Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  “My job is to observe and communicate how you do your work, start to finish.”

  “Just you, right, and just day-shift hours?”

  “You haven’t seen the agreement? Check your e-mail. You know how to open an attachment, right? It says you must include me in any actions taken on the case. If it intrudes too much into my private life, I make that call, but most of the time I’ll join you. Nights too.”

  “What if having a journalist around intrudes into my professional life?”

  “That would be a problem … if your opinion mattered.”

  “It’ll just be you? Not one of those nitwits like Kost or Button?”

  “Kost’s no nitwit. No comment on Button. Anyway, when it comes to the murder, Carp will be on call too. You remember Lynn Carpenter?”

  “The photographer who helped us on your sister’s case?”

  “You liked her didn’t you?”

  “She was okay. Considering she’s … one of you. But at the crime scene? We’ve got professionals taking pictures.”

  “Carp’s a professional.”

  “I meant a real professional. Police department. I can’t let a newspaper—”

  “Read your e-mail. The agreement says pictures can be taken, but before any-thing’s published you’ll see it. You’ll be asked to approve. If we disagree, we say so and your chief makes the call.”

  Clarence pulled out one of those miniature computer doohickeys and poked at it with a magic wand.

  “So,” he said, “how long before we’ll be working a case?”

  “We try not to put murders on the calendar anymore. It was nice for planning vacations, but it looked suspicious.”

  “Approximately.”

  “Do I appear to be all-knowing?”

  “Not remotely.”

  I sighed. “Manny and I get every fifth murder. There’ve been, let’s see, three murders since Jimmy Ross, you know, the dude Lincoln Caldwell blew away? Doyle and Suda are working on the guy who went over the bridge last night. Glissan and Barrows are next. Murder rate’s been unusual. We’re already on deck.”

  “So what’s your best guess? Based on averages.”

  “Block out everything from now until next month, and you should have it covered. Or if you want things to move quicker, kill somebody yourself.”

  “I’m considering it,” he said.

  I didn’t like the way he looked at me. He scribbled something and handed me a business card. It was neat and professional. “That’s my cell number.”

  “Got it already.” I waved my phone at him.

  “Now you have it in your wallet. If your cell dies, you can still find a phone and call me. Don’t forget. I need to be there from the beginning.”

  Apparently I told my face I was unhappy.

  “It could be worse,” Clarence said. “We could be television. Cameras and bright lights.”

  “That’s next. After that, they’ll film the murders live.” I shook my head. “I’m telling you, Abernathy, the detectives are going to think this is a sellout. That I’m a sellout.”

  “Berkley said your chief’s the one who suggested it.”

  “You’re saying ‘your chief’ on purpose, aren’t you?”

  I walked away. This is usually a good move when you feel like decking somebody.

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21

  There was a time in my life when I would have been sound asleep at 3:07 a.m. without assistance. That time passed when lightning struck two years ago, and somebody yanked Sharon from my life.

  Since then I’ve had to use sleeping pills, or my preferred pharmaceutical, Budweiser. I’d been on a bender at Rosie O’Grady’s pub the night before, so when the phone rang at 3:07, I wasn’t sure if I’d gone to bed three hours or twenty minutes ago.

  “Chandler?” the raspy voice said. “It’s me.”

  Why do people say “It’s me”? What’s the alternative—demon possession?

  “Who’s you?”

  “Lieutenant Mike Petersen.”

  I saw his image rising from the ashes of my torched mind: built like an oak, but with rougher bark, mosslike hair coming out his ears.

  “Hang on a second.” He was whispering, which meant he was trying not to wake his wife. “Okay. There’s been an incident.” If you drive a bus, an incident is a fender bender or two passengers squabbling over a seat. If you’re a cop, incidents involve bombs, attacks, crashes, and mayhem. When you’re a homicide detective, incidents are murders.

  “One body. 2230 Southeast Oak. House is green with—”

  “Yellow tape and cop cars out front?” I said, legs heavy as sandbags. Wading through the darkness and feeling cold kitchen tile against my bare feet, I flipped Mr. Coffee. “Who’s patrol?”

