Dead of Winter

by Stuart Melvin Kaminsky

  He sat up slowly. His leg was bandaged. The throbbing was tolerable. Determination was strong. He was in a small studio apartment, sofa against one wall, a Murphy bed across the room tilted back up into the wall.

  The door to the apartment suddenly opened. Stevie tried to get to his feet, but his leg sat him down again.

  The Jockey came in with a paper bag in one hand.

  "Brought you some coffee," he said. "And a couple doughnuts."

  "Thanks," said Stevie, looking inside the bag Jake handed him and taking out the coffee.

  He felt queasy. The coffee and doughnuts might help. He didn't know, didn't care. He was hungry. He picked up a doughnut and laughed.

  "What's funny?" asked Jake.

  "Yesterday was my birthday," said Stevie.

  "No shit," said the Jockey. "Happy birthday."

  * * *

  Anders Kindem, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, retained only a trace of a Norwegian accent.

  Mac had read about him in a New York Times article. Kindem had, supposedly, definitively confirmed that whoever William Shakespeare was, he was certainly not Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, or John Grisham.

  Kindem, blonde straight hair, slightly gawky, with a constant smile, wasn't yet forty. He was addicted to coffee, which he drank from an oversized white mug covered with the word "words" in various colors. A tepid cup of hazelnut, which he had brewed from the tall green jar of whole beans he kept next to the grinder and coffeemaker in his office, stood next to one of four computer screens.

  Kindem had two of the computers on a desk. Two others were on another desk facing the first two computers. The professor sat on a swivel chair between the four computers.

  Mac sat watching him swivel, turn, move from computer to computer, looking more like a musician at an elaborate keyboard than a scientist.

  Further detracting from Kindem's image as a scientist were his new-looking jeans and a green sweat shirt with rolled up sleeves. Across the front of the sweat shirt in white letters were the words YOU JUST HAVE TO KNOW WHERE TO LOOK.

  Music had been playing when Mac had entered Kindem's lab, carrying a briefcase containing the disks of Louisa Cormier's novels.

  Kindem had turned down the volume and said, "Detective Taylor, I deduce."

  Mac shook his hand.

  "Music bother you? Helps me move, think," said Kindem.

  "Bach," said Mac. "Synthesizer."

  "Switched-On Bach," Kindem confirmed.

  Mac looked around the room. The computer setup used half the room. The other half contained a desk with still another computer on it and three chairs facing the computer screen. Framed degrees and awards hung on the walls.

  Kindem followed the detective's eyes and said, "I hold small seminars, discussions really, with the graduate students I advise."

  He nodded at the three chairs.

  "Very small seminars. And the adornments on the wall? What can I say? I'm ambitious and possess a small streak of academic vanity. The disks?"

  Mac found a spot at the end of one of the desks holding two computers. He opened his briefcase, took out the disks, each in a marked sleeve, and handed them to Kindem.

  "You'll want to read them," Mac said. "You can give me a call when you know something."

  Mac handed Kindem a card. Kindem had placed the disks between two of the computers. "Don't have to read them," Kindem said. "Don't want to read them, certainly not on a computer screen. I spend enough time reading things on screens. When I read a book, I want it in my hands and on a page."

  Mac agreed, but said nothing.

  Kindem was smiling.

  "I can tell you some things quickly," he said. "If your questions are simple. If you want a full analysis, give me a day. I'll have one of my grad students prepare and print out or E-mail you a report."

  "Sounds fine," said Mac.

  "Okay," said Kindem loading each disk into a tower between two computers.

  Each of the six disks went in with a whir and a click.

  "So," he said. "What am I looking for?"

  "I want to know if the same person wrote all these books," said Mac.

  "And?" asked Kindem.

  "Whatever else you can tell me about the author," said Mac.

  Kindem went to work displaying his keyboard virtuosity, turning up the volume of the CD he was playing, looking even more like a musician playing along with the music.

