Capital Murder (Arcane Casebook Book 7)

by Dan Willis

  “How much does a full-grown wolf weigh?” Alex asked.

  The lieutenant shrugged.

  “I don’t know, but one big enough to maul a man to death has got to be a hundred pounds if it’s an ounce.”

  Alex whistled. That would be a lot of dead weight for the thief to haul up on a rope, especially after climbing it himself.

  “Is there a circus in town?” he asked.

  “How would I know?” MacReady said, then he added, “Why?”

  “Because,” Alex said, “those trapeze guys can climb ropes like monkeys, and circuses work with all kinds of large, dangerous animals.”

  “What would circus performers want with a bunch of cards from an old loom?”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to shrug.

  “No idea,” he said. “But they might just be a hired crew, stealing the cards for someone else.”

  MacReady flipped his notebook open and began scribbling in it.

  “I guess I’ll go see if P.T. Barnum is in town.”

  “All right, Lieutenant,” Alex said, setting down his bag. “I promised Mr. Gundersen and Miss Pritchard that I’d look around, so I’ll do that while you make a few calls.”

  MacReady nodded, then instructed the three uniforms to stay out of Alex’s way before walking off.

  Alex took out his oculus and slipped it over his eye, then clipped the silverlight burner into his lamp. In a public space like this, he expected there would be hundreds of biological and chemical markers, everything from saliva and fingerprints, to grease and tobacco. When he lit the lamp, however, he was surprised. Most of the errant marks were confined to the various railings that kept visitors from touching the exhibits.

  Turning his attention to the loom, Alex found fingerprints on it, but most of them were old and almost faded completely. There were some fresh prints on the mechanism that read the cards, but they were fuzzy and indistinct. The only time Alex had seen something like that was once when a thief wore gloves but got some grease on them, so they left smeared-out grease prints behind.

  Discouraged, Alex turned his attention to the bloodstained floor. The picture painted by his lamp was gruesome. There were bloody footprints where the guard had tried to run away from the assault, and a smear of blood where he’d fallen. All around the area were animal footprints in blood, but they were much larger than Alex expected, almost as big as his hand.

  After walking over the area for ten minutes, Alex gave up. There just wasn’t any way to tell what had happened during the theft, beyond the obvious, of course. With a sigh, he blew out the silverlight burner and switched it for ghostlight. He didn’t expect to find anything magical involved, but he liked to be thorough. Shining the light around at the scene of the attack, he didn’t see anything, so he moved on to the loom. Sweeping the beam over the apparatus, he peered at the needles that read the cards and the various strings and gears that made up the machine.

  “Nothing,” he grumbled. He wasn’t excited about solving the theft of a bunch of cards with holes in them, but a man had been killed, a man who was just doing his job. Alex owed the dead guard his best effort.

  “Apparently my ‘best effort’ is confirming the police theory of a rope climbing thief with a wolf in his hip holster,” he muttered. It sounded just as ridiculous out loud as it did in his head. “All right,” he said to himself. “I’ve waisted enough time on this. Time to go over to the morgue.”

  He packed up his gear, then headed back to the front of the building to confer with Lyle and the lieutenant to make sure he had access to the morgue.

  14

  Accidents

  The office of the Deputy Curator of America’s official state museum was far less grand than Alex thought it would be, just a small, well-appointed room off a side hallway. When Alex arrived, Zelda was sipping a glass of some red liquor and seemed to be feeling much better.

  “Did you find any clues?” Lyle Gundersen asked as Alex entered.

  “Nothing that makes any sense,” he said. “For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would steal a bunch of old pattern cards. I mean if I’d been hired for this job, I’d have just faked some in my workshop. They’re just strips of wood with holes in them, right?"

  “They’re much more than that, Alex,” Zelda said, turning in her chair to face him. “Those cards are part of history, a part that’s gone now. They represent the hard work and ingenuity of the people who made them, and they’re a literal pattern of their artistry.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Lockerby was discounting the historical value, Zelda darling,” Lyle said, giving Alex an apologetic look. “Just wondering why a thief would pick those particular objects.”

