by Rex Burns
“You wearing your mother’s army boots again?” Bunch sat at the worn and scarred desk, the single lamp throwing his shadow broadly across the wall. Through the window, reflected from the brick surfaces of other walls, the glow of Union Station and the post office terminal filled the night sky. From somewhere beyond the district in the tangle of railroad tracks that filled the river bottom came the dull crash of a freight car being humped.
“Haas shot himself. The police are over there now.”
“No shit? Well, what the hell, it happens in the best of families. How’d you find out?”
“His wife called nine-one-one.”
“Is he dead?”
“Nothing said, but the ambulance was in no hurry. And she didn’t ask for an ambulance—just for the cops. Can you find out what they have?”
“Depends on whose case it is. But I should be able to come up with something.”
In his eight years as a cop, Bunch had moved up quickly to make detective sergeant before he finally burned out—perhaps because he had been so good. First it was the growing knowledge that his job wasn’t to help people but to wipe up the city’s human garbage after they were beyond help. Then it was the ever-increasing paperwork whose only purpose was to cover ass—yours and especially your superiors’. Then it was the court system, which took a cop’s good, hard work and threw it away on technicalities and plea bargains so that the scumbag was back on the street faster than the arresting cop. Finally it was the politics, intensified by a conflict between those who joined the police union and those who didn’t, which divided the department and set cops against each other. He had quit playing professional football after three years because he grew sick of the routines of training camp and season, and especially because—despite all the color and noise—there seemed no real point to it except a few hours entertainment for John Q. once a week. He had quit to do some good as a cop. Now he was among the growing numbers of ex-cops in the private police business. “Screw it—I got more freedom out here. I do a better job, too; I’ve put away more people as a p.i. than I ever did in uniform.” And because he didn’t care who took official credit for a collar, he often turned the arrest over to friends in the detective bureau. In exchange, of course, for help when it was needed.
He dialed a number from memory and asked for Sergeant Kiefer. “Okay, would you ask him to call when he gets a chance? Thanks.” Bunch gave the duty watch the office number and hung up. “The good news is Keifer’s on duty. He’ll fill us in. The bad news is he’s out on call—probably over there now, and God only knows how long it’ll be before he gets back. End of shift, probably.”
“How about staying on it? McAllister wants me to go with him to see Haas’s wife.”
“Tonight?”
“I have to be over there in fifteen minutes.”
It took slightly longer and McAllister, who didn’t like to wait, was pacing a small circle on the porch under his wooden eagle. “Glad you finally got here, Kirk. Leave that damned van of yours—Raymond will drive.”
He was silent most of the way as the limousine moved smoothly through the steely flicker of passing street lamps. Raymond slowed a bit for empty red lights and stop signs, but McAllister didn’t seem to notice until finally he sighed and opened the small bar mounted behind the partitioned driver’s seat. “Something to drink?”
“No, sir.”
He poured himself a glass of mineral water and watched the liquid sway with the spongy lean of the heavy car. “It wasn’t worth shooting himself, Devlin. Not even for as much money as they must have paid him.”
“Maybe it was the shame. I’ve known a suicide or two for that reason.”
“And I’ve never known a commercial real-estate salesman to have any shame, let alone to die from it. But perhaps you’re right.” He drank deeply. “I wouldn’t have guessed Haas was the kind to have that weakness, but perhaps you’re right.”
We hesitated briefly at the gatehouse; the guard caught a glimpse of the car’s length and its license plates and quickly waved us through—something I wanted to remember for future gate crashings. The ambulance had gone, but a number of vehicles still clustered in front of the large home sitting on its own spread of prairie; a few lights burned in the bulky shadows of neighboring houses, but the only sound was an occasional distant whisper of traffic from I-25 when the wind shifted.
“Well, let’s get to it. You wait here, Raymond.”
“Yes, sir.”
I followed him up the winding flagstone walk and noticed a few young trees, their trunks staked as if anchored against some evil wind. The old money had grown up with their trees; the new money was just planting theirs. And some wouldn’t grow up with the trees at all. I rang the doorbell—McAllister waited for that service—and a uniformed officer answered, glancing at our jackets for identification badges.
“Who are you?”
“Owen McAllister. A friend of the family.”
“Nobody’s allowed in unless they’re on official business. This is a crime scene.”
“I said I’m Owen McAllister. I’m here to see Mrs. Haas. She will need some help.”
He puzzled for a moment over whether to shut the door in our faces. Then he caught a glimpse of the limousine and finally stepped back. “Stay right here and I’ll get the sergeant. It’s a crime scene, so you got to stay right here.”
The detective was short and nattily dressed and would have seemed more at home wearing a letterman’s sweater and smoking a pipe in some campus beer joint. But Sergeant Kiefer was thoroughly professional and very jealous of his role, and never more cheerful than when peering at a body. And despite thinking of me as a mere civilian, he was willing to admit that he knew me.
“Devlin Kirk! Don’t tell me you’re the friend of the family.”
“No. Mr. McAllister is. Owen McAllister. He’s Haas’s employer.”
The name registered. “Ah. Does Mrs. Haas know you’re here, sir?”
“Not yet. We just arrived.”
