by Randy Alcorn
I plugged in my camera and downloaded my photos into my notebook computer. I went through them one by one, enlarging some. Whenever I found myself wanting a better angle, I jotted a note for when I returned.
I sat in my old brown recliner, the one Sharon special ordered and we picked up at Clemmer’s Furniture, east of Gresham. I reached out and touched the horizontal eight-by-ten photo on the table next to the chair, taken ten months before Sharon died. It was of all the Portland homicide detectives and their spouses, so there were about seventeen of us in the picture, including three unmarrieds. It happened to be the best picture of Sharon and me anywhere. I should ask a computer nerd to do one of those Photoshop things so the picture would just be me and Sharon, maybe on a beach in Hawaii, though that wouldn’t work since I was in coat and tie and she was wearing her favorite black dress. I still have that dress in the closet. Sometimes I take it out to remember her scent.
My mind went back to the crime scene. I was searching it, comparing sketch with pictures, romancing it, asking it to whisper secrets in my ear.
I heard the ring tone of the phone at CTU headquarters, where Jack Bauer works. It was my cell. “Manny” showed in the display.
“Jack Bauer,” I answered.
“I sealed the crime scene. Body’s been taken away.”
“Where you standing?”
“By the front door, about to lock up.”
“Look into the room, turn immediately to your left, and walk five feet. See that miniature bookshelf that’s maybe three feet high?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a greenish book, hardcover, on top.”
“How do you know—?”
“I have a photographic memory for crime scenes.”
“You’re in Photoshop.”
“What’s the book called?”
“It’s by … some honcho named Bertrand Russell. Title’s Why I Am Not a Christian.”
“No kidding? Okay, leave it right there. Going fishing for witnesses?”
“Yeah. Those second-floor apartments on the next street have a clear view of the house. You?”
“Studying the scene.”
“It’s right here.”
“You know my methods, Watson.”
“Watson was a gringo.”
I studied the pictures and read my notes. I printed out six photos. Next thing I knew, it was 9:15. I called Clarence and told him I was returning to the scene. I gave White’s Market beef to Mulch, with a dab of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. Then I was out the door.
I scanned titles on Palatine’s bookshelves, ignoring those by German men with long last names. My eyes landed on Sherlock Holmes. I opened it up. The spine cracked, and its first few pages stuck together. Didn’t take a skilled detective to figure out it was a gift Professor Smart Guy never opened. Too bad, since it beat to blazes everything else on his shelves.
When Abernathy arrived, I pointed to the Holmes book. “Watson showed Holmes to the world. Your words will immortalize me—until the afternoon, when people put the Tribune on the bottom of the birdcage.”
“If you end up looking good, which is unlikely, you’ll frame the article. If you look bad, you’ll blame me and trash it. I was a sports columnist, remember? The guys who whined about my criticisms loved my praise.”
“When you feature my brilliance, I’ll tack it on my wall.”
“You’ll have to show your brilliance first.”
“I have.”
“I must have blinked. You didn’t even know how to retrieve phone messages. And you ate a dead man’s Snickers bar.”
“Not going to let it drop, are you?” I leaned against the bookcase. “You want brilliance? I’ll show you something I learned from Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.”
“You haven’t told me who they are, and I’m not going to look it up.”
“Nero Wolfe was the last of the great detectives. Always stayed in his old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street in New York. He weighed a seventh of a ton—like you only a lot shorter. He was a gourmet. Kept ten thousand orchids. Sent Archie Goodwin out to do his investigating, bringing back the facts so Wolfe could apply his brain and solve the crime.”
“He wasn’t real?”
“It’s fiction, okay, but to me he’s real. As real as you and me and Mulch and Lou’s onion ring platter. Forty-seven books, written by Rex Stout. Classics. Stout was the best. Hemingway was a hack.”
“So what did you learn from them that can help us?”
“Archie Goodwin once paged through every book on a shelf.”
