AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "You're thinking jealous husband?” Portman finished buttoning his coat. “Forget it. B.J. had his failings, but that wasn't one of them."

  After the lawyer had left, Auburn made a note of all the numbers he could discern on any of the letters. Once he turned them over to the forensics lab, he'd have only photocopies to work with, and he doubted that the impressions of the numbers would show up in the copies.

  Up in the lab, Sergeant Kestrel accepted the envelope from him as if it were the original manuscript of The Divine Comedy and made a grand rigmarole out of recording the circumstances under which it had come into Auburn's possession. Then he laid the sheets out in a precise row on a laboratory bench as clean as the counter in a hospital kitchen.

  "Any way of tracing the paper?” asked Auburn.

  "I doubt it. There's no watermark. This is just cheap twenty-pound writing paper, like you can buy anywhere. Not really the best choice for a computer or photocopier."

  He proceeded to survey the letters under a blinding light. “Were you thinking these might be in some kind of cipher?” he asked finally.

  "No, not at all,” said Auburn, fighting an impulse to smile. “I think they're just what they seem to be—crank letters, with a little homicidal menace thrown in. And now that the homicide has actually taken place ... Could you get a set of photocopies down to me yet this morning?"

  Auburn heard his name called on the public address system and used his cell phone to answer the page.

  "Sergeant, are you free to see a walk-in about the Canavalt case?"

  "Did you get a name?"

  "A Mr. Grantley."

  "Send him up to Room K."

  Unlike the Bossart Tower, headquarters had only one elevator. Instead of waiting for it to come to the top floor, Auburn took the back stairs so as to arrive at the waiting area on his level before Luke Grantley got there.

  Ever since becoming president of the Board of Education, Grantley had been embroiled in one controversy after another. His appearance was therefore fully familiar to TV news watchers and newspaper subscribers. Big and bony, he had a broken nose and a broad shock of silvery hair that lay obliquely athwart his brow like the collapsed tin roof of an abandoned house. Auburn met him at the elevator and led him to his office.

  "Thanks for seeing me without an appointment, Officer,” said Grantley. Once in the office, he unbuttoned his windbreaker and eased himself slowly down into the chair Portman had lately vacated with something between a sigh and a groan. “I just got back from out of town late last night and didn't know about B. J. until I saw the news this morning. It upset me so much I canceled a whole day of meetings."

  Auburn sat down behind his desk. “According to the papers,” he said, “you and Canavalt were bitter political opponents."

  "Not bitter. And I'm no politician.” He said it in the same way a used car salesman might tell a whopping lie about a faulty ignition system, and it came across just about as convincingly. “Sure, we differed pretty sharply on some matters of principle. But, as the saying goes, a man who has no enemies can win no battles."

  "Were you and he personally acquainted?"

  "We used to be pretty close when I was coaching because B. J. donated a lot of money for uniforms and equipment."

  "How long has it been since you saw him or talked to him? Or wrote to him?"

  "Oh, months. Maybe a couple years. After he started that poison farm of his down in the southern part of the county, where he was dumping tons of petroleum residue right into the regional water supply, we came to a parting of ways. I just want you to know, though, that I deplore this murder and the spite and lawlessness behind it. And that whoever shot B.J., it wasn't me."

  "We haven't—"

  "Because, let's face it, I've got to be on your list of suspects. But, hey, I've always been a guy that believes in working through the system. I saw enough violence when I was growing up in Jersey to know that it creates ten times more problems than it solves. And anyway, like I said, I was in Baltimore the past couple days with a whole flock of people from the school board.” Again that mendacious tone and the smirk that went with it, challenging Auburn to doubt the alibi Grantley had just given himself. “And if there's any way I can help you find out who did this, please feel free to call on me. I'll even put the whole resources of my organization, CPR, at your disposal if it'll help."

  Grantley hauled his huge frame erect with more groaning. “What are you, about thirty-five?” he asked.

  "Plus one."

