by Todd Ohl
In the last column of shelves, John found research textbooks and compilations of folk tales. This set of books was set apart from all of the others by its own organizational structure. They seemed to be grouped first by topic, then alphabetically by author.
The worth of the books astounded John. He considered the possibility that the massive private collection was an egghead’s stand-in for safari trophies; the menagerie let a visitor know what works Hallman had conquered.
“Did Mr. Hallman say anything to you in the past few days?” John asked Klingman.
“No, nothing.”
“Did he have any friends in the building?”
“No, Mr. Hallman wasn’t here much. When I saw him in the hall, I always saw him treat everyone nicely, though you could tell that he really had nothing in common with anyone here.”
“Thanks a lot, Mr. Klingman. You have been most helpful. If you would excuse us, we are going to need to seal this apartment off as part of an investigation.”
“Oh, OK.” The old man nodded, then turned slowly and shuffled off without a glance back.
John thought back to Dunglison’s letter; he said Hallman would arrange for someone to find his information. Based on the interaction Klingman described, it seemed Hallman was lacking someone with which to plant clues, as Dunglison did with Brinker. If Hallman left something here, no one was going to point it out.
Slipping on a pair of rubber gloves, John turned to Alvarez, and said, “I’m looking for something—a pack of papers. They were supposedly hidden here somewhere.”
“Here?”
“Yes,” John said, realizing that Dunglison never specified that the papers would be here. He thought it best to keep Alvarez thinking that a search had some purpose. “Look around. Try not to disturb anything, but let’s see if we can find them.”
Alvarez tilted his head and shrugged. “OK, I’ll take the kitchen.”
John made his way to the bedroom and scanned the room to make sure nothing would literally, or figuratively, leap out at him. A book sat open on the nightstand. On the mattress of the canopy bed was a rich and intricately woven coverlet. The top drawer of the dresser was open, exposing a pile of socks and stack of boxer-briefs. In the three lower drawers, John found a large number of polo shirts, khakis, and sweaters. The closet held three dress-suits and a few oxford shirts.
John sized up possible hiding places. The easiest spot to hide something was in between the sweaters. Upon inspection, he found that only wool and cotton pullovers occupied the drawer. The other dresser drawers were also bereft of anything unusual.
He pulled out his keychain and found a small LED flashlight he kept attached there. Kneeling down, he shined it under the bed. He found nothing.
There, down on his hands and knees, John realized he was clueless as to where the papers were; he was just flailing around in hope of stumbling across them. He would need to do better than that. He stood up, a bit embarrassed at the weak effort, and sat down on the bed.
“Think, jackass,” he murmured to himself.
John considered a few possibilities. First, there was his earlier realization that the information could be somewhere else entirely; there was no guarantee it was in the apartment. Second, Hallman could have died before he ever stashed his papers or left the appropriate clues for someone to find what he wanted to share. Third, Dunglison never said there were papers, only information; that could be hidden on Hallman’s computer. Fourth, John considered whether Hallman might have mailed it to someone, but Dunglison said the information would be found, not delivered.
He stared at the bedroom, waiting for some clue to pop out at him, but he knew that he was waiting in vain. Unless he had some idea of where or how to find the hidden information, he was wasting his time. It would be a better use of time to let Harry pick the place apart while he sipped some coffee back at the office.
He stood to leave when the book on the nightstand caught his eye; it was Hamlet. His mind flashed to the one word written on the wall in Dunglison’s blood. Hallman’s last moments suddenly made sense to John. Just like Dunglison, Hallman was hiding his information in a book.
“Son-of-a-bitch.”
Flipping through the book revealed no notation on the inside. It was simply a pristine copy of Hamlet open to page 225, where Hamlet exclaimed to Horatio, “Alas, poor Yorick!”
John’s heart sank. Hallman’s recent memories, flooding back to him in a jumbled mess, could easily explain his last words. He sighed and replaced the book.
John walked back into the living room and started up the computer. The computer screen held the message: “No fixed-disk volume found.” Someone had deleted the partition from the drive. The only way to get information off the drive now, was to painstakingly crawl through the disk bit by bit, and that was only possible if the person forgot to securely wipe the drive. He was sure someone had beaten him to the apartment.
He turned and drank in the waterfall of books. If a book held the papers, as he thought a few minutes ago, it would take quite a while to go through them all. So even if someone beat him here, there was a chance that something could still be hidden in the bookcase. He scanned through the shelves, looking for something to be out of place, but each of the books was tucked snugly into its alphabetically correct place. Scanning down through the titles, John realized Hallman had two copies of The Canterbury Tales on the shelf. The same was true of A Christmas Carol and Frankenstein. He jumped to H, and there sat a second copy of Hamlet.
