The Man Who Understood Cats

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  “I had, until I saw that picture of you at Jeremy’s and looked up your war record.” He stole a glance at Caleb, who was looking straight ahead.”

  “I lost control.”

  Thinnes laughed humorlessly. “Nobody’s ever really in control. It’s an illusion.”

  “Did you ever kill a man?”

  “No, thank God.”

  The conversation seemed to choke to death on that. Caleb stared out at Division Street. Thinnes concentrated on traffic. The silence was uncomfortable. Eventually Thinnes felt compelled to fill it.

  “In the academy, they teach you to draw your weapon only to save life and shoot only if it’s absolutely necessary. But you’re taught to shoot to kill if you do fire.”

  “In any case, it’s supposed to be a considered decision.”

  “If you stop to debate the ethics, you’re dead.”

  Caleb didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, I get it. You think because you didn’t stop and calmly decide that the asshole who was taking out your buddies deserved to be killed, it somehow makes killing him wrong?” He shot a glance at Caleb. “Or are you one of those killing-is-never-justified fanatics?”

  Caleb thought before answering. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’ve been too obsessed with losing control.”

  “Like I said, nobody’s ever really in control except maybe someone like Finley’s killer.” Caleb shuddered. Thinnes added, “The best we can hope for is to contain our little explosions. Or divert ’em.” He paused to deal with traffic. “Speaking of losing control, Margolis broke down and confessed to killing his son. His lawyer’s claiming we browbeat him into it and it’s nonsense.”

  “In a sense, he did kill him, but not literally. He goaded him into a white rage and let him drive away mad. Chris drove too fast and lost control of his car.” Caleb seemed to be trying to get control of some strong feeling. “I believe Margolis has paid with remorse every day since.”

  Thinnes pretended not to notice the pause. He said, “Survivor guilt?”

  Caleb nodded.

  When you get a second opinion and it agrees with the first, it’s probably right.

  “Do you know who might be blackmailing Margolis?”

  “Anyone who knew Chris was gay.”

  Thinnes nodded. “And about you and him?”

  Caleb shook his head. “We were discreet. But Chris was arrested once—caught with his pants down, so to speak. Margolis got him off and eventually had the arrest record expunged, but who knows who saw it first?”

  Sixty

  Forest Avenue, Wilmette. Fifty foot elms and maples overarched and shaded the brick street where Thinnes had left his Chevy. He wondered what had become of “cooler near the lake” as he stood on his in-laws’ imposing porch and waited for someone to answer the door. His shirt was cotton and short-sleeved, but it was damp, and he fanned himself with the manila envelope and the papers he’d brought. The house seemed smaller than the first time he’d stood here, but it was no less impressive—a three-story, pale gray stucco with white trim and tall windows. He was about to lift the brass knocker again when Rhonda’s mother opened the door.

  Louise Coates was five five, blond and gray eyed, what Thinnes’s mother would have called genteel.

  “Hello, Louise. How’ve you been?”

  Anger, or something like it, made frown lines in her flawless makeup. “She won’t see you.”

  He’d never known Louise to be rude, not even when, as a rookie cop, he’d had the nerve to ask to marry Rhonda. He said, “She has to.”

  Something like fear replaced the anger, and Thinnes remembered what Caleb had told him about Rob’s assessment of his, Thinnes’s, mental state. He pulled the hem of his shirt up above his beltline so Louise could see that he wasn’t carrying. “No gun,” he said. He let the shirt drop.

  “She doesn’t want to see you,” Louise repeated, and closed the door.

  Thinnes gripped the photo envelope between his teeth and rolled the papers into a cylinder, which he slid into his hip pocket. He banged the brass door knocker for five minutes.

  Louise finally opened the door the width of the security chain. “Go away,” she told him, “or I’ll call the police.”

  For a domestic dispute involving a Chicago cop? Wilmette’s finest would love that. But he knew she wouldn’t call. She couldn’t stand any kind of scene. He said, “Go ahead.”

  She started to close the door again, but Thinnes put his right arm against it, above his head, and leaned on the arm.

