Consulting Detective

by Alan Manifold

  Mihdí checked the browser’s history and saw a number of sites that could have supplied information about getting guns. The times shown for the various site visits were consistent with Craig’s story.

  As he prepared to leave, Mihdí spoke directly to Craig, “Lying to the police and obstructing a murder investigation are serious crimes. I don’t know yet where this case will end up, but I know that you’ve made it harder for me and consequently harder for yourself.”

  Mihdí paused. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I think you are lying to yourself as well, Mr. Craig.”

  Craig looked up at him, with surprise showing in his eyes and something else. Fear.

  “Ask yourself this question,” Mihdí continued, his voice still quiet, his eyes focused on Craig’s. “Had you been able to buy that gun and visit Rabbi Klemme, what would you have done if things had not gone as you thought they would? What decision would you have made if Rabbi Klemme had told you that he would keep seeing Tammy, despite you pointing your gun at him? Would you have simply put the gun away, thanked him, and walked away?”

  Craig was looking down. He didn’t meet Mihdí’s gaze.

  Mihdí let the silence draw out, then said, “You should consider yourself very lucky that there’s a waiting period for buying guns, because you’d be facing a life in prison if you had gone there, threatened him, and then let your jealousy get the better of you. Get yourself some help, because next time, your luck may have run out.”

  When he had spoken to Tammy, Mihdí had been struck by the timing of the planned announcement of Jacob and Tammy’s engagement, and he had started revising his thinking about why the murder had happened when it did. But he didn’t have sufficient evidence to arrest Craig immediately. He took down the name of the gun retailer that Craig had visited and drove back to the office. He asked Kurt Childs to check whether the staff at Freddie Bear could verify that part of Craig’s story.

  After about fifteen minutes, Kurt came to Mihdí’s office.

  “The manager at Freddie Bear remembers Mr. Craig very well. He said that if there hadn’t been a three-day waiting period, they would have created one for Craig. He wanted a gun, and he let them know it. He yelled at the guy helping him and demanded to see the manager. When the manager confirmed that there was a waiting period, Craig cussed him up and down. They finally threatened to call the police before they could get him to leave.”

  “None of that sounds the least bit surprising. Thanks, Kurt.”

  “Oh, by the way, this finally just came in for you from New Lenox. It’s the file about that murder where they interviewed Brent Wiegand.”

  “Great, thanks. I hope it has something useful in it. I feel like I’m chasing whirlwinds on this case.”

  The file contained a number of documents, which Mihdí glanced through. He decided to start his reading with the autopsy report on the victim, Silas Pattison. The cause of death was identified as a stab wound that entered the victim just under the ribs and went upwards. No murder weapon was found. In addition to the stab wounds, there was some evidence of abuse on the body, such as might have been caused by some physical abuse, perhaps hard slaps, punches, and a few kicks. These all appeared to have been inflicted near the time of death.

  The murder took place at the end of Sycamore Lane, a cul-de-sac not far from the New Lenox downtown. Gary Stevenson, the witness who had placed Wiegand in the area, had been out walking his dachshund a bit after dusk and had seen Wiegand walking ahead of him, heading east along Wood Street. He noticed that Wiegand appeared to be a bit intoxicated, but not incapacitated. At one point Wiegand picked up a pine cone from the sidewalk and was tossing it up in the air as he walked. Inevitably, he eventually dropped it, and Stevenson got a very good look at him when he turned around to pick it up. Stevenson was still behind him when Wiegand turned north on Gum Street, and he saw him enter Sycamore Lane. Stevenson lived at the outlet of Sycamore and knew it was a dead end, so he thought it was quite unusual to have someone he didn’t know walk that way. He kept half an eye on the street from his kitchen window for the next fifteen minutes or so, but he did not see Wiegand come back out, so he assumed he was visiting someone. He was able to give a very good description of Wiegand’s clothes, hair, face, and tattoos.

  Based on Gary Stevenson’s information, the New Lenox detective had correctly surmised that Wiegand had been at the VFW post, and the bartender confirmed that he had been there. The bartender also knew Brent’s friend, who was a member. When they followed up with the friend, he was able to direct them to Wiegand.

  The detective had interviewed Brent within twenty-four hours of the murder. Wiegand said he was trying to get to the Rock Island train station so he could go home but that he took a wrong turn. He admitted he was on Sycamore Lane but said when he got to the end of the street, he just continued through the woods and ended up back on Wood Street, the same route he had already taken. This time he got the directions right, found the train station, and went straight home. There was surveillance video at the train station that showed Wiegand on the platform about forty-five minutes after sunset. The train station is a bit more than a twenty-minute walk from the murder site, so it was still possible for Wiegand to have committed the murder, but getting through the woods in his impaired condition might well have slowed him down enough to account for the additional time. There was no other evidence that tied Wiegand to the crime, so they had not pursued him further.

  Mihdí flipped through the other pages in the file to see if there was any other information of interest. On one page, the name “Richardson” caught his eye. It was the initial report of the crime, which had been called in by Charles Richardson, a real estate agent from Pine Bluff. Richardson had come in to work on a house on Sycamore Lane the morning after the murder had apparently been committed. He had seen the body lying just off the street, in the grassy area in the center of the turnaround at the end of the lane, and had called the police immediately.

