Collateral Damage

by Austin S. Camacho

  “I’m sorry,” Dean said in a small voice. “I didn’t mean to make a mess. I just went over to Oscar’s. To talk.”

  “Oscar Peters?” Joan continued to speak only to Hannibal.

  “Dean says Oscar’s dead,” Hannibal said. “I was just getting ready to call the police.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joan said, hands raised. “Police. Shouldn’t we know for sure what happened first? I mean, we don’t even know if anyone’s dead. Why don’t we go around there and see what Dean saw? Oscar could be lying there in need of first aid or something.”

  “You’re right,” Bea said, clearly considering for the first time that Dean’s report might not be accurate. “He could just look dead. Maybe we should send an ambulance.”

  “I need some sanity here, Jones,” Joan said in a sarcastic tone. “He was driving my car and it’s covered with blood. Don’t you think we ought to check out the situation?”

  -10-

  The man running out of Oscar Peters’ house was much too tall to be its owner. But half a block away from the nearest street lamp, that was all Hannibal could tell about him.

  Joan had ridden with him because Cindy cautioned that no one should touch Joan’s car. In a worst-case scenario, the police might accuse them all of an attempt to obstruct justice by tampering with evidence. They had barely left Hannibal’s car when the house’s front door opened. Joan called out Oscar’s name and rushed ahead. Hannibal purposely hung back a bit, to see what interaction there might be between them. But then Joan stopped dead in her tracks, the man on the porch stared at her for a split second, looked at Hannibal beyond her, and sprinted down the street. Only then could Hannibal judge his height. He was much too tall to be Oscar, with long, black, stringy hair. He wore a black silk shirt and black jeans.

  Hannibal charged down the street behind the running man. His breath came in short puffs while his body adjusted to the chase, but in seconds he was in his distance runner groove, arms pumping, lungs expanding to accept all the oxygen they could drag out of the air.

  The stranger was a suspect, possibly a murderer. With him in hand, no mystery would face Hannibal. Dean Edwards would be in no danger, his mother would be in the clear, and Bea could perhaps convince him to return to a normal life. All of that was motivation driving Hannibal down the street behind the rapid-fire clop clop of his quarry’s footfalls.

  But the other man appeared to be driven by fear. That perhaps gave him an adrenal edge. In thirty seconds of running he had opened his lead to almost a block and then he turned the corner to the left. Hannibal cursed his suit coat and dress shoes as he watched the man disappear around the house on the corner. Hannibal still followed, nearly falling as he rounded the corner himself. Then he coasted to a stop.

  Hannibal found himself on a narrow deserted lane. He moved to the middle of the street and pulled off his shades. Then he rested his hands on his knees and drew deep breaths as he scanned the street. His man could have run into any of the houses, or possibly reached the corner and turned either way. Of course, he could be hiding anywhere in the darkness. He dropped his head, mentally berating himself for being unprepared and missing a rare chance.

  His head snapped up at the roar of a big engine coming to life. On the right side of the street a big car pulled away from the curb from behind another parked vehicle. Its headlights stabbed into his eyes as he tried in vain to see the person behind the windshield. Too slowly his mind registered that it was coming right at him. Too tired to run or reach for his pistol, Hannibal leaped to the side and rolled onto the sidewalk. As the big sedan pulled away he caught a fleeting glimpse of the license plate. Then his murder suspect disappeared down the darkened street.

  On the long slow walk back to Oscar’s house, Hannibal realized he could smell his own sweat from running in his black suit, which had picked up quite a bit of dirt while he rolled along the street. There was a nasty scuff on the toe of his left shoe. He opened the top button of his white shirt and pulled his tie away from his throat an inch or two. He had almost reached his destination before he could clearly see Joan sitting on the steps leading up to the porch. As she came within sight he slid his glasses back into place.

  “Did you catch him?” Joan asked, getting to her feet. She smoothed her skirt as if she were just rising from a board meeting.

  “Afraid not,” Hannibal said. “He managed to reach his car and take off. So did you go in?”

