Till Death - Mark Kane Mysteries - Book Four: A Private Investigator Crime Series of Murder, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Stories...with a dash of Romance. A Murder, Mystery & Suspense Thriller

by John Hemmings

  As I looked around the room I saw a broken tumbler on the floor next to his discarded clothes which were on a footstool. I picked it up, using a handkerchief to ensure that I left no fingerprints. It smelled of scotch − probably from the bottle Lucy had found in the kitchen. I quickly walked back into the kitchen, wiped the bottle and rinsed the neck under the faucet. I hadn’t been thinking clearly when I handled it earlier. I went back into the bathroom. I imagined the scene just before death. It was cold outside and cold in the apartment too. No heating had been switched on inside the apartment although there were radiators in the hallway outside. It seemed that the dead man had been taking a bath – maybe to warm himself up, or maybe he was about to leave the apartment altogether. He’d taken off his clothes next to the bathtub and laid them on the stool. There was a white towel lying on the floor by the stool too, ready for him to dry himself when he was done. He’d been sipping a scotch when he was attacked. It had been in his right hand, probably resting on the lip of the bathtub. He’d obviously been taken by surprise; perhaps his eyes were closed as he lay in the warm bath, relaxed by the warmth and the scotch he was drinking.

  Had he been brought the drink by someone else? By the woman I’d seen him with earlier? That seemed likely, because otherwise the bottle itself would probably have been in the bathroom too. And where was she now? I hadn’t been able to see whether they entered the apartment building together. She seemed the most likely suspect. If she wasn’t the murderer, then where was she? But she wouldn’t have been strong enough to overpower him, even if she’d taken him by surprise. The surge of adrenaline in his body when he realized he was under attack would have practically doubled his strength. It was, for the time being anyway, a mystery.

  I looked through the clothing beside the bathtub. I wasn’t expecting to find anything helpful so I wasn’t surprised when I came up empty-handed. Literally empty-handed; there was nothing in his pockets at all.

  I paused to consider what facts I could be sure of. Whoever had slugged me had been in the apartment with the consent, or at least knowledge, of the dead man – perhaps at his invitation. This was obvious because when I went into the apartment the front door had been locked. There appeared to be no trace of the key – or any key – now. It seemed highly likely, though it couldn’t necessarily be assumed, that the person who’d slugged me was the murderer. The guy in the bath hadn’t been dead for long, and I’d seen the water seeping under the door when I walked in, presumably from spillage from the bathtub during the deceased’s death struggle. The murderer must have heard my knock on the door, and my effort to pick the lock, and concealed himself, or herself, in the bedroom, probably armed with a weapon of some sort. They’d taken the chance to slug me as I bent over the bathtub to try to lift the man out of the tub. Whoever slugged me might not have had the type of weapon capable of inflicting a fatal injury – a gun or a knife – but once I was unconscious it wouldn’t have been difficult to devise a way to finish me off, so I had to assume that whoever it was they hadn’t wanted me dead. Lucy rapped lightly on the bathroom door.

  “I’m all done in here.”

  I took out my iPhone. It had been Lucy’s Christmas gift to me. She taught me how to use it too. She’d insisted I discard my old Samsung and moved with her into the twenty-first century. She explained that it would be a useful tool for me because it would double-up as a camera. She was probably also hoping to curry favor with me in her quest to become my assistant. I took a couple of shots of the dead guy, then took some tissue and wiped the rim of the bath to ensure that I hadn’t left my prints there and flushed the tissue down the toilet. Then I went out to the living room, closing the bathroom door behind me.

  “There isn’t much stuff here,” Lucy said, “and I haven’t found anything useful I’m afraid.”

  “We need to go,” I said. “Were you careful not to touch anything which might hold your prints?”

  “I’m not that much of a novice. I’ve seen enough movies to know how to handle a crime scene.” She smiled at me. “Back to your old self?” she said.

  “Good as new. Let’s get out of here. We’ll take the stairs. It doesn’t look like the kind of elevator with a CCTV but we don’t want to run into any of the neighbors.”

  Lucy had parked the car less than a block away. We got in, Lucy in the driving seat, and me shivering beside her. She started the engine and we headed home.

  “Are you going to call it in?” she said.

  Usually I would have called 911 anonymously. The last thing a private investigator wants is to spend half a day in a police station with the prospect of being called as a witness at a subsequent trial or coroner’s enquiry. I didn’t want to be even half-considered a suspect either; nor did I want to explain what I was doing in the apartment or how I’d got in. But I needed help if I was to solve this murder. I needed to know at least how the dead man had been killed. He may have been drugged or asphyxiated for all I knew. He may have just suddenly expired in the bathtub of natural causes, although I hardly thought that likely.

  “I’m going to call Calley,” I said.