“All of them?” He looked at the professor’s books.
“There’re just a couple hundred. People can stick something important between the pages. Notes. Letters. Business cards. Then they forget them, and eventually they’re back on the shelves. Hidden evidence.”
“Needle in a haystack.”
“We can do it in an hour or two. The point is to flip pages, not read.”
After some intellectual yawners, I came to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I fingered it and inhaled the smell of old pages. My grandfather used to do that, when books were few enough to instill reverence. I’d picked up the book-sniffing habit and never lost it, though it seems wasted on the slick mass-produced stuff.
Clarence and I paged through Plato. René Descartes. John Locke. Some woman named René with a mustache. Voltaire. Rousseau. Adam Smith. Kant. Nietzsche. Francis Bacon (Mulch’s favorite philosopher).
“Here’s a phone number inside the back cover of Karl Marx,” Clarence said.
“Think it’s Marx’s home number?” I asked.
No response.
“Who was your favorite Marx brother? Mine was Harpo.”
Still no response. I jotted down the number.
Five minutes later, Clarence said, “Here’s a travel book for Maui. Same thing—phone number inside the back cover.”
“We’ve got a pattern now. Look for it.”
I remembered the green book. I went over to the small bookcase and picked up Why I Am Not a Christian. I slipped it in my briefcase.
We found a few more phone numbers in the backs of books—strangely, not one of them with a name.
I turned and looked around at all the mementos and photos taped, pinned, and hung on the wall. “There’s lots of visual evidence in this room. It’s cluttered … hard to see what’s really here. I’m going to call in some eyes.” I punched 2 on my cell phone, for the department.
“Mitzie? Ollie. I’m going to drop by some case notes before lunch. If you can type them this afternoon, I’d appreciate it. Hey, who’s hanging around the donuts? Cimmatoni? No thanks. Anyone else? Yeah, Phillips is fine.”
When Phillips came to the phone, I said, “You busy?”
“Always.”
“I’m in the first twenty-four hours of this case. Could use your eyes. 2230 Southeast Oak.”
“Want me to bring Cimma?”
“Uh, no … this is more up your alley. Just need one pair of eyes. Yours.”
“Okay. Give me fifteen.”
I sat in front of the computer. They’d removed the hard drive and taken the keyboard for computer forensics, but the monitor was still there.
“Something’s wrong. Didn’t think about it last night. The professor was just a couple inches shorter than me, wasn’t he? This chair’s way too high. If they want to use the keyboard, tall people lower the seat and short people raise it, right? Sit in this chair.”
Clarence looked ridiculous, the keyboard way too low.
“How tall would someone be who’d put a chair at this setting?” I asked.
“Five foot? A woman?”
“Or a fourth grader? A jockey?” I knelt, looking at the metal rod on the chair adjustment. “See the marks? That’s the normal position, the professor’s setting. What does that tell you?”
“Someone else used it.”
“Palatine was grading. Played solitaire. Then someone adjusted the chair. You don’t do tha
t unless you’re sitting a while. If it’s just a minute, why bother? I say they did it to type the confession.”
“Then wouldn’t their prints show up on the keyboard?”
“We’ll see when tests come back.” I walked toward the fireplace.
“Look at the photos on the mantel,” I said. “What do you see?”
Clarence moved in for a closer look. “Mediocre quality pictures in cheap stand-up frames.”
“How many?”
“Nine.”
“Four on one side and five on the other,” I said. “Now, look at all the picture groupings on the wall. Everything’s balanced, symmetrical. So why the imbalance on the mantel?”
I stepped up onto the hearth to get a closer look. “Yeah. The dust tells the tale.”
“What tale?” Clarence got on his tiptoes and could see the top without climbing.
“The four pictures on this side … they’ve been moved to equal spacing. But there were five pictures, just like on the other side. One picture’s been taken. Someone didn’t want us to notice, so he filled in the spaces.”
