Next to Die Read online

  “We looked at a guy, yeah. He’s since been convicted; he’s a registered sex offender.” Corrow tossed the gum wrapper aside. “But nah, it wasn’t him.” He gave them both a look. “Listen, I understand you got this murder in Lake Haven. I mean, what’s that – first murder in ten years?”

  “Eighteen,” Overton said.

  “Eighteen years. So you’re scrambling, I get it. But trust me when I tell you, we went through all this with a fine-toothed comb. We worked round the clock for weeks. Months. Nobody from her cases did this. Just remember: Corina Lavoie is a missing person. We didn’t have a corpse, didn’t have a crime scene. All we had was the goddamned car. I think she just took off.”

  “And left the car?”

  He waved a hand in the air then faced forward, got the Impala moving. “Ah, she was with some guy. Doesn’t matter what her sister thinks – sisters hide things from each other. I know. I’ve got three of them. I bet she was seeing some guy, someone outside the area, and he came and picked her up, you know, met her at the movies and they took off and that was that. She doesn’t wanna be found. She doesn’t wanna go back to that weird little house with all the Jesus stuff in it.” Corrow’s eyes found Mike in the mirror this time. “No offense to any religious sensibilities.”

  He took them along the route that Corina Lavoie was supposed to have driven on her last day in a world that knew where she was, what she was doing. Corrow said, “She came home, we’re pretty sure, because the sister said there was evidence of that – Maybelle was away, visiting friends in Gouverneur. Her church group, or something.”

  “Her church group had overnight functions?” Mike asked.

  Corrow’s eyes in the mirror again. “I guess so. What do I know? The woman says she spent the weekend with friends… Oh, it was a retreat, that’s what it was. A religious retreat.

  “But the sister says when she came home she found dirty dishes in the sink, though she’d cleaned up the morning before she’d left, indicating Lavoie had come home after work before going to the movies. Oh, and the clothes – Lavoie had left dirty clothes in the closet, and we showed those clothes to co-workers, and it was what she was wearing that day. We went through her whole wardrobe, the sister helped, trying to do a process of elimination on what clothes she could be wearing based on what she’d left behind.” He started laughing, like it was the funniest thing, and his laughter turned to coughing. Corrow rolled down the window, spat out the gum, rolled it back up.

  “So,” Mike said carefully, “Corina Lavoie goes off with some guy she’s secretly seeing, but doesn’t take any of her clothes, any of the things in her room. Just leaves her sister – she moved home to be with her sister, help out. Then she ups and leaves?”

  “Look,” Corrow said, starting to sound agitated, “I told you, with all due respect, we went through this. I was in this woman’s room two days—” he held up fingers to accentuate the point, recalling the gesture made by Jesus “—two days I’m in there going through this woman’s clothes, her personal effects. I know it looks capricious, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe she’s bogged down by her sister, her job, and the only way out is to just bolt. Just escape. I’ve seen it plenty of times. And we had no evidence of foul play. Nothing. No blood, no DNA, no weapon, no witnesses. I understand you want to link this to the Fogarty case you got. Whip up a little serial murder investigation. But I can’t sit here and tell you I think Corina Lavoie was murdered.”

  He finally fell silent after that, and they slowed in front of Lavoie’s house, where Mike and Overton had just been. Then he sped up again. “So this is the route we figure she took. Mall is a mile away. This is the easiest, most natural way to go.”

  He made a few more turns and they made the rest of the trip with no one talking.

  Corrow pulled into the mall where the movie theater was, a Regal, with a grand entrance that looked like something out of Las Vegas. Even midday in the middle of a work week, there were plenty of cars. The parking spot Corrow wanted to show them was occupied by a minivan.

  “This was the space, right here, this was where her car was. We let it sit here a week; Regal finally threw a fit at us, and we impounded it. Nothing in the car but her registration, a few candy wrappers, a couple pens; that was it. You want to go look at the car, too?”

  Mike opened his mouth but Overton beat him to the punch. “No thank you, Detective. I think we’ve seen enough – can you just send us the info on that sex offender you said?”

