The Highly Effective Detective

by Richard Yancey

  My buzzer rang. The pizza. I punched the intercom button.

  “Just bring it on up!”

  “Mr. Ruzak?”

  “Susan?”

  “Hi. Can I come up?”

  “Uh. Sure.”

  She came up wearing a black dress and dark hose with sensible low-heeled sandal-type black shoes, her dark hair pulled back in a severe-looking bun. I held the door for her and caught a hint of lilac as she passed.

  “It’s not too late, is it?”

  The question was so ironical, I almost laughed.

  “I didn’t know you knew where I lived,” I said, because I didn’t.

  “I looked it up in the phone book.”

  I threw the dead bolt on the door because she might have been followed or someone might be staking out my building, and what I was suffering from seemed to be exceedingly contagious: the pathogen of extreme violence. Parker Hudson had already succumbed to it.

  She sat on the sofa. Her dress was sleeveless and terminated about two inches above her knees. Except for the shoes, she looked like she might be dressed for the theater. I offered her something to drink and she said Coke if I had it, which I did, and I poured her a glass with lots of ice in it, because I had heard in Europe they go easy on the ice—maybe two cubes at the most. You wonder why refrigeration is such an issue over there or if it’s just a cultural thing, like not being able to get sweet tea above the Mason-Dixon Line.

  “How was the funeral?” I asked. Bad topic for small talk, but it was really the only thing we had in common.

  “Catholic and very, very Irish. The wake was incredible. I never laughed so hard—or cried so hard—in my whole life.”

  “I hear those Irish Catholics know how to throw a burial.”

  “It makes me wish I had known her better.”

  “Me, too. Not you, but me, I meant. How well did you know her, Susan? Did you meet before the wedding?”

  “I didn’t even go to the wedding. They were married in Ireland, honeymooned in Morocco, and flew to Knoxville six weeks later.”

  “You had no idea?”

  “It was a total surprise.”

  “Matthew seemed to think there was some kind of fix involved.”

  She shook her head and again I got a whiff of lilac. “There was no fix,” she said. “Matt’s got a chip on his shoulder, that whole ‘absent father’ thing. Dad loved Lydia.”

  “He offered me a couple million dollars to hand him the killer so he could take care of things extrajudicially.”

  “Sounds like my father. Please don’t report him or anything, Mr. Ruzak. He didn’t really mean it. My father is the kind of man who always looks for the shortest distance between two points.”

  That was for sure. “I didn’t report him,” I said. “And I really wish you’d call me Teddy. Even the mailman, who I hardly know, calls me Teddy.”

  She nodded and sipped her Coke. “This is good. Thank you. I still have some jet lag, I think.”

  She slipped off her shoes and put her stocking feet on the coffee table, pulling the hem of her dress down demurely as she did.

  “Speaking of Matt,” I said. “He pretended he didn’t even know what your dad did for a living.”

  “He’s an investor. Real estate mostly. He started here in the States, of course; he’s got half a dozen houses around town and some condos, but after a while, he got into the overseas market. He buys it, develops it, and sells it at a huge profit, I guess, because two million dollars is nothing to my father.”

  “I guess your dad’s very economical in his thinking.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m working on a theory of the economics of thought.”

  “Are you really?”

  “No, not really. Sometimes things cross my mind that are beautiful but fleeting, like a shooting star—though more overwhelming. More like fireworks than a shooting star, I guess. So I get all excited and think I’m onto something profound, until I find out somebody else thought it or said it a few hundred years ago. It’s hard to have a truly original thought anymore—I guess because we’ve been around for so long. Kind of like the monkeys typing Shakespeare.”

  She laughed. “Oh no. We’re back to Shakespeare’s monkeys.”

  “I’m not sure about that hypothesis, though. It’s like that mathematician’s theorem about the arrow never hitting the target.”

  Her eyebrows came together, creating a fine horizontal line that hovered over her nose.

  “You know, anything that travels must cover half the distance before it can arrive at its destination. But before it can travel half the distance, it has to travel half of that half, and so on, and if you calculate that, always dividing by half, the arrow never gets anywhere.”

  “Sort of like our conversations.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I meant it as a compliment.”

  “You probably mean you never get any answers from me about your stepmom. I guess that’s why you’ve come, but honestly, I don’t have anything. Not a blessed thing.” Even to my own ears, I sounded sincere as hell. I was a better liar than I thought I’d be, and I remembered Mom’s saying each lie gets easier. “I thought I had something, but that fizzled out, so now your best bet is the task force. I guess you’re in touch with them, too. You’ve got to remember that these people have access I don’t. You know, forensics and databases and years of experience in this kind of deal.”

  She nodded. “I don’t like that Detective Watson. She talks to me like I’m a moron or a little kid.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s a crackerjack detective, though. You don’t reach her level in a place like the TBI without having something on the ball. Did she tell you their theory?”

