Ice Cap: A Mystery (Jackie Swaitkowski Mysteries)

by Chris Knopf

  It was another pleasant thing to have the parking lot behind my building already plowed, and to see Asian gentlemen from the restaurant busily heaving snow off the sidewalks. I punched in the code at the outside door and made my way up the stairs and into the welcoming embrace of my second-story domain.

  I retrieved my robe and slippers from the apartment and brought them over to the office. Still chilled from the drive over, I stayed in my clothes. It took some furious digging to come up with the paper file, which for some reason had found its way inside a catalog offering discount patio furniture, gardening tools, and lawn ornaments. Having neither garden nor lawn, it’s no wonder I couldn’t find the damn thing.

  I called the client and worked on her case for about an hour. Then I spent another hour scanning the information and turning it into electronic files that I could save in multiple locations, whether she liked it or not, and sent it to our home office, rescued from the physical reality to which it was once confined.

  After that, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing work for other clients in less urgent, though valid, need until both my short-term to-do list and conscience were completely cleared.

  Then I went back to the Buczek case.

  I leafed through the case file, which was ten times too big to fit inside a gardening catalog, looking for unexamined material. I’ve read about breakthrough archaeological finds happening not in the field, but in the basement of a museum by people who merely looked at an artifact with fresh eyes. It was the same with the law. Much of the time, the most important fact or angle on a case is right in front of your nose, and you just haven’t seen it yet, or given it the proper interpretation.

  Neither of which happened to me as I slogged through the piles of paper, photo images, and Post-it notes. It wasn’t until I pulled the still shot from Randall’s satellite program out of my back pocket that I realized the path inadequately traveled.

  I went over to the laptop and opened the application. I knew the problem: It was the boredom factor. My brain is designed to leapfrog from thing to thing, patternless and impulsive, not just hunker down, wait, and stare. This was a job for other people. But then, I balanced my checkbook every month, a job I hated even more. If I can do that, I can do this, I told myself, turning on some Mississippi Delta blues and pouring a glass of wine so at least something else was going on.

  After more of this than I could stand, I took a different tack, more to my liking: I used the fast-forward and scanning functions to jump around—forward and back in time, faster, slower, zooming in and out, in real time and frozen in place. This seemed like a lot more fun, probably encouraged by the white wine and a roach I was thrilled to discover in the top drawer of my desk. Why I was looking there, I don’t know.

  I was about to move on to something less monotonous when I found myself looking at the week before Tad was killed, and then the week after—the middle few days, of course, obscured by the big storm. Something stopped me, and I went back to review the action again.

  Randall had set up the application so I could open different images in separate windows, allowing for side-by-side comparisons. This was the first occasion for me to use that feature, and it took a while to set up, but eventually I had two exact views of the Buczek property captured about a week apart.

  It was the giant sprinkler on Hamburger Hill. Before the storm, the three twisted tubes were barely visible. When I zoomed in, the reason was apparent—they were laden with snow, blending with the ground below. A week later, after almost two feet had fallen, they were bare.

  And in a different position. They’d moved.

  The ringer for the outside door went off and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whipped my head around to the monitor and saw Saline Lumsden trying to look through the peephole in the door. I went over to the control pad and pushed the intercom.

  “Hello, Saline, what’s up?”

  “Oh, you’re there. I was hoping I could talk to you.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, disappointed by the intrusion.

  She clutched at herself and shivered. “Do we have to talk over this squeaky little speaker?”

  “Of course not.”

  I buzzed open the outside door and went out in the hall to wait for her. She clumped up the stairs in heavy workboots, clutching a large canvas bag to her middle. When she saw me at the top of the stairs, she gave me a wan smile.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I have some dreadful news.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, waving her into the office. “Come in, let me clear a spot for you to sit. Can I get you anything? Water?”

  A fold-out couch and two overstuffed chairs constituted my conference room. I gave her the couch.

  “No,” she said weakly, “I don’t need anything. It’s just nice to sit down. I’m so tired all the time.”

  She still held the bag with both hands, so firmly I hesitated to suggest she stow it somewhere. Maybe she thought it would disappear into all the junk I had strewn around, a reasonable fear.

  “So what’s what?” I asked. “You said you had news.”

  “Freddy’s dead,” she said, looking up at the ceiling as if to signal his new location.

  “Oh my God. What happened?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, people just die. At least I got to say hello to him at the jail. He wasn’t happy there.”

  “Was he sick? Did he take medication?”

  She looked like she hadn’t considered that before. “You’re right. Maybe that’s it. He took too much of his headache medicine. That can be very dangerous.”

  My cell phone rang, causing me for the second time that day to jump up in my chair. I looked at the screen. It was Joe Sullivan. I asked Saline to excuse me, that I’d keep it short.

  “I just heard the news,” I said to Sullivan.

  “What news?”

  “Freddy Lumsden. He died, right?”

  “He did,” said Sullivan. “About five minutes ago. We just gave up on the CPR. How did you know?”

