Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 02/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  Powder stared at Haller for an uncomfortably long moment. But it was too dark to see if Haller had anything on his mind besides his job. Funny, though, that Haller should be here. His assigned patrol area was miles to the west.

  Oh well.

  Powder beckoned Haller to lean in close. “I haven’t heard anything from inside the building and there’s no getaway car waiting back here. Probably whoever did it is long gone. Even so.”

  Haller nodded. Both men drew their weapons and Haller also took out his flashlight.

  Powder turned his light on, took a breath, and headed into the dark void. “Police,” he called. “Stay where you are.” He dodged to one side and crouched. With gun and light he scanned the room.

  Haller took the other side, his flashlight too searching for danger.

  They found none.

  By the doorjamb Haller discovered a row of three switches. He flipped them all.

  The room flooded with light, showing it to be a large storeroom, with a desk, a computer, and a file cabinet against the wall opposite where they’d just come in.

  There was no one in the room besides the two policemen.

  “Clear,” Haller called.

  Each man took a door that led off the room on the end away from the desk.

  “Clear,” Powder called, finding a toilet.

  “Clear.”

  Then together they approached the main passage into the public’s area of the store. They entered quickly and cautiously, and rapidly they searched up and down the aisles of goods. There was no one in the store.

  Powder moved in the direction of the main entrance, intending either to open it for the officers standing outside or indicate through the glass that there was no one untoward on the premises.

  “Hang on a sec, Lieutenant,” Haller said.

  Powder turned. “What?”

  The younger, taller man approached and leaned forward. Quietly he said, “It’s good to have backup you can trust, isn’t it?”

  After a moment, Powder said, “What’s that supposed to mean, Haller?”

  “Leave my wife alone.”

  “What?”

  Haller held Powder’s eyes for another moment. Then he stepped around and unbolted the entrance door. “Nobody home,” he said to the three officers outside.

  “We have to stop meeting like this, Roy,” Carol Lee Fleetwood said in her office the next day.

  Powder smiled and sat down.

  “No, I mean it, Roy. I can’t have you coming here all the time. What is it now? A statistical analysis of how many officers call in sick every Super Bowl Sunday? The World Series? The Pride Parade?”

  Powder’s smile vanished. “I want to make you a better non-cop,” he said.

  Fleetwood sighed. She looked at her watch. “Two minutes.”

  “Oh for crying out loud.”

  “One fifty-five. Fifty-four.”

  “Barry Haller threatened me last night.”

  “He what?”

  “He clearly threatened that one day he wouldn’t back me up when I needed him to.”

  “Did you record it?”

  “No. And I’ll take care of the threat. But the point I’m making is that he knew I’d been checking up on him. He said, ‘Leave my wife alone.’”

  “His wife?” Fleetwood gave Powder a look that asked whether there was more between him and Haller’s wife than had previously been advertised.

  “Don’t be stupid. I’m saying that Haller knew his wife told me—me and not an anonymous letter deliverer—that he was off hunting deer. I’d never met the woman before, and it’s not like I was wearing my uniform.”

  Fleetwood considered this. “Funny glasses? A fake beard?”

  “Sunglasses and a Colts cap.”

  “Maybe she described you well.”

  “Because I’m so distinctive? You and I both know that without my uniform I’m just an average-looking guy in late middle-age. Nobody would look at me twice.”

  Fleetwood considered this.

  “I wasn’t there long and she never really saw me—I didn’t give her any reason to.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “So I’ve come in to ask whether someone in this office told Haller that I reported him for taking unauthorized time off.”

  Fleetwood rocked forward. “You’re accusingme?”“Not you. But I have legitimate cause to ask who else might have seen the report I left with you.”

  “Not who might have seen it. Who might have tipped off Barry Haller.”

  “Yes.”

  “No one.”

  “No one saw it?”

  “No one in this office tipped off Barry Haller.”

  “Just like that? No thinking about it? No reviewing where the report went after I left? Who had access? What time people left the office?”

  “Just like that.”

  Powder studied her face. Then he got up. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “If you say no way, then it’s no way. So there has to be some other explanation.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. I can help cops do their jobs better. Maybe I’m overreaching to try to help you non-cops.”

  “Okay,” Fleetwood said. “And I will give your report some thought.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  She frowned, trying not to repeat that she’d just told him not to keep coming to the office.

  “I’m preparing a report on absenteeism on Valentine’s Day. Why can’t they just say it with flowers?”

  Powder was making a joke. Fleetwood didn’t laugh. He left.

  Powder did some gardening after he got home from seeing Fleetwood. He no longer had a plot of land on the edge of the city but there was soil and some sunshine on two sides of his little house. It was enough to make do with, as were so many other things in his life.

  Anyway, Powder’s gardening wasn’t about the fruit or the flowers. He gardened when he had something to think about. Today that something was Barry Haller.

  Part of the mystery was how Haller knew it was Powder who’d visited his house and found out about his hunting trip. If he hadn’t learned this from someone in Human Resources, then from who?

