The Death of Blue Mountain Cat

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  “I’d think this wasn’t your métier, Dr. Dennison.”

  Dennison looked more like a golf pro—fit and tan—than an aging professor. He seemed startled. “Do I know you?”

  “No reason you should. I attended one of your lectures. ‘Peoples of the Southwest.’”

  “Ah, yes.” Dennison raised his eyebrows.

  Waiting for an introduction, Caleb decided. “I’m Jack Caleb. This is Anita Margolis.” When they’d completed the requisite handshakes and inanities, Caleb asked, “Are you branching out into contemporary Indian art, Doctor?”

  “Hell, no—” He remembered Anita and said, “Er, excuse me.”

  She muttered, “People seem quite concerned, this evening, about offending my sensibilities.”

  “I heard a rumor,” Dennison told Caleb, “that Bisti uses Anasazi artifacts to make his junk. That, for example—” He pointed to the bowl in the sand.

  So much for art appreciation.

  “That’s illegal!” Anita said.

  “Not if the piece was found on private property. Or the seller is willing to swear that it was. To read some of the affidavits, there are entire Anasazi cities buried on some private properties.”

  The catalog was ambiguous on the subject, saying only that the bowl was Anasazi.

  “I doubt he uses genuine pieces,” Anita said. “I’ve been offered a few from time to time. They’re horribly expensive.”

  Genuine or ingenious? Art or artifice? Caleb was sure the ambiguity was intended.

  They left Dennison studying the bowl and drifted into the next gallery, a mezzanine overlooking the floor below.

  “This must be what Ivan was referring to,” Anita said, pointing. Progress.

  The installation, on the wall shared by both upper and lower galleries, looked like a ten-by-twenty foot painting springing off its canvas into three dimensions. They had to descend to the lower gallery to fully appreciate it. The part on the wall was a generic cityscape, cubist and panoramic, showing both aerial and profile views surrounded by desert. Coming out of the foreground, into the lower gallery, was the steel skeleton of a skyscraper in progress. The building’s foundation, however, was a Tinkertoy construction of human bones—tiny and organized in the painted part of the picture, longer and larger and scattered like Pick-Up Sticks in the part that seemed to have broken free, so that the bones at the foremost edge of the work were life-size. They were labeled: HOMO SAPIENS NAVAJOENSIS, H. SAPIENS PUEBLOENSIS, H. SAPIENS LAKOTA, etc. A toy tractor crawling over the middle ground of the thanatocoenose had a logo that explained Harrison Wingate’s wrath—a tiny, three-barred gate with a blue first-place ribbon affixed.

  “Well,” Caleb said, “this explains Harrison Wingate’s animosity.”

  “Very pun-ny. Do you think David meant he’s literally building on the bones of Native tribes, or digging up Indian remains?”

  “We’ll have to ask him.” He sighed and added, “So much for my plan to save energy,” as they climbed back up to the mezzanine.

  Clinging to his arm to avoid falling off her three-inch heels, Anita patted his shoulder and said, “I’ll overlook it if you promise we can leave soon. I’m starving.”

  “Our reservations aren’t until nine.”

  “We could stop for a drink, or coffee to kill time. McDonald’s would be better than this.”

  Caleb laughed, and they began their tour of the mezzanine gallery. Halfway through, they came upon several regular patrons of the museum in an animated discussion of David’s vision of progress. They stopped to eavesdrop. All were scandalized except one elderly woman who seemed to think David was the most original artist since Picasso.

  Their conversation was brought to an abrupt halt by a scream.

  Four

  Caleb wasn’t given to flashbacks. The sound was real, and he reacted as he’d been conditioned to by the war, running cautiously toward it. He didn’t remember setting his drink down, but he must have—he didn’t hear glass breaking.

  Lauren Bisti was framed in the entrance to the gallery featuring the installation with the bone knife. Her back was to Caleb. She lunged forward. He followed her through the doorway, and before her figure obscured it, he glimpsed what seemed to be David Bisti’s most effective exhibit.

