“All we got,” explained the one on the ground, “is that peenoomatic nailer over there in the corner. This here thing that looks like a Harley without no wheels is the compressor, which if it was an alligator you’d be missing an arm or a leg by now.”
Auburn could certainly not see, among a jumble of tools including several power saws and drills, anything resembling a cartridge nail gun.
They said they’d been working here since nine a.m. and had been absent from the building on their lunch break from noon to one. Although Auburn suspected the roundness of these numbers, he nonetheless recorded them as the best approximation to the truth that he was likely to get. They had heard no gunshot or loud music from above, or any other direction. They had never heard of Conrad Sleate and had never been to the top floor of the building. They had no keys to any part of the building, not even the apartment they were redoing.
As he rode down to the main level, Auburn looked at the list of tenants that Fernsall had given him. Twenty-three suspects, including Fernsall himself, at least in the sense that any one of them could easily have gained access to the eighth floor of the building and thus to Sleate’s unlocked apartment. Interviewing them all would take many hours, and background checks on all of them would cost the department well over two grand. These were upper-level decisions of the type for which he currently needed the approval of his supervisor but that, as a lieutenant, he would have to make for himself.
The last tenant to move in had been there for almost a year. Most likely the killer was someone who had gained access from outside. The disappearance of Sleate’s files suggested a victim of his vitriolic pen, maybe even someone he was blackmailing, unless the gutting of the cabinet had been a blind. In that case those papers might well be at the bottom of the trash chute, along with the weapon, as Kestrel had speculated.
Fernsall, still working in the office, informed him that the trash chute ended at a locked room in the basement, which was emptied every Thursday by a waste disposal service. He took Auburn down for a personal inspection. This being Monday, the accumulation of plastic bags, two of which had burst open on impact, was considerable. After a cursory examination, Auburn decided to leave the task of sorting this mountain of rubbish to Kestrel.
Before leaving the building he checked all four entrances. Each tenant’s apartment key unlocked the door between the outer and inner lobbies and the rear entrance from the parking lot. The two side doors were strictly fire exits, and opening them activated alarms.
From his car Auburn called headquarters to request basic information on W. R. McConnahay and Gayle Van Till, Sleate’s two visitors. According to the city directory, Weldon Russell McConnahay lived with his wife and two teenage sons in the posh Harmony Heights district, and was employed at the newspaper as assistant features editor. Van Till, single and independently wealthy, held an executive position on the local Board of Elections. No wanted notices or outstanding warrants had been posted against either of them.
Since Sleate had still been alive when Van Till had signed into the Spaulding Tower just before noon, Auburn started with her. After parking back at headquarters he hiked, with an Arctic tailwind, the block and a half to the offices of the Board of Elections. Although very little seemed to be happening there today, he was kept waiting for about twenty minutes before being admitted to a large, bare, chilly office where Ms. Van Till was punching computer keys as if she were crushing potato bugs. Without makeup or jewelry, she had the bleak, battered, indomitable look of a medical missionary on leave, or maybe a retired high-school principal.
Auburn showed identification. “I believe you had a meeting with Mr. Conrad Sleate around noon today?”
“Correction. I had an appointment with Mr. Conrad Sleate at noon today.” Ms. Van Till’s voice possessed the unsettling timbre of a dental drill with a faulty transmission.
“May I ask the nature of your business with Mr. Sleate?”
She glared at him as if he had asked her favorite flavor of ice cream. “I guess you can ask. Our business is private and I don’t see why I should discuss it with you or anybody else outside of a courtroom. Why are you asking?”
“Because Mr. Sleate was found shot to death an hour or so after you left the building.”
“Well, I didn’t shoot him,” she said, without turning a hair. She extended both hands in front of her, palms up. “Bring on your paraffin, or whatever you use nowadays to check for powder burns. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even see him.”
“Can you explain that?”
“He didn’t answer his doorbell. He didn’t answer my knock. His radio was blaring so I called him on my cell phone. I heard his phone ringing, but he didn’t answer. Exit Gayle.”
“What about last week when you went to see him? Did you get in then?”
“Sure I did. But he didn’t have his ghetto blaster cranked up then.”
“Before you went up to his apartment today, did the guard at the desk call him to tell him you were on the way?”
“Sure he did. That’s their idea of running a maximum security residence.”
“Sleate answered his phone then. Yet a few minutes later he didn’t answer when you called him on your cell phone. Didn’t it occur to you that something might have happened to him?”
“The main thing that occurred to me was that I was missing my lunch while that old muckraker was sitting in there puffing purple cigarettes and making himself deaf . . .”
Behind the harsh, jagged façade, Auburn was beginning to glimpse the outline of a lonely, vulnerable woman with a quirky sense of humor. “Did you sign out when you left?”
“Come to think of it, I didn’t. I went out the back way instead of going through the lobby again. Pretty suspicious behavior, huh?” Although she didn’t seem in the least concerned that she might be charged with murder, she did loosen up slightly as to her business with Sleate. “He was going to write a column in support of a pet project of mine. Nothing to do with the Board.”
But that was as far as she was willing to go—outside of a courtroom.
