At the Scene of the Crime

by Dana Stabenow

  Tess knew Kollings, an empathetic patrol officer and a widow herself.

  “Other family?”

  “Just a son, Steven, with a ‘v.’ We reached him, and he’s on his way.”

  Hayes nodded. “How about a weapon?”

  “Negative so far, sir.”

  “Cassidy, what would you say?”

  Tess didn’t mind being called by her last name. Appreciated it, in fact, as a badge of “blue” respect. But she also knew that “Kyle” used it to buffer his own emotions, because he called her sister—the lieutenant’s preferred investigation partner—“Joan.” The older Cassidy was out on maternity leave three weeks prior to having her baby, which Hayes wished was his baby, too. Despite his romantic hopes, Joan had chosen the law over law enforcement for a husband, marrying an attorney named Arthur.

  And now Joan was at the hospital, about to deliver, while Tess was wading into a grisly crime scene commanded by a scorned, pissed-off detective.

  “Cassidy,” said Hayes, “Am I talking to myself here?”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant.” Tess forced herself to look at the body. “From the way his skull’s caved in, I’d guess an axe. Or, with that big RV in the driveway, a camp hatchet?”

  “Might be hope for you yet, Cassidy. That’s my take, too.” Hayes squatted next to the slight man’s torso. “No defensive wounds on the hands or forearms, so I’m guessing this one in the back of the head was Blow Number One. Then, after the vic fell and landed sideways, Numbers Two through—what, Six, maybe?—on the floor.” Hayes rose. “Barefoot, too, and bloody soles but no tracks in the living room, so probably he was already here in the den when attacked, rather than being chased into it.”

  Tess thought out loud. “Or running for it.”

  “What?”

  She looked around the library. “If Mr. Zederberg knew somebody was going to kill him, maybe he wanted his books to be the last things he saw.”

  Detective Lieutenant Kyle Hayes just stared at Tess. “Cassidy, you are one odd duck.”

  Consider the source, sister Joan would have told her, so Tess took that as a compliment.

  Dusting for latent prints at the threshold of the kitchen, Tess Cassidy could hear Hayes interviewing Nanette Zederberg, but not actually see them. It was like listening to a play being read aloud on the radio.

  HAYES

  Did your husband have any enemies?

  ZEDERBERG

  No. No, Marty was in medical supplies. He was always helping people, not hurting them.

  HAYES

  Anybody else you can think of who might want to hurt him?

  ZEDERBERG

  Just the man I told Officer Kollings about.

  HAYES

  The man?

  KOLLINGS

  Mrs. Zederberg was driving down the street, saw a quote, “hulking man,” unquote, walking toward her—meaning northward—about two doors up from the house here.

  HAYES

  Mrs. Zederberg, can you describe him for us?

  ZEDERBERG

  Not really. I mean, as she just said, he was . . . well, “hulking,” the size of a professional wrestler? But also kind of mean.

  HAYES

  Mean?

  ZEDERBERG

  The way he walked. And moved his head. Like he was really angry about something.

  HAYES

  Did you get a good look at his face?

  ZEDERBERG

  No. I . . . I really only glanced at him. He stared at me, I know, but I was . . . well, frankly, scared of the way he seemed, so I just kept driving. Then I found the front door open here, and Marty—Oh, God, Marty in . . .

  KOLLINGS

  Here you go, Ma’am. These tissues will help.

  Good cop, Kollings.

  Tess was almost finished dusting when she heard from behind her, “Cassidy, you know where the Loot is?”

  The green-gilled uniform they’d met at the front door. “In the kitchen, with the widow.”

  “The son is here. Where should I put him?”

  “Ask Hayes, but maybe call him out blind first. He might want to interview the guy without his mother knowing. Or in earshot.”

  “Stepmother, actually,” said Steven Zederberg.

  Now Tess was working the entrance to the library, and she could see Hayes with the younger man in the living room, sitting across from each other on matching armchairs. The son took after his father, slight frame and black, curly hair, with a Jewish skullcap bobby-pinned to the back of his head.

