Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  “The details aren’t important,” Elizabeth said again. “The point is Hamlet’s dying. He asks Horatio—”

  “Horatio’s his friend,” Shan explained.

  “He wants Horatio to tell his story,” Elizabeth said. “But Horatio reaches for the poisoned cup. And that’s when he says, ‘I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.’ ”

  “He’s not literally a Roman, he’s a Dane,” Shan said. “Hamlet’s a Dane too. They’re all Danes.”

  “It’s his way of saying he wants to kill himself,” said Elizabeth. “It’s a matter of loyalty. When a Roman nobleman was killed, his followers sometimes committed suicide. It was a point of honor. Horatio feels the same kind of loyalty to Hamlet.”

  Owen McCaleb nodded. “So he kills himself?”

  “He tries to. Hamlet stops him. But that’s the meaning of the line. It’s Horatio’s way of declaring his intention to kill himself.”

  “So the open book is supposed to be a suicide note,” McCaleb said, pacing the office. “But you don’t think Kristoll killed himself. So what we have is a murder made to look like a suicide. And a murderer who quotes Shakespeare.”

  McCaleb reached the doorway and turned back. “And the victim is a man who published a literary magazine. A man who, we have to assume, knew plenty of people capable of quoting Shakespeare. A man who lived in Ann Arbor—a city where, if you order a mocha latte, it gets handed to you by someone who’s read Hamlet.” He stopped suddenly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Eakins has the body?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said.

  “We’ll see what the autopsy tells us,” said McCaleb. “In the meantime, Kristoll’s office stays sealed. And no one talks to the press. I’ve already heard from a reporter at the News. She wanted to know if there was a note. Let’s keep the Shakespeare theory to ourselves.”

  At home, Elizabeth shed her coat and her gun and her cell phone. She boiled water and fixed a cup of herbal tea. She took it into the living room, where the television was on low. Her daughter, Sarah, lay asleep on the couch—a lanky girl of fifteen with sleek black hair like her mother’s. She slept like a girl in a painting, on her side with her hands palm-to-palm beneath her cheek.

  Elizabeth set her cup on an end table and switched off the television. She reached for a quilt to cover her daughter, but just then the girl stirred.

  “You should be in bed,” said Elizabeth.

  “I was waiting up for you.”

  Elizabeth took a seat at the end of the couch, and Sarah turned onto her back and laid her legs across her mother’s lap.

  “I was watching the news,” the girl said. “They had a story about a guy who fell out a window. Is that why you’re late?”

  “That’s why.”

  “He fell six floors. It must have been gross.”

  “You should be in bed.”

  “They were cagey about it. They wouldn’t come out and say he jumped.”

  “They don’t know. There weren’t any witnesses.”

  A pause. Elizabeth tasted her tea.

  “Defenestration,” Sarah said. “That’s what you call it when somebody gets thrown out a window.”

  “It’s not for sure he was thrown.”

  “But he could have been. Do you think he was?”

  “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to talk to the press.”

  “I promise.”

  “It’s possible Tom Kristoll was defenestrated.”

  “Do you have suspects?”

  “It’s too soon to say.”

  “What about his wife? Does he have a wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “I saw her tonight, very briefly,” Elizabeth said. “She came in to identify the body.”

  “But you didn’t question her.”

  “It wasn’t the right time. She was in no condition to answer questions. And she had her lawyer with her.”

  “That’s two strikes.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She’s the wife, and if a man gets killed, you have to suspect the wife. And now she’s hired a lawyer.”

  “I don’t know that she hired him,” Elizabeth said. “Mrs. Kristoll is a professor, and her husband was a publisher. Some people don’t need to go hire lawyers—they already have them, like they have dog walkers or accountants.”

  “Still, it’s two strikes. The only way it could be worse is if she’s having an affair. That would be three strikes. Is she having an affair?”

  “That’s something I’ll have to ask her, if I can pry her away from her lawyer.”

  Elizabeth sipped tea. Sarah rose from the couch and stretched, arms reaching for the ceiling. Lanky was the wrong word, Elizabeth thought. Lithesome was closer to the truth.

  “Are you having an affair?” she asked.

  “Mom,” the girl said. She gave the word an extra syllable.

  “There are two soda cans on the counter by the sink,” Elizabeth said. “One Pepsi and one Mountain Dew. Billy Rydell is a known consumer of Mountain Dew.”

  “I’m not having an affair with Billy Rydell.”

  “Billy Rydell is sixteen,” Elizabeth said. “He’s a roiling sea of hormones. If teenage lust were a crime, it would be my duty to lock him up.”

  “Billy Rydell was here for twenty minutes. We talked about a project for school. Then he asked me to go with him to a movie.”

  “Ah.”

  “A matinee, tomorrow afternoon,” Sarah said. “I told him I’d have to clear it with you. I said you might be able to drive us. He turned pale at the thought. I think he’s afraid you might shoot him.”

  “I might. We’ll have to see about whether I can drive you. It depends.”

  “What does it depend on?”

  “Whether Tom Kristoll was pushed out the window. If he was, it’s going to fill up my afternoon.”

