All Sales Fatal

by Laura Disilverio

  When Helland continued to stare at him, Edgar added, “He wasn’t the kind to show up just to shoot the shit with the troops, you know?” Edgar’s grin stretched at the idea, displaying a gold canine tooth.

  “What type was he?” Helland asked.

  Edgar gave it some thought while he gathered his lunch box and crossword puzzle book. “An operator,” he said finally. “Yeah, the dude was an operator. Always had something going.”

  “Really?” I was surprised. I hadn’t seen Woskowicz as much of a player. Disgruntled, womanizing, tough-guy wannabe, but not an operator.

  Edgar shrugged massive shoulders. “He let me know, subtlelike, that he could hook me up with a bookie, if I wanted, and I’m pretty sure he and Weasel had something going with merchandise that ‘fell off a truck.’” He winked. “He offered me a deal on a plasma TV once.”

  Weasel was the previous night-shift guard, a pal of Woskowicz’s, who’d gotten himself killed when he tried to blackmail a murderer. “He never hinted at anything like that with me,” I said.

  Edgar chuckled, a deep rumble. “EJ, everybody knows you’re a straight arrow.” Still chuckling, he bumped the glass door open with his shoulder and left. I stood staring after him, hands on my hips.

  “That’s a good thing,” Helland said. He kept a straight face, but the corner of his mouth dented in.

  I rounded on him. “It makes me sound like Dudley Do-Right or some kind of Goody Two-shoes,” I said.

  Wisely electing not to pursue the subject, Helland turned to the bank of camera screens and said, “Where do we start?”

  As we sat side by side and fast-forwarded through the hours of jerky camera footage, I asked Helland, “So, how did he die? You haven’t asked about suicide notes or his state of mind, so I’m guessing he was murdered.”

  “Good guess.” Keeping his eyes on the monitors, he said, “He was shot in his car. A hiker found the car off a dirt road about ten miles from here as the crow flies. Blood was spattered all over the driver’s-side window, so the hiker called it in. It was supposed to look like suicide, but there are too many inconsistencies. We’re treating it as a homicide.”

  “Inconsistencies? Like what?”

  Helland shot me a sidelong glance. “Like Woskowicz had a nine mil in his pocket. The .38 that did the deed was on the floor in the passenger-side foot well. Why would a suicide take two guns with him? And the passenger-side door, dash, seat had no prints.”

  “Wiped clean?”

  Helland nodded.

  “So he met with someone, or drove out there with someone, and that person killed him.” I spoke half to myself, but Helland nodded. “Do you know when he died?”

  “Sometime between when he left here Wednesday evening and noon Thursday. Given where he was found, and the fact that he missed his rendezvous with Ms. Wertmuller, I’d bet it was Wednesday night.”

  “So he’s been dead this whole time.” It made me sad to think of Woskowicz dead and alone in his car while I visited his house and searched his office. The thought made me say, “I suppose you want access to his office.” How was I going to slip the file cabinet key, which I had returned to the pencil sharpener, into a desk drawer with Helland right here? I couldn’t, I decided. I had to hope his team was sharp enough to find it.

  Helland rose. “There’s nothing here,” he said with a disgusted gesture toward the monitors.

  I resisted the urge to say, “Told you so.”

  “Where’s the of—” He stopped as Joel, Harold Wasserman, and another day-shift officer walked in, chatting. They broke off and stared at Detective Helland, leading me to think they’d been discussing Captain Woskowicz’s death. Before I could make introductions, the phone rang and I snatched it up.

  “EJ,” Pooja said, “Mr. Quigley would like to speak to you.”

  “The police are here about Captain Woskowicz’s murder,” I said.

  “That’s what he would like to talk to you about,” Pooja said, her voice telling me I’d better trot over to Quigley’s office now.

  “Is that why you’re working on a Sunday?”

  “I had plans with my boyfriend,” Pooja complained, tacitly answering my question.

  “Officer Rooney can show you Captain Woskowicz’s office,” I told Helland. Joel puffed his chest out. I left before Helland could reply.

