AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He found a different guard on duty in the main lobby now, a young skinhead whose name tag read “Golnicky."

  "Hicks is at dinner,” Golnicky informed him. “He'll be back at seven."

  "Anybody else but you two on duty tonight?"

  "No, sir, just me and him from four to midnight."

  Auburn was studying Golnicky's uniform. It consisted of a white shirt, narrow black tie, black slacks, and a gray jacket with patches on the shoulders identifying the Spahn Agency. “What caliber side arm is that?"

  "Thirty-two."

  "Is there any way you could leave here for a few minutes—come upstairs with me and take a look at something?"

  "Yes, sir. It's about time for me to make my rounds anyway.” He led Auburn to one of two elevators that were standing open and put a key into a slot in the control panel before punching the knob for the tenth floor. “Did they really shoot this guy right here in the building?"

  "That's the way it looks. Did you know him?"

  "Just to see him coming through every day. What time did he get shot?"

  "We don't know that yet. Did you hear anything?"

  "Like a shot? You wouldn't. Not in this place."

  When they got to the office, Golnicky had a hard time keeping his eyes off the corpse long enough to examine the uniform jacket and cap. “That's not one of ours,” he said, holding the sleeve of his own jacket out for comparison. He took off his cap and showed Auburn that the detailing and the maker's name were different.

  "Can you get from here to the Underwood Apartments without going outside?” asked Auburn.

  "No, sir, you'd have to go out the main entrance, hang a left along the street to DeWire, and then another left."

  Stamaty put down his camera and made a notation on a clipboard. “Cy, if you're going to see the wife we might as well go together. Can you wait while I bag his hands?"

  After enclosing the dead man's hands in plastic bags, Stamaty stripped off his gloves, picked up his raincoat, and tucked a fat notebook into an inside pocket. They left Kestrel in charge.

  Three minutes’ travel in the wind and sleet had them dripping and gasping by the time they arrived at the Canavalts’ apartment. Auburn's ring was answered by Mrs. Canavalt herself, a thin woman in her fifties whose hair, with the rich ivory color of gold turning to silver, swirled in disarray around her shoulders. Her features looked haggard and worn despite a freshly applied layer of makeup, including lipstick the color of a cut rose that is due to be thrown out.

  He introduced himself and Stamaty and expressed sympathy and regret that they had to question her while her grief was still fresh. She nodded her understanding and invited them to leave their coats in the entrance hall before conducting them to the living room. She was evidently in a state of shock, her responses automatic.

  The apartment had been lavishly but tastefully decorated by professionals, with lots of gold tissue and blond wood. It displayed the dreary harmony and order of a dwelling place inhabited by middle-aged people without children or grandchildren. In one of the plush chairs sat a distinguished-looking man with a shot glass half full of pale amber liquid at his elbow.

  "Mr. Portman is our lawyer,” explained Mrs. Canavalt. “I called him as soon as I got back from the office."

  Barry Portman acknowledged their greetings with a lordly nod but made no move to get up. “You can direct any questions you have to me,” he said. “I'm an old friend of the family, and I'll be helping Henrietta with any arrangements that need to be made."

  Although Auburn had once aspired to a legal career himself, his decision to go instead into law enforcement had engendered a gradually strengthening antipathy to lawyers in general and pompous oafs like this one in particular. Disregarding the opening Portman had just given him, he addressed his questions to Mrs. Canavalt.

  "I know you've already made a statement,” he said, “but we'd like you to go over everything just once more. Could you tell us what happened this afternoon, as you experienced it?"

  "As I experienced it? Why, all I know is that a policeman suddenly appeared on my doorstep and said that B. J. had been killed and would I come and identify the body?"

  Auburn hoped Officer Schottel hadn't acted quite so callously as she made it sound. “When was the last time you saw your husband or talked to him?"

  "This morning, a little before nine, when he left for the office."