  “Are you kidding? There might be a dead body in there.” Joan jerked her thumb toward the door and moved out of Hannibal’s path.

  Clearly, bodies were his business. He pushed the door open slowly with a gloved hand and took one step inside. The dining room light played over the stark ghastly scene displayed like a waxwork in the living room. Hannibal stepped carefully around the edge of the room to reach the corner living room torchere.

  “You might want to stay on the porch, Miss.”

  More light didn’t make it any more pleasant. Oscar Peters lay on his back, his head turned to his left. He still wore his glasses but behind them, his eyes were empty. His cheek was stuck to the floor by the large pool of blood. A couple of quarts had leaked out across the hardwood floor there, actually pumped out through his jugular vein. Oscar might have been staring over at Dean’s footprint in the red pool. His face was frozen in shock. Well, yes, getting murdered is often a surprise.

  Hannibal crouched beside the body, trying to hold a mental photograph of this last view of Oscar Peters. His facial expression was the result of the stab wound, one deep thrust to the solar plexus with the flat of the blade held horizontally. Too thick for a kitchen knife. Hannibal could picture the killer putting a hand behind Oscar’s neck, or perhaps an arm around his shoulders, holding him still while he pushed his camp knife or hunting blade up into Oscar’s middle.

  “Oh dear God.” That sound from behind Hannibal meant that Joan had decided to come in after all. Well, now she knew why he wanted her to stay on the porch. Hannibal looked toward Oscar’s pale face. The slash wound across his throat was deeper and from the pool of blood, must have been deeper still on Oscar’s left side. Hannibal again saw the killer in his mind, stepping behind Oscar, sinking his blade into the left side of Oscar’s throat through the big vein, then yanking it to the right and dropping him. No, not dropping him. He would have landed face down then. The killer must have stepped back and lowered Oscar to the floor.

  Finally Hannibal lifted Oscar’s cold arm and tried to bend it up a little. Judging by the stiffness, Oscar was at least two hours dead. Then Hannibal stood, recalling his brief tenure as a homicide detective in New York City. He remembered seeing lots more damage done to men. This was, in fact, the kind of neat work so often done by professionals and the mentally unstable.

  “Now, Miss Kitteridge,” Hannibal said without looking at her. “Now I think it’s time to call the police.”

  Hannibal was pleased to see he had judged Joan correctly. Most people are frozen into shock by the sight of a dead body but she gritted her teeth, nodded her head, and reached into her purse for her phone. She did turn her back to the death, and step back out to sit on the porch while dialing. That was fine by Hannibal. He intended to stay in the house for a few more minutes.

  Guilt was creeping in around the edges of his heart. While he quickly toured the house’s first floor he was driven by more than a need to avoid Dean being charged with murder. For now he wouldn’t think of that. He would look for some clue to who would want this little man dead.

  Hannibal found nothing of a personal nature on the ground floor, if you discounted the knickknacks and kitchen utensils, so carefully matched and coordinated as to betray an obsessive attention to detail. Even Cindy didn’t have salt and pepper shakers that matched the napkin holder, the toothpick holder, the canister set, and even the breadbox for God’s sake. In Hannibal’s mind, this guy was turning out to be a combined cliché. Everything he saw was what he would expect to find in the home of a young gay computer geek.

/>   Upstairs was almost as infuriating. It was Hannibal’s experience that you learned about a person from the nature of the mess they left. Nothing is as individual as the type of disorder we each leave behind. But Oscar Peters left none. Empty garbage cans. A totally orderly bathroom that did, at least, reveal enough in the products he kept to confirm his lifestyle. Quite a variety, in fact, of scents, oils and lubricants. Hannibal could only imagine how they came into play during contact between two male bodies. Closing the medicine cabinet he found himself staring into his own shaded eyes.

  “But that’s no reason to let a man die,” he told himself aloud.

  The other source of information Hannibal usually counted on was the clutter of paper most of us accumulate. A careful search yielded little there. Photo albums, address books, store receipts all told a person’s story. But Oscar lived a nearly paperless existence. Hannibal assumed all such records were in his personal computer in digital form, and he would not have nearly enough time to find them.

