Snowjob

by Ted Wood

  Hinton was cold and weary enough to snap at this. “What he’s got is a goddamn good reason to sue our ass off,” he said. “His arrest last night was a phony. You know that and so does he.”

  “You better have this discussion with the chief,” Cassidy said. “In the meantime I’m relieving you here. Take this man and get back to the precinct and report what you’ve done.”

  “Glad to,” Hinton said. “Come on, Reid.”

  We went back to our snow machines, leaving the two detectives standing there with their hands in their pockets and puffs of righteous breath rising around their heads.

  “Let him freeze his own ass off,” Hinton said. “Come on, let’s get down the slope, get a cup of coffee.”

  We drove down, dodging skiers, and left the machines at the rescue hut. Then Hinton led me to the coffee shop and we got a cup of new life and warmed our feet. He paid for the coffee and said nothing while we drank it. When we’d finished he took me out to his car and said, “So, let’s go catch hell.”

  The chief was in his office talking on the phone. The door was open and Hinton tapped on the door frame with his knuckles. The chief looked up and waved him in, still talking. He looked less menacing this morning, neat in a gray suit, as if he’d just come from church. He finished his conversation and stood up, looking straight at me. “I was just talking to Mr. Maloney. I’m glad you came in,” he said. “I want to apologize for what happened last night.”

  I didn’t reply at once. The department was in the wrong and they should appreciate that. Not for my sake but for the sake of the next guy they didn’t like the looks of.

  The chief had expected an answer but when none came he went on, a little less sure of himself now. “I acted responsibly on the case that was presented to me. I’m sure you appreciate that.”

  This time I had to speak. “In my jurisdiction I wouldn’t have arrested a man on hearsay, Chief. I’d have asked the complainant to swear a warrant against the accused and then acted on it.”

  He looked at me, then away, then collected his confidence and looked back at me, nodding. “I’m afraid I’ve put the town in a very embarrassing situation. Will you accept my apology?”

  “I will if I get compensation,” I said and I heard Hinton catch his breath. The chief said nothing, waiting for me to name the number of millions I had in mind. I put them out of their misery. “For my own arrest, no charge. But I had to purchase my dog back from the pound. It cost me seventy-five dollars.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, relief spreading across his face, but I held up my hand. “If he’d been killed, I would have sued. As it is, I’d like my seventy-five bucks, plus.” I left a pause and he waited, a chastened man. “Plus I want to volunteer to act as an investigator in this murder and the murder of Ms. Laver. I think they’re connected.”

  He reached out to shake my hand. “Thank you. We’re most grateful to you, Mr. Bennett. Or should I call you Chief?”

  “Reid is fine. And I want to take my dog with me on this case without Mr. Cassidy getting snotty.”

  “Sure. Sure.” He looked at Hinton. “Can you fill Reid in on our investigation so far? And get him desk space, a phone, whatever he needs.”

  “Yessir.” Hinton’s anxiety had fallen away from him, like snow from a jerked branch. “And we’ve already made one find in the Grant case.” We, not Reid, I noticed. He would be working here after I left. He needed all the brownie points he could score.

  “What’s that?” The chief was all business now, gathering his authority around him again like a man putting on a uniform.

  Hinton pulled out the evidence bag with the billfold in it. “We found this at the scene. It was at the edge of the trees. Must have been thrown away from the chair lift, just before the body was dropped.”

  The chief picked up the bag by one corner. “Any ID?”

  “It’s Grant’s, sir,” Hinton said. “I haven’t checked it but it looks like the money has gone and the credit cards. If we’re real lucky there could be prints on it from the perp.”

  “Get Wilkins in and have him dust it.” The chief made a shooing motion and we turned to leave but he called me back. “Mr. Bennett, Reid, if you don’t mind, could we have a word in private?”

  “Of course.” I waited as Pat left and the chief got up and closed the door. “I was intrigued when you said the two homicides are related.” He looked at me and I studied his face. He looked intelligent. Strong features with a long, straight nose and clear blue eyes. Polish-German ancestry, I thought and remembered that Huckmeyer, one of the people I suspected, was also probably from the same gene pool.

