I was thinking that I needed to get out more.  A police chief who spends all his time on budgets, schedules, and public relations can lose touch with the realities of the street.

     I needed a replacement for Tom Koboloski, my day-shift detective, who got caught in a six-car pile-up on the Mass Pike one Saturday and woke up in Marlborough General Hospital looking at two weeks of convalescent leave.  Lenny Cronin wanted a crack at it; he’s a bright guy and I knew he’d do a good job, but I chose another highly qualified professional.  Myself.

     Which is how I came to be looking at naked photos of Doris Plummer, whose figure kept men awake all over Hudson, not that it was doing anything for me.  Maybe if she hadn’t been lying on the coroner’s stainless steel table.

     I used a pen to touch a small dot on the picture between the dead girl’s breasts.  “This it?” I asked.  “Just one shot?”

     Nadine Fuller, my second-shift detective, nodded.  “One shot, .38 caliber.  Pretty good shooting.”

     “Or lucky,” I said.  “Since I’ll have to explain all this to the papers, tell me again how her dad found the body.”

     Nadine opened a folder that currently held only a few sheets, but would probably bulge with facts and clues by the end of the week.  It had better, I thought.  Hudson only has one or two murders a year, and folks expect us to be solve every one of them.

     “Doris was 24,” Nadine began.  “Divorced with two little girls.  We’ve busted her ex-husband, Rick, a couple of times, last time for beating the crap out of Doris.  He picked up the girls last Friday, but when he took them back Sunday, she didn’t answer the door.  Rick figured that she was trying to screw up his visitation rights, and called us.  Freddy Malloy went out but he didn’t get any answer either.  Rick kept the kids, and tried again after work yesterday, still no answer.  He had no clothes besides what the kids brought with them, so he called her folks in New Hampshire, and her dad agreed to bring down a key.  He came down this morning, let himself in and found Doris lying on the kitchen floor.”

     “He called us?”

     “Right.  You called me, and here I am, on overtime.  Which I can use, by the way, because I went a little crazy at Christmas.”

     “I’d say you can look forward to plenty of it. What does the medical examiner say about the time of death?”

     “Late Saturday night, early Sunday morning.  Full lab report isn’t back yet”

     “So she was lying there Sunday night when Malloy knocked on the door.  Pretty convenient for Rick, having a cop to back up his story.  No gun found, I suppose.”

     Nadine shook her head.  “No gun, but we found a glove on the counter with the name ‘Rawlins’ in it.  Lance and Lynn Rawlins are the neighbors.  He’s in the Army, and it’s a military-issue glove, but there’s no telling how it got there.”

     She checked her watch and stood up.  “I have to meet Rick at the apartment.  His father-in-law gave us the key and went back to New Hampshire to tell his wife.  I said I’d let Rick get some stuff for the girls.” 

     I took my coat from the back of my chair.  “I’m back in the saddle.  Let’s go.”

     Doris Plummer’s townhouse was a two-bedroom model at the end of a block of four.  It wasn’t the nicest development in town, but it was far from the worst.  Nadine nosed our black Crown Vic into the space that Doris Plummer’s car should have occupied.  The front door to apartment ‘D’ was crisscrossed with yellow crime-scene tape.  Rick Plummer was sitting on the front steps.

     I hadn’t seen Rick since the night he broke his wife’s jaw, but he hadn’t changed much.  The tangled mane of unwashed hair was down to his shoulders now, and he wasn’t wasting money on razor blades, either.  He had a short fuse when he’d been drinking, which he seemed to be doing most of the time.

     “Hey, how do I get the child support stopped?” he said by way of greeting.  “I’m gonna need that money now, but I don’t wanna get in trouble with the court.”  A cigarette bobbed at the corner of his mouth.

     “Sorry that you’re taking it so hard,” Nadine muttered, moving up the steps with the key.

     “I heard that,” Rick said menacingly.

     Nadine looked down at him, unimpressed.  It takes a lot to impress her after eight years on the streets of Boston’s Area E before coming out here.  She looked Rick in the eye without saying a word, and he couldn’t take it.

