Soft Case: (Book 1 in the John Keegan Mystery Series)

by John Misak

  “Here we go,” I said, hoping Jacob heard me.

  I saw Steve go over to John, who pointed in my direction. I was actually surprised that John knew my name, but then again, there wasn’t anyone else in the place who was a cop. Steve strode, and I mean strode, over to me. He was smiling.

  “Detective Keegan,” he said, standing over me, “how nice to see you again.” I really couldn’t tell if he was being a wiseass, or if this was just his way.

  “Hello Steve, have a seat.”

  He looked at me, then sat down slowly.

  “Need a drink?”

  “I’ll take a vodka and seven,” he said.

  I flagged the waitress, who was staring at the television with John, and she walked over.

  “Get my friend here a vodka and seven, and I’ll take another as well.” I know I said I was going to watch the drinking, but I didn’t want Steve to think this was some sort of formal interrogation. I wanted him to relax. Things come out easier that way.

  The waitress walked away and got the drinks.

  “Thanks for coming down,” I said. “I’m sure this is the last place you want to be right now.”

  “I could think of others.” Steve seemed relaxed, and didn’t at all seem concerned about talking to me. “I’m not sure what it is you want to talk to me about.”

  “There’s a few things. It’s no big deal.”

  “How’s the case going?”

  There was a good question. “It’s going. We’ve got a few things we are working on, and I was hoping you could shed some light on a few things.”

  “No problem. You still don’t think he committed suicide?”

  “I can’t say. Why? You really think he did?”

  His expression changed. It was subtle, but I noticed it. It was hard to put a finger on what I saw from him, but the best I could do is say that he seemed to get deeper into thought.

  “Everything looks that way from my standpoint. I mean, I’m no detective, but all the signs point to that.”

  “Like what, that he had a fortune, was going into the career he really wanted, and he had a great wife?”

  “Well, no, not that. Just everything else. You know, the car, the way he was acting right before he died.”

  “Can you get into that a little further? That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”

  The waitress came by, picked up my half-empty drink, and placed the other two down. Steve took his, drank a good bit of it, then put it down. I had a sip as well. He looked at me. I couldn’t tell for sure, but he seemed to be either hiding something, or trying to make me think some particular thing. What? I had no idea.

  “Let me put it to you like this. I knew the man pretty well. I wasn’t on a social level with him, of course, but I could tell when he was in a good mood or a bad mood. He had been in a bad mood for like two weeks before he died. He just didn’t seem like himself. He almost seemed depressed.”

  I tried to remember what story he had told me the first time we spoke, and I was pretty sure he had said something similar.

  “You think he was depressed enough to kill himself?”

  He acted like he thought about that for a second. I could tell it was only an act.

  “Yeah, I’d say so.”

  “Okay. So he was depressed, and depressed enough to kill himself. Then why would he drive his car all the way into the city, and then ram himself into an embankment? Why not take a bottle of pills, or, if he wanted to be really violent about it, take a gun to his head and blow his brains out? That would make a lot more sense that vehicular suicide, where the odds of survival are high.”

  “Hey, I’m just saying that I saw indications that make me think he might have actually killed himself. Why he did it the way he did, I have no idea.”

  “Right. You see, the way I look at it, suicide seems unlikely. I’m sure there is something more to this.”

  “There might be.”

  “What do you know of the business, Techdata?”

  “Honestly, not much. I took him there a few times, and I heard him on the phone, but I can’t say I know much about the whole thing.”

  “You know anything about his partner, Harold Chapman?”

  “A little. I met him a few times when he came to the house.”

  “In your opinion, how did they get along?”

  “You think Harold Chapman murdered him?” The question came as though he couldn’t believe I was thinking that. Like it was the most outlandish thing he had ever heard.

  “Anyone could have done it. Of course, the first step is to investigate the people closest to the victim.”

  “That guy doesn’t seem to have it in him,” Steve said. I didn’t know how well he knew the guy. He sounded like he knew him well. What that meant, I had no idea.

  “You’re saying, in your opinion, it’s impossible?”

  “I guess so. Like I said before, I’m no detective.”

  “Of course.” The mood had changed at the table. Steve had come in confident, almost completely comfortable talking to me. Now he had shifted a bit. I had him on the defensive, but to be honest, I had no idea what I said that did it.

  Steve had finished his drink, and I signaled to the waitress for another round. I was relaxed after the three drinks, and I didn’t have that nervous feeling I had earlier.

  “Okay, so you think Chapman is incapable?” I asked.

  “I do.”

  “What makes you think so? I mean, how well did you know him? How much contact did you have?”

  Steve shook his head. “It’s not like that. I can judge a guy by meeting him once. I never saw much of Chapman, but from what I did, he didn’t strike me as the type to have the innards to murder someone.”

  “Innards?” I asked.

  Steve pointed to his chest. “The heart,” he said.

  I decided to shift gears.“What do you know about marital problems between Mullins and his wife?”

