by John J. Lamb
“Honey, is that you?” Ash sounded both anxious and a little testy and with good reason. I’d promised to come back to the hotel and hadn’t yet, I’d missed most of the teddy bear show, and had been incommunicado for over an hour.
“Yes, my love. I’m fine and I just wanted to call and update you.”
“It’s after four o’clock! Where are you?”
“I was abducted by aliens.”
“Brad sweetheart, if they were smart enough to build a starship, they wouldn’t have grabbed you. Where are you really?”
“Um…the State Police offices at the airport, but we’ll be leaving soon.”
“And you’re at the airport because?”
“We had to talk to the Wintle management team before they flew back to El Paso. Tony told us that he and Jennifer finagled it so that they kept the rights to Todd’s books while writing him out of the licensing contract. The suits confirmed that and told us a couple of other interesting things.”
“What?”
“Todd didn’t know anything about the pending agreement until early Friday morning, when a conscience-stricken VP tipped him off to the fact there was a contract in the works. She talked to Todd before the Swifts arrived at the teddy bear show.”
“And obviously that’s important, but I don’t see why yet.”
“You will once you have all the information. During that first meeting, the VP didn’t tell Todd the Swifts were on the verge of swindling him…only that there was a licensing deal pending. Todd didn’t learn the full story of how he’d been duped at Jen’s urging until Friday evening when he briefly met the VP again. In fact, I noticed Todd talking to her and he disappeared a little later.”
“To sabotage the inhaler.”
“That’s what I think, too. But, I’m also convinced he didn’t come up with the idea spontaneously on Friday night. He’d been considering it for at least several hours, because I’m pretty certain I saw him stealing the card key to Jennifer’s room from her purse on Friday afternoon.”
“Which means he was already thinking about breaking into their room.”
“Exactly, but I’m beginning to wonder if his motive was actually murder.”
“How do you mean?”
I heaved a sigh of frustration. “I don’t know yet. Something the VP said about Todd is bothering me. By the way, where is he?”
“Still holding court at the Cheery Cherub Bears booth, I think. I’ve stayed away from him, just like you asked.”
“Good. And how are our bears selling?”
“A fresh bunch of people came to the show after lunch, so we’re getting a little more foot traffic at our table now. Before that…”
“I know. Almost everybody stayed away because the word got around that the cops thought I’d killed Jennifer. So, how many bears have we actually sold?”
“Just two, including Suzy Cinnamon Streusel from earlier this morning.”
“Ouch. We aren’t even going to cover our registration fee, much less the hotel bill for the weekend, are we?”
“Probably not…and thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not reminding me that it was my idea for you to get involved in this investigation. This is all my fault and I’m sorry,” Ash said gloomily.
“Ash honey, you didn’t make me do anything and you’ve got nothing to apologize for. Would it make you feel any better if I told you that I’m having a blast?”
“A little, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy that someone had to die.”
“Now, tell me: is the award ceremony still set for five?”
“Yes, but they’ve moved it to a different ballroom, because the CSI people are still processing the other room for evidence.”
I looked at my watch. “And it’s a little after four now. We’ll be—hang on a sec, love.”
Kinney emerged from the roll call room and half-jogged toward the exit. Hard on his heels were Wintle and Coburn, the trio apparently prepared to search the terminal on foot for Fielding. I hoped she’d hold out for a large pay raise along with her reinstatement. Next, the Baltimore detectives appeared.
Delcambre pointed toward the door and gave me a toothy smile. “Ready for another ride with the Road Warrior?”
I told Ash, “Sweetie, I’ve got to go now, but can you do me a little favor?”
“Of course. What?”
“I’m going to give Sergeant Delcambre the phone. He’s bringing me back to the hotel and enjoys driving like a lunatic. Would you like to explain what you’ll do to him if we get in an accident and that further delays me getting back to you and the teddy bear show?”
“I’d be happy to, darling. Please put him on the phone.”
I handed the receiver to Delcambre. He didn’t get much past saying a jolly hello before the grin began to slowly vanish. Ash didn’t yell, so I don’t know what she said, but before another ten seconds had passed, the detective was wearing an uneasy and alert expression that reminded me of how our dog Kitch looked when we lectured him on the evils of taking an empty pizza box from the trashcan.
Mulvaney noticed her partner’s sudden transformation and said, “Can we put this on the speaker phone?”
Delcambre glowered at his boss and quickly covered the speaker button with his hand. Meanwhile, he was saying, “Yes, Mrs. Lyon…I understand, ma’am…. No, I wouldn’t do that…. He was exaggerating a little, ma’am…. Just one, ma’am, and it wasn’t my fault…. No really, someone else rear-ended my car…. You’d what, ma’am?…No, I don’t think I’d like that…. I’ll be very careful…. I promise you, Mrs. Lyon…. We’ll be there soon—but not real soon…. Good-bye, ma’am.”
As he gently lowered the receiver into its cradle, I asked, “So, are we ready to roll?”
“Your wife must really love you, because she just told me that if you so much as got your hair mussed on the ride back to the hotel, she’d…just what is a whipstitch?” Delcambre sounded a little dazed.
