The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries)

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Did they...I mean, did anything happen to the backup cop?” Nate asked.

  “There was an Internal Affairs investigation, and he was forced to retire, with full benefits.”

  “That’s it? Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  We drove on in silence.

  There was a little more to that story, of course. Griffith had come to our house when I was in middle school, theoretically to apologize for not being there that night. He’d sat down in our living room, in the little apartment above the comic book store, and said he was sorry, that he had been a bad officer and a bad human being. His face was covered in broken blood vessels, and his fingers shook as he spoke. My kindhearted father said nothing, just escorted him out without a word. Rory started to cry, and I went back into the bedroom we shared and punched a hole in the wall. The day after that I’d found the boxing gym.

  Stateville Correctional Facility was a gloomy, sprawling place: more of a campus than a single building, with no apparent pattern to the layout. The whole place was made mostly out of those big sand-colored bricks that somehow manage to leech away even the mild charm that red brick buildings usually muster. I hadn’t been there before, but there were signs everywhere outside the gates, and I managed to find my way through the chain link fence to the visitor’s parking area. I left Nate in the Jeep with a couple of magazines I’d scrounged from the backseat and Rory’s old copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. If he wanted other reading material, he should have brought his own.

  I’d called ahead, but I still had to show my ID and my investigation license to about three different people before I was ushered into an honest-to-goodness interview room. I got the sense that someone – probably Sarabeth – had called and put in a good word for me, and I was grateful. Every time I underestimate Sarabeth, she does something like this to remind me why she’s a good cop. Or at the very least, a good friend.

  Taper was usually housed in the prison’s big claim to fame: the panopticon, a big circular building where the bars on the cells faced inward and a single guard tower rose in the middle, theoretically able to view all cells at once. A hundred years ago the panopticon was the cutting edge in prison design, but the model was problematic, and in the age of closed-circuit video cameras it seemed like more of an antique gimmick than a viable architectural phenomenon.

  Taper had been pulled from his cell earlier that day and placed in visitor holding, so I only had to wait a few minutes in the interview room, a tiny, brightly lit cube divided by a pain of glass. Each side of the glass had a chair on it, although the chair on the other side was bolted to the floor. The room smelled like antiseptic, linoleum paste, and body odors both ancient and fresh. I sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and waited for the guard to bring in Taper.

  They came in eight minutes later, Mason Taper shuffling along in his cheap prison sneakers and chains. Wordlessly, the guard transferred the locks on Taper’s chains to a big metal staple that was also bolted into the table. When he was locked in, Mason and I looked each other over for a long, quiet moment. He had buzzed gray hair and a face that drooped with wrinkles, like a Shar-Pei. The research I’d done on his crimes suggested he was in his early sixties, but he looked at least a decade older than that. His eyes were too light, beyond gray and leaning more towards silver. A prominent scar crossed one cheek, and I would bet that it was fairly recent: the stitches had been jagged and sloppy, done by a disinterested prison doc, possibly while the patient was thrashing around.

  While I was studying him, Mason was regarding me thoughtfully, tilting his head and sucking on his teeth. It took effort, but I managed not to fidget uncomfortably. At one point my hand half-rose to rest on my belly, but I suppressed that, too.

  “Hi,” I said finally. “I’m Lena Dane.”

  He nodded, unimpressed with that. I decided to cut through the formalities. “Did your eyes give you trouble when you were working?” I asked. “Too easy for witnesses to remember?”

  Taper blinked those eyes at me, surprised. “They did. I usually wore sunglasses, or later contact lenses, to cover them.”

  “Oh.” We sat for a moment in silence, while he looked at me genially. It was unnerving as hell. I’d expected him to be at least a little nuts, or maybe a slavering pervert like I’d arrested back when I’d worked the drunk tank at County Jail. I wasn’t used to criminals who just...watched me. Except for the cold eyes, he looked like an quiet grandfather, the kind of guys who sit at McDonalds on weekday mornings, drinking coffee and complaining about gas prices.

  “Ms. Dane,” he said with exaggerated patience, “what is it you wanted to ask me about?”

  “Jason Anderson.” This was one place where Jason had to use his real name, thank goodness. Taper didn’t react when I said the name; just continued to stare at me with benign interest. “I spoke to the prison, and I understand he came to visit you a few months ago. You haven’t had another visitor since then, so I’m guessing you remember.”

  “I do.”

  “May I ask why you granted Anderson the interview? You had turned down every other request for the previous three years.”

  Taper sighed elaborately, folding his hands in his lap. His fingernails, I noticed, were spotless. How does one keep a nice manicure in prison?

  “At first I expect my tolerance for the meeting was mostly the result of an old man’s ego. He was full of talk of making a film based on my life, you know.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I recognized his features.”

  That wasn’t what I’d expected to hear. “You’d met before?”

  Taper waved a hand. “No, no. He was a child when I was imprisoned. No, I recognized his face, his-” he automatically raised a hand to gesture at his own face, but the chain stopped him before he got too far—“cheekbones, I suppose. And those green eyes.” Looking at my expression, Taper chuckled. “I see you haven’t done your homework on me, Ms. Dane.”

