Yesterday's News

for whatever evidence Jane might have had on the conspiracy. A forensic investigation of a suspicious death would have provided the perfect cover for that kind of search. It didn’t seem anyone had bothered, though it’s hard to spot a slow, careful search if the place isn’t your own to start with.
    I skimmed through what files I could find in a box in her closet. They all seemed to be just copies of stories from her previous jobs. Nothing about Coyne or Dykestra.
    I closed Rust’s door to the front hallway and the outside door to the house, both locks snicking securely behind me. Walking to the Prelude, I looked back at the two-family. An unremarkable place to die.
    As I approached the motel, Sal’s Sub Shoppe still had its lights on. I got an Italian with everything on it and directions to the nearest package store, Sal warning me that only the bars in town stayed open past ten.
    At Nasharbor Liquors, I bought a cold six-pack of Molson Golden ale just as the clerk was cashing out. I tried Nancy from the pay phone outside. No answer.
    The odor of oils from the sandwich filled the car on the way back to the Crestview. Loading up on carbohydrates, I watched TV for an hour before surfing to sleep in the Honeymoon Suite.

The Nasharbor police headquarters was on Main Street next to city hall. The department occupied a massive Gothic building with miniature gargoyles on the comers and a modem, masonry block annex. I went through the double doors atop the old steps and walked up to the desk sergeant’s Plexiglas enclosure.
    The sergeant was olive-skinned with black wavy hair. “What can I do for you?”
    “I’d like to speak with Captain Hagan.”
    “Captain’s a busy man. What about?”
    “The death of Jane Rust. My name’s John Cuddy.” I opened my ID under the small slit on the counter. “Private, huh? Insurance?”
    “I’d like to talk with him about it.”
    “Probably be a while before I can call him.”
    A bench was pushed against the wall. “I’ll time you from over there.”
    The sergeant shuffled a few forms to save face, then dialed an internal extension.

    Hagan folded my ID and leaned back across his desk, careful not to knock over the triptych portraits of wife and assorted kids on the corner. Mounted commendations crawled up the wall behind him. He’d stood and shook hands when I’d come in the room. A little shorter and a little huskier than I am, maybe forty-two or forty-three, with auburn hair in a Madison Avenue cut and a herringbone jacket with elbow patches. Clean-shaven, he looked like the sort who slapped Aqua Velva onto his cheeks in the morning mirror.
    Hagan said, “Anybody on Boston I can call about you?”
    “Try Robert Murphy, lieutenant in Homicide.”
    “Don’t know him. Anybody else?”
    “Yeah, but they’d hang up on you.”
    Hagan sat back, tenting his hands at belt level. “So what’s your interest in Jane Rust?”
    “She came to see me on Monday afternoon. She didn’t strike me as close enough to the edge to kill herself Monday night.”
    “She goes to a private investigator, she must have had something bothering her.”
    “Look, Captain, we can dance around a while longer if you’d like, but we both know why she came to see me. She thought your department was involved in the death of Charlie Coyne.”
    “You ever meet Coyne?”
    “No.”
    “If he graduated high school, they would’ve captioned his photo ‘Most Likely to Die in an Alley.’ Which is exactly what happened to him.”
    “Suspects?”
    Hagan snorted a laugh. “No more than a hundred. When Coyne got drunk, he got sentimental, wanted to share things with his brothers on the street. As in homeless and on the street.”
    “And you figure one of them did him?”
    “One of them saw it. Or at least the end of it. Or at least he thinks he saw the end of it.”
    “What did he see?”
    “Biggish bum, hobbling away after stabbing Coyne. The witness says Coyne managed to knife the killer in the leg.”
    “The big guy show up at a hospital?”
    “Not that we can tell. If he tried to patch himself up, he’ll lose the leg within a month. If he crawled off somewhere to die, a pair of uniforms will get a call to investigate a godawful smell coming from some abandoned building.”
    “You seem pretty casual about all this. You have that many homicides down here?”
    “You mean murders, no. You mean deaths by unnatural causes, hell yes. The leading killer of the homeless is frostbite. Right