  "Words, easy," said Kindem as he punched instructions moving from one computer to the next. "But don't tell my department chair. He thinks its hard. He pretends to understand it. I never call him on his encyclopedic misinformation. Words, easy. Music is harder. Give me two pieces of music and I can program them, feed them into the computer, and tell you if the same person wrote them. Did you know Mozart stole from Bach?"

  "No," said Mac.

  "Because he didn't," said Kindem. "I proved it for a supposed scholar who had worked the academic scam for a full professorship in Leipzig."

  He went on for about ten minutes, talking constantly, drinking coffee, and then turned from one computer to another.

  "Exclamation marks," he said. "Good place to start. I don't like them, don't use them in my articles. Almost no exclamation marks in scientific and academic writing. Shows a lack of confidence in one's words. Same is true of fiction. Author is afraid to let the words carry the impact so they want to give those words a boost. Punctuation, vocabulary, word repetition, how often adverbs, adjectives are used. Like fingerprints."

  Mac nodded.

  "First three books," said Kindem. "Overloaded with exclamation marks. Over two hundred and fifty of them in each book. Then, in every book after that, the exclamation marks disappear. The author has seen the light or…"

  "We have a different author," said Mac.

  "You've got it," said Kindem. "But there's a lot more. In the first three books, the word 'said' appears on an average of thirty times per book. I'll check, but the writer seems to be avoiding the word 'said,' almost certainly looking for other ways to ascribe dialogue. So, instead of 'she said,' the author writes, 'she exclaimed' or 'she gasped.' The later books average two hundred eighty-six uses of the word 'said.' Growing confidence? Not that extreme, not that soon. You want more?"

  Mac nodded.

  "Far more compound and longer sentences in the first three books," said Kindem, looking at the screen. "Casual reader might not be consciously aware of these things, but subconsciously… you'd have to go to someone in the Pysch Department."

  "Anything else?"

  "Everything else," said Kindem. "Vocabulary. For example, the word 'reciprocated' appears on average eleven times in each of the first three books. It appears in none of the others."

  "Couldn't the change after the first three books be a decision to change style or a honing of the author's skills?"

  "Not that big a change," said Kindem. "And I think I'll turn up more if you give me another few hours."

  "The formula in all the books is pretty much the same," said Mac. "Woman is a widow or not yet married though she's in her mid thirties. She has or is responsible for a child who turns out to be in danger from a vengeful relative, the mafia, a serial killer. Police don't help much. Woman has to protect herself and the child. And somewhere in the last thirty pages, the woman confronts the bad guy or guys and prevails with a new man in her life who she's met along the way."

  "Which means that whoever wrote those books followed the formula," said Kindem. "Not that it was the same person."

  Mac was sure now. Louisa Cormier had written the first three books. Charles Lutnikov had written the rest.

  But why would she shoot him, Mac thought. An argument? Over what? Money?

  "You want printouts?" asked Kindem.

  "E-mail," said Mac. "Address is on my card."

  "Are you going to need me to testify at a trial?"

  "Possibly," said Mac.

  "Good," said Kindem. "I've always wanted to do that. Now
back to the works of the now-exposed Louisa Cormier."

  * * *

  Stella sat in the car, drowsy and aching, while Danny drove. For the eighth time, Stella went over the Alberta Spanio file, which was in her lap.

  She looked at the crime-scene photographs- body, bed, walls, side table. She looked at the bathroom photos- toilet, floor, tub, open window over the tub.

  Something tickled at her brain. Something wrong. It felt like trying to remember the name of an actor or writer or the girl who sat next to you in a calculus class in high school. You should know, were sure it was inside you. You could go through the alphabet ten, fifteen times and not come up with the name and then, suddenly, it would be there.

  She turned to the testimony of the two men who had been guarding Alberta Spanio, Taxx and the dead Collier.

  Then as she continued to read, it struck her. She went back to the photographs of the bathroom, her photographs.

