Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series)

by Robert B. Lowe

  “Yeah. It just came over the radio five minutes ago,” said McGuire. “Judge…umm…Gilbert. Miriam Gilbert. Municipal Court. They just found her. She croaked during the night in her chambers. Duffy probably picked it up on your scanner.”

  “But, Duffy’s in San Rafael,” said Lee as warning sirens screeched in his head. As he glanced up, he watched Ray Pilmann leave his office and begin the long waddle to Lee’s desk.

  • • •

  MORE COPS THAN usual were milling around the dingy, cavernous third-floor corridor of the San Francisco Hall of Justice. Lee knew that behind the courtrooms was a rabbit warren of dark passageways and windowless offices. The area was where the judges and their staffs worked and was off limits to the public. Judge Gilbert’s chambers would be buried there someplace.

  Lee pulled out his thin notepad from the back of his waistband. He was wearing faded jeans, a V-neck maroon sweater over a black T-shirt and a beat-up pair of Asics running shoes. He had come to the newsroom planning to sit at his computer all day. As a feature writer, Lee might have to spend one day on a ranch with a horse whisperer and the next following a chimney sweep down a smoke vent. So his dress code was flexible. Lee checked his watch, a Rexall special. He had 15 minutes to the 10 a.m. deadline.

  Two patrolmen standing outside a doorway in black uniforms looked particularly forbidding. Lee walked over.

  “Enzo Lee of the News,” he said. “May I go in there?”

  The cops looked at Lee’s informal attire. They exchanged looks. The bigger one with huge ears, an overdeveloped schnoz and a smug expression smiled insolently and shook his head.

  Lee tried again. “Is this where the judge is? The dead one?”

  They looked at each other again. The big one shrugged and grinned again, a little more malevolently.

  Hell, thought Lee, becoming annoyed. These bastards were going to make it rough and he didn’t have time for it. Pilmann was going to rip him a new one if he didn’t come back with this story.

  “What the hell is the problem here?” he said. “I’m the goddamn Press! I wanna talk to somebody!”

  Dumbocop looked absolutely gleeful now. He grunted mirthfully as he and his buddy began advancing in a pincer movement. Lee tried to think of something to say or somewhere to move.

  “Ah, Christ,” Lee muttered to himself as he slowly gave ground. A slow-motion image flashed into his mind of the two cops flailing away with their sticks while Lee absorbed the punishment. How had the day turned so rotten?

  “Atten-SHUN!”

  The cops froze. Lee hadn’t heard any footsteps or seen the door open. But, in the doorway behind the pair stood a black woman, wearing an amused smile and with her hands on her hips. Lee guessed she was in her late 30s, about his own age. She wore her hair in a profusion of shoulder-length braids and had on glasses with black rims, a dark gray pants suit and held a radio in her right hand.

  “What’s up, boys!” she said, glancing left and then right at the patrolmen in a quick assessment of the situation. She chuckled as she shook her head. The uniformed cops gave her a sour look and grimaced in a poor imitation of a smile.

  She walked into the hallway, letting the door close behind her. Lee left the sentinels behind and walked beside her, savoring the protection.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” said Lee when they were out of earshot of the two uniformed watchdogs. “Enzo Lee of the News.”

  The woman gave Lee a critical once over. “Where’s Duffy?” she demanded.

  “Brush fire,” said Lee. “Somewhere near San Rafael. You know how quickly townhouses can go up. Stuff burns like dry tinder.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, looking at the reporter even more closely now, starting with the worn Asics and moving up to his face. She raised both eyebrows approvingly.

  Lee had wavy, jet black hair that was beginning to gray at the temples. He was a lean six footer with fine but not delicate features. The Chinese blood from his mother and the European influence of his father had made Lee into something of an ethnic Rorschach. In his travels, natives in such disparate locales as Hong Kong, Istanbul, Guadalajara and Maui would often mistake him for one of their own. A gay friend had once told Lee he looked like the product of a marriage between the actors Sylvester Stallone and B.D. Wong.

  “So…ahh…they sent me down to cover the dead judge,” Lee explained. “What’s her name? Is it Gilbert?”

