Caught Dead (10 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Detective Ardolino, standing inside the yellow tape and holding a Burger King coffee cup, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, spotted me the minute I joined the crowd of onlookers gathered on the late-night street. Hank and I had driven there, mostly in silence, after saying good-bye to Liz and Jimmy. Liz looked dazed and Jimmy wiped out—he'd headed home to a couple more beers and bed. I parked my car in the lot of a closed Thai restaurant, walking two streets over. The murky corner was quiet now. The medical examiner had finished his work, the body removed, but the Hartford evidence crew was at work and would possibly be there until morning. A small crowd of locals and a few press jostled one another, almost wordlessly, waiting for something. Hank and I locked eyes. The cordoned-off corner was the same one where Mary had died.

A crew buzzed around a car. A Volvo. License plate: MOLLY2.

This just didn't make any sense.

“You!” From Detective Ardolino, as his trained cop eye scanned the crowd. “Come here.”

Hank and I dipped under the tape. Ardolino stamped out his cigarette and used a crumpled handkerchief to wipe sweat from his brow. He looked tired. He'd been there awhile.

“I know you,” he barked.

I reintroduced myself. “I gave you my card.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Sorry. Don't have it with me. I had it framed and hung over my desk.”

He nodded at Hank.

“Hank's mother called us.”

He bit his lip. “So Batman and Robin come running over. Everybody was kung fu fighting.”

“What?” From Hank.

“Nothing,” Ardolino said. “Okay, what's this all about?”

I started into his face. “What?”

“What's with this sister act on this corner?” A few onlookers leaned in, noisy as hell. “And what the fuck is your problem?” he said to a woman who was bending over the tape, trying to listen. She backed off, cursed at him in Spanish. He mumbled something insulting back at her, also in Spanish.

“You and your boy wanna join me for a cup of coffee?” He motioned across the street to a Spanish café.

“He's not my boy,” I said.

“Your
aide de cop.
”

“That's better.”

Detective Ardolino sat in a back booth, facing the street, muttering about a cockroach he'd seen in this very café two years back. “Drink the goddamned coffee,” he advised. “Skip the
arroz con pollo
, if you know what I mean.”

I ordered a bottle of spring water, Hank an Arizona Green Tea, and Ardolino looked at us as though we'd toppled off a Vegan-for-President truck. He slurped a cup of coffee so lightened by cream it might justifiably be called a glass of milk. He licked his lips, happy.

“So maybe I was wrong,” he admitted, flat out. “But then again, maybe I wasn't.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, maybe the first woman
was
the intended victim, especially since her sister bites the dust in the exact same spot two weeks later. Both sisters should be nowhere near this part of town.”

“Hard to say.” My eyes darted around the room.

“Yeah, sure. Let's believe that, okay. Sister number two got a little nuts thinking about dead sister number one, and she gets drawn down here to see what she could see. To lay some plastic flowers on the sidewalk. And she got in the way of some badass street business. Coincidence?”

“A little farfetched.” From Hank.

“You bet, sonny. Sorry, I don't believe in coincidence.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Same old, same old, to tell the truth. I get a call around eight, some 911 anonymous from a phone booth, saying there's a lady dead on the sidewalk, drive-by shooting that nobody, it turns out, heard happen. Someone walks out of a bar, sees a body lying on the sidewalk, with a cell phone in her hand, but not turned on, how convenient. A nice, new Volvo is nearby, still running. Very strange.”

“How strange?”

“Someone leaves a Volvo running in this neighborhood, and no one decides to take it for a joyride?”

“But there's a body nearby,” I said. “Would you want to be suspected of murder?”

“A joyride is a joyride. By the time we trace the car, the kids are gone with the wind. All we'd find would be blurred fingerprints and a few burnt-out roaches in the ashtray.”

“So when you got here, you saw it was Molly Torcelli.”

“I seen it's an Asian lady, and suddenly the bells and whistles start to clamor like it's fuckin' New Year's Eve in Times Square.” He sighed. “And I learn it's the wife of a prominent Hartford businessman to boot. High class. That's real trouble, this one, let me tell you.”

