Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  They were within sight of City Hall when Elizabeth’s cell phone rang.

  “Where are you?” Harvey Mitchum asked her.

  When she told him he said, “Do you have time to do me a favor? Run by Sean Wrentmore’s place?”

  “What for?”

  “I need to know his shoe size.”

  Chapter 30

  MITCHUM HAD CALLED FROM THE NICHOLS ARBORETUM, A PARK ON THE shore of the Huron River. Elizabeth and Shan drove there together, left their car in a lot by the water, and walked along a broad dirt path to a spot at the foot of a hill where Mitchum stood with a tall, thin black woman in her fifties.

  The woman had a dog on a leash, a mixed breed that was mostly grey-hound. For the benefit of Elizabeth and Shan, she explained that she had let the dog off his leash and he had run up the hill and into the woods. He had been gone a long time. He had returned with a shoe in his mouth—a white running shoe covered in dirt and stained with something that looked like blood.

  The shoe was a size ten. Wrentmore had worn a nine-and-a-half—too close to rule out a match. Still, Elizabeth had her doubts. According to Laura Kristoll, Wrentmore had been struck on the head; it wasn’t clear how his blood would have ended up on his shoe. A call to David Loogan could have resolved the matter, if she could reach him and if he were willing to talk, but when she tried his number she got connected to his voice mail as usual.

  In the end, there was nothing to do but have a look around. She and Mitchum and Shan climbed the trail up the hillside and fanned out into the woods. After an hour or so Ron Wintergreen joined them, bringing along one of the department’s police dogs. At three o’clock Elizabeth and Shan departed. Shan had been called away on another case. He dropped Elizabeth at City Hall.

  Back at her desk, she worked up a report on their conversation with Wrentmore’s lawyer, then gathered Wrentmore’s mail from Shan’s desk and began to sort through it piece by piece. She was still at it when Alice Marrowicz came by, wearing a flowered dress like faded curtains.

  “I’ve been calling hotels,” Alice said. “We already sent out a fax with David Loogan’s photo and description, but I’ve been following up like you suggested—asking if they’ve had anyone registered under the name Ted Carmady. I’ve gone through every hotel in town and a bunch in Detroit and the surrounding area. No luck yet. I’ll keep trying.”

  “Thanks, Alice. But he’s smart enough to come up with a fresh alias. Don’t let this keep you from other work you have to do.”

  “It’s no problem. I wish there were some other way I could help.”

  Elizabeth combed her fingers through her hair. “You can help me with Wrentmore’s mail if you want.” She picked up one of his credit card bills. “About all I’ve uncovered is that the man bought gas and groceries and occasionally went to a restaurant—where, from the looks of things, he ate alone.”

  She had the mail in two piles. She transferred one of them to Shan’s desk. “This is the stuff I’ve already gone through,” she said. “See if anything jumps out at you.”

  Alice settled into Shan’s chair and set to work, poring over each piece of mail as if it might lead her to a buried treasure. She was still there when Elizabeth left at five o’clock.

  Under a deep blue sky Elizabeth descended the steps of City Hall. As she walked to the parking lot, she thought about picking up groceries, getting home to her daughter.

  She got her car out of the lot and aimed it south on Main Street. There were banners hung from lampposts. College students smoking in front of downtown shops. She crawled along for a while in rush hour traffic, and then, without intending to, found herself driving west toward David Loogan’s neighborhood. She found his street and drew up before his rented house. An X of yellow police tape marked the front door.

  She left the car and drifted up the walk. Made her way onto the porch—slow, hollow footsteps on the wooden planks. She stood by the porch swing and got out her phone. Entered Loogan’s number, expecting to get his voice mail again.

  He answered on the second ring. “Detective Waishkey,” he said. “You startled me. I was just about to check my messages.”

  Now that she’d reached him, she wasn’t sure what she would say. She sat on the porch swing, leaned back, put one foot up on the railing.

  “Where are you?” she asked him.

