by Blake Banner
“Thank you, Undersheriff, that is very…”
“What’s your precinct, Detective Stone?”
“43rd, in the Bronx. My commanding officer is Deputy Inspector John Newman.”
“See you in an hour and twenty. Name’s Sarah.”
I hung up. Dehan looked at me along her eyes. “All good?”
I nodded once. “Very efficient woman.” I spoke as I punched the address into the GPS. “She’ll see us in an hour and twenty minutes. She’s making inquiries and putting out a BOLO.”
“Great. So what’s wrong?”
I sent Pfenninger the photograph of Cyril, then sighed and shook my head. “I may be wrong…” I said. “We’ll see when we get there. Don’t ask me. It’s a stupid idea. I just have a feeling…”
We arrived an hour and ten minutes later. The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office is not what you would normally associate with a county sheriff. It is a huge, modular construction, set on the edge of the desert to the north of Reno, and looks more like a military HQ from a Star Wars movie than anything else. We left the car in the parking lot, went in to the front desk, gave the deputy our names and, two minutes later, Undersheriff Sarah Pfenninger appeared in a khaki uniform with smartly tapping heels. She was short, sharp and efficient, with very blonde hair pulled back so tight you could almost hear it scream, and very blue eyes that didn’t seem to care how much her hair screamed. She greeted me and shook hands and regarded Dehan without expression.
“Your man popped up right away. Follow me.”
We followed her down a passage, through a door and a busy detectives’ room into an office that had three glass walls through which she could keep an eye on her troops. There she sat down and we sat too. She said, “Can I see some ID?”
We showed her our badges and she sat back in her chair to look at us both.
“He’s your suspect, but he’s on my turf. What’s the story with this guy?”
Dehan said, “He’s a possible suspect in a murder inquiry.”
They both looked at each other a moment. Pfenninger seemed to be waiting. After a moment, she raised her eyebrows. “Your partner already told me that. You want to put some skin on the bones?”
I filled her in with what we had found so far and she listened carefully, with a small frown creasing her brow. When I’d finished, she said, “That’s a pretty weird story. What’s his motive for killing the girl?”
Dehan crossed one long leg over the other. “We don’t know that he did. On the face of it, we just want to eliminate him from our investigation.”
Pfenninger let her eyes rove over Dehan, seemed to find her wanting and turned back to me. “You figure he’s emotionally unstable.”
“It’s possible.”
“Probable.”
I nodded. “Probable.”
“He has big issues with his mother. Could have killed your Sue Benedict out of jealousy.”
I drew breath to answer but Dehan interrupted. “You said his name popped up right away.”
Pfenninger looked at her for a full three slow seconds, with her fingers laced over her belly, before nodding.
“Yup.”
I said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Dehan looked at me in astonishment. Pfenninger raised an eyebrow at me. “How would you know that, Detective Stone?”
Dehan echoed her: “Yeah, Detective Stone, how would you know that?”
I sighed. “A hunch. How did it happen? Did he come here from Europe?”
“I don’t know. You say he disappeared from New York in the early hours of November first, he showed up in Reno on November eighth.”
“How do you know that?”
Her face was totally expressionless. “Keep listening and I’ll tell you.” I heard Dehan snort, but I ignored her. Pfenninger kept talking. “He was lodging at a house on the edge of the desert, Chablis Drive, out by the 395. Landlady said he was quiet. No trouble. Never spoke to nobody. Friday night, that’s November 10th, two days after he arrived, he goes to a building site on the river, by East 2nd Street Bridge. They were putting up a big hotel-casino at the time, and they’d poured a load of concrete that day into the foundations. So your boy gets up on a big pile of rubble, just beside the wet cement, and starts screaming about how life don’t have no meaning no more. The night watchman come running over, shining his flashlight, and he hears a big splash. Your boy had just jumped into the foundations. Wet concrete sucks you down like a quicksand. There ain’t no way out of that. So that’s where he’s buried, in the foundations of the East 2nd Casino Hotel.”