  "Well, let me tell you something: After fifty, everything is a compromise. And weather like this plays hell with joints you didn't even know you had. And spending two and a half hours on a bus doesn't help either."

  Just after Grantley left, a messenger brought Auburn photocopies of the five letters from upstairs. He spent ten minutes with various directories in a futile search for Ira Ventura and then took the copies with him to lunch in the canteen. Over chicken giblets and rice he read slowly and carefully through each letter.

  There didn't seem to be much doubt that all five of them had been written by the same hand. The style reminded Auburn of some newspaper editorials—smug, puritanical, and imperious. “You are a simpleton if you think the citizens of this district are going to elect you to public office with your record of dissimulation and chicanery, for once a man in your position has forfeited his bona fides, they can never be reestablished,” read one. “If you persist in your presumptuous pursuit of a seat in the state legislature, your execrable person will infallibly become the corpus dilecti in a murder case,” read another.

  Something didn't jibe here, but Auburn couldn't quite put a finger on it. The stuffy manner, the pretentious choice of words, the stilted phrasing all seemed unnatural, something like prose manufactured by a computer. Canavalt evidently hadn't taken the threats very seriously, yet he had kept the letters. Was it possible that, as Kestrel had suggested, the words printed on the pages concealed some kind of cipher messages?

  After lunch Auburn met with his immediate supervisor, Lieutenant Savage, to review progress on the case.

  "No powder residue on the victim's hands?” asked Savage.

  "No, sir. But the gunshot was instantly fatal, and he wouldn't have had time to put the gun away in the drawer..."

  "I know. Just trying to get the full picture. What do we know about this uniform that was found at the scene?"

  "Nothing so far. Kestrel's still checking on it. Nothing on the weapon yet, either, except that there weren't any latent prints."

  "So what have we got? Somebody walks into Canavalt's office wearing a guard's uniform and probably gloves, whips out a revolver, and shoots him at point-blank range through the heart. Why did the killer leave the uniform and the weapon behind in the office?"

  "I'm assuming he left the uniform there, wrapped around the murder weapon, so we'd find it and conclude that he needed it as a disguise, or at least a cover, to get him into the office."

  "Whereas he was actually someone who was known to the victim?"

  "Exactly. He may never even have put the jacket or the cap on—just carried them in and planted them."

  "Sounds like a bulky load. Maybe brought the uniform stuff and the revolver in a carryall or briefcase?"

  They both reflected in silence for a few moments. Then Savage asked if Auburn had checked on Simms's alibi yet.

  "No, sir. I figure the dentist's office records will keep for a couple of days until we decide if he's a suspect or not. And I haven't checked on Grantley's alibi either, but I'd bet it's airtight. After all, he came all the way in here this morning just to tell me about it."

  "Sure. But if a guy like Grantley was actually behind this murder, he wouldn't be the one to pull the trigger. He'd get some starry-eyed disciple to blow Canavalt away in the name of clean air and pure water."

  Savage spent several minutes studying the threatening letters. “When you dig through all the tommyrot,” he said finally, “the writer is basically telling Can
avalt that if he continues to seek election to the state senate, he'll be murdered. Assuming the writer of the letters is the killer, who stood to lose if Canavalt was elected?"

  "Well, the incumbent, obviously. But that's Veronica Bedell, and they say she's about ready to retire anyway. Not that she couldn't have some starry-eyed disciples too."

  Savage shuffled the photocopies of the letters. “Do we know what address these letters were mailed to?"

  "No. The original sheets had been folded in thirds to fit in a business-sized envelope, but Portman couldn't find the envelopes, and there's no proof they ever actually went through the mail."

  "Or that Canavalt ever saw them. You were saying something about having a consultant look at these?"

  "Well, yes, just because the wording is so odd, with all the Latin and French. Sort of an unofficial consultant is what I had in mind—one of my old high school teachers, Donald Quick. He's retired, but he was always kind of a word detective. Used crossword puzzles and cryptograms in the classroom."

  Savage eyed him askance. “What kind of fee would we be talking about?"

