Time of Death

by Shirley Kennett

  Fredericka’s head swiveled toward him, as though discovering his presence for the first time. The movement reminded Schultz of a praying mantis swiveling its triangular head, eyes locking onto lunch.

  “On Wednesday,” she said. “We had lunch at Jake’s Steaks, in the Landing. I remember it because Arlan had a margarita, and he usually doesn’t drink until evening. In fact, I don’t think he drinks often at all. Too many empty calories.” She patted her perfectly flat abdomen as though to protect it from the very phrase.

  “So did he seem worried about something and that’s why he was drinking at lunch?” Dave asked.

  “He was worried, I think. Probably because of the clients he was driving to Chicago to meet. He gave me the impression the clients were going to be disappointed about something. I’m sure it wasn’t our designs.”

  “He was planning to drive after drinking?”

  “He only had one drink, silly.” She had a musical laugh that floated up to the high ceiling like a brightly colored balloon. “We split up about two o’clock, and I came back here to work. I assume he took off for Chicago.”

  Schultz noticed that Fredericka’s attitude had changed when Dave started doing the questioning. A lilt in her voice. A tilt of her head. A jaunty toss of her ponytail. The weakness she’d suffered a few minutes ago had dissipated. She rocked herself sideways on her bottom so that she ended up close enough to Dave’s knee that a spark could cross the distance.

  Fredericka rested her hand lightly and familiarly on Dave’s thigh. Beads of sweat began erupting on Dave’s forehead like pimples on a teenager. No doubt he was wondering where the wandering hand would go next. Cutting off speculation, Fredericka got to her feet in a smooth motion that looked like a flower unfolding. She was clearly trying to draw the interview to a close.

  “Arlan was a wonderful man,” she said. “A good businessman and a good husband. An old-fashioned gentleman. I hope you find whoever did this awful thing.”

  Dave got up, limbs flailing around for balance. “We’re doing our best,” he said. “Any problem if we look around a bit?”

  A fleeting frown passed over her face, a cloud blocking the sun. She hesitated.

  “Arlan didn’t spend much time here, and I have work to do, Detective. I have a contractor coming in first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Just for a little while, Freddy,” Dave said. “For our reports, you know.”

  Schultz didn’t know that Dave could come up with such a disarming smile. Dave had certainly never used it on him.

  “Well, okay. I’m getting back to work, though,” Fredericka said. “Say, don’t you need a warrant?”

  The wattage of Dave’s smile doubled. “Not if we have your consent. We won’t take anything, though.”

  She pursed her lips into a kissable circle before saying yes.

  Any more of this and I’ll puke.

  She retreated to one of the kitchen stools and set up a laptop on the counter. Like a pair of hungry lions scouring the savannah, Schultz and Dave roamed the space, taking note of everything. They discovered a pocket door that practically disappeared into the wall, and it led to an expansive room with a toilet, sink, shower, and dressing area.

  “I knew she had to shit somewhere,” Schultz said, once inside with the door closed. “This place is just a little too perfect, isn’t it?”

  Dave wasn’t paying attention. He was looking at the U-shaped dressing area with one of those three-way mirrors surrounded by open shelving, hanger rods, and built-in drawers with glass fronts. All of them neatly filled. There was one small section of men’s clothing, some casual outfits and a few suits. The nearby open shelving held folded men’s dress shirts, socks, and boxers. Tucked below were four pairs of men’s shoes, two dress and two casual. Schultz’s eyebrows rose.

  “Unless the lady’s a cross-dresser, there’s a man around the house.” Dave said.

  Schultz drifted over to that section and casually checked the items, which were in plain sight. “Size eighteen shirts, thirty-five inch sleeve. Arlan was a big guy, wasn’t he?”

  As they were leaving, Schultz asked about the presence of men’s clothing. Fredericka was prepared with an answer, having seen them go into the room.

  “Arlan stopped in to shower and change sometimes. Work sites can be awfully dirty.”

