The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  “You look beat,” Dag said.

  Lammeck snorted. “Why the hell weren’t we on the same plane? I haven’t talked with anybody in three days. This is the first time in two days I’ve taken the damn cotton out of my ears.”

  Dag smiled and dipped his head, acknowledging Lammeck’s discomfort. “We had to travel separately.”

  “Why, for Christ’s sake?”

  “You remember I told you that only four people in the world know what I have to tell you? Well, that was to make sure at least one of us got here alive. Sorry.”

  Lammeck accepted the answer as the secret and labyrinthine logic of the government.

  Dag circled a finger in the air. “You’re from around these parts, if I recall.”

  “Providence.”

  “Nice town?”

  “A hole. Maybe someday someone will do something with it, but for now if you want a fight or a whore, call the mayor’s office.”

  Dag laughed. “Got his number?”

  Lammeck closed his eyes.

  Dag asked, “You want to talk now?”

  Lammeck waved this off. “Let me sleep to Newburyport. I don’t want to be half dead when you show me whatever it is you dragged me across the planet to see.”

  “Trust me, Professor. Half dead’s a lot better than what I’m going to show you.”

  Lammeck opened his eyes for a moment, a little startled, but too tired to remark. He closed his eyes again and slept.

  He didn’t wake until Dag tapped his shoulder. Lammeck looked out the windshield at an intersection bounded by sooty slush, dull storefronts, and cars steaming exhaust into the frosty noon. Newburyport was a waterman’s town, no question. Stacks of lobster traps rose in the parking lot of the filling station, knotty nets lay tangled outside a hardware store, sun-bleached driftwood decorated front porches and windows. Every face on the sidewalks bore the etches of salt, wind, and sun. These were tough people. Lammeck knew them. He felt the returning embrace of America in this northern town.

  “You spent a few years in these parts, didn’t you?” Dag asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Your old man, didn’t he teach up here somewhere?”

  “At Brown. European history.”

  “That’s right. I remember you telling us about him one night in a pub. That first night when you shot the dummy. That was slick.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How is your father?”

  “He died. Just before the war broke out.”

  Dag nodded and quieted.

  Sitting up straight in the car, taking it all in for the first time in five years, Lammeck told America not to get too cozy with his return. He was still mad. If his father were alive, he’d be mad, too. Lammeck missed the old man, but was glad his father had not lived to see his native Czechoslovakia occupied, the massacres, and America’s failure of will to stop Hitler early, before the entire world caught fire. Lammeck had abandoned America. He was not ready to get chummy with it again.

  Dag drove through town, to the outskirts. He headed east, toward the ocean, taking the government car along a three-mile stretch of sea oats and dune. The road was empty. Out here, the snow lay pristine. All the ripples of sand were smoothed in a blank jacket and the shoulders of the Merrimack River were round and soft.

  At the end of the paved surface, Dag took a right turn onto the beach road. Here, a police barricade stopped them. One bundled-up local cop stood guard. The man greeted Dag by name.

  Dag shut the engine and leaned to the backseat to snag one of the yellow folders.

  “Time to work your magic, Professor.”

  Lammeck climbed out of the car to the hiss of a tame surf and little wind. The day was socked in and gray. He walked beside Dag onto the sand. The snow here was only a thin gauze; the ocean wind blew most of it away. They came to a site, fifty yards square, marked by sawhorses and a sagging string hung with damp red ribbons. Inside the cordon, small yellow stakes had been driven into the sand.

  “This where it happened?”

  “Yep. Take a look. We’ve got pictures of everything.”

  From the folder Dag handed him, Lammeck pulled a sheaf of eight-by-ten black-and-whites. The first photo showed this same empty bit of beach, not empty on the morning of the pictures, but filled by murder.

  A pickup truck had stood just to the right of where Lammeck gazed at the photographs. A rectangle of stakes outlined the location now. The truck’s grille had been aimed directly at another phantom of stakes, a large body in the photo, flat on its back, arms palm down. The body lay exactly thirty-seven feet from the front bumper of the truck, according to a line drawn on the photo and a notation. A second corpse, a woman’s, lay also faceup, almost in the water, seventeen feet past the man’s remains. Her arms were bent up to her shoulders, like she was showing off her biceps. There were no stakes visible for the woman. Her death place lay below the afternoon tide.

  Another set of photos displayed close-ups of the area around the truck. A crowbar lay in the sand four feet in front of the hood.

  Lammeck tapped the picture. “Anything found on the crowbar? Blood?”

  “Negative.”

  “Footprints?”

  Dag shook his head. “Dead end. By the time the next shift of Civil Defense wardens showed up at six a.m. and found the bodies, then ran all over the scene, then add to that the local cops tramping it up, there were fifty different prints in the sand. No go.”

  Lammeck flipped to another series of photos. These showed the wheel tracks of the pickup truck in the sand. The photos marked the truck’s approach and stop. Lammeck paused at a photo that illustrated how the truck had been moved in a small arc, coming to rest directly facing the man’s corpse. Another picture showed the keys in the column ignition.

