Collateral Damage

by Austin S. Camacho

  Hannibal sighed. “Yes sir, you did tell me that. But now I know that was a lie. And I was hoping, with her safety in question, you might be willing to now tell me the truth. I think it must have been when she was very young, and I think he must have been a military man.”

  It happened almost too quickly to follow. The color drained out of Langford’s face, then rushed back up into it. He turned away, and his eyes focused on some imaginary spot in the distance. A grandfather clock ticked somewhere in the house, and Hannibal imagined the sound was connected to Langford’s mind grinding away. Hannibal reminded himself that Joan Kitteridge had probably learned her calculating ways at this old man’s knee. But when Langford turned back to Hannibal, his face was clear and relaxed again. His eyes were hooded, but Hannibal knew that shame could cause that in men old enough to still occasionally feel it.

  “She was barely eighteen,” Langford said softly. “Had no interest in listening to the old man. Just took off to be with this fellow. I still don’t know what the attraction was. For her, anyway. Anybody could see the attraction for him, eh? But it didn’t last long. He treated her poorly and she soon understood her mistake.”

  Hannibal tried to buoy the mood with a small smile. “Young people make mistakes. But sometimes the mistakes don’t go away as quickly or as permanently as we think. What can you tell me about the boy?”

  “Nothing really,” Langford said. “I never cared to know anything about him. Except as you say, he was a soldier.”

  “All right,” Hannibal said. “I guess that’s no surprise. How about a description? Can you tell me what he looked like?”

  “Back then?” Langford’s eyes turned up as he called his memory into play. “Well, let’s see. I seem to recall a handsome man, a tall man, on the slim side but well muscled, as a soldier would be. Dark brown hair and eyes. High cheekbones. Not a dark complexion but well tanned I’d say.”

  “You’ve a good memory, Mr. Kitteridge,” Hannibal said. “It almost sounds like someone I know.”

  * * *

  The address was neither hard to find nor a surprise. Standing on the roof of Mark Norton’s condominium complex Hannibal could have thrown a football with a reasonable expectation of hitting the building Mark worked in before the ball hit the ground. He parked his Volvo in the only unmarked space he could find. Almost as an afterthought he grabbed Oscar’s yearbook, thinking it might make a useful prop when questioning Mark. Once inside, Hannibal called for an elevator. Mark lived on the 11th floor and just as Hannibal touched that button in the elevator his telephone hummed at him.

  “Hannibal? It’s Cindy.”

  Even on the worst of days, it brightened his heart to hear her voice. “I know who it is sweetheart. Have you talked to Francis? What did she think of Dean’s theory?”

  “Well she was sure glad to know her son doesn’t think she’s a murderer,” Cindy said. “But his basic idea is all wrong. She says she didn’t know that Joan was married and never met or talked to her husband. She couldn’t have told him about her husband’s affair with his wife, and she says she wouldn’t have told him anyway.”

  “So Dean’s out of the guilt trip area,” Hannibal said as the elevator smoothly raised him into vertical space. “No way he can be responsible for either of the killings, even by proxy.”

  “Yes, but where does that leave you for a suspect?”

  “I still like the ex-husband,” Hannibal said in front of Mark’s door. “And I have to say Joan’s tastes seem to be consistent. The description of her husband sounds an awful lot like the guy behind this door I’m knocking on right now. Better talk to you later, babe.”

  Mark Norton answered the door in jeans, tee shirt and white socks. One small lick of his hair stuck up in defiance from the back and he hadn’t shaved. He clearly was not on his way anywhere that day. Hannibal smiled his small menacing smile and stepped past him into the great room, which reminded Hannibal of Walt Young’s place.

  “Okay Mark, let’s not dance around. Where’s Joan?”

  Mark didn’t bother with bravado. He closed the door and headed for the kitchen area as if Hannibal was an invited guest. “She’s not here. Look around if you like. Drink?”

  “No thanks,” Hannibal said, “but you go ahead.” He waited for Mark to gulp down half a bloody mary so that he could have his attention again. “She seems to take off quite a bit, unannounced. You should keep better tabs on your wife.”