  “Aren’t you taking a bit of a chance?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll risk it. Calley owes me one and I’m going to need access to some confidential information from the police.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like who the guy is, for a start; where he comes from, how he died. Maybe it will help to find out who killed him and why.” I picked up the laptop from under the seat where Lucy had stashed it. Lisa’s car was heading towards the North End.

  Chapter Nine

  The Dead Guy

  My clothes were still damp and my head hurt. Now we had to contend with grinding traffic on the way home. Lucy was driving and I was too fed up to even care when she occasionally crunched the gears. It was almost four o’clock when we got home. Lucy made some coffee and laced mine with a shot of whiskey, and then I had a hot bath. After that I lay on my bed for a while and dozed off. It was seven o’clock when I woke up. I went into the living room. Lucy was sitting on my recliner, lost in thought.

  “You should’ve woken me up? Has Don called?”

  “No. You needed to rest. Your body needs time to recover.”

  I checked my email but there were no messages.

  “You looked like an angel when I came to in the bathroom this afternoon,” I said.

  “I am an angel.”

  “No, I mean a real one.”

  Lucy laughed. “It’s not like you to farm out compliments.”

  “I’ll try not to let it happen again,” I said.

  “Maybe the blow on your head has changed your personality forever,” Lucy giggled. Then she frowned and said: “Did it hurt much? I mean when you were slugged.”

  “Strangely enough I don’t remember feeling anything – except a kind of slight nausea, and suddenly everything seeming far away. I remember trying to stop myself falling over, and the next thing I remember is hearing you calling my name – from a distance it seemed at first.”

  “When are you going to call Calley?”

  “Right now,” I said.

  I picked up the phone. Lance Calley was a detective in homicide. We’d had our ups and downs, but I believed everything to be cool at the moment. I hadn’t spoken to him for several months. I dialed his private number.

  “Lance, this is Kane. I’ve got something for you. Not really your district but it’s yours if you want it.”

  “A homicide?” he asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m going to need some help from you if I let you have it.”

  “So long as you don’t need anything that’s gonna get me in trouble,” Calley said. “I’m sitting pretty sweet with the department right now, and that bastard Armstrong’s off my back. Partly thanks to you I guess, although it pains me to say it.”

  Bruce Armstrong was a sergeant detective in homicide.

/>   “I’ll just need access to some of the investigation details, nothing you can’t get your hands on easily enough.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  I gave Calley the address.

  “How long’s the guy been snoring?”

  I looked at my watch. “About six or seven hours I think. He’s in the bathtub; naked. The place is empty apart from the victim and a few sticks of furniture.”

  “How…

  “Don’t ask,” I said. “This is an anonymous call.”

  “Roger that,” Calley said. We hung up.

  “So what are we going to do now?” Lucy said.

  “That, Lucy, is what is known as a sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

  “Has it got a sixty-four-thousand-dollar answer?”

  “We’ll both need to don our thinking caps,” I said.

  “Well at least Lisa must be okay or we’d have heard.”

  “I have a worrying concern, Lucy; about the identity of the culprit. I hope to God I’m wrong.”

  Lucy’s expression morphed from cheery to serious.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “You know how hard it is to drown somebody in a bathtub?” I said.

  “I haven’t really given it much thought. It’s not something you come across very often,” she said, with a slight grin and something of the usual twinkle in her eye.

  “Seriously,” I said. “The only person we saw the dead guy with…God I wish I had a name for him instead of having to keep calling him the dead guy.”

  “The creep?” Lucy suggested.

  “Let’s allow him some dignity in death, shall we?” I said. “Anyway, the only person we saw him with – apart from Lisa of course – was his café companion. I’ve no idea whether she accompanied him back to his apartment − I lost sight of them as they walked away from the café. I don’t even know whether she’s ever been to that apartment; there’s nothing in it which says so. But, in any case, she can’t be the culprit – she wouldn’t have been strong enough, at least not on her own. When a person is attacked or in danger it’s trite knowledge that the human body produces a surge of adrenalin which gives that person extra strength − it’s an evolutionary thing. Even without that extra strength I don’t see that woman being able to overpower the…dead guy. You saw her. I grant you he wasn’t that big, but he was young and fit-looking and she was quite slightly built, so even if she’d surprised him in the bath I can’t see how she’d have been able to hold his head under the water long enough with him struggling and thrashing about. Anyway, we have no reason to think that she had any motive to kill him. They seemed to be friends, or partners or something.”

  “So who’s the suspect you reluctantly have in mind? Not Lisa, surely?”

  “No, not Lisa; for the same reasons – I don’t think she’d have been physically capable of it. Of course we don’t know whether she had a motive. The guy obviously had something that was seriously bothering her.”

  “Then who?’

  I looked straight at her. “I sent Don an email on Monday, as you know. I told him what we’d seen. I even told him the address of the apartment.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.

  “My God, you’re not serious are you?” she said.

