by Tracy Clark
“Yeah, Cass, I thought I’d better call. You got a delivery here. I didn’t see who dropped it off, but they set it right outside your door. You want me to do something with it?”
I frowned. I wasn’t expecting any deliveries. “What is it?”
“Big box. Heavy. If it’s a piece of furniture, I can go ahead and put it together for you, if you want?”
“Is there a return address?”
“Hold on.” I could hear rustling on his end. I guessed he was checking the box. I waited, my breath holding, watching a couple of U of C students meander down the block toward the campus. My birthday was nine months away; Christmas six months away. There was no reason anything should be sitting outside my office door.
“Tell you the truth,” Turk said slowly, “it must have taken more than one fella to get this in here. It’s got to be a good hundred pounds or more. Nope. No address, just your name scrawled on the side. Want me to open her up?”
I started the car, peeled away from the curb, headed his way. “No. Get away from it, and keep everybody else away, too.”
“It’s early yet. Nobody here but me.” I could hear the confusion in his voice.
I took a red light, then two others, weaving around slow traffic. “Leave it. I’m on my way. Three minutes.”
Turk was changing a lightbulb down in the lobby when I rushed through the front door.
“It’s still there,” he said calmly as he climbed off his ladder. “I blocked off the hall so no one could get at it. What’s going on?”
“I’ll let you know in a minute. Stay here.”
I brushed past him and raced up the stairs to the third floor. I couldn’t miss the box. It was a big cardboard sucker, the kind refrigerators or stoves come in, and I was absolutely certain I hadn’t ordered either appliance. I approached slowly, studying it. Like Turk said, no address tag, no stamps, no UPS bar codes, just my name in black marker scrawled on the side. Standing over the box, I was relieved to discover that it wasn’t ticking, but that meant very little, really. Bombs didn’t have to tick. And who’d send me a bomb, anyway? Scratch that. I could come up with a few names. The box was taped along the top and sides with heavy packing tape. No nicks, no scrapes. It looked brand-new.
“See? Just a regular old box.”
I jumped, startled by the voice. So engrossed in the box, I hadn’t heard Turk walk up behind me.
“I told you to stay put.”
Turk nodded, staring at the mystery box. “I heard you.” “Then why are you here?”
“This is my building. I run it—it don’t run me.”
“This thing was here when you got here?”
“Nah. I got here at six, the hall was empty. I spent the morning upstairs waxing the floors. When I got down here to do this one, the box was sitting here. I asked Gupta and some of the third-floorers if they saw who hauled it in, nobody did.”
“What time was that?”
He shrugged. “Just before I called you. I needed to get to the floors. The box is in the way.”
We both peered down at the box as though our combined concentration would unlock its secrets. Turk suddenly hauled off and kicked the side of it, the loud thud caused by the steel toe of his heavy boot echoing off the walls. I reeled. “What are you doing?”
“I’d say it’s not a bomb, but whatever’s in there’s got some weight to it.”
I glowered at him, then started in on my pockets, feeling around for my keys to use to make a dent on the tape.
Turk watched, caught on, and then reached behind to his waistband and pulled out a knife big enough to gut a whale. He handed it to me, hilt-side first, the hilt covered by what looked like crocodile hide. I shook it at him. “This? Right here? Illegal.”
Turk looked unimpressed. “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
“Step back,” I ordered. Reluctantly he took a tiny step back. I motioned with the mega-knife. “Three more. Big ones.”
Turk hesitated before complying. Only then did I take his knife, slit the tape away from the top of the box, reach over, and pull the flap back.
“Well, what is it?” Turk asked.
I began pulling plastic away. “Don’t know yet, so far it’s just a lot of . . .”
I heard myself scream; then I recoiled. Staring up at me from the box were glassy green eyes the color of Chinese jade attached to a face, a dead human face. The recoil was so strong, I lost my footing and landed on my backside. Like a crab, I skittered backward, fast, until my back hit the opposite wall. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried breathing, but I could still see the eyes. The stench of death was now shooting out of the box like the decomposing rot of a mummy’s tomb.
