Small Vices Part 3

"What's your name, bro? Your name Tom, maybe?"

"My name's Hawk."

Ellis was too full of jailhouse self-control to look startled. But he was silent for a moment staring at Hawk. Then he nodded slightly and looked back at me.

"So what you want from me, Spenser?"

"Tell me your story," I said.

"I got no story, I'm just another n.i.g.g.e.r framed by the man."

"Sure," I said. "How'd it happen?"

"How you think?"

"I figure they kidnapped you from church," I said.

"Naw. They come busting in, about eight of them, while I was still in bed. Ten o'clock in the morning. I had a bad hangover. State cops, I think. I never did know for sure. And they haul my a.s.s out to Pemberton. And stick me in a cell in the back by myself. You know, man, my whole life I never been in Pemberton? 'Cept for doing time, I ain't been five miles from Seaver Street."

"You didn't kill this girl."

"No. I tole them that and every time I tole them that the one cop doing all the investigating, State cop, I think, big tall guy, blond hair, real pink cheeks, he talk a lot of trash, 'bout how they know how to handle a buck n.i.g.g.e.r goes around raping their girls."

Ellis paused a moment thinking about it and shrugged. "After a while couple of people I never heard of pick me out of a lineup," he said. "And then they gimme some preppy b.i.t.c.h probably never been laid, to be my lawyer, and you know she walks me right into the joint."

"You got a theory?" I said.

"Sure, same old honky s.h.i.t. Something goes down, find a n.i.g.g.e.r and clear the case."

"How'd they pick you?"

"They want to get me off the street anyway."

"Who they?" Hawk said.

"You ought to know that, bro."

"Yeah, but they a lot of white folks, Ellis. Which one want to get you off the streets?"

"What's the difference?" Ellis said. "They ain't going to help you get me out."

"We're not looking for help," I said. "We're looking for information."

"Well, I already give you all I got," Ellis said.

I looked at Hawk. Hawk shrugged.

"He got no reason to hold back," Hawk said.

I nodded, and looked at Alves.

"You got anything else to say?"

"The cop doing all the talking, out in Pemberton, cop name of Olson? Maybe he know something."

"We'll talk with him," I said.

Ellis looked at Hawk again.

"I heard about you," Ellis said.

"Un huh."

"You willing to work with him?"

Ellis nodded toward me.

"Un huh."

"You trust him?"

"Un huh."

Ellis, still sitting rigidly erect in the chair, looked at me like I was a specimen. He shook his head.

"You ain't got no prayer. They gonna land on you like a truck-load of sludge. You gonna get buried. Like me."

"Probably not," I said.

"They want it buried-they gonna bury it. Even if you white, you helping a n.i.g.g.e.r, you ain't white no more."

I didn't see anywhere to go with that so I let it pa.s.s.

"You got no idea how they happened to pick you to take the fall?" I said.

"None."

"Okay," I said.

I got up and went to the door. I opened it and nodded at one of the guards. They came in, put the cuffs back on Alves, patted him down, and led him. out. He stood absolutely straight as they did this, and when they took him out he didn't look back.

"You in for life," Hawk said after Alves was gone, "hope will kill you. You going to survive, you got to keep your mind steady."

"I know."

"Ain't much else in there but hate and power."

"Better than nothing," I said.

Chapter 6.

THE CAMPUS OF Pemberton College was like Collegeland at a theme park: stone buildings on hills, winding footpaths, greensward, brick, and a bunch of trees arranged so artfully that they seemed almost accidental. There even was an occasional portico and at least one arched pa.s.sageway that I drove through. I saw a number of young women, many in fine physical condition. Most of them appeared dressed to work out, or go camping. I was wearing a tee-shirt and jeans. I had my jacket off. As I drove I tried putting one arm out the window and flexing. n.o.body made any attempt to flag me down and seduce me, and it was kind of cold, and it made my shoulder stiff, so I pulled my arm in and rolled up the window.

