by John H. Dirckx
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to get any closer than this.” Marlon Josquin brought the SUV to a jolting halt in the midst of a rock-strewn patch of waste ground about a hundred yards from Heron Creek Dam.
“Well, then, don’t try,” said his wife. “It feels like a couple of my ribs are loose already.” She folded the map with which she had navigated the trip to the dam and started changing into her boots.
Josquin climbed out of the car, checked the contents of the numerous pockets of his hunting jacket, and strapped on an expensive camera protected from grit and moisture by a heavy-duty plastic food bag.
“Did you lock it?” he asked suddenly when they were halfway to the dam.
“No, but you did.”
Near the water’s edge they came to a high stone pedestal with a brass plate:
Ponce Memorial Heron Creek Dam
U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
1957
“My stars, Marlon, the sign is bigger than the dam. After Boulder this seems awfully tame.”
Josquin, his eyes aglow with the enthusiasm of the aficionado, made no reply as he scrambled closer to the bank of Heron Creek just downstream from the dam.
“That’s almost a sheer drop,” she warned him. “Is there anything to hold on to?”
“Are you volunteering?”
“I am not.” She stopped near the edge and peered after him. “Is it really worth breaking your neck just to get some pictures? There’s only a dribble of muddy water coming through.”
“The weather’s been dry. Anyway I’m not taking pictures of the water. This is the eighth largest gravity type combination causeway and dam east of the Wabash.”
“Big whoop. So where’s the causeway?”
“Right along the top.”
“But it’s not even paved. That back road we were on doesn’t even run across it.”
Amid an avalanche of small stones, Josquin slid the last few feet down to the soft clay bank of the creek, keeping his balance with one arm outstretched and clutching the camera to his bosom with the other.
“You okay?”
“Sure,” he called from out of sight. But in a matter of moments he reappeared, clawing his way up the steep slope with uncharacteristic urgency.
“That didn’t take long.”
“Nikki, there’s a dead body down there.” He was pale and shaking.
“Oh, no! In the water?”
“Yeah. Jeez, it’s only a kid!”
“Oh, no!” He was going all to pieces and she was keeping right up with him.
“Give me the cell phone.”
* * * *
Patrolman Dollinger, stocky but nonetheless fit and agile, clambered up from the margin of the creek in one smooth rush, sending down a hail of pebbles behind him. His gaze swept quickly from one horizon to the other, taking in the whole vast and desolate tract of unemployed land around the dam, his cruiser parked next to the Josquins’ car, and finally the Josquins themselves standing grim and silent next to the big brass plate.
Dollinger scraped mud from his shoes on the rocky ground and brushed dust from his trousers before joining them. “How long ago did you folks say you got here?” he asked.
Josquin examined his watch, a complicated affair that looked as if it might be able to determine both latitude and longitude and, in a pinch, brew coffee. “Just before three. Say twenty-five, thirty minutes ago.”
“Have you seen anybody since you got here? Anybody on foot ... parked car or truck?” The couple both shook their heads. “Hear anything like a gunshot?”
“Gunshot?” asked Nikki. “You mean he was ...?”
“Yes, ma’am. In the back of the head. I’m no expert, but I don’t think he’s been dead for even an hour.”
“Hunting accident?” asked Josquin.
“That I doubt. His pockets are empty. No wallet, no keys. How close did you get to him?”
Josquin jumped slightly. “Me? Oh, ten, twelve feet. I could see he was dead from there. I mean, face in the water...”
“Let’s go to the cruiser. I need to call in and I want to get some more information from you. Just routine.”
* * * *
Like many people who live alone, Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn had contracted a number of unwholesome habits, one of which was eating most of his meals standing up in the middle of the kitchen. At six p.m. on Tuesday, while eating an impromptu dish of eggs, ham, and potatoes right out of the skillet, he turned on the radio to catch the news.
“Police are holding an area man in connection with a shooting death around noon today on California Avenue,” said the local anchor, his voice charged with enthusiasm and high spirits, as if he were announcing a reduction in federal income tax. “Slade Nealon, thirty-four, was shot once in the head when an argument behind The Pennypicker Saloon turned violent. Witnesses said both men had been drinking. And for the second time in weeks, Deer Creek Retirement Community has been hit by what authorities are calling the Invisible Bandit. Jewelry and cash to the value of several thousand dollars disappeared from the rooms of at least four residents, apparently during a presentation Sunday by the Wilmot High School Band and Chorus. And the City Council voted late this morning to continue the ban this year on tobacco and alcohol sales at Fallfest, despite lagging attendance figures. Details on these and other stories at six.”
Eric Baldorf, who had shot Slade Nealon in the parking lot of The Pennypicker Saloon, was in the cooler and the case against him was airtight—strictly the city prosecutor’s show from now on. The thefts at the nursing home weren’t Auburn’s problem either. And Fallfest, a gimmick of the Downtown Business Association to stimulate retail sales during the six week slump between Halloween and Thanksgiving, certainly held no interest for a homicide detective.
The phone rang. Auburn wolfed down another mouthful and glanced at the clock before answering.
A robbery-homicide. White male around thirty. Single gunshot wound to the head. No ID yet. Body found in Heron Creek just below the dam. People who found him waiting at the scene to talk to a detective. Coroner’s investigator on the way. Evidence technician, ditto.
Auburn hung up the phone, his eye still fixed on the clock. It would be getting dark in an hour. Another night of bowling ruined, and no hope of getting a sub in time.
He arrived at the dam a few minutes past six thirty and stopped his car on the shoulder of the road instead of venturing over rocks and ruts to park near the other two vehicles—the van from the coroner’s office and an SUV with plates from another county, in which a man and a woman were sitting.
Patrolman Dollinger had finished his shift by now and left the unidentified homicide victim in the custody of Nick Stamaty, the coroner’s chief investigator. Auburn traversed a sloping tract of weeds, mud, and rocks to reach the margin of the creek, where Stamaty stood drafting a plan of the scene on a clipboard. At his feet lay a field kit and a camera case.
In the days of the glaciers, Heron Creek might have ranked as a watercourse of some consequence. Today it was just a meandering stream collecting surface water from every gully and ditch in the county, but it had a way of meandering right through the middle of every newly projected thoroughfare, shopping mall, and residential development. Its tendency to flood after the spring rains had prompted officials to dam it half a century ago at a point just within the city limits to the northeast.
