Detective

by Arthur Hailey

  “Wait, there’s more.”

  The recording was quieter as Ainslie went through the charade of hearing Doil’s “confession.”

  “I killed some people, Father”…

  “Who was the first?”

  “Coupla Japs in Tampa”…

  Newbold, his attention riveted, began making notes.

  Soon, Doil’s affirmation of his other killings … Esperanzas, Frosts, Larsens, Hennenfelds, Urbinas, Tempones …

  “The numbers don’t add up,” Newbold said. “You told me so, though I was hoping …”

  “That my math was wrong?” Ainslie smiled faintly, shaking his head.

  Next came Doil’s frantic plea concerning the Ernst murders: “Father, I swear … I didn’t do it … ain’t fuckin’ true … don’t wanna die bein’ blamed for what I never done …”

  The outpouring continued, then abruptly Newbold exclaimed, “Stop it!” Ainslie pressed the black PAUSE key. In the glass-paneled office there was silence.

  “Jesus! It’s so goddam real.” Newbold rose from his chair, took an impulsive turn around the room, then asked, “How far away was Doil from being dead when he said all this?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe. Not much more.”

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know. I was sure I wouldn’t believe him … But when death is that close …” The lieutenant faced Ainslie directly. “Do you believe what he said?”

  Ainslie answered carefully. “I’ve always had doubts about that one, as you know, so …” He left the sentence incomplete.

  Newbold finished it. “You find it easier to believe Doil.”

  Ainslie was silent. There seemed nothing more to say.

  “Let’s hear the rest of it,” Newbold said.

  Ainslie pressed PLAY.

  He heard himself ask Doil, “About all those killings—the fourteen you admit to. Are you sorry for those?”

  “Fuck ’em all!… Just forgive me them others I never done.”

  “He’s insane,” Newbold said. “Or was.”

  “I thought so, too; still do. But the insane aren’t lying every minute.”

  “He was a pathological liar,” Newbold reminded them both.

  They stopped, listening again as Ainslie told Doil, “… a priest could not give you absolution, and I’m not a priest.”

  Then Lieutenant Hambrick, confronting Ainslie: “You know enough … Do something!”

  Newbold’s eyes were on Ainslie during Foucauld’s Prayer of Abandonment, which Ainslie intoned and Doil repeated. The lieutenant passed a hand across his face, seemingly moved, then said softly, “You’re a good man, Malcolm.”

  Ainslie switched off the recorder and rewound the tape.

  Back at his desk, Newbold sat silently, clearly weighing what he had believed against what he had just heard. After a while he said, “You were in charge of the task force, Malcolm, so to that extent it’s still your case. What do you suggest?”

  “We check everything Doil claimed—the money clip, a robbery, the Ikeis, the knife he talked about, and a grave. I’ll give it to Ruby Bowe; she’s good at that kind of thing. At the end we’ll know how much Doil was lying, or if he was lying at all.”

  “And if, just for once,” Newbold queried, “Doil wasn’t lying?”

  “There isn’t any choice. We take a fresh look at the Ernsts.”

  Newbold looked glum. Few things in police work equaled the frustration of reopening a closed murder case that everyone believed was solved, especially one so public and celebrated.

  “Do it,” Newbold said finally. “Get Ruby started. We have to know.”

  7

  “Check out those things in whatever order you want, Detective,” Ainslie told Ruby Bowe. “But at some point you’ll have to go to Tampa.”

  It was shortly after 7:00 A.M. the morning following Ainslie’s session with Lieutenant Newbold, and they were in the Homicide offices, Bowe in a chair alongside Ainslie’s desk. The previous evening he had given her a tape deck and a headset, telling her to take both home and listen to the State Prison recording. When he first saw her this morning she had shaken her head in dismay. “That was heavy shit. I didn’t sleep much afterward. But I felt it. Closed my eyes and I was there.”

  “So you heard the things Doil said, the stuff we need to check?”

  “I wrote them down.” Bowe handed Ainslie a notepad, which he glanced at. Typically, she had listed every point requiring follow-up.

  “It’s all yours,” he told her finally. “I know you’ll get it right.”

  Ruby Bowe left, and Ainslie returned to the accumulated paper that confronted him—though unaware he would have only a few fleeting minutes in which to work on it.

