by Randy Alcorn
“It relates to the Palatine case. Detective Chandler’s going to carry the ball.”
“Great,” Suda said.
Tommi gave her a disapproving look. I noticed dark swollen bags under Tommi’s eyes.
Sarge didn’t know I’d come at 5:00 a.m. to place Ray Eagle’s miniature camcorder, looking like a nondescript plastic container, sitting on a front shelf surrounded by manuals. It was pointing at the detectives.
It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, and if no one finds out, you don’t have to get forgiveness either. I pressed the record button on the remote in my coat pocket.
“Sarge asked me to read my conclusions about the Palatine case.” One look at Sarge’s face caused a revision. “He didn’t ask me. He gave me permission.” Here’s what Manny and I are thinking.” I saw Manny’s expression. “All right, Manny’s not so sure. Here’s what I’m thinking.”
“Can we move this along?” Doyle asked.
“Tonight it’ll be three weeks since Palatine was murdered. Since then two others have been murdered because of what they knew or saw.”
“Speculation,” Doyle said. “And those aren’t your cases.”
“I’m going to read this,” I said, holding up a paper. “Please withhold comments till I finish.”
“First, the killer planned this meticulously, including the bizarre elements with the noose and ink injections.
“Second, the killer stayed dangerously long at the site. Apparently he knew nobody heard anything, even the broken window, and nobody called 911. Why would he stay unless he knew cops wouldn’t come sooner, and he wouldn’t be caught? Maybe he had access to a police monitor or experience with police procedure.
“Third, the killer took unnecessary measures that could make him vulnerable, as if he were daring detectives to catch him. He knew enough to avoid being caught, yet he took the time to inject the ink and remove items from the scene.”
“What items?” Phillips asked.
“At least one framed photograph and a wine bottle.”
“How do you know that?” Doyle asked.
“It’s in his report,” Tommi said.
“Fourth,” I said, “the killer probably came back to the scene after patrol got there and before the detectives arrived. That’s in my notes too.”
“Fifth, the killer knew how to fake fingerprints and where to place them on the gun.”
“We’re sure those were fake?” Cimmatoni said, looking at Noel.
“Positive,” Sarge said. “Internal Affairs had three lab experts examine it to make sure. They all agreed. Noel’s in the clear.”
“Leave it to IA,” Suda said. “Bet they were disappointed not to hammer one of us.”
“Sixth, the killer—I think—knew it was department SOP to search Dumpsters within four blocks of the scene. So he knew where to put the murder weapon—the one with the planted fingerprints.”
I got several nods on this one.
“Seventh, the killer—most likely—knew the private phone number of a homicide detective, my number, and called me from the scene.”
“Anybody can get a phone number,” Cimmatoni said.
“I thought the professor made the call,” Kim said.
“We think it was the killer,” I said. “Anyway, the killer seemed to know homicide investigative procedures well enough to get around them. And because he took chances and left unnecessary evidence, this may be a game for him.”
“That about it?” Sarge asked.
“Any … tentative conclusions based on what I’ve said?” I asked the group.
I saw the dissatisfied faces.
“Are you thinking.” Karl Baylor stopped and thought how to rephrase it. “The killer’s a cop?”
Brandon Phillips looked around the room. “He’s thinking more than that. He’s thinking the killer was a homicide detective. He’s thinking the guy’s right in this room.”
“Guy or gal,” I said, nodding at Tommi and Kim.
“Nice to be included,” Tommi said, laughing unnaturally. Suda wasn’t smiling.
There’s an old theory about announcing something shocking to a group and watching each person’s expression to see who’s least shocked. Old theories don’t always work. And when your pool of suspects is homicide detectives, they’re even less viable. We’re used to studying people’s faces. We know what we’d be looking for—and therefore how to avoid looking ourselves.
But I also knew that gradually faces would become less guarded. That’s why I had the video running. It would be my game film.
“Since Noel was framed, does that eliminate him?” Tommi asked.
