The Witchfinder

by Loren D. Estleman

  The Fisher, topped by a glittering cupola covered with gold leaf, houses offices and shops, a plush theater with palatial dressing rooms for the performers, and up at the top the broadcast studios of WJR, one of the most powerful radio stations in the world and among the oldest. I parked in the large monitored lot next to the building, and when I was sure no one was looking I popped open the glove compartment, took out the Smith & Wesson .38, checked the load, and holstered it in the permanent dent behind my right hip. It was concealed well enough when I put my coat on. I bought them long for that purpose.

  The brass-framed revolving door sucked me into the lobby with a whoosh. It was an interior arcade, three stories high and lined with pink-veined marble, opening at regular intervals into bookstores, clothing shops, art galleries, and a bank; the world’s oldest indoor mall, as exclusive as an audience with George V. My own footsteps whispered back at me from the skylights.

  In the spaces between the shops, employees of Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn had put down black rubber mats and parked antique cars on them, just in case the city’s residents and visitors forgot that the one hundredth anniversary of the invention of the automobile was coming up. Tasteful signs erected on free-standing brass pedestals identified the spotless automobiles: included were a 1933 Auburn with curving, cream-colored fenders and chromed exhaust pipes snaking out of ports in the hood like exposed muscles; a white-over-red 1955 Kaiser; a 1928 Cadillac touring car, gunmetal gray with running boards and a spotlight; a 1915 Thomas Flyer, as long as a covered wagon, with a canvas top to complete the illusion; a 1941 Packard with blackout headlamps; and a detailed reproduction of Henry Ford’s quadricycle, the backyard invention that predated the Model T, which put America on wheels and the world on the petroleum standard. They gleamed with wax and brass polish and smelled of new rubber and oiled leather.

  It was an impressive display, but a historical distortion. The curved-dash Oldsmobile should have been propped up on a jack to represent the condition of the nation’s roads in 1900 and there should have been bulletholes in the Prohibition-era Caddy. The farther you go forward, the smoother the path looks behind you.

  The security desk stood inside the corner of the L, with a clear view down both ends of the arcade and the corridor that ran between the elevators to the main entrance on Grand. The guard seated behind it was another grayhead in a lightweight blue uniform with balloons of scar tissue over both eyes, a double for Joe Louis in his later years. In another decade or so the natural course of time is going to empty out our store of rent-a-cops. The checked grip of a Ruger Blackhawk pressed into the hard fat around his middle.

  “Any way down from the tower except by those elevators?” I jerked a thumb toward the twin banks of brass doors.

  He laid a spatulated index finger on a book of crossword puzzles to mark his place and stared down the corridor as if he’d never seen it before.

  “Just the stairs,” he said finally.

  “Know anyone who suffers from gout?”

  He thought about that, then nodded. “Me, for one.”

  “How do you deal with stairs?”

  “When there’s elevators I don’t.”

  I thanked him and strolled over to stake out the corridor. He watched me, then returned his attention to his puzzle. I wondered if he was going to do me any good.

  Doors opened, doors closed. A number of job applicants went up to and came down from interviews, identifiable by their pinstripes and white shirts, both sexes. Those who already had jobs boarded and exited in their shirtsleeves, carrying leather portfolios and cardboard file folders like the one I had under one arm. A local author I recognized from his picture in the News and Free Press book sections got on, accompanied by a publicist or something in a tailored skirt and jacket and somebody with a portable tape recorder who seemed to be collecting material for a biography; I figured they were on their way up for an interview on the radio. Doors opened, doors closed. None of the elevators stood open for long. People who called Detroit a dead city didn’t make it a practice to hang out by the elevators.

  Stuart Lund was ten minutes late. He was the last off the elevator and had some trouble fighting his way through a group trying to get on. He was wearing the same gray silk suit he’d had on when we met, with a green club tie and a rusty-orange pocket handkerchief to match the design. He was leaning a little on the cane and it must have been a long ride because the pain of standing showed on his fleshy face. But the waves of yellow hair were in order, the little triangular moustache was trimmed to within a millimeter of its life, and his waxy blue eyes were alert. He spotted me right away.

  “I shall never get used to all this hurly-burly at tea time,” he said by way of greeting. “Someone should introduce the custom to this country.”

  “California’s spoiled you. Welcome to the Industrial Midwest. How’s your foot?”

  “It was improving until I left the hotel. How is your head?”

  “It was working a little slow until a while ago.”

  He didn’t pry into that. “I don’t suppose there’s a place in this pretentious barn to sit down.”

  “There’s a coffee shop down in the tunnel.”

  “And what tunnel might that be?”

  It was easier to take him there than to tell him about it. We took the broad open staircase down from the lobby to the sublevel, where a well-lit passage lined with clothing stores, barber shops, and eateries connects the Fisher with General Motors and the New Center Building. It was clean, well-ventilated, and every bit as busy as upstairs.

  “Good Lord, I never knew this existed. Does it run all the way under the city?”

