“You can be too straight-on,” I said. “Like not bothering to leave the gun at the scene of a suicide.”
“I’ve heard that story too.”
“Like arranging a landlubber’s accident for Nate Millender when it was clear just from his decor he was no amateur sailor.”
“Most sailing accidents happen to experts,” he said. “Ask the Coast Guard.”
“I like to think I postponed his accident a day. You’re too good a mechanic not to scrub an assignment once a trained detective came along to place you at the scene. Maybe not, though. The lake was pretty crowded that afternoon. Maybe it was a dry run.”
“No pun intended.” He smiled.
“The next day, after witnesses saw Millender on Belle Isle, buying gear and eating tomatoes, you caught him alone, brained him, slipped him into the water, and launched his sloop. Smearing gray matter on the boom sweetened the pill.”
He patted the pocket where he’d stashed his telephone. “I had an emergency meeting in town. I borrowed a car from the curator of the Dossin Museum on the island. An old friend. You can check the time with him.”
“Once a body’s been floating a couple of days, nobody can determine time of death within twelve hours; plenty of time to scare up forty people of good reputation to testify you were with them when the tragedy took place. That tin soldier’s been wound up so many times it runs without a key.”
“See, that’s what sitting in an office will do to you. Your mind wanders all over the place and brings back any old thing.”
“It was a good plan.” I used the ashtray. “Complicated enough to seem incredible, but not so tangled you might trip over details. That’s why Arsenault was such a disappointment. You took chances. You were seen in the vicinity at the time he was killed. You must have been in a hurry.”
“I haven’t hurried since I was fourteen. I made mistakes. I don’t make them now. I didn’t tag Arsenault.”
It was the first flat-out denial he’d made. For some reason it disappointed me.
“Arsenault was a lapsed Catholic,” I said. “That early guilt training never goes away. Being bled by Millender didn’t help him forget. It all came back on him hard enough to drive him back to the Church, where he was advised to take his confession to Lily Talbot and beg forgiveness. When push came to shove he couldn’t do it, so he threw money at her, disguised as a business transaction.
“She took it, as who wouldn’t? She probably thought she’d earned it. But even a watered-down act of self-abasement on Arsenault’s part set off alarm bells. What if he took it a step further and told her who set up the frame that split her and Jay Bell Furlong? She might go straight to Furlong with the information, and that would leave the culprit—we’ll call him the witchfinder, just for fun—out in the cold. No bequest. So now Arsenault belongs to the ages.”
He wasn’t smiling now. He was someone hanging on to a story he didn’t care for but wanted to know how it ended.
I went on. “Millender was a footnote: the man who rigged the photograph, a blackmailer who might dip his straw anywhere, a small spill to be wiped up. If you were going to blow off a job quick and dirty, it should have been him. Maybe the assignments came too close together. Busy couple of days for Suicide Sam.”
“Mister,” he said, “I don’t know any Lily Talbot or anything about rigged pictures. Are you talking about the one you had in your pocket?”
“You’re letting me down, Royce. We’re just two guys talking: no wires or tape recorders. You’ve been hanging around politicians too long. You’re not a straight-on guy anymore.” I got rid of some more ash. “Okay, let’s hear your version.”
“You don’t know anything, do you? I mean for real.” There was awe in his tone. “When I entered my late good friend Nate Millender’s place, found a burglar on the premises, and took action against the rising tide of crime in our fair city, I thought you had some kind of handle. When I frisked you I was sure of it. But you really do work without a net.”
I took one last deep drag—it was like drawing a strand of rusty barbed wire down my throat—and punched out the cigarette. My hand wanted to shake but I didn’t let it.
“I don’t recommend it in your case,” I said. “When you jumped me, the world didn’t know Millender was anybody’s late anything. The body hadn’t been found.”
“But his brains had. Don’t try to shit a shitter.”
