Today the waist-high white banks have company, and plenty of it. The Chamber of Commerce parking lot is full, though the building is closed until May. Cars and trucks that couldn’t find space in that lot are strewn along both sides of our road, though no parking is allowed on either. Chatham cops are all over the place, slipping orange cardboard citations under icy windshield wipers, barking orders at those vehicle owners they can locate, and directing traffic impatiently while a solitary tow truck tries to make its way through the quagmire.
Our narrow driveway is filled to capacity, the Kydd’s pickup and my Thunderbird hemmed in by two dark gray sedans I’ve never seen before. Harry pulls in behind them, then up onto the front lawn, and stops the Jeep next to Senator Kendrick’s Hummer. “Oh, good,” he says as he cuts the engine. “Company.”
We collect our belongings, climb out of the Jeep, and Harry takes a leisurely stroll around the two mystery cars. He kneads his chin, his expression puzzled. The sedans are identical and they’re impossibly clean, somehow immune to the slush, sand, and salt that coat every other vehicle in sight. “You have friends I don’t know about?” he asks. “People who wash their cars?”
I don’t answer.
Two men in dark overcoats pace in opposite directions on our small front porch, one with his hands jammed into his pockets, the other talking into his palm. I assume there’s a phone in it. They glance at Harry and me as we approach, but both quickly return their focus to the noisy crowd on the sidewalk. It’s multiplying by the minute, kept in check on the other side of our split-rail fence by a human barrier of Chatham police officers. I recognize a few faces in the assembly—members of the press for the most part—and they shout hurried questions at us as we cross the front lawn. Harry’s name is called out more than once—and mine, too—but I can’t decipher much else. Two TV vans idle in the Chamber of Commerce driveway, their lights and cameras pointed in our direction. It’s after six; it should be pitch black out here now. But, thanks to the TV crews, it’s not.
The talker snaps his miniature phone shut, drops it into his coat pocket, and plants himself at the top of the three brick steps leading up to the porch, his stance wide. “You Madigan?” he asks, pulling his black wool cap tight over his ears. His hatless partner joins him, outturned palm demanding: Hold it right there.
Harry pauses on the bottom step and laughs. “You boys are forgetting your manners,” he says as he continues the short climb to the porch. “That’s not how it’s done in these United States of America.”
He’s nose to nose with the one in the black cap now, and neither of our visitors is happy about it. “You’re supposed to tell me who you are,” he says to both of them, “and you’re supposed to prove it before you ask me a goddamned thing.”
They stare at him, stoic.
Harry shifts his schoolbag from one gloved hand to the other and claps the black capped one on the shoulder. “You want me to recommend you for retraining?” he asks them both, his tone entirely sincere. “Or do you want to try that again?”
Both men scowl, but each one reaches into an inside pocket and pulls out a laminated ID. Harry takes his sweet time perusing both, his hand resting comfortably on Black Cap’s shoulder while he reads. “Secret Service,” he says to me at last. “We’re safe now.”
Secret Service. Of course. Senator Kendrick normally keeps a low profile when he’s in Chatham. Now that Michelle’s body has been recovered here, that won’t be possible.
“We have another team out back,” Hatless tells him.
Harry’s still looking over his shoulder at me. “We’re a veritable fortress,” he says.
Black Cap removes Harry’s hand from his shoulder, holding the glove with two fingers as if it’s toxic. “You Madigan?” he tries again.
“One and the same,” Harry answers, taking a gallant bow. “And may I present the lovely Miss Nickerson?” He sweeps one hand toward me, as though I’m the guest of honor at a debutante ball.
Hatless pulls a notepad from his pocket. “She’s on here,” he says to his partner, taking a pencil from behind his ear and tapping the eraser end of it against the page. “Nickerson, Martha.”
Harry grins as I join the three of them on the porch. “Come, Nickerson Martha,” he says, offering his arm. “I’m sure Jeeves has the martinis mixed.”
The closest thing Harry and I have to a Jeeves, of course, is the Kydd. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know how to mix a martini. Still, if he offered one, I wouldn’t turn it down. A stiff drink sounds like a good idea at the moment. Two, maybe.
The front office is empty and the sounds of the TV tell us the Kydd and Charles Kendrick are in the conference room. Harry and I hang our heavy coats on the rack and then join them, but they barely look up when we enter. They’re in side-by-side wing chairs, their eyes glued to the evening news. The Kydd’s are glistening; he has a heart the size of Texas. The Senator’s aren’t, but the network of fine, pink lines around the whites of his gray-blues tell me he hasn’t been dry-eyed for long. Michelle Forrester is the top story. The four of us watch in silence as two Coast Guardsmen lift a draped stretcher from Smithy’s patrol boat and carry it to the county van waiting at Cow Yard.
Geraldine Schilling appears on the screen, looking the way she always looks on TV: like she just emerged from a two-week stint at a Beverly Hills spa. The autopsy is ongoing, she tells the horde assembled outside the Superior Courthouse. She expects to have the Medical Examiner’s report in hand first thing tomorrow morning. She’ll issue an update then. And she will, she assures her audience, bring the perpetrator of this heinous crime to justice. She turns her back to the crowd without another word and reenters the courthouse. The anchorwoman pauses for a station break. The Kydd hits the mute button.
Harry rests a hand on the Senator’s shoulder, then drops into the chair beside him. “How’re you holding up?” he asks.
Charles Kendrick shakes his head slowly, his eyes still glued to the glow of the television screen. He doesn’t answer.
I unbutton my suit jacket and half-sit on the edge of the conference room table. We’re going to be here for a while, it seems.
“Geraldine called,” the Kydd says quietly. “She wants Senator Kendrick to come in tomorrow.”
“That’s out of the question.” I realize too late that I’ve snapped at the Kydd, a classic shoot-the-messenger reaction.
He shrugs. “She said she’d see him at his convenience—before the Holliston trial resumes in the morning, or at the lunch break, or at the end of the day. She’s hoping he’ll do this voluntarily.”
“She is not,” Harry says. “She knows better.”
“But shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I at least try to help?” The Senator directs his query to Harry, but Harry turns to me. Charles Kendrick isn’t going to like the answer to that question. I’m the one who should give it to him.
“No,” I say. “You shouldn’t.”
“But—”
“Everything is changed now.” I hold up both hands to cut him off, then point to the still-silent TV screen. “Michelle is dead. You can’t help her. No one can.”
His lips part, but he says nothing.
“Our District Attorney is an elected official,” I tell him. “You don’t need me to tell you this is a political nightmare. She wants an arrest yesterday. All you can do by talking now is hurt yourself.”
The Senator’s eyes move from mine to Harry’s to the Kydd’s. No doubt he’s hoping one of them will contradict me, offer a kinder, gentler view of our system. No luck. He turns back to me, resigned. “All right,” he says. “You tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.”
This is a first.
Charles Kendrick’s gaze returns to the TV screen. The commercial break is over; coverage of the Michelle Forrester story has resumed.