  "No fee. I'm sure he'd jump at the chance to do some verbal sleuthing just for the fun of it. You probably remember that he helped us clear up that apparent suicide a year ago last fall at the nursing home where he lives. I never thought he even knew my first name when I had him in high school, but last year he told me he'd been following my career in the papers all along—"

  "A classic example of the Pygmalion effect."

  "The which effect?"

  "He likes to think you owe your success as a detective to his skill in teaching you French."

  "Spanish."

  "Es lo mismo, no?"

  At this sudden evidence of his boss's unsuspected fluency in Spanish, Auburn did a mental double take and found himself too dumbfounded to come back with an answer in any language.

  Upon returning to his office, he called Mr. Quick's number at the nursing home. Getting no answer after ten rings, he moved on temporarily to other business. He was immersed in a rereading of the letters when his phone rang.

  "Sergeant Auburn, this is Donald Quick. I think you were just trying to reach me? At least my phone says so."

  They arranged a meeting later that afternoon. Lindenhaven Manor was situated in a densely populous residential district that had fallen somewhat from its former glories. Auburn parked in the enclosed court and found his way along corridors flooded with bright orange light and schmaltzy music to Mr. Quick's room in the Independent Living wing.

  "Come in, Sergeant,” said Quick, effusively cordial. He looked pretty much the way he had twenty years ago when he was making Auburn memorize irregular verbs, with bright blue eyes and silvery hair tumbling over his ears and down the back of his neck. “Let me have your coat. I can't wait to learn what this puzzle is that you've brought me."

  They sat at a round table that served Quick as a desk, and Auburn opened his briefcase. “As I mentioned on the phone,” he said, “this is all strictly confidential."

  Mr. Quick's eyes lit up with enthusiasm as Auburn placed the letters on the table. “That's what has me so intrigued. A secret document in Spanish, is it?"

  "These are copies of some letters that I'd like you to look over. They're written in English, but a kind of weird, flowery English, with a lot of French and Latin quotations thrown in. You'll notice that the letters contain some threats. You've probably read something about this particular case in the papers, and you'll be reading more. But all I'm asking for is your impression as to what kind of person wrote these letters, and whether there's something there between the lines, so to speak—"

  "And what all the foreign stuff means, eh?” Quick put on a pair of glasses and began reading through the letters rapidly, nodding now and then and occasionally making little clucking sounds of surprise or indignation. Meanwhile, Auburn sat back in his chair and ran his eye over the titles of the books tightly packed into the bookcase next to the bed, appraised the potted plants flourishing on the windowsill, and admired the vaulted ceiling.

  "I notice,” said Quick at length, “that all five of these letters are signed ‘Ira Ventura.’ Do you know of any such person?"

  "So far we haven't traced anybody by that name."

  "I thought perhaps that would be the case,” said Quick with a coy nod. “Ira ventura is Latin for ‘the wrath to come.’ A Biblical phrase, you know,” he added, in his fussy, pedantic manner.

  He picked up the sheets and riffled their edges, frowning in distress as if he were preparing to hand back a set of particularly unsatisfactory assignments to his class. “There's nothing mysterious about the French,” he said. “Faute de mieux means ‘for want of something better’ and tout de suite is as much as to say ‘P.D.Q.’ And so on through the rest of them. Virtually all of them could be found in any reference book on foreign expressions, maybe in any good English dictionary.

  "Now let's look at the Latin. Take for example this sarcastic remark here at the opening of the second letter—Congratulo te."

  "I think I can figure that one out for myself."

  "Can you?” asked Quick, with arched eyebrows. Something in his manner warned Auburn that he was headed for an F in Latin. “It seems obvious, doesn't it? The meaning is plain enough, I suppose, but the grammar—” He shook his head and made a face as if a vitamin pill had gotten stuck halfway down his throat.

  "It's a deponent verb, you see—active in meaning but passive in form. So it's congratulor, not congratulo. And since it takes the dative and not the accusative, it should be tibi, not te. And, by the way, the more usual classical verb would be the simple gratulor. And then, in a sentence like this it's customary to put the verb last. So what does that come to—four mistakes in the compass of two words?"