  “Officers Dorsey … and Guerino.”

  “Do I know them?”

  “If I were you, I could answer that.”

  “Grumpy, Lieutenant?”

  “You know what time it is?”

  “3:11?”

  “My grandkids are spending the night. I’m in the hallway.” He gave me Dorsey’s number.

  “Got it. Go back to bed.”

  “Don’t forget to call your shadow.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Tribune reporter. What’s his name? The big black guy who used to do sports.”

  My gut squirmed like a fish tossed on the bank. “Abernathy.”

  “Chief said to make sure you call Abernathy. I’ll call Manny. Longer trip for him. Wait for Abernathy before you go in. That’s what the chief said. You’re calling him?”

  “Got it.”

  I hung up and started to call Abernathy. I stopped. I emptied into my giant Seahawks mug the first eight ounces from the coffeepot. Nice and black. I go through bags of coffee like they’re paper towels.

  What was that? Something in my driveway. Sounded like a car door latching. I reached for the nearest gun, the Ruger P-97 in the cupboard, behind two coffee mugs.

  I went to the front window and looked at the driveway. Nothing. I snuck out into the garage, opened the door, and followed my Ruger. I studied my car. Okay. Came around to the front porch. Okay. I realized only then how cold it was, especially on my legs. I wasn’t wearing pants.

  In case someone was watching, I posed like Dirty Harry, lacking only a .357 Magnum, shoes, and pants. I backed into the garage and shut the door.

  I replaced the P-97 in the cupboard, took the Browning in the Seahorse waterproof case out of the medicine cabinet, set it in the soap dish, and took my shower. I threw on the least offensive clothes lying by the bed and tucked a tie in my jacket pocket. I pulled on a dark blue stocking cap and put my black Sam Spade fedora over it. I grabbed my cell phone and headed to the car. As I pulled out, I punched numbers.

  “Dorsey.”

  “Ollie Chandler, homicide. On my way. What we got?”

  “Scene’s pretty clean, but the vic’s a mess. Something went sideways here, Detective. He—”

  “All I need to know. Be there in ten. Keep everybody out, okay?”

  I prefer not to hear crime scene descriptions over the phone. I like to rely on my own eyes. I want to see what I see, not what somebody else says I should see. I’d get patrol’s report after my own wheels were turning.

  As I drove, I noticed something in the passenger seat. A box. It said Wally’s Donuts. In it was a single glazed donut, with telltale signs that it’d recently had five companions.

  There were three reasons I didn’t eat it. One, I didn’t remember buying those donuts. Two, I didn’t remember going to Wally’s Donuts. Three, I didn’t remember ever hearing of Wally’s Donuts.

  The last six months, when I come home late from Rosie O’Grady’s, there’s a lot I don’t remember. But donuts from a place I’d never heard of? It wasn’t like me to have eaten five donuts. If I’d bought these, I would’ve eaten all six. Or given the last one to Mulch. Could I have been drunk enough to leave a donut in the car?

  What’s going on? The donut
wasn’t my only issue. Why did they call me? Manny and I aren’t the up team. We’re on deck. Aren’t we? But then, if I couldn’t remember buying a box of donuts.

  My plan was to call Abernathy once I arrived at the scene. I’d still be in the car, so I could tell him I hadn’t entered yet. That would give me a head start. I’d be holding the cards when he got there.

  At the scene were a dozen people, two in bathrobes covered by coats. Crime scenes are magnets. Fortunately, at 3:30 a.m. not as many gawkers are available, and most journalists are sleeping in their crypts, or doing whatever vampires do when they’re not sucking blood.

  My biggest concern was the swarm of uniforms. It looked like the Policemen’s Ball. That always makes me nervous. The greater the numbers, the greater the potential for contaminated evidence. Cops, firemen, paramedics, all kinds of trained and helpful people can trample a scene and destroy or bury evidence.

