Time of Death

by Shirley Kennett

  The meeting wound down and the two men started telling raunchy jokes. That was PJ’s cue to kick them all out of her office.

  As he was leaving, Schultz pointed to the remaining two doughnuts. “You going to eat those?”

  “Yes. Be sure to close the door on your way out.”

  When PJ checked her email, she found a message from Merlin, which was very rare. She didn’t bother to trace the source of the mail and try to find out who or where Merlin was, since she was sure he’d use an anonymous remailer, probably several levels deep.

  Keypunch,

  Where have you been hiding? You should tell your sweet Uncle Merlin. I haven’t been able to get through to you, and thought you’d want to know some gamer friends of mine located the tunnel creep. He’s Kevin Hannings, 4568 Tessabee Road, in Pacific, out I-44. They’re a hundred percent sure of this. He’s been banned from online gaming, period. Worldwide. Forever. Under any name he tries to come up with. I have to admit I’m a little curious how they did that, since I’m not confident I could. This has caused quite a stir among ’core gamers. People in assorted countries offered to come over and personally beat the shit out of him and then do worse things. Gamers have been known to have poor impulse control, so unless you’re okay with having Hannings’ guts ripped out and tied around his neck (that one won the vote), you should probably give Schultz the creep’s name and address and have him picked up. Soon. Very soon. I believe several have already boarded their airplanes.

  Yours,

  Merlin

  p.s. I had to give out Thomas’s game ID, so they know him now. I trust these people. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thomas starts moving up in the rankings, though.

  p.p.s. Thomas didn’t happen to mention where Hannings got the costume, did he? I have two gamers pestering me.

  PJ responded, giving a brief description of the events at her house and indicating that Hannings was already in custody. Thanking him for his efforts, she asked him to call off the gamers if possible, and sent the message on its way. She thought about what he’d mobilized on her behalf. Here was a person who cared so much about her and could call on help of every description from around the world if she asked. Selflessly. What had she ever done for him? Of course, some of Merlin’s good ideas seemed to get away from him, but it was usually possible to control the damage. In this case, the only fallout would be that Hannings’s neighbors might notice strangers casing the house for a few days.

  Locating Jasmine Singer was easy. PJ enlisted the help of the chief of the Hannibal Police Department, who recognized the name immediately.

  Aunt Jasmine, as PJ was already thinking of her, lived in a residential care home, but she wasn’t one of the poor elderly scraping by on Medicare payments. She was a multimillionaire, and could easily have maintained her own home and hired whatever help she needed. She lived at Riverview Elder Care because she liked the company of the other active retirees, the security of living in a place with a twenty-four-hour staff, and the food. There was an on-site gourmet restaurant. The place apparently wasn’t low end.

  PJ phoned to ask if today would be a good day to visit. A staff member checked with Mrs. Singer, who said that she’d receive company after her nap, which was over at four o’clock. PJ made an appointment for a visit at four-thirty. On a map of Missouri, she picked a route. Highway 61 was probably faster, but if she took Highway 79, a two-lane road that paralleled the Mississippi River, she could stop at the city of Clarksville. Her son had brought home information from school about bald eagles that wintered there, fishing in the river below Lock and Dam 25.

  She got the idea that she would take Thomas with her, even though he’d have to sit around in the lobby while she interviewed Jasmine. He would love the trip. It would be a Friday afternoon off school, and they could talk the whole way there and back. Excited, she immediately phoned Mr. Archibald at the academy to let him know she’d be picking up her son at one o’clock. The man gave her a hard time about pulling Thomas out during the school day, but relented when she made it clear there was an educational aspect to it.

  PJ set to work on recreating Marilee Baines’s murder in virtual reality. She had a few hours before leaving, and was already wondering if the trip to Hannibal was justified in terms of hard information for the case.

  “Shower,” PJ said. The null world resolved into a scene of a city street. Narrow homes lined the block, each with one or more banged-up trashcans out front. Quite a few cars were parked at the curb, since these homes had no garages and only a few of them had driveways. It was dark, with the light of the old-fashioned streetlights six houses in either direction barely casting a shadow as she moved. Once between two houses, she was invisible.

