[Jake Boulder 01.0] Watching the Bodies

by Graham Smith

  The paper has a few details on Chalmers and a picture that looks like it has been lifted from a social media site.

  While not great leads, they are the best we’ve got. We agree I’m to speak with them in the morning while Alfonse continues his digital excavations of their lives.

  Chapter 25

  He waits until the sliver of moon is hidden behind a cloud and moves from his hiding place in the manicured hedge.

  Each step is hurried but silent as he crosses the garden and approaches the house’s back door. Using a set of picks, he is through the door and inside the house in less than a minute.

  He knows which room she’ll be in. He’s watched the house for hours, observing her movements. A trail of lights being switched off identified her bedroom at the rear of the house.

  He is striking when the night is darkest. When the target is deepest in sleep.

  She fits the pattern. She will die tonight. Her death will be a quick one. Painful for a brief spell, but quick compared to the Niemeyer slut.

  As he moves towards the stairs he’s startled by the angry hiss of a cat. Inside the lounge a mangy tabby with fierce eyes arches its back.

  Taking two steps forward, he reaches the lounge door and closes it while the cat is still deciding whether or not to attack.

  Step by step he tiptoes up the stairs, keeping his feet against the left wall to minimise the risk of a creak betraying his presence.

  The strong aroma of muscle liniment fills his nose, telling him the old girl has overdone it at the gym.

  Reaching the top of the stairs he identifies the correct bedroom from the gentle snores.

  His gloved hand clasps the door handle and he slips into the bedroom, taking care not to make even the tiniest sound.

  Three brisk steps have him towering over her bed, the scalpel in his hand poised ready to strike.

  Chapter 26

  I swing the Mustang into a parking bay and step onto the street. Four paces later, I feel the first prickles of sweat begin to encase my body. It isn’t usually this hot at this time of year, but it’s not unknown.

  The growing heat causes me to be uneasy for another reason altogether. A friend has decided to take advantage of the good weather. He’s called with an invitation to an impromptu barbecue and pool party.

  Claude is a lousy cook at the best of times. As a rule, his barbecuing produces more charcoal than a forest fire. Add to that a thirty by twelve hole filled with water and drunk people and you have a recipe for disaster.

  I’d made vague promises, saying how busy I am, but I’ll try to get there if at all possible.

  Before entering George Chalmers’s office, I take a moment to assess what I can see through the window.

  Chalmers is seated at his desk with a vast ledger in front of him. To his left, nearer the door is the cleanest cut young man I’ve ever seen. He’s staring into a computer screen with serious intent when I hear the muted tones of a telephone.

  Clean Cut lifts the telephone on his desk and speaks for a moment before transferring the call to Chalmers. Figuring Clean Cut is some kind of intern or trainee, I wait until the phone call ends then enter the small office. It’s the tidiest office I’ve ever stepped into. Nothing seems to be out of place. Even the papers on the desks are ordered and straight. A hint of cologne hangs in the air rather than the dusty smell of old files.

  Before I can say a word, Clean Cut is out of his chair. ‘Good morning, sir. Welcome to Chalmers Accountants. How may I help you?’

  Not only is he too polite for words, he is even more clean-cut when close up. I reckon he’s never yet used a razor and won’t need to for at least ten years.

  ‘I’m here to have a word with Mr Chalmers.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment, Mr…?’

  ‘Boulder. No, I don’t.’ I look across the room to where Chalmers is pretending to look at the ledger while earwigging our conversation. ‘It’s to do with a case I’m working on for Devereaux Investigations.’

  Give Chalmers his due, he doesn’t flinch at my words.

  A shot of excitement fills Clean Cut’s face before professionalism and breeding remove it. He turns to his boss. ‘Mr Chalmers, do you have a moment to speak to a Mr Boulder about a case he’s investigating?’

  Chalmers looks up from the ledger on his desk. ‘I have five minutes, Mr Boulder. I am afraid we are rather busy just now.’