Above the dam the creek swelled out to form a tranquil pool about twenty feet across, where only the sluggish course of an occasional floating leaf betrayed the steady movement of water toward and through the dam. On the downstream side a sturdy iron gate the size of a garage door, which could be moved up or down in its frame by means of a big wheel at the edge of the causeway, controlled the flow.
A thin sheet of moving water, barely a foot wide, poured smooth as oil from under the gate and down a narrow, gently inclined concrete channel perhaps a hundred yards in length. At its lower end the channel widened out to form a stilling basin before returning the tailwater of the dam to the natural channel of the creek.
In the failing light Auburn could see the body of a man lying faceup in the channel just a few feet below the dam. Although he was beyond the stream of water coursing down the slope, the condition of his hair and clothes suggested that he had only recently been moved out of it.
“Evening, Nick. You pick funny times for your sketching expeditions. In another half hour you’ll be able to do one of a black cat in a coal cellar at midnight. Still no ID?”
“We’ll roll some prints at the mortuary. Meanwhile, this is a start.” Stamaty released a slip of paper from the clipboard and handed it to Auburn. “Shirt pocket,” he said, and went back to his drawing.
The paper, slightly damp, was a machine-printed receipt for lunch that day from a fast-food restaurant less than a mile away. The luncher had used his credit card and signed himself “G. Durand.” The last four digits of his credit card number were printed on the receipt.
“Unless,” said Auburn, “the autopsy shows he had shish kebab and Belgian waffles for lunch instead of hamburger and fries. Did you call this name in?”
“Not yet. I wanted to finish up out here while there was still some light.”
“How big a hole?”
“In his head? Medium huge. Probably a rifle bullet, starting to tumble. I’m thinking a long-range sniper up a tree or maybe an out-of-season hunter having a bad day.”
“Not near as bad a day as G. Durand was having,” Auburn commented. “A hunter wouldn’t have robbed him.” He moved closer to the edge. A ragged set of footmarks showed where somebody had plowed a path down to the water and back up again. He had already taken note of Stamaty’s immaculate trouser cuffs and patent leather shoes. “Who made these tracks?”
“The guy over there in the boomer-mobile. With a little help from Dollinger. I walked up the spillway from the far end to get to him. Whoever took his wallet and keys probably went the same way.” Stamaty handed him the statements Dollinger had obtained from the people in the SUV. “You might want to talk to them next,” he said. “They’ve told me twice they’re getting hungry.”
The waiting witnesses had signed themselves Marlon Josquin and Nicole Josquin-Heller. The man, in a camouflage hunting jacket, tennis shoes, and a baseball cap, looked like a fifty year old trying to appear nineteen and failing miserably. His wife was very thin and darkly beautiful.
Even before talking to them, Auburn had them sized up as a middle-aged nerd and nerdess with plenty of cash and nothing better to do than drive around finding corpses on Thursday afternoons just in time to make a detective miss an evening of bowling. Did he inadvertently convey some hint of that feeling to them when he asked them to join him in his car, or did these people just represent that ineradicable minority to whom an African-American in a position of authority is an affront and an abomination?
They didn’t budge until he’d shown them identification, and then they lagged behind whispering all the way up to the edge of the road. By the time they managed to get themselves settled in the back seat of Auburn’s car, he had called in to Records for information on any locals named G. Durand.
He looked over the statements Stamaty had given him quickly under the map light. Then he twisted around in his seat to face them. “Are you folks just down for the day, or are you staying somewhere locally?”
Josquin wore a straggling and somewhat lopsided mustache, rather like a misplaced eyebrow. “We drove down this morning to take some pictures of the dam,” he said.
“Are you a professional photographer, sir?”
“No. Dams, canals, locks are just a hobby of mine. I already explained that to the other...”
“I have your statements here,” Auburn assured him. “But Mr. Stamaty is from the county coroner’s office and I’m with the city.”
“Do you always work at cross-purposes?” asked Ms. Josquin-Heller in a tart, overcultivated East Coast accent.
“Not always.” Auburn turned to face the front again so they couldn’t see his saturnine scowl and made some notes on a three-by-five-inch file card. “I understand you don’t know the man down by the water and that you didn’t see or hear anything unusual around here before or after you found him.”
“Correct,” said Josquin.
“Then I guess all I really need to know from you is where you’ll be this evening and where you can be reached tomorrow.”
“If we ever get away from here, we’re planning to grab a bite to eat. After that we might try to make it home tonight, or we might stay over at a motel. It just depends—”
“I mean,” his wife interrupted him, “it isn’t as if we could be suspected of having murdered anybody.”
“Could you explain that to me, ma’am?” Auburn came right back at her in his silkiest manner.
The temporary silence in the back seat was as evocative as a gasp of indignation. “Explain what?”
“Why you couldn’t be suspected of murder.” Maybe he should have had a little more to eat before leaving home. He was positively enjoying this. “At the moment it looks to me like you’re our only suspects.”
“Now, that’s just stupid,” hissed Nicole Josquin-Heller. “And insulting.”
“Officer,” said Josquin, his voice undulating slightly out of control, “I’m a senior research engineer with Nancovoy-North American. My wife is vice principal of Nelligan Academy. We both serve on—”
The radio came to life. “On your ten-twenty-six, I have a Glen Michael Durand, address two-eight-eight Laffitte, no wants or warrants—”
“Ten-twelve,” said Auburn, to advise the dispatcher that other ears besides his own were hearing the message. “Vehicle registered to that name?”
“Red Tempura Lancer, model year ninety-nine, registration AG48NW.”
Auburn twisted in the seat to face the Josquins again. “Does that name mean anything to either of you?” he asked. “Glen Michael Durand?”
“No, of course not,” Josquin answered between his teeth, as if they had been asked if they sniffed glue.
“Then I guess you’re both free to go. Thanks so much for your cooperation.”
After they had scurried out of the car and slammed the back doors with unnecessary violence, Auburn engaged in further colloquy with Records. Glen Michael Durand was the only person with that surname listed in the phone book or the city directory. He was twenty-four, lived alone, and worked at a hardware store.
The Josquins stormed past in their SUV, conversing animatedly and peppering his hubcaps with flying gravel.
