by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021
Walker opened and shut his mouth a few times, like a beached carp. Finally he said, “Litvak knew the security code to get into the building. If he’d broken in, the alarm would have gone off on my phone, but people come in in the night sometimes. Horvath did, to catch up on his paperwork. Mr. Roccamena likes to call his Italian suppliers at three A.M. when no one’s around. If someone’s here on legitimate business, the alarms don’t go off.”
“You were tight with Horvath, right? Did he come here that night to catch up on his paperwork? Were your security cameras even functioning so that we can see whether he arrived or not?”
“Are you with the police?” Walker demanded, recovering his balance. “Let me see some ID.”
“I’m not with the police. I’m an investigator who works with insurance companies. When people wreak havoc at their businesses to collect insurance, the companies I represent become very cranky. They unleash their massive array of lawyers and do ugly things to companies. If you can’t let me see the full security footage for that night, then that will affect the report I write.”
“Klondike was satisfied. Which makes me think you’re a scam artist yourself. Let me see some ID.”
“Klondike.” I rolled the name on my tongue like a bad vintage. “They’re your insurance agency, they’re not the company that underwrote the policy.”
I walked away, out past the loading bays, where the forklifts were still racing back and forth. The cigarette stubber gave me a half wave.
6
“Don’t try spinning me a line, Donny. I’ve been watching you cheat at marbles since we were six.”
I had called Sonia, demanding to talk to Donny. She’d arrived forty minutes later, her brother in tow. Donny claimed to know nothing about Klondike’s client list, especially Roccamena Liquor Wholesalers, Inc. And no way had he gotten Gregory his job there.
“Besides, that was eighteen years ago. Even if someone did put a little pressure on Roccamena, they’d have fired Gregory if he wasn’t up to the job. Just like they fired him two weeks ago.”
“The damage to the warehouse was what—ten days ago? Two weeks? Roccamena is back up and running. Did Klondike get the carrier to cut a check, or did they advance money to Roccamena? No way would suppliers provide as much inventory as I saw unloaded today because they love Harvey Roccamena.”
That’s when Donny said he was just the Klondike handyman; he didn’t know anything about their client base or who paid claims to whom. When I said I couldn’t keep working for Sonia if he didn’t tell me a few truths, he said that Klondike had gotten Ajax Insurance, who underwrote the Roccamena policies, to give them a bridge loan until the claim was settled.
This is common in the industry: an important account could get a favorable interest rate on a short-term loan to tide them over a bad patch. In this case, since the claim was almost certain to be paid, Ajax had demanded the most nominal possible interest.
“Gregory says you’ve promised him an alibi,” I said to Donny. “We’re trying to get his bail reduced, so letting the judge know he’s got a believable alibi will make a big difference.”
Donny cracked his knuckles. “You come up with evidence showing someone else had a bigger interest in offing Horvath. If you can’t, I’ll see about the alibi.”
“You’ll ‘see’ about it? Crap, Donny. Does that mean you don’t have one but you’ll manufacture it?”
“It means the alibi would embarrass some people, so I’d rather not have to use it.”
“You’d let Gregory rot?” Sonia exclaimed.
“Sonny, Sonny.” Donny patted her broad shoulders. “You know I wouldn’t. Remember the time the cops arrested me but Stan told the cops it was him and Reggie said it couldn’t be because Stan was with you; it was really him? We all look after each other, even Stanley, down there in Sedona communing with interplanetary forces. Even Reggie, snotty little capitalist that he is. We won’t let Gregory down.”
Sonia gave a reluctant smile. “Then Reggie will come up with the bail money?”
“Probably not,” Donny said, “but I’m working on him.”
“Tell me about Eugene Horvath,” I said. “Why was he so despicable?”