“Why?”
“Because he thought if we noticed a photo was missing, it might incriminate him.”
“How?”
“Don’t know. But if it wouldn’t, why cover it up? Why not just snatch the picture and forget it? He took that photo for a reason—it was important to him. But it was also important to him that we didn’t notice.”
“So far you’ve got him carrying away a wine bottle and a five-by-seven picture frame.”
“There’s a reason for every action. This brings us one step closer to the killer.”
“Anybody home?”
Brandon Phillips is that ageless sort who looked old in his twenties when I met him and now in his forties looks young. He was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugged, leathery face like a mountain climber. Broad shoulders, big chest. And fit? I could see him offering his water to Sherpas climbing Everest as he passed them.
I introduced Phillips to Clarence and said, “I humbly request your observations on my crime scene. And thanks for not dropping by uninvited, like Suda did last night.”
Phillips cleared his throat. Though we were standing right in front of the mantel, with me leaning against the brick, he walked immediately to the other end of the room. “Lots of books. Computer’s nice. Wide-screen. Flat. He buys over the Internet.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a Dell. I’ve seen that model on the website. You can only get it online. It’s not available in stores … not in Portland anyway.”
“See?” I said to Clarence. “You never know what you’ll get from a detective.”
Phillips walked around making other observations. Nothing particularly helpful.
“What about at this end? What do you see?” I pointed toward the mantel and the photos.
“Lots of pictures.” Phillips coughed. He cleared his throat and rubbed his face.
“You okay?”
“I need the bathroom.” He walked quickly around the corner and I heard the door shut.
“What’s with him?” Clarence asked.
I shrugged. He came back five minutes later.
“Anything wrong?” I asked.
“Allergies. I’m fine.”
“So, what do you see on this mantel?”
“He’s no photographer.”
“Yeah, but proud of his work. Nine photos up there, huh?” I pointed to the mantel.
“Hang on. I have to call Cimma.” Phillips stepped into the other room, and I heard his muffled voice. A minute later he reappeared. “Cimma needs me.”
“I didn’t think Cimma needed anybody.”
“One more witness on our case. Cimma wants me to see if I can catch him before lunch. Sorry.”
Fifteen seconds later Phillips was gone. I looked at Clarence and shrugged.
I swung by detective division at eleven to drop off case notes for Mitzie to type. I was fortunate to find one of the precious few police only parking spaces on Second Street, just south of Madison, a stone’s throw from the Justice Center. I was back in my car ten minutes later because though Lou’s Diner is only five blocks away, the midday sky was dark, threatening rain. It looked like it had been rubbed hard with gray finger paint. It made me thirsty.
I got to Lou’s early enough to think through the case before Jake and Clarence arrived. And have a couple of beers. Lou’s is “The Diner Time Forgot.” The jukebox was playing “Surfin’ USA.” Archie, Betty, and Veronica could have been sitting in the next booth. I’d be Jughead, since I play his part, downing the cheeseburgers.
I love old diners, but nothing compares to this one. Lou’s son Rory keeps the place sparkling, unlike Ralph’s Diner on Ankeny, where you need a crowbar to remove syrup bottles from the lazy Susan.
Three years ago, Jake, Clarence, and I started meeting at Lou’s on Thursdays for lunch. We all work downtown, so we rarely miss, and work in a second lunch during the week whenever we can. We shoot the breeze about lots of things, but sometimes Jake gets us talking about … well, spiritual stuff. Once they tried to get me to read something called The Purpose-Driven Life. I told them I already had a purpose-driven life. Justice—hunting down criminals in a Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, Jack Bauer sort of way. I don’t see religion as a solution, but a problem. My job is to hunt down the bad guys God lets get away. Jake said maybe I’m serving God’s ends and He’s using me to get the bad guys. Whatever.
