“Still,” I put in, “his killer would have to be someone strong, don’t you think?”
“Fairly strong,” Slawski conceded.
“Could a woman have done it?”
“I seen it happen, dude,” Very said. “Domestic dispute in Hell’s Kitchen couple of years ago. Woman did her boyfriend with one: Guy was big as a fridge. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, but she was a natural. Mechanics of her swing were perfect, is what I’m saying. Generated as much head speed at the point of impact as Frank Thomas taking the Rocket Man downtown.”
“A woman could not have hoisted the victim into that cart,” Slawski pointed out.
“True,” Very allowed.
“How about a boy?” I asked.
“Depend on the boy,” Very replied. “Why, you got something on Arvin?”
“Do they know what time Thor was killed, Trooper?”
“Not precisely, what with him being in that cold pond water. They estimate between eleven and eleven-thirty.”
“Was there a struggle?”
“No preliminary evidence of one. Victim’s hands showed residual bruising consistent with the fight at Slim Jim’s on Saturday. But he had no fresh scratches, nothing under his nails.” Slawski cleared his throat uneasily. “Mr. Hoag, there was one other finding of possible significance …” I heard a slow intake of breath. “… to do with the victim’s pancreas.”
“What about it?”
“He had a malignancy. Man was terminal. What I mean is, he had six, maybe twelve months to live. His estranged wife says she knew nothing about it. Neither did his doctor, who last saw him two years ago, at which time he was pronounced in perfect health. Did you know, Mr. Hoag?”
I didn’t answer him right away. I couldn’t. For some reason, learning this about Thor had made him come back to life for me again. Fragile, painful life. “I did not,” I replied quietly. “I wonder if he did.”
“Dude’s got six months to live, he knows,” Very declared.
“Not necessarily, Lieutenant,” I countered. “They call pancreatic cancer the silent killer—people often don’t know they have it until it’s way too late.” Still, if Thor had known, it explained a lot. Such as why he was pushing himself and everyone around him so hard. Did it explain Clethra, too? Did it explain why he’d run off with her?
Slawski was talking again: “There were no fingerprints on the weapon. His attacker wore gloves. A thread got caught in the handle of the garden cart. Common cotton work gloves, available anywhere. No prints on the garden pruners either. Traces of the victim’s blood and tissue were found on the blades.”
“Was the penis severed post-mortem or ante-mortem?” That was Very speaking. I don’t use words like ante-mortem. Or at least I try not to.
“Post,” answered Slawski.
“Is there any way of knowing if the same person committed both acts?” That was me.
“At present, there is no evidence to support the theory that multiple perpetrators were involved.”
Very said, “What about shoe prints?”
“Investigators are still on mud detail,” said Slawski. “But I ain’t optimistic. They got dog and cat prints, ducks, raccoon, deer. They got the garden cart coming and going, the baby buggy. They got a light but steady rain falling before they sealed the area. They do got a few partials so far, which they’ll be looking to match up with Mr. Hoag, Miss Nash, their hired man and so forth. But mostly what they got there is a real mess.”
“I apologize, Trooper,” I snapped. “Next time someone dies there I’ll make sure I drag a rake across it beforehand.”
“Chill, dude,” Very cautioned me.
“I wasn’t casting any aspersions,” Slawski said crisply.
“I know you weren’t,” I said, running my hand through what was left of my hair. “I was out of line. Anything else?”
“Yessir,” he replied. “Lieutenant Munger has officially eliminated the crew from Slim Jim’s. Kirk Bennett and his posse were out on a charter boat catching blues at the time of the homicide. Left New London at six in the morning, came back at two in the afternoon. Got dozens of people can vouch for ’em. So the lieutenant won’t be stumbling down that particular alley no more.” Slawski didn’t say how unhappy this particular development made him. He didn’t have to. “We can cross off your hired man, too.”
“You’ve been checking out Dwayne?” I asked, somewhat surprised.
