Three-Day Town

by Margaret Maron

  He flashed the light behind the cartons and bins. Nothing moved.

  Throughout his inspection, Horvath had hovered near the elevator. Now they were startled by the buzzer as one of the residents called for the elevator. The man seemed relieved to return to his regular duties.

  Almost immediately, Dwight heard sirens out on the street and three uniformed cops barged through the basement’s outer door.

  “Major Bryant?” the lead officer asked. “Lieutenant Harald sent us. She should be here in a few minutes. She said your wife’s missing from here?”

  Dwight went through it again, hitting the high spots: how she would not have gone far because she was probably wearing her parka over her nightclothes, how he had found her glove by the outer door, how there was a uniformed employee here earlier who had also vanished.

  “I know you’re worried, sir, but could it be that she just stepped out for a cup of coffee or something?”

  The man sounded so reasonable that for the first time Dwight wondered if maybe he was overreacting. Deborah was gregarious. If one of the workers had come in early and she was on her way out for coffee, she might well have invited him to come along, her treat.

  “The market around on Broadway opens at six,” he said slowly. “And I think they do serve coffee.”

  “There now, you see? Bet you she’s there right now. Why don’t you go look since you know what she looks like and we’ll keep searching here?”

  Dwight reluctantly agreed. “I’ve covered the tool room, the boiler room, and the break room.” He gestured to each in turn. “I haven’t started on the storage area back there. Maybe you could—?”

  “Yessir!”

  They unclipped flashlights from their utility belts, while Dwight hurried outside and up the ramp to the sidewalk. Even though he was almost running by the time he reached the corner, his eyes searched the sidewalks for Deborah’s form. The Upper West Side was coming awake and starting another workday. Early commuters streamed past him, newspapers under their arms, cartons of coffee or tea in one hand, fare card in the other as they flowed toward the nearby subway station and down into the subterranean tunnels.

  At the market, Dwight quartered the store like a birddog casting back and forth for a downed bobwhite. As he feared, Deborah was not there. Nor did he see anyone in a brown uniform.

  As he returned to the apartment building, two more prowl cars pulled up with blue lights flashing to park next to the first two responders. Sigrid got out of one car, Detectives Sam Hentz and Jim Lowry emerged from the other, while three more uniformed officers joined them.

  “Start at the beginning,” Sigrid said before he could thank them for coming, so once more Dwight described waking up in the empty apartment, of determining what Deborah must be wearing, of hanging over the balcony to scan the sidewalks, of seeing a man in a brown uniform help the sanitation workers load the heavy bags from this building.

  “But it wasn’t the night man—Horvath—and he says he’s the only employee on duty until eight o’clock, so who the hell was it and where is he now?”

  Sigrid had gotten even quieter than usual as she concentrated on his words. Now she turned to Lowry and said, “Call Sanitation. Find out where that truck is and tell them to hold it.”

  “Oh, shit!” An iron band tightened around his chest as her meaning sank in and he remembered that Antoine Clarke’s body would have been set out at the curb had that porter not hunted down the missing wheeled bin.

  White-faced, he described how heavy the bags had seemed and how the slender man had swung the last one back and forth until he finally got enough arc to sling it up into the maw of the truck.

  He read the look that passed between the three detectives and knew they were thinking the same thing.

  “Describe him again, please,” Sigrid said. “You said a hat and a brown uniform. Coveralls or jacket and slacks?”

  “I didn’t look that closely,” Dwight admitted.

  “But thin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Black? White?”

  “The light was bad, but I have an impression of light skin. Certainly not real dark.”

  “Any facial hair?”

  “Not to notice. He—” He broke off as a slender young man entered the basement from the outside door. “What the hell? That’s him!”

  Before the others could stop him, he rushed forward and grabbed the newcomer by the collar of his brown uniform jacket. “What have you done with her, you bastard?”

  Scared and bewildered, the new elevator man cowered and put up his hands to ward off the blow. “Done with who? When? I just got here.”

  “You’ve been here since six-thirty. You were out on the sidewalk. I saw you.”

  “Not me, man. What’s going on?”

  Hentz put a hand on Dwight’s shoulder. “Calm down, Major.”

  “James Williams?” Sigrid asked. “The new elevator man?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Just started yesterday.”

  “Okay,” Dwight said, lowering his hackles. “I get it.” He released his hold. “Sorry.”

  Jim Williams straightened his jacket. “But for real, man, what’s happening?”

  Before Sigrid could tell him, her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and signaled for Hentz to finish explaining.

  The uniformed cops returned from the back to report. “Nothing obvious, sir. We need keys to get into those storage bins and look behind stuff.”

  “Forget it,” Hentz told Dwight. “The locks belong to the owners and even Lundigren didn’t have duplicate keys.”

  He sent the three officers to check the nearer buildings to see if any of the night people on duty had watched the garbage pickups earlier and had noticed any activity from this building.

  Sigrid ended her call. “That was Tillie,” she told Hentz. “We’re putting out an APB on Sidney Jackson.”

  “Sidney?” Dwight exclaimed. “The evening man?”

