“Tombstones?” I asked.
“From the churches in the village. There are still tombstones there, all covered over by the Park,” Verge said. “That isn’t right, is it? To bury over where people were laid to rest.”
“Doesn’t sound right to me. And the angel?”
“She was just there on the ground, near the foundation of the church. The man-the other man-he was picking up things from the ditch, at night while nobody else was around. He asked me if I wanted the angel. I told him yes, and he gave it to me.”
There was always another man, someone to be blamed for a theft or a bad act. I was getting frustrated by Verge’s selective memory.
“The other man, Verge,” I said. “I don’t suppose you know his name.”
“No, lady, I don’t.”
“That’s right, you’re bad on names.”
He caught the edge in my voice. I started to turn away, but he reached out and grabbed the sleeve of my blazer.
“But I’ve seen him before. I met him years ago. And every now and then I see him again.”
“That’s good to know, Verge,” I said. “How do you know him?”
“I told you I worked at the garage, helping my daddy,” he said. “From 1960 to 1980. That man recognized me from all that time back. Said we used to talk some and that my father was good to him.”
“Where’s the garage, Verge?” I asked. It sounded like he was bluffing me again-and I was just off my own bluff to Jessica Pell, so I didn’t want to fall for it. “Maybe someone there can help us figure out who the man is. Figure out whether the dead girl had something to do with your angel.”
“Amsterdam Avenue, near 77th Street, like I told you. It’s an old stable, actually, that was made into a garage,” Verge said. “It’s the Dakota Stables. Called that after the apartment building it was built for. The Dakota Stables.”
TWENTY-THREE
“What do we do with this guy in the meantime?” I asked. “I don’t know if he’s crazy as a fox or telling us the truth.”
Mercer, Mike, and I were in the lobby of the rustic cottage, home to one of the last public marionette companies in the country. The cheerful décor of the children’s theater was a sharp contrast to the serious subjects we’d been discussing.
Verge had gone outside in the company of four of the Park’s anticrime cops who had helped Mercer find him early this afternoon.
“You can’t lock him up, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Mercer said. “Florida’s got no hold on him, and he’s not in any trouble here.”
“But he knew the dead girl and he actually spent time with her. His little carved angel was found not far from her body,” I said, struggling to put all that together. “He’s got no idea where he was when she died.”
“We don’t know when she died, Coop,” Mike said. “How can you expect him to alibi up?”
“The man has no home, his family doesn’t trust him enough to want him. And our girl wasn’t gay, even though she was with Jo and her friends. Let him go, and we’ll never see him again.”
“That’s a little over-the-top,” Mercer said.
“A convicted sex offender with a long history of hitting on teens?”
“A few hours ago you thought he was Angel’s protector, when Jo was talking about him. He’s sixty-three years old. He’s probably aged out of the molesting business, courtesy of Florida’s castration meds.”
I started listing the offenders we’d handled together who had still been sexually violent in their senior years, some of them turning to blunt force or strangulation when they’d been frustrated by an inability to complete the physical act.
“Besides, the parkies who trusted him didn’t realize Verge had a rap sheet, Mercer. But now he knows we know about it.”
“You think the city will put him up for a night or two in a hotel?” Mercer asked.
“We’re not quite at material witness status. I’ll push McKinney to let us do it, if you think he’ll stay.”
“Let me ask him.”
“Ask him about the Dakota Stables, too. Have you ever heard of them, Mike?” I asked.
“Never did. But it’s my next stop.”
“I’m with you.”
We walked out the door of the cottage. Verge was entertaining the plainclothes cops with stories about the Park. He was holding a large object in his hands, but his back was to us and I couldn’t make out what it was.
Mercer called out to him and he turned around.
“What the hell is that?” Mike asked.
“Damn,” I said. “It’s one of the marionettes, from the theater. It was in a box on the floor near the door when we went inside.”
Verge was dangling a puppet that was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. The cops were laughing with him as he made up his own version of the fairy tale, the two-foot-tall doll bouncing from the strands of string that controlled her movement. He was talking about walking her through the desolate Ravine, past the three waterfalls, when she was approached by the wolf.
“Where’d you get that, Verge?” Mercer asked. It seemed as though he didn’t like the fact that the disarming nature of our “simple” friend could be so deceptive.
“I’m telling a story,” the man said. “The police officers are my friends.”
“The doll. The puppet. Where’d you get it?” Mercer knew the answer to my question as well as I did.
“Red Riding Hood? She was a gift to me. The people inside-the people who work the show-one of them gave it to me.”
He was as straight-faced now as he had been when he responded to our questions just minutes ago.
“There’s nobody inside the theater. You’re not telling the truth, Verge,” I said. “Who? Who was it?”
His head was weaving from side to side. “You know I’m not-”
“Good with names,” I said, taking a step closer to him, holding my hands out to ask for the return of the puppet. “That doesn’t work with me.”
He jerked his right arm and Red Riding Hood flew up in the air, missing the side of my head by inches.
“Give it back, Verge,” I said.
He was laughing hard now, spinning the marionette so that the strings became twisted around one another. “She’s mine.”
I turned to reenter the cottage.
“Where are you going?” Mike asked.
“To get someone from the theater. They’ll be missing this doll. If he’s not giving it back to me, there must be someone here who can reclaim it.”
Mercer was trying to keep one eye on Verge Humphrey and follow my activity. “I’ll get it from him, Alex. Don’t knock yourself out.”
“Do you get my point? Do you see that he just told a big fat lie, Mercer? So how can we believe anything he says?”
“He’s mentally challenged, Alex.”
“I can deal with that just fine. But what’s the challenge? That’s the issue. Is Verge just slow, or does he have problems telling the truth? How do we get him evaluated, Mercer? ’Cause he’s useless to me-”
“To all of us.”
“If he’s a pathologic liar. And a serial sex offender.”
“No signs of violence,” Mercer said. “Not recently.”
I went into the cottage, walked through the vestibule past the empty box in which the marionette had been resting when I first arrived. There was a door to the side of the stage, and I knocked on it. A young woman in jeans and a T-shirt, a paintbrush in her hand, opened it and asked what I wanted.
“I’m with the police officers who were just in here,” I said. “One of your puppets was in a crate near the front. I’m just wondering-?”
“Red Riding Hood? She’s fine there, thanks. We’ve got someone from the doll hospital coming to pick her up shortly,” the woman said cheerfully. “She’s got a broken arm, and we need her back for the Saturday matinee. Is she in your way?”