Shadow Tag

by Marjorie Swift Doering

  “Franklin,” Ray blurted out.

  “His father’s brother,” Waverly chimed in. “Franklin Johnson was Michael Johnson’s paternal uncle, right?”

  “Right,” Hoerr said.

  “So,” Waverly surmised, “after little Mikey’s father died, Uncle Frank and his wife Loretta took in their nephew. I’ll be damned.” He patted Hoerr’s cheek. “Good job, kid.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  “Yeah, great job,” Ray said. “Thanks.”

  Hoerr nodded. “Is there anything else you need done—anything I can help you with?”

  “We’ll let you know if something comes up, Dennis,” Waverly said. “Thanks again.”

  Ray watched the gleam go out of Dennis Hoerr’s eyes—saw the sag in his shoulders.

  “Hey, Dennis…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You okay?”

  “Sure, I’m fine. See you guys later.”

  17

  Inside his dilapidated apartment, Michael Johnson opened a wallet nearly as old and worn as himself. The billfold compartment held three crisp Washingtons and one faded, dog-eared Jackson. He’d have to stretch the twenty-three dollars until payday; he’d done it before on a lot less. The scant funds would buy him a little time outside the dreary apartment—time in a place alive with laughter and conversation. Drinking at home was cheaper, but he always slept better after visiting Gilhooley’s.

  He’d have found the bar even more to his liking if it hadn’t been for Steve, the young punk of a bartender with the wavy, dark hair, broad shoulders, and smart mouth. Standing in his bedroom, Johnson’s lips curled in a snarl as he mimicked him. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough? Maybe you should have something to eat. You oughta go home and get some sleep.” Johnson spoke to the phantom bartender with a sneer. “And maybe you should stick it where the sun don’t shine, Stevie boy.”

  Johnson’s wallet flopped open as he tossed it back on the dresser. He brushed a finger over the faded photo of his late wife, her eyes sea-blue, hair the color of corn silk. If only he could reach out and touch her cheek, feel its warmth and softness once more. His arthritic fingers glided over her image encased in the scratched, plastic photo holder. Gone was the gruffness and hard glint in his eyes.

  “How did things ever get so messed up, Lucy?” He closed the wallet and headed for the kitchen where he threw a cabinet door open and grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam. “One shot,” he told himself. “Gotta spread it out.”

  He poured the whiskey into a glass and let it flow down his throat like liquid fire. Tilting the bottle a second time, a small trickle splashed into the glass before he jerked the bottle upright. He couldn’t risk letting the liquor loosen his tongue like it had before. His mouthing off about Paul Davis at Gilhooley’s hadn’t been just stupid, he realized, it was dangerous.

  There were plenty of other bars where he could take his business, but Gilhooley’s was his favorite. The place had been taken over by new management a couple months back. The new owner, Kurt W. Schwartz, spoke with an accent thick enough to stop a bullet. Still, the bar’s name remained unchanged as did the decor and the shamrock-crested cocktail napkins. Johnson figured the cheap bastard saved a bundle that way, not that it mattered. They could play “Oh, Danny Boy” on a glockenspiel and he wouldn’t care as long as Schwartz didn’t raise the price of the drinks.

  Schwartz, however, couldn’t leave well enough alone; he’d turned the place into a bar and grill joint. It was the enticement of food and the proximity to Allied Computer Corporation that turned Gilhooley’s into a popular lunchtime spot for the ACC crew. Johnson figured he’d established squatter’s rights. He wasn’t going to be forced out by the incessant talk about Paul Davis and the damn investigation, but he’d have to be a lot more careful to keep his thoughts to himself.

  “Bar and grill,” he snorted. “Damn that Schwartz.”

  The bottle beckoned, but he was distracted by a knock at the door. “What,” he shouted. The knocking grew louder, more persistent. “Who the hell is it?”

  Three sharp raps followed.

  Johnson hitched up his pants, opened the door and eyed Ray and Waverly up one side and down the other. “Might’ve known—Heckle and Jeckle. Now what do you two want?”

  Ray glared at him. “The truth—same as before.”

  “You already got it.”