“It’s the way you hand sew fabric together very snuggly. A really good whipstitch—which I can’t do, by the way—is so tiny it’s almost invisible. Ash can do it, though,” I replied.
Mulvaney did a double take. “How do you know that?”
“My wife taught me. And you know, as much as I’d love to be a homicide detective again, I really enjoy being a teddy bear artist and working with her.” I turned to Delcambre. “Why did you ask about a whipstitch?”
There was a haunted look in Delcambre’s eyes. “Well, apparently, she’s going to whipstitch my…um, never mind. I’ll drive very safely.”
Twenty-one
Although my leg was aching, I passed on another electric cart ride, because it would have taken too long to have one dispatched to our location. Even so, it took ten minutes for me to hobble through the terminal and out to the patrol car. Outside, it wasn’t raining now so much as misting, and off to the west, I saw a tiny patch of blue sky among the gray clouds. We got into the cruiser and after starting the motor, Delcambre surprised me by using a component of the steering system he’d thus far ignored: the turn indicator.
A minute or so later, we were clear of the terminal and traveling westbound along Interstate 195. Leaning forward to peer through the Plexiglas barrier and over Delcambre’s right shoulder, I saw that he was locked on to the posted speed limit. Both his hands were on the steering wheel—at the two and ten o’clock positions—and he looked as if he belonged in an old drivers’ education film. I looked to the rear and noticed there was an ever-growing mass of vehicles stacked up behind us because, of course, no one would pass the police car.
There was a burst of brief and undecipherable squawking from the police radio. Mulvaney grabbed the microphone to acknowledge the message. Then she pulled her wireless phone from her coat pocket and made a call. From the way she talked, it sounded as if she was receiving some mildly good news.
Once she disconnected from the call, Mulvaney turned around in her seat to face me. “That was district
headquarters telling me that the media just left the station.”
“Tired of waiting for the press conference?” I asked.
“That and there was a fatal car crash up on Loch Raven Boulevard.”
“And people need something to watch over dinner. Any word on processing the gloves?”
“The techs just began fuming them. It’ll be hours before we know whether there are even any latent prints, much less matching them with Todd’s knowns.”
“You can’t wait that long to talk to him.”
“I know.”
“So, are you ready to give some thought as to how to work the contact with Todd?”
“Yeah. What do you think?”
“I’d just stroll up and say howdy. If you make it look like a formal interview, you’re all but begging him to get a lawyer.”
Mulvaney looked pensive. “Do we consider giving him Miranda?”
“Why read him his rights? You can’t arrest him, so the contact will be consensual and non-custodial.”
“And we don’t have anything even close to P.C. to hook him.” Delcambre signaled and gently guided the car into the lane that led to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
The P.C. that Delcambre was referring to was Probable Cause, the legal concept that allows cops to arrest people for felony offenses that didn’t happen in their presence. It’s the combination of objective information, evidence, and circumstances that would lead a normal person to conclude that a crime occurred and that the suspect committed it. Hunches, feelings, and unconfirmed suspicions can’t be factored into the equation, which meant that Delcambre was absolutely right; there wasn’t Probable Cause to arrest Todd.
In fact, we possessed next to nothing in the way of hard evidence. Until the crime lab completed its forensic work on the latex gloves and the Baltimore detectives had the opportunity to show the photo lineup with Todd’s picture in it to the fifth-floor maids, all we had was an iffy motive and one observation on my part that might point to opportunity. What’s more, the significance of what I’d witnessed was almost valueless, because I couldn’t state for a fact that I’d seen Todd remove the card key from Jen’s purse. I’d only seen him rifling the bag. However, there was nothing to prevent the detectives from talking to Todd.
As the police cruiser rolled sedately onto the northbound slow lane of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, I said, “Can I make a few suggestions?”
“Absolutely,” said Mulvaney.
“First, you guys have to talk to him without me being present. If Todd sees me with you, he’ll realize that you’ve figured out that I was framed and assume you think he planted the stuff in my room.”
“Which will mean he’ll also know we suspect him.”
“And you don’t want to telegraph your moves.”
“Makes sense. Where will you be?”
“With Ash at our booth or in our room. And here’s an officer safety tip: I’m done playing cops-and-robbers and she won’t react well if you ask me to go anyplace else today. Come to think of it, if you ask me, I won’t react well either.”
“Yeah, right.” Mulvaney made no effort to conceal her disbelief.
“It’s true. This has been fun, but I’d forgotten just how sordid murder cases are. Also, ever since my retirement, my wife and I have been sort of joined at the hip and I miss her.”
“Then we can handle things from here,” said Mulvaney. “But we do…appreciate…”
“Don’t start going Sally Fields at the Academy Awards on me, LT. It’ll ruin my image of you.”
“You really are a smart ass, you know that?”
“Uh-huh. Suggestion number two: I’m not telling you what to do—”
“No, you’d never do that.”
“Hey, I prefer to think of myself as helpful. Anyway, don’t hardball him. Treat him initially as if he’s a witness who can clear up some troublesome points that have come up. Let him lie to you. Hell, encourage him to lie to you, because we all know how juries view that sort of behavior later on.”