  Sigrid nodded. “My sergeant got in early and started going through the pictures the party guests gave us. There’s a clear shot, time-stamped, of Antoine Clarke opening the elevator cage at ten-ten and again at ten-fourteen, which means that Sidney Jackson doesn’t have an alibi for at least part of the relevant period. That elevator was so crowded, I couldn’t even swear myself who was working it when I got here Saturday night.”

  Hentz pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Like waiters and salesclerks.”

  “Invisible men,” she agreed.

  “Yeah, that could’ve been Sidney I saw out on the sidewalk,” Dwight said. “He has the right build. Haven’t they located that truck yet? Can you give me a car?”

  “Easy, Major,” Sigrid said, realizing that he had not noticed that Lowry had left after taking a call a few minutes ago. From the nod Lowry had given her, the truck had been located and stopped. “Soon as we know anything, you’ll know.”

  The elevator descended and a weary Jani Horvath pulled back the cage just as two buzzes hit their ears. He spotted Williams, glanced at his call board, and said, “She’s all yours, kid. Take her straight up to eight and work your way down.”

  “Yessir,” an eager Williams said.

  “Lieutenant?” one of the uniforms called from the outside door. “The night man across the street says he saw a woman and one of the men from here out by the garbage bags around six-thirty, give or take a few minutes.”

  A sick feeling washed over Dwight as he realized he had missed Deborah by less than twenty minutes.

  “He say who the man was?” Sigrid asked.

  “No, ma’am. Just that he saw them come back in, and then a couple of minutes later the guy came out by himself.”

  “Was he carrying anything? More garbage?”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the young cop said. “He said the guy helped load some of the bags, but he didn’t say if he brought one out with him.”

  Something in the lieutenant’s look made him feel like a complete incompetent.

  “I’ll go back and ask hi
m,” he said hastily.

  “You! Horvath,” Dwight called as the night man headed for the break room.

  “Yeah?”

  “You said you came down here around six-thirty. You sure you didn’t notice anything? Was the outside door open?”

  He shook his white head. “Might’ve been a few minutes before six-thirty, and if that door was open, I’d’ve felt a draft, and I didn’t.”

  Even as they spoke, the outer door opened again and the second porter, Hector Laureano, arrived.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he asked Horvath, following the older man into the break room.

  The young cop was back almost immediately. “No, ma’am,” he told Sigrid. “He came out empty-handed, stayed to help throw the bags in, and then went back in. Said he saw a big guy come out to the sidewalk a few minutes later and then go back in. No woman either time.”

  “Dammit!” Dwight exploded. “They’re still here then! Horvath says Lundigren was the only one who could unlock the stairwell doors from this side. You have to go up to the second-floor service landing to get to the stairs and come down to open either the lobby door or this one. So he’s done something with Deborah and he has to be hiding here somewhere.”

  “You said you found one of her gloves by the outer door,” said Sigrid. “If she stuck it in the door to keep it from locking, maybe she did the same on that door. If so, Jackson could be anywhere in the building. Or he could have been waiting around the corner of the lobby till Horvath left and then walked out the front door.”

  Nevertheless, she sent the troops up on the service elevator to search the stairwell and the hallways. After giving them a description of Sidney Jackson, one man was put on the lobby door and another positioned at the outer door just in case he was still in the building.

  Frustrated and unable to stand around doing nothing, Dwight had combed through the storage area himself, shining the flashlight from ceiling to floor, looking behind anything bigger than a wastebasket that wasn’t locked in one of the cages.

  As he passed by Hentz and Sigrid on his way to check out the front part of the basement again, he saw that Sigrid had her phone pressed to her ear again.

  “They find the truck?” he asked.

  Sigrid shook her head and stepped away to finish listening to what Jim Lowry had to report. No way was she going to tell Dwight Bryant that the truck had been found and that it carried a bag containing Corey Wall’s body.

  “I cut it open so that I didn’t disturb the knot,” Lowry said. “Looks like the poor kid was smashed on the head just like Lundigren. Probably happened around the time he went missing. No rigor anyhow. I’ve called for the crime scene unit, but we’ve gone down another layer of bags below that one and I’m pretty sure it’s nothing but garbage.”

  “Good work, Lowry,” she said. “Keep me informed.”

  In a low voice, she told Sam Hentz what Lowry had found, but before he could comment, they heard Dwight call to them from the service elevator.

  “Look here,” he said and turned back one of the quilted plastic pads that hung from a series of hooks along the top edge of the elevator wall to protect the walls from getting banged by heavy furniture deliveries. “I noticed that one of the grommets wasn’t on its hook, and when I reached up to put it back, the first one slid off and—well, look for yourselves.”

  He turned back the loosened pad and they saw a large blood spatter across the width of the pad.

  Hentz stepped into the car and lifted the rear pad. More blood. Fairly fresh, too. None on the wall, though, which meant that someone had reversed the pads.

  The floor of the elevator was fairly clean, but Dwight pointed his flash to the side wall where it joined the floor. “That grunge in the crack look like blood to y’all?”

  “Call for a crime scene crew,” she told Hentz, “and let’s secure this elevator till they get here.”

