Unforced Error

by Michael Bowen

  “I’m not so sure,” Melissa said. “It doesn’t speak particularly well of Peter that he had access to that drug, even if he was trying to commit suicide instead of take advantage of an unwilling woman.”

  “Be your age,” Klimchock said dismissively. “Obviously, it was the bimbo who had the drug, not Peter. She gave it to him.”

  “Not to lapse into gender stereotypes,” Melissa said, “but a bimbo who wants to get a guy into bed generally doesn’t have to plan on drugging him.”

  “The one on TV who tried bedding Peter came a cropper.”

  “To be sure. But your average, garden variety bimbo wouldn’t plan her evening around running into gentlemen like Peter. She’d be anticipating a more readily available male. So why would she go to the risk and expense of getting the one drug she’d never anticipate using? My heart keeps trying to find a way around attempted suicide, but my brain keeps saying no.”

  “It’s my brain that has trouble with the attempted suicide notion,” Klimchock said. “I will grant you that suicide is a moral failing, but it does require a certain modicum of physical courage. Now, Peter is a polished jewel, but God love him he is not a courageous man. I’ve seen him back away from men two stone lighter than he is. I’ve seen him cringe over paper cuts.”

  “Something to file away for future reference, I suppose,” said Melissa.

  “Have you turned up anything on Karin Henderson?”

  “There is a Henderson who spells her first name that way and lives near Liberty, which would be within easy driving distance of Jackrabbit Press,” Klimchock said.

  “Is her husband by any wild chance a recently escaped felon who had been serving time for assault-with-intent on an imagined rival?”

  “No. He’s a shipping expediter with Yellow Freight, and an Air Force reservist on top of it. Not only that, his summer duty includes this week. On Monday night he and his mates got on board a C-140 carrying heavy equipment to Germany, and they’re not scheduled to return until Friday.”

  “So we’re down one suspect,” Melissa said.

  “Never say die, now,” Klimchock. “I’ll keep checking, and you track down our General Rawlins and his order.”

  Melissa had gotten far enough through this latest assignment to learn that General John Rawlins had been chief-of-staff to Ulysses Grant when Rep finally made his appearance. The bravest smile she could muster at her husband’s entrance couldn’t mask her discouragement.

  “Your clever wife has discovered that the toxin which disabled Peter is known as a date-rape drug, ” Klimchock said, without taking her eyes from her computer screen. “I call that a fair afternoon’s work all by itself.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Melissa sighed.

  “Maybe we should defer our review of everybody’s research for a couple of hours,” Rep said. “I think the next order of business is to check in with Linda and Peter. We need to get them into Norm Archer’s law office tomorrow morning—and we need to tell them about the saber.”

  “Uh oh,” Klimchock said then, still without so much as a glance at Rep, “what have we here?”

  “I give up,” Rep said.

  “Henderson is Karin’s married name,” Klimchock said.

  “Not a member of the Lucy Stone League,” Rep said, alluding to the nineteenth century American feminist who had first called for married women to keep their own names.

  “Rep, darling, do quit showing off,” Melissa said.

  “Her maiden name was Pendleton,” Klimchock said. “She’s the youngest sister of Sergeant Frederick Pendleton of the Missouri Highway Patrol.”

  “This somewhat ratchets up the urgency of our talk with Linda and Peter,” Rep said.

  “It’s unanimous,” Melissa said.

  “We can use my car,” Klimchock said.

  It was pushing five-thirty when the three of them finally made their way into Peter’s room at St. Luke’s, sixty-plus blocks of rush-hour traffic from the Jackson County Public Library. While Melissa and Klimchock took care of hugging Linda, Rep noted that Peter seemed to be sleeping peacefully, forehead dry and IV’s detached.

  “The crisis is over,” Linda said, following Rep’s eyes. “About two hours ago he was able to urinate, and it was like that scene in Austin Powers when he wakes up from suspended animation. The doctors were enormously pleased. They told me it meant that the effects of the drug had pretty much worn off. They’re going to observe him overnight, and then probably release him in the morning.”

