Capital Murder (Arcane Casebook Book 7)

by Dan Willis

  Lisa looked from Alex to Sal’s hand and back, then she rounded the table and examined the other hand.

  “There should be bruising on the knuckles if he’d been in a fight,” she said, more to herself than to Alex. Finally she looked up, nodding. “You’re right, Mr. Lockerby,” she admitted.

  Before Alex could respond, she moved back to where she’d left the autopsy report and began paging through it again, mumbling.

  “What’s she doing?” Connie whispered, moving up beside Alex.

  “The same thing we’re doing,” Alex replied. “Looking for clues.”

  As Lisa continued to read and mutter, Alex reached under the gurney and removed the cardboard box that sat on its lower shelf. He knew from experience that it would contain the dead man’s personal effects.

  “Let’s see what we can find out while she works,” he said, moving to a nearby desk and setting the box down.

  “What are we looking for?” Connie asked as Alex began taking out Sal’s clothing and patting it down.

  “Anything that might give us a clue to where Sal was killed.”

  Alex squeezed the leg of Sal’s trousers, running his hand down each leg. If there had been anything concealed inside he’d have felt it, but there was nothing. Moving on, he repeated the process with the suit coat, the shirt, and even Sal’s tie. The only thing he found was a dry cleaner’s mark on the inside lining of the jacket.

  Next came Sal’s shoe — apparently only one had been recovered — as well as a cheap pocketwatch, a gold wedding band, a lighter, and a leather wallet. Opening the wallet, Alex found it empty. With a sigh he checked the box again, looking for anything he might have missed. The only thing left was a property envelope where the coroner would have put any money found on the body.

  He was about to start putting everything back, but he’d come this far so he might as well be thorough. With a sigh, he picked up the envelope, turned it over, and tipped it toward his open hand. When nothing came out, he looked inside and found it completely empty.

  “Why did they put this here if there’s nothing in it,” he groused. As he moved to throw the useless paper into the box, he caught the name printed on the outside of the envelope. He’d assumed it said Capital Police, but instead, it read, Capital Bank.

  “What?” Connie said, picking up on Alex’s sudden excitement.

  “Did Sal have an account at Capital Bank?” he asked.

  Connie shrugged.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “But I can tell you who does have an account there, Colton. The boss set it up for him and puts money in there to pay the business expenses.”

  “As soon as we’re done here, I need you to call Sal’s wife and find out if he had an account.”

  “And if he did?”

  “We need to know if he took any money out on the day he died.”

  Connie was about to ask something more, but Lisa’s raised voice interrupted.

  “I think I’ve figured it out,” she said. “Look here.”

  Alex and Connie moved over so they could see the clipboard where Lisa was pointing. She had folded the upper pages back, revealing a diagram of a human body that also showed the bones. Several lines had been made through various bones.

  “This shows where Mr. Gerano had broken bones,” she said. “Look here, at his legs.”

  Each of the upper leg bones had a slash through it but Alex didn’t see why that would be significant.

  “These injuries are symmetrical,” Lisa said. “They’re in almost the exact same position on both femurs.”

  “So?” Connie said.

  “So I think they were caused at the same time by a large, horizontal object.”

  “You think he was hit by a car,” Alex guessed.

  Lisa blushed slightly and brushed her hair back.

  “Well not a car, exactly,” she said. “If this were a bumper, it’s too high for a car. I think he was hit by a truck, one moving pretty fast. That would account for his injuries and there wouldn’t be any defensive wounds.”

  Alex exchanged a glance with Connie, then nodded.

  “Thank you, Miss Baker,” Alex said, offering her his hand. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  She smiled again and told Alex he was welcome any time, then she wheeled Sal’s body back into the cooler.

  “You got that look,” Connie said.

  “What look?”

  “Like you just made your first big score. I’m guessing that means you’ve figured something out.”

