Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  She began with a circuit of the house, starting in the basement, ending on the second floor. She was struck by how little David Loogan had left behind. Clean laundry in the dryer in the basement. A few shirts and a sport jacket in the bedroom closet. Papers in the small office off the living room: bills, half-edited manuscripts for Gray Streets.

  She knew Loogan had rented the house. The neighbors had supplied the name of the owner, a history professor on sabbatical, doing research at an institute in Frankfurt. Loogan had slept in the man’s bed, eaten off his plates, made use of his office; apparently he had brought little of his own into the house. There were no boxes of mementos, no records of his past.

  Elizabeth lingered for a moment in Loogan’s bedroom. She imagined him there, hurriedly packing as the EMTs worked downstairs. What would he have done if someone had decided to come up and investigate? She looked to the window—a long drop, a sprained ankle at least, maybe a broken leg. Not a good way out. He would have been trapped here. Yet he had stayed in the house with Beccanti, had done his best to bind the man’s wounds.

  She descended to the living room, where the copper scent of blood hung in the air. She surveyed the room, trying to work out what had happened. Beccanti had driven to Loogan’s house; they had found his car parked across the street. He had come in through the window. The sliced screen told its own story—that was Beccanti’s M.O.

  Where was Loogan when Beccanti climbed through his window? The covers on the bed upstairs were thrown back. Had Loogan been asleep?

  She had trouble making sense of it that way. Imagine Loogan awakened by an intruder. He creeps down the stairs. Fine. But when does he acquire the knife? Was he sleeping with it under his pillow?

  It made far more sense if she assumed Beccanti’s killer had hidden in the downstairs office. She turned a slow circle, letting her gaze pass over the office doorway, the lamp, the chair, the sofa. There was Beccanti’s blood, a pattern for her to read. She had seen his body in the hospital morgue; she knew the location of his wounds. Put the killer in the office in the dark, give him a knife, and everything fell into place. Imagine Beccanti climbing through the window, moving to the center of the living room. He’s near the floor lamp; maybe he’s about to switch it on. His back is to the doorway of the office. The killer seizes Beccanti’s hair, runs the blade across his throat.

  He misses the carotid arteries; they’re harder to find than most people suppose. Beccanti slumps, catches himself against the back of the chair. Leaves some of his blood there. He turns to face his attacker, barely has time to register the knife before it sinks into his abdomen. He doubles over, draws himself up again, bracing himself against the chair. The knife strikes three more times before it lets him be. Retreating, he falls over backward. The knife is in his stomach. He has the strength to draw it out, to roll over, to crawl on hands and knees to the sofa. Somehow he pulls himself up, manages to sit; the knife ends up beside him.

  And what about his attacker? There are two possibilities. Loogan is the attacker and he’s had a change of heart; he does what he can now to stop the bleeding. Or the attacker is someone else entirely. Someone who was lurking in the office with a knife while Loogan was asleep upstairs.

  You want it to be someone else, Elizabeth thought. You don’t want to believe that David Loogan would slice a man’s throat and stab him four times.

  She looked up at the framed photograph over the fireplace: paper leaves, bits of colored glass. She touched the beads of her necklace.

  “An unknown subject,” she said aloud.

  If Beccanti was stabbed by an unknown subject, then his attacker must have fled the house. Did he leave by the front door? No. Why take the long route when there was an open window right there, beckoning him? He would have some of Beccanti’s blood on him; it would be a wonder if he didn’t. But the curtains were spread wide. He could get past them without leaving blood behind.

  What about the screen? Elizabeth crossed to the window. The remnants of the screen were bent inward. They ought to bend outward, if someone had exited that way.

  She brought out her phone and dialed Harvey Mitchum’s number. There was a strain of weariness in his voice when he answered.

  She said, “Something occurred to me, Harv. Wanted to run it by you.” Deference in her tone. It was his crime scene.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “What do you think about sending the window screen to the lab, looking for traces of blood?”