Donny spread his hands. “I didn’t know the guy. He’s the one who—oh. You think if Gregory didn’t murder him, I did? I did not kill him. He was a jerk and I’m not crying over him, but he has ten thousand clones on the South Side. I know Roccamena will find just as big an asshole, if not bigger, to take his place. Gregory didn’t kill him, either. Nor did Sonia or Reggie or even Saint Stanley.”
“I want to see the security tapes for that night. Not just the stills that the cops have, the whole footage for the whole evening.”
“Can’t help you,” Donny said.
“Give me the code to the warehouse and I’ll find them myself.”
“How would I know the code?”
I shook my head. “Maybe Klondike has it in their client database. Or you have a friend at the alarm company. They’ve probably changed it since the bust-up, but I have enormous faith in your ability to weasel it out of any file or hiding place where the numbers are buried.”
Donny’s shoulders went back, preening. He corrected the move at once: no one was supposed to notice that he could be flattered.
7
Melanie Horvath bore her grief quietly, in the middle of a very quiet subdivision on the outer reaches of Chicago’s exurbia. We don’t dress for mourning anymore; she greeted me in skinny jeans covered by a man’s white shirt.
She took me to a sunroom at the back of the house, which overlooked a flower garden. Beyond it a field stretched away into the hills.
“I didn’t want to see his body, not when the police described it to me, but then it showed up on social media. A kind neighbor thought I should look at it. Will I ever get that image out of my head?”
It was a rhetorical question, but I assured her it would fade in time. “If the picture comes to you, try to think at that moment of a time when he was laughing or intent on a project. Some people find that helpful.”
I apologized again for disturbing her but explained that there were ongoing questions about the murder—in particular, what time her husband went to the warehouse.
“The crew on the floor say he was often there in the middle of the night, that he liked to work on accounts undisturbed. It seems as though he could be pretty peaceful here.”
She smiled, a small bleak smile. “I worried at first that he was using that as an excuse for an affair. I worried so much that I followed him several times, but, in fact, he’d go into the warehouse and leave after a few hours. I never saw anyone else there, except sometimes Harvey Roccamena.”
A trio of horses appeared at the fence behind her garden. Horvath saw me looking at them.
“My hobby. My lifesaver now: you cannot leave animals unattended. They force me to get dressed and go outside.”
I made a sympathetic noise, but I wondered about the income that supported three horses, a house that might include five thousand square feet, and the BMW I’d parked next to in the driveway.
We continued a desultory chat. She had last seen her husband when he left for work the morning he died. “He told me he had a dinner date and that he would probably be late. I finally went to bed at midnight. The police woke me at six with the news.”
Her voice was steady with an effort; the tendons in her neck stood out and she twisted the ruby on her right hand until the prongs caught on a knuckle and made her bleed.
I asked if she could look up her husband’s credit card on the chance he had paid for dinner. She did so, but he hadn’t charged anything to his personal cards that day. She didn’t have access to his corporate cards.
“I hope your coworkers or your neighbors are looking after you,” I said as I left.
“My coworkers. Yes, it would be good if I had a job, something besides the horses to get me out of bed in the mornings. I’ll think about that.”
When I got bac
k to my office I found a message under the door: parking lot across from warehouse midnight. It was in the rough handwriting of someone who seldom wrote; I took for granted it was from Donny Litvak.
8
At midnight, most of the massive warehouses and plants were down to skeleton crews. The parking lots were nearly empty. I left the Mustang near a twenty-four-hour diner so it wouldn’t stand out and provide a target for the knots of teens who swarmed and evaporated through the area.
The Roccamena warehouse was about half a mile away, across a vast stretch of asphalt. The empty lot unnerved me. I walked along the perimeter, keeping away from the circles of light the streetlamps created, but close enough to the road I could sprint from danger if I had to.
When I got to the lot entrance, facing Roccamena, I squatted on the pavement. I was wearing a black cap, loose black clothes, running shoes with the white trim painted black.