  At the back of the house, one window had its curtains partially open. Light spilled from it, slicing across the yard like a knife. She approached the window carefully, staying out of the light. When she reached it, she squatted low to make sure no part of her head showed. On her feet were outsized, fuzzy bedroom slippers with smooth, leather soles, and her hands were sheathed with several pairs of latex gloves.

  The window was open a couple of inches. She could hear water running in the shower. Cautiously raising her head, she peeked into the window. Inside was a small bedroom, inexpensively furnished but clean and neat. PJ tried lifting the window, but it wouldn’t slide up smoothly. Probably a little stuck with layers of old paint above the two-inch mark. PJ reached into a pack around her waist, and found a knife patterned after the one that forensics determined was used on Marilee Baines. She used the knife to pry at the painted-over window track, then remembered that the police report said there’d been no pry marks at all, inside or outside the bedroom window.

  “Stop, restart entering the back yard,” she said. There was a dizzying moment as the scene reset itself. She went up to the window again, and this time, after carefully looking around for people looking out their windows, she wiggled the window back and forth slightly, then shoved it up. She felt the resistance of the paint holding, then breaking free. There was some noise, but neighbors had their windows closed due to the freezing weather.

  Once the window was up, she had to act fast. Having practiced getting up into the back of the pickup truck in the barn scenario, she had no trouble controlling the Genman’s motion to get up and over the low windowsill.

  Inside, she quickly lowered the window so that if anyone did happen to look out, they wouldn’t see Marilee’s window standing wide open and become suspicious. She glided across the wood floor in her slippers until she came to the bathroom, which had vinyl flooring.

  Now what? In spite of the bloody shower stall and some smeared blood on the floor, no bloody footprints had been found, either in the shower or in the bedroom. She ducked away from the doorway to think about it. There was a large mirror on the bathroom wall, and it would be possible for Marilee to see her coming, especially if PJ stood there thinking for a long time. The victim wasn’t going to stay in the shower forever. The killer must have come prepared for this.

  “Pause, free Genman,” PJ said. Instantly the sound of the running water stopped, the droplets frozen in midair. Marilee, bent over scrubbing her legs with a loofah sponge, rear plastered against the steamy glass doors, halted in that inelegant position. Genman, free to move, stepped into the bathroom to look around.

  And stood on a pink, shaggy bathroom rug.

  Of course! Why didn’t I notice that? There had been no rug at the scene, confirmed later when she examined the photos. The bathroom had been scanned into the computer, rugless, but its artificial intelligence had conjured a rug based upon stock photos of hundreds of bathrooms in its database. The majority of them must have had rugs outside the shower door, for wet feet.

  PJ thought about what to do, stepped back out of the room, and then said, “Resume.” She took off her slippers and left them right outside the bathroom, noticing when she did so another detail from the crime scene photos. There was a pair of slippers near the bed, similar
to the ones she was wearing.

  The killer staked this place out and knew a lot going in.

  In her bare feet, PJ took a large step and planted her feet on the rug. She slid back the fogged-up doors and confronted Marilee. It was not a fair fight. PJ had a knife and Marilee had a sponge. With surprise on her side, PJ’s first lunge was a solid strike.

  Having seen the clear trend of how things were going, PJ became a FOTW for the rest of the murder. It was mainly a matter of not getting scratched by the frantic and weakening woman. Although Marilee had defensive wounds on her hands and forearms in the autopsy photos, there had been no skin cells under her fingernails.

  She watched Genman complete the killing, take the finger, and make the heart design on the back of the door in blood. Then she took over the role of killer again.

  Her feet were bloody, but she carefully stepped into the waiting slippers. Then she reached into the bathroom, tugged on the rug, and when it got close enough, peeled off one of the pairs of latex gloves, tossed them on the rug, and rolled the whole thing up to take with her. It had a rubberized backing that did a good job of keeping in the blood.

