Then she grabbed her keys and jumped in her slicktop, steering it down Hemlock Hollow in the silent darkness to Amity Road, which took her to the Wilbur Cross Parkway. She headed in the direction of New Britain, the home of Stanley Tools and the Pontiac Trans Am capital of Southern New England. Des didn’t know if there was any connection between these two facts. Probably. There were a few overnight truckers out on the road, flying. Her presence there slowed them right on down, since absolutely nobody in the state of Connecticut drove an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria sedan except for a trooper. When somebody spotted her, they eased right off the gas. If she slowed to 30 in a 65 mph zone, they would, too. No one dared pass her. No one.
Kensington, her destination, was a working-class suburb of the Hardware City. The small, neat house was located in a neighborhood of small, neat houses belonging to school teachers, nurses, postal workers and other hardworking people.
Strivers Row, Brandon used to call it mockingly.
Des knew it simply as the place where she had been raised.
The porch light was on. And Buck Mitry was seated at the kitchen table in his flannel bathrobe, patiently drinking his coffee. He was good for ten or twelve cups a day. Used to be a heavy smoker as well, but gave that up as a twenty-fifth anniversary present to Des’s mother, who had then proceeded to leave him for her high school sweetheart, an Allstate claims adjustor down in Augusta, Georgia. “I am reborn,” she had told Des at the wedding. “I have rediscovered laughter and joy.” Buck remained behind in the house alone-like father, like daughter. He was a big, rangy man with a furrowed brow, graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His hands were immense and blunt-fingered. He had been a fine athlete as a young man, even played first base in the Cleveland Indians organization for two years out of high school until he met Des’s mother and decided to get serious. He took the state police exam in 1968, when they happened to be looking for a few good, black troopers. He had risen slowly but steadily through the ranks. And now, at age fifty-six, he was the deputy superintendent-the highest-ranking black man in the history of the state. He got there by being honest, steady and careful. He got there by getting along. No flash, no dash. Buck Mitry believed in proper procedure. He believed in saying please and thank you. He believed in shined shoes, muted ties and dignified charcoal-gray suits. He owned eight such suits, all identical. Always, he had been guarded with his emotions. Des, who was his only child, had never once seen her father lose control of his temper. To the best of her knowledge, no one else had either.
That was why they called him the Deacon.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said to him, hands on her hips, “but isn’t that the same robe I gave you for Christmas back when I was twelve?”
“Quality never wears out,” he said, smiling at her faintly. “You got a cold?”
“Allergy.”
“Sounds like a cold.”
“It’s an allergy.”
She kissed him on the forehead and poured herself some coffee and sat down opposite him, hearing steady, determined crunching noises coming from the direction of the back door. Cagney and Lacey, the two stray cats Des had talked him into adopting, were nose down in their kibble bowls. They, too, thought it was time for breakfast.
“Why’d you go and do that to your hair?” he asked, eyeing her dreadlocks critically. “What is it, some kind of a statement?”
“No statement. It’s just hair.”
“Doesn’t look professional,” he grumbled at her. “And the powers that be think you’ve become a Rastafarian.”
“They are seriously behind the times.”
“They are in charge.”
“It’s just hair,” Des repeated, louder this time.
“So why don’t you wear it normal?”
“This is normal, Daddy. The Anita Hill look was chemicals. And when my head looked like the business end of a felt-tip marking pen, that was chemicals, too. Now I look like me. And it’s my head, thank you, so let’s just drop the subject, okay?”
They dropped it, Des gazing across the table at him in anxious silence. The two of them were not especially close. No one ever got close to the Deacon, not even Des’s mother. If she had she wouldn’t have fled elsewhere in search of joy.
“If this about Captain Polito I can’t help you, Desiree,” he spoke up. “Polito runs his own squad his own way. And if he wants to bring in further supervisory manpower, that’s his business.”
“That’s not why I needed to see you,” she said quietly.
He sat back in his chair, big hands folded before him on the table, waiting for her to continue.
She took a sip of her coffee, followed by a deep breath. “I want to see Crowther.”
His eyes widened at the mention of the one man, the only man in the Connecticut State Police who outranked him-Superintendent John Crowther. “What about?”
“Some unanswered questions from his past.”
“Which unanswered questions, girl?” he asked sternly. “And don’t you be giving me any double-talk. I want it straight up. I want it specific.”
“The Weems murder-suicide on Big Sister Island thirty years ago. Crowther was the investigating officer.”
“So…?”
“So the bodies were found by a seventeen-year-old girl named Dolly Peck who had recently been forcibly raped by the male victim. So this girl’s grandfather happened to be a U.S. senator. So this girl now goes by the name Dolly Seymour and is smack dab in the middle of three more murders that practically have me chewing my own foot off. She’s the linchpin, Daddy, then and now. I’ve been looking through Crowther’s official bio. The man’s career just took off after the Weems case. He went from sergeant to captain in the blink of an eye. I am talking zooom. And it so happens that his report is full of holes. So is Dolly Seymour’s memory-she claims to remember nothing of what happened that day. I have to find out what he left out.”
He got up and refilled his cup, his face stony. “You want to rattle the man’s cage, is that it?”
“Absolutely not. I could care less about the politics. All I care about is this investigation. Here and now. What’s happening now isn’t adding up. If I can find out what really went down thirty years ago, maybe it will.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I am under the gun. I need results. I can’t help it if the trail leads me to him, can I?”
He considered this for a long moment before he said, “Have you gone through Polito on this?”
She ducked her head, her mouth tightening.
“Uh-hunh,” he grunted. “Because he’d tell you to drop it. And that’s exactly what I’m telling you to do. Don’t go there. You don’t accuse the superintendent of falsifying a report and concealing information. You’d be committing political suicide.”
“I told you, this isn’t about politics.”
“Girl, everything is about politics,” he said, shaking his head at her. “That is the reality of the situation. And if you don’t accept it you will get ground into dust. Crowther is one tough SOB. You do not want to go one-on-one with him. What do you think is going to happen-you’ll twitch your fine tail at him and the man will spill something he’s been holding onto since Richard Nixon was in the White House?”
Des could feel her face burning now. She said nothing.
“Do you honestly think he’s going to jeopardize his whole career to help you put away a rich white woman he didn’t put away thirty years ago? Not a chance. All that’ll happen is you will make yourself one powerful enemy. Probably end up back in uni, staked out at a speed trap outside of Killingley. Is that what you want? Explain yourself, girl. What is going on here?”
Des got up and went over to the sink, aware of his eyes on her. Clearly, he was baffled by her. She had never given him much reason to be. She had always been the good daughter. Good grades. Good manners. Never got into drugs. Never brought home a thug. Hell, her idea of running away from home was going to West Point. She’d taken the right job. Married the right man-or so they’d all believed. Never once had she been the wild child. Never once had she rebelled.