by Parnell Hall
While I was thinking all that, a young man on his way out actually held the door open for me.
I went in, took the stairs up to Hanson’s apartment. On the last flight I realized the phrase fourth-floor walk-up should have been a deal breaker.
As I reached the top, it occurred to me I now had to get into the apartment. I was running through my list of choices again when I noticed something funny about the door. The shadow being cast on the frame seemed to indicate it was ajar.
I walked down the hallway, pushed on the door.
It swung open.
I stuck my head in, called, “Leslie.”
I don’t know what I expected. Him tied up in bed perhaps, unable to reach the phone. If so, he was also gagged, because there was no answer.
The apartment was dark. I groped for a switch, found one on the wall just inside the door. Flicked it on. I was in a small, haphazardly furnished living room. Leslie might be a contractor, but he wasn’t an interior designer. His furniture might have been gathered off the street. None of it matched in period, style, or color. I have no taste in apartment furnishings, as Alice often reminds me, but even I could tell everything clashed. It made me hesitate a moment. Was it really worth sticking one’s neck out to save a man with so little taste?
The bedroom had all the charm of the living room, enhanced by an unmade bed. Dirty socks and jockey shorts adorned the floor.
On the far wall, the door to the bathroom beckoned. I wondered what atrocities it held.
Just one.
The body of Leslie Hanson hung from the shower rod.
44
HE WAS FULLY CLOTHED IN A GRAY SUIT, WHITE SHIRT, THIN tie, black leather shoes. The rope around his neck was ordinary clothesline. It was a wonder that it held. Evidently he had tied it around one of the faucets in the tub, run the rope up over the shower rod, then stood on the edge of the tub, pulled the rope as tight as he could, and then tied it around his neck. It was tied in a single knot, which on first glance appeared to be a square knot but on closer inspection proved to be a weak granny knot, a square knot’s poor relation, looped the wrong way. Hanson had apparently tied the knot and stepped off the side of the tub. The tension in the rope was just sufficient to keep his toes from touching the floor. A gagging man touching solid ground would have instinctively stopped himself from choking, no matter what his intentions. But his feet hadn’t reached the floor, which would have left him, had he had second thoughts, with only the hope of grabbing the rope to pull himself up to take the tension off his neck, a ploy which, had he attempted it, clearly hadn’t worked.
On the bathroom mat, directly below the body, was a sheet of paper.
I leaned in to take a look.
Written on the paper were two words: I’m sorry.
My sentiments exactly.
It was, in my opinion, the clumsiest attempt to make a murder look like a suicide imaginable.
I took a quick look around the bathroom, didn’t see anything else significant. I went out though the living room, trying to remember what I’d touched. As far as I could tell, it was only the doorknob. I hated to wipe it off. I might be eliminating the murderer’s fingerprints. On the other hand, if the murderer was stupid enough to leave fingerprints, they’d probably catch him anyway. I took out a Kleenex, wiped the doorknob. Wondered if they could get DNA from mucous. Snot possible, I told myself. That was enough to tell me I was losing it again.
I slipped out, left the door in the position I’d found it, and got the hell out of there.
I hurried down the street, trying to remember what the guy who’d let me in looked like. Another in a growing list of people I had to avoid. I found a pay phone, dropped in a quarter, and called nine-one-one.
The operator who answered sounded bored. Even the report of a dead man didn’t perk her up.
I hung up the phone, got in the car, and drove home.
On the way, I promised myself for the umpteenth time never to second-guess Alice again.
45
I FELT TERRIBLE. I’D TRIED TO HELP AND ONLY MADE THINGS worse. What an understatement. I’d gotten a guy killed, that’s what I’d done. By sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong, I’d basically murdered the contractor. The guy hadn’t hung himself. Not unless he was a suicidal acrobat. No one teeters on the edge of the tub trying to knot a noose, no matter how attractive the alliteration. He’d been killed for following up the lead I gave him through his attorney.
Which more or less solved the case. The jock killed the contractor. Which meant the jock killed the congressman, bang, over, finished. I was right, but it was small consolation. I was also a killer.
Alice knew something was wrong the minute I came in the door. “You look terrible. What is it?”
I told her what happened.
She was predictably sympathetic. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“No, it isn’t. You had vital information in a murder case. It was your civic duty to pass it along. It would have been obstruction of justice if you hadn’t.”
“How can you say that? You told me not to.”
“Because you didn’t know if you were right. Turns out you were. So your information was important.”
“You can’t spin this, Alice. I fucked up and a guy is dead.”
“I know. And all the poor schmuck wanted to do was bribe a congressman.”
“You saw him. At the memorial service. You think he deserved to die?”
“That’s not the point. Things happen for different reasons. They’re all intermeshed. Did what you said to his lawyer have anything to do with him getting killed? Maybe. But would he have gotten killed if he hadn’t tried to bribe the congressman? No. So don’t try to take all the blame.”
“I can’t argue with you. You’re too good with words. I grant you all the points you’re trying to make. I still feel like shit.”
