An Echo of Death

by Mark Richard Zubro

  Actually, I got as far as the liveried servant and the front door before several armed security guards in green army fatigues showed up. I grabbed James, the butler, and used him as a buffer for the few seconds it took to get inside.

  “Where are they?” I said.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  Not bad for a guy with an arm around his windpipe. I flung him outside and slammed the door, then raced to the grand staircase.

  I took the stairs three at a time. They’d have to figure out where I’d gone. This seemed my quickest way out of anybody’s line of sight. Seconds after I reached the top, I heard wild scrambling and feet pounding behind me on the marble floor, then the softer thud of boots thumping on the carpet up the stairs after me.

  For a few seconds, I felt as if I was in one of those Marx Brothers comedies, or maybe the Three Stooges, with doors opening and slamming shut and characters rushing in and out.

  I managed to get back to the first floor to a room that opened onto a patio outside some French windows before a machine-gun-toting kid, maybe all of eighteen, met me coming in a door I was going out. He leveled the trembling gun in my direction.

  A door opened behind me.

  “What is this?” Jason Proctor’s voice said.

  I swiveled my head around, and the kid poked the muzzle of his gun into my chest. I stepped back.

  Mr. Proctor approached.

  “We’re going to talk,” I said.

  He glared at me.

  “Get rid of him,” Proctor said. “If you have to, shoot him.”

  “Is that how Glen died?” I asked. “You just gave an order, and the boys took care of it for you?”

  He walked up to me swiftly and slapped me hard.

  “Not happy about the truth?”

  I caught his hand the next time he raised it, but my soldier buddy whapped me on the side of the head with his gun.

  I barely felt it. The adrenaline poured through my body.

  Mrs. Proctor walked into my field of vision from the back of the room.

  “Jason!” Her voice was sharp.

  The three of us looked at her as she marched across the room.

  “We’ll discuss this like civilized people!”

  By this point, a large contingent of servants and guards had arrived.

  “Go!” Mrs. Proctor commanded. One word, and they went. “Bill is in the library,” she said. She led us to a room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined with books that all had golden spines and embossed lettering.

  Three groups of black leather chairs sat from the front of the room to the back: one at the door, one in the middle, and one at the far end. In one of the black leather chairs in the middle of the room, Bill Proctor sat. He wore a white fisherman’s sweater, dark blue jeans and white socks and gym shoes. He barely looked at me. Mrs. Proctor wore a beige wool pant suit. Mr. Proctor was in a blue blazer, white shirt, duck trousers, and penny loafers.

  Mrs. Proctor pointed at me. “Why is this person here?”

  “Because he was honest with me. Because I trust him. Because I want him here,” Bill said. He glared at his mother.

  With practiced grace, she shrugged off his tone and aggressiveness and indicated seats. I took the chair across from Bill, and Mr. Proctor sat to my right. Mrs. Proctor told her husband she didn’t want a chair.

  She stood in the center of the Oriental carpet that nearly touched the bookcases around the edges.

  “Where have you been?” I asked Bill.

  He picked up a briefcase from next to his chair. He clicked the locks open and spilled the contents onto the rug.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Mr. Proctor asked.

  “Oh, bluster out your ass, Jason!” Mrs. Proctor said.

  “Where’s Glen’s body?” Bill asked.

  “How dare you?” Jason asked.

  “How dare I, Dad? I’ll tell you how. I’ve been using the past twelve hours to have all the materials on the disks transcribed and analyzed. It cost me a small fortune, but I learned how to spend from both of you. Besides being a record of all that Glen had been up to, it was a record of what you and your companies have been doing.”

  Bill was breathing heavily and his fists clenched and unclenched.

  “Now son,” Mr. Proctor started.

  “I’m going to do all the talking,” Bill said.

  “Shut up and let him,” Mrs. Proctor said.

  “You keep silent, too, Mom!” Bill said.

  Mouth agape, she plopped abruptly into a chair.

  Bill picked up a sheaf of papers from the floor. “Glen explained everything in code on paper or on the computer disks. First the necklaces. That was a lark he got into just two weeks ago. He’s worked with the drug people for a while, but he just got the information on them about two months ago, the final details a few days before he was killed. The relic stealing was a fluke. Brad Stawalski got some hot stuff he couldn’t get rid of. He knew Glen had connections. Brad didn’t tell the truth. Neither of you thought Glen could ever make plans and carry them out, but he did. I know that a lot of what he did was to con people. He took precautions when dealing with the drug people, like using a fake name.” Bill tossed the papers he’d been holding in a heap on the floor. He wiped his hands across his face.

  Both of his parents started to speak.

  “Be silent!” he shouted at them. “Just for once in your lives, shut the fuck up!” The fury and anger in his tone and the glare of his eyes pierced through their consciousness and held them dumb.