  “Yes. That Lydia was jogging on the trail and a stranger pulled her or lured her into his car.”

  “So, um, they’ve ruled out somebody Lydia might know?”

  “I guess that was pretty easy, since she didn’t know many people.”

  “Why is that? Did she have some kind of psychological disorder or—”

  “I think America was a little overwhelming to her. She wasn’t an outgoing person at all, Mr. Ruzak. She told me once that when she was growing up, all she wanted to be was a nun. Why do you think she didn’t marry until she was in her thirties? At the wake, her family said they used to tease her about being an old maid.”

  “So what was she up to when she met your dad? I mean, did she have a job?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know what it was.”

  “What’s that story? How did they meet?”

  “In a restaurant. She was at a table with some friends and Dad went over and introduced himself. He told her he had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.”

  “Turned her head.”

  “He was good for her. He brought her out of her shell some— not a lot, but some. And she was good for him.”

  “How so?”

  “She made him laugh. She was a very funny person, but her sense of humor was very subtle. Some people missed it, like Matt.”

  “Maybe he resented her. You know, that happens when a kid thinks his parent is trying to replace the original.”

  She lowered her dark eyes. “Maybe,” she said softly.

  “I looked into that a little,” I said. “Your mother’s death.”

  “I’m sure you did,” she said. “I’m sure Detective Watson did, too.”

  I agreed she probably had.

  “It sure is an odd coincidence.”

  “Exactly,” Susan Marks said firmly. “And that’s all it is.”

  My buzzer rang. She gave a little jump and I said, “I ordered a pizza.”

  Veggie lovers’ supreme, heavy on the olives. I was being halfheartedly conscious of my weight. Susan said she wasn’t hungry, but, like a lot of slight girls, she had the appetite of a horse. I fetched her another Coke and we ate sitting cross-legged on the floor, with the pizza on the coffee table between us. I was pushing the envelope
even having her in my apartment. What if someone was staking me out? Was Gary already on his way to Felicia’s? Susan picked the olives off and dropped them one by one onto my slice.

  “The stranger theory doesn’t work,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Location for one, if she really was snatched from the trail. A kidnapping like that is a crime of opportunity. She would have been taken from the house, which everybody agrees she probably wasn’t.”

  She nodded. A piece of cheese clung to her plump lower lip and this produced a sensation in my gut that was pleasant and uncomfortable at the same time.

  “They found remnants of her jogging shorts in the woods,” she said.

  “So she was either on the trail or in the neighborhood on the way to the trail, a little early for rush hour, but people might have been around anyway.”

  “Like the man who saw the geese.”

  The reference to Parker made my throat close up and completely killed my appetite. I set down my slice of pizza.

  “Right. The second thing is, I don’t know much about her, but from what you’ve said, Lydia wasn’t the kind of person who would just jump into some stranger’s car.”

  “No way.”

  “Would she have fought with him?”

  “She was Irish.”

  “Okay. Let’s try to imagine this. She’s jogging along and this SUV pulls over and a stranger jumps out and grabs her. Does she holler? Kick? Punch?”

  “Probably all those things.”

  “Or the car pulls over and the stranger asks her something, maybe tells her something, that would make her come over at least, close enough for the grab. Could that have happened?”

  She shook her head. “She wasn’t distrustful, but I can’t imagine anything somebody could say that would have made her stop and go to the car. She thought America was a very violent place.”

  “That means a lot, coming from somebody from Ireland. So an organized killer like this one—and we know he’s the organized type, based on how easily he got her in the car and how he killed her—just wouldn’t have picked her randomly like that. Too much risk.”

  “But if it wasn’t a stranger…”

  “It could be somebody she knew, not necessarily somebody you knew she knew.”

  “Like a neighbor?”

  “I’m sure the task force has covered all the neighbors. But it could have been somebody she met at a store or a restaurant, maybe even the bag boy at Fresh Market. I’m just using the bag boy as an example. She knew this person in passing at least; there must have been a germ of trust there, a note of familiarity. Or maybe even someone in law enforcement. Or, um, maybe even pretending to be in law enforcement, though not every cop is a saint—we’re all human—but you know everybody trusts cops. I’m just using that as an example, too. I’m not saying it was a cop or somebody pretending to be a cop. Did she know any cops? Mention any cops to you? Maybe not, if it was a casual acquaintance, maybe even a mutual acquaintance—you know, of hers and your dad’s. No? Well, you wouldn’t necessarily know her casual acquaintances. I don’t care how close you are to somebody, and it looks like Lydia wasn’t close to hardly anybody, you don’t know everybody they know.”

  I was spinning this and I knew it was all a bunch of hogwash, since, after all, I knew the truth, or most of it at least. And there was something terribly obscene about me hypothesizing about it, dropping hints and asking leading questions like some dime-store pettifogging shyster. But Susan Marks needed something to cling to. She was young; she wanted answers to life’s horrors. There was also the seductive fact that she was one of the few people who seemed to hang on my every word. When somebody finds you interesting, you try to be even more interesting.

