Tales of River City

by Frank Zafiro

  Finch rubbed his chin. “Well, we do know when the mummy was most likely taken—around one in the morning. Maybe we need to go at each of them again. See who’s alibi breaks up when we try to pin them down a little more.”

  Elias nodded in agreement. “The only trouble is, more than one of them is lying.”

  “Who do you figure?”

  Elias held up a finger. “Moore, for sure. He said he went straight home, but his wife puts him there at 0200. That’s a straight-up lie.”

  “All right. Who else?”

  Finger raised a second finger. “The janitor is hiding something. Did you see how he got nervous when we closed the door?”

  “Could just be a reaction to the closed space.”

  “No way, Finchie. The guy did time. He might not like it, but he’d be comfortable in a broom closet. No, he’s nervous because he’s hiding something.”

  Finch shrugged. “Okay, maybe. How about the professor?”

  Elias frowned. “Well, she was sorta over the top about being helpful….”

  “Maybe she wanted to clear her name.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she’s not as smart as we thought. Maybe she’s just as arrogant as we think and believes we won’t figure it out.”

  Finch considered. “I don’t think so.”

  “She stands to gain if Leavitt gets canned.”

  “True. But I don’t think she’s the one. At least she’s got an alibi.”

  “You crossing her off the list?”

  “In pencil, yeah.”

  Elias shrugged. “She’s the number five horse, anyway. What about Leavitt?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I think he’s still a possible, though I don’t see what he’d gain from it. But his alibi isn’t backed up by anyone, so I guess he’s the number four horse for me.”

  “Behind Eric, the security guard?”

  “You bet! The kid says he fell asleep, but what if he just let the tapes run and rewind on purpose?”

  Finch cocked an eyebrow. “If he did, then he knows who the thief is.”

  “Or he is the thief,” Elias said.

  “We’ll start with him, then.”

  “P-p-prison?” Eric stammered. “But I only fell asleep!”

  Elias shook his head, his eyes cold. Watching on, Finch felt a brief welling of sympathy for the college student, but he brushed it aside.

  “You fell asleep”—Elias made air quotes with his fingers—“at a very convenient time. While you were sleeping”—more air quotes—“the mummy was snatched. And just as conveniently, the tape ran and re-ran, erasing the best evidence of the crime.”

  Tears welled up in Eric’s eyes. “I screwed up. I know it. But—”

  “You didn’t screw up, Eric,” Elias said. “You committed first degree theft by accomplice. That is a class-A felony. You can get up to twenty-five years for that crime, did you know that?”

  “Twenty-fi…?” Eric’s mouth fell open. The tears brimmed over his eyelids and streamed down his cheeks.

  “What are you now, twenty? So if you did the maximum, you’d be forty-five when you get released.” Elias shrugged. “I suppose you could go back to college. Lots of people do it these days. What do they call it? Oh, yeah.” He held up the air quotes again. “A non-traditional student.”

  Eric’s shook his head rapidly from side to side. His mouth moved but no sound came out. Finch felt another stab of pity.

  Elias leaned forward and patted Eric comfortingly on the shoulder. “We don’t think you planned this, Eric. We figure you were just brought aboard by someone else. That makes you less of a bad guy here. And if you come forward now and cooperate, we can testify to the judge that you were helpful. That could make a big difference in your case.”

  Eric let out a hitching sob and hung his head. Finch handed him a box of tissues while Elias patted him on the shoulder. The security guard wept in deep, uncontrolled sobs. “Oh, I screwed up so b-b-bad,” he cried. “And then I l-l-lied to you.”

  Elias shot Finch a quick glance over the top of Eric’s head. He winked.

  “Tell me the truth, Eric. What did you lie about before?”

  Eric sniffled and wiped his nose. He struggled to regain his composure, looking Elias directly in the eye. “Can they send me to jail for lying?”

  Elias nodded. “Especially if you let the lie stand.”

  Eric shook his head. “No, I’ll tell the truth now. I never should’ve tried to lie about it to begin with.”

  Elias patted his shoulder again. “Good, Eric. Good. Now, what do you want to tell me?”

  Eric took a deep wavering breath. “I…I…” He let out the breath in a whoosh and shook his head apologetically, his face red.

  “It’s all right,” Elias said. “Take your time.”

  “I…well, um…that wasn’t the only time I fell asleep at work.” He swallowed. “In fact, uh, I pretty much slept most of the night. Every night.”

  Elias let out a barely discernible sigh. His eyes flicked to Finch. Finch winked. Elias clenched and unclenched his jaw.

  “What else, Eric?”

  Eric’s brow furrowed. “What else what?”

  “What else do you need to tell me?”

  He gave Elias a confused look. “That’s all. Look, I know I’m going to get fired and everything, but it’s the truth.” He glanced to Finch and back to Elias. “Am I going to jail?”

  “What if the thief knew Eric was sleeping the night away most nights?” Elias asked Finch in the hallway. “He could even have made a trial run or two to make sure.”

  “That’s pretty risky. If the kid wakes up within two hours of the theft and changes the tape, the guy is nailed.”

  “Maybe he had a contingency for that.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Steal the tape or something.”