  Looked a whole lot better than blade wounds. Thinking back to the corpse, though, Tess didn’t remember any cap on or around the victim.

  Hayes said, “You realize I have to ask some awkward questions?”

  “Lieutenant, my father’s just been brutally murdered, and you’ve told me I can’t see Nanette until after you’ve interviewed me. So, please, ask away and be done with it so I can go to her.”

  Tess thought, kid’s got some guts.

  Hayes said, “We haven’t found a weapon so far. Do you know if your parents keep an axe or a hatchet on the premises?”

  “If you mean the house, no. But I’m sure Dad has one—had one in the camper.”

  “The recreational vehicle outside?”

  “Yes. My father traveled a lot in his business, but mainly via airplane to convention cities and big hospitals. He always yearned to see the rest of the country, and so when he got a good offer for the medical supply company, Dad sold it.”

  “Can you tell me how much he got for it?”

  A pause. “Is that really necessary for your investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause. “All right. My father asked me to work with his lawyer on the deal.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d just gotten my accounting degree, and Dad thought it would be good experience for me. And it was. Overall, we netted about three million.”

  “‘We?’”

  Tess looked up to see Zederberg clench his teeth. “My father did, that is.” A shake of the head. “They were going to put the house on the market, too, though I told them he’d take a wicked hit—God, I’m sorry.”

  The son began rubbing his eyes with his fists, like a little kid. Tess’s heart went out to him, but her job meant returning to the dusting.

  Hayes said, “I know this is difficult for you.”

  “Yes,” Tess hearing what she thought could be palms slapping thighs, “yes, you probably do, Lieutenant, because this is your job. But it’s our lives.”

  Tess thought: The son’s got guts and humanity.

  Then Steven Zederberg made a noise that sounded almost like a laugh. “The bizarre thing is, Dad was always afraid he was going to die by fire.”

  “Fire?”

  “Yes. The hospital he was born in burned to the ground like a week later. Then my father’s first warehouse was struck by lightning when he was at his desk on the second floor of it. And, just before Dad decided to sell his company, he got caught in a hotel fire in Rochester, New York.” The son hung his head. “Never thought he’d be killed like . . . this.”

  Hayes cleared his throat. “When you said your father and stepmother were going to ‘take a wicked hit . . . ’?”

  “Uh, taxwise.” Zederberg raised his face to the lieutenant. “While they’d lived here way beyond the minimum period for capital-gains forgiveness, the house has also appreciated to the point. . . . ”

  Tess couldn’t follow the rest of what Steven Zederberg said, but it sounded interesting, so she resolved to ask her brother-in-law, Arthur the Attorney, about the issue.

  If she ever get done with this crime scene, that is, so she could go visit Joan at the hospital.

  “You look way too cute to be a cop.”

  Puh-leeeze, thought Tess. Where do guys find such garbage lines? Could there be a “dumb-ass.com” somewhere on the Web?

  She was at the step-up entrance to the RV, about to go in to look for the camp hatchet Steven Zederberg had menti
oned. The male, forties and balding, stared back at her over the bordering fence, focussing less on her face and more on her butt.

  Tess said, “And you’d be?”

  “Pete.”

  “That’s your last name?”

  “No.” A husky laugh. “First. Pete Odabashian.”

  Zero hope of remembering that one. “Can you spell it for me?”

  He did.

  Tess said, “And you live next door?”

  “Why I’m standing where I am.”

  “What can you tell me about the Zederbergs?”

  “Well, they were quiet, that’s for sure. No wild parties, probably because she’s way younger than he was.”

  “By how much?”

  “Actually we happened to talk about that once.”

  Tess heard his “happened” the loudest.

  Odabashian said, “We were all like ten years apart.”

  “The ‘we’ being?”

  “Well, Marty was the oldest, at fifty-six. I’m next at forty-seven, then Nan at thirty-six, and Stevie at twenty-five.”

  Using “Nan,” not her full first name. “Anything else about your neighbors?”