  Sarah went up to her room around one o’clock. Elizabeth followed suit a short time later. She showered, washed and dried her hair, and went to bed. She stared for a while at the window of her bedroom. A streetlight cast the shadows of branches on the curtains. When she slept, there were windows in her dreams.

  She walked down a long corridor with a window at the end, and as she approached she saw the silhouette of a man outside, but when she reached the window he was gone. Through the night, she had variations of the same dream. Once the window was in Tom Kristoll’s office. Once it was in her own room and the man at the window began to climb through. She assumed it was Kristoll, though in the dream his face was hidden in shadow. He beckoned to her as if he wanted to tell her something, but when she got out of bed he began to climb back out through the window. She stepped through to follow him and at first her feet found solid ground on the other side, and then the ground gave way.

  She woke suddenly, her legs jerking the way legs do in dreams about falling. She sat up and looked around. Gray light. Her bedside clock read 7:40. Her cell phone rang on the night table.

  It was McCaleb on the line. “I just heard from Lillian Eakins,” he said. “She won’t have anything official till later, but you better come in. You were right. It wasn’t a suicide.”

  Chapter 8

  “I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO TELL ME.”

  “Is that right?”

  The house on the Huron River was thick with solemn young men and women in their twenties. The majority wore black, though whether it was a matter of style or of mourning would have been difficult to say. Laura Kristoll had her lawyer with her—a pudgy man with weak lips and thick gray hair that swept back from his forehead. She left him behind and invited Elizabeth into her husband’s study.

  “I knew Tom,” Laura said. “I’ve never believed that nonsense about not being able to really know another person. Are you married?”

  “I was,” Elizabeth said.

  “I knew Tom. I know he wasn’t depressed or guilt-ridden or whatever he would have to be to decide to throw himself from the window of his offi
ce. So what you’re here to tell me is that you’ve come to the same conclusion.”

  They sat in upholstered chairs and the afternoon sunlight came through the arched windows at the far end of the room.

  “That’s true,” said Elizabeth. “We believe your husband was the victim of an assault. The medical examiner found an injury that wouldn’t have been caused by the fall—a fracture of the skull at the back of the head that can’t be accounted for, given what we know about the impact and the position of the body. There was swelling at the site of the injury, and that means blood had to have been circulating, his heart had to have been beating—”

  “And it wouldn’t have been, after the fall,” said Laura.

  “No. So we believe your husband received a blow to the head, maybe more than one, at some point before the fall.”

  Laura Kristoll looked away toward the windows. Her golden hair was gathered up and pinned, but a few strands hung free. She trembled and Elizabeth saw the trembling in those strands.

  A tear rolled unobtrusively down Laura’s cheek, and she rose abruptly and crossed the room. There was a box of tissues on the desk. Elizabeth would have liked to let her alone. She thought about looking away; it took discipline to watch. Laura wiped her eyes. She braced herself, head low, elbows locked, palms flat on the surface of the desk. Elizabeth observed nothing false in her movements.

  She came back to her chair. “I apologize,” she said.

  “There’s no need.” Elizabeth nodded toward the closed door of the study. “Do you want me to call for someone?”

  “No. You’ll want to ask me things,” Laura said. “You’ll want to know if my husband had enemies. He didn’t. I can’t think of a reason why anyone would want to kill Tom.”

  “Had he been experiencing any financial trouble? Any large debts?”

  “Nothing like that. The magazine’s doing well.”

  Elizabeth lowered her voice. “Forgive me for asking, but did he have any bad habits? Gambling? Drugs?”

  “He drank. Moderately. Once in a while he drank immoderately.”

  “Was it common for him to be at the office late on a Friday night?”

  “He kept his own hours.”

  “Who else has access to the office?”

  “There are interns going in and out during business hours,” Laura said. “One or two of them have keys. There’s a secretary, Sandy Vogel. But she would have left by five.”

  “I’ll need to talk to her. Anyone else?”

  “Cleaning people. Sandy can give you their names. And I have a key, of course.”

  Elizabeth shifted in her chair. “I have to ask: Where were you yesterday evening?”

  Laura examined the backs of her hands. “Now we come to it,” she said. “Rex wanted to be here when I answered that question.” Rex Chatterjee was the pudgy lawyer. Elizabeth waited.

  “I was at the home of David Loogan,” Laura said. “He’s a friend of mine, and of Tom’s. He’s also an editor for the magazine.”

  “And how would you describe your friendship with Mr. Loogan?” said Elizabeth.

  Laura smiled faintly. “That’s an artful way of asking the question,” she said. “David Loogan and I were intimate. We were having what I suppose you would call an affair.”

  Elizabeth took care not to react. “How long had that been going on?”

  “Not long. Since the end of August. But when I went to see him yesterday he told me he wanted to end it.”

  “Why was that?” Elizabeth asked.

  “He didn’t feel right about it. He was fond of my husband.”

  “Was there something in particular that prompted his decision?”

  “Not that I know of. I see what you’re saying. If that was how he felt, why not break it off sooner?”

  “Why start it in the first place?”

  “He didn’t exactly start it,” Laura said. “I pursued him.”

