Thinnes signaled, and the AME re-covered the body and pulled the curtain closed. Thinnes opened the door into the next room and waved her in. Room 133. Gray-and-black furniture, built to withstand the onslaught of distraught humans; reddish carpet and orange door; tan walls and ivory curtains; and, near the ceiling, the preferred medium for introducing people to the hard facts—closed-circuit TV.
At his request, she sat on the sofa. He thought she fit the stereotype—the stoic red man. Or, in this case, woman. “Do you have a place to stay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to have to ask you questions at a time like this, but I need help finding those responsible.” She nodded. “When was the last time you saw him alive?”
“The morning after Thanksgiving. He came for dinner and left after breakfast the next morning.”
“Did he have any enemies?”
“No.”
“Anyone hate him enough to kill him?”
“No.”
“Can you think of anything that would help me?”
“I know why he was killed.” He waited. “He knew who killed the artist. Bisti.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He knew, though.”
“Did he know Bisti?”
“He knew Mrs. Bisti. He loved her. He wanted to marry her—before she met Bisti. But she didn’t love him. So she married Bisti. I told him, go to the police.”
“Was he afraid?”
“My brother was never afraid. But he should have gone to the police.”
Forty-Nine
“Hey, Thinnes. Looks like we got a line on your dog.” Viernes slapped a note sheet down on the table in front of Thinnes. “Beat copper—Noir—ran him down for you.”
“Dog?”
“Yeah, you know. The one that took a dump on your crime scene.”
“Oh.” Thinnes picked up the paper and read a name, Abner West. Address in Uptown. The address was familiar: an SRO—single room occupancy—hotel, an odd one in that its former suites had been converted to one-bedroom apartments. “Noir still on duty?”
“Should be.”
“Do me a favor?” Thinnes waved the paper. “Call over to Twenty and ask them to have him meet me.”
Gray and dismal even in summer, Uptown was hell in December. Thinnes parked; before he and Oster could get out of the car, Officer Noir and his partner pulled up with their Mars lights flashing.
Thinnes got out and walked over to the patrol car. “Noir?”
“Yup.”
“Kill the lights, would you please?
“Sure.”
“You guys with us?” Oster asked.
Noir gave them a thumbs-up and got out of the car, closely followed by his partner. Young and blond and fit, Noir could have been a poster boy for the Hitler Youth. He was pressed and polished, clean-cut and clean shaven. And macho. His partner was dark, taller, heavier, and laid-back enough to seem half-asleep by comparison. He wasn’t. He gave Thinnes a succinct account of their discovery of the dog’s owner—from memory. Thinnes was impressed. An “attaboy” was in order, he decided, maybe a good word to the team’s supervisor.
The man who opened the office door looked like a Hell’s Angel, from long, greasy hair tied back with a bandanna to chain-clad motorcycle boots. Dirty sleeves from his thermal undershirt showed below the rolled sleeves of a plaid work shirt, and his jeans were held by both suspenders and a belt with a Harley Davidson buckle.
“We’re looking for an Abner West,” Oster told him.
“Yeah. Well, like I told the beat cop earlier…” He focused on something behind Oster—spotted Noir, Thinnes guessed. He seemed to calculate briefly whether Noir would consider it an insult to be called “cop” by a civilian. Thinnes could almost see the wheels turning and the internal shrug as the man decided he didn’t care. He brought his full attention back to Oster. “I ain’t seen him in a couple days.”
“That unusual?”
“Well…He’s a boozer. You know how they are sometimes.”
“Tell us about him,” Thinnes said.
“Not much to tell. Lives alone—no family he’s ever mentioned ’cept a nephew that’s a bum. Served in Korea. Pays his rent pretty regular.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“Ya got me. Some kinda pension, maybe?”
Oster said, “What’s the nephew’s name?”
“Elvis Hale.”
“What kind of bum is he?”
“The kind that’s got a prison record.”
“Know where we can find him?”
The manager shook his head.
“Tell us about West’s dog. What kind is it?”
