Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  I paused, wondering what it would be like to work for this guy. “Just the two in the lobby. From 7:00 pm last night through 6 am today.”

  “I can do that,” he said.

  “Yes, you can,” I said, giving him a smile. “And I would appreciate it.” Just as I was thinking about whether Carlucci could manage to make time literally stop, Ryan came into the room. “Steven Carlucci, Detective Ryan Miner.” The two shook hands.

  I said to Ryan, “Can you go back out to the lobby and see if the clerks from last night have shown up yet?” He nodded and left. He was back in a minute, leading a young man and a young woman.

  “This is Michael Harper and Melissa Pierson. Detective Seagate,” Ryan said.

  “Please sit down, both of you. Just a couple questions.” The two had saucer eyes. “First, do either of you have any memory of anyone phoning for Mr. Arlen Hagerty in room 213, or leaving a message for him?” Both of them shook their heads no. “Did anyone come to the desk and ask about him or leave a message there with you?” Again, no. “Any recollection of anything having to do with Mr. Hagerty or room 213? Did he make any calls to you, or did anyone call you to report any unusual noise coming from that room?” No. “All right, thank you both,” I said, standing. “We appreciate you coming in.” I handed each of them my card. “You think of anything, give me a call.” They nodded and left.

  “Okay,” I said, sitting down again. “Just one more question. What dry cleaner does the hotel use?”

  “Downtown Dry Cleaning, on Eighth Street.” Ryan jotted down the name in his skinny notebook.

  “Great, thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate all your help, Mr. Carlucci. Here’s my card. We’re gonna do everything we can to speed up our investigation at the hotel and get out of your hair.” I stood and shook his hand. He turned left, stopped, and turned right, like he was disoriented, before walking back toward the reception area.

  “Okay, Ryan. Tell me what we know and what we don’t know.”

  “Let’s see. We think it was a crime of rage. Someone with some decent physical strength. Probably someone who knew Hagerty, unless he was in the habit of letting strangers into his room. Or someone from the hotel, but that’s not likely. This is all based on the premise there was no forced entry and it wasn’t a robbery.”

  “Right,” I said. “And what do we know about the vic?”

  “Good-time Charlie, got along well with Jonathan Ahern. We think he had sex last night with someone in his room, then took a shower. He was watching TV, probably from bed, then he probably let someone in his room. Then he got ventilated.”

  “And what don’t we know yet?”

  “Almost everything. We don’t know who’s here in town as part of the debate. We don’t have a motive, and we don’t have a weapon.”

  “That’s right. Good.” I paused, closing my eyes to think. “Yeah,” I said, finally. “That’s the way I see it, too. All right, here’s what I’d like you to do next.” He turned the page in his notebook and nodded. “First, check with the reception desk and get a list of everyone accompanying Hagerty. Second, check with the dry cleaner. If anything came in from the hotel since, I don’t know, 10 pm, tell them to hold it.”

  “In case there’s some biologicals we can link up to anyone from the debate.”

  “Right. Next, check with Housekeeping. They haven’t cleaned the rooms today, but see if for any reason they were called to any of the rooms from the debate people in the last twelve hours.”

  “Got it.”

  “And we need a murder weapon. Have the uniforms check all the trash from the hotel, the dumpsters outside, see if anyone from the debate could have thrown anything out a window. The windows open, right?”

  “The skinny vent windows on either side of the big window open.”

  “Yeah. And one other thing. I want the uniforms to check every public trash can and dumpster in a half-mile radius.”

  “They’ll love that.”

  “That’s why I’m having you tell them.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Hey, two months ago, you’d’ve been diving yourself.”

  “I really appreciate that.”

  “Okay, any questions?”

  “No,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  Robin’s car was already in the lot at headquarters when we got there. It was hard to miss: a ’72 Volkswagen Beetle painted with the swirling black and white markings of a Holstein cow, the rear window covered with decals of punk bands that cut their own MP3’s in their bedrooms and gave them away online. First time I’d seen it, I asked Robin if it had been a company car for Gateway Computers or some kind of ad. Robin looked at me, puzzled, and said no, she didn’t like ads. So, you painted it that way yourself? Of course, she said. Cool, huh?