“Ah.” He mused on that for a second. “Well, come over here out of the way of the investigation. Please wait in this room. I’ll let her know you’ve come.” He led us into a study just off the living room where all the action was. It had more bookshelves than books and a towering mossrock wall that dwarfed one of the house’s fireplaces. Ceiling beams, thick carpets, heavily framed windows, all emphasized weight and permanence, but through the casement window with its pattern of diamond panes I could see the thin shadow of one of the small trees.
“How long did Mr. Haas work for you, Mr. McAllister?”
McAllister eyed the detective. “‘Did’? That means he’s dead?”
A corner of Keifer’s mouth twitched in self-annoyance. “That’s what it means. How long was he with you?”
“Almost seven years. He was a good employee.”
“And you saw him recently?”
“This afternoon. And, no, he didn’t seem depressed or anxious in any way. In fact, he seemed in damned good spirits. Exactly what happened, Officer?”
Kiefer tugged at the pastel shirt cuff that had slipped up beneath his blazer and his eyes glanced hard at me before settling back on McAllister. “It looks like a suicide. Which you seem to know already. Can I ask what brought you here, Mr. McAllister? How did you know something had happened?”
McAllister hesitated, then nodded abruptly at me. “Kirk there. He told me.”
“I picked it up on the scanner.”
“Ah. The scanner. You just happened to be listening to your CB at two o’clock in the morning?”
“It beats the late-late show.”
Kiefer looked steadily up at me. “What’s your interest in this?”
“I’m doing some work for Mr. McAllister. When I heard, I figured he’d want to know about Haas.”
“I certainly did. And I’d like to see Mrs. Haas. I’m sure she’d appreciate a friendly face.”
“And you have no idea why Haas would shoot himself?”
“Not in the least.”
It took another couple of seconds to make up his mind, but finally he said, “All right, wait here. I’ll ask her if she wants to see you.”
She did. McAllister and I followed Kiefer past the busy living room and up a flight of curving stairs to the second-floor family room where Mrs. Haas sat on a heavily upholstered chair and held two solemn children close to her sides. Her bloodless face was a fragile mask whose bone structure still showed the fundamental beauty that had drained from the flesh. Beneath the short, straight nose, her mouth—almost too wide—was a vulnerable line of stiffly clamped lips, and above that her eyes stared at us almost without blinking. The shocked, green eyes had not yet cried, but the strain showed in the taut cords of her neck and in the tense voice that welcomed McAllister. And like an almost visible mist, she and the clinging children were surrounded by an aura of pain and bewilderment.
“I’m so sorry, Margaret. Is there anything I can do—anyone you want me to call?”
Her dark hair, clipped just below the ears, shook briefly. “I’ve already called the family. They’re flying out as soon as they can.” Beside her, the girl, forefinger in a round mouth, dug deeper against her mother’s ribs and away from the two strangers who, with so many others, had invaded her home. The boy, older, watched with the wide eyes of a child whose adult world has suddenly become incomprehensible and threatening. But his mother wasn’t crying. If she wasn’t crying, he wouldn’t.
“Do you want a doctor? Do you want someone to be with the children?”
“No. We just want to be together right now. I suppose I haven’t realized it all yet. Everything seems so … so unreal.” She pulled the collar of her robe tighter as if a chill blew across her neck. “It’s so sudden. I guess I’m—I suppose we’re all in a bit of shock.”
“Of course you are.”
“Can you tell us what happened, Mrs. Haas? Are you up to that?”
Her green eyes looked at me as if just noticing another figure in the room. She was slightly puzzled, but so much of her life had been so suddenly disoriented that one more stranger was almost expected.
“This is Devlin Kirk, Margaret. He works for me.”
Numbly, she nodded hello.
“If it’s not too difficult, could you tell me what happened?”
“I was asleep. Austin had stayed up to do some work and I had gone to bed. I heard a sound … something … and I didn’t know if I was asleep or awake. Then I knew I was awake and that a noise had done it. I thought it might be the television—sometimes Austin falls asleep … I came downstairs … and … I opened the study door … and he was there.” Her arms clutched the children still pressing against her.
“I heard it too.” The boy spoke more to McAllister than to me, his voice a solemn assertion that he had shared this thing. “I woke up and heard it too.”
“Shh, Austin. There, now.” She rocked gently with her son. “I don’t want to say any more.”
“I understand.” The next question was harder and might crack the icy rigidity that held back her tears. But I asked it anyway—it was on McAllister’s mind as well as mine. “Was his behavior any different recently? Was there anything that might have indicated … that might have shown undue tension?”
“No. When we lost the two projects to the Aegis Group, he was disappointed. He worked so hard on them. And he was so upset when we didn’t get them. But not enough to … my God, don’t you think I would have noticed something as serious as that?” Her hand dragged across her pale face, the fingers clutching tightly around her mouth. “Do you think I should have seen something? Of course I should have, but there was nothing! Nothing!”
“There, there, Margaret. Of course there wasn’t. Kirk, go down and see if you can find a shot of brandy. If you can’t, there’s some in the car; ask Raymond.”