  “To start with, you’ve got the wrong man in jail. I knew Doug Ford in Nam. He’s an honorable man. We’ve been in some bad places together but he never did anything to make me think he would murder anybody. Apparently he was following up an investigation of his own, something involving the murdered woman. When I started making some inquiries along those lines I soon got hassled. The first time proved to me that Doug was right. Some guys from out of town kidnapped Doug’s daughter and told me to go home.” He wanted to speak here but I kept on. “And when I followed up anyway Grant and his buddies tried to beat me up. And now Grant’s been killed. It bears out what Officer Ford told me.”

  The chief held up his hand. “A bit slower, please.” He frowned. “I haven’t heard anything about a kidnapping.”

  “We didn’t report it. The child was returned unharmed and Doug’s family left town.”

  He had more questions but this time I played hardball. “Chief, Doug Ford was certain he had a big case on his hands. He was right. You can see that from young Grant’s death. But he has sworn me to secrecy. The only way to get his views is to get him out of that jail and talk to him.”

  “I can’t do that.” He leaned forward and fiddled with the edges of some files on his desk, making sure they were square and parallel with the edge of the desk, which they already were. “He’s charged with Murder One.”

  “He shouldn’t be. There’s no solid case against him. The most he should have been charged with was possession of the money that went missing from the lodge and even that charge is shaky.”

  He looked up at last. “I can’t go to the DA and tell him this. It’s nothing but hearsay. You think your old buddy is innocent so we should let him out, give him his job back.”

  “It’s hard.” I gave him that much. “It’s going to embarrass the department, but if you do, you’re going to look a whole lot better when this business is finally cleared up and people see what really happened.”

  He looked at me out of those ice blue eyes and said, “And what if we never find out what happened? Ask yourself. How many homicide cases ever get cleared?”

  “Random killings, sex crimes and so on, not many. But when there’s a lot of people involved, someone talks. They all get solved, some sooner, some later.”

  He sighed and tapped his teeth with his forefinger. “I’ll talk to Ford,” he said. “Then, if it makes sense, I’ll talk to the DA. Meantime, we’ll give you every assistance.” He paused, realizing that this wasn’t enough yet, and then said, “And I want to thank you for your assistance and your professionalism.”

  “Thank you, Chief. I’ll go find Pat.” I stood up and so did he, reaching across his desk formally to shake my hand.

  “Go get ’em,” he said.

  The deskman saw me and said, “Detective Hinton is in his office, sir, upstairs and third on the left.”

  “Thanks. The name’s Reid Bennett. What’s yours?” Always get the help on your side. You never know when you’re going to need them.

  “Wally Beeman. Glad to know you.” Another handshake. I was starting to feel like a visiting senator.

  Hinton was in his office on the phone saying, “So, okay. Have him come in the moment he gets home. Can you tell him that, please?”

  He hung up. “Wilkins has gone ice fishing. If his wife knew where, we could send a guy to get him. As it is, we have to
wait until he decides to come home.”

  “There’s nobody else?”

  “He’s had special training. Hell, I can dust for prints, most of us can, but he’s trained and he’s good, I’ll give him that.” He sat back, wearily. “So, waddya think? I’d be heading over to the morgue to check with the ME if I was on my own.”

  “Good idea. Why not stop off at your house and get some dry pants and shoes? It’ll make you feel more like working.”

  “Let’s go.” He stood up with real enthusiasm and we set off for his place.

  Fifteen minutes later we were at the morgue watching the medical examiner take his first look at Grant’s body. He was an anxious young doctor and he looked at me in surprise. “Who’s your partner?” he asked Hinton.

  “This is Chief Bennett, from Canada. He’s assisting us with the investigation.”

