Consulting Detective

by Alan Manifold

  She said, “The same key opens the closet. I won’t be a moment.” She was back in less than a minute with the key.

  “I’ll bring it back when I’m done, ma’am,” Mihdí said.

  He went around to the side door, which was unlocked, then up the stairs to the second floor. Since Mihdí had been there before, he knew the layout. There were two apartments upstairs. Wiegand’s door was just at the top of the stairs, and the other apartment was at the end of the hall. Mihdí could see a smaller door without an apartment number next to the entrance to the other apartment. He put on a pair of latex gloves he had brought from his car and let himself into Wiegand’s apartment, which was just a single room, plus a kitchen area and bathroom. Mihdí took a quick look through dresser drawers, but didn’t find any evidence of spray-paint, gloves, or other relevant items, and there didn’t seem to be any place to hide things like that, either. He made sure the apartment door locked behind him, then opened up the closet. There were clothes, a few games and some canned goods.

  One of the shelves, though, was reserved for Wiegand’s skinhead activities. There were flyers with racist rants. There were some DVDs that appeared to be distributed by neo-Nazi groups in the western United States. And there were four cans of black spray paint lined up on the shelf, along with an apparently unused pair of gloves. That wasn’t a particularly helpful result, since Wiegand had just been caught with spray paint, but it did seem to confirm that Wiegand had prepared ahead of time, rather than simply purchasing spray paint on the spur of the moment. There were also two cans of red spray paint on the shelves as well, both of which seemed to be new and full.

  Mihdí locked up the closet, returned the key to the owner and drove back to his office. He decided it might be helpful to do a bit of a brain mapping about the case. Using his favorite online brain-mapping site, he put the rabbi’s name in the center. He then added the names of the key people he had talked to in the case. Several, such as Sam Schliebaum and Neil Hoffman, he moved to the side in a category of people without motives. Some of the others he placed under the boxes for people to whom they were connected, such as putting Rev. Crestwood under the box for Matthew Skefton. He annotated those whom he considered possible suspects with information about their character, motives, associates, and alibis. He didn’t worry about making the brain map totally comprehensive, since it was only there to help him see where things stood.

  Kurt Childs was at his desk nearby, so Mihdí called him over to look at the brain map. Greg Victor, another member of the detective squad, was in the office, so Mihdí invited him to join them as well. As they looked it over together, they could see that Mihdí had narrowed it down to four suspects: Scott Craig, Charlie Richardson, Matthew Skefton, and Brent Wiegand.

  Kurt, who had been part of Mihdí’s consultation earlier that day, noticed that Ahmad Muhammad was not one of them. “I know Beth thought he should be checked out,” he said to Mihdí, “but I’m with you on this. He had nothing to do with it.”

  They looked at each of the four in turn.

  “Just based on motive,” Mihdí said, “I’d peg Richardson as having the strongest . . . what would you say . . . traditional motive. He could make a lot of money if his proposal were accepted, and it would be necessary for the synagogue to move for that to happen.”

  “But if I understand your notes properly,” Greg observed, “he has an airtight alibi.”

  Mihdí nodded.

  “This Wiegand guy looks like pretty much a lowlife type,” Greg said.

  “I agree,” said Kurt. “You’ve talked to him, right, Mihdí?”

  “Yeah, I have,” Mihdí replied. “More than once. He’s a real piece of work. Bad attitude, bad history, bad beliefs. It seems reasonably likely he could be involved, although we have nothing specific tying him to the rabbi or the synagogue or even to Jews in general. His alibi is incomplete and unconfirmed, so he’s definitely still in the frame.”

  “And Skefton?” Kurt asked.

  “A bit of a wild card, I’d say,” said Mihdí. “He certainly has the passion and seems to have had some kind of grudge against Klemme. But he’s also a new Christian.”

  “Fanatical?” Kurt queried.

  “Absolutely,” Mihdí answered. “And he seems like he might be capable of murder under the right circumstances. But he’d also be worried about his eternal soul and would have some pretty significant hesitation about adding a mortal sin to his ledger.”

  “The stuff you have on this Scott Craig seems a bit sketchy,” Greg said.

  “Yes, I noticed that, too,” said Kurt. “What’s the story there?”

  “Well, I tried to talk to him on Friday, but he had gone home sick. I have an appointment with him this afternoon, and I hope to tie up all of the loose ends. He’s one of a group of young people in the synagogue, and I’ve only talked to a couple of them. It’s possible one of the others will help fill in some gaps, too.”

  The three of them agreed that talking to Craig was top priority, then digging a bit deeper into Wiegand’s past. They thought the other two suspects could wait.

  Mihdí had lots of time before his scheduled appointment with Scott Craig, so he decided to try a consultation with some of the people involved in the case. He drove up near the synagogue, which was only three minutes from the police station. He stopped in at Hoffman’s Deli, HisStory Book Store, and ended up at Uncommon Brews, with Sandy Klarr, Neil Hoffman, and Harry Katz all in tow. They found a table and placed their orders, then they chatted until the coffees were served. Mihdí asked Ahmad Muhammad to join them.