I moved a shoulder. “Just staying in practice. For once in my life I don’t want the killer. Arsenault was a career snake. Worse, he was an uncommitted one, without the stomach to accept what he was or the guts to change. Millender was a leech. As far as I’m concerned the earth’s oxygen supply was wasted on both of them. I just want what I was hired for. Who hung a frame on Lily Talbot?”
“I wish I could help. For once in my life I do. I knew Arsenault from when I worked at county and he made zoning requests. The mayor’s shopping around for a new convention center and he tagged me to get a bid from Imminent Visions. Errands are the job most of the time.”
“You had an appointment with him the morning he was killed.”
“I had a conflict. I tried to cancel, but I couldn’t get an answer on the phone.”
“It wasn’t working; but that’s another story. Arsenault’s secretary said you kept the appointment.”
He ran a finger along his square jaw. “She said that? That makes me very unhappy.”
“Is that why she disappeared?”
“Did she.” His face was full of thought.
I shifted gears. “Say she’s lying, and you’re clean on Arsenault. Why Millender? And don’t tell me you swung his way. I’ll throw you out on your gun.”
“Much as I’d like to see you try.” The grin was back. “Can I be hypothetical?”
“I wish you were.”
“I love you too. Millender liked to take pictures of naked men doing things naked men like to do together; not furry-chested specimens like you and me, goes without saying. Suppose somebody who ought to know enough to stay away from cameras unless he’s kissing a baby just kind of wandered in front of one in his birthday suit, in the wrong company. Male company. Hey, if they had any brains they wouldn’t chase after public office in the first place, right? Hypothetically speaking, remember. It’s bad business to judge the people you work for.”
“Which one was it? Hypothetically speaking.”
“If I told you that I’d just be making more work for myself. And I’m indolent.” He tasted the word.
I shook my head.
“Too much coincidence. Why should Arsenault and Millender die within twenty-four hours of each other if there was no connection?”
“If I could answer that, I’d know what the hell we were talking about. I can only give you my side.’
“Hypothetically speaking.”
“Fuck that, I’m tired of it. We’re just two guys talking, like you said. Millender had CANCELED stamped on his forehead the day we started hanging together. These things take time. The cops who bother to backtrack tend to focus on new people and new developments in the deceased’s life. You have to establish some kind of norm. Keeps you from being singled out.”
“Makes sense.”
“Of course it does. I never hurry. But when a private cop comes around asking about Millender’s photography, it’s time to fill in a date on the stamp.”
“What brought you to his apartment later?”
“The party I was working for had bought the negative and all the prints; but Millender’s word was all he had on that. I needed to be sure there weren’t any more lying around. I almost forgot.” Again he went into his pocket. This time he laid Millender’s passbook and the negative and prints of Millender and Arsenault on the desk. They looked even more lewd there than they had in the apartment; the passbook no less so than the pictures. “I recognized Arsenault. I thought the shots might come in handy if we wound up doing business with Imminent Visions, but that was before the news broke.”
&nbs
p; I made no move to pick them up. “What’s the catch?”
“Call it professional courtesy.”
“Not without choking on it.”
He raised a hand. “Whatever. I can’t afford to collect junk I don’t need. I move a lot.”
“Picky neighbors?”
“Candy-ass employers. Sooner or later they get to feeling ashamed of themselves. Keeping me around reminds them of too many things.”
“Bummer.”
“I’m used to it. And the demand always exceeds the supply.”
I let a little silence settle. Then I reached out with my left hand and shuffled the items into a stack. He didn’t have to know I was unarmed.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“We’re square for now. You shot me, but you didn’t cross the T. That puts me in a minority of one, for which I suppose I should show a little gratitude. I’ll consider this stuff a bonus.” I opened the passbook. “You wonder why Millender bothered working at all.”
“Everybody needs a cover.” He got up and turned the chair around.
I watched him. “You mean like ‘currently attached City of Detroit, no title or office, duties unspecified’?”