  The title set toe doctor’s mind at ease. He nodded to me, wiggling his hands in their rubber gloves to show why he wasn’t about to shake. “Pleased to meet you. My name’s Weichel.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Doctor.” I smiled formally and stood back to watch him work. In a town like Chambers he would not have examined many homicide victims, I thought, but he was pro. He gave Hinton a camera and told him how to operate it and to take the pictures he called for.

  First he wanted a shot of the body and then close-ups of the face and hands and the left breast.

  Hinton took two shots of each point, following the doctor’s directions to the letter. The body was lying on its back, dressed in a down jacket, good mustard-colored corduroy pants and a pair of high winter boots. There was a good deal of blood on the left breast of the jacket, and a long, narrow smear on the hem. The face was scratched deeply.

  The doctor bent to examine the smear. “Looks as if the assailant wiped his knife blade here,” he said. “Take a close-up, please.” Hinton took the shot and the doctor went on to check the face, speaking into a tape recorder in his left hand. He counted the lacerations and described their size and distribution and the fact that they had not bled noticeably. He also commented on fleets in some of them, apparently pieces of bark.

  He stopped recording and spoke to us, giving us the Reader’s Digest version of his opinion. “He must have been dead for at least a few minutes before he fell. That’s why there’s no blood flow from these scratches. And there’s bark in them which indicates they were probably postmortem, caused by the branches of the tree he fell through.”

  He went on to check the condition of the hands, which were bare. “No trace of skin or anything foreign under the fingernails which are bitten down. Scratches on both hands, mainly on the backs, similar to those on the face.” He stopped now and removed the down jacket. The body was stiff but we got the jacket off and laid it on a steel table nearby while Hinton photographed the bloodstain on the sweater underneath. It was very wide, reaching from the neck to below the waistband of the pants. As a layman I figured the aorta had been severed. The doctor apparently thought the same. “He was as lucky as you get in a case like this. Death must have been almost instantaneous.”

  “You think this was done by a pro?” I asked.

  He glanced up at me. “Indubitably. He punctured the heart with a single thrust, pulled the blade out and wiped it. An amateur would have stabbed in the abdomen, I’d say.”

  He turned back to the corpse and called for Hinton to lay the jacket beside it. He did so and the doctor took a tape measure and checked that the holes in the jacket and the sweater lined up. “He was standing or sitting with his arms at his sides when he was stabbed,” he said, then waved the jacket away and went on examining.

  It took him most of an hour while he checked each layer of clothing and then the body itself, noting the signs of lividity where blood had pooled at the lowest points of contact with the earth. “Did you talk to the people who found him?” he asked before commenting on the lividity.

  Hinton had. “They say he was lying on his left side, the right leg dragged up against the trunk of the tree.”

  “That fits,” the doctor said. He didn’t bother explaining any further but I’ve seen enough bodies to know the pattern. I could see the dark marks of pooled blood on Grant’s left hip and shoulder.

  “I’m going to take a blood sample to check for intoxicants,” the doctor said. “I’ll also check the stains on the jacket in case the man who did it cut himself as well and there’s some of his own blood mixed in.”

  “Thank you, sir. Chief Bennett and I would like to check the clothing now.”

  “Go ahead.” The doctor waved vaguely and we set to work on the dead man’s clothes. We started with the down jacket. There were paper tissues in the right-hand pocket and in the left a pack of Tareytons with four cigarettes in it. We checked the box carefully but there were no notes written on it, nothing to help us. But there was a chance there might be other prints on it so we sealed it and the tissues in evidence bags and checked the pants next. In the right pocket we found keys and a dollar eighty-seven in change.

  I stopped now and looked at Hinton. “You know what we haven’t found?”

  “What’s that?” He was working hard, rolling everything around in his mind, but he had overlooked one thing. “His .22 pistol. Did you give it back to him last night?”

  “Yeah. And his spare magazine.” Hinton was thoughtful now. “He must have left it in his car, do you think?”

  “Could have done. Or maybe Garfield, his lawyer, hung on to it.”

  “I’ll go ask him when we’re through here,” Hinton said.