  Scott Trevors had gotten on this man’s bad side, and I could see how: Trevors was the kind of alpha intellectual who would have insisted on being the smartest one in the room, and Taper wouldn’t like that. Luckily, I don’t have a penis, so I don’t feel the need to jump into a pissing contest. “No, I guess I haven’t,” I said with a shrug. “You knew Jason Anderson’s parents or something?” I was pretty sure Taper wasn’t Jason’s father. They looked nothing alike. Even the shape of their bodies was different.

  Mason smiled, and for a second I saw it: the reptile beneath the benign-looking old man. “His father. I killed him.”

  Taper was obviously expecting some sort of dramatic reaction from me, but I kept my face expressionless. I may not have had a lot of time to do my homework, but I’d seen the list of all the murders the police had accused or even suspected Mason Taper of committing. “You’ve never killed a man named Anderson,” I said in a bored voice.

  “Not out there, no,” Taper admitted with a smile. “It was in here.”

  Oh.

  28. A Bang-Up Angle

  When was this?” I asked casually.

  Taper gave a little shrug, making the chains on his wrists clatter together. “Thirty years or so ago. He was the big fish when I arrived.” I saw the mean glint of self-satisfaction. He might not look it now, but for awhile there, Taper had been the big fish.

  “Okay, I believe you. But why did Jason Anderson want to talk to you?” I asked. “Was he angry? He wanted revenge?”

  Taper’s face soured. “Those things, I could understand. But no, Anderson really did come to pitch me. He knew who I was, and thought our...connection might be a selling point for the film studios.”

  I sat back in my chair, unable to keep the disgust off my face. “‘A biography written by the son of one of his victims,’ that kind of thing?”

  Taper nodded. “What a douchebag,” I said without thinking.

  Taper threw his head back and laughed, a booming, merry sound that seemed to go on for minutes. The guard shifted hi
s feet a little nervously, but didn’t interfere as Taper’s laugh eventually dissolved into guffaws and finally broke off. When he looked back at me there were tears of laughter in his odd pale eyes. “You know,” he said, bending his head so he could wipe them away with the back of a chained hand, “He really was.”

  I saw it: the tiniest little flinch, a moment of still uncertainty when he very specifically didn’t meet my eyes.

  “You know that he’s dead,” I said softly. “How would you know that?”

  Taper shrugged dismissively. “One hears things.”

  I shook my head. “No. He was killed in LA. The memorial service was reported in one crappy little newspaper, and it didn’t even use his real name. But you knew he was dead.”

  Taper met my eyes, not flinching now. He was utterly still. “I think we’re done here,” he said finally. “Thanks for the change of pace. And for the laugh.”

  “No.” My voice was too harsh, and the guard glared my way. Quieter, I said, “No. I want to know how you found out that Jason Anderson is dead.” If I’d had more time, I would have let him stew. But Jason Anderson’s killer was following me right now, and the longer I worked the case without catching him, the more in danger I was, and the more trouble I’d be in with Toby.

  Taper didn’t react to the implied accusation, so I pressed harder. “You’re in prison, but people can always get messages around in a prison,” I said slowly. “Someone still had to send it to you, though. Who was it?”

  Taper looked at me impassively. Strike one. I needed to switch tactics and come back to it, or I was going to get kicked out of here with nothing. “What did you tell Jason? About the screenplay?”

  For the first time, Taper’s facade cracked, just a little. “I answered all his questions,” he said tonelessly. “He came for two long interviews, two days in a row, and I told him whatever he wanted to know. I owed him that much.”

  I snorted. “You owed him? You make yourself sound so noble, for a guy who spent twenty years murdering people. How are you any better than a slimy ball of jackass like Jason Anderson?”

  “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “Don’t try to get a rise out of me. I get enough of that in here.”

  Strike two, I thought. But Taper added nastily, “Jason Anderson was a bottom-feeding piece of garbage, a weak little man with weak little needs that consumed his weak little mind.”

  “He never killed anyone, though,” I needled.

  Taper blew out a breath and shook his head a little. “What’s so terrible about killing people for money? I did it in Vietnam. I was good at it, I had experience, and it didn’t bother me a bit.”

  “You make it sound like you were selling used cars.”

  He blinked at me, taken aback. “Well, I would like to think killing people was better than that.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Did you order someone to kill Jason Anderson?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell him something worth killing over?”

  Taper paused, tilting his head to the side in thought. “No,” he said pensively. “And if I were you I would stop trying to figure out what Jason knew that got him killed. I don’t think he had the balls to find information like that.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know why else someone would kill him.”

  “Really?” Taper gave me a disappointed look. Strike three. “Why does anyone ever kill douchebags?”

  I frowned. Why, indeed.

  The guard stepped forward to let me know I was out of time. Taper said I could return anytime for another visit, an offer I did not entirely find welcoming. The guy had been perfectly civil, even cooperative, but his eyes still gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  By the time I made it back through security and to the Jeep Nate was practically bouncing up and down in his seat. I didn’t even get all the way to my door before he started asking questions.

  “What did he say? Did he tell you anything about Jason? Did he remember him?”

