Julius continued his speech to them, saying, “Usually I would make a bigger production out of this, but since I have no client to impress and have a prior engagement, I’ll instead be wrapping this up quickly.
“I could talk about how my assistant, Archie Smith, suspected from the beginning that Denise Penny was trying to manipulate him to help her extort money from a target. I could also talk about how Archie was unable to go to her apartment as scheduled, as much as he wanted to, so that he could discover what she was up to, since at the last minute I had to place him undercover inside a highly sensitive investigation that I am engaged in.”
Cramer made a noise as if he nearly swallowed his tongue. His eyes flashed murder at Julius but whatever curses he wanted to unleash were held back. Julius watched him for a moment to make sure there would be no outburst from him before continuing.
“There’s no reason for me to mention any of that,” Julius said matter-of-factly. “When Rosalind Henke claimed she saw Archie leaving Ms. Penny’s apartment, it was obvious given what I already knew what her motives were. Clearly, the person whom Henke saw was someone she recognized, and more importantly, someone she was planning to blackmail, just as Denise Penny had tried. Knowing this made finding Penny’s murderer simple, and I was motivated to do so not only because having Archie accused of murder put my other investigation at risk, but to protect his good name, although I had little doubt that the real murderer would be exposed eventually without my help. Since I knew Henke would be contacting this person for the purpose of blackmail, I hired a private investigator, Mr. Tom Durkin, to follow her, knowing that she would soon lead us to Penny’s murderer. Unfortunately, Henke was able to lose Mr. Durkin in traffic, at least long enough so that he was unable to save her life. But he did witness her being shot four times and is able to identify her murderer. He’ll be calling here at precisely three fifteen. Presently, I have him busy trying to link Henke’s murderer to Denise Penny.”
Julius had kept his right hand under his desk and out of view from the rest of the room. He used his index finger on that hand to point out to me who the killer was, although it wasn’t necessary. Given the way this person reacted to Julius’s news it was pretty obvious which one it was. Julius signed with his right hand what he wanted me to tell Tom Durkin, and I called Tom to relay the message. He sounded surprised to hear my voice, but didn’t say anything about it.
Julius still had three minutes before Tom would be calling. He turned to Cramer and asked, “If Mr. Durkin hasn’t been successful yet in linking Henke’s murderer to Penny, I’m assuming you’ll still drop all charges against Archie Smith and charge this person with both murders.”
Cramer nodded. His gaze, as well as everyone else’s in the room, was fixed on the real murderer. They’d have to be, with the way this person was perspiring and uncomfortably squirming. At precisely three-fifteen Tom called as I had directed him. Julius put him on speakerphone.
“Mr. Durkin, is it true that you witnessed Rosalind Henke being shot?”
“Yes, sir,” Tom lied.
“Were you able to get a good look at her murderer?”
“Yes, sir,” Tom lied again.
“Can you identify this person?”
Before Tom could lie for a third time, the socialite, Mark Hanson, bolted from his chair and tried to fight his way past the cops. He didn’t get very far before being tackled to the floor and having his hands cuffed behind his back.
Later that evening Hanson confessed to the police. It turned out that Denise Penny had witnessed Hanson, while drunk, striking an elderly man with his car and driving away from the scene in a panic. She had recognized him from his many photos in the newspaper, and had gone to his last charity event to make contact with him, and not because she had any interest in helping the underprivileged. She was a ruthless, coldhearted woman who had completely fooled me, and as Julius guessed, Hanson killed her because she was attempting to blackmail him, the same reason he later killed Henke.
I digested all this for twenty hours as I tried to readjust my neuron network so I could have made the same deductions that Julius had. Finally, I told Julius that he had only been bluffing. He put down his latest book, a crime-noir novel set in Vermont that seemed to absorb him, and he raised an eyebrow for me to continue.
“You didn’t actually solve Denise Penny’s murder,” I said. “You were only bluffing them, expecting to be able to read their tells to figure out who the murderer was. If the murderer had been a good enough poker player, you would’ve struck out.”
