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CHAPTER 1
D.R.T.
The day we found the Artistic Director of The Nantucket Theater Lab murdered in his basement, I was too busy to respond.
Haden Krakauer, my Assistant Chief, and I were in the middle of busting a cockfight on Essex Road — thirty-two thousand dollars in the kitty, eight birds in cages, two more in the dirt, thirty men, six extra cops, and three translators working five languages in the angry crowd.
Haden sighed as the ringleaders were cuffed and hauled away. "This isn't my Nantucket."
"Really?" I said. "Wasn't that your old pal Nick Folger, calling the fight?"
"Don't remind me."
Back at the station, I could see it was going to take hours to untangle the mess, with advocates and family members and a team of veterinarians for the birds. Just sorting through the confusion of dialects — Belarus, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Jamaican patois and, this was a new one, Vietnamese — slowed the process to a crawl.
At one point Haden leaned across the interview table where we were dealing with the five Ecuadoran brothers who owned the cockfight property, and said, "Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
I nodded at the Biblical reference. "But the point of the Tower of Babel was to stop this kind of shit. Humans all talking the same language was the whole problem, right? 'They have all one language and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.' God didn't like that idea — people imagining stuff to do. Mostly bad stuff."
"Wicked stuff."
"Yeah. So he made everybody speak different languages."
"And yet ... we still have cockfights on Essex Road."
"At least He made the effort."
"How about just, like, making people nicer? That would have worked. We could all speak Esperanto and help each other. But, no. He'd rather just sit around like Tolkien, making up those weird languages and writing in Elvish."
I smiled. "God as a crackpot English academic. I like it."
The Ecuadorans stared at us. Their lawyer continued texting. He knew his clients would be back on the street in an hour, once the bail was set.
We stood and stepped out into the main hall. I felt a tug at my shirt. It was Barnaby Toll, out of breath. He must have taken the stairs to the basement booking room, deserting his dispatch desk. He knew better, after four years on the job, so something big must have happened. His round pale face confirmed it. I could see the excitement in his eyes. Some authentic crime had brought out the animal in him, that fight-or-flight jolt straight from the adrenal gland. I could feel it, too — the clutch of danger, the thrill of the hunt — when he whispered, "Chief! Chief! Somebody killed Horst Refn!"
Haden was already on his cell phone. "Charlie Boyce is out there. Fraker and the Staties got the call. They beat us to the house and sealed it. The vic is D.R.T., head-first in his meat freezer. Charlie rallied the troops, talked to the neighbors. Looks like the T.O.D. was less than an hour ago."
D.R.T. — dead right there. Haden had picked up the term from me, but I hadn't heard anyone use it on a crime scene since I left the LAPD. A witness with a solid Time of Death report would be a huge help. My boys were already canvassing the neighborhood, just as I'd taught them to do. Maybe the NPD was turning into a real-life police department, after all.
I scanned the milling crowd of mostly Hispanic cockfight aficionados. They would all be processed by the end of the day, placed in holding, released or turned over to ICE if they had criminal records. Our work was done. I nodded to Haden. "Let's go."
On the way out the door I recognized a face and almost turned back. But there was nothing I could do for him at that moment, and my singling him out would only make trouble for him with the others, marking him as an informant or a rat. As far as I knew, he was neither. He ran a big landscaping company he'd built from scratch and wrote agitprop plays about the Nantucket class war. His name was Sebastian Cruz, father to Hector Cruz — my daughter's new boyfriend. It was a small world on Nantucket.
And getting smaller all the time.
The last time I saw Sebastian, he was having a shouting match with Horst Refn on Main Street.
"Same Time, Next Year? Good Vibrations? What is this? Jupiter, Florida, dinner theater? At least those audiences get to eat!" "We have a great season," Refn sputtered.
"You have crap! Who Dun It ? A 'black box,' no cables, bring-your-own costumes Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark ? Why bother? Aida with a papier-mâché pyramid and six kids in Babar costumes left over from Halloween?"
"That's not fair! We're doing a great job with —"
"With what? I give you a serious piece of theater and you shit all over it."
"Yeah! Because it was bad!"
"No, because you are bad! Because you are an ignorant, gutless, low-class punk! You're useless. You're a suit from Walmart. You're a chicken nuggets Happy Meal!"
"I'm the Artistic Director of The Nantucket Theater Lab!"
"You're a corporate stooge! Everyone hates you! You think the girls like it when you come on to them? You're pushing fifty and you're getting fat!"
"Say that again"
"Fat! You're fat! Your fat piggy face makes them sick! You're ripping the seams of that fancy jacket. Look in a mirror! You're an overstuffed sausage."
"Shut up!"
"Make me."
Refn shoved him. That was where I stepped in.
I blocked Refn, twisted around to flat-hand Sebastian's chest. "That's enough, boys."
