Transgressions

by Ed McBain

“That you should have a glass or two every day. But cognac wasn’t on the list. I don’t know how good that is for your health.”

  Sam laughed too. “I feel like living dangerously.”

  He expertly opened the bottle, whose cork stopper was close to disintegrating.

  “You were always good at that,” his wife said.

  “I never had many talents—only the important skills.” He handed her a glass of the honey-colored liquor and then he filled his. They downed the drink. He poured more.

  “So what’ve you got there?” she asked, feeling even warmer now, giddier, happier. She was nodding toward a bulge in the side pocket of his camel-hair sport coat, the jacket he always wore on Sundays.

  “A surprise.”

  “Really? What?”

  He tapped her glass and they drank again. He said, “Close your eyes.”

  She did. “You’re a tease, Samuel.” She felt him sit next to her, sensed his body close. There was a click of metal.

  “You know I love you.” His tone overflowed with emotion. Sam occasionally got quite maudlin. Elizabeth had long ago learned, though, that among the long list of offenses in the catalog of masculine sins sentiment was the least troublesome.

  “And I love you, dear,” she said.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes, I’m ready.”

  “Okay. . . . Here.”

  Another click of metal. . .

  Then Elizabeth felt something in her hand. She opened her eyes and laughed again.

  “What. . . Oh, my God, is this—?” She examined the key ring he’d placed in her palm. It held two keys and bore the distinctive logo of a British MG sports car. “You . . . you found one?” she stammered. “Where?”

  “That import dealer up the road, believe it or not. Two miles from here! It’s a nineteen-fifty-four. He called a month ago but it needed some work to get in shape.”

  “So that’s what those mysterious calls were about. I was beginning to suspect another woman,” she joked.

  “It’s not the same color. It’s more burgundy.”

  “As if that matters, honey.”

  The first car they’d bought as a married couple had been a red MG, which they’d driven for ten years until the poor thing had finally given out. While Liz’s friends were buying Lexuses or Mercedes she refused to join the pack and continued to drive her ancient Cadillac, holding out for an old MG like their original car.

  She flung her arms around his shoulders and leaned up to kiss him.

  Lights from an approaching car flashed into the window, startling them.

  “Caught,” she whispered, “just like when my father came home early on our first date. Remember?” She laughed flirtatiously, feeling just like a carefree, rebellious Sarah Lawrence sophomore in a pleated skirt and Peter-Pan collared blouse—exactly who she’d been forty-two years ago when she met this man, the one she would share her life with.

  Tal Simms was hunched forward, jotting notes, when the dispatcher’s voice clattered thought the audio monitor, which was linked to the 911 system, in the darkened detective pen. “All units in the vicinity of Hamilton. Reports of a possible suicide in progress.”

  Tal froze. He pushed back from his computer monitor and rose to his feet, staring at the speaker, as the electronic voice continued. “Neighbor reports a car engine running in the closed garage at two-oh-five Montgomery Way. Any units in the vicinity, respond.”

  Tal Simms looked up at the speaker and hesitated only a moment. Soon, he was sprinting out of the building. He was halfway out of the parking lot, doing seventy in his Toyota, when he realized that he’d neglected to put his seat belt on. He reached for it but lost the car to a skid and gave up and sped toward the suburb of Hamilton on the Hudson, five miles away from the office.

  You couldn’t exactly call any of Westbrook County desolate but Hamilton and environs were surrounded by native-wood parks and the estates of very wealthy men and women who liked their privacy; most of the land here was zoned five or ten acres and some homes were on much larger tracts. The land Tal was now speeding past was a deserted mess of old forest, vines, brambles, jutting rocks. It was not far from here, he reflected, that Washington Irving had thought up the macabre tale of the Headless Horseman.

  Normally a cautious, patient driver, Tal wove madly from lane to lane, laying on the horn often. But he didn’t consider the illogic of what he was doing. He pictured chocolate-brown blood in the Bensons’ den, pictured the unsteady handwriting of their last note.

  We’ll be together forever. . .

  He raced through downtown Hamilton at nearly three times the speed limit. As if the Headless Horseman himself were galloping close behind.

  ∞

  His gray sedan swerved down the long driveway leading to the Whitley house, bounding off the asphalt and taking out a bed of blooming white azaleas.

  He grimaced at the damage as he skidded to a stop in front of the doorway.

  Leaping from his car, he noticed a Hamilton Village police car and a boxy county ambulance pull up. Two officers and two medical technicians jogged to meet him and they all sprinted to the garage door. He smelled fumes and could hear the rattle of a car engine inside.

  As a uniformed cop banged on the door, Tal noticed a handwritten note taped to the front.

  WARNING: The garage is filled with dangrous fumes. We’ve left the remote control on the groun in front of the flower pot. Please use it to the door and let it air out before entring.

  “No!” Tal dropped the note and began tugging futilely at the door, which was locked from the inside. In the dark they couldn’t immediately find the remote so a fireman with an axe ran to the side door and broke it open with one swing.

  But they were too late.

  To save either of them.

  Once again it was a multiple suicide. Another husband and wife.

