Felonious Jazz

by Bryan Gilmer

  Jeff, Cooperton and the commander sat in the back of the panel truck, where the video monitor for the robot’s camera and its control joysticks were located. They watched the monitor as the squad commander drove the vehicle down a dingy hallway, consulting a rough layout of the house one of the deputies had drawn.

  “You’ll use the robot to bring it out?” Jeff asked.

  “You crazy? We’re going to open it right there where it sits.”

  On the monitor, the violin case came into the frame, looking as big as a bus from the low camera angle. It sat near the center of a filthy rug.

  “Watch this,” another bomb squad member said. “Sarge’s good with this thing.”

  The violin case was resting flat, and when the robot got close enough, there was Margaret’s name on the leather-framed tag. “That’s hers.”

  The sergeant grabbed two new joysticks, anda robotic arm came into view. The joysticks clicked slightly as the cop manipulated the robot’s arm to lift the tab of one brass-plated latch. When it flipped open, the hasp naturally fell away from the case. The sergeant grinned.

  He backed the robot, drove it up to the other latch, then repeated the procedure. But this latch held firm while the whole case lifted off the ground. He cursed, backed the robot out and made the approach again. “The thing must be pretty light. I reckon that’s a good sign.”

  “Be careful; maybe the violin’s still in there,” Jeff said. “They weigh nothing. Half-million bucks, maybe more. Seriously.”

  On the next try, the latch popped right open. “Now we just have to lift the lid,” the sergeant said.

  “Remember,” Jeff said. “Half a million bucks.”

  “Shit, My kid’s cost $179.” The sergeant looked at Jeff. “I’ll just flip it open. Cover your ears in case it’s full of C4.”

  He finessed a blade from the robotic arm between the halves of the case, then jerked the joystick.

  On the monitor, the whole case flipped over and landed face down, its black plastic blocking the camera lens.

  “Nothing blew up,” the sergeant said.

  Jeff cringed for the Marquis de Savigny, but when the guy backed the robot away and re-oriented the camera, they could see that the case had been empty.

  “Shit,” the sergeant said. “Why don’t y’all ask me for something tough, next time. Y’all can go on in.”

  * * *

  Cooperton stood in the middle of one of the farmhouse’s bedrooms, the violin case at his feet, and plucked the note from the case using a pair of forceps too tiny for his sausage fingers. “Recognize the handwriting?”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said.

  The note from inside the violin case matched the one that the burglar – that Leonard Noblac – had left at Jeff’s loft.

  “The answer you’ve been looking for is so cool,” the note said, “that I left it in the fridge.”

  Cooperton opened the bedroom window and hollered for the bomb squad captain again.

  “Quit loading that robot. We need y’all to send it back in here to open up the fridge.”

  * * *

  The refrigerator didn’t explode either, though the possibility of a bomb cleared the house again.

  When the bomb squad leader gave the okay, Jeff and Cooperton rushed into the kitchen.

  The old, avocado-colored fridge held a few food crumbs, an empty bottle of fancy Bordeaux and an orange vinyl binder labeled, “Libretto: Stolen Inspiration In the First Degree.”

  An evidence tech gingerly pulled it out with two latex-gloved fingers.

  “Go on and open it,” Cooperton instructed.

  The tech used the tweezers, and Jeff looked at the first page with bleary-eyed fascination.

  Track 1. Everything Comes Due at Once

  Track 2. Rich Pets / Poor Kids

  Track 3. Choke Point

  Track 4. The Natives are Priceless/Murder

  Track 5. Emptiness and Fullness/Aggravated Assault

  Track 6. Babe Watching/Aggravated Stalking

  Track 7. No Son of Mine/Kidnapping

  Track 8. She’s Your Margaret Marinna But She’s My Muse/Rape

  and written in pencil next to that, “Homicide.” Last on the list:

  Track 9. AND JUSTICE FOR ME / Come and see

  The tech gingerly turned to the next page using the forceps. Sheet music drawn in by hand on paper printed with blank staves, intricate-looking compositions with parts for several instruments, ran pages apiece. Words underneath the lines, like lyrics. The first one said, “The dog is gone before she begins to feel the drug coming into her system…”

  The other pages were similar, with music and words that seemed like stage direction, describing the series of crimes Jeff and Cooperton had been investigating over the past week or more.