“Politics is fuzzy. Good thing, too. There’d be no place for me if it wasn’t. You, too, maybe.” He stuck out his hand.
I didn’t look at it. “Don’t tell that one even to your pillow.”
He lowered the hand. There was no daylight in his face. The grin was strictly Edison.
“Let’s you and me make an effort to stay out of the same room from now on,” he said. “I scrape guys like Nate Millender off my heel all the time. You might spoil my appetite.”
“Hypothetically speaking.”
He shook his head. “Straight on.”
“You had your last word,” I said. “Now skeedaddle.”
His grin hung in the air a moment after he’d left, like the Cheshire Cat’s.
In a little while it was replaced by the hard glitter of Sergeant St. Thomas’s glasses.
Mondays.
Twenty-nine
TODAY IT WAS a blue suit, pale salmon shirt, and gay floral print tie, the kind that have bred and multiplied and overrun all the men’s departments, stampeding the stripes, dots, and club patterns of old. I’d decided not to shop for ties until the fad blew over; but it seemed to have settled in with all the grim determination of AIDS and the three-button suit. On him it looked all right.
“I just ran into Royce Grayling downstairs,” he said. “How’d you manage to smoke him out?”
“I didn’t have to. If I sit here long enough every crook and cop in town drifts in with the smog. Did you wrap him up or grill him on the spot?”
“He promised to drop by this afternoon and make a statement.”
“Good of him to fit you in. Most of the killers I know are booked up three weeks in advance.”
“I didn’t draw up the system, Walker. If I did, every cop would be on a five-year contract, subject to renegotiation when his conviction record bumps up above two-fifty.”
“How’d you spot him?”
“Detroit Chamber of Commerce faxed us his mug. He’s a member.” He adjusted his frames. “I wasn’t sure it was him downstairs, though, until I got close. I thought he was you.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not kidding. Your build and coloring, except his tan’s nicer. Even your way of moving, like something you’d see on Wild Kingdom. If he shaved off his moustache you could be brothers.”
“It’s not just the moustache.”
“Says you. You both spell more work for me. What did you two find to talk about?”
“Hypothetical situations. Where’s your shadow?”
“Shadow? Oh, Redburn. He’s got snazzy ideas about taking a day off every few weeks. He’s new like I said. Anyway we’re not sold as a set.” He took the chair Grayling had vacated and rested a manila envelope on his side of the desk. He saw the paste-up on the blotter. “That the note you told me about at your place? Kind of him to bring it back. Are you pressing charges against him, by the way?”
I opened the middle drawer, swept the note inside, and pushed it shut. “Why ask? It isn’t your jurisdiction.”
“Professionally, I’d just as soon his aim were better. Downriver we like our homicides sell-contained: wives and husbands, fathers and families, disgruntled factory workers with pink slips and automatic weapons. We don’t need to import mysteries from the big city. I was just being polite.” He drummed his fingers on the envelope.
“Your warrants are getting bigger,” I said. “You’ll need a hand truck for the next one.”
“It’s not a warrant.” He slid it toward the corner, farther out of my reach.
When no explanation was forthcoming, I drew a pencil out of the cup and played with it. I wanted something between my fingers and my throat was raw from smoking a pack since sunup. “Anything yet on the secretary that fingered Grayling? Greta Whatsername?”
“Griswold. We don’t know where she is yet, but we know a little more about her. Griswold is her married name. It’s old Detroit, like we figured.”
“Like you figured.”
“I was being modest. When her late husband gave it to her he also gave her U.S. citizenship. The background check stops at Immigration, where she applied for resident status ten years ago under the name Cathlin Margareta Faolin.”
“Irish?”
“Sounds like. The folk at Imminent Visions say the brogue came out when she got upset. We’re waiting on a callback from Washington for the rest.”
“Any make on her car?”