“Not necessarily,” I said, trying to be inclusive. “He has access to his own fingerprints. He could have done it.”
“Yeah,” Noel said. “I’ve always wanted to frame myself for murder.”
“What about you, Chandler?” Doyle asked. “Eliminated yourself as a suspect?”
“I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Right,” Cimmatoni said. “Why don’t we just take a poll and find out which of us did do it. That would save time.”
“I know this is awkward,” I said.
“It’s not just awkward,” Suda said. “It’s ridiculous. I can’t believe you’re doing this, Chandler. Did Internal Affairs put you up to this?”
“The evidence put me up to it.”
I pulled out of my coat pocket a handful of scrap papers. “Everybody gets a paper. Write your name on it, fold it, and pass it in.” One minute of corporate whining later, Tommi picked them up.
I held up the scrap papers. “The person whose name is drawn will be the first to say where they were between 10:45 and 11:45 November 20.”
“I don’t believe this,” Phillips said.
“Chandler’s a horse’s rear end,” Cimmatoni said, or something to that effect.
“Okay,” I said, pulling scraps out of my pocket and setting them on the table in front of Tommi. “Draw.”
Tommi picked out of the middle, unfolded it, and read, “Kim Suda.”
So began an hour of alibis.
25
“Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. You will not wonder that my first act on entering your rooms was to close your shutters, and that I have been compelled to ask your permission to leave the house by some less conspicuous exit than the front door.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE FINAL PROBLEM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1:00 P.M.
THREE HOURS LATER, Clarence and I sat in Ray Eagle’s living room, in Vancouver, Washington, across the I-205 bridge from Portland. His furniture was brown, red, and gray, with American Indian paintings on the wall. The chair I was sitting in disproved my theory that attractive furniture is uncomfortable. I rested my feet on a soft bulgy thing Clarence called an ottoman.
Ray connected his camcorder to his TV. He said to me, “So, you see Suda rifling your files, tail her, see her secret meeting with the chief, and her name gets drawn first? A one out of ten chance.”
I reached in my right coat pocket and pulled out a bunch of folded paper scraps. I handed them to Clarence.
He looked through them.
“But … they all say Kim Suda.”
Ray laughed.
“The trench coat has a pocket divider,” I said. “I took the papers they wrote on and stuck them in back. The ones I wrote on were in front.”
“You did this in front of a group of professional detectives?” Ray laughed again.
“I didn’t want to give Suda more time to think. I wasn’t going to take Clarence’s approach and leave it up to providence.”
“But … Tommi drew other names, right?” Clarence said.
“I replaced my scraps with theirs while everyone watched Suda.”
Ray turned on the video and handed me the remote control, making me king.
“Wait,” Clarence said. “Did they know they were being videotaped?”
I t
ried not to laugh.
“Isn’t that illegal? Or unethical?”
“Go check with a lawyer or a priest, and get back to us,” I said. “Me, I’m just looking to solve a murder. If it helps, pretend I have a photographic memory and we’ve hired professional actors to re-create the scene as I recall it. That would be just as unfair as this is. We’re here to evaluate their body language, responses, anything that could indicate innocence or guilt.”
I passed out that photo of the detectives and spouses, taken before Sharon died. Carp had made a dozen copies for me since I needed to flash detective faces around.
“Before Suda answers, let me fill you in. She’s short, maybe five one. Fit. Strong but feminine. Great conditioning. She chased a twenty-year-old gangbanger ten blocks before taking him in. Her partner, Chris Doyle, was her backup, four blocks behind. They say he was lying in a heap hyperventilating while Kim handcuffed the perp. Suda moves to her own beat, music playing in her head.”
“What about Doyle?” Ray asked.
“A Hercule Poirot when it comes to his soft mannerisms, but the similarity ends there. Reminds me of Jessica Fletcher because people around him have a way of dying. Smokes himself to death, and nobody’s eager for him to stop. Anyway, here we go.”
I pressed play and was back in the room where all this had happened four hours ago. Except this time I had two more sets of eyes, could see faces at will, and had the freedom to pause and rewind.