  Curtis Quigley was standing by Pooja’s desk when I came in. “EJ! Finally.” His brown eyes scanned my face. “Is it true?”

  “That Captain Woskowicz was shot? Yes. I was just talking with the police detective in charge of the case.” Hint, hint.

  “This is awful, just awful,” Quigley said, ignoring my implication that my time would be better spent helping the police. He ran a hand nervously over his slicked-back hair. An onyx and silver cuff link caught the light. “An accident, I presume?” Hope lit his thin face.

  I shook my head. “The police are treating it as a homicide.”

  “Gaagh.” Quigley made a sound like a choking walrus. “We do not. Need. This.” He threw up his hands. “Think of the publicity! First the naked Easter Bunny, now this.”

  I didn’t think the Easter Bunny’s antics were on par with a murder, but I didn’t say so.

  “The FBI board of directors was already unhappy about the gangbanger left on our doorstep, so to speak. What in the world will they say about this?” He paced the length of the room while Pooja and I watched. “Have the police arrested anyone?”

  I hated to dash his hopes, but I had to say, “No. As far as I know, they don’t have any suspects.” Not that Helland would necessarily share the info with me if he did have someone in his sights.

  “Well, that is unacceptable,” Quigley said, thinning his lips. “Since you are now the acting director of security, it is incumbent upon the police to share the results of their investigation efforts with you. You will, of course, report directly to me so I can determine how best to spin—ah, present—the information to the media and to the board. Pooja”—he wheeled to face his administrative assistant—“you’ll need to be on top of the funeral arrangements. Find out when it is and send a suitable flower arrangement from Fernglen. Also, draft an announcement that I can disseminate to the mall employees and a position notice to advertise the job. I don’t want to seem disrespectful to Dennis’s memory, but we can’t operate for long without a director of security. You’ll be applying, of course, EJ?”

  I made noncommittal noises and escaped back to the security office after promising to keep Quigley posted. I found Helland in Woskowicz’s office, about to unlock the file cabinet. I raised my brows, impressed that he’d found the key. A uniformed cop crouched by the desk, disengaging the computer from printer and monitor cables. “Find anything interesting?” I asked nonchalantly.

  “We’re taking the computer with us,” Helland said. “We’ve got computer forensics types who can break the password and get into Woskowicz’s email and Internet history.”

  “Was there anything interesting on his home computer?” I hoped my tone didn’t betray the fact I knew his home computer was missing.

  Helland’s blue-gray gaze fixed on me. “What makes you think he had a home computer?”

  I waved away the question. “Everyone has a home computer or laptop these days,” I said. “Amazonian jungle dwellers have PCs. Reindeer herders in Lapland travel with MacBooks.”

  Helland turned his attention to the file cabinet, and I let my breath out slowly. Slipping the key in the lock, he turned it and slid the top drawer out. He riffled through the folders, then pushed the drawer back in and opened the bottom drawer to reveal the shoe box. I edged further into the office as he withdrew it and placed it on the desk. With one latex-gloved finger, he flipped the lid off, revealing the gun. Only a slight wrinkling of his brow revealed his surprise. “Ever seen this before?” he asked, lifting the gun by its trigger guard so it swung from his index finger.

  “We’re not authorized to carry weapons,” I said, dodging the question.

&n
bsp; Helland sniffed at the barrel. “It’s been fired recently.” The other officer handed him a plastic bag, and he slipped it over the gun and sealed it. “We’ll run ballistics on it.” Standing, he stripped off the gloves and shoved them in his pocket. “Who’s in charge now that Woskowicz is dead?”

  “I am.”

  “Congratulations. Or maybe condolences would be more appropriate.” One corner of his mouth quirked up. “At any rate, don’t count on moving in for a couple days. I’ll conduct my interviews here; it’s as good a place as any.”

  Moving into Woskowicz’s office wasn’t at the top of my priority list, so I didn’t mind that Helland was staking a claim. “It’s all yours. Let me know when you’re ready to start, and I’ll work the schedule so you can talk with all our officers. I’ll also get the camera data downloaded to a CD so you can let your team study it.”