I frowned. “How do you know it was him?”
She gave a small sigh. “How many suicides have you dealt with over the years, Stone?”
I nodded. “A few.”
“Jumpers off bridges? You got some nice jumping bridges in New York.”
Dehan said, “I know where you’re going. It’s true. They always take their damn jackets off.”
“Yup.” She looked at Dehan and nodded. “Took his jacket off and left it lying on the rubble.”
I was shaking my head. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you notify his sister?”
“We didn’t know he had one. When he registered here, he registered as having no next of kin. So there was nobody to notify.”
Dehan said, “He turned up on the Wednesday, found lodgings and the first thing he did was register?”
Pfenninger spread her hands. “What can I tell you? He was depressed, suicidal, maybe he was OCD, how should I know? From what you’ve told me, he was some kind of crazy.”
I puffed my cheeks and drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair. “You have been extremely helpful, Sarah. Can I trouble you for one more thing?”
“It ain’t no trouble. Just my job.”
“The night watchman…”
She opened a file and pulled out a slip of paper. “I figured you’d want to talk to him. He’s in charge of security at the same hotel. Give him a call. He’ll be happy to talk to you. His name’s Joseph White. He’s black. One of them ironies you was talking about.”
We left her watching us leave through the glass walls of her office, with her fingers laced over her belly.
Eleven
The East 2nd Casino Hotel was a sprawling, four story building in red brick and beige that stood directly opposite the Greater Nevada baseball field. I pulled into the underground parking lot, found a space and we took the elevator up to the foyer. There was a lot of brown leather and red carpeting, and just past the reception desk on the right, a huge arch led to three broad steps that took you down into the ninth circle of hell, where all the fruit machines are.
Behind the reception desk there were a pretty young woman and a pretty young man, both in blue suits. He had a burgundy tie and she had a burgundy scarf. They both had very white teeth which they displayed like badges of office.
“Good afternoon, my name is Sally. How can I help you today?” She said that.
I said, “We are police officers from New York. The Sheriff’s Department tells me I can find Joseph White here. I believe he is head of security.”
She picked up the internal phone, dialed three digits and smiled at me with her head on one side while it rang.
“Mr. White? There are two detectives from New York here to see you…” She held my eye while she listened and smiled, then said, “OK, thank you,” and hung up. “He’ll be right down if you’d like to sit down, or have a few games in the casino, or have a refreshing cocktail in the Cavendish Cocktail Lounge.”
We strolled over to a couple of brown leather armchairs and sat. I said, “It’s amazing what they can do with artificial intelligence these days.”
“She was definitely artificial, Stone, but intelligence…?”
I snorted a laugh but didn’t have time to answer, because a tall, athletic man in his sixties had entered the foyer from a broad staircase. He had hair graying at the temples, a dark blue, double-breasted blazer with brass buttons, and gray slac
ks. His black patent shoes were military clean and he had a chest like a sherry cask. He glanced at reception and AI Sally showed him her gleaming teeth and pointed at us. We stood as he approached. Dehan stuck out her hand as he made to reach for mine.
“Mr. White, I am Detective Carmen Dehan of the 43rd Precinct in New York. This is my partner Detective John Stone. I wonder if you could spare us five minutes of your time to talk about Cyril Browne?”
He watched her carefully as she spoke, with a small frown on his brow. When she’d finished, he said, “Cyril who now?”
“Cyril Browne. The man who is part of the foundations of this building.”
His eyebrows went up and his mouth made an ‘O’. He nodded. “Sure, sure. Let’s go up to my office.”
His office was a cubby hole up a short flight of steps. There was no window, but he had a wooden desk, a black imitation leather chair and two chairs for visitors. As he sat, he said, “Can I see some ID?”
We showed him and, as he handed them back, he asked Dehan, “What is it you want to know?”