  Ryan and I went down to Robin’s lab in the basement. Because she had the place to herself, she controlled the music. It was horrible. “Hey, Robin,” I said as we walked over to Robin’s bench. She was hunched over her microscope. On the steel counter extending the length of the lab were the tools of her trade: four microscopes, a gas chromatograph, an x-ray diffraction unit, an emission spectrograph, a mass spectrometer, and an array of personal computers.

  “Hi, guys,” she said, lowering the volume of the music. “Just give me a second here.” She stared into the eyepiece for a moment. “You like Rancid?”

  “What?”

  “The music,” Ryan said. “It’s Rancid.”

  I assumed that was supposed to mean something. More and more these days, I feel like I’m in some kind of parallel universe that makes even less sense than the regular one.

  Robin was still looking at her microscope. “Just what I thought: a bunch of dead boys.”

  I noticed the towel on the bench next to the microscope. “Semen on the towel?”

  “Yup,” Robin said. “Not a whole lot. Just a trace.”

  “Are you saying your sample is just a trace, or it looks like a low sperm count?” Ryan said.

  “Actually, both. It’s just a trace of fluid, more consistent with him washing up in the shower and missing a spot than him pumping into the towel.”

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “If he was pumping and that’s all the fluid he pulled up, I doubt he could’ve gotten it up in the first place.”

  I looked at Ryan for confirmation. He shook his head. “Makes sense to me, but I have no idea.”

  “Trust me on this. I’ve dated some older guys,” Robin said.

  “That’s your evidence?” I said.

  “No,” Robin said, breaking into a smile. “Just messin’ with you. Seriously, there are data correlating potency and ejaculate levels of men at different ages and levels of fitness.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s true. I looked it up. Plus,” she said, brushing a strand of green hair back behind her ear, “I’ve dated some older guys.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I said, shaking my head. “You said the sperm count looked low.”

  “Yeah, I can’t draw any hard conclusions, because maybe we’re looking at an atypical sample of the ejaculate, but if the sample is representative, it should be two-to-five percent sperm. I’m seeing less than one percent. In other words, I think we’re looking at geezer cum here.”

  “Did I mention you’re a lovely young lady?” I said.

  “I think you did, but I never tire of hearing it, Detective. I’ve always tried to be,” Robin said with a smile.

  Ryan said, “You know, we’re assuming the semen is Arlen Hagerty’s. It doesn’t have to be.”

  “I’m on it, Ryan,” Robin said. “I grabbed a cheek swab and a couple of strands of hair before Harold bagged him. I’m running the DNA to make sure it’s him.”

  “Of course,” I said, “we’re also assuming the towels were clean when Hagerty used them, right?”

  Ryan said, “I’m pretty sure the towels were clean. They wash them at temperatures over
one fifty. I doubt if any biologicals would have survived that.”

  Robin said, “Karen, are you saying maybe the towels were from whoever had the room before, and Housekeeping didn’t change them?”

  “Yeah, maybe the day before, another old goat pumped a load of geezer cum into the towel after watching some pay-per-view, you know, maybe some donkey-on-girl action, but he was ashamed, so he put the towel back nice and neat, then along comes Hagerty, after a long car ride, and he washes his face, grabs that towel off the rack, and rubs the cum all over his face.”

  Robin said, “That’s kinda disgusting, Karen.”

  “Am I grossing you out?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Excellent,” I said, extending my palms as if that wasn’t that difficult.

  “Okay, girls,” Ryan said. “If we can get back to the case, just for a moment.”

  I let out a chuckle and said, “Okay, Robin, tell me what you’ve got on the hotel room.”

  “There were no signs of forced entry on the door. The door locks automatically when you leave the room. And the lock is working correctly.”