  “Of course. There’s a lake and a pipe organ on the next level down. Then catacombs.”

  “I find your humor wearying.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t get Monty Python.”

  There was a wait for a table. He leaned against the wall next to the blackboard menu on the easel, hooked the cane over a forearm, and mopped his face with a plain handkerchief from his inside breast pocket. It was cool down there, but his collar was damp. “Well, who is it?”

  “Who is who?”

  “The witchfinder, naturally. The reason I’m not sitting in a comfortable cab right now, on my way back to my comfortable suite and a warm foot bath.”

  “The case was a little more complicated than I hoped. I thought when I found the party responsible for the fake photograph that broke Mr. Furlong’s engagement, I’d have the murderer of Lynn Arsenault and Nate Millender as well. I forgot life isn’t that simple.”

  “You weren’t retained to solve any murders at all.”

  “You can’t always pick out the nut without getting a piece of shuck,” I said. “Royce Grayling killed Millender. He as much as told me so this morning in my office, not that his confession would hold up in a court of law. It happened Millender was blackmailing Arsenault for his part in the inheritance fraud; a fraud he originally blackmailed Arsenault into with evidence of his homosexuality.”

  “You forget I’m a homosexual. I don’t march in parades, but the world has changed since Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment. No one can use my sexual preference to force me to act against my will.” He lowered his voice an extra decibel on the phrase sexual preference. The buzz in the crowded restaurant would drown out a Buddy Rich solo.

  “They might if you worked for Vernon Whiting, and liked your job. Anyway, we’re not talking about you. Yet.”

  I couldn’t tell if he heard the last word. Just then our blonde hostess returned and led us to a table for two next to the kitchen. I ordered coffee in a carafe to keep us from being interrupted. Lund said he’d share the carafe.

  I lifted my brows. “Not tea?”

  “Can’t bear it. Sometimes I think that’s the reason I left England. You were saying?”

  “It looked promising,” I said. “But Millender was killed for a different extortion, unrelated to the case. When I started sniffing around, Grayling assumed I was after the goods o
n that other blackmail victim and moved up his timetable on Millender. I should feel guilty for that. I don’t. Millender had all the morals of grout mold, and anyway his ticket was punched long before I met him.”

  Lund started to say something, but our coffee came and he waited until the waitress moved on to deliver the check to another table. “Bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say? Arsenault and Millender were connected, and Arsenault was in a line of endeavor that brushes frequently with local government. Grayling’s employers, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Not so coincidental. Blackmailers forget there’s only one sure way out from under. Given his penchant for well-set-up victims in delicate circumstances, he was bound to rub up against Grayling or someone like him someday.” I tasted my coffee, and dumped in a container of cream to cut the bitter edge. A cellar place is a cellar place. “The cold fact is Grayling couldn’t have committed both murders, because they were both committed at almost the same moment. That’s a coincidence, but only in timing.”

  I spread open the file folder and handed him the eight-by-ten glossy Sergeant St. Thomas had given me, taken at the murder scene in the garage at Imminent Visions.

  He turned it toward the light, scowled. I couldn’t read him beyond that. He’d been present at too many litigations. “Arsenault?”

  “He didn’t take nearly as good a picture as he did eight years ago.”

  “Why did you want me to see this?”

  “When I make a report I don’t leave anything out. Here’s a closer shot.” I gave him one of the blowups Randy Quarrels had made. It was a practice shot.

  “Same picture? Odd framing.”

  “Ignore the corpse. Concentrate on that round spot next to it.”

  “Blood?”

  “More likely grease. There wasn’t any blood on the floor until I opened the car door and Arsenault’s body fell out. But any garage worthy of the name has streaks and puddles of grease and oil all over. You have to be careful not to track it anywhere.”

  As I spoke I picked up the best print of the batch and slid it on top of the one he was looking at. This one was much clearer.

  “That cane of yours is a valuable antique,” I said. “You ought to be more careful where you put it.”

  His eyes didn’t move from the quarter-size circle near Lynn Arsenault’s dead arm, the print of the rubber tip of a cane. They were as lifeless as blue candle stumps. They remained that way while he tore all three pictures in half, then in quarters. He went on tearing until he couldn’t get the pieces any smaller. Then he turned in his chair and let them flutter to the linoleum between the tables.

  Thirty-two

  I PLACED THE negative and the remaining practice print on his side of the table.

  “Tear those too, if you like. The cops have the original negative and can afford to get an even clearer enlargement. Any jury could look at it and match the mark to your cane. From the location, I’d say you leaned on it with your left hand while you used your right to shoot him through the window on the driver’s side of his Porsche.”

  He made no move to pick up the items. “Do you expect me to deny it? Very well. I was with Jay when Arsenault was killed. And I have no motive.”

