One Clean Shot

by Danielle Girard

  Hal was already walking into the stairwell when she entered the building and followed him up to the mezzanine where they rode an escalator to the lobby.

  At the entrance to the elevator bank was yet another guard who pointed them to the main desk to sign in.

  “We don’t have this kind of protection in the damn jails,” Hal muttered as they opened their badges for the guard at the desk.

  “We’re heading to a homicide scene on thirty-one,” Hailey told him.

  The guard nodded and took Hal’s badge, began to write down his information in slow block letters.

  “You take down the information for the paramedics when they head up to save some guy having a heart attack?” Hal asked, the edge in his voice making the guard halt.

  “I haven’t heard of any heart attack today, officer.” He passed the badge back and reached for hers.

  “Rendell Funds?” Hal said when he was done writing.

  The guard pointed down the hall. “For thirty-one, take any of the elevators in the middle bank.”

  Hal frowned like he was thinking about the thirty-one floors he was about to ride up.

  Hailey walked past him, punched the button in the bank and waited until the orange light lit. Hal got in behind her, stepped to the back of the box, and as the heavy sway of gravity sank in her gut, Hal made a small, suffering groan behind her. She didn’t turn back but watched the yellow lights above the door click off the floors until they stopped on thirty-one with another lurching halt.

  Two uniformed officers stood in the hall, talking. Across the floor, a set of double glass doors read Smith Barney in large blue block letters.

  “The building’s on rollers,” one of them was saying. “If there’s a big quake, the whole thing just slides around.”

  The other one looked around. “I don’t want to be up here when that shit’s going on.”

  “Better than the whole thing breaking in half. That’s what would happen without the rollers.”

  “One of you should be inside,” Hal barked.

  Both stood at attention. “There’s an officer inside, Inspector.”

  “Then, go back to the station. Go do something else. Don’t sit up here fucking around,” he mumbled and walked past.

  “He doesn’t like heights,” Hailey said.

  A length of yellow crime scene tape stretched across the top of the doorway and Hailey ducked beneath it, past a brass plaque on the wall beside the door that read, “Harvey Rendell, Rendell Funds.”

  Inside, Roger Sampers was heading up the evidence collection. His bald head and hairless face looked a strange shade of yellow under the office’s halogen lights. A moment later, he crossed to her. “I got the cork.”

  Hailey saw Hal in the other room.

  “Talk later?” Roger said as though sensing her unease.

  “Yeah.”

  Hal watched them.

  Roger stooped to talk to a tech collecting evidence around the secretary’s desk with a red Dirt Devil.

  Hailey joined Hal beside the corpse.

  Rendell sat in his chair, his head lolled back, mouth open, eyes closed like he was sleeping. He was a huge man—close to three hundred pounds.

  Shelby Tate was taking photographs.

  “Hey, Shelby.”

  “Hailey, good to see you. Been missing you at our dinners.”

  “I’ll get back one of these days,” Hailey said.

  “I hope so.”

  “So, can you tell us how he died?” Hal interrupted.

  Shelby gave Hal a sideways glance. “Secretary thought it was a heart attack until she saw the bottle.”

  “Bottle?”

  Shelby nodded to the table where a plastic evidence bag sat on the desk. Inside was an orange pill bottle, empty.

  No prescription sticker on the outside.

  “He had a pill caught in the back of his throat. I think it was Halcion,” Shelby said.

  “Halcion—that’s—”

  “A heavy narcotic,” Hal said with almost the same tone he’d used with the officers in the hall.

  Shelby raised her eyebrows and turned to store her camera in a grey canvas bag.

  “I was going to say it was the same stuff used on the Dennigs,” Hailey said.

  Hal didn’t acknowledge her. “How do you know he didn’t OD?” he asked.

  “Well, it was meant to look like one,” Shelby said, unzipping the body bag. Two paramedics lowered the body into the bag. “He was smothered, actually,” Shelby went on. “Heavily drugged first. Maybe he wasn’t dying fast enough.”

  “Or maybe the perp figured it was going to take more Halcion than what he had to kill the guy,” Hailey said.

  Hal looked down at the huge man. “Like maybe the killer had never seen Rendell before?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where’s the secretary?” Hal asked, looking around the room.

  “We sent her out for a cup of coffee,” Roger said, glancing at his watch. “She was screeching too loud to get anything done. She should be back here soon.”

  “You sent her out for coffee?” Hal said.

  “I sent her out with one of my people. I’m not an idiot, Harris.”

  Hal nodded, stepped back. “Of course not.”

  Hailey put some distance between her and Hal as they watched the lab techs work the room. Soon, they’d be able to look around, but Roger guarded his crime scenes like a sentry and he insisted his team do the initial sweep without interference.

  Plenty of crime scene leads had been burned by the nasty business of evidence chain of custody. Every piece of evidence had to be tracked from the initial scene through every step of the process. If they overlooked something, then it was almost never admissible in the trial. When they wanted their man convicted, and they all did, they knew better than to interfere.