  The 911 call came through to the Miami Police Communication Center at 7:32 A.M.

  A complaint clerk responded. “Nine-one-one Emergency, may I help you?” Simultaneously the caller’s phone number and a name, T. DAVANAL, appeared on an ID box above the clerk’s computer.

  A woman’s breathless voice: “Send the police to 2801 Brickell Avenue, just east of Viscaya. My husband has been shot.”

  As the caller spoke, the complaint clerk typed the information, then pressed a computer “F” function key, sending the data to a woman dispatcher in another section of the spacious room.

  The dispatcher reacted promptly, knowing that the address given was in Zone 74. Her own computer already displayed a list of patrol cars available, with their numbers and locales. Making a selection, she called by radio, “One-seven-four.”

  When Unit 174 responded, the dispatcher sent a loud “beep,” prefacing an urgent message. Then by voice, “Take a three-thirty at 2801 Brickell Avenue, east of Viscaya.” The “three” was for “emergency with lights and siren,” the “thirty” notified a reported firearm discharge.

  “QSL. I am at Alice Wainwright Park, close by.”

  While the dispatcher was speaking, she signaled Harry Clemente, the Communications sergeant in charge of dispatch and radio traffic, who left his central desk and joined her. She pointed to the address on her screen. “That’s familiar. Is it who I think it is?”

  Clemente leaned forward, then said, “If you mean the Davanals, you’re goddam right!”

  “It’s a three-thirty.”

  “Holy shit!” The sergeant read the other information. “They got trouble. Thanks, I’ll stay close.”

  The original complaints clerk was still speaking with the 911 caller. “A police unit is on the way to you. Please let me verify your last name. Is the spelling D-a-v-a-n-a-l?”

  Impatiently: “Yes, yes. It’s my father’s name. Mine is Maddox-Davanal.”

  The clerk was tempted to ask, Are you the famous Davanal family? Instead she requested, “Ma’am, please stay on the phone until the police unit arrives.”

  “I can’t. I have other things to do.” A click as the caller’s phone connection ended.

  At 7:39 A.M. the dispatcher received a radio call from Unit 174. “We have a shooting here. Request a Homicide unit to Tac One.”

  “QRX”—shorthand for “stand by.”

  Malcolm Ainslie was at his desk in Homicide, with his portable radio switched on, when he heard Unit 174’s message. Still sorting papers, he motioned to Jorge. “You take it.”

  “Okay, Sarge.” Reaching for his own radio, Rodriguez told the dispatcher, “Thirteen-eleven going to Tac One for Unit one-seven-four.” Then, selecting the Tac One channel—exclusive to Homicide: “One-seven-four, this is thirteen-eleven. QSK?”

  “Thirteen-eleven, we have a DOA at 2801 Brickell Avenue. A possible thirty-one.”

  On hearing the address, followed by 31 for “homicide,” Ainslie looked up sharply. Abandoning files and papers, he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood. He nodded to Jorge, who transmitted, “One-seven-four, we’re en route to you. Secure the scene. Call for more help if needed.” Pocketing the radio, he asked, “Is that the home of that rich family?”

  “Damn right. The Davanals. I kno
w the address; everyone does.” In Miami there was no escaping the family name and its fame. Davanal’s department stores were a huge Florida-wide chain. There was also a Davanal-owned TV station which Felicia Maddox-Davanal managed personally. But more than that, the family—originally mid-European but American-Floridian since World War I—was prestigious and powerful, both politically and financially. The Davanals were constantly in the news, sometimes referred to as “Miami’s royalty.” A less kindly commentator once added, “And they behave that way.”

  A telephone rang. Rodriguez answered, then passed the phone to Ainslie. “It’s Sergeant Clemente in Communications.”

  “We’re on to it, Harry,” Ainslie said. “The uniforms called. We’re leaving now.”

  “The DOA is Byron Maddox-Davanal, the son-in-law. His wife made the nine-one-one. You know about the name?”

  “Remind me.”

  “He was plain Maddox when he married Felicia. Family insisted on his name change. Couldn’t bear the thought of the Davanal name someday disappearing.”

  “Thanks. Every bit of info helps.”

