by Jack Kilborn
I glanced over at Herb. He set a pink plastic case on the kitchen counter and opened it up. It was a woman’s toolkit, the kind they sold at department stores for fifteen bucks. Each tool had a cute pink handle and a corresponding compartment that it snugged into. This kit contained a hammer, four screwdrivers, a measuring tape, and eight wrenches. There were also two empty slots; one for needle nose pliers, and one for something five inches long and rectangular.
“The utility knife,” I said.
Herb nodded. “She owned the weapon. It’s looking more and more like suicide, Jack. She has a fight with Hale. He dumps her. She kills herself.”
“You find anything else?”
“Nothing really. She liked to mountain climb, apparently. There’s about forty miles of rope in her closet, lots of spikes and beaners, and a picture of her clinging to a cliff. She also has an extraordinary amount of teddy bears. There were so many piled on her bed, I don’t know how she could sleep on it.”
“Diary? Computer?”
“Neither. Some photo albums, a few letters that we’ll have to look through.”
Someone knocked. We glanced across the breakfast bar and saw the door ease open.
Mortimer Hughes entered. Hughes was a medical examiner. He worked for the city, and his job was to visit crime scenes and declare people dead. You’d never guess his profession if you met him on the street—he had the smiling eyes and infectious enthusiasm of a television chef.
“Hello Jack, Herb, beautiful day out.” He nodded at us and set down a large tackle box that housed the many particular tools of his trade. Hughes opened it up and snugged on some plastic gloves and booties. He also brandished knee pads.
Herb and I paused in our search and watched him work. Hughes knelt beside the vic and spent ten minutes poking and prodding, humming tunelessly to himself. When he finally spoke, it was high-pitched and cheerful.
“She’s dead,” Hughes said.
We waited for more.
“At least four days, probably longer. I’m guessing from hypovolemic shock. Blood loss is more than forty percent. Her right zygomatic bone is shattered, pre-mortem or early post.”
“Could she have broken her cheek falling down?” Herb asked.
“On this thick carpet? Possible—yes. Likely—no. Look at the blood pool. No arcs. No trails.”
“So she wasn’t conscious when her wrist was cut?”
“That would be my assumption, unless she laid down on the floor and stayed perfectly still while bleeding to death.”
“Sexually assaulted?”
“Can’t tell. I’ll do a swab.”
I chose not to watch, and Herb and I went back into the kitchen. Herb pursed his lips.
“It could still be suicide. She cuts her wrist, falls over, breaks her cheek bone, dies unconscious.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not. I like the boyfriend. They’re fighting, he bashes her one in the face. Maybe he can’t wake her up, or he thinks he’s killed her. Or he wants to kill her. He finds the toolbox, gets the utility knife, makes it look like a suicide.”
“And then magically disappears.”
Herb frowned. “That part I don’t like.”
“Maybe he flushed himself down the toilet, escaped through the plumbing.”
“You can send Crouch out to get a plunger.”
“Lieutenant?”
Officer Crouch had returned. He stood by the kitchen counter, his face ashen.
“What is it, Officer?”
“I was doing the door-to-door. No one answered at the apartment right across the hall. The superintendent thought that was strange—an old lady named Mrs. Flagstone lives there, and she never leaves her home. She even sends out for groceries. So the super opens up her door and…you’d better come look.
Mrs. Flagstone stared up at me with milky eyes. Her tongue protruded from her lips like a hunk of raw liver. She was naked in the bathtub, her face and upper body submerged in foul water, one chubby leg hanging over the edge. The bloating was extensive. Her white hair floated around her head like a halo.
“Still think it’s a suicide?” I asked Herb.
Mortimer Hughes rolled up his sleeve and put his hand into the water. He pressed her chest and bubbles exploded out of her mouth and nose.
“Didn’t drown. Her lungs are full of air.”
He moved his hand higher, prodding the wrinkled skin on her neck.
“I can feel some damage to the trachea. There also appears to be a lesion around her neck. I want to get a sample of the water before I pull the drain plug.”