In the hours since the police arrived, Ardolino said, a lot had happened. The state forensics crew had joined the city team, and the body had been removed to a morgue slab at the hospital in Farmington. Ardolino had already visited Larry Torcelli, with the chief of police and “other big-shit brass” in attendance, given the weight of Torcelli's social standing. But Ardolino hadn't stayed more than a few minutes, leaving, as he put it, “most of the suck-ass brass apologizing for a murder they didn't do.”

“What happened at the house?” I asked.

“It wasn't pretty. Well, it seems this Torcelli had been calling around, looking for her after he got home from work, pissed off 'cause she didn't leave a note like she always did when she had to go out at night. He usually worked late, he said. When we rang the doorbell, he thought it was an accident. He even asked about the car, which I thought was a little heartless. But that's me. I think of people first. When we told him she was dead—murdered, in fact, in the same spot where sister got it—well, he just didn't get it. He kept looking over my shoulder like this was a trick or a game. We had to repeat it over and over again.”

“Were the kids there?”

“Not at first. Because of the squad cars and the living room filled with cops, they traipsed downstairs. Torcelli just stared at them, dumb, and so we had to tell them. Torcelli slid down his chair, crumpled up, but the two kids looked like they had just been told the family was out of ice cream.”

“That's unfair,” Hank blurted out. “Maybe they were in shock.”

“Shock?” Ardolino said. “If so, they bounced back real fast, walking out of the room and heading upstairs. Torcelli starts to sob when he's told he got to come for identification. So he blabs something real strange—‘You know, she's one of the beautiful Le sisters. She's the most beautiful woman I ever met.' Like she's still alive, and not on this slab of concrete with a sheet over her. I gotta admit, she is—
was
—a looker.”

“So what's your thinking?” I asked.

“That's what I asked you first. Assuming there is some connection between the two murders, I'm gonna need your help here. The Asian angle. There's stuff here I don't know nothing about. Asians is one of them. They keep to themselves—you people do, I mean.” He looked a little confused as to how to address Hank and me. “I mean, maybe I gotta rely on you, Mr. Rick Van Lam, for some help here. This double killing is gonna get ugly in the
Courant
and the chamber of fuckin' commerce. Nobody was on my back about a drive-by that winged a lowlife drug spic, and we wrote off the first sister as wrong place and wrong time, but two middle-aged, middle-class women, twin sisters, and one the wife of a super-rich car king, and, well, my ass in on the line. Christ Almighty man.”

“Especially since you put a quick period on that first murder.”

“Tell me about it. Who knew?”

Hank spoke up. “If Molly had died first, the rich one, it would have been a different matter. Then maybe there wouldn't have been a second murder.”

“Hey, kid,” Ardolino grumbled, “that's the way life is. Look around you.”

***

Hank and I drove to the Torcelli estate, even though it was after three a.m., but the circular driveway was ringed with cars, the house ablaze with light, upstairs and down. Hank had called home and learned his mother and father were at Molly's, as well as other relatives. We rang the doorbell, and Hank's mother let us in. She was just leaving, she said, but come in for a minute.

The vast living room was like a funeral parlor, pockets of people tucked into chairs, clustered in groups, but no one was speaking. Who were all these folks? In the center of the sofa, sitting alone, was Larry Torcelli, and for a second I didn't recognize him. The slick business tycoon with his pressed dress shirt and expensive tie, with his costly haircut and steely eyes—none of that was in evidence. Instead, I saw a train wreck of a man, someone who'd just weathered a sharp blow to the head—shoulders bent, skin sallow, eyes cloudy and red, and trembling hands. That shocked me. A lit cigarette burned in an ashtray.

Hank and I decided not to talk to him, though he did look up as we entered the room.

Hank's mom whispered to me. “Come to my house, Rick. Please come.” I nodded.

We were in the foyer when Jon came down the center staircase. Hank greeted him, but Jon just frowned, looked a little inconvenienced by the crowd in the house. I waited for him to join his father, but he glanced in, grimaced, and jangled his car keys.