  No doubt he needed someone to scrub his back, too. In an old-fashioned way, of course.

  Chapter 7

  DEAR DIARY,

  These are things that happened to me, cross my heart and hope to die.

  “Lazy bones, crazy bones,” my sister chants. I press my fingers into my ears and pretend not to hear. She sees that our parents are busy in the dining room getting ready for Christmas dinner. She comes over and punches me in the stomach.

  “Ow! I’m gonna tell!” I say, and my face screws up with pain. The punch is not quite hard enough to leave a bruise. Oh, no, she never leaves a bruise.

  “Go ahead, crazy bones,” she says. “You know they’ll believe me over you. You might as well not even try. They’ll punish you for telling lies again.” She pinches my shoulder, hard. “You better save me your dessert and all of your cookies from the farm, or you know what will happen to you tonight.”

  I shiver thinking about it. I’m eight-years-old and skinny. Spaghetti legs, Mom says, spaghetti arms, all I need is some tomato sauce to make a good dinner. Mom must think that’s really funny because she says it a lot.

  My older sister is very strong. She can hold me down and pour salt water in my mouth, or cover my face with a pillow until I absolutely can’t last another second without dying.

  I hate Christmas dinner because my jerky relatives from Chicago are here. Grandpa Marshall, who gives me the creeps with his cold hands and beady eyes and I never want to be alone with him in a room again, is sick and can’t travel. Maybe he’ll die.

  A good part about Christmas is the farm cookies. Dad picks them up every year. They come in a cardboard box tied with red string. Butter cookies shaped like reindeer, round cookies with cherries or nuts in the middle, cookies that are half-chocolate, cookies that look like half moons, gingerbread men. Mom never makes anything like that. Some old farm woman bakes them. If I’m fast enough, I can get some in my pockets before my sister sees me.

  “Where’s your new doll?” my sister says in her bully voice.

  I close my eyes. Mom and Dad finally gave me something I want for Christmas, probably by mistake. My sister saw the happy look on my face. I wasn’t fast enough hiding it. Big mistake.

  “I don’t know. I guess I lost it,” I say, trying to keep my voice from showing that I still have it. “You don’t like dolls anyway.”

  “You little shit!” She talks like that when Mom and Dad can’t hear. “Gimme that doll!”

  “No! You have presents of your own. You don’t need mine. You don’t even like dolls!”

  She comes right up next to me, so I have to look up to see her face. I look right up her nostrils. They don’t look any better than mine, I’ll bet.

  “Listen, you freak,” she says, “Don’t you ever talk to me like that. I’ll have to tell Mom and Dad how bad you are. Maybe they’ll send you off to live with Grandpa Marshall!”

  She sees the fear shining in my eyes and knows she’s got another thing to tease me with. So far I’d hid that from her real good, that I was scared of him and his big, scratchy hands. He wouldn’t think of putting those hands on her, no, of course not. He’d get in trouble if she said anything. With me, he knows everybody will think I’m making things up again.

  “Hah, hah, hah, you’ll go live with Grandpa Marshall,” she sang. “Then I’ll have everything to myself the way I did before you were born. Everything was so much better before you came along, crazy bones.”

  I’ve heard that a thousand times. A thousand times a thousand. What makes it so bad is that maybe she is right. I might be a freak. When I look in the mirror, I’m not sure what I see, me or a freak. Mom and Dad think I’m
a liar because of all the things I’ve said about my older sister. “What are you talking about? Your sister’s sweet as pie. Everybody knows that.”

  Hating myself for every step I take, I go into the bedroom. I pull the new doll out of my most secret hiding place, the one she hasn’t found yet.

  I walk back into the dining room, my feet dragging but pulled along like she’s tugging on my leash. Which she actually does, sometimes. Puts Jingles’ collar and leash on me and takes me for a walk, outside, where everybody except Mom and Dad can see.

  Her hands are mean to my doll, and then she throws it on the floor.

