Of Mice and Murderers

by John Stockmyer

  Or, thinking far, far out, could it be that shy-seeming Beth Ogden had two lovers: the one that people knew about – the director – and an additional, but secret, female lech? Could a possessively jealous dyke have first killed Beth Ogden, then found a way to dispose of the director? ....

  Still, Ms. Ogden's marriage had to be thrown into the balance. ....

  Which might indicate – far, far, far out – that Beth Ogden was bisexual.

  Bob Zapolska closed his eyes; tried to envision the Ogden woman, both at home, and as he'd seen her in her office; at the office sitting beside that stick-figured praying mantis of a ball-breaker. The uppity bitch who Z had little doubt was the one who'd tried to finger him for the Ogden killing. Ingrid Nielson. That femme, that butch .....

  Bob Zapolska's head was spinning. To settle himself before he threw up, he reached for the phone. Dialed. Got routed through.

  "Hugh Calder, here."

  "Z. Got a strange question."

  "Shoot."

  "Any chance Beth Ogden was bisexual?"

  Silence. Calder thinking.

  "Not that I know of. Not a hint of that from anyone at Bateman, either. And there would have been if someone had known. As enlightened a community of scholars as a college thinks it is, people love to talk scandal here, as much as any place else." Silence. Calder thinking some more. "I'd say the chance of Beth Ogden being a lesbian, to say nothing of bisexual, is nonexistent."

  "Thanks."

  "Does all this talk about Beth Ogden's love life mean you think she was murdered?"

  No sense denying it at this stage of the game. "Yes."

  "Do you have Lucas pegged for the murderer?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because he was Beth Ogden's lover. A sad truth is that most murders are family related."

  A pause. Both of them thinking.

  "He ever disappear for this long?"

  "A detective asked me the same question just a little while ago, the cops talking to people here on campus this morning. And the answer is no. It was pretty common for Lucas to miss a day or two, but not this long a stretch."

  "Thanks. That's helpful."

  "Any time." Click.

  And what Calder said had been helpful – if not in the way the professor thought.

  Helpful because it pointed Z down a new avenue of investigation.

  The Calder connection.

  With something of a shock, Z realized that almost everything he knew about both murders came directly from the chubby prof. It was Calder who'd said that Victor was too content with his life to have shot himself, for instance; that Terbrugghen was a drunk (something the liquor bottles in the director's apartment confirmed); that Terbrugghen was Ogden's lover.

  What – now thinking farther out that the Milky Way – if Calder had a reason to lie? ............

  A detective on campus? Another good idea.

  But that avenue of thought also came to nothing when a late afternoon of snooping about Bateman College – people willing to talk, even to a private detective – served only to confirm Calder's views. Like Calder said, Terbrugghen had the reputation of being a talented drunk. Always with a buzz on, but blotto on Wednesday nights. He was also thought to have been seeing the widow Ogden. Nor had there been any takers when Z had steered the conversation to make it easy for someone to hint that Ms. Ogden was a butch.

  So in the end, all Z's imaginative speculation had done was loop him back to Lucas Terbrugghen as the prime suspect in the murders.

  Calder – even that bitch, Ingrid Nielsen – were zebras.

  Terbrugghen was the horse.

  Leaving unsolved the question of the man's whereabouts.

  No sign that the director had been planning to ... disappear. Meaning ... what? That he had "disappeared" ... by accident?

  Holed-up somewhere, drunk?

  Holed-up somewhere, sick?

  Holed-up somewhere ... trapped?

  Not in his apartment, nor in any place the cops had looked.

  For Big Bob Zapolska's money, that left Terbrugghen hiding in a Lucas-hole in the warren of "his" building ... Bateman Hall.

  Z didn't like what came next. On the other hand, nobody had forced him into the detective business.

  Clearly, it was time to go back to Bateman Hall, if for no other reason than to take a second look at the sub-basement where the janitor had been murdered.

  Thinking back, Z tried to remember how he'd felt when he'd first seen that grimy limestone rathole.