  He paused for a second, working it out. “Beccanti’s blood? You think the killer went out that way?”

  “Could be.”

  “That doesn’t fit with Loogan being the killer.”

  “No.”

  “Besides, the screen was bent toward the inside.” Mitchum had always had a sharp eye.

  “Suppose the killer let himself out,” she said, “and then bent the screen back in.”

  Another pause. “All right, Lizzie. I’ll send somebody to collect it.”

  “Thanks.”

  She punched the cut-off button on her phone and rounded back toward the center of the room. Her eyes were drawn again to the framed photograph over the fireplace. It was a gift from Tom Kristoll, Loogan had told her. He took the frame apart when Kristoll died, hoping to find a hidden message from his friend.

  She stood on tiptoe to take the frame down from the wall. Turned it over in her hands—no secret envelope taped to the back, nothing but the emptiness of the white posterboard backing.

  Her phone rang and she answered it absently, holding the framed photograph with one hand. The voice she heard was one she recognized.

  “Hello, Detective.”

  Carefully, she propped the frame against the stone of the fireplace.

  “Mr. Loogan.”

  “I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he said. “There are things we need to talk about. You’ve been to my house, I imagine.”

  She glanced at the window, struck by the sudden thought that he could be watching her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Someone stabbed Michael Beccanti in my living room.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve been trying to decide what I should say to you. I know how it looks. The knife is from my kitchen. You’ve probably found my fingerprints on it.”

  She moved closer to the window. No sign of him on the street.

  “We’ll find them, if they’re there,” she said.

  “It looks like he broke in and I stabbed him. That’s not what happened.”

  “I believe you, Mr. Loogan.” She said it quietly, half to herself.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said I believe you. But it doesn’t matter what I believe. You need to come in to the department. We’ll talk. You can tell me what really happened.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll come to you then,” she said. “Tell me where you are.”

  His sigh came clearly over the line. “I’m not really in any one place. I guess you’d say I’m on the move. Did you look in Beccanti’s pockets?”

  The question caught her by surprise, but she didn’t let it show in her reply.

  “We always look in their pockets, Mr. Loogan. It’s part of the job.”

  “Did you find a compact disc, or a letter addressed to Tom Kristoll?”

  “No. What’s this about?”

  “I wish I knew. Look, I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I told you I stopped looking for Michael Beccanti, and that’s true. But the reason I stopped is, he found me. He came to my house on the night of Tom’s funeral.”

  She stood up straight, alert. “Go on.”

  “He came in through the window that night. That’s when the screen got slashed. He knew I’d been looking for him. I think he wanted to meet me on his own terms. We were both friends of Tom. He thought we should do something about Tom’s death.”

  “This isn’t a story in Gray Street
s, Mr. Loogan.”

  “You keep telling me that. But more and more it’s getting to look like one. Beccanti went to Tom’s office downtown on Saturday. Just to look around. He didn’t turn up anything. Then last night he went to Tom’s house. He found a letter and a disc, brought them over to show me. I was in bed. He came in through the window again. I think it amused him. We talked upstairs. He wanted to plan our next move. He went downstairs, and I was supposed to get dressed and join him down there.

  “But that’s when it happened. Either someone was watching the house, or someone was following him. And whoever it was, he saw Beccanti climb in through the window. He must have climbed in the same way. He must have been downstairs while Beccanti and I talked. Then, when Beccanti went down, he was waiting with the knife.”

  The energy was draining slowly from Loogan’s voice. “By the time I went down he had gone. Beccanti was bleeding on the sofa. I didn’t think to look in his pockets; I had other things on my mind. But if you didn’t find the disc and the letter, then the killer must have taken them.”

  Elizabeth heard nothing for a long moment. There were no street sounds to fill the silence, no signature of a car’s engine. She imagined him pacing in a barren hotel room.

  Then: “He didn’t say anything, by the way. Beccanti. I think he was in shock. I remember his eyes focused on me a couple of times. I think he knew he was going to die.” She heard him let out a long breath. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. Last night I drove a long way.”