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ I give a sideways nod at Clean Cut. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’

  He frowns then pulls a dead president from his billfold. ‘Michael, would you be so kind as to walk down to Sherri’s and get me my usual? I will take lunch at my desk today.’

  Listening to Chalmers’s educated voice and his mannered speech pattern, the presence of Clean Cut begins to make sense to me. The younger man will be either a relative or a carefully vetted protégé.

  As soon as the door closes, I pull up a chair ready to pepper Chalmers with questions about his relationship with Kira.

  His nose wrinkles in distaste at my sitting without being invited, but I’m not too worried about his sensibilities. What I have come to discuss is far worse than bad manners.

  ‘Have you heard Kira Niemeyer was murdered?’

  He nods. ‘A terrible business. Whoever could do such a thing?’

  Not bothering to answer his question, I lock eyes with him. My intention is to go straight for the jugular with a candid account of Kira’s death. Get him on the back foot by offending his genteel nature. Perhaps I’ll get a flash of a darker persona lurking underneath. ‘Did you also hear how she was slashed seventy-two times before her heart was pierced? That her body was dumped half under a bush on a popular walking trail where it was sure to be found?’

  The blanching of his already pale skin is the only answer I’m given. His eyes cloud with sadness as he considers my words.

  ‘Every cut was on her chest and stomach. Can you imagine what a mess that many wounds would do in such a concentrated area?’

  He shoots from his seat and darts towards a door at the back of the room. I am three paces behind him when I recognise the room he’s entered is a bathroom. Chalmers isn’t trying to escape. He’s more concerned with hitting the toilet bowl with the streams of vomit pulsing from his mouth.

  I step back into the office and return to my seat. There is nothing to be gained from standing over him, he’ll be out when he’s finished. Having witnessed his upright-citizen behaviour, I guess he’ll be shamefaced about his less than stoic reaction.

  When he does emerge from the bathroom, his pallor has dropped a couple of shades to a hue interior decorators call apple white.

  ‘I am sorry. That was rather embarrassing.’

  I wave away his apologies. ‘Don’t worry about it, you’re not the first person I’ve known to be sick after being told something horrible.’

  He gives a small nod of thanks as he pulls a bottle of sparkling water from a desk drawer. ‘All the same, it is not very gentlemanly.’

  There’s a danger we’ll keep going round in circles if I don’t change the subject, so I get to the real point for my visit.

  ‘Kira mentioned in her journal you and she dated. How long were you together, and when was it?’

  ‘We dated for around two months. It would be the middle of last summer.’

  I cast my memory back and remember dating a dental nurse who’d wanted to teach me how to swim. Her increasing insistence had brought a swift end to our relationship.

  ‘Why did you split?’

  He shrugs. ‘Why does any couple separate? I guess we were not terribly well suited.’

  ‘In what way didn’t you suit each other?’

  He delays his answer by emptying the bottle of water into a glass. ‘Did you know Kira before she died?’

  I nod and wait for him to continue.

  ‘You are a private detective. I am sure you have assessed me as a person, looked into my background?’

  It’
s my turn to shrug. ‘A little.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Boulder, why do you think Kira and I parted company?’

  It’s a good question. One whose answer makes sense.

  Chalmers is a prig at best. At worst he’s a prissy little mummy’s boy who’ll expect his wife to conform to the Stepford model.

  Kira and he wouldn’t be suited to each other in any way. While opposites are meant to attract, she was an untamed spirit who lived life at a pace that suited the rhythms of mood and moment.

  Chalmers, on the other hand, is the type of person for whom routine is everything. A real ‘fish on a Friday’ kind of guy. He’d worship and provide a decent life for her and any kids they produced while suffocating her free-spirited nature.

  Sure, physical attraction may carry them so far together, but his sort are planners by nature and Chalmers is at that age where the getting of a wife has been moved from the ‘one day’ to the ‘imperative’ column in his life ledger.