  Uneasy....

  As if something was ... wrong ... down there.

  All this mental tacking going a long way toward explaining why, just before midnight, dressed in black, lock-pick case and blackjack in separate pockets, Z was once again atop Bateman hill.

  Though it was likely to be a long night ... first things first. Moving quietly, blending with the wind swept shadows, he walked along the front of blacked-out Bateman Hall until he came to the building's opposite corner.

  There, turning, Z looked up.

  One story.

  Two stories.

  Three stories.

  To see that, once again, the Bateman "ghost" haunted the northwest tower!

  Wednesday night.

  Figured.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 22

  Remembering that he and the professor were well below ground at this point, Z switched on the basement room's lights, the cold fluorescent tubes flickering to life in their dirty enamel fixtures. Without Calder to lead him, it had been difficult to find the door he wanted in the vastness of Bateman Hall at night. Tiny battery lights were for picking out the right key on the ring, not for negotiating pitch black corridors to say nothing of stumbling down warped wooden stairs.

  No chance of the light down here showing outside the building; almost no possibility the light would attract inside attention, either. Was anyone, ever, in Bateman Hall past midnight? Security? Cleaning people? ... Anyone? ...

  He doubted it. While Calder might call Bateman Hall the director's building, it seemed equally true that, in the depths of night, the building belonged as much to Big Bob Zapolska as to anybody.

  The basement was the same: tables piled with assorted theater junk, the actors' dressing stalls lined up along the right wall, their doors, like open mouths, pleading that, "The show must go on."

  Mercifully, Z found that the core of him had warmed up at last; a beneficial by-product of all the time he'd spent getting lost on his way down here.

  While waiting for his eyes to adjust to the flickering glare of the long, bare tubes, Z unbuttoned his coat, took off his gloves, and stuffed his gloves in his pockets, his fingers now better able to rub feeling into his nose and ears.

  While warming up the extremities, he looked around to orient himself.

  What he was looking for was at the back left: a crooked door to steps that plunged to the sinkhole where the janitor had been killed.

  Unaware of it, Z had taken out his lighter. Was nervously flicking the spark wheel, the lighter's flame spurting up, dying, flaming up -- rhythmically. Not a bad habit as bad habits went. It was just that Z was determined to show no outward emotion of this kind.

  His feelings of apprehension under control, he slipped the lighter into his pants pocket.

  Reluctant to descend even lower into Terbrugghen's world, chiding himself for unnecessary delay, Bob Zapolska became aware of a scent his nose had just "warmed" to.

  Faint.

  A smell similar to the odor of the oily, rubbery, multi-colored "goop" someone -- all clues pointing to the theater director -- had touched off in Z's fireplace.

  Yes. Sniffing again, he was certain this was the place he'd smelled that odor for the first time.

  No. Not the first time.

  It came to him that his earliest association with the scent was a happy time in his childhood when his father had made bird houses in the garage. Not the fresh warm-amber odor of sawed white pine, but a smell that fit gene
ralized construction, both of bird houses and of theater flats. An old-fashioned smell of........

  Paint?......

  Not quite.

  The smell of oil-based paint.

  Z remembered playing with his father's quart-sized paint cans in the garage, most of them scarred, dented, rusty, drips of paint hardened on the rim so the can lids didn't seal. What Z was smelling now was the odor of discarded paint cans; the smell of linseed oil and pigment, evaporating turpentine, and finally, a thick, wet scum of paint at the bottom.

  What had Terbrugghen done? Scraped out old paint cans until he had enough crud to do Z in?

  Looking around the room in the dead-white stare of the room's warehouse lights -- nothing else sounding like the buzz of worn-out starter coils -- Z saw what he thought he'd remembered from his previous visit: scabby cans of paint shoved against the walls of the dirty workroom. Gallons, rather than quarts.

  He closed his eyes to visualize the room as he remembered it the last time he was here. Opened them to look at the room as it was now.