  He went quiet again and she found herself staring at the leaves in the photograph by the fireplace.

  “David,” she said. “You should come in. Get a lawyer. Get this cleared up.”

  “If I come in, can you guarantee I won’t be put under arrest?”

  She hesitated. “I could, if it were up to me.”

  “But it’s not up to you,” he said. “That’s what I thought. I know where I stand. Beccanti’s dead and I’m a suspect. If this were a story in Gray Streets, I’d have to solve the crime on my own. I’d have to find the killer and clear my name.”

  She closed her eyes. “David, this isn’t a story in Gray Streets.”

  “That’s what you say. Look, there’s more I need to tell you, but it’s complicated. It starts with the disc and the letter. The disc had a manuscript on it. The letter was from a blackmailer. Do you have a pen? You’re going to want to write some of this down.”

  Chapter 24

  ELIZABETH’S EYES OPENED. “DID YOU SAY A BLACKMAILER?”

  “I can’t remember the text of the letter exactly, but it started with ‘Dear Mr. Kristoll, I know about Sean Wrentmore.’ Then there was a demand for fifty thousand dollars and an address to send it to in Chicago. The letter was signed, but that won’t help you. Whoever wrote it used a pseudonym: M. L. Black.”

  A few steps took Elizabeth to the kitchen, where she had left her coat.

  “Should I know who Sean Wrentmore is?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Loogan said. “The thing is, there’s something more I haven’t told you. I suppose I should have. Sean Wrentmore’s dead. Have you found a pen?” His tone was matter-of-fact; the energy had returned to his voice.

  She pulled her notebook from her coat. “Yes. Go on.”

  “Sean Wrentmore was a writer. He died on the night of October seventh in Tom Kristoll’s study. Wrentmore wrote a novel and Tom edited the manuscript—that’s the manuscript that was on the disc, by the way. Adrian Tully helped Tom work on the manuscript. There was an argument over the editing and it turned into a fight and Wrentmore was killed. Tully was the one who killed him. Am I going too fast?”

  “I’m keeping up,” she said. “How do you know all this? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Some of it I found out only recently. Some of it I can’t be certain of. I know for sure that Wrentmore’s dead. I believe Tully killed him. If you want to check my story, you should talk to Laura Kristoll. She told me what happened. She heard it from Tom.”

  Elizabeth turned a page in her notebook. “You say you know Sean Wrentmore’s dead. How? And what happened to the body?”

  “Buried in the woods,” Loogan said. “Look, there are a few more things. I can save you some time on Wrentmore. He lived in a condo on Carpenter Road.” He recited the address for her. “He also rented a storage unit, at a place called Self-Storage USA. I think he kept something important there. Unit 401. He gave his neighbor a key and told her that if anything ever happened to him she should go there. The neighbor’s name is Delia Ross. She and I drove out to the storage place on Saturday, but whatever Wrentmore kept there was gone by then. It would be interesting to know if anyone else has gone to that unit recently.”

  Elizabeth tapped her pen against the page. “Did Tom Kristoll bury Sean Wrentmore’s body?”

  “Didn’t I already say that?”

  “Not exactly. Did you help Tom bury the body?”

  His silence stretched so long that she thought he had put down the phone.

  “That’s a question I’d rather not answer,” he said finally.

  “Mr. Loogan, I need to know where to find Sean Wrentmore’s body.”

  “I liked it better when you called me David,” he said. “Look at it from my perspective. If I helped Tom bury the body, I may be the only one alive who knows where it is. That gives me a certain advantage. A certain leverage.”

  “Listen,” she said. “The story you’ve told me is outlandish. This Wrentmore was killed over a manuscript. Without a body, I don’t know how I’ll get anyone to take it seriously.”

  “I’ve said all I’m going to say for now. I think they’ll take it seriously.”

  “I don’t know why I should take it seriously.”

  “Because you believe me.”