  “The rest of the information on the disks was about you two. Glen wasn’t just trying to get dirt on you guys. He actually seemed to be trying to be part of both companies. He desperately wanted you to respect him. Even more, Glen the joker, the wild one, always desperately wanted the two of you to get along. We used to talk about it. He wanted no more fights. All that acting out he did as a kid was a way to try and get your attention off each other and onto himself. Glen hadn’t changed much.”

  “I knew he wouldn’t do anything illegal against us,” Mrs. Proctor managed to get in.

  “He was getting dirt, and it was illegal,” Bill said. “He was in Mexico bribing people to screw Dad out of projects you, Mom, had bribed people to sabotage. These people picked up triple bribes. They must have thought they’d latched onto the lost treasure of El Dorado. And, speaking of bribes, he got some great information out of your banking people, Mom.” Bill barked a one-note harsh laugh that jarred all of my teacher instincts. He continued, “And Glen was using money from both of your companies to bribe everybody. Maybe he thought it would be something of a lark to screw up both of your companies. You know how wild and crazy he was. Who knows what he may have actually been planning?”

  Bill shut his eyes and leaned back in the chair.

  Both parents spoke at once. Bill let it go on for several minutes as each parent got louder and louder. Suddenly he opened his eyes and leaned forward. As his parents each drew a breath, he said, “Shut up.” Speaking the words softly, as he did, had an enormous impact.

  We sat in silence. The grandfather clock near the door chimed seven o’clock. I wanted to go home and sleep for days.

  Bill said to me, “What did the police find out? I heard snatches of news about what happened on the South Side.”

  I told him what happened. “What the cops don’t know—and once again are ignoring—is who killed Glen. I know the relic people never got close enough to kill anybody. The necklace people got what they wanted. That leaves the drug people and you three. There were two sides in the drug war: pro- and anti-Frederico.” I explained what the cops had pieced together.

  I finished, “My guess is by the time either one of them got to the penthouse, Glen was already dead. I tend to think it was Pedro who got there and who chased us first because they didn’t fire at us as quickly. The cops just think it’s settled because they’ve got all these dead drug dealers, but I think it went beyond that. I think both g
angs attacked us the next morning. They may have begun to think things were truly strange when they were chasing another guy who looked like Glen. Maybe he thought Glen had told us something. Maybe he thought Scott was Glen; or, as turned out to be true, they thought he sent us something. All that means is that some of the drug people didn’t know or weren’t satisfied with one death. Maybe Frederico wanted to eliminate anybody connected with Glen. Remember that fanatics killed the guy who translated Salman Rushdie’s work into Japanese. Just because he translated it. If Frederico was mad, who knows? But I don’t think the drug people got to Glen. I think somebody else got there first.” I glared at the assembled Proctors. “The question is: which one of you knew Glen was in town? He didn’t make any calls while we were around. Which one of you did he call? What did he say? He was probably blackmailing both of you. Who was he going to take a bite out of first and most? Who had the most to lose? Who would order the murder of his or her own child?”

  Jason Proctor stood up and took a step toward me.

  I rose, as did Bill. The son forestalled his father’s progress.

  “You killed him!” Bill said. “Your rivalry killed him. Somehow I knew it would come to this.”

  “How dare you accuse your mother and me of having anything to do with your brother’s death? Certainly we have been tough when it comes to business. You either get tough or lose, but we’d never try and hurt our own son. If what you say about what he found out is true, then we will have to take action immediately to minimize our loses. There was no blackmail.”

  “That rivalry gave you a fabulous home,” Mrs. Proctor said. “And a life with chances and privileges that few people ever have. You must turn over to us all the information you have immediately.”

  Bill paced the floor between the chairs. “You two are the most disgusting people on the face of the planet! This family is so screwed up. Your son is dead, and all you can think of is saving your ass or defending the rivalry between the two of you. All either Glen or I wanted was your love.”

  They stared at him silently, as if the words had been spoken before and they were used to them, or there was truth in them and it held them dumb, or that no matter how much hurt was in them nothing could touch them, because they were rich and different.

  Bill resumed, “People come to this house with ghastly news, and I’m not told. Why is that, Father? You had something to hide from the beginning. I called you, Mother, and you said you knew nothing. Either one of you had the power and strength to get a body moved and hide it. Which one of you killed my brother?”

  “No one killed him,” Jason Proctor said.

  “Then how did he get dead?” Bill asked.

  The two parents gazed at each other. Mrs. Proctor’s eyes became moist. “It was a horrible accident,” she said.

  “Orders were given in Mexico to find Glen,” Mr. Proctor said. “Our people kept running across the name ‘Scott Carpenter’ as someone nosing into our affairs. We never dreamed Glen was using that name. Both of our people had orders to stop Scott Carpenter at all costs and to bring Glen home. We sent private guards from here to help out.”

  “Not all of them knew Glen by sight.” Mrs. Proctor spoke slowly.

  “Our guards here do, of course,” Jason said. “But the Mexican people didn’t. They followed who they thought was Scott Carpenter to his place in Chicago. They were half a day behind him. The people we sent to help search were also close behind, but Glen was good at wriggling out of tight spots. He called both of us to announce he wanted to meet with us at that penthouse.”

