Tony Marcella 05 - Witch House

by Dana Donovan

  “That’s it.”

  “Did it work?”

  I held the wrapper up to the light of the window. “I don’t know. A candy wrapper is a bit unorthodox. Maybe I should check with Lilith.”

  “Yes, check with Lilith. That’s a good idea.”

  “All right, I will. Here, take this.” I passed the wrapper to Carlos, carefully handling it by the top where the folded crease kept the spell locked in tightly. I got my phone out and called Lilith, something I would rather have not done, as I knew she would make a big deal over my using witchcraft without her prompting. Ever since the witch’s rite of passage when I became a witch by proxy, Lilith has been on my case to exercise and explore my powers to keep them fresh and prevent their deterioration. It had been my view that using witchcraft, especially at work, is tantamount to embracing the dark art as a religion; something I am just not comfortable with.

  The phone rang three times, then I heard, “Bright morrow caller, pray speak as thou wilt.”

  “Ursula?”

  “Aye, `tis Ursula. Be that you, Master Tony?”

  “Yes. Where is Lilith?”

  In the background, I could hear a commotion akin to a bar brawl, glass breaking, wood shattering and a deep rumbling sort of growl that made me think of a grizzly bear. “Oh, Lilith hast taken chores. Doth thou wish to leave for her thy word?”

  “No, thou wishes to speak to her right now. Tell her it is important.”

  “Kind sir.” A crash like a window breaking interrupted her. She returned. “I beg thee forgiveness, verily, for what dragon she slays not by choice now, she may ner the chance to slay later.”

  “What? A dragon? What is that commotion?”

  In the background I heard Lilith say, “Who is it Urs?”

  “`Tis Master Tony. He begs a word with thee is all.”

  “No. Tell him I’m busy. He’ll have to call back.”

  Ursula returned. “Lilith is busy, Master Tony. Mayhaps a call by hour’s end will find her free.”

  “No, Ursula, tell me what the hell is going on there? Did she bring an animal into the apartment?”

  “Fare thee well, sir. My heart to Master Carlos, too, if you please.”

  In the background I heard, “Ursula, hang it up!” The call went dead. I turned to Carlos, my jaw slack and my body numb.

  “Well?” he said.

  I took a breath and swallowed. “I think she brought a dragon home.”

  “A dragon?” He laughed guardedly. “There’s no such…. Really?”

  I winced uncomfortably.

  “They have those at the pet store now?”

  I shook my head and collected my wits. “No, I’m sure it’s just Ursula’s speak. You know, everything is a metaphor with that woman.”

  He nodded to appease me. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. So, what do you think?” He held up the candy wrapper. “Will the whisper thing work?”

  I took it from him. “We will soon find out, won’t we? You wait here? I’ll be right back.”

  I got out of the car and headed upstairs to Stephanie’s apartment. I knew I did not have a lot of time before Tarkowski showed up, but I did not need much. All I had to do was give her the wrapper and watch her open it. The rest would take care of itself.

  The moment I stopped at her door, I knew she was home. The rank of cigarette smoke spilling out through a crack in the window told me that much. It may have been the only thing keeping her smoke alarms from going off. I had been in barrooms clogged with more smoke than the human body could tolerate. This was worse. What kept her body upright remained a total mystery to me. I knocked on her door and waited. It opened with a flurry of chains and unlocked unlatches.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said, sounding disappointed. Her cigarette had burned down to the filter with the ash several inches long still hanging on. It fell when she flicked her hand to dismiss my presence. “Go away, Detective. I’m busy.”

  “Wait. I don’t want to come in. I have something for you. It’s from Frank Tarkowski. I want to give it to you.”

  “You have something from Frank?”

  “Yes, it’s a present of sorts.”

  “Where is Frank?”

  “Oh, he’ll be along. He wanted me to come by first and give it you.”

  She regarded me with mistrust. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” I held up the wrapper. “He put it in here and told me not to look inside.”

  “A candy wrapper?”

  “It was all he had to put it in. He insisted I give it to you, though, along with a message.”

  She opened the screen door and took the wrapper. “What’s the message?”

  “The message is, ‘Inside this wrapper is everything I feel for you in my heart’.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes—no. He also said that he would be along in a few minutes to hear what you had to say about that.”

  “Did he?” She smiled, her yellow teeth dimmed further by the cigarette smoke streaming past her face. “Well, let’s see what’s in there.” She unrolled the wrapper and held it with her eye to the opening. “What is this, a joke? It’s empty.”

  I grinned devilishly. “It is now. I’ll see you.”

  As I turned and headed away, I heard her grumbling on about that heartless bastard, Frank, and how she would tell him a thing or two the next time she saw him. Did I feel badly about it? Sure, I did, but I felt better about myself; not because I pulled off a successful act of witchcraft, but because like a good cop I thought fast on my feet to prevent the flight of two dangerous suspects in a murder case.

  I joined up with Carlos, who had slid in behind the wheel while I was gone. “You want to drive?” I said. “That’s okay with me.” I jumped into the passenger seat. He reeled back and he gave me a dirty look as though I had just dragged in with me the stink of a six-day-old outhouse. “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  “You.” He said.

