Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  Tommi walked toward Clarence. Heavy makeup surrounded her left eye, which was puffy and bloodshot. The lower eyelid showed underlying red and purple. I’d noticed this late last week. If it was still this bad, I’d hate to have seen it when it happened.

  “I’m Tommi Elam,” she said to Clarence, sticking out her hand like she was chairperson of the homicide Welcome Wagon.

  “Clarence Abernathy.”

  “The columnist. That’s what I thought! That piece you wrote on volunteerism in the inner city?”

  “Yes?”

  “It was excellent.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “It’s great to have you here, Clarence. Let me know if I can do anything for you.” Tommi sat in front.

  “She’s a compulsive liar,” I whispered to Clarence. “She’s in therapy.”

  He gave me his look.

  “Here comes Karl Baylor, Tommi’s partner,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll introduce himself to you. He’s a Christian, so you two might understand each other.”

  “Clarence Abernathy, right?” Baylor said, smiling broadly. Ten seconds into the conversation he was calling Clarence “brother,” in the Christian sense I suppose, since Baylor’s white as I am. This guy pushes my buttons. He should either have something done to his teeth or stop smiling so much. He always has to let people know he’s a Christian.

  “Don’t we have the greatest view of the city from up here?” Baylor gushed like a tour guide.

  His voice irritates me. It’s like his diaphragm needs a larger outlet than his throat affords. It’s always spurting out words in loud, spasmodic bursts of dogmatism.

  “Welcome to the inner sanctum, Clarence.” It was Jack Glissan, offering his hand. He waved to Noel, his partner, over by the concessions. “I’ll have a Sprite.”

  “Sure,” Noel said, then looked at Clarence and me. “Get you guys a soda?”

  “I’m good,” Clarence said.

  “Coke,” I said.

  “Coca-Cola?”

  I nodded, smiling at the blend of personalities that make up our homicide department. I felt guilty for suspecting them.

  Manny walked through the doorway, looking for a seat by himself. He took the second seat from Bryce Cimmatoni, which guaranteed the seat between them wouldn’t get taken. Who sits between two megagrouches?

  Sergeant Jim Seymour stood behind the flimsy wooden podium. Things started to quiet.

  “What’s he doing here?” Doyle asked, pointing at Clarence.

  “You’ve probably heard,” Sarge said, “Clarence Abernathy is observing the William Palatine murder investigation. Part of the arrangement Chief Lennox made with the Tribune is for Abernathy to attend this meeting, but only while it’s pertinent to that case.”

  “Great,” said Suda, with a fake good-natured tone.

  “Yippee,” said Phillips, not bothering to fake the tone.

  Tommi grinned and rolled her eyes at Clarence, like “this is the sort of stuff we have to put up with every day.” Her makeup under her tender left eye was wearing off.

  “No offense,” I whispered to Clarence, “but cops are as fond of the media as a Frenchman is fond of deodorant.”

  “So we’ll start with the Palatine case. Chandler?”

  I handed out notes, summarized what we’d found, the limited lab results, witness interviews, the options we were considering. Naturally, I didn’t say what I was really thinking about the killer’s identity.

  “Manny and I are open,” I said. “Suggestions?”

  “It’s obvious,” said a face grooved by time and trouble. Cimmatoni’s jaw is so solid it doesn’t move when he talks. He looks as if he could bite off a steel rod like a pepperoni stick. His voice is huge, the sort ancient orators must have used to speak on hillsides to a thousand people. Too bad Cimmatoni usually says nothing worth listening to.

  “What’s obvious?” I asked.

  “It was a transient. A street person.”

  “We know what a transient is,” I said. “Didn’t you say the same thing when the priest was murdered by that CEO?” That got two chortles, a guffaw, and a giggle.

  “Transients are your default murderers, aren’t they, Cimma?” Doyle asked.

