Nothing's Certain but Death

by M. K. Wren

  Steve frowned. “Did it rain here last night?”

  “Torrents. I know it didn’t stop before 3 a.m. when I finally got to bed.”

  The glasses were askew, the lenses frosted. Conan remembered the raindrops sparkling on them last night and tried not to think about the fact that there had been no light in this frigid tomb. He stared at the right hand, at the purplish cast of it; blued flesh under a mottled casing of frozen blood. The blood must have come from the head wound; the hand itself didn’t seem to be injured.

  “Oh, damn.” Steve breathed the words in a near whisper as he turned to look at the inside of the door.

  There was blood on the push knob and in smears around it, but opening the outer latch with that knob took both strength and the leverage of a standing position. Nye’s strength had been drained with the blood that rimed the floor, and he’d been incapable of standing; none of the rust-brown blotches left by the beating of his fists were more than three feet above the floor.

  And no one heard his desperate poundings. This chill cell was insulated to preserve its deathly cold; it might as well have been soundproofed, and outside in the kitchen there was the noise of the exhaust fans.

  Were they on last night? Brian would know.

  Then, as his eyes followed the ghastly smears down toward the bottom of the door, Conan felt the outer chill closing around his heart.

  There was a shape and purpose to some of those smears. Letters. Two letters, canted to the left, drawn crudely like a child’s first efforts; drawn in darkness; drawn in his own blood by a man in the black shadow of death.

  The first was relatively clear, although the horizontal lines lapped too far over the vertical. Still, it was readable as a B. The second looked like a grim, asymmetric crucifix with the horizontal crossbar overbalanced to the right and at that end sagging down, then failing with the failing strength of the hand that shaped it.

  But it was legible. The letter T.

  From the cooler door, Earl Kleber said, “Thought you might be interested in that, Mr. Travers. Sort of a dying testament, you might say.”

  Steve rose and faced him.

  “You have somebody around here with the initials B.T.?”

  Kleber smiled grimly. “Matter of fact, we do. You met him. Name is Brian Tally.”

  Chapter 5

  Conan stayed out of the way while the criminologists and Dr. Reuben went about their business. He wandered the sterile reaches of the kitchen, feeling as empty and useless as the silent machines, the suspended pots and tools, the dead ovens.

  He explored the upper part of the L, passing the pastry table and baking ovens, pausing to look into two storage rooms. There was a door at the end of the L. He tried it, using a handkerchief, although he was sure too many people had access to everything in this kitchen for fingerprints to mean anything. It was unlocked. Beyond it was a long passage lined with plastic garbage cans.

  When he realized that he’d been staring at the ranked cans for a full minute without moving, and certainly without seeing them, he turned away, closing the door behind him.

  What he had in fact been seeing was those two bloody letters.

  B T

  B T: Brian Tally.

  With those letters Nye had pointed an incarnadined finger of accusation.

  Yet it didn’t make sense. Conan could no more accept the possibility that Brian had murdered Eliot Nye—at least not in this particular fashion—than he could accept an assertion that the sun rose in the west.

  But neither could he deny the reality of those letters.

  He returned to the front of the kitchen where an occasional strobe flash indicated that the crime scene crew was still at work in the cooler and freezer. Dr. Reuben was supervising the removal of the body; it was on a stretcher and decently covered, but there was something grotesque about the hunched shape of it under the sheet. It wouldn’t give up its fetal position. Conan watched two policemen maneuver the stretcher out, faces reflecting more than physical strain.

  Dan Reuben was shaking his head. “Steve, I can’t do anything until it thaws out, and I hope you don’t expect me to give you an estimated time of death.”

  “Well, we know it had to be sometime between midnight and eight o’clock this morning.”

  “Based on rigor?” Reuben asked ironically.

  “No. Oral flux.”

  “Well, I can tell you this much: it was closer to midnight than eight. That’s based on the state of freezing. Look, I’ve got an autopsy to do in Medford this afternoon. I’ll have to take care of this one tomorrow morning.”

