forty-one

“Somebody deleted all the evidence, Bear,” Cal said and pointed to his computer screen. He leaned back, sipped his coffee, looking at Bear across the office. “They got into William’s email and deleted everything.”

I’d arrived at the Task Force office on the southwest side of town just before nine and found Bear and Cal at work. It was obvious they never went home last night—tired, bloodshot eyes, the same rumpled clothes, and an empty bag of breakfast takeout lying in the trash.

“Where are we then?” Bear propped his feet on his desk and closed his eyes. “Can you undelete the emails?”

“I’ll have to check with the techies.” Cal tapped away at his keyboard. “Whoever deleted William’s email did it remotely—they used a computer outside the bank. So either they don’t work at the bank or they’re trying cover their tracks.”

Bear cursed. “The bank has everything backed up, right? How often?”

“Every morning at three a.m. They got to his account before the backup, though. He was killed around two a.m. and someone deleted his files just before the backup ran. We lost the day before his murder. Techs are sending what they found right now.”

Bear stood and went to the coffeepot across the room to refill his mug. “And the crime scene report?”

“Right here.”

I read over Cal’s shoulder. “Nothing exciting, Bear. The glass fragments were from some kind of picture frame. And Angel was right, the paper in William’s hand was papyrus. Not enough to make any sense of but the lab thinks its old—like ancient-old.”

“Skip the glass and papyrus,” Bear said, “what about the .22-cal bullets, fingerprints, and everything else?”

Cal smiled. “If you already read the report, man, why are you asking?”

“Just tell me.”

Cal muttered under his breath, then said, “They’re gonna try to match the slug from Nic’s arm to the .22-cal from the Agatha Christie book that took the bullet for Conti. We found fragments of the bullet that killed William, but not enough to ID. We’ll have to send the two whole bullets to the lab in Richmond, but I think they’ll match. And no prints in the vault or safe at all—wiped clean. The blood was all William’s blood type. No surprise there. The ME won’t be done with the body until tomorrow, so that’s it for now.”

“Shit.” Bear sat back down and leaned back in his chair to contemplate the darkness inside his closed eyes. “And the bank perp? What’s his status?”

“Nothing. No trace,” Cal said. “No reported gunshot wounds around a three-state area. Nothing. We canvassed Old Town but no one saw anything. As for the pickup leaving the club last night—well, do you know how many old, dark pickups there are in this area?”

I said, “That would-be bank robber wasn’t working on his own or thinking for himself, Bear. He knew about William’s vault and then went after Poor Nic. That takes inside information and balls.”

“I was thinking that same thing,” Bear said.

Cal cocked his head. “What same thing?”

“Inside job.” Bear shrugged and repeated me almost word for word. “He screwed up robbing the bank, and shooting Bartalotta was another big mistake. Two big mistakes in one day. That’s not a pro.”

“Sure, right. I get that.” Cal sipped his coffee. “Thinking out loud—again.”

I said, “This is about whatever was in that safe.”

“And it’s about what was in that safe,” Bear repeated, closing his eyes again.

I added, “And it’s about Keys, and Holister, and Cy Gray …”

Bear repeated me.

Cal watched him and shook his head.

“Oh, and it’s about Cairo and Hekmet Fahmy, the belly dancer.”

“And Cairo and the belly dancer …” Bear sat up. “Who the hell is Hekmet Fahmy?”

Cal loosed a loud belly laugh and spit coffee over his desk. “Belly dancer? Oh, man, you need some sleep, man. I’m going down to the tech boys. A belly dancer? Damn, man, get a grip.”

As Cal walked off laughing, Bear turned to me. “Dammit, Tuck. I look like an idiot. What the hell are you talking about?”

I told him about Ollie and the files I found in my attic. He didn’t have a big problem with any of it considering I was explaining about my long-dead grandfather showing me his photo album. But he almost spilled his coffee when I replayed my trip to 1940-something Cairo and the Youssif murder. He did spill it down his shirt over my theory that William’s murder was linked to Cairo and the death of Claude Holister and Cy Gray—William and Keys’s World War II buddies.

I finished with, “Oh, and Karen Simms paid Poor Nic a visit this morning at the hospital. He’s helping her hide. And you missed this great catfight between her and Lee Hawkins—”

“Lee was there?”