  “Tell Ronnie if she’ll just hear me out I’ll go away forever. If she still wants me to. Just five minutes—that’s all.” He backed away from the door and let her close it.

  Fifteen minutes later, Rhonda stepped out on the porch looking as dragged out and miserable as Thinnes felt. She pulled the door shut behind her, then leaned against it. She let her “show me” expression speak for her.

  Thinnes slipped Jeremy’s “morphodite” photograph out of the envelope. “Those pictures of me were faked,” he said. “Just like this one.” He handed her the photo and watched the sullen anger in her face fade to puzzlement as she studied it.

  The puzzlement changed to incredulity.

  Thinnes took the paper roll from his pocket and peeled off the copy of Berringer’s confession. “Somebody figured to get my mind off a case I’m working by making trouble for me at home.”

  Rhonda glanced at him suspiciously, but took the paper. He stepped back and worked the remaining papers—a copy of the report on the raid; statements by some of Berringer’s associates; and the names Karsch had given him—into a tighter roll. He had to keep his hands busy. Keep them off her.

  When she finished reading the first report, he handed her another, then another—as fast as she could read them—until all he had left was the paper with the references.

  He held it out and she took it. She read it, turned it over. “What’s this?”

  “Marriage counselors.” When she didn’t respond to that, he added, “Give me another chance, Ronnie—I’ll go to counseling with you. One of those, or anybody you say.”

  He studied her face. She was clamping her lower lip between her teeth, trying not to cry. At least she cared enough for that. Finally she handed the reports back, keeping the picture and the reference list. “I’ll think about it.” She couldn’t resist smiling as she added, “Who’s your cute friend?”

  Thinnes and Rhonda arrived home in Rhonda’s car. Thinnes parked in the driveway behind his own car and turned the engine off before he turned to Rhonda and let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

  “Does this mean you’ll have to work late next Thursday night?”

  “I said I’d go. I won’t promise to like it.”

  They sat in silence for a minute.

  He said, “Remember when we used to sit like this outside your folks’ house?”

  She smiled. He grabbed her and kissed her with mock ferocity. After token resistance, she responded eagerly, and they kissed long enough to leave both of them breathless.

  “Let’s continue this conversation inside,” he said, grinning.

  She nodded. While she gathered up her things, he hurried around to open her door—a gesture sufficiently uncharacteristic to surprise her.

  Rob was sitting on the stairs when they come in. He studied their faces hopefully while Thinnes took off his gun and put it on the top shelf of the closet. “Everything go all right?” Rob asked. Anxiety pitched his voice higher.

  “She’s a marriage counselor,” Thinnes said, dryly, “not a miracle worker.” He reached up to ruffle his hair. “Bedtime.”

  “Rob, your father and I love each other. We’ll work it out.”

  Rob hardly seemed comforted. He started up the stairs, then paused. “I almost forgot,” he said, looking down at Thinnes. “You’re supposed to call the station ASAP.”

  Thinnes put the phone very deliberately in its cradle and went grimly to the foot of the stairs. “Rhonda!” He g
ot his gun from the closet.

  “What is it, John?”

  “I’ve got to go. They just found Ray Crowne’s car in the lake.”

  A crowd had gathered and was lit by the floodlights of TV mini-cam trucks. Uniformed officers were trying to keep the curious at bay as Thinnes made his way through. Strobe flashes of red, yellow, and blue light from emergency vehicles and police cars gave the scene a surrealistic quality. A giant tow truck backed up to the water. Its cable disappeared beneath the surface. Diver’s followed it under, making little roiling whirlpools.

  Moments later, accompanied by shouts from emergency workers and an awed murmur from the crowd, Crowne’s red sports car was hauled out of the water. Thinnes grabbed a flashlight from someone and shined it on the driver’s window. He could see Crowne’s drowned face clearly. He tried frantically to open the door, but it was locked.

  A fireman put a hand on Thinnes’s shoulder. He spoke gently. “There’s no rush. He’s been in there over an hour.” A police officer took Thinnes’s arm, and Thinnes let himself be led away as the firemen started to pry the door open. He looked back to see it pop open. Crowne swam earthward in a flood of water, like something aborted. They put his body on a stretcher and covered it with a tarp.