  “Good,” Rep said. “I hate to sound all-business about this, but I think we should go straight from the hospital to Norm Archer’s office tomorrow.”

  “Why?” Linda asked.

  As gently as she could, Melissa told her about the residue found on Peter’s saber, and the perfect genetic match with Quinlan’s blood.

  “But that’s impossible,” Linda said. “It just can’t be.”

  Good defense, Rep thought. Worked for O.J.

  Rep’s phone rang. He stepped out of the room and, seeing signs warning sternly against the use of cell-phones in the vicinity of patients’ rooms, almost jogged to an open lounge area at the end of the corridor.

  “This is Cerv,” the voice said when Rep answered. “I wanted you to know that two Missouri Highway Patrolmen left here three minutes ago with the material you brought to me, and the original records documenting chain of custody of said materials from the time it came into my hands.”

  “Missouri Highway Patrol,” Rep repeated. “Not Kansas City, Missouri Police Department or Jackson County Sheriff.”

  “Correct.”

  “Is your written report finished yet?”

  “It isn’t started yet, except for the computer-printouts with the raw data, but even if it had been they wouldn’t have gotten it. That’s work product.”

  “Right,” Rep said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Hands clasped behind his back, staring with grim distraction at a mural of Tweety Bird grinning against a garish, red and orange background, Rep stayed in the lounge instead of hurrying back to the room. He told himself that, no matter what, it had been the right decision to tell Pendleton about the saber. The police would have had it within a few days in any event, and this way Peter could be depicted as having nothing to hide. A cynical defense lawyer, seizing on the Karin Henderson neé Pendleton angle, might even try to make something out of Sergeant Pendleton sending Highway Patrol troopers instead of local police officers to pick the evidence up.

  Right, a minority report in his psyche was saying. You know what, buddy? You screwed up. His gut felt hollow.

  The police would have a preliminary report on the saber by tomorrow morning at the latest, and maybe within a couple of hours. They might waste an hour checking the Damons’ home again, but it wouldn’t take them long to start checking hospitals. The next move Rep and company made had to be the right one, and they had to make it fast.

  “Who was on the phone?” Melissa asked from behind him a few minutes into his reverie.

  “Cerv,” Rep said, turning to face her. “Pendleton didn’t waste any time. He’s already had a couple of his own boys pick up the saber.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “I’m not sure, but whatever it is, Linda gets a vote. So let’s get her and Dame Diane Klimchock out here to talk things over.”

  The conference lasted about twelve minutes, which was enough time to come up with three options: (1) wake Peter up and try for an early check-out; (2) stay with Peter until either he woke up and they could talk to him or the police came; and (3) split up, with Rep staying by Peter’s bed and the others going back to the library to interview the security guard when he came in early.

  For Melissa and Linda, who had seen Peter writhing in his own vomit less than six hours ago, (1) was out of the question. That left (2) and (3). They picked (3), on the theory that if Linda weren’t there when and if the police came she, at least, couldn’
t be interviewed.

  They marched back to the room. Peter was gone.

  Chapter 17

  Klimchock accomplished more in the next three hours than Rep and Linda did—which, unfortunately, wasn’t saying much. She drove to her apartment, fed Bloody Helpless (her dog) and Bone Idle (her cat), took Bloody Helpless for a walk, sorted her mail, checked her answering machine, changed from a Modern Career Wear linen skirt-suit and silk blouse into a Casual Moderns linen skirt and cotton blouse, dined on a microwaved pot pie while scanning the Kansas City Star, enjoyed a Dunhill and a cup of Earl Grey, and drove back to the Jackson County Public Library. From this she gained a measure of contentment, reinforced adoration from Bloody Helpless, complacent indifference from Bone Idle, and two answering machine questions from John Paul Lawrence, who was wondering whether funding for the Liberty Memorial library expansion project had run into some kind of snag.