  “And the windows that open?” Ryan said.

  “The windows on either side of the big window crank open, and they’re ten inches wide. But unless you remove the panes themselves—which there was no evidence of—the opening is less than seven inches. And it’d be really hard to climb up to the second floor, with no terraces or anything. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but the person would have to be real small and real athletic.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So we’re assuming the killer either had a key or Hagerty let him in.”

  “Have we ruled out the killer was already in the room when Hagerty came in?” Ryan said.

  “We can’t rule that out,” Robin said. “With that carpet not showing any footprints, plus it’s a hotel and it’s got all kinds of shit in it anyway, we can’t be sure the killer wasn’t already there. But there’s no evidence in the bathroom or the closet, which are the only two places he could hide so Hagerty would get inside the room without seeing him, that there was anyone inside.”

  “All right, Robin,” I said. “You got anything else for us?”

  “Not at the moment. I’ll keep looking to see if I can pull anything else off the towels or the sheets to help us identify whoever he was banging. Not sure the drain’s gonna do us any good, since the biologicals in there could be from days ago. I already did a quick check of the vacuum cleaner bag; nothing fun like an earring or anything like that. But I’ll keep going and let you know later today.”

  “Okay, thanks a lot, Robin.”

  “See ya,” Robin said, clicking her mouse to turn the volume back up on her awful music.

  Ryan and I left the evidence lab and walked back up the stairs. I said, “Let’s run this by the chief.” Ryan nodded. We headed down the hall to the private offices. All the way at the end we came to the chief’s. It was the only office with a big glass panel on the door with his name written on it.

  Helen Glenning looked up from her screen and said, “Can I help you, Detectives?” I wasn’t expecting the question. With the former receptionist, Kari, you could just walk right in. This one was maybe fifty, hair mostly grey, tight curls. A plain cranberry sweater, single strand of good quality imitation pearls, a pin of a cat. Framed photos of kittens on the walls.

  “Can we see the chief?” I said.

  “Did you have an appointment?” she said. The receptionist’s desk had been moved to block a straight path to the chief’s inner office. Probably his idea.

  “No, no appointment. We wanted to bring him up to date on the Hagerty murder,” I said. “No time to make an appointment. He just got killed around midnight.”

  Helen paused, raising an eyebrow to signal she caught the implication of that last sentence. The gesture said, Don’t go smartass on me if you want to see the chief. She hit the intercom button. “Detectives Seagate and Miner, on the Hagerty homicide.”

  “Okay,” the chief’s voice said on the intercom, equal parts bored and annoyed.

  Ryan said to her, “Thanks very much, Helen.” She gave him an official smile and turned back to her screen. No smile for me.

  For a municipal office, the chief’s was nice: paneled walls, real wood furniture, a couch off to the side, upholstered arm chairs in front of his desk. The chief didn’t acknowledge our entrance. He kept looking at the screen, which obviously was more important than his detectives reporting to him on a murder that had already made the national news.

  I stood there, hands clasped before me. Looking down at my feet, I studied the wine-colored carpet. I poked Ryan and pointed to the carpet. “Nice nap,” I whispered. He nodded. If I was to hole up in this office, then kill the chief, I’d have to remember to remove my footprints—or wear clown shoes.

  After ten seconds or so, the chief looked up from his screen and nodded at us. “Yeah?” he said.

  I was silent. Ryan looked at me, but I just stood there. He spoke. “We wanted to bring you up to date on the Arlen Hagerty murder.”

  The chief nodded, the signal for Ryan to speak. “He was killed around midnight, multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, probably not from a knife but something more like a screwdriver. We haven’t recovered a weapon. He probably had sex with someone in the room. We think he was watching TV, then got up and let the murderer in, or the murderer was the person he had sex with. That’s all we’ve got so far.”

  “All right,” the chief said, nodding to Ryan and looking to me. “What are you doing now?”

