Primed for Murder

by Jack Ewing

  If only he’d called the police when he’d first found the body in his truck, none of this would have happened, probably. If only he’d gone deaf, he wouldn’t have heard the screams of the man dying in the blue house. And before that, if only he’d told that demented old bird, Mrs. Cratty, to stick the job when she’d called then he’d be home free.

  The detectives were still yakking, and their words began to penetrate. “So, Mr. Rew,” French said, bent so his nose was an inch from Toby’s, “who’s after you?” The detective’s breath was really bad this morning. His nostrils loomed like twin barrels of a shotgun. “We know who’s capable of arranging the fire. The real question is why?”

  Toby, nerves as taut as wires, shrugged. “Beats me. I’m just a housepainter.”

  French snuffed and Toby could almost feel the suction. “A housepainter who witnessed a murder.”

  “I reported it to you guys, and what did you do? Nothing.”

  French bored on. “A housepainter working for a known mob associate.”

  “It’s for his wife. And I haven’t started working yet.”

  “A housepainter whose apartment, coincidentally, was just torched.” Toby didn’t have a comeback for that.

  “Look, Mr. Rew.” Dixon waved for his partner to back off. “As we informed you, our hands were tied when we first investigated your report of a murder. There was no body, no sign of a struggle. We did all we legally could.”

  “Which was zilch.”

  “But now things have changed. You see, the body of the dead man you described turned up early this morning.”

  Toby fought off a chill that stirred short hairs erect at the back of his neck. “No kidding.” The strangled voice emanating from his mouth sounded foreign to his ears.

  French hunched, fists balled. “Go ahead. Say ‘I told you so.’”

  “Where’d you find him?” Seemed reasonable to ask.

  “Grove Street Cemetery, five miles from the Puterbaugh house.” Dixon interlaced fingers behind his head and leaned back, studying Toby. “He was dressed as you said, in a tan suit. Somebody laid him out neatly on a rug atop an old vault.”

  “But he wasn’t killed there,” French grudgingly allowed. “The M.E. said the probable cause of death was a skull fracture from blunt-force trauma. We’ll know for sure when they do the post-mortem. The state of the body and the progress of decomposition were consistent with your story. Time of death seems right.”

  “The rug and clothing are being processed,” Dixon added. “The neighborhood around the cemetery is being canvassed. Maybe they can tell us something.”

  “Now what?” Toby asked. “You’ll talk to the Puterbaughs again?”

  “We tried, before coming here,” Dixon said. “Nobody home.”

  “You know where they might be?” asked French.

  “Couldn’t tell you.” He could, but that would just raise more questions, cause Toby more problems. “Did you find out who the dead man was?”

  “Not yet,” said Dixon. “We’ve had his fingerprints sent out and if he’s on file anywhere we’ll know in a few days.”

  “Are you checking south of the border?”

  “We could,” Dixon said. “Why should we?”

  “He looked Latino to me. The Puterbaughs just returned from there. And Mr. P has lots of books about Mexico, since he deals with it in his teaching. I thought there might be some connection.” It didn’t hurt to plant a seed.

  “There might be, at that.” Dixon scratched his chin, put his notebook away and stood. “You staying here for awhile?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Toby rose as the detectives drifted towards the door. “The two women who shared the apartment downstairs in my old building, Jean and Sylvia, were talking about the three of us maybe renting a house together.”

  “Fast work.” French sneered. “Naughty boy, taking advantage of a tragedy.”

  Toby felt his cheeks flare but maintained control. He ran fingers through his coarse hair. “The fire happened so fast. One minute, you’ve got an apartment full of stuff. Next minute, you’ve got nothing.”

  Dixon sympathetically squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll land on your feet again.”

  “If something doesn’t land on your head,” French said. “Wouldn’t be hard for a determined pro like Artie Colangelo to find you here.”