  Conan had come up to eavesdrop. He asked, “What about the head wound? Any idea what hit him?”

  Reuben shrugged. “Probably the usual blunt instrument. That’s all I can tell you now.”

  Conan nodded and offered nothing more to detain him, thinking that there were undoubtedly more lethally sharp instruments than blunt in this kitchen. He roused himself when Steve went to the cutting table near the side door.

  “Personal effects, Conan. You want to look them over? Chief?” This to Kleber, who was hovering nearby. “I’d like to talk to that janitor. What’s his name?”

  “Hancock. You want me to bring him back here?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  Conan studied the meager pile on the table. A ring of keys, some change in which a paperclip had gotten mixed, a ballpoint pen, a notebook without a remaining note, a pickup slip from a local drive-in restaurant. A billfold. Its contents had been removed: two twenties and a ten, four credit cards, a photograph of a pretty, dark-haired girl; it looked like a graduation portrait. There was also a driver’s license and a plastic card inscribed with the Lord’s prayer.

  Conan turned the license to read it. Eliot Ussher Nye. Thirty-four years old. Restriction for corrective lenses.

  Steve said, “Ussher. As in House of, maybe?”

  “It’s spelled with a double S. As in Archbishop.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Who’s Archbishop Ussher?”

  “He was an accountant, too, in his way. Seventeenth century. He went through all the begats in the Bible and calculated that the world was created in 4004 B.C. I think it was October twenty-sixth at something like nine in the morning.” Then he frowned. “Chief?” But Kleber was gone.

  “I don’t think Earl can tell you whether that was standard or daylight-saving.”

  “What?”

  “The creation of the world.”

  “I was hoping he could tell me where Nye was staying. What motel, I mean. He’s been in town since Thursday.”

  “Has he, now? Well, I can save you making yourself beholden to Earl. Nye was staying at the Seafarer Motel a couple of blocks south of here. In fact, the chief has already put a guard on his room and car.”

  “Well, you have to give him credit. But what I want to know is where is Nye’s motel key? I can’t believe he’d walk out at midnight and leave his room unlocked.” Steve studied the scant assortment on the table, the long distance squint reaching out a few more miles.

  “Good question. And he did lock the door. At least it was locked when Earl’s sergeant arrived for guard duty. We checked all of Nye’s pockets, which wasn’t easy. It must’ve been raining buckets here last night; his coat was soaked through. And frozen through.”

  Conan started as if he’d been physically prodded.

  “Damn. His hat, Steve. Where’s his hat?”

  “Oh, Conan, for God’s sake, how would I know—”

  “Never mind. Here’s our night man.”

  “Our what? Oh. Hancock.”

  Kleber led Hancock into the kitchen, curtly cautioned him not to touch anything, then presented him to Steve.

  Hancock still wore his dark glasses, which was as revealing as dilated pupils. His mouth slackened as his head turned toward the cooler where the lab men crowded the confined space, but when he faced Steve, his arrogant slouch served notice that he didn’t intend to volunteer anything.

  Steve asked plea
santly, “What time do you usually get to work, Mr. Hancock?”

  He hesitated, but perhaps it was only because he wasn’t accustomed to being addressed as “mister.”

  “Ten o’clock,” he admitted.

  “And how long a shift do you put in?”

  “Oh…usually till four. Depends.”

  “When did you leave last night?”

  “Early. About two, maybe.”

  “Why did you leave early?”

  “Brian told me to.”

  “That’s Brian Tally? Okay. Then you were here at midnight?”

  “I told you, I come on at ten.”

  Steve smiled. “I mean, were you here in the kitchen?”

  “Sure. I don’t usually finish up in here till about one.”

  “You start your cleaning in here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, you were here in the kitchen from ten until one. Did you leave at any time?”

  One shoulder twitched in a shrug. “No.”

  “All right, now this is important. Did you see anybody here in the kitchen during that three-hour period?”

  Hancock paused, only briefly, but Conan found himself resenting the dark glasses. He had the feeling something vital was going on behind them; something lost to him.

