Past Due

by Richard Stockford

  “Does Bill have family in the area?”

  “No. Bill’s parents are dead and he was an only child. Albert was his only family.”

  “What was Bill’s business?” Clipper asked.

  He and Rupe have a custom computer software business. Mostly for private sector business, but they also do some defense work."

  “Is the business doing well?”

  “Yes, it always has. They’ve got four employees and they’re always busy. Bill still went to work every day, but I could tell he was just going through the motions, letting Rupe carry the load.”

  “So, at some point you left?” asked Peters, pulling the interview back on point.

  “Yes. Two weeks ago, I went to my mother’s. Bill and I weren’t fighting, but I just couldn’t be around him anymore.”

  “How many times have you been back to the house since you left,” asked Clipper.

  “I… I haven’t been back. My mother went over to get some of my things a couple of days after I left, but I just needed to make a clean break.” Janice looked Clipper in the eye as she spoke, but he could see the lie in the sudden arch of her foot and hear it in her voice.

  John Peters leaned forward. “Mrs. Owens, was Bill faithful to you,” he asked bluntly.

  Janice laughed harshly and visibly relaxed. “Before, I never had reason to question him, and lately, he wasn’t even interested enough to cheat,” she said ruefully. “And before you ask, no, I’ve never cheated on him.”

  Peters nodded and sat back in his chair.

  “Yesterday, you said that everyone liked Bill.” Clipper said, referring to his notebook. “Have you thought of anyone who might have had a reason to kill him?” he asked quietly.

  “No. It must have been a robbery or something. Bill didn’t have any enemies.”

  Clipper heard the lie again. “When he was found, your front door was unlocked. Can you tell me who has keys to your house.” he asked.

  “You know I have keys and my mother has a set, and maybe Rupe Jones. I don’t know of anyone else.”

  “Would Bill have left the door unlocked?” asked Peters.

  Mrs. Owens turned in her chair. “No, never.” she said firmly. “He was always careful to lock up at night.” She turned back to Clipper. “And there’s no way he’d be in bed with someone in the house.”

  “John Peters cleared his throat. “So,” he said deliberately, “you’re saying someone who did not have a key and did not have anything against Bill slipped into your locked house and stabbed him in the heart.”

  Clipper leaned forward into the shocked silence. “Janice, we know you were at the house last night. You were seen,” he said gently. “You need to tell us your side of whatever happened between you and Bill. If you level with us now, we’ll do everything we can to help.”

  Janice Owens shook her head mutely, staring at Clipper, wide-eyed. They locked gazes for a long moment and just as he was about to bear down, her shoulders slumped and the defiance drained from her face. “I was there,” she whispered, almost inaudibly, “but I didn’t go inside. Bill had been acting strange, like he was afraid or worried, and I did think maybe he was cheating or something. I went over there to see if he was alone. I… I’ve done it a couple of times in the last two weeks, but I didn’t go into the house. I was just in the back yard, and the lights were out, so I left.”

  Clipper heard the lie again, and so did Peters who slid his chair a little closer. “You were there, you have a key, you’re divorcing him… come on, Janice, tell us the rest. Did he threaten you? Were you afraid?”

  Janice Owens stiffened in her chair and took a deep breath. “I think it’s time I had a lawyer,” she whispered determinedly. “I have nothing else to say.”

  “Charge her, or we’re out of here. She’s got no statement at this time.” Caleb Mathers was a tough young defense attorney who had appeared in response to Janice Owens’ call. They had conferred privately in the interview room for fifteen minutes before calling Clipper and Peters back in.

  Clipper frowned at Janice. “We’re going to want to speak to you again, and we’re going to keep your house sealed for a while longer, but you’re free to go.” He pulled Mathers aside as they left the office. “She’s lying, bigtime, Caleb,” he whispered, but I still think it might be in her best interest to level with us.”

  The young attorney grinned. “Much as we’d like to cooperate with the Po-lice,” he drawled, “I think we’ll just sit tight for the moment.” He sobered. “Let me see what she has to say, and I’ll give you a call if anything changes. Clipper let him go, satisfied that he had done all he could.