  I looked across at Saline, who was searching around her fabric bag.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Thanks for the information.”

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. But keep your cell phone handy,” I said, and hung up before he could say more.

  “Saline,” I said, as evenly as I could despite the ball that was forming in my throat. “What did you do?”

  “What I have to do. Who else is going to do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Deal with people who have some notions in their heads that one just can’t accept.”

  “Like Freddy? What notions did he have?”

  “He was planning to tell them everything. I knew he would. It’s his personality, to be the helper, to make everybody happy. It’s a good quality, but not in every single situation,” she said with exasperation.

  “The night Tad died. What happened?” I asked, and held my breath.

  “It wasn’t Freddy’s fault. It was Tad’s. See, it’s that personality thing again. Tad had to give the orders, had to tell everybody what to do.”

  “The sprinkler sculpture on Hamburger Hill,” I said.

  She looked surprised. “Did Freddy tell you that? I knew he would. Damn, why can’t he just listen?”

  “Before the big storm we had a lot of freezing and thawing. Ice was building up all over the place, including the sprinkler. With all that new snow on the way Tad was afraid the tubes wouldn’t bear the load. He turned it on.”

  “No he didn’t,” said Saline, “Freddy turned it on. Tad was outside, halfway around the other side of the hill, and wouldn’t you know it a big piece of ice went flying off that ridiculous thing and hit him right on the head. Smashed his skull right in.”

  Part of me desperately wanted to reach for my little digital recorder, but I was afraid to break the spell of the moment.

  “The police told me he might have survived the head woun
d,” I said. “That a stab wound actually killed him.”

  “Survived? What sort of survival do you think he’d have? Do you know what happens in this part of the brain?” She turned her head and pointed to the back of her skull. “It’s where you keep your visual cortex. He would have been blind for sure. And who knows what else had been damaged. The left parietal was also involved. Lots of stuff goes on in there.”

  “You finished him off. You killed him.”

  “No, it was a coup de grâce. You know what that means? The mercy blow. It was the only merciful thing to do.”

  “What did you use? A screwdriver, ice pick?”

  “No pick, just ice,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “An icicle.”

  “They were lying all over the place. I inserted the pointy end here”—she pulled up her hair and put her finger beneath the occipital bone—“and just stomped on it. Simple.”

  That explained the absence of a murder weapon. It melted.

  “And you were going to let Franco take the fall. Doesn’t seem too fair,” I said.

  “That obnoxious gigolo? Who cares? Nice to have him gone. We got that extra bedroom back.”

  Even in the most loony conversation, there’s usually an interior logic of some sort. I strived to find it here.

  “Saline,” I said gently, “you’re not going to get to use that bedroom or anything else in that house. You’ve committed two murders. You’ll never get out of prison.”

  She smiled a tight little smile.

  “Well, you see, that’s where this comes in,” she said, pulling a fat syringe out of her canvas bag. “It works under pressure. You just hit the button on top.”

  I grabbed the nearest stack of papers and threw it in her face. There were some heavy items in there, so it made an impact. She cried out and put her left forearm in front of her face. Still brandishing the syringe, she stood up from the couch. By then I was on my way to the control pad for the alarm system. If you pushed two of the numbers at the same time it was the equivalent of a panic button. I didn’t get there in time—Saline and her syringe blocked my path. I heaved another stack of papers, which were in ample supply, though she was ready this time and easily swatted them away.

  I backed deeper into the office. She followed me, keeping a steady distance between us.

  “Saline, don’t do this. I’m your best hope,” I said to her.

  “I don’t want your help. I can help myself just fine. Always have.”

  “We’re family.”

  She guffawed. “Fat lot of good that does. They turn on you in a second.”

  I backed up against my desk, then spun around and snatched up my laptop. Saline backed off a step or two before I had a chance to heave it at her head. She used the hand with the syringe to bat it away, but the crack of the heavy aluminum casing told a story. She switched the syringe to her left hand and put the injured arm against her chest.

  “I think you broke my ulna,” she said in her usual flat tone. “That really hurt.”

  I looked around for something else to throw. Saline made a tentative move toward me.

  “All I have to do is touch you with the needle,” she said. “There’s no point in trying to get away.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  I tossed the security camera monitor at her, followed by Randall’s external hard drive. And a few ceramic coffee cups found scattered about the desk. Saline successfully fended off the barrage. She was a really big woman and, by the look of her, not easily dissuaded by flying objects.

  She moved closer and I did the only thing left for me to do—risky, but unavoidable. I scooped up my terrycloth robe and moved in close enough to throw it over her head. She slashed at me with the syringe, missing by a whisper, though I was already on my way toward the door, not to hit the panic button this time but to retrieve my coat, dropped carelessly on the floor, weighted down by the Glock in the outside pocket.

  She kicked at me, but I leaned out of the way, dove to the floor, shoved my hand into the coat, and felt the familiar composite contours of the automatic. I pulled it out of the pocket, and as soon as Saline had stripped the robe off her head, screamed, “Freeze!”