  Finch clicked his tongue, nodding. “Okay, so are we agreed the kid wasn’t in on it?”

  “Ninety-nine percent, yeah.”

  “And the professor?”

  “Last horse still in the race.”

  “Agreed. So that leaves Leavitt, Moore, and the janitor.”

  “Let’s hit Moore first. He’s the one with the bad alibi.”

  Moore sat on the bench in the empty waiting area, hunched over and kneading his hands. “Why couldn’t we do this in my office?” he asked.

  Because we don’t want you getting comfortable, Finch thought.

  “Police reasons,” Elias said.

  Moore scrunched his brow. “I never heard of any kind of reason not to interview someone in their office.”

  “Well,” Elias said briskly, standing over him, “you’re not the police, are you?”

  Moore’s features darkened. He glared at Elias but said nothing.

  Finch sat next to Moore on the bench. “What are we going to find when we pull your application file, Tony?”

  Moore swiveled his gaze to Finch. “Huh?”

  “You applied to River City PD,” Finch said evenly. “You were turned down. What are we going to find when we have Records pull your application and we review your background? Or when we read the oral board interview results?”

  Moore shrugged. “Pull it and see.”

  “Why don’t you just tell us?”

  He smiled sourly. “I’m not the police.”

  Finch ignored his tone. “No, but you are the head of security here. That’s a position of trust.”

  “So?”

  “So, trust requires honesty. And you haven’t been honest with us. So we’re trying to figure out if that was part of the reason you didn’t get hired by the police.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been honest with you. I want to find the mummy. I’ll probably lose my job over this.”

  “Maybe you should,” Elias observed coldly.

  Moore eyes snapped to Elias. “What’s your problem, man?”

  “I don’t like liars.”

  “Well, I didn’t—”


  “We talked to your wife, Tony,” Finch interjected. “She told us when you got home.”

  “I got home at midnight,” Moore insisted.

  Finch shook his head. “No. You woke up Angela when you got home at two.”

  Both detectives watched Moore as his face changed from anger to denial to realization. “Two?” he finally rasped.

  Finch raised his eyebrows and gave a short nod.

  Moore remained silent for several seconds. Then he said, “She was probably drunk. She thought it was two but it was really twelve.” He considered that for a moment, then nodded his head. “That must be it.”

  “No,” Finch said. “She may have been drunk, but she’s sure it was two. Tony, do you know what that means?”

  Moore didn’t answer.

  “Near as we can tell,” Finch continued, “the mummy was taken about one in the morning. And since you know the codes and since you didn’t get home until two—”

  “And since you lied,” Elias added.

  “—that makes you a prime suspect,” Finch finished.

  Moore stared at his hands. Finch and Elias remained quiet, giving him a few moments to stew. Finch noticed that Moore’s hands were trembling.

  “Can you guys keep a secret?” Moore finally asked.

  “It depends on the secret,” Finch told him.

  “It’s got nothing to do with this museum or any of this that you’re investigating.”

  Finch gave a half-shrug. “Then probably we can.”

  Moore sighed. “The reason I wasn’t home until two is the same reason I lied to you guys about it. I was with someone.”

  “Someone?” Finch asked.

  “My girlfriend. Tina.”

  Elias groaned.

  Finch leaned forward and caught Moore’s eye. “You spent last night with your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah. Well, till two.”

  “And then you went home?”

  “Right.”

  “And this girl Tina will back that up?”

  “She should,” Moore said. “At least, as long as she doesn’t think it’ll get me in trouble.”

  “Why’d you lie about this?”

  Moore turned his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t want you to tell my wife. She’s about to divorce me anyway. This would put things over the top.”

  Finch didn’t even consider exploring the relationship dynamics any further. If it were a rape or a homicide, they might be key components, but he didn’t sense the whys of the situation mattered much. “Is that why you got bounced on your oral boards when you applied to the police department?”

  Moore nodded glumly. “Like you guys don’t fool around.”

  Finch ignored that and handed Moore his notepad and a pen. “Write down her number.”

  Finch dropped the phone onto the cradle and frowned. “She backs his story, one hundred percent.”

  “Which puts him neck and neck with the professor for last in line.”

  “Can we stop with the horse-racing metaphors?”

  “Would you prefer chariots? Since we’re dealing with a mummy and all that.”

  Finch ignored the question by asking one of his own. “The janitor?”

  “Yep.”

  “I knew you guys’d be back,” Michael Booth told them, putting down his magazine.

  “Why’s that?” Elias asked.

  Booth smiled humorlessly. “Cops always come back.”

  “Profound,” Elias muttered.

  Finch pulled a plastic chair from the corner of the room. He sat near Booth and regarded him quietly for a moment. Booth stared back at him, unfazed. Finch continued to stare.

  After about a minute, Booth shrugged at him. “What?”

  “You are the only person in this investigation with a criminal record,” Finch said.

  “So what? That doesn’t make me the only criminal.”

  “What’s that mean?” Elias asked.

  Booth glanced up at him. “What, I spoke Portuguese?”

  Elias’s face flushed and his jaw clenched.

  “What are you driving at when you say that?” Finch asked.

