Murder in the Dog Days

by P. M. Carlson

  “Doris and Frank. Can you tell me anything about them?”

  “Resler. Resler.” Olivia pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Frank Resler. A lawyer, maybe.”

  “Yeah. Criminal lawyer.”

  “Hey, if you know already, why—oh, hell, same reason I do the same thing. Fresh angle.” Olivia looked eagerly at the detective as a stratagem occurred to her. “Maybe if you told me a little about the others I’d remember more.”

  “Okay. First tell me about the phone call. How do you know he was talking to Mrs. Resler?”

  “I just heard the end of the conversation. He was saying sure, Mrs. Resler, I’ll be discreet.”

  “Discreet about what?”

  “I wish I knew. But he hung up then.”

  “I see. Can you tell me anything else about the Reslers?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll sure look them up.”

  “No doubt,” she said drily. “Do you recognize the name Peter Church?”

  “Peter Church. Yes, actually,” said Olivia, surprised. “I remember now, when I saw the list of crash victims in January, he was the only one I’d even heard of. He was one of Representative Knox’s aides.”

  “And where had you met him?”

  “I didn’t meet him, just talked to him on the phone about press releases last year.”

  “Ann Kauffmann was another aide in Knox’s office,” offered Schreiner.

  Olivia filed away the information. “I’d heard there was a second aide. But I don’t know anything about her. How about those first people you mentioned? The Lewises?”

  “Corky Lewis was the pilot. Priscilla Lewis is his sister.”

  “I see.” Olivia decided to find out about Corky, maybe at the little airstrip where the plane had taken off. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about them.”

  “Anything else you can tell us? About Church, about any of the other names?”

  “No. But we’ve got stuff in the files at the office. Dale probably has good files here at home too, knowing him. And of course Representative Knox’s office will have a lot of information.”

  “I see.” Schreiner paused to read through her notes again. A thorough woman, obviously tired but still alert, double-checking everything. Strange to be in law enforcement, Olivia thought, a traditional man’s job even more than the newspaper business, where it was tough enough to get yourself taken seriously. And yet Olivia could imagine the appeal. Not just curiosity, or desire to be allied with the power of the law, or a yen for excitement, though all that was real enough. But to see life at the raw edges, to be part of the forces that knit it back into order after it had been ripped apart—

  Come off it, Olivia scolded herself, or next thing you know you’ll be signing up at the Police Academy yourself. You, who tried to get yourself arrested for peace at least twice. But plenty of women really had signed up. From traffic cops to detectives. And jailers, she thought suddenly. If Joanne Little’s jailer had been a woman, the tragedy would not have occurred. And what was it like to be a jailer? She could sell Edgerton on this, she realized. Tie it in to the Joanne Little story, a whole series on women in law enforcement.

  Detective Schreiner had finished skimming through the pages. “Okay, Ms. Kerr,” she said, and pointed with her chin at the bookcases. “Do you remember any more tapes on the shelves earlier today?”

  Olivia stared at the empty space. “I think—look, I can’t swear to it, but I think so. And if they were stolen it might be important.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, a lot of us use tape recorders for some of our interviews. If Dale had been asking someone the wrong questions—”

  “I see.”

  “But it doesn’t really narrow things down unless we find the tapes.”

  “Right.” Schreiner wrote it down and asked, “Is there anything else you can tell me about Mr. Colby’s work situation? Did he get along with the others at work?”

  “Yeah.” Again Olivia felt that sinking sense of being personally entangled when she’d much rather be an observer. “The usual relationships at an office. Nothing deep. We’d talk about stories, or just joke around, or grouse. Probably the same as police do.”

  “No enemies at work?”

  “No. Not that I know of, anyway.”

  “You mentioned grousing. What did Mr. Colby grouse about?”

  “His medicine, or people who wouldn’t be interviewed, or the weather—all the usual stuff.”

  “You think he was unhappy with his work?”

  “No! Look, you asked about grousing, right? That doesn’t mean he always did it! He worked hard, kept things organized tightly. If anything, he groused less than the rest of us because he didn’t gossip as much. I really don’t think it was one of us!”