  “From what I told him in the email he would have known that the guy who lived in that apartment was behind Lisa’s worries. Lisa means the world to him. He’s a martial arts expert – a sixth Dan according to Duncan. He’s fit and strongly built. He’s physically capable. And I find it a little strange that he hasn’t been in contact this evening to find out what happened today. I’m not saying he’s a suspect exactly – I’m just saying that for the time being we can’t discount the possibility.”

  “Well perhaps he’ll call later. Or maybe he’s waiting for you to contact him.”

  “I hope you’re right, but I can hardly call him and say, ‘the guy who was arguing with Lisa on Monday was drowned in his bath this afternoon. Have you got an alibi?’”

  Lucy laughed nervously. “Especially as he’s our client,” she said.

  Anyway, I don’t think we can avoid talking to Lisa about this for much longer. It’s too serious. And then there’s the question of how much we tell Don at this stage; assuming of course that he knows nothing about it yet.”

  Lucy thought this over for a while.

  “Why don’t you let me do it? Talk to Lisa I mean. I have an idea: if we could arrange for Don to introduce me to Lisa – as a friend I mean – I can see if I can get her to talk to me; girl to girl.”

  “It’s not a bad idea, and it might work. The problem is that if it doesn’t then we’ve blown our cover.”

  “But do you think that really matters anymore? I mean if the guy who’s been bothering Lisa is dead we won’t need to tail her again.”

  “I don’t think it’s as simple as that. If we’re going to get anywhere with this then we have to theorize. We each keep an open mind of course, because our theory may be wrong – but if we don’t have a theory to work with then we won’t get anywhere. And the problem is that we’re making assumptions all the time and those assumptions may not be correct.”

  “Okay, so what’s your theory at the moment?”

  “I think that Lisa is, or maybe was, being blackmailed. About what I have no idea, but it’s a pretty safe bet that it relates to something in her past; something that happened before she met Don. It’s obviously something serious – it could even be something criminal – because otherwise she would have opened up to Don about it. They obviously have a close and loving relationship – at least they do if Don is to be believed; we haven’t heard her side of it.”

  “But if she was being blackmailed then it will stop now because the guy’s dead,” Lucy said.

  “Not necessarily. We assume that he was the blackmailer but he may only be a go-between. He may be a minor player. You see there has to be some motive for his death. I think it’s safe to assume that he was murdered, probably by a person who was in the apartment when I arrived, although even that’s not certain. The person who slugged me may have entered the apartment after me – whilst I was preoccupied with the guy in the tub. I left the front door open a tad when I went into the bathroom. Either way, we don’t know who the murderer was, so for the time being we have to focus on why. It’s unlikely that the woman could have done it herself – at least not on her own. We shouldn’t assume that there was only one person involved in the murder of course. Two people could have easily overpowered him if they were working together. But whether one or two people were involved we still have to consider the motive.”

  “So what do you think the motive could be?”

  “I think he was either killed to shut him up by somebody else involved in the blackmail or in revenge for what he’s been doing to Lisa – unpleasant though the implication of that second possibility is.”

  I walked over to the kitchen to get some more coffee and at that moment Lucy finally had a message from Don.

  “See,” Lucy said, “I told you he’d be in touch.” He’d sent us an email. Lucy went over to check and called over to me.

  “He wants to meet tomorrow. He’ll be in the gym where he coaches and he has something significant to tell us. He’ll see us at twelve.”

  “The Kraken wakes,” I said.

  “What’s a kraken?”

  “Never mind,” I said. After I poured the coffee I leaned on the counter and looked over at her.

  “Lucy there’s something else I haven’t told you about yet. It’s probably nothing more than a strange coincidence, but if it’s not then we may get Calley promoted to Sergeant yet.”

  “What on earth is it?”

  “You know those cold cases I’ve been working on for the department?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This death seems like a carbon copy of one of them, Lucy – possibly in more ways than one.”

  “Whe
n did it happen?”

  “About seven years ago.”

  Lucy’s eyes were as big and round as a Mexican sombrero, and she briefly covered her mouth with her hand.

  “My God,” she said. There was a pause. “How long has Don lived in Boston?”

  Chapter Ten

  The Cold Case

  The first thing I did in the morning was feel the lump on the back of my head. Lucy had stayed over. In case I had a relapse, she said, or a delayed reaction. That was swell by me; I needed a bit of cheering up. The throbbing had stopped and it only hurt when I tried to look sideways, so I took some painkillers and walked around looking like a robot for a couple of hours.

  Over coffee I suggested that we both look at the cold case files. There was nothing else that we could usefully do until we met Don at lunchtime. I’d managed to get all the papers in box files. There were thirteen of them – some full, some not so full. About the equivalent of a couple of trees from the Amazon rain forest I guessed. I’d made an index. Lucy was mightily impressed even before I opened the files.

  “It’s all so neat-looking,” she said enthusiastically.

  “It took me a long time,” I said. “I would’ve given the files to you to sort out except that I didn’t want to cart them all downtown.”

  “I could’ve done them at home,” she said.