  Chapter 2.6

  Tired and hungry, Clipper finally got home, at 8:30. He grabbed a beer and some deli meat from a nearly empty refrigerator and made a couple of huge sandwiches. After stowing his .45 and badge on top of the refrigerator and snapping on the CD player, he went out to his back deck and slumped into a battered lawn chair to eat. Clipper was a good cook, but he was often satisfied with the quick and easy, especially when he wanted to think. Right now he was thinking hard as he chewed distractedly, pondering the day’s events. First Jones, and then Janice Owens seemed to be holding back something about the victim. Janice Owens was the logical, almost textbook, suspect in her husband’s murder but, for some reason, Clipper wanted to believe her when she said she didn’t do it. Maybe it was the unlikely thought of her petit figure shoving a triangular steel blade into a man’s chest... Clipper’s eyes narrowed as the mental picture of the knife wound again stirred a wisp of latent memory. Before he could tease it out, the image of Janice’s face, scared and defiant, destroyed his concentration and he finally went back into the house, locked up and trudged upstairs to bed.

  The next morning, Clipper was in his office before seven o’clock. He reviewed the previous night’s activity reports, a typical assortment of Burglary, theft, vandalism and domestic disputes, assigning those that needed follow-up and then reviewed all of the division’s reports for the last two days. By eight thirty, the routine paperwork was out of the way, and he was on the phone with the Assistant Attorney General in Augusta.

  “…And, so far, she’s all we got for suspects.”

  The prosecutor responded as Clipper knew he would. “It’s not enough. I’ll give Mathers a call, but without a confession or a lot more physical evidence, we’d never get past the grand jury.”

  Clipper hung up and went down to the department’s crime lab to find Dave Adams staring intently into a computer screen. Fair haired and slight of build, Adams had known by age ten that he would one day work in a police crime lab. Lacking the money for a formal college training, he had haunted police headquarters from the time he started high school. His obvious interest and willingness to bring coffee and doughnuts to old Sergeant Dane, then passing his time until retirement comparing fingerprints and developing photos, won him an informal education. As he soaked up the traditional fingerprint and crime scene training, he brought computer and digital technology to the table, and by the time he had graduated from the local community college with an Associate’s Degree in Law Enforcement, he was one of the most qualified evidence technicians in the state. His remorseless budget requests, wholeheartedly endorsed by Lieutenant Clipper, had provided the Bangor Police Department with a crime lab that ranked among the top in the state.

  “Hey, LT,” Adams said without looking away from the monitor, “what’s happening?”

  “You tell me. Did you get a time of death?”

  Adams turned to face Clipper. “Yeah,” he said, “The M.E. put it between 11:00 pm and 1:00 am. Cause of death was a single stab wound to the heart, made with some kind of a three cornered blade, about nine inches long and tapered to a point. No other wounds, no blood alcohol. They’re doing a tox scan, but there was nothing obvious.”

  Clipper grunted. “Nothing we didn’t know,” he said disappointedly.

  “Well, I don’t know… There is this.” said Adams nodding at the computer monito
r.

  Clipper leaned in to look at the screen which showed an extreme close-up of the triangular chest wound, gaping red but bloodless against the background of pale skin.

  “It showed up a lot better under oblique light,” said Adams, “but there’s a mark where the knife guard slammed into the chest. That’s how we could tell how long the blade is. If you look real close, you can see some initials or something impressed into the skin.”

  Clipper stared until he could see two faint rectangular marks in the skin, above and below the wound. He straightened up and took a sheet of paper offered by Adams.

  “It was pretty faint, but this is a drawing of what it looks like.” On the paper, Adams had sketched:

  “I couldn’t make out the small print, but I’m pretty sure about the U.S. so I should be able to research it. At least, we ought to be able to identify the knife when we find it.”

