Julius made a face. The thought of dealing with a murder suspect earlier than he had planned was naturally distasteful to him, but he shook his head.
“No, Archie, that won’t be necessary.”
When Julius answered the door, Slattersby was smirking every bit as much as when I first saw him through the webcam feed. At forty-nine, he was thin in a bony sort of way, and was three inches shorter than Julius’s six feet. The dark green turtleneck sweater covering his throat did little to conceal a pronounced Adam’s apple. “When Lind asked me to see you, I was at first going to tell him to go to hell,” he said with a nasty edge to his voice. “But instead I decided to come here and tell you to your face to go to hell.”
Julius grunted at that. “You went to a lot of trouble to do so, especially since you could’ve just picked up a phone,” he said.
Slattersby didn’t have an answer for that, or at least none that he cared to share. I expected him to turn on his heels and walk off in a huff, and Julius might’ve also, but after a ten-count of Slattersby standing fixed where he was, Julius let out a soft sigh and asked, “Would you mind telling me what I did to deserve such rancor?”
“I’m no fool, Katz,” Slattersby said, his lips still twisted into a hard smirk. “Lind hired you to pin Connogher’s murder on someone other than himself, and you wanted me here only so I’d hand you enough rope to lynch me with.”
The obvious observation for Julius to make was “and yet you continue to stand at my door,” but instead he asked, “Isn’t it possible that I was hired to uncover the truth?”
“Hardly.”
Julius shrugged. “If you’re right, then you would be an obvious choice. After all, you despised Andrew Connogher, correct?”
Slattersby snorted at that, which was an interesting feat given that he was still smirking. “I made no secret of that,” he said. “After what he did to me, I had every right to hate that cold-blooded bastard. When your client asked me for my advice on the best way to handle Connogher, I told him to put a stake through his heart, and I’ll happily admit that I was glad to hear that a bullet worked instead. But so what?”
Julius’s eyes slitted as he continued to stare at Slattersby. “Thomas Lind called you the night of the murder. What about?”
“Nothing. Just drunken gibberish. If you want to know more, ask your client. Are we done here?”
“He’s being awfully obliging for someone who came here just to tell you to go to hell,” I said.
Julius ignored me. He asked Slattersby, “If you had an alibi you would’ve given it already. Can you prove that you did not visit 432 Elm Street the night Connogher was murdered?”
I was puzzled about why Julius gave him a different address than where Connogher was killed, at least until I saw Slattersby’s reaction. He almost corrected Julius but stopped himself at the last moment. As he realized the mistake he almost made, his color paled to a milk-white.
“We’re done,” Slattersby said. He was still smirking, but now it was looking sickly. He turned from Julius and walked away, his gait overly self-conscious.
“He knows where Connogher was killed,” I said. “He almost told you the real address. And in case you’re wondering, the police still haven’t released that information. By the way, technically he never told you to go to hell, only that he wanted to tell you that.”
“No wonder Connogher was so easily able to swindle him,” Julius murmured under his breath. “The man’s a fool.”
I wasn’t about to argue with Julius over that, and while we waited for his two o’clock appointment I spun my processing cycles trying to link Slattersby to the murder weapon. By the time Janice Martin rang the bell, I’d gotten nowhere. Unlike Slattersby, she arrived on time, didn’t smirk once, made no veiled accusations, and took a seat in Julius’s office without any fuss.
Janice Martin was thirty-six, and according to her driver’s license was five feet five inches and weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds, and I saw nothing to contradict that. I was also guessing that she was very attractive given how much she resembled a brunette Gwyneth Paltrow. Even with the way Slattersby had acted, Julius hedged his bets as far as Martin being a murderer by offering her coffee and nothing else. She declined his offer, which was a mistake. A coffee cup would’ve given her something to do with her hands, which would’ve kept her from nervously pulling on her fingers, at least when she wasn’t aware that she was doing so.
Julius sat back in his chair quietly gazing at her. As she absently began pulling on her fingers once more, he said, “Ms. Martin, I’d rather not waste any more of your time than necessary. Did you murder Andrew Connogher?”
He asked her that question as bluntly as he did to rattle her, although since I’d been with Julius three other murder suspects had been caught off-guard enough to answer yes. In Martin’s case the question certainly had its effect; her head jerked up, but she whispered, “No.”
“Did Lind kill him?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“He called you that night.”
She gave Julius a puzzled look.
“Thomas Lind.”
She shook her head.
“Please, Ms. Martin, don’t waste my time denying what can be easily proven through phone records. A call was placed from Lind’s home to yours that lasted four minutes and thirty-eight seconds.”
For a moment she looked paralyzed with fear, but she shook herself out of it. “His wife called,” she said.
“What about?”
“She wanted to know whether I’d seen Thomas earlier that evening.”
I picked up her tell then, and I was sure Julius did too. It was the slight hitch that showed along the side of her mouth right before she lied, but to an expert poker player like Julius it was as obvious as a blinking neon light. While this was the first time the hitch revealed itself, she could’ve been lying before but in too much of a panic for her tell to present itself.
Julius played along and instead of accusing her of lying, asked, “Did you?”
She shook her head.