“As consciousness of guilt,” said Delcambre.
“Exactly. Next, if and when you come to the point where the interview is transitioning into the accusatory phase, I wouldn’t try to run a scam that you’ve linked him to the crime through physical evidence or a witness.”
“Why not?” Mulvaney asked.
“Think about it. This guy is a paramedic. One of the main features of his job is going to violent crime scenes. He’s seen how cops operate, so that means he’ll know you’re blowing smoke. Because if you had the evidence—”
“We’d just arrest him.”
“Right, and another thing: don’t talk down to him as if he were some sort of street hood or gangbanger. It’ll insult him.”
“And we wouldn’t want to do that to a killer,” said Delcambre. His gaze never swerved from the road ahead as he steered the car along the interchange ramp to the Harbor Tunnel Thruway.
“You really don’t, Richard. I imagine this guy is just like the overwhelming majority of murder suspects we’ve handled during our careers. How many of them were actually Hannibal-the-Cannibal evil?”
Delcambre nodded slightly. “Just a few. Mostly they’re just stupid.”
“And since there’s no evidence that he’s delusional or otherwise mentally incompetent, don’t you think Todd is aware he’s done something very stupid? He’s about to lose everything. His career as a paramedic, his opportunity to write children’s books, his freedom, maybe even his life, if he’s smart enough to realize this could be filed as a capital murder.”
“So, why rub his nose in it and endanger our chances for a confession? I see what you’re saying.”
“And he will confess if you’re patient and remember something: people don’t like to confess to murder, but they’ll own up to making a mistake. So, let him depict the murder as a mistake.”
“Sorry, but how can it have been a mistake if he broke into Jen’s room to sabotage the inhaler and later planted murder evidence? That sure looks like premeditation to me,” Mulvaney said.
“Maybe. But who cares whether it’s the whole truth or not?”
“I do.”
“You’re missing the point. Which would you rather have, a confession from Todd that he poisoned Jen by mistake—a story you can later debunk faster than a James Frey memoir and portray as a nasty self-serving lie? Or, no statements from him and a theory of premeditation?” I said.
“When you put it that way, the confession.”
“Then let it be a mistake.” I saw that we were approaching the Harbor Tunnel entrance and glanced at my watch. “Can I make one final suggestion? It’s four-forty now and you probably want to get to the hotel before five.”
“Why?” Mulvaney asked.
“There’s an award ceremony scheduled for five and you can be certain that Todd will be attending it, because there’s a Cheery Cherub Bear up for a prize. You’ll seriously hink him up if you pull him out of that event once it’s started. So, you might ask your partner to drive just a little faster.”
Delcambre’s back stiffened. “I don’t think so. Your wife distinctly said that she’d whipstitch me and she didn’t sound like she was bluffing.”
“But, if I assumed personal responsibility for the slightly higher speed then—”
“She said she was going to use an upholstery needle and her heaviest thread.”
“That is a big needle,” I said.
“So this needle isn’t going any higher.” Delcambre momentarily released his left index finger from the wheel to point at the speedometer.
“Then let’s just hope that the award ceremony is like every other public function in the universe and starts the usual fifteen minutes late.”
We passed through the tunnel, got off the Thruway at the O’Donnell Street exit, and headed westward through the city streets toward Fells Point. Along the way, Mulvaney radioed some officers at the hotel and instructed them to go to the lobby and await our arrival. My watch
read 4:58 P.M. when Delcambre parked the patrol car in the fire lane in front of the Maritime Inn. I got out of the cruiser and took off the Baltimore Police jacket I’d been wearing.
Handing the coat to Mulvaney, I said, “Good luck and one final bit of advice from one egomaniac to another: you’re a much better detective when you aren’t completely stressed out over the need to be the star.”
“Thanks. And by the way, I’d request a transfer to the parking enforcement division before I’d work with you as a partner…but you do know your stuff.” Mulvaney gave me a quick handshake and then tossed the coat into the backseat of the cruiser.
Delcambre extended his hand. “Hey, you’ve got a spring broken in your head, but I like you.”
“And vice versa. I’ll tell my wife that we had a very safe and slow drive here.”
“And to put that upholstery needle away.”
“Yeah, that would be baste for everyone.”
“Huh?”
“A bad sewing pun and you don’t know how disturbed I am that I can make them. But then again, I’m a teddy bear artist now.”
As we entered the hotel, I saw a small squad of uniformed cops standing in the lobby. Mulvaney waved them over into a loose huddle, while I headed for the corridor leading to the exhibit hall. Although I’d only been gone for a few hours, it seemed much longer, and I suddenly felt exhausted. It would be a pleasure to get back to Ash and relax. Plus there was the added relief of knowing that I wasn’t going to be threatened with arrest again, at least for the rest of the day.
As I stumped along, I noticed that the CSI crew still had the ballroom sealed off, but a door was open on the opposite side of the hallway. I looked inside and saw the room was crowded with maybe a couple hundred folks. There was a small and elevated rectangular stage at the far end of the room and on it stood Lisa Parr with the other two members of the Har-Bear Expo judging team. It was obvious that the award ceremony had just started.