     “You got no cause to be giving me grief,” he complained to me, since Nadine obviously didn’t care.  “I paid that money on time, every month, and it wasn’t even me that wanted the divorce.  She left me!”

     “Headfirst, through the screen door,” I reminded him.

     “I knew you’d try to hang this thing on me,” he whined, “but I had nothing to do with what happened to Doris.”

     Nadine followed him upstairs where he filled two suitcases with clothes and toys from the girls’ room.  When he came down I asked him if he’d told the girls yet.

     “I don’t know how to.  I just said she had to go away for a while.  They think she’s with her folks.  But I know I’ve got to tell them.”

     “Tell me what you did this weekend,” Nadine said.

     He gave me an ‘I-knew-it’ look.  “What do you want me to say?  Saturday I took the girls to the mall and then my Mom watched them when I went to the speedway.  I got friends who saw me there, too.  Sunday we hung around the house until I tried to bring them home.  That’s it.”

     As he lugged the suitcases out to his pickup truck I thought of one more thing.  “Doris have any life insurance, Rick?”

     He laughed.  “That’s right, and now I’m a millionaire.  Come on, Chief.  She answered phones at the lumberyard and ate macaroni and cheese three nights a week.  You think she could afford life insurance?”  He was still laughing as he gunned his pickup out of the lot. 

     There were no lights in the apartment next to Doris Plummer’s, and Apartment B was vacant, according to the girl at the rental office.  There were lights in ‘A’, at the far end of the block.  Nadine checked her notes.  “Guy named Dustin Ramsey, lives alone.”

     Ramsey was barefoot and in his undershirt when he opened the door.  We’d caught him changing for night school, he explained.  His dark blue trousers had a red stripe running down each seam.

     “That a uniform?” Nadine asked.

     “I drive for an armored car service.  It’s not a great job, but they pay part of my night school.”

     “You’re an ambitious guy,” she said, and he beamed.  “You carry a gun?”

     “Sure do.”  Ramsey said proudly.

     “Where is it now?” Nadine asked sharply, her hand under the bottom of her windbreaker.  I eased my right hand around my back onto the butt of my Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special snub-nose.

     Realization dawned in Ramsey’s eyes.  “Not here,” he blurted.  “I leave it at the company.  Some guys take theirs home, but I’m afraid that someone might break in and take it.  This isn’t the greatest neighborhood.”  He jerked his head in the direction of Doris Plummer’s apartment.

     “Let’s talk about that,” Nadine said.  “You know her at all?”

     “Not really.  Said ‘hi’ if I saw her outside.  Never been in her place though.  I guess you don’t know yet who killed her?”

     Nadine ignored his question.  “Where were you this past weekend?”

     “I worked Saturday ‘til six, came home, changed, and went to the late movie with my girlfriend.  Didn’t come back until after lunch Sunday.”  He winked at me, like I was supposed to think he was some kind of stud.  “I remember a police car out front around dinner time.  Watched some TV and went to bed.  Not much of an alibi, is it?”

     “Who said you needed one?” I asked.

     As Ramsey saw us to the door, Nadine said, “What do you carry at work?  Pistol or revolver?”

     “I use a .357 Magnum.  If I have to shoot someone, I want them to stay down.”

     “You any good?” I asked.

     He straightened noticeably.  “Real good.  Always in the center ring.  You know, I’ve got my application in for the police force.”

“Great,” I lied.  Nadine nodded as we went out. 

     In the car, she said, “Chief, a .357 Magnum will fire a .38 caliber round.  Gun doesn’t jump as much.  They told females at the police academy to do that if they didn’t like the kick of the Magnum rounds.  I’d love to run a ballistics check on Ramsey’s revolver.”

     “Me too,” I said, “but we don’t have probable cause to seize it yet.  I don’t want to spook him too soon, in case he is our guy.”

     “Right,” Nadine said.  Our eyes met, and we nodded, right out of Dragnet.

     On Wednesday morning Doris Plummer’s 1988 high school graduation picture was on the front page of the Middlesex News and the Metro page of the Worcester Telegram, along with my prediction that we would soon have a suspect in custody.  I was relying on Nadine to make it come true.    