“Sure, she came to see Nic. They’re pals.”

“Pals, huh? What did Lee have to say to Nic?”

I gave him the details. “Karen knows something, or thinks she knows something. She promised to tell Nic as soon as she found someplace to hide. He gave her a car and—”

“I’ll send Cal to talk to Lee.”

“Why don’t we go?”

“I’m busy.”

“So’s Cal. Let’s—”

“No. You stay clear of Lee, Tuck. Cal knows her pretty well from the Kit Kat. He’ll have better luck.”

What was wrong with him? “Are you afraid of Lee? What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. Give. What’s going on?”

He retrieved another cup of coffee. He took his time stirring it—odd, since it was black—and stalled long enough for Cal to return to the office.

“Tell me you have something, Cal—please.”

“Okay.” Cal laid a thick file on Bear’s desk and spread several of the pages out. “I think Lee Hawkins has some explaining to do, Bear. And I gotta tell you, I’m blown away. I always thought she was a sweet, hot lady—a tough one, but still sweet, ya know? But according to the little I read, she and Willy were really having a battle.”

Bear picked up several emails and read them. I stood beside him and read over his shoulder. The first few were an exchange between William and Lee four months ago. Lee was upset that he wouldn’t invest in her grandfather’s business. In another, things got heated and she used words like traitor, coward, and backstabber. A few emails later, as early as last month, Lee threatened to go to the board of directors and tell them about his “secrets and betrayals.” Nowhere did she say what those were, but she made it perfectly clear she’d ruin him with them.

When I looked up, Bear’s face was sullen. His eyes were sad and I could tell by the way he put the papers down that the contents upset him. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the big lug was truly smitten with Lee Hawkins and now her being a suspect killed him.

So goes life as a detective.

“This might track with what Karen Simms said,” I said. “But, then again, people say vicious things in emails and they don’t mean most of them. I used to get email offers from big shots in Nigeria who wanted to give me ten million dollars.”

“Dammit,” Bear said, closing his eyes.

Cal handed Bear another email. “You better read this one, Bear.”

Bear hesitated, then took the paper.

This one was pretty clear. It was an email from Lee to William just a week ago. It warned him that if William didn’t control “that bitch Simms,” Lee would take matters into her own hands. In plain words, it read, “I’ll deal with that bitch myself if you don’t put her back on her leash.”

“I think it’s time we look a little deeper into Lee Hawkins and Karen Simms,” Bear said in a low voice. “Let’s start with Lee. Go see her, Cal, and get to the bottom of this. Ask her about her visit with Poor Nic this morning and these emails.”

“Her what with Nic?” Cal’s face twisted. “You get something while I was gone?”

Bear nodded. “She was at the hospital this morning. Karen Simms was there, too. They got into it.”

“Oh?” Cal looked around the room. “And I suppose an informant told you this?”

“I got a call.”

Cal laughed. “Yeah, okay, man—you got a call.”

There was a knock on Bear’s office door. A uniformed deputy stood in the doorway behind Angel.

She walked in. “Good morning. I just spoke with Nicholas. He’s doing fine and on his way home from the hospital. He said for you to call him later today to compare notes. He has something, but he wouldn’t tell me what.”

“Oh, he wants me to call him?” Bear growled. “To compare notes?”

“You know what he means, Bear.” She looked over at me leaning against the wall behind Cal and gave me a “humph.” That meant I was still in trouble after last night. She said to Bear, “I got a voicemail from Karen Simms, too. She asked me to come by her apartment later. She was very upset and said that she had some important things to tell me about the Kit Kat Club.”

I said, “Did Nic mention seeing her and Lee this morning?”

Bear asked her that, too—for Cal’s sake.

“No, nothing about them. Maybe Karen will tell me about it. I think she feels safe talking to me—woman to woman. I’m going over there later this morning. I just thought you should know.”

I said to her, “What about your pal Thorne? Maybe you can interrogate him over a movie or a show next.”

“Now, that’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time,” she quipped, then smiled when Cal looked at her and snorted a laugh. “The idea that I get going to see Karen, that is.”

Cal grinned and picked up his coffee. “Oh, yeah, Angela, go see Simms.” He laughed all the way out of the office. “You guys crack me up.”