Reaching out, he grabbed the book from the shelf and tried to open it. The hardbound cover gave resistance until he heard a snap. The book opened, revealing a hidden compartment with folded papers. John slid the papers in an evidence bag and then tucked the bag into his coat pocket.
Reexamining the shelves for any books that might bear a similar appearance to the false book he had just pillaged, he found a false copy of Crime and Punishment that contained condoms and liquid KY lubricant. He closed the book and kept scanning, but nothing else seemed suspicious.
In the kitchen, he found Pete Alvarez’s rear-end sticking out of a lower cupboard. He asked, with a volume loud enough to carry over the banging pans, “Did you find anything, Pete?”
“Just some cockroaches.”
“I think I’ve found what I needed. Pop some tape on the door and seal this place off until CSA can get over here. The hard drive on the computer has been wiped clean, and I don’t think Hallman did it himself.”
“You got it.” Alvarez stood and walked out the front door to get his yellow crime scene tape.
Taking the papers from his coat pocket, he scanned through them to see if there were any directions to other possible hiding places in the apartment. There were several photocopies of old letters and a few computer printouts. Hallman had scrawled notes onto most of the pages. The notes were sometimes in pencil, sometimes in blue ink, and sometimes in black ink. Once or twice, Hallman had taken a yellow highlighter to the notes.
A plain white page topped the stack. It began by contradicting John’s most confident assumption of the whole day:
I reformatted my hard drive to lessen the chance that the people who helped us find this information will be put at risk.
Please see that Detective Fullman gets these: Information on the Brethren.
--
T.J. Hallman
Just as in Dunglison’s letter, there was yet another reference to Detective Fullman.
Since the homicide division bumped into other police units all over the city, John should have met another detective—even one from another division. He strained his memory trying to recall Fullman, and generated a picture of a fat detective with a handlebar mustache. Unfortunately, that guy’s name was Feely, not Fullman; he recalled that name association by envisioning that the mustache twirled out into feelers. He gave up on trying to recall Fullman’s face and returned to the papers.
A sticky note, lower on the same page, read, “Contains letters donated by Alice Morti
mer and other supporting documents, arranged in the order I found them: Why I believe the door and Le Coeur Codex in Phila, PA.”
He flipped past the first page and found what looked like a long letter written in a fancy script. Hallman had jotted some notes on a sticky note attached to the page. The fancy and faded script looked like it would be hard to read, so John decided to save it for later.
The next page was a clear and crisp computer printout that contained the words:
Revelation 3:7-11:
To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth;
I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.
Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them who dwell upon the earth.
Behold, I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.
Hallman had written in the margin, “St. John had reportedly written Revelation according to the information given to him by Christ. Did they come to Philadelphia to use the words of ‘the Rock’ against him? To remind St. John that he was just a man and could not take the crown?”
John’s face contorted in confusion, but then his attention was captured by the sound of tape being ripped off a spool.
As he stretched the yellow crime scene tape across the doorway, Pete Alvarez met John’s gaze and asked, “Did you find everything you need, Detective, or are you still looking for more?”
John folded the papers and slid them back in the evidence bag. “I think I have most of it, you’ll need to watch the place until Harry arrives and can go over the whole thing. I need to stop off at the ME and then get downtown. I’ll log these papers when I get to the Roundhouse.”
John started toward the door and asked, “Your station house covers Penn Commonwealth and the old Victorian that had the murder last night, right, Pete?”
“Yep.”
“Do you know a Detective Fullman?”
“Nope,” Alvarez grunted with a frown. “I know all the detectives there, and I don’t know any Fullman.”
“Maybe he’s new.”
“Nah, not unless he started today; the Sarge makes sure we meet all the new detectives at roll call the day after they start. It’s a precaution so we don’t accidentally shoot any new guy when something goes down.”
“Well, maybe he works from another station. Does your squad car have a wireless connection?”
“Sure, come on.”
John followed Alvarez though the cheese-stench and down the grimy stairs until, finally, he burst through the doors of the building and found himself back on the street. There, even though he inhaled car exhaust and sewer vapors, he was happy to be back in the fresh city air. John took a deep breath to clear his lungs and waited for the cop to bring up the cruiser’s laptop computer and wireless connection.
“Here you go,” Alvarez said as he exited the car.
John clicked on the departmental directory and searched for “Fullman.” The computer answered him with the words, “Total instances found: 0.”
He thought for a moment. If no one at Alvarez’s station house could handle the call at the time, the call might have gone to a detective from another station house within the Southwest Division. It was also a possibility, though unlikely, that both Dunglison and Hallman screwed up the spelling. John searched for all the detectives and lieutenants in the Southwest Division. The computer answered, “Total instances found: 71.”
