He stepped a little closer. “Think we can take a break? Just an hour?”
She glanced at Pete’s big house, looming behind her. “Well, we’ve got the league list.”
“That can wait a minute.”
She held up her phone. “We’ve also got the list of child protective service adoption actions through the district court. Just came into my email.”
He leaned back, unable to see the small lettering that close. “Dodd?”
“No, Morrissey. Charles and Gerry-Anne Morrissey. He beat her up, put her in a coma, she delivered her baby. Baby went to Child Protective Services.”
“I remember the file.”
“Well, then you remember that Gerry-Anne died not long after – they couldn’t stop the brain swelling, she was a vegetable, they pulled the plug. Charles Morrissey was over in Anderton, doing his time for attempted murder. The baby was adopted that fall.”
Mike sighed. “So Morrissey gets out of prison, just like Dodd Caruthers, goes after Corina Lavoie, then Harriet?”
Her eyebrows went up, her expression said, It’s a possibility.
He sighed again. “I think we need more boots on the ground.”
“I think I agree.”
She was giving him a coy look, so he added, “And no, I’m not just saying that because you turned me down for a nooner.”
She laughed, bright and sudden, then walked to the car and opened the passenger side door. “A ‘nooner’? What is this, 1950?”
“I can be vulgar if you prefer.”
She gazed at him over the car roof. The birds were chirping, light breeze stirring, a few garlands of clouds and the sun beating down. He was either growing infatuated with Lena Overton, or it was something more.
“I prefer you the way you are,” she said. Then she dropped into her seat.
* * *
More boots on the ground. That meant requesting BCI send someone else out to pick up Mike’s slack, which wasn’t likely to happen. Cases that lingered unsolved were usually given fewer resources, not more.
He was frustrated. This was supposed to be his area; he had a good clearance rate when it came to homicides, a shiny seventy percent. Not that a number mattered, but a grieving family deserved answers, and a small town that hadn’t seen a murder in nearly two decades needed to know.
The case was sprawling. So many people, the faces were starting to blur. They had just enough manpower to interview league bowlers separately, see if anything came out about Dodd’s presence at Silver Lanes the night of. He left Lena preparing her patrol officers while he went to talk to Charles Morrissey.
He drove through Lake Haven with the radio on for a while, the oldies station, last one left in the area; Solomon Burke wailed “I’m Hanging up My Heart for You.” As he cleared the town, though, Mike shut it off, wanting to think in silence.
The suspects topping their list were people who’d gotten caught up in the system, lost a child because of either violence, drugs, poor choices, or all of the above. Dodd was especially interesting; he checked a lot of the boxes, and had apparent leanings toward white supremacy.
But they had no murder weapon. Forensic evidence, all around, was sucking wind. No prints or DNA in Harriet Fogarty’s car, aside from her own. The house on River Street was splattered with everyone’s fingerprints from the neighborhood, but nothing matching Dodd or anyone else in the system that raised a flag.
Jamie Rentz was still missing. There was no real way to tie him to the crimes except for Bobbi Noelle, and that was circumstantial. Still, Rentz was interesting; his Facebook page was loaded with more selfie shots than Justin Bieber – though he hadn’t posted in months. They could start pinging his phone with a subpoena, but that might be tough – Bobbi wasn’t able to identify him as the man outside her house, and the texts to her, on their own, were harmless.
Like Hume had suggested, it could be worth it to show Maybelle Spruce some pictures, though, see if she recognized Rentz. For that matter, see if she recognized Dodd Caruthers.
For now, it was all about Charles Morrissey.
* * *
The property looked like a tornado had come through: rusted vehicles, a couple of snowplows, snowmobiles with ripped seats, broken riding mowers, two Japanese-made motorcycles, piles of bagged trash, dunes of old tires. It was working hours and Mike didn’t expect anyone home, but a man in a ragged white T-shirt came to the door of the mobile home as Mike parked the Impala.
“Afternoon,” Mike said as he got out of the vehicle. “Charles Morrissey?”
“Who’s asking?” The man brought a rifle into view.
Mike stopped in his tracks, put one hand on the gun in the waistband holster at the small of his back, and stuck the other hand out. “Hey – whoa. Mike Nelson, state police. Put that down, sir.”
“Let me see some identification.”
“Point that away, right now.”
“You come up slow. This is private property.”
“Yes, sir. It is that. I’m just here to ask a couple of questions.” Mike walked carefully, keeping his right hand behind him on the grip of his gun. Twice in one day now he’d gone for his firearm, when whole years passed without even considering it. It added to his respect for caseworkers, who placed themselves in some sticky situations, all for the good of children.
“I’m going to reach into my jacket here with my left hand, pull out my badge, okay?” Mike eyed the rifle the man was holding, which he’d pointed down and to the side. “That a short rancher?” Mike asked.
“Yah,” the man said. “Winchester .30-30.”
“I think they used those on Bonanza…” He was a few yards away and held up his badge, and the unshaven, slovenly man squinted down from the raised doorway of the mobile home.
“I never seen that show,” the man said.
“Before your time, I guess. So, are you Morrissey?”
“Yeah.”
Mike slipped the badge back into his pocket. “Do me a favor, Mr. Morrissey – set that down on the floor behind you, and step on down out of the home, can you do that?”
It took him a moment, but Morrissey finally complied. He walked down the three steps from the mobile home, sniffing and wiping his nose with his forearm. He stopped, keeping a distance between them.
“Let’s talk,” Mike said.
They stayed outdoors, standing, the sun beating down, Mike getting some foul odors from the various piles of junk surrounding him. Morrissey was a small engine repair guy, he said, though it didn’t seem like there was a lot of repairing going on. Finally, they got around to the difficult subject of his incarceration, and what led him there. In order to get to the telling, Morrissey said he needed some liquid courage, and popped open a beat-up cooler with some cheap cans of beer inside, cracked one open.
“It was an accident,” he said. “I still maintain that. Gerry-Anne, she fell. She was runnin’ from me, but I wasn’t gonna do nothin’. But the DA said that I hit her, and I pushed her, and that’s how she hit her head – the angle iron on the guardrail took a good piece of her scalp clean off. It’s one of those things like lightning striking, you know?”
Mike tried to push away the sickening thought of a scared wife running from her husband, killing herself in the process. If, anyway, Morrissey was to be believed. “And she was pregnant,” Mike said.
“Another case of lightning striking,” Morrissey said. “A miracle. I looked it up – I went online when I was in Anderton and read about how there’s only a few cases where a woman delivered while she was in a coma like that. Amazing what the body can do.” He took a long pull of the beer and cleaned up with his forearm again.
“The baby went into Child Protective Services,” said Mike.
“Yah. She did.”
“Was there any contention over that?”
“No… no contention. She didn’t have nobody else. Gerry-Anne’s mother, she’s got… well she had cancer then, and she died. Gerry has a brother, but he’s a real piece of work, no way he’s gonna raise a kid, so there was really no one else. And I was fired from my job, and up at county jail, waiting for my day in court.”