  Across the wood floor in her slippers, out the window, pull the window down to two inches, walk carefully out to the sidewalk with the rug. She stopped the simulation there. Somewhere on the street, the killer had a car parked, and would be away into the night, taking his bloody footprints with him.

  Chapter 43

  THE CLOUDLESS SKY WAS deep blue and the rolling hills north of St. Louis along the Mississippi River were covered with trees and tan pastures. A couple of turkeys took flight and skimmed over the roof of the car, looking like flying bowling balls and drawing “oohs” from both driver and passenger. With the car’s heater pumping out warmth, it was easy to forget it was only fifteen degrees. There had been no significant snow in December, and Highway 79 was a dry ribbon following the contours of the land. It was a beautiful winter day.

  The only cloud on her personal horizon was that the driver of the Blazer who’d try to run over her had escaped the police chase. She was no closer to knowing who wanted her dead.

  Thomas was thrilled to go with her. The day trips they frequently took to explore the countryside around St. Louis had been at the bottom of the priority list recently. When this case was behind her, PJ was going to renew a lot of things that had gotten shoved aside. She was also going to think through her relationship with Schultz. She needed time to sort things out when dead bodies weren’t turning up every day or two.

  In Clarksville, PJ bought gas for the Focus and asked for directions to an eagle-viewing area. The attendant must get the question a lot, because he handed her a pre-printed slip of paper with directions to two different spots and told her it was early in the season but she might get lucky because of the cold weather. The eagles congregated around open water when the temperature dropped. She chose Lock and Dam 25, just because she’d never seen the setup before.

  It was a little disappointing because the lock was inactive. There wasn’t any river traffic at that time, and so it just sat there, ice coating the huge metal gates. There was a viewing platform with spotting scopes for the eagles. There were some, but they were far away on the other side of the river, and looked like dark shapes high up in the trees. There was no fishing activity by the birds.

  “I guess it’s siesta time,” she said.

  The wind coming in over the Mississippi was brutal. Even though they were wearing down parkas, gloves, and scarves that covered about every inch of their faces except for their eyes, they didn’t stay long.

  As they headed back to Highway 79, PJ and Thomas were a bit subdued. Aside from getting really cold, they hadn’t accomplished anything.

  “Mom, look,” Thomas said. He was pointing out the front window. A magnificent adult eagle, its white head shining in the sun, had landed just ten feet above them in a tree branch. Its claws were curled around a wriggling fish, just snatched from the river. Holding the fish against the branch, the bird began to tear at it.

  “Awesome,” Thomas said.

  “Awesome,” PJ agreed. “But not for the fish.” They sat there until the eagle spread its wings and flew away, then made their way through Clarksville, picking up some burgers for an on-the-move lunch.

  Conversation fizzled out after the fries were gone, and they passed through the town of Louisiana driving along in comfortable silence. Half an hour later, PJ pulled into the driveway of Riverview Elder Care in Hannibal. They were fifteen minutes early, about as well timed as PJ could have hoped.

  The grounds were beautifully-landscaped, attractive even in the dead of winter with plenty of evergreens. Instead of the decrepit old farmhouse she was expecting, the center was a low-slung creation fashioned of dark glass and slabs of black marble, a storm cloud fallen from the sky and settled on a hilltop. There was a circular driveway leading to the main entrance, but PJ found a visitor’s spot in the small parking lot.

  The lobby carried through with the glass and marble theme, but reversed to white. On the floor was white tile with a matte finish that PJ assumed was slip-proof. Off to the right was a solarium that held a large swimming pool. A few residents paddled around, and at one end of the pool, there was an organized exercise class. A receptionist sat behind a curved marble counter. She smiled at them and waved them forward.

  “I should have brought my swimming suit,” Thomas said quietly, so that only PJ could hear. “I could show those old guys in there some moves.”

  She nearly burst out laughing. Instead, she hooked her arm into his and propelled him along. He was dragging his feet, looking enviously at the pool.