“Holy crap!” Turk yelled, holding his nose. He’d crept forward to take a look. “Is that a real head in there?”
I took a moment, then two more. It’s not like this was my first dead body. It’s just that you do not expect to see a dead person’s head in a box with your name on it, a box delivered to you, like a gift. I stood, shaking off the heebie-jeebies, my skin crawling.
Turk shook his head, frowned. “Man, that is not cool.”
I approached the box again, pulled back the flaps for a better look. The head was still there, the eyes, the rot. I covered my nose, held my breath. The head was detached from its body. I found the rest—legs, torso, arms—stacked up beside it like a cord of wood, bloodied, its cut edges jagged. I turned my attention back to the eyes. They weren’t quite so dreamy now. This was Vincent Darby, the man who’d threatened to break me in two.
* * *
I was in the women’s room, washing my hands for the fifteenth time, when the police arrived to take possession of what was left of Darby. I’d been in there a while, washing and washing again, trying to rinse away the shock and revulsion, with little luck. I checked myself out in the mirror. The light wasn’t good in here, but even in dimness, I looked like a woman who’d just found a dead body in a box. You couldn’t mistake my shell-shocked expression. After a few more breaths, duly braced, I headed for the door, then thought better of it. I turned and went back to wash my hands again. The door squeaked open behind me and Detective Marta Pena walked in. I turned to face her. She nodded. I nodded back.
Her star hung from a silver chain around her neck. From the bags under her dark eyes, it looked like she’d been up for days. “You okay?”
“Sure. Why? Don’t I look it?”
The look she gave me told me no, but she was polite enough not to say anything. Instead, she eased her notebook out of her pocket and flicked the top of the ballpoint nestled between the pages. “Tell me about the dead guy in the box.”
“His name’s Vincent Darby, and up until about twenty minutes ago, he was high on my list of suspects in the death of Tim Ayers.”
At the mention of Tim’s name, Marta’s eyes locked on mine and her face went deadpan, like a rock, like one of those presidential visages carved into the stone of Mt. Rushmore. As far as she was concerned, Ayers’s case was closed. She was wrong, of course, and I’d argued as much, but it was obvious she didn’t appreciate having it brought up again.
“Darby worked for a guy named Nick Spada, who specializes in life settlements.”
She sneered. “Not exactly a high-risk line of work.”
“Nick Spada and Darby held Ayers’s end-of-life policy.”
I waited to see if the connection sank in. I could tell by the narrowing of her eyes that it was beginning to.
“I’ve been digging into Darby hard. He refused to tell me he was living on a boat just three slips down from Tim’s, or that he argued with him before he died. I believe that argument was about Tim’s run of good luck, the fact that he was still alive when his doctors told him he shouldn’t be. If that’s true, that ropes Spada in.” I leaned against the sink, arms crossed. “I think Nick Spada killed two people, maybe more. Maybe even Peter Langham, whose house Darby was living in. I need to check on that next.”
“So Darby bein
g here?” she asked.
“Is a warning. We’re dealing with a psychopath.”
Marta sighed. “I’ll need a list of everybody you talked to in regard to Darby.”
I shook my head. “I can give you what I know of him, but the rest is my client’s business, until that point when it becomes police business.”
Marta’s three-mile stare would have withered the gonads of any ordinary criminal, but I’d seen it before. She didn’t scare me.
“A man’s dead body is lying not ten feet from us. That’s homicide. That’s police business.”
“Yes, I saw. It’s serious and someone’s going to pay. Maybe Darby was into something he shouldn’t have been, but no one deserves to end up the way he did. It’s cruel. It’s sick. When I prove Tim was murdered, and I will, I believe I’ll know who killed Darby.”
“This is not a time for you to go lone wolf,” Marta said. “This is what we do.”
“It’s also what I do.”