  “You guys can start with the files,” Roger said after a few minutes. “I still want the area around the body clear.”

  She and Hal snapped on latex gloves and moved to opposite ends of the room, starting in on the file cabinets. The first drawer she opened was client files, beginning with “T.” She would go through every file. Maybe some other connection would turn up.

  Each had white label with the first and last names of the client, an account number and a date that Hailey assumed was when the account was established. Tanner, Mark and Christine, had been clients for three years. Inside the file were records of trades, deposits, withdrawals, each page signed by Rendell. The file also included check stubs from disbursements and copies of client deposits.

  From the looks of it, Rendell’s recordkeeping was meticulous. The older files were bigger. One was from 2000 and inside, Rendell still had confirms that were fifteen years old. “This guy kept everything.”

  “Here, too,” Hal said. “Don’t usually see these guys hang onto stuff longer than whatever the law requires.”

  “Even that’s sometimes a stretch,” she said.

  “Why keep them?”

  “It’s a good question, especially since the statute of limitations for prosecuting criminal charges is usually longer than the seven years required by the IRS,” Hailey added, feeling some of the familiar rapport return. “Better to dump everything right at seven than risk having something farther back get used against you.”

  “I’ve got something,” Hal said a few minutes later.

  He held a file marked with Abby and Hank Dennig. “Filed under ‘R.’ Her maiden name. There’s one for Tom Rittenberg, too.”

  He set the file on the top of the cabinet and let it fall open. The page on top was dated November 9th, 2010. He flipped through the pages, turned to the back as she watched over his shoulder. The last page was dated January of 2004.

  “Nothing since 2010?”

  He went back through the middle
of the file again. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  He pulled the pages out of the folder, held them in his hand. Maybe two inches of paperwork, but the faded bottom of the green hanging folder was worn, its perforations looked stretched to three inches or more.

  “Someone cleaned it out.”

  “We’ll need to collect anything in the garbage and the shredder,” Hal said to Roger.

  Roger nodded. “It’s already done and I’ve got someone trying to find out where the trash goes from here. If it’s not at the dump yet, I’ll get it.”

  Naomi Muir stood in the doorway. “We found a safe out here.”

  “Let’s call someone in to break it,” Roger said.

  The two returned to the cabinets and kept looking. They continued in silence for ten or fifteen minutes.

  “Hailey,” Hal said, almost a whisper. He drew the file out and set it on the cabinet between them, held his palm flat on top of it. His hand covered almost the entire front surface. Between his fingers, she saw the name on the file—Wyatt.

  “Oh, Hal.”

  The first page was a copy of a check for twenty thousand, written last month and signed by Jim.

  “I’m so—”

  Hal returned the page to the file, his jaw tense as he slammed the file closed. “Maybe Marshall will give me that transfer now.”

  Hailey tried not to flinch. “Maybe he will.”

  Hal walked away and she pressed her forearm against the cold metal, checked her phone. She was alone now. She couldn’t trust Jim and she had alienated Hal. Bruce was with someone else. She could do this alone. She needed to find a place for the girls.

  No word from the girls’ old babysitter. They’d be out of school in a couple of hours and she still had nowhere to take them.

  “You guys probably want to come have a look at this,” Roger called from the other room.

  Keeping distance between them, the two followed Roger through the outer office and into a small adjoining kitchen. The freezer door was open. Cold smoke billowed out into the warm room. The freezer was empty except for two trays of ice.

  On the kitchen table a small, blue plastic box was laid out on a sheet of plastic, its lid open.

  Inside were a half dozen of the buttons.

  Without looking, Hailey knew they read “Wage Peace, Not War.” Roger lifted a plastic sandwich bag from the box.

  The plastic was fogged from the freezer. Whatever was inside looked vaguely like a cork.

  Hailey found it hard to swallow.

  Shelby entered the room and they all stood over Roger as Roger opened the bag. Hailey leaned forward and looked in. It wasn’t a cork. It was the tip of a finger.

  “Jesus Christ,” Shelby whispered over her shoulder.

  “Or Nicholas Fredricks,” Hailey said.

  Hal nodded, staring at the frozen finger. “That would be my guess.”

  Chapter 21

  Hailey started to get antsy watching Roger pack up his team. She didn’t want to talk about that cork over the phone and Hal was watching her. She’d have to follow Roger out, make an excuse to leave Hal.

  It was lying.

  Again.

  She’d tell him as soon as she was sure. She swore to herself. As soon as she was sure the girls were safe.

  “I’m going to head out if that’s okay,” Hailey said. One of them had to stay and wait for the safe breakers, but it wasn’t going to be her.

  “Where to?” Hal asked. He gave her his full attention. Arms crossed, leaned against the wall.

  “Picking up the girls from school.”

  “You’ll be back?”

  Roger walked out.

  Hailey started past Hal.

  “You coming back?” he said again, louder.

  She didn’t stop. “I’m not sure. I’ll have my phone.”

  Only one officer stood in the hallway now. “You can probably go,” she said. “Check with Inspector Harris.”

