AHMM, Jan-Feb 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Rigor is pretty well advanced,” Kestrel said, now squatting beside the body. “It would have been cool down here by the water last night, but even so, I'd say she must have been dead since midnight."

  "Somebody should have heard a shot,” said Auburn.

  "The guy at the bar and grill didn't,” said Dollinger. “He lives upstairs over there. We didn't ask anybody else yet, but that's right up top on our agenda."

  "One wonders,” said Krasnoy, “why they didn't just throw her and her bag in the river."

  "They may have tried, and missed the water in the dark,” said Dollinger. To Auburn, he added, “They must have tossed her from up here on the grass. Terry and I made those footprints when we covered her up, and they're the only ones near the body."

  "Any bloodstains or other traces around here on the grass, or over on the sidewalk?"

  "No blood that we could see,” said Krasnoy, “and no shell. Here comes our ancient mariner,” he added under his breath.

  Auburn turned to see a stocky middle-aged man stepping with pompous self-assurance over the yellow tape and descending the bank. With his floppy-brimmed hat adorned with fishing flies and his sunburnt nose, he looked like something straight out of a beer commercial on TV. When he got closer, Auburn sensed that he had indeed just had a beer, if not two, at the establishment across the street.

  His name was Fred Shannoy; he was on a two week vacation from his job with an advertising agency. “I'm not what you'd call a serious fisherman,” Shannoy assured him. “Anything I catch I throw back. I figure it's going to be full of lead or mercury or radioactive wastes anyway ... Hey, I don't even like fish."

  Auburn obliged him with the expected chuckle. “Do you own the boat, Mr. Shannoy?"

  "Rented. I showed the papers to the officers here."

  "Where did you cast off this morning?"

  "The landing at the park up in Stillwell, around seven. Told them that too. I was just drifting with the current, looking for a shady spot to tie up, when I saw this old gal lying here on the bank. Kind of like a sunbather, you know? Except she was in the shade and she had all her clothes on. And then when I got close enough, I saw she was ... uh ... well, you know. Not with us any more."

  Just the sort of circumlocution, thought Auburn, that one might expect from an advertising man.

  "So I pulled in and tied up downstream there and came ashore.” He glanced briefly at his muddy shoes. “The place across the street, The Green Fish, wasn't open for business yet, but there was a truck there delivering meat, so I went in and called you guys. That ... that's a bullet hole, isn't it?"

  "That's what it looks like. Are you familiar with this area?"

  "No, sir. Never been here before, either by land or by sea."

  "Did you see anybody here on the bank besides the dead woman?"

  "No. Not on this side of the river, anyway. I saw a few joggers and pedestrians over on the downtown side."

  Auburn was making a final check of Shannoy's written statement when Nick Stamaty from the coroner's office arrived. Dark and heavily built, Stamaty dressed like a college president, moved with the grace of a sumo wrestler, and radiated the sincerity of a Sunday-school teacher.

  "Straighten your ties, guys,” he said, before even looking at the remains of Ida Blanford. “The camcorders are coming."

  Auburn stepped up to the brow of the levee and peered down into the street. “It's Channel Four,” he reported to the others. “They usually behave pretty well."

  After sending Shannoy off to resume his fishing, Auburn filled Stamaty in on the details thus far known. Stamaty unslung his camera case and checked the position of the sun. “Let me get some pictures. Then we'll see if one of those keys gets us in the house."

  While waiting for Stamaty to finish his work around the body, Auburn walked west along the top of the levee, away from where the TV crew were setting up, and surveyed the scene from a distance. A quarter of a mile downstream stood a massive steel-truss railroad bridge, no longer in use.

  The broad, shallow river had never supported much traffic, but since the rebuilding of the dam at Tippettsville in the 1960's to prevent spring flooding, it amounted to little more than a stream. A hulking wharf and warehouse, part wood and part brick, stood at the water's edge just this side of the railroad bridge. A row of cars parked outside the warehouse indicated that it was still being put to some use.