By now it was nearly dark. Auburn found Stamaty behind the wheel of his van, writing up his report by the glow of the dome light and listening to a sprightly symphony on the CD player.
Auburn climbed in next to him and handed back the Josquins’ statements. “Charming folks, aren’t they?” asked Stamaty.
“Cream of society. Glen Durand, age twenty-four. Lived and worked in the Phoenix District. No record.”
“Next of kin?”
“Nothing on that yet. He lived by himself. I thought I’d run over to his place now.”
“How are you going to get in if he lived by himself?”
“It’s an apartment. You about finished here?”
“With paperwork, sure. But I can’t leave till the body’s on the way to the mortuary.”
“So—are your guys coming?”
“Well, not yet, Cy. I’m stuck here with Mr. Durand until your clown from the lab gets finished crawling around down there filling bags and bottles with muck and crud.” The mere prospect of an encounter with Sergeant Kestrel, the Public Safety evidence technician, often put Stamaty into an uncharacteristically waspish mood.
“Pretty dark for that.”
“So? He’s got enough watts to light up an airstrip.”
“He won’t need them tomorrow morning.”
“Are you saying he’s not on the way out here now?” Stamaty was already reaching for his cell phone to summon the mortuary crew.
“Better pull the van up to the road or they’ll never find you.”
“Maybe I’ll build a bonfire. Hey, give me that address, Cy. I’ll try to catch up with you if they get here before midnight.”
* * * *
Glen Durand’s apartment and the hardware store where he worked were both in the Phoenix District, once an enclave of French immigrants and now a haven for the artsy, the craftsy, and the odd. The academic, theatrical, and literary worlds were well represented among residents of the district. Quaint little shops that were seldom quite what they seemed lined the main streets, where the waves of counterculture were as palpable as a breeze from a garbage dump.
Chez Pompadour Apartments looked snug, respectable, and cheap. Auburn spotted Durand’s car in the parking lot on his way around the side of the building to the door of 3B. No lights shone behind the curtained windows. Ringing the bell and rapping on the storm door elicited no response. The mailbox was empty. He went back to the unit marked office, which faced Laffitte Street.
His ring there was answered by a sleepy-looking young man in his stockinged feet.
“Sorry to bother you, sir. Are you the building manager?”
“Huey Hughes.”
Taking this as an affirmative answer, Auburn showed identification. “I believe you have a tenant named Glen Durand in Apartment Three B.”
“Correct.” Hughes rubbed his eyes and scratched his head. “Glen in some kind of trouble?”
“How recently have you seen him?”
“Couple days maybe. Isn’t he home now?”
“No, sir, we believe he’s dead. A body was found—”
“Dead? Glen?”
“We haven’t confirmed that ID yet.”
Hughes was fully awake now. “Come in, come in.” He kicked his feet into a pair of slippers, put on lights, looked at his wristwatch. “Place is a mess. My wife’s out of town at her sister’s.” A TV chattered from another room.
“This will only take a minute. I was hoping you could let me into Durand’s apartment. We didn’t find any keys on his body.”
“Yeah, sure, I guess so. What happened to him?”
“He was shot, up near Heron Creek Dam.”
Hughes paused in the act of pulling a big ring of keys out of a drawer. “Shot! I never knew anybody that got shot before. What was it, a hunting accident?”
“We don’t think so. Was Durand a hunter?”
“Not as far as I know. I’ll come around with you.”
They walked together through a fine mist to Apartment 3B. “There’s Glen’s car,” said Hughes as they passed the parking area. “The red Lancer.”
“How long has he lived here?”
“Couple years.”
“Do you know if he had any family locally? Any close friends?”
“Gosh, I really don’t know. Glen never had much to say, at least to us. They might know at the hardware store—Allardyce’s, up on LaFontane.” He sorted through keys by the headlights of cars passing on Laffitte, selected one, and unlocked the front door to Durand’s apartment.
From the moment they stepped inside, it was evident that somebody had been here before them and had taken the place apart with no effort at concealment, much less finesse. The contents of drawers, closets, and cupboards had been dumped in a heap on the living room floor and systematically ransacked. Books and papers were strewn everywhere, intermingled with clothing whose pockets had been turned out and personal articles of every description.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Auburn. “Don’t turn on any more lights.” He got out his flashlight and explored the rest of the apartment. Plastic shades hung loose from ceiling light fixtures. The range and the refrigerator had been pulled away from the kitchen wall, and well-stocked cupboards had been completely emptied of cans and packages of food. The bed had been stripped down to the ironware and slats. The lid of the toilet tank sat awry.
From a tangle of objects on the floor before a desk in the bedroom Auburn retrieved a spare set of keys. “Let’s look at his car.”
They found the Lancer locked. The contents of the glove compartment formed an untidy pile on the front passenger seat. The floor mats had been taken up and roughly replaced. The searcher had also rummaged through the articles in the trunk, spilling out a kit of top-quality tools—Auburn recalled that Durand had worked at a hardware store—and unscrewing the spare tire to look under it.
Auburn couldn’t decide whether the hood felt warm or not. Releasing the hood latch and touching the engine block settled the matter. The car had almost certainly been driven here by Durand’s killer from the scene of the shooting. All things considered, the killer must have left the apartment only minutes before Auburn arrived. The possibility that Glen Durand had died in a hunting accident had now receded to the vanishing point.
Auburn dismissed Huey Hughes after persuading him to let him keep the key to Apartment 3B. He put on a pair of vinyl gloves and went over the premises again as thoroughly as he could without disturbing possible trace evidence. Neither the front door nor the back one, which opened on a court off the parking lot, had been forced, presumably because the searcher had used Durand’s own key to get in. Three chess boards, a tennis racket, and a collection of chess books and science-fiction paperbacks provided glimpses of Durand’s personality and interests. By all indications he neither smoked nor drank. If the searcher had found any illicit drugs or firearms in the apartment, he had taken them with him.
The only thing remaining on top of the desk was an elderly computer with a monitor screen the size of a Reader’s Digest. Auburn turned it on and booted it up, touching switch and keys with the point of a letter opener to avoid smudging latent fingerprints. Because access to Durand’s e-mail files wasn’t protected, he was able to scan the dead man’s correspondence with a sister, who apparently lived somewhere where the weather was warmer, and several fellow chess enthusiasts.