A few semis were still huffing in the loading bays, a few cars still parked nearby. It was one before the last truck drove off, the last worker jumped down from the dock lip and into his car. One SUV remained, a late-model Lincoln. After another twenty minutes, Harvey Roccamena himself came through a side door, typed the code into the pad next to it, and took off in the Navigator.
After its taillights vanished, two figures walked down the road toward me. They were both bulky, broad shouldered, but I waited for them to get near before I got to my feet. When they reached the entrance to the lot, I could hear one say, “She’d damned well better be here, after you dragged me into Gregory’s mess.”
“Present and accounted for,” I said softly, from my shadow.
“Fuck, Warshawski!” Donny swore. “You fucking gave me a heart attack.”
“Wanted to make sure this wasn’t a setup,” I said. “Is this Reggie?”
The second man grunted. “Yeah. Donny can’t handle technology. Has to come to little brother. Slobbering and groveling.”
“You could have come up with the bail money,” Donny said.
“I could not come up with two hundred thousand in cash. Stop playing on that string, Donny, or I’ll head back to Elgin. In fact, I’d like to be there right now instead of running the risk of arrest with you. And what kind of lawyer did you grow up to be, Warshawski, breaking into warehouses in the dead of night? You could be disbarred if you’re caught.”
“Then we’d better not get caught,” I said. “And the easiest way to avoid that is to stop arguing on a public street where no one else is loitering. I saw both Chicago and Bedford cruisers roaming through the lot while I was waiting.”
I took gloves from my pocket. I offered some to the brothers, but they’d brought their own. I put on mine and followed the pair across the road to the warehouse. Despite their bulk, the Litvaks moved quickly. At the side door where Roccamena had exited, we flattened ourselves against the wall while Donny stuck up an arm to put a piece of chewing gum over the camera eye. Reggie held his camera lens over the keypad. Whatever app he’d installed communed with the keypad’s brain; in another minute a light flashed green, and we were inside.
The warehouse had security lights in the ceiling tiles. Their glow was just bright enough that we could see the crates and ladders cluttering the aisles.
Donny knew what arcs the security cameras traced. Reggie and I followed his lead, getting down on the floor and sliding, snakelike, between the edges of the camera ranges. We were all out of breath, holding back adolescent giggles, when we reached the door that led to the warehouse offices.
Reggie once again held his phone to the keypad. On the other side of the door, we tiptoed up a metal stairwell to a small room that overlooked the warehouse floor. Here were the computer monitors, showing the cameras at work. I watched as they tracked the shelves, checking for pilfering, but not sweeping low enough to have seen us on the floor. A big monitor with a keyboard in front was connected to the company’s main computer.
This room didn’t have any windows to show a light to the outside; we turned on the desk lamps.
“Okay, nerd, work your magic,” Donny said to Reggie.
“Right, punk. Go beat someone up and don’t bother me.”
Reggie settled himself at the monitor, removing his gloves to make it easier to type. Donny entertained himself by going through the drawers in the small desk. I stood behind Reggie, watching the screen.
It took him about twenty minutes to get into the system and to find his way around the files. I watched, impressed, as he found the reports from the night Horvath was killed.
Action began at 2:32 A.M. It showed a forklift emerging from the back of the warehouse, from the area around the loading bay. It was impossible to see the driver but easy to follow the action: Godzilla going through New York City, picking up high shelving and toppling it.
At one point, the driver stuck his torso out at right angles to the machine and waved at the cameras. He was masked, wearing work gloves. You couldn’t see who it was, but if the state was basing Gregory’s arrest on his prints on the machine, this frame showed he didn’t leave them that night.
A few minutes after that, the machine started down aisle ninety-seven. We saw the driver pick up a shelf, try to resettle it, and back away as it crashed in front of him. He maneuvered through the wreckage and disappeared into the service bays.
“Poor bastard—must have seen Horvath’s body,” Donny said.
I swerved to look at him. “How do you know that, Donny?”
He met my gaze with a limpid smile. “Police report; dude was found in aisle ninety-seven. Must have been a hell of a shock to see a body on the floor.”