  Mark’s answer was a slight surprise. “Joan isn’t the type of cat you put a bell on, Mr. Jones.”

  “So I’ve learned,” Hannibal said. “She’s been really hard for her uncle to keep track of. He hasn’t seen her in days. And he has no idea she’s married you know. How’d you manage to keep such a secret over so many months? And why?”

  “So many what? Boy are you confused. We’ve only been married for two weeks. How about some fruit juice?”

  This time Hannibal nodded and moved over to take a seat on one of the stools in front of the counter, keenly aware that his position was now the reverse of what it was when he chatted with Francis Edwards in Walt Young’s condo. He decided that he didn’t need to play hardball to get answers here. It was obvious that Mark wanted to keep this friendly, and that was fine with Hannibal.

  “So, you weren’t married when you spent the summer together in Vegas?”

  Mark handed over a glass of chilled apple juice. “Now you’re fishing, buddy. I’ve never been to Las Vegas before the day you saw me in the hotel room, and Joanie spent the summer in Australia.”

  Hannibal sipped his juice and watched Mark’s face closely. Leaning on the counter he was quite relaxed, his mind not really centered on the conversation. If he was lying, he was a pro. On the other hand, he might just feel safe standing behind the truth. That would make him just about the only innocent in this case.

  “Yeah, that’s what her uncle thought too. Now don’t tell me. She e-mailed you every day, right?”

  Mark adopted a smug smile and pulled open a kitchen drawer. “Yeah, she did, as a matter of fact. But of course, e-mails can come from anyplace. You’ll be more interested in these postmarks.”

  With the flourish of a stage magician, Mark flipped his wrist and laid a fan of post cards on the counter in front of Hannibal. And like the mark at a carnival, Hannibal spread the postcards out with one hand, pictures toward himself, considering which one to pick out. Except this time he knew it was the magician who had been fooled. There was no longer an ounce of doubt in his mind that Mark had been dodged as easily as Langford Kitteridge had.

  Hannibal soon found the card he wanted. Its glossy cover featured a picture of the Sydney Opera House. “Ah, this one’s from August 12th,” he said blandly. Mark’s brows knit as Hannibal raised the card and held it at arm’s length with the picture toward himself. He looked over the edge of the card at Mark’s now startled face “Didn’t stay for an opera today,” Hannibal said, as if reading right through the card, “but it was well worth stopping just to see this place. Love you always, your Joanie. Right?”

  Mark snatched the postcard out of Hannibal’s hand. “How the hell did you do that?” “Sorry, pal,” Hannibal said. “She sent the same card to her uncle. On the same day. With the exact same message. But none of that changes the fact that court records show she was in Las Vegas at the time getting a divorce.”

  “Divorce?” Mark built another bloody mary while he talked. “How can that be? I mean, Joan wasn’t married before.”

  Hannibal enjoyed the sweet aroma of his apple juice before draining the glass. “Don’t feel bad. Her uncle missed her getting married twice. I figure she got somebody to send her the postcards from Australia, filled them all out, and sent them back.”

  Mark swallowed most of his new drink and walked around to the couch. He stood for a while, as if he wasn’t sure sitting down was safe. “That would be an awfully elaborate ruse, don’t you think? Just to keep me from knowing she was married before? Besides, she doesn’t have any friend
s in Australia.”

  “Well, maybe a professional contact, or a business associate.” Hannibal said. Then he froze in place staring right past Mark. The word professional had done it. A memory jumped into his mind. The only papers he found in Oscar’s bedroom were airline ticket stubs, neatly folded in the table beside his bed. In the last year, he’d flown to Canada, Japan, Russia and yes, Australia.

  Hannibal lifted the yearbook onto the counter and stared down at it. “Oscar Peters was there,” he said. “Oscar, her employee. She knew him when he was just a kid, way back in Germany.”

  “Really?” Mark moved back into the kitchen and reached for the refrigerator, but the book Hannibal had just put down drew his attention.