  I saw two EMTs smoking cigarettes outside the ambulance across the street. That always means somebody’s dead.

  Two civilian cars in the driveway, patrol car at the curb. On the porch, two cops were having an animated exchange with somebody.

  I reached into my trench coat’s inner pocket for my Black Jack gum. Nothing. I patted it down. No Black Jack? Bad luck. I dialed Abernathy’s cell number. One ring.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Chandler. Sorry to get you up.”

  “I am up.”

  “Just got a call, Eeyore. There’s been a murder.”

  “No kidding.”

  I stepped out of the car. “The address is—”

  “2230 Southeast Oak.”

  On the porch, one officer was looking at me, the other was eyeing the big guy in suit and tie, who was pointing at the house numbers with his cell phone, glaring at me.

  “Oh, boy.”

  I approached, identified myself to the uniforms, then looked up at the shall-we-say tense face of Clarence Abernathy.

  “So you ‘just’ got a call?”

  “It was at 3:07. Only twenty minutes ago.”

  He looked at his watch. “Twenty-six minutes ago. Twenty-two minutes ago I got a call.”

  “The lieutenant?”

  “He said you’d call me, but just in case …”

  Light shone on our faces from the video camera of a bozo named Jordan who comes to murder scenes and sells footage to two of the TV stations.

  “Hey, Jordan, we’re having a private conversation here. Mind turning that off?”

  Jordan didn’t say anything. He kept filming.

  “Shaq here wanted us to let him in,” Dorsey said. “Can you believe that?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just like him.”

  It was a cold night. Abernathy had steam rising from his forehead, like it was the fourth quarter in a long, icy drive up Lambeau Field.

  “We had an agreement,” Clarence said.

  “I kept it. I didn’t enter the crime scene before calling you. I still haven’t entered the crime scene.”

  “That’s why people don’t trust cops. You’re liars.”

  I saw Guerino’s hand lower a few millimeters toward his pistol. It was a flinch, but I notice things.

  Jordan stepped over the yellow tape onto the lawn. I wanted to put a couple of Glock holes through his camera, but I figured that might win me a return trip to anger management.

  Officer Guerino shouldered up by Dorsey and gave Abernathy a hard stare, which he apparently thought was intimidating. But staring a man in the Adam’s apple, or craning your neck so he’s looking down your nostrils, does not intimidate.

  “You need coffee,” I said to Clarence. “Here’s my thermos. Leave some for me.”

  He eyed the thermos like it harbored an Ebola culture.

  “Look,” I said, “you want to stand here and fight while the body gets cold? We could sit on the lawn and play pinochle. You and Guerino can be partners.”

  Abernathy stared at Guerino. Finally the cop blinked.

  “Or how ’bout I go in the door and do my job?”

  “Your job was to call me.”

  “I called you. Want to watch me work? Fine. Otherwise, quit whining and go back to bed.”

  “You crossed me and you lied,” Abernathy said. “I won’t forget it.”

  “Does this mean,” I said, tapping my fingers on the yellow crime scene tape, “that the honeymoon’s over?”

  4

  “My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE SIGN OF FOUR

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 3:45 A.M.

  I PULLED ON LATEX GLOVES and foot covers, then handed a pair of each to Abernathy.

  “Never take these off. Got it? Take them off for one second, and you’re on the other side of the yellow tape.”

  His hands didn’t fit the one-size-fits-all. He grumbled but wrestled them on, short of his wrists.

  “Crime scene contamination’s our worst enemy. Somebody visits her cousin and discovers he’s been murdered. She picks up the phone and calls 911. She’s handled the phone, the doorknob, possibly the victim. All contamination.”

  He was taking notes now, so I figured I was forgiven. This was my chance to shine in the newspaper I hated.

  “The 911 operator tells her don’t touch anything else; wait outside for the cops. She might still use the toilet, wash her hands, get a glass of water, pick up her cousin’s picture, and make three more phone calls.”

  Clarence tried to read his handwriting and glared at the gloves.