  Had there been a ... rearrangement of the cans? ... Z thought so.

  Again playing bloodhound-on-the-trail, threading his way around littered tables, stepping past scarred, splatter-painted flats, he made his way to the left wall, stopping there to pick up an empty paint can.

  Yes. Drifting through the edge of the battered lid was that smell.

  Looking around for something he could use to open the can, finding a beat up coat hanger, he pried up at the rim ... And found the proof! The film at the bottom had been torn away, a wet trail of oil and pigment sloshed up one side where the bottom gunk had been scraped out into another container!

  At random, Z opened another can to find its bottom "leavings" had also been scraped out. Opened another can. Found the same.

  Funny, how it was easier to identify an odor if you smelled it in its proper context. At home, all he could tell was that the mess he'd found in his fireplace smelled like something he'd experienced before. Here, the gunk smell was clearly of rancid, oil-based paint.

  As if he needed it, this rotted paint was the final clue pointing to Terbrugghen as the murderer.

  The missing Terbrugghen.

  Missing because he was holed-up somewhere.

  Missing because he was holed-up ... here. In the bowels of "his" personal building!

  As sharply as the snapping of a switch, Z felt fear -- the fear the big game hunter knows when, nearing a beast's lair, the advantage of the chase swings from hunter to hunted!

  Here, Lucas Terbrugghen would turn and fight!

  To settle himself, Z felt for the sap in his coat pocket -- a blackjack a weapon of short range and of surprise.

  The overriding question of the moment was, when he found the director (another story down?,) would Terbrugghen have a gun?

  Earlier, Terbrugghen had a gun, first used as a prop, then to kill the janitor. Probably knew the gun was there; no doubt picked it up as a last-minute inspiration.

  No problem.

  That pistol was in the police's property room.

  Unfortunately, living in America, the land of the free and the home of the N.R.A. -- a frontier land where children carried loaded guns to school -- it was more than possible that Lucas Terbrugghen would have a second gun.

  Z about to run his quarry down, it was at times like these that Bob Zapolska wished for an automatic. Or a revolver. Or even for a single-shot .22. Anything to put himself on a more equal footing with an armed opponent.

  It was just that, refusing to carry a gun was part of Z's detective style. Sometimes, the scary part.

  A few deep breaths settling him down (if he failed to count the clammy feeling at the back of his neck,) Z reversed direction to shuffle back through the room's litter, thankful -- in case "someone" should be in the room below -- that the floor was sound-absorbing concrete rather than squeaky wood.

  Backtracking to the base of the stairs, he flicked down the switches to the parallel rows of overhead fluorescents, plunging the room into a cave-like, pre-Zapolska dark.

  As ready as he'd ever be, extracting the penlight, snapping it on, moving carefully by the shine of the light's slender beam, he picked his way back across the room to the far wall, found (as much by feel as by sight) the narrow door that led to the cramped sub-basement down below.

  Closed.

  Had Calder closed this door when they were here last? ... Z couldn't remember.

  Flicking off the tiny flashlight, putting it in his coat pocket, Z pressed his ear against the old, warped door.

  Heard ... nothing.

  Somewhere, just inside that door, Calder had found the switch that snapped on the bare bulb at the bottom of the narrow stairs.

  What Z had to decide was ... should he do the same?

  If Terbrugghen was down there -- sleeping in the dark? -- switching on the light might awaken him, warn him that someone was about to descend into the netherworld of the director's "realm." If, on the other hand, Z tried to get down the stairs with just his penlight -- and if the director had already been alerted to Z's presence in the room above -- the director could, in the perfect cover of the small room's blackness, use Z's light to get off a "can't-miss" shot.

  Deciding quickly that it was better to light your enemy's position than your own, Z opened the sub-basement door and felt around in the dark until he'd located the antique switch.

  Holding his breath, he clicked the switch, the heavy-watt bulb below glaring into life, a shadow of the bulb's dawning drifting up the steeply descending stairs.

  Light.