  “Uh-huh, sure,” Corrow said and nailed the gas, Mike feeling the Gs.

  * * *

  With Corrow off chewing gum somewhere on his own, maybe grooming his sideburns, the investigators had left Watertown with a copy of the file on Lavoie, a hard summer rain drumming the car’s roof. They were cruising along, Overton driving, Mike reading when Mike said, “Pull over.”

  She shot him a look then brought the car to a stop in front of a restaurant. Before she could ask a question, he handed her the open file, poking the top page with his finger. “Read that.”

  Overton held his gaze a moment then turned her attention to the file, started reading. “Okay… Lavoie was fifty-five when she disappeared… born in Watertown… went to school at SUNY Buffalo, was a social worker in Buffalo for almost ten years before she moved to Lake Haven to—”

  She stopped reading to look at him again. “She worked in Lake Haven?”

  “Yeah. And during the time she was a caseworker at Lake Haven, Harriet Fogarty was there, too.”

  “Holy shit. How did we miss that?”

  “Missing Persons didn’t have her work history. And what Corrow originally sent us only covered the Watertown stuff.”

  “He didn’t think it was relevant – we have a murdered caseworker in Lake Haven, and his missing person used to work there?”

  Mike didn’t have an answer. Sometimes cops missed things. Corrow was as busy as any other investigator, juggling multiple cases, being a chauvinist.

  Overton continued examining the file. “Well, I think he’s just got his mind made up, and that’s the reason. If this is foul play, and someone abducted her, there’s no sign of it. Her car was fine, no scratches, no forced entry, no marks. So I can see why Corrow thought this was a boyfriend or something.” She looked out into the rain.

  “Or it just means it was someone she knew,” Mike said. “Maybe the same as Harriet.”

  Overton kept scanning, flipping pages. “Not a trace of Steven Pritchard in here,” she said. “Or Jameson Rentz, or the Fullers, nothing. Looks like Corrow worked it for about a month before considering it cold.”

  Mike was quiet a moment, letting her read. Then, “Maybe this thing has to do with something further upstream.”

  “Like a case they shared back – what? Ten, fifteen years ago?”

  “Just a thought.”

  “Okay but what about the MO? Like Cheever said, Lavoie is abducted, missing. Harriet is not.”

  “That we know of. Lavoie is gone, yeah. Dragged off, hidden, murdered, who knows?” Mike thought of his talk with Crispin about a killer breaking pattern, escalating things, seeking a new high. Maybe hiding a body wasn’t satisfying enough the second time, and no one could see the handiwork when you hid your victims.

  Mike’s eyes drifted to the rubbery shapes just visible through the thick rain. A neon sign in the restaurant window glowed red in the dark downpour. They’d stopped in Black River, just outside Watertown, still hours from home. “Again, maybe she knew him,” Mike said. “Maybe Corrow’s got that part right. He met her in the theater, convinced her to go somewhere with him, she never came back.”

  “Still a different MO – no sign he was in the car with Lavoie. With Harriet, he obviously had a way in.”

  “Right. Maybe he does it one way with Lavoie – uses the fact that she knows him to lure him to his car or something. But maybe that’s too much hassle, almost doesn’t work; I don’t know. Or his relationship to each of them is different, requiring an altered method.
But think about it – in twenty years, how many CPS caseworkers have been murdered or vanished into thin air?”

  “I’m going to guess two.”

  Mike said, “Right now, we’re looking at present, open, child protection cases. Corrow said he looked at ten.”

  “Yeah, Corrow…” she said skeptically.

  “I think he brushed off the sex offender because of Lavoie’s age.”

  “Or maybe her race. I don’t know if Corrow struck me as socially liberal.”

  “Me neither. But what I’m saying is…” He took the file back, thumbed through a couple of pages, pulled one out and handed it to her. “Lavoie transferred to Watertown in 2008. Like her sister said, she moved in to be a support. We need to see all her case files.”