  Collier had told Flack that he had stood in the tub to check and look out the window. If the killer came through the window, he or she had to have pushed the pile of snow blocking the window into the tub. There should have been some melted snow in the tub when Collier stepped in it. But there was no sign of moisture in the tub in Stella's photographs and no footprints from Collier's shoes, even though the bottoms of his shoes should have been wet from standing in the melted snow.

  Why, she thought, had Collier lied?

  * * *

  Sheldon Hawkes sat at the desk next to Mac, looking at the videotape on the monitor in front of him.

  "Once more," said Hawkes, leaning closer to the screen.

  Mac rewound the tape and sipped coffee while Hawkes watched the twenty-minute tape again, sometimes fast-forwarding and halting.

  "Let's hear the interrogation tape again."

  Mac rewound the tape he had made of the interview of Jordan Breeze and played it again.

  "You want to see him in his cell?" asked Mac. "My guess is it will confirm what we already know."

  Hawkes stood and said, "You're right."

  Mac listened while Hawkes told him what he had observed.

  * * *

  "Sure," said Mathew Drietch.

  He was wiry, about forty, with sparse yellow hair and a boxer's face. He had answered Aiden Burn's request to see the.22 Louisa Cormier had used for target practice on the firing range, which was just outside the door to the office in which they now sat.

  "You like the sound of gunfire?" Drietch asked.

  "Not particularly," she said.

  "I do," he said, looking past her at the glass-paneled door through which he could see the stations of the hand gun range. "The crack, the power. You know what I mean?"

  "Not really," said Aiden. "Now, can you show me the gun?"

  He got up slowly, hitching up his black denim slacks.

  "When was Louisa Cormier last here?" she asked.

  "A few days ago," he said. "Day before the storm I think. I can check."

  He went to the door of his office, opening it to the cracking sound of gunfire. He held it open for her, then stepped out in front of her, and crossed behind the five people at the small-arms firing range.

  "Cold brings them out," Drietch said. "They get a little stir-crazy and want to shoot something. This gets it out of their system."

  Aiden made no response. Drietch went to a door next to the check-in desk. A man, stocky, balding, reached under the desk, pushed a button, and the door opened.

  "I've got a key," said Drietch, "but Dave's almost always here."

  The room was small, bright, with small wooden boxes on shelves from floor to ceiling and a small table with no chairs in the middle of the room.

  "We've got almost four hundred handguns in here," said Drietch, moving to one of the shelves as he pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. "Master key opens them all."

  He pulled down a box and placed it on the table in front of Aiden. Aiden looked at the box and then at the shelves.

  "Some of the boxes have padlocks. Some don't," she said.

  "No gun in the box, no lock," he explained.

  "This box has no lock," she said, looking at the box on the table.

  "Must have forgotten to put it back on," he said. "It's probably in the box."

  Aiden concluded that Drietch ran a very loose ship.

  "Ammunition's in a safe," Drietch said, reading her look of disapproval.

  Aiden said nothing. She reached down and lifted the lid of the metal box. There was a gun inside, a Walther.22 exactly like the one Louisa had in the drawer of her desk.

  "Target gun," said Drietch.

  "It can still kill," said Aiden, inserting a pencil in the barrel and lifting the gun from the box.

  It took her a few seconds to determine that the gun had been cleaned recently.

  "Did Louisa Cormier clean this gun?"

  "No, Dave does that," he said.

  Aiden bagged the gun and turned to Drietch.

  "I'll need a receipt for that," he said.

  She took out her notebook, wrote a receipt, signed it, and handed it to him.

  "Does Ms. Cormier open the box and get the gun herself?"

  "No," he said. "Stands and waits. I've got the key. I take it out, check to be sure it isn't loaded, hand it to her. I bring the ammunition to her at the range. When she's done shooting, she gives the gun back and I lock it up."

  "She never touches the lock or the drawer?" asked Aiden.

  "She doesn't have a key," he said patiently.

  Aiden nodded and checked for prints on the box. She lifted four clean ones.

  Aiden put her gloves into her kit. She'd have to check the toilets, garbage cans, trash containers outside for the missing lock. It wouldn't be fun, but it would beat digging for that bullet in the elevator pit.