  When he was interviewed later, Richardson told the detectives that he had been working at the house the evening before but had to leave shortly after dusk because the power was turned off, so he didn’t have sufficient light to keep working. He couldn’t say whether the body was there when he left, as he had pulled straight out of the driveway and up the lane, not around the circle, and had been on the wrong side of his truck to notice a body in the gloom. The occupants of the only house that fronted onto the turnaround, beyond the one Richardson was working on, were gone on vacation.

  The interview form included Richardson’s address, which was on the 14600 block of Darwin Avenue. Mihdí checked the address on his computer, as he didn’t recognize the street. It was, as Richardson had told him, less than half a mile west of his office. A thought occurred to him, so Mihdí checked his notes from his interview with Meredith and Barry Grant, the couple Richardson had escorted around Pine Bluff to look at houses on the Tuesday of last week. They had provided Richardson with an alibi during the estimated hours of Rabbi Klemme’s murder. According to them, Richardson had told them that his children attended Bluff Point Elementary School. But because Richardson lived west of Pine Bluff’s main street, Mihdí realized that couldn’t be the case; they would have started at Pulaski Elementary and then moved to Emmett Till Elementary when they were a bit older. Mihdí was also conscious that when he had talked to Richardson this morning, the real estate agent had seemed to be in a big hurry to get away from him to meet the Grants, and wondered if that had been on purpose.

  Mihdí immediately called Richardson’s cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. He looked up Meredith Grant’s cell phone number, and she picked up right away.

  “Mrs. Grant?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Please don’t call me by name just now, but this is Detective Mihdí Montgomery.”

  “OK,” she said with a puzzled voice. “What can I do for you?”

  “Please don’t react in any way; just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’�
��Is Charlie Richardson with you right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell me the address where you are?”

  “Sure, it’s 14116 Newark Avenue, just off Lexington Drive.”

  “Please just try to stay there, if at all possible. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Mihdí practically ran to the parking lot, hopped in his car, and drove. He arrived at the house in less than ten minutes. Meredith Grant was standing in the driveway by herself.

  “Barry and Mr. Richardson are in the back yard, detective. I didn’t say a thing to either of them. What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure I know, but I need to talk to Charlie Richardson.”

  He went around the side of the house to where the two men were talking. Although their backs were to him, they turned around as they heard him approaching. Barry Grant was on the right, but the man on the left, although he looked very much like Charlie Richardson, was clearly someone else.

  “Hello, Detective,” Barry Grant said. “I’m surprised to see you here. What’s up?”

  “Hello, Mr. Grant. I’m actually here to speak to Mr. Richardson. Would you mind excusing us for a few minutes?”

  “No problem. I need to talk to Meredith, anyway.” Grant headed to the front of the house, taking the same route that Mihdí had just used.

  “As you may have heard, I am Detective Mihdí Montgomery of the Pine Bluff Police Department. And you are . . . ?”

  The man hesitated for a moment. “I’m John Richardson, detective, Charlie’s twin brother.”

  “Please explain what’s going on here.”

  John Richardson was obviously uncomfortable with being caught in a lie. His face was flushed, and he shuffled from foot to foot as he talked. “Charlie had some kind of conflict, so he asked me if I would come and show these people around the city last week. Charlie and I used to work together, and I’m a licensed real estate agent myself, so I help Charlie out now and then when he really needs it.”

  “But you told the Grants that you were Charlie . . .”

  “Yeah, Charlie asked me if I would do that. It was a bit odd, but I assume Charlie had his reasons. He hasn’t asked that in the past. It seems like a pretty harmless deception. Then, since I showed them around last week, calling myself Charlie, I pretty much had to do it again this time.”

  “So, when you’ve done this before in the past, you usually just introduced yourself as John and said you were working with Charlie, but this time he wanted you to pretend to be him.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Did anybody else know about this arrangement?”

  “Well, Ximena Gomez—that’s his assistant—she certainly knows that I help Charlie out from time to time. In fact, usually she’s the one who calls me to ask me to meet clients. But this time, Charlie called me himself. It’s not the first time he’s called me directly, but it’s usually Ximena. I suppose it was because of the special request that I use his name.”

  “Yes, I imagine so. Do you happen to know what your brother’s conflict was last week?”

  “Nope, no idea. I work on my own time nowadays, so I’m happy to do something a little different. I didn’t ask him why, I just said I’d be happy to do it.”

  “Do you know where your brother is now?”

  “Nope. He might be showing a house to somebody else, but I really don’t know. Is Charlie in trouble?”

  Mihdí ignored the question. He handed Richardson his card. “Thank you very much for your information, Mr. Richardson. If your brother calls you, please let me know. Otherwise, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call him for a few hours.”

  The Grants were standing beside what he assumed must be Richardson’s car as Mihdí returned to his Mini, so he gave them a wave, but he didn’t stop to talk. He drove back to the police station and sat in the parking lot thinking what to do next. He called Richardson’s cell phone, but again it went straight to voice mail. He called the office number and reached Ximena. He identified himself and asked her if she knew Richardson’s whereabouts.