  “Can you go back to the first page, please?” Jeff asked the tech, his voice trembling.

  He looked down the song titles. Jeff knew he and the Ellises had been Track 5. He didn’t think he knew what crime Track 6 was – Jeff worried that there was another body to be found. Jacob was Track 7. He realized with dread that Margaret was supposed to have been Track 8.

  “Call your homicide guy,” Jeff told Cooperton. “See if that dead female this morning was named Marinna.” Then, “Shit, that’s the receptionist from the veterinarian’s.”

  Cooperton made the call, asked the question, and shut the phone with a grim nod.

  Jeff called Margaret to make sure she was still okay.

  Fifty-five

  Back in the Pathfinder driver’s seat now, Leonard pulled on the shades and a ball cap with the same diamond logo and company name as the door signs. He’d snagged the hat through another van’s open window in the alarm company parking lot two weeks ago. He grinned as he thought of the same diamond-shaped logo on a stick in most of American Estates’ postage-stamp lawns.

  The neighborhood’s 40 homes were packed into 10 buildings, two of which were still under construction.

  He pulled into the main road, then drove past the townhome building right in the center of the development, the one where Jacob and the babysitter were penned up in the downstairs bathroom of the end unit. People had moved into all the units in the building but that one, and Leonard had been able to steal one of the keys out of the real estate lockbox when an agent had met him there a week earlier to show him the property.

  Next door to that building on one side was a fully occupied building. On the other, the still-naked bones of an even newer one had been framed, and roofers were hammering plywood onto the rafters.

  Feeling the ache in his side twist into a live current of pain, Leonard swiped the heel of his hand across his forehead and did another mouthful of sanitizer. That would be the last one.

  He parked the Nissan at the curb of the occupied building. He allowed himself a couple of deep breaths to suck the pain back into his belly. Then he got out and ploomped down orange safety cones near the front and rear bumpers and clicked together the plastic buckle of his tool belt. The pleasant bulk of the pistol weighed in a cargo pocket of his jeans.

  He walked down the sidewalk looking for indications that anyone was home; he found none. Three o’clock on a Monday, and everybody was at work 30 miles away earning the money to pay the mortgage that gave them this place to sleep before they got up and went to work to earn the money to pay the car payments, insurance and gas that let them drive to work and earn the money to pay the mortgage. Leonard smirked and shook his head. And all day long, nobody was enjoying or even watching all the stuff these cats were working so hard to have! It was inspiring, man.

  He walked around the end of the building, where he spotted the plastic conduit that carried a bundle of telephone cables into the row of townhomes.

  He took a battery-powered reciprocating saw and cut through it in about nine seconds. And that was all it took to keep five expensive alarm systems from calling the police on him, not that the police took alarm calls seriously.

  Back around front, he pulled
out his black-market garage door opener and hit the button while standing at the garage door to the end unit. Soon, the motor cranked the door open, and Leonard walked inside, and, as usual, found the door from the garage into the house unlocked.

  When he opened it, a siren blared – a lot like the trumpet part for this track – but the alarm system computer wasn’t even getting a dial tone. A little dog of some kind started yipping it up next door. Leonard pulled the flimsy door shut but didn’t let it latch. He calmly walked back to the garage opening and looked up and down the street, then pretended to make some notes on his clipboard, the siren wailing the whole time. One old lady poked her head out her front door across the street. He waved at her, stifling a wince as he raised the arm, and pointed at the Nissan, complimenting himself for turning the hazard flashers on.