“I know.”
Alice made me some chicken soup. Funny. That’s what you do for a person who’s sick. In a way, I was.
She didn’t talk while I ate, just saw I had napkins and a spoon. I sat at the kitchen table, ate it up.
“Want some more?”
“No.”
“Feel better?”
“No.”
“You have to let it alone.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. The cops know everything you do. They don’t need you. Between the ADA and the guy’s lawyer, they know all they need to know.”
“Not really.”
“Didn’t you say he filed a deposition?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there you are. The lawyer was investigating the guy. The lawyer’s client knew that he was investigating the guy. Who are the cops going to want to talk to? You, or the guy?”
“You should have seen him, Alice.”
“No, I shouldn’t. You shouldn’t have, either. It’s bad, but it’s over. You have to leave it alone. Stay out of it, let the cops do their job.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
It was on the evening news. MURDER SUSPECT HANGED. “Leslie Hanson, a suspect in the murder of Congressman Jason Blake, was found hanged in his apartment earlier this afternoon. Mr. Hanson, arrested at the scene of the crime, was currently out on bail. Hanson was discovered with a rope around his neck, hanging from a shower rod. While the police have not ruled out foul play, a note apparently in Mr. Hanson’s own handwriting, found at the scene of the crime, would tend to indicate that the suspect had taken his own life in a fit of remorse.”
Alice muted the TV. “Don’t.”
But she knew it was no use.
46
AT LEAST MACAULLIF DIDN’T THROW THE PHONE. HE snorted, said, “I was hoping it wasn’t true.”
“MacAullif.”
He put up his hand. “Don’t start with me. I’m sitting here, hoping he won’t walk in the door, and sure enough, here he comes. I know what that means. It means he did something stupid I was hoping he
hadn’t. Fat chance, what with another anonymous tip.”
“So what could I do?”
“You could stay out of my office. You could stay out of crime scenes. You could stop treating every murder as if it had been perpetrated solely to aid in your personal psychotherapy.”
“I’m a bad boy. I got a lot of guilt.”
“No shit. Can I assume you found this asshole’s body and have been beating yourself up ever since?”
“Hypothetically?”
MacAullif waved it away. “Oh, say whatever the fuck you want. I figure I’ll lose my pension anyway, you decide to roll on me. Look, bad as you may feel, this one’s over. So why don’t you go home.”
“That was Alice’s opinion.”
“Wives aren’t always wrong.”
“Trouble at home?”
“Yeah. My wife expects me to reach retirement, not get suspended for acting dumb. It was a nice case, but it’s over.”
“How can it be over? The contractor got killed.”
“Oh, that case. I’m talking about the congressman. Hanson was going to trial for that. Now he isn’t. You can’t prosecute a dead man. That’s how ADA Reynolds sees it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I spoke to him this morning. Just to head off any trouble. Turns out there isn’t any. He’s winding up the case, much as he hates it. Slam-dunk conviction up in smoke. You don’t get one like that every day.”
“But that’s not what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hanson didn’t kill himself.”
“Oh. That’s another case. Still under investigation. Even if something comes of it, I doubt if Reynolds would handle it. He’s fed up with the whole thing.”
“Wait a minute. The cops really are writing this off as a suicide?”
“Watch your tone. Cops don’t do that. We investigate based on the evidence. That’s all we can do.”
“What about the evidence? Hanson’s lawyer scheduled a deposition. With this guy who was friendly with the widow. Are the cops investigating that?”
“I would imagine the deposition’s off.
“No kidding. What about the jock? Are the cops talking to him?”
“Cops talked to him this morning.”
“And?”
“Guy was out of town yesterday. Cleveland. Business trip. All day. Couldn’t have done it.”
“Any corroboration?”
“Probably airline tickets and luncheon receipts.”
“No witnesses?”
“No one’s going to Cleveland if they don’t have to. They may have talked to witnesses on the phone.”
“So the guy was in Cleveland.”
“Yeah.”
“But he’s back in town now.”
“That’s right.”
“But he’s not being deposed.”
“That would be my guess. You wanna talk to the lawyer, I can’t stop you.”
“Which means I was wrong.”
“There’s a shocker.”
“If the jock’s not the killer, the killer’s still out there.”
MacAullif grimaced, put up his hand. “Don’t, don’t, don’t. Just because you had a bad theory proved wrong, doesn’t mean you have to come up with something else convoluted. If anything, it should ease your conscience. Ratting out the jock didn’t kill the contractor.”
“What if it did?”
MacAullif groaned. “Well, then the laws of reason have been suspended. Look. You ratted out the jock, the congressman got killed. You think it’s cause and effect. It doesn’t have to be.”
“You mean it’s coincidence?”
