by Susan Dunlap
Ott knew how to cover his ass. It would be like him to document my cooperation in the files he was sure were safe. If I planned to survive in the department, and have Ott survive, I needed to find him, and fast.
CHAPTER 15
CARY KOVACH WAS ALONE, guarding the scene, at Ott’s office. The rest of the building’s units were dark. Here a dead body was clearly nothing to lose sleep over. From the look of Kovach, slouched on a hard chair, he felt the same. But he could hardly complain. He was warm, indoors, and on dog watch losing sleep was his job.
“I’m Smith, here to check out the scene.”
He wriggled to straighten his ursine form in the chair. Like all of Ott’s furniture, it looked inadequate to its task. “Inspector had five guys going over the place. Plus Raksen. Raksen got called to another scene or he’d still be here.”
“He’d be here till the Second Coming if he could.”
Kovach grinned. “Yeah, I got that feeling. Anyway, if there’s anything left, you’re welcome to it.”
“Thanks,” I said with a sarcastic laugh, and started past him.
“Smith?”
“Yes?”
“You okay here alone for five minutes?”
I patted my holster. “I’m not afraid of the dark.”
Kovach pushed himself up.
Guarding the scene and surveillance: They’ve got the same drawback. “Use the John at the university, Kovach; it’ll be worth the extra ten minutes. I speak from experience.” When you’re on patrol for eight to ten hours, bathrooms are a big issue. Clean is good, and ones where you won’t be caught with your pants down (and your gun belt hanging out of reach on the door) are better. The hospitals, the UC patrol station are the best. A minute or two of banter with the UC guys would break up Kovach’s long, isolated night.
Ott’s rooms had been aired while the crime scene team picked and packed, and the smell of death clung only in cracks and corners. I closed and locked the door, and the little breeze treated me to a whiff of urine and decay.
As Kovach intimated, anything worth finding in Ott’s office would already be gone. The files I had noted earlier—the flowerpot case in the folders with no name, for one—was at the station with Ott’s coded case notes. I made fast work of the desk and file drawers, looked under and around the furniture. I’d been here often enough, perched on that desk to demand, to goad, to beg, that anything out of the ordinary now would have struck me. It didn’t. I moved on to the bedroom.
In crime scenes, housekeeping standards are rarely improved by police searches. Herman Ott’s bedroom was the exception. The room normally looked as if it had just been tossed; now it merely might have been the apartment of someone about to slap town. No longer was the floor awash with homogeneous clutter; when planning to cross to the window now, I didn’t think of it as fording. Ott’s belongings now were in individual piles: bedclothes here, clothing there, newspapers by the outside wall, magazines piled precariously against the hall door, miscellaneous items in a cardboard box next to his chair.
Never before had I seen his once-overstuffed chair uncovered. It was akin to running across an aging floozy the morning after, when her eyes were puffy, her corset discarded, her skin sagging in unseemly places, and her sunflower print bathrobe threadbare and with two springs poking out. When Daisy Culligan admitted she’d slept with Ott, I’d wondered why. Now my question was how. Or more to the point, where?
Gingerly I sat on the edge of the chair and surveyed Ott’s jutting bookcase. Shelves of political periodicals, books on Berkeley, a few volumes on organic farming, and two on pesticides. Had Ott nurtured a secret garden? Perhaps the crop of choice in Northern California? I brushed that thought away. A plot of marijuana was far too dangerous for a man in his position, particularly when supply was so easy to come by. Perhaps he’d been one of the flower growers in the fleeting era when locals tried to cultivate People’s Park. But I couldn’t picture Herman Ott with a spade in hand. He was hardly an early bird. Or a bird of the wild. No, Herman Ott was meant to perch right in here and merely look awry at the methods of California’s biggest industry, agriculture. The one time I had shown up here with an apple, Ott had sneered: “We’re so cocky insisting on toxic standards for our fruit and vegetables. And then come winter, what do we think we’re eating? Artichokes from Argentina, peaches from Peru, and who knows what from Mexico, where they dump their shit in the rivers.”