“How long have you known Andrew Connogher?”
The hitch showed again. “Ever since Thomas brought him in as his Chief Financial Officer and partner. So three years.”
It was doubtful she was lying about that, so the hitch indicated not only when she was lying but extreme nervousness, which made it an unreliable tell. It showed up again when Julius asked if she’d had an affair with Connogher and she answered ‘no’, and again later when she denied knowing about Connogher’s Cambridge apartment. Julius danced around with her for another half hour, but with how unreliable her tell seemed to be, he accepted that he wasn’t going to get anything more out of her. After she left, I commented, “That was damn confusing.”
Julius responded by breathing in deeply through his nose and letting out a heavy sigh.
“Earlier I was pretty much sold on Slattersby,” I said. “But now I’m not so sure unless the two of them did it together. She was obviously lying about never having an affair with Connogher, and she knew about the apartment. So which one do you like?”
“Be patient, Archie. We still have at least two more people to talk to.”
Alice Lind was scheduled for three o’clock. After she was fifteen minutes late Julius had me call her.
“This is Archie Smith, Mr. Katz’s assistant,” I said once she answered the phone with a brittle hello. “You’re late.”
“I decided I’d rather not meet with him,” she said in that same brittle voice.
“Hmm,” I said. “That’s not necessarily a healthy attitude to take. If I put Mr. Katz on the line, would you answer a few questions?”
There was a long pause from her, then, “If you do that I’ll hang up.”
If I had eyebrows I would’ve arched one of them. I told her, “Your husband could be facing a murder charge. You don’t want to help him?”
“There’s nothing that I could tell your boss that could help Thomas.”
/> Julius had been patched into the call from the beginning, and he scribbled out a question for me to ask her. “That’s not true. For starters you could tell him the whereabouts of a certain bottle of forty year-old Macallan scotch.”
“I already told the other detective I don’t know what happened to it.”
I waited for Julius to scribble out his next question. “What did you say to Janice Martin?”
“What?”
“You called her the night Andrew Connogher was murdered. What did you say to her?”
She hung up then. Again, if I had eyebrows I would’ve raised one of them. Again, I found myself murmuring hmm. I asked Julius whether I should call her husband. “He could pressure her to come here. Or should I call a cab? Why not surprise her with a visit?”
Julius shook his head. “I doubt she’d open the door for me, and even if Lind convinced her to meet with me I’m not in the mood to pry open a clam with my bare fingers.”
Alice Lind’s call left Julius in a funk, and he sat stewing, at least until Henry Zack called ten minutes later. “Sorry for this taking as long as it has, but I’ve finally had a chance to study Lind’s prenup,” Henry said. “The wife gets little if he dies and nothing if she initiates a divorce. But there’s an interesting clause where if my client is convicted of a felony, the prenup is voided and the wife then stands to make millions in a divorce.”
“That is interesting,” Julius agreed.
“I thought you’d think so.”
Henry’s call helped whatever funk Alice Lind had put Julius in, at least enough for him to pick up from his desk the latest copy of Wine Spectator. His call also got me digging for any information I could find about the wife. Before Julius had a chance to do much browsing, or me much digging, Saul called.
“I need to talk to Julius,” he told me, his voice sounding a tick more upbeat than his usual flat monotone.
“You found a witness,” I said.
“Bingo.”
Earlier I had emailed Saul photos of Lind’s wife and the other three suspects. “Ten to one your witness picked out Alice Lind,” I said.
Saul paused before telling me he’d pass on making that bet. Without being asked again I patched him through to Julius, and Saul told him that I’d already guessed which of the four suspects was spotted entering the apartment building. “An upstairs neighbor saw her several times entering through the back of the building, leaving also. She’s a little fuzzy on when the last time was, but thinks it was three days before Connogher was bumped off. If you want I’ll keep searching for someone who saw her the night of the murder.”
“Very good, Saul, but that won’t be necessary. Will you be available if I need your services again in a few hours?”
“Sure, that won’t be a problem.”
By the time Saul got off the line, I’d already found more evidence that pointed to an affair between Alice Lind and Connogher. “I’ve got credit card charges showing that two and a half months ago she started parking at a garage three blocks from Connogher’s secret apartment. Twenty-four of these charges, all of them in the evening, the average time her car was left in the garage was two hours and fourteen minutes. I’m guessing she either convinced her husband she was taking classes of some sort during those nights, or she rendezvoused with Connogher when Lind was busy. I’ve also got her making phone calls each of those days to what I’m guessing was a disposable phone that Connogher used.”
“Very good, Archie.”
I couldn’t help marveling at the sheer duplicity and cold-bloodedness of this woman. Carrying on an affair with Connogher all so she could frame her husband for murder. “How do we prove she killed him?” I asked.
Julius grimaced at the thought of that. He said, “Unless I’ve badly miscalculated, Tom should be calling sometime today with what I need to expose and convict our murderer.”
I didn’t think that was likely. I knew the assignment Tom was working on, and it seemed a longshot at best. In fact, I calculated the odds at less than three percent of Tom being successful, but Julius must’ve been operating with better data because only three minutes later Tom called to report that he had found the person he was looking for.