  “But not from you.” Ray followed him inside. “You denied owning a gun. You denied knowing Franklin Johnson. Didn’t your Uncle Frank teach you it’s not nice to lie?”

  Johnson’s shoulders slumped.

  Ray kept pushing. “That pearl-inlaid .38 came from him, right?”

  “All right, yeah. It was my uncle’s gun.” He ran a hand over his stubbled face. “Fact of the matter is, I never denied none of that stuff you’re talkin’ about. You just don’t listen too good is all.”

  “There’s an awfully thin line between evasion and lying,” Ray said.

  Johnson crossed the room and sank into the nearest chair, his eyes hazy, the creases in his ashen face becoming fissures. “You two show up here asking all kinds of questions about Paul Davis, then Frank, and about my owning a gun. You think I’m some kind of idiot? You figure I don’t know when a bull’s-eye is getting stuck to my back?”

  “Look,” Waverly said, “you’re not doing yourself any favors by dicking around with us.”

  Johnson slouched in the worn, moss-green chair. “My boss... My gun... What the hell was I thinking? Sure. I shoulda spoke right up.”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t find out?” Ray asked. “Tell you what. We’re gonna give you one more shot at telling the truth. How’d your gun wind up in Paul Davis’s hand?”

  “Beats me,” Johnson told him.

  “If you can’t explain it,” Ray said, “we’re going to come up with an explanation of our own, and I guarantee you’re not going to like it.”

  Johnson glanced toward the bottle of Jim Beam on the kitchen counter and licked his lips. “All right, you want to hear what happened, I’ll tell you. Frank had himself a little shoe store in Toledo. Nothin’ much, but it was his. A pretty humdrum living, though, so he took up target shooting in his spare time for something to do. Did damn good at it, too.”

  He got up, went to a table in the corner and brought back a small, walnut box, holding it out for them to see. Affixed to the front was a small, engraved plate bearing his uncle’s name, date and a tournament title. “See here? Frank won that gun—was mighty damn proud of it, too. His passing it on to me meant a lot.” His cheeks flushed with emotion—probably the healthiest color his face had been in years.

  “That doesn’t explain how it wound up in Davis’s hand,” Ray said.

  “Okay, here’s the thing. I took the revolver to show it off to the guys at work. A few days later, here in my apartment, I went to take a look at it and it was gone.” Johnson opened the lid. An empty gun-shaped indentation covered in red velvet was all the box held. “Someone took it.”

  “It was stolen?” Ray asked.

  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t give it away.”

  “Did you report it?” Waverly asked.

  Johnson shook his head.

  “Why not?” Ray ran a finger between his neck and shirt collar. The heat in the upstairs apartment felt fifteen degrees higher than on the street.

  Johnson’s eyes shifted toward the open bottle of whiskey again. “’Cause Gaines and Chalmers are a couple of frickin’ jokers. I figured one or both of them hid it, pulling another one of their damn stunts.”

  “You took it to work and left it lying around?”

  “It didn’t seem like a big deal.”

  Ray shook his head in disbelief. “Are you suggesting one of them may have used your gun to murder Paul Davis?”

  Johnson’s eyes flared. “Hell, no. All I’m sayin’ is that I’m not sure when it went missing.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ray asked.

  “When I brought the box home, maybe
the gun was inside, maybe it wasn’t. It could’ve been swiped from right here inside my own goddamn apartment for all I know.”

  “If someone broke in, you’d have been able to tell,” Ray said.

  “How? A jimmied lock or something? This ain’t the Ritz, ya know. A credit card probably works better in that door than my key.”

  “All right,” Ray said, conceding the point, “but if the gun wasn’t inside that case when you brought it back from ACC, the weight of the box alone should’ve clued you in.”

  Johnson shrugged. “Sometimes I’m not as…observant as maybe I should be.”

  “Or as sober?” Ray suggested.

  His lip curled. “Been talking to Chalmers and Gaines, right? Must’ve been real happy to spill their guts about me. Okay, so I drink some. So what?”

  “When you found the gun was missing,” Waverly said, “you should’ve reported it.”

