Chapter 39
Bloch
‘Why do I have to wear a suit?’ asked Raymond.
Bloch gave him a stare from the driver’s seat of her Jeep.
He swallowed, stared out the front window, said, ‘You didn’t have to get dressed up.’
‘I’m not the one playing a part,’ said Bloch. ‘I’m just being . . . me.’
He pulled at the collar of his shirt with a finger, then yanked his tie down and began wrestling with his top button.
They had been parked in a laneway for half an hour, waiting.
And with every passing minute Raymond had grown more uncomfortable.
He wasn’t used to wearing a suit and tie, and at first he had balked at the idea and refused flat out.
It had taken Harry to persuade him. A visit to Harry’s tailor on the west side with the promise of an indulgent lunch at Patsy’s Italian restaurant had sealed the deal.
Harry complained that the following week he had to take his tailor out to lunch at Patsy’s to apologize.
His tailor was seventy-nine years old and he’d never cut a suit for a man who’d shown up to his business in a pair of camo shorts and a Napalm Death T-shirt.
Even Bloch had to admit it was a nice suit. Well cut to Raymond’s generous figure. He had even had a haircut, but had drawn the line at shaving off his goatee. Harry had managed to slip the barber a twenty to accidentally trim it.
A silver BMW pulled up outside the electronic security gates.
A single occupant. A young man in a dark suit and blue shirt.
He got out of the BMW and waved at Bloch.
She fired up the engine of the Jeep, flashed the lights.
The BMW driver opened the gates with a key fob, then drove through, Bloch following.
‘Do up that tie, Raymond.’
‘It’s strangling me,’ said Raymond.
‘I’ll strangle you.’
Raymond buttoned his shirt and straightened his tie.
The driveway was a narrow single lane that snaked through a crop of old trees.
The BMW crawled along, and Bloch followed close behind.
After close to a minute, the trees thinned to reveal the large shingled house.
Bloch had never seen this kind of architecture outside of the Hamptons.
The house was covered in wood shingles, from its base up and over the roof.
The small individual wood shingles had darkened with age and weather, and were darker still on the canopy that covered the entrance porch.
Parking beside the BMW, Bloch got out and met the young man in the sharp suit. Raymond had picked up a hefty black bag from the trunk of the Jeep and joined them.
The house was a vast pile, and obscured the ocean behind it, but not the smell. Bloch inhaled deeply. She loved the smell of the sea.
‘Mr. Corbett?’ asked Bloch.
He nodded and handed Bloch his business card. In his other hand he held a set of keys.
B. Corbett, associate at Family Law and Matrimonial Department, Buchanan and Duff, attorneys at law.
‘This shouldn’t take too long,’ said Corbett.
‘It will take as long as it takes,’ said Bloch.
‘How long does it take to appraise a property?’ asked Corbett.
‘To do it properly, it will take some time,’ said Raymond.
‘Can I see your business card?’ asked Corbett, to Raymond.
Raymond said nothing. Bloch said, ‘He’s not in the realtor business any more. He just does private appraisals and valuations for the market.’
‘I’ll need his name for the file,’ said Corbett.
Bloch said, ‘My name is—’
‘I know who you are. You’re Flynn’s enforcer. Sorry, I meant investigator. Who is he?’
‘He’s the realtor. He’s with me,’ said Bloch. ‘You’ll see his name on the valuation report when Mr. Flynn serves it on your firm.’
‘Fine, you want to make it that way. No problem. You know, this is a total waste of everyone’s time. The house is a pre-marital asset. There’s no way a judge is going to let this fall into marriage property. Your client is never going to see a dime from this house in the divorce.’
‘I’m not a lawyer. I’m just here to make sure he gets to value the property. Let’s get this done,’ said Bloch.
Without another word, they followed Corbett to the front door.
He unlocked it, and as the door opened the security panel in the entrance hall began to beep intermittently.
Bloch was on his heels, watching as he punched in a four-digit code into the keypad to shut off the alarm system.
As he pressed the hash key, a louder and more satisfying beep echoed through the hallway to signal the deactivation of the intruder warning.
An ornate armchair sat in the corner of the hallway, and Corbett took out his cell phone and folded himself into the chair.
Bloch looked around the vast hallway with its central staircase leading up to the first floor. The house had a nautical theme, with a ship’s wheel above the door, varnished oars nailed to the opposite wall, telescopes and barometers, and natural wood.
A typical grand Hamptons summer house.
‘Don’t take too long,’ said Corbett.
From his heavy black bag, Raymond brought out a light bar and switched it on. Instead of white LEDs, the bar emitted a strange purple glow. He began running it over the floors and walls.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Corbett.
‘Checking for mold and dry rot,’ said Raymond. ‘This is an old house. I don’t want any arguments about the property valuation based on remedial works from the husband’s realtor if they’re not necessary. I know how the game is played.’
Bloch couldn’t resist a smile. Raymond was playing the part. Even if, despite the suit and haircut, he still didn’t quite look the part.