  Overton clucked her tongue. “That’s gonna be tough – she’s considered a missing person, not a homicide. Her confidentiality is protected. It’ll be hard to get Cheever to sign off on a warrant opening Lavoie’s stuff when the connection is this tenuous.”

  “There’s got to be a way around it. I think we can get Cheever on board.”

  The rain made shifting shadows over her face as Overton thought it through. She said, “Well, this could be good news for Bobbi Noelle.”

  “I think she’d be relieved, yeah.”

  “I mean we can’t say anything, obviously… I wish we could. She seems pretty freaked out.”

  Mike had felt the same, even if she showed an aptitude for self-defense.

  “You know what strikes me about Noelle?” Overton asked.

  “How much she looks like she could be Harriet’s daughter?”

  “Not that. But that Noelle comes from a well-to-do family – her father worked for Xerox in Rochester for years, and when they shut down he went into business for himself and did very well. What’s she doing up here in the sticks?”

  “You’re a classist?”

  She hit him on the shoulder. “Stop it. You know what I mean. Stock County is the second most dependent county in the state. Know what the first one is?”

  “Point taken.”

  “More people in Pierce County on disability, Medicaid, than anywhere else. People are leaving – not coming in. Plenty of jobs and higher pay in Rochester.”

  He shrugged. “There’s a need, I guess. And just because she comes from money doesn’t mean she doesn’t have… Maybe it’s one of those things where a kid takes off in a completely different direction from her parents.”

  Overton got a half-smile on her face and leaned back in the seat a little, looking toward the restaurant. “Well, my son, Eric, says he wants to be a cop, so, there goes your theory.”

  He waved a hand. “Bah, anecdotal.”

  “Hardly. You want statistics? I bet we can find them. I bet more kids get up to similar careers than different from their parents. Eldest children, most definitely. What did your father do?”

  “Cop.”

  Overton threw her head back and laughed. “See? You jerk. Where was he a cop? Around here?”

  “Dad worked the Seven-Seven in Brooklyn.”

  Her jaw dropped. “East New York?” Sections of Brooklyn in the late 1970s had hotbeds of organized crime and law enforcement corruption; most cops had heard a story or two.

  “East New York was the Seven-Five district,” Mike said. “He was right next door.”

  She faced him. “You lived down there or what?”

  “I grew up there for the first few years, then my parents divorced, I moved up here with my mother but went back to Brooklyn in the summers for a while. How old is Eric now?”

  “Uhm, he’s… Eric is sixteen.”

  Mike whistled.

  “What?” Her eyes accused him though she smiled.

  “That’s just got to be something. You’ve got two teenaged boys under your roof. Got to be a handful. And, so, what does…?”

  “Avery.”

  “And what does Avery want to become?”

  “Right now? He wants to go to work for the National Park Agency. But it changes almost weekly. Last week it was a foreign correspondent for a major news network.”

  “Where? Like Moscow?”

  “No way. Avery is a warm-weather boy. Hates the snow. He’ll wind up someplace tropical.”

  “But still a quagmire of American imperialism…”

  “I hope not. I plan to visit wherever he goes. Before that, it was a professional surfer. I liked that one.”

  “Ambitious for thirteen.”

  “You should’ve heard him at five.”

  They stopped talking, the rain hitting the roof like coins. Mike’s stomach grumbled, drowned out by the noise. “You want to take this inside?”

  “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  She handed him back the files and he tidied up. “We’re going to have to run for it,” he said.

  * * *

  They each took to a bathroom to dry off then grabbed one of the only free tables. It was the busy summer season, boaters and fishermen and motorcyclists driven indoors by the storm.

  The restaurant was attached to a motel; Mike counted seven rooms from his seat by the window. When his eyes drifted back to Overton, he felt his stomach clutch, a sensation he’d long forgotten – he hadn’t experienced anything like it since college, when he’d fallen hard for a girl named Molly.