  “Harris,” he said. “He’s the—”

  “The big guy. The angry one.”

  He nodded but didn’t make a move. Maybe he figured it was better to stay put rather than deal with Hal.

  Smart choice.

  Hailey caught Roger at the elevator. The tech, Naomi Muir, was with him. The two of them discussed evidence priority on the ride down. The elevator settled on the ground floor and Hailey inhaled.

  Roger was going to have questions, too.

  She wouldn’t ask him to lie for her. If the cork matched, they’d get the information to Kong and O’Shea. They could get a subpoena for Jim’s house and collect their own cork. Jim had at least half a case left of the wine.

  “I need to speak to Inspector Wyatt a moment,” Roger told the tech.

  “I’ll take the evidence and meet you at the van,” Naomi offered.

  “It’ll only be a few minutes,” he added.

  Hailey and Roger walked slowly across the lobby toward the door to Kearney Street. Rain fell in a light mist. Roger looked longingly outside.

  Gearing up to deliver bad news maybe.

  She held herself still.

  It wasn’t like him to avoid a conversation. He was struggling with something. She and Roger had always worked well together. She respected him and he her. Or he had. “I’m sorry if I put you in a bad position.”

  He sighed. “What’s going on, Hailey?”

  “I’m chasing a theory. About Jim Wyatt.”

  “Your father-in-law?”

  “Yes.”

  “The corks are the same,” he said.

  “How certain are you?”

  “Very,” he said. He touched her arm.

  She nodded, grateful that he didn’t say it, that he didn’t try to console her with words.

  “Clearly it’s the same wine,” he continued. “We know that from the cork design. And of course, then, they’re both red, so the chances are good they’re the same varietal. St. Jean has up to eight red varietals, depending on the year. If you’re dealing with the same varietal, then you get into vintage differentiations, which can be enormous, as well as some minimal barrel distinctions within a single vintage. Those are less obvious but still present. The wine on those two corks is from the same varietal, the same vintage…” He paused. “The wine could come from the same barrel. I can’t be as definitive about that.”

  The same barrel. Jim was involved. For all the times she’d thought maybe, now it seemed clear. He wasn’t a killer. She couldn’t believe that. But he wasn’t innocent either.

  Hal was right.

  “How many bottles does a barrel hold?” she asked.

  “A barrel is sixty gallons so it holds twenty-five cases, three hundred bottles.”

  “Twenty-five cases,” Hailey repeated.

  “Assuming the bottles are bought by the case—I don’t know the percentages on that because the distributors sell them as cases but most stores sell them individually.”

  Jim bought them in cases. “It’s the 2010 Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cepages.”

  He nodded and rubbed his eyes.

  “So, the wine is the same varietal, same vintage but we’re not sure about the barrel.” Even if it wasn’t the same barrel, they were talking about one wine. One specific vintage. The wine Jim drank most nights. Even if he only drank three bottles a week, he would go through one hundred and fifty bottles a year. They would surely come from different barrels just by chance.

  Somehow Jim was at the center of this thing.

  “Right,” Roger agreed. “For one thing, it’s impossible to tell how much the wine was affected from being in the coffin. I assume there was quite a bit of mold present.”

  “There was,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t testify to them being the same wine.” He paused. “At least not based on the chemistry of the wine
samples. The cork samples tell a similar story. It’s real cork, from a cork tree—there’s a move now towards man-made material for corks—” He stopped, waved his hand. “You know all that.”

  Hailey nodded. Endangered cork trees.

  “The nutrients in the soil will create variations in the cork even from trees as close as six or eight feet away—some within a single tree.” Hailey looked away, dreading what he would say.

  “These two samples come from the same tree,” Roger said. “The same vineyard would get corks from the same place, so again there’s still a possibility that those corks came from two different barrels of wine. Even if they’re both from the same barrel of wine, that fact doesn’t necessarily link them to a single wine drinker.”

  She thought it did. She felt sure of it. “Is there anything else we could test? To be sure?”

  “Not one hundred percent. Not from the wine or the corks. There was one other thing that suggested the same source.”

  She waited.

  “Both cork samples showed an odd angle of wine absorption.”

  “What do you mean—absorption?”

  “A tiny bit of wine gets into the cork—it’s very slow and very minimal, but you do find minute samples of wine that are absorbed over time.”

  “From storing them on their sides.”

  “Right. People who know wine store the bottles horizontally.”

  “These were stored like that? On their sides?”

  “Actually, what’s interesting is that both of these cork samples came from bottles stored at a slightly declined angle—that is, more declined than ninety degrees.”

  Jim’s bottles were stored in a dank, cement room in the basement.

  The room reminded her of a prison cell. It was no larger than five by five, the door was made of thick oak beams, a flat iron bar across the top and bottom and a heavy iron ring to pull it closed.

  Hailey had always wondered where it had come from, what castle—or maybe what dungeon.

  The walls of Jim’s cellar were lined with hand-carved alder racks, each bottle cradled and each neck supported at the same angle, one that was pointed down—maybe five or ten degrees more than ninety.