Residents at the first two of Dart’s four locations politely explained that they had never heard of the species and offered for Dart to look around, which he did. As it turned out, there were no bald cypresses at either location. He reached Sam by cell phone and was told, with reluctance on her part, that the horticultural list had been compiled some seven years earlier. Many of the trees could now be dead, and worse, others might have been planted within the last few years and not be included on the list.
The door of the third location was answered by a matronly woman with bluish hair and substantial girth. Closer to East Hartford, this was a decidedly nicer house than Dart’s first two attempts. There was a small backyard with a bird-bath, but the bald cypress was to be found inside the house, making Dart skeptical about the possibility of this leading him to Payne’s visitor. The futility of this search began to wear on him. He felt depressed and stretched thin-nothing about these cases ever seemed to connect; he worked on hunches, but with so little evidence. Here he was, chasing a tree! He felt like an idiot.
At 9:00 P.M., Dart once again connected by phone with Richardson, who was having equally bad luck, and she informed him that she intended to head home and try again tomorrow. Dart had promised himself one last try, but he too gave it up.
After work the next night, at a few minutes past 7:00 P.M, Dart drove over toward Pope Park South to search the last of his four locations. Although a scant few blocks from the Trinity College enclave, the Hamilton Court address was unfamiliar to him and not the kind of place that Dart felt easy visiting alone at night. It was a tough neighborhood, and the proximity to Pope Park made for some tension as it doubled as a needle park after dark. On the park’s northern boundary, Park Street ran east-west and was the most dangerous of any street in the city at night. Anything and everything was available there, from crack cocaine to teenage boys-the weapons count was astronomical. If a patrol car cruised Park Street, it did so with a team, heavily armed and ever alert.
Hamilton Court turned out to be a filthy, narrow alley less than fifty yards long that bisected a steep hill and connected Hamilton Street with Park Terrace. Dart turned onto the street and kept on driving, reluctant to park or even to slow down. Four decrepit clapboard buildings lined the alley, two on each side, surrounded by broken and decaying chain-link fences.
Driving past, Dart hoped the entrance to these houses might be on Zion, at the top of the hill, but he made a pass through the alley twice and determined that their only access was off Hamilton Court. Number 11 was pale yellow, the windows of the ground floor alit. The rotting wood trim had once been white.
Dart parked and locked the car with the engine running, thankful that he kept two car keys for just this purpose. He removed his police identification card and slung it’s chain around his neck, hopeful that a shooter would think twice before dropping a cop. Cop killers had short lives once inside Hartford jails. He walked over to the sagging stairs and climbed them quickly with sharp, quick movements as he kept an eye on everything around him. Stupid time of night to be here, he thought to himself, heart pounding, his hand ready to draw his weapon. This was a shoot-first-ask-questions-later-neighborhood-a concept that didn’t sit well with Dart, but one he understood.
He knocked sharply and waited. No one answered. Fine with me, he thought as he turned to return to his waiting car.
As he stepped down onto the second step, he heard and felt something crunch beneath his shoe, and the alarm inside his policeman’s brain sounded. He wanted to label it glass, but it didn’t fit. Almost like glass, his senses told him. Don’t stop! the same internal voice warned. But he did. The steps proved too dark and he withdrew his small penlight, condemning himself for being such a Boy Scout, and shined the light onto the step. The cone of light caught tiny white stones, like stars in the night sky. But stones did not pulverize as these had, and so Dart looked closer, still checking over his shoulder for a mugger or a kid with a semiautomatic. Cautiously, he knelt, reached out and carefully pinched some of the material between his fingers. That same alarm sounded with this tactile contact: rock salt!
Bragg had connected rock salt to the Payne suicide-to Payne’s possible visitor-and although Dart might have been elated with such a discovery, in this neighborhood, on this street at this time of night, he half wished that his foot had missed that step.
Mac tried to bark from the back of the Volvo, sounding like a vacuum cleaner with its belt out of adjustment. Dart glanced up to see if it was a warning, but decided it was only old Mac longing for company, wanting to go home. Me too, boy.
Dart placed the dust into his palm and shined the light on it. A watery-blue hue-just as Teddy had described it.
In theory, because 11 Hamilton Court was listed as a location of a bald cypress tree, with this discovery Dart had two of the three elements identified by Bragg. The detective in Dart could not ignore this. Like it or not the wretched old house seemed inexorably linked to Harold Payne. He deposited the pinch of rock salt in his top pocket, gathered his courage, and decided to look around back.
A narrow dirt driveway ran alongside the building and accessed a rickety wooden slat fence that had once been painted green. Having no legal right to enter, and keeping in mind that 11 Hamilton Court might prove valuable, Dart elected to stay out, but he found a space in the rundown fence to peer through. Inside this back area, it was dark, and his eyes took a nervous moment to adjust. Along with his anxiety, he felt excitement.
Unable to see, he lifted the penlight and shined it inside, and what he saw caused him to gasp. Once an enclosed garden it was now a place of ruin and neglect. Lying on the ground, the printing wet and faded, the paper burst open like a rotting corpse, a bag of potting soil had spilled its contents across the path to the back stoop. The third element that Bragg had described! To the left of the area stood a scraggly tree, its limbs barren for winter, at the base of which-and, in fact, littered across the entire area including where Dart stood-was a carpet of small needles, some a dull green, others brown and amber. A bald cypress tree, Dart knew, without knowing. He collected some of the fallen needles into his pocket.
He quickly turned off his penlight and glanced up the sheer wall of the worn house, his heart racing, his skin prickling. It seemed so gloomy and desolate, like a haunted house from a film or a nightmare. But this place was real, and the effect on Dart, palpable.
Whoever lived here had been inside Harold Payne’s on the night of the killing-not suicide, but killing. And the cop’s instinct welling up inside of him said that this person had been more than just a visitor.
Dart made for the car, unlocked it, and climbed inside. Mac greeted him with a slobbery kiss. “We’re not going home, boy,” he informed the dog, intending to keep 11 Hamilton Court under surveillance.
Abby reached Dart on his cell phone at eight-fifteen, reminding him that he was forty-five minutes late for dinner. He told her briefly about his find and that he and Mac were keeping an eye on 11 Hamilton Court from up on Zion. Without a bit of annoyance, she announced that two dinners to go were on their way.
Twenty minutes later Abby Lang, in blue jeans and a deerskin jacket, was sitting in the front seat of his Volvo, working on a chicken salad. For Dart, the most difficult part of police work was sitting around waiting for something to happen, which was one reason he had eschewed Narcotics.