  Dwight immediately brought over a chair that stood against the far wall and positioned it so that the door couldn’t close.

  “Major…” Sigrid began.

  “You don’t need to say it,” Dwight said grimly. “I can see it’s not fresh enough to be Deborah’s blood. You reckon it’s from that kid that went missing?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “He came down to go sledding,” Dwight said slowly, piecing together the likely scenario. “And he probably saw Sidney stuffing Antoine in a bag, so Sidney had to stop him, too. Only why you reckon Sidney killed Antoine?”

  “Because Clarke could put him in your apartment at the same time Lundigren was killed. He must have seen people going in and out. Clarke was in early, planning to spend the night because of the predicted snow. Jackson could have told him he needed a bathroom break or something, and while Clarke ran the elevator, Jackson probably intended to duck in and grab those gold pillboxes, thinking their loss could be blamed on Denise Lundigren or some of the party guests. Just his bad luck that Lundigren picked that time to bring back that painted cat. Jackson probably panicked, grabbed up that brass maquette, and hit him as hard as he could. God knows what he hit the Wall kid with. We’ll have the whole basement processed. They’ll turn it up if it’s here.”

  As they spoke, the door to the stairwell was opened from the other side by one of the uniformed officers. “No sign of him here, Lieutenant. You want me to prop this door open?”

  “Yes, please. What about the hallways?”

  “That’s gonna take a little longer. People are going to work, and so far, none of them have seen this Jackson guy today. There’s a Mrs. Wall up on twelve who says she wants to speak to you.”

  Her cool gray eyes met Hentz’s dark blue eyes.

  “Want me to go?”

  She shook her head. “Too soon. I want to talk to Lowry again.”

  Dwight looked around. “Was he that other detective? The one that called Sanitation? Where’d he go?” He took one look at their faces and his own face tightened. “He found the truck, didn’t he?”

  “She’s not there, Major,” Sigrid said. “The boy is, but she’s not.”

  “Then where the hell is she?”

  “If they’re in the building, we’ll find them. I promise.”

  He glared at her, then turned away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To look for some rat holes. That bastard’s worked in this building for almost twenty years. He’s bound to know some we’ve missed.”

  As he strode away, Sigrid said, “Stay with him, Hentz. If he does find Jackson, we don’t want another killing on our hands before we find out what he did with Judge Knott.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  Aside from the regular patrolmen there is the Sanitary Squad, that has to do with enforcing health regulation; the Traffic Squad, that regulates the traffic of the great thoroughfares;… the Boiler Squad, that examines engines, boilers, and engineers.

  —The New New York, 1909

  DWIGHT BRYANT—TUESDAY MORNING (CONTINUED)

  I thought you said you’d already searched here,” Hentz said, following Dwight into the dim and cavernous boiler room.

  “I didn’t go down to the lower level.” Dwight flipped the switch beside the door and frowned at the low-watt bulb that hung from a cord overhead. “I can’t believe Lundigren kept that thing running with no more light than this.”

  He shined his flashlight on the steel steps that led down to the steam boiler. Near the bottom was another wall switch, and this one turned on an array of fluorescent tubes concealed from above by the crossbeams to which the fixtures were attached.

  While Hentz watched from the upper level, Dwight ducked under the many pipes and edged past the boiler into a recess in the wall beneath Hentz’s feet.

  “See anything?” Hentz called when Dwight disappeared from view.

  “Looks like a barrel of rags back here.” Dwight’s voice bounced and echoed off the concrete walls and metal pipes.

  He approached the chest-high barrel cautiously and gave it a shov
e that tipped it over and sent it clanging along the floor. “Nothing but rags,” he called up to Hentz.

  As he stooped to avoid the pipes that crisscrossed overhead, he heard an oddly familiar yet unidentifiable noise carried to his ears by an acoustical trick of the pipes. “Was that you?” he asked Hentz.

  “Was what me?”

  “I don’t know. I thought heard something.” He put his ear close to the return pipes but heard only the faint flow of water. As he started back around the boiler, he noticed a low flush door with simple thumb latch. He stooped to open it and flashed the light inside a space that opened up higher at the back and seemed to terminate in a door secured with a heavy padlock. “Looks like it might have been the coal bin when the boiler was coal-fired,” he said.

  Again, he flashed the light all around and under the antiquated boiler, to no avail.

  “I could’ve sworn this would be the sort of place he would hole up in,” Dwight said.

  As he came back up, he flicked off the bright lights till they were once again in near darkness, and his conviction was stronger than ever. That unexpected noise he had heard while below only strengthened it.

  “You ever go deer hunting?” he asked Hentz.

  “Huh?”

  “Deer can’t count, you know. They’ll stay in the bushes and watch while four guys climb up into a deer stand.” Dwight had gradually lowered his voice till Hentz could barely hear him. “When three guys climb back down and leave, the buck doesn’t know there’s still a man in the stand.”

  “Because deer can’t count?” Hentz asked, humoring him.

  “You got it, pal.” Raising his voice to a normal conversational level, Dwight said, “No, we can cross the boiler room off. He’s not here.”