He handed Rizzoli a file and videotape. “Crime scene video,” he said. “We’re getting the rest of the files copied for you. Some of them are in my trunk-you can take them when you leave.”
“Dr. Isles will be sending you the final report on the remains,” Rizzoli said.
“Cause of death?”
She shook her head. “Skeletonized. Can’t be determined.”
Gorman sighed and looked toward the house. “Well, at least we know where Maria Jean is now. That’s what drove me nuts.” He gestured toward the house. “There’s not much to see inside. It’s been cleaned up. But you asked.”
“Who’s living here now?” asked Frost.
“No one. Not since the murder.”
“Awfully nice house, to go empty.”
“It’s stuck in probate. Even if they could put it on the market, it’ll be a hard sell.”
They walked up the steps to a porch where wind-blown leaves had collected and pots of withered geraniums hung from the eaves. It appeared that no one had swept or watered in weeks, and already an air of neglect had settled like cobwebs over the house.
“Haven’t been in here since July,” said Gorman as he took out a key ring and searched for the correct key. “I just got back to work last week, and I’m still trying to get back up to speed. Let me tell you, that hepatitis’ll kick the wind out of your sails but good. And I only had the mild kind, Type A. Least it won’t kill me…” He glanced up at his visitors. “Piece of advice: Don’t eat shellfish in Mexico.”
At last he found the right key and unlocked the door. Stepping inside, Rizzoli inhaled the odors of fresh paint and floor wax, the smells of a house scrubbed down and sanitized. And then abandoned, she thought, gazing at the ghostly forms of sheet-draped furniture in the living room. White oak floors gleamed like polished glass. Sunlight streamed in through floor-to-ceiling windows. Here, at the top of the mountain, they were perched above the claustrophic grip of the woods, and the views ran all the way down to Blue Hill Bay. A jet scratched a white line across blue sky, and below, a boat tore a wake in the water’s surface. She stood for a moment at the window, staring at the same vista that Maria Jean Waite had surely enjoyed.
“Tell us about these people,” she said.
“You read the file I faxed you?”
“Yes. But I didn’t get a sense of who they were. What made them tick.”
“Do we ever really know?”
She turned to face him and was struck by the faintly yellowish cast of his eyes. The afternoon sunlight seemed to emphasize his sickly color. “Let’s start with Kenneth. It’s all his money, isn’t it?”
Gorman nodded. “He was an asshole.”
“That I didn’t read in the report.”
“Some things you just can’t say in reports. But that’s the general consensus around town. You know, we have a lot of trust funders like Kenny up here. Blue Hill’s now the in place for rich refugees from Boston. Most of them get along okay. But every so often, you run into a Kenny Waite, who plays this do-you-know-who-I-am? game. Yeah, they all knew who he was. He was someone with money.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Grandparents. Shipping industry, I think. Kenny sure didn’t earn it himself. But he did like to spend it. Had a nice Hinckley down in the harbor. And he used to tear back and forth to Boston in this red Ferrari. Till he lost his license and had his car impounded. Too many OUIs.” Gorman grunted. “I think that pretty much sums up Kenneth Waite the Third. A lot of money, not much brains.”
“What a waste,” said Frost.
“You have kids?”
Frost shook his head. “Not yet.”
“You want to raise a bunch of useless kids,” said Gorman, “all you gotta do is leave ‘em money.”
“What about Maria Jean?” said Rizzoli. She remembered the remains of Rickets Lady laid out on the autopsy table. The bowed tibias and misshapen breastbone-skeletal evidence of an impoverished childhood. “She didn’t start out with money. Did she?”
Gorman shook his head. “She grew up in a mining town, down in West Virginia. Came up here to take a summer job as a waitress. That’s how she met Kenny. I think he married her because she was the only one who’d put up with his crap. But it didn’t sound like a happy marriage. Especially after the accident.”
“Accident?”
“Few years ago. Kenny was driving, boozed up as usual. Ran his car into a tree. He walked away without a scratch-just his luck, right? But Maria Jean ended up in the hospital for three months.”
“That must be when she broke her thighbone.”
“What?”
“There was a surgical rod in her femur. And two fused vertebrae.”
Gorman nodded. “I heard she had a limp. A real shame, too, ‘cause she was a nice-looking woman.”
And ugly women don’t mind limping, Rizzoli thought, but held her tongue. She crossed to a wall of built-in shelves and studied a photograph of a couple in bathing suits. They were standing on a beach, turquoise water lapping at their ankles. The woman was elfin, almost childlike, her dark-brown hair falling to her shoulders. Now corpse hair, Rizzoli couldn’t help thinking. The man was fair-haired, his waist already starting to thicken, muscle turning to flab. What might have been an attractive face was ruined by his vague expression of disdain.
“The marriage was unhappy?” said Rizzoli.
“That’s what the housekeeper told me. After the accident, Maria Jean didn’t want to travel much. Kenny could only drag her as far as Boston. But Kenny, he was used to heading for St. Bart’s every January, so he’d just leave her here.”
“Alone?”
Gorman nodded. “Nice guy, huh? She had a housekeeper who’d run errands for her. Did the cleaning. Took her shopping, since Maria Jean didn’t like to drive. Kind of a lonely place up here, but the housekeeper thought Maria Jean actually seemed happier when Kenny wasn’t around.” Gorman paused. “I have to admit, after we found Kenny, the possibility kind of crossed my mind that…”
“That Maria Jean did it,” said Rizzoli.
“It’s always the first consideration.” He reached into his jacket for a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Does it seem hot in here to you?”
“It’s warm.”
“I’m not too good with the heat these days. Body’s still out of whack. That’s what I get for eating clams in Mexico.”
They crossed the living room, past the spectral forms of sheet-draped furniture, past a massive stone fireplace with a neat bundle of split logs stacked beside the hearth. Fuel to feed the flames on a chilly Maine night. Gorman led them to an area of the room where there was only bare floor and the wall was a blank white, undecorated. Rizzoli stared at the fresh coat of paint, and the hairs on the back of her neck stirred and bristled. She looked down at the floor and saw that the oak was paler here, sanded and revarnished. But blood is not so easily obliterated, and were they to darken the room and spray with luminol, the floor would still cry with blood, its chemical traces embedded too deeply into the cracks and grain of the wood to ever be completely erased.
“Kenny was propped up here,” said Gorman, pointing to the newly painted wall. “Legs out in front of him, arms behind him. Wrists and ankles bound with duct tape. Single slash to the neck, Rambo-type knife.”
“There were no other wounds?” asked Rizzoli.
“Just the neck. Like an execution.”
“Stun gun marks?”
Gorman paused. “You know, he was here about two days when the housekeeper found him. Two warm days. By then, the skin wasn’t looking too good. Not to mention smelling too good. Could’ve easily missed a stun gun mark.”
“Did you ever examine this floor under an alternate light source?”
“It was pretty much a bloody mess in here. I’m not sure what we would have seen under a Luma-lite. But it’s all on the crime scene video.” He glanced around the room and spotted the TV and VCR. “Why don’t we take a look at it? It should answer most of your questions.” Rizzoli crossed to the TV, pressed the ON buttons, and inserted the tape into the slot. The Home Shopping Network blared from the TV, featuring a zirconium pendant necklace for only $99.95, its facets sparkling on the throat of a swan-necked model.