  “Me? What did I do? Oh, no wait. I see Tarkowski pulling in.”

  We slunk down low in our seats and watched Frank Tarkowski whip his vehicle into a parking space directly in front of the stairs. He hopped out, leaving the car door open and motor running, and ran up the three flights in a sprint. Carlos tagged my arm and said in a hush, “Spot me, I’m going in.”

  “Going where?” I said, but he was already gone. I watched him sneak around the side of Tarkowski’s car and climb into the front seat. Meanwhile upstairs, Frank and Stephanie began arguing out on the balcony, their hands waving in animated gestures, their shouts ricocheting down the stairwell in angry echoes. I heard Frank shout something about her revolving door, though later Carlos swore he said F`n whore. He may be right. Whatever the case, the encounter ended with her stepping back into the apartment and slamming the door in his face. As he started down the stairs, I called to Carlos in a whispered shout, “Carlos! He’s coming!”

  Carlos backed out of the car ass first, and in a crouch, scuttled across the parking lot and into the cruiser. We kept low and out of sight as Tarkowski hopped into his truck, peeled out in reverse and then dumped it into drive, squealing his tires the entire distance of the parking lot.

  “Wow, Carlos, that was close,” I said, after poking my head up to make sure the coast was clear. “What were you doing in his car?”

  He smiled slyly, with a look I seldom get from Carlos. “I found this.” He held up Tarkowski’s passport and wallet.

  “You stole his wallet and passport!”

  “Shhhh, I didn’t steal them. I found them. They must have fallen out of his car after he left the door open.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What? I’ll turn them in at lost and found.”

  “When?”

  “When we don’t care anymore whether or not he leaves town.”

  I pitched my head against the backrest. “Whatever, come on, let’s go now.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Excuse me?”


  “Yeah, see I need you to get out of the car now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s nothing personal. Maybe you can catch a bus back to the office.”

  “Carlos, what the hell do you mean? I’m not getting out of the car.”

  “Well, I am not going anywhere with you; so, you might as well get out.”

  “Are you upset with me? Is this about the wallet and passport?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Then why ask me to get out?”

  He scowled in contemplation. “I don’t know. I just don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

  “You don’t…. Oh, I get it. Carlos, did you look inside the candy wrapper while I was on the phone with Ursula?”

  He turned away bashfully. “Ahm….”

  “Tell me the truth now.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I might have.”

  I laughed. “Carlos, it’s all right. You opened the whisper box on yourself. That’s why you don’t want to go anywhere with me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure, it’s no big deal.” I looked up at Stephanie’s apartment. “It’s funny. Just getting an empty wrapper from Frank was enough for her to blow her stack. Who’d have guessed? I didn’t need to use witchcraft.”

  “Yeah, who would have guessed?”

  “All right then, let’s go now.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Carlos, I told you it’s all right. You opened the whisper box on yourself. You’re not mad at me. You’re under a spell.”

  “So?”

  “So shake it off!”

  “I can’t!”

  I will skip the calamity of events that followed. Suffice to say there was no way Carlos was going to let me ride back to the office with him until I made another whisper box to reverse the spell. That one I fashioned from an old beer bottle I found in the gutter, using my thumb as a bottle cap. The spell worked so well that he followed me around all afternoon like a lost puppy. I had to smack him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper just to get some privacy in the restroom back at the Justice Center, but that’s a story for another day.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I know I say this sometimes, but not enough. Dominic Spinelli is a credit to the department and his profession. How he found out that Frank Tarkowski was getting ready to leave town will remain a wonder to me always. For a new detective, he sure has a lot of friends in lofty places, and many more in not so lofty places, I am sure. That said, I am afraid that I also occasionally take him for granted. His innovative methods and resourcefulness notwithstanding, it is easy to forget sometimes that one must make allowances for his youth. To deny him that is to burden him with the expectation of cognition beyond his experiences. After all, through our years we age, through our mistakes we grow.

  We were back in the detective’s lounge when I asked Dominic if he collected any suitable DNA samples from John Davis’ uniform. He said he had, and that technicians were already down in the lab testing it against the bones we found in Johnny Buck’s casket.

  “That’s good,” I said. “How soon before we know anything?” His attention drifted away as if tethered no longer to our conversation. I assumed he was calculating his answer, but I soon realized that his thoughts were miles away. I palmed his shoulder and shook him lightly. “Dominic?”

  He blinked and came back, seemingly unaware of his diversion. “What?”

  I suppose that was the first time I really noticed something was wrong. “The DNA, how soon before we know if we have a match?”

  “Yeah, right the technicians are downstairs in the lab testing it against the bones now.”

  “I know. You said that already. How soon before we have a match?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, tomorrow maybe.”

  I looked to Carlos, who clearly shared my misgivings. To Dominic I said, “Are you feeling okay?”

  He looked at me, and it was then I saw it. All the years I was a cop, exposed to just this kind of thing, trained to see the telltale signs from those who were trying to hide it; yet I had not noticed the obvious standing before me.