“Damned if I know. Yellow.”
“Big?”
“It will be when it gets done growing.”
“How long has he had it?”
“’Bout two months. Not sure. It’s quiet. No tellin’ how long he had it ’fore I found out.”
“Why’d you let him keep it?”
“Like I said, it’s quiet. And he cleans up after it.”
They waited. Nothing he’d said so far explained why a landlord would let a tenant keep a dog.
Finally he said, “Well. He gave me two months rent up front for security.”
They kept waiting.
“To be honest, I figured if he had some company, he wouldn’t be pestering me all the time. He gets lonely and gets tanked up, then he comes down here wantin’ to talk—a real pain in the ass.”
There was no answer when they knocked on West’s door, and the woman in the next apartment was worried. She hadn’t seen him in two days, though he usually came and went walking the dog.
It was obvious, as soon as Thinnes opened the door, that their concern was justified. Blood was everywhere. Dark, clotted blood. Half-dried. Still smelling like death. The dirty, scarred linoleum was splattered with it as if someone had taken a bucket and splashed it from the center of the room to the doorway on the far side. And then padded through it barefoot. And slipped on one of the splotches and gone down on hands and knees, squeegeeing the blood aside, leaving scrabbled handprints on the filthy floor.
Right behind Thinnes, Noir said, “Christ!”
Thinnes said, “Stay here.”
Noir stopped in the doorway. Thinnes pulled latex gloves from a pocket and put them on before stepping carefully across the room. The overhead light reflected dully off the clots that hadn’t dried. It was hard to find places, as he reached the far doorway, to put his feet without stepping in it. The short hallway beyond the doorway was dark, and Thinnes stopped before entering it. “Noir, throw me your flashlight.”
Noir, who’d drawn his gun, complied.
Thinnes hugged the left side as he continued, holding the light well away from his body and trained on the bloody handprints along the right wall. He didn’t really fear an attack. The blood was old, the killer likely gone. But Thinnes advanced cautiously.
The trail led to the end of the hall, a bedroom if the layout was the same as the neighbor’s, back out into the hall, and through a doorway in the right wall of the hallway—what had to be the bathroom. The door was closed. Thinnes picked his way through the bloodstains, stepping carefully on dried patches where there wasn’t enough blood-free space for his feet. The flashlight beam found dried blood on both jamb and doorknob. And bloody daubings along the door’s edge. Thinnes turned the knob and pushed. There was momentary resistance. Then a grotesque, familiar smell. The smell of death—feces and a body left lying in the steam heat. How many days?
The resistance was from weight, not power—something heavy leaning on the door. Thinnes shoved the flashlight in his belt and leaned backward so he could look for an attacker through the crack between the jamb and the hinge side of the door. He saw only a dirty bathtub and an old steam radiator. He pushed the door open wider. The white tile floor of the room was dark with blood, blood following the grout lines, outlining the small hexagonal tiles. He peered c
autiously around the door.
The room was about five by eight, with sink and toilet on the right, tub opposite the door, and radiator opposite the toilet. The body of a Caucasian male, mid-sixties, 250 pounds, lay on its left side, facing the toilet with its arms bracketing the space occupied by the fixture and its feet against the door. Worshipping the porcelain god even in death. The body was clad only in a sleeveless undershirt and boxer shorts.
Without entering the room, Thinnes looked closely at the remains. Abner West’s face, hands and feet, forearms and knees were covered in dried blood. And blood matted his thinning white hair. His half-mast eyes were darkened by the dry air, as were his lips and the numerous small scrapes and scratches on his flabby legs and torso. His skin looked jaundiced under a fluorescent light yellowed by years of cigarette smoke. The purple blotches of livor mortis darkened the lowest-lying body parts, except on the feet, which had been moved when Thinnes shoved the door. West’s flaccid limbs and the greenish tinge of his distended abdomen told Thinnes that rigor had come and gone and putrefaction was settling in.