     The picture got me thinking, so I went by Hudson High and looked at a copy of the 1988 yearbook.  She was Doris Metcalf then, pretty and smiling.  It said underneath that she played clarinet in the band and wanted to be a singer.  Rick Plummer was listed as “camera-shy”.   He was probably sleeping it off in the back seat of a car the morning they took the pictures.

     My daughter, Sandy, was class of ‘86, and she was in the band.  I found her yearbook and checked out the band photo.  Sandy was holding a flute that cost nowhere near as much as the braces she was hiding with that closed-mouth smile.

     Doris Metcalf, a sophomore then, stood in the second row holding her clarinet.  The caption listed the other clarinetists as a senior named Lori Preston, a Charlie-something, and a freshman named Dustin Ramsey.

     I drove back to the station trying to decide whether or not to ask for a warrant to seize Ramsey’s revolver.  He might have used someone else’s and returned it.  If we tested his and came up empty, he would feel the heat and cover his tracks.  By the time I turned into the lot from Packard Street I’d decided to wait until after we talked to the Rawlins couple. 

     Nadine was wearing a snappy red business suit, figuring on the chance she’d get onto the TV news.  I was in uniform, for the same reason.  I waited twenty-two years to get a star on my collar, and damned if I’m not going to show it off.  I also wore my bulletproof vest, for the first time in ages.  I tell all my officers, “If you’re in uniform, you wear the vest.”  Besides, there are advantages in looking like you belong on Muscle Beach.

     The front door to the Rawlins’ townhouse was open when we drove up, and when I knocked, this terrier-looking thing, not much bigger than my cat, ran up so fast that it thumped into the storm door and started yapping its head off.  Lynn Rawlins was close behind.  She was a good looking girl, with straight, waist-length brown hair that reminded me of Sandy, and a face that looked good without makeup.  She was younger than Sandy though, early to mid-twenties.  A loud little rug-rat squirmed mightily to get free of her arms. 

     “Would you two like coffee?” she asked.  “On TV the police are always drinking coffee.”  I passed; Nadine took one with cream and sugar, opened her notebook and got to the point.

     “Were you and your husband around this past weekend?” she asked. 

     “No.  I’ve been away since last Monday, at my folks’ house in Springfield.  I got back last night.”  Lynn leaned forward, nodding as she spoke, obviously eager to help.  Sandy does the same thing when she’s excited.  “I left after supper to miss rush hour and got back about nine.”

     “You were there for, let’s see.”  Nadine wiggled her fingers, “Nine days?”

     “That sounds right.  Lance is in the Army, up at Fort Devens.  He had to go on field exercises for two weeks, and when he goes away that long I usually go to my folks’.  I guess you can see why.”  Lynn wrapped her arms around herself and gave a quick shudder.

     “Anyway,” she continued, “he left last Monday before the sun was even up and I left around lunch time.  We have two cars, at least we do as long as mine keeps running.  Lance comes home this Friday, so I came back last night to make sure the house was ready.  But I didn’t expect to walk into this.”  She shook again, and I had to resist a fatherly urge to reach over and take her hand.

     Nadine made some notes and said, “Then no one has been here for nine days, and no one was home this past weekend.  Lance didn’t come back for anything?”

     “Well, sometimes they let the guys out on pass for that middle weekend, but Lance said that they wouldn’t be doing that this time.  Otherwise I’d have been here for him.  I’m a good Army wife.”

     “I’m sure,” I said, meaning it.

     “Were you and Doris close?”  Nadine’s question went momentarily unanswered as Lynn lunged from her chair to stop her kid from sitting in the dog’s water.

     “Sorry,” she said when he was safely in her lap.  “This one keeps me so busy that I don’t get anything done unless he’s napping.  We didn’t spend much time together because she worked. Doris couldn’t afford sitters or repairmen, so sometimes I’d watch the girls and on weekends Lance would usually go over there to fix something.”

     “Pretty nice of you two,” I said.

     “I just try to be a good neighbor.  Now, tell me, is there some guy creeping around here I need to be worried about?”

     “I don’t think so,” Nadine said.  I hated to think of Lynn Rawlins alone and afraid until her husband came home, and I was about to suggest that she return to Springfield, when Nadine continued with, “Who do you think would want to hurt Doris?”