  "We don't know yet just what happened, but most homicides are committed by people known to their victims.” Out of the corner of his eye, Auburn could see the lawyer glowering bleakly at him, ready to intervene if he overstepped the bounds of propriety. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill your husband?"

  "Dozens,” she said with a wry smirk. “I'm sure you read the papers. They've been screaming for his—his blood for months."

  "Do you know of any personal enemies? Anyone who had a particular grudge against your husband, or who'd made threats against his life?"

  "No. But B. J. wouldn't have talked about things like that to me. I'm afraid he never took me very seriously."

  "How can you say that, Henrietta?” objected Portman. “You were his whole life, and you know it."

  "Oh sure, his bird in a gilded cage.” She swept heavily bejeweled hands in a broad arc to take in the sumptuous decor around her. “But when I helped him at the office he wouldn't even let me turn on a computer because Simms might not like it."

  "That's because Simms has been running the business for him for years. B. J. always knew where the money was, but he never had the patience to stop and count it."

  "We're interested in reaching Mr. Simms as soon as possible,” said Auburn.

  "He's at home,” said Mrs. Canavalt. “I just talked to him a couple of minutes ago. He and I never got along very well, but somebody had to tell him what happened. He said he left work early this afternoon because he had a dental appointment.” Auburn checked with her to be sure he had Simms's correct phone number.

  He and Stamaty obtained answers to a few more routine questions, and Stamaty exchanged cards with Portman as they discussed procedures for the release of the body by the coroner after the mandatory autopsy had been completed. Then they went back through the bitter, blustery night to the Bossart Tower. Hicks, the guard they'd seen on their first arrival, was now on duty again at the security desk near the elevators.

  Auburn stayed in the lobby to interview Hicks while Stamaty went back up to the homicide scene. Hicks hadn't seen any stranger wearing a guard's uniform in the building that afternoon. He hadn't heard anything that could have been a gunshot.

  Apparently the three shifts of guards at the Bossart Tower served a largely cosmetic function. Security was mainly concentrated on the luxury apartments that occupied the eleventh to the sixteenth floors. The elevators would open on those levels only in response to keys held by tenants. Other levels were open to the public not only from the elevators but also from either of two stairwells. In addition, the mezzanine, which housed Hartline Savings and Trust, was accessible day and night from the parking garage next door. A visitor to the building who, like Auburn, had parked in the garage could take an elevator from the mezzanine to the tenth floor and then leave the building by retracing that route without ever passing through the lobby.

  Deciding that he would only be in the way if he returned to Canavalt's office, Auburn took an elevator up one floor from the lobby to the mezzanine level so as to get back to his car without further exposure to the elements. His way led him past the entrance to the bank, now closed for the day except for two automatic teller machines projecting into the hall, and along a suspended walk that traversed a floodlit forest of imitation tropical foliage.

  Before leaving the garage he called Simms and arranged to meet him at his home at eight P.M. That left him about forty minutes to grab some dinner at a fast-food mill along the way.

  Simms occupied a townhouse in the Phoenix District, not far from downtown. The man who answered Auburn's rin
g looked considerably older than he'd expected, and his speech was slurred, as if his tongue had turned to leather. “I'm not drunk,” he assured Auburn. “I spent an hour at the dentist's this afternoon, and the local hasn't worn off yet."

  He welcomed Auburn to his bachelor lodgings with stiff cordiality. His manner betrayed no emotional response whatsoever to the recent murder of his employer, but then Auburn suspected that he was a pretty cold fish by nature. His living room possessed all the comfort and charm of the customer waiting area at a transmission shop.

  "What time was your dental appointment?” Auburn asked when they were settled in leather armchairs wreathed in dust.

  "Three thirty. I left work around three. My dentist's office is just up the street here in the Phoenix Medical Building. He found something cracked, so I didn't get out of there until almost five."

  "And came on home here from the dentist's?"

  "Yes. B. J. knew I wouldn't be coming back after my appointment. He didn't make me punch a time clock."