“I was at a friend’s house pretty late,” Suda said.
“What friend?” I heard myself ask.
“Someone who doesn’t want to be identified.”
Long pause, then Chris Doyle said, “She dropped by my house.”
The room was one collective smirk.
“It wasn’t what you think,” Chris said.
“What would be wrong with what they think?” Suda asked him, ignoring the tittering.
“We were together until you got that text message from your mother about 11:20.”
“Your mother sends text messages?” Cimmatoni asked.
“She’s high-tech. Was spending the weekend with me and wasn’t feeling well. I needed to get home.”
“We were together until 11:20,” Doyle said. “That’s close to time of death, right? And wasn’t the killer supposedly there forty minutes earlier? Then you called me when you got home, say 11:40.”
“Proves nothin’,” Cimma said.
“Yeah,” Suda said. “I always make calls while I’m murdering someone. It calms my nerves.”
“Clears me though, right?” Doyle said. “I mean, I was home at 11:15 and 11:45 when you called, right, Kimmy? I mean Suda.” His chubby face glowed like a Christmas light.
“Kimmy?” Noel said.
“Kimmy,” Tommi said, putting her hand over her smile.
Suda glared.
“Why didn’t you stay home with your mother?” I asked. “What brought you back out at four in the morning when you dropped by our murder scene?”
“None of your business.”
“Hiding something?”
“I’m a light sleeper. Occasionally I get up and drive. I had the monitor on and heard about the murder. It was close to my place, so I stopped in.”
“Anyway,” Chris said. “Back to Kim’s phone call at 11:45. That covers me, right?”
“It would,” Suda said, “if I’d called your home phone. But I called your cell.”
“Way to take him, Kimmy,” Cimma said. “You could’ve been anywhere, Doyle. You’re what, ten minutes from the dead guy’s? You could have been standing over his body when she called … if she called.”
Doyle froze, dragging me back to the present, where we were sitting in Ray’s living room. Ray had grabbed the remote and paused.
“Look at his face,” Ray said.
Chris’s face had gone from red to stark white. It’s as if a plug had been pulled, and all the blood drained out. His Adam’s apple was moving, but he was swallowing nothing. I didn’t need a polygraph to measure his nerves, not when I’d heard him live, and not now that I watched him again.
Clarence typed furiously on his notebook computer.
“You’re going to keep that to yourself, right?” I asked him.
“For now.”
“Maybe forever. You can’t tell anybody I taped this.”
He pretended to ignore me.
“He looks guilty,” Ray said.
“Doyle or Abernathy?”
“Tell us more about Chris Doyle,” Ray said.
“He worked a couple of cases with me when Manny was out and Suda had a family emergency. Doyle’s … like a duck on the lake. He’s calm on the surface, looks like he’s doing nothing, but underneath those legs are paddling. If the perps leave their fingerprints on everything, or they look into surveillance cameras and hand notes written on the back of their phone bills to bank tellers, saying ‘Give me all the money,’ Doyle will nab them. But he’s no creative genius. This crime seems too intricate for him.”
“Somebody told me, ‘Things aren’t always as they seem,’ ” Clarence said.
Ray walked behind me. “He just looks like your average red-faced guy drinking beer and watching his Buffalo Bills play in December.”
“Except Doyle would be more likely to watch ballet,” I said. “I think he has sugarplums dancing in his head.
“Okay.” I pointed to the screen. “This next guy’s Noel.”
“The guy who was framed? Plus he’s got a solid alibi? Six guys in a bar plus the bartender?” Ray asked. “Are they all close to him … and each other?”
“Just bar buddies. Acquaintances.”
“Hard to believe six guys and a bartender would be in on a conspiracy to protect him,” Ray said. “What’s Noel like?”
“He’s a good old boy, nice golfing tan. Smart enough to be an average detective. Doesn’t have to be brilliant. He works with Jack.”