  “Maybe,” Alex admitted as he headed toward the exit. “I’m guessing Sal didn’t have an account at Capital Bank. That would mean that the money he took out was from Colton’s account.”

  “Why would Sal take money out of Colton’s account?”

  Alex pushed the door open but hesitated, waiting for Connie to catch up.

  “If you were assigned to guard Colton and he got grabbed, what would you do?”

  “Call the boss and start a manhunt,” Connie said without hesitation.

  “Let’s say you can’t or won’t do that?”

  Connie sighed and shrugged.

  “I don’t know, I guess I’d go out to find Colton myself.”

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “I think Colton got grabbed and Sal tried to just pay the ransom.”

  “Okay,” Connie said, thinking over what Alex said. “But is that good news or bad?”

  “If I’m right, it’s bad,” Alex said. “If Sal was hit on his way to make the ransom drop, it means that whoever grabbed Colton thinks they delivered their ransom demand and they haven’t heard back.”

  Connie swore.

  “What if they’re the ones who killed Sal?” he asked.

  “No,” Alex said. “That had to be someone else. If the kidnappers never intended to give Colton back, they’d just wait and take the ransom at the drop. No need to kill Sal.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You go see your boss,” Alex said, waving at a passing cab. “Find out how much money Sal took out and from whose account, then call me at my hotel.”

  15

  The Tip of the Iceberg

  In Manhattan, uniformed policemen had local precinct buildings spread throughout the city, enabling them to respond quickly to any emergency. Detectives, however, were concentrated in the Central Office, allowing them greater access to the resources they needed and allowing them to easily share information. D.C. , however, spread its detectives out into three offices around the city. Each office covered a piece of the ten-mile square that made up the district.

  When Alex exited a cab in front of Command Office number two, he wasn’t impressed. Unlike the towering edifice that was the Manhattan Central Office, this building was a plain, two-story brick structure. If he hadn’t known he was in the right place, Alex would have sworn it was an overbuilt warehouse or a small industrial building.

  “I’m here to see Detective Norton,” Alex told the desk sergeant in the lobby.

  “Take a seat,” the man grumbled, not looking up from his paper.

  “He’s expecting me,” Alex pressed.

  The cop looked over the top of his paper and gave Alex the once-over. His expression said he wanted to make Alex wait just for the crime of interrupting his reading, but Alex was wearing an expensive suit and that might mean trouble. After a long moment, the man sneered and set his paper aside.

  “Who wants to see the Detective?” he asked as he picked up the phone on his desk.

  Alex grinned back at the surly sergeant.

  “Tell him Santa Claus is here,” he said, “and I’ve got a present for him.”

  Ten minutes later, a uniformed officer led Alex to a small office with a desk and several filing cabinets. There might have been a chair for visitors in front of the desk, but it was impossible to tell. Every surface was covered with paper. Not the orderly stacks he’d seen in Danny’s office, but what amounted to litter. It looked as if someone had taken the contents of several dozen police reports
and simply thrown them up in the air.

  In the center of this sea of document chaos sat Detective Norton, wearing a different rumpled suit from yesterday. As Alex entered, his escort stepped back and closed the door.

  “All right, Lockerby,” Norton growled. “What’s with giving my desk sergeant a hard time?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “He started it,” he said. “Besides, I figured you might not want anyone to know we were meeting in case they read that story in the Capital Dispatch.”

  Norton thought about that for a moment, then nodded.

  “It’s not a bad idea, actually,” he admitted. “So, you found something.”

  “Not yet, but I have good news on that front,” Alex said. “How did your investigation go?”

  Norton’s expression soured and he took out a crumpled cigarette pack.

  “My buddy directed me to the National Archives,” he said, fishing through the pack for a smoke. “He said all legislation is on file over there. So, I call over and they tell me that the bills I’m looking for are in their legislation storage room.” He held up the pack to his eye, then grumbled and crushed it.

  Alex pulled out his own case and offered a cigarette to the Detective.