  “I haven’t said so. Not about this.”

  “You believe me, and you want to find out who killed Tom,” he said, as if the matter were decided. “I’ve got to go. You’ll do what you think is best.”

  She tried to come up with something that would keep him on the phone.

  “David—” she began.

  But the line had already gone dead.

  Her phone rang again as she drove to the end of Loogan’s block, heading for City Hall. She heard Sarah’s voice when she answered.

  “Hi, Mom. Did he call you?”

  Though she knew what the answer would be, she asked, “Did who call me?”

  “David. He called here a while ago, looking for you. I gave him your cell. He said he didn’t stab that man.”

  Elizabeth drove past lines of bare trees. “He said the same thing to me. I think it’s probably true.”

  “Well, no kidding,” Sarah said. “He’s an editor. He knows how to juggle. It’s not like he’s dangerous or anything.”

  Elizabeth didn’t have to convince anyone to take Sean Wrentmore’s death seriously. Loogan had been right about that.

  She arrived at City Hall to find that Laura Kristoll had just left. She and her lawyer, Rex Chatterjee, had met with Owen McCaleb in his office. The purpose of their visit was to deliver a brief statement—three pages, single-spaced. Elizabeth found a copy waiting on her desk. It was Laura Kristoll’s description of the circumstances of Wrentmore’s death, as they had been related to her by her husband.

  Carter Shan had sat in on the meeting. He told Elizabeth all about it. “I asked her why she didn’t come in sooner,” he said. “But Chatterjee wouldn’t let her answer. He said any further questions should be submitted to his office. Apparently we’re supposed to be grateful that she came in at all. We’re not supposed to notice that she’s been withholding knowledge of a homicide for nearly a month.”

  Elizabeth thought she understood why Laura had decided to make a statement now. Loogan must have warned her that he intended to talk about Sean Wrentmore.

  Shan nodded toward McCaleb’s office. “The chief ’s on the phone with the county prosecutor,” he said. “Chatterjee’s attitude ticked him off. He wants t
o see if any charges can be brought against Laura Kristoll.”

  A moment later, McCaleb appeared at his office door and summoned Elizabeth and Shan inside. He shook his head wearily when Shan asked him about his conversation with the prosecutor.

  “He wants us to treat Laura Kristoll gently,” McCaleb said. “He thinks she’s suffered enough already, given the death of her husband.” He scowled. “He won’t admit it, but I think Chatterjee already talked to him. The two of them went to the same law school.”

  As he sank into the chair behind his desk, Elizabeth began to tell him about the phone call she had received from David Loogan. She passed along Loogan’s version of what had happened at his house the night before. She saved the part about the blackmail letter for last.

  “So someone was blackmailing Tom Kristoll,” McCaleb said. “Someone who knew Sean Wrentmore was dead.”

  “Apparently.”

  Shan picked up the pages of Laura Kristoll’s statement from McCaleb’s desk. “There’s nothing in here about blackmail,” he said.

  “No,” McCaleb said mildly. “Mrs. Kristoll neglected to mention it.”

  “Do we think it’s possible she didn’t know?”

  “It’s possible,” said McCaleb. “We’ll have to ask her.”

  Pointedly, Elizabeth said, “Are we allowed to ask her?”

  McCaleb gave her a bitter smile. “We’ll ask her gently, through her lawyer. In the meantime, we’ll act on the information we’ve been given. Let’s see what we can find out about Sean Wrentmore.”

  The bedroom of Wrentmore’s condominium had a set of vertical blinds along one wall. The blinds covered a sliding glass door opening onto a rectangle of cement that served as a patio.

  Elizabeth stepped out onto the cement. The sun had set and the grass beyond the edge of the patio looked sickly in the dark. A few pine trees made a broken row at the border of Wrentmore’s yard. Beyond those trees, the ground sloped down to the parking lot of a franchise restaurant. The sign above the restaurant’s entrance was a bright half-circle, like an enormous moon hanging low in the sky.