Sinister Justice

by Steve Pickens

  Sharon Trumbo poked her head in the office, as if to make sure there wasn’t a new crime scene in the space, stepping cautiously in before sitting at her desk, setting the bag with her soup and salad down. She caught sight of the blue butterfly on her desk and said, “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “Well, this,” she said, picking up the butterfly, “explains why I nearly collided with Dorval on my way in.”

  “Our acting captain has a bee in his bonnet,” said Haggerty.

  “He’s still pissed at Nancy for putting us on the Weinberg thing,” said Sharon dismissively, referring to the other captain in the police force, Nancy Flowers. “He always waits until she’s gone to go to George.”

  “I have noticed that,” he said.

  “How was your dinner with him the other night?” he asked.

  “Don’t remind me,” Sharon said, rolling her eyes. “That’s why he’s in a bad mood. I thoroughly rained on his parade. I told him never to cross the line like that again.”

  “Was he inappropriate?”

  “No,” Sharon said. “Just…sneaky. It wasn’t a date. He is married after all and he really did go over some department policies, but it just felt creepy. I just wish I’d been a little more patient: I could have seen Blackburn Junior punch out Blackburn the Third.”

  “Probably best you didn’t,” Haggerty said. “You know Dorval would have wanted to throw them both in the tank.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right,” she said, fishing out her plastic soupspoon.

  “Chicken noodle?”

  “Chicken and dumpling.”

  “It smells good,” he said wistfully.

  Shaking her head, Sharon pulled out a second container of soup and set it before him. Grinning, he opened the soup and inhaled deeply. “You’re a treasure,” he said.

  “And you are a pain. One of these days when I say I’m going to get lunch I wish you’d just let me get it for you too, since I do that anyway. And you owe me $4.50.”

  Haggerty dug out his wallet and handed her a five-dollar bill. “Keep the extra for me being a pain.”

  “That I can do,” she said, taking a bite out of her salad. “So what’s new?”

  “Leona Weinberg did have apple in her throat, but that wasn’t what caused her death.”

  “What did?”

  “Poison.”

  “Poison?”

  “Digitalis,” Haggerty replied. “Organic, not from any pharmaceutical company.”

  “I knew that was too much to hope for. Where’d it come from?”

  “All over, I expect. Foxglove grows wild all over the place around here. Highway 22 is lined with the stuff.”

  “In the spring and summer.”

  “It’s still deadly when it has died back,” Adam replied.

  “Was it in the apple?” Trumbo asked.

  “Yep. It was in all the apples. Small puncture mark on the uneaten ones, hidden skillfully in the calyx.”

  “The what?” asked Sharon, several years out of a biology class.

  “That bit at the bottom that used to be the flower,” said Adam. Continuing, he said, “And it’s a damn good thing she was a loner. Anyone grabbing one for a snack would have keeled over dead. Every apple in that bowl had a lethal dose in it, three times the amount required to kill an adult human,” said Haggerty. “Not that it takes much to be lethal.”

  “She didn’t taste it?”

  “Digitalis is sweet. It would have been easily masked by the apple.”

  “Okay, so where did the apples come from? You’re acting awfully calm about this when there’s a potential product tampering case here,” said Sharon doubtfully.

  “Nope, not a product tampering case. The apples came from her own backyard. It’s a good thing Leona was greedy and didn’t share any with the other members of the council.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Sharon joked. “Well, with two others on the council…”

  “Sharon,” Haggerty chided gently.

  “Sorry, sorry. So how’d the apples get poisoned?”

  “There was no evidence of a break-in. At first glance anyway. Take a look at this,” said Haggerty, opening his desk drawer and tossing a crime scene photo over to Sharon.

  She picked it up and studied it. It was a color photo of the walk leading up to the front door. Flanking either side of the path spaced at regular intervals was a collection of ugly ceramic dwarves.

  “I saw these while I was there. What am I looking for?”