  “It was already too late, ’cause by then,” Johnson muttered, “it showed up in Mr. Paul ‘Lah-de-dah’ Davis’s cold, dead hand. Think I didn’t know how that would look?”

  “No, I’m sure you knew exactly how it would look,” Ray said, “especially once we found out Paul Davis threatened to fire you for drinking on the job.”

  “But he didn’t fire me, now did he?”

  Genuinely curious, Ray asked, “Why is that?”

  “Said someone put in a good word for me, that’s why.”

  “Who?”

  “Beats me. Anyway, Davis said he was giving me another chance. He wrote me a letter telling me so.”

  Eyes narrowed, Ray cocked his head. “Davis wrote to you personally? Paul Davis?”

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  Ray wasn’t buying it. Human Resources was likely to be involved in handling disciplinary actions, but if claiming Davis dealt with him personally was what floated Johnson’s boat, he decided there was no point in poking holes in it. Clearly someone had to have given him a second chance or Johnson would have been long gone. “So what happened? Did Davis catch you drinking a second time? Maybe you had to beg him for a another chance, and he refused.”

  “You’re crazy. That didn’t happen.”

  “Killing Paul Davis might’ve been the only way you knew to keep your job. Or maybe killing him for humiliating you the first time gave you some kind of sick satisfaction.”

  “Dream on.” Johnson rose from his chair. “My gun might’ve been in his hand, but I didn’t kill him.”

  Ray looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Unless you were the one who put it there, how would you know that gun was yours?”

  Johnson inhaled sharply. “I…I heard talk that it was pearl-handled. I figured it had to be mine. There ain’t too many of those around.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “From people.”

  “What people?”

  “Just people.”

  “Where?”

  “At...at Gilhooley’s.”

  Waverly picked up on Ray’s confusion. “It’s a bar and grill joint near ACC,” he explained.

  “Secretaries and other ACC desk jockeys hang out over there,” Johnson added. “I overheard some of them talkin’, that’s all.”

  “You go to this Gilhooley’s place often?” Ray asked.

  “Sometimes. Got nothin’ keepin’ me here.”

  “Your gun was used to kill Paul Davis. If you didn’t pull the trigger, who did?”

  “He did it himself.”

  “Hold it. You’re saying he used your gun to kill himself?”

  “Yeah,” Johnson said. “He must’ve come across it and kinda borrowed it…short term.”

  Waverly’s eyes did a double roll.

  “When I heard about the gun, that’s when I checked and saw mine was gone. Simple as that.”

  Ray paced. “So, first you told us you thought Gaines or Chalmers took the gun as a prank. Then you suggested someone could’ve stolen it from this apartment. Now you expect us to believe Paul Davis happened across your revolver and used it to kill himself? I don’t think so.”

  Johnson shrugged. “Think whatever you like, but I’m telling you I didn’t kill Paul Davis. He put that bullet in his skull all by himself.”

  “Have you considered that someone could be framing you—maybe one of your work buddies?” Waverly asked.

  “No way. Neither of them had reason to kill Davis.”

  “If that’s true, why haven’t either of them come forward to help clear you?”

  “And maybe get accused of a frame-up like you’re talkin’ about now?” he said. “Why chance it?”

  Waverly rose, signaling the interview’s end. “Mr. Johnson, we may have more questions for you later. Stay where we can reach you.”

  Johnson showed them to the door, yanking it open so forcefully it produced a welcome breeze. “Get out, you effin, G.D. S.O.B.s.”

  Waverly broke into a broad smile as Johnson slammed the door shut. “Feisty old bastard just about threw the whole alphabet at us.”

  “Gave it his best shot.” Ray began considering their next move.

  18

  The drive to Kingsley Security Agency, the company responsible for Michael Johnson’s job assignment to ACC, proved to be a long one. Road construction and malfunctioning traffic signals conspired to slow Ray and Waverly’s progress.

  “Damn it,” Waverly griped, “why the hell isn’t a traffic cop out here? They’d better get someone’s ass over here to straighten this mess out.” He glanced to his right and caught Ray yawning. “Your back still keeping you awake nights?”