  Odabashian shrugged. “Not very religious, though I think the kid’s decided to be, since he wears a yarmulke all the time.”

  Tess remembered that was the religious word for the skullcap. “How’d the family get along?”

  “Fine, far as I could tell. I’m guessing Marty and Nan had to help Stevie out, starting a new business with student loans, an office, his own apartment, and so on. Then Marty decided to pull the ripcord on owning and running the company, and they bought this camper here. He was always puttering around in it, even forgot to close the door sometimes.”

  “Lock it, you mean?”

  “No, not even click the door shut. I’m surprised he didn’t get a squirrel or skunk building a nest in there.”

  “How about Mrs. Zederberg?”

  Odabashian squinted. “In what way?”

  A careful reply. Tess inclined her head toward the RV.

  “Roughing it?”

  “Ah, right. I got the impression Marty was a little higher on the great outdoors than Nan was.”

  “Mrs. Zederberg told you that?”

  “Not in so many words. But I remember they took the camper out for a trial run, toward really touring the country in it. When Nan came back, all I heard was her not feeling safe driving it, banging her head or elbow into things. Even though the camper’s enormous to look at, when Marty invited me to take a Cook’s tour, it’s kind of like a submarine inside, and I kept banging into cabinet corners and doorways myself. Plus there’s the poisoned ivy and bug bites Nan got on their maiden voyage.”

  “Was that the only point the Zederbergs disagreed on?”

  “Why don’t we have a drink together, and I’ll tell you everything you want to hear?”

  God. “Like whether Mrs. Zederberg had any . . . male friends?”

  “Aside from me, you mean?”

  Consistency is not always a virtue, especially when it hints at a motive for killing the woman’s husband. But all Tess said was, “Yes.”

  “How about that drink first?”

  “Actually, I’d rather start by holding hands.”

  Odabashian seemed stunned. “You would?”

  “Yes. If you were inside this camper, I need to take elimination prints from your fingers.”

  “That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Tough luck. You can hop over here now, or you can cool your heels for a night or two in jail until a judge gets around to making you cooperate.”

  Pete Odabashian gave Tess a sour look. “Somehow, you’re not so cute anymore.”

  Coming through the CSU door at headquarters, Detective Lieutenant Kyle Hayes said to Tess, “The vic’s wallet was gone, but the stash of cash he kept in that library—and the wife kept in the kitchen—are both still there.”

  Suggesting a killer/robber not familiar with the household’s habits. Then Tess looked up from logging in the evidence baggies used at the crime scene. Hayes was carrying two folders of different colors, neither of them ones the department used.

  Tess said, “What are those?”

  “Personnel files. From the vic’s former business and the wife’s job at the museum. She’s a docent.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Cassidy, you have to get out more. A ‘docent’ is like a tour guide.”

  Tess kept her temper. “Thanks.”

  Hayes laid the folders on the counter next to her. “The family’d like to have the decedent in the ground by nightfall.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “Religious thing. The ME knows about it, and he’s putting Zederberg at the top of his list. Though, if it was up to the wife, we’d be looking at burning, not planting.”

  “Cremation?”

  “Only the son’s gotten pretty devout over the years, and he said it was also a religious thing to bury, and the funeral director’s agreeing—naturally, since he’ll get more money on the deal.”

  Tess was trying to think all that through when Hayes said, “I’m gonna get some coffee. Be back in ten to see how you’re doing.”

  No “Can I get you something, too?” Tess said, “I’ll be here.”

  As soon as Hayes closed the door behind him, Tess moved over to the folders. She was a little surprised that the owner of a company had a personnel file on himself. Opening “Zederberg, Martin,” Tess read about his selling of medical supplies, some correspondence on him in turn selling his company, and some more letters about retirement options.

  Then she turned to “Zederberg, Nanette.” Given date of birth, she was a good twenty years younger than her husband, as Odabashian had told Tess. And not much employment history: nurse’s aide, restaurant hostess, “docent” at the museum.