  The only papers in Oscar’s bedroom lay neatly in a folder in his side table. Most of its contents consisted of a series of airline ticket stubs. Canada, Australia, Japan, and Russia all in the last year. The man got around.

  The rest were personal letters, each folded and stored in the envelope it arrived in. The envelopes bore a return address in Heidelberg, Germany. Hannibal recognized the street because he had spent time not far from it. He opened and read the most recent letter, which turned out to be from Oscar’s mother. Oscar’s parents, Foster and Ruth Peters, had decided to remain in Germany when Foster retired from the Army. In her letter, Ruth was trying to convince her son to visit them and patch up his differences with his father. Their disagreement apparently stemmed from Oscar’s disapproval of his father’s job as a Military Policeman.

  The guilt twisted Hannibal’s stomach harder. His own father had been an MP. When he was killed in Vietnam, Hannibal’s mother raised him there in her native Berlin. Sergeant Jones may even have served with Foster Peters.

  Then Hannibal’s brow knit and he returned quickly to the airline ticket stubs. Not one to Germany. London was the closest he got. All over the world, but not one visit to his parents. He had been kept away by a feud that, according to his mother, started when he was in high school, almost fifteen years ago. And now, she would have to be told her Oscar died without reconciling with his father. Just as Hannibal’s father died, a continent away, with no warning, no final hug, no good-bye.

  The stairs seemed so much longer on the way down. Cool fresh air washed his face when he opened the door, and Joan turned to him. Her expression was both hopeful and expectant. He had nothing to offer her except an address he had written on his note pad.

  “Oscar’s parents. You’ll want to notify them.”

  “Yes, of course,” Joan said, accepting the slip of paper as if it was much heavier than it appeared. Then they both turned to face the street and stood side by side in the gathering silence. After a few moments the silence became as heavy as that slip of paper. Joan wrapped her arms around her designer jacket.

  “It’s getting cold.”

  “Yes, probably two hours old,” Hannibal said before he realized his mind was not on the same track as Joan’s. “Sorry, I guess that sounded pretty callous.”

  “No,” Joan said with half a laugh. “I can’t think of anything else either.”

  Actually Hannibal couldn’t get the cupric smell of Oscar’s blood out of his mind, but he didn’t feel the need to share that with this woman who knew the deceased in business and, as Oscar told it, socially as well. “I suppose you’ve been thinking about who would want him dead.”

  “I know it’s a cliché, but as far as I know Oscar didn’t have an enemy in the world.” She turned to face Hannibal, staring as if she could see deep into his eyes through his sunglasses. “Can you tell me how a person can do that? Push a knife into another person’s body?”

  Hannibal could, but chose not to. He leaned against the pillar holding the porch roof up, and felt paint crumble behind his shoulder. “He traveled a lot, didn’t he?”

  “For business,” Joan replied. “The computer industry holds conventions all over the world. It’s an easy way to reward good workers.”

  “But none in Europe,” Hannibal said. “None he could take advantage of to visit his parents.”

  “He never accepted the trips to Germany,” Joan said. “And I never asked why.”

  A siren trailed off as a car with a flashing light on its roof rounded the corner. Two more followed and all parked in front of Hannibal’s car. Hannibal knew what to expect and took Joan’s arm to pull her to the side on the porch. A dozen or more men flowed out of the three cars like flies from burst melons. Or perhaps bees, Hannibal thought, because they gathered and buzzed around one central figure for a moment, as if getting instructions from the queen in a hive. Then, as if on some silent signal, they surged forward, not looking left or right, straight up the steps and into the house. The one man left outside walked behind them with the slow pace that is the privilege of the man in charge. He stopped in front of Joan, opened a wallet to display his badge and pulled out a notebook.

  “Stan Thompson, ma’am. I’m the detective in charge of this investigation. I’ll be back in a moment to ask you a few questions if that’s all right.” Joan gave a dull nod in response to his calm, almost smiling face. Thompson reminded Hannibal of a wall: tall wide and flat. His broad shoulders were part of that image. The pug nose and thin lips highlighted it. Even his straw-like hair seemed two-dimensional. He even wore a stone gray suit. When he turned to enter the house, Hannibal was almost surprised he didn’t fall over. But since he was being ignored, Hannibal figured he would follow and learn whatever else he could.