  David himself was sprawled on the floor with the bone knife buried to its hilt in his chest. Bright blood seeped from his nose and mouth.

  Simultaneously, Caleb became aware of three things.

  Dismay was first, the feeling most often expressed—inadequately—by some simple utterance: Oh, God!

  He noticed his own reaction next, the dismay deepening to despair. Not another artist! Not David!

  Finally, there was primitive excitement—almost akin to joy—at the sight of blood. Bright, oxygenated blood. Stoplight, stop-heart red. Shocking.

  He felt no guilt for this last. It was quite normal. The mind protected itself from horror with disbelief and distraction. Time enough, later, for the awful enormity to sink in. For the finality to assert itself.

  Then before he could warn her not to, Lauren threw herself on the body, jerked the knife out, and flung it aside. Blood seeped from the wound and pooled on David’s chest. Caleb could smell it.

  Without any apparent thought for the blood, Lauren knelt beside the remains and took David’s body on her lap—all in no more time than it took Caleb to register her actions. She sat on the floor, legs straight out, blood seeping onto her lap and soaking the carpet as she rocked her murdered husband, making animal sounds.

  Caleb tore his eyes from the tableau and scanned the room. No bloody-handed killers skulked in any of the corners. Behind him, people piled up like cars stopped behind a wreck. A murmur of “What happened?” passed through the crowd, which surged toward the site of the tragedy until it came up against the breakwater of those first on the scene. Caleb blunted the momentum of the most aggressively curious by giving them minimal information and assignments: “There’s been an accident. Please call the police and paramedics. Get a security guard. Find the director. Please stand by the front door and make a note of everyone who leaves.” He kept those who questioned his authority at bay by interposing himself between them and the crime scene. With his peripheral vision, he could see Anita doing the same, standing with him to form a police line of two.

  A man tried to push past, and Caleb put an arm out to stop him. He kept his voice low but put authority in his tone. “Don’t come in here.”

  “Who appointed you God?”

  Caleb kept his face neutral and raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m Michael Wren,” the man said. “Let me pass.”

  “You have a good reason to give the police for entering a crime scene?”

  Wren was taken aback for a moment, then said, “Someone should help the poor bastard.”

  “He’s beyond help.”

  “I suppose you’re a doctor.”

  “I am, as a matter of fact.”

  That seemed to end the opposition. A man in a security guard’s uniform pushed his way through; someone said, “Thank God.” Wren laughed cynically.

  The security guard said, “What happened?”

  “There’s been a violent death,” Caleb told him. While the guard absorbed that, staring at the bloody spectacle, Caleb told Wren, “If you really want to help, Mr. Wren, try to get everyone to wait in one of the other rooms until the police arrive. And ask them not to discuss this until they’ve spoken with the detectives.” Caleb watched conflicting desires—curiosity and the urge to be in control of things—contort Wren’s face. The will to power won out, or perhaps—to give him benefit of the doubt—Wren’s desire to be heroic won. He turned his back on Caleb and began to demand attention from the crowd.

  “I’ve just been advised,” he said, “that the best thing we can all do for now is to clear this area.” He pushed his way through the crowd—parting it, to be more accurate, with the force of his personal power. Then he led everyone but Caleb, Anita, Lauren, and
the guard from the room.

  Caleb turned back to the guard, who looked ill but asked gamely, “What should I do?” He was young, in his early twenties.

  “Keep everyone out until the police arrive,” Caleb said, “even your boss.”

  The guard inclined his head toward Lauren Bisti. “What about her?”

  “I’ll see if I can’t persuade her to come with us.”

  Five

  Thinnes was an hour early for work. Rossi, his supervisor, had chewed him out three times in two weeks for being late, and Thinnes had had it. Rossi was never confused by the fact that Thinnes usually worked past quitting time without putting in for overtime pay.