Hughes dove into his box. Herb, Crouch, and I left him and went into the living room. Herb called in, requesting the forensics team.
“Any hits from the other tenants?” I asked the rookie.
He flipped open his pad. “One door over, at apartment 3010, the occupant, a Mr. Stanley Mankowicz, remembers some yelling coming from the victim’s place about six days ago.”
“Does he remember what time?”
“It was late, he was in bed. Mr. Mankowicz shares a wall with the vic, and has called her on several occasions to tell her to turn her television down.”
“Did he call that night?”
“He was about to, but the noise stopped.”
“Where’s the super?”
“Johnson hasn’t finished taking his statement.”
“Call them both in here.”
While waiting for them to arrive, I examined Mrs. Flagstone’s door. Like Janet’s, it had a safety chain, and like Janet’s, it had been ripped from the wall and the mounting was hanging from the door. I found four screws and some splinters on the floor. There were no screws in the door frame.
A knock, and I opened the door. Officer Johnson and the super. Johnson was older than his partner, bigger, with the same dead eyes. The superintendent was a Pakistani man named Majid Patel. Mr. Patel had dark skin and red eyes and he clearly enjoyed all of this attention.
“I moved to this country ten years ago, and I have never seen a dead body before. Now I have seen two in the same day. I must call and tell my mother. I call my mother when anything exciting happens.”
“We’ll let you go in a moment, Mr. Patel. I’m Lt. Jack Daniels, this is Detective Herb Benedict. We just have a few…”
“Your name is Jack Daniels? But you are not a man.”
“You’re very observant,” I deadpanned. “Did you know Janet Hellerman?”
Patel winked at me. Was he flirting?
“It must be hard, Lt. Jack Daniels, to be a pretty woman with a funny name in a profession so dominated by male chauvinist pigs.” Patel offered Herb a look. “No offense.”
Herb returned a pleasant smile. “None taken. If you could please answer the Lieutenant’s question.”
Patel grinned, crooked teeth and spinach remnants.
“She was a real estate lawyer. Young and good looking. Always paid her rent on time. My brother gave her a deal on her apartment, because she had nice legs.” Patel had no reservations about openly checking out mine. “Yours are very nice too, Jack Daniels. For an older lady. Are you single?”
“She’s single.” Herb winked at me, gave me an elbow. I made a mental note to fire him later.
“Your brother?” I asked Patel.
“He’s the building owner,” Officer Johnson chimed in. “It’s the family business.”
“Did you know anything about Janet’s personal life?”
“She had a shit for a boyfriend, a man named Glenn. He had an affair and she dumped him.”
“When was this?”
“About ten days ago. I know because she asked me to change the lock on her door. She had given him a key and he wouldn’t return it.”
“Did you change the lock?”
“I did not. Ms. Hellerman just mentioned it to me in the elevator once. She never filled out the work order request.”
“Does the building have a doorman?”
“No. We h
ave security cameras.”
“I’ll need to see tapes going back two weeks. Can you get them for me?”
“It will not be a problem.”
Mortimer Hughes came out of the bathroom. He was holding a closed set of tweezers in one hand, his other hand cupped beneath it.
“I dug a fiber out of the victim’s neck. Red, looks synthetic.”
“From a rope?” I asked.
Hughes nodded.
“Mr. Patel, we’ll be down shortly for those tapes. Crouch, Johnson, help Herb and I search the apartment. Let’s see if we can find the murder weapon.”
We did a thorough toss, but couldn’t find any rope. Herb, however, found a pair of needle nose pliers in a closet. Pliers with pink handles.
“They were neighbors,” Herb reasoned. “Janet could have lent them to her.”
“Could have. But we both doubt it. Call base to see if they found anything on Hale.”
Herb dialed, talked for a minute, then hung up.
“Glenn Hale has been arrested three times, all assault charges. Did three months in Joliet.”
I wasn’t surprised. All evidence pointed to the boyfriend, except for the damned locked room. Maybe Herb was right and the killer just slipped under the door and…
Epiphany.