  “Always the optimist,” he said. “One of these times I might tell you.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “I wonder what would happen,” he said. “Would you send squad cars screaming down on me? Suppose I told you I was at the cemetery, standing by the fence where you and I talked the day of Tom’s funeral—”

  The smallest pressure of her foot on the railing set the porch swing in motion. “I wouldn’t send squad cars. But I don’t think that’s where you are.”

  “No, it’s not. How are things going? Did you talk to Sandy Vogel? Did you ask her if she told anyone about seeing Beccanti in Tom Kristoll’s office?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  She relaxed into the motion of the swing. “I’m afraid that’s part of an ongoing investigation. I’d like to tell you, but technically I’m not supposed to. I might be willing to bend the rules, but only if you told me something in return.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like where Sean Wrentmore’s buried.”

  “That’s a big something.”

  “Let’s start smaller then. Is he buried in the Nichols Arboretum?”

  “No. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Someone found a shoe in the woods there today. It was roughly his size.”

  “He’s not in the Arboretum. You shouldn’t waste your time there.”

  “I already did,” she said. “A good part of the afternoon. Me and three other detectives and a police dog. That’s the way it’s going to be from now on, whenever anyone finds a scrap of clothing in the woods, or a patch of dirt that looks like it’s been disturbed. You need to tell me where to find Sean Wrentmore.”

  “I’m not ready to do that yet,” he said.

  She listened as the wind stirred the branches of a forsythia bush beside the porch.

  “I know,” she said. “Wrentmore is your leverage. You know where he is, and you think you might use the information as a bargaining chip later on.” The bare forsythia branches scratched the wooden railing. “You’re wrongly suspected of stabbing Michael Beccanti, and you think you’re going to figure out who really killed him, and maybe you’ll solve Tom Kristoll’s murder too, while you’re at it. But none of that is going to happen. Do you know why?”

  “Yes,” he said, without hesitation.

  “Because this isn’t a story in Gray Streets,” she said. “Listen, you know I’m right. You should come in now, and tell me where Wrentmore is, and we’ll go from there.”

  “I’ll think about it. Give me a few more days.”

  “Don’t think about it. Do it. I’m at your house right now. I’ll wait for you here. We’ll figure out what to do.”

  He paused, and the pause gave her hope, but only for a moment.

  “It’s tempting,” he said, “but I’m not ready yet. A few more days.”

  Less than three miles away, Loogan turned off his phone and slipped it into a pocket. He looked down at the headstone of Tom Kristoll’s grave, then turned and jogged across the cemetery lawn to his car. He drove along the winding road to the gate and headed east toward downtown Ann Arbor.

  A few minutes later, he managed to find a metered parking space on a side street. He walked two blocks to Main, slipped into a café, found a table in front by the window. From there, he could look out at the building that housed the offices of Gray Streets.

  His own face stared up at him from a discarded copy of the Ann Arbor News. He folded the paper over and smiled at a girl reading Kafka at another table. The corners of her mouth turned up briefly before she went back to her book. The photo in the paper had been a poor one to begin with,
and he hardly resembled it now. He had shaved his head and bought a pair of drugstore reading glasses—black plastic frames and the weakest prescription he could find. He looked very much like every other man with a shaved head and glasses.

  A moment later, the lobby door of the Gray Streets building opened, and a woman emerged. Sandy Vogel wore a long navy blue coat and had a handbag slung over her shoulder. She walked south along Main Street and when she was out of sight Loogan stood up. He smiled again at the girl reading Kafka, pushed through the door to the sound of a tinkling bell, and jogged across the street.

  Elizabeth closed her phone and got up from the porch swing. She had called in to the department and talked to McCaleb. She had learned that Loogan’s cell phone company had traced his call to an area on the west side of Ann Arbor, near the intersection of Wagner and Jackson. Tom Kristoll had been buried in a cemetery off Jackson Road. Loogan had been telling her the truth. She thought of driving there to look for him, but he would be gone by now. And McCaleb had already dispatched patrol cars to search the area.

