Work day over.
Has that clock on the wall
always been so loud?—Debisu
I return the gun to Overshort.
“We’d better get back, put out that little fire at the store,” he says to Heidi, and packs up his gear. “And don’t you have a killer to catch, cop?” he asks me.
“I’m already on the case. Been working all morning as a matter of fact.” If Overshort is going back to the store to destroy evidence, I’m glad said evidence is safe in my pocket. “Just for the sake of argument, where were you last night?”
“With Quince here,” he says without hesitation.
Heidi confirms it with a reluctant nod. When I pictured her out on the town Saturday night, Overshort is not whom I pictured her with.
“That it?” he asks.
“For now.”
“Well, good luck,” he says, and slings his gun bag over his shoulder. Heidi takes the spare gun from the rack.
“Yours?” I ask, unable to keep all the incredulity out of my voice. It’s not sawed-off or pump-action either but seeing her with it is still a shock.
“Mr. Overshort thought I should learn to shoot. For self-protection,” she replies.
“A handgun you could keep in your purse would serve you better.”
She shrugs.
“Come on, Quince,” Overshort says, “we’ve got work to do.” He stops at the table to sign the tab and heads back toward the clubhouse at a casual pace, Heidi at his heels. Either he’s covered his tracks so well he’s not worried about me, or he’s a consummate actor. He should worry, though. I pat my pocket. Do I have a mate to the brass I picked up at the bookstore the first time someone—Overshort?—shot at me from the Eterniti? If I hadn’t been too addled to look, I might have a third match from the drive-by after my first meeting with Nikki. One will have to do.
I spend the afternoon working from home. I place several calls to Marybeth Waltann but all I get is her answering machine. Finally I leave a message and call it a day. Buffeted by waves of sickness, I am unable to concentrate on work. My choices seem to be drown in misery or drown in alcohol.
As night approaches, the withdrawal pains I wrestled with last night gather strength like an approaching thunderstorm. I retreat to my bedroom and sit zazen with nausea, dizziness, and tension that advance and recede like the swells of a turbulent sea.
*****
Monday dawns clear and dry, the air so cold the sky is more white than blue. Though it’s corduroys/leather jacket/boots weather, I put on a suit and oxfords as befits my official status and wish whoever rolled me in the alley behind the strip club hadn’t taken my topcoat. I fill my pockets with wallet, keys, handkerchief, and the shell casing I picked up from the street outside the bookstore where Heidi and I were fired on.
The bills and correspondence I took from Hector’s condo still litter my kitchen table. Those papers probably contain much information that’s material to the case. To use any of them I’ll have to explain that I broke into the place to get them. At the foot of the table lies the white vinyl trash bag in which I hauled the papers from Hector’s condo. I could shove them back in, dump it in the garbage can for the city to take away, and no one would be the wiser. At a mental crossroads, unwilling to go down either road, I stand in the middle of the kitchen for several minutes not so much debating as waiting for divine intervention. It doesn’t come and I leave the mess where it lies.
The station’s rear police-only entrance channels me directly into the central corridor and a gauntlet of well-wishers and curiosity-seekers. Some of them haven’t seen me since the Terminal Road fiasco and have a lot of catching up to do. When I finally reach my desk, I find it cluttered and dotted with crumbs from someone’s brown-bag lunches. Strapped as we usually are for equipment, I’m not surprised to find my desk put to use in my absence.
I clear a space and get busy on a search warrant for the pay phone in the Firefly Lounge next to the Jade Pagoda. In hopes that New England Tel won’t put up a big protest or drag its feet, I limit my request to the night of Scott Corcoran’s death and the hours he was likely in the bar. A small window of time, a pay phone in a public place, and I’m not trying to find out who made calls or even who answered them, just what calls were made and where they went. Doesn’t seem like a big privacy issue to me but the phone company can be jealous of its customer records, especially since those customers tend to sue when they feel their rights have been violated. I must have crossed all the Ts and dotted the Is because the magistrate at least doesn’t have a problem with it.
When I return to the office, I place a call to the Waltanns’ insurance agent. A recording answers and invites me to leave a message or, if it’s an emergency, to call a mobile number. While I doubt my need for answers about Hector’s insurance qualifies as an actual emergency, I accept the invitation and wait for a call-back. Not long ago, like this morning, I would have occupied myself during the interval with a cigarette.