  “I know this is a bit unusual,” he said to them all, “but it often helps me to consult with others about a case to see what perspectives I have missed and what facts I may have overlooked. I hope you’re all open to the idea of talking things through a bit.”

  They all agreed, although there was a hefty degree of puzzlement spread around the table.

  “I’d just like to have us work together to try to surface the truth. If you have a strong opinion about anything that comes up, just ‘check it at the door,’ as it were. For now, we just want to see what comes up when we talk about things.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” said Sandy Klarr. “I don’t even know much about the case.”

  “Well, let me fill you in on a few facts, but it’s your fresh eyes that I’m counting on.”

  Mihdí went over the basic facts of the case, including the graffiti, the murder weapon, and the timing of events, as far as they were known. He didn’t talk about any of the suspects, as that was confidential.

  “So, given that very rough outline of what happened, let me ask you your general impressions.”

  “It still seems pretty obvious to me,” ventured Harry Katz. “Somebody came to vandalize the place, and they offed the rabbi when he caught them at it.”

  “Wouldn’t a vandal be much more likely to run than to commit murder?” asked Neil Hoffman. “Vandalism is a pretty low-level crime. It doesn’t seem like a tagger would make such a quick jump to murder.”

  Sandy Klarr nodded her head in agreement and added, “I would think that it would be very difficult to commit murder. Taking a human life is a very bad thing to do, and I think everybody knows that. It’s more than one giant step beyond vandalism.”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Katz. “But this wasn’t just someone painting their name on the side of a boxcar, you know. It was a hate crime, and that’s already a step or two beyond typical vandalism.”

  “Who would hate that much?” asked Ahmad. “In this country, it doesn’t really seem like people have that much hate. Sometimes I see suspicion or fear in people when they see me, but not so much hate.”

  “So, what do you think would make anyone kill a rabbi, particularly one as generally respected and friendly as Jacob Klemme?” Mihdí asked the group.

  “People do kill each other out of hate, don’t they?” asked Sandy Klarr. “There were all those lynchings and stuff in the South
years ago, right? Those were all basically hate crimes before they were called that.”

  “That’s true,” said Hoffman, “but it was almost always mob violence, not individual crimes. For individual murders, I would think you’d be more likely to look at love or money as motives, rather than some generalized hate. Once you’ve decided to kill someone, you may find it easier to do if you view the person as part of a group you hate. But hate, all by itself, is not gonna be enough to get you pull the trigger if you’re looking at one particular person walking down the street, minding his own business.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Muhammad. “In some parts of the world, prejudice can be so strong that one group doesn’t even view other groups as human. They can kill members of a different group without even feeling guilty because they think of it as killing an animal or digging up a weed in the garden.”

  Sandy Klarr winced at that idea. “Oh, that’s terrible! How can society function when there are such prejudices and hatred?”

  Nobody seemed to have an answer for that, so there was silence for a few moments.

  “I think you’re right, Ahmad,” said Harry at length. “It may start with one group hating another, but maybe when one individual hater focuses his hatred on one other individual, he can feel justified in killing him just because he’s considered as ‘one of them.’”

  Hoffman said, “I still think maybe love and money are much more likely to be motives. If somebody thinks somebody else is stealing their lover or if there’s money to be made, that’s when they’ll get to the point of killing somebody.”

  “I think you need to mix the love motive with hatred,” Harry speculated. “If somebody is stealing your lover, you’re not going to be happy about it, but you don’t kill them for that. The idea that somebody inferior is stealing your lover, though, might make your blood boil. I supposed that could apply to Rabbi Klemme if there was someone from a different religion who felt the rabbi had stolen someone from them, but I also think it would rule out a Jew. No Jew would think a rabbi as nice as Jacob could be inferior. Was he dating a non-Jew?”

  “As far as I’m aware, Jacob’s love life was completely within the Jewish community,” Mihdí answered quietly.

  “Then all we have left is money!” Harry stated triumphantly. He sat back in his chair as if the entire conversation were now over.

  “Would there have to be something personal involved for money to be the motive,” Mihdí asked, “or could that be completely impersonal?”

  Neil Hoffman said, “How are we to know what moves someone to murder? I think it’s a safe bet that none of us has ever seriously contemplated it, let alone gotten far enough along to experience what it might feel like.”

  “Is that a problem for the police, too, Detective Mongomery?” Sandy Klarr asked.

  “Is what a problem?” Mihdí replied. “I’m not sure I get the question.”

  “Well, hopefully, none of the police have every committed murder, either,” Sandy said. “How can you get inside the head of a murderer if you don’t have any experience to tell you how a murderer thinks?”

  “That’s an interesting question, Montgomery,” said Harry. “I’ve heard of the idea of police trying to think like criminals, but they can’t really know how to do that, right?”

  “Well, I hope that’s right,” Mihdí replied. “If we have any murderers in our ranks, I’m certainly not aware of them. But the same could be said for any type of psychology. People study psychology so they can learn things about the way people think and hopefully can apply the general principles of psychology even to other people’s thoughts and motives that might seem quite foreign. It’s certainly possible for us to feel empathy for people who have suffered things that we’ve never suffered.”

