Death Trap

by Sue Henry

  “Do your parents know where you are?”

  Danny’s shrug was more of an attempt to distance himself from the subject than an indication that he didn’t know. He looked up, took a deep breath, and was about to tell the truth about how he had left home without permission to spend the day at the fair with his two friends. But the sudden sound of voices at the other end of the building caught the attention of both man and boy—voices that grew louder, accompanied by the footsteps of two people headed in their direction. Disturbed by the sounds, an irritated goose honked in annoyance and another answered. A peacock joined in with its distinctive screech. Ignoring the birds, the two people walked closer.

  “Sh-h-h,” Monroe warned softly. Danny nodded, and they both sat very still to listen without moving.

  “You’re sure you didn’t see a kid with a bicycle?” asked one of the invisible men.

  “Very sure. Wouldn’t have let him bring it in here. Anyway, everyone’s gone now. You can see the barn’s empty.”

  The footsteps passed in front of the two skirted tables, inches from where Danny and Frank Monroe sat still as mice, both holding their breath. A rabbit, agitated by the passing of the two men, rattled the feeding tray in its cage as it moved.

  “What was that?”

  “Just a rabbit—jumpy as you are.”

  “I want that kid. He stole my camera bag.”

  They moved on through the door between the two rooms of the barn, and there was the sound of the back door thumping shut after one of them opened it for some reason.

  “Don’t you lock this?”

  “No. The security guys need it to check on the place after I leave.”

  “How long will you be here?”

  “Another hour or so. Got some cleaning up to do in the petting zoo. But no kid, bicycle or not, will come in here with the doors shut.”

  “Well, he didn’t go out through any of the gates, so he must still be on the grounds somewhere. Keep an eye out, and call me if you spot him.”

  From under the table, Danny and Frank heard the summons of a cell phone ringing.

  One of the men answered it.

  “Yeah.”

  A pause.

  “Sorry. There’s been a couple of setbacks.”

  Another pause.

  “Look. Some kid stole my bag with the camera and stuff. I’ve been scouring the grounds, trying to find the little shit.”

  A significantly longer pause.

  “I know. I won’t. Look, I can’t talk now, and I’ve got a problem with Curt to take care of. Yes—Curt. I’ll take care of it.”

  Pause.

  “I said I’d take care of it. Just let me find that kid and I’ll get back to you.”

  He hung up, and the footsteps faded as the two men moved back toward the front of the barn.

  They walked right past and didn’t look under the table?”

  “Yes,” Monroe said, and Danny nodded agreement.

  “So you stayed there—all night?”

  “It seemed a good idea, as they had already decided the barn was lacking Danny’s presence. They didn’t know about mine, of course.”

  “True.”

  “After the manager left, we took advantage of there being no one to see and moved some straw under the table from the other part of the barn. It made a comfortable enough bed. We were careful not to move and make it rustle when a security guard came through on his rounds a couple of times during the night.”

  “Didn’t you get hungry or thirsty?” Jessie asked.

  “I had a bottle of water and, of course, my purloined supplies from the grocery. We made a snack of Vienna sausages on crackers and the oranges before we took a nap.”

  “Like a picnic,” Danny chimed in. “It was fun.”

  “What about the red gym bag?” Jessie asked. “Wasn’t that when you found out what was in it?”

  As the two satisfied their hunger, Monroe thought about the comment made by the unseen person who had passed the table without knowledge of their presence. I want that kid. He stole my camera bag. Swallowing the Vienna sausage he was chewing, he turned to the boy.

  “Have you looked inside that extra bag you’re carrying?”

  Danny shook his head. “I thought I’d just leave it somewhere, so somebody would find it and turn it in.”

  Monroe thought for long enough to peel an orange.

  “They might not turn it in, you know. Perhaps it would be more advisable to see just what it contains before determining a course of action concerning it. Yes?”

  “Okay.” Danny reached for the red bag and handed it to Monroe. “Here. You look.” But he leaned forward to see as the man unzipped the bag and opened it.

  Though it was dim under the table, there was enough light to see what was inside as he lifted out a 35mm camera complete with flash attachment. Feeling around in the bag, he identified several rolls of film, four of which had been used—if lack of the strip of film that pulls it into the camera was an indication. There were also several photographs of the fairground.

  “No wonder the owner’s concerned about it,” he said, turning the camera around so he could read Minolta on the front. “This is a valuable item you’ve accidentally acquired, Danny. Not one you’d want to leave lying around just anywhere for some less scrupulous person to liberate.”

  He looked up to see that the boy was staring wide-eyed at the camera, his face a study in desperation. “I didn’t steal it. Honest. I didn’t mean to take it at all. It just happened.”

  Monroe laid a hand on his arm in consolation. “It’s all right, young man. I believe you. We must simply think of a way to get it back to the owner in the morning. I think perhaps there’s accommodation for lost items at the security office, don’t you? I’ll take it, if you like.”

  But Danny declined the offer.

  “No. I’ll do it. I took it, after all, whether I meant to or not. I should make sure he gets it back, I guess.”

  “Good lad.” That the boy would take responsibility for his own mistakes pleased the old man enormously. “We’ll see about it tomorrow then.”

