Amy takes stock of her surroundings. Lorna’s in deep conversation with the sailor; Amy can easily leave her here if she wants to go home and tend to JP. If there’s blood on Dennis’s knuckles, what must JP’s face look like? “Is he badly hurt?”
“He might have a shiner,” Dennis says. “I hit him twice. He didn’t really fight back.”
No, he wouldn’t, Amy thinks. JP doesn’t like confrontation. If he has a problem, he throws money at it.
She should probably go home and tend to his wounds.
But…she doesn’t want to.
“I had a lot of pent-up anger toward the guy,” Dennis says. “Though I feel bad about hitting him now.” He eyes Amy’s glass. “What if I bought you an apology drink for ruining your boyfriend’s face?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” Amy says.
The Chief
The national average of hit-and-run homicides that end in convictions is under 50 percent, but that doesn’t make the Chief feel any better. Nor does the fact that his wife, Andrea, spent an hour on Thursday watching the virtual memorial service for Vivian Howe, then spent another hour （or more） on the Vivian Howe Memorial Facebook page reading through the comments from her readers.
“They want the Nantucket Police to figure out who did it,” Andrea says. “They want justice. I felt shady—there I was on the page, posing as a normal, everyday reader, which I am, except that I’m also married to the Nantucket chief of police.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” Ed says.
But the truth is, he’s getting nowhere with this investigation.
The tire tracks were no help. The pattern had been compromised by Cruz’s footprints, the arrival of the ambulance, and the footprints of the paramedics.
Lisa Hitt found Vivian Howe’s blood on Cruz DeSantis’s car. On the door handle. Likely, Cruz had Vivi’s blood on his hands when he climbed into his Jeep after the ambulance took her to the hospital. The luminol turned up nothing on the bumper or grille, which was a relief, though frankly, the Chief would have felt better if the car were completely clean. He doesn’t want the statement “Vivian Howe’s blood was on Cruz DeSantis’s Jeep” to get out into the community without context. Already, Falco’s report of seeing the kid run a stop sign and speed down Surfside is everywhere. Finn told the Chief he’d heard people talking about it on the beach at Cisco.
“They’re all saying Cruz hit her,” Finn said.
“There’s no evidence of that,” the Chief said. “People talk. We might as well call this Rumor Island.”
The only member of Vivian Howe’s family who has called Ed is Rip Bonham, her son-in-law. The Chief knows Rip and his father, Chas, and his sister, Pamela Bonham Bridgeman, because the department works with the Bonhams’ insurance company on regular traffic accidents. Rip’s phone call was gentle, just asking if the police had any leads.
The next steps would be examining Vivi’s clothes for flecks of paint from the Jeep and looking for fibers from those clothes on Cruz’s bumper. Every contact leaves a trace.
Here is where the investigation hit a major snafu. Vivi’s clothes are missing. The ME says he followed protocol—he cut the clothes off the deceased, bagged them, and had them delivered to the police station, where they would be processed and sent to Lisa Hitt on the Cape. But the clothes never made it to the station, according to Alexis Lopresti, who was working the processing desk. The Chief went back to the ME—the guy was new, replacing longtime ME Dr. Fields—to ask who exactly he’d sent to deliver the clothes, and the ME admitted he wasn’t sure. He’d handed them off and assumed they would be dealt with.
“Well, where are they, then?” the Chief said. He was about to blow his stack, but the last thing he needed was an ME with a grudge against him. “Never mind—they must be at the station.”
Ed drove to work and stormed up to Alexis Lopresti at the processing desk.
“You did not see or receive the bag containing Vivian Howe’s clothes from the hospital, is that correct?”
“Nope,” Alexis said. “Did you check the evidence room?”
“Yes,” he said. “Twice. Who was on the schedule last Saturday?”
Alexis looked put out by this question. “I don’t know.”
The Chief was tempted to fire her on the spot. She must have noticed his expression because she clickety-clacked on her computer and said, “Dixon and…Pitcher.”