  Luckily, Tess was back at her logging by the seven-minute mark, because Hayes burst through the door early. And empty-handed.

  “Where’s your coffee?”

  “Cassidy, we’ve got a weapon.”

  “The weapon?”

  “Well, that’s something we’re just gonna have to find out, aren’t we?”

  Silently, Tess said good-bye to witnessing the birth of her first niece or nephew.

  The uniform assigned by Dispatch to investigate a bloody hatchet had enough sense to leave it on the ground.

  Hayes said to her, “Any identification on the caller?”

  “I can check with Dispatch, Lieutenant, but they didn’t tell me squat on that.”

  Tess lowered her duffle bag to a patch of grass maybe ten feet removed from the weapon. She had a gut feeling the tipper stayed anonymous, though she also knew that 911 had caller ID, so they at least could trace the number.

  Probably to an equally anonymous pay phone.

  “Cassidy, you want to process this thing?”

  Looking forward to it all day. “Yessir.”

  Tess bent down, trying to picture how the hatchet got there. “We’re about three miles from the Zederbergs’ house, right?”

  “Ballpark. And in the direction the widow saw her ‘hulking man’ walking.”

  There were two huge prints, probably thumbs, in blood on the handle, but any others seemed too smudged to matter. “I don’t remember Mrs. Zederberg saying anything about him carrying a bloody hatchet.”

  “You didn’t interview the woman. She was upset, likely to miss stuff. Especially since she just ‘glanced’ at the guy.”

  “Only other people could have seen him, even focus on a big man acting odd. Why would he bring the murder weapon this far?”

  “The guy could have it in a bag. Or he could just be a crazy.”

  “But why not wipe the thing off? Or hide it, even bury it?”

  Hayes and the uniform both laughed.

  Tess said, “What?”

  “Cassidy,” the lieutenant still chuckling, “you are a mite slow. ‘Bury the hatchet?’”

&n
bsp; “Oh.”

  At her computer, Tess cursed. After taking preservative close-up photos of the hatchet’s handle, she’d lifted both latents perfectly from the surface. However, neither of them was in the state or federal databases.

  And there were no prints in the house that didn’t belong to one of the three Zederbergs, and none in the RV beyond theirs and those of the neighbor, Pete Odabashian.

  Tess ran all four people through the computer. Zip also, which meant nobody had a criminal record, served in the military, or applied for any of a dozen kinds of licenses or permits.

  The good news was that Tess had done all she could on the case, so now there was nothing official keeping her from going to the hospital.

  “It’s a boy,” the new papa said, beaming in the gleaming corridor, a piece of cardboard in his hand.

  Tess smiled at her brother-in-law. “That’s terrific. How’s Joan doing?”

  “Great, just great. Still a little groggy, but only because they had to do a Caesarian section.”

  Meaning general anesthetic, so that made sense.

  Arthur held up the cardboard. “And isn’t this just the cutest thing?”

  Tess glanced at “the cutest thing,” then began to stare at it, and finally read the label. “What does ‘I/M-Print’ mean?”

  He told her.

  Tess nodded once. Twice. Three times. “Arthur, what happens when a married couple goes to sell their house?”

  “What happens?”

  “Taxwise,” said Tess Cassidy, “and keep it simple.”

  She had to give Detective Lieutenant Kyle Hayes credit. He was willing to do what Tess asked.

  They were both in the Zederbergs’ living room with Nanette, son Steven, and neighbor Pete Odabashian.

  The widow checked her watch and spoke with an edge to her tone. “Okay, my husband’s funeral starts half an hour from now. What’s this about?”

  Hayes said, “Cassidy?”

  Tess had already drawn and released a deep breath. “I want to take prints of all your . . . big toes.”

  “Our what?” Odabashian said.

  “We found impressions on the handle of a hatchet, and the blood on its blade matches the decedent’s DNA.”

  The son said, “So?”

  “The prints are either the thumbs of a ‘hulking man,’ like the one your stepmother reported to Officer Kollings, or the big toes of somebody else.”