  The squad room was large and square, with standard fluorescent overhead lighting, yellow-painted concrete block walls, and a red, ceramic-tile floor. The north-south rows of tables that served as desks for the detectives were equipped with uncomfortable chairs. Each table had at least one phone. A thirty-gallon coffee urn was centrally located. The assignment officer’s counter and the doorway to the stairs occupied the west wall. Other doors around the periphery led to offices and interview rooms. There were three other dicks in the room—all on the clock, all looking busy. Thinnes had taken a conspicuous seat near Rossi’s office and was reading the Sun-Times when Rossi came in.

  “Thinnes,” he said without any warmup, “where’s your sidekick?”

  “He’s not on for an hour. He’ll be here.”

  “Yeah. Well, we got a stabbing on North Michigan. Some Indian.” His tone implied that he shared Custer’s attitude about Indians. He handed Thinnes a paper with the address. The number was familiar. “I don’t need to remind you to be discreet.”

  Then why did you? flashed through Thinnes’s head, followed by Teach your grandmother to suck eggs! But he didn’t say it; he shook his head.

  “Get on with it, then.”

  “Right.”

  Thinnes left the Sun-Times on the table. Someone might as well enjoy it; he wouldn’t get back to it tonight.

  When Thinnes pulled the dark blue Caprice in front of the museum, there was a single reporter canvassing the gawkers held at bay by yellow crime-scene tape. Thinnes parked in front of the line of patrol cars and the ambulance sitting at the curb with lights blazing. Out of habit, he tossed the OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS sign on his dash and pulled the keys from the ignition before walking back to talk to the beat cop in the second car. It was cold, but the crowd was orderly, and the copper was keeping warm while carrying out his assignment to keep an eye on things. He rolled his window down as Thinnes approached and nodded when Thinnes flashed his star. “Detective.”

  Thinnes pointed to the reporter. Male Cauc, early forties, five ten, 170, medium build, blue eyes, brown hair, beard streaked with silver. He was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a black jacket, Levi’s, gray athletic shoes, and a hat like John Drummond’s. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s okay,” the cop said. “The crime reporter for ‘News Radio.’ ” He laughed. “Must have a good scanner.”

  “Or very good informants,” Thinnes agreed.

  Six

  Anita’s head appeared in the ladies’ room doorway. “Jack, we need the paramedics in here!”

  The two men in fire-department uniforms raced Caleb for the ladies’ room. Inside, they found Lauren Bisti in a heap on the gray linoleum. Blood seemed to be everywhere.

  “What happened?” Caleb asked, as the medics squeezed their equipment into the cramped space.

  “I started to help her wash some of the blood off,” Anita said. “When she looked in the mirror, she just fainted.”

  “Could you folks move out and give us room to work here?” one of the medics asked.

  Without saying anything more, Anita squeezed past them and disappeared.

  Caleb said, “Certainly,” but he backed up against one of the toilet stalls and paused to look before he left.

  In a scene familiar from the nightly news and countless TV recreations, Lauren Bisti lay on the floor between the paramedics, who were efficiently doing everything that needed to be done.

  The room was surprisingly Spartan—two salmon-painted sheet-metal stalls with standard, institutional toilets; metal towel dispensers; a vanity counter with only one sink; and a mirror, centered over the sink, so small it covered only a third of the wall behind the sink. There was a single, bloody handprint on the counter. Laureen obviously had placed her hand there, perhaps leaning over to look in the mirror, perhaps to steady herself when she felt faint. The print smeared across the countertop, and where her dress brushed up against it, the front of the vanity was also smeared with blood. The floor was spotted with it.

  Caleb decided he could best help by staying out of the way and was about to leave when a woman’s voice demanded, “Let me through. My friend needs me.”

  “Damn!” one of the medics said. He looked up at Caleb. “Keep her out of here, will you?”

  Caleb nodded. When he stepped to the doorway, he filled it with his bulk, blocking Amanda Kent.

  She said, “Get out of my way.”

  Caleb kept his voice low, so she’d have to strain to hear him. “I’m sorry.”

  It got her attention. She said, “Lauren?”