  The serious eyes studied her a moment, and Olivia felt furious at herself, realizing that getting emotional hurt more than it helped. But Schreiner just said mildly, “Fine. I’ll stop by your office tomorrow to follow up some of these things with the others. Now, could you tell me how you came to schedule this picnic with him?”

  “Oh, it was pretty casual, really. A couple of days ago he called and asked me to stop by to take some of his stuff to the office. I came to the door and we both complained about this heat wave. I told him we were planning a picnic with Jerry’s sister on Monday, and I saw his little girls behind him in the hall and just impulsively asked if they’d all like to come to the beach with us.” Olivia smiled faintly. “The kids both gave him this bated-breath look, and he said sure, it would be good to get out of the house. The little one clapped her hands. He told her to settle down and she did, but it was clear that we were all committed.”

  “But in fact he didn’t go,” the detective pointed out.

  “No, damn it. He didn’t.” A wave of loss surged up through Olivia, surprising her. Dale hadn’t been a close friend; recently she hadn’t even seen him that often. But he was a presence in her life all the same, grinding out solid, tightly researched stories that they all respected. A hardworking man with an odd little smile she’d never see again. She clasped her hands on her knees and blinked at them.

  “When did he decide not to go, Ms. Kerr?” Detective Schreiner’s cool professional voice pulled her back.

  “It was—” She found she had to clear her throat. “It was when I was talking to him, I think. He seemed a little edgy with everyone. Then I told him about Moffatt’s visit, and he called for Donna to bring him a sandwich and to take the kids away so he could take his nap and do some work.”

  Schreiner’s pen was scribbling rapidly across the page. “Do you know what he planned to do next?”

  “No! I would have told you first thing!”

  “Yes, of course.” The grave eyes appraised Olivia. “Now, could we go over the order that things happened? What was he doing when you arrived?”

  “I came to the den door and he was on the phone with Mrs. Resler.” She went through it all again. After that she explained about coming back from the beach, the games and banter that had culminated at that hideous frozen moment when Maggie broke into the den.

  At last Detective Schreiner closed her notebook. “Thank you, Ms. Kerr. I’ll probably have follow-up questions later but that’s all for tonight.”

  “Okay.” They stood and Olivia said diffidently, “You know, Detective Schreiner, I’m planning a feature on women in law enforcement. Right now I’m doing the Joanne Little trial, and it seems to me women would have handled it a lot better, don’t you think?”

  “Not for me to say.” Schreiner’s attention was distracted as she maneuvered her notebook into the patch pocket of her skirt.

  “Yes, but—anyway, I wondered if I could interview you sometime about it. Just on what the job is like for a woman.”

  Detective Schreiner’s gaze was direct but opaque, impenetrable. “That wouldn’t be appropriate. Especially while this case is open.”

  “Yeah, I understand that right now we’ve got this officia
l relationship too. But I wouldn’t be asking anything about this case. It would be a lot more general. And I could conceal your identity, that’s no problem.”

  “Even so—look, Ms. Kerr, you’ve been following the Little trial. You’ve seen how the lawyers scrutinize every move those officers made.”

  “Yeah, but those guys were dolts! Made one blunder after another!”

  There was that twitch of amusement again at the corner of Schreiner’s mouth. “Well, I’m not a dolt, Ms. Kerr. I want this investigation to be as blunder-free as possible. Look, why don’t you call the D.C. Public Information office? Out of this jurisdiction would be best. Maybe they could set up something for you. A ride in a patrol car.”

  Olivia looked at her: an ordinary, pleasant-faced, sad-eyed woman, totally unreachable behind the fortifications of her official authority. Well, we’ll just see about that, Ms. Blunder-free Detective Schreiner. You want to be a pig, I’ll write about pigs. To hell with your D.C. patrol cars. Aloud Olivia said politely, “Right, that’s a good idea. Oh, and one other thing. Should the Colbys be making arrangements to stay somewhere tonight? Your people won’t be finished here for a while, will they?”

  “No, not for a while. Tell her to make the arrangements, and as soon as I’ve talked to the last two of you, everybody can go.”

  “Fine.” Outwardly docile, Olivia went back to Betty Morgan’s.