  “Keep looking at the dwarves,” said Haggerty gently. “Notice anything about them?”

  “Other than they’re all hideous? No.”

  “Keep looking. It’s not readily apparent.”

  “The figure closest to the door is different. The colors are too bright. It’s a hide-a-key, right?”

  “I had it dusted for prints. Nothing, of course, totally wiped clean.”

  “But it was there, right? In a compartment in the bottom?”

  “World’s ugliest one I’ve ever seen, but yes. Which leads me to wonder what that broken one looked like.”

  “Broken one?”

  “Finnigan and O’Conner told me that about two weeks back Weinberg arrived home madder than hell. She accused their dog…” He pulled the report out and began flipping through it. Finally, he found what he wanted. “…Barnaby, a beagle, of breaking her dwarf Bashful.”

  “But the dog didn’t do it,” said Trumbo. “The yard is completely fenced in, and I get the feeling the O’Conner-Finnigan boys keep an eye on their little guy.”

  “He’s a very well-behaved animal. The neighbors across the street and next door said they’ve never seen the dog loose in the neighborhood. O’Conner said he sometimes lets him run around at the park, but never lets him out of sight.”

  “You trust him on that?”

  “I’ve got no reason not to. Your report indicate otherwise?”

  “No. Nothing so much as a traffic ticket, although there was a car accident last year. O’Conner was not at fault. Sister works for the ferry system, mother teaches art at the college and has her studio in town, as you know. Both of them are clean as well. Sam O’Conner has won several design awards for his ships, done some major contracts in this country and abroad and has a sterling reputation. Files his taxes on time, no problems there either. Two things did crop up.”

  “They were?”

  “Domestic violence in his early twenties. Seems a previous boyfriend beat him up pretty badly. Said individual, a…Thomas White, is currently having an extended stay at the pen in Walla Walla courtesy of the state for manslaughter.”

  “Poor guy,” Haggerty said, shaking his head. “O’Conner, that is. He seems like a very gentle soul. Hitting him would be akin to torturing defenseless animals.”

  “Second incident predates that, back when he was just a kid. A little odd…”

  “What was that?”

  “The death of his father. Police found him at the bottom of the Harbor Steps in Seattle. No one came forward to having witnessed the fall, and he had a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit for being intoxicated even back then. It was ruled accidental.”

  “Why is that so odd?”

  “Well, for one thing O’Conner is the mother’s maiden name. She had all their names legally changed two months after the death of the father, one Philip Baker.”

  “Did you run him?”

  “Oh yeah. Rap sheet quite long there—domestic stuff, drunk and disorderly, bar room brawls. Philip Baker was one mean guy, it seems,” said Sharon. “The officer at the scene is retired now but I called him on a hunch. Something in that report just seemed a little off.”

  “This soup is incredible,” said Haggerty, closing his eyes and taking a spoonful, enjoying every flavorful nuance as it spread over his tongue. “What’d the guy say?”

  “Nothing, really, just that something felt a little wrong.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the kid had
a black eye and so did the mother, for one. Allegedly the kid—Sam O’Conner—had a schoolyard fight. Evelyn O’Conner said she had tripped in the garden. She and the kids were living with her brother and sister-in-law at the time. They hadn’t even seen Phil Baker in three or four years, so they said. They claim not to have seen him the night in question, either.”

  “Okay, that is a little weird,” Haggerty admitted. “You don’t think the kid had anything to do with it, do you?”

  “No, and neither did the guy I spoke to. He wasn’t certain about Evelyn O’Conner or the brother either, but let it go because the brother was good friends with the police chief, the mayor and the county prosecutor to name a few. And, in any event, he said he knew the world was better off without a bastard like Phil Baker in it so he dropped it.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” said Haggerty. “What about the Finnigan brothers?”

  “The elder, Jason, has a lead foot. Several speeding tickets, all paid on time. Former photojournalist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Was known as professional and polite by the SFPD. Covered a few of the more gruesome cases down there. Editor at the Chronicle feels he didn’t really have the stomach for what he was doing so he left.”