  I kneel down next to the doll, with her head hanging sideways and her new outfit torn. I wrap her in a washcloth to keep people, especially my jerky relatives, from seeing her bare front.

  If only other people could see how mean my sister is. But they only see her shiny hair and her pretty face and her woman’s body and that she moves like a cat, real smooth.

  They don’t see what’s inside her the way I do. Her black, black heart. If I could, I’d rip it out of her and feed it to Jingles. Whenever nobody’s looking, she pulls Jingles’ ears or tail and then shoves him at me, like I did it. I would never hurt him. Jingles is nervous around me, and it’s not my fault.

  But she’s my sister, and I’m supposed to love her. I guess I do, kind of. She’s a lot easier to love when she’s not around.

  She didn’t have to do that to my doll, though.

  Chapter 8

  ALONE IN HER OFFICE, PJ dialed her home number. Thomas picked up on the second ring. He must be waiting for a phone call, and chances were excellent that it wasn’t from her.

  “Oh, it’s you,” her son said. “When can I have a cellphone like the rest of the universe?”

  “When the rest of the universe pays the bill,” PJ said. “You could at least ask me how my day’s going.”

  “Hi, Mom, how’s your day going?”

  “Rotten, thank you. I left some meatloaf in the refrigerator for your lunch.” PJ glanced at the time. It was nearly one in the afternoon.

  “I just finished breakfast,” Thomas said. “We need more eggs.”

  Again?

  “Orange juice, too.”

  “I’ll make your grocery needs a priority,” PJ said. “They’ll come right after winning a car on The Price is Right.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. I wanted to make sure you finish your homework before you start on that RPG stuff.”

  Thomas had discovered MMORPG—Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Games. One in particular, The Gem Sword of Seryth, had captivated him. He’d gotten so wrapped up in it that his intermediate grade report included a couple of D’s. The private school he was attending, Jamison Academy, was piling on the homework as the first semester came to an end. The workload was high, and the expectations even higher. She knew Thomas was up to it, though, and getting him into the academy gave her peace of mind.

  After an incident in which Thomas was threatened with a knife outside his public school, PJ’d had enough. Paying the tuition made money tight in other areas, but both of them would rather eat macaroni and cheese and Ramen noodles than have Thomas try to cope. Her brilliant, gentle, sensitive son was thriving at Jamison.

  “Yeah, I’ll get it done.”

  “Remember, you have a math test.”

  “Mom.”

  It was time to change the subject. “Are you seeing Winston today?”

  Winston Lakeland was Thomas’s best friend. He’d been on the waiting list to get into Jamison, too, but Thomas was the last one on the list to get a slot. Both of them were hoping for a vacancy to turn up soon, for some family to move or some kid to flunk out. In the meantime, the boys saw each other on weekends. And online.

  “Later. I think he’s still asleep. When will you be home?”

  The question jabbed PJ right in the extra organ that rode atop the hearts of single parents: guilt.

  She made a quick guess and padded her answer. “By eleven.”

  “See ya.”

  He hung up, not waiting for her response. She figured he didn’t want to give her too much time to think about the homework versus RPG situation.

  PJ swiveled around and faced the high-end Silicon Graphics workstation that was the magnet that brought her to St. Louis. The department had obtained the equipment under a federal grant and quickly realized it was necessary to hire someone who knew what to do with its visualization capability. When PJ arrived, the boxes were literally gathering dust in a corner. She’d quickly set it up and installed the software developed in her marketing research job.

  As a marketing analyst, she produced simulations of grocery stores, car dealerships, whatever the client wanted. People participating in the study entered the scene virtually and shopped, picked cereal from the shelves, or test-drove cars. It could be a product’s shelf appeal that was being tested or whether a dealer’s showroom enticed buyers to come inside. The big difference between her past and current work was in motivation: make a profit or put a killer behind bars.