  Which, as it turned out, wasn’t much. Thompson stood just inside the doorway for maybe a minute staring down at the corpse. Finally, he nodded his head and muttered, “I’ve seen this before.” Then he turned so suddenly he nearly stepped into Hannibal.

  “And you are?” Thompson asked.

  Hannibal gave his name as he stepped back onto the porch. Thompson switched on the porch light and turned back to Joan. Hannibal leaned against the low front wall of the porch, to Thompson’s left and Joan’s right. Thompson stood with pen and pad in hand, focused entirely on the woman before him.

  “First I want to thank you for calling us, ma’am. Can you tell me how you came to find the deceased here?”

  Whether it was his bluntness or his calmness, or the fact that he made no attempts to establish any kind of rapport with her, Joan was frozen. Her mouth moved a few times but no sound came out. For his part, Thompson stood patiently waiting for her to eventually answer. Hannibal noticed how harsh the lighting was on her face, casting hard black shadows that made her look much older than she was.

  “She didn’t,” Hannibal said. “A man who is my client discovered him here less than an hour ago and told me and Ms. Kitteridge about it.”

  When Thompson turned to him, Hannibal produced his credentials and a card. Thompson stared hard at both, as if they answered his next few questions. When he had worked his way through them he moved on to the questions he still needed answers for.

  “Your client’s name?”

  “Dean Edwards,” Hannibal said. “He’s up in Arlington right now.”

  Thompson began rocking back and forward from heels to toes. A sign of agitation Hannibal guessed. Now he ignored Joan. Hannibal had the impression this man could only encompass one person at a time.

  “He didn’t call the police when he found... this?”

  “Mister Edwards was upset,” Hannibal said. “This man was his friend. And we weren’t sure if he was in fact dead. Mister Edwards has had some problems of an emotional nature.”

  Thompson’s eyes came up from his pad without his head moving. “I see. Did you know the deceased?”

  “Ms. Kitteridge is his employer,” Hannibal said. Then in a lower voice he added, “I met him today.”


  “All right. Now what about this man Ms. Kitteridge mentioned in her phone call who was here when you arrived?” Thompson had turned a corner in his questions, but Hannibal knew he’d come back to the earlier line. He was a good cop who knew how to question a witness.

  “Tall Caucasian male dressed in dark clothes, and a hell of a fast runner,” Hannibal said. “Escaped in a large dark four door sedan with out of state plates that start with the numbers 902.”

  “You couldn’t even see the make of the car?”

  “It was dark,” Hannibal said, looking down. He knew his guilt must be showing by now.

  “How did you come to know the deceased?”

  There it was. The lead to the pivotal question. The guilt that was clawing at Hannibal’s mind suddenly burst in, and just as suddenly burst out through his mouth. “I was here earlier today. Mister Peters told me he thought his life was in danger. He told me he had received death threats.”

  “Really? And what did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Hannibal said through clenched teeth. “I didn’t believe him. I didn’t do a damned thing, all right? I blew it off and just a few hours later I’m standing here and he’s.....” It took just that long for Hannibal to regain his grasp on the guilt and shove it back down deep into his gut where it would churn and gurgle like a bad piece of meat, but he determined not to let it come spewing out again.

  Detective Thompson looked at Hannibal as if he recognized what was happening to him. “When you’ve had a little time to think this through, then we’ll both know this wasn’t your fault. I know something of this Edwards and I’ve got a feeling he’ll be able to tell us more than you might think. In fact he’s the obvious suspect, isn’t he? We’ll know more of course, after we speak to him.”

  Joan’s voice was an unexpected intrusion. “I don’t think you will.” When Thompson turned to her, she said, “Mister Edwards is also in my employ. And right now he’s under a doctor’s care so I don’t think you should be harassing him. Besides, your most obvious suspect is the man we saw running from the scene, don’t you think?”