  The cheese still hung to her bottom lip and it took everything in me not to reach out and pull it off.

  “Maybe I don’t know everybody she knew, but I know most of the places she went. I know where she shopped for clothes and groceries. I know where she had the car serviced, where she got her hair done. She managed Dad’s rental properties here in town when he was away. Collected rents, dealt with tenant complaints, things like that. I could make a list for you and you could work from that.”

  She must have seen something change in my expression, because she said, “What?”

  “Susan, I don’t know how to tell you this, but …but I’ve got to let this go.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to let it go, but the truth is, I have what you might call an ethical dilemma.”

  “What’s your ethical dilemma?”

  “I don’t have a license to practice detection.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I rushed into hanging up my shingle before I even looked into the requirements. I’m taking the test in a couple of weeks, but as of now, I can’t work on any cases.”

  “But I’m not paying you anything. Is that what you want, Mr. Ruzak? You want me to pay you? Okay, what do you charge? I didn’t realize this was about money….”

  She had started to cry. I passed her a napkin and said, “If it was about money, I would have taken your father’s when he offered it.”

  “You couldn’t take it because you don’t know who did it.”

  She had a good point. She had wrapped the napkin around her index finger and was dabbing the corner of her eyes with it. Prep school, horseback-riding and tennis lessons, and long afternoons at the country club sipping iced tea and gossiping with the girls. We might as well have been from different planets.

  “Okay, maybe it’s more accurate to say I don’t have the experience to help you. It’s more like someone asking you tomorrow to remove a cat’s gallbladder. Only I’m not sure if cats even have gallbladders. My point is, my reach has exceeded my grasp on this one.”

  “Okay, Mr. Ruzak.”

  “Please call me Teddy. Why won’t you call me Teddy?”

  “I understand. I guess I’ll have to find somebody else to help me….”

  “The task force—”

  “You just said the task force had it all wrong!”

  “I was speaking from the exuberance of inexperience.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s like when—”

  “Oh, no, no, no. Don’t tell me what it’s like. Everything you say is like something else. When is something just what it is and not like something else?”

  I tried to think of an example, but just thinking of an example proved her point. She stood up and her hem fell down. When she said, “No, no, no,” she had shaken her head violently and a thick strand of her dark hair had pulled free from the bun and fallen against her cheek. Audrey Hepburn, that’s who she looked like. Another simile; there really was no escape.

  She jumped up and went to the door.

  “Susan…”

  “I just want somebody to help me,” she said. “Why won’t somebody help me?”

  She pulled at the knob, not realizing I had thrown the dead bolt.

  “Susan,” I said. “There are some things I can’t tell you….”

  This stopped her, giving me time to cross the room.

  “What things?”

  “I’ll be frank,” I said. “Frankly, I’m really torn up right now. I’m trying to figure out what’s the right thing to do, and that isn’t always clear.”

  “You don’t think finding who killed Lydia is the right thing to do?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  She slowly shook her head and another strand came loose.

  “That’s not complicated, Mr. Ruzak,” she whispered. She had started to cry again. “You don’t know what it’s like… what it’s like to lose somebody…to lose two mothers….”

  “No,” I said. “I lost only one.”

  I don’t remember who moved toward who first. The next thing I knew, she was in my arms and the smell of lilacs was all around me. Then I was kissing her. Our mouths came open and I could taste cheese.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SHE BROK
E THE KISS FIRST. THIS WASN’T SOMETHING NEW in my experience, so my feelings weren’t hurt.

  “I don’t know why I did that,” she said.

  “Why did you?”

  “I just said I didn’t know.” She sounded cross. “I have to go. I think I really need to go.” She looked at her watch.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” I said.

  “Why? Am I in danger?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. You’d like to think there’s a limit to evil—you know, a line or a barrier that can’t be crossed— but the ancient Greeks didn’t buy that and I’m not too sure I do, either. Let’s just say the longer you’re here, the more somebody else is in danger.”

  “You?”

  “No. Maybe. Probably, in the end.”

  The line deepened between her eyebrows. “You’re trying very hard to tell me something without telling me anything.” She waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, she said, “That’s okay. I understand. Well, I don’t understand, really, but that’s par for the course with you, Mr. Ruzak.”

  “Stay here till I get back,” I told her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to walk around the block. I won’t be long.”

  “There’s something about Lydia you’re not telling me. You know something.”

  I knew just about everything, but how could I tell her that? I trotted down the stairs and into the night. I walked a block east toward the river and back again, but I didn’t see any suspicious persons hunkered in cars, or any persons whatsoever, for that matter. I spotted her car parked across the street from my building. It was the only car parked on that side of the street.

  Upstairs, she had to go to her tiptoes to kiss me good-bye.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ruzak,” she said softly.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m walking you to your car.”

  I escorted her across the street, her small hand resting on my forearm as we walked.