ten

Bear needed to know about Karen Simms’s revelations. I went to find him. He was back in the sub-basement, standing near William’s vault, talking with Thorne as the crime scene technicians gathered their equipment. The look on Bear’s face was foul and I thought it best to stay quiet and let him work.

“We’ll have to drill the safe unless we can find that combination,” Bear said when the tech signaled they were done with the scene. “We’ll get to that this afternoon.”

“I’m afraid I still haven’t found Marshal, Detective.” Thorne watched a tech tapping notes into a tablet computer. “He isn’t answering his cell phone, either.”

“Keep trying.”

“Of course. I hope nothing has happened to him.”

“Yeah, me too.” Bear went into the vault and stood looking at William Mendelson’s body. He spoke to Thorne without turning to face him. “Any talk from your staff? Any rumors? My men are interviewing, but we’re not getting much.”

“Nothing.” Thorne hesitated a moment, then added, “Detective, I just learned that the entire staff knew about this vault. I had no idea. But, as I told Angela, they don’t take to me very well.”

“No?” Bear said. “Why’s that?”

“No one likes authority, Detective. And they like security and the police even less.”

“Yeah, I get that. I need William’s home address and any close friends, contacts … the works. Can you get that for me?”

“I’ll do what I can.” Thorne turned and went back upstairs.

I waited for him to leave and walked up behind Bear standing over William’s body. “Weird, huh?”

He jumped. “Jesus, don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

He lowered his voice so the crime tech couldn’t hear. “Sneak up on me.”

“Sorry. I thought you saw me.”

He glanced out of the vault to ensure the crime scene team was out of earshot. “I was concentrating on the dead guy in the room.”

“Then you did see me.”

“No.” Bear rolled his eyes. “Him—the one who isn’t arguing
with me.”

“Gotcha.” I took a long look at William’s body and did what I used to do when I was a living, breathing detective—I tried to find what the body hid. “Want to hear what I think?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“A choice of what, Detective?” one of the crime techs asked at the vault door. “The medical examiner’s done and said to call when you’re ready. He’ll transport the body.”

Bear looked back at him. “What did the ME say about time of death?”

Billy Villary, a seasoned crime tech, looked at his notes. “TOD is estimated at two a.m. The body’s core temp was 86.6 degrees when he took it—down 10 degrees from normal. The body loses about 1.5 degrees per hour, and we figure the vault had a constant temperature, too. That sets TOD at just eight hours ago. Full rigor has set in and that’s normally between six and twelve hours, so that fits, too—he died about two a.m.”

“Okay. Any evidence or prints so far?”

“No prints at all. Not even the vic’s. The killer was real careful and wiped everything down. A few tiny fragments of glass and what you see on the table—blood, wound splatter, and a missing something from the table. Maybe we’ll find more when we get into the safe.”

“Glass?” One of Bear’s eyes narrowed like he had something in it. “No prints at all?”

“A few very small shards of plain glass—at least that’s what it looks like. No prints, no fibers. We vacuumed up the shards and were about to bag the hands.”

I said, “I think I have something.”

Bear walked over beside me and waved Billy away. “Okay, Billy, I’ll bag the hands. Tell the ME to take him out of here. Why don’t you take a break until we get into the safe?”

“Thanks.” Billy clicked off his tablet computer and went upstairs.

Bear turned to me. “What did you find?”

I pointed to William’s right hand, which was clenched in a fist. “He’s got a small piece of cardboard or heavy paper in his fingers. Looks like something was ripped out of his hand postmortem.”

Bear retrieved a latex crime scene glove and a penlight from a kit on the anteroom table. He snapped the glove on and gently lifted William’s hand—his body was almost in full rigor mortis and the arm was stiff and difficult to manipulate. Bear shined the penlight over the body’s fingers at a tiny piece of dull, dark paper—perhaps an inch square—caught between the fingertips and palm.

“It’s something, whatever it is. We’ll let the ME remove it.” He retrieved two paper evidence bags from a kit in the anteroom and slipped one over each hand. Then he retrieved some tape from outside the vault and taped the paper evidence bags tight around William’s wrists, sealing any possible evidence that might fall off his hands inside the bags. “You got anything else?”

I told him about Angel’s conversation with Karen Simms. He was particularly interested in William’s odd behavior. “Everyone around here seems to have secrets, starting with William. But I think he told some of them to Karen.”

“Then we better find out what those secrets are before someone else does.”