  “That’s helpful. Thanks. But don’t think that just because I’m conducting the investigation out of this office that you’re a participant,” he added disagreeably, “because you’re not. Homicide is police work. Civilians only endanger themselves and others.”

  His words started a slow burn inside me, but I’d heard it before from him, so I didn’t react, and I didn’t remind him I’d been with the military police for over ten years before the explosion that led to my medical retirement. I also didn’t remind him that I’d cracked the case—and boosted his arrest record, incidentally—when a local developer’s body had shown up in a mall display window. Instead, I asked, “Do you think there might be a link between Captain Woskowicz’s death and Celio Arriaga’s?”

  “Now, why would you ask that?” Helland asked.

  Oh, maybe because the gun he’d just found matched the caliber used to shoot Celio. Not wanting to admit that I’d had the opportunity to examine the gun, I said, “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that there would be two murders associated with the mall in less than a week?”

  He rose. “Given the number of gangbangers, teenagers, stressed-out soccer moms, and garden-variety nut jobs roaming the halls, I’m surprised there isn’t a murder a day in this place.”

  Detective Helland left, saying he’d be back early that afternoon to conduct his interviews with the security staff, and I drew up a quick schedule that would let each of the guards rotate in to talk with the police, and I called the off-duty staff members to request their presence. That accomplished, I turned to Joel, who had scored a copy of the local newspaper.

  “Listen to this, EJ,” he said. The newspaper rustled. “‘A local mechanic, Ernest Finkle, discovered the body of a dead man in a car while hiking on the south edge of the Wilderness Battlefield area with his dog yesterday afternoon. The man, whose name is being withheld until next of kin can be notified, was shot in the head, the coroner’s office confirms. “Sam Adams had run ahead,” Finkle said, referring to his Labrador, “and I knew by the way he was barking that there was something wrong. I wasn’t expecting anything like that, though. A man in his SUV with blood and brains all over the window. I hauled Sam Adams away and called the police.” The Vernonville Police Department spokesman refused to comment on manner of death…’ Yada-yada.” He lowered the paper. “What do you suppose Woskowicz was doing out there?”

  “Meeting someone.” I wondered if Mr. Ernest Finkle would tell me exactly where he’d found Woskowicz. It might not be my job to find his murderer, as Helland had so testily pointed out, but it couldn’t hurt for me to examine the scene. And if I happened to find something the police had overlooked, it would be my pleasure to share it with them, in a completely unsmug spirit of cooperation, of course.

  “Who?” Joel leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs. “A woman?”

  “He had a perfectly good house—he didn’t need to make out in his car in the middle of nowhere. That’s for teenagers.”

  “Maybe she was married,” Joel said.

  I pursed my lips thoughtfully. “Not a bad idea.”

  Encouraged, Joel expanded his theory. “Her husband suspected she was having an affair and followed her. When he saw her with Woskowicz, he lost it and shot him.”

  “And the woman—what? Just sat there?”

  “She ran into the woods,” Joel said, nodding rapidly as his story gained momentum, “and the husband went after her and shot her. Or,” he plowed on before I could raise objections, “she and Woskowicz did the nasty and she left in her car. Then her husband, who had been lurking nearby, shot Woskowicz.”

  “Not totally implausible,” I admitted, “but it doesn’t explain why Woskowicz had a gun on him. Why take a nine mil to a romantic tryst?”

  “Woskowicz probably always carried concealed,” Joel said, “because he was the kind of guy who liked to pack a weapon. That way, he could break up a bank heist if he happened to be making a withdrawal when one went down, or shoot a robber trying to rip off the Quik Mart when he went in to pick up a six-pack.”

  Joel’s observation was surprisingly astute. Woskowicz was the type to fantasize about playing the hero and then doing the talk-show circuit. More than once I’d heard him applaud the actions of a vigilante who’d made the news for taking the law into his own hands. Still, I wasn’t buying Joel’s scenario. It didn’t account for the gun in the file drawer or for Celio Arriaga’s murder. Despite Helland’s skepticism, I had a hunch the two deaths were connected.