  Mrs. Proctor said, “He didn’t want to meet here, or at any of the offices. He wanted us alone on neutral ground. He told us he had succeeded and that we would be proud of him for the first time.”

  “It took over an hour to drive down from here. By then he was dead. Mason and Carpenter had been chased off. We found the body. At first we thought the drug people had got him. We had no idea who’d done it, but we didn’t want a scandal. We organized the cleaning and removal. We set up internal investigations of all our security personnel. I allowed Mason and Carpenter into the house the next day to see whether they knew anything substantial.”

  Mrs. Proctor said, “We’ve barely slept. We sent our people everywhere south of the border to track information on the drug lords because we thought they’d killed him. We got nowhere. Finally we received information from our operatives that they’d killed Scott Carpenter. We knew then that a horrible mistake had been made.”

  “When did you find this out?” I asked.

  “We’ve gotten bits of information all weekend. The people chasing Glen from Mexico reported to their superiors there.”

  “You knew Monday when we talked to you,” I said to Mrs. Proctor.

  “I don’t answer to you,” she said.

  “You ordered them to kill Scott Carpenter?” I asked.

  “Accidents happen,” Mrs. Proctor said.

  “You see,” Jason Proctor said, “it was all an accident. It was nobody’s fault.”

  Bill Proctor’s laugh was long and unhealthy. The kind of laugh that you rushed to the phone to call in a team of therapists when you heard it.

  “An accident!” he roared. He pointed his right index finger at his parents, accusing, fixing them in place. “Nobody’s fault!” The laughter pealed again.

  Mrs. Proctor stood up and reached a hand toward her son. “Bill,” she said.

  But he laughed again. He stooped to his briefcase, flicked it open, and came up with an enormous gun. The hole in Mr. Proctor’s chest was geysering before I could leap to my feet. Mrs. Proctor’s scream was cut short by a bullet in her throat. I was halfway to Bill when he raised the gun to his temple, shut his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

  I heard pounding feet, so I knew I didn’t have to shout for help. I knelt next to each in turn, starting with Bill. The blood was awful. My feelings of pity and terror kept me numb. I thought it might be possible to save Mrs. Proctor. Mister and Bill were beyond any help.

  She died on the operating table two hours later.

  I don’t remember much about the interrogation by the police. I do know that Todd, my lawyer, showed up. He got me out of there in a reasonable amount of time. I know I called Scott that night before I went to sleep and told him everything. I also called school and explained what had happened and told them I wouldn’t be in the next day, either. The principal was very understanding. I slept for eighteen hours.

  A month later, we sat in the breakfast nook of the penthouse. Scott’s wounds had healed, although he’d have permanent scars on his left arm. We were almost back to our normal level of workouts as Scott’s body got back into shape. Spread out over the butcher-block tabletop were the plans for my new house in the suburbs, which would be built on what I would be able to afford from my salary.

  “I like this,” he said.

  These were the final drawings of the plans. Building would begin in a few weeks.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “It’ll be like we always had it. A place to stay in the city and a place out near where I work.” Scott grabbed my hand and pulled me over to him. I stretched over the top of the table so our lips met.

  By Mark Richard Zubro

  The “Tom and Scott” Mysteries

  A Simple Suburban Murder

  Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead?

  The Only Good Priest

  The Principal Cause of Death

  An Echo of Death

  The “Paul Turner” Mysteries

  Sorry Now?

  Political Poison

  Stonewall Inn Mysteries

  Keith Kahla, General Editor

  Sunday’s Child by Edward Phillips

  Death Takes the Stage by Donald Ward

  Sherlock Holmes & the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde

  by Russell A. Brown

  A Simple Suburban Murder by Mark Richard Zubro

  A Body to Dye For by Grant Michaels

  Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell De
ad? by Mark Richard Zubro

  Sorry Now? by Mark Richard Zubro

  Love You to Death by Grant Michaels

  Third Man Out by Richard Stevenson

  The Night G.A.A. Died by Jack Ricardo

  Switching the Odds by Phyllis Knight

  Principal Cause of Death by Mark Richard Zubro

  Breach of Immunity by Molly Hite

  Political Poison by Mark Richard Zubro

  Brotherly Love by Randye Lordon

  Dead on Your Feet by Grant Michaels

  On the Other Hand, Death by Richard Stevenson

  Shattered Rhythms by Phyllis Knight

  Eclipse of the Heart by Ronald Tierney

  A Queer Kind of Love by George Baxt

  An Echo of Death by Mark Richard Zubro

  Ice Blues by Richard Stevenson

  AN ECHO OF DEATH. Copyright © 1994 by Mark Richard Zubro. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y 10010.

  eISBN 9781466802773

  First eBook Edition : October 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Zubro, Mark Richard.

  An echo of death : a Tom and Scott mystery / Mark Richard Zubro.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-13480-0

  1. Carpenter, Scott (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Mason, Tom (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 1. Title.