“Call the lab team. I want the whole apartment dusted. Then get an address and a place of work on Hale and send cars. Tell them to wait for the warrant.”
Herb raised an eyebrow. “A warrant? Shouldn’t we question the guy first?”
“No need,” I said. “He did it, and I know how.”
Feeling, a bit foolishly, like Sherlock Holmes, I took everyone back into Janet’s apartment. They began hurling questions at me, but I held up my hand for order.
“Here’s how it went,” I began. “Janet finds out Glenn is cheating, dumps him. He comes over, wanting to get her back. She won’t let him in. He uses his key, but the safety chain is on. So he busts in and breaks the chain.”
“But the chain was on when we came in the first time,” Crouch complained.
Herb hushed him, saving me the trouble.
“They argue,” I went on. “Glenn grabs her arm, hits her. She falls to the floor, unconscious. Who knows what’s going through his mind? Maybe he’s afraid she’ll call the police, and he’ll go to jail—he has a record and this state has zero tolerance for repeat offenders. Maybe he’s so mad at her he thinks she deserves to die. Whatever the case, he finds Janet’s toolkit and takes out the utility knife. He slits her wrist and puts the knife in her other hand.”
Five inquisitive faces hung on my every word. It was a heady experience.
“Glenn has to know he’d be a suspect,” I raised my voice, just a touch for dramatic effect. “He’s got a history with Janet, and a criminal record. The only way to throw off suspicion is to make it look like no one else could have been in the room, to show the police that it had to be a suicide.”
“Jack,” Herb admonished. “You’re dragging it out.”
“If you figured it out, then you’d have the right to drag it out too.”
“Are you really single?” Patel asked. He grinned again, showing more spinach.
“If she keeps stalling,” Herb told him, “I’ll personally give you her number.”
I shot Herb with my eyes, then continued.
“Okay, so Glenn goes into Janet’s closet and gets a length of climbing rope. He also grabs the needle nose pliers from her toolbox and heads back to the front door. The safety chain has been ripped out of the frame, and the mounting is dangling on the end. He takes a single screw,” I pointed at the screw sticking in the door frame, “and puts it back in the doorframe about halfway.”
Herb nodded, getting it. “When the mounting ripped out, it had to pull out all four screws. So the only way one could still be in the doorframe is if someone put it there.”
“Right. Then he takes the rope and loops it under a sofa leg. He goes out into the hall with the rope, and closes the door, still holding both ends of the rope. He tugs the rope through the crack under the door, and pulls the sofa right up to the door from the other side.”
“Clever,” Johnson said.
“I must insist you meet my mother,” Patel said.
“But the chain…” Crouch whined.
I smiled at Crouch. “He opens the door a few inches, and grabs the chain with the needle nose pliers. He swings the loose end over to the door frame, where it catches and rests on the screw he put in halfway.”
I watched the light finally go on in Crouch’s eyes. “When Mr. Patel opened the door, it looked like the chain was on, but it really wasn’t. It was just hanging on the screw. The thing that kept the door from opening was the sofa.”
“Right. So when you burst into the room, you weren’t the one that broke the safety chain. It was already broken.”
Crouch nodded rapidly. “The perp just lets go of one end of the rope and pulls in the other end, freeing it from the sofa leg. Then he locks the door with his own key.”
“But poor Mrs. Flagstone,” I continued, “must have seen him in the hallway. She has her safety chain on, maybe asks him what he’s doing. So he bursts into her room and strangles her with the climbing rope. The rope was red, right Herb?”
Herb grinned. “Naturally. How did you know that?”
“I guessed. Then Glenn ditches the pliers in the closet, makes a half-assed attempt to stage Mrs. Flagstone’s death like a drowning, and leaves with the rope. I bet the security tapes will concur.”
“What if he isn’t seen carrying the rope?”
No problem. I was on a roll.
“Then he either ditched it in a hall, or wrapped it around his waist under his shirt before leaving.”
