“Is this the right kind?” he asked.
“You bet,” she answered.
Thirty minutes later, she took Dart’s hand and pulled him out of the chaise lounge and led him around a Japanese paper screen to a small bedroom that contained a pine chest, two long rows of hanging clothes, and, on the floor, a futon with a down comforter. She turned and faced him and pulled the shirt over her head. Her bra was translucent, her nipples hard. She undid her jeans and stepped out of them, and Dart was reminded of their night in the crib. She said, “Do me a favor and at least take off your shoes.”
She slipped under the covers, her back to him. Dart undressed fully and climbed in beside her, pressing to her back like spoons. He reached around her and cupped her breasts and hugged her, and she hummed. The air trapped in the covers smelled of her arousal and penetrated Dart to his core. They remained this way for several long minutes, Dart stroking her breasts lightly, Abby, head bent, kissing his arms and hands. It felt to him that they had been lovers for a very long time and that they knew each other’s secrets and pleasures. His fingers explored her, and she slipped out of her underpants and bra, and she found a condom in a bedside box and said something about safe sex and rolled him over and put it on him. She kissed him then, and rolled them over together so that Dart lay atop her. “Gentle at first,” she requested, taking hold of him and rubbing him against her in a way that offered her pleasure and made her shudder. “Rough at the end.”
Later, they collapsed in a sweaty embrace, out of breath and spent with exhaustion. She kissed his neck lightly and ran her fingers down his back and giggled approvingly. “I knew it,” she said happily, the only words she offered. She held him tightly and wouldn’t let him off of her, even after they slipped apart, lingering in the glow of the moment.
“Will you stay with me?” she asked.
“Uh-huh,” he answered, kissing behind her ear, working down her neck, and finding her breast and kissing her there too.
“Maybe hugging comes in second,” she said a while later, and Dart dozed off with a smile on his face.
A beeping sound, emanating from Dart’s clothing, awakened them.
He slipped out of bed.
“I protest!” she complained. “You traded out,” she reminded him.
He carried the pager into the light of the other room and read the CAPers phone number off its LCD display. He called in to Jennings Road, speaking with Sergeant Haite. He hung up immediately, sneaked into the room, and collected his things. “Gotta go,” he told her in a whisper, grateful that she, unlike Ginny, would understand such things.
“Will you come back?” she offered. “Please.”
“I’ll try. It’s over in West Hartford. I’ll be a couple hours at least.”
“Why bother with something in West Hartford?” she asked, coming more fully awake. West Hartford was out of their jurisdiction. She answered herself immediately, confirming that even half-asleep she could think faster than most detectives. “Another suicide,” she said.
“Right.” He clipped the pager to his belt and checked his sidearm and holster. “Another suicide,” he confirmed. “West Hartford asked for our help.” Many of the neighboring towns had little more than patrol squads, using either HPD or the State Police for the bigger investigations.
“Any record?” she asked, flicking on the bedside light, with no inclination toward modesty. She had long since passed the age of pinup girl, but she had nothing to hide.
He hesitated, and she asked him a second time.
“A pornography conviction,” he said.
“I’m coming with you,” she announced, throwing the covers off.
Dart knew better than to argue.
Orchard Road climbed high up a hill, offering a spectacular view of the distant city. This was the high-rent district: half a million dollars and up for a three-bedroom on an acre. Woods. Ponds. Views. Beamers. Rolexes. Divorces. And silicon implants.
Dart pulled the Volvo into the curving drive and parked alongside an HPD patrol car in front of the brick-and-stone two-story house. Abby yanked the rearview mirror toward her and ran a brush through her hair. They both hung their badges around their necks and entered by the front door.
“Tuna’s got the wife upstairs,” announced patrolman Benny Webster. Tanya Fische, an HPD patrol officer, referred to as Tuna, was clearly Webster’s patrol partner. “The wife popped a bunch of Valium and is in la-la land. No use to us until morning. We ain’t touched nothing in the study. But it’s a messy one,” he said, eyeing Abby Lang as if she might have trouble stomaching it. “Single shot up through the roof of the mouth. Nine millimeter.”
“Who’s on it?” Dart asked.
“Kowalski and-” he answered.
Dart and Abby met eyes, interrupting the uniformed man.
“Something wrong?” Webster asked, seeing this.
“Everything’s just ducky,” Abby answered.
Webster continued, “And their assistant chief.”
“West Hartford’s?” Dart clarified. “Nolan?” he said, adding the name.
“That’s him. Yeah. Only he ain’t here. Showed up, talked to the K,” he said, meaning Kowalski, “and took off. It being a suicide and all, he didn’t seem too bothered.”
“Wanted to brief his chief and prepare a statement,” came the voice of Roman Kowalski. He looked tired; the buttons on his shirt indicated he had dressed hastily. “What brings you here?” he asked Dart.
“Sergeant Haite.”
“And you?” he asked Abby.
She didn’t want to explain her having been with Dartelli. She said for Kowalski’s benefit, “‘And you, Lieutenant.’ Is that what you meant to say, Detective?”
Kowalski glared at her. “The wife was out with friends ’til about an hour ago. Comes home, finds the hubby spread all over the study. Calls nine-eleven.” Kowalski eyed Abby again, and Dart realized that maybe he was busy with his arithmetic.
The entrance foyer had a low ceiling with hand-hewn dark timbers and plaster that had pieces of yellow hay stuck into it. To Dart’s left, a gray-carpeted stairway ascended to the second floor. He passed a small stone column supporting a wicker basket filled with trick-or-treat candy and fresh fruit. He thought that on this of all nights, Halloween, there would have been, should have been, potential witnesses around and about.
“Did she find the house locked or open?” he asked Kowalski.
“If you want to sit in the fucking bleachers and watch, I got no problem,” Kowalski said. “But if you want to play Twenty Questions, fucking take it somewhere else.”
“You know what’s amazing about you,” Abby told Kowalski, stepping past him and moving toward the open study door, “is how delicately you handle the language.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off, raising a finger at him, “And be careful what you say to your superiors, Detective.” With extra venom she added, “’Cause I’ll bust you down to traffic, given half the chance.”
Dart smiled at Kowalski and raised his eyebrows, taunting him.
Stepping up to Dartelli, Kowalski said earnestly, “I’m waiting on Buzz before I go in there. Don’t touch a fucking thing.” He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his coat pocket and stuck one in his mouth. “I’ll be outside.”
The study was the size of Dart’s studio kitchen and sitting area combined. Oriental rugs, dark antiques, a stone-and-brick fireplace with two gargoyles supporting the four-inch thick, burl walnut mantel. A substantial puddle of blood on the rug below the deceased. Splatter pattern on the ceiling consistent with the top of a human head coming off. An oil portrait of a man with a bulbous red nose, who lived back when the river trade kept Hartford prosperous, ruled from above the mantel. Leather-bound books crammed the shelves, looking both untouched and unread. Window dressing. Dart noticed a few spaces between the volumes, like missing teeth.