  Zelda’s cheeks flushed a bit in response, but Alex gave her a smile.

  “Actually,” he said, “you just gave me an idea.” He turned to Lyle. “Those cards tell the loom how to weave a pattern, right?”

  Lyle looked a bit confused at the question, but nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “And does anyone at the museum know what pattern those cards produced?”

  “Uh,” Lyle hesitated. “Actually no,” he said. “We would never actually use the Jacquard Loom. It’s almost one-hundred years old, after all.”

  “But if you had the cards,” Alex pressed, “could someone determine what pattern they would make?”

  Lyle thought about that for a long moment, then shrugged.

  “I suppose,” he said. “But I suspect you’d need someone with an expertise in weaving to figure that out.”

  “You let me worry about that,” Alex said.

  “Why does it matter?” Zelda asked.

  “You said it yourself,” he replied. “The real value of those cards is what they represent.” He turned to Lyle. “You said those looms could make intricate patterns using the information encoded on those cards. So what if someone encoded more than just a fancy design?”

  Zelda’s expression changed from confusion to excitement and her smile lit up her face.

  “You mean something like a treasure map?” she wondered.

  Alex shrugged.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or it could be someone’s will, or the co-ordinates to a lost historical artifact, or any number of things. I think it would be very instructive to find out exactly what pattern those cards make.”

  “I guess that would be a good idea,” Lyle said, somewhat hesitantly. “But since they’ve been stolen, I don’t see how I can help you.”

  Alex put his hand on the Deputy Curator’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile.

  “What I need from you, is for you to call your insurance company.”

  “Why?” Zelda asked.

  “I spoke to him already,” Lyle admitted. “The value of the cards is rather minor, so we won’t be putting in a claim.”

  Alex shook his head.

  “I’m not interested in that,” he said, then winked a Zelda. “In order to insure your loom and its contents, your insurance company would have taken photographs of it, along with all the things that went with it.”

  “They’ll have pictures of the cards,” Zelda gasped, her eyes positively glowing. “Alex, that’s brilliant.”

  Alex just grinned.

  “You get me those pictures,” he said to Lyle, “and I’ll show them to a friend of mine in the textile industry. Once we know what the pattern made by those cards is, I bet you we’ll have a good idea about who stole them.”

  “I…I’ll call my agent back right away,” Lyle said, turning to his desk.

  “I want to go over to the city morgue and take a look at the dead watchman,” Alex said, taking out his cigarette case and offering one to Zelda. “Will you call your police contact first and make sure they won’t give me any trouble?”

  Lyle promised that he would, as Alex lit Zelda’s cigarette and then his own.

  “I expect it will take a few hours at least for them to dig up the photographs,” Alex said. “When they get here, call the Hay-Adams hotel an
d leave word for me.”

  Lyle nodded and Alex left the office. Before he left the museum, however, he stopped at the public phone booths in the lobby.

  “Young residence,” a honeyed, feminine voice greeted him when his call connected.

  “Tiffany? This is Alex Lockerby. How much do you know about the legislation your husband was involved in?”

  “Not very much, I’m afraid,” she said. “I usually relied on Duke for that sort of thing.”

  “Duke?”

  “My husband’s aide, Michael Harris — he goes by Duke. He oversaw all official communication, kept Paul’s calendar, that sort of thing. Do you think my husband was killed over something he was working on?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Alex said. He didn’t want to tell her it was the only lead he had.

  “I’d say it was a certainty,” Tiffany said. “I got a call this morning from the Illinois governor. He’s already appointed Paul’s replacement, a man named William Unger.”

  “That’s pretty fast,” Alex said. “Do you know this Unger guy?”

  “Yes, he ran against my husband in the last election.”