Refn glared at me. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I don't care what either one of you said. Break it up right now or I'm locking both of you up for disturbing the peace."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I ever —"
"Show some dignity, Horst."
Sebastian laughed. Refn lunged again and I had to grab his arms. I turned to Sebastian. "Go. Now."
Sebastian looked past me at Refn. "You ever lay a hand on me again, I'll fucking kill you, culero."
He turned and walked off down Main Street. "What did he say? What did he just call me?"
"You don't want to know."
Literally, the term meant "ass salesman" but "asshole" was the most useful translation. The small crowd that had gathered started to disperse. The show was over. But Refn still struggled against me. "You're just letting him walk away? He threatened my life! That's assault in this state."
"And you pushed him. That's battery. And this is late June on Nantucket, going into the biggest holiday of the year. So we're all going to live and let live."
But someone obviously had a different plan in mind for Horst Refn.
As we pulled into the driveway of the Killdeer Drive house, I felt relieved. Sebastian's arrest was one piece of good news — if the coroner's report confirmed witness statements for the time of death, his presence at the cockfight would be an unbreakable alibi.
I killed the engine, just as the WACK disc jockey who called herself J. Feld was about to identify the song she'd been playing. The imagery of the "bargain-priced room on La Cienega" had made me briefly homesick for Los Angeles. The repeated line "You, or your memory" was probably the title. I'd look it up when I had time.
I stayed in the silent car for a moment or two, studying the house. It exuded a bristling sense of danger, cruel but sluggish, like the giant yellow-jacket nests you found so often under the eaves of Nantucket mansions. Police and crime scene techs moved in and out like insects, bound on inscrutable random business of their own.
Neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk, curious but keeping their distance. Local alternative newspaper editor David Trezize was interviewing one of them, scribbling intently in his spiral-bound notebook, glancing up occasionally through his thick glasses, looking like an intelligent otter, reaping the first quotes for his front page story. I looked around for someone from the Inquirer and Mirror, but David had beaten them to the story, once again.
Past the yellow crime scene tape, Lonnie Fraker had his troops fully mobilized, working crowd control at the perimeter, guarding the doors and loitering with squinting intensity inside. They reminded me of the paint crews Mike Henderson had pointed out a few weeks before, with one guy on a ladder scraping listlessly at a window casing, another one standing at the base of the ladder for no particular reason, a third guy dabbing at the fence as if he were touching up a self-portrait, with the rest of the crew pointing up at the second floor, studying each car as it drove by or staring at their smartphones. "How do those crews make any money?" he had asked me. "I actually work, and I can barely make ends meet."
The answer was easier for Lonnie's storm troopers. Malingering in the most threatening way possible was their basic job description. The real action was happening in the basement, where the Boston crime scene techs were working.
We climbed out of my cruiser and started up the driveway. Just inside the front door, a new hire I'd never seen before blocked the hall. "This is a restricted area, sir. I'm going to have to ask you to vacate the premises."
I wasn't wearing my uniform — I rarely did. Still, he should have known better. I had participated in an orientation day for the new State Police recruits less than a month ago. But I'd been wearing my uniform that day.
I shook my head at the stilted jargon. "Is that like 'leaving the building'?"
Haden laughed, but the kid didn't see the humor. That's my cross to bear. The kid moved a step closer. "Don't make me ask you again, sir."
I decided to speak his language. I pointed out the open door to where my official Ford Explorer with full police markings and big antennas was parked at the curb. "I'm the operator of that vehicle. Get it?"
"Let him in, O'Donnell," Lonnie called out from the kitchen. "He's Chief of Police Henry Kennis."
O'Donnell's face pulled tight and his eyes opened comically wide. He reminded me of an L.A. burglar pinned by the floodlight from a police helicopter.
I patted his shoulder. "No problem, O'Donnell. Now you know." I tipped my head toward Haden. "This is Assistant Chief Krakauer. He's allowed to be here, too."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."
We moved past him into the kitchen. I turned to Lonnie. "What have you got?"
Lonnie pulled his heavy-framed, Buddy Holly-style glasses from the front pocket of his uniform, extracted his wallet-sized spiral blue pad, and flipped a couple of pages. With his high-pitched nasal voice and a hunched posture that tried to minimize his awkward height, he could have been a geek at ComicCon, haggling over a mint condition Steve Ditko Spider-Man comic.
"Okay, so, the forensic team reconstructed the incident this way. Front door was open, the perp knew that, and they're thinking it had to be someone who knew Refn. No sign of struggle. Two coffee mugs out on the kitchen counter — nice friendly chat. Eventually Refn and the perp go down to the basement."
"Any idea why?"