  “So we can just go over there and look it up?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Norton said, lighting his borrowed cigarette. “They haven’t filed it yet.”

  “Who cares?” Alex asked, lighting a cigarette of his own. “ We’ll just go through the newest stack and find it ourselves.”

  Norton chuckled without any humor in his voice.

  “You’d think, but no. According to the helpful clerk I talked to, they just got finished filing the Congressional Record for nineteen-thirty-four.”

  “So they’ve got three years of legislation in a big pile in a back room?” he said with a laugh.

  “Yeah,” Norton said. “And it isn’t funny. According to my contact, Congress put a bunch of security rules on their paperwork a few years ago. That means I’d need a warrant just to get a look for some bill for renaming a post office.”

  “And whatever we’re looking for is no post office,” Alex said with a nod. He took a drag of his cigarette and smiled at the Detective. “Then it’s a good thing I’ve got an in for us.”

  “Just like that?” Norton said, appraising Alex from under his bushy eyebrows.

  “Well, it does come with one caveat.”

  Norton’s face twisted into an expression of disgust.

  “Okay, Lockerby, get to the bad news.”

  Alex put his hand on his chest and gave Norton a look of profound innocence.

  “Why Detective, you wound me,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Not only have I gotten us in at the Senate offices tonight at six, but I’ve also recruited some extra help.”

  “The bad news,” Norton demanded.

  “Much like your superiors,” Alex explained, “the FBI has taken their hotshot sorceress, Sorsha Kincaid off the Senator’s murder.”

  “Isn’t she your girlfriend?” Norton asked.

  “By a happy coincidence, I believe she is,” Alex said. “But what’s important is that she believes the Senator was murdered, too.”

  Norton looked like he was about to object, but he stopped and thought about that for a long moment. When he smiled, Alex knew their little cabal had taken shape.

  “Do you think she could get us a look at the FBI’s file on the case?” he asked.

  Alex bit his lip and shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “The local guy in charge doesn’t like her very much. I guess she’s interfering with his time in the spotlight. Names Blake if I remember right.”

  Norton chuckled at that.

  “Sounds like him, the pompous ass. He’s the director of the FBI’s field office in the city. A man of great ambition and little talent, which means he’ll go far in Washington.”

  Alex wanted to laugh at the detective’s words, but it didn’t sound like he was joking. That prospect was horrifying.

  Reaching into his shirt pocket, Alex took out his flip notebook and tore out a page that contained Sorsha’s room number and the number of the Fairfax hotel where she was staying.

  “What’s this for?” Norton asked as Alex dropped it on top of his paper-strewn desk.

  “I’ll arrange for Sorsha to meet us at the Senate Offices tonight, but after that you two need to coordinate directly.”

  Norton picked up the paper, then his eyes narrowed, and he looked up at Alex.

  “Why?”

  “Because, Detective,” Alex said, reaching behind him for the doorknob. “Like you, the Sorceress might find herself in trouble if anyone were to know that I was working with her.”

  Norton thought about that as Alex opened the door, then he nodded.

  “That’s fair enough,” he said. “One less person to share the credit with, I suppose.”

  Alex grinned at the man, then stepped out into the hall.

  “Glad we understand each other,” he said. “Six o’clock in front of the Senate Office Building. Don’t be late.”

  With that, Alex headed back toward the stairs and the first floor. For as disorganized as Detective Norton seemed to be, he caught on quickly. Alex could work with that.

  He stopped by the pay phone in the lobby and dropped a nickel into the slot.

  “Give me room two-eleven,” he told the man who answered. A moment later he heard Sorsha’s voice come on. “I just talked with Detective Norton,” he reported. “He’s on board.”

  “What about looking at the Senate files?” she asked. “My friend in the Senate says it might take a couple of days to track down what Senator Young was working on. He isn’t on the same committees.”

  Alex explained about his conversation with Tiffany Young and how she’d basically blackmailed her husband’s aide, Duke Harris, into helping them.