  “That happens,” said Haggerty, thinking of the first murder he’d ever seen. It had nearly been his last. He glanced up at the photo Jason had taken now adorning their wall. “I would say his talents certainly lie elsewhere anyway.”

  “I’d agree. I love that photo. He’s got a great eye, and that would be wasted on crime scenes. I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Emerson’s attic.”

  “That was a rough one.”

  He smiled at her, nodding. There was a reason Sharon Trumbo was his partner. They simply worked well together, each bringing their own unique perspective to a case. Sharon’s laser-like perceptions had been off-putting to most of her partners in the past, just as Haggerty’s eccentricities had alienated him from most of the other detectives in the force. For some reason, his and Trumbo’s styles just melded, and the results were truly remarkable.

  “What else on the older brother?”

  “That’s about it. He was the victim of identity theft in San Francisco and had a heck of a time repairing his credit. Other than that, he’s just been hired on at the Examiner as photographer and archivist.”

  “And the brutally honest younger brother?”

  “Well, you remember the Susan Crane case. He was one of the folks on board the ferry Elwha who found her body.”

  “All too well,” said Haggerty, considering. “Maybe that is why he so keenly denied poking his nose into the investigation. He looked really shaken by that.”

  “I think I know why.”

  “Oh? What else?”

  “I’ll get to it. The background check didn’t reveal anything in the last several years. Works for the ferry system and has for about eight years. Currently on a leave of absence. Prior to that, went to school at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Grew up in Port Jefferson across Admiralty Inlet. No criminal background at all.”

  “In short, not likely to have snuck over to Leona Weinberg’s house with a syringe full of distilled foxglove,” said Haggerty. “What prompted the other comment?”

  “Well, he had no criminal background, but the Port Jefferson PD remembers him very well.”

  “Oh?” Haggerty said.

  “Yeah. Back when he was in high school, his best friend was murdered. It seems Mr. Finnigan wrote a scathing letter and published it in the school paper. The local newspaper picked it up, and then the Seattle affiliates. Caused a bit of trouble.”

  “From a high school kid’s letter?”

  “Finnigan does his research. It was a blistering accusation of homophobia. He accused the police of ignoring the case because his friend was gay. Most of the police took it for what it was—the emotional outpouring of someone who’d just lost their best friend since early childhood, but it triggered an investigation into the department by the state.”

  “Hmm, what’d they find?”

  She sighed and said, “You want my gut feeling?”

  He arched an eyebrow at her.

  “I think his accusations had some merit. It was big good ol’ boys club at the Port Jefferson PD back then. Other than the one detective who spent a good deal of time on the case, it was shoved under the rug. There was basically nothing to go on, but I got the impression they didn’t do as much as they could have.”

  “And the state?” asked Haggerty.

  “It’s between the lines. You know how stuff like that goes. They found they could have probably done more, but that they’d really done nothing wrong. Finnigan didn’t file a complaint.”

  “Well, you were right,” Haggerty said. “That explains some things.”

  “What exactly were you thinking?”

  “Do you remember seeing him on the ferry last year?” Haggerty asked.

  “No. I was so mad when that idiot Danvers came on board and ordered us all off, I hardly remember anything else about that day.”

  “When I first saw him, he was shaking, and not just from the cold. I’d guess borderline shock. His face had a very haunted look to it, and I couldn’t place what it was. I knew he was upset. Who wouldn’t be after seeing that? But I could tell it ran deeper with him.”

  “With what happened to his friend, it would be hard not to flash back on that,” Sharon said.

  “Exactly. Who killed his friend?”

  She shrugged. “No one knows. The case is still open. Ice cold, but still open.”

  “Well, that explains a little too,” he said. He looked at Sharon. “You think any of them had anything to do with Leona’s demise?”