  Sixty-One

  Swann got the case. Another death investigation. Another death that didn’t sit right, even though everyone knew Crowne drove like a maniac.

  Two “accidents”—if you counted the mysterious failure of his own brakes—in two weeks. Thinnes didn’t buy it. Someone had arranged both. Someone who knew Thinnes’s car. Someone from Area Six. What was the connection with Finley?

  Swann’s first act had been to have Thinnes gently but firmly evicted from the crime scene.

  “He said he had a date tonight,” Thinnes insisted as Swann pushed him under the police barricade tape.

  “What was her name?”

  “I don’t know. He played the field.”

  “He carry an address book with him?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, okay, Thinnes, we’ll get to it. Meantime, why don’t you go home?”

  He didn’t though. After the squadrol left with Crowne, while the tow truck driver got the Fiero ready to roll, the cops dispersed the crowd. Thinnes watched from behind the barricade tape as Swann did a careful preliminary search of the car, including a quick flashlight inspection of the undercarriage. Swann catalogued his findings out loud for Thinnes’s benefit. The windshield was smashed where Crowne’s head had hit. There was an empty half pint on the floor.

  Swann put gloves on and pulled a .45 out from under the front seat—Crowne’s backup piece. It hadn’t done him any good. The rest of the contents were unremarkable: maps, registration, insurance card, and tire gauge in the glove box; a raincoat and a folding dash shade Crowne never used on the back seat; jumper cables, flares, jack and spare, boxes of ammo in the trunk. A pair of boots. And a soaked collection of the gravel and lint and bits of paper, hair, and miscellaneous dirt that settles on the floors and in the trunks of cars. Maybe the lab could sort some of it out.

  Swann walked over and said, “I’m ridin’ with it to the pound. You can give me a lift back if you like, ’n tell me what you know.”

  Thinnes nodded. Swann couldn’t compromise his case by offering more.

  Thinnes had watched autopsies before, but this, in its way, was a first. The room was cold. The medical examiner, a pathologist, began by putting on gloves and turning on the microphone that hung over the autopsy table. He had his assistant take photos while he studied Crowne’s clothing before removing it. He handed the sodden notebook, from Crowne’s jacket pocket, to Swann and covered the mike with his gloved palm before saying, “Be sure that’s logged in before you walk off with it.”

  Swann said, “Yeah,” quietly. He already had Crowne’s gun and wallet and keys.

  The notebook was folded back to Caleb’s address. Significant? Or just an indication that Caleb had been the last subject Crowne had contact with? Swann put the book on one of the stainless steel countertops.

  The ME carefully undressed the corpse. It gradually penetrated the dull misery Thinnes was feeling that the pathologist wasn’t anxious for an audience. But who in his right mind would be, working with two dicks—who had a stake in the case—looking over your shoulder? The man described the color and condition as he took each item off, mentioning the brand name, before he handed it to his assistant.

  “I have before me the body of a well-developed, well-nourished white male, who appears to be the stated twenty-nine years of age…”

  Thinnes had never seen Crowne naked before. He felt like a peeper. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t look away.

  The ME was saying, “…Evidence of a blow to the face—specifically, the forehead.” He went on to describe the bloody wound in medical terms. He searched carefully, turning the body over, combing through the hair for other distinguishing marks or evidence of violence, describing every scrape and pimple to the microphone. In detail. His assistant took more pictures than a first-time parent. Thinnes thought it was odd there were no bruises from the steering wheel on Crowne’s chest. The ME didn’t comment, just described what was there in nauseating detail. Until Thinnes wanted to shout get on with it! He had plenty of time to sort through his feelings. Too much. Not enough feelings. He began to realize how little he’d understood what made Crowne tick. He wondered if Crowne himself had had much sense of who he was or what he could’ve been. The quick and the dead. Crowne hadn’t been quick enough. Now he was dead. DOA.