I stepped toward the screen and pointed out Jack Glissan. “Jack can tell you the names and dates of crimes committed twenty years ago. He’s the brains.”
We heard Noel’s alibi then listened to Manny’s. Home with Maria until she left at 10:45 to work night shift at the hospital. Manny was at the house with three kids, who were sleeping until the 3:00 a.m. murder call. He dropped the kids at his sister’s. He seemed agitated just talking about it, saying “We weren’t the up team” and complaining about journalists coming to a murder scene.
“Okay, Brandon Phillips is next,” I said. “His name’s about to be drawn.”
Ray zoomed in.
“He’s looking at his BlackBerry,” Clarence said, getting up to point at the object in his hand. “Checking e-mail?”
“Or rehearsing his alibi?” Ray asked.
“Phillips is a detail man,” I said. “Precise. Methodical. We did a couple of cases together. Nice guy, but he drove me nuts. He was like a fussy little maid looking for dust in every corner.”
“The scars on his face,” Ray said. “Acne?”
“Golden Gloves boxer. He reminded us, maybe to make excuses for his face. He’s okay, but when you press him, he can get a steel rod up his back. Last year I happened to be driving down his street to avoid traffic. He was shoveling snow in his driveway, and it was like a Wayne Gretzky slap shot.”
I pointed to the screen. “The next part’s interesting.”
After I asked his alibi, Phillips seemed to be thinking for five seconds, then finally looked at Jack and said, “Was that the night we were at your place talking about that cold case at Lloyd Center?”
Jack nodded.
“It was a couple of hours,” Brandon said. “Maybe I got there at ten? I had a couple beers, but you were on call, so you couldn’t drink. So I left when? Midnight?”
“Closer to twelve thirty,” Jack said, a little red-faced when he caught my eye. After all, he’d claimed to drop by Noel’s at eleven thirty that night—back when Noel needed an alibi. “Linda came downstairs and reminded me I needed sleep.
”
“She’ll confirm that?” I asked Jack, instantly regretting it when I saw his face.
I paused the tape, then rewound. “So when I ask Phillips for his alibi, what do you see?”
“He’s … trying to remember,” Clarence said. “Then suddenly he does.”
“Which makes you think what?” I asked.
“He hadn’t given it much thought?”
“Hold it,” Ray said. “The guy’s been sitting there twenty minutes. He had to be thinking about how he’d answer the question.”
“Exactly,” I said. “This isn’t a man trying to remember. This is a man pretending to try to remember.”
“What’s the difference?” Clarence said.
“The difference between innocence and guilt?” Ray asked.
“Would Jack and his wife lie for him?” Clarence added.
I’ve tried not to like Phillips—maybe because he’s strong and good-looking and fifteen years younger and the consummate detective. But he isn’t an easy guy to dislike. There’re those little things. Like him calling me after he’d seen me at Rosie’s, wondering if I was okay.
Besides, Cimmatoni was his partner. If he was going to murder somebody, wouldn’t he have taken out Cimma years ago?
I froze the frame, and we studied Bryce Cimmatoni. He’s a specimen—looks like he was born to conduct mysterious business in nightclub back rooms with guys named Giuseppe and Bruno. You could see him breaking a piano player’s fingers for being delinquent on his loan or putting a horse head in somebody’s bed. Cimma doesn’t give an inch, a cent, or a rip.
But I’d still take a bullet for him. That’s how it works.
As I looked at Cimma on film, he was pale with four or five splotches of red. His face had no insulation between lumber and Sheetrock. His hair was gray and receding. His jaw—pit-bull solid—looked like it had been clamping down on people for decades.
His face seemed incurably unhappy and therefore unreadable since it always looked the same—disgusted.
“Is he as tough as he looks?” Ray asked.
“Tougher. He gets no points for personality, but he’s a decent detective. His wife Martha was drop-dead gorgeous in her day and at sixty is still striking. She’s an oncology nurse. Sweetest person you’ll ever meet. She rivals Tommi. How she ended up with Cimma, I don’t have a clue.”