  “That’s right,” said Sandy. “Each of us has suffered in some way, whether it’s from torture to stubbing our toes. We can translate our pain into empathy for those who have experienced far worse things than we have.”

  “I think this is a very important point,” said Ahmad. “We all share parts of the human experience, so we can feel pain when our brothers and sisters feel pain, even if it’s not directly affecting us.”

  Mihdí nodded and said, “Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith tells us, ‘Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land.’ I think He’s talking about compassion, walking in somebody else’s shoes.”

  “That’s very beautiful, Detective,” Sandy responded.

  “Yes, I think so, too,” Mihdí said. “But I’m afraid I’ve contributed to us getting hopelessly off topic.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “I don’t want you to think it’s a total loss, though. I really gained a lot from this conversation,” the detective said. “The way you talked through the possibilities and examined how each type of motive would play out was very helpful to me. I hope I haven’t taken too much of your time.”

  Everyone got up and shook hands as they departed for their various shops. Mihdí paid for the coffees, embraced Ahmad, and went back to his car.

  Mihdí drove over to Scott Craig’s building and went up to the fifth floor office. He rang the bell on the receptionist’s desk again, and the same woman who had helped him on his previous visit appeared a moment later.

  “I have an appointment with Scott Craig,” Mihdí said.

  “I saw him come in earlier,” the woman replied. “Let me go check on him.”

  Another woman came to the reception area a few minutes later.

  “You’re Detective Montgomery?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Mihdí said. “And you are . . . ?”

  “I’m Scott’s secretary, Fang Yee,” she said. “Scott’s really busy today; he has a big deadline tomorrow. He was wondering if he could reschedule for another day.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” Mihdí replied. “I want to see him now. Let him know that we can do it here, or I can arrange to have him taken in for questioning.”

  Fang Yee’s eyes opened a bit wider, but she didn’t react otherwise. “I’ll give him the message,” she said.

  A few minutes later, Scott Craig emerged from the inner office area. Craig was short—no more than five foot seven—and had dark, curly hair. While he did not have facial hair, he had a very dark shadow of shaved whiskers on his chin and down his neck. His blue Oxford button-down shirt fit him perfectly, but the sleeves were rolled up, the top button was open, and his tie was loosened.

  When Mihdi had first met Craig during the cleanup at the Beth Shalom synagogue, he had looked energized from all the manual labor they had done. Now, however he looked tired and harried. He said, “I’m sorry, Detective, I am very busy today. I hope this won’t take long.”

  Mihdí just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll see,” he said.

  Craig nodded reluctantly and led Montgomery through the outer door to his office. Craig’s desk was strewn with papers, and there were several documents open on the computer screen. Craig saw that Mihdí was looking at them, so he turned off his monitor with an angry flourish.

  “Mr. Craig,” Mihdí began. “Since you’re busy, I’ll get straight to the point. Did you kill Rabbi Klemme?”

  “No!” Craig said, surprised. “Of course not!”

  “If possible, I need you to prove that,” Mihdí said. “You had an appointment with the rabbi at 6:00 p.m., and you notified the police shortly after that time. Can you account for your whereabouts during the rest of the afternoon?”

  “Well, I can tell you what I did,” Craig replied, “but I don’t think I can prove anything to you.”

  “Let’s start with that, then,” said Mihdí.

  “I was here all morning. I left at around 1:00 to go get lunch. I’ve had something on my mind lately—a personal thing, so don’t ask what it was— and I was really torn up about it that day. I called
Jacob to set up a time to see him after work. But then I felt like I needed to do some thinking. So I drove over to Pulaski Woods and just walked trails for a few hours. After that I went home to wait to go to the synagogue at 6:00.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone you knew in that time who could verify any part of this?”

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t, Detective. I didn’t know I’d need an alibi.”

  “Of course,” Mihdí said. “It’s perfectly natural. It’s just not very convenient for you.”

  “I’ll agree with you there,” replied Scott.

  “When you were at home, did you use your computer or make phone calls or anything that would show that you were there?”

  Craig looked down in his lap and said, “No. I just read the newspaper and flipped on the tube for a while.”

  Mihdí waited for a moment to see if Scott would say more, but he kept his eyes down and stayed silent.

  “OK then,” Mihdí continued. “You’ve said that the subject of your appointment with Rabbi Klemme is off limits. I understand your desire for privacy, and I suspect you won’t tell me anything more now. I just want to warn you that if the subject eventually appears to have some bearing on the case, or if I feel there’s some connection, I may need you to tell me more. Would you like to tell me more at this point?”

  “No,” Craig said, looking up briefly.

  “So noted,” said Mihdí. “I’d like to ask you about your relationship with Tamar Ornstein. Can you tell me about that?”

  “There’s not much to tell, really. We went out for a while, and then she broke it off.”

  “When was that, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. About six months ago, maybe.”

  “Did she give a reason?”

  “I think you should ask her that question,” Scott snapped.

  “I’d like to hear what you have to say about it.”

  “She said a lot of stuff, but I figured it boiled down to falling out of love.”

  “Did it have anything to do with Jacob Klemme?” Mihdí pursued.