  “You asking me to confirm the story, right, Scoop?” said the woman. “Don’t try to bullshit me now.”

  Lee glanced at his watch. He was out of time for bullshitting or anything else. His only hope was the direct approach.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got it right. I’ve got a deadline in ten minutes. I’m desperate to confirm the story.”

  She thought for a minute.

  “Okay, Scoop. You’re right. The law clerk of Judge Miriam Gilbert found the judge dead in her chambers when she got to work this morning. We don’t know the cause of death. Stick around, I’ll probably have more in thirty.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Lee as he walked toward the nearest pay phone, scribbling on his notepad as he went. “And thanks. Say, what’s your name?”

  “Detective Bobbie Connors. Spelled like the tennis player.”

  • • •

  “ENZO!” THE VOICE of Ray Pilmann burst through the telephone and into his head.

  “Ray!” Lee replied. From the bank of telephones at one end, the third-floor corridor of the San Francisco Hall of Justice seemed like a massive tunnel. Looking toward the opposite end more than a city block away, Lee could see a cross section of the city’s citizenry, bored jurors, anxious defendants and tired lawyers waiting on the plain wood benches that lined the dungeon-like corridor.

  Lee noticed a few heads turn his way. It sounded like Pilmann was at his apoplectic worst. Some of the reporters had actually started a pool, betting on the time of day that Pilmann finally would have a coronary. Lee considered it wishful thinking, like throwing money into a wishing well. He had contributed thirty bucks.

  “What kind of bullshit story was that about the judge… whatshername?” said Pilmann

  “Gilbert.”

  “Yeah. What is this bullshit?”

  “It’s called deadline reporting, Ray. You knew the situation. It’s called busting my ass to get any kind of story at all.”

  “Yeah. But what did she die from? Was she killed? Did she kill herself? You can’t tell from this story. Was she hacked to death or did she choke on a piece of meat? What’s the story for the next edition?”

  Christ, thought Lee. The story was turning into a four-alarm disaster. The next edition?

  “Uhh…well…it looks like natural causes,” said Lee. “No obvious signs of violence or trauma. She was at her desk. It looks like she had a heart attack or a stroke or something.”

  “Natural causes?” said Pilmann. “What about suicide? She was a widow, right? Was she depressed?”

  “Her husband died – I don’t know - years ago,” said Lee. “Her clerk said she seemed fine. There was no note.”

  “What about drugs? Did they find any drugs?”

  Lee delayed answering for a few seconds. “They found half a bottle of Darvon in her purse,” he finally admitted.

  “What?” yelled Pilmann. “They find drugs and you aren’t going to write about it?”

  “C’mon, Ray. It’s Darvon, a prescription painkiller. A lot of people use it. Besides, it was more than half full. If she wanted to kill herself, why leave most of the bottle?”

  “Half empty, half full! What is this, a goddamn riddle?” Pilmann was shouting now. “It sounds like suicide to me! She’s lonely! On the bench all day! Married to her work! No one to go home to at night! You got to work in the goddamn drugs! Get the suicide angle and have it ready for the next edition!”

  “Do you want me to announce the Second Coming, too?” said Lee.

  “Yeah! If you got time, yeah! But get this fucking story first!” Pilm
ann slammed down the phone. Lee sighed, then banged his hand against the faux marble partition harder than he intended. The sound echoed down the dim corridor and more people looked his way. Lee put in a quarter to call back the paper. He still wasn’t sure when the next deadline was.

  Chapter 3

  THE FIRST THING that Lee noticed about Sarah Armstrong when he returned to the News newsroom from an extended coffee break was the way she primped her hair, running her hand through the short brown hair styled to slant along her forehead and graze her left eye. She had high cheekbones, almost a model’s face. He guessed that she had a smile that could light up a room. But, Lee could tell he’d have to wait to see it – if he ever did - because her lips were compressed in a manner that suggested impatience, annoyance or both. Her eyes were gray, luminous yet direct. Lee guessed she could be hell on department store clerks and uncooperative reporters.