  She began by scanning in crime photos of the levee and the access road. Her program took the setting and rendered it in simple 3D wireframe mode. Then she did the same with photos of the victim. Her software filled in any missing areas by extrapolation, combined setting and person, and set the whole thing in motion. In fifteen minutes she had a wireframe version of a male lying at the base of the cobblestone levee, river water slapping at his feet. His wounds were crudely shown at this point, but she had routines to make the blood and guts realistic.

  PJ had a large library of standard elements she could add, so she plunked a car, a late model sedan, on the access road. She also added a driver, choosing from among the set of avatars she’d developed. Genman, for generic man. Average height, build, appearance—the face in the crowd. She also had Genfem, Genteen, Genkid, and Genbaby programmed and ready to use. She’d never had to use Genbaby, and hoped she never would.

  She ran through a basic scenario on her monitor. The car traveled along the access road and stopped. The driver emerged by walking through the door rather than opening it. The trunk lid popped open. Genman pulled the victim out and tossed him toward the river. Instead of rolling, the victim floated smoothly down as if he were cushioned on air and stopped several feet short of the river. Water surged up the levee from the Mississippi, rose three feet into the air, and enveloped his feet.

  The playback was rough even by PJ’s lenient standards for a first run-through. It was going to be a long afternoon.

  There were three apples and a stale Danish lined up on PJ’s desk, and that would have to do for dinner.

  She worked with the wireframe scenario of the dump site until there were no scenes of walking through solid objects, and then added the subtle shading of 3D rendering. The victim’s face was now Arlan’s, and his injuries were chillingly accurate. The computer used its database of information about St. Louis to fill in the downtown backdrop. After reviewing the playback several times, PJ felt there was nothing more to be learned by exploratory VR. That was the term for interacting with a virtual world only by viewing it on a monitor. The next step was immersion, in which she would enter the world she’d created as a participant, and everything would appear life-sized to her.

  It took more than a powerful computer to provide an immersion experience. It took a Head Mounted Display, or HMD, and a device to control motion in the virtual world, usually data gloves. When PJ first got started, she’d had to borrow those items from a researcher at Washington University. The hardware she borrowed wasn’t the slick commercial type, but she was in no position to be choosy. The HMD looked like an overturned kitchen colander with wires streaming up from it like spaghetti defying gravity. It had served her well, but eventually the researcher reclaimed both it and the data gloves to use in his own projects. Left with no interface, PJ had taken the salaries allocated for two long-promised computer assistants and converted them into a hardware purchas
e. She needed equipment more than she needed additional staff.

  The results lay in front of her, still new enough that she stored them in their boxes when they weren’t in use—a kind of honeymoon period. Later on, they’d be treated as casually as the other objects in her office, which meant hoping no one sat on them.

  PJ ate the Danish, sipping her coffee and savoring the relative quiet of the building. It was late afternoon, and there was a lull before the evening activity revved up.

  She pulled on stretch data gloves that allowed her to move around and manipulate objects in virtual reality, and even provided tactile feedback so that when she “picked up” a knife she could feel the grip in her hand. The gloves used wireless transmission, so she wasn’t tethered to her computer.

  The new HMD was a light, sleek, open-topped helmet with two liquid crystal screens in front of her eyes. The screens were very bright but low in power consumption, so small batteries did the job—no more cables to tangle. The flat screens blocked out the outside world, like having binoculars glued to her face. There were eye-tracking and head-motion sensors in the helmet, so the high-resolution images of the virtual world existed only where she was looking. The rest was the null world, nothingness. When she moved her eyes or head to scan a scene, the world at the edges of her vision was continually being generated, so that it appeared to have been there all along. The generation was done so fast that there was no way to jerk her head around and catch the world in the process of being built. She’d tried, of course, and wrenched her neck so that she couldn’t turn her head for days without wincing.

  To add to the realistic effect, the speakers inside the helmet were programmed for 3D sound. That means the sound of a door slamming reached one ear slightly ahead of the other ear, just as it would in the real world, letting the person localize the source. The volume of the sound fell off realistically according to its distance from the person, too. The only thing that was missing was the shadowing effect of having some object between the person and the sound.