  “Yeah, they went back that far. He did this for her, to deceive both you and her uncle about her having been married previously.” Hannibal opened the book and began slowly flipping the pages.

  “Do you really think that was a secret worth killing for?” Mark asked, sounding uncertain for the first time. “Could she have done such a thing?”

  Hannibal kept the pages turning slowly, staring down at a time most of us remember as being more innocent. “He was a real person Mark. A human being, with a past, and hopes and dreams just like the rest of us. It’s hard to avoid the fact that Joan is connected with his death.” Then he looked up. “Where is she, Mark?”

  Hannibal turned the book upside down and Mark stared down into it as if hypnotized by the moving pages. Learning so much so quickly about his new bride had drained all the fight out of him. “I heard her say something about going to see Gil Donner today.”

  Hannibal turned the book back around to face himself. “Wonder how she knows Gil,” he said. “Any ideas?” He had fanned past the general crowd scenes and club photos to the glamorous poses of the senior class pictures. Right that minute he hated the world that turned some of those winsome faces into selfish, hate filled or dangerous people. Then his hand fell flat onto the page just under one of the pictures and he drew in a long, deep breath. She was very lovely back then, and now he knew her deep, blood tinged auburn hair was natural. Her skin was still as creamy and clear as it had been in high school, and her eyes were just as dark. As she looked up from the page at him his mind pulled the scattered threads of the case more tightly together around her.

  “It would seem that Joan and Oscar go back even farther than I suspected.”

  -30-

  Within fifteen minutes Hannibal was turning off Route One into the little mini-suburb of hotels and office buildings just north of Alexandria called Crystal City. On the way, he had called Cindy to let her know he had the case all figured out. While pulling into the access road behind the Courtyard Marriott, he mentally walked through the likely scenarios of meeting Gil, Ruth and Joan together. He tried to predict who would say what, how each would react, and how he could best separate Ruth from the other two. He was convinced that Gil and Joan were conspirators involved in the three connected murders. Ruth, he thought, was an innocent and he needed to separate her from the rest.

  He grabbed the yearbook, dropped change into the meter at the curb and walked around to the front of the hotel. He spotted Ray parked a few yards away. At least no one would go in or out unobserved.

  Hannibal brushed past the uniformed doorman into the chrome and steel lobby, complete with conversation groups reminiscent of the gathering of faux living rooms one finds in large furniture stores. The elevators rose up transparent columns on the other side of the lobby, and he stalked toward them with resolve. He had a plan, but just before he reached the elevators, his plan was short-circuited by a woman calling his name.

  He spun to see Ruth Peters on the nearest sofa. Her soft features beamed at him as if he were a long lost family member. The woman was woefully short of family, he thought, and he couldn’t simply walk past her even if he wanted to. Working to raise a smile, he went to her and sat opposite her on the facing couch. For a moment, it was as if he was visiting her in her own living room.

  “Mrs. Peters, you’re looking well today. But why are you sitting out here in the lobby?”

  She touched her bluish hair and Hannibal thought she might be a little embarrassed. “I was here visiting an old acquaintance, but he has company right now.”

  Hannibal thought it time to cut through some of the smoke screen. “You’re here with Gil Donner, ma’am,” he said. “You know him because years ago he was provost marshal in Berlin and your husband’s boss. His visitor is Joan Kitteridge. I now know that she knew your son back in high school.” He laid the yearbook on the glass table that separated them. Ruth eyes flared in instant recognition.

  “Where did you find this?” she asked, laying her gnarled hand on the cover as if it were her son’s body. “Did you take it from Oscar’s home?”

  “Actually, your husband gave it to me when I went to Germany,” Hannibal said. “I should have given it to you right away, but I thought...”

  He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence so she finished it for him. “You thought I’d want to know why Foster would part with it. That was kind of you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you fished it out of our trash. Foster can be a cold man.”

  Hannibal reached forward to touch a bookmark sticking out just a bit at the top of the book. Ruth moved her hand and he opened the yearbook to the designated page. The room was dominated by the sounds of people rushing more than they needed to on their way to their next destination. Over that noise he heard Ruth’s small gasp.