  Lammeck surveyed the remaining photographs, mostly differing angles and zooms of information he’d already ingested, shots of bodies and wounds. Dag waited without speaking until Lammeck returned the black-and-whites to the folder.

  “What do you think?”

  Lammeck handed over the pictures before replying. “You’re saying the husband did this? The guy who shot himself in the head?”

  “I’m not saying anything, Professor. I’m just showing you what I’ve got. I have a few theories. But the local cops, yeah, they’re pinning it on the husband. I take it you don’t agree.”

  “If you thought I would agree, you wouldn’t have brought me all this way. Where is he?”

  “Morgue. Town Hall. With the other two.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  They returned to the Packard. The local cop at the barricade stood smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, casual in the bitter cold. Dag drove away from the beach, back through Newburyport. Lammeck watched the odometer, 3.9 miles to the center of town.

  Dag parked in front of a brick three-story building below a tall spire, in a space marked police vehicles only. He grabbed the second folder from the rear seat and pushed open his door. Lammeck sensed pedestrians ogling them as he climbed out of the Packard. A multiple killing like this in a small town would definitely put everyone on edge. Big Lammeck with his beard, alongside lean, crumpled Dag—they’d stand out in Newburyport as strangers. To a local, that could not bode well. Lammeck had only been back in America for two hours, in this town for less than one, and already he found his situation unsettling.

  * * * *

  THE MORGUE LAY IN the basement of the Town Hall. Lammeck and Dag descended steps in cool fluorescent light. They entered through a swinging door into a gleaming room of silver implements, linen-draped tables, and vials. Lammeck wanted to pause, his academic interest engaged by the room’s tools, but Dag headed across the gleaming linoleum, past a secretary, and straight for another door marked storage. Lammeck reluctantly followed. They stopped at a bank of white portals, lacquered and pearly like refrigerator doors, even with the chrome handles of refrigerators. Strange, Lammeck thought. Of the thousands of dead bodies he’d studied in photos, illustrat
ions, and his imagination, he’d never seen a real cadaver except for his father in his casket. Dag stepped forward, reaching for one of the shiny white doors. Lammeck’s stomach turned over. There’d been no moment to prepare himself for the proximity of a murdered body; Dag just marched up to the silver handle and tugged. Lammeck’s gut skittered. He was tired from the long trip, still annoyed at being dragged so far from his work, and now he was reluctant and squeamish. He drew a shaky breath, smelling the room’s soapy air.

  Dag slid out the long silver tray.

  Lammeck stepped back.

  Dag glanced at him. “Something the matter?”

  Lammeck didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “This the husband?”

  “No. The Civil Defense guy. Otto Howser. You okay?”

  Again, Lammeck made no reply. He stepped up to the drawer and the cadaver.

  The naked corpse rested on its back, a, sizeable man with a belly rising off the tray. The skin was blanched except for the bottom few inches, a blue bruise running from heels to neck, pooled blood. A mild odor of meat rose from the flesh; the body had been washed, then preserved in this cooler. Lammeck fought to hold his ground, convincing himself that the smell was not awful and the look of death on the frozen face was not too gruesome. The man’s eyes were closed. His mouth hung slightly open, a last gasp. A clean slit marred the big chest. Dag casually probed a finger near the cut, left-hand side, a heart stab. Lammeck tried not to flinch.

  “The coroner figures an eight-inch blade, one and a quarter wide. Straight-in angle. Plenty of force. Otto here didn’t die right off. You remember the photos?”

  Lammeck nodded.

  “He crawled backwards, nine feet. His heart was still pumping for a minute maybe. Then he was done. Look here.”

  Dag pointed at the corpse’s left leg, above the ankle. The Achilles tendon had been sliced deep, a slash that likely went down to the fibula.

  Lammeck stared for another minute. The beginnings of a theory had already arranged themselves in his head, but he said nothing, to let Dag believe he was thinking through the crime rather than simply enduring.

  Once he’d taken a better hold on himself, he asked, “Where’s the woman?”

  Dag put Otto away. The platform slid into the wall with a whisk and click. He pulled out another drawer.

  The woman’s short body was equally antiseptic and drained. It bore the same azure pooling of blood along her entire backside. Lammeck fought off a twinge of embarrassment at her nakedness. He gazed away to the floor, as if to give the body a moment, then raised his eyes, figuring he could best serve her by looking. Like Otto, she was full-figured. But her wounds, and her face, were very different.

  Both forearms had been cut in identical diagonal lines. Dag stepped back from the body, tilting his head at Lammeck for him to step up for a closer examination of the wounds. Lammeck licked his lips. He moved closer, to slowly dig a finger into one of the furrows in the flesh. He spread the cut and peered down into severed cords of muscle and tissue. His heart raced.

  “Bonny Chapman,” Dag told him.

  Lammeck took his fingers from the fissure; the flesh eased shut. He bent to examine her face. Bonny’s features were distorted, stained cherry red by her murder, the remnant of broken capillaries in her cheeks and nose. Her eyes bulged in an inhuman fashion, as if she might pop. Her mouth was fixed wide, the tongue stiffened over the lower teeth, which were slightly yellow.

  Lammeck wiped the back of his hand across his lips.