“You know I hate the word. But this isn’t it. It is not coincidence the guy got killed. He was involved in the murder, either as the perpetrator or the guy who got framed. In either case, there’s a reason for him to die, and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with you. Jesus Christ, what an egocentric asshole you are. You’d think you were the protagonist in some fucking book. Like those mysteries you read. Which is your whole problem. Real crime isn’t like that, and you can’t take it. But that’s how it is. Someone killed the contractor. They chalk it up to suicide, they’re wrong. Do yourself a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t tell them.”
47
I WASN’T GOING TO, REALLY. UNLESS IT BECAME BLATANT, flagrant, absofuckinlutely obvious, or some other superimperative that could not be ignored.
Mine came in the form of a cop inviting me downtown to talk to ADA Reynolds. I was tempted to decline, but it turned out attendance wasn’t voluntary, and with Richard unwilling to intervene for anything less than a charge of murder, it seemed prudent to comply. I was also curious what the guy wanted. If he’d really washed his hands of the case, why bother?
I was in for a surprise. ADA Reynolds wasn’t alone. ADA Fairfield was with him.
“Oh,” I said. “You guys ganging up on me?”
ADA Reynolds said, “Don’t try to be cute. This isn’t funny.”
“Why am I here? I thought the case was closed.”
ADA Reynolds shot a look in the direction of the attractive attorney, and the situation was instantly clear. I was there because his girlfriend wanted me there.
I couldn’t wait to tell Alice.
“We have some loose ends to tie up. We were hoping you could help us out.”
“I don’t see how. Your suspect is dead. Unless you have another suspect.”
“We don’t yet.”
“Does that mean you’re not buying into the suicide theory?”
“What suicide theory? You mean the one they’re spouting on TV?”
“I thought you’d washed your hands of the case.”
“Who told you that?”
Oops.
“I guess I just assumed.”
“Yeah.”
ADA Fairfield smiled at me. “He’s just pissy because his defendant’s dead. It’s an unfortunate situation. We’re looking into it. So far you’re the only unifying factor.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t unify anything. I was connected to the congressman. I’m not connected to anything else.”
She cocked her head. “I thought you were the one pushing the theory about the widow’s lover.”
“Right,” I said. “And how did that pan out?”
ADA Reynolds looked at me sharply. “You sound like you know.”
“Yeah, well I don’t. They could be banging like bunnies or barely know each other. I have no idea which.”
“It was your theory.”
“Yeah. But I didn’t have the resources to check it out, so I brought it to you. As you’ll recall, that was before your suspect’s untimely demise.” I settled back in my chair. “So, tell me, does that wind up the case or not?”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s pretty damn convenient.”
“Uh-huh. You know how we found the body?”
“Hanging from a shower rod.”
“I mean how we came to find the body.”
“An anonymous tip?”
“I don’t recall releasing that to the media.”
“Well, if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be asking the question in such an insinuating manner. How did you find the body?”
“Anonymous tip.”
“You’re lucky you got it. Otherwise he might still be hanging there.”
“I doubt it. His lawyer would have checked him out.”
“Why? He owe him money?”
ADA Reynolds took a breath.
Once again, his girlfriend stepped in. “There’s no reason to adopt an adversarial attitude. We have an unsatisfactory case. There’s some things we could probably help each other with. Whaddya say?”
“I’m your man. Whaddya need?”
“For starters, what’s your interest in this case? Because it’s not apparently obvious. And, yet, you persist.”
I sighed. “I’m a second-rat
e detective doing a third-rate job. I chase ambulances. For the most part. Every now and then someone else hires me. I do my best to discourage them. Sometimes the money’s so good I can’t resist. I did the congressman a bad turn. I’d like to think it didn’t get him killed. If the contractor’s the answer, I’m delighted. But I’m not going to take it on face value.”
She frowned. “That’s the same old song. It doesn’t really fly. There’s one thing that points to this not being a murder-suicide. The anonymous tip. If Hanson hung himself, who called? You say an innocent bystander who didn’t want to get involved. That’s all well and good. But then you go back to the killing of the congressman. And what do we find? An anonymous tip. What are the odds of two innocent bystanders who don’t want to get involved?”
“In this city? Pretty damn high.”
“Yes, yes, that’s very wry and cynical and patently untrue. The odds are pretty damn low. So low I can’t see it happening.”
I said nothing, sat and waited. Cursed ADA Reynolds for having a girlfriend. If the guy hadn’t had a sex drive, I’d have been home free.
The predatory female stretched like a cat, prepared to pounce.
I shuddered involuntarily.
“No,” she said. “It seems far more likely the same person made both phone calls.”
“You mean the killer?”
“No. That makes no sense. Why would the killer care?”
“The killer wants to make it look like a murder-suicide, to make you think Hanson’s the killer.”
“Why? We already think Hanson’s the killer. Nobody thinks anything else. Killing Hanson doesn’t convince anyone he’s the murderer. It just raises suspicions.”
“Some killers aren’t very bright.”
“No, no. You can’t have it both ways. The killer can’t be smart enough to frame Hanson, and too dumb to think it through.” She smiled. “But you very cleverly changed the subject. We were talking about those anonymous calls. Who could have made them besides the killer?”