  “She’s being well cared for.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’m a doctor. The paramedics know what they’re doing.”

  She relaxed a little.

  “The best thing you can do for her,” Caleb added, “is pull yourself together and cooperate with the police investigation.”

  “How is she?”

  “She hasn’t been physically harmed but she’s in shock.”

  She nodded dully, as if in shock herself, and turned away. Caleb stepped out of the doorway and pulled the door shut. He crossed his arms and stood guard until the medics carried Lauren Bisti out.

  Seven

  The textbooks said you were supposed to separate multiple witnesses and multiple offenders. Yeah, right. Thinnes looked around and groaned inwardly. “Give me the good news,” he told the uniform without looking at him.

  The copper pulled his notebook from his pocket before answering, and Thinnes wondered if the sudden pain in his gut was due to the .38 slug he’d stopped there some months back or to the realization that the first officer on the scene was a rookie. “Just tell me,” he said wearily.

  As the rookie started to answer, a second uniform hurried up. A veteran. Black, five eight, 220 pounds. Officer Reilly. “I’ll take care of this, Curtis,” he said. “You go see what’s holding up the sergeant.”

  “Curtis,” Thinnes said, “make a note of everyone hanging around outside and get the license number of anything parked in this block and the alleys on either side. As soon as somebody shows up with a camera, ask ’em to get pictures of the crowd.” He looked back at Reilly.

  “We got a call for a stabbing,” Reilly told him, “and found this. Paramedics were already on the scene. Said the victim’d already been pronounced dead by a doctor.”

  “You got the offender?”

  “Nah. Doctor who pronounced the victim seems to have taken charge—I didn’t have time to get all the details but he said he couldn’t finger the cutter.”

  “Where is he?”

  Reilly laughed. “In the ladies’ room. Victim’s wife isn’t taking it very well. They got the medics in there, too.”

  “Thanks, Reilly. See if you can find out who’s in charge of this circus, will you? And when my partner arrives send him in—Detective Oster.”

  “Right.”

  Reilly left, and Thinnes took a deep breath. The suspect list—judging by the number of people milling around—was awesome. Where do you start with a case like this?

  Get a grip on it, Thinnes! he told himself. Start at the beginning.

  Start with the most obvious suspects—wife, business partners, lovers. Establish whereabouts. Opportunities. Motives. Figure out who stands to gain.

  Fending off questions and demands from
the crowd of witnesses, Thinnes found a phone near the reception desk and dialed his supervisor’s number. No sense broadcasting the details to all the reporters listening on their scanners. After three rings, he heard, “Rossi.”

  “Lieutenant? Thinnes. I’ve got seventy-five of the best shod of the city’s well-heeled on the scene, and they’re madder than wet hornets. This Indian wasn’t just some Uptown wino that wandered down here and died. You’d better send me some reinforcements.”

  Eight

  The police arrived with commendable speed. Caleb glanced at his watch and calculated seven minutes elapsed between Lauren Bisti’s scream and the first officer’s arrival. If one allowed for the time required to decide that the police should be called, it had not taken them more than two or three minutes to respond.

  A significant number of the guests had escaped—those who wanted to avoid the scandal, those with something to hide. The rest were trapped between the police who’d expelled them from the crime scene on the upper level and those guarding the exits. The stairs were covered with people who’d abandoned all pretense of dignity for the comfort of a seat, however unconventional. And, in spite of the injunction against discussing the case, there was a low murmur of conversation. The events taking place above, behind the barrier of uniformed officers and yellow police tape, were too intriguing to pass without comment.

  Caleb and Anita staked their claim to the bottom step, with the best view of the lobby and the best chance of an early interview, but Caleb soon relinquished his seat to a pregnant woman in five-inch heels. When he got tired of standing, he sat on the floor. His suit was ruined anyway—stained with David Bisti’s blood. As they watched four detectives enter and flash their badges at the cop guarding the door, Caleb told Anita, “It looks like our reservations have been canceled.”