“I should take you in for obstruction.”
“That’d be a bonehead move, and you know it.”
We stood in silence for a time, my mind reeling. I had nothing. I’d been running around chasing threads for days, finding nothing that led to anything else. Darby’s death elevated things, sped the clock up. Someone out there, someone I’d approached, felt threatened enough to start cutting ties with loose ends. Was that his boss, Spada? Was it Ganz? Leon? Someone else?
“I’ll give you a head start,” I said. “Darby likely had enemies, unrelated to his association with Ayers. He’s an ex-con with an extensive record, fraud, mostly. He was a scam artist not above bilking the vulnerable. Maybe that’s why he latched onto Ayers, I don’t know. Who’s more vulnerable than a dying man hoping to get the last bit of happiness out of the time he’s got left?” I blew out a long breath. “Or maybe I’ve pegged Darby wrong and he’d gone completely straight. Maybe he lied to me because he’s spent his entire life lying to cops and he hadn’t found a way to break the habit. I’ve got bits of information, a handful of people with stories to tell, but no proof, no straight line. The work’s not done.”
Marta stared back, her eyes intense. “You didn’t get any of that from us, did you?”
“I’ve got resources outside of the department, thank you. Are you going to take the information I have about Darby, or not? Maybe his troubles stemmed from his job. I talked to Spada. He seemed harmless enough, though he’s a bit narcissistic, but when there’s money involved, people get greedy. I looked him up. He came back clean, but I’m getting a feeling. You might want to check him out on your end. Maybe you’ll get something on him I didn’t.”
“No, I think you’d like to send me off chasing my tail with this Spada to throw me off your client’s scent. I’ve got him for the break-in. Maybe Darby saw him, too? Maybe Byson’s not only a thief but a killer, which is why he’s on the run.” I thought about Tim’s painting in Jung’s apartment, and my own suspicions that he might be a killer. However, until I knew for sure what was going on, I had no other choice but to stick with him.
“You’re being ridiculous. You’ve met Jung. Would he have the sense to run?” It was a good question, one I’d asked myself a million times since leaving his apartment. “He could be hiding. The question is, why’s he hiding from me?”
“Because he knows he’s been had,” Marta said. “Now let’s go. You’re going to run through this whole thing again, step-by-step, telling me everything you know.”
“Oh, come on. I don’t have time for that. You heard me. My client may have dug himself deep into a hidey-hole.”
“You’re a witness in a homicide.”
I shook my head. “I’m the innocent recipient of the worst gift ever, that’s all. And if you’d taken me seriously when I told you Tim’s death wasn’t accidental, we wouldn’t even be here right now.”
“This got anything to do with your car getting torched?”
I wasn’t surprised she’d heard about it. Marta was good, thorough. “Darby couldn’t have done that from the box. He looks, and smells, like he’s been dead for some time.”
Marta reached for the doorknob, frowned. “I’m done with this buggy bathroom. Your office. Now. And if you even think about getting cute and leaving out one tiny detail of this twisted sister of a story, I’ll lock the cuffs on you myself.”
My car burned to a molten lump. Jung missing. Darby dead in a box. Someone was sending me a message, and I didn’t like it. Doesn’t anybody send Western Union anymore?
Chapter 33
My small office was packed with cops, some uniformed, most plainclothes. Everybody wanted to know what I knew. I slid an aggrieved look toward Marta. This was a circus, and she was enjoying dragging me around the center ring. Suddenly a solitary trip to the police station didn’t seem all that bad. I looked for Turk and found him across the hall in a huddle of detectives. He looked angry. Someone had disrespected his building, and he wasn’t okay with it.
Marta clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “All right, everybody, clear out. We need the space. Reingold with me. DeLancie, you’re on the ME, and let me know the minute you get something from the techs.”