Searching at random through chess programs and intergalactic war games, Auburn suddenly came upon a file of a single page.
THIS TIME PUT $1,000 IN CIRCULATED 10S AND 20S IN A PLAIN RED FIBERBOARD ENVALOPE AND SEAL IT WITH SCOTCH TAPE. BEFORE NOON ON FRIDAY THE 24TH PUT IT OUT OF SIGHT UNDER THE BIG IRON WHEEL ON TOP OF HERON CREEK DAM. ANY TRICKS I GO STRAIGHT TO POLICE.
Assuming that the killer hadn’t planted this message as a red herring, Auburn had obviously hit the proverbial jackpot. His heart started doing a fox-trot and he actually looked back over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone.
The file had been created in August by GMDurand and last modified four days ago. Further exploration of Durand’s hard disk failed to turn up a likely name and address for the recipient of the cash demand. An exhaustive review of the papers in the apartment would have to wait until Kestrel had completed an examination of the scene.
Auburn dialed Stamaty’s cell phone number. “Nick! You still at the dam?”
“Crew’s here now. You get inside his apartment yet?”
“Oh, yes. Have you got a good flashlight?”
“Couple. Is the power off over there?”
“I’ve got a mission for you. See if you can find a red fiberboard envelope under that big wheel on top of the dam.”
“With two tickets for a nine-day Caribbean cruise?”
“Or maybe a grand in used bills. Don’t waste your time coming over here. The place is a shambles.”
“Vandalized?”
“Homogenized. But I can give you an e-mail address for Durand’s sister if that’s any help.”
“Every little bit. Lay it on me.”
Auburn did. “Use gloves on that envelope, Nick. Catch you later.”
After printing off two copies of the message on the computer, Auburn locked the apartment. Even though the searcher probably still had the key, the chances of his returning before morning to do more rummaging seemed remote. Before leaving he touched base with Hughes and instructed him to stay out of Apartment 3B until it had been gone over by an evidence technician.
It was about a quarter to nine. The mist had matured into drizzle. Instead of phoning in to request background probes on the Josquins and Huey Hughes, Auburn submitted the requests in person after dropping off the key to the apartment at headquarters. As he drove home he sifted through the data so far available in the case.
Evidently besides chess and sci-fi and selling hardware, Durand was into blackmail or extortion. His victim—one of them, anyway—had ambushed him at a payoff site, taken his wallet and keys, and searched his place for an incriminating document, maybe a compromising letter or photo. Had he found it, or would the redoubtable Sergeant Kestrel unearth it tomorrow morning rolled up inside a hollow chair rung or disguised as a candy wrapper?
* * * *
Wednesday dawned raw and rainy. Auburn, exercising one of the privileges of rank, skipped morning report and walked into Allardyce’s Hardware Store a few minutes after it opened. Unlike most of the retail outlets in the Phoenix District, this business had obviously occupied the same site for decades. Heavily laden shelves covered both side walls from floor to ceiling, the higher shelves accessible from ladders sliding on tracks above and wheels below. The slightly uneven hardwood floor was soaked with oil and blotched with paint, and the air sang with a potent and pervasive aroma of rubber, mineral spirit, and lawn chemicals.
No, said the gray-haired man stocking the cash drawer with coins, he wasn’t Allardyce. Allardyce had been dead for years. He was Dowley, the owner-manager, and he knew exactly why Auburn was there, having heard about Glen Durand on the morning news. “Have you got any idea yet what happened to him?”
“We’re trying to put it together. How long had he been working here?”
“Full time, about two years.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Not a whole lot.” Dowley used both big bony hands to push the wooden cash drawer gently shut until it locked with a dry, discreet click. “I’m sure you already know his address, age, things like that. He was a good worker—always on time—got along okay with the customers and the rest of the staff—seemed like he really enjoyed helping folks—knew a lot about cars, plumbing, electrical—not so hot on painting and gardening ... I don’t guess any of that is much help, is it?”
“Don’t stop now. You’re doing fine. Do you know anything about family, girlfriends, hobbies, outside interests?”
“You’ve got me there. I know he had an apartment by himself just around the corner here on Laffitte—didn’t live with his folks. But he didn’t talk about himself. In fact, he didn’t talk much at all. Sort of a loner.”
Brief interviews with the two sales clerks on duty, Fawn Aronsky and Reggie Spencer, corroborated Dowley’s impressions and added nothing of consequence to them.
On his computer at headquarters Auburn found three e-mails from Stamaty. One, sent at ten last night, informed him that there was no envelope under the valve wheel at the dam. The second, an hour later, gave the full name, address, and phone number of Durand’s sister in Atlanta and indicated that Stamaty had been in touch with her.
The third, dating from early this morning, gave a preliminary report on the examination of Durand’s body by the forensic pathologist. Death had apparently resulted from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, which had shattered the skull and turned the brain into a purée of gray cells. The total absence of powder tattooing around the wound suggested a range of at least two yards. An autopsy was scheduled for later that morning.
Requisitions for the background probes Auburn had ordered last night hadn’t gone in yet to the national service, so he added the three people he’d talked to at the hardware store this morning. Probes were routine on anyone who might become a court witness in a felony case. Not until ten o’clock did he find an opportunity to meet with his superior officer, Lieutenant Savage. He made a brief report and learned that Kestrel was now gathering evidence at the scene of the shooting and would proceed from there to Durand’s apartment.
Other cases in varying stages of development occupied his time until past lunchtime. Although departmental guidelines strongly urged homicide investigators to attend autopsies, it usually happened that more pressing duties prevented Auburn from being at the mortuary when the pathologist, Dr. Valentine, was delving inside a cranium.
He was finishing his lunch in the canteen when Kestrel breezed through the serving line, snatching up yogurt, garden salad, and papaya juice as if he were assembling reagents to perform an analysis in his lab on the top floor. As Auburn had foreseen, Kestrel ignored his presence and chose a table by himself. On the way out of the canteen Auburn stopped to ask him about the outcome of the morning’s investigations.
Kestrel’s hair was wet and his shirt collar soggy. He stared at the clock and chewed and swallowed raw cauliflower before answering. “There were traces of fresh blood in the gravel on top of the dam,” he said, “directly above where the body was found. I’ll know in a few minutes if they belong to the same group as the stains down below.”