  “Sorry about that,” he yelled. “Testing.”

  She glared at him and went back inside. Everyone in the suburbs knew an alarm siren was just annoying evidence of a malfunction, yet everyone still had alarms. Leonard shook his head again, went inside and pressed the button to lower the garage door. He found the circuit breaker for the alarm and shut off the siren, which was making him crazy.

  * * *

  Sarah Rosen’s desk phone rang. She caught a chill when she recognized her ex-husband’s voice in the earpiece.

  “I’m calling to tell you where to find Jacob.”

  Sarah tried to measure her tone, not to say anything that would make him change his mind. Sarah’s heart throbbed dangerously fast. She settled on a flat, “Okay. Is he all right?”

  “He’s, uh, living the American dream.” The phone clicked off.

  It was Leonard’s joke about the house of Jacob’s babysitter, a modest, three-bedroom townhome in an ever-expanding neighborhood called “American Estates.” Whenever they’d gone there to drop Jacob at Lauren’s house, Leonard had always said, “If this is the American dream, I hope I wake up soon.”

  Sarah cleared the line and punched in the number for Lauren’s house. It rang three times and went to voicemail. Damn. She called Lauren’s cell.

  “He’s not with me,” Lauren said. “I wish he was. I’m at the mall right now putting up posters with his picture.”

  Sarah grabbed her keys, tugged on her purse strap and strode toward the elevator. She opened her phone and asked Jeff Swaine to meet her at Lauren’s house.

  * * *

  Leonard looked down the block and was pleased that no one had come outside from the row of buildings where he would be working. He’d be able to finish the album without interruption. He was humming the bass riff now. He set a plain cardboard carton onto his handtrucks, ignoring the ripping feeling under his arm when he lifted it. This album was going to be a classic, just like he’d planned. He’d rehearsed it a hundred times in his mind.

  Inside the townhouse, he opened the carton, reached in and unscrewed the top of one of the jugs of sanitizer. He pulled out the plastic pump spout and threw it onto the floor. He doused the sage green living room sofa with the alcohol gel. He soaked the carpet leading all the way up the staircase with a second jug. He connected the two locations with a line of goo across the floor from a third jug. And upstairs, he pulled down the attic stairs and poured gel on them, too. That way, the fire would spread into the attic and all the way down the building.

  Leonard stood there reveling in the alcohol vapor. What was an artist supposed to do with a godawful place like Rocky Falls when it had a store that sold napalm by the shipping pallet?

  The little blondie and the bastard were eight units away, in the next building, Leonard realized. There was a 15-foot space between the buildings. Leonard would not set their building on fire. But if it caught on fire naturally, it was the way things were supposed to be.

  “Relax,” Leonard remembered Reverend Ted saying on Sunday, “Everything will turn out just as it’s supposed to.”

  Back downstairs – this part was crucial to the composition – Leonard searched the people’s kitchen for a book of matches. He found a silver bowl filled with matchbooks from local establishments. Rocky Falls Brewery and Grille. Perfect.

  He tore out a match, struck it. He used it to ignite the rest of the pack. They flamed up with an angry shush. Leonard threw that onto the line of gel across the living room, and the gel ignited with a such a magnificent whoosh that Leonard was inspired to rewrite the score of the final track to include it. But there was no time now.

  * * *

  After an hour, sweat was running down EmmaJane’s back. Dylin – she wouldn’t let the creeper re-name the wittle guy – was asleep in the tub on most of her hoodie. She had sheared off one corner of the fleece fabric with the stew lid, and now she used the little scrap to protect the palm of her hand from the metal as she used the stew lid to cut through the wall. The wall wasn’t made out of wood; it was that kind-of chalky stuff sandwiched between two layers of paper.

  The tub was surrounded by tiles, so she hadn’t tried cutting through there. And the wall with the sink and toilet or the one with the door didn’t give her enough room to work. So she was kneeling just past the end of the toilet, cutting in the middle of the wall beside it, just cutting a little slot, and suddenly, she the lid sank an inch into the wall. She’d broken through.

