”
8
“So what do you think, Steffi?” Vince asked, taking a throat-cooling swallow of his Coke. “Mystery solved? Case closed?”
“Not on your granny!” she cried, and barely registered their appreciative laughter. Her eyes were sparkling. “The cause-of-death part, maybe, but…what was it, by the way? In his throat? Or would that be getting ahead of the story?”
“Darlin, you can’t get ahead of a story that doesn’t exist,” Vince said, and his eyes were also sparkling. “Ask ahead, behind, or sideways. I’ll answer anything. Same with Dave, I imagine.”
As if to prove this was indeed so, The Weekly Islander ’s managing editor, said: “It was a piece of beef, probably steak, and very likely from one of your better cuts—your tenderloin, sirloin, or filet mignon. It was cooked medium-rare, and asphyxiation due to choking was what went on the death certificate, although the man we have always called the Colorado Kid also had suffered a massive cerebral embolism—your stroke, in other words. Cathcart decided the choking led to the stroking, but who knows, it might have been vicey-versa. So you see, even the cause of death gets slippery when you look at it right up close.”
“There’s at least one story in here—a little one—and I’m going to tell it to you now,” Vince said. “It’s about a fella who was in some ways like you, Stephanie, although I like to think you fell into better hands when it came to putting the final polish on your education; more compassionate ones, too. This fella was young—twenty-three, I think—and like you he was from away (the south in his case rather than the Midwest), and he was also doing graduate work, in the field of forensic science.”
“So he was working with this Dr. Cathcart, and he figured something out.”
Vince grinned. “Logical enough guess, dear, but you’re wrong about who he was workin with. His name…what was his name, Dave?”
Dave Bowie, whose memory for names was as deadly as Annie Oakley’s aim with her rifle, didn’t hesitate. “Devane. Paul Devane.”
“That’s right, I recall it now you say it. This young man, Devane, was assigned to three months of postgraduate field work with a couple of State Police detectives out of the Attorney General’s office. Only in his case, sentenced might be the better word. They treated him very badly.” Vince’s eyes darkened. “Older people who use young people badly when all the young people want is to learn—I think folks like that should be put out of their jobs. All too often, though, they get promotions instead of pink-slips. It has never surprised me that God gave the world a little tilt at the same time He set it spinning; so much that goes on here mimics that tilt.
“This young man, this Devane, spent four years at some place like Georgetown University, wanting to learn the sort of science that catches crooks, and right around the time he was coming to bud the luck of the draw sent him to work with a couple of doughnut-eating detectives who turned him into little more than a gofer, running files between Augusta and Waterville and shooing lookie-loos away from car-crash scenes. Oh, maybe once in awhile he got to measure a footprint or take flash photos of a tire-print as a reward. But rarely, I sh’d say. Rarely.
“In any case, Steffi, these two fine specimens of detection—and I hope to God they’re long out to pasture—happened to be in Tinnock Village at the same time the body of the Colorado Kid turned up on Hammock Beach. They were investigating an apartment-house fire ‘of suspicious origin,’ as we say when reporting such things in the paper, and they had their pet boy, who was by then losing his idealism, with them.
“If he’d drawn a couple of the good detectives working out of the A.G.’s office—and I’ve met my share in spite of the goddam bureaucracy that makes so many problems in this state’s law enforcement system—or if his Department of
8
“So what do you think, Steffi?” Vince asked, taking a throat-cooling swallow of his Coke. “Mystery solved? Case closed?”
“Not on your granny!” she cried, and barely registered their appreciative laughter. Her eyes were sparkling. “The cause-of-death part, maybe, but…what was it, by the way? In his throat? Or would that be getting ahead of the story?”
“Darlin, you can’t get ahead of a story that doesn’t exist,” Vince said, and his eyes were also sparkling. “Ask ahead, behind, or sideways. I’ll answer anything. Same with Dave, I imagine.”
As if to prove this was indeed so, The Weekly Islander ’s managing editor, said: “It was a piece of beef, probably steak, and very likely from one of your better cuts—your tenderloin, sirloin, or filet mignon. It was cooked medium-rare, and asphyxiation due to choking was what went on the death certificate, although the man we have always called the Colorado Kid also had suffered a massive cerebral embolism—your stroke, in other words. Cathcart decided the choking led to the stroking, but who knows, it might have been vicey-versa. So you see, even the cause of death gets slippery when you look at it right up close.”
“There’s at least one story in here—a little one—and I’m going to tell it to you now,” Vince said. “It’s about a fella who was in some ways like you, Stephanie, although I like to think you fell into better hands when it came to putting the final polish on your education; more compassionate ones, too. This fella was young—twenty-three, I think—and like you he was from away (the south in his case rather than the Midwest), and he was also doing graduate work, in the field of forensic science.”
“So he was working with this Dr. Cathcart, and he figured something out.”
Vince grinned. “Logical enough guess, dear, but you’re wrong about who he was workin with. His name…what was his name, Dave?”
Dave Bowie, whose memory for names was as deadly as Annie Oakley’s aim with her rifle, didn’t hesitate. “Devane. Paul Devane.”
“That’s right, I recall it now you say it. This young man, Devane, was assigned to three months of postgraduate field work with a couple of State Police detectives out of the Attorney General’s office. Only in his case, sentenced might be the better word. They treated him very badly.” Vince’s eyes darkened. “Older people who use young people badly when all the young people want is to learn—I think folks like that should be put out of their jobs. All too often, though, they get promotions instead of pink-slips. It has never surprised me that God gave the world a little tilt at the same time He set it spinning; so much that goes on here mimics that tilt.
“This young man, this Devane, spent four years at some place like Georgetown University, wanting to learn the sort of science that catches crooks, and right around the time he was coming to bud the luck of the draw sent him to work with a couple of doughnut-eating detectives who turned him into little more than a gofer, running files between Augusta and Waterville and shooing lookie-loos away from car-crash scenes. Oh, maybe once in awhile he got to measure a footprint or take flash photos of a tire-print as a reward. But rarely, I sh’d say. Rarely.
“In any case, Steffi, these two fine specimens of detection—and I hope to God they’re long out to pasture—happened to be in Tinnock Village at the same time the body of the Colorado Kid turned up on Hammock Beach. They were investigating an apartment-house fire ‘of suspicious origin,’ as we say when reporting such things in the paper, and they had their pet boy, who was by then losing his idealism, with them.
“If he’d drawn a couple of the good detectives working out of the A.G.’s office—and I’ve met my share in spite of the goddam bureaucracy that makes so many problems in this state’s law enforcement system—or if his Department of
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