  As he replaced the phone, Ainslie told Rodriguez, “A lot of power people will be watching this one, Jorge, so we can’t screw up a thing. You go ahead, get a car and wait downstairs. I’ll tell the lieutenant.”

  Newbold, who had just arrived in his office, looked up as Ainslie strode in. “What’s up?”

  “A possible thirty-one on Byron Maddox-Davanal at the family home. I’m just leaving.”

  Newbold looked startled. “Jesus! Isn’t he the one who married Felicia?”

  “He is. Or was.”

  “And she’s old man Davanal’s granddaughter, right?”

  “You got it. She made the nine-one-one. Thought you’d want to know.” As Ainslie left hurriedly, the lieutenant reached for his phone.

  “It looks like some feudal castle,” Jorge observed as they approached the imposing Davanal residence in an unmarked car.

  The turreted, multi-roofed house and its grounds sprawled over three and a half acres. Surrounded by a high, fortress-like wall of quarried stone with buttressed corners, the entire place had a medieval flavor.

  “I wonder why they didn’t include a moat and drawbridge,” Ainslie said.

  Beyond the whole complex was Biscayne Bay and, farther out, the Atlantic Ocean.

  The massive, rambling house, only partly seen from outside, was accessible through a pair of handsome wrought-iron gates bearing decorative heraldry. At the moment the gates were closed, but on the far side of them a long winding driveway was visible.

  “Oh, goddam, not already!” Ainslie exclaimed. He saw a mobile TV van immediately ahead and realized that the Miami media people, monitoring police radio, must have recognized the Davanal address. The van bore the insignia of WBEQ, the Davanal-owned TV station. Perhaps someone inside had tipped them off to be here first, he thought.

  Three police blue-and-whites were near the entrance gates, roof lights flashing. Either Unit 174 had asked for help or more units had responded anyway—probably the latter. Nothing like a nosy cop, Ainslie reflected. An argument appeared to be taking place at the gate between two uniforms and the TV crew, among them an attractive black reporter, Ursula Felix, whom Ainslie knew. Already, yellow POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape was in place across the entranceway, though a uniform officer, recognizing Ainslie and Rodriguez, opened a gap, leaving room for their car to pass.

  Jorge slowed, but the reporter rushed forward, blocking them. Ainslie lowered his window. “Hey, Malcolm,” she pleaded, “talk some sense into these guys! The boss lady, Mrs. Davanal, wants us inside; she phoned to say so. WBEQ is the Davanals’ station, and whatever’s going on, we want to catch the morning news.” As she spoke, Ursula Felix pressed herself against the side of the car. Her ample breasts, made more prominent by a tight silk blouse, were so close that Ainslie could have touched them. Her jet black hair was tightly braided, and a heady perfume wafted into the car.

  So there had been a call from inside, Ainslie thought—and not from just anyone. Felicia Maddox-Davanal had made the call, a woman who had reportedly become a widow only minutes before.

  “Look, Ursula,” he said, “right now this is a crime scene, and you know the rules. We’ll have a PIO here soon, and he’ll let you know whatever we can release.”

  A cameraman behind the reporter cut in, “Mrs. Davanal doesn’t recognize rules when there’s Davanal property involved, and it’s theirs both sides of the gate.” He gestured to the TV van and the house.

  “And the lady runs a tight ship,” Ursula added. “If we don’t get through, we could be out on our asses.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Ainslie motioned to Jorge to drive forward through the heavy gates.

  “You’ll be lead detective,” he told Jorge, “though I’ll work closely with you.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  Gravel crunched beneath their tires as they negotiated the driveway, passing high palms and fruit trees, then a parked white Bentley near the house. They stopped at an impressive main entrance where one of a pair of ponderous double doors was ajar. As Ainslie and Jorge alighted, the door opened fully and a tall, dignified, middle-aged man appeared, impeccably groomed and clearly a butler. He glanced at both detectives’ ID badges, then spoke with a British accent.

  “Good morning, Officers. Please come inside.” In the spacious, grandly furnished hallway he turned. “Mrs. Maddox-Davanal is telephoning. She asked that you wait for her here.”

  “No,” Ainslie said. “There’s been a report of a shooting. We’ll go to the scene immediately.” A wide carpeted corridor branched off to the right; near the end was a uniformed officer who called out, “The body’s this way.”