  As she descended the steps of Loogan’s porch, she noticed a car parked across the street, partway down the block. The driver’s door opened and a man climbed out—for a moment she had the crazy sense that it was Loogan. Then she saw that it was an old man in a rumpled suit, a man with gray, comb-over hair: Roy Denham, the detective from Nossos, New York.

  Closing the door, he leaned wearily against the car. He smiled as she approached, and the smile transformed his loose-jowled face. He said, “Detective Waishkey, isn’t it?”

  “Detective Denham,” she said. “How long have you been here?”

  He checked his watch. “Nearly four hours,” he said. “I wanted to be of some use, and yet stay out of everyone’s way. Seemed like a good idea to watch Malone’s house.”

  Elizabeth blinked at hearing Loogan’s real name. She looked through the driver’s window at the front seat and saw the usual detritus of a stakeout: a tall thermos and a half-eaten sandwich, a folded newspaper with a crossword mostly filled in. No sign of a weapon, and Denham didn’t seem to be wearing a holster under his suit jacket.

  “You don’t have to worry,” he said, as if he could read her thoughts. “I don’t have a gun. Haven’t carried one since I retired. I don’t plan to try any cowboy stunts. If I see Malone I’ll call it in.” He flashed a cell phone and slipped it back in his pocket. “Technology,” he said. “When I was young we had radios and nightsticks. Now you’ve got Tasers and cell phones.”

  He tipped his chin up at Loogan’s porch. “Who were you talking to there, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Chief McCaleb,” Elizabeth said. “And before that, Loogan—or Malone, if you like. I’m trying to lure him in. But he’s got his own agenda. He thinks he’s going to find out who really stabbed Michael Beccanti, and he thinks that’s going to tell him who killed Tom Kristoll.”

  “You think he’s telling the truth—he’s not the one who stabbed this fellow Beccanti?”

  “Yes. Though that puts me in the minority around the department, especially since you showed up and we found out about Jimmy Wade Peltier.”

  Denham produced a pack of cigarettes from a shirt pocket. Shook one loose, but didn’t light it. “It may surprise you,” he said, “but I tend to agree. Like I said yesterday, I never expected to find Darrell Malone mixed up in something like this. I don’t think he’s a violent man, not at the root of him. What happened that night—up there on that parking deck—it was a fluke. Peltier provoked him.”

  Elizabeth watched him roll the cigarette between his finger and thumb, consider it, and slip it back in his pocket.

  “Do you think you got the real story?” she said. “About what happened that night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I listened to your briefing, and I read the file. Loogan—Malone—stabbed Peltier, and Peltier went down. He was no longer a threat. Malone went to call for help. Then came back and stabbed Peltier a few more times for good measure. Do you think that’s really what happened?”

  Denham turned his face up to the dark sky, considering the question. “That’s the story Malone told, and the wounds were consistent with it. What’s the alternative?”

  “It occurs to me that it wasn’t just the two of them up there,” said Elizabeth. “There was the woman—Charlotte Rittenour. She was unconscious for a time, but suppose she came to while Malone was calling for help. And there’s Peltier lying right nearby, the knife in him. She’s disoriented, terrified. Maybe he moves. She grabs the knife and stabs him.”

  “And then Malone takes the blame for it?”

  “He’s being noble,” Elizabeth said. “He figures she’s gone through enough.”

  Denham set his weary eyes on her. “It might be easier to take, if it happened that way. But we interviewed Charlotte Rittenour, and we questioned Malone every which way. His story was always the same. There’s no reason to think it didn’t happen the way he told us.”

  His smoker’s voice dropped low. Elizabeth heard sympathy in it.

  He said, “You like him—Malone. It’s all right. There’s no shame in it. I got to like him too. I think he’s an honorable man, in his way. But there’s no question about what he did to Jimmy Peltier.”

  Loogan crossed through the empty lobby and rode the elevator to the sixth floor. The doors opened and a man with a briefcase stood waiting. For a second Loogan froze, but the man gave him a bored look and stood aside to let him pass.