“Did you happen to find a rifle shell?”
Kestrel bridled slightly, as if he thought he was being baited. “Negative. If there’s a shell there it could be anywhere within a couple hundred meters from the dam—in the scrub, the woods, maybe at the bottom of the pool.”
“Did you get over to Laffitte Street yet?”
“Just finished there.” He snapped open his juice container and started sipping. It soon became evident that he wasn’t going to divulge any more information without prodding.
“So did you find anything at the apartment?”
“Lot of latent prints. Probably all Durand’s.”
“Address book?”
“I’ve got three boxes of letters, bills, and other personal papers upstairs. No address book.”
“How about red fiberboard envelopes?”
“Negative.”
“Any stray keys besides the spare set to his car?”
“There are a couple rings of keys hanging on a clothes hook in the back of the bedroom closet. One key fits the lap drawer in the desk and another one goes to a metal document box, but both of those were unlocked. I didn’t find anything the other keys would fit.”
“Do you have that latchkey I got from Hughes on you?”
Kestrel made him sign a receipt on a paper napkin before handing over the key to Durand’s apartment.
Auburn found the place still more of a mess than on the previous night. Every smooth, flat surface in sight now wore a blotch of silvery gray fingerprint powder. Kestrel had gone through the apartment like an army of locusts attacking a wheat field, breaching here and disassembling there with a heavy hand. He had left parts and pieces stacked in ungainly piles no doubt corresponding to his unique sense of fitness and order.
Without wasting time on further searching, Auburn retrieved the keys from the bedroom closet. The ones whose functions Kestrel had already identified were together on one ring. The two on the other ring were both Loesser padlock keys, but for different locks.
He found Huey Hughes unshod again and still sleepy.
“Is there a storage area somewhere that your tenants can use for things they don’t have room for in their apartments—spare furniture, winter clothes ...?”
“Yes, sir. Sure. Those big doors right behind here opening into the court lead down to the basement where each tenant has a cubbyhole for storage. I didn’t even think about that last night—sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re not getting paid to think of things like that.”
“One thing, though,” said Hughes. “The tenants supply their own locks, and I don’t have keys to those.”
“I think I’ve got the key. Just point me in the right direction.”
Durand’s storage cubicle was crammed full of oddments, mostly in cardboard boxes. In order to go through them Auburn had to drag them out into the middle of the basement floor and supplement the meager fluorescent lighting with his flashlight. It took more than an hour to convince him that nothing here was likely to shed any light on the murder.
After restoring everything to the cubicle and locking it in, Auburn explored the rest of the basement. Around a corner he came upon a laundry room equipped with three big washers, two dryers, tables for sorting and folding, an out-of-order pop machine, a few chairs that looked like renegades from an inner-city barber shop, and a set of steel lockers with padlocks where tenants could store private supplies of soap and other materials. For the moment the place was deserted.
Auburn got a twinge of anxiety as he approached the locker marked 3B. Barring a miracle, this was pretty much the end of the line for his investigation here. The second key opened the padlock. Soap flakes, fabric softener, three brands of spot treatment. Auburn thought of all those cans of paint, roofing tar, and asphalt sealer at Allardyce’s. There was also a few coins, probably rescued from pants pockets at the last minute, and against the back wall of the locker, two huge and battered science fiction omnibuses, Unforeseeable Futures and More Unforeseeable Futures, stacked one on top of the other. Not just stacked but stuck together. And heavy.
Auburn lifted them out and placed them on a table directly under a ceiling light. Someone had obviously done a highly workmanlike job of joining the two books together and hollowing them out to form a deep and well-disguised storage box. When he raised the front cover of the top volume, he found neither a packet of scented love letters nor a cache of hash, but bundles of paper money and fistfuls of jewelry—gold, diamonds, and pearls.
The profile of the late Glen Michael Durand kept acquiring new breadth and definition.
With his find locked in the trunk of his car, Auburn made it back to headquarters by a little after two p.m. Before handing over the hoard of valuables to be officially catalogued and secured in an evidence vault, he took it to his office for a thorough examination. The total value of the three rubber-banded stacks of circulated bills came to about twenty-two hundred dollars. The jewelry included bracelets, brooches and pins, necklaces and pendants, wristwatches, and rings, many of the pieces heavy and old fashioned in design.
To Auburn the most interesting articles in the box were five shiny new keys, all of the same brand but stamped with different serial numbers. Each bore a cheap pasteboard tag inscribed with a different street address in Durand’s handwriting. Then and there Auburn looked up the people who lived at those addresses, every one of which lay within the Phoenix District.
The easiest way to maintain the chain of custody seemed to be just to carry the box to Lieutenant Savage’s office, which shortly became the scene of an animated conference of senior Public Safety officials. Lieutenant Dunbar of the Larceny Division eventually assumed possession of most of the spoils and left Auburn with the five keys.
Illuminating the criminal career of the dead man might or might not lead to the identification of his killer, but it was about the only thing Auburn had left to work on. By mid-afternoon he was talking to Dowley again at the hardware store, this time in a cramped office with a small barred window looking out on the parking lot.
“Sure, Glen cut keys,” Dowley told him. “It was kind of a specialty of his. But he didn’t cut these. These are the manufacturer’s original equipment, sold along with new locksets. Duplicates we make here are cut from generic blanks.”
“Do you carry this brand of lock?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a standard line of medium quality replacement locksets, exterior and interior. Let me show you.”
On the way to the lock and key department Dowley stopped to tell a customer where to find copper street ells, whatever those might be.
Several brands and numerous styles of locks were displayed on the shelves next to the key-cutting machine. For the convenience of the customer who was replacing more than one lock at a time, several of each type were keyed alike, as indicated by identical serial numbers on the cartons.
Two of these had been slit open and taped shut again. Abetted by Dowley, Auburn reopened them and found exactly what he had expected. One of the two new keys supplied with each lockset was original equipment, while the other was a duplicate cut from a blank in the store. As if Durand’s modus operandi weren’t now perfectly obvious, the serial numbers of the opened packages matched those on two of the keys Auburn had brought in. And people from all five of the addressees on Auburn’s list had bought locksets—only one apiece, as it happened—at Allardyce’s, and had been served by Glen Durand.