Instead, I distract myself by hunting up the file on Scott Corcoran. Just as I remembered, it was Grady’s case—the thin folder has a red label. Swbyra is blue and I’m yellow, cause for much ribbing when it was first allotted and which now seems prophetic. I don’t expect to find much and I don’t, only the beginnings of an investigation into an “unattended death,” closed when the medical examiner ruled suicide. The folder holds the offense event report signed by the first reporting officer, a lengthy supplement from Grady detailing the crime scene, the medical examiner’s report, and a clearance form officially closing the case. Grady’s report describes a motel room furnished like the one in which I discovered Hector, but in less disarray. True to the thoroughness that is Grady’s hallmark, he noted not only what he found but also implies what he might have expected to find and didn’t. He indicated that the bed was made up, the towel still neatly folded on the towel bar, the sink dry, the drinking glasses still shrink-wrapped, and the bed made up, hinting that the room hadn’t been slept in. Further, there was no luggage, all of which supported the M.E.’s finding of suicide.
The Firefly Lounge’s bartender told me that after using the phone, Corcoran had returned to his bar stool agitated, filled with dread, and in need of several drinks. Whom did he call? Did Corcoran make some kind of farewell call to his wife, steel himself with alcohol, then go back to his room at the Jade Pagoda and do the deed? If I knew now it wouldn’t be soon enough. Impatience sets my foot tapping under the desk.
The M.E.’s report recaps some of Grady’s findings. The stolen shotgun was found close enough to Corcoran’s right side to have fallen from his hand after death. Rigor and lividity were consistent with a recent demise. The postmortem confirmed death from a shotgun blast that tore open a major artery. Yes, that can do some damage. Though the squad room is warm, I find myself shuddering and turn quickly to the firearms investigation. Nitrates were found on Corcoran’s right hand and his palm print was on the gun.
Along with the reports are prints of the photographs Grady took. Corcoran’s ruined, lifeless body is a pathetic shell emptied of the proud spirit that tempers his posture in his official portrait where he stands with chin up, right hand in sharp salute, left angled away from the sidearm at his hip.
His left hip. Sidearm at his left. Scott Corcoran was left-handed. No way he would have killed himself using his right hand. It’s a shot no one would want to have to take twice. His suicide? A sham to cover up a homicide? The unused room, the absence of luggage could point not only to a man intent on killing himself but also one planning a meet. The phone call from the Firefly Lounge didn’t have to be to bid his wife farewell. It could just as easily have been to set up the rendezvous. More than ever, I want to know whom Corcoran called just prior to his death.
And Monetta, Facets’ cleaning lady, fatally mugged in the Jade Pagoda’s parking lot ... could her death, too, be as I’ve suspected, something more than random violence?
I have just pulled up her file on the computer when my line flashes. The dispatcher tells me it’s a call from Dessa Barisawski, Waltann’s insurance agent. I introduce myself and inform her of Hector’s death.
“A homicide?” she asks. Her voice is comfortable, relaxed, amicable, but not obsequious. “That’s official?”
“Unless the M.E. uncovers something that proves otherwise,” I reply.
“So, not a suicide?”
“No. Why, would you have expected that?”
“Oh, no. Just that it would affect the claim.” She chuckles pleasantly. “Thinking like an insurance agent. But thanks for the notification. I can get the ball rolling, contact his widow before she has to call me.”
I state briefly my need for details about Hector’s insurance coverage and ask if we can meet. She explains she’s on the road servicing accounts. “That’s why I didn’t get back to you sooner. This is the first chance I’ve had. Look, I haven’t had lunch yet. If you don’t mind my talking while I eat.”
“Not at all. Where should I meet you?”
“How about Benny’s?”
“Done and done.”
I give her my general description, then head across the river and up Restaurant Row. At the franchise place she specified, I ask the hostess for a booth.
“Smoking preference?” she asks.
“Smok—. No, make that non.”
She seats me in a booth just inside the door. While I wait, I order my own lunch. Though I can’t remember the last time I ate, I still don’t have much of an appetite. I pick at the sandwich, more interested in the parade of other customers. A beleaguered husband and wife come in trailing a mob of noisy, overactive kids. Two older gents take pie and coffee at the counter. Four women loaded down with shopping bags drop gratefully into the next booth and order sundaes. A large van pulls into the handicapped space at the front entrance. I watch with idle interest as the driver’s door opens, a ramp extends, and a woman in a wheelchair rolls down and out. She points a remote at the van, the ramp retracts, and the door closes behind it. I’m still admiring the smoothness of the whole operation when the wheelchair woman appears at my booth and extends her hand.
“Dessa Barisawski, National Assurance.” Her smile reveals even white teeth and her blue eyes sparkle with personality and intelligence.
Automatically I rise for the lady, then awkwardly stop midway and sit, uncertain of whether one stands for someone in a wheelchair. “Detective Mansion, Ma’am,” I stammer.
She casts a dubious eye at the booth and says, “Could we switch to a table?”
“By all means.”
From the take-out-order pick-up the waitress calls, “Hi, Dessa. The usual?”
“Come here often, huh?” I ask. Dessa Barisawski nods. “Food’s that good?”