  And then Haller had threatened him. To imply that Powder might find himself without backup in a dangerous situation was about the worst threat one policeman can make to another without brandishing a weapon. What was that about?

  Both the threat and its premeditated nature were puzzling. Claiming to be sick in order to take a day off to murder deer was bad—irresponsible—but it was misdemeanor territory rather than felony land. Even Powder wouldn’t lock Haller up or fire him. Some community service, maybe. Emptying bedpans at a hospital for a month or two? Helping out at a deer sanctuary?

  The target of Powder’s report was a general attitude rather than any particular offender. Which Haller couldn’t know, fair enough, so maybe he thought he’d been singled out. But even so, to threaten a superior and senior officer? Overkill, surely.

  Many weeds died but Powder still did not find the missing bit of the Haller puzzle.

  Neither did he find it at the beginning of the shift that evening. Discreetly, Powder gave Haller special attention as he went through the assignments, alerts, messages from on high, and the rest of the appetizers, entrées, and desserts on the day’s roll call menu. He also watched Lyndrick, Wear, and Dubinski, three of the other four “criminals” on his list. Connick, the fifth, was absent. He was in the hospital with a hiatal hernia. Supposedly.It was Larry Wear who was Haller’s neighbor. They hadn’t struck Powder as special friends in the past and today they didn’t sit at the same table. Did they hunt together? Powder didn’t know. When he’d rung the bell at Wear’s house, no one had answered.

  And Lyndrick and Dubinski? No answer at their doors, either. Who knew? Powder was stuck for ideas about how to proceed.

  And he continued to be stuck until a call came through from a woman in a condo off College just north of B
road Ripple. She was worried about a prowler in the hallways that connected her unit to others.

  The officer taking the call was one of the ND72 patrols, Valerie Muntz. Powder arrived shortly after to back her up as well as to observe how she handled the call. On the job little more than a year, Muntz appeared to be a high-fives female officer—one who seemed more comfortable with rough-and-tumble calls requiring chases and searches than with mundane matters requiring sensitive dealing with the public. Since most calls about prowlers didn’t lead to shootouts Powder decided to see how patient Muntz would be this time.

  The member of the public turned out to be perfect for the purpose. Mrs. Jacqueline Fredrick was in her early seventies and spoke slowly and carefully.

  “So what exactly did you see, Mrs. Fredrick?” Muntz said.

  “It’s not what I saw. It’s what I heard,” the woman said. “It was a man and he was mumbling to himself.”

  “Mumbling?”

  “Making low and threatening sounds that weren’t really words. I know everyone in this building, by name. I recognize their voices. There’s just nobody who sounds like that. And it wasn’t a visitor, because there are no cars parked in the visitors area outside. I can see it clearly from my living room.” Mrs. Fredrick nodded when she finally finished this statement, to punctuate and affirm it.

  Powder stood well behind Muntz and said nothing.

  “So you didn’t see anything,” Muntz said.

  Mrs. Fredrick looked exasperated. “It’s what I heard. I just told you.”

  “What about condo security?” Muntz asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Did you report your suspicions?”

  “Tell them? All they do is play cards all night.”

  “So you didn’t report what you heard to them?”

  “Of course I did. The man I spoke to said I shouldn’t worry, they’d take care of it. Well, I can see their office from my kitchen window. Neither one of them left their building.”

  “And how long ago was that?”

  “Must be forty-five minutes now.”

  “So you heard the prowler . . . ?”

  “A few minutes before that. Look, Officer, are you going to search the building for him or not?”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t see anybody as I came into the building.” Muntz turned to Powder. “Did you, sir?” She raised her eyebrows, knowing that Mrs. Fredrick couldn’t see her do it.

  “No one, Officer Muntz. Nor did I pass any doors that looked like they’d been forced open.”

  “Me neither,” Muntz said, latching on to something she hadn’t thought of for herself. She turned back to Mrs. Fredrick. “So I’m not sure what I can do, ma’am. Would you like me to get someone to call you for an appointment to look over your apartment’s security?”

  “I would not, young woman,” Mrs. Fredrick said. “What I want you to do is search this building and find the intruder.”

  “That doesn’t seem appropriate to me, since you didn’t see anyone. But we’re happy to look around as we leave.”

  “I think your attitude is highly cavalier and irresponsible.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Powder could hear the frown on Muntz’s face, though he couldn’t see it.

  “Very off-hand. How will you feel if you leave now and in an hour’s time you hear that somebody in this building has been robbed or murdered?”

  Muntz paused before she answered this. “I would be upset, of course, ma’am. But you hear a strange sound that could have been somebody’s radio or maybe even from the TV next door. How much time am I meant to spend looking in shadows for that? Your own security people aren’t worried. If you don’t think they do the job, then complain to your condo committee. We’re here to help, but we’re not exactly going to call in the National Guard because you heard something.”

  It was then that Powder got an idea about Barry Haller.

  “Well!” Mrs. Fredrick said. “I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life.”