  Dominic was hooked.

  “Please,” he said. “I’m fine.” He turned with a nervous twitch, rubbed his nose with the back of his wrist and sniffed. “It’s these damn allergies. They got my head in a fog. I’ll be all right.”

  He went into his shirt pocket and pulled out a bottle of what I had assumed all along were his allergy pills, but when his shaking hands could not open it, I reached out and took it from him. “Here,” I said, “let me help you with that.”

  “No, that’s all right, I have—”

  “Dominic.” I held the prescription label out for Carlos to see. “These aren’t allergy pills. They are prescription pain pills.”

  “I know that.” He snatched the bottle back from me. “I take these because I am still in a lot of pain from when I was shot.”

  “That was last year.”

  “Yes, but I’m still in pain.”

  “I suppose you are. I see you popping these all the time. Are you sure you have it under control?”

  He stepped back and gave me a look like the one Carlos gave me in the car back at Stephanie’s place. “What, am I not doing a good job? Am I dropping the ball on you?”

  “No, I didn’t say that.”

  “Then leave me alone. I know what I am doing. I have a prescription for these.”

  “I’m sure you do. It’s just that Oxycontin is a powerful narcotic. If you think you need help, we—”

  “Tony, I’m fine. I appreciate your concerns, but I have everything under control. Now, can we get back to work? This case isn’t going to solve itself.”

  “All right, fine.” I referred to Carlos, who simply shrugged, as if saying to me let it go for now. I forced a grin of assent. “Let’s move on then. This business with Frank Tarkowski, where does it leave us?”

  “With a boatload of suspects,” Carlos remarked. “We need a way to thin the herd. They can’t all be guilty.”

  “Ah, but they can,” said Dominic. “It is conceivable that every one of them is in on a conspiracy to get the money from the robbery that they all believed Landau had hidden somewhere.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but only one of them pulled the trigger on the gun that killed him.”

  Carlos tossed his hands up in a sigh. “So, it’s back to that. We need the murder weapon. Otherwise, there is no way we are going to narrow down our list of suspects.”

  “I’m afraid you are right,” I came around the table and took a seat. “Unfortunately, the gun used to kill René Landau is probably lying on the bottom of the river somewhere. We need to accept that we may never find it.”

  “Or might we?” said Dominic, a sparkle of mischief in his eye; and I did not think it was the drugs this time. “What if we announced that we found the gun? That might force the killer’s hand to make a move he hadn’t planned on making.”

  “That might flush him out?”

  “Exactly.”

  Carlos said, “But we don’t have the gun. That’s the whole point.”

  “Yes, but the killer doesn’t know that.”

  “I’m lost.”

  “It’s easy. We put the word out that we found the murder weapon and that an arrest in the case is imminent. If the killer believes it, then he might try something to get the gun back, so long as we make the bait appealing enough, get it within reach, so to speak.”

  “What if the killer still has the gun? He’ll know that we are lying?”

  “Yes, or he will think we are mistaken. Either way we have nothing to lose.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How do you propose we do this?”

  Dominic walked up to the television set and placed his hand on top of it, “We go on TV and release a statement. That is the only way to guarantee maximum exposure to assure that our killer gets the word.”<
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  “That’s not bad. We can use a decoy.”

  “Of course, there is a substantial side risk to doing this.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It could backfire. If we don’t flush the killer out, then the public won’t get the arrest we promised.”

  “It is a gamble, and it could tarnish your reputation some. Are you up for it?”

  “Me?” I looked at him and laughed. “This is your baby, Dominic. I think you need to do this.”

  “What?”

  “Sure.” I put my arm around his shoulder. “You’re always saying how you want to get out in the field more. Well, now is your chance. We will schedule this press release of yours out there, back at the scene of the crime.”

  “Back at Pete’s Place?”

  “Yeah. We do this in the alley, tonight, live on the six o’clock news. You get them to focus the camera on the spot where Landau died. Do the chalk outline for maximum impact. Then hold up a shoebox, shake it and tell them that you found the murder weapon and that it is inside the box. Let them see you placing the box into the trunk of your car, explaining that it will be safe there until you can get it to the Justice Center in the morning. After that we wait.”

  “For what?” asked Carlos.

  “For someone to come along and take the bait.”

  “I love it,” said Dominic. “Anyone wanting to get his hands on the gun would know that his best chance is tonight before I drive in to work in the morning and deliver the box into evidence.”

  “Exactly. So, the question is are you up to this?”

  “Of course.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could tell he was nervous about it. Dominic has always been a behind the scenes operator, the unsung hero type that never gets the accolades he deserves. Sometimes, I think he prefers it that way. The problem with working in the long shadows of men like Carlos and me is that it can stifle one’s self-esteem. That, I am afraid, is what has happened to Dominic. I believe he regards his brush with death last year a consequence of failure, and that the pain he tries to numb with prescription drugs is a pain of the heart and not the body. I felt that perhaps by pushing him out of our shadows and shinning a spotlight on his worth, we might begin to heal the heart and mend the mind of a troubled soul, and that for Dominic, it is the least we can do.