     Lynn Rawlins didn’t have to think for a second about that one.  “You guys must know about her ex-husband.  He’s always around here making trouble.  I told her she ought to get a restraining order, like I see on TV.  I know that Rick used to hit her when they were married.  She’s been trying to cut off his visits and I know he’d do anything to get back at her.  He’s got the girls now, hasn’t he?”  She finally paused for a breath, her face flushed with emotion.

     “We don’t know yet what will happen to the girls,” Nadine told her.

     “Thank you, Ms. Rawlins,” I said.  “We’ll want to talk to Lance when he gets back, but you’ve been very helpful.”  Nadine went out the door ahead of me.

     “I’m glad I could help,” Lynn said.  “I hope you find whoever did it soon.  I know that it takes a big deal to get the police chief involved.”

     I smiled.  “Actually, I’m just filling in.  One of my detectives was hurt in that pile-up on the Mass Pike.”

     Her hands went to her mouth.  “Wasn’t that awful?  When I went by, there were State Troopers and ambulances all over the place.  I almost had to pull off the road I was shaking so much after that.  I hope he’s all right.”  Her eyes were wide and compassionate, like Sandy’s used to get over baby birds, or mice, or anything else she thought she should bring into the house.  I thanked Lynn for her concern and we headed back to the station.

     On the way I asked Nadine why she hadn’t mentioned the glove in Doris Plummer’s kitchen with ‘Rawlins’ written in it.

     “Man’s glove, so let’s wait for the man,” she said.  “His reaction might tell us something.  I don’t want her spoiling the surprise.”

     I had a budget meeting that I couldn’t skip if I intended to pay everyone for the next quarter.  Nadine said she’d do some background on Dustin Ramsey and Lance Rawlins.

     I was there, but not all there, for most of my meeting as I struggled with reasons that Dustin Ramsey might kill Doris Plummer, and thought about Rick Plummer’s short fuse and how much he probably wanted to get back at his wife.  There was something in the back of my mind that really bothered me, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  If Dave Diamond, the Fire Chief, hadn’t kept nudging me at key moments I probably would have put my whole department out of work.

     The second I walked into the station Nadine hit me with her bombshell.  “Lance Rawlins is our killer.  The MP’s at Fort Devens are holding him for us now.”

     “I’ll drive.”  It’s fifteen miles to the Fort’s main gate in Ayer, and I used blue lights all the way.  Nadine filled me in and by the time we pulled up in front of the military police building I was looking forward to a confrontation with Corporal Lance Rawlins.

     He was maybe a year older than his wife, dark hair in a high-and-tight with a wanna-be mustache on his upper lip.  They’d carted him in from the field so fast that the remnants of green camouflage paint still smeared his face.  He popped to attention when we entered the small interrogation room.  I told him to sit, and he even did that at the position of attention, elbows in tight at his sides, fingers curled and resting on his thighs.  He stared straight ahead while Nadine read him his rights, but I saw the tremor in his lower lip.  This wouldn’t be too tough.

     “You want to talk to us or do you want a lawyer, Corporal?”

     His Adam’s apple jumped.  “Why do I need one, ma’am?  I haven’t done anything wrong.”  He faced her.  “Have I?”

     “How about screwing around on your wife?” I said.  We’d agreed that I’d be the ‘bad cop’, and believe me, I can do it.  His head snapped around.

     “I know that’s not good, but is it a crime, sir?” 

     “Murder is.” It was shooting fish in a barrel.   

     The kid came unglued. “I didn’t kill anyone!  Do you think I murdered someone?  I don’t even know what you’re talking about.  I’ve been in the field for over a week!”

     “Not last Saturday, Corporal,” I announced, bringing Nadine’s information into play.  “We talked to your commander.  He says you knew before you left last week that you were going to come in on Saturday.  Is that true?”

     “Yes, sir.”  It was almost a whisper, like he knew what was coming.  He took his hands from his thighs and sat on them. 

     “You didn’t tell your wife that,” I snapped.  “You told Lynn to go to her folks for two weeks.  Why’d you do that, Rawlins?” 