I had of course responded by biting into the apple, but it wasn’t the tastiest snack I’d ever had.
On the bottom shelf, under what looked to be another haphazard pile of newspapers, I found the last thing I would have expected, a sturdy gift box from Wanamaker’s department store. Wanamaker’s? Those stores had been only on the East Coast, and they’d been closed for years. Not that Ott was one to throw out a box merely for age.
The box was ordinary compared with what was inside. It held a small picture album—one shot per page, black paper, corner keepers for the black-and-white photos. An album of pictures a mother culled from the family book, made especially for a child.
It had never occurred to me that Ott had a mother. It was hard to imagine him ever having lived with a family or in anything other than these two rooms. At best I could see him sitting by an inadequate hearth, reading the picture book version of Political Injustice for the Young Reader.
The album held twenty pages, two sides each, but there were only three pictures. There were holders for others, holders as crisp and unmarred as the day they had been pasted in. Ott must have pulled the photos out. A wave of sadness came over me, not so much for the memories torn out of his life as for those he couldn’t bring himself to part with. So easy to destroy in fury, but to halt angry hands before the righteous pleasure of shredding, to wall off part of your heart from your principles…And then to sit in this shabby room, not moving lest the chair springs poke into your butt, and break into that wall for just a peek…
Just a peek, because if you open too big a hole, your whole heart will fall out…and the world will tramp on it. I turned away as if I’d come in on him naked.
The first shot, on the first page, was of a plain blond woman of about twenty, in a skirted bathing suit, sitting next to a hamper under a beach umbrella. It could have been taken on any East Coast beach to which families carted more than their ancestors had loaded on to the Niña, Pinta, or Santa María. Ott’s mother, I had to guess. It pleased me that she wasn’t a pretty woman, one who would have been distressed at the sight of the round, sallow child Ott must have been.
I turned the page, and then about ten more to get to a shot of what must have been Ott’s extended family. Blonds of all ages. It took me several minutes squinting over the picture to find Ott himself. I checked all the other boys twice again before admitting that the eight-year-old on the left had to be Herman. If so, Mrs. Ott could have been beautiful and things would have been all right. The boy with Ott’s eyes, and that familiar little smirk on his lips, was a knockout. Eyes that I had seen only narrowed in anger were open wide in pleasure. A smile stretched his mouth wider than I could have imagined it going. His hair had been full and wavy and glowed in the sun like white gold. And most surprising, he had his arms around the shoulders of the two children next to him, and theirs encircled his back.
The last photo was wider than the others, a professional job, and near the back of the book. It was the most stunning of all. If I’d had to guess which club Herman Ott had headed in high school, it would have been the Nerds’ Club, by whatever name it was known in that era. Wrong again, Smith. There, in black and white, was Herman Ott, squatting in the second row of boys in football uniforms, behind a banner: GO MONGEESE!
The Herman Ott I knew was not even as tall as I, with shoulders so stooped that only a shrug made him look near normal. His cheeks were rounded; his chin receded. His were arms that never lifted more than a pen, his legs were toothpicks, and when he was sitting, he looked as if he were holding a volleyball on his lap.
&
nbsp; I stared at the handsome little boy in pads. Already he was shorter than average. He’d have played running back, one of those little guys who size up their slower-thinking opposition, fake to the right, and squirt left through the line. He’d have been a hero. Herman Ott, the all-American kid.
What had happened to him? I sat down between the sprung springs of his chair, smelling the remnants of death from the doorway, the cold of the unheated office chilling me through my thermal shirt. Ott had had everything and had chosen this. What, indeed, had happened to him?