  This line of thought almost leads me to discount him as a suspect until I have a second thought.

  What if he’d fallen for her and had his marital offer discarded? I’ve learned from many a fight, the quiet ones often prove the most dangerous.

  Perhaps her rejection had been the straw that broke the dromedary’s spine, flipping him from prissy clerk into a crazed killer, intent on making sure that if he couldn’t have Kira, no one else could.

  As plausible as this sounds at first, the theory doesn’t bear much scrutiny. They’d been together last year. Suppressed personalities can be very unpredictable, but there had been no current trigger. If she’d been listed in the Casperton Gazette’s weekly round-up of engagements, there would be more cause to consider him as a suspect.

  It wasn’t outwith the realms of possibility he’d found out Kira was hooking, but I doubt he has. While his office and clothes speak of a decent business, I can’t see an accountant being able to justify spending money on a hooker. Certainly not ones charging ten grand a time. While there is no particular kind or type of person who’d hire a hooker, I just can’t picture him booking one.

  Still, I’m not ready to strike a line through his name just yet.

  ‘Okay, so you were different people who hooked up for a while. Tell me what you two did have in common. Where you hung out together.’

  ‘We did not exactly have a lot in common. We would perhaps watch a movie or go for dinner and then go back to my place.’ He blushes as his eyes look at anything in the room except me. ‘Our relationship was more physical than cerebral.’

  ‘I get it. When you first got together who instigated it?’

  ‘Kira did. I was quite taken aback at her forwardness.’

  I have a struggle to keep my reply to that statement unspoken.

  Kira would have eaten Chalmers up and spat out a chewed skeleton without her extra-curricular activities. With them it was a complete mismatch, which made David versus Goliath seem like a fair fight.

  ‘And who was it who called it quits? You or her?’

  ‘That was her too.’ He looks me in the eye for the first time in minutes. ‘I did not let it bother me too much to be honest. The physical benefits may have been enjoyable but it was never true love for either of us. In fact, the night she told me it was over she as good as told me she was interested in someone else.’

  ‘Who? What did she say?’ My words come out in a hurried jumble. This was the kind of information that could point us towards her killer.

  Again Chalmers delays by taking a drink of water before speaking. It’s as if he is searching his memory or is afraid what he says will disappoint me. ‘She told me that she thought a lot of me, but I would never be Jake Boulder.’

  I guess I must have gasped as he asks if I am okay. Chalmers could have punched at me for an hour without doing a fraction of the damage his words had.

  My skin develops a sheen of sweat. The thoughts and ideas in my head are tumbling around too fast to comprehend.

  I haul myself together enough to focus my eyes onto his face. Staring hard at him I find no trace of deception or animosity. There is a tinge of empathy and embarrassment at the confession that has compared us in Kira’s eyes.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

  I nod, not trusting the desert that’s masquerading as my mouth. Taking the water from him, I gulp a mouthful and follow it with a steady drink.

  ‘Thanks.’ I hand the glass back.

  ‘I can see that threw you somewhat.’

  ‘Just a bit.’ I give a brief smile and try to make light of it. ‘It’s just a wee bit of a surprise, that’s all.’

  ‘I am sure it was. If it is any consolation, I was most perturbed when she said it to me.’

  His use of perturbed jolts me back to a semblance of my regular self. I know what the word means, but I’ve never heard it used in conversation before.

  ‘Tell me, when you were together did she ever take you back to her place?’

  ‘No. I suggested it, but she always had a reason why we should go back to mine.’

  ‘What about her family, did she take you to meet them?’

  ‘Again the answer is no. I was not particularly bothered about meeting her family if I am honest.’

  ‘Why not?’ I think I may just be back on track, at least in appearance.

  ‘I could tell we were into different things and I find the whole business of meeting parents rather intimidating. Especially when you consider how wealthy her father is.’