  “Here’s where I take my first mental photograph of the crime scene. Ready?”

  I turned the corner into the living room. After hundreds of homicides, I’ve learned that what I first see is the image that stays with me. What struck me this time was a smell—the coppery scent of blood that hadn’t dried.

  As I looked at the face of the victim, something crawled across the nape of my neck—it felt like a big spider with wet feet.

  I recognized the man on the floor. He was a professor at Portland State University. I’d sat in on one of his classes years ago—I was trying to remember exactly when and why since I never attended there. I hadn’t seen him since … or had I? Actually, it felt like I’d seen him more recently. But where?

  His face was a color it shouldn’t have been. I don’t mean he looked dead. I mean he didn’t look like a dead person is supposed to look. His skin had a hint of blue, but not the shade of asphyxiation.

  And yet … around his neck was a rope, bright blue with red flecks in it. The rope was three feet long, and the excess beyond the noose was too short to hang from anything. The end was cut smooth, barely fraying. I stared at the knot, which raised a host of knot-making memories from my childhood. Though it was tied snugly, his neck and throat showed no signs it had been tighter, no signs he’d been hung. I looked above me at an undisturbed ceiling.

  The source of the smell was a wound in his chest. Given the shirt fabric, it appeared to be two shots, close together, over the heart. His shirt was soaked.

  Multiple causes of death on one body?

  I’d never been in this house. Why did it seem familiar? It was as if I’d been here in a dream. A recent dream. I tried to shake off the déjà vu.

  The victim’s clothes swallowed him. I remembered him as bigger in that classroom. Death had shrunk him 20 percent. I studied his dark eyes, open and vacant. They looked like manholes over hell.

  I used to stare at stiffs without taking death personally. Lately it’s been different. I’ve been pondering that the death rate is 100 percent, and I’m not going to be the exception. I wonder … does everyone slip into a dreamless sleep? Part of me hopes so. Hell scares me. Heaven scares me almost as much.

  Suddenly I realized I was holding hands with a dead man. I dropped it. I looked up, hoping Abernathy wasn’t watching. He was.

  The victim’s wallet was
stuffed in his right front pocket. I examined his driver’s license and another picture ID.

  “Professor William Palatine,” I said. A tech informed me Palatine had taught at PSU for many years.

  “What do you call those outfits?” Clarence asked, pointing at two criminalists.

  “Bunny suits. The technical name is biohazard coveralls. Protects them from contact with body fluids. And protects the evidence from them.”

  Already one criminalist was on his hands and knees fussing with carpet fiber.

  “Why’s he that color?” I asked.

  “What color?” the criminalist said, reluctantly turning from fiber, his first love, to flesh.

  “Bluish.”

  He shrugged. “You’re the detective.”

  “I’m the detective who’s asking the criminalist why he’s that color.”

  He looked around the room as if, having no opinion of his own, he wanted to borrow one. “ME’ll run a tox.”

  I pointed to the computer. “Check the keyboard for prints?”

  He looked at me as if the question didn’t deserve an answer. One thing I’ve learned in decades of detective work: I’d rather get dirty looks now than find out later that somebody messed up.

  “We’ll get the bullets first,” he said.

  “How many?”

  “Two through his chest. Presumably in the floor.”

  “He was on the floor like this when shot?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Seen the bedroom?” It was Officer Guerino.

  I followed his pointing finger to the hallway leading to the back left of the house. The bedroom was mostly neat and tidy, bed made, drawers shut, light lemon smell. But the outside window had been broken.

  I looked it over. Entry point? Break-in? No. Not a big enough hole in the glass. And too jagged. No blood evident. Anyone coming in this way would have taken a couple more whacks at it and cleared the jagged glass before entering. They probably knocked it in, then decided on another entry.

  I stared out the fractured window into the darkness. A single streetlight was blocked by a tall maple still holding a third of its leaves. Then I realized what wasn’t lying at my feet: broken glass.

  “What are you seeing?” Abernathy sounded like Darth Vader with a head cold.