‘This isn’t going to be fast, is it?’ asked Corbett.
Bloch picked up Raymond’s bag, followed him into the kitchen as he swept the light over every surface and said, ‘Get comfortable, Mr. Corbett.’
This was the second time in as many months Bloch had followed Raymond with that strange light. The last time, they were in a much smaller property.
Molly Green’s apartment. A court-sanctioned forensic examination for the defense.
Raymond was Bloch’s forensics guy. Had been for years.
He worked from a private lab in the city, and always had time for Bloch.
She was one of those people who was good to know.
While becoming friends with her wasn’t easy, it paid off, and once they had discovered that they both had a fondness for Hong Kong cinema the friendship became easy.
If Bloch was in a particular hurry to get quick results on a forensic test, she would bring in the test sample with a Blu-ray for Raymond.
Usually something starring Tony Leung, Chow Yun Fat or Raymond’s favorite, Jackie Chan.
Those tests then somehow managed to skip the line with A1 priority.
He was diligent, honest and fast, the key characteristics of a great forensic technician.
For Raymond, knowing Bloch made life easier.
There was a certain cachet of cool that came with being her friend.
Doors opened. And more importantly for Raymond no one bullied him any more.
Bad-tempered bosses and even jacked-up, gym-rat PIs stopped giving Raymond shit.
In that respect, being Bloch’s pal was like having a nuclear weapon in the backyard.
Nobody would ever risk pissing you off in case you aimed it at their house.
In Molly Green’s apartment, months ago, Bloch had ignored Raymond as he swept the apartment with the same equipment he was using now. In Molly’s apartment, Bloch had a particular point of focus.
She remembered staring at the Monet print that hung on the wall – the water lilies.
She remembered sniffing the air.
Whatever chemical smell she had detected on her first visit to the apartment was now gone.
She had approached the picture, examined it. It sat flush to the wall. Bloch put her hands on the frame, tried to tilt it upwards to take it off the picture hook, but it didn’t move.
It must’ve been stuck on with picture tape.
Instead, she pulled gently, and then lifted.
The picture came off the wall with a slight cracking, sucking sound.
Her first thought was that she had been right, the picture had been stuck to the wall.
But when she checked the frame, she didn’t find any stickers.
None on the wall either. There was a single picture hook.
She had looked closer, saw that some flecks of white paint had come away from the wall, and were now stuck to the frame.
She had called for Raymond then.
That moment of discovery. Of finding something that had been hidden, it gave most investigators a thrill.
A surge of adrenaline and dopamine that was the juice of the job.
Not for Bloch. She felt different. She felt as if something wasn’t quite right.
An itch. An annoyance. And revealing the truth fixed the problem.
It was soothing, but, in a strange way, not completely satisfying.
Raymond was up on all the latest forensic techniques, including retrieving blood and DNA in all kinds of situations.
Bloch had helped him that afternoon in Molly’s apartment, carefully sanding and removing layers of paint to reveal – bloodstains on the wall, behind the paint.
Raymond explained that once paint dries, it forms a discreet layer.
In a way, it’s just like wallpaper. If the layer of paint is carefully peeled from the wall with a sharp blade, then whatever was beneath it can be properly examined.
Raymond had processed the bloodstains that he could find, and a DNA analysis had revealed that it was Molly Green’s blood.
Now Bloch knew why she and Lake had smelled that solvent aroma when they’d first visited Molly’s apartment. It was fresh paint. Someone had painted over Molly’s bloodstains on the wall.
Why they had done so was not clear to Bloch, Lake, or even Eddie.
Why paint a wall to hide a victim’s bloodstains when there was a pool of her blood on the floor? That was a question that continued to plague Bloch, but it established a method of operation. Painting over blood to hide it.
Now, as Raymond swept the light over floors of Patrick Vanderpool’s Hamptons beach house, Bloch got the same curious feeling.
She left Raymond in the grand hallway of the Hamptons house, and moved into the kitchen.
It was a vast space with a long wooden dining table with a dozen wicker seats on either side.
At the end of the kitchen was a glass-paneled bi-folding door that led straight out onto the beach.
It was an overcast day, with dark gray clouds that sat over a chalk-green ocean.
The sand was still wet with recent rain and looked more like clay in this light.
White foam brushed the beach, waves breaking far away and rolling in toward the house.
It should have been a beautiful sight, the whole room was designed to frame that view, but Bloch felt only loss.
She had always been slightly fearful of the ocean, recognizing its power and how often people underestimated it.
Watching the tides, Bloch could easily see how a young Teresa Chase could have been swept away in those waves.
Taken and never returned by an unforgiving sea.
It would be easy to sell such a story.
But the more time she spent in that room, the more she thought that this house was just as dangerous as the sea outside.
Something wasn’t right in this house. Something had been hidden.
She and Raymond had to find—
‘Bloch,’ called Raymond.
She turned and followed his voice. The way he had said her name just now. The tone – she knew before she even saw him that Raymond had found something.