There’s a theory that floats around in the esoterica above Berkeley about walk-ons. When someone is depressed, becomes ill unto death, or perhaps attempts suicide and is resuscitated at the last moment, the theory is that the initial tenant of the body really did give up on life and, in that moment before reviving, ceded the body to another soul anxious to enter life midstream. The body regains health. Friends and relatives are astounded, delighted, not only at the victim’s recovery but at his wonderful change of spirit. If they note there is something just a bit different about him at base, they’re willing to overlook it. They probably didn’t like that aspect of him to begin with. The maudlin devil you know is hardly preferable to a chipper one you don’t know.
If Ott was a walk-on, he’d gotten the sequence backward.
Still, where better to hide out than with his old buddies and his own family? I squinted at the photo, peering closer until I could make out the word above Mongeese. Monongahela Mongeese.
Anyone who has watched the Raiders is all too familiar with the fearsome Steelers in Three Rivers Stadium. Three Rivers: the Ohio, Allegheny, and the Monongahela. Ott was from Pittsburgh! Or thereabouts.
I could have called the dispatcher, but you can never be sure who is listening to the police scanner, and I was too impatient to talk in code. Instead I pulled out my cell phone and dialed information. It was still late evening here, but in Pittsburgh it was after midnight. I punched in the number, flicked off the light, and settled on the edge of the chair as Ott himself must have done many times.
“Sergeant Laura Goldman, please. Is she on duty now?”
“I’ll ring.”
“Goldman.”
“Laura! Jill Smith.” We’d been roommates at the National Women’s Police Officers’ Association convention the previous spring, placed together to share the joy of not smoking. “Still snoring?”
“I’m working up a storm for you next year. You still emptying hotel minibars? You gave me the worst moment of the convention, coming back to that empty—”
“Just the chocolate, Goldman. I left you plenty of those little liquor bottles. You could have drowned your grief in bourbon, vodka, and Grand Marnier. Yeah, four ounces each.”
“Ugh.”
“Listen, Laura, I’ve got a missing suspect who grew up in Pittsburgh. Could be he’s back there. Not dangerous. But we did find a murder victim in his office—”
“Bet that victim found him dangerous. And you’d like to have him back, huh? Shoot.”
“All I’ve got is a football picture from a high school team called the Monongahela Mongeese. That mean anything to you?”
“Nooo. But there’s a Monongahela High School here in town. And I’ll bet the Monongahela High School alumni woke up one morning and changed that team name back to Lions or Tigers like it should be. ‘Can’t call our little lads furry snake eaters!’ ”
I laughed. Snake eater suited Ott.
“You got a name and DOB for the suspect, Smith?”
“Right. Plus, I’ve got a photo that looks like an old family gathering, but it could have been taken anywhere. So I don’t know if there was much of my guy’s family in Pittsburgh at all. He’s been out here since the sixties. But anything you can find on him, I’ll appreciate. And if there’s nothing—” I shrugged. Not that Laura could see it. “His name is Herman Ott—”
“Ott?”
“Right.”
Laura Goldman was laughing. “Smith, I think I can help you out. Ott, huh?”
“What were they, the town crooks? Or the drunks? Or the old lefties at every factory gate?”
Goldman laughed harder. Finally she spit out, “Coal.”
“They were coal miners?”
“No, Smith, the Otts didn’t dig the coal. The Otts owned the mine. Now which Ott did you say you’re after?”
“Herman Ott.”
“Which Herman Ott? They’re all Herman Otts. John Herman Ott. Richard Herman Ott. Robert Herman Ott. The mother was a Herman. You’ve heard of Herman Steel, haven’t you?”
I hadn’t, but Goldman wasn’t waiting for that admission.
“Herman Steel and Ott Mining. That marriage made the papers for months. My grandmother still talks about it. She was a housemaid at the Hermans’ before she married my grandfather. That wedding was far and away the biggest event of her life, way more important than her own marriage. The only glamorous thing she was ever involved in. She kept hoping her daughters and then her granddaughters would go into fashion or theater or at least be airline stewardesses. We’ve been disappointments, Smith.”
I laughed. “And if you don’t get back to my Herman Ott, you’ll be one again.”