A discreet road sign said "Campus Police." I turned off between some bushes and went in to a small parking lot behind the maintenance building. The cops were in a wing of the building, with no sign outside, hidden away like an embarra.s.sing relative.

"My name is Spenser," I told the young cop on the desk. "I'm looking into a murder you had here about a year and a half back."

"May I see some ID?" he said. His name tag said Brendan c.o.o.ney.

I showed him some. He studied it closely and slowly before he gave it back.

"Whaddya need?" he said.

"I'd like to talk to the officers involved in the case," I said.

The young cop nodded. "Have a seat," he said.

I sat in a straight chair near the door and read the campus parking regulations while he went into an office for a while and then came back.

"Chief will see you," he said and opened the lift top gate in the counter, and I walked through and into the chief's office.

"Sit down," the chief said. "I'm Fred Livingston."

He was a blond guy with longish hair combed back and parted on the left. His upper teeth were sort of prominent and he looked to be maybe forty-five.

"I'm working for Cone, Oakes and Baldwin," I said. "Law firm. They want to re-examine the murder thing you had out here about a year and a half ago."

Livingston nodded. "Melissa Henderson," he said.

"Who handled the thing?"

"For us? I did. But there wasn't much to handle. This isn't a big city police force. Soon as we found her we called the town cops, and they brought the State cops with them."

"You see the crime scene?" I said.

"Sure. One of our guys found her, Danny Ferris. Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He called me, and I told him not to touch anything and I went right over."

"Can you show it to me?"

"Certainly," Livingston said. He stood, picked up a walkie-talkie from the recharge rack, put on his hat, and walked out with me.

"She was behind some bushes down from one of the dorms," he said in the car. "Probably the first corpse Danny ever saw."

"How's your experience?" I said.

Livingston shrugged.

"I've seen a few. I was Police Chief in Agawam before I got this job. Motor vehicle mostly. Some of them are pretty ugly. Couple of gun-shot homicides. Domestic one, and one involving some gang kids from Springfield. Drugs probably, we never got the perpetrators."

We went back under the archway between two buildings and bore to the left.

"Park over here," Livingston said, and I did.

We were at the foot of a hill with a long gradual grade, and a footpath that ascended the hill and curved among some bushes on the way. There's no special reason for it to curve, but landscape architects hate a straight line. Livingston led me along the path to the first clump of bushes.

"She was here," he said.

I looked back at the roadway where we'd parked.

"How'd he see her?" I said.

Livingston made a face.

"Crows," he said. "Danny saw a bunch of crows flapping around and came up to see what was going on."

There didn't seem to be anything to say about that.

"She was on her back," Livingston said. "No clothes except for her bra pulled up above her t.i.ts. Her pantyhose were tied tight around her neck. You ever seen anybody been strangled."

"Yeah."

"Looked like she had cuts and bruises, too. 'Course, some of that might have been the crows."

"ME could probably figure that out," I said.

"Oh, yeah. He did. But I'm just telling you what we found."

"Sure," I said. "Go ahead."

"That's about it," Livingston said. "I called the town cops, and they came over, and some State cops, and we got out of the way."

I stood and looked at the crime scene. It told me what most crime scenes told me. Nothing. Students walked past us with books, and book bags, and knapsacks, and Diet c.o.kes in paper cups with plastic tops and straws sticking out. There was nothing interesting about two middle-aged guys standing around beside a clump of bushes. Nothing reminded them that a woman's murdered body had lain here a year and a half ago. Most of them probably knew it had happened, some of them had probably known the woman. But there was nothing they could do for her now, and there were midterms to think about, and college guys, and maybe the Dartmouth winter carnival. They had places to go, so they went there. And there was no reason they shouldn't have.

"Any clothes?" I said.

"Just the bra."

"Anybody ever find her clothes?"

"Not so far as I know," Livingston said. "The n.i.g.g.e.r dragged her into his car. I guess he did her there and got rid of her clothes later."

"And brought her here and dumped her."