  And ... silence from the depths; a stillness stretching into minutes as Bob Zapolska froze at the top of the stairs...................................

  Ploy No. 2.

  Backing away, digging out the penlight, snapping it on, Z backed away until he could reach an empty paint can by the wall. Picked up the rusty can by its wire handle.

  Returning to the sagging door, opening it wider (finding a grim satisfaction in also being able to play with paint,) he tossed the can down the stairwell, the can going CLANG! on a top step, then bouncing down to hit another, then another, the container sounding like a broken gong, the can noise fading until the paint can jolted to the floor of the sub-basement room, where it rolled to silence against an object down below.

  No panicky gunfire at the clangor charging down the stairs.

  No sound after the can stopped rolling, the "fearsome paint can ploy" the last trick Z knew how to play.

  Nothing else he could do to protect himself, sap out, Bob Zapolska took the first timid step down.

  Waited.

  Then took another.

  Sweating, gliding cautiously, descending quietly, he "floated" ... step ... by spooky step ... into the pit.

  To stop ... near the bottom.

  Taking a deep now-or-never breath, crouching to make himself as small a target as he could, Z hurdled the final steps to pounce into the harsh light of the smallish room!.............

  Nothing.

  With the exception of a dented paint can rolled to a stop against an old divan, the place was as it had been when Calder brought Z here.

  Sofas, throw rugs, lamps, coffee table, occasional tables with splintered legs, dressers, cracked mirrors.

  Just a chilly, damp, unpleasant, bare stone room .....

  Aware he'd been holding his breath, starved for air, Bob Zapolska blew like a surfaced whale, to gasp in a lung-full of long dead air.

  A minute -- two minutes for his breathing to return to normal -- and he could relax.

  Though the director might be hiding in another room in the building, he wasn't here, a fact Z found difficult to regret.

  Noticing that fear-produced sweat had him shaking in the chilly room, pocketing his blackjack, Z buttoned his coat and put his hands in his pockets.

  Feeling warmer, he noticed he was standing where the janitor had been shot; that fact, alone, enough to jar the nerves.

  And yet
... it was something else that was making him feel ... restless. The room itself seemed ... out of joint.

  Was it ... the air?

  Z took another breath....

  A smell. Something apart from the room's background scent of mold and damp.

  Different from the odor of decaying paint, yet somehow, familiar.

  An acrid odor; one he'd noticed when he'd been here with Calder.

  Like the paint smell Z had failed to recognize in Z's fireplace, though he'd first picked up this astringent scent down here, he'd also smelled in the world above. ............ In Susan's refrigerator!

  Excited again, aping an out-of-shape gorilla, Z bent to sniff his way around the room, moving past derelict sofas, threading his way between wrecked chairs and discarded end tables, pausing to sniff at pieces of ruined furniture.

  Getting nowhere this way, he began a systematic dissection of the room -- north-south, east-west -- weaving his way past upended tables, slipping on moldering rug-rolls -- smelling everything ... to find it definitely stronger near the fireplace prop.

  Z squatted to take a deep whiff....

  More powerful still....

  Going to his hands and knees on the tomb-cold floor, he took another sniff.

  And then was certain. The smell was coming from a line of white powder along that wall.

  When he'd been in the room before, he remembered seeing that chalky substance; had thought it might be age old stone, sifting down from the limestone wall.

  Now paying more attention, it made no sense at all to explain away the sprinklings as rock dust. If the powder lay along the room's other walls, maybe. But not this left partition. Not from the one wall in the room made of cinder block!

  Dumb.

  He could be so dumb sometimes, it was scary!

  Reaching out, he pinched up a little of the whitish material, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger to find it was grittier than talcum powder.

  Brought his fingers to his nose.

  Strong! Acidic!

  Dusting off his fingers, Z sat back on his haunches, as he did so, looking about the floor for what he needed, finding what would work: an old theater program. Picked up the stiff paper, using the program as you would a dust pan to scoop up a small quantity of powder.