Slowly the room emptied. When it did, Marta closed the door and the room fell quiet. Through the frosted glass in the door, I could see the silhouettes of cops milling around in the hall, walking back and forth. Their voices were muted; the noise of their activity reduced to a low murmur. I sat behind my desk, relieved at last to be off my feet.
There were two client chairs facing my desk. Marta took one, her partner the other. Reingold, she’d said. I didn’t know him. He was white, slightly balding, a strawberry birthmark on his right cheek. There was no wedding ring on his finger, and he exhibited no outward signs of having a welcoming personality. His beady eyes stayed pinned to mine. No smile.
I leaned forward. “Are we really doing this?”
Reingold and Marta exchanged a look, but the almost imperceptible communication from partner to partner was lost to me. Each team had their own language, their own shortcuts. All I could do was wait until they hashed it out and got back to me. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes for a second.
“We’re going to go over it again,” Marta finally said. “We’ll stop you when we’ve heard enough.” Her notebook was at the ready, so was Reingold’s.
I opened my top drawer and took out a bottle of aspirin, held it up. “Anybody else need one of these?”
Neither cop responded.
I slid two tablets from the bottle, swallowed them dry, and then set the bottle front and center. “Well, if you change your mind, here they are.”
“You got security cameras in this dump? Do we have any shot of getting a look at who dropped that box off?”
“No, and no, and I take exception to the ‘dump’ crack.” It was a dump, but I could say so, they couldn’t.
Reingold cocked a thumb toward the hall. “How about Easy Rider out there? Looks like he could be into something.”
I stared at him, unamused. “Dead end. Turk’s solid. You’ll have to try harder than that.”
Marta let out a low, frustrated growl. “Slide me that aspirin, dammit.”
For more than two hours, I answered the same questions at least five times. No, I didn’t know who might have wanted Darby dead. Yes, I did know the deceased. No, not intimately. Yes, of course, I had access to a box. Who couldn’t get their hands on a box, if they needed one?
Marta and Reingold tried angling for more information and even tried slyly steering me toward revealing details of my investigation—with no success. It was a soul-draining, relentless back-and-forth that quickly began to take on the rhythm of a go-for-broke tennis match, neither side willing or able to give up a single point. The aspirin had a tough time keeping up.
“Look,” I said finally. “This has turned out to be a real sinkhole of a day. I’m tired, you’re tired. We’ve gone over this a hundred times.” I stood, hoping the gesture sig
naled the end. “What I know about Vincent Darby, you now know, so either take me in or cut me loose.”
Marta and Reingold stood. There was a knock at the door. Reingold opened it and a cop stuck her head in. She and Reingold spoke in whispered tones. I could make out nothing, but the looks on their faces didn’t look promising for me. The cop ducked back out; Reingold walked back.
“Besides the slice and dice,” he said, “GSW to the chest on the victim.”
Marta stepped forward, held her hand out. “I’m going to need your gun.” She read my look. “Don’t make it ugly.”
I turned to Reingold. “What caliber round? What kind of gun?”
He didn’t answer. That meant the ME didn’t know yet, which meant Reingold didn’t know.
I turned back to Marta. “Go fish. Unless I’m under arrest, or until you know what kind of weapon you’re even looking for, my gun stays with me.”
She drew her hand back, nodded, a slight smile on her face. She knew I knew she’d just tried to pull a fast one. “I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll count the minutes.”
* * *
It took a while for the building to empty, but when it did, I sat quietly at my desk, my door open, staring out into the hall, my eyes on the spot where the box had been. Turk had been Johnny-on-the-spot with a clean mop and floor wax, once what was left of Darby got bagged, tagged, and carted away. He’d scrubbed the hall twice, no doubt hoping to rid the place of the dead man’s juju. His building, he reminded me, his prerogative. I knew Marta would be back to me quickly when the ME determined what kind of gun Darby had been shot with, but she’d only be wasting time. For some reason, she seemed determined to show me up or prove me wrong about Ayers. I couldn’t understand the competitiveness, but it didn’t worry me, either. I had a job to do, same as her.