  “Simple,” Booth replied. “Someone else took the mummy, right? And that guy’s a criminal.”

  “What if that guy was you?” Finch asked him.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “But what if it was?”

  Booth shrugged. “What if daisies were dollars?”

  That one surprised both detectives and they gave him questioning looks.

  Booth smiled broadly. “Well, if that were so, I’d have a million dollar field growing right in my front yard.”

  “You think this is funny?” Elias asked.

  “No,” Booth said. “But I know I didn’t do it. And my answer will be the same no matter how many times you ask.”

  Finch tried a different tactic. “If you didn’t do it, then you wouldn’t mind taking a lie detector test, right?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t believe in them,” Booth said.

  “Ah,” said Elias, giving Finch a wink. “A skeptic.”

  “They’re not admissible in court, anyhow,” Booth went on.

  “A skeptic and a legal scholar,” Elias observed. “When did you get your law degree, Grisham?”

  “I spent some time in the law library when I did my stretch. Keeps me from getting jerked around by cops.”

  “We’re not jerking you around,” Finch told him. “We’re trying to find the mummy.”

  “I didn’t take it.”

  “So take the polygraph.”

  “Like I said, I don’t believe in them.”

  Finch shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in them. We do.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “Look, if you take the polygraph and pass, we believe you. If you take it and fail, it’s not admissible in court. How can you lose? Take the test and clear your name.”

  Booth shook his head. “No.”

  “You know,” Elias said conversationally, “if the museum thinks you had anything to do with this, they’ll fire you.”

  “So? It’s a janitor job. And it’s contract work, anyway.”

  “So maybe they’ll dump the contract.”

  “Let ’em.”

  Finch rubbed his chin and sighed. “You know, if I owned a janitorial service and some employee caused me to lose a contract, I’d fire him.”

  “And blackball him so he’d never get work in town again,” Elias added.

  Booth’s smile returned. “You’re breakin’ my heart, guys. I’ll never work in this town as a janitor again? Boo-hoo. I’ll work construction. Better money, anyway.”

  All three men fell quiet for a moment. Booth watched both men, his face a mask of calm bravado.

  Finch broke the silence. “Are you still on probation, Mike?”

  Booth shook his head in disgust. “I wondered how long it would take you to get around to that. No way is my probation officer going to violate me because I won’t take a lie detector test.”

  “Probably not,” Finch said. “But no one is perfect. Everyone screws up, especially when they’re bound by all sorts of rules.”

  “Like a guy on probation,” Elias said.

  “Sooner or later, a guy is going to screw up. Might be something small, but still a screw-up. And if anyone is watching that guy when he screws up…” Finch shrugged nonchalantly.

  “He gets hammered,” Elias finished.

  “So, should I give your P.O. a call?” Finch asked.

  Booth’s gaze went back and forth between the two detectives. Then he sighed. “Why are you guys hassling me? I didn’t take the mummy. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “You’re hiding something,” Finch said. “That’s why.”

  Booth stared at him for a long while. Finally, he asked, “Look, if I tell you the truth, can I get a pass on some misdemeanor crap?”

  Finch and Elias exchanged a glance. Elias gave Fin
ch a short nod.

  “Probably,” Finch told Booth. “Depending on what it is.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with this mummy or anything like that,” Booth said.

  “Then what?”

  Booth sighed. “Follow me.”

  He led the detectives out of the utility room and down the hallway. Elias leaned close to Finch’s ear. “Be careful he doesn’t turn and rush us,” he whispered.

  Finch nodded. “At least if he does, we’ll have a better story than last time.”

  Elias winced and grinned at the same time.

  Booth pushed open a door marked “Employees Only—Men.” Light reflected off the bright tile on the locker room floor. A long row of blue lockers stood along the wall. A bench ran the length of the lockers. Booth stopped in front of number twelve. He turned to face the detectives, his face grave. “I’m trusting you guys here. I’ve been screwed over by cops before.”

  “We just want to find the mummy,” Finch said. “What is it?”

  “The thing is,” Booth said, “I’ve got a lot of joint pain. Lifting weights in the pen got me really big, but then I didn’t stick with it after I got out. There’s a lot of pressure on my joints, but the doctor won’t prescribe anything harder than Tylenol for it.” He shook his head. “He sees ex-con, same as you, and probably thinks I’m scamming to get some OxyContin or something.”

  “What’s this have to do with the mummy getting stolen?”

  “Nothing,” Booth said. “But—”

  A Nextel phone on Booth’s belt chirped. A tinny version of Moore’s voice echoed in the locker room. “Mike? Where are you?”

  Booth cursed and spoke into the phone. “Locker room.”

  “You with the detectives?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Be there in a couple.”

  Booth cursed again, replacing the phone on his belt. “If he finds out about this, I will get canned.”

  “Finds out about what?” Finch asked.

  Booth pointed to locker number four. A piece of masking tape on the front bore the name “Mike” in black marker. “That’s my locker there. This one here”—he pointed to twelve—“is supposed to be empty.”

  “But it’s not.”

  “No. It’s not.” Booth slipped a key into the lock and opened it. Then he stepped aside for the detectives.