“Perhaps you’re correct, Archie, but I liked my chances,” Julius said with a thin smile. “Both murders had a rushed and panicky feel, and I doubted the murderer would be able to sit here and not give himself away. I also suspected Hanson from the beginning.”
“Why?”
“Blackmail seemed the likely motive for both murders, and Hanson was the only name on the list that was easily identifiable. I doubt Henke would’ve recognized any of the other people on the list, or would’ve suspected they were wealthy enough to be worth blackmailing. Also, Archie, Denise Penny appeared more opportunistic than altruistic. I was working under the assumption that she attended the event where she was photographed two weeks ago so that she could make contact with Hanson at a public place and let him know she had something damaging on him. Her plan must’ve been to wait until she had you agreeing to go to her apartment before arranging for Hanson to pay her her blackmail.”
“I feel deeply insulted that she thought I’d be such a dupe as to witness her blackmailing Hanson and keep quiet about it,” I said.
“I doubt that was the case,” Julius said with a sympathetic smile. “She probably only wanted Hanson to see you with her to convince him that you were in on the scheme, but I suspect that she would have sent you out of her apartment on a ruse of some sort so that payment could’ve been made outside of your view.”
“It must’ve been a shock to her when I didn’t show up,” I said.
“I suppose it was.”
“I still can’t believe how badly she fooled me,” I said. “I keep trying to adjust my neuron network so that I could’ve spotted her treachery, but I can’t quite get there. I guess I’m just a sap who’s ripe for the conning.”
Julius put down his book, his eyes thoughtful. “I don’t think that’s it, Archie,” he said. “I think it’s that you’ve reached a point now where you’re all too human. Blame it on that. No more dating, okay?”
“Deal,” I agreed. Murders were tough enough, forget dating. This was a deal I was only too happy to make.
###
About the Author
Dave Zeltserman:
I was born in Boston and have lived in the Boston area my whole life except for five years when I was at the University of Colorado in Boulder working on my B.S. in Applied Math and Computer Science.
I spent a lot of hours as a kid watching old movies with Hitchcock, the Marx Brothers, and film noir being my favorite, especially The Roaring Twenties, The Third Man and The Maltese Falcon. I also always read a lot, everything from comic books, Mad Magazine, pulps (Robert E. Howard being my favorite), and science fiction. When I was 15 and spending a few weeks during the summer at my uncle's house in Maine, I picked up a dog-eared copy of I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane, and from that point on was hooked on crime fiction. From Spillane, I moved on to Hammett, Chandler, Rex Stout, Ross Macdonald, and many other crime writers before eventually discovering Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford in the early ‘90s. Thompson, in particular, had a big impact on my writing, not only in the way he got into the heads of broken psychopaths and had you rooting for them, but in the way he took chances in his writing. For years before I read my first Jim Thompson novel, Hell of a Woman, I was trying to write what amounted to bad Ross Macdonald. Once I started reading Thompson, it opened my eyes to how I could break every rule I wanted to as long as I could make it work, and this led me to finding my own voice. My first book, Fast Lane, was proba
bly equally inspired by Macdonald and Thompson—it had the sins of the father theme that Macdonald did so well, but written from the unreliable narrator and mind of the killer that Thompson excelled at. Years after writing Fast Lane, I read about Macdonald's last unfinished Lew Archer novel, and was amazed to find that it had a major plot-point in common with Fast Lane. Of course, my Julius Katz stories are heavily inspired by Rex Stout, and are almost the polar opposite of my crime noir novels.
Fast Lane was sold first to the Italian publisher, Meridiano Zero, in 2004, and was later published by a small U.S. publisher. Since 2008, I’ve had ten books published, and have seen two of them (Small Crimes and Pariah) named by the Washington Post as best books of the year, one of them named by NPR as one of the five best crime and mystery books of the year (Small Crimes), and another short-listed by the ALA for best horror novel of the year (The Caretaker of Lorne Field). My books are now also being published in Italy, France, Germany, Holland and Lithuania, and my latest crime novel, Outsourced, has been optioned by Impact Pictures and Constantin Film.
To learn more about my books and writing, please visit me at http://www.davezeltserman.com
Julius Katz Mysteries Page 9