     Sweat beads popped out on his forehead, and I figured he was about to holler for a lawyer, so I tried to derail his train of thought.  “You had something going with Doris Plummer, didn’t you, Rawlins?”  He didn’t say a word, but turned to face me as I hammered away.  “You sent your wife off so that you could came back and screw Doris Saturday night, didn’t you?”

     “Yes, sir,” he mumbled into his lap.

     I went for all the marbles.  “And then you killed her.”

     “No!” he shrieked, jumping up. His chair tipped over with a bang and an MP that I’d never want to tangle with burst into the room.  I waved him off.  Rawlins sagged back against the wall and slid to the floor, arms wrapped tightly around his knees.

     Nadine went to him and knelt, speaking softly.  “Did she ask you for money, Lance?  Threaten to tell your wife?”  He shook his head.     Nadine squeezed his shoulder.  “Tell me what happened Saturday night, Lance.  Tell me something I can believe,” she said.

     He started gnawing at a hangnail.  “We were having an affair.  It started by accident.  Lynn is always so busy with the baby; everything’s the baby now.  I don’t think she even noticed how much time I spent at Doris’ place, fixing things.  Doris appreciated that, she gave me a lot of attention, like Lynn used to.  I’ve missed that.  Pretty soon Doris would call even when nothing needed fixing.  We started sleeping together.”

     “And last Saturday?” Nadine prompted.

     “I lied to Lynn, like he said.  I told her I wouldn’t have a pass, told her to go to Springfield.  Doris met me at the EconoLodge in Fitchburg.  I didn’t dare go anywhere near the apartment.  I had to be back here at midnight, and I figured we’d have more time if we stayed close to the Fort.”  His teeth clicked against his thumbnail.  We waited for him to continue.  “We made love until after eleven.  Then I came back here.  She said she was going home.  Where was she killed, sir?”

     I thought for a moment, and decided it was okay.  “In her apartment.  Do you have a key to her place, Corporal?”

     “Yes, sir.  I had it before we started sleeping together, so I could go in and do work while she was out.”

     “Where is it now?”

     “It’s at home, sir.”

     “We found a glove in her kitchen with your name in it, Lance.  How’d it get there?”  Nadine asked.

     “I don’t know, ma’am.  I’ve got both of mine right here in my coat.  I’ve got a pair at home, but I never took them over there.”

     “You own any guns, Corporal?”

     “No, sir.”

     We left him with MP’s, who charged him with adultery, which is still a crime in the military.  They would hold him as a flight risk while the Middlesex County DA decided if he wanted to go with a murder charge.  Nadine called the EconoLodge in Fitchburg.  Doris Plummer had taken a room on Saturday afternoon, checking out before midnight.

     “I’d love for it to be him, but I don’t think it is,” I told her as we drove out the gate.

     “No,” Nadine agreed.  “Not really enough time to get from the motel to her place and back to Fort Devens by midnight.  So, who, then?”

     “Let’s find out why Dustin Ramsey knows Doris Plummer a lot more than he lets on,” I proposed.  “And let’s seize that gun.”  Nadine nodded, and we rode in silence.

     It was dark and spitting snow by the time we hit I-495 South.  My mind was everywhere except on the road, and if Nadine hadn’t yelped I’d have put us under the back of an eighteen-wheeler.

     “Maybe you’d better let me drive, Chief,” she said.  “You’ll get us in a wreck like Koboloski, and then who’ll solve this thing?”  I swerved into the breakdown lane and slammed on the brakes.  “Hey, I’m just kidding,” she protested.

     “Listen!”  I knew now what had been bugging me.  “Lynn Rawlins said she drove by that accident, right?  But that was Saturday morning.  And she said she didn’t come home until Tuesday night!”

     “She lied to us.”

     “That wreck shut down the whole west-bound lane because they brought a chopper in.  So the only way she could have passed the scene was to be coming east.”

     “Like coming home from Springfield.”  We used blue lights the rest of the way to Lynn Rawlins’ townhouse.

     She was surprised to see us.  “The police keep longer hours than the Army,” she said as we entered her living room.  “I hope that you solve this thing soon, so you can at least go home for supper.  Can I offer you something?”