“But you say you don’t know which one he is.”
“He’s forty-six years old.”
“Oh, okay, he’d be the oldest. Of course. The one who disappeared. Sure, that makes sense.”
“Why, Goldman? Why did he disappear?”
Goldman laughed again, but a different land of laugh, with the merriment replaced by bitter knowledge. “No one knows. Believe me, finding out would have made a reporter’s career. But a family like that doesn’t go on Oprah with its secrets. Your guy, Alexander, graduated from high school and was never mentioned again. People knew better than to ask, or presumably they learned after the first time.”
“Do you have any idea?”
“No. But I’ll tell you this, Smith, whatever it was, it cut to the core. His mother died fifteen, twenty years ago, and he didn’t show up at the funeral; there was talk about that, believe me. Nana carried on so long we had to threaten her with ‘the home.’ I can’t imagine anything in the world that would bring Alexander back to Pittsburgh.”
“Rats. I really hoped…” Ott’s outside door rattled. Kovach hadn’t dawdled at Cal. Automatically I lowered my voice. “Check around for me, Goldman, just in case.”
“Goes without saying. I’ll go through our files and the news morgue and fax you what I uncover. Cheer up, Smith, you still have this year’s convention to look forward to. Another couple of great nights with me.”
“I can handle that. They’ve got this plastic staple that clamps between your nostrils to keep you from snoring.”
She laughed. “You sure it works?”
“Not positive. But if it doesn’t, I’ll tie a string to it and tether you outside the door.” The door rattled again.
It was a rattle, not a knock.
“I have to go.” I turned off the phone, moved behind the bookcase, eased my gun from the holster, and waited.
CHAPTER 16
IT WASN’T KOVACH AT Ott’s door.
I turned off the volume on my radio and tightened my grip on my semiautomatic.
“Hello? Ott?” A question, not a demand. I didn’t move, barely breathed. The voice wasn’t familiar. Male, not young, not old, a middling voice with a squeaky core. He knew Ott wasn’t here. No surprise. All of Ott’s cronies on the Avenue would have heard about the crime scene. But this guy knew Ott’s entry routine: Never let on you’re in here till you’re sure who’s out there, and even then never open the door till the third demand.
Carefully lifting, silently setting down my feet, I moved to where I could see the door to the corridor. A celluloid strip waggled between it and the molding. It moved slowly. The guy wasn’t worried. He must have missed me coming, just seen Kovach leave, and figured all that was protecting the scene was the locked door.
I eased back into the
darkness of Ott’s bedroom.
The plastic strip hit against metal, then slapped the wood as the guy snapped it out to try again. Loiding a lock isn’t as easy as people think.
I moved back a couple of steps along the bookcase. I’d always wondered why Ott had chosen to have this large, flimsy piece of furniture poking out into the room he slept in. Not wise in earthquake country. The smartest people don’t have bookcases at all in bedrooms. The rest of us have them bolted to the walls. The end of Ott’s bookcase was eight inches away from the wall, so the whole thing was standing free. There was no back to steady it. In a tembler it would shimmy once or twice, toss its six shelves of books and clutter, like Parmesan cheese sprinkled thickly over an everything pizza. And over Ott. Why not screw the thing to the wall?
But now I understood why. And the import of it made me feel sorrier for Ott than I’d ever imagined I could.
For the first time I realized why the newspapers and magazines and crumpled paper cups were mixed in with the books he cared about.
I was standing hidden in the narrow aisle between the bookcase and the window. This was where Ott slept. He may have considered the danger of burial under books, but if so, it had been overridden by a more pressing threat. From any position, standing, squatting, sitting on the floor, even lying down on his side, Ott could peer between the bookshelves and see through the doorway into his office. Ott must never have gone to sleep without the thought that he might be woken up by a burglar, a pissed-off client, an irate subject he was investigating, or just some wacko from the Avenue looking for drug money. How could the man live like this? And why? Why, when he seemed to have an ideal life in Pittsburgh?