  The search took twenty minutes, during which time she also checked and double-checked the pay parking lot next door.

  When she went back inside, Drietch was standing next to an open stall on the range, a gun resting on the platform against which he was leaning. He pointed at the gun.

  As she approached, he stepped back, giving her space.

  Aiden fired. The targets, familiar black on white circles, were about twenty feet away. She got off five rounds and handed him the gun. Something on the floor of the range caught her eye.

  Drietch looked at the target. The pattern was all inside the bull's-eye. Aiden could have done almost as well if the targets were twice the distance away.

  "You're good," he said with respect.

  "Thanks," she said. "Have everyone stop firing and tell them to put their guns down."

  "Why the-?" he began.

  "Because there's a lock out there," she said. "And I'm going to go bag it as evidence."

  * * *

  "Everything is arranged," said Arthur Greenberg.

  Mac had called him to double-check.

  "Snow, rain, anything but the terrible Wrath of God will not stop us from going ahead," Greenberg continued. "Is there anyone you want notified?"

  "No," Mac said.

  He was waiting at the courthouse for a homicide detective named Martin Witz and an assistant DA named Ellen Carasco to come out of the chambers of Judge Meriman's office, hopefully with a warrant to search the apartment of Louisa Cormier.

  "Then," said Greenberg, "we'll see you at ten tomorrow morning?"

  "Yes," said Mac, looking at the solid door with the name of Judge Meriman engraved impressively on polished brass.

  Greenberg hung up. So did Mac as the door to Judge Meriman's chamber opened and Ellen stepped out.

  "He wants to talk to you," she said.

  Carasco was deceptively lean. Mac knew that beneath her loose-fitting suit were the impressive muscles of a bodybuilder. Carasco was ranked among the top thirty female bodybuilders in the world in her division. Her face was clear, pretty, her hair dark and long. Stella had more than once suggested that Carasco would not turn him down if Mac were to ask her out to dinner
. Mac had never followed up on the suggestion. He didn't plan to.

  Mac followed her back into the judge's chamber where Detective Martin Witz sat heavily in a reddish-brown leather chair facing the judge behind the desk.

  Meriman, nearing retirement, proud of his mane of white hair and his well-groomed signature white mustache, nodded at Mac, who nodded back.

  "We've been over the evidence," said Meriman in a practiced baritone. "I want to go over it again with you before I make my decision."

  Mac nodded again. Meriman held out a palm indicating that Mac should sit. He sat upright in a chair identical to the one Witz was in. Carasco stood between the two seated men.

  "Victim was Charles Lutnikov," said Mac. "Lived in the same building with Louisa Cormier. They knew each other."

  "How well?" asked the judge.

  "From the evidence, reasonably well," said Mac.

  Mac told the judge about Aiden Burn's discovery of the lock that had been used on the box that held the firing range gun, the recovery of the bullet in the elevator shaft, the typewriter ribbon and what they had found on it, the report by Kindem saying that someone other than Louisa Cormier may have written most of her novels.

  "Gun been tested for a match with the bullet?" Meriman asked.

  "We're doing that now," said Mac.

  "Flimsy," said Meriman, folding his hands and looking up at his three visitors.

  "Search warrants have been issued with less," said Carasco.

  "Two pieces of information," Meriman said. "First, this is a world-famous author we are talking about, a person with resources including an attorney of high cost and great skill. Second, your evidence is largely circumstantial and without substance. Highly suggestive, I agree, but- "

  Mac's cell phone vibrated insistently in his pocket. He reached for it saying, "I'm sorry, Your Honor, but this may be pertinent."

  "Keep it brief," said the judge, looking at the clock on his wall, "and get off the phone if it has nothing relevant pertaining to this request for warrant."

  Mac answered the phone with, "Yes."

  He listened. The call lasted no more than ten seconds. He flipped the cell phone closed, pocketed it, and said, "That was CSI Investigator Burn. The lock that was cut from the box has two clear fingerprints on it, Louisa Cormier's."