  Stamaty was adding the final touches to a sketch on a clipboard when he caught up with Auburn. His left little finger was hooked through Ida Blanford's big ring of keys. “Looks like point-blank range to me, Cy,” he said.

  The crumbling sidewalk in front of the house had been marked long ago for repairs with red spray paint and then apparently forgotten. The mailbox was empty. The hinges on the gate needed oil. But the tree-shaded lawn was neatly trimmed and free of weeds. They waited a full minute after Auburn manipulated the knocker on the front door before starting to try keys in the lock.

  The house was dark, quiet, and cool. Not a trace of disorder or a speck of dust spoiled the old-fashioned but opulent decor, as if Ida Blanford had known, the last time she left, that she would never return. Auburn recalled that she'd been a schoolteacher. From the entry hall they passed into a parlor that looked like a principal's office, a kitchen like a high school physics lab, and a dining room as bare as the refectory of a convent. Every light they turned on in the parlor blazed with maximum wattage. A reading glass rested on the desk, another next to the chair in the front window.

  Further exploration revealed a pantry, another parlor, and an enclosed back porch facing the river. The rear parlor was somewhat more habitable than the front one, with shelves of old books, family photographs in silver frames, more bright lights, and more magnifying glasses. Every window on the ground floor was closed and latched. Deadbolts were shot on side and back doors.

  There was no computer in the house, no answering machine attached to any of the antiquated dial phones, not even a television set. Of the bedrooms upstairs, Ida Blanford had used only the front one. In the other rooms they found stored furniture, locked trunks, cardboard cartons secured with heavy cord. The heirs, if any, were going to have a circus digging through the spoils and apportioning them.

  The basement was nearly empty, probably because of the damp that reigned there. Another of the keys on the ring got them into the detached garage. There was no car—just a broken porch swing, several dozen red clay flowerpots, a formidable array of gardening implements, several pieces of furniture that belonged in a landfill, and a bicycle that belonged in the Smithsonian.

  Returning to the back parlor for a more focused search, they found an address book containing the address and phone number of a Dale Blanford in East Atlas, about seventy-five miles away. Auburn used his cell phone to call East Atlas.

  "Dale Blanford.” A man in his thirties, his voice crisp and assertive.

  "This is Detective Sergeant Auburn calling, sir. About a Miss Ida Blanford. I believe she's a relative of yours?"

  "She's my aunt.” Still crisp, now expectant and slightly challenging.

  "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, sir. Miss Blanford was found dead this morning near her home."

  "Found dead? What happened to her?"

  "At first glance it looks to us like she was shot in the course of a robbery."

  The man at the other end of the line muttered something that might have been profanity. “Was this a break-in?"

  "No, sir. There's no evidence of that. We're inside her house now. We found it locked and we don't see any evidence of damage or theft. Her body was found on the riverbank just east of here."

  "You can understand this comes as kind of a shock. I'm trying to get myself together."

  "Are there other relatives besides yourself?"

  "No. Well, my sister, but she lives in California. What do I need to do?"

  "As soon as our investigation here at the scene is finished, your aunt's body will be removed to the mortuary.
The coroner will want you to go there and make a formal identification. I'm going to turn you over to Mr. Stamaty from the coroner's office if you'll hold the line just a moment."

  Stamaty expressed sympathy in businesslike tones, gave Blanford information and directions, and handed the phone back to Auburn.

  "This is Auburn again. I'd like to talk to you eventually so we can work up a profile on your aunt for our report and possibly get some ideas on what happened to her. I'll give you a number that will reach me no matter where I am, and I'd appreciate it if you'd call me when you get to town."

  "Okay, but, like I told the other gentleman, it may be sometime this afternoon before I can get away."

  After Auburn hung up, Stamaty explained that Blanford was building a deck somewhere in the wilds of Carney County. “Says he can't leave until he's sure his guys are far enough along to finish up without him."