We can hardly have lunch without the afterlife intruding into the conversation. But I don’t want to die trusting that God will make things okay. I want to make them okay right here, right now. Is that so much to ask? If I can make things right, I do. So if God can make things right, why doesn’t He?
These are not popular questions to ask Christians. Jake and Clarence listen and nod and say they understand my questions, that they too once struggled with such things. But I must have faith, I must trust, I must believe, and all will be better. Well, sorry, but I just don’t. And most of the time, frankly, I don’t want to.
Sometimes these guys are stubborn and opinionated. I feel like they’re taking the moral high ground, like the rest of us aren’t good enough for them. I guess I’m saying ours is a complicated friendship.
I looked at my watch. 11:52. I waved to Rory and pulled out my wallet. “This is for my beers.”
“I can just put it on your bill,” he said.
“Jake’s turn to buy. And take my bottles and the glass, would you?”
“I brewed your dark Italian roast extra bold. You’ll love it.”
“You’re a good man, Rory. If you ever get murdered, I’ll go after the guy. That’s a promise.”
“Grazie, Mr. Ollie.”
Okay, I feel guilty for what I said about Jake and Clarence. Because there’s another side, and I guess it’s why I keep meeting them for lunch. The conversations sometimes bug me, but they make me think. Occasionally they’re downright interesting. And yes, Jake asked my permission, and I’ve agreed to talk about the Bible now and then. These guys aren’t total morons, and they have hope. I admit that it seems a naive and baseless hope. And yet … there’s a certain comfort in being around people who really believe—deep in their gut—that one day things will be better than they are now.
It seems like if you become a Christian, everything’s supposed to be great, right? You live happily ever after because you go to heaven, and that makes up for life’s miseries. Never mind that people—like my Sharon—suffer and die, and murderers get away. After all, there’s pie in the sky by and by.
Sorry, but I’d rather have my pie here and now. Speaking of which, I’d noticed that huckleberry was Lou’s pie of the day.
My phone rang. Manny again.
“You need to listen to the 911 call about the professor.”
“Who called? A neighbor?”
“Didn’t identify himself. Came from a cell phone, but wasn’t traceable. It was an old one without GPS. Dispatch sen
t us an audio file.”
“I’m going back to the scene after lunch. Then I’ll swing by the office and listen to the call.”
Jake appeared that moment, smiled broadly, shook my hand with a vise grip, and sat down. We traded small talk, exchanging theories on the Seahawks. Pretty soon we were laughing.
Clarence arrived and sat next to Jake. It’s a big booth, but their side was suddenly full.
Nobody had to look at the menu. Rory came over and asked, “The usual?” Everyone nodded. Lou’s serves a mean cheeseburger.
“Okay,” Jake said. “Last week we said we’d read the first eight chapters of the book of John. How’d we do?”
“I had a busy week,” I said. “Couldn’t squeeze it in.”
“Five minutes a day or one reading of half an hour? Come on. That’s just a sitcom.”
“I like sitcoms better.”
“John 8 relates to your work as a detective.”
“How’s that?”
Jake opened his Bible, full of underlines. “Jesus says, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ He says the truth will set us free from lies.”
“Whose truth we talkin’ about?”
“The truth. He says we’re slaves, but ‘if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’ He’s talking about freedom from deception.”
“Every day I sift through the lies people tell,” I said. “I dig for the truth all the time.”
“I’m grateful you do, Ollie. We all benefit from your work. Now check out what Jesus says about Satan in the next verse: ‘He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.’ So Satan is a murderer, and he lies to cover up his murders. That should interest a homicide detective.”
“The devil must be a good liar,” I said.
“The best,” Jake said. “Lying is his native language.”
“The truth challenges our assumptions,” Clarence said. “It’s more comfortable just to believe the lies. We fall for lies because we’re wired that way.”
“In my work, deception is fatal.”
“Jesus said the truth sets us free,” Jake said. “In an investigation, once you see through the lies, when you discover the truth, don’t you feel free?”