  Eleven

  When I managed to get hold of him, Ernest Finkle obligingly provided GPS coordinates for where he’d found Woskowicz. “I never hike without my GPS,” he said, apparently not even curious about why I wanted the information. “Why, I get turned around in your mall.”

  I thanked him and went to ask Kyra if she’d like to go for a little hike after her roller derby bout. “What about the cops?” she asked when I explained why I wanted to check out the site.

  “What about them?” I asked, my expression daring her to suggest that I didn’t have a prayer of discovering something the cops had overlooked, or that the police might object to my inspecting the crime scene. The Wilderness Battlefield Park was open to the public… Why shouldn’t I stroll along its southern border if I wanted to?

  Evidently reading the determination in my face, Kyra didn’t press the point. “Sure, I’ll go with you. Then you can buy dinner.”

  I agreed, and three hours later, after the Vernonville Vengeance, Kyra’s roller derby team, trounced the Harrisburg Hornets, we stood in a copse of trees beginning to bud, the setting sun ruddying the dried grasses in an adjacent field and the Civil War–era artillery piece pointing at us from the far end. The chill of approaching night nipped at me as I pulled the GPS unit from my pocket, grateful for my leather gloves. Kyra slipped on an ear-warmer headband and fluffed her thick hair around it.

  “Just over here,” I said, moving forward and to my right.

  “Not much to see,” Kyra observed as she joined me.

  Unhappily, she was right. I could barely make out tire tracks on the verge of what was intended to be a walking trail. A crushed pine sapling released its pungent scent and bore mute witness to the path Woskowicz’s SUV had taken. We were only about fifty yards off the road, where I had parked the Miata, but the trees and dense undergrowth of vines, saplings, and ferns effectively blocked the road from view. Keeping an eye out for poison ivy, I shone my powerful flashlight on the ground and followed the tire tracks from where they first broached the trail to a set of deeper impressions where Woskowicz had apparently parked. Kyra quickly lost interest as I played the beam back and forth across the ground, and she wandered to the edge of the copse to stare across the meadow.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked out of the blue.

  I snorted. “What? You think Captain Woskowicz’s ghost is lurking here, waiting to avenge his murder? I can’t imagine the murderer is likely to come back to this spot, so he’s in for a long, fruitless haunting.”

  “Not Woskowicz,” Kyra said. “Them.” She lifted her chin to point at the field.

 
“Them?” I joined her in staring at the field, wondering if she’d spotted some tourists draining every last minute from a day of battlefield tramping. March wasn’t exactly the height of tourist season, but dedicated Civil War enthusiasts showed up year-round. I saw nothing but lengthening shadows and a fox skirting the tree line as she began her evening’s hunt.

  “The soldiers.”

  Kyra’s husky voice gave the words unusual weight, and I leaned forward, almost expecting to see men in ragged gray or blue uniforms surging forward or scattering at the whistle of incoming artillery. No whiff of cordite stung the evening air, and no screams echoed. I’d been in a couple of firefights in Afghanistan, and it was my considered opinion that no soldier’s ghost would willingly stick around a battlefield, the site of terror and confusion and chaos. I told Kyra as much.

  “Who said they were willing?” She asked the question almost under her breath and then, after a moment, turned her back on the field. We resumed our scan of the area, and I picked out what looked like another set of tire tracks on the other side of the trail behind where Woskowicz’s SUV had parked. These were set closer together, suggesting a smaller vehicle.

  “Someone opened their door here,” Kyra said, pointing to waist-high breakage on a holly bush. “But it could’ve been last October for all we know.”

  “No,” I said, sniffing the branches. “This is new. It still smells sappy, and the twigs show green inside.”

  “So, someone—man, woman, or alien—arrived in his, her, or its own vehicle and climbed in with Woskowicz for a chat or a make-out session or whatever. They argue, the newcomer pulls out a gun, and pow!” She made a gun out of her index finger and thumb and mimed shooting me in the head.

  “I think whoever it was came here planning to kill him,” I said. “Otherwise, why the gun? It was premeditated. And Woskowicz either trusted the person or wasn’t afraid of him, because he had a gun of his own but kept it in his pocket. If he’d really been nervous about the meeting, he’d have had the gun out from the get-go.”