  They locked the house and returned to the riverbank. Kestrel had already left the scene and the body was once again draped in blue plastic. The crowd of spectators was getting bored and thinning out. The TV crew idled patiently in the shade. After touching base with Dollinger and Krasnoy, Auburn crossed the street to the bar and grill on the corner of Jardine and Pace.

  The Green Fish looked as if it might have started out as a neighborhood restaurant and sunk slightly in status in order to keep its owner out of the red. The front window bore the image, in cracked and fading paint, of a spirited bass writhing at the end of a line amid churning foam. Lettering, somewhat less faded, offered beer, liquor, and food. The door facing Jardine St. was marked family entrance. Auburn went in.

  The place was a little busier than might have been expected at nine thirty in the morning. Three men, each in his own world, were downing eye-openers at the bar, which ran back along the left side, opposite the windows facing out on Pace Street. A stainless steel lunch counter, reminiscent of an old-fashioned diner, was set at a right angle to the bar. Behind it a stocky man in a white apron and chef's cap wielded skillets and spatulas with skill and dispatch.

  At the counter and at booths and square tables in the front part of the building, seven people were having breakfast. A couple of tinny speakers in the ceiling gave forth the current output of a local rhythm-and-blues station. In the narrow spaces among the tables, a solitary waitress was juggling plates and cups. Most of the customers, even the ones at the counter, seemed to be watching the crowd across the street through the plate glass window with the picture of the green fish. Nobody, not even the waitress, paid much attention to Auburn.

  He stepped to the counter and caught the cook's eye. “Excuse me, sir. Police officer.” He showed identification.

  "Scotty Casteven. Chief cook and flycatcher."

  "Are you the proprietor?"

  "That too."

  "I understand you identified the body of Miss Ida Blanford across the way this morning?"

  "I don't know about the Ida part.” Casteven, tending an order of hash browns and a couple of waffles, wasn't looking Auburn's way. Everybody else in the place was. “I never heard her first name before. We always called her Miss Ramford—you know, like Ramrod. That's what my wife called her because she walked so stiff."

  "But you definitely recognized her?"

  "As the old gal that lived in the white house across the street, sure. I've seen her out there a thousand times, getting the mail out of the box, working in the garden, raking leaves, walking to the bus.” He broke off to shout some cryptic message to the waitress.

  "Would your wife know anything more about her?"

  "Maria died three years ago. Heart.” His expression clouded and he turned back to the grill.

  "Sorry. What time did you close last night?"

  "We close at eleven sharp except Friday and Saturday."

  "I understand you live here on the premises. Were you home last evening?"

  "Yes, sir. I already told those two cops over on the bank that I didn't hear any shots last night, no yelling, no commotion, nothing."

  The waitress kept circulating among the tables, refilling cups and glasses, removing dirty dishes, taking further orders. Two people left their table and stepped to the cash register where the lunch counter and the bar intersected. Casteven put down his tools, wiped his hands on his apron, and took their money.

  In the circumstances there was obviously no question of a private interview. Auburn decided to turn that to his advantage. Raising his voice slightly, he addressed the whole bunch. “If anybody here has any information about the woman who was killed across the street last night or about what happened to her, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know. If you don't want to talk to me here, you can call Public Safety any time day or night and ask for Sergeant Auburn."

  In compliance with the mysterious laws that govern crowd behavior, nobody was looking at him now.

  The couple who had just left had vacated the table in the window. On a whim, Auburn sat down there himself. The heat and humidity were building up outside, and from here he had a view of Ida Blanford's house and the adjacent riverbank, except for the site where the body lay.

  Eventually the waitress stopped beside his table. “Did you want to order something, Officer?"

  Her name tag said “Darla.” She was fighting a losing battle with the calendar over the issue of turning thirty. She was lean, hungry, and overdecorated, the kind of woman Auburn's father described as “a shark in mascara."

  "Just coffee, thanks."

  "Cream and sugar?” she asked over her shoulder, already halfway to the serving stand in the corner where two coffeepots steamed gently on hot plates.

  "No, thanks."

