Read Online Vulgar Boatman by William G. Tapply - Free Book Online

I’d say she dressed herself afterwards. Doubtful if the murderer would dress her again after killing her. Not typical, anyway, though there are all different kinds of nuts around. You figure, if a guy was careful enough to get her all dressed again, logically he would have tried to hide the body. But Alice Sylvester was found on the grass right beside the parking lot. As if she’d been dumped out of a car. We looked for a rock or something her head could’ve been banged against. There would’ve been a lot of blood. We didn’t find anything. I figure she was killed inside the car and then rolled out onto the ground. We find the right car, we’ll find blood inside of it.”
    I sighed. “This is not a heartwarming tale.”
    “There’s more,” said the chief. “I mentioned, I think, that the M.E. found traces of cocaine in her blood. This report—” he shook the paper he was holding “—says that there were also traces of coke in her lungs. Congested mucous membranes. Inflamed trachea.” He arched his eyebrows at me.
    “Crack,” I said.
    He smiled thinly. “You are really up to date, Counselor. Right. Cocaine that is smoked. Possibly free-base, but most likely crack. This stuff is starting to find its way up here from New York. A little shocking for this sleepy little seaside community.” He grimaced at his own cynicism. “You figure Roxbury, Dorchester, Lawrence, Lowell—”
    “Actually,” I interrupted, “you figure Wellesley, Winchester, Concord. What I hear, this is upper-class dope. Sexy. Prestigious.”
    “Cocaine, yes,” said Cusick. “Crack, not necessarily. It’s cheap, for one thing. And just deadly as hell. In any case, Windsor Harbor is not exactly your hub of the drug underground. But if nice high school girls like Alice Sylvester are getting ahold of crack, we’ve got more of a problem than one murder.”
    “Windsor Harbor is a seaport,” I suggested.
    “A very minor seaport, Mr. Coyne. A few sport fishing craft, lots of sailboats and runabouts. Nothing commercial.”
    “You don’t need anything commercial to haul this stuff.”
    He nodded. “I’ve thought of that, believe me. Matter of fact, I talked with a guy at the Coast Guard this morning. Guess what he said?”
    “He said it’s a long coastline.”
    “That,” said Cusick, nodding, “was the essence of it. Of course, if we can come up with any good leads, they’d be delighted to seize a vessel on the high seas for us.”
    “And accept full credit.”
    “Sure. Anyhow, that’s all conjecture. Point is, the girl was smoking this stuff, had sex with two guys, and then got herself strangled to death. And I need all the help I can get.”
    “Well, I’ll cooperate, don’t worry about that. I really find it hard to believe that Buddy Baron…” I let my voice trail off. Harry Cusick regarded me benignly. “Not that I knew him that well,” I added.
    The chief stood up dismissively. “You just never know,” he said gently.
    We shook hands and I left. I played Vivaldi on my tape deck on the way back to Boston. I had my seasons mixed up. It seemed like the dark pit of a dead, frozen winter, with the cold rain angling out of a black sky, and the slick roads littered with fading leaves, and young people getting murdered in a nice little town like Windsor Harbor, Massachusetts. I was eager to get back to the sanity of my law office.
    I nosed my BMW into my reserved space in the parking garage and took the elevator up to my office. Julie, my secretary, was working at the computer keyboard, listening through earphones to a tape I had dictated for her. I still missed the cheerful clack, clatter, and ding of the old typewriter. She looked up at me, crossed her eyes by way of greeting, and said, “Well, look who’s here,” without missing a beat at the keyboard. “Be with you,” she added, and returned her attention to the tape.
    I poured myself a mug of coffee and took it into my office. A place for rational analysis.