From the Board of Elections Auburn proceeded on foot to the newspaper office, this time with a headwind that made his sinuses hurt. He found W.R. McConnahay in a glass-walled cubicle dominated by a computer monitor the size of a billboard. Throughout their interview the images on the screen kept jumping from one configuration to another as editors in other cubicles made additions or changes.
The assistant features editor, portly and phlegmatic, registered his astonishment over Sleate’s death by repeatedly shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite accept the news. “That’s going to make a major change in my life,” he said. “When my present boss moved up and I inherited his position, I also acquired the duty of visiting Sleate twice a week to pick up the copy for his column. I’ve been there at ten A.M. every Monday and Thursday, winter and summer, for the past six years.”
“Isn’t it a little unusual for an editor to visit a writer at home?”
“A little. This branch of journalism has always been sort of a cottage industry. I mean, the nature writer lives and works twenty miles out in the country, the health columnist is a starving resident who puts together her stuff in the doctors’ lounge between deliveries, or autopsies . . . You get the idea. But they e-mail their copy to me.
“Sleate didn’t own a computer and he wouldn’t put anything in the mail. And he never left the building because of his health problems, which may have been mostly in his head for all I know. But the paper couldn’t afford not to play by his rules, because he kept our circulation up during the lulls between political scandals and international crises and increases in the price of gasoline. He wrote out his drafts in pencil and submitted his copy in peacock blue ink. Always as legible as print, always within two or three words of a round eight hundred, and he never missed a deadline.”
“Did he seem his usual self this morning?”
“His usual scrawny, sickly, cynical self. He may actually have managed a smile
, sort of like a python with a full stomach, as I was leaving, but I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Was anybody with him in the apartment when you left?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“There’s a big cabinet in the corner next to his desk.”
“I know it well,” nodded McConnahay. “Always wide open and crammed with little bits of gossip and scandal about everybody in town.”
“When he was found dead early this afternoon, the cabinet was empty.”
McConnahay resumed his slow, persistent head shaking. “There’s material for a couple years’ worth of columns gone west. If you could put your hands on that stuff, you could whittle down your list of suspects to a couple thousand people.”
“Did he get negative feedback—threats—from the public about his columns?”
“I’m sure he did. All his mail came here, and I usually had a bundle of it to deliver to him, but I never opened any of it.”
“He lived in an apartment building with guards . . . never went outside. Did you get the idea that he was afraid of something, or somebody?”
“Absolutely not. He didn’t even lock the door of his apartment, at least when he knew I was coming, because he was too lazy to get up and let me in. Nobody scared that guy. And nobody impressed him, either. If he was presented to the president or the pope he’d say something like, ‘I’ve been following your recent career with considerable interest . . . but hardly with approval.’”
On leaving McConnahay’s office, Auburn went to the newspaper file department in the basement, where an old high-school classmate of his was in charge. For years they had carried on a sham feud, renewed at each of Auburn’s visits. As soon as Auburn appeared at the counter, the bitter raillery began.
“Hey, Auburn, you better either get your hair cut or break down and buy a hat. You look like a turkey trying to fly backwards in a typhoon.”
“You’re a real hoot, Hansen. But did you ever think how much more work you could get done down here if you’d stop putting happy dust up your nose every five minutes?”
When they had both run out of breath and inspiration, Auburn got around to requesting access to Conrad Sleate’s “Local Affairs” columns for the past several months. During the three-quarters of an hour that he spent there skimming scum and filling file cards with notes, it repeatedly occurred to him that as a lieutenant he would probably seldom have occasion to visit this dusty cavern. But his farewell to Hansen lacked none of its usual venom.
Auburn spent his last hour at the office, and three more at home, doing Internet research on tenants of Spaulding Tower and people and institutions that Sleate had assailed in recent columns. At eleven o’clock that night the local news anchor called the late gossip columnist an “investigative reporter,” which Auburn thought was about like calling a suicide bomber a selfless idealist.
Tuesday morning’s paper contained, instead of Conrad Sleate’s usual column, a terse announcement of his death and an exquisitely ambiguous eulogy, signed by W. R. McConnahay, of this “tireless seeker-out of secret shames and purveyor of painful truths.”
Shortly after morning report, Records sent Auburn a batch of background probes on the people he’d interviewed yesterday, as well as one on the slain purveyor of painful truths. As expected, the security guards at Spaulding Towers had spotless records. Both had military histories, Overbeck with the Seabees and DiPalma in the Naval Reserve. Besides her full-time job at the apartment building, DiPalma worked three evenings a week as a personal trainer and self-defense instructor at a women’s health spa.
Aaron Fernsall, who owned one-eighth of Spaulding Towers and sorted the mail, had managed retail stores and fast-food outlets with integrity, if not with conspicuous success, before undertaking his present venture. Kermit Banks and Orrin Enyeart, the comedy team who were remodeling the apartment directly below Sleate’s, owned their business, were licensed and bonded, and had been publicly honored a couple of years ago for volunteer disaster-relief work.