I closed the door on the cluster of figures. From somewhere downstairs came the muffled tread of heavy shoes and an occasional murmur of voices, punctuated by the periodic crackle of a radio. Following the curving staircase toward the sounds, I noted the home’s expensive appointments and the absence of those blank areas that many new houses have when people move in and haven’t yet found the exact thing to fit that corner or this wall. Here, everything went together and with the house as well, and for some reason I was certain that the harmony and control weren’t created by the dead man but by his wife. It was her control and poise that were reflected in the drapes and carpets and especially the many paintings and the pieces of furniture that sat just right, in the scattering of living plants that accentuated the space and airiness of the large rooms. The house had neither the brittle rigidity nor the carelessness of a suicide. But then my father’s house did not offer a hint of his plans, either.
I peeked into the living room which, despite its size, now seemed crowded with the bulky shapes of policemen. Like the rest of the house, it had its arrangement, the space vaguely marked into three areas by sofas and tables and strategically placed plants that brushed the ceiling and led the eye to this room’s towering fireplace. The body was gone, probably pronounced dead at the scene and carried to the morgue for the obligatory autopsy. But the photographer was only now finishing his work, the hot wink of his camera flickering deliberately against the glossy leaves of a large rubber plant. Everything was done deliberately, including the measurement from the chalked outline of the arm to the mark of the fallen pistol.
“What are you after, Kirk?”
“Is that the bar over there?”
Kiefer glanced at it. “Yeah, that’s the bar. And this is the crime scene. Go on back upstairs.”
The photographer had moved around to the other side of the rubber plant’s large tub and aimed again at the rug.
“It’s for Mrs. Haas. She’s starting to realize what happened. She needs a shot of brandy.”
“Brandy.” He strode to the wooden cabinet and opened one of the darkly polished doors to peer among the cluster of tall and short bottles. Then he brought one back. “Here. I already asked her if she wanted a doctor or somebody. She said no.”
“It’s getting to her now.”
“Yeah. Too bad. It’s a hell of a thing to wake up to. She’s a nice-looking woman. Nice kids. Nice house. Too bad.”
“Any question about it not being a suicide?”
The bottle paused. “It looks like a suicide: one shot, one set of fingerprints. You have any information I should know?”
“Just asking.”
“And I asked how you and McAllister knew about this and you hand me some crap about hearing it on a scanner.”
That was better than saying I heard it on an illegal wire tap. “What can I say, Sergeant. That’s how it happened.”
“Kirk, Bunch and I worked together for a long time, and we still help each other out. We’re friends and I’d like to keep it that way. Don’t screw me off.”
I needed him more than he needed me, and we both knew it. “I don’t have any reason to think it wasn’t a suicide, Sergeant. In fact, everything I have points toward it. There was a security leak at McAllister’s corporation and I’ve been investigating it. Haas might have been involved.”
“Ah? Well, now, tell me more.”
“I was hired to check him out and that’s what I’ve been doing. But I’ve found nothing at all to incriminate him. As far as I know, he had not one thing to do with that leak.”
Kiefer finally handed me a bar glass and the squat, black bottle whose label said V.S.O.P. and was sprinkled with stars. “As far as you know. But somebody could have tipped him that you were on him?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know of. Only two people knew what I was doing, and neither of them had any reason to tell Haas. And we were very quiet about it—McAllister insisted on that because he didn’t want any rumors getting started.” I added, “I’d appreciate you keeping quiet about this, too, for the widow’s sake.”
“I see.” The policeman scratched at his earlobe.
; “I’ve told you what I have.”
The eyes glanced at me. “Yeah—okay. Everything we’ve got is consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a thirty-two revolver. We’ll run a paraffin test as a matter of course, but I don’t think it’s needed; you can smell the gunpowder on his hand. It looks like he held it up and bang.”
“Temple wound?”
“One shot behind the ear. Close range.”
“I thought they usually went for the temple. Or the mouth.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes they turn their head like this and put the muzzle here.”
I could picture it without Keifer’s demonstration. Merely substitute one face for another and I saw once more the so obviously dead sprawl of my father in the glossy five-by-eight photographs that were part of the official report. “There’s no reason now why Mrs. Haas should know about my investigation.”
“She won’t hear it from me.” Kiefer turned as the photographer called to him. “Right—let’s wrap it up.” Then back to me. “What about domestic problems—anything along that line?”
“Nothing that I turned up.”
“Okay. You or Bunch check with me later on—I’ll give you a run-down on the lab reports.”
I reached the top of the stairs, bottle and glass in hand, and met Margaret Haas shepherding her daughter out of a bathroom. The little girl stumbled sleepily as she dragged against her mother’s arms.
“Let me help you.” I lifted her on one arm as she pulled away from the stranger and started to whine, suddenly awake again and frightened. “That’s okay—Mama’s right here. Here she is—see her?”
The slender woman led me past the girl’s room to the master bedroom. “Let’s put her in here—I’d rather not have her sleep alone.”
I placed the small figure on the expanse of white coverlet, and her mother tucked the cloth up to her chin, then sat and stroked the head dwarfed by one of the big pillows. The girl’s hair was lighter than her mother’s and longer, and draped motionless over the pillow.