  “I’m Rhonda. You’re here to see Mrs. Singer, aren’t you?” the receptionist said.

  “Yes. We’re a little early, so we’ll just wait over there.” PJ pointed to a bank of upholstered easy chairs that looked like white leather and probably were.

  “No need. She woke up from her nap a little early. I think she’s very curious about your visit. Mrs. Singer doesn’t have many guests. Actually, she just doesn’t agree to see many.”

  PJ remembered the painful beginning to her phone conversation with John Winter, when she was the first to inform him of the death of his two nieces’ husbands. She didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news to Mrs. Singer. She already had an image of the woman in her mind: frail, crepe paper skin, eyes slightly filmy, sweet personality. Everyone’s old grandma.

  “You must be Thomas,” said Rhonda, turning to her son. “Some of the men headed off to the rec room a little while ago. I think they’re playing table tennis. Would you like to join them?”

  PJ saw the look that crossed her son’s face. A swimming pool where he could show off his excellent water skills, maybe, but stuck in a room with a bunch of octogenarians batting a little ball back and forth wasn’t his idea of fun.

  “Actually, I have this book to read,” he said, holding out The Great Gatsby, assigned at the academy. She’d been pestering him to get started on it, and now he was eager to use it as an excuse. Annoyed, she stepped on his foot out of sight of the receptionist.

  “Ouch. I mean, I’d be happy to. Just show me the way.”

  “If you’d both follow me, please.” The woman took off down the hall. They heard the rec room before they saw it. “In here.”

  The room was large almost to the point of being cavernous, high-ceilinged and lit by rows of skylights. Artificial lighting was taking over as an early winter sunset darkened the sky. There were several seating arrangements scattered around the room, some of them occupied with residents talking or quietly reading. One side of the room was lined with computers, and the rest of the place had many forms of indoor entertainment, including pinball machines, a self-service snack counter, pool tables, and table tennis.

  “Heads up!”

  A white ball went whizzing past Thomas’s head. He ducked, and it clattered to the floor after bouncing off a plasma TV.

  “Sorry.”

  They
watched as play resumed. The men might have been octogenarians or nearly so, but they were active and thoroughly enjoying themselves. There was a rooting section that booed and applauded, and the players were good. They stood far back from the tables, and the moving ball was practically a blur.

  “Hey, can you teach me how to play like that?” Thomas said.

  “Sure, c’mon over, young man. Eddie here used to be a high school coach. He’ll get you started.”

  “Bye, Mom. Take your time with your interview or whatever.”

  PJ and Rhonda continued down the hall until they came to wooden double doors. The receptionist knocked and then opened the doors to a sumptuous office.

  There’s no end to the surprises here.

  “This is Dr. Penelope Gray,” Rhonda said. PJ entered and the doors closed behind her. The only light in the room was an exquisite Tiffany lamp on the desk. The base looked like a twisted vine, and the stained-glass shade was ringed with blue and green dragonflies. Light glowed vibrantly through the shade. It took a few moments for PJ to notice the woman sitting behind the desk. She was diminutive, dwarfed by her massive mahogany desk. PJ guessed she was about sixty, with a crown of silver curls, wearing a conservative dark dress and a tasteful amount of gold jewelry.

  “It does draw the eye, doesn’t it?” the woman said, nodding toward the lamp.

  “It’s beautiful. Are you the administrator?” PJ asked. “I made an appointment to see Mrs. Singer. My business with her is private.”

  “Sit down, Dr. Gray. I’m Jasmine Singer.”

  PJ sat down, keeping her face lowered to hide her confusion. This isn’t everyone’s sweet old grandma.

  “I don’t just live here, I own the place. Most people are a little surprised when they meet me,” Jasmine said. “Money can stave off old age, or at least the appearance of it, for a while. I’m seventy-nine. It shows up in some ways, though. The staff tennis instructor says soon he’ll be able to beat me with one hand tied behind his back. I told him if he ever does that, call the funeral home because I’ll be dead.”