  As she rested a minute and looked at the little cut, she thought about the time Katie’s dad had gone all mental and punched the wall. It was made out of the same stuff, and he had punched right through it. It was, like, hollow.

  EmmaJane stood raised her foot, and kicked like hell. She made a little dent along one edge of the slot. She kicked again, and this time the chalky stuff gave way.

  “Yeah!” she shouted, and that woke Dylin up, but she kept kicking until a one-foot square of the stuff had caved in.

  “I’m getting us out, sweetie,” she told Dylin, and she knelt by the hole and started digging the junk out with her fingernails, making the hole grow.

  EmmaJane ripped the wall material away in bigger and bigger chunks. She’d uncovered a shallow space, but behind that was another layer. Some kind of plywood stuff. She ripped more wall stuff out until she found the seam between two pieces of the plywood. She slipped the stew lid between them. Something scraped.

  This was the outside wall on the front of the house. And that wall had a layer of brick, at least the first story did. She wanted to sit down and cry. But somehow, she knew that wasn’t good enough. She had to get her and Dylin out. The creeper would come back. Something really bad would happen.

  She turned around and checked out the door. It was made out of some kind of fake wood, cuz when she knocked on it, it sounded hollow. She took the stew lid and started sawing a little slot right in the middle of it.

  * * *

  Back in the driver’s seat, Leonard grabbed a pack of Marlboros from the Pathfinder’s passenger seat. He stripped off the cellophane, flipped open the top and plucked a cigarette from the front row. He put it between his lips, lit it with the dashboard lighter and tried not to cough or breathe in too deeply.

  He slid off the seat, walked around behind the Pathfinder and stuck his head into the hatch and took two more gallons of the gel. He had a craving to swallow some more of it now, but he disciplined himself not to.

  An electricity consumed his whole body, the rush of a man fulfilling his life’s dream. He grabbed the jugs by their handles and walked to the townhouse building under construction, right through one of the gaping front doorways into what had been destined to become a center unit. That destiny was changing.

  As he looked through the forest of two-by-four studs with no drywall on them yet, a dozen shirtless, stubble-bearded guys sawed and marked lumber and wandered all over the place. But Leonard had a tool belt and a ball cap with a company logo, probably from some other subcontractor, they’d figure, so he looked like he belonged on the jobsite. And he kept the cap’s bill pointed toward the floor, so none of these framers or roofers, or whatever they were, said a damn thing to him.

/>   He looked for an area downstairs away from where they were all working. He settled on the niche under a middle unit’s staircase. He carefully opened one jug and poured a big puddle of gel onto the floor there. Then he climbed the stairs, opened the second jug, and walked slowly down, trailing the cleansing goo behind him.

  His cellphone was ringing now. He smiled at the display. His wife, again. Just keep driving honey. Come see me. He pocketed the phone.

  He inhaled the alcohol vapor, took two more steps backward toward the front doorway. He tossed the cigarette into the puddle of gel.

  Whoosh.

  And the workers were all looking at the fire and yelling to each other to get the fuck out of there.

  Fifty-six

  Jeff smelled smoke like a house fire – burning wood and plastic – as he pulled up to the address Sarah had given him, a cheaply built townhouse in a new neighborhood that might be in a working-class family’s price range for a starter home. Maybe the construction guys down on the next block were burning their trash or something.

  Sarah’s Lexus sedan squealed in behind the Toyota Corolla he’d rented at the airport. Jeff got out. He tried to tell her about finding the libretto, but she was fixated on finding her son, and she believed he might be inside this house. Together, they went to the front door and banged on it.

  When Sarah finally explained that Leonard had called and told her Jacob was here, Jeff said, “Shit, you should have told me that on the phone. Did you call the cops?” And when she shook her head no, he speed-dialed Cooperton.