  “Yes, this is the woman upstairs,” Hannibal whispered. “Joan Kitteridge. She went to school with Oscar. More recently, she was his boss, at her own software company.”

  “His boss. Her company.” Ruth spat out the words. “I knew that little tramp when she was young and dirt poor. Oscar even brought her home once or twice for a meal.”

  “But then she married young, didn’t she?” Hannibal asked.

  Ruth’s face reddened, making a sharp contrast to her blue tinted hair. “In Germany,” she said. “She was with him before she was even out of high school. But I understand he died in a training accident.”

  Hannibal reached out to take the old woman’s right hand in both of his own. The hand was cold, but the veins on its back were a road map of the long and twisted trail she had taken through life. There were secrets buried so deep she could barely see them. He thought now was the time to dig them out.

  “Mrs. Peters, I need for you to tell me what it is that ties Joan and her ex-husband to your husband and to Gil Donner. What connects them?”

  Ruth released one loud sob and a tidal wave of tears spilled out of her eyes. She faced downward, her sorrow splashing onto Joan Kitteridge’s teenage face. “The murder,” she said.

  Hannibal looked around but none of the travelers stopped to ask about, or even seemed to notice the old woman sobbing in the lobby. Still, he leaned closer to make it clear he was comforting her, and offered her his handkerchief. He couldn’t see how Gil Donner or Foster Peters figured in the death of Grant Edwards or Oscar’s more recent murder. One possibility remained. “Do you mean Carla Donner?”

  Ruth nodded, holding the handkerchief to her nose. “Foster covered it all up to protect them. Oh, God, he covered up the murder and somehow, Oscar always suspected. He knew his father had done something wrong. That suspicion drove them apart.”

  “You said protect them? The murderer and...”

  “Gil,” she said, forcing words through her crying. “He was afraid if there was a real investigation everyone would know...” Hannibal waited for her to regain her breath. “They’d know she was with another man.”

  Hannibal was rubbing her hand now, feeling her shake. “And somehow Joan knew about all this?”

  This time when Ruth’s head started nodding it didn’t stop. “She must have known. Her husband was having an affair with Carla.”

  -31 -

  Hannibal stopped at the hotel room door to add to his tally of victims. While Foster Peters lived wi
th his own actions, his wife Ruth felt such guilt about his actions that it had eaten her alive from the inside out for perhaps twelve years. Hannibal had called Ray inside to keep an eye on Ruth while he went upstairs to face the conspirators who, he was certain, were working at getting their stories straight in case of trouble. He had just raised his hand to knock when the door opened inward and Joan almost walked into him.

  “Where you headed, girl?” Hannibal asked, planting a gloved palm in the center of her chest and shoving her back inside. “This is where it gets interesting.”

  As Joan fell against the bed Hannibal took the room in at a glance. Donner had decorated his space to look like home. A five or six inch statuette of an infantryman stood guard on the low chest of drawers. What looked like a class photo of men in uniform stood in the center of the round table by the window. Between that table and Hannibal, Gil Donner stood at the writing desk holding the telephone to his ear. As Hannibal stepped past the bathroom door on his left Donner slowly lowered the phone back into its cradle.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Donner asked.

  “Giving you a chance to confess and maybe lighten your sentence.”

  “I have done nothing,” Donner said, taking one step forward.

  Hannibal pulled his automatic from under his right arm and pointed it at Donner’s right knee. “Nothing except perhaps destroying evidence and certainly falsifying reports. Maybe you’re just guilty of being a bad cop. Or isn’t a provost marshal considered a cop?”

  Donner and Joan exchanged a look that seemed more desperate than Hannibal would have expected. Joan sat up on the bed, looking more like a woman than an executive for the first time in Hannibal’s experience.

  “You don’t understand,” she said in an unexpected, plaintive tone. “You can’t keep me here.”

  “Then why don’t you make me understand,” Hannibal said. “While we’re waiting here for the police to show up, make me understand why you covered for your ex-husband when he killed Grant Edwards.”