  “Well, not exactly, sir,” she said, “but I know he’s out with a young couple from Des Plaines, taking a second look at some houses. The . . . uh . . . Grants.”

  “Mmm. So you haven’t seen him since he left the office this morning?”

  “No. I would guess he’d be done soon, though, and I’ll be happy to have him call you when he gets in.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Gomez.”

  Mihdí thought about it for a few more minutes and decided he would check out the synagogue. If Richardson were involved in the murder, it would be because he wanted the congregation to sell and move out, so he might be trying to find new ways to encourage them to do that.

  Mihdí went to the front door of the synagogue. Since the rabbi’s death, he assumed that the front door was generally kept locked, but he tried it anyway and found it unlocked. He hoped to enter very quietly, but there was some construction noise coming from down the street, and he was afraid it could be heard inside. He opened the door a crack, very slowly. He thought he heard some small sounds from inside, but the outside noise made it impossible to tell for sure. He proceeded to push the door open a bit wider and slipped in. The front door led into the sanctuary, but there was a short wall dividing the door from the main room, so someone entering would not be seen. He quietly closed the door behind him. The sanctuary was rather dark, lit only by daylight coming through windows and through the office area door. Mihdí waited for about a minute as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  He listened intently but did not hear anything in the sanctuary. He peered around the corner of the dividing wall and didn’t detect any movement. He moved very slowly to avoid making any noise, still worried that he had heard something earlier. He crept slowly out of the entrance way toward the back rows of pews, drawing his service pistol as he walked. He remembered the light switches as being on the right side of the sanctuary, near the hallway leading to the office door, about halfway up, so he headed cautiously in that direction.

  He reached the back corner of the pews and started moving up the side aisle, still moving quietly but a bit faster. He still had four or five more rows of pews to go before he reached the door leading to the office area. He stopped suddenly and looked at the wall beside him. Even in the gloom, he could see that part of a swastika had been roughly carved into the plaster wall. He looked at it a bit more closely to see if he could see what kind of tool might have been used. He also stooped to look at the floor, thinking he saw some fresh plaster dust just under the carving on the wall.

  He knelt on the carpet and set his pistol on the floor so that he could examine the plaster dust more closely. Just at that moment, a figure jumped out at him from between two pews. The attacker was wielding a large hunting knife and caught Mihdí with a slash across his left shoulder. Mihdí jumped backward, away from his attacker but also a long way from his pistol, which was fortunately hidden by the darkness in the sanctuary. He was off balance, however, so he fell onto his back when he landed. The man with the knife rushed in his direction, apparently intending to land on him and complete his attack. Mihdí managed to block the attacker with his feet and pushed him back into the pews. That gave Mihdí time to get up and put some distance between himself and his assailant, as well as to draw them both away from his gun, which he hoped had escaped notice. With that distance, he could see the other man clearly in the light from the office door.

  “Richardson, you’re only going to make things worse for yourself.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, detective. You’re not going to be able to tell your story to anyone, and I’m going to walk out of here. Though before I do, I might carve a swastika into you, just like I did on that wall. That should put the Jews into a selling mood, eh?”

  Richardson was slowly inching nearer, the knife held threateningly in front of him.

  “These things never work out the way you think they will, Charlie. Put the knife down, and let’s tal
k about it.”

  Charlie scoffed and took a swing at Mihdí with the knife. Mihdí was able to duck away, but he was being forced slowly into the back corner of the sanctuary. He made as if to lunge forward, but then pulled back. Richardson took the bait and made another swing at Mihdí. The detective was ready this time and leapt forward before Richardson could bring the knife back to position. He dodged Mihdí’s blow, though, and skipped backwards out of Mihdí’s range.

  Mihdí had succeeded, though, in getting himself out of the corner, so the two of them faced each other on more equal terms. Mihdí was bleeding steadily from the wound on his shoulder, but he tried to ignore it and focus on the man in front of him.

  “You blackmailed Brent Wiegand to vandalize this place and the Islamic Center, didn’t you?”

  “That imbecile. He was a pretty easy tool to manipulate.”

  As he said this, Richardson started waving the knife wildly in front of him and danced towards Mihdí. The detective grabbed a two-handled brass flower vase from a table at the back of the sanctuary and held it up as a shield as he backed away from the slashing knife. Richardson wasn’t able to get close enough to Mihdí to use the knife and didn’t want to take the chance of it being knocked out of his hands by the vase Mihdí was holding. Richardson quit waving the knife and again stood with it pointed at Mihdí.

  “This is his knife, actually,” Richardson said. “I pulled it out of the body of that homeless guy over in New Lenox. I thought that the knife, along with the video I made of Wiegand killing him, could both come in handy.”

  “How did you arrange that?”

  “Bit of luck, actually. I was working at the house and was just getting ready to quit when I saw the two of them arguing. There was no power in the house, so I was in the dark and pretty much invisible, but they were standing right under a streetlight. I whipped out my phone and started filming.”

  Mihdí kicked out and just managed to connect with Richardson’s wrist, but Richardson was able to hold onto the knife.