  Finally, Hancock’s mouth stretched in a malicious grin. “Yeah, I seen somebody. It was Claude. Must’ve been about midnight.”

  “Claude?”

  Kleber explained, “Claude Jastrow. He’s head cook here.”

  Hancock snickered at Jastrow’s unintentional demotion, but the hard look he got from Kleber sobered him.

  Steve said, “Chief, I’d like to talk to…”

  But Kleber was already on his way. “I’ll bring him.”

  “Thanks. Okay, Mr. Hancock, tell me about Jastrow.”

  “You mean when he come in here? Well, I just got back from taking out the last load of garbage, and here he was, standing about where you are now.”

  “You didn’t see him come into the kitchen?”

  “Well, no. Like I said, I was taking the—”

  “Yes, I got that.” There was a hint of chill in his tone. “How long does it take to get the garbage out?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know. Some days they collect a ton of garbage here.”

  “And you take it outside the building?”

  “Yeah. The dumpster is…out at this end of the parking lot.” He was beginning to realize his error.

  “Give me a rough estimate. How long were you out of the kitchen while you were hauling off a ton of garbage?”

  His hands opened and closed nervously.

  “I…well, it takes maybe an hour altogether. But I was, you know, sort of in and out the whole time.”

  Steve didn’t seem impressed with that qualification. “Did you see anybody else here in the kitchen at any time after midnight?”

  Another pendant hesitation, then, “No. I didn’t see nobody.”

  He was spared further questions for the moment. Kleber returned with Jastrow, who gave Hancock a heavy-lidded look of transparent contempt and said in honeyed tones tending to Old Vic English, “What a relief it must be, Johnny, to answer police questions about something other than your own transgressions. Ah—is it Chief Travers? Your title precedes you, sir, if not your fame, which I’m sure only reflects the benightedness of this backward corner of the world.”

  Steve needed a moment to digest that speech, which would have been sickly obsequious except for the drawling irony in it.

  “I never use the ‘chief,’” he said, “but you’ll have to fill me in on the etiquette for ‘chef.’”

  Jastrow threw back his head to laugh at that.

  “Ah, very good. And I never use the ‘chef.’ You have some questions for me?”

  “Yes. Were you here in the kitchen about midnight last night?”

  “Of course I was.” This with a wry smile for Hancock. “My purpose, Mr. Travers, was to look in on Johnny, who has an unfortunate tendency to knit up his ‘ravel’d sleave’ at every opportunity, or to avail himself of the cooking wine, which reduces his usual low efficiency rate to zero.”

  Hancock’s whiskered chin jutted out belligerently.

  “Damn it, you got no right putting me down like—”

  “Oh, no doubt, Johnny. Treat every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping? Certainly not you.”

  “Never mind,” Steve put in before Hancock could retort to that. Then to Jastrow, “Can you pin down the time a little closer? I mean, when you came into the kitchen?”

  “It was twelve-fifteen,” he replied flatly. “I remember looking at my watch when I left the bar.”

  “Okay, could you tie it in with what was going on in the bar then? Was Nye still there?”

  “Ah, the little Sadducee. No. Actually, the alarums and excursions were over by then, and Mr. Flagg had been assisted from the field on his shield.” He spared Conan a sympathetic smile.

  Steve only glanced obliquely at Conan, then asked Jastrow, “Did you see anybody else in or near the kitchen?”

  “Other than Johnny? No.”

  “How long were you in here?”

  “Oh, perhaps five minutes. Long enough to see that Johnny had neglected to empty the grease traps on the grills. I also noted and informed him that he’d done his usual slipshod job mopping the floor.”

  Hancock snarled, “A couple of scuff marks! You could eat off that floor!”

  “Perhaps you could; I assume your digestive system is inured to coexisting with filth, but mine isn’t, and I—”

  “You know what you can do with your digestive system!”

  Steve noted testily, “Look, I’m not from the Health Department. That’ll be all for now, unless…Conan?”