  So you stayed there that night,” Becker commented.

  “And woke up early, expecting to do the right thing with the camera equipment and film.”

  “What about you, Jessie? You came back the next morning to a much different fair, right?”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Right,” Jessie agreed. “It turned into a total nightmare.” She stretched forward to lay a hand on Tank’s head. “We came back to the fair, and I started to the Iditarod booth. But at the entrance to the lumberjack arena there was a bunch of people standing around: security guards, police, state troopers, and others who had just stopped to see what was going on. You were there, Phil—one of the only people I knew. I stopped for a minute to see what was going on and heard somebody say they’d found a dead man in the pond.”

  When Jessie arrived at ten that morning it was bright with sunshine, but behind the mountains of the Chugach range to the east, a gray bank of cloud hinted at the possibility of rain later in the day. The air coming in through the open window of the pickup smelled warm and fresh, but she assessed the clouds as she drove the few miles between her house and the fair and was glad she had thought to bring a waterproof jacket. It was the sort of weather she called “push-me-pull-you,” the kind it was impossible to accurately predict. The threat of rain would most likely cut down the number of people at the fair, especially since there was a week and a half before it closed, and visitors would assume they could visit on a better day.

  Flashing her pass and a smile at the gate guard, she drove through to the employee parking lot, where she took one of the last spaces available. Vendors and fair personnel clearly weren’t staying away.

  Locking the pickup, she started across the lot with Tank on his leash, intending to go through the passageway beside The Sluice Box. She was startled to find the end of it closest to the lumberjack arena crowded with people, most of them fair w
orkers on their way to their jobs. Their attention was focused on several law enforcement officers and security people inside the arena. Beyond them, at the arena’s entrance, a state trooper’s patrol car was parked, along with what she recognized as the van used by the Anchorage crime lab, which was responsible for forensics statewide. As she approached, a man she knew turned and started toward the pub—the bartender from the evening before.

  “Eric,” she called, and he stopped to wait for her to reach him. “What’s going on?”

  “Nasty. About an hour ago someone found a dead man floating in the logrolling pond.”

  “Who is it?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “Don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know that either. Maybe he fell in and drowned.”

  “But that pond is only hip deep. I watched that show last year.”

  “Well, maybe he had a snoot full.” The bartender shrugged, helpless to supply information.

  Jessie’s memory took her back to the night before and the man she had glimpsed sitting under one of the trees. Could it be the same person? Could he have been so drunk that he staggered into the pond by accident? Maybe. An accidental death would explain the presence of the crime lab van.

  “I saw someone that I thought might have had a few too many last night as I was leaving. But he was in the trees by the picnic table.”

  “Oh yeah?” His eyes widened in interest. “Maybe you better tell one of the troopers or PPD officers. I don’t really know anything except that we try to cut people off before they have too many. But with Hobo Jim on stage last night, it was a madhouse and we might not have noticed—especially if someone else was buying his beer.” Shifting his feet, he started to move toward the pub again. “Sorry, Jessie, but I’ve got to get inside. We’re about to open, and there’re still a few kegs to replace in the cold room.”

  She waved him away. “That’s fine. You go. I’ll find someone to tell, though it’s probably not the same guy.”

  “Stay well,” Eric told her as he moved away and went into The Sluice Box through the back door.

  As Jessie turned back toward the entrance to the arena, a tall slim trooper whom she recognized, partly by his western hat, stepped up, raised a hand for quiet, and addressed the gathering, which was growing by the minute. Now, just after opening time, it included a few early fair goers.

  “Listen, folks. We’ve got a possible crime scene here, and it won’t help us to have all of you milling around. Please go on about your business and let us do ours.”

  The people obliged, if slowly and with a low, speculative murmur. They began to move through the passage next to the pub, toward the center of the fairground, many casting frowns or curious looks over their shoulders. Jessie stood where she was and was soon rewarded by a quick smile from Phil Becker, as he saw and acknowledged her. But a look of concern immediately replaced his warm greeting.

  “Hey, Jessie.”

  She walked to where he stood, and he knelt to give Tank a pat or two.

  “Phil, I don’t know what you’ve got in there, but I thought you should know that I saw a guy sitting under one of the trees last night as I left to go home. He looked asleep or passed out, and might have been drunk enough to wander in there and drown.”

  Becker stood up frowning, his attention immediately focused on what she was saying. “Tell me about it. What time was it? What can you remember about the guy you saw? What was he wearing, for instance?”

  “That’s all, really. It was between nine-thirty and ten o’clock. He was sitting in the shadow under that tree,” she said as she turned and pointed to it. “He was just a silhouette against the little bit of light that came through from beyond, so it was too dark to see colors or what he looked like. The only thing I could see in the light from the back door of the pub was that he had on boots—brown leather boots.”

  Becker nodded. “That works. This guy does have on similar boots. You came out that back door?”

  “Yeah. There was some kind of ruckus going on out front, and with people crowding to get in, it was almost impassable, so I went through the pub and took the back way to the parking lot.”

  “That lot’s for fair workers. You on that list, Jessie?”

  “Helping out at the Iditarod booth.”