  But Donna seemed incapable of thinking of anyone to stay with. “Don’t you have a friend? Another teacher, maybe?” Maggie asked. She was lounging in Betty Morgan’s leather recliner, the sleeping Sarah curled into the bit of her lap that hadn’t been usurped by her belly.

  Donna nodded. “Roberta. But she spends August in Maine.”

  “Your sister? Jill?” Betty Morgan suggested. She stood twisting her hands in the arch of the dining room. Two lanky teenage boys, probably her sons, had appeared and now sat drinking Cokes at the table behind her.

  “No. Jill moved to California,” Donna said.

  “Other relatives?” asked Nick from the rug next to Maggie’s chair. Last in line to be interviewed, he was waiting for Jerry to return from next door, his hand resting lightly on Maggie’s ankle. Donna shook her head mutely.

  “What about Dale’s family?” he continued gently.

  Donna looked stricken. “No, no. When I called Grandpa Colby he was so angry.”

  “He’s mean,” muttered Josie.

  Olivia glanced at Betty Morgan, who turned pink. “Yes, well, I’d love to help, Donna, you know that. We could manage. Of course Randy and Bo’s rooms are always a mess.” She smiled, half proud and half apologetic, at the teenagers. “But, let’s see, you could take our room, and we’ll put the sleeping bags in for the girls. And we can open the sofa here and—”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Olivia. “It’s sweet of you, but we’ve got four bedrooms and only two of them in use. Donna, you can come with us.”

  “No, I don’t want to be a bother. Maybe a motel.”

  “No, no, it’s all settled. We’ll stick together.”

  “But—”

  “I want you to come!”

  So it was settled. Donna continued to protest feebly, thinking Olivia was just being polite. But Olivia caught Maggie looking at her ironically, and knew that at least one person realized that she had spoken the truth and was pleased as punch.

  5

  “So you first realized there was a problem when you got back from buying the pizza?” Holly asked.

  Jerry Ryan was leaning back into the corner of the sofa, one bony elbow on the armrest, the other arm extended along the sofa back. He had his sister’s deep blue eyes and curly black hair, but in him the family lankiness looked craggy, mature. Being female lightened Maggie just enough to give her that teenage-boy appearance that Holly found so unsettling. Besides, Jerry showed less of Maggie’s inquiring friendliness. This Ryan didn’t make the same outrageous demands on Holly that his sister did.

  He was nodding. “Olivia met us in the driveway, in fact. Heard the van arrive and came out to meet us. And I’m glad she did. Nick and I were roistering about, singing ‘Rocky Mountain High’ for young Tina. But I took one look at Liv’s face and knew there was trouble. She explained as we went hurrying in. Maggie yelled down the hall at us to keep everyone in the kitchen, and then asked me to come look.”

  “Because you’re a doctor.”

  “Right.” He pressed his hands together and examined his knuckles. “But there was nothing I could do.”

  “He was clearly dead?”

  “For hours.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  His head came up alertly and he frowned at her. “Am I wrong? Well, you’ve got the experts in there. I’ll admit that my experience is limited. Even when I worked in ER we managed to save most of our patients. My guess was based on memories of the olden days in med school. Hell, I’m not a bad doctor. You’ve probably seen more dead bodies than I have.”

  “Probably. Even so. I’d appreciate your top-of-the-head reactions, Dr. Ryan. It could help.”

  Jerry Ryan shrugged. “Okay, as long as it’s unofficial. I mean, you do have the experts. I didn’t do any tests. Just checked for respiration, pulse, stiffness.”

  “Rigor?”

  “Right. Rigor was clearly present in the small muscles, face and neck. But not in the larger muscles, at that point. Lividity was well advanced.”

  Holly nodded. That agreed with her own observations.

  Jerry concluded, “So, unofficially, I’d guess he’d been dead four, maybe six hours.”

  “Why not more?” Holly was writing it all down.

  “He wasn’t cool to touch yet so I figured it was closer to four hours than ten. But hell, your guys have thermometers. They should come pretty close.”

  “Right.” She looked up from her notebook. “I’m asking because your sister didn’t realize he was dead until she turned him over.”