  Samuel and Elizabeth Whitley were in the garage, reclining in an open convertible, a old-fashioned MG sports car. While one officer had shut off the engine and firemen rigged a vent fan, the medical techs had pulled them out of the car and rested them on the driveway. They’d attempted to revive them but the efforts were futile. The couple had been very efficient in their planning; they’d sealed the doors, vents, and windows of the garage with duct tape. Shades had been drawn, so no one could look inside and interrupt their deaths. Only the unusual rattle of the engine had alerted a dog-walking neighbor that something was wrong.

  Talbot Simms stared at them, numb. No blood this time but the deaths were just as horrible to him—seeing the bodies and noting the detachment in their planning: the thoughtfulness of the warning note, its cordial tone, the care in sealing the garage. And the underlying uneasiness; like the Bensons’ note, this one was written in unsteady writing and there were misspellings—“dangrous”—and a missing word or two: “use it to the door . . .”

  The uniformed officers made a circuit of the house, to make certain nobody else was inside and had been affected by the carbon monoxide. Tal too entered but hesitated at first when he smelled a strong odor of fumes. But then he realized that the scent wasn’t auto exhaust but smoke from the fireplace. Brandy glasses and a dusty bottle sat on the table in front of a small couch. They’d had a final romantic drink together in front of a fire—and then died.

  “Anybody else here?” Tal asked the cops as they returned to the main floor.

  “No, it’s clean. Neatest house I’ve ever seen. Looks like it was just scrubbed. Weird, cleaning the house to kill yourself.”

  In the kitchen they found another note, the handwriting just as unsteady as the warning about the gas.

  To our friends and family:

  We do this with great joy in hearts and with love for everone in our family and everyone we’ve known. Don’t feel any sorrow; weve never been happier.

  The letter ended with the name, address, and phone number of their attorney. Tal lifted his mobile phone from his pocket and called the number.

  “Hello.”r />
  “Mr. Wells, please. This is Detective Simms with the county police.”

  A hesitation. “Yes, sir?” the voice asked.

  The pause was now on Tal’s part. “Mr. Wells?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re the Whitleys’ attorney?”

  “That’s right. What’s this about?”

  Tal took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to tell you that they’ve . . . passed away. It was a suicide. We found your name in their note.”

  “My, God, no What happened?”

  “How, you mean? In their garage. Their car exhaust.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. A little while ago.”

  “No! . . . Both of them? Not both of them?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Tal replied.

  There was a long pause. Finally the lawyer, clearly shaken, whispered, “I should’ve guessed.”

  “How’s that? Had they talked about it?”

  “No, no. But Sam was sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “His heart. It was pretty serious.”

  Just like Don Benson.

  More common denominators.

  “His wife? Was she sick too?”

  “Oh, Elizabeth. No. She was in pretty good health. . . . Does the daughter know?”

  “They have a daughter?” This news instantly made the deaths exponentially more tragic.

  “She lives in the area. I’ll call her.” He sighed. “That’s what they pay me for. . . . Well, thank you, Officer. . . . What was your name again?”

  “Simms.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tal put his phone away and started slowly through the house. It reminded him of the Bensons’. Tastefully opulent. Only more so. The Whitleys were, he guessed, much richer.

  Glancing at the pictures on the wall, many of which showed a cute little girl who’d grown into a beautiful young woman.

  He was grateful that the lawyer would be making the call to their daughter.

  Tal walked into the kitchen. No calendars here.

  He looked again at the note.

  Joy . . . Never been happier.

  Nearby was another document. He looked it over and frowned. Curious. It was a receipt for the purchase of a restored MG automobile. Whitley’d paid for a deposit on the car earlier but had given the dealer the balance today.

  Tal walked to the garage and hesitated before entering. But he steeled up his courage and stepped inside, glanced at the tarps covering the bodies. He located the vehicle identification number. Yes, this was the same car as on the receipt.

  Whitley had bought an expensive restored antique vehicle today, driven it home and then killed himself and his wife.

  Why?

  There was motion in the driveway. Tal watched a long, dark-gray van pull up outside, LEIGHEY’S FUNERAL HOME was printed on the side. Already? Had the officers called or the lawyer? Two men got out of the hearse and walked up to a uniformed officer. They seemed to know each other.

  Then Tal paused. He noticed something familiar. He picked up a book on a table in the den. Making the Final Journey.

  The same book the Bensons had.

  Too many common denominators. The suicide book, the heart diseases, spouses also dying.

  Tal walked into the living room and found the older trooper filling out a form—not his questionnaire, Tal noticed. He asked one of the men from the funeral home, “What’re you doing with the bodies?”

  “Instructions were cremation as soon as possible.”

  “Can we hold off on that?”

  “Hold off?” he asked and glanced at the Hamilton officer. “How do you mean, Detective?”

  Tal said, “Get an autopsy?”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering if we can.”

  “You’re county,” the heavy-set cop said. “You’re the boss. Only, I mean, you know—you can’t do it halfway. Either you declare a twenty-one-twenty-four or you don’t.”

  Oh, that. He wondered what exactly it was.

  A glance at the sports car. “Okay, I’ll do that. I’m declaring a twenty-four-twenty-one.”