  Rep and Linda, by contrast, spent their time in the VW checking the Damons’ home, Linda’s hotel room, the Country Club Plaza, the Kansas City Jazz Museum, Stroud’s, Bryant’s, the libraries at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Rockhurst University, and every other haunt and hangout Linda could think of where Peter might have gone to ground. They accomplished absolutely nothing. When Klimchock and Melissa finally reunited with them at the public library guard station shortly before nine-thirty that night, they would see a bedraggled, ill-tempered, and empty-handed pair.

  For most of this interval, Melissa thought she was faring just about as badly. Linda told her that Chelsea Tuttle stayed at the Raphael Hotel near the Plaza when she visited Kansas City, but a few calls confirmed that she wasn’t registered there or in any of the major downtown hotels.

  So, faute de mieux, Melissa drove the Taurus to the encampment in search of Sergeant Pendleton. Not without difficulty she eventually found the Missouri Partisan Rangers sector of the encampment. She reached that area just after retreat, with plenty of daylight left but no military chores remaining for the re-enactors. So it aggravated her a bit that Pendleton took his own sweet time before moseying over to see her.

  “Good evening, Sergeant,” she said, choking back her pique and offering a reasonably warm smile. “Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.”

  “My pleasure, entirely, ma’am,” he assured her. Shifting a cast-iron skillet with something sizzling in it to his left hand, he doffed his hat and sketched a hasty bow. “I’m afraid we can’t provide any camp stools here.”

  “Entirely unnecessary,” Melissa assured him. With only a hint of clumsiness she sank to a sitting position on the ground, pulling her khaki cotton skirt—definitely not period-authentic—up to her knees. Pendleton tamped down grass with his right foot, then squatted and set the skillet in the flattened space. An inch-thick slab of spit-roasted beefsteak graced the skillet.

  “Didn’t know if you’d had time to eat,” he said, offering her a one-bladed pocket-knife. “We’re a bit short on utensils, too.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” she said, accepting the knife.

  She hadn’t quite believed Rep when he’d told her how true believers ate at the encampment. Sensing Pendleton’s scrutiny, though, she had no intention of playing greenhorn. Gripping the knife’s handle with the lower three fingers of her right hand and bracing her thumb against the dull side of the blade, she sank the edge into the meat, sliced as far as she could, then sawed through a bite-sized piece until she hit iron. She trapped the morsel between her thumb and the blade, raised it to her mouth and dropped it in.

  “Delectable,” she said after she’d swallowed. “Thanks very much.”

  “You’re most welcome,” Pendleton said, nodding slightly. “Now, how may I be of service to you?”

  “Well, I don’t know if this will be useful to the police, but I thought of something today while we were all trying to recover from the uproar over Mr. Quinlan’s death, so I figured I’d pass it along.”

  “I’d be most grateful if you would.”

  Melissa let Pendleton watch her enjoy another slice of beefsteak before continuing. The stuff really did taste good, worth even the juice that she could now feel running slowly down her jaw and the grease congealing on her fingers.

  “I happened to visit the editorial offices at Jackrabbit Press last night, and saw something a little odd.”

  “What time were you up there?” Pendleton interjected. No nineteenth-century linguistic flourishes now. All of a sudden it wasn’t 1864 anymore.

  “I didn’t have a watch, but it had to be sometime before ten o’clock. I saw a letter on Mr. Quinlan’s chair with a letter-opener stuck through it. Very dramatically, you know, not like the way you’d ordinarily leave a message for someone?” Her voice rose at the end to turn the declaration into a question.

  Pendleton’s expression didn’t change by an eye-blink as she said this. She couldn’t tell whether he was holding a pair of deuces or a full house.

  “How did you happen to be there?”

  “I was with Linda Damon. She works there, of course.”

  “Right,” Pendleton said. “Speaking of Linda Damon, you wouldn’t happen to know where she is right now, would you?”

  “I couldn’t say. Rep told me she’s meeting with a lawyer tomorrow, though, so I expect she’ll be in touch soon.”

  “That would be good. Any idea who left this note?”

  “It’s interesting that you use the word note. I saw a letter typed on Jackrabbit Press stationery that I assume Mr. Quinlan signed, but there was a note hand-printed over the typing. I didn’t recognize the printing, so I’d hate to speculate further. I’d be happy to take another look at it if you’d like.”

