The Man Who Wasn't All There by David Handler (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

seat was no stranger to us. He was Lieutenant Carmine Tedone of the Major Crime Squad, the homicide investigator with whom we’d been involved that summer in the Sherbourne Playhouse murders. Carmine was Pete the Fixer’s cousin. Everyone in the Connecticut State Police was related. Carmine was a chesty fireplug like Pete, with dark, hooded eyes and a head of mountainous, elaborately layered black hair that was reminiscent of John Travolta from his Saturday Night Fever disco heyday. He wore a cheap shiny black suit just like Pete did. So did his driver, Sergeant Angelo Bartucca, who was his wife’s cousin. I wondered if the family bought them in bulk, like rolls of paper towels at Costco.

Lieutenant Tedone hadn’t cared much for me, partly because he thought I was an annoying asshole, but mostly because I’d been the one who’d cracked the Sherbourne Playhouse case, with a generous assist from Lulu. I’m fairly certain he would have been thrilled if he’d never had to see me again.

Merilee got up and opened the front door to save them the trouble of knocking.

‘Nice to see you again, Miss Nash,’ Tedone said with deferential politeness. ‘Sorry it’s not under cheerier circumstances.’

‘Do we ever meet under cheery circumstances, Lieutenant?’

He frowned. ‘No, I guess not.’

‘Please, come in. Hello again, Sergeant Bartucca.’

‘Hiya, ma’am,’ he responded, ducking his head shyly as she closed the door behind them.

Tedone gestured in the direction of the sofa with his chin. ‘How’s the hero doing?’

Merilee smiled. ‘Lulu is being very brave and stoic, aren’t you, sweetness?’

She let out a low whoop.

‘I meant the tall guy.’

‘Oh, him. He’s still dizzy. The doctor said he has to take it easy.’

Tedone crossed the room toward me. I started to get up to greet him.

‘No, no, stay put.’ He checked out my head wound. ‘Boy, that’s quite some wallop. Concussion?’

‘Already got one, thanks.’

‘Still have that same mouth, too.’

‘In fact, it turns out he’s had two prior concussions that I knew nothing about,’ Merilee said to him. ‘It’s strange how you think you know everything about a person whom you’re close to, but you don’t.’

‘You got that right,’ Tedone agreed. ‘Every investigation I ever work I find out things that the victim’s loved ones never knew about.’

‘Remember that woman up in Wallingford, Loo?’ Sergeant Bartucca said. ‘Turned out she was married to two men at the same time.’

‘Did one of them kill her?’ Merilee asked with keen interest.

‘No, she killed both of them, actually,’ Tedone said. ‘Hoagy, we’ll try to make this quick so we don’t tire you out. We’ll also remove that bullet from your kitchen wall, Miss Nash, if you’ll show Sergeant Bartucca where it is.’

‘Gladly.’

He removed a pair of latex gloves, a baggie and long tweezers from his jacket pocket and followed her into the kitchen.

‘So here we are again,’ Tedone grumbled at me.

‘Here we are again,’ I said, nodding, which was still a mistake. I definitely had something rattling around in there. ‘Have a seat, Lieutenant.’

He settled into the wing-backed chair by the fireplace and pulled a notepad from the breast pocket of his jacket, leafing through it. ‘Jim Conley ran it for me. Told me that you thought Lulu picked up the scent of someone following you up the mountain. That it was about three o’clock when you reached the ruins, which was when the victim conked you on the head. And that you thought you may have heard voices at some point, though you were pretty out of it by then.’

‘Correct. Was the M.E. able to determine a time of death?’

‘He told me it’s going to be very hard to determine. Austin’s body was in full rigor, but it was also lying face down in a forty-five-degree river. My guess? He was killed not long after you got conked on the head that afternoon. Dusk approaches early up in the mountains this time of year. I figure his killer would have wanted to make it back down the mountain trail before darkness settled in. We did find where he bled out – on the dirt path on the path at the top of the falls. Soil’s soaked with blood. There were traces of it on the safety railing, too, meaning Austin was murdered there and shoved over the railing. We also found a gazillion shoe prints there from your rescue team, which will most likely make it impossible to isolate the killer’s shoe prints. But they had no way of knowing they were compromising a crime scene. All they were thinking about was finding you.’ He paused, clearing his throat. ‘Deputy Superintendent Mitry has told me to tread very lightly on this one. Austin Talmadge may have been certifiably crazy, in and out of mental hospitals his entire life, but he was also …’

‘The second richest man in the state of Connecticut.’

Tedone nodded. ‘So rich he had the Yale School of Medicine’s top child psychiatrist, Dr Annabeth McKenna, on an exclusive personal retainer for a million bucks a year. I just paid a courtesy call on his older brother, Michael …’

‘Who is the richest man in the state of Connecticut.’

‘He sure doesn’t seem to enjoy his wealth very much. The man was so edgy he was shaking. Have you met him?’

‘I have. He may be the most frightened person I’ve ever come across. He’s lived in terror ever since Austin shot him in the head with a pellet gun when they were kids and permanently deafened his left ear. Dr McKenna told me that he suffers from such acute anxiety and panic attacks that not even maximum doses of prescription meds give him a moment’s ease. He lives in a high security mansion, employs four ex-Green Berets and a trained attack dog for protection.’

‘Yeah, I saw them when I stopped by his place. Right now, they’re protecting him from the media people who are swarming his front gate. He likes his privacy, I gather. You know this Dr McKenna?’

‘She lives down the road, though I just met her the other