Chapter 15

15

On her way to the town police department in her black Toyota RAV4 rental, Colleen passed a white steepled church, a library with painted pumpkins scattered about the grass in front of it, a fancy all-girls boarding school that had tennis courts and horse barns across from its redbrick dorms. All of it draped perfectly with just-so piles of autumn leaves and hay bales as if the Beckford Town Pumpkin Spice Beautification Committee had just struck again.

Had the town of Beckford been laid out by Norman Rockwell himself? she wondered as she crested a softly rolling hill.

No , she thought as she made a left into the police department and parked and got out and followed a leafy path to an actual covered footbridge that spanned a gently bubbling brook.

The Bronx County Courthouse beside Yankee Stadium, this was not.

Used to working in and around the very worst of NYC's falling-apart courts and hellhole lockups, all the happy bird chirping, free parking, peace and quiet and not even one half-naked junkie to step over was almost disorienting.

Almost , Colleen thought as she passed—what couldn't be but actually really was—a little brown bunny innocently nibbling away in the grass beside the flagstone path.

The police department building was a long low antique that looked like it was made out of hand-cut brownstone blocks. Inside the entrance, she lifted a phone off the wall beside the glass-walled reception partition.

A pretty, young, female uniformed cop appeared on the other side of the glass after a few buzzes. She was scrub-faced, maybe twenty-five, with her dark blonde hair up in a bun. M. DAVIS, it said on her name tag.

Remembering the bunny, Colleen smiled.

She was surprised it didn't say B. POTTER.

"Can I help you?" she said.

"Hi, my name is Colleen Doherty. I called a few days ago. Sergeant Tyler has a package for me in his mailbox, he said."

Coming by to pick up Olivia Ramos's full police report from the night of her death while she was up here was a no-brainer. Colleen had called two days before to get ahold of it and was told it would be waiting.

"Sure. Let me check," said Officer Davis with a smile.

As she disappeared, Colleen looked around the little alcove. There were photographs on the wall. The Beckford Redhawks winning a basketball game. A policeman talking to a classroom of first graders. A town Memorial Day parade. The biggest one was of a middle-aged white-haired Chief Phillip R. Garner, smiling stiffly under his very elaborate and official-looking full-dress chief's hat.

As she came back, Colleen could tell by the fallen look on Officer Davis's innocent face that something was not right.

"Sorry. There's no package," Officer Davis said. "But Sergeant Tyler left you this."

She passed a folded note under the partition.

"No report. That can't be right," Colleen said half to herself as she lifted the note.

She knew that by law, police reports were available to the public after the case was closed. They had to hand it over. They didn't have a choice.

She opened the paper.

Sorry , the handwritten note said. Can't release the report due to the State Prosecutor's office reopening the case.

Colleen stood there stunned.

That was...crazy, Colleen thought, staring at the note with a perplexed look. She'd checked the state website two days ago. The case had been closed for six months.

They were playing games, Colleen realized.

After she had left the meeting with campus security, someone from the college must have called the state prosecutor and had them reopen the case solely in order to block her access to the report. The only way she could see it now was if Olivia's father decided to sue and they handed it over during discovery.

This had all happened in the last ten minutes. Colleen imagined the kind of juice that it would take to make the state prosecutor jump and immediately reopen a closed death investigation with a phone call. She thought of cat lady Dean Darwell. She was more of a bobcat lady apparently.

Whatever they were hiding, wow, was it a doozy.

She eyed Officer Davis.

"Is Sergeant Tyler around?" Colleen said.

"I think he might be, but he's, eh, really busy," Officer Davis said.

Colleen slowly looked around the deserted alcove. Then turned and looked out at the deserted parking lot out through the glass of the door. The bunny was still out there, she saw, working on a dandelion now.

Yeah, you look really jammed up here , she wanted to say as she turned back.

But she bit her tongue. Her last performance report at the firm had labeled her "inflexible."

Don't be inflexible , Colleen thought.

Think happy thoughts. Think happy flexible thoughts.

Colleen grasped the phone tighter, leaned forward, and dug in.

"Actually, I came all the way up from New York City for this," she said pleasantly. "I could wait if Sergeant Tyler is busy. All day really. I have nothing else to do. And it really won't take but a moment. I just have one question to ask him. Just one, I promise."

"I'll, um, I'll see," Officer Davis said, scurrying away from the booth.

"Yes? Hi. What is it? I'm actually in the middle of something," Sergeant Tyler said sheepishly as he appeared behind the glass.

Sergeant Tyler was frumpy and middle-aged. With his unshaved cheeks and thick glasses, he looked much more like a back-office mailman than a cop.

He was also having trouble looking Colleen in the eye. But she remembered her nice conversation with him. He seemed like a good guy.

"Thanks so much for your time, Sergeant. Just one question. When did the state prosecutor's office— No, wait, let me rephrase that. When did you learn the state prosecutor reopened the case?"

The sergeant stared at her.

"It was within the last half an hour, right?" Colleen said pleadingly.

He stared some more.

"I don't recall," he finally said as he nodded very slightly at the same time.

And then he gave Colleen a wink.

She winked back with a grateful smile.

Games it was, then, Colleen thought, and her smile disappeared as she hung up the phone.