  “Good point.” Dixon’s hand fell away. “If I were you, I’d move from here today. Just in case the party who tried to scare you, or kill you, makes a second attempt.” His eyes searched Toby’s. “Unless, of course, you have something to say that’s useful in pointing us at whoever committed the arson. In which case, if there’s a legitimate threat to your health, we could put you in protective custody.”

  Custody, protective or otherwise, was to be avoided at all costs. Toby needed the ability to move around, arrange things, if this whole situation was going to turn out right. “Nothing I can think of.” Good thing he wasn’t hooked up to a lie detector!

  French shrugged, his hand on the doorknob. “Your funeral.”

  “Call me when you find a new place.” Dixon handed over a business card with his name and phone number on it, nothing more. “We may want to talk to you again.”

  Toby promised he would. “Is it okay to visit the old apartment? I’d like to see if there’s anything left to salvage.”

  Dixon looked doubtful. “They soaked it pretty good. Don’t know how safe it would be. You won’t find much but ashes.”

  “I’d still like to take a look. Might be something.”

  “Okay.” Dixon scrawled a few words on a blank page of his notebook, ripped it out and handed it to Toby. In large, loopy letters, the note read:

  To whom it may concern:

  Toby Rew has police permission to search the fire damaged house on the 2200 block of James Street for his possessions.

  (Signed) Det. Frank Dixon, SPD

  “Thanks,” Toby said. “And thanks for the advice.”

  The detectives stepped onto the motel’s walkway. Dixon turned back. “Don’t forget to call in your new address, or if you remember something about the murder or the arson. If I’m not at that number, somebody will get in touch.”

  Toby thumbed next door. “You going to question them, too?”

  Dixon looked blank. “Why? The girls aren’t involved in these crimes, are they?”

  “We couldn’t interrogate them now if we wanted to.” French walked away, still talking. “When we asked the desk clerk which rooms you were in, he told us the girls had already called for a taxi and checked out this morning. No forwarding addresses.”

  The grin he gave Toby over his shoulder was nasty. “We don’t know where they are. And by the look on your face, you don’t, either.”

  Chapter 16

  The detectives were right, damn them. Jean and Sylvia were indeed gone, as Toby discovered by pounding on the locked door of the next room. Shading eyes to peer through open drapes, he saw a rumpled bed, empty pizza box, and nothing more—no sign of a note. He might as well kiss goodbye all that money he spent on them. Fuming, he returned to his room to get his things together. He looked longingly at the bed, wishing he could again sink into its softness. But there was much to do.

  In fifteen minutes, everything was in the truck and he headed south towards the city. It was nearly ten-thirty.

  Toby first stopped at a telephone booth to call his landlady and inquire if she had another apartment for rent, similar in size and price to his old one. Mrs. O’Dwyer didn’t answer but her machine told him to try later. At a popular Wolf Street cafe he bought a paper and ate breakfast. He read through furnished rentals, circling possibilities with a pencil, then aimed the truck at his burned-out apartment.

  There were no police cars visible anywhere around his former James Street home. The blackened heap of rubble was bordered by yellow tape—CRIME SCENE/DO NOT CROSS—tied to fence posts, looped around a fire-seared bush, knotted on reflector-studded metal posts delineating the driveway.r />
  Toby pulled paint-spattered coveralls over his new clothes, changed into work boots and strolled toward the wreckage. Across a front door threshold, he moved carefully among the ashes, probing ahead with a fire-blackened board to make sure the flooring would support his weight. Clouds of soot stirred up by his footsteps billowed in his wake, and he cupped a hand over his mouth and nose to keep from breathing in particles. It was creepy walking about the place where Bart had lived and loved and died. Toby could almost sense the odor of burning flesh lingering in the air, a subtle tang among other pungent smells.

  As the detectives had predicted, there wasn’t much. A TV set, case distorted and picture tube shattered. Something made of plastic, melted into a blue lump—a woman’s handbag? A porcelain bathroom sink suspended above naked plumbing. At the back corner of the foundation, two floors beneath where Toby’s apartment had been, the fire had burned fiercest by the way flooring had given way. He shuffled to the edge of a ragged ten-foot-wide hole and peered down into the concrete-floored basement. Among shards of glass, soggy chunks of wall, shreds of planks, and scorched wads of yellow insulation lay a tangled heap of coal-colored appliances—stoves, refrigerators, microwaves, dishwashers—that had fallen through from upper floors.