“I’m wondering why he didn’t keep the duplicates he made and put the original keys back in the packages,” said Auburn.
“I can tell you that.” Learning of Durand’s dishonesty had put Dowley into a grim frame of mind. “These key duplicating machines don’t always do a perfect job. They leave burrs, take off too much metal, or not enough. About five percent of the duplicates we make have to be redone. Glen just didn’t want to take any chances.”
Back at headquarters Auburn learned that two of the five people on his list had reported burglaries within the past few months. In both cases cash and jewelry had disappeared from houses that were unoccupied during the daytime without any evidence of forced entry. He notified Lieutenant Dunbar at once so that articles reported stolen in those two incidents could be compared with the inventory of items from Durand’s laundry locker.
That left three potential burglary victims who hadn’t yet reported losses. To what extent did the enterprising Mr. Durand’s blackmailing operations interact with his burglaries? If the basis of the blackmail was something he found while carrying out a burglary, the victim wouldn’t report his losses to the police. Not before he had settled with the blackmailer for good, and certainly not afterward, either.
Auburn requested record reviews on the three who hadn’t reported burglaries and then spent an hour upstairs going through the personal papers Kestrel had collected at Durand’s apartment that morning. A tedious chore, also somewhat depressing, but it had to be done. And when it was finished he had no more leads toward Durand’s killer than when he started.
Public Safety had no criminal records on Randall Ralston, Adrian St. John, or Rita Hachenoise. Full background probes probably wouldn’t be available until morning, considering that it was now almost five o’clock.
Just before he left for the day, Stamaty called to tell him that around noon Dr. Valentine had removed a single 9-mm steel-jacketed rifle bullet from Durand’s head. “There was a humongous, irregular entrance wound and no exit wound. Like I said, the bullet must have been tumbling and losing velocity when it struck.”
“Implying a long-range marksman,” said Auburn, “with an eagle eye and a steady hand.”
“Correct—always assuming that Durand’s head was the intended target. But who knows? The shooter could have missed him half a dozen times before that one round connected. You find your red envelope yet?”
Auburn explained about the envelope. “Kestrel found some blood on the ground near the wheel. The killer probably picked off Durand from cover while he was poking around looking for the payoff that wasn’t there. Then he took Durand’s wallet and keys and rolled him over onto the spillway so he’d be out of sight from the road. Up till then he may not even have known who was blackmailing him. What kind of shape is the bullet in?”
“All but virgin. Like I said, steel jacketed. Extra long nose, lead body, antimony core—that’s armor-piercing stuff, Cy. Anyway it didn’t pick up any dents going through a half inch of bone.”
“Just so Ballistics can match the projectile to the weapon and maybe trace it to a source.”
“I can tell you right now exactly who made it, but that’s where the tracing stops. There are about thirty Internet sites where you can buy that kind of ammunition just by faxing them your driver’s license to prove you’re over twenty-one. Or, for that matter, your Aunt Millie’s driver’s license. As long as you use Aunt Millie’s credit card too.”
At morning report on Thursday, Lieutenant Dunbar announced that every single piece of jewelry that had been reported stolen in the two burglaries at homes for which Durand had keys had been among the articles cached in Durand’s locker. And three of the other pieces hidden there had been stolen from residents of Deer Creek Retirement Community about ten weeks earlier.
By midmorning Auburn had full background profiles on the three people to whose houses Durand had possessed the means of access. His strategy for the next step in the investigation received Lieutenant Savage’s less than enthusiastic endorsement.
Accompanied by Patrolman Fritz Dollinger in plainclothes, Auburn would visit the three, telling each in turn that some locks recently sold by Allardyce were defective and that he and Fritz the Locksmith needed to check the one they’d bought there.
Dollinger would carry a small tool kit and his principal role would be to snoop over the premises as far as possible without arousing notice. Meanwhile Auburn would ask about recent thefts of cash or jewelry and casually inquire about an alibi for the afternoon Durand had died.
When they mounted the porch steps at Randall Ralston’s place around 10:30 a.m., a sign stuck in the front window told them Ralston was at his shop, The Hiding Place, around the corner. The store dealt in leather articles ranging from the funky to the grotesque—shoulder bags the size of a coin purse on rawhide straps a yard long, stuffed animals like a zoologist’s nightmare, polychromatic and polygonal caps guaranteed to make the wearer look like a raving twit.
Evidently at least some of the merchandise originated on the premises. They found Ralston squatting over a sewing machine, intent on stitching two panels of pinkish purple leather together. When he stopped the machine they could hear acid rock seeping from a portable radio at his elbow like incense from a perforated brass burner. A low bench behind him was littered with knives, awls, punches, stamps, needles, scraps of leather, and lengths of thread.
“Help you, gentlemen?” Ralston bellowed. With shoulder-length hair, granny glasses, and buffalo-hide sandals, he looked like the quintessential hippie of yore, except that the hair was gray and the glasses were bifocals. According to his background profile he was a fifty-four year old widower and owned both his house and his shop, as well as a small farm in Carney County.
Auburn identified himself and launched into his spiel.
Yes, Ralston had bought a lock at Allardyce’s several weeks ago and installed it on the back door of the shop to replace an old one with a broken internal part. No, he hadn’t had any thefts there that he was aware of. Sure, Mr. Dollinger could examine the lock—through the hanging beads and straight on back.
A rich aroma of leather permeated the shop. Auburn examined the merchandise displayed around him. “The natural look in leather goods seems to have gone out of style,” he remarked.
“Yes, sir, it has,” agreed Ralston. “The suppliers dye skins like this partly because the public is collectively without sense or taste; witness such national icons as a white whale, a blue ox, and a red-nosed reindeer. But it’s mainly to help the animal rights people forget that cute little critters used to live inside them.”
“Sounds like you don’t belong to that camp.”
“Correct. I’ve got a place out in the country where I like to do some deer hunting after the corn is picked. Have to get up there again a couple times before the leaves are all down.”
Although no hunter himself, Auburn’s interest in Ralston’s activities in that line was perfectly genuine. “Do you use a shotgun or a rifle?”
“Oh, always just a bow. One bang out of a gun and Bambi and company go underground for the day. Plus a bow always seems more sporting.” As he chatted, Ralston idly fingered an immense maul that could have brained a charging rhinoceros.