  “I’m not afraid of that,” she said, the words bursting from her lips.

  “Drop the syringe, or I will shoot you. I really, really will,” I said, sighting down the muzzle pointed at the middle of her chest.

  She seemed undecided. I wished the Glock had a hammer to pull back, to signal my earnest intent, but all I had was the unwavering barrel. I told her I’d shot people before, and would do it again without hesitation.

  “I think you would, now that you mention it,” she said. “You’re almost like a real Swaitkowski. All pigheadedness and crazy fantasy.”

  And then she stuck the syringe directly into her chest and pushed the button.

  25

  To enjoy a funeral can cause a person to feel the worst kind of cognitive dissonance. You’re sad, but even when the occasion is the result of a horrible tragedy, you normally get to see people you haven’t seen for a while, indulge in ancient religious majesty, and if it’s a nice day, get a little fresh air in an interesting place, which the Polish graveyard in Southampton certainly was.

  I also got to wear my funeral outfit, a sleek black dress with a single strand of pearls, which more than one mourner has favorably commented on.

  Saline’s funeral was no different. Father Dent did another masterful job sympathizing with her choice to truncate her troubled life without actually condoning suicide, a mortal sin. With characteristic diplomacy, he also bypassed mention of her role in killing Tad Buczek and her husband, Freddy Lumsden, the latter of whom after all was a Presbyterian and thus already conveniently damned.

  Franco Raffini—whom I finally sprang after long days of wrangling with the District Attorney’s Office—opted out of the event. I couldn’t blame him, considering all the trauma he’d been through and the scant support he’d received from Southampton’s Polish community.

  The other notable person missing from the affair was Zina Buczek, who’d disappeared a few days after Saline’s death, and a day before the ADA had decided to charge her as an accessory to the chop-shop operation. It was later discovered by Sandy Kalandro that she’d managed to extract almost two million dollars from her share of Tad’s estate, a process she began the day after Franco found his body. Where the money went, and if she was able to follow, were unanswered questions.

  Paulina was there, naturally, and less than entirely friendly. I don’t think she would ever fully believe that Saline had wreaked so much havoc, or that she would have killed herself rather than face inevitable ruin.

  The rest of the family was cordial enough, Tad’s massive criminal enterprise having distracted everyone from the circumstances of his death, which the ADA had decided to rule an accident and save everyone a lot of complicated bother.

  Being the only surviving person with full knowledge of the case, I owed a lot of my success in persuading the prosecutors to the unwavering support of Ross Semple. He’d been a homicide detective in the city for years, and still had close contacts in the Carnegie Hill precinct, at this point mostly retired. They told him they’d always suspected Saline, since the deadly overdose of the migraine medicine sumatriptan was delivered by needle, and Mr. Vargo’s prescription was for pills alone. These suspicions were bolstered by statements from the couple’s friends that their relationship was rocky, with Mr. Vargo apparently beginning to see other women. However, given they were both med students with easy access to pharmaceuticals, it was too hard a case to prove.

  I had no problem believing it. My unproveable hypothesis had Saline as a woman for whom men were a constant disappointment. First her young boyfriend in the city, then her husband, whom she saw as an ineffectual sap. Tad himself, for whom she probably felt unrequited love (they’d lived together in that house for a lot of years—you have to wonder how unrequited), was at least a single man until he brought home Zin
a, which must have been a crushing disappointment. Until Zina took up with Franco, and then a little less so.

  Since she’d killed the boyfriend and got away with it, and recovered from a serious emotional breakdown, the act had become no longer inconceivable but even justifiable by her own warped moral code.

  Her death was the end of Saline and the question of Tad’s murder, but it was just the start of another string of events, the most satisfying of which was a sting operation mounted by a team of Long Island detectives on Ivor Fleming’s alchemy business, with Joe Sullivan in the lead. As predicted, containers filled with scrap metal routinely left the plant with engines and transmissions, electronic sensors and controllers, wheel assemblies and sometimes complete cars. It was yet to be seen if the trail could be followed into Brighton Beach, though I seriously doubted it.

  * * *

  And even after all that, I had one piece of unfinished business. Using old phone records, I determined that the call to Donald Pritz was indeed made from his own house, on Franco’s cell phone, which he had reported lost two days before. I also tracked down the guy who had been instructed by Eliz to deliver the rotisserie at a very specific time on a very specific date and to leave it unassembled.

  I uncovered some other interesting things on the big life policy Donald had taken out right before he died. The insurance carrier, whose interest aligned neatly with mine, obtained testimony from an agent that Eliz had pushed for the coverage and that Donald thought it entirely unnecessary.

  With Franco’s credibility at least partly restored, and safe from prosecution via double jeopardy, the ADA was willing to listen to his side of the story and reopen the case. Ross was also willing to investigate further, and the upshot of the whole thing was I got to ride in the patrol car when Southampton Town Police drove over to arrest Eliz Pritz for second-degree, premeditated murder.