  “Sondra?”

  “Yeah, unless he had another wife.”

  He didn’t laugh, but I was certain it wasn’t my problem with timing this time.

  “From what I knew, they got along fine.”

  That was a change. I seriously doubted that Steve didn’t notice they were having trouble, the way Sondra and Mullins’ mother had told me.

  “I understand there were major troubles between them over the years. Some of it even made the papers. Rumors of another man in Sondra’s wife, I think.”

  He didn’t say anything at first. He shifted in his seat.

  “I didn’t notice that they were having any trouble,” he said, ignoring the ‘other man’ comment. Interesting.

  It was time to get to the meat of this questioning. It was time to take a risk. The worst thing that could happen would be him getting up and walking away.

  “Listen, Steve, you’re lying to me. I’m not sure why, but I don’t appreciate it. I need the truth here.”

  He started to object, then he looked down.

  “I just don’t want to drag my former boss’ reputation through the mud, you know?”

  Sure he didn’t. “I understand, but please tell me what you know. You’re holding back. Please don’t do that.”

  “You’re not considering Sondra a suspect, are you? I mean, she was in the Bahamas and all.”

  So, there it was. He wanted to protect Sondra the whole time. Well, I couldn’t be certain, but it looked more and more that way. The only way I would find out would be to question him further about her.

  “I know that. I didn’t say I was considering her a suspect.”

  “Oh,” Steve said. “Sounded like you were.”

  “Not at all. Consider it my detective way of speaking. But it does help to know what sort of trouble they were having.”

  “You gonna keep this between us? I don’t want to see this all over the tabloids,” Steve said. “She’s been through enough.”

  “I understand. Of course that won’t happen. It’s between you
and me,” I said.

  He took another swig from his drink. I wanted to light up a cigarette from the pack that was sitting in front of me, but I was afraid to do so. As long as the pack stayed there on the table, I wasn’t risking Steve seeing the device, or the switch accidentally going off. Not that Steve had told me anything I could use yet.

  “Okay, they were fighting constantly. As a matter of fact, that’s another reason why I think he committed suicide. He treated her bad. Well, I don’t mean that he was a bad husband, but he was always doubting her, always thinking she was cheating on him. They would fight about that all the time. I would try not to listen, you know, it was their business, but they screamed in front of us sometimes. It was mostly about that.”

  “How often did they fight?”

  “A lot, especially over the two weeks before he died. He was certain she was cheating on him.”

  “Did he say who?”

  “No, of course not. He was always making blind accusations. This was probably just another one.”

  I looked at my watch casually. I couldn’t be sure that the battery would last exactly an hour, and I had been talking to Steve for almost forty minutes. I needed to make my way to the bathroom, or hope he would do that.

  “Well, to be honest,” I said, “she is a piece of ass. I’d probably wonder about her like that too.”

  Stevie-boy didn’t seem to enjoy that comment.

  “Sondra is a good woman, from what I know of her. Every one of his accusations came up empty.”

  He really was protecting Sondra. Why not let it ride even further?

  “Well, if I was her, I’d be looking to get out of that marriage, if that’s what he was doing.”

  “You are considering her a suspect,” Steve said.

  “I told you the first time we met, I consider everyone a suspect. Though she has a great alibi, I still have to explore the possibility that she has something to do with it.” I stood up. “Listen, these drinks ran right through me. I’m gonna go take a leak.”

  “Yeah,” he said, a bit angry. “No problem.”

  I walked over to the bathroom, which was right next to the bar. When I got there, I noticed that the television was set to NBC, and there was a bulletin.

  “We now bring you to a live broadcast of a press conference from Commissioner Agnelli of the New York Police Department,” the blonde anchorwoman said. For all the good luck I had experienced that day, it was all turning to shit.

  “Turn up the volume,” one of the men at the bar said. John complied, and I ran into the bathroom, hoping Steve wouldn’t overhear the press conference, which undoubtedly was about the Mullins case, and how the department was officially closing it as a suicide. This wasn’t good.

  I walked into one of the stalls, and pulled out the transmitter. Before I switched it off, I decided to alert Jacob of my situation.

  “If you’re hearing this, I just want you to know that things are getting interesting. They are playing the press conference on the television,” I said, talking toward my collar, and feeling like an idiot for doing it. I looked down at the transmitter for second. I assumed the battery was near dead.

  Before I had a chance to switch the transmitter off and turn on the new one, the door to the stall busted open, smashing me in the back and knocking me into the wall behind the toilet. I dropped the transmitter on the floor and couldn’t see it.

  “You son of a bitch,” Steve said from behind me. “You were trying to make me give up Sondra, weren’t you?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I said, still not able to turn around.

  “You know damn well what I am talking about. I saw the press conference. The case is closed. What the hell were you trying to do?”

  Before I had the chance to politely respond, he rammed his fist into the middle of my back. I wanted to thank him for doing that for me, and moving four of my vertebrae out of place. I didn’t get the opportunity because he hit me again, this time a little higher. Let me tell you something, fighting in a bathroom stall is no fun. To make matters worse, I was facing the wrong way, and getting closer to the toilet.