  Toby moved debris from the back of the house to descend concrete steps into the basement. A water pipe dripped somewhere in the darkness. The smoky aroma was strong enough to pucker his nostrils and make his eyes fill with forced tears.

  Working in shafts of sunlight slanting through holes in the floor above, Toby pawed among junk, getting filthy and coughing like his late dad as he stirred ashes that found his nose. No sign of his sax, unless it was now that shiny, golden-colored puddle of congealed metal stuck to the basement floor. After fifteen minutes, he exposed his apartment oven, resting at an angle on a pile of other crap. He opened the sooty, dented door. The sheaf of papers tumbled out, yellowed and brittle from intense heat that had raged against the appliance’s protective covering, but otherwise little worse for wear. Toby gathered them into a sloppy stack and stepped up out of the basement.

  “Halt!” a stern voice commanded nearby. “Freeze!”

  It was as if Bart had come back from the dead to interrupt another questionable activity. Toby went rigid, sneaked a peek over a shoulder.

  Ten feet away, a dark-haired, uniformed officer crouched, weapon drawn and braced by both hands, sighting along a gun barrel pointed at Toby’s head. To the right stood a second policeman with short golden hair, in an identical stance. The dark-haired one spoke: “Don’t move!” The testosterone-saturated bellow was delivered in a high-pitched, tension-tight voice. “Drop what you’re holding!”

  “They’re just some papers—”

  “Drop them, I said!”

  “They’ll scatter. Can I put them down instead?”

  There was a long pause. This wasn’t in the manual. “Put them down!”

  Toby lay down the sheaf, rested his boot toe on the papers so they wouldn’t blow away, and straightened. “Can I get something out of my pocket to show you—?”

  “Hands up!” Toby obeyed. “Down on the ground! On your face!” Toby lay down, his boot toe still awkwardly pinning the papers in place.

  “Arms straight out at your sides! Spread your legs!” Toby did as he was told. He felt the muzzle of a gun jammed into his neck. His left arm was yanked behind his back and a metal collar clicked into place around his wrist. His right arm was secured a moment later. He was lifted roughly to his feet.

  The blond cop, twenty-five and solid, kept his gun trained on Toby. He grinned. “Here I was complaining about watching a cremated house.”

  From behind, his partner’s hands ran up and down Toby’s legs and arms, patted his waist and chest. “Any weapons? Anything sharp that could stick me?” Toby shook his head. The dark-haired cop unzipped the coveralls and rifled his pockets. He found the wad of cash and whistled. “Look at this!” He waved the money.

  “You been hitting other houses in the area?” the blond asked. “Collecting so you can make a buy to feed your habit?”

  “I earned that money,” Toby said. “Advance pay for a job I landed.”

  “What kind of job?” the dark-haired cop asked. “Dealing?” Toby’s keys fell beside the pile of cash and the stack of papers on the ground.

  “Of course not. I don’t do drugs. I’m a housepainter.”

  “You could’ve been a dead housepainter,” the blond said. “Looters can be shot.”

  “I’m not a looter. I used to live here until it burned down.”

  The dark-haired cop had Toby’s wallet open, studying the driver’s license. He was six feet tall, wiry, thirty or so. “What’s your name?”

  “Toby Rew.”

  “Date of birth? Social Security number?” Toby rattled off the info. “It’s the right address,” the dark-haired one told his partner. “Data fits.” His gaze seemed capable of penetrating skin. “You’re still in the wrong, Mr. Rew. Why’d you ignore the crime scene tape?”

  “Look in my shirt pocket. You’ll find something that explains it all.”