  The other thing that Lee noticed was that she was sitting in his chair. Seeing a stranger sitting at his desk amid the clutter of notepads, phone messages, press releases, and with the partially written story about the pierced-body parts record holder on the computer screen, made him nervous.

  “You’re in my chair,” he said

  “Are you Enzo Lee?” She spoke briskly and in an irritated tone.

  “No. I’m Duffy. Who are you?”

  “I’m Sarah Armstrong.” She looked puzzled and miffed. “I wanted to talk to Enzo Lee and they told me to wait here.”

  “Okay. I was just kidding. You’ve got the right man. But, I don’t have much time. I’m on deadline. And…do you mind if I sit there?”

  “By all means.”

  As she stood up, Lee took stock quickly. Medium height. Slender but full breasted. She was wearing a moss green sweater that reached her mid-thigh, black pants tapered at the ankle and slipper-like black shoes. She moved quickly, efficiently. He guessed she was 30. Lack of confidence didn’t seem to be her problem.

  While Armstrong walked through the space on one side of the desk, he went around the other side and sat down. Lee clicked his half-written story off the computer screen. She took the chair opposite his desk and folded her arms across her chest, her posture ramrod straight.

  “Okay,” said Lee. “Let me guess. You want to talk about Judge Miriam Gilbert.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Join the crowd.” Lee nodded at pink message slips strewn about his desk. In the story that had hit the newsracks the previous afternoon, Lee had complied with Ray Pilmann’s instructions and mentioned the half-empty bottle of Darvon prominently in the story. His article said pointedly that the police had not eliminated suicide as the cause of death.

  The messages were from friends and acquaintances of Miriam Gilbert, irate about any speculation that the judge had taken her own life. His phone had been ringing off the hook when he arrived early in the morning. This was the price he was paying for letting himself be sucked into this story. Pilmann had said to tell them all to fuck off. Lee had finally instructed the receptionist to refer all his calls to the city editor. He considered all this Pilmann’s fault anyway.

  “Look. Every word in that story is true,” said Lee. He started gathering up the messages, forming a small mound in the center of his desk.

  “I know,” said Armstrong.

  “You do?”

  “I know she had a bottle of Darvon with her. She always did. She had migraines and her doctor prescribed it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Lee made a show of sweeping the messages into his wastebasket.

  “And, she didn’t have much of a life outside of her work.”

  “Well, that’s what I wrote,” said Lee. He began to fiddle with his computer. He looked up at the newsroom clock.

  “What you didn’t say was that she was an incredibly happy woman who valued her work,” said Armstrong, showing no response to his impatience. “She felt very fulfilled. She was finding ways to speed up the courts. That’s what she had been working on so hard. She was looking to the future.”

  “Okay, I give up,” said Lee. “What are you? Her psychic? Her personal trainer?”

  “I’m her niece. I guess…I just wish you had found out more about her. You read this, and it’s just so cut and dried. You reduce her to six facts and make her seem so lonely and…almost afraid. That just wasn’t her at all.”

  Armstrong was silent for a moment. She stared at the wall of the newsroom.

  “Dammit!” Her fist crashed on the end of Lee’s desk so suddenly that he involuntarily jumped out of this chair before catching himself and sitting back down. “You don’t care! It was a mistake to come here.”

  Lee was trying to think of something to say when Armstrong stood abruptly and walked quickly to the door of the newsroom, her shoulders back and her head held high. As she passed the copydesk, all the old geezers stopped what they were doing and looked.

  Lee watched her disappear out the doorway. A couple of the copy editors looked his way. Lee shrugged. Then he turned to his computer. What had she expected, anyway? A retraction? An admission that he was a creep?

  After staring at the pulsating cursor for a minute, Lee stood up and walked over to the windows facing 4th Street.

  He waited until she walked out of the building’s front entrance. Armstrong stopped at the curb. Her head turned left, then right. Then she walked purposefully across the four-lane street.

  ***

  THE BURLY GERMAN with long blond hair had slimjimmed the door and hotwired the ignition in less than three minutes. With any luck, the stolen vehicle report wouldn’t show up in the police computer until midday.