  “Should have guessed.” Becker grinned. “How’s your bad knee?”

  “Better, but no racing this winter.”

  He scowled again in thought, then shook his head. “Since you can’t identify the guy you saw, I’d guess there’s no way of knowing if it’s this one in the pond. But I’ll keep it in mind.”

  As he hesitated to say more, there was a flurry of movement at the logrolling pond, where four officers had waded into the water to retrieve the body. “God dammit!” one of them cursed in a shocked voice. Both Jessie and Becker turned to see that they had lifted and were holding the body facedown at the surface of the water.

  “Shit!” Becker swore. “No wonder his feet were all that was visible. That thing was weight enough to hold the rest of him under. There’s no way this one drowned.”

  Even from a distance of forty feet it was possible to see the ax that was deeply embedded in the back of the dead man’s skull.

  Jessie gasped and raised a hand to her mouth. One of the fair security guards made a hasty exit through the arena entrance to lose her breakfast in the weeds behind The Sluice Box.

  “Get a cover on it,” one of the troopers demanded, and a Palmer policeman stepped forward with a piece of blue plastic tarp as the four in the water lifted the body out of the pond.

  “Sorry, Jessie,” Becker said, already moving away from her. “I’ll get back to you if we need more.”

  “Sure,” she told his retreating back. “You know where I’ll be.”

  As the group of law enforcement people shifted to allow the body to be laid on a waiting stretcher, she saw John Timmons, assistant coroner from the crime lab, roll up in his wheelchair and lean to lift the makeshift plastic from what was now his responsibility. She caught the sound of his gravel voice as he snapped an instruction to one of his two assistants, but she couldn’t make out what he had said.

  Timmons was a good friend and almost a legend in the forensics world. Paralyzed from the waist down by a skiing accident, he hurled himself at his work the same way he hurled himself at everything else in his life—and expected the same from his crew. This would be no different, Jessie thought as she turned to make her way to her duties of the day.

  Well, it’s none of my business this time, she told herself with relief.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Little did you know.” Timmons made his first comment of the evening from a place near Frank Monroe where he had parked his wheelchair and had been listening to the recital of past events. “That was just the start of things for you, wasn’t it, Jessie?”

  “It certainly was, and it got nothing but worse from there,” Jessie told them. “I didn’t hang around—went straight to the Iditarod booth—so I didn’t know any more until later. But it was such an appalling way for someone to die that I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  “It was that,” Timmons agreed. “But the single blow with the ax at least made his death instantaneous. It’s pretty amazing what people will do to each other given rage, fear, or greed. When I did the postmortem that afternoon, though, it was obvious that the victim had been beaten pretty badly before he was killed, so I guessed it must have involved some combination of those three. Turns out I was pretty close, too, wasn’t I, guys?” He grinned at Phil Becker, then across at his partner, another state trooper who sat on the other side of Jessie smoking a briar pipe filled with a fragrant tobacco blend and lighted with a kitchen match.

  “You were very close, John,” the pipe smoker acknowledged with a grin. “But then, you usually are.”

  “Exactly who was the dead man?” Doug Tabor, Danny’s father, asked Timmons. “I never found out anything but his name.”

/>   “We ran prints and found him on file as Curtis Belmont, a smalltime thief and hoodlum who had served a couple of years for appropriating a vehicle that didn’t belong to him and using it in a convenience store holdup. At that point we had no idea who had killed him, or why.”

  “I recognized him,” Frank Monroe said, suddenly remembering.

  “You’d seen him before?”

  “The day before. He was the shorter of the two men I had observed in the plaza.”

  “How did you happen to be in the lumberjack arena that morning?” Becker asked. “Weren’t you in the barn?”

  “Well, you see, Danny and I had slipped from the barn early, when people started appearing to take care of their animals at seven that morning. Someone would eventually show up to answer questions and hand out printed information at those tables, so I thought it prudent to eradicate the evidence of our occupancy beneath. Putting their feet in a bed of straw might have startled that someone enough to make inquiries. I thought it just possible that we might require that refuge again, and it is never advisable to burn your bridges. We spent the time, until the fair opened at ten o’clock, in concealment next to Danny’s bicycle, behind the straw pile about which he has already informed you. When people began to come in through the southern gate, we joined them, inclined toward finding ourselves some breakfast.”

  Monroe did not seem to notice that several of those listening to his account could not keep from smiling at his exaggerated choice of words. Young Danny seemed about to question the meaning of several of the largest ones, but shrugged and chimed in with “I was really hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry,” his mother admonished him. “Hush now, and let Mr. Monroe tell this.”

  “I was hungry, too.” Monroe smiled at the boy. “Danny recalled a vendor who sold a pastry confection he called ‘elephant ears.’ So I took charge of the two bags he was carrying and enjoined him to purchase these items for both of us while I kept a rather urgent appointment with the gentlemen’s facilities near The Sluice Box. After breakfast we intended to convey the red bag with the camera equipment to the lost and found at the security cabin in the middle of the grounds. When I completed my errand Danny had not yet returned and the crowd at the small arena caught my attention. I strolled over to see what was happening and recognized the deceased, but I had no concept of his villainous past, of course.”