  Auburn sipped his coffee slowly and meditatively, dividing his attention between the shrinking crowd outside and the customers of the The Green Fish. The bar and grill may not have been the heart of the neighborhood, but it probably reflected the rhythm and flavor of local life as accurately as anyplace else.

  Customers left, others came in. They all seemed to know what was going on across the street. And from the way the newcomers looked at him, Auburn sensed that they also knew, as if by telepathy, that he wasn't an ordinary patron but a detective engaged in the investigation. From time to time one of them lingered by his table, ostensibly peering across the street through the plate glass window with the picture of the fish on it, but also taking the opportunity to give him the once-over at close quarters.

  Most of them were obviously regulars, but Auburn suspected that a couple of the bar patrons had hiked the six blocks from the Greyhound bus station on Guinan Boulevard for quick nips during layovers. The regulars, nearly all of them men, didn't look a prosperous lot. There were the usual neighborhood retirees, a few younger people possibly out of work for one reason or another, a couple of unclassifiables.

  Scotty and Darla worked smoothly together, communicating in the quaint jargon of the hash slinger and taking turns serving drinks at the bar, collecting payments at the cash register, and feeding dirty dishes to the huge automatic dishwasher in the corner. The radio droned and twanged on, at times barely audible above the clatter of dishes and the mutter of voices.

  Because the two streets out front dead-ended into each other, there was virtually no traffic. The only cars and trucks that ever moved into Auburn's field of vision seemed to belong to patrons of The Green Fish. Over on the levee, he could see Dollinger and Krasnoy giving brief and no doubt suitably vague answers to the television reporter. Kestrel was going over the sidewalk inch by inch like a man who has lost a contact lens in the snow. Ida Blanford's house stood solemn and empty, the front parlor ablaze with sunlight streaming in an east window.

  Eventually Darla came back with more coffee.

  "Do you live here in the neighborhood?"

  "I used to live in the apartment upstairs.” She rested the coffeepot on the table, leaned closer, and lowered her voice. “After Scotty's wife died he moved out of their place on Eversole, kicked me out, and moved in here himself. I've got an apartment now
at the other end of the Randolph Street Bridge."

  "Are you here every day?"

  "Six days. We're closed Sundays. I work till eight, when the dining room closes."

  "Has there been any kind of trouble in the neighborhood recently?"

  "Like what kind of trouble?"

  "Break-ins, vandalism, gangs, drugs ... ?"

  "Highmore's Grocery right over on the other corner closed up about three months ago. They said it was because they didn't have enough business, but Scotty and I think it's because they had two holdups in a row around Christmas time.” She picked up the coffeepot.

  "Did you know Ms. Blanford?” Auburn asked her.

  She put the coffeepot down again. “Not to talk to. I saw her outside almost every day. She used to drive a big old Lincoln to go shopping and to go to church on Sundays, but we heard she totaled it and lost her driver's license because they said she was legally blind. Since Highmore's closed, you'd see her coming back from the bus stop with shopping bags maybe a couple days a week."

  "Have you noticed anything unusual going on over at her place in the past few days?"

  "No. Sometimes a younger man stops in the afternoon, usually on weekends. Sometimes he comes in a truck and other times he brings his family in a car—wife and two little boys. But I haven't seen them over there in the last month or two. I always figured they were family."

  "Could I get your name, miss?"

  She glanced down to make sure her name tag was showing. “Darlece Fontaine.” She spelled both names.

  Contrary to his usual procedure, Auburn didn't ask for an exact address and he didn't start a file card until she had gone away to serve other customers, and then he made only the sketchiest of notes.

  A ten-year-old boy put his head in through the family entrance and called “Paper!” A man on one of the barstools asked if he had the world soccer scores.

  Across the way, Dollinger and Krasnoy took off in their cruiser, probably on a call. A few minutes later an ancient hearse stopped in the street outside with a screech of brakes, and two mortuary attendants disappeared over the brow of the levee with a body bag and a folding stretcher. After a lengthy interval they reappeared, loaded the remains of Ida Blanford into the hearse, and drove off with a squeal of rubber.