  “Ok, good work.” Clipper started for the door, then paused. “Will you gather all the old evidence from the Edgewink shootout and bring it to my office? I need all the stuff in the display and copies of all the pictures, finger print cards and whatever else you can find.” The display was a locked glass front cabinet in the police station lobby that contained a half dozen faded photos and the weapons and other items taken from the gang member’s bodies as well as other historical department artifacts.

  Clipper smiled at Adam’s quizzical look. “The council wants to do a reenactment of the shootout for Founder’s Day. Guess who gets to help.”

  Clipper got back to his office just in time to take a call from Colin Murch. “I’m home all afternoon if you want to come over and check out the stuff I’ve got on the Edgewink gang.” the young reporter said.

  “Sounds good. I’m gathering up everything we’ve got, so we should have a pretty good picture of the thing.” After getting an address, Clipper hung up and went to tell Paula he’d be out for a while.

  Clipper had grown up in Bangor and, except for three years in the Army and two indecisive years at the University of Mine, had lived there all his life. Although he was authorized to use an unmarked cruiser while working or on call, Clipper elected to use his own Chevy pickup as he spent a couple of hours slowly cruising familiar streets, stopping occasionally to speak with people he trusted to keep him abreast of the city’s secrets. Like most small New England cities, public Bangor had polarized around an aging downtown business center and a newer, big-box retail perimeter. Clipper concentrated on the downtown of his childhood, stopping briefly at a small hardware store, a family owned bakery, a barber shop and a couple of small retail shops. He walked a few blocks chatting with kids on skateboards and street people with grocery carts before grabbing a quick lunch at Cloe’s Diner, the same diner of Edgewink shootout fame, and then heading back to the police station. He found Sgt. Peters and Detective Angelo at their desks.

  “Jones checks out ok so far,” said Angelo in response to Clipper’s question. “Couldn’t shake his alibi, nothing in the interview or background, seems to be a solid citizen, but there’s still something he isn’t talking about. I think he suspects someone, but I couldn’t get it out of him.”

  “Peters stretched. “I think we can stop looking,” he said, seriously. “He probably suspects the wife and doesn’t want to be the one to point the finger. I think he’s right, we just need to prove it.”

  Clipper grimaced. “All right. Keep the hold on the house. I want to go through it again, top to bottom, and let’s get a search warrant for her mother’s house and her car. We need to find that weapon.”

  “All ready in the works, boss.” John Peters got purposefully to his feet. “We should have the warrants in an hour and I’ve got Dave and Ken and a couple of patrol guys to help. We’ll get it done this evening.”

  Clipper went to his office to find his desk piled high with evidence bags and report folders from the Edgewink gang shootout, and a message to call Ed Bass. He dialed and sat leafing through the familiar photo prints and evidence forms, as they chatted and scheduled another meeting for the following Monday. The actual case reports of the shootout were long gone, closed case reports had not been saved forever in the pre-digital days, but the photos, fingerprint cards and physical evidence left a trail to follow. Setting aside the paperwork, Clipper opened the evidence envelopes and spread their contents on the desk. There was a worn Colt .38 revolver with a handwritten tag bearing the date 17 June 1937 and the name Aemon Kennon in faded black ink. There was a Colt .45 automatic, identical to the one on Clipper’s belt, tagged with the same date and the name Michael Whary. The last two weapons were a pair of identical Smith and Wesson model 10 .38 spl. revolvers, each bearing the date and the name Lester Edgewink on its tag. For as long as Clipper could remember, these four handguns had resided in the station’s display cabinet. He hefted the matched Smiths and tried to imagine Lester Edgewink’s last stand at the old diner. A mark on the butt of one of the pistols caught his attention, and he turned to the window for more light. Neatly carved on the bottom of the oiled wooden grip was a slightly curved line with a straight line under it, and beside it another curved line with an upside down half circle under it. Clipper glanced at the second pistol and saw the same mark and shivered slightly as he realized that he was looking at Lester Edgewink’s personal monogram.