  "How long had you been working for him?"

  Simms's eyes blinked once before he generated an answer. “Eleven years and five months."

  "Were you aware that he was expecting any visitors at the office this afternoon?"

  "No, but then I wasn't his secretary. My job is to keep the books, bill the customers, pay subcontractors and vendors and Uncle Sam, and watch the cash flow. B. J. did his own marketing and made his own appointments."

  "Was it unusual for him to be at the office after five?"

  "Not really."

  "Who knew you wouldn't be there after three o'clock today?"

  "Just B. J. and the people at the dentist's office."

  "Are you aware of any personal or political enemies who might have been motivated to kill him?"

  "No, but there again I didn't know all that much about his personal life or his political activities—except what I read in the papers."

  "Is there anything in the office that somebody might want to steal?"

  "Just a little petty cash. Mrs. Canavalt said that hadn't been touched when she called."

  "I understand she works at the office sometimes."

  "As I said, I don't do secretary work. Sometimes she helped B. J. when he got behind in his correspondence. He wasn't one to spend money on temporary help when he could get somebody to work for him for nothing."

  After leaving Simms, Auburn phoned in to headquarters to report on his activities and find out whether there were any fresh developments in the case. There weren't. He filed requests for records searches and background probes on the Jenclaires, Simms, the Canavalts, and their lawyer Portman, who seemed to be on pretty chummy terms with the newly widowed Henrietta.

  * * * *

  The weather next morning was as bleak as ever. The sleet had stopped, but roads and sidewalks now lay under a treacherous glaze of ice. The mournful howl of sirens was heard downtown at intervals of a half hour or so all through the day.

  Stamaty had e-mailed a preliminary autopsy report on Canavalt. Death had been due to a single gunshot fired at almost point-blank range from a .32 caliber handgun. The bullet had passed completely through the left ventricle of the heart, causing massive and instantly fatal hemorrhage. Both the bullet and the weapon found at the scene were currently under study at the regional ballistics laboratory. The forensic pathologist had tentatively set the time of death at four thirty P.M. Drug and toxicology studies were pending.

  Somebody in Records had done an excellent job of assembling a dossier on Benjamin John Canavalt, age fifty-seven. Most of the material had apparently come from Internet sites featuring old newspaper articles. Canavalt had started in the waste disposal and salvage business in the early 1970s with a little capital and a lot of gall. In that era of rampant ecologic hysteria, he had opened a chain of so-called recycling centers, which were quite simply salvage operations that paid out absolutely nothing for the rich harvest of lead, copper, aluminum, and scrap iron that a gullible public brought their way.

  Later, Canavalt had branched out into toxic waste transport and disposal, activities that eventually brought him into conflict with the very activists to whom he owed his early success. His landfills and incinerators had aroused the anger and indignation of citizens’ groups that claimed that his methods of handling lead, mercury, PCBs, asbestos, Freon, and fiberglass resins were actually returning those pollutants to the environment instead of removing them.

  Canavalt's most flagrant offense to date had been his manner of recycling petroleum-contaminated soil in open fields, which involved repeated disking and tilling. This venting of the soil was supposed to lead to volatilization and biodegradation of petroleum residues, but a vocal minority claimed that, to the contrary, it resulted in irreversible contamination of the underlying aquifer.

  During the past three years Canavalt had begun dabbling in local politics and had evidently garnered enough party support to run for state senator in the next election, with Barry Portman as his campaign chairman. His candidacy had been vehemently opposed by environmental activists, and in particular an arch-conservative organization called the Coalition for Peaceful Renewal. The moving spirit behind CPR was Luke Grantley, a retired high school basketball coach and the recently elected president of the county Board of Education.

