“Because they’d stopped their mail.”
“Of course.” He puffed out his cheeks. “You’d be in a position to know that, wouldn’t you?”
“I had an unmarked prescription bottle full of Valium in my pocket. Also a pair of latex gloves. I’d already stowed the hose, the duct tape and box cutter in Hank’s trunk. And a full bottle of Jack Daniels.”
Des said, “When I asked if you kept any bourbon in the house you marched straight into the kitchen and came back with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Nice bit of playacting on your part. You bought yourself another bottle, didn’t you?”
“Didn’t have to. One of Hank’s firehouse buddies gave him one for Christmas. It was under the tree in the living room.”
“What’d you do after you parked at the boat launch?”
“I got out and asked him to move on over behind the wheel, which he did. He was very compliant. Or he was until I told him to drink down the bottle of Jack Daniels. He had a few sips but then he didn’t want anymore. He became extremely resistant, in fact. We had to force him to drink it. Casey gripped him by the neck while I-”
“You held a gun to his head,” Des said. “A Smith and Wesson.38 Special.”
Paulette looked at her in surprise. “Why, yes.”
“After he passed out you slipped on the latex gloves and got down to business. Tucked the Valium bottle into his jacket pocket and sent yourself that text message from his phone. Am I right?”
She nodded her head. “I left my cell phone here. I was careful to make sure I did that. Casey got the other things out of the trunk. We duct taped the hose to the tailpipe, then ran it in through the driver’s window and rolled it up.”
“You thought of every little detail. You even left my business card on the seat next to Hank’s phone. You were very clever, Paulette. But you weren’t smart. You left bruising on his neck and forehead when you forced him to drink that bourbon. You also failed to account for how Hank managed to rig up the hose to his tailpipe without ever getting out of the car. It was pouring rain out. Yet, somehow, his hair was dry. So were his shoes and his floor mat. The duct tape and box cutter were wet when I got there. The passenger seat, too. And the passenger-side floor mat was missing.”
“I panicked a little,” Paulette conceded. “Actually, I panicked a lot. I guess it was the … finality of it.”
“Yeah, death is pretty damned final.”
“I started shaking and couldn’t stop. So I sat back down in the passenger seat to collect myself. I wanted to make sure that we’d done everything right before I turned on the engine and we left him there. When I realized I’d gotten the floor mat all wet I took it along. Figured it didn’t matter if the duct tape and box cutter were wet.”
“And what about the seat?”
Paulette took a small sip of her wine. “There was nothing I could do about it. I hoped you wouldn’t notice. That was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t your only one. You also took the Jack Daniels bottle with you.”
“That was Casey’s doing,” she acknowledged glumly. “I told him to leave it there. The poor fool thought he was being thorough. He just didn’t understand.”
“Where is it now?”
“He tossed it in a Dumpster this morning when he went out to buy cigarettes.”
“And what about the.38 that you held to Hank’s forehead?” Questa asked. “We traced an identical weapon to one of your carriers, Abe Monahan. Abe is currently on vacation with his family. How did you get the weapon out of his house? Did Tina Champlain help you?”
“Tina?” Paulette blinked at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Where’d you get the.38, Paulette?” Des asked.
“Casey bought it last year from some lowlife at the Rustic. It made him feel manly to have a gun.”
“Where is it now?”
“In the bottom drawer of my dresser. Do you want me to get it?”
“That’s okay. We’ll do it.”
“Whatever,” Paulette said hopelessly. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now that he’s gone. I was his mother. When you’re a mother you do whatever it takes to protect your child. He was desperate. I gave him every penny I had. And when that still wasn’t enough I did what I had to do. What any mother would do. None of you are mothers. You don’t know what it means. Casey came from inside of me. He was connected to me. And he wasn’t strong. He still needed me. He never stopped needing me.”
“And now he’s dead,” Des pointed out. “And you got him killed. When you murdered Hank you wrote Casey’s death sentence. There was absolutely no way Slick Rick and Tommy the Pinhead could let him stay alive. Not once they knew that the postal inspectors were grilling him about Hank’s so-called suicide. Casey wasn’t strong, like you said. They were positive he’d rat them out to save his own skin. They had to create some daylight between themselves and Casey. You left them no choice, Paulette. By killing your own boyfriend to protect Casey you ended up getting Casey killed.”
“I did not,” Paulette insisted heatedly. “Don’t you dare blame me for what happened. It’s Josie Cantro’s fault. Every damned bit of it.”
“Are you implicating his life coach in these crimes?” Grisky asked.
“I’m saying she led Casey on. He thought she was in love with him. He thought they had a future together. That’s why he started betting so much money on football games. He wanted to make a fortune so that they could run away to Hawaii together. He did it for Josie. She’s the one who ought to be locked up. If it hadn’t been for that manipulative blond bitch, none of this would have ever happened.”
“She told me she was trying to help him be more assertive,” Des said.
“How?” Paulette demanded. “By filling his head with crazy fantasies? He was still a child. I should never have brought those two together. That’s what I regret. But after she helped Hank quit smoking I thought that maybe, just maybe, she could help Casey, too. Biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll never forgive her. She’s supposed to be a professional. She should have known that he’d fall head over heels in love with her. Why, he even talked about her as if the two of them were actual lovers.”
Des didn’t touch that. None of them did. There was no point. Was Josie Cantro America’s sweetheart? Not really. Did Des approve of her methods? Not really. Did trouble seem to have a way of following her around? Yeah, it did. So did lucrative estate settlements. But was Josie legally responsible for anything that had just gone down? No, she wasn’t. Not unless the M.E. discovered that Bryce Peck’s death was something other than a straight suicide. So far, he’d found no evidence of foul play and Des’s gut feeling was that he never would. Bryce Peck was a burn-out case who’d taken his own life.
“Paulette, we can debate Josie Cantro’s ethics all night,” she said. “But it won’t alter the simple truth of this matter, which is that Josie didn’t steal the U.S. Mail or kill Hank. You did.”
Paulette said nothing in response. Just stared morosely out the front window at the street.
“Well, I guess that’s it then,” Grisky concluded, rubbing his hands together.
“Real solid work, Master Sergeant,” Sam Questa said.
Grisky nodded his jarhead in agreement. “Good job, girlfriend. If you ask me, your talents are wasted in this town.”
Des looked at Paulette, who was still staring out the front window, before she said, “You couldn’t be more wrong, Agent Grisky. This is where I’m needed. And I’m still not your girlfriend.”
EPILOGUE
(ONE DAY LATER)
The world-class pissing contest didn’t stop after Paulette’s arrest for the murder of Hank Merrill. Since Hank was an employee of the U.S. Postal Service his murder constituted a federal crime and the Department of Justice wanted to take the case away from Connecticut’s prosecutors and try it in a U.S. Court. What with Casey Zander being a postal service employee, too, the feds also wanted their hands on Tommy the Pinhead, hoping they could persuade him to flip on Slick Rick Fontanella and the Castagno crime family.