  “Whoa, there.” I slid—well, lumbered, considering my shifted center of gravity—into my seat and started the car. “Calm down, Nate. What do you young people say? ‘Chillax?’”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Nobody says that anymore.”

  “Oh, man, I’m behind on the vernacular again?”

  “Lena,” he wheedled, “Selena. Friend. What did Taper say?”

  I frowned, pulling out onto the highway. “I think he said I’ve been barking up the wrong tree.” I related the conversation to him, as best I could remember. Nate didn’t seem surprised when I told him his grandfather had been a convict. I guess he was prepared to hear just about anything about Jason Anderson, at this point.

  “So what does all that mean for the case?” Nate asked.

  “Well, Taper seemed to think that Jason only talked to him because he was pitching his slimy screenplay. No offense,” I added.

  Nate shrugged. “Does it seem like I’ve got a lot of illusions about the guy at this point?”

  I bobbed my head to acknowledge the point. “Anyway, Taper killed your grandfather in prison—uh, sorry about that, I guess—and Jason thought that would be a bang-up angle to get his screenplay sold. I’m guessing that’s what he meant when he told Starla he had something really original in mind.”

  “What a tool,” Nate said disgustedly.

  I shot him a smile. “I agree. But being a tool isn’t worth killing over.”

  “Okay...” Nate said, “And why are we barking up the wrong tree again?”

  “I’ve been barking up the wrong tree. You’ve been busy being a well-rounded, wholesome American teenager. Right?”

  Nate rolled his eyes at me, looking the part. “Right.”

  “Because all this time, I’ve been thinking that Jason was killed-”

  “And you were attacked,” Nate supplied.

  “And I was attacked,” I continued, “because of something that Jason knew. But if Jason wasn’t following a killer, or digging into a crime, then why kill him at all?”

  “Oh. How do we find out?”

  I grinned across the seat at him. “We go back to detective basics. Who benefits from Jason Anderson’s death?”

  “Well, not me or Tom...”

  “Obviously.”

  “Starla does. She gets the insurance money.”

  “Good. But Starla hired me when she already had the money free and clear. Why would she hire me if she killed Jason?”

  “Good point.”

  I frowned, feeling a little guilty about this line of discussion. “Besides, I just don’t see her doing it. Her concern for Jason when I first met her seemed real. She really loved him.”

  “But isn’t she an actress?”

  “Nice thought, but trust me, she’s not that good.”

  “But I can’t think of anyone else who benefits from Jason’s death.”

  I thought it over for a moment, then shook my head. “Neither can I.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Well, we’re going to have to stop to pee.”

  “Again?”

  I glared at him. “Then you’ll continue being a wholesome All-American teenager. One who doesn’t skip school to play junior investigator. I need to think about it for awhile.”

  “You know, Robin never had to put up with this crap from Batman.”

  My mouth gaped open and I almost swerved the car, staring at him. Nate just smiled at me serenely. Then we both started laughing.

  29. Way to Hang in There

  By the time I fed Nate and drove him back up to the Chicago suburbs, it was nearly mid-afternoon. The skies were still overcast, but the temperature had climbed a dozen degrees, so I peeled off my leather jacket and tossed it in the back seat of the sedan. Then, on a whim, I went over and knocked on Delilah Harker’s door. Very softly.

  The door creaked open about a foot and I saw a baby’s head peeking out. Then the baby disappeared, and popped back into view again. Behind the door. In front of the door.
By now he was laughing hysterically, and I played along, putting on a huge surprise face for each round of peek-a-boo.

  After a few minutes Aidan erupted into mad baby giggles, and Delilah finally reached down and scooped him up. She slung him on a hip and opened the door all the way. “Hey,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Oof. He’s getting so big.” Eyeing my stomach, she added, “As are you.”

  “Har har,” I said, wrinkling my nose at her. “You got a minute?”

  “Of course. Come on in.”

  I followed Delilah into the now-familiar front room, which was anchored by two big cream-colored leather couches that didn’t look at all like her style. Between the couches there were enough toys scattered on the floor to fill the Jeep. “Take a seat,” she said, nodding at the couch. She put the baby on the floor, and he crawled happily into the nearest pile of toys. “What’s up?”

  I sat. Delilah and I had had coffee a few times since I’d first knocked on her door, usually when I was on my way to or from driving Nate home from Great Dane. I’d learned that she was a graphic designer, that she worked from home during the bits and pieces of her day when the baby slept, and that she kept up this grueling routine by fueling herself daily with so much coffee and diet Mountain Dew that she’d quit breastfeeding just to keep the baby safe from the caffeine. Oh, and that she’d designed her tattoos herself.

  “Actually, I have a few more questions about Jason Anderson,” I admitted. Delilah stiffened just the tiniest bit, and I felt a little bad. Lots of people come to regret sleeping with someone, but Delilah had me literally knocking on her door to remind her of her mistake. Again. But I pushed on. “It turns out he was in town a couple of weeks before he died.”

  “In Chicago?” Delilah asked in surprise.

  “Yeah. Only I’ve seen his credit card bill, and there was no hotel on there,” I explained. “I was just wondering if you know of any friends he might still have in the city, who might have put him up.”