  Records reviews on the Jenclaires had turned up nothing of interest. She was a clerk at a clock and camera shop, and he worked as a draftsman for an engineering firm. E. Bartlett Simms, fifty-two, had a degree in accounting and finance. Before joining Canavalt Industries, he had managed the local branch of a public income tax preparation agency. The law firm to which Barry Portman, Esq., belonged specialized in divorce, child custody, and adoption cases. Portman was fifty-seven and unmarried, a past president of the local bar association, and currently chairman of its ethics committee. Henrietta Canavalt née Speedwell had taught school before, and for a short time after, she married B. J.

  Auburn was digesting all these pieces of information and merging them into a single file when he got a call from the desk downstairs announcing the unexpected arrival of Barry Portman. Moments later the lawyer swept in, set his briefcase on the floor, slipped off his coat, and settled into a chair as if he were in his own office and Auburn were the visitor.

  Then fixing Auburn with what he probably thought was a mesmeric gaze, he opened the briefcase and withdrew a manila envelope.

  "You won't want to touch these until your lab people have gone over them,” was his opening remark. “I'm sorry to say I already did touch two of them before it occurred to me that they might be evidence."

  "What is this exactly?” asked Auburn, taking the envelope from him but making no move to open it.

  "You can judge that for yourself. Henrietta Canavalt and I were going through B. J.'s personal papers at his office this morning and I came across a group of five letters he'd apparently received within the past two or three months. I'm assuming they're that recent because they refer to his candidacy for the state senate."

  Auburn turned back the flap of the envelope and allowed the letters to slide out on his desk without touching them. He used a pencil eraser to spread them out for examination. There were five of them in all, each consisting of two or three pages, computer-printed, single-spaced, on one side of letter-sized sheets of plain white paper. They were undated. All were addressed to B.J. Canavalt and all bore the computer-printed signature “Ira Ventura."

  "Envelopes?” asked Auburn.

  "We couldn't find them."

  "Do you know who Ventura is?"

  "No, and he's not in the phone book, or the city directory either."

  Auburn scanned the letters, reading enough of each to get the general flavor. The language was flamboyant and rhetorical, sprinkled with French and Latin quotations, erupting occasionally into bombast. The writer accused Canavalt of lying, cheating, manipulating public officials, and engaging in a morally objectionable business operation while posing as a public benefactor. The ostens
ible purpose of all the letters was to dissuade him from running for public office. Two of them contained more or less explicit death threats.

  "Had Canavalt mentioned these letters to his wife?” asked Auburn.

  "No. But, as she told you last evening, he kept things like this to himself."

  "He hadn't mentioned them to you either?"

  "No, certainly not."

  "I understand you were managing his campaign for state senate."

  "That was still highly tentative. The elections are almost a year away, and he hadn't even been nominated yet."

  Auburn leaned to one side so that the light struck the sheets obliquely. “I can make out the impressions of numbers on some of these pages,” he said. “Apparently, somebody wrote on something that was lying on top of them. Was that you?"

  "No, I'm sure it wasn't,” replied Portman after a moment's reflection.

  "Can we keep these?"

  "Of course. That's why I brought them to you."

  Auburn gave him a receipt for the letters. “Would we have a set of your fingerprints on file?"

  "You should. Taken a few years ago when I was bonded as trustee for a legal aid society. By the way, when Henrietta and I went up to the office this morning we found Simms slogging away at his computer exactly as if nothing had happened. But that figures. B. J. used to say Simms was the grand national chairman of the Society for the Prevention of Change."

  "What's Simms's status legally now, do you know?"

  "I certainly do know.” Portman stood up and picked up his coat. “B. J. never incorporated his business. He was sole proprietor, and by the terms of his will the whole thing passes to Henrietta. She's keeping Simms on for the time being, but I've advised her to sell the business. Without a feisty fire-eater like B. J. behind it, it'll go down in a couple of years, and then she won't be able to give it away."

  "There's something I didn't want to ask you yesterday in front of Mrs. Canavalt,” said Auburn. “What are the chances that Canavalt was involved in some romantic entanglement?"