“I can't stay here,” he mumbled to Hank. “I'm going crazy. I gotta drive somewhere.”

“Are you okay?” Hank asked.

Jon said too loudly, “Am I okay? Some asshole Rican murders my mother, and I'm supposed to be okay?”

“Jon,” Hank started, “you don't know…”

“I really can't talk to anyone.” He twisted around. “Not now. The last time I see my mother she's laughing about something, and then the police come and say she's dead.”

“I'm sorry.” Hank and I both spoke at the same moment. We looked at each other.

“This is one big fuckup,” Jon sputtered.

Hank asked, “How's Kristen doing?”

“Well, no one knows. She's locked herself in her room and won't answer the door. Even good old Pop can't get her out of there—and she's his little baby girl, all three remaining brain cells and all.” But he seemed to regret his cruel words, and stepped back, looking at the crowd.

“Your father's taking it bad,” Hank said.

“Well, he's lost his trophy wife, Miss Saigon.”

Hank, angry. “For God's sake, Jon, it's your mother.”

Jon's upper lip trembled slightly, but he controlled himself. “My mother was the only one
ever
on my side.” It was a strange, sudden declaration, and it hung in the air. He looked back into the room, staring at his father, who was rocking back and forth, eyes closed. Jon tightened his grip on his car keys.

Jon spoke at his father in a low, fierce voice. “Why wasn't it you?”

***

At Hank's home we sat around the kitchen table in the pale hours before dawn broke. Grandma was wrapped in her old bathrobe, her eyes bleary, refusing to go back to bed, despite the hour. She kept shushing her daughter who repeatedly said everything could wait until daybreak. But that was not the case. Everyone—even Hank's father and grandfather—sat with bowls of steaming jasmine tea before them, waiting, expectant.

Hank did the talking, succinctly filling in the tale of woe, as the family, particularly Grandma, sighed and shook her head. He summarized our talk with Ardolino.

Grandpa, always so silent and wary when I was in the house—a man who was generally uncomfortable with strangers—was actually talking rapidly, even glancing at me for agreement. I suddenly entertained the vagrant thought that someday he and I might actually have a conversation, that he would accept me.

“I don't like this,” he stressed. “Someone is killing members of this family.
Your
family,” he added, looking at his wife. Grandma sat there ashen and nervous.

Hank's mother spoke up. “This is getting dangerous.” She looked pointedly at her son. “There must be a madman out there who is targeting Asians.”

“Ma,” Hank begged, helpless, “that's paranoia.”

Grandma, yawning, spoke up. “Nobody's going after Asians.”

“What?” From Hank's father, looking grumpy.

“No, this is the story of these two women. The two sisters. Twins. It has something to do with the worlds they lived in. The two of them. Asian, white man, no matter.”

“Grandma, what are you saying?” Hank asked.

“I'm saying that they are sisters who lived in two different worlds—one white and one Vietnamese—but where the circles of their lives overlap, that's where the answer is.”

I smiled. “The one is the other.”

Grandma looked at me. “And the other is the answer.” She sighed. “There is where you'll find the hunger, the thirst…the murderer.”

Grandpa frowned. “What the hell are you two talking about? This is crazy.” He stressed the words:
dien ro
. Madness.

“Buddha,” I offered.

Hank's dad raised his eyes to his own heaven, good Catholic that he was. I thought how odd it must be for him as a Roman Catholic, married to a wife raised in the Buddhist tradition, especially with Grandma the resident dispenser of Buddha's fine wisdom. “Buddha has nothing to do with this,” he informed us all.

Grandma winked at me.

“I don't think this has anything to do with being Vietnamese,” Hank said.

“Why not?” his father asked.

“I feel it. Something else is going on here.”

Everyone smiled. Grandma touched him on the shoulder lightly, affectionately, and he looked at her. “Am I talking like a Buddhist, Grandma?”

“No.” She tapped his shoulder. “You're just talking like someone who is looking for answers where others say there can be no answers.”

“And there are always answers?” Hank asked.

“If there's a question,” I said, “there has to be an answer.”