  Conan had glanced up from his frowning survey of the floor to catch Steve’s attention with a raised eyebrow.

  “Claude, where were those scuff marks?”

  “Here.” He took a step backward to the corner of the cutting table. “Johnny apparently managed to eradicate them the second time around, but there were two of them, approximately parallel, about—oh, two or three feet long and angling off toward…” His eyes completed an arc ending at the freezer, but if he drew any conclusions, Hancock gave him no opportunity to voice them.

  “So what? A couple of sh—of measly scuff marks! And, damn it, they wasn’t even there when I mopped the floor!”

  Conan demanded, “They weren’t there? Are you sure?”

  Jastrow laughed mockingly. “Mr. Flagg, Johnny’s perceptions aren’t always exactly clear, shall we say.”

  “Those marks wasn’t there when I mopped!” Hancock insisted. “Hell, you probably made ’em yourself just so you’d have something to bitch about!”

  “I hardly need to go to that much—”

  Conan interrupted impatiently, “Johnny, when did you mop the floor?”

  “Well, I mopped this end before I started on the garbage. The floor was still wet when Claude come in and tracked it up while he was looking for something to bitch about.”

  “You weren’t finished with the mopping? Where was the mop then—and I suppose you use a bucket of some kind?”

  “Sure. It’s a regular mop bucket with a wringer on it. I left it right over there by the dishwasher.”

  Conan might have pursued the subject, but Kleber’s patience was obviously wearing thin, and he decided not to try it further. He nodded his satisfaction to Steve, who thanked Jastrow and Hancock and sent them back to the dining room.

  When they were out of earshot, Kleber asked, “Mr. Travers, what about getting those statements from the witnesses?”

  Steve studied the work in progress around the freezer. “You have a stenographer available?”

  “Amy Marstand’s waiting at the police station.”

  “Okay, have somebody take the, uh, witnesses to the station, but before we get started on that, I want to see Nye’s motel room. Jeff?”

  One of the m
en from the crime scene team turned. Lieutenant Jefferson Kaw, whose Indian blood was as obvious as Conan’s and not as diluted.

  “Yes, Steve?”

  “When you get through here, the next stop is Nye’s motel room. I’m going to take a look at it now.”

  Kaw nodded. “Just keep your hands to yourself, okay?”

  “Don’t I always?” He frowned as a Holliday Beach policeman came into the pantry and beckoned to Kleber.

  “Phone call for you, Chief.”

  Conan followed Steve and Kleber back into the dining room, noting that the tableau by the windows hadn’t changed appreciably. Brian looked at him as if awaiting a divine sign, but got only a vague shrug. While Kleber took the call on the phone by the cash register, Steve was buttonholed by the D.A. Conan caught part of that conversation.

  “Luther Dix,” Culpepper said, wringing his hands. “Assistant district director. That’s in the Portland IRS office. I, uh, told him you’re in charge of the case?”

  Steve grimaced. “I’m afraid so. What did he want?”

  “Well, uh, I think he just wanted to find out, well, what progress you’re making. Oh—he seemed, uh, quite concerned about any IRS papers Nye had in his possession?”

  Steve said curtly, “I’ll call him as soon as I can.”

  Kleber hung up the phone with a satisfied grunt.

  “Mrs. Randall?”

  Beryl Randall looked up with a startled, “Yes?”

  “That was the state patrol. They found your car.”

  She sighed gustily, “Oh, thank goodness!”

  “Your car?” Brian asked with a perplexed frown. “What’s this about your car?”

  “Well, it was stolen. When I woke up at seven, it was gone. That’s why I was late this morning, then when I got here and found out what…” Brian had paled, and she bit her lip, then turned to Kleber. “Where was it?”

  “Down at the Shag Point state wayside just south of Holliday Bay. Somebody had a short ride.”

  She blinked in bewilderment. “Why, that’s only a mile from my house. How strange.”

  “Maybe not. It won’t start. It’s being towed up to the police station. We’ll have to go over it, you know.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” She added absently, “I’ve been having trouble with the starter. I suppose…”