“We had to,” Slawski said. “Matter of routine. But you can set your mind at ease—he was helping his mom around the house all morning. Nice lady. Still think she got a bum rap.” He coughed and went silent after that.
“It doesn’t sound as if you have very much to go on, Trooper,” I concluded.
“We’re still in the preliminary stages. We have a great deal of evidence to compile. Numerous alternative leads to pursue …”
I tried it again, louder this time. “It doesn’t sound as if you have much to go on, Trooper.”
“We got shit,” he admitted. “And that’s no lie. Lieutenant Munger is requesting that Ruth Feingold, Barry Feingold and Marco Paolo return later this week for formal questioning.”
“What the hell kind of name is Marco Paolo?” Very wondered.
“A fake one,” I told him.
“Her boy Arvin’s coming too,” Slawski added. “You’re welcome to sit in, Lieutenant Very.”
“I’m there,” Very said.
“I didn’t know you ever left the city, Lieutenant.”
“Oh, sure. I’m cool as long as I’m safely home on the streets by nightfall. Check, that Ruth Feingold practically shot my ears off this afternoon. She’s some kind of pistol.”
“I’m down to that,” Slawski agreed.
“Just us three gees spitballing, though, I’m liking Barry for both killings. Solid motive for taking out Gibbs—father protecting his daughter—plus he’s super-vague about his whereabouts when it went down.”
“And his motive for killing Tyler?” I asked.
“Dude trashed his daughter. Payback time.”
“I understand you have your own medical examiner’s preliminary findings, Lieutenant,” said Slawski.
“You understand right.”
“That was fast,” I said.
“We’re talking high-profile case here. Rich kid dies in his room at Columbia he goes right to the head of the line. Not that I’m gonna dish you word one, dude,” he said to me, as laid-back as can be. “Not until you give me some. First you gotta give me some.”
“Why, Lieutenant, whatever do you—?”
“With this guy you gotta trade,” he explained to Slawski. To me he said, “Gimme.”
“As you wish.” I gave him Barry’s ex-lover, the one who was his supposed alibi for when Thor was killed. Which means I also gave him the HIV angle. Very promised he’d be discreet. I knew I could count on it. I did not give him Arvin and Clethra and what Tyler knew about the two of them. It was Barry he liked for it. I gave him Barry. “Satisfied?” I asked him.
“For now,” he replied, with that new and unnerving chuckle of his. “Okay, I got me a strangler with an average-sized pair of hands—”
“Average for a man or for a woman?” I broke in.
“Ruth could have done it, if that’s what you’re tripping on. Victim was a twerp—five-feet-six, a hundred and thirty pounds, almost no muscle tone. Ruth outweighed him by a good hundred pounds, and she’s got a helluva grip on her. I made sure—I shook her hand.”
“She’s no shrinking violet,” I concurred, wondering again about my teenaged celebrity. Could she have strangled Tyler with those soft, pudgy little hands of hers? “Trooper, did the man guarding the farm today mention anything about Clethra going out?”
“He said she didn’t. Why?”
“Just curious. Please continue, Lieutenant.”
“Time of death,” Very went on, “was somewhere between seven-thirty and eight o’clock this morning. Our three prime suspects all claim the
y were home at the time … Ruth was home alone working on a speech.”
“Arvin had left for school?” I asked.
“Correct. He left the house at seven-twenty, arrived at the Dalton School by subway in time for class at eight … Barry and Marco swear they were still in bed asleep.”
“Is it possible one of them was and one of them wasn’t?” Slawski asked.
“Very,” I said.
“Yeah, what is it, dude?” he asked.
“I’m saying it’s very possible,” I explained wearily.
“Mucho possible,” he agreed. “It’s also possible, we end up with nothing but bupkes, we can maybe pry them two lovebirds apart. But as of this minute, they’re sticking together.”
“Wait a minute, Lieutenant,” I pointed out, “Tyler Kampmann couldn’t have been murdered between seven-thirty and eight o’clock.”
“Why not?” A testy little edge crept back into his voice for the first time. It made me downright nostalgic for the old Very.