  “All right,” Sorsha said when he was done. “I’ll be there at six sharp, and…and thanks for helping.”

  Alex bit back a snarky comment.

  “Any time, darlin’,” he said, then hung up.

  He turned to make his way back out to the street, but stopped. It had only been a couple of hours since Alex had left the museum, but it was on the way back to his hotel room, so he decided to check in.

  “Alex,” Lyle Gundersen’s voice greeted him enthusiastically. “I’m glad you called. My insurance man is on his way here with the pictures you wanted.”

  “That’s great work, Mr. Gundersen. I’ll be right over.”

  Twenty minutes later, Alex entered Lyle Gundersen’s office at the Smithsonian. To his surprise, Zelda Pritchard was still there, sitting in one of the comfortable chairs in front of Gundersen’s desk. She had her legs crossed and the slit in her skirt was open, revealing a generous amount of toned calf.

  “Alex,” she said as he entered, giving him a smile that reminded him of Leslie Tompkins. “I’m glad you came back,” she went on, bouncing her bare leg casually. “You hurried off so quickly before I was beginning to think you wanted to get away from me.”

  Alex took off his hat and held it over his chest.

  “My most humble apologies,” he said. “I was obviously too eager to track down the museum’s card thief.”

  “Yes, about that,” Lyle said, standing from behind his desk. He indicated a third person in the room, an older, heavyset man with a bowler hat in his hand and a fairly large folio under his arm. “This is Jerry Edwards. He represents our insurance company.”

  Edwards stuck out his hand, but was still holding his hat. After a moment of confusion, he dropped it on the desk and shook Alex’s hand.

  “Lyle said these might help you find out who robbed the museum,” he said, holding the folio out. “Since the museum isn’t going to make a claim, we won’t need these right now, and my company is interested in apprehending the thief just the same.”

  Alex took the folio, but almost dropped it.

  �
�How many pictures did you take?” he said with a grin as he placed the folio on Gundersen’s desk.

  “There’s one of every card that was acquired with the loom,” Edwards said.

  That didn’t sound right, so Alex undid the clasp on the front and opened the top of the folio. Inside there had to be two hundred photographs. Reaching in, Alex pulled out a half-dozen or so and spread them out across the desk. Each was a photograph of a thin wooden card laid out on a white cloth with a ruler plainly visible below it. Comparing them quickly, Alex found they were all different, and each card had a number cut into its bottom right corner, indicating its position in the sequence.

  “You say there’s only one picture of every card in here?” Alex asked the insurance man.

  “That’s right,” Edwards confirmed, a bit confused by the question.

  Alex ignored his probing glance and turned to Lyle Gundersen.

  “How many cards do you figure were stolen from the loom exhibit?”

  “About fifty,” he said. “But I don’t know which of those are the stolen cards.”

  Alex grabbed his forehead with his thumb and index finger, desperately attempting to ward off a frustration headache.

  “I’ve been assuming that whoever stole them did it because they wanted to reproduce the pattern the cards make,” he explained, somehow resisting the urge to yell.

  “I don’t follow,” Gundersen said.

  “Lyle,” Zelda gasped, standing up to better see the pictures on the desk. “Don’t you see what Alex is getting at?”

  Gundersen looked from Zelda to Alex, then shook his head.

  “They can’t reproduce the pattern without all the cards,” Alex said with exaggerated patience. He picked up one of the pictures from the desk and held it up. “That means they’re going to need the rest of these.”

  “Oh,” Lyle said, his cheeks reddening in embarrassment. “I actually…I didn’t consider that.”

  “So where are all of these,” Alex said, waving the picture. “There’s got to be a couple hundred pictures in here.”

  “Well, most patterns are very complicated,” Lyle said. “It’s quite common for these kinds of looms to use several hundred cards in just a simple pattern. As for the cards, whoever set up the exhibit probably took the fifty best cards to be put on display.”