  Chapter 2.7

  Carrying a six pack of cold beer and a shopping bag full of evidence, Clipper climbed the stairs to Colin Murch’s apartment. Murch lived on the second floor of a stately old west side mansion which had been rehabilitated and converted to up-scale apartments having survived the urban renewal craze of the seventies and early eighties.

  Murch opened the door and motioned Clipper into a large, sun drenched living room filled with heavy wooden furniture. Tall bookcases lined one wall with a gigantic plasma television centered on the opposite wall and much of the remaining space covered with a collection of colorful framed posters. “Hey, Lieutenant,” he said with a wide smile, “glad you could make it. Especially with beer!” As they entered, a fit looking, blond woman rose effortlessly from a lounge chair, book in hand. “Hi,” she said in a husky contralto, “I’m Wanda Lambert.”

  Clipper set his bag and the beer on a coffee table. “Call me Clip or Clipper,” he said easily. He looked around room and nodded appreciatively. “Nice place.”

  “Thanks. We spend a lot of time in this room, but his real hideout is in there. That’s where he goes to ignore me and drink,” Wanda said playfully, nodding to a closed door in the corner of the room. Murch grinned, grabbed the beer and opened the door, beckoning Clipper into the small, comfortable office that lay behind. The walls were covered in newspaper clippings and photos, with one section devoted to a collection of old badges, handcuffs and assorted police paraphernalia. Clipper whistled at the Thompson sub-machine gun that dominated the display.

  “Looks real, doesn’t it?” smiled Murch reaching out to flick a tag hanging from the sleek weapon. “It’s a museum grade replica. Cost me over three hundred dollars, but it’s worth it to see the kid’s faces when I pull it out on Halloween.”

  Clipper chuckled. “Very nice man-cave,” he said looking around.

  “Well, I do spend a lot of time in here, Murch said. “Wanda doesn’t like me drinking around her, so I do all my work,” he shrugged, “and my drinking, in here.” He gestured at a small table and a bookcase standing against one wall. “There’s my research on the Edgewink gang,” he said. “I’ve been collecting this stuff ever since I heard about the shootout when I was a kid.”

  Clipper retrieved his bag and started laying the guns and folders on the table. “I gathered up everything we’ve got, and I found out one thing I didn’t know before,” he said, holding one of the Smith and Wessons out to Murch. “Look on the bottom of the grip.”

  It only took Murch a second to spot the carving. “Lester Edgewink’s monogram,” he said knowingly,” He stepped around his desk and sat at the computer. “He left quite a few examples of that mark,
and there’s even a story that he left it somewhere to point to where he hid the gang’s loot. “Look here.” He opened a folder of digital pictures and began paging through them, selecting one. Clipper looked at an enlarged picture of a rifle stock where the mark could clearly be seen carved into the wood. He took the mouse and brought the picture back to normal size, and studied the image of several weapons on a kitchen table.

  Suddenly, Clippers memory clicked and he went back to Murch’s printed photos and began shuffling through them. When he found it, he stared at the photo of rifles, handguns and knives laid out on a long table, just as he’d remembered. Right in the middle of the group was a vicious looking World War One era trench knife, with a black, wickedly pointed blade that, although it was hard to tell in the picture, Clipper knew would be triangular in cross section.

  “That’s it,” he muttered.

  “That’s what?” asked Murch looking over his shoulder.

  Clipper reached for his cell phone. “That trench knife has a triangular blade. They stopped making them that way when they were outlawed by the Geneva Convention after World War I.” he said dialing John Peters’ number. “That shape has been nagging at me. I think… John, its Clip. I think we’re looking for an old army trench knife for the Owens kill. Google it for a picture, but it’s got the right blade shape, and that would account for the U.S. mark above the wound.”

  When Clipper finished the call, Murch was wide-eyed. “Wow,” he said opening a beer, that’s going to make a hell of a follow-up story.”

  Clipper mentally kicked himself. “Look,” he said, earnestly, “I shouldn’t have said that in front of you. Right now, only us and the killer know about that knife and we need to keep it that way. You tell the whole world and we lose an important interrogation tool and the killer dumps the knife, if he hasn’t already.”