“Ian from across the hall spoke to him at a few minutes before nine,” I replied.
Right away Very started breathing in and out, in and out. “Ian must be mistaken,” he said gently.
“I don’t see how he could be, Lieutenant,” I argued. “He was on his way to a nine o’clock class. He pounded on Tyler’s door to see if Tyler was coming. Tyler said no. They’d been out partying late.”
Very stayed calm. “Okay, I can’t explain it, dude,” he conceded blandly. Damn, it was strange. “Coroner might be off. It happens.”
“Did anyone else on Tyler’s floor see or hear anything?”
“No one saw him all morning. And no one saw anyone who didn’t belong there. Security guard downstairs swears no one could have sneaked by him.”
Slawski sniffed. “Man’s bound to swear that. Job’s on the line.”
“Agreed,” said Very. “I’m going back up there to show him a photo of Ruth. Barry and Marco, too. You never know.”
“I’d show him a picture of Clethra as well,” I suggested.
“Why?”
“You never know.” I sat there on the edge of the bed, mulling it all over. Merilee was running the shower now, her bath completed. “Is it possible that these two murders aren’t related at all?”
“Possible,” Very admitted. “But not likely.”
“But why mutilate Thor and not Tyler?”
“Matter of being practical,” he offered. “Small dorm room, crowded floor. Perp had to make it quick and quiet.”
“Okay, but why go to the trouble of hiding one body and not the other?”
“Same reason, dude. Where the hell you gonna hide a dead guy in an eight-by-ten room?”
“Good answer, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks. Does Lieutenant Munger have any ideas, Trooper?”
“If he does he ain’t sharing ’em with me.”
“Or me,” Very said. “All I can get out of him is attitude. What’s the gee’s problem, anyway?”
“I just assumed he had a certain personal difficulty with African-American individuals,” Slawski answered stiffly.
“Could be,” Very suggested, “he’s just an all-around schmuck.”
“I’m down to that,” Slawski agreed.
“Dude?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Anyone else’s photo I should be showing to the security guard?”
“Arvin.”
“You got some reason to believe the kid’s involved?”
“I’ve got no reason to believe he isn’t.”
“What aren’t you telling me, dude?” he persisted, his voice growing heavy with apprehension.
“Nothing that I can share with you at the present time.”
“You’re trying to destroy me, aren’t you? You’re purposely trying to destroy me!”
“Why, Lieutenant, whatever do you—?”
“I knew this was gonna happen,” he fumed. “The second I laid eyes on you!” He was getting good and agitated now. He almost sounded like his old, normal self. “I knew it!”
“Careful, Lieutenant. Think of your brain waves.”
“What seems to be the difficulty here?” Slawski wondered.
“The problem is this gee’s all the time getting in my face!” Very roared.
“I heard that. He the Piffle Man.”
“He tells me my business. He withholds key information from me—”
“Uh-huh,” Slawski chimed in. “That’s right.”
“He stirs up every single person he comes in contact with—”
“You the man.” Slawski egging him on. “Uh-huh!”
“And then, just when he’s managed to turn a neat, orderly investigation into a rat’s nest of nutsiness and hysteria, he pulls some bonehead play that just about gets everybody killed. And guess who he leaves to pick up the pieces? Me! Always me!” Very stopped short, breathing heavily into the phone, in and out, in and out. “But he doesn’t get under my skin anymore,” he insisted, his voice as soft and sweet as warm maple syrup. “That was the old me.”
“I surely would like to know how you manage it, Lieutenant,” Slawski said. “On account of, dig, I could use me some of that.”
This seemed like a really good time for me to hang up. I left the two of them to hash over the details, pleased that they were starting to bond.
And even more puzzled than I had been. Sometimes, as more information comes to light, the picture becomes clearer. This wasn’t one of those times. Thor had been a dying man. Had he known about it? Is that why he’d shown up on my doorstep? And what about Marco? For some reason Barry’s volatile lover kept nagging at me. Was there something about Marco I was overlooking? Some personal stake he had in Thor’s affair with Clethra? Some connection between him and Tyler? What was I missing?