  I couldn’t begin to guess how much Old Man Niemeyer was worth, but then again, money isn’t my God. So long as I have enough bucks to get by from week to week I’m happy. How much or little other people have is their business, not mine.

  An accountant like Chalmers will be obsessed with money and will no doubt have a pretty good handle on where in Casperton all the money, and the power accompanying it resides.

  Being as he is such a prissy fellow, I figure appealing to his decency will get me some answers. Unless I’ve misjudged him, Chalmers’s moral code won’t allow him to be deceitful on matters which don’t directly affect him.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me that may help catch her killer?’

  Chalmers talks for a couple of minutes. I don’t think anything he says is helpful but I let him finish just in case.

  Chapter 27

  Next on my list of people to see is Pete Lester. I know Pete from his occasional visits to the Tree. He is a big guy with a cheerful nature and ready grin.

  He’s also living embodiment of beauty only being skin deep. Few are the times I’ve seen him without some girl or other in attendance, despite him looking as if he’d fallen from the top of the ugly tree and hit every branch face first on the way down.

  As I drive across town, my brain chews at the implications of Kira’s words like a starving rat.

  You’re no Jake Boulder.

  Whichever way up I stand those words, in any context I can think of, they always return me to the same conclusion. Kira Niemeyer had fallen deeply in love with me. Not the usual hearts and flowers love the gift card industry markets. Hers was the bat-shit crazy obsessive kind of attraction which poisons common sense and taints reason until you have a twenty-four-carat stalker on your tail.

  What astounds me more than anything else is the way I’d been left unaware of her true feelings. To my mind I was little more than a booty call or a friendly conversation when our paths crossed.

  That Kira had possessed such a depth of feelings for me is a haymaker from a world champion. Whenever we’d gotten together she’d exhibited none of the typical signs of clingy or nesting behaviour which so terrifies both Alfonse and me.

  On the contrary, her behaviour often verged on being aloof or distant.

  Realisation dawns on me as I pull into Pete Lester’s yard and climb out of the Mustang. Kira had been two steps ahead of me.

  Feminine instinct, her natural intelligence or some other factor had warned her of the result of
trying to ensnare me into a proper relationship. Recognising my ingrained bachelordom, she’d played a different game – always leaving the door open for a return while seeming indifferent to my response.

  Looking back at our liaisons, I realised just how much she’d set the pace and tone. Kira and I had been good together. We both knew it and yet neither of us had wanted to make it a regular thing.

  At least that’s what I had always thought.

  How the hell had I gotten it so wrong? Not picked up even the slightest hint she’d fallen so hard for me?

  I see Pete and a couple of his men loading a pickup with timber windows. As I walk across they begin tossing ropes across the pile.

  ‘Hey, Jake. Whatcha after?’ A squint-toothed smile follows his words.

  ‘I’m here to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘No sweat. What’s your problem, dry rot? Termites?’

  ‘Alfonse and I are investigating Kira Niemeyer’s murder.’

  ‘Better you than that dumbshit Farrage and his cronies.’ His own cronies nod agreement.

  I can’t help but smile at their endorsement.

  ‘Thanks.’ I give a nod to the far side of his yard where his office is located. ‘Can we talk somewhere more private?’

  ‘We can.’ A callused thumb jerks towards his men. ‘But when I get back they’ll just ask what we’ve been talking about. And I’ll tell them. I’ve no secrets about Kira as far as they’re concerned.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ It isn’t but there is little I can do about it without a badge to give me authority.

  Pete’s eyes narrow as he detects the difference in my tone. ‘It’s cool, Jake. I dated Kira for about three months at the start of the year. Neither of us were looking for anything more than a bit of fun and neither of us were exclusive.’

  ‘Can you tell me about how you two hooked up?’

  ‘She came on to me. I didn’t have to do anything except not piss her off.’ His smile is joined by a lecherous wink.