  “Yeah. Well, of course lying on his back with his neck askew, it seemed obvious to me at first glance. But front-down, the way she saw him? He’d look more natural. I might have done the same thing. Tried to get him into position for CPR even while checking for signs of life.” He met Holly’s gaze. “My sister’s no dummy.”

  True. So get off her case, Schreiner. “I wasn’t suggesting that she was, Dr. Ryan,” Holly said levelly. “Just trying to get an idea of how things were. What would you say about the cause of death?”

  “Not much without an autopsy.”

  “Unofficially, Dr. Ryan,” she said patiently.

  Jerry shrugged. “Someone clobbered him on the head with a brass lamp.”

  “Subdural hematoma?”

  Interest quickened in the blue eyes. “Yeah, I’d tell them to look for that. They teach medical jargon to detectives now?”

  “I used to be a nurse.” Until they’d told her she got too involved with her critical patients, exhausted herself, became a safety hazard to them.

  “Aha. And you left for better pay?”

  “Partly.” She gave her stock answer. “Mostly I got bored with the parade of hemorrhoids.”

  Jerry Ryan’s appreciative laugh was infectious. “You’re absolutely right! Medicine is supposed to be so exciting, but after a while only the life-and-death stuff really satisfies.” Holly had to agree; she’d only lasted a few months in nursing once they’d moved her away from the critical patients. He sprawled back into the sofa corner again. “So. You recommend detecting for jaded medics?”

  “It’s okay.” Amazing how all these people wanted to spend their time discussing her job. Get him back on track, Schreiner. She picked up two evidence bags from the sofa beside her. “These seem to be prescriptions for Mr. Colby.”

  Jerry glanced at the labeled bottles inside. “Yeah. Anti-Parkinson’s drugs.”

  “I recognize one. Artane,” said Holly. “Anticholinergic, right?” In Parkinson’s patients, she knew, the critical balance between two brain chemicals, dopamine and acetylcholi
ne, was upset because their brains didn’t produce enough dopamine. Tremor and other symptoms resulted. The usual treatment was based on suppressing acetylcholine with anticholinergic drugs like Artane, so that the two brain chemicals would be in balance again.

  Jerry nodded. “Yeah. Dale told me at our party he’d been taking it for years. Up to a high dose by then so his physician was going to add a low dose of L-dopa.” He indicated the second bottle.

  Holly had read newspaper stories about L-dopa a few years ago. It was a real breakthrough, achieving the critical chemical balance in the brain by increasing dopamine instead of suppressing acetylcholine like the older drugs. Starting L-dopa slowly was sound medical practice. Nothing weird there. She asked, “Dr. Ryan, do you have any ideas about how someone might get out of that room?”

  “You mean, if I’m so sure somebody bashed him, how did the somebody get out.” His forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know. I’d look pretty carefully at the windows. Or maybe the door was already splintered and something else was holding it closed somehow when they were trying to get in. But why ask me? You’ve got other experts to tell you about that.”

  “Yeah. We’ll check it out.” Holly debated taking Jerry in to talk to Doc Craine. But Doc would have found all the same things, and he got prickly at second-guessing. More than once she’d been snapped at herself for offering a medical observation. So wind this up, Schreiner. There’s still a lot to do tonight. She asked, “Can you think of anything else, Dr. Ryan? Anything odd or even obvious that might have affected this death?”

  “Only that locked door. Aside from that—well, my wife’s a reporter.” He gave a little shrug, suddenly seeming very vulnerable. “So I can’t help wondering what the hell he did to get someone that angry.”

  “Yeah.” Holly nodded and closed her book. “We’ll find out. Thanks, Dr. Ryan. We’ll want you to sign a statement tomorrow, but that’s it for now. As soon as I talk to Mr. O’Connor we’ll be done.”

  “Good.”

  Nick O’Connor was a broad, burly man, with expressive eyes that could move from dark sorrow to twinkles to lively curiosity in an instant. His head was nearly bald but his khaki shorts and unbuttoned polo shirt revealed plenty of curly hair on legs and chest and arms. He was a comfortable man, easy to talk to. Holly took him quickly through the departure and return from the beach. He confirmed the other accounts and apologized for not being able to add anything. “As things worked out, I never even saw Dale Colby, before or after the trip to the beach. Maggie and Olivia can help you more.”