None of the names resembled anything close to Fullman. The two deceased scholars seemed the type that would get the details straight. If they did, either somebody was posing as a cop, or a cop was giving a false name. John particularly disliked the implications of a cop bearing an alias; it most likely meant that one of his brothers in blue was dirty.
“Everything OK?” Alvarez asked.
John wondered about that question. He did not have the time to wait around while Harry swept the place. Even if he did stand here and wait for Harry, it would do little good; a dirty cop could access the scene, pick up any evidence he wanted, and walk out with it while the rest of them cluelessly worked the site. Until he could locate Detective Fullman, he could trust no one, and his best hope at finding Fullman was to get downtown and start working a few requests through the system.
“Eh,” John said. “Until I find this elusive Detective Fullman, watch your back.”
Chapter 7:
Rue to the Morgue
By the time John made it to the ME’s office in University City, it was almost noon. It was on the way back downtown, so he felt it best to make the stop now. If he passed by and Kim had something to show him, it would mean another trip across town later. He wished that the city government had kept its offices closer together; he spent too much time traveling between them. If he kept things short here, he could grab something to eat and wrap things up at his office before five.
John strolled through the lobby of the building and took the elevator down to the morgue; most of the lights in the place were off, making it appear creepier than he liked. He wondered why lights were always off in these places. Maybe coroners were worried about the bodies decomposing from the heat of the lights; maybe coroners were just weird.
After opening the door at the end of the hall, he found Kim behind her desk, wearing teal medical scrubs. She stopped reading some kind of digital printout and looked at him over the top of her reading glasses.
“What do you have for me?” he asked.
“Where the hell have you been? I called you three times.”
“I haven’t heard it ring.” John pulled the lifeless cell phone from his pocket. As he tried to close the skewed lid, it snapped off. He gave her a wry smile and faked a shocked look, then said, “Oh, no wonder.”
“Very funny. What happened?”
“A game of leapfrog went terribly wrong.” He smirked. “What did you find?”
“Dunglison was easy enough; he bled to death, probably because of dismemberment. I didn’t find any puncture wounds that would otherwise explain it. I’m not sure about the marks on a few of the bones. I still think they look like a serrated edge made them, but who knows. It also looks like he took a few Valium a couple hours before he died.”
John raised an eyebrow.
She propped her elbow on the desk and rested her head in her hand. After a second, she said, “Hallman was another story.”
“How so?”
“The kid had enough heroin in him to kill a horse. That just doesn’t jive. Heroin is an extremely addictive drug, and I only found a few needle marks on him. They don’t look older than a day.”
“Any chance he was just experimenting and was too stupid to go slow?”
“Sure, but I doubt it. I have everything in the report.”
John thought he would have more time before Kim was done and thought he might have heard that incorrectly. After a short pause and a frown, he asked, “Did you file it already?”
“Yeah, why?” Kim asked with a furrowed brow.
“I found a few things today that I don’t like. Hallman and Dunglison left notes that refer to a detective I can’t seem to locate. So either someone was impersonating a cop, or a cop was giving a false name.”
“What are the odds on the second option?”
“The probability is low, at best, actually. Any caller would be sent to whatever detective was available. It would be doubtful that they got the one detective that was rotten. Either it was just incredibly bad luck, or there was someone at the call desk who knew where to s
end the call. Once you start looking at more than one person being involved, well, conspiracies tend to be unlikely. I don’t like what I’ve seen, though. So, it would be best to play it safe. If possible, it would be better to not file the report just yet. I wouldn’t want to let a bad cop read about how you thought Hallman’s overdose was fishy until I can check things out.”
“Like I said, I already filed it—just before you got here, actually. It’s already in the system.” Her face suddenly looked like she had stepped in something that smelled bad.
They both knew that once a report was in the record system there was no deleting it. Unlike a word processing document, it was in a tightly managed and secure database. It was now a permanent part of city history.
He took a deep breath and then exhaled all of it. He thought for a second. “Can you still change it—dumb it down a bit? Just say that Hallman was apparently a junky. Let whoever might be snooping around think that we just didn’t catch anything odd. Keep the original report somewhere safe for now.”
She squinted at him, clenched her jaw, and asked, “Are you really asking me to alter a report?”
He knew that she was smart to wonder. He sat for a second and followed it in his mind. He could easily be the cop on the inside, asking her to get rid of the key points in her report. They had been friends for a while, but you never knew who might go sour.
“Look, you took the training on insider threats. They are usually disgruntled employees that have been that way for a long time. People don’t wake up one day and decide they want to try to create an elaborate murder plot involving people they’ve never met. You know that. That’s not me.”
She stared at him.
He knew he was far from the poster boy for department morale. Again, she was smart to wonder.
“OK, leave it,” he said. “You’re right. Just keep a copy of the original somewhere safe. If someone is on the inside, they might be able to get into your account.”