He got out his leatherbound notebook. “She wasn’t as flashy as her boss. Blue nineteen-seventy-four Olds eighty-eight. Remember them?”
“Big car. Big trunk.”
“Big trunk.” He nodded and put away the notebook.
“Think she’s in it?”
“The good people of Allen Park don’t pay me to think.” His eyes shone behind glass. “I’m on my way back from Lieutenant Thaler’s office. We’ve been matching collars and cuffs on our respective homicides. Thought you’d like to know the autopsy results on Millender.”
I watched him pull the manila envelope into his lap. “Time of death?”
“Not an exact science, given the circumstances. Forget body temperature. The bloating screws up postmortem lividity and accelerates decomposition. Not the digestive process, though. That stops shortly after death. Still no help, unless you know when the deceased consumed certain items found in the stomach and intestines.”
“Tomatoes,” I said.
“Thought you’d remember them. He was seen eating one in a store in Grosse Pointe Farms at eight o’clock Friday morning. His stomach stopped digesting it and a few others approximately an hour later. Which means if Lieutenant Thaler, clever woman, nails Grayling with the Detroit murder, he’s got an airtight alibi for the one in Allen Park. At the time Arsenault died he was busy killing Millender.”
“He said he had a conflict.”
“What else did he say?”
I ducked it. “What about vice versa?”
“I sure hope it is vice versa,” he said. “Not to wish any fresh headaches on our brothers and sisters here in the big city, but I’ve got a drug killing and two robbery-murders on my desk besides this one and I’d just as soon tack it on Grayling as anyone so I can think about the others. Let the prosecution worry about swinging an indictment. That’s their job, just as running down the bad guys is mine.”
“Two killers.”
“One’s all I’m concerned about. Just thought you’d like to know. Now you owe me.”
“I pay my debts sooner or later.”
“So does Russia. What did you and Grayling find to talk about?”
I twirled the pencil and holstered it in the cup. “It’s not vice versa.”
He nodded. “I was pretty sure it wasn’t when the Griswold woman rabbited. Did he tell you he’s the one who dus
ted Millender?”
“It’s hearsay.”
“Like I said, that’s the prosecution’s wagon. It isn’t even my case. But we’re all brothers under the blue. And you’re back to withholding information in a homicide.”
“Information. Not evidence.”
“It’s a fuzzy line. Ask the White House.” He waited.
“Millender was blackmailing others besides Arsenault. He ran the same homosexual photo scam on a local politician. Enter Royce.”
“Exit Nate.” He touched his glasses. “What’s the politician’s name?”
“He didn’t say. He didn’t say he killed Millender, either. He said it was a hypothetical situation.”
“I wondered what that meant.”
“The hell you did.”
He didn’t pursue it. “I’ll let Thaler wrestle with the gray area. At least it will tell her where to tighten the screws.”
“I’d be grateful if you told her where you got it.”
“I’ll let you do it. I’m already way ahead on brownie points with Detroit. That homesick I’m not.” He picked up the manila envelope and put it in his lap. He made no move to get up.
I bit. “What’s in the envelope?”
“Oh, this?” He looked surprised he was holding it. “Pictures of the crime scene in the garage. I dropped off duplicates with Thaler.”
“I hate to ask.”
“The hell you do.” He waited again.
“May I take a peek?”
“Be my guest.” He unwound the string and tipped the contents out on to the blotter. I picked up the glistening eight-by-tens and skimmed through them. The body and the blood on the concrete floor looked like cheap Hollywood props in the glare of the flash. Still life with bulletholes.
“We’re lucky in our crime-scene guy,” said St. Thomas. “All the really first-rate photographers work for newspapers and magazines. Good second-stringers apply straight to the forensics department in Detroit. Our guy’s as good in his way as you say Millender was. He could work anywhere, but he likes what he’s doing and he prefers to do it in Allen Park. I’d put his detail work up against anyone’s upriver.”
The Witchfinder Page 21