“I’m gonna go check the tapes,” Johnson said, hurrying out.
“I’m going to call my mother,” Patel said, hurrying out.
Herb got on the phone to get a warrant, and Mortimer Hughes dropped to his hands and knees and began to search the carpeting, ostensibly for red fibers—even thought that wasn’t his job.
I was feeling pretty smug, something I rarely associated with my line of work, when I noticed Officer Crouch staring at me. His face was projecting such unabashed admiration that I almost blushed.
“Lieutenant—that was just…amazing.”
“Simple detective work. You could have figured it out if you thought about it.”
“I never would have figured that out.” He glanced at his shoes, then back at me, and then he turned and left.
Herb pocketed his cell and offered me a sly grin.
“We can swing by the DA’s office, pick up the warrant in an hour. Tell me, Jack. How’d you put it all together?”
“Actually, you gave me the idea. You said the only way the killer could have gotten out of the room was by slipping under the door. In a way, that’s what he did.”
Herb clapped his hand on my shoulder.
“Nice job, Lieutenant. Don’t get a big head. You wanna come over for supper tonight? Bernice is making pot roast. I’ll let you invite Mr. Patel.”
“He’d have to call his mother first. Speaking of mothers…”
I glanced at the body of Janet Hellerman, and again felt the emotional punch. The Caller ID in the kitchen gave me the number for Janet’s mom. It took some time to tell the whole story, and she cried through most of it. By the end, she was crying so much that she couldn’t talk anymore.
I gave her my home number so she could call me later.
The lab team finally arrived, headed by a Detective named Perkins. Soon both apartments were swarming with tech heads—vacuuming fibers, taking samples, spraying chemicals, shining ALS, snapping pictures and shooting video.
I filled in Detective Perkins on what went down, and left him in charge of the scene.
Then Herb and I went off to get the warrant.
Harry McGlade dates back to 1985, when I was 15. I’ve been a mystery fan since I was nine years old, and I thought it wou
ld be a fun genre to parody. On a summer afternoon at my friend Jim Coursey’s house, we sat at his Apple IIe (with the green phosphorus monitor) and giggled like fiends writing one stupid PI cliché after another. I picked the name Harry McGlade out of a phone book. For the next dozen years, I wrote over a hundred McGlade short stories. None of them were any good, but they did garner me my very first rejection letters, including one in 1989 from Playboy. This story was sold to the now-defunct Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine. I wrote it just after my first novel came out in 2004.
I was halfway through a meatball sandwich when a man came into my office and offered me money to steal a dog.
A lot of money.
“Are you an animal lover, Mr. McGlade?”
“Depends on the animal. And call me Harry.”
He offered his hand. I stuck out mine, and watched him frown when he noticed the marinara stains. He abruptly pulled back, reaching instead into the inner pocket of his blazer. The suit he wore was tailored and looked expensive, and his skin was tanned to a shade only money can buy.
“This is Marcus.” His hand extended again, holding a photograph. “He’s a Shar-pei.”
Marcus was one of those unfortunate Chinese wrinkle dogs, the kind that look like a great big raisin with fur. He was light brown, and his face had so many folds of skin that his eyes were completely covered.
I bet the poor pooch walked into a lot of walls.
“Cute,” I said, because the man wanted to hire me.
“Marcus is a champion show dog. He’s won four AKC competitions. Several judges have commented that he’s the finest example of the breed they’ve ever seen.”
I wanted to say something about Marcus needing a good starch and press, but instead inquired about the dog’s worth.
“With the winnings, and stud fees, he’s worth upwards of ten thousand dollars.”
I whistled. The dog was worth more than I was.
“So, what’s the deal, Mr…”
“Thorpe. Vincent Thorpe. I’m willing to double your usual fee if you can get him back.”
I took another bite of meatball, wiped my mouth on my sleeve, and leaned back in my swivel chair. The chair groaned in disapproval.
“Tell me a little about Marcus, Mr. Thorpe. Curly fries?”