She offered me milk and cookies and we sat together on the couch watching one idiot show after another. She fell asleep at last, her head on my shoulder. I stretched her out, covered her with my jacket, and watched the tube until the station went to static. I never did get to Gail’s.
20
A woman was severely beaten in her apartment last night, apparently by the same man in a ski mask who has been responsible for a recent rash of crimes in Brattleboro. Starting with the shotgun killing of James Phillips by Thelma Reitz on January 3, this mysterious masked man, whom police have yet to identify, has been involved in a series of assaults, thefts, and possibly one other death-that of police Captain Frank Murphy on January 10-now officially ruled a traffic accident.
With this latest assault, however, a possible motive has been found for the unknown assailant’s previous actions. Susan Lucey, last night’s victim and a “part-time” prostitute, told this reporter that the man police have labeled Ski Mask forced his way into her apartment and demanded to know what she had told police earlier in the day about the death of Kimberly Harris, found murdered at the Huntington Arms apartment complex on September 15, 1983. Harris and Lucey reportedly worked together as prostitutes for a brief period several months prior to Harris’s death.
The Harris case, the most sensational in Brattleboro’s history, ended with the conviction of William Davis, who at the time of his arrest was the janitor of the Huntington Arms complex. Davis, a black Vietnam veteran originally from Baltimore, claimed throughout the trial that he had been framed and was innocent of all charges.
It seems the police might now be in agreement. Lt. Joseph Gunther, acting head of the Police Department’s Support Services, has been rumored for weeks to be investigating the old case. Indeed, it was Lt. Gunther who visited Susan Lucey yesterday before she was assaulted and who questioned her on her relationship with the late Miss Harris.
I stopped reading half way through and put the paper down. “Exciting stuff.”
Tom Wilson, the town manager, glowered at me. “Did you read it all?”
“I got the gist of it.”
“I want you to read it all. If I end up doing something you’ll live to regret, I want you to know why.”
I nodded and looked at the other people in the room-Brandt, Dunn, Patrol Captain Billy Manierre, and town counsel Robert Denby. They sat like boys outside the principal’s office. I went back to reading.
Katz had dug up much of what there was to dig, especially on the prostitute angle. Surprisingly, he still missed the connection betwesaid dth="0"›Ien Ski Mask’s early victims and the Harris jury members, as irrelevant as that was now. He also didn’t bring out a lot of what we were currently holding-all the forensic stuff, Harris’s time cards, her bank records, or even the fact that her name wasn’t Harris. All that just revealed how good he was at combining peripheral knowledge with some jazzy writing. Still, he knew more than we had officially released, and I couldn’t deny that the news of Susan Lucey’s beating came as a double shock.
I put the paper down a second time.
“Finished?” Wilson asked.
“Yup.”
“Just to give you the benefit of the doubt, is it true you saw Lucey and talked to her about Harris?”
“Yes. This is the first I heard of her being beaten up. I’d like to talk to her.”
“Talk to me first, assuming that isn’t monumentally inconvenient.”
“To be fair,” Brandt interrupted, “Joe would have had no reason to talk to you until now in any case. He reports to me. I report to you.”
“In theory, you mean.”
“I’ve kept you up to date.”
Wilson’s face reddened and he grabbed the paper out of my lap. “Then why the hell is most of this new to me? I had no idea Harris was a hooker.” He was tense, but under control.
“Most of it isn’t new. I’ve kept you apprised of the major elements in this case. The prostitute angle is less than a day old. You know a lot more than Katz does, and you’ll know even more before the end of the day. These are political and PR problems. They had to surface sooner or later.”
“I’d say they were legal ones,” Denby softly said.
Wilson glanced at Denby and nodded. “He’s right. We could be taken to the cleaners on this thing. I’ll give a shit about the politics when I’m up to my ass in lawsuits. How the hell did Katz make the Kimberly Harris connection?”
We all looked at each other. I finally stated the obvious. “He says it was through Lucey.” Wilson shook his head in exasperation. “I know that, for Christ’s sake. I meant, how did he find her?” There was silence in the room. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe we should ask him.” Denby said.
“What would he get out of a conversation like that?” asked Dunn. Brandt started fiddling with his pipe. “We could give him something-trade a little. Up to now, he’s been baying at our walls, trying to get in. If we let him in, he might at least tone things down a notch. The closer we get to cracking this thing, the more harm stories like that will do us. He might even be of some help if we approach him right.”
“That’ll be the day.”
Wilson held up his hand. “Fine; whatever. If you want to try playing footsie, it’s okay with me. I just want to know what’s coming next. I’m tired of being blindsided. The selectmen put me on the griddle every time we get together-and ter amp;withat’s been a lot lately-and I don’t have anything to tell them.”
“That was per agreement. You were willing to take the hot seat,” Brandt reminded him.
“What was agreed was that we should let as few people know what Gunther was doing as possible, until he was sure we couldn’t get out of this thing.” He shook the paper again. “Wouldn’t you say that time has come? In fact, wouldn’t you admit we missed the boat a little on this one? I’d have been a whole lot happier if the selectmen had read this with the dubious comfort of advance knowledge. As it was, the damn paper wasn’t even distributed before my phone started ringing off the wall.”
Brandt finally stopped fiddling and lit up his pipe. “We have no way of knowing when Ski Mask is going to pop up.”
Wilson shook his head. “You miss the point. As it reads now, the police department has been reinvestigating the Harris case for weeks, piling up data, stepping over a growing number of corpses, opening us up to Christ-knows-how-many potential lawsuits, and the hoard hasn’t been let in on any of it. I mean, Jesus, I gather Dunn here was given inside information. He’s not even a town official.”
“Amen,” muttered Dunn.
Wilson glared at him. “Tony, I was willing to play dumb with the board on the premise I’d be the first to know of any developments. You’ve probably gotten my ass fired, you know that?”
Brandt took the pipe out of his mouth and shut his eyes for a moment. Ten long seconds drifted by before he spoke. “All right. Let me talk to them. Until Joe and Frank went to Connecticut, we weren’t even sure Harris shouldn’t be left just where she was. A lot has happened since then; some of it, like Joe’s meeting with Susan Lucey, is so new we haven’t been able to digest it yet.” He pointed at the paper with his pipe. “That’s the real damage here. Katz blew the whistle before the players were ready to start. I do have one major misgiving, though, and it’s the same one I’ve had from the beginning. If I have to give everything I’ve got to the board, I doubt any of us will have to wait for the next paper before the word’s all over town.”
“Could that be any worse than the way things are now?” Wilson asked.
Brandt nodded. “Yes. We still have a lot Katz doesn’t know. If it gets out before we’ve been able to put it to use, all sorts of things might go wrong, some of which we might never even hear about.”