  I said, “We canvassed the hotel and we’re nailing down any contacts between Hagerty and the hotel staff. We don’t think there was anything. We’re getting a list of who was traveling with him. We’ll start interviewing them this morning.”

  “Who was he screwing?” the Chief said to me.

  I caught a whiff of condescension here, as if I wasn’t thinking enough about the sex angle. “We’re not sure yet,” I said. “He’s married. We have to find out whether the wife was along with him, or if there was anyone else in the group.”

  “Check to make sure he didn’t call an escort service.” Ryan pulled out his notebook and start writing in it. I had already asked the hotel for the phone records for Hagerty’s room and was going to ask for authorization to get his records if he had a cell phone.

  I saw the chief looking approvingly at Ryan. The kid was smart, making him think he was really contributing to the investigation. The reason the chief asked about an escort service probably had less to do with helping us than with how he spent his time at cop conventions four or five times a year.

  “Okay,” the chief said, shifting his weight in his chair to signal the interview was over. “Anything else?”

  “No, not at the moment,” I said.

  “Stay in touch,” he said to me, as if this was my first case.

  “Absolutely,” I said, mouthing the word asshole as I turned to leave.

  Chapter 3

  Two others were along for the debate gig: Arlen Hagerty’s widow, Margaret, and his assistant, Connie de Marco. We decided to start with his wife. She was in room 217.

  “Ms. Hagerty, I’m Detective Karen Seagate. My partner, Detective Ryan Miner.” She nodded in acknowledgment, stepping back to let us enter. The room was identical to the one in which her husband had been murdered. “First, we’d like to express our condolences on your loss.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Please come in.” She walked over to the desk, picked up the phone, and pushed a button. “One more side chair, please.” She sat in the upholstered chair and motioned for me to sit in the desk chair. “Detective Miner, another chair will be here in a moment.”

  “I don’t mind standing, ma’am.” He looked at the king-size bed, which Margaret Hagerty or Housekeeping had already made up.

  “As you wish, Detective.”

  I said, “Ms. Hagerty, I realize how painful it must be to have to talk with the police so soon after
this terrible event, but I hope you understand that time is important. I promise you we’ll do everything we can to prosecute this case professionally so as to minimize the pain we cause.”

  “I appreciate your saying that, Detective Seagate, and I would expect nothing less.” She sat motionless in the chair, her hands folded in her lap, her legs crossed. Her gaze was direct. Any grief she was feeling for her husband, she wasn’t showing us. She was about sixty, but it was sixty with money. The hair was honey-blonde, perfectly shaped to round out the contours of her long, thin face. The jaw was slightly too big, and her left eye, a little higher than her right, make her look as if she was tilting her head slightly. The makeup was understated. Eighteen-carat gold earrings set off with large opals, and a matching necklace. Her dark grey suit was silk, her shoes crocodile, with low heels. The shoes cost more than I spend on clothes in a year.

  “Ms. Hagerty, we’d like to learn as much as we can about Mr. Hagerty and your relationship with him. We’d also like to learn what we can about the two others who travel with you on these debates.”

  “I understand.” Margaret Hagerty’s teeth were capped and whitened, and not with the cheap stuff you buy at the drugstore. “But I must tell you we have chartered a plane for two this afternoon. We’re returning to Soul Savers headquarters in Colorado Springs.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Hagerty, but that won’t be possible. We need you all to stay here in Rawlings to assist us in the investigation, at least for several days. In addition, an autopsy needs to be performed here.”

  “That cannot be performed elsewhere?” she said, her eyebrow arched, as if surely there must be some way a person of her standing could be spared this inconvenience.

  “Unfortunately, no. Because this is a murder investigation, the autopsy must be performed here.”

  “I see,” she said. “Excuse me.” She stood and walked to the desk, hit three buttons on the phone. “Put the plane on hold, please, and notify the hotel we will all be staying until further notice. Thank you.” She returned to her chair.

  “Ms. Hagerty, can you tell us when you last saw your husband?”