“It must be hard for you to get away from the shop. Or do you have some help?”
“No help. I probably haven’t been away from this place on a weekday afternoon for a couple of months. But if I set up my stand around sunrise I can put in two or three hours and get back here by noon when I open the shop.”
When Dollinger returned from behind the glass bead curtain to report that the lock on the back door was in perfect operating condition, Auburn thanked Ralston for his cooperation and they went on their way.
“Nothing much back there but bundles of skins and cartons of stuff that have never been opened,” Dollinger reported. “Some empty display cases. Kitchenette, bathroom.”
“I assume Durand’s key fitted the lock.”
“Lock?” asked Dollinger with a well-feigned air of moronic bewilderment. “Was I supposed to check that too?”
Their next visit was to Adrian St. John, who lived in one of a row of sketchily restored townhouses on LaFleur, the Phoenix District’s main drag. According to Auburn’s information, St. John was a semi-retired actor and announcer, sixty-seven years of age. They rang and knocked in vain for so long that Auburn was on the point of trying their key in the nearly new lock on the front door when St. John finally opened it a few inches on a security chain. He put on glasses to examine Auburn’s badge and whipped them off again before admitting him and Dollinger to a quaintly Victorian foyer.
“So sorry to keep you,” he said in a British accent that sounded as phony as a plastic pear. “Thought p’r’aps you were selling something or taking round a petition.” His pastel blue jacket and maroon scarf went perfectly with his salt-and-pepper mustache and scotch-and-brandy complexion. Despite his bluffly cordial manner, his facial features were set in a stony mask. His gait seemed jerky and he held one hand stiffly behind his back.
“Nothing that sinister,” Auburn assured him and recited his brief mendacious tale. With the householder’s assent, Dollinger unpacked tools and began meddling with the lock. “Haven’t I heard your voice somewhere before, sir?” asked Auburn.
“Oh, probably.” Although he tried to sound casual, St. John couldn’t quite conceal his gratification. “I worked on and off Broadway for a number of years. But it’s hard to get stage roles with this.” He held up his right hand, which flapped out of control like an overweight bird struggling to get airborne. “Parkinsonism. You can’t even play a corpse if you can’t hold still.”
“You do radio commercials, don’t you?”
“Radio and TV. I’ve dubbed English dialogue for French and Italian films, narrated documentaries for the Wildlife Federation, training films for the Red Cross...”
Auburn, who had two and a half pages of St. John’s curriculum vitae in his pocket, didn’t need to hear any more of this. “Do you live here alone?” he asked.
“Yes, more’s the pity. ‘He thrives well that wives well,’ but I’ve never wived at all. Now and again my nephew descends on me to lie low and sponge off me for a few days, as if I weren’t every bit as poor as he is. My sister-in-law’s prodigal son, a wastrel and layabout at thirty-seven.”
“Is he here with you now?”
“No, sir. Haven’t seen him in a couple of months.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to get his name and a permanent address.”
“There’s nothing permanent about him except being unemployed and without funds.” But he gave Auburn the name of Ringo Novachuk and an address in Chicago.
Dollinger was doing a masterly impersonation of a locksmith at work but, after all, a simple exterior lockset is subject to just so many manipulations. Auburn hastened to ask the crucial question before Dollinger pronounced the lock sound.
“Robbed?” said St. John, his bright blue eyes blazing in his immobile face. “Yes, by Jove, I was! A few weeks back I missed some cash and an old gold watch that didn’t run. But I thought Ringo had probably lifted them the last time he was here. I still think so, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m afraid you’re probably right, sir,” said Dollinger. “Nothing wrong with this one, Sergeant.”
Auburn had left Martine Hachenoise, now in her second term as county auditor, until last because he considered her an improbable murder suspect. A native of Haiti, Ms. Hachenoise enjoyed considerable local renown by reason of a vibrant wardrobe, a flamboyant lifestyle, a quirky sense of humor, and unfailing cordiality. Her habit of treating white male colleagues with mocking indulgence in public forums had earned her an avid following among both feminists and persons of color.
Auburn and Dollinger had the good fortune to find her lunching at home in an apartment decorated with African and Caribbean primitive art, drums, ceremonial masks, and bolts of vividly colored cloth in stripes and zigzags. She recognized Auburn at once and waved away his ID without looking at it. She probably recognized Dollinger too, but she didn’t say so.
“What you guys looking for today?” she asked in her exotic trademark accent. She somehow contrived to make guys sound like a synonym of idiots or losers. “Lead nickels or a dead body in the back garden?”
For the third time that day Auburn trotted out his fable of a defective batch of locks.
“Tsk, tsk!” she scolded noisily. “And made in U.S.A. too.”
Since the new lock had been installed on the front door, she didn’t invite them past the hall. She floated back and forth between there and the kitchen, intermittently munching and sipping, while Dollinger pretended to look for problems with the lock and Auburn asked her about recent thefts.
“Nothing here to steal,” she laughed. “I keep my money in the bank. Except of course that wad of bills I embezzled from the office. That’s in an old trunk down behind the furnace.”
“Did you install this lock yourself?”
“I did. With one Phillips screwdriver. In less time than it’s taking your sidekick to get it loose again without splitting the seat out of his pants.”
“Do you live here alone, ma’am?” Officially Martine Hachenoise was unmarried.
She laughed some more. “Hey, I don’t have to tell you that. I know my lefts, as it says in the Good Book. I suffered through a whole year of law school with all guy profs before I got out of there and went into accounting and finance.”
Auburn had little choice but to play along with her bantering mood. “Were you here or at the office on Tuesday afternoon?”
“I spend every Tuesday afternoon in a meeting with the county treasurer and his gang of cutthroats. Hey, don’t put oil in that lock, mister. It collects dust and grit and increases the wear on the parts. Wipe that off and I’ll get you some graphite if you don’t have any in your toy box.”
Auburn and Dollinger effected a tactical withdrawal from the scene of battle in good order.
On the way back to headquarters they made a wide detour to examine Heron Creek Dam by full daylight—not that there was enough direct sunlight today to cast a shadow. The sky at midday, looking like an inverted salad bowl of anodized aluminum, shed a dull uniform glare over the scene of Durand’s murder. Recent rains had augmented the flow of water through the dam, which now covered the full width of the concrete spillway. An unclean scent rose from the swirling torrent, indicating that the increased flow had purged pockets of decaying organic matter from hidden recesses upstream.