  Loogan had the key ready when he reached the Gray Streets door. He listened for a moment with his ear close to the pebbled glass. No sound, no light inside.

  He turned the key, went in, and locked the door behind him. Sliding his glasses into his pocket, he made his way to Sandy Vogel’s desk and switched on her lamp. A stack of envelopes rested on her blotter: stories from eager writers, unsolicited and probably unpublishable.

  At the edge of the blotter lay a leather-bound notebook: Sandy’s day planner. Loogan opened it and glanced through some of the entries. Many of them were personal—a meeting at her daughter’s middle school, a reminder to pick up her son from band practice. Out of curiosity, Loogan paged back to the day Tom Kristoll died. No dark secrets were revealed to him. He paged forward and spotted an entry for Saturday, November 7. Tomorrow. Brunch at 11 with board at LK’s.

  He closed the book, rolled the chair back from the desk, and spun slowly in a circle, thinking. After a moment he tapped the space bar on the keyboard of Sandy Vogel’s computer and watched the monitor come to life. Ten minutes later he had what he needed and was back in his car heading out of town.

  The moon glowed full overhead as Elizabeth made the turn onto her street.

  She had spent a while with Denham, trading stories, and then she had left him behind at David Loogan’s house. He promised her he wouldn’t stay much longer; he would get something to eat and get some rest.

  She had her window rolled down a few inches as she coasted along her street, barely touching the gas. A cool current of wind took her hair. She saw her house from a distance: the silhouette of the elm out front, the light of the porch, framed by the eaves and the posts and the railing. There were figures in the light. One of them was Sarah, the other was distinctly male. She knew at once it was not Loogan. It was a tall, skinny sixteen-year-old boy with unruly hair. Billy Rydell.

  The two figures leaned into each other. Sarah put her arms up, clasped her hands at the back of the boy’s neck. It was a practiced gesture; this was not the first time. A second later, when they kissed, Elizabeth knew that it was not their first kiss.

  She eased her foot onto the brake. This needed thought. It was better not to overreact. Teenage girls had boyfriends. She had joked with Sarah about having an affair with Billy Rydell. She should have seen this coming.

  She looked away for a moment, because it was awkward, watching. But she wasn’t sure how she felt about not watching either. She knew all the theories about parenting, about r
especting a child’s privacy, trusting her to make good decisions. But there were limits, and sitting in a car at night and waiting patiently while your daughter made out with her boyfriend on the porch was somewhere on the far side of the limits. It was over the border and past the minefield and beyond the razor-wire fence.

  Time to move then. She would drive on, let them see she was home, and sort it out from there. She looked up and Billy Rydell had his hand on her daughter’s waist. They were still kissing. Elizabeth released the brake and the car rolled along and Billy’s hand went under her daughter’s shirt. He walked her a step backward until she was against the screen door. Sarah broke the kiss and wriggled sideways. She grabbed his wrist and pushed it down and away.

  He moved in for another kiss and she braced her hands against his chest and shoved him away. He spread his arms in a gesture that said, What’s the big deal?

  Both of them turned then. Elizabeth had borne down on the accelerator and then the brake. The car screeched to a stop at an angle to the curb. The headlights washed over the lawn. She had the presence of mind to put the car in park, but not to cut the engine. Then she was out of the car. Billy Rydell saw her coming. He understood his situation. He thought about running—Elizabeth could read it in his face.

  To his credit, he didn’t run. He came down the porch steps, palms out, mouthing apologies. He tried to skirt her only at the last moment, when she reached for him. She got hold of his shirtfront, used his own momentum to spin him around. Walked him backward three paces and slammed him into the trunk of the elm tree.

  The impact knocked the wind out of him. His eyes stared. The fist of her left hand clutched the fabric of his shirt. Her right hand was down at her side. Her pistol was in it. It took an act of will to keep herself from pressing the muzzle into Billy Rydell’s ribs.