  "Suggesting that the writer probably knew French a lot better than Latin."

  Mr. Quick fixed him with a sharp and somewhat aggrieved look, as if Auburn himself had written the faulty letter. “Let's take another one. ‘...Once a man in your position has forfeited his bona fides, they can never be reestablished.’ The writer seems to think that bona fides is plural because it ends in s. But the Latin phrase, which means ‘good faith,’ is singular."

  "Evidently—"

  "Here's another one. In his fifth letter, Mr. Ventura promises the addressee that if he doesn't desist from his political campaigning he will end up as ‘the corpus dilecti in a sensational murder case.’ I'm sure you, as a police officer, know that the proper word here is ‘delicti.’”

  "Do you think it's possible that the mistakes are deliberate?"

  "Of course they are! These mistakes must be deliberate, for the simple reason that a good Latin scholar wouldn't have made them, and anyone who doesn't know Latin, but can write English prose as clean and crisp as this, would have sufficient perspicacity to verify the Latin quips and quotes in a reliable reference work."

  "But do you think there could be some hidden meaning here? I mean, why would anybody write bad Latin on purpose?"

  "Ah,” said Mr. Quick, with an air of dismissing the whole matter from his mind, “there's where the retired language teacher bows out and the professional detective takes over.” He handed back the letters.

  "So you find this writing clean and crisp?” asked Auburn. “I do. The style is turgid and bombastic, of course, but this is the work of a highly literate and cultivated writer. Let me point out just one example. In two of the letters you find the phrase ‘conflict of interests.’ That's the correct expression, with ‘interests’ in the plural, but it's not the way politicians and journalists talk nowadays, nor all the giddy sheep who parrot their babbling—pardon my rude jumbling of metaphors—"

  He rambled on in this vein for several more minutes until Auburn, feeling that he had obtained all the information he was going to, and finding the atmosphere growing oppressively academic, thanked him and took his departure.

  Something Quick had said about reference books had jogged Auburn's memory.
Before leaving the nursing home parking lot, he called the offices of Canavalt Industries in the Bossart Tower and found that E. Bartlett Simms was still on the job. He arranged to meet him there within a half hour.

  Was Simms really, Auburn wondered, such a zealous employee that he went right on working even though the boss was dead and his own future with the company was highly doubtful? Or was he perhaps at this very moment skimming company funds into a private account in anticipation of being given the sack by his new employer? Or concealing the traces of prior embezzlements?

  The only difference Auburn noticed today in the office of Canavalt Industries was the absence of the corpus delicti. Simms barely looked up from his computer as Auburn entered. “Be with you in a moment."

  "That's all right” said Auburn. “Take your time. Actually, I just want to check on a couple of things here in the office."

  He let himself through the gate into the main office, sat down at the second desk, and examined the reference books on the shelf above it. Since Simms seemed in no hurry to finish the task he was working on, Auburn got out his notebook and took down one of the books from the shelf. After working for a few moments, he reached around to the feed tray of the printer on Simms's desk and borrowed a single sheet of paper to make some notes.

  By the time Simms signified his readiness to answer questions, Auburn had finished his investigation and was on the point of leaving.

  "Were you aware that Canavalt had received some letters recently that threatened his life if he went on with his campaign for a seat in the state senate?"

  Simms's poker face gave away nothing. “No, sir. He opened his own mail, and he didn't discuss his personal affairs with me."

  It was nearly dark by the time Auburn got back to headquarters. He went straight to the lab on the top floor and handed the sample of paper from Simms's computer to Kestrel.

  "It's not the same paper,” said Kestrel immediately. “This is twenty-four-pound stock with a Pergamus watermark and about a thirty percent rag content. What's all this scribbling?” With a frown of disapproval he glanced over the list Auburn had made: simpleton 470.8, dissimulation 614.3, execrable 913.12, insupportable 862.16. “Isn't that your handwriting?"