  “You mean twenty-one-twenty-four. . . . You sure about this?” the officer asked, looking uncertainly toward the funeral home assistant, who was frowning; even he apparently knew more about the mysterious 2124 than Tal did.

  The statistician looked outside and saw the other man from the funeral home pull a stretcher out of the back of the hearse and walk toward the bodies.

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “I’m sure.” And tapped loudly on the window, gesturing for the man to stop.

  The next morning, Monday, Tal saw the head of the Crime Scene Unit walk into the Detective pen and head straight toward LaTour’s office. He was carrying a half dozen folders.

  He had a gut feeling that this was the Whitley scene report and was out of his office fast to intercept him. “Hey, how you doing? That about the Whitley case?”

  “Yeah. It’s just the preliminary. But there was an expedite on it. Is Greg in? LaTour?”

  “I think it’s for me.”

  “You’re . . .”

  “Simms.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the man said, looking at the request attached to the report. “I didn’t notice. I figured it was LaTour. Being head of Homicide, you know.” He handed the files to Tal.

  A 2124, it turned out, was a declaration that a death was suspicious. Like hitting a fire alarm button, it set all kinds of activities in motion—getting Crime Scene to search the house, collect evidence, record friction-ridge prints and extensively photograph and video the scene; scheduling autopsies, and alerting the prosecutor’s office that a homicide investigation case file had been started. In his five years on the job Tal had never gotten so many calls before 10:00 as he had this morning.

  Tal glanced into the captain’s office then LaTour’s. Nobody seemed to notice that a statistician who’d never issued a parking ticket in his life was clutching crime scene files.

  Except Shellee, who subtly blessed herself and winked.

  Tal asked the Crime Scene detective, “Preliminary, you said. What else’re you waiting for?”

  “Phone records, handwriting confirmation of the note and autopsy results. Hey, I’m really curious. What’d you find that made you think this was suspicious? Fits the classic profile of every suicide I’ve ever worked.”

  “Some things.”

  “Things,” the seasoned cop said, nodding slowly. “Things. Ah. Got a suspect?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Ah. Well, good luck. You’ll need it.”

  Back in his office Tal carefully filed away the spreadsheet he’d been working on then opened the CSU files. He spread the contents out on his desk.

  We begin with inspiration, a theorem, an untested idea: There is a perfect odd number. There is a point at which pi repeats. The universe is infinite.

  A mathematician then attempts to construct a proof that shows irrefutably that his position either is correct or cannot be correct.

  Tal Simms knew how to create such proofs with numbers. But to prove the theorem that there was something suspicious about the deaths of the Bensons and the Whitleys? He had no idea how to do this and stared at the hieroglyphics of the crime scene reports, increasingly discouraged. He had basic academy training, of course, but, beyond that, no investigation skills or experience.

  But then he realized that perhaps this wasn’t quite accurate. He did have one talent that might help: the cornerstone of his profession as a mathematician—logic.

  He turned his analytical mind to the materials on his desk as he examined each item carefully. He first picked the photos of the Whitleys’ bodies. All in graphic, colorful detail. They troubled him a great deal. Still, he forced himself to examine them carefully, every inch. After some time he concluded that nothing suggested that the Whitleys had been forced into the car or had struggled with any assailants.

  He set the photos aside and read the documents in the reports the
mselves. There were no signs of any break-in, though the front and back doors weren’t locked, so someone might have simply walked in. But with the absence of signs of physical assault an intrusion seemed unlikely. And their jewelry, cash, and other valuables were untouched.

  One clue, though, suggested that all was not as it seemed. The Latents team found that both notes contained, in addition to Sam Whitley’s, Tal’s and the police officers’ prints, smudges that were probably from gloved hands or fingers protected by a cloth or tissue. The team had also found glove prints in the den where the couple had had their last drink, in the room where the note had been found, and in the garage.

  Gloves? Tal wondered. Curious.

  The team had also found fresh tire prints on the driveway. The prints didn’t match the MG, the other cars owned by the victims or the vehicles driven by the police, medical team, or the funeral home. The report concluded that the car had been there within the three hours prior to death. The tread marks were indistinct, so that the brand of tire couldn’t be determined, but the wheelbase meant the vehicle was a small one.

  A search of the trace evidence revealed several off-white cotton fibers—one on the body of Elizabeth Whitley and one on the living room couch—that didn’t appear to match what the victims were wearing or any of the clothes in their closets. An inventory of drugs in the medicine cabinets and kitchen revealed no antidepressants, which suggested, even if tenuously, that mood problems and thoughts of suicide might not have occurred in the Whitley house recently.

  He rose, walked to his doorway and called Shellee in.

  “Hi, Boss. Havin’ an exciting morning, are we?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Are you . . . ? I mean, you look tired.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine. It’s just about this case.”

  “What case?”

  “The suicide.”

  “Oh.”

  “I need to find out if anybody’s bought a book called Making the Final Journey. Then a subhead—something about suicide and euthanasia.”

  “A book. Sure.”

  “I don’t remember exactly. But Making the Journey or Making the Final Journey is the start of the title.”