  “No offense meant, ma’am,” Muntz said, “but if that’s the worst you’ve ever heard, you’ve had a pretty lucky time of it.”

  Powder intervened. “Mrs. Fredrick, I’m sorry that Officer Muntz has been impolite.” He stepped forward.

  “I wondered whether you were just along for the ride,” Mrs. Fredrick said to Powder. “Listening to all that . . . Outrageous. I pay your salaries.”

  “Now just a—” Muntz began.

  Powder put a hand on her shoulder. To Mrs. Fredrick he said, “Officer Muntz will be disciplined and I will see to it that she attends classes to help her learn how to be more polite in the future.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Fredrick said, but her tone made it clear she liked this change of direction.

  “Meanwhile, Officer Muntz and I will search through the public areas of the building. Before we leave, we’ll stop back and tell you what we’ve found, if anything.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Fredrick said. “Officer . . . ?”

  “Lieutenant Leroy Powder, ma’am.” He gave her a card. “Don’t be shy about calling again if you see, or hear, anything suspicious. We’ll knock on your door in a few minutes.”

  When she and Powder were out of earshot down the hall, Muntz said, “I can’t believe you bending over like that for a time-waster like that old woman.”

  “That time-wasting old woman pays for your salary, Muntz. And your pension. And for your sick days. And for your personal days, once you’ve been working long enough to get some.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” Muntz wasn’t happy. “What if somebody’s out there getting shot just because we’re in here chasing shadows?”

  “You’ve made a fundamental mistake, Valerie.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “You walked into this building and you came to this woman’s apartment. Right?”

  “So?”

  “And because you didn’t see anybody on the way, you act like you’ve searched the place.”

  “I have.”

  “Work it through. Nobody left the building after she heard what she heard. She watched from the window.”

  “Right.”

  “And when you came in, nobody was coming down as you were going up.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So tell me what happened if Mrs. Fredrick was right and she heard somebody in the hall. Where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know.” Muntz felt her exasperation growing. She’d heard about the spots Powder put people in sometimes. She’d just never been on the receiving end before.

  “Think about it,” Powder said insistently.

  “Okay . . . then he went into one of the apartments. He lives here.”

  “Reasonable. But Mrs. Fredrick says he doesn’t live here.”

  “Then he vanished in a puff of smoke. I don’t know.”

  “That’s true. You don’t.” He waited while Muntz stared at him. Finally he said, “What if the prowler went up instead of down?”

  “There are only two floors, Lieutenant.”

  “There’s a roof.”

  “Why would a prowler go on the roof?”

  “Why does a prowler prowl and mutter to himself? I don’t know. But I think we should go ask him, don’t you?”

  And, as if to make the point as clearly as if it were a training exercise, Powder and Muntz did indeed find a man passed out at the top of a stairwell that led to the roof. From the smell of him he was almost certainly drunk. The empty bourbon bottle by his side was another clue.

  How and why did he get into the building in the first place? Why did he go up as high as he could? There was no way to tell and they couldn’t ask him because his sleep was deep. But hey.

  “You,” Powder said to Muntz, “will stay with this member of the public until the ambulance gets here.”

  “Oh for—”

  “When he is safely loaded aboard, you will go to Mrs. Fredrick. You’ll explain what happened, and apologize sincerely and profoundly to
her. I will come back tomorrow to ask her how you presented yourself. What she says will have an effect on your future.”

  By this point, Muntz had gone quiet.

  “After your apology, you will follow the ambulance to the hospital and you will stay with Citizen Doe until he wakes up. You will ask him what he was doing in the building and how he got in. These are important security issues. You will not leave his side until you learn the answers to these questions. And you will make no stops on the way to the hospital. Do I make myself clear?”

  Powder left home early the next afternoon and he did, indeed, stop to talk with Mrs. Fredrick.

  “That girl policeman came by this morning,” Mrs. Fredrick said. “She looked terrible.”

  “Remorse at having been rude to you, I expect,” Powder said.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. But she did apologize. I offered her a cup of coffee, or a place to lie down for a nap, but she went on her way.”

  “She’s on duty again tonight.”

  “I hope she manages to sleep during the day. The poor thing looked exhausted.”

  “Did she tell you about the prowler?”

  “She said he thought he was somewhere else.”

  “A different building?”

  “Chicago. He has mental problems, it seems. There was a number in his pocket that the hospital called. He walked out of a facility in Illinois. They have no idea how he got here, and your young officer couldn’t find out how he got into the building. A bit worrying, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going to happen again soon.

  Powder nodded slowly as he absorbed this information. Muntz seemed to have followed instructions. It would be interesting to see how she behaved at roll call.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Lieutenant?” Mrs. Fredrick asked. “And I have some fresh chocolate chip cookies . . .”

  But Powder declined the offers apologetically. He had a second stop to make. This one was at the house of Barry Haller.

  Although he was in his uniform he carried his baseball cap and his clipboard, just in case it was Mrs. Haller who opened the door. They would help remind her that he’d been there before. His sunglasses were missing, but only because he’d left them on his car seat and squashed them.