  Luckily, it was clean. Well, sort of.

  “Sondra didn’t have anything to do with her husband’s death, you understand that? Nothing to do with it!”

  “She’s a whore,” I said, and tried to kick him to knock him back a bit. I succeeded, but it wasn’t enough. I turned around, only to catch a stiff right hand in the mouth. I fell back, and started to feel a bit queasy. Not like I have a glass jaw or anything, but Steve, if I haven’t said this before, was put together pretty well, and obviously had enough training in the art of fighting. I did too, but I was working at a major disadvantage.

  Steve grabbed me, and turned me around. I tried to resist, but I was a little out of it, and he was a lot stronger than me. He pushed my head toward the toilet. I’ll do you the favor of not making any wisecracks about that situation. I’m sure you can figure them out.

  “Sondra was too good of a woman for Mullins. She was trapped in that marriage. You understand that? Your own department has even said Mullins killed himself. What are you doing poking around? Why are you questioning me about Sondra?”

  And why was he beating the shit out of me, and stuffing my head down the toilet? Of course, I couldn’t ask that question. My head was about to be submerged in toilet water. How nice.

  Though my face was submerged, I could still hear him speak.

  “He was killing her. He couldn’t offer her what she needed. I could. He was just in the way. The same way you are.”

  He lifted my head out of the water, then smashed it on the edge of the toilet. If you’ve never had something like this happen to you, let me tell you that the edge of a toilet is probably one of the hardest surfaces in the world. I had been helping a friend get through a drunken episode one time when I was a teenager. He was puking his brains out, and I was getting him through it. His head was buried in the toilet, so I picked him up by the back of his hair. I looked at him, and asked him if he was okay. He said yes. I told him I was going to let him go. He said okay. I let him go, and his forehead slammed right on the edge of the toilet bowl. It made a thud unlike any other I have heard before. He didn’t make a sound. He was knocked out cold, and he had a mark on his head for a week. The pain I felt from Steve slamming my head on the toilet was possibly the worst I’d ever experienced, as far as blows to that head are concerned. And, I didn’t have the good fortune my friend had. I didn’t pass out.

  “Thank you for that,” I muttered. I realized it was getting to the point my life was in danger. Steve had obviously disposed of Mullins, and he probably was intending to do the same thing to me. I reached down by my ankle for the small gun I kept there. My hand almost made it, too.

  “You stupid son of a bitch. You never even came close to figuring out what happened to Mullins. Chapman. How the fuck could you possibly think that Chapman could murder Mullins?” He picked my head up again, as I was just about to grab the gun. “Chapman wanted to do it, I am sure. From what I know, he might have even had it planned. But he doesn’t have the balls.”

  I had my hand on the handle of the gun. I couldn’t get it out of the holster. I felt like Fredo, from The Godfather, when his father is about to get shot. Helpless is the word I am looking for. Idiot would work too, of course.

  “So, I guess you do,” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure the words actually came out right, but he replied, so they must have.

  “Of course I do. And you had no idea, did you?”

  Did he want me to answer?

  He slammed my head against the edge of the toilet, and the last thing I heard before I went completely unconscious was, “Yeah, and I have the balls for killing you too.”

  Everything went black. I know that is a stock phrase, but if you really think about it, there is no better way to describe it. I have no recollection of what happened afterward.

  Epilogue

  I woke up in a hospital bed the next
morning. My head felt swollen, and was throbbing. I thought hangovers were the worst. This beat a hangover by a long shot. I put my hand to my forehead, and felt tape, which I realized was covering stitches. The bastard had cut me. I had gotten through youth and adolescence without any scars on my face. Now, I would most likely have one sitting right in the middle of my forehead. Of course, I should have been happy that I wasn’t dead. But I wasn’t. I was pissed.

  No one was in the room when I woke up. Maybe I should have expected that, but considering the questions I had about what had happened, it would have been nice. Instead, I was left there for three hours, wondering what the Hell I had been through, and whether or not Steve got away clean. I hoped he didn’t. Actually, I hoped he died in a pool of his own urine.

  I know what you are thinking. The supposed hero ended up with his head in the toilet. Also, I was wishing bad things on the guy who bested me in a fight, if that’s what you want to call it. Hey, it’s how it happened, and there is nothing I can do about that.

  It was about two in the afternoon when I received a visitor. The nurse came in first, an ugly nurse let me tell you, and asked if I wanted to see someone. She didn’t say who it was. I figured it was probably my mother, or someone else in my family. I was wrong.

  It was Geiger.

  “Hey pal,” he said, smiling at me. He was holding a basket of fruit, of all things.

  “Boss.”

  “Some night you had, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I knew you would come through.”

  “Hey, I appreciate the visit and the small talk, but I’d really like you to tell me what happened.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Steve Eckert first.”