Small Vices

"If there is something that comes up in the future," she said, "which does not threaten my college, I would be pleased to help you."

"Thanks," I said. "And if you ever need a thug…"

"Maybe for fund-raising," she said and smiled. And I smiled. And she came out from behind her desk and walked with me to the door and opened it. And I left.

Chapter 9

THE THING I dreaded most was talking to the victim's parents, so I figured I might as well get it done. They lived in Brookline in a big red brick house with a wide porch; a couple of blocks uphill from the reservoir. Mr. Henderson was The Henderson Corporation, a firm that occupied most of the floors in the Mercantile Building that Cone, Oakes and Baldwin didn't occupy. The Henderson Corporation owned banks, and fertilizer companies, and a stock brokerage firm, and a company in Switzerland that made faucets, and a lot of other stuff that I couldn't remember, because I didn't take notes when I looked them up. He was a medium-sized guy with no hair and horn-rimmed glasses. His handshake was firm, his gaze direct. He was still in his suit, with his jacket off. He wore a white shirt and broad suspenders in a colorful pattern-the kind of no-nonsense guy that you'd trust with your money, though you might trust him more with his own. Mrs. Henderson was slim and dark with her black hair in a severe Dutch boy cut. She had on a mango-colored dress with a square neck and a short skirt. It looked good on her.

"You wish to talk about our daughter," Mr. Henderson said when we were seated in some bentwood furniture covered in floral prints in the sunroom off the formal living room.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"We had hoped to put that behind us," Henderson said.

He and his wife sat together on the sofa against the white painted brick back of the living room fireplace.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But I've been employed by Cone, Oakes and Baldwin to look into her death more closely."

"To what purpose?" Mrs. Henderson said.

She held her hands folded in her lap. There was a stereo setup to my right, in front of one of the windows. On it was a picture of a young woman wearing a much too big Taft University letter sweater. The sweater had a big blue chenille T on the front. There was a pair of small te

"Is that Melissa?" I said.

"Yes," Henderson said.

"What is the purpose of your investigation?" Mrs. Henderson said.

"To make sure they've got the right guy."

They were both silent for a moment, and then Mrs. Henderson said, "You mean you're not sure?"

"I have just begun, ma'am. I'm not sure of anything. It's why I'm going around talking to people."

"This law firm, this Cone whatchamacallit, they think Alves is i

"They feel he got an inadequate defense," I said. "They wish to be sure it's the right man."

Again they were quiet.

Finally, Henderson said, "I realize you're just doing your job…"

His wife interrupted.

"Walton is always reasonable. He can't help it. But I don't care about your job. I care about my daughter. And I will not permit the man who murdered our only child to be set free."

Henderson looked at his wife and at me. He didn't say anything.

"You have no reason to question the verdict?" I said.

"Absolutely not," Mrs. Henderson said.

She was leaning forward on the couch, her hands still clasped in her lap. She might have been actually quivering with the intensity of her feeling, or I might have thought she was.

"Mr. Henderson?" He shook his head. "Your daughter ever go to Taft?" I said.

"No," Henderson said.

His voice was still reasonable, but it was sounding a little shaky.

"Do you know who her friends were?" I said. "Her roommate, maybe, at school."

Mrs. Henderson stood up quite suddenly.

"Get out," Mrs. Henderson said. "Get out of my house, you nosy fucking nigger lover."

Her daughter was too recently dead for me to debate her about race and justice. Or even nosiness. Henderson got to his feet and put a hand on her shoulder, she shrugged away from it. The skin on her face seemed too tight, and the structure of the skull showed beneath it.

"And if you do succeed in getting that son of a bitch out of jail I will find a way to kill him myself," she said.

"You'd better go," Henderson said to me. "We have nothing to say to you."

"I'm sorry I had to intrude," I said.

"Just get out of here," Mrs. Henderson said.

Which is what I did. Driving back to Boston I watched the joggers moving around the reservoir in the bright fall morning. I remembered once again why I had dreaded the parents. I'd been talking to the next of kin of various victims for a long time now and had seen all the grief I ever wanted to. It was hard to rate grief The loss of a mate seemed to elicit as much grief as the loss of a child. But nothing came close to the rage level of grieving parents. Because she had called me a nigger lover didn't mean she would frame a black man. The police chief at Pemberton had called Alves a nigger, too. Didn't mean he would frame a black man either. On the other hand, none of this meant Alves wasn't framed. Be good to find out something that meant something.

At Cleveland Circle I turned left and went up a block to Commonwealth Ave. and headed in town that way. Near State Police Headquarters at 1010 Commonwealth, I found a convenient spot at a bus stop and parked and went in to talk with a cop I knew.

Healy was at his desk in the Criminal Investigation Division, of which he was the commander. He and I had worked on a case up in Smithfield about twenty years ago, and he'd helped me out now and then since. He was gray-haired and wiry, and not as tall as I was, though as far as I could tell it didn't bother him.

"Whaddya need today," Healy said when I walked in.

"Maybe I'm just stopping in to say hi."

"Okay," Healy said, "hi."

"And maybe to ask you if you know anything about that murder in Pemberton about eighteen months ago."

"Maybe that too, huh?" Healy said. "College kid?"

"Yeah," I said. "According to the trial transcript, a State detective named Miller was on it."

"Yeah, Tommy Miller."

"You follow the case?"

"Not really. As I remember it, it was pretty open and shut. Two eyewitnesses saw the perp kidnap her, right?"

"So they tell me."

"So why are you asking about it?" Healy said.

"Had a defense attorney right out of law school, she thinks he was i

"And she hired you to get him off?"

"Sort of. She works for Cone, Oakes now, and she got them to hire me."

"Must be a nice change of pace for you," Healy said, "a client who can pay."

"Nothing wrong with it," I said. "How's Miller?"

"He's all right. Probably a little rough around the edges. Thinks being a State cop makes him important."

"Tough guy?"

Healy shrugged.

"Compared to who?" he said. "Compared to some high school kid with a loud mouth and a nose full of dope, he's tougher than scrap iron. Compared to Hawk, say, or me… or you." Healy shrugged.