Presumably Durand had chosen this place as a drop site for the hush money because, although familiar to locals, it was remote and unfrequented, isolated from business and residential zones and main traffic arteries. His tactical blunder had been overlooking all the cover provided to his killer by the surrounding irregular terrain and foliage or, as Kestrel had called it, scrub.
They stopped at the restaurant where Durand had bought his last meal—something Auburn supposed he should have done sooner. The server whose name appeared on Durand’s receipt, Leota, was stout, round-shouldered, and grandmotherly. Decades in the same line of work had narrowed her horizons to “smoking or non?” and “with or without cheese / onions / fries / whipped cream?” She didn’t remember Durand and therefore couldn’t say whether or not he’d come in alone on Tuesday.
After requesting a background check on St. John’s nephew Ringo, Auburn met with Savage at two thirty. Within an hour he was at the courthouse talking to Judge Sorley. He presented the case in detail, offered his interpretation of the facts, and in conclusion explained why he needed three search warrants. The judge heard him out with exemplary patience but at length handed back the papers without signing them.
“Your theory is beautiful,” he said, “but that’s all it is, just a theory. You can’t be certain Durand didn’t burgle other premises besides the ones you know he had keys for. Nor can you be certain he did burgle any of these three.”
“I admit that, your honor—”
“This leather chap, for example, Ralston. You say he put the new lock on the back door of his shop. Durand would hardly have gone looking for it there.”
“Except that Ralston used his business credit card to pay for it, and that’s the address that appears in the record at the hardware store. I’m convinced that one of these people was involved in his death. The trouble is that I can’t just go and ask them. Without witnesses, I need to find some hard evidence.”
“I understand,” nodded the judge, clearly trying to see the matter from Auburn’s point of view. “But neither can I just send you out on a random search-and-seizure expedition. The law of the land expressly forbids that. You’re going to have to choose one of these people as your most likely sniper, and then you’re going to have to come back here and convince me that you have probable cause to suspect him of homicide. Or her.”
Auburn returned to his desk in a morose mood and started digging through the notes and documents in the Durand case all over again in a quest for the most likely hood. His grade-school piano teacher had once told him that the real music lives in the white spaces between the notes on the staves. Similarly, he had often found the real solution to an enigma lurking in the subtle unwritten links and correlations among the words in files and autopsy reports and arrest records.
One fleeting notion, snatched just before it vanished into oblivion, caught like a spark in dry tinder and set off a blaze of speculation, inquiry, and inference. Auburn’s pulse was doing a fox-trot again as he performed a series of four Internet searches, in each case entering a name and the single word rifle. Before making another trip across the street to the courthouse, he spent some time with reference books in the police library and then tracked down Lieutenant Dunbar to gather further information from records in the Larceny Division.
* * * *
“I was afraid you’d be back,” said Adrian St. John gloomily as he admitted his two callers around four thirty that afternoon. The fact that Dollinger, the supposed locksmith, was now wearing a policeman’s uniform must have struck him as particularly ominous.
“We have a warrant to search your apartment, sir,” said Auburn, and presented the document without further comment.
“Do what you have to,” said St. John with a sullen shrug. “I can’t imagine what you expect to find here, though. Unless maybe some joints of marijuana squirreled away in the back bedroom by my nephew the last time he was here.”
It took them less than five minutes to retrieve a large sealed plastic bag full of watches, jewelry, and folding money from the flush tank of the downstairs toilet. Auburn dried off the bag with a bath towel, and he and Dollinger both initialed it with an indelible marker.
The retired actor didn’t bother to act surprised.
“I have a list here,” Auburn told him, “of articles that were reported stolen from Deer Creek Nursing Home last Sunday. Most of them seem to be in this bag. I also have lists of other nursing home thefts in the area during the past several months. This amethyst brooch that looks like the knocker on a mausoleum came from Lindenhaven.
“You might not be able to impersonate a dead body these days, sir, but I’m sure you have no trouble at all putting on a little senile dementia. Nursing home staff are used to seeing elderly folks they don’t recognize wandering around the halls and having them turn up where they don’t belong.”
Auburn made the arrest and Dollinger gave St. John the mandatory warnings.
St. John sank into an overstuffed chair as if trying to bury himself everlastingly in its embrace. “I have a weakness,” he conceded. “I take things. I simply can’t help myself.” For all the remorse he displayed he might have been talking about an addiction to miniature golf or hot wings.
“All right,” said Auburn. “Now let’s talk about Glen Durand.”
“I don’t know anybody by that name.” St. John made a pretty good show of retaining his composure, but his bogus accent was going to pieces.
“Durand had that same weakness,” said Auburn, “but his methods were a little different. A few months ago he gained illegal entry here and, from what he found, he figured out that you were the ‘invisible’ nursing home bandit. So he put the black on you. How many payments had you made before you ambushed him out at Heron Creek Dam on Tuesday afternoon?”
“I ambushed somebody? Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“You told me your sister-in-law’s son is named Ringo Novachuk. Since you were never married, Ringo must be your brother’s son, in which case Novachuk is your name too. Under your real name of Adam John Novachuk you spent two terms in a reformatory for shoplifting as a teenager. You also used that name when you won trophies at national tournaments of the American Trapshooters Association.”
St. John came as close to scowling as his neurologic infirmity permitted. “That was in the seventies,” he said. “Before this happened.” His right hand and forearm, held out before him at shoulder height, paddled and churned the air as if he were conducting a mariachi band.
Auburn’s nod conveyed only a modicum of sympathy. “Maybe you’re not up to winning trophies anymore,” he conceded. “I don’t know how many times you missed Durand before you took him down because, being a well-trained shooter, you picked up your brass. But Parkinsonism doesn’t put you completely out of the game. It only makes an extremity shake when it’s at rest. The tremors stop when you perform purposeful activities, such as changing the lock on your front door. Or aiming a nine-millimeter rifle at a blackmailer.”
They found the rifle in a compact case in the attic, freshly cleaned and lubricated, along with a carton of brand-new steel-jacketed bullets from which just one was missing.
Copyright © 2010 John H. Dirckx