  “You ever seen this before. Professor? Know what does this to someone’s face?”

  Lammeck nodded.

  Dag answered anyway. “Strangulation.”

  Bonny’s face had frozen in her last struggling seconds, begging, straining for air. This was confirmed by a series of empurpled bruises around her throat.

  Lammeck did not speak. Dag seemed callous. The woman’s brutal choking, Otto’s stabbed heart, scarcely seemed to touch him. Lammeck moved back to let Dag slide her away. Watching his former Jedburgh, Lammeck wondered if coldness was an unavoidable side effect of being a killer.

  The third body proved the most difficult to look at. A chunk of the left side of the man’s head had been blown out. The gaping wound was jagged and raw, a grayed shade of pink. Lammeck pinched his lips together, and this time made no disguise of his queasiness. Not even Dag could chastise him for being averse to this wreckage of a human skull. Lammeck ducked for a quick look inside the brainpan and involuntarily sucked a sharp breath. Beside him, Dag murmured, “Hang in there, Professor.”

  Lammeck leaned across the body to view the right temple. The sideburn had been punctured and scored by a blast at close range. The rest of the corpse bore no marks. Lammeck straightened and retreated two steps, mopping his brow.

  Dag said, “Arnold Chapman. Skinny little cracker, isn’t he?” He pointed out the man’s pocked nose. “Drinker, I bet.”

  Lammeck nodded, ignoring Dag’s cavalier tone. “Probably. Was alcohol found? Suicide note?”

  Dag held up the second folder. “I got shots of the guy’s house. Yes to the booze. No to the note. And I got close-ups of all three stiffs before they were cleaned up. This guy in particular.”

  “Cordite on the right hand?”

  Dag nodded. “He was holding the gun, no question. You need to see the gat?”

  “Yes. And I want to see the knife.” Lammeck indicated the jagged exit wound in Arnold’s head. “Where did you find the spent round?”

  Dag dug into the folder for several photographs. He held the black-and-whites out to Lammeck, pointing while he spoke.

  “This is where they found him, in the living room.”

  In the photo Arnold lay spread-eagled in the center of an oval hook rug. Blood splattered the fabric. Around the body were the normal domestic articles: lamps on doilies, framed pictures on an upright piano, prints on the walls, a Victrola radio, a sofa and chair. On the fireplace mantel were trophies, a bunch of photo albums, and some signed baseballs. The dead man lying in the middle of his possessions seemed an even sadder sight than seeing him here on a morgue slab.

  “Flip to the next one,” Dag instructed.

  Lammeck brought up the next glossy, a close-up of a baseboard. A slug was buried into it. Dag reached across and tapped the picture.

  “He was lying down when he did it.”

  Lammeck agreed. He turned quickly through the rest of the photos of Arnold and Bonny’s home. It felt wrong and tragic touring their house like this in black-and-white, after their lives had been snuffed out, peeking in their cabinets and drawers, the state of their housekeeping. Lammeck handed back the pictures.

  “Any need to go over there?” he asked.

  Dag shook his head. “Nah. The cops have gone over it pretty good. You think we’re done here?”

  Lammeck flicked both hands at Arnold Chapman to have Dag slide him away. Once Dag had pushed the corpse back into its dark cubby, Lammeck followed him out of the room and up the steps, buttoning his coat against the chill. Dag led him from the Town Hall to the sidewalk. Lammeck welcomed the frigid air and distant sun. Dag eyed him and gave him a quiet moment to restore his nerve.

  A block away, the Newburyport police station seemed almost vacant. A double murder and suicide must have shaken this town to its roots. Lammeck guessed all the cops were out, collecting clues, interviews, and more pictures, running in circles that would bear fruit for them because they wanted to prove Arnold was the killer. It made sense: Close the books quick and go back to being a quiet fishing village.

  Dag showed his federal ID to a desk sergeant, saying Lammeck was with him. The cop raised an eyebrow at the Secret Service badge but made no comment. He let them pass into the station’s inner offices.

  “Wait here,” Dag told Lammeck at a worn sofa in a dingy outer room. A coffee pot steamed on a hot plate. Lammeck poured himself a cup. He was unable to find cream or sugar, and regretted it with the first sip. The cop coffee was strong and old. He sank into t
he cushions of the battered sofa.

  Waiting for Dag, Lammeck sifted through his conclusions. Unlike the police, he was unchained from procedure and probable cause, free to roam through possibilities and likelihoods. Neither he nor Dag would ever be faced with proving a case in court. He suspected what had happened, and was certain of what had not. The weapons would confirm him.

  Dag returned. He set a cardboard box on the sofa, then turned to pour himself some coffee. Lammeck warned him off it. Dag ignored the advice.

  The box was marked evidence: do not remove in a thick black scrawl. Lammeck marveled how Dag managed to dodge the rules, the same way his clothes managed to avoid an iron. He recalled how this skill had made up a large portion of the Jedburghs’ training in Scotland: Use the land and what’s at hand to your advantage; exploit opportunities; seize the initiative. Lammeck had taught them how almost any common item can be used as a weapon. Apparently Dag had learned well.