  “Much obliged,” Pendleton said. “I’ll pass that on to the locals.”

  “Great. Rep said you were going to have them go over tomorrow and pick up the things he left at Dr. Cerv’s lab. I suppose I could meet them there and save time for everyone.”

  Pendleton’s left eyebrow might have twitched a sixteenth of an inch. He offered no other visible reaction.

  “I’ll mention that possibility to them,” he said.

  They exchanged farewells and Melissa headed back to her car. After slipping behind the wheel she gave it a frustrated bang with the heel of her right hand. She’d learned something—she just wasn’t sure what it was.

  Was Pendleton’s mention of note calculated or inadvertent? Or did he just use it as a synonym for letter? Pendleton had asked her nothing about what either the letter or the note said. Did that mean he hadn’t known enough about them to appreciate their significance—or did it mean he’d already seen them himself and didn’t need her to fill in the blanks? He hadn’t told her to sit still while he summoned one of the local detectives working on the case to ask her follow-up questions. Did that mean her information was old news—or did it mean he hadn’t told the Kansas City police about sending his own men to Dr. Cerv after lying to Rep about what he was going to do? He hadn’t reacted—

  “Yipes!”

  Surprise as much as fear provoked the mini-yelp. From the corner of her eye she’d caught a shadow passing across her side-view mirror. Adrenaline pumping, she snapped her head around, then sagged back in her seat in anticlimactic deflation. One of the re-enactors on his way back to his own car walked past the Taurus. She was jumping at shadows.

  All at once she grabbed the wheel with both hands and pulled herself up straight. The passing re-enactor had white pants, red trim on his collar, and corporal’s stripes tips up on his sleeve. Marine, if Rep was right. Probably the only one here, if Rep was right.

  As discreetly as she could, she pulled the Taurus out of its parking space, waited until the Marine had gotten his own car under way, and followed him. A thirteen-minute drive brought them both to the Hilltop Motel, where the Marine pulled into a space outside room 125. Melissa parked half-a-dozen spaces away and, by hustling a bit, managed to reach the door just as Chelsea Tuttle opened it to the Marine
’s knock.

  “Good evening, Ms. Tuttle,” Melissa said after about five seconds, as no one else seemed interested in saying anything.

  “Pennyworth, isn’t it?” Tuttle asked in a school-marm voice. “I’m afraid this isn’t a very good time. In fact, it’s a singularly bad time.”

  “Would you excuse us for ten minutes, Corporal?” Melissa asked. “I feel awful asking, but it really is terribly important.”

  The Marine picked up an almost imperceptible nod from Tuttle, touched the bill of his cap, and strode toward a sign that read ICE-VENDING.

  “This better be good,” Tuttle said. “How did you even know I was here?”

  “Finding you was mostly luck. I saw him leaving the encampment, and I remembered that dorm-lounge crack you made last night about your in-depth study of marine biology. I bet on double entendre and I won.”

  “Congratulations.” Tuttle stepped away from the door, leaving room for Melissa to come in and close it behind her. “That’ll teach me to be clever with editors. I should know better by now.”

  “Quinlan told you he had a command performance around midnight. Do you know what he was talking about?”

  “No. Probably just a standard Tommy fib. The only one at Jackrabbit Press higher on the food chain than I am is John Paul Lawrence himself.”

  “Did you see Peter or Linda when you left the note in Quinlan’s office?”

  “Not a sign of either. Anything else?”

  “Not much. I don’t know if the police have questioned you about that dramatic little note—”

  “They’ve questioned me all right. I walked into it flat-footed. Waltzed over to Jackrabbit Press for my noon meeting and was chatting with a brace of detectives five minutes after I got there. They’d found the letter, they naturally surmised that I’d written the note on it, and they wanted to know all about it. So I told them.”

  “Did you mention your scene with Quinlan just after you left it?”

  “I gave them the PG version. Your name didn’t come up, for example, nor that little flick with the riding crop. I thought they might not fully appreciate the ironic turns of a creative mind.”