  “My back’s good, but my brain wouldn’t shut down last night. My clock started sounding like a jack hammer after a couple of hours. I laid there trying to figure out if the ticking sound actually goes tick-tock or if it’s really just tick, tick, tick—whether it’s a trick of the imagination or something.”

  “Get yourself a digital, Buddy. God’s truth—you and Dennis Hoerr are starting to worry me. You and tick-tock—him and extraordinary.”

  “Extraordinary? What’s his problem with that?”

  “He says that if you break the word apart, it should mean more ordinary, not exceptional—that it’s misleading. The kid’s got way too much time on his hands.”

  Waverly was probably right. Troubled by thoughts of Dennis Hoerr, Ray turned his attention to the traffic snag as Waverly made an unexpected right-hand turn. At the next street, he turned right again.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Here,” Waverly said, pulling into a gas station, “unless you’d rather push the car the rest of the way.”

  “I’ll pass. If you want to fill the tank, I’ll get us something cold to drink.”

  “You’ve got a deal. Get me a Mountain Dew. A big one. Lots of ice.”

  A few minutes later, Ray came out of the station, carrying two thirty-two-ounce cups. Three teenage girls dressed in short shorts and skimpy halter tops, pressed past him through the door, giggling as they looked him over from head to toe.

  He wondered if he should be flattered or if the laughter was at his expense. Backing up to make way for them, he bumped a metal ashtray stand. Sacrificing both drinks, he caught the receptacle before it hit the ground. The cups landed on the sidewalk, creating a mini-tsunami of pop. Doubled over in laughter, the girls kept moving.

  Crushed cigarette butts and assorted candy and gum wrappers jutted from the sand as Ray wrestled the container back in place. Transfixed, he stared at it for several seconds while splatters of Mountain Dew soaked into his slacks and dripped down his shoes. He rushed back to the car, empty-handed. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s your hurry?” Waverly asked.

  “C’mon, let’s move.”

  Popping his head through the open driver’s window, Waverly said, “We haven’t paid for the gas yet.”

  Ray darted back into the station, slapped three bills down on the counter and left without waiting for change. “Done,” he informed Waverly as they got into the car. �
�Now let’s get going.”

  “Hey, where’s my drink?”

  “Forget that. Forget Kingsley’s, too. Take another right.”

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  “Back to ACC.”

  “Again? What for?”

  “I think I know where to find our missing bullet.”

  As they pulled up outside the Alliance Computer Corporation building, Ray got out before Waverly put the car in Park.

  A dozen paces behind him, Waverly tried to catch up. “Hey, slow down, would ya?”

  “It stands to reason it would be—”

  “Hold it,” Waverly said, “I can’t hear you.”

  As Ray entered the lobby, he saw the object of his interest. Just inside the reception area, a standing, concrete, stone-encrusted ash stand stood beside the doorway. It was as conscientiously tended to as the rest of the building. A single cigarette butt lay half-buried in the sand. Ray suspected Charity Kitwell, the reception desk demigoddess, personally oversaw the prompt butt removal process at ten-minute intervals.

  Ray pointed at the stand. “I said this is probably the one. There’s one of these at each entrance, but this is closest to the elevators.”

  “Makes sense,” Waverly said. “Need a hand?”

  “I can manage it.” Ray tipped the heavy container onto its side and heaved the base upward. Sand avalanched over the marble floor, pooling in a manmade dune.

  Abandoning her reception area fortress, Ms. Kitwell charged toward them. “What on earth are you doing?”

  Like an archaeologist in search of fossils, Ray lowered himself into a crouch and started brushing the sand aside. Not as nimbly, Waverly followed suit.

  Kitwell fisted both hands on her hips. “Are you out of your minds? Stop that.”

  Ignoring her, Ray continued until he uncovered a small metal object. “Have a look, Dick.”

  Waverly hovered over the spent bullet near the base of the sandy heap. “I’ll be damned.”

  Ray stood and brushed the sand from his hands. “Gaines had it wrong. The odd gait he heard that night wasn’t Johnson stumbling around drunk; he was struggling to haul this thing into the boardroom. It has to be around a hundred pounds. He must’ve had a hell of a time lugging it back and forth.”