  “Is he a sore loser?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Tiffany said. “He’s the most typical example of a politician, a greedy coward.”

  “That sounds like exactly the kind of man who would have a rival killed to get him out of the way.”

  “In business, maybe,” Tiffany said. “But in politics, men like that won’t make a dangerous move unless there is a fortune on the line…or if they have no other choice.”

  Alex wasn’t sure her explanation rang true, but she understood politics better than he did. Still, he’d have Sherry look into William Unger and see if there might be a hidden motive for him to kill Paul Young.

  “Well, if he’s not our man, I’m back to your husband’s work,” Alex said. “How can I get access to the bills he was involved with?”

  “It’s public information, but it’ll take days for you to cut through the red tape at the National Archives. I’ll call Duke and have him give you access to Paul’s files.”

  “He can do that?”

  “Not legally,” Tiffany said with a chuckle. “You’ll have to go over after the Senate office building closes.”

  “What if Duke objects?”

  Tiffany laughed at that, a deep, full-throated sound.

  “I have a few very interesting pictures that will guarantee Duke’s cooperation,” she said. “Remind him of that if he gives you any trouble.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow at her words. So far the ins-and-outs of politics were leaving him jaded, at best.

  “All right,” he said, not addressing her admission of blackmail or her intent for him to become complicit in it. “I’ll go over after closing and go through everything. If I find anything, I’ll call.”

  “Or,” Tiffany purred. “You could come by afterword and brief me on what you found out.”

  The implication was naked, right out in the open, and Alex shuddered. Tiffany Young was a beautiful woman, there was no denying that, but she had ably demonstrated that she was also dangerous. Alex already had more than enough beautiful, dangerous women in his life.

  “I can’t,” he lied. “I’ve got another matter to deal with.”

  “Pity,” Tiffany said in a voice that made promises.

  Unlike the Manhattan morgue, which was hidden away in the basement of an ordinary-looking office building, the Washington D.C. morgue was its own, unassuming structure in the southeast part of the city. The problem with that was that if you showed up there, you were going to the morgue. When Alex was just starting out as a detective, he’d managed to sneak down to the Manhattan morgue by pretending to be going up to one of the various offices above it. There wouldn’t be any way for a young detective to bluff his way inside.

  As Alex paid the cabbie, he saw Connie getting out of a car in the morgue parking lot.

  “You sure we can get in?” he asked. “A museum guy doesn’t sound like he’d have any pull with the cops.”

  “Welcome to politics,” Alex said as the two men headed for the front door.

  A bored uniform with a mustache and a paunch gave Alex a hard look when he entered the building’s lobby. Putting on a confident smile, Alex walked right up to the man.

  “I’m Alex Lockerby,” he said. “Someone should have called about me.”

  The policeman didn’t look convinced, but he checked with an equally bored officer behind a tall counter and a few minutes later, Alex and Connie were escorted through a set of double doors and into the morgue proper.

  Unlike the morgue he was used to, this one was done up in white tile and looked more like a hospital. Officer Mustache led them back to the office of a gray-haired doctor who looked outraged at the very idea of shepherding a private detective.

  “Let the girl deal with them,” he said, waving Officer Mustache away.

  Rebuffed, the policeman led Alex and Connie back across the building to a tiny office that also seemed to serve as a storage room.

  “Miss Baker?” Officer Mustache said, knocking on the doorjamb.

  Inside, Alex could see a young woman with mouse-brown hair and thick glasses filling out reports under the harsh glow of a desk lamp. She had a plain face, tired eyes, a messy pony tail, and wore a white coat over her clothes.

  “What is it?” she said, without looking up.

  “Dr. Reynolds wants you to help these two,” Mustache said, jerking his thumb in Alex’s direction.

  The young woman looked up and took in Alex and Connie with a sweeping glance.

  “Who are they?” she asked.

  “Private detectives,” Mustache said, irritation plain in his voice. “Someone high up wants them to have a look around.”