  Hans Dietrich had waited patiently since six in the morning for Sarah Armstrong to emerge from her home. He had stolen the maroon van the night before from one of the dark, quiet residential neighborhoods in the Sunset district.

  When Sarah Armstrong came out of the house Dietrich got a good look. She was attractive. He knew she was a lawyer but she was dressed casually. She moved athletically. Maybe a tennis or soccer player in her youth. Dietrich filed all this in his mind as she drove away in a yellow BMW and he followed.

  When Armstrong parked across the street from the newspaper building and headed for the entrance, Dietrich parked the van with the engine running a half block from the building entrance and waited with a hunter’s watchfulness. It was a half an hour before he saw her emerge again. He could see that she had no idea that she had been followed or that she had any reason to be afraid. As he pulled the stolen van away from the curb, Dietrich saw her crossing the street quickly.

  As Dietrich drew near her and shifted into second gear, he saw the terrified expression on Armstrong’s face as she looked at the oncoming van. She began sprinting to reach the other side. Dietrich twisted the steering wheel hard to the right and floored the accelerator.

  Chapter 4

  LEE TOOK THE stairs three at a time. By the time he had run through the lobby and out into the morning sun, a cluster of people surrounded the figure sprawled on the asphalt. Someone had placed a jacket under her head. Armstrong was moaning as she struggled to lift herself up onto her elbows. Lee moved between two pressmen who wore gray uniforms streaked with ink. He knelt on the pavement beside Sarah, put his hands on her upper arms and pressed her down.

  “Don’t move anything,” he said. “Just stay down. It’s okay to lie here.” She was looking at him but didn’t seem to recognize him. Still, she relaxed and let him push her back down on the asphalt. Then, she grimaced and writhed as pain shot through the shock.

  “Call 911. Right now!” Lee told the pressman on his left. As the pressman trotted back across the street to find a telephone, Lee turned back to Armstrong.

  “They’ll be here in no time. They’ll take you to the hospital. We need to find out what’s been hurt.” He spoke calmly but insistently. Her eyes were closed. Her forehead was furrowed in pain and she was biting her lip. But she nodded in agreement.

  Her last-minute sprint had taken her out of the va
n’s direct path but the driver had swerved hard and sideswiped her. Lee had lost sight of her behind the van, but guessed that she had been knocked into one of the cars parked along the street before hitting the ground.

  He continued holding one of her arms as he looked her over. He saw no bruises or scrapes around her face or head. Her pants were torn on the outside of her left leg where she must have hit the street. He could see some blood and scraped skin, but it wasn’t as bad as he had imagined.

  It wasn’t until the paramedics had taken Sarah Armstrong away to San Francisco General that Lee thought to ask the people who had gathered to watch if anyone had taken down the license number or gotten a look at the driver. One of the pressmen volunteered that the van was a Chrysler with tinted windows and that he thought the driver was a woman or a man with long hair.

  It was after noon when the hospital finally released Armstrong. By then, Lee had argued with Pilmann over a hospital pay phone about the body-piercing story. The News readers would have to remain ignorant of the amazing facts for another day. The emergency room at the hospital was a barely controlled bedlam of wailing children, broken limbs, high fevers and bandaged cuts and burns.

  Lee hadn’t actually planned to spend three hours in the San Francisco General emergency room. However, once the nurses realized his presence was somehow related to the patient being treated for scrapes and contusions, and x-rayed to ensure her bones and joints remained in their original, undamaged condition, he had no choice.

  First he was ordered to buy her a pair of oversized sweatpants and a T-shirt. Then he became the designated keeper of Armstrong’s jacket and purse. Lee couldn’t resist a quick peek at her driver’s license. It revealed that she was 32 and that she lived on Sutter Street, in an area not too far from San Francisco’s upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood. Finally, when it became clear no one else was there to ferry her home, Lee became the presumptive chauffeur.

  Lee had just exhausted the hospital’s meager supply of Time magazines when Armstrong came out in a wheelchair adjusted so that her left leg stuck straight out. She held a pair of wooden crutches and a brown pill container. She looked alert but exhausted.