There was a spent cigarette butt dissolving in the toilet—lid and seat were up—and black crud growing under the rim. Yellow drip stains decorated the outside of the bowl, trailing to a crust of filth around the base. Not a foot from Abner West’s dead face. Apart from the blood, there was no sign of a struggle. Thinnes looked everything over twice to be sure. Then he backed out of the room and let the weight of West’s feet against the door push it shut.
The room at the end of the hall was dark. Thinnes shone the flashlight around and was momentarily startled when a pair of red eyes flashed back at him. Then he remembered West had a dog. He found the light switch and flipped it. Light changed the red eyes dark brown and the darkness around the eyes to almost white. The dog looked like a Labrador retriever that had been bleached almost white. A red nylon collar around its neck and a red nylon leash tied to the leg of the bed kept it from crossing the room to greet Thinnes. There was a large damp spot on the faded rug at what looked like the maximum distance the dog could get from the bed. The dog wagged its tail, timidly at first, as if expecting to be punished, then more enthusiastically.
Thinnes looked around the room. At first glance, it appeared to have been tossed by the DEA—clothes and old newspapers and empty booze bottles were strewn everywhere. But the drawers were still in the dresser, and the closet door was shut. And nothing in the room was broken. Abner West had simply been a slob. The only neat thing in the room was the dog. And even the dog was splashed with the blood that trailed into the room and back out again.
Thinnes returned to the front room.
Oster was standing just inside the front door, looking around. “Not much of a housekeeper, is he?”
“Was,” Thinnes said. “Looks like natural causes, but in case I’m wrong, let’s get a mobil unit in here to take a few pictures. And call the ME—see if they want to send an investigator—the usual drill.”
Thinnes spent the next twenty-five minutes talking to the neighbors up and down the hall, learning nothing helpful. When the district evidence guy showed up, Thinnes told him, “Victim’s not in any hurry. Go take pictures of his dog, first, so we can get it out of here. End of the hall.”
The photographer took pictures of the hall, itself, before he picked his way down it, through the blood. From just inside the bedroom door, he shot pictures of the floor and three walls, then crossed to the opposite side of the room to shoot the door wall. He took two close-ups of the bloody dog, one from each side. The dog sat quietly and wagged its tail.
“What’ve we got here, Detective?” the tech asked.
“In spite of the blood, I think we got natural causes,” Thinnes said. “Guy was a boozer. Looks to me like it finally caught up with him.”
The technician nodded. “Where is he?”
“In the bathroom. Let me get rid of this dog before you shoot in there.”
Thinnes crossed to the bed and untied the dog, then carried it out of the apartment, trying to hold it away from his body to keep from getting blood or hair on his clothes. The animal was heavy—twenty-five or thirty pounds—and he was glad to set it down in the hall.
The two beat coppers, lounging against the wall opposite the door, came to attention when he appeared.
“Noir,” Thinnes said, “see if the manager’ll take this dog off our hands. If not, call Animal Control, then take it out for a walk before it has another accident.”
Noir nodded, without enthusiasm, and took the leash. Thinnes went back in the apartment to watch the tech photograph Abner West.
Fifty
“What’re you doing tomorrow night?” Rick’s voice.
Caleb stood at the window of his office as he listened to the phone, watching the traffic crawl down Michigan Avenue. The Loop was aglitter with lights and feverish with the urgency of the season. Christmas shoppers. He tried to picture Rick in a Christmas context—shopping, stringing lights, or singing Christmas carols. What came to mind was a fantasy involving red ribbon and mistletoe. He blushed at the thought and said, “I have tickets for the opera.”
“Tickets?”
“Wagner. Die Walküre.”
“You’re going with someone.”
Nothing like being subtle, Rick, he thought. “No…”
“Well?”
Caleb took a deep breath and wondered why he couldn’t just say no. It was symptomatic that he felt he was being pressured into what he should have freely offered. And he resented it. What am I doing, going with this man?
“I’ve never been to an opera,” Rick was saying.
“Die Walküre is not the one to start with.”
“I’ll be good.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What’s the drill?”