  The woman looked back at Alex and he put on his most charming smile. It seemed to work, since she swept a few stray hairs back over her ear self-consciously.

  “All right,” she said, standing. “I’ll take it from here.”

  The officer thanked her, gave Alex a stern look, then headed back to his post.

  “Okay,” the woman said, standing up. “Who are you and what do you need?”

  Alex introduced himself and then Connie, claiming that the big man was his assistant.

  “Lisa Baker,” she said, sticking her hand out. “Since Dr. Reynolds doesn’t want to deal with you, I’m at your disposal.”

  “We’ll try not to take up too much of your time, Dr. Baker,” Alex said, shaking her hand. She had a firm grip and callused hands. Alex suspected that she did a lot of the work around the morgue.

  “It’s just Miss Baker for now,” she said with a self-deprecating smile. “I still have to finish my training, assuming Dr. Reynolds approves my work.”

  Alex got the impression that Reynolds was holding the girl up; he was certainly in a position to do so, and he could continue to pawn his work off on her as long as he did.

  “We’re here to see two of your clients,” Alex went on, his smile never wavering. “First a Michael Halverson — he would have been brought in early this morning, and then Sal Gerano, brought in sometime last week.”

  Lisa nodded and headed off down the tiled hall, motioning for them to follow.

  “If you’re looking for the coroner’s report,” she said, “there won’t be one for the man brought in this morning. We work fast, but not that fast.”

  “That’s all right,” Alex said. “I understand that case is pretty cut and dried, but I promised I’d take a look.”

  When they reached the cooler and Lisa uncovered Halverson’s body, Alex wished he hadn’t kept his promise. The body was lacerated and torn, the flesh ripped into long strips, and the man’s throat had been completely torn out.

  “Yuck,” Lisa said in the understatement of the century. “What happened here?”

  “The initial assessment was animal attack,” Alex supplied.

  “I concur,” Lisa said. She pointed to the ragged edges of
the wounds in the man’s neck. “You can see the tracks left by the teeth. Some kind of dog, I’d guess.”

  “Whoever made the initial assessment thought it was a wolf.”

  Lisa leaned down and examined the wounds more closely, then she shrugged.

  “The teeth are a bit large for a dog,” she admitted. “But it might have been a big dog.”

  “Ain’t that what a wolf is?” Connie asked. “A big dog?”

  Lisa smiled and nodded.

  “Pretty much, but it’s rare to find a wolf in the city.”

  Satisfied that he’d done his duty, Alex motioned for Lisa to cover the body again. Once she’d wheeled it back into the cooler, she hunted around for Sal’s body, eventually bringing it out. When she pulled the sheet back, Alex found himself looking at what appeared to be a younger version of Connie. The man was large, with big shoulders and a lantern jaw. His body was covered with nicks and scrapes and there was a large depression on the side of his head where he’d clearly been hit with a blunt object.

  As Alex began to examine the body, Lisa picked up the clipboard hanging from the end of the gurney and began reading the coroner’s report.

  “This one was fished out of the Potomac,” she said, flipping to the next page. “Multiple broken bones and contusions. Cause of death looks like the blunt force wound to the head. Dr. Reynolds concluded that he’d been beaten by multiple attackers.”

  “Does he say who did it?” Connie asked.

  Lisa chuckled and shook her head, no doubt assuming the mobster’s question was a joke.

  “I hate to disagree with Dr. Reynolds,” Alex said, turning one of Sal’s hands over to examine the palm. “But I don’t think this man was involved in a fight.”

  “Oh, really?” Lisa asked, her voice wavering between interest and sarcasm. “And what makes you think that?”

  Alex turned Sal’s hand back over so the top was visible.

  “There aren’t any defensive wounds on his hands,” he said. “Sal here was a professional bodyguard, so he knew how to fight. Even if he’d been jumped by multiple attackers, he’d have gotten off a few punches before they put him down. But there’s nothing here.”