“The guy’s name’s Charlie Huck,” Tom said over a background noise of music and people talking. “A shifty individual, to say the least. He’s sitting at the bar, but I’ve got eyes on him. As you suggested, I put out word that I was looking for someone selling Rohypnol and it didn’t take him long to contact me. To make a long story short, I showed him the four pictures Archie sent over and he picked out the wife. Claims she wore dark sunglasses and a red wig when he sold her the drugs, but insists it’s her.” He paused before adding, “I have to admit, Julius, I thought this was a wild goose chase at best, especially with the money you wanted me to offer. Should I have him sign a statement and pay him?”
“Tom, I think it would be better if you brought him here.”
“I don’t think he’ll go for that, at least not voluntarily. I could strong-arm him if needed.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary. Tell him that if he wants to be paid, he needs to come here. And that if he doesn’t, I’ll be disregarding whatever he told you.”
“Okay, Julius. I’ll call you back.”
Tom didn’t sound as if he thought he had much chance of success, and when he called back forty-seven seconds later he sounded almost as if he were in shock. “Expect us in twenty minutes,” he said, keeping the call brief so he wouldn’t be giving Huck any extra time to change his mind.
“You’ve got the V.P. of Marketing, Sebastian Nygren, scheduled in a half hour,” I told Julius.
“Archie, please call him and cancel the appointment.”
“Sure, I can do that if you want, but according to Alice Lind’s driver’s license, she weighs a hundred and five pounds while her husband’s at a hundred and ninety. She had to have had help moving his unconscious body to her car so she could dump it in that alley, and she could’ve called any of those three that night. And it makes sense that any of those three could’ve conspired with her.”
“A valid point, Archie, but if necessary I can talk with him later.”
I understood then what was going on. He was hired only to prove whether or not his client murdered Connogher, and not to uncover who Alice Lind’s accomplice might’ve been. So as far as Julius was concerned he was done, at least after he met with the shifty Charlie Huck. I was going to argue with him about the gross lack of professionalism he was showing, but I knew it would be pointless, so I didn’t bother.
◆◆◆
Charlie Huck appeared every bit as shifty as Tom had promised. Medium height, chunky body, stringy black hair, and a thick round face with skin that made me think of hardened rubber. He had eight arrests in Boston, all for burglary or selling stolen property. No convictions, and no drug charges either. Julius had him sign a statement, and then counted out five hundred dollars for him, all the while Huck showing a shifty sort of smile. After Huck shoved the money into his pants pocket, he started to push himself out of his chair, but Julius told him he’d like him to stick around for an hour, maybe longer.
“Not in this office,” Julius said. “Mr. Durkin will show you to another room and keep you company.”
Huck looked at Julius as if he were crazy. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I gave you what you wanted.”
“In a way you did,” Julius agreed. He held up the paper Huck had signed. “You may not realize it, but this statement has placed you on top of a deadly precipice, and unless you do as I ask the consequences for you will be dire.”
“Such as?”
“At the very least a twenty-year prison sentence.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No sir. And if you were half as bright as you believe you are, you would know better than to test me.”
Huck blinked then. And not just figuratively but literally. In fact, several times in rapid succession. His expression dulled as he low
ered his gaze from Julius’s, and without any further arguing he followed Tom out of the office.
I didn’t get where Julius’s threat of a twenty-year prison sentence came from. Huck had no previous convictions, so his admitting to selling Alice Lind four Rohypnol tablets would’ve most likely gotten him probation. At the very worst, three months jail time. I was trying to figure it out when Julius interrupted me with a list of instructions.
“When you call Detective Cramer, you can tell him not only will I be fulfilling my obligation to my client, but I will be handing him his murderer,” Julius said.
That was no surprise. He had known who the murderer was since Saul called him, and Huck had given him a way to prove it. Gathering the crowd he wanted to his office seemed anticlimactic to me since he could’ve simply had me fax Huck’s statement to Cramer, but I started making the phone calls he asked me to make.
◆◆◆
Julius’s office can comfortably seat six people, aside from Julius. At six o’clock that evening his office was officially crowded with nine people seated and five more standing in the back. Thomas Lind had the seat of honor in the oversized leather chair directly in front of Julius’s desk. Close by on the loveseat was his trophy wife looking badly tarnished. She also looked like she’d rather be anywhere in the world other than where she was, which was understandable given that she had to’ve known what was coming. Julius had seated Sebastian Nygren next to her, which I found an interesting choice and it made me wonder whether Julius had somehow gleaned that Nygren was her accomplice even though Julius still hadn’t questioned him. Nygren seemed nervous, although no more so than Janice Martin and Daniel Slattersby who were seated on chairs that were squeezed in next to the loveseat.
The only one in the room who looked more miserable than Alice Lind was Charlie Huck, who sat sandwiched between two of Cambridge’s finest on the sofa. Rounding things out, Cramer, Henry Zack, and an eighty-two year-old Mary Pickerling sat on chairs that were placed against the wall, while Tom Durkin, Saul Penzer, and three more of Cambridge’s finest stood in the back of the room.
More Julius Katz and Archie Page 7