  “Half our unsolved crimes are probably transients. Could be a gang member, but they’re too obvious. Probably four dozen transients with digs within a quarter-mile of that house. I’ll lay two to one on a transient.”

  “I’ll put down twenty bucks,” I said.

  He looked like he didn’t believe me, but I didn’t take it personally. He hadn’t believed anybody for a couple of decades.

  Phillips was looking over the notes I’d handed out. “Why’d he turn blue?”

  “The killer injected him repeatedly with ink,” I said. There was a low whistle and some grimaces. “Summary of the toxicology report’s on page three. Blue fountain pen ink.”

  “Traceable?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “The noose?” Sarge asked.

  “A special rope sold in nautical supply stores, used mostly for tying boats. But unless it’s a recent purchase, or he used a credit card or made a cash purchase in a store where there’s a security camera …”

  “Once you get a suspect,” Doyle said, “take his picture to boating stores.”

  “A suspect would be nice,” I said.

  “Transient,” Cimmatoni muttered.

  “Rope important or just a diversion?” Suda asked.

  “You tell me,” I said. “And here’s one. Talked to his brother, who’s a doctor. Palatine wore a medical chain identifying him as an insulin-dependent diabetic. Insulin bottle in the fridge. Needles in the drawer. But the professor wasn’t a diabetic.”

  “Plus the only needle marks were in his shoulder,” Clarence said. “Diabetics don’t take injections there.”

  The silence was deafening. Outsiders never came to these meetings. That an outsider would speak was unthinkable. That the speaking outsider was a journalist was strike three.

  “Why don’t you take over the investigation?” Manny mumbled. “We’ll write your useless columns.”

  “I didn’t know you could write,” Clarence said.

  Manny’s usual scowl cranked up a notch.

  “People leave evidence because they’re hurried,” I said, “or careless, or want to be caught. Doesn’t seem like he was in a hurry. But why the noose? Injection? Fountain pen ink? Insulin bottle? Needle? What does it all mean?”

  “The noose suggests suicide,” Karl Baylor said.

  “Or execution,” Cimmatoni said.

  Until then, that thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Two miles to the north of us, in Washington, they still hang people. Only by the condemned prisoner’s request, so it’s rare, but it happens. This fit the note on the computer screen and other indications that the professor had been brought to justice. But what had he done to warrant execution? If we knew, it would point to the killer.

  “It doesn’t have to make sense,” Cimmatoni said. “Killers aren’t brainiacs.”

  “Even when it doesn’t appear to make sense, it does,” I said, “if you’re in the head of the killer.”

  “Yeah, and to be in his head it helps if you are the killer.”

  I stared at Cimmatoni. Why had he said that?

  “Okay,” Sarge said, “we’ve had more murders in the last four weeks than in the previous three months. Everybody has an open case, so we’ve got lots of ground to cover. Suda and Doyle, you’re next. Mr. Abernathy, you’re excused.”

  Clarence put his notepad in his briefcase and snuck out. I waved bye-bye to him, kissing the air, feeling a little smug that at least we weren’t letting the Trib in on everything.

  It seemed a long wait between breakfast with Clarence at Lou’s and lunch at New York Burrito by the Federal Building, across from the Justice Center.

  The only downside was that Manny was with me, and he’s not a happy eater. He made a face at his burrito. I don’t me
an he showed displeasure by raising his eyebrow. I mean he made an actual face. Manny’s eating skills are remarkably similar to his people skills.

  My partner doesn’t just have a lot of issues; he’s got the whole subscription.

  Personality aside, however, in most respects Manny’s a good partner. He’s efficient, hard-nosed, and lock-jawed determined. If he catches a scent, that dog’ll hunt. And he knows how to turn the thumbscrews, especially with the young and cocky. He’d make Jack Bauer proud. The world’s full of personality—I don’t need that in a partner.

  Right now I was contemplating how to tell Manny what I was thinking about the killer being a detective.