  “Did your husband know about the affair?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But he might have. What would his attitude have been if he knew?”

  “You’re being artful again,” Laura said. “We weren’t swingers, if that’s what you’re getting at. I wasn’t in the habit of sleeping with my husband’s friends. If he knew, he would have reacted as any man would.”

  “He would have been jealous? Wounded?”

  “Yes.”

  “Angry?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Would he have confronted Mr. Loogan?”

  “I think he would have confronted me. But he never did.” Laura closed her eyes for a moment. “If you think he confronted David and David threw him out a window—well, you don’t know David Loogan.”

  “You don’t believe he’s capable of murder?”

  “I imagine he is. But he wouldn’t kill Tom. He liked Tom.”

  “He might not have set out to do it,” Elizabeth said. “They might have argued—”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Because you know David Loogan.”

  “Yes,” Laura said. “I’m sure that’s difficult for you to understand. All you know about David is that he had an affair with his friend’s wife, and now his friend is dead. You can spin any number of scenarios out of that. He argued with Tom and things got out of control. Or he killed Tom to get him out of the way, so he and I could be together.”

  “That possibility has occurred to me.”

  “Or David and I conspired to kill Tom, so we could be together.”

  “I haven’t suggested that.”

  “No. That would be a crude thing to say at a time like this. You’re not crude. You’re artful.” Laura’s blue eyes were locked on Elizabeth’s. “It doesn’t matter. David didn’t kill Tom. I’m sure of that—and not just because of my judgment of what kind of man David is.”

  “No?”

  “No. It’s because of the timing. They told me last night that Tom died at around twenty after seven.”

  “That’s right,” Elizabeth said. “A driver passing on the street called 911. The call came in at seven twenty-two.”

  “At twenty after seven, David was at home. That’s when I left his house.”

  Chapter 9

  DAVID LOOGAN HAD COFFEE BREWING WHEN ELIZABETH ARRIVED AT HIS house on Sunday evening. She took the seat he offered her—in the living room on the sofa with the wall at her back. He sat in a chair with the front window behind him.

  A floor lamp stood near the chair and outside was the street and the night coming on. Through the window, Elizabeth could see the shape of an elm tree on the front lawn. A few stubborn leaves clung to the branches. The sight was strangely familiar. She had an elm on her lawn at home.

  She turned her attention back to Loogan and saw that he was watching her. He was clean-shaven and his copper-colored hair was trimmed and he had on a blue Oxford shirt and khaki pants. He looked like a man who would never be out of place. Put him anywhere, Elizabeth thought, and he would blend in. Put him in an office or a laboratory—or on a construction site, loping along with a wooden beam balanced on his shoulder.

  She reached for her bag and took out a pen and a notebook.

  “It’s an unusual name,” she said. “Loogan.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Sounds like it might be Dutch.”

  “It may very well be Dutch.”

  “The people I’ve talked to,” she said, “seem to know very little about you.”

  “Really?”

  “Sandy Vogel, for instance. The secretary at Gray Streets. She said you were a cipher.”

  “I haven’t gotten to know Sandy as well as I probably should.”

  “Laura Kristoll—well, she’s a different story. She knows something about you.”

  On the coffee table between them, their cups were untouched. Loogan’s right hand rested on his knee. He raised it and looked at his palm in the light of the floor lamp.

  “I’ve never heard the name Waishkey before,” he said. “What
sort of name is that?”

  “It may very well be Dutch,” Elizabeth said dryly. “Where were you last night?”

  “Last night?”

  “I stopped by here, hoping to speak with you.”

  “I went to visit Laura Kristoll.” Loogan’s attention was focused on his palm. He curled his fingers into a fist.

  “That’s interesting,” Elizabeth said. “What’s the matter with your hand?”

  “It’s nothing. I have a sliver.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It’s a distraction.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “From taking apart a picture frame this morning.”

  “Why were you taking apart a picture frame this morning?”

  “It’s not important,” Loogan said. “I’m sure there are other things you’d like to ask me.”

  “Indulge me.”

  He looked up at a framed photograph above the fireplace. “Tom gave me that,” he said. “I took it apart this morning, then put it back together.”

  The photograph was of flower petals and bits of paper and colored glass. The glass reminded Elizabeth of the beads around her neck.

  “Why would you do that?” she asked him.

  “It’s irrational. I was looking for something.”

  “What?”

  “A message, I suppose. Tom is gone. That’s the only thing I have from him.”

  “You thought there might be a note concealed in the frame?”

  “I told you it was irrational.”

  “Did you find a note?”

  “All I found was this sliver.”

  “You should take it out.”

  “There aren’t any tweezers in this house.”

  Wordlessly, Elizabeth dug through her bag for a pair of tweezers. She crossed to where Loogan was sitting and bent over his open palm. In the lamplight she worried at the sliver with her thumbnail. After a moment she was able to get a grip on it with the tweezers and draw it out.

  Loogan rubbed his palm. “Thank you.”

  She returned to the sofa and dropped the tweezers in her bag. A scent lingered in her memory, the scent of soap and fresh-scrubbed skin.