“Can you tell us exactly what happened that night?”
He leaned back and sighed. “It’s a long time ago, Detective. Ten, twelve years?”
“Twelve years last November. It’s important, or we wouldn’t have come all the way from New York.”
He nodded. “I get that.” His expression became abstracted and he seemed to study the edge of his desk. “It was the craziest suicide you could ever imagine. Still gives me nightmares from time to time.” He looked up and frowned at her. “I just can’t imagine a more horrible way to die.”
I repeated Dehan’s question. “What happened, Joe?”
He glanced at me, then back at his desk. “It was the first week of November, I guess. I don’t recall the exact date…”
“The report says it was the tenth.”
“Yeah, that’s about right. This, what you see here, was just a building site. Early stages. They was just laying down the foundations. There were big heaps of rubble waiting to be taken away, big holes in the ground where they were laying the concrete for the foundations. It was a kind of organized chaos, if you know what I mean.”
I smiled. “Sure.”
“So in all that chaos, as I am sure you can understand, you had not only valuable tools and equipment, you also got the risk of some kid getting in here to drink or take drugs or whatever kids get up to, and getting hurt or injured in the process—or worse. Then the company got to pay out for occupier’s liability, for not making the place safe enough. The world we live in, right? Kid is stupid and gets hurt, the company is liable. Always somebody else’s fault.”
“That’s why they had you there.”
“Every night, there was two of us. We took it in turns to do the rounds, make sure nobody snuck in to take nothing. So that night, must have been ten or ten-thirty. I’m doing my rounds and all of a sudden I start hearing this screaming and shouting. Some kid is going crazy, screaming that life has no meaning no more, that it’s all over, that he just wants to die.
“So I get on my radio and call Sam, and I am running, hell bent for leather toward where I can hear the screaming. It was over…” He twisted around in his chair, pointing awkwardly, “At the north corner, just in from the road a bit. There was a fence up, and there was a big pile of rubble up against the wall, oh, I suppose six or eight feet high, and there was a kid standing on the top of the rubble. He had his jacket in his hand and he was shouting like a mad man.”
Dehan had gone quiet. I asked him, “What did you do?”
“Well, you can imagine that in the dark it wasn’t easy to run, with all that stuff lying around, and them big holes in the ground. They was cordoned off all right, but you could still trip and have a nasty fall. And if you fell in the wet concrete, you was in real trouble. So I was going as fast as I could, shouting to him not to do nothing stupid, that that was wet concrete there, and at the same time trying to make sense to Sam on the radio.”
“Where was Sam?”
“He was in the hut, keeping warm. He never saw nothing.”
“OK.” I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “Let me just make sure I have this straight. This young man was standing in the northwest corner of the site, on a pile of rubble, overlooking a pit that was filled with liquid concrete. Sam was in the hut, so he could see nothing, and you were trying your best to run to the boy, shout to him to be careful, talk on the radio and shine your flashlight both on the boy and on the ground to make sure you didn’t fall. You deserve a medal just for that, Joe. Where, exactly, were you when you were doing all this?”
He had started laughing. “It was a thing to behold, I can tell you. Where was I? As luck would have it, I was at the farthest point. Like you say, he was in the northwest corner, so I must have been in the southeast.”
I sat back. “OK, Joe, I have a clear picture in my mind now. What happened next?”
“Next thing, he just went and jumped in. Craziest thing I ever saw in my life. I can understand a man shooting his brains out. I can understand a man jumping in front of a train, or hanging hisself. Them’s all quick deaths. Jumping off a building, get it over and done with. It’s quick. But jumping into wet cement? There ain’ no way anybody ever is gonna get you out of that. It’s gonna get in your nose and mouth, and your eyes. That is gonna be one bad death. Like being in hell. And slow.” He paused. His face was uncomprehending. His eyes were distressed. “I know the Mob used to do that a lot, but even them, you know? They’d kill you first.”