  Maybe it was the fact that Overton’s hair had gotten a good soaking, her blouse was still a little see-through, her skin flush from the run inside. Or maybe it was the way she stood against the wall during interviews, exuding composure while displaying genuine compassion for a victim’s family. Maybe it was her clarity on the job, or her obvious but understated love for her sons.

  And then there were her eyes – each color that formed hazel sparkling in the steel light that shined through the big restaurant windows.

  “What?” She grew self-conscious. “What are you looking at?”

  “Just thinking.” He dropped his gaze and studied his menu.

  Heart pounding? You’ve got to be kidding. Days of stomach butterflies and a jacked pulse over a woman were supposed to be long gone.

  Shit.

  * * *

  They ordered and talk came back around to the case.

  “So,” Overton said, sipping a Coke.

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright – I’ll indulge this. We’ll go with your old scores theory for a minute, see where it leads.”

  “Old scores… It’s got a ring to it. Okay.”

  “I was thinking about this idea that the killer altered his MO with Harriet. Maybe it was like you said – a better fix.”

  “Or maybe it was something unforeseen. Messing up his plan.” Mike took a sip of his own drink, water with lemon.

  Overton was watching him. “So let’s say this guy gets involved with DSS and Harriet or Lavoie is his caseworker. Could be both – lots of these cases go through all sorts of social workers, lawyers, judges. Do we have anybody so far that fits? Who do you have written down in your little book there?” She was referring to the black Moleskine notebook he kept, currently warmed by his right butt cheek.

  She answered for herself, ticking them off on her fingers. “I’d say you got Pritchard, number one. Jameson Rentz we still don’t have eyes on. Then there’s mystery person X – someone like the sex offender from Corina Lavoie’s cases. What about other employees from DSS? As long as we’re taking it all apart, looking at everything – what about Lennox Palmer? Before he chased down absentee fathers for child custody payments, he was a caseworker, too.”

  Mike set down the glass, wiped his mouth with a napkin. He was about to respond when there was a commotion at the far end of the restaurant: two men arguing. Mike didn’t peg them as locals, but bikers. There was a row of nice-looking Harleys parked out front, getting wet. It was that time of year, when long chains of motorcycle enthusiasts roared through the small picturesque towns of the North Country. They came down from Canada, or up from New Jersey, Massachusetts, lower New York. For the most par
t, they were ordinary folk: weekend warriors who were plumbers and teachers and business owners in everyday life. Occasionally, though, you ran into some hard guys.

  “God dammit,” one of the men said loud enough to carry. His tone had a ripple effect on the other patrons, most of whom seemed to shrink in their seats. The biker then shoved his seat back, stood up, and pushed his large stomach through the crowded restaurant and out the front doors into the rain.

  Mike glanced at Overton, who was twisted around to watch. She turned back, gave Mike a look, lifting her eyebrows.

  The door to the kitchen swung open and a man in a stained white apron looked into the dining room and strode to the table. The cook spoke to the remaining biker, who wore a leather vest and gray goatee. Mike took a long sip of his water.

  Overton stood up.

  The cook was quieter, but his face was red – he pointed after the biker who’d left. The biker in the vest threw down some cash on the table, stood, and strode to the door, giving Overton a look as he went. Then he was gone and she sat back down.

  * * *

  Back in the car, Overton poked at her teeth with a toothpick as she looked at the restaurant.

  The storm hadn’t let up. It was getting dark, the rain just slamming down. Three motorcycle riders in leather huddled beneath the awning, peering out at the row of Harleys. Water poured from the gutter ends, milky white.

  “A nice family place,” Overton said.

  “You looked ready to splash someone on the floor in there.”

  She laughed. “Yeah that was tense for a minute.”

  They watched the trio of bikers some more and Mike said, “I wonder where their rain gear is.”

  “Nobody should ride in this. Why don’t they just get a room?”

  He turned toward her, and his heart started to gallop again. Like a teenager, for God’s sake.

  “We never really got our flow back in there,” she said.

  “Yeah. We need to, ah…”

  Then she leaned in toward him a little, her lips slightly parted, like she had a secret.