There are two different police departments in Southampton. A confusing bit of municipal legality that separates jurisdictions of the Town of Southampton from the Village of Southampton. Officer Matthews of the Southampton Town — not Village — Police Department shook Heat’s hand and met her gaze with the innate cheerfulness she had seen in more firefighters than cops. One of those aged-to-perfection veterans, Woody Matthews gave off the vibe of the guy who would fix your flat in the Kmart lot on his day off, or be found in a tent flipping pancakes at the town fair. He looked at the mug shot he had already been shown by Detective Aguinaldo, but it was the additional picture Nikki showed him that Roach had found on the floor in Jeanne Capois’s room that got him nodding. “Yes, I can now say that’s definitely the man I saw.”
The patrolman also confirmed the date he encountered him. It had been earlier the same night Beauvais asked Ivan Gogol to stitch him up — if the Russian doctor’s original story held true, which Heat believed it did. “Detective Aguinaldo said that he might have been shot?”
“That’s possible. Did you see any evidence of blood on him?”
“Negative. I can say for sure, I would have responded to that. Now he was sort of hunched-up, though, with his arms crossed like yay.” The officer bent to demonstrate, his leather belt creaking like a saddle. “The guy said he was sick, and I’m not out to bust chops, you know? I just wanted to make sure he was all right. I even offered him a ride to the train, but he declined. I got a drunk and disorderly call at one of the taverns on the highway, so I let it go and rolled to the D&D.” Catch and release, thought Nikki.
“Did he seem scared, like he was being followed?”
Officer Matthews brushed his fingers through his short-cropped, salt and pepper hair. “Again, that is definitely something I would have keyed into.” Heat believed him. He was one of those local types who put on the uniform every day to help, not hassle.
Heat asked to show where he found Beauvais. He spread a map on the hood of his car and tapped North Sea Road near the cemetery. “That’s literally on the other side of the tracks from here,” she observed.
“Correct. His direction of travel to the train station was coming from the north.”
Which was odd. Odd enough, thought Heat, to qualify as an odd sock. If Fabian Beauvais had been coming from either Keith Gilbert’s or Alicia Delamater’s, he would have been walking from south to north, not the other way around. “What’s up North Sea Road?”
“It’s a lot of residential,” said Detective Aguinaldo.
“Right,” continued the officer. “Some nice homes up that way. Not like all this, but middle to upper-middle class. Wooded lots and two-car garages. Let’s see, a liquor store, which is where I first thought he might have been coming from. But he could also have been a kitchen worker from the seafood place. Everything else up there would have been closed that time of night. The tree service, Conscience Point, the general store.…”
“Hang on,” said Heat. For a second, the word almost slipped by Nikki. But as it started to float away, it suddenly turned like an arcing boomerang and returned to her full force, slamming into her mind. “What is Conscience Point?”
Nikki pulled into the parking lot of Southampton’s municipal marina at Conscience Point fifteen minutes later and parked beside a public works truck that was unloading sand bags to brace for the storm. Inez Aguinaldo got out of her unmarked SUV and led her counterpart on a brief walking tour of the Parks & Rec moorage, which amounted to a humble, yet tidily kept green between the road and North Sea Harbor. Three T-shaped docks jutted out from the seawall and a row of slips ran at a right angle down the shore’s walking path.
Two months after Labor Day, most sat empty. The few remaining sloops and cabin cruisers belonging to diehards trying to extend the season were in the process of getting hoisted out now. A crew operating a diesel crane with a sling lift worked at a feverish pace to get the boats dry before Sandy came knocking. Heat kept to herself, watching the cascade of water sluice off a winched-up Ensign 22, observing the layout of the grounds, contemplating the pair of Parks & Rec buildings situated just off the blacktop, noting the trash bins and the white six-hundred-gallon fuel storage tanks across the lot. Listening and seeing, the detective tried to be open; to let this place speak something to her.
The two detectives sat on top of a picnic table, eating their panini, watching the three-thousand-pound Ensign swing on a crane toward a carrier on a flatbed. Finally, Aguinaldo asked, “Can I be of help? Is there something specific you’re looking for?”
“It’s like playing