  The older cop, who identified himself as Officer Chris Franklin, Shield 6871, extracted the folded paper from Toby’s breast pocket. The blond, Officer Tom Czek, Shield 7014, holstered his weapon. Franklin read the note, lips moving, then showed it to Czek. “Looks like Dixon’s scrawl. They should have told us you were coming.”

  The blond unlocked the cuffs. “Sorry about the misunderstanding.”

  “No harm, no foul.” Toby rubbed his wrists to remove the feel of metal. He held no hard feelings towards these men. He reserved his anger for those who burned his home and disrupted his life.

  Officer Franklin apologized and returned the wallet and the roll of bills. Toby replaced them in his pockets and bent to gather up the rest of his belongings.

  “Find anything of yours in there?” Officer Czek was all friendly now.

  “No. Everything’s toast.”

  Franklin mentioned reporting in. He walked away towards a nondescript car parked in the shade of an elm on a side street two blocks away. Czek’s bright blue eyes found the papers in Toby’s hands. “What you got there?”

  “Just some personal papers.” He handed them over.

  Czek flipped through, stopped at a page where a smear of blood had dried sepia-toned. “The writing’s almost gone. I’m surprised they survived the fire at all.”

  “They were in my storage box.” It was the truth, sort of.

  “What are they?”

  “Something my dad wrote long ago,” Toby improvised. It wasn’t far-fetched: Randy Rew probably had written about Mayans at some point. “Not worth anything, but they’re important to me since my dad’s dead now. Sentimental value, you know?”

  Officer Czek lost interest and handed the papers back, brushing dust off his fingertips. He gave a half-salute and wandered after his partner.

  Toby climbed into his truck, stuffed the papers in the glove compartment, and swung up the driveway. He loaded the bed with everything useful from the garage—cans of primer and thinner, brushes, drop cloths, spare coveralls, and toolbox—fastened down ladders, made the tarp snug and headed towards town.

  Toby left the truck in a downtown parking lot, then walked into a Warren Street bank. He deposited $1,000 in savings and checking accounts, and exchanged $10 for coins. He stationed himself at a pay phone in the bank’s lobby, and called numbers of rental properties he’d circled in the classifieds. After an hour, Toby had weeded twenty ads down to seven prospects whose owners were available, arranging appointments a half-hour apart. He set off to inspect them.

  An upstairs apartment at a house on Grand, near the zoo, was dirt cheap for a reason: it was a dump. The place featured worn-through linoleum, cracked walls, stained ceiling, squeaky floors, leaky plumbing, Salvation Army furniture and a cockroach problem by all the brown bodies belly-up on kitchen counters.

  “Not quite what I’m looking for,” Toby told th
e squat, angry-looking landlord, and got away fast.

  A duplex off East Genesee was nice, well kept-up. But it contained not a stick of furniture. “It was supposed to be listed as unfurnished in the want ads,” Mrs. Baum, the gray-haired owner, complained. “The Post-Standard said it would be corrected by tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve had six calls from people like you, wasting my time.” She glared at Toby as though it was his fault the paper got it wrong.

  From the outside, a big old three-story house four blocks from Marshall Street near the S.U. campus reminded Toby of his James Street apartment. The inside, however, had been subdivided into dozens of living cubicles, to accommodate the maximum number of affluent, off-campus-housing-desperate students, at whatever price the market would bear. A stream of college-age people came and went as Toby followed the building manager upstairs. Mr. Van Lander Wee, a preppy, thirty-something man with a supercilious manner and a full beard that attempted to make up for a fast-emerging forehead, led Toby to a door at the end of a hallway. “You’re lucky to find a vacancy. We’re usually booked solid year-round.”

  It was difficult to hear him for all the music that poured out of other apartments at high volume. “This is one of our nicest units.” Van Lander Wee swung the door open on a 120-square-foot cell: single bed, nightstand, lamp, cardboard wardrobe, four-drawer dresser, small desk and straight-backed chair. There wasn’t space for anything else.

  “Six hundred a month,” the manager called as Toby retreated. “I’ll have it rented tomorrow.”