“Right.” My voice was as dry as glass dust. “As you pointed out, Gregory’s alibi could embarrass someone.”
I waited another minute, but he wasn’t going to say anything else; I turned back to the monitor.
The program only played camera activity if something triggered their motion detectors. A clock at the top of the screen reported how many minutes they idled between reports. Twelve minutes had passed before the warehouse was filled with cops.
Roccamena appeared, talking to whoever was leading the patrol unit.
“Back that up,” I told Reggie. “Where did he come from?”
He backed up the video, but Roccamena seemed to appear from nowhere.
“You can’t get inside the offices from the outside staircase, so he had to still be in the building,” I said. “If he’d come in through the side entrance or the bays, he’d be on camera four or seventeen. Go back to the start of the night. When did the last person leave the building?”
Reggie found someone bolting the last of the loading bays at 11:00 P.M. He left through the side door, shutting off the lights on his way out. After that, nothing triggered the sensors until 11:30, when a man came in through the side door. The cameras went black.
Reggie went through all his file-revival tricks, but the cameras hadn’t found anything until 2:32, when the forklift appeared from the loading bays.
“Was that Horvath? Can we look at him again?”
Reggie went back to 11:30 and froze the frame. None of us knew Horvath by sight, but his picture had been all over the news immediately after the murder.
“Send all these files to me, will you?” I said to Reggie. “We need these pictures if we end up going to court. Of course, the real driver of the forklift may step forward.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Donny said. “He’d be afraid of being framed for the murder.”
“Maybe he’ll grow a conscience,” Reggie growled.
“Maybe his overgrown conscience led him to the warehouse that night,” Donny growled back.
“We’ll turn the alibi holder over to Sonia in the morning,” I said. “Right now, I want to make sure we have our own copy of the camera footage. And then get out before someone finds us in here.”
“Sonia,” Donny said in a strangled voice.
“Your sister is my client. She needs to know about Gregory’s alibi.” I grin
ned in a friendly way.
Reggie muttered curses at Roccamena’s IT administrator—he couldn’t find file compression software. “They’ve got 7-Zip now and they’d better thank me for it.”
He closed the files he’d opened, used an alcohol pad to wipe off the keyboard, and followed Donny out the door. I was behind them when I realized Donny had left one of the drawers he’d been fiddling with open.
When I couldn’t get it to shut all the way, I squatted and saw a sheaf of crumpled paper had slid between the back of the drawer and the desk wall behind it. I eased the pages out. It was a printout of financial data, as far as I could tell—most of the paper was so crusted in dried blood I couldn’t read it.
9
I was between the stairs to the office and the side door when I saw the flashlight dancing across the floor.
“I know you’re in there. I have a gun and I’m prepared to use it,” a deep voice cried.
“And I have the blood-covered report on your pension fund. Which I am prepared to use,” I called back.
I’d stood in the office too long, trying to read through the dried blood. I’d finally seen that this was a printout of the Roccamena pension fund activity for the past six years. Names that I couldn’t decipher were highlighted.
I’d heard the side door shut behind Donny and Reggie; Donny texted me to hurry it up, they wouldn’t wait forever. I stuck the report into an envelope and left the office—about five minutes too late.
Harvey Roccamena charged around the corner of aisle 114, gun out. I hit the floor, rolled up against the shelf. He lifted his hand to fire and I swept all the bottles from the bottom shelf into his path. He sidestepped and his shot went wide, shattering the whiskey behind me.
I scrambled to my feet and flung a bottle at him. It went high, flying over his head to shatter against the shelf behind him. I threw again as he fired. My fourth bottle hit his shoulder and he dropped the gun. He scrabbled for it as I tried to kick it. My toe slammed into his hand, but he held on to the gun and pointed it at my head.
I twisted around, swung my left foot into his gut. Dropped to the floor as he fired, grabbed his leg, upended him into the broken glass.