  “Furlong might remember whether you were out that morning; sick or well, he’s sharper than any ten men his age. Or he might not. I think you said that was one of his bad days. I couldn’t get through to you when I called from the garage. When you finally answered the telephone, you’d had time enough to drive to Allen Park and back twice.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “That part’s for the cops. So’s the motive, but I’ve got that. You’re the witchfinder. You rigged the fake picture scheme to keep Lily Talbot from marrying Furlong and changing his will.”

  “Ludicrous. His bequest to me is purely honorary. I make more than that in a year on his retainer.”

  “A retainer that stops the moment he stops breathing. A new one kicks in as soon as you clock in as executor and probate attorney. Given the number of heirs involved—not to mention their temperament—the will could drag on in court for twenty years without a widow in the picture. No one gets anything out of that but the lawyer, you. That has to be the seventh circle of heaven for someone in your profession, a nearly unlimited source of income from a client who can’t pester you because he’s dead. I can think of the names of a couple of dozen ambulance-chasers who’d kill for a good deal less.”

  He sipped from his cup. His hand was steady. “If I were your counsel, I’d advise you to keep your voice down. All you have is a snapshot of a stain on a concrete floor. Even if the police manage to match it to my cane there’s nothing to prove I was in the garage at the time of the murder. I could sue you for everything you own.’’

  “Be my guest.”

  “You say that merely because what you own isn’t worth much. But you’re forgetting your reputation as a detective. When I’m through with you, you won’t even have a livelihood.”

  I said, “The cops have Greta Griswold.”

  He spilled coffee on his hand. He yelped, slammed down the cup, and wound his handkerchief around the burn. One or two of the diners seated nearby looked at him, then dove back into their conversations.

  “And who might she be?” he asked then.

  “You might want to put ice on that,” I said. “Hot coffee can raise blisters. I turned her over to the sheriff’s deputies at the airport. I’d tailed her from the Marriott, where you gave her cash to lam to Pasadena. She has friends there. She told me everything. Now she’s telling the cops.”

  “What sort of lies did she tell?”

  “She’s not good at them. She knows that; it’s why she ran. You know that, or you wouldn’t have bankrolled her flight. But then you know her better than anyone.”

  “I never heard the name before this moment.”

  “That’s a lie, but you did know her better as Cathlin Faolin. She went back to her maiden name after you stopped living together as man and wife in England.”

  He wound the handkerchief tighter and said nothing. The flesh on the back of his hand bulged as white as the fabric.

  “Some marriages involving a homosexual partner last a long time.” Since he hadn’t touched the picture and negative, I returned them to the folder and closed it. “Yours wasn’t one of those, although technically you’re still married. She didn’t know that at the time. You told her the divorce was final, and being a solicitor you were able to rig up documents for her to sign that satisfied her. It wasn’t until after she emigrated to America, married again, became a widow, and took a job at Imminent Visions, that you told her she was a bigamist. That meant she was never legally married to a United States citizen and could have been deported. That was your leverage.”

  I shook my head. “Poor old Nate Millender thought he was hot stuff as a blackmailer, but he wasn’t a patch on you. You got Greta to help you kill Arsenault by threatening to report her to the State Department if she refused. She didn’t much like him, and she has bad memories of Northern Ireland. It didn’t take her long to make the decision.

  “Her car had a big trunk,” I went on. “Still, it must have been a snug fit for a man your size. No wonder your gout’s worse. She smuggled you into the garage past the parking attendant, let you out to wait for Arsenault to come down, and smuggled you back out in the trunk afterward. That’s where you were hiding all the time the cops were searching the building for suspicious persons. Simple enough to work. But you complicated things when you forced Greta to tell the cops Royce Grayling was on the premises at the time of the murder. How long did you think that would hold up, when neither the security guard in the lobby nor any of the video cameras scattered throughout the building saw him?”

  “He had an appointment! He—” He clamped his jaw shut. Pain spasmed his heavy features. He unwound the handkerchief from his hand, reached inside his coat, and brought out a plastic prescription bottle. He shook out two pills, swallowed them, and washed
them down with coffee.

  I nodded. His slip should have made me tingle. Instead I felt saturated and old. My head hurt.

  “You have the right to remain silent, Counselor,” I said. “Yeah, Grayling had an appointment to see Arsenault that morning. You knew who he was and what he was from what I’d told you. When you learned from Greta he was expected, you got the bright idea to set him up to take the fall for Arsenault. Only you couldn’t know that Grayling tried to call and cancel. The telephones weren’t working that morning, thanks to me, and Greta couldn’t warn you. She can’t remember now what scheme you’d cooked up with her to get Arsenault to go out to his car at the time Grayling was expected, but that doesn’t matter. She didn’t get a chance to use it. I smoked him out first.

  “When he came down to the garage where you were waiting, you assumed Grayling was in position for the frame and went ahead with the kill. Greta nailed Grayling for the cops even though he never showed, not knowing what else to do without you on hand to advise her. That was the blunder, the X factor you didn’t allow for. It turned her into a fugitive; something she wasn’t any better at than she was at improvising a more acceptable lie. These things happen when you don’t take time to plan.”