  “I can’t see it. I suppose people have done it for less, but I trust your instincts. When you say O’Conner is about as threatening as a butterfly, you’re right. He didn’t even defend himself when his ex-boyfriend was beating him. Neither Finnigan brother has what I’d call a predisposition to violence. What did you think of their assessment of the argument they had with her?”

  “Pretty tame stuff,” said Haggerty, picking up a piece of kami paper and making two quick folds on it. “Leona Weinberg was an established bigot, as was well demonstrated at the town hall meeting two weeks ago. However, they’d both been living in a well-preserved state of ignoring one another, which all the neighbors agreed upon as well.”

  “Any of the other neighbors suspects?”

  “No. And now that we’ve got approximate time of death, we’ve got to find out what Mrs. Weinberg was doing in the hours leading up to her eating that poisoned apple.”

  “And how someone could have snuck in there and poisoned them,” said Sharon. “High Street is lighted pretty well. Even with the key, you’d think someone would have seen something suspicious.”

  “All working families in that area. Even if Finnigan and O’Conner were home, you can’t see Weinberg’s house that well from theirs, the way it is set into that lot. The backyard has a high fence. And right behind that fence…”

  “Part of the Sky to Sea Trail,” said Sharon.

  “Currently it runs out at the park at McDougal Lake. There are plenty of places to park, walk up the trail, and hop that pathetic fence Weinberg has there. Right in the corner, next to—”

  “The apple tree. Yeah, I see that. You can’t see into the backyard easily from either of the neighbors. You could take your time. Pick some apples off the tree or even some good ones off the ground, poison them right there, then—”

  “Use the key to open the back door, since it’s the same lock.”

  “The key which had already been procured in the dark some time before.”

  “Slip in, exchange the apples, slip out. Then it is only a matter of time before Leona picks up one of them and takes a bite.”

  “There’s a lot of ifs there, Adam.”

  He handed her the origami crane. “I know it. But we know one thing. Poisoning someone takes patience. It ta
kes planning and care,” he said, suddenly laughing.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Well, that more than anything clears Mr. Finnigan in my mind. If Leona Weinberg had been shot dead in her tracks, I’d be more suspicious of him. He just doesn’t strike me as the patient type,” said Haggerty, massaging the lump still on the back of his head.

  “You’re right. Which means we’ve got one scary killer out there.”

  “More than we might realize.”

  “The thermostat?”

  Haggerty nodded. “Finnigan’s right. Someone turned that up, and I’m willing to bet it wasn’t Leona, a well-known cheapskate.”

  “Which means whoever killed her…”

  “Was watching and waiting.”

  “And willing to risk going back in there again even after he’d accomplished his goal,” said Sharon with a shiver.

  “Yeah. Clever, observant, patient, and willing to take risks.”

  “A deadly combination.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The blinking cursor seemed to mock him. He picked up a pen, and drummed it on his lips, glancing out the small half-window of the basement at the leaves drifting past. Jake shut the computer down and went up the stairs to the second floor and looked around the spare bedroom, his eyes drawn to the window facing Leona Weinberg’s house. He deliberately looked away, turning to the far window at the Crenshaw house across the street. The recent winds had taken down most of the leaves, but some were still coming down in the breeze currently swirling outside.

  Jake had heard from Phyllis Crenshaw that a distant nephew was coming out to settle the estate. Jake assumed the place would be sold and wondered how hard it would be to sell it with a death having occurred in the home.

  Again, he found himself wracked with a sudden sadness for his bigoted neighbor. She had died alone with no one who cared near her. He wondered what it had been that had finally done her in. Perhaps it had been a sudden attack of acute bigotry and she had flopped over like a fish out of a net. He had a sudden image of Leona Weinberg with a fish body floundering around on the floor and had to stifle a laugh, feeling instantly guilty.

  “Oh knock it off,” he said aloud. “She was a horrible old bat, and if she died alone and friendless, that’s her own damn fault.”