No One Will Miss Her(36)

He was wrong. Lizzie’s dreams weren’t banal. They were goddamn tragic. They were the saddest thing Bird had ever seen.

His thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of the phone in his hand. He lifted it to his ear, tapping the screen to answer it.

“This is Bird,” he said.

Brady didn’t bother with formalities. “Boston PD says the lady is at home, evidently alone, drinking a glass of wine, and showing no signs of distress,” he said.

A glass of wine, Bird thought bitterly. After what he’d just seen, the idea of Adrienne Richards blithely sitting around with a beverage, while Lizzie Ouellette was about to be dissected, was practically obscene.

“They know all that without knocking?” he asked.

“Apparently, there’s a big glass window on the street side, second floor, with a good view in. She’s sitting right up in it.” Brady paused. “You know, I had a cat once who liked to do that.”

“Great,” Bird said.

“They’ve got one guy keeping an eye on the place until you show up. If Cleaves gets there first, they’re prepared. I told them armed and dangerous, but it’s only the shotgun that was missing, correct? No other weapons?”

“Not that we know of.”

“All right. Good. A gun that big will be easy to spot, if he’s dumb enough to walk around with it. And the other thing, your guy Cutter? You were right, he’s a known entity. Heroin dealer.”

“Huh,” Bird said.

“You can’t be surprised,” Brady replied. He was right: heroin was having a boom in small-town New England, tearing its way through communities from Cape Cod to Bar Harbor and beyond. A frantic play by the cartels, who had flooded the region with cheap product in an attempt to recoup their losses from the slow state-by-state creep of legalized cannabis. Bird wondered if that was why the people he’d talked to today hadn’t been more floored by Lizzie Ouellette’s tragic death at the age of twenty-eight. The violence aside, dying young in Copper Falls just wasn’t that unusual.

“Not surprised. It just hasn’t come up,” Bird said, and then instantly thought, But that’s not true. There had been Deborah Cleaves’s furious denial, My son doesn’t do drugs, and then the follow-up question; it had seemed like nothing more than an angry retort at the time, but now . . .

“Actually, scratch that. It was suggested to me by Cleaves’s mother that Lizzie Ouellette might be using,” Bird added. “I thought she was being sarcastic, but maybe not.”

“Well, we’ll know soon enough,” Brady said cheerfully. “If there was anything in her blood, the M.E. will find it. Let’s check back in after you interview the mistress.”

“Will do.”

Bird hung up the phone, only to have it immediately buzz again against his hand. He glanced at the screen and saw a mobile area code. Not troop headquarters. He tapped the screen and the speaker came to life.

“This is Bird.”

On the other end of the phone, a man’s deep baritone replied, “Detective Bird? This is Jonathan Hurley.”

The man’s name rang a bell. A former teacher?

Hurley’s voice came back again, answering the question for him. “I’m a veterinarian. Lizzie Ouellette was my employee, part-time.”

That’s it, Bird thought. Earl had told him that Lizzie worked as a veterinary assistant at Hurley’s clinic, a job she was good at, according to her father. Suited to it, that was how he’d put it. Earl couldn’t understand why she’d quit. Bird stepped out of the car, holding the phone to his ear as he replaced the fuel nozzle on the pump and twisted the cruiser’s gas cap back into place. He was anxious to get on the road and had half a mind to tell Hurley he’d call back some other time, but the Boston PD was already watching the house. He could spare a few minutes for research.

“I’m sorry,” Hurley was saying. “I was out toward Skowhegan with a sick horse, and I didn’t find out what happened until—”

“That’s all right,” Bird said. “So Lizzie Ouellette worked for you. For how long?”

Bird could hear the veterinarian’s breath: rapid, uncomfortable, like he was pacing back and forth.

“Two years. It was a while back. I think it’s been maybe two or three years since we let her go.”

Bird blinked. So Earl had misunderstood. “You fired her?”

“Listen,” Hurley said, his tone becoming fretful. “I really agonized about this. I don’t want to cause trouble for her family. I always liked Lizzie.”

“Let’s back up a minute. You hired her as an assistant? I thought you need schooling for that.”

“I’d have to double-check my records, but I think she’d taken a couple classes at the community college,” Hurley said. “For an assistant position, for what I needed, that was plenty. I only kept hours at the animal hospital a few days a week. My main business is large animals—you know, horses, cows.”

“Where was the animal hospital?”

“Dexter,” Hurley said, and Bird saw Cutter’s face in his mind’s eye. A little ways to the east. Was he lying? Had he known Lizzie after all?

“You know a guy named Cutter? Jake Cutter?”

“No,” Hurley said. He sounded confused, the syllable coming out like a question.