  “I don’t like Abernathy coming to our meeting,” he said, turning his displeasure from the burrito to me. “And I don’t like him working on our case.”

  “Neither do I. But he’s a decent guy. Almost a friend.”

  Manny stopped chewing and stared me down.

  “Speaking loosely. In the broadest sense of friend. But he’s a journalist. Now, if he were his father, it’d be a pleasure to have him around.”

  “His father was his only good feature,” Manny said. “Too bad he’s gone for good.”

  “Gone for good?”

  “Yeah. Dead. You know what dead means, right?”

  “It comes up now and then in this business.”

  “Dead is dead.”

  “Some say people still live after they die,” I said. “That they just go somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, and some say we were made by aliens and at night they take us up on their ships and perform experiments.”

  “And that proves there’s no life after death?”

  “You turning religious on me?”

  “No.” I said it too quickly, hearing my defensiveness and wondering how I’d suddenly fallen on the other side of the argument. “You sound like Nietzsche.”

  “You looked up Nietzsche, didn’t you?” Manny asked. “You didn’t know jack about Nietzsche, and you looked him up.”

  “Nietzsche schmietzsche,” I said, as Manny swallowed his last bite, leaving half a dead burrito, and headed out the door.

  This was the deepest philosophical discussion Manny and I’ve ever had. It bothered me to hear him say what I’d thought myself, that Obadiah Abernathy no longer existed. Something inside, buried deep, told me this couldn’t be true. And if it were, the universe was just a cruel joke.

  I consoled myself with the remnants of Manny’s burrito.

  I’d left my notebook in the office, but I jotted down my thoughts on a New York Burrito sack. It wasn’t the Gettysburg Address, but it was a piece of work:

  The killer planned the murder methodically, including the bizarre elements with the noose and the ink injections. He may have stayed forty-five minutes at the crime scene.

  The killer knew how long it would take the cops to get there. He might have had a police monitor.

  The killer took unnecessary measures that might make him vulnerable, like he was daring a detective to catch him. He took the time and trouble to put on the noose, inject the ink, and remove items, at least a photo and a wine bottle.

  The killer—almost certainly—knew the private number of a homicide detective and called him from the scene.

  The killer believes he knows investigative procedures well enough to get around them. He may take pride in his ability to outwit homicide detectives.

  Seeing it in black and white was disturbing. I wanted to add a sixth point, but I wasn’t sure I could. “The killer—possibly—planted incriminating evidence at the scene, including a Black Jack wrapper and a rope belonging to me. And he may have planted a donut in my car.”

  But if he used my rope and planted my wrapper and Wally’s donut and called me from the scene, he was setting me up. Did he believe I was going to investigate the case? Or was he expecting it to be someone else, knowing that whoever did would find the evidence against me and I might be tagged with a homicide?

  But something bothered me more. I couldn’t remember the night of the murder. It was just … not there in my mind. Had I come home from Rosie’s? Or had I gone to the professor’s house?

  Strange how anxiety over a blackout due to drinking can make you want to drink more.

  13

  “The plot thickens.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, A STUDY IN SCARLET

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1:30 P.M.

  A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES begins with a single step.

  Falling down a flight of stairs begins the same way.

  The step my little gray cells had taken—that the murderer was one of our own detectives—was that kind of step.

  As I walked slowly back to the Justice Center, under a thick cloud cover, I marveled at how that awful thought, on its face inconceivable, had walked right in the back door of my mind, taken off its shoes, and thrown itself on my cerebral couch. And like my cousin from South Carolina who showed up twenty years ago with a backpack and a pet boa, it showed no signs of leaving.

  We’re the fraternity of detectives. It’s a brotherhood, including Tommi and Kim, who are brothers with different shapes and higher voices. Comrades in arms, for crying out loud. Even Cimma.

  Like my platoon in Nam. We didn’t all like each other, but we’d die for each other. We watched each others’ backs. That’s what cops do. That’s what the brotherhood does.

