“You said the caretaker used to live out here?”
“Yes, when I was a girl. I was raised on Big Sister. My maiden name is Peck, you see.”
“As in Peck Point?”
“That’s right. My family settled this area back in 1649. Saybrook was nothing more than a fort at that time, built by Lion Gardiner of Dorset Regis. The rest of this area, hundreds of thousands of acres, was land granted to Malcolm and Matthew Peck for services rendered to the crown.”
“What kind of services?”
“No one knows, but my own theory is that they were thieves and scoundrels,” she answered with a smile.
There was a pullman kitchen and a bathroom with a scarred old tub. They weren’t much, but they were adequate. There was a hinged trapdoor in the kitchen floor fitted with a brass transom catch that had a recessed pull ring. She raised it to show him what was down there. It was a dirt crawl space, very dark.
“There’s no basement, I’m afraid,” she apologized. “That means no washer-dryer. There is a laundromat in town…” She broke off, frowning prettily. “Of course, as it’s just you, I should think you could use mine. And there are a few odd sticks of furniture collecting dust in the barn. Nothing grand, mind you.”
A steep, narrow staircase led up to a loft above the living room. It had a peaked ceiling with exposed beams and skylights. It had a pair of dormered windows for light and ventilation. There was enough space for a bed up there but not much else.
“Dear God, would you believe I had my very first kiss up here?” Her eyes shone with schoolgirl longing. “I was twelve.”
Mitch eyed her curiously. She seemed attached to this place. Also reluctant to part with it. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
A dark look crossed her face-and Dolly Seymour suddenly seemed someplace else. Someplace very far away. Someplace very unpleasant. It shook her. A shudder of pure animal revulsion seemed to shoot right through her entire body. But then, just as suddenly, she returned. “I’m quite sure I don’t want to,” she responded in a soft, thin voice. “But I must. I need the income. I have no marketable skills of any kind. None. And our property taxes are positively crippling. That’s why we gave the Point to the Nature Conservancy. These houses out here are just about all we have left. And we can’t lose them. The trouble is that I’m on my own now, Mr. Berger.”
“It’s Mitch,” he said quietly. “Not easy being alone, is it?”
“No, it’s not. I guess you understand that, don’t you?” She looked him over carefully, as if realizing for the first time that she knew virtually nothing about him. “What is it you do, Mitch?”
“I’m a film critic.”
“How fascinating! I’ve always admired people who do creative things.”
“The filmmakers are the ones doing the creating. I just write about it. But I have a new book to get done. And I need someplace quiet to work.”
“Big Sister is definitely quiet. In fact, winters it’s too quiet for some.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Mitch, imagining himself taking long walks on the snow-driven beach. Curling up with a good book in front of a roaring fire, the surf pounding outside his window. “I would want a vegetable garden.”
“There’s an old one out behind the barn that is just waiting for someone to bring it back to life. And I’ve garden tools aplenty and…” Dolly took a deep breath and blurted out, “I’m asking a thousand a month, Mitch. What do you say, shall I call my lawyer and tell him you want it?”
Mitch stood there a moment in stunned silence, realizing to his own astonishment that it had finally happened. One door was closing and another one was opening. Today was the day. As of this moment, I am moving on. Maisie would want him to do this. Change was healthy. Change was life. It was time to get on with his life. And so Mitch Berger smiled at Dolly Seymour and in a loud, clear voice said, “I would love for you to call him.”
CHAPTER 4
THE CENTRAL DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS of the Connecticut State Police’s Major Crime Squad was located in Meriden across from the Lewis Avenue Mall in what had once been a state-run reform school for boys.
A narrow, unmarked road snaked its way up a hill to the secluded and unexpectedly pastoral campus of gently aged red-brick dormitories and classrooms. The state’s prestigious Forensic Science Laboratory had sprouted up here, under the guiding hand of its nationally eminent director, Dr. Henry Lee. The state’s K-9 training center was headquartered here as well, providing a steady background chorus of barking German Shepherds. Des practically heard them in her sleep. And she had learned never to stroll too near any parked cruisers on her way inside-if a K-9 trainee happened to be stationed in the car, it would lunge at her through the partly open window.
Major Crimes operated out of the old headmaster’s residence, a sober and dignified brick mansion with a slate mansard roof. The entry hall beneath the grand staircase had been converted into a reception area with a desk and mail slots. Also a bulletin board over which hung a crude, hand-lettered sign that read: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE. The district commander’s office was in the ornate dining room. The grand parlors and bedrooms had been partitioned into cubicles.
Des aggressively worked the room as she made her way toward hers, trading frisky, playful banter with her male colleagues. If a man was into pumping iron she remarked on how big his arms looked. If he was trying to take off a few pounds she told him he was looking buff. She admired their new neckties. She even laughed at their bad jokes. The squad room was the land of opportunity. Des was not above a little flirting if it meant she could find a loving home for a healthy, neutered male tabby. A number of the single guys had indeed fallen prey to her charms, adopting one of her strays in the tumid hope that Des would follow up with a visit. No chance. She did not do house calls. As for the happily married ones, they were afraid to so much as make eye contact with her. The word was out: Get too friendly with Desiree Mitry and you get stuck with a feral cat.
The hand-lettered sign that one of them had stuck on the wall of her cubicle said it alclass="underline" CAT GIRL FROM HELL.
By eight Cat Girl was parked at her desk, hard at work. At age twenty-eight, Desiree Mitry was one of the youngest Major Crime Squad lieutenants in the state of Connecticut. And one of only three who were women. Of those three women, Des was the only one who also happened to be black. This made her the state police’s prized poster girl, its great non-white hope. Des also had pull. She had major pull.
Des had the Deacon behind her.
This made her a magnet for resentment from some white officers. Up to and including her district commander, Capt. Carl Polito, who belonged to the so-called Waterbury Mafia-a tightly knit network of Italian American officers who’d been born and raised in the Brass City and who were, in many cases, related to each other. Capt. Polito’s deputy commander, Lt. Angelo Tedone, was his brother-in-law as well as an academy classmate. And the muscle-bound little preener of a sergeant with whom Des had been saddled, Rico “Soave” Tedone, was Angelo’s kid brother.
Soave was infinitely more loyal to the Mafia than he was to Des. There was no doubt in her mind that he believed she’d been handed her lieutenancy strictly because of her color and gender and pull. That he felt he’d deserved it more than she did. And that he would seize any opportunity he could to cut her long, fine legs out from under her. Anything negative about her that came along, Soave passed directly on to his big brother Angelo. Any slip. Any stumble. Anything. She could not trust the little twerp. But she could not get him reassigned either-not without just cause. Otherwise, it would go down on her record that she couldn’t get along with male subordinates. So she put up with him.
She put up with all of them. In many ways, they were just like a gang of little boys who had their own secret club, their own secret handshake and their own fort. And she, Des, was a g-i-r-l. But she could handle it. She did handle it-by routinely outperforming them. She’d cut her teeth on rape cases and bombings when she first joined the squad, but now her caseload consisted mostly of homicides. Homicides were her bread and butter. Captain Polito may not have been in her corner, but he was not an idiot. Every district commander was under constant pressure from Hartford to produce. And that’s what Des did. She produced.