She shrugs. “It’s edible. But they have a ramp, the aisles are wide, and I can get into the ladies’ room.”
Suddenly the ache of healing muscles and nerves in my leg seems negligible.
“So, you’re a young guy,” she says. “You have good coverage, I suppose.”
“Actually, no. A man in my line of work ... hold on a second. I didn’t ask to meet to get a sales pitch.”
“Well, you’re on my time,” she replies. “The least you could do is listen so I can account for it as a sales meeting.”
So I listen patiently while she extols the virtues of whole life and term. Finally I get a chance to ask about Hector’s policies. “Did he in fact let his personal insurance lapse by not paying the premiums?”
Dessa Barisawski replies, “As soon as you hung up, I remembered the policy is no longer in force.”
“Oh that’s diplomatic. What about his business insurance? Did you handle that too?”
“Yes, I did.”
“The buy-sell policy, was that still ‘in force’?”
“Yes, it was,” she says between bites of club sandwich. “The year’s premium had been paid in full when the policy was initiated.”
“Would the benefit be enough to say, justify murder?”
“Murder? I thought you said—”
“Homicide. Officially. For now.”
Her cheeks color slightly.
“I’m not asking you to assess the beneficiary’s character, Ma’am,” I explain. “I’m just asking about the money.”
“I guess people have killed for less,” she says quietly. “A lot less.”
“And when will the claim likely be settled?”
“Once I get an official death certificate stating definitively it wasn’t suicide, a matter of days. Unless, of course, you charge the beneficiary.”
That would be Marvin Overshort.
“Will you?”
“It would be premature to comment on that at this time,” I reply.
“Now who’s being diplomatic?” she asks, but with a smile.
“But the settlement would be worth hanging around for, to see if one, well, got away with murder?”
“Definitely.”
I thank Dessa Barisawski for the help and reach for the lunch tab.
“That’s OK,” she says. “I’ll expense it off. That is, if you promise to think about it. The whole life?”
“It’d be expensive, wouldn’t it?” I ask.
She shrugs. “It’ll only get more expensive the older you get. And you’ve got a long life ahead of you.”
If only I could be as sure of that as she is.
Back at the station, I try Marybeth Waltann again and this time I reach her.
“These messages you’ve been leaving me about the Eterniti ... what’s that about?” she asks. She sounds listless.
“It’s parked in the lot at the Canterbury,” I tell her.
“So? Oh, I guess they want me to move it,” she replies.
“No, it’s not a problem. I just thought you might want it out of there.” Better in her garage rather than at Overshort’s disposal.
The silence that greets this suggestion reminds me the car isn’t her favorite subject. “Marvin was supposed to box up whatever of Hector’s personal belongings are still at Facets, but I haven’t been able to make myself go get them yet. I guess I’ll pick up the car at the same time. Except, I don’t have a key.”
“Hector didn’t give you one?” I ask her.
Her glare is audible over the phone. “I’ll bet Marvin knows where I can find a key,” she says.
Yes, I’ll bet he does.
I return to the file on the fatal mugging of Facets’ cleaning lady, Monetta, shot in the parking lot of the Jade Pagoda between Sunday night and Monday morning a week ago. No witnesses. Hair and fibers found in the car were attributed to Monetta and her boyfriend whose alibi apparently met with Grady’s satisfaction. A shell casing and tire tracks. These last two set my scalp tingling. Such evidence is useless unless one has a suspect sample to match it to but I believe I have just such a sample in my pocket.
I clear the computer screen, open a new file, and complete a narrative on yesterday’s fake-jewel fracas at Facets. I assign individual evidence case numbers to the alleged-phony emerald and my collection of shell casings—the one ejected from Overshort’s gun at the Hunt Club and the one from the bookstore drive-by shooting, along with a note for Grady to compare them with those found at the scene of Monetta’s ambush at the Jade Pagoda.
I can’t handle the shell casing without picturing Heidi hoisting that spare shotgun. It makes me uneasy, like turning onto a familiar street only to find the road has been widened and all new stores have gone up. “For protection,” indeed. What is Overshort up to?
As to my own protection, it’s time the old gunslinger strapped on his six-shooter.
Though I push my chair back from the desk, I’m not really done here and I know it.
No, it will never come to this. There’s a good chance no one would ever find out.
My conscience is deaf to my excuses. Finally there is nothing left to do but open one last file and swear out everything I know about Carlotta Trephino, Airol Jones, and Shrike, including my involvement. I print it out and drag my feet down the corridor to Crowberry’s office.
The lieutenant isn’t in. I force myself to stand just inside the doorway to wait. Several minutes pass. I look at the paper in my hand and discover I’ve rolled it into a scroll. Before I can mangle it any further, I leave, but not before placing the report on Crowberry’s desk, edges curling.