     Nadine let me handle it, like I’d told her to.  “No thanks.  Where’s your boy, Ms. Rawlins?”

     “He’s asleep.  Is there something you forgot to ask me this morning?”

     “Just one thing, Ms. Rawlins, one simple thing and we’ll go.  Does your father have any guns in his house?”

     “I don’t understand that question, but, no, none that I know of.”  Big smile.  Warm and disarming, exactly the way my daughter does it when she’s hiding something.  Sandy was always a pretty fair liar, so I know.

     “We called the Springfield Police, Ms. Rawlins.  They say he does.  Guns have to be registered, you know.”  Bingo!  The smile disappeared and her eyes narrowed.

     “Just what are you saying?”  There was a new hardness to her voice.

     “That you lied to me this morning, when you said you didn’t come home until last night.  You drove back here Saturday morning with a gun that you took from your father, and I’ll worry later about whether he knew it or not.  You knew that your husband was sleeping with Doris Plummer, so you let yourself into her place with the key that you have, and you killed her with one lucky shot, right in the heart.  Nobody heard it because no one else was around here Saturday night.  You wore your husband’s gloves, but you got careless and left one behind.  You ditched her car and drove back to Springfield, to return the gun.”  I took a deep breath.

     Lynn Rawlins didn’t waste our time with the sobbing routine.  “Lance was having an affair.  He was cheating on me, after I tried to be the best wife and mother I could be.  I knew Lance was lying to me.  One of the other wives told me they were all coming out of the field Saturday.  I got Daddy’s gun and came back Saturday morning.  I sat all day at the end of the street waiting for his car to pull in.  I intended to kill him, not her, you know.  But when I saw her going out, I figured she was meeting him.  So I followed her.”  She spat words like machinegun bullets, every bit of her energy showing in her face, and I’ll tell you, I hope I never see my daughter look like that.

I sent Nadine out to call another car for the prisoner transport, figuring that we’d stay and poke around.

     Lynn Rawlins continued.  “I almost bust into the motel room and killed them both, but I knew I’d get caught, and then who’d take care of my baby?  So I came back here to wait for her, like you said.  But you’re wrong about that being a lucky shot.  Daddy taught me about guns when I was a little girl, and I’ve been shooting all my life.  I’m not careless, either.  I left the glove so that you would blame Lance, so he could rot in jail for daring to cheat on me!  I drove her car to the body shop on Lower Main Street and I’ll bet nobody’s figured out yet that it doesn’t belong there.”

     I’d heard enough.  “You’re under arrest, Ms. Rawlins.  Call someone to care for your son until Child Services finds a foster home.”  She nodded, silently.  My daughter would have been bawling, but Lynn hadn’t shed a tear yet.  She began rooting around in a desk drawer, for her phone book, I figured.  I’ve been off the street way too long.

     “One more thing you were wrong about, Chief,” she said, her voice as cold as the stainless steel .38 revolver she now pointed at me.  “I didn’t return this yet.”

     There’s just no way to quick-draw a small gun when it’s practically behind your back to begin with.  But I tried, when I should have been ducking instead.  Her shot hit me in the chest, hammering me like a Nolan Ryan fastball even though the vest stopped it, and I collapsed onto the same couch I’d sat on that morning.  I fumbled my gun on the way down, heard it clatter on the coffee table, and I knew that I was in really big trouble.

     A red blur came from my right.  “Drop it,” Nadine yelled, cracking off a shot.  One was all it took.  Nadine is good with guns, too.

     The next morning I read in the Worcester Telegram about the great job I’d done.  “Top Cop Hospitalized After Shooting” was the front-page headline, and in smaller type below it said, “Murder Suspect Killed”.  I was very glad it didn’t read the other way around.

     I spent two days in Marlborough General, plenty of time to do some thinking.  I decided to put Lenny Cronin on temporary detective duty.  He’s a bright guy, and I knew he’d do a good job.

     After all, a police chief has responsibilities.  I’ve got budgets to balance and schedules to plan.  I can’t waste my time playing cops and robbers in the street, now can I?  

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