  The last thing we checked was the heavy wool shirt. And here, in the left-hand pocket, undo: the thick crust of blood from his stab wound we found a flat folded package of the kind drug dealers use for a gram of coke. It was soaked through with blood but looked as if it had not been opened. Hinton eased it out of the pocket and put it into a fresh evidence bag. “I’ll have our drug guy check this out,” he said. “Looks like cocaine to me.”

  “Not surprising, given this guy’s reputation,” I ventured. “But it looks like he hasn’t used any. This might just give us a rundown on his whereabouts test night. If you know who the dealers are in town and we lean on them, it could help.”

  “Right.” Hinton gathered his evidence bags together, including separate bags with each of Grant’s garments, and spoke to the doctor. “I guess it’s pretty hard to guess how long he’s been dead, Doc?”

  “Almost impossible. But I’m going to do a postmortem and when I see the stomach contents that may give me something. I’m about to begin it. Would you like to stay?”

  “No, thanks. Our time would be better spent elsewhere,” Hinton said politely. “But the department would be most grateful for your report as soon as you have it, Doctor.”

  “Of course. I’m just waiting for my assistant. As soon as she gets here I’ll proceed.”

  “Thank you.” Hinton nodded to the door and I took the hint and led the way out.

  “I guess I’ll have to turn this all over to Cassidy,” Hinton said. He sounded a little bitter.

  “Is he in charge of the investigation?”

  “We don’t have a formal homicide squad,” Hinton said. “Hell, we don’t need one. Cindy Laver and now this are the only homicides we’ve had in four years. He’s the chief of detectives is how it works and he takes charge of everything.”

  There was nothing to say except what my wife calls the “There, there, poor thing” speech so I said nothing. He went on, “We haven’t got a hell of a lot but I’d like to lean on Kelly myself.”

  “Who’s Kelly?”

  “The drug source in town. He was picked up for pushing grass, not that it’s much of a crime anymore but if there’s illegal substances around, he’s the logical guy to know where they came from.”

  “Where’s he live? Is it on the way back to the station?”

  Hinton looked across at me and grinned happily. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  We stopped at the edge of town
at a mobile home set up on concrete blocks. It was the kind of place the local fathers would like to burn down now that they’d built up a decent clientele for their ski slopes. Knowing what its owner did for a living, I checked it thoroughly. It needed paint and had a corrugated iron lean-to at one end that almost covered a pickup truck. The driveway had been plowed out a couple of blizzards ago. There were banks of snow each side of the drive and the snow between them was trenched with plenty of wheel marks.

  While Hinton went to the door I checked the wheel marks. None was particularly fresh but it seemed to me as if a lot of different vehicles had driven in here. It indicated that Kelly was back to business as usual.

  I joined Hinton, who was talking to a tall guy with a tattooed swastika on one cheekbone. A biker type with hard jail time behind him. He had long hair and a Zapata moustache and he hadn’t shaved the rest of his face for a few days. He was angry. “What’s this about?” he shouted.

  Hinton was pure reason. “We can do this either of two ways, Mike. One way is, you can get on your high horse and raise hell and we can get a search warrant. But I’m warning you that we’ve got a drug-sniffing dog in the department who will tear this sorry place apart when he gets a whiff of what you’re selling. So you’ll have to flush all your goodies down the can before we get back. That’s the hard way. Or you can answer a couple questions and we’re on our way.”

  Kelly looked me up and down, hanging from one hand inside the door of his home. I guessed he had a shotgun up there and he was looking at me like he’d want me to be his first skeet.

  “This is our K9 officer,” Hinton said. “Now let’s get reasonable.”

  I just stood there, staring at Kelly as if he was something I’d found on my shoe. He folded. “Waddya wanna know?”

  “We found some coke on a guy, a dead guy,” Hinton said. “Where’d he get it?”

  “Coke?” Kelly laughed. “Coke? You gotta be kidding. I’ve sold a little grass in my time, I admit that. It oughta be legal anyways. But I can’t afford to get into coke.”

  “Then who can, in town?” The obvious question. Kelly caught in slyly.