  As Ainslie moved, the butler insisted, “Mrs. Maddox-Davanal particularly asked—”

  Ainslie paused. “What is your name?”

  “I’m Mr. Holdsworth.”

  Jorge, already making notes, added, “First name?”

  “Humphrey. But please realize that this house is—”

  “No, Holdsworth,” Ainslie said. “You realize. This house is now a crime scene, and the police are in charge. A lot of our people will be coming and going. Do not get in their way, but don’t leave; we’ll need to question you. Also, do not disturb anything in the house from the way it is now. Is that clear?”

  “I suppose so,” Holdsworth said grudgingly.

  “And tell Mrs. Maddox-Davanal we would like to see her soon.”

  Ainslie walked the length of the corridor, Jorge following. The waiting uniform, whose name tag read NAVARRO, announced, “In here, Sergeant,” and led the way through an open door into what appeared to be a combined exercise room and study. Ainslie and Jorge, both with notebooks in hand, stood in the doorway, taking in the scene before them.

  The room was large and sunny, with early-morning sunlight coming through open French doors. Beyond the doors was an ornate patio providing a spectacular view of the surrounding bay and distant ocean. Within the room and nearest the detectives, a half-dozen black-and-chrome exercise machines were lined up like spartan sentries. An elaborate weightlifting machine dominated, then a rowing simulator, a program treadmill, a climbing device, and two machines of unclear purpose. Easily thirty thousand dollars’ worth, Ainslie guessed.

  In the same room, facing the exercise area, was the study—elegant and luxurious, with lounge chairs, several tables and cabinets, oak bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes, and a handsome modern desk with a reclining chair pushed back some distance from the desk.

  On the floor between desk and chair was a dead white male. The body was lying on its right side, with the top left side of the head missing, and around the head and shoulders was a mélange of blood, bone splinters, and brains. The bloody mess, beginning to coagulate, extended beyond the body and onto the floor at front and sides. The dead man was dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt, now drenched with blood.

  Though no weapon was visible,
all signs pointed to death by gunshot.

  “Since you arrived,” Rodriguez asked Navarro, “has anything been touched or changed?”

  The young officer shook his head. “Nothing. I know the drill.” A thought struck him. “The dead man’s wife was in the room when I got here. She could have moved something. You’ll have to ask her.”

  “We will,” Jorge said. “But let me ask you this for the record. There’s no weapon in sight. Have you seen one here or anywhere else?”

  “I’ve been looking since I got here, but haven’t seen one yet.”

  Ainslie asked, “When you found Mrs. Maddox-Davanal here, how did she seem?”

  Navarro hesitated, then gestured to the body. “Considering the way everything was, and this being her husband and all, she seemed pretty calm; you could even say poised. I wondered about it. The other thing …”

  Ainslie prompted, “Go ahead.”

  “She told me there was a TV crew coming from WBEQ. That’s the—”

  “Yes, the Davanals’ station. What about it?”

  “She wanted me—pretty much ordered me—to make sure they were let in. I told her she’d have to wait for Homicide. She didn’t like that.” The young policeman hesitated again.

  “If there’s something else on your mind, let’s hear it,” Jorge said.

  “Well, it’s only an impression, but I think the lady’s used to being in control—of everything and everybody—and she doesn’t like things any other way.”

  Ainslie asked, “And all that was happening while her husband was lying there”—he pointed to the body—“like that?”

  “Just like that.” Navarro shrugged. “I guess the rest is for you guys to figure out.”

  “We’ll try,” Jorge said, scribbling notes. “Always helps, though, when we draw an observant cop.”

  Jorge then made the routine calls on his portable radio, summoning an ID crew, a medical examiner, and a state attorney. Soon this room and other parts of the house would be crowded and busy.

  “I’ll take a look around,” Ainslie said. Stepping carefully, he approached the open French doors. He had already noticed that one door seemed to be out of line with the other; inspecting closely, he observed what looked like fresh pry marks on the outside of both doors, around the knobs and lock. Outside he saw several brown footprints on the patio, as if someone had stepped in loose dirt or mud. Beyond the footprints he saw a flower bed fronting a four-foot wall, with more prints in the soil, as if the same person had come over the wall, then approached the house. The prints appeared to be from some kind of athletic shoes.