  And I was going after one of them?

  “I wish you were here, Sharon,” I said aloud, looking up but seeing no crack in the clouds. “I need you. I need to talk with you.”

  “I know, Ollie. I know. But there’s someone you need a lot more than me. He can do for you far more than I ever could. Talk to Him. Turn to Him. I love you. More importantly, He loves you.”

  In the conference room near our work area, I walked Manny through my written points on the burrito sack.

  “That’s ridiculous. Your prime suspect is one of us?”

  “Why is it ridiculous? Because you know them? Killers are always known by people. They always work with somebody. Everybody goes on TV when it all comes out and says he was a nice guy and washed their car and made them cookies and they had no clue.”

  “There’s no way.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If you were going to kill somebody, how would you do it?”

  “I have to fight for time to go to my son’s T-ball games,” Manny said. “I don’t have time to stage a murder.”

  “But if you did stage a murder, you’d be successful, wouldn’t you?”

  “You tryin’ to say somethin’ to me?” He stood, fists clenched tight, as if he were a gang member again and I was calling him out.

  “My point is, if anybody’s going to know how to pull off a murder and not get caught, it’s a homicide detective, right? Any of us could do it.”

  He went to the door. “I’m going back to the professor’s hood. I say somebody saw something. And about your theory?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re losin’ it.”

  Was I?

  A homicide detective would know what not to do—all the things we catch people on. If I were going to kill somebody, I’d plan it so nobody would catch me.

  If I was sober, that is.

  I headed to Sergeant Jim Seymour’s office. I took a breath and walked in. His office is well-organized, and he must have a dozen pictures of his wife and four kids, in everything from baseball to band.

  “What’s with that?” he asked, pointing at the sack in my hand.

  I read him the burrito bag. After I’d made my case for the murderer being a detective, Sarge kept blinking at me like maybe I’d disappear after one more blink.

  “I don’t know what else to think,” I said. “It’s a hunch, but it’s based on evidence. I have to consider it.”

  “We’ve got ten homicide detectives. You going to check their alibis? Let’s say five of them were home alone or with their wives, then what? You’ll suspect that their wives, or Tommi’s husband, may be lyi
ng. Where’s this going to take us? Who’re you going to eliminate? Manny?”

  “How can I?”

  “Did you say that to his face?”

  “No.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it. What about Jack? You going after him?”

  “Sure. Everybody. Jack’ll understand.”

  “Right. I’m sure the whole team will be dripping with sympathy.”

  “Look, means and opportunity come easily for us, don’t they? It’s all about motive. So can’t homicide detectives have a motive to kill someone?”

  “Sure, but … not this crew. Don’t you know them better than that, Ollie? You still read your murder mysteries, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too. What if you read that the prime suspects in a murder mystery were a bunch of homicide detectives?”

  “Well, in a book I might think it was … lame.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Okay, in a novel I’d never make ten homicide detectives the murder suspects. The author would be an idiot to even try it. But this is the real world.”

  “You said ten suspects. You mean nine, right? Unless you’re suspecting yourself.”

  “Hey, it could be eleven. You have access to everything. If the evidence leads me to you, what should I do?”

  “Investigate me,” Sarge said. “Clear me or keep me on the suspect list.”

  “Then that’s what I have to do with everybody.”

  I took the elevator down two floors to criminalist detail. The receptionist confirmed Phil Oref was there. I signed in, and she buzzed me through the security door.

  As I went down the hall I saw a technician making tool marks on wood to see what they looked like, then glanced into ballistics, where they were testing guns. While the state crime lab has lots of scientists, criminalists are sworn officers, so you get to know them cop-to-cop. Sometimes you can ask a favor.

  I shook Phil’s hand, and we talked about the case for a few minutes.

  “Know when we’ll get the fingerprints on the Dumpster gun, the murder weapon? We need them pronto.”