The phone rang not ten seconds after I’d hung up.
“The police,” Ruth Feingold blustered, “think I killed them both.”
“The police,” I said, “don’t know what to think.”
“Where’s Clethra?” she demanded. “And don’t you dare lie to me.”
“In Connecticut.”
“What, alone?”
“She wanted some time to herself.”
“I see,” she said harshly.
“She’s got a lot on her mind, Ruth. Don’t crowd her or you’ll drive her further away.”
“What the hell do you know about teenagers?”
“Plenty. I still am one.”
That silenced her for a moment. No small feat. “Hoagy, did Thor … did he say anything to you about his health?”
“Not a word.”
“Maybe this explains some of his …” She trailed off, groping around in the eternal dark for some comfort. “How he behaved. Maybe it had already gotten to his brain. That can happen.”
“It can,” I agreed. Who was I to take this crumb of solace away from her?
“I always used to joke about how he was the living embodiment of the dead white male. And now …” She let out a sob. “The poor bastard.”
“Just give Clethra some time to sort through things, Ruth. She’ll come back to you. She’s a good kid.”
“She’s a bitch,” Ruth snarled. “It runs in the family.” And with that she hung up.
Merilee came padding in from the bath in her silk dressing gown. “Darling, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I could have sworn I just heard you say Clethra was a good kid.”
“You must be imagining things.” I glanced up at her standing there, all dewy and fragrant, her cheeks flushed. Tired as always, to be sure. But she’d never seemed lovelier to me than she did at that moment. “Clethra slept in our bed last night.”
“Did she?” she said mildly. “And where did you sleep?”
“In our bed. She came up in the middle of the night. She was frightened. She had a claw hammer.”
“Oh, that old ploy.” Merilee went over to her dressing table and began pawing noisily through her jewelry box. “What did I
do with my diamond earrings?”
“I calmed her down.”
“Have you seen my diamond earrings, darling?”
“No, Merilee, I haven’t seen your diamond earrings.” I tugged at my ear. “Nothing happened, of course.”
She treated me to her up-from-under look, the one that turns the lower half of my body into ooze. “Of course.”
“You do believe me, don’t you, Merilee?”
“Darling, if I can’t believe in you after all these years who can I believe in?”
“Maybe Neil Young, but I can’t think of anyone else.” I got to my feet and went over to her. “Thor was dying of cancer.”
“I wondered.”
I frowned at her, puzzled. “You wondered?”
“To me, the man was positively begging for it. Running off with his own stepdaughter that way. Picking that fight with those hairy mastodons at Slim Jim’s. Rather surprising, really. Don’t you think?”
“What is?”
“That with all of his macho posturing Thor Gibbs didn’t have the nerve to commit suicide.”
I considered this. “Unless that’s precisely what he did do, Merilee.”
We dressed. The tux for me. Starched white broadcloth shirt with ten-pleat bib front and wing collar, black silk bow tie, Grandfather’s pearl studs and cuff links, something greasy in what was left of my hair. Just kidding about the hair, actually. I have a lush, rampant growth of hair. It’s just that very little of it happens to be on my head anymore. Merilee went with the black velvet Ralph Lauren, the bare-shouldered one that makes her look as willowy as a schoolgirl. Diamond necklace and earrings—yes, she found them. Her long, golden hair up, a bit of color on her lips. She looked positively radiant.
“Where are we going?” she demanded eagerly. She hates secrets more than just about anything else, except possibly Velcro.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“But I must tell Pam where we’ll be, darling. We can’t just be footloose and fancy-free anymore, you know. We have Tracy. We have responsibilities. We have—”
“I’ve written it all down for her,” I said to her soothingly. “Besides, we can pretend, can’t we?”
She straightened my tie and kissed me lightly on the mouth. “We can do more than pretend.”
The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy Page 19