Free The Marble Kite by David Daniel

over. There was some sort of argument, it got physical, and she got dead.”
    â€œWhy’d she show if she had a restraining order against Pepper?”
    Cote showed no surprise that I knew about it. “Why does any woman? I could spend all my time on domestic relationships that go bad but where the partners can’t let go. Plenty of shrinks do. Anyhow, that went back more than a year, and when it lapsed, she didn’t renew it.”
    â€œHad Pepper ever violated the restraint?”
    He tried to read whether it was rhetorical or a genuine question. Finally he just said, “I haven’t seen anything about that.”
    â€œHave you talked to her friends and found out if he’d made any threats to her?”
    â€œYou looking for something special?”
    â€œIt seems to me part of the job for both of us is to get some back story.”
    â€œBack story? What is this, Hollywood? Okay, sure, there’re always things in anyone’s life that are interesting to dig up—but where are you going to begin that story? ‘Your Honor, I’d like to start on a blustery March morning, when the moon was on the wane. My client’s mother gave birth to him … ’ I mean, the way I see it, we may be interested in entirely different things. So the best policy right now is we don’t talk anymore. That okay with you?”
    I let it go. Beyond, the meadow was bright with goldenrod and purple loosestrife and the little stark-white tufts of burst milkweed pods, and
farther back still, the woods were aflame with scarlet sumac and yellow and orange maples, the colors a vivid backdrop to Cote’s drab presence. I gestured in that direction. “Why there?” He turned. “You guys obviously have your evidence,” I pursued, “but wouldn’t it have made more sense to wait till he could get her out of here for good?”
    â€œWhat did I just tell you?”
    â€œThis is just me spitballing. Pretend I’m not here. Why not stick her in the river down in Lawrence or Haverhill or put her in the New Hampshire woods? No body, no crime, and maybe next spring, or five years from now, some hiker comes across decomposed remains, and Pepper and the carnival have been in a hundred other cities and no one remembers.”
    Cote’s interest didn’t stir. “You think too much, Rasmussen,” he said.
    â€œNo one’s ever told me that before.” I shrugged. “The spot where he allegedly carried her is a hundred yards from here. Does that make any sense?” Saying it, I realized I was working through it for the first time for myself, too.
    He gave his shoulders a vague twitch. “Dumping the body somewhere else is maybe what he’d like to have done, but he didn’t get a chance, the dumb shit. He had to be on the job. So he left her in the trailer, waited till later, and hauled her straight out. We estimate that to be around seven, seven-thirty, when he took a short break from working the midway. It’s going dark then. He didn’t even take time to clean up the evidence. She was found at eight-forty. Her pocketbook was under the bunk in his camper.”
    The officer came out now, glancing at Cote for instructions. “Seal it up,” Cote said.
    The cop set to affixing crisscrossing strands of yellow tape to the door, pressing the ends in place with thick-fingered hands. He seemed to have a relish for the job.
    I asked, “Do you figure Pepper carried the victim out of the trailer by himself?”
    â€œWhy not? She weighed all of a hundred pounds. Plus we caught a break. There were officers on detail, and their quick thinking helped us ID Pepper as a suspect right away. Officer Duross here was one of them.”
Duross. He was the one who had talked with Alice Parigian in child services in New Jersey.
    Cote looked around, then underhanded his coffee cup toward a clump of weeds. It spun through the air, spraying coffee in a