  Damn this addictive job! As with all addictions, Thinnes felt he was needing greater and greater fixes to stave off withdrawal. Why did it have to be Crowne who O.D.’d?

  The ME began the exploration of Crowne’s head injury. Thinnes felt his teeth grinding as the pathologist cut through scalp and bone. Brain surgery. Even Swann looked pale.

  “Massive subdural hemorrhage of the frontal lobes due to blunt trauma. Lacerations…that’s odd. There’s no contrecoup.”

  “What?”

  “There’s none of the secondary damage you’d expect to find, due to rebound of the brain after the initial impact.”

  “In English, Doc,” Swann said.

  “In cases where a moving head strikes a hard stationary object, such as a windshield or a steering wheel, the front of the brain strikes the inside of the skull on impact and is damaged. The brain subsequently bounces—rebounds—off the skull and strikes the rear of the skull, sustaining secondary damage in the back. There’s hardly any here. It’s suspicious but inconclusive, especially since he’d been drinking so heavily.”

  “He didn’t drink.” Thinnes meant not more than a beer or two. Crowne had used to snort with disgust when someone bragged how he’d tied one on last night. Thinnes had never seen him hung over.

  The pathologist stopped what he was doing to turn and look daggers at Thinnes. “Maybe the aroma in here is diesel fuel.”

  “He’s right, Thinnes,” Swann said. “You can smell it. So butt out or get out.”

  Thinnes turned around and left. He felt like puking but he knew he wouldn’t. Crowne didn’t drink. He always used his seat belt. He always said it would save him if his driving ever caught up with him. Thinnes walked up and down the hall until he felt in control again, then he went back in.

  The ME had opened up Crowne’s body with a Y-shaped incision that ran across his breasts diagonally from shoulder to midline, and down the midline to his pubic area. Retractors held rib-cage and abdominal cavity open for examination.

  After what seemed an hour later, the ME said suddenly, “Here’s something. Fluid in the lungs that has the smell and appearance of hard liquor. Get a sample of this,” he told his assistant.

  In the lungs. Thinnes didn’t say I told you so, but Swann said, “Shut up, Thinnes.”

  The ME began to reexamine Crowne’s throat.

  Thinnes and Swann left the room when the ME began to close up. They went over the cases Crowne ha
d been working on while they waited for the pathologist to finish. He gave them his report orally while he changed his gown and gloves because he had another urgent case waiting to be autopsied.

  “This is unofficial, because we don’t have the tox reports yet, but I’d say the cause of death was drowning—in alcohol. It’s a close call, though, because the head injury undoubtedly rendered him unconscious—which is how some person or persons unknown managed to pour the booze into him—and it might have killed him without the alcohol. My guess is that the alcohol was introduced with a hard plastic or metal tube. Probably tried to get it into his stomach and it went down the wrong pipe. He no doubt would have drowned in the lake if the alcohol hadn’t done the job.” He looked from Swann to Thinnes. “The manner of death is unquestionably homicide.”

  Sixty-Two

  Irene Sleighton opened the bills with a letter opener and a vengeance, and when Caleb had escorted his client across the outer office to the door, she held up one of the envelopes. She had a funny expression on her face.

  “Doctor, this came in this morning’s mail.”

  It was unopened, addressed to North Michigan Avenue Associates in Allan Finley’s hand, with his return address. Caleb considered what to do for a moment, then borrowed the letter opener. He slit the envelope and dumped the contents onto Irene’s desk without touching anything. He used the opener to turn the items over so he could see them. There were: the return portion of Finley’s monthly statement; a check for the amount; and a small slip of paper with two long numbers and the word Chartreuse written on it.

  “Mrs. Sleighton, do you have a tweezers I could borrow for a moment?”

  Irene was surprised, but she dug a tweezers from her purse.

  “Thank you.”

  He used the tweezers to lift the check, statement, and cryptic note over to the copy machine, where he made copies. Then, still using the tweezers, he returned the items to the envelope, which he also copied. He returned the tweezers, folded the copies, and put them in his pocket, then he got a business envelope and letterhead from Irene and took them in his office.