"Well, clearly it's pretext, not 'reason,' you know what I mean? This individual had a plan. Refn had lots of stuff stored down there — art books, vintage clothing, plaster maquettes, antique quilted pillows — he had put a lot of the merchandise up at the ReUse exchange website. Seems like he wanted to unload a lot of personal baggage fast. Maybe he was planning to make a move? Which is weird because the Theater Lab just renewed his contract for three years. Anyway, we're taking his computer and we'll track the e-mails, see if anyone was in touch about the stuff he had for sale. So, let's see ... they go downstairs, there's a struggle, we have signs of blunt-force trauma. The perp knocks him out, then jams him into the meat freezer. There's serious pre-mortem frostbite on the face."
"Cause of death?"
"Looks like strangulation, as the perp held him in place. Nasty way to die."
"Time of death?"
"We lucked out there, Chief. The next door neighbor was listening to the Red Sox game and heard sounds of struggle right after a Pablo Sandoval home run. And, hey, if you follow the Sox, you know any home run is a big deal this season. Am I right?"
"We could sure use Ortiz right now," I offered. I didn't really follow baseball but you couldn't help absorbing the basics, here in Red Sox Nation.
Lonnie flipped over a page. "The body was found by Donald Harcourt, he's on the NTL Board, some kind of industrial packaging big shot, WASP, big money, house in Shimmo."
"What was he doing here?"
"He says he got a call from Joe Little. They were supposed to meet at the house. Some kind of big pow-wow with Refn. But Little was a no-show. Or he split before Harcourt arrived."
"Joe Little ..." I was trying to place the name.
"Joseph Frederick Little, Lotus Capital Management? Loaded, like all the rest of them. He's on the NTL Board."
I put it together. "Yeah ... he had a big fight with Harcourt at some charity cocktail party a couple of weeks ago. One of them pushed the other into an antique hutch that turned out to be a replica from Pottery Barn. The owner was going to sue until the decorator confessed — a perfect Nantucket story."
"I never read about it," Lonnie said. "Were you there?"
"Right. I always get invited to these fundraisers because they know I'm an easy touch."
"Okay, okay, so how did you find out about it?"
"Jackson Blum told me."
"You're all chummy now?"
"Actually, we are. He turned out to be a pretty decent guy."
I had arrested Blum for murder last Christmas, on the night he found out he'd driven his gay son to suicide. It was a horrific one-two punch, but we dropped the murder charge and the son survived. Still, the night Blum spent in jail and the ecstatic family reunion the next morning had scrambled his brain chemistry like a course of electro-shock. Here, I thought only a lobotomy could redeem him! Seriously, though, Blum had become so humble and friendly, I suspected an ulterior motive, but the wolf really had transformed into the wolfhound. If only I could pull the same trick on people like Donald Harcourt and Joseph Little. As it stood right now I might have to console myself with arresting one of them for murder.
"Is Harcourt still here? I need to talk to him."
Lonnie grinned. "He's in the Great Room. Pissed as hell. This dead guy is ruining his whole day."
"Let him wait. Did you talk to the neighbor?"
"We talked to all the neighbors. Or, I mean — we are talking to them. The canvass is ongoing. They all hate each other and they all hated Refn the most. Parties late at night. Police callouts — you can dig up the records. Cigarette butts in the yard. Apparently, he smoked outside, and the wind blows those butts all over the place."
I shook my head. "It's hard to believe anybody still smokes."
"Yeah," Lonnie grinned. "It could seriously shorten his life. Though four out of five doctors agree it's not quite as dangerous as being strangled and stuffed into a meat freezer."
"That's catchy. You should write ads for Big Tobacco."
He shrugged. "There was more. Refn let his hedge grow too high and never trimmed it. The homeowners' association was bitching about that as far back as last summer. And he built his fences wrong-side out. That had the abutters screaming. This guy definitely puts the 'butt' into abutter."
"Inside out?"
"It's a rule. I thought it was one of those unwritten rules, but it's also a bylaw. You build a fence on the property line, the structural part of the fence, the cross pieces, have to face your property. The neighbor gets the good-looking side, the slats. Refn ignored the law, and the — you know, the custom, the neighborly agreement — and put up the fences so the neighbors have to look at the bad side. Best part is, it's not even his house! The Theater Lab owns it and the Artistic Director just lives here. Like the President in the White House."
I nodded at the casual way Refn had trampled the community's mores. "He seems more like the President in the White House all the time."
"Hey! Refn was good looking — and smart, supposedly. With actual hair. Anyway, the Theater Lab was pissed off at him, too — but they wouldn't pony up the dough to take down the fences."
"Is that all?"
"Are you kidding? Not even close." Fraker flipped another page. "Let's see ... he parked his car blocking other people's driveways and he had a car alarm that went off at all hours. People love that! Someone was flattening tires with a knife and everybody suspected Refn. No one filed a complaint; there was no proof — but it gives you the idea. Next big hurricane they'd have been looking for the wind machine in his basement. He'll be off the hook for that now. And they have to admit he didn't commit this murder. Unless he killed himself — to frame one of the neighbors!"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Nantucket Counterfeit"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Steven Axelrod.
Excerpted by permission of Poisoned Pen Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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