We were quiet for a moment. Dehan was watching me curiously. I said, “Can you describe the boy to me, Joe?”
He blinked, pulling himself back from his nightmare. “Sure, he was kind of average height, maybe five ten, slim, dark hair. He was wearing dark pants and a dark sweater. That was about all I could see. He looked young, maybe late twenties or early thirties.”
“Can you remember if he said anything in the moment he jumped?”
“Uh…” He stared at the wall. “It was kind’a crazy. He was screaming a lot, making a lot of noise. I was running, trying not to fall…” He shook his head. “No, he sort of went silent. Then there was this horrible splash and he was sinking into the cement.”
“Then you scrambled up the rubble?”
“No. Sam arrived. I was pretty upset. He called the cops. They came about fifteen minutes later. There was no way to save the boy, though he must have took a whole minute or two to die. I was crazy, you know? Trying to find a stick or something to help pull him out. Cops started processing the scene and it was them found his jacket. Seems nuts, don’t it? But the detective told me lots of suicides do that, before they jump, or before they drown themselves, take off their shoes and their jacket. Crazy.”
“But he didn’t take off his shoes.”
“No, not his shoes, just his jacket.” He studied my face for a bit. “Who was he?”
Dehan said, “Cyril Browne. A very unhappy young man.” She hesitated, sighed and said, “Joe, I know it’s easy after all this time to trick yourself into remembering things that you either want to believe or think you ought to believe. So I want you to think very carefully, OK? It seems likely that Cyril either killed a woman in New York, or was framed for her murder. His dying words could be really important. Can you remember with any degree of certainty what he was shouting?”
He seemed to sag in his chair. “Oh, Lord…” He was quiet for a long time, staring at that spot on his desk. “Life had no meaning anymore. I know he kept saying that. He was coming home. I remember he said that a couple of times. She was gone…” He hesitated. “I don’t want to go inventing things, but he might have said he was going home to her. But I really don’t want to say no more because that might be bullshit.”
I looked at Dehan. She was thinking, frowning at the desk. The desk was getting frowned at a lot that afternoon. I said, “You have any more questions, Detective Dehan?”
She looked at me for a moment, her eyes fli
cking around my face. Then she shook her head. “No. No, I think that’s everything.”
I stood, leaned over and shook his hand. “Thanks, Joe. We’ll see ourselves out.”
We made our way down in the elevator, into the dark, echoing parking garage. I pressed the key and our car bleeped. Dehan was looking down at the floor with an odd expression on her face.
“You think he’s down there?”
I went and opened the driver’s door, looked back at her where she was watching me. “If he is, I guess that constitutes concrete evidence that he’s a hardened criminal.”
She frowned. “That’s not funny, Stone.”
“I know. Get in the car, will you? I’m starving.”
She walked toward me. “It’s kind of funny, but your timing is awful.”
She got in and we drove out into the bright, freezing afternoon. As we emerged from the garage, my phone pinged. It was an email. I pulled it from my pocket and handed it to her. “Have a look, will you?”
She swiped the screen a couple of times and said, “It’s from the inspector.” She glanced at me. “Cyril’s financials.” She looked back at the screen and spoke absently. “I guess they’re pretty much irrelevant now.”
After that, she was quiet for a while, reading, swiping occasionally, then reading some more.
“That’s odd.”
I glanced at her as I turned onto South Wells Avenue. “What is?”
She frowned out the windshield at the long road ahead. “He disappeared from New York in the early hours of November 1st. He showed up in Reno November 8th and killed himself November 10th.”
“Yeah, so?”
“He booked a ticket on October fifteenth, flying from San Francisco to Geneva on November 12th.”
We were quiet for the length of the avenue. I turned right into Plumb Lane and then right again into a large shopping mall with a parking lot. There I saw a bar called Shenanigan’s Old English Pub and decided the gods were smiling on me that day. I parked outside and we went in. Dehan was still reading Cyril’s financial records on my phone.