“Business attire—”
“No T-shirts?”
“The performance starts at six-thirty and runs nearly five hours. Latecomers aren’t seated until there’s a break or an intermission. Clearing one’s throat is frowned upon; talking is grounds for murder.”
“Sounds pretty stuffy.”
“You don’t have to come.”
“Where do I meet you?”
He took a cab. The usual hustle and rush of Loop traffic was intensified by the urgency of the season. Hanukkah. Headlights and brake lights flashed, and turn signals and Four-ways. There was the usual glitter and neon of the Loop, and all the Downtown trees were bejeweled with white Italian lights. For the first time in years, he felt the manic joy of the season. Ebenezer Caleb transformed by Christmas spirits. The words for the song, “You’re Just in Love,” mingled in his head with the carols and madrigals he’d heard recently on WFMT—Wassail and Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel. Being in love—he recognized it as infatuation—was closely akin to insanity and probably biochemically congruent with the manic phase of bipolar affective disorder. He was—in strictly clinical terms—hyperrthymic. But the “dis-ease” was strictly self-limiting, so he decided to enjoy it.
As the cab let him out in front of the opera house, Caleb’s excitement built like an electric charge in the dry, cold air. Rick was waiting.
He looked gorgeous in a dark-gray mohair coat, gray suit, and gray paisley tie with traces of red and the same slate blue as his eyes. His only concession to the season was a small cloisonné wreath of holly leaves with a tiny, red AIDS-awareness ribbon in place of a bow. His greeting was more effusive than Caleb felt comfortable with under the circumstances—an awkward hug.
For a brief moment, Caleb felt like an old cat in the company of a puppy. “Shall we go in?” he said.
The art deco doors opened, creating a temporary vacuum, and a great whoosh of cold air propelled them inside.
“The Lyric is a world-class ensemble,” Caleb said. “And the Civic’s one of the world’s premier houses. It’s acoustically perfect, and there aren’t any bad seats.”
They had drinks, then went to their seats. Caleb had a box, on the mezzani
ne, with a superb view of stage, orchestra, and audience. The spectacle was dazzling: bronze and marble, gold and glitter, and golden light.
He tried to see it as Rick must. There were upper-middle-class people, middle-aged and older couples, gays as well as straights.
“So what’s the appeal?”
“Ritual, spectacle, and drama.” Bread and circuses. Opera and hockey. Different metaphors for the same spiritual experience. In opera, the emphasis was on verbal assault. “It fills the same need as soap opera, professional wrestling, and Kabuki. Or Greek tragedy.”
“Pretty heavy.”
He was being polite. Ponderous was the word more often applied, particularly to Wagner.
“How did you get interested?”
“My mother was the quintessential opera buff.”
As a child, Caleb had resisted his mother’s efforts to interest him in opera. But, since his father always managed to have “emergency” surgery on opera nights, Caleb accompanied his mother to performances from the time he was seven. He’d never enjoyed it. The music wasn’t bad, but as with Gregorian chant, he’d liked it better before he understood the words—which in translation frequently were insipid. And there’d seemed no point in ruining a perfectly good drama—or dressing up a silly one—with songs in foreign languages.
Then one day he’d heard Maria Callas on the radio. It had been an epiphany.
“So tell me about this show,” Rick said.
“In Act One, Siegmund, the hero, arrives destitute and exhausted at Hunding’s house, built around the trunk of an ash tree. Hunding’s wife, Sieglinde, offers him sanctuary. When Hunding arrives, he reiterates the offer of shelter—until he hears Siegmund’s story and discovers Siegmund is his kinsmen’s enemy, whom he’s sworn to kill. He tells his guest that he can safely stay the night, but in the morning, he’s a dead man. Hunding and Sieglinde go off to bed, but she drugs him and returns to Siegmund. She shows him a sword a mysterious stranger once drove into the trunk of the ash. Siegmund retrieves the sword. They talk and discover that they’re siblings, separated long ago. They fall madly in love and elope—”
The Death of Blue Mountain Cat Page 19