W. R. McConnahay, Sleate’s editor, was one of those citizens who can live in a community for decades without ever deviating far enough from the rut of normal daily existence to leave a trace on the timeline of human history. At least no one knew anything to his discredit.
Some energetic soul in Records had downloaded an intriguing piece of background information on Gayle Van Till. After reading a few lines of it, Auburn remembered with a rush the furor she had created about a year and a half ago by advocating that drivers make a practice of running yellow and even red lights when there was no cross traffic, and no police cruiser in sight.
Her argument went something like this. A driver who brakes suddenly for a yellow traffic signal risks being struck from behind by a less observant or less conscientious driver. Although guilty of no traffic offense, a person who has been rear-ended in such circumstances may be penalized for obeying the law by being marked as accident-prone.
Whether or not the police investigate the collision, and even when no insurance claim is ever filed for the necessary repairs, a record of the accident somehow finds its way into a national data bank. Automobile insurance companies pay hefty fees to gain access to those data. If you get rear-ended more than once within a given period, your insurance premiums will go up and probably stay up.
The conclusion was obvious to Van Till: It’s cheaper to take a chance on getting a ticket by running a yellowish red light, especially when traveling a high-volume highway that’s crossed by a deserted rural side road, than it is to brake and risk paying the penalty in inflated insurance premiums for the rest of your driving years.
As Auburn had good reason to know, Van Till held strong convictions about the privacy and confidentiality of personal information. Her real purpose was to promote legislation prohibiting the collection and transmission of data on innocent parties in traffic collisions. But her strategy backfired. The insurance lobby, augmented by the data-bankers, had thus far squashed any hope of legal control of the practice. That left Van Till looking like an irresponsible crank campaigning for wholesale violation of well-established traffic laws. Although severely censured by police authorities and even threatened with official muzzling, she stubbornly continued her crusade through media blitzes, largely at her own expense.
Auburn went through the stack of file cards he’d filled with notes at the newspaper file room yesterday. Sleate had commented on privacy issues twice in recent weeks, but it wasn’t altogether clear that he agreed with Van Till’s position, or she with his.
While Auburn was updating his computer file on the Sleate murder, Stamaty phoned from his office in the courthouse across the street. “Another strike in the county typing pool, Cy,” he announced. “The report Doc Valentine dictated last night on Sleate’s autopsy may not exist in hard copy until after we both retire. I thought I’d call and give you the high spots.”
Auburn picked up a pen. “Ready when you are.”
“One hollow-point thirty-two-caliber lead pellet plowed through Sleate’s brain stem like an eggbeater. No powder tattooing or scorching of the skin or hair, but lots of emphysema.”
“Are you trying to tell me this guy with a hole in the side of his head smoked himself to death?”
“Pathology lesson, Cy. We’re talking subcutaneous emphysema, not pulmonary. Pockets of gas under the skin around the wound plus no powder marks equals a point-blank shooting with an air gun.”
During the ensuing brief silence, Auburn remembered Gayle Van Till blithely offering her hands to be tested for powder traces.
“That’s really the whole story,” said Stamaty. “I’ll send you a copy whenever the pool thaws out. The bullet’s on the way to the state. Lab reports are pending.”
Auburn went to books and the Internet to refresh his memory about air guns. They were highly favored for target competition because their kick was less erratic than that of a firearm. Also, though far from silent, they weren’t nearly as noisy as weapons with explosive charges. They ha
d never been popular for either hunting or homicide, nor were they even subject to legal regulation in most jurisdictions. But although air rifles and air pistols usually took ammunition smaller than .32 caliber, accidents with them often proved lethal.
Around eleven that morning Kestrel sent him a preliminary report on the investigation of the crime scene, including the empty apartment across the hall and the trash room in the basement. Kestrel had found no weapon, air-powered or otherwise, and no usable latent fingerprints. The even distribution of dust in the vacant apartment made it unlikely that anyone had entered it for several weeks. Although, with one exception, the trash room contained nothing but trash, the catalog of it filled seven pages.
The exception was a nearly new wooden pencil that Kestrel had found lying loose among the plastic bags at the bottom of the chute. It was of the same premium brand as the half dozen pencils lying on Sleate’s desk, and like them, it had been sharpened with a knife. Unlike them, it bore teeth marks.
Teeth marks. As often happened, Auburn couldn’t decide whether Kestrel had given him too much information or too little. He called the lab.
“What’s the deal with this chewed pencil?” he asked.
“Not chewed,” said Kestrel, as if Auburn had misquoted an article of the Constitution. “Bitten—once. Somebody held it clamped in his teeth with the eraser outside.”
“Or her teeth.”
“No. Unless maybe a female gorilla. This biter had a big mouth with big teeth in it.”
“Any idea what this female gorilla was doing with one of Sleate’s pencils in her mouth?”
“Not my field,” replied Kestrel, without a trace of humor. Humor wasn’t his field either.
When Auburn had finished putting all the available data into some kind of order, he sketched out a timetable of events yesterday morning at Spaulding Towers.
The carpenters started working on the seventh floor at nine A.M.
W. R. McConnahay arrived for his regular appointment with Sleate at ten and signed out at ten thirty-five.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine Page 12
