“Good morning, Oliver,” I said and noticed that my watch said it was twelve fifteen. “Pardon me, good afternoon.”
“I sure hope so,” Oliver said. He wasn’t wearing his usual happy face today.
“Something troubling you, Oliver?” I said.
“I’m not sure, Matt,” he said. “Say, tell me, have you see the Travis’s lately.
“Art or Louise?” I said.
“Either one,” Oliver said.
“I haven’t seen them yet today,” I said.
“Neither have I,” Oliver said. “And I didn’t see either one of them yesterday or the day before. Of course, I was gone most of the day on Thursday so I can’t say for sure.”
“That is a bit unusual,” I said. “Louise almost always walks that little dog of theirs. What is it, a Pekinese?”
“Pomeranian, “Oliver said.
“That’s right,” I said. “That furry little ankle nipper.”
“That’s the one,” Oliver said. “And Art, well, I don’t know. Sometimes I could go a whole day without seeing him, but three days, no, I think something’s wrong over there. I walked by their house yesterday about this same time and I thought I smelled something pretty foul, but passed it off as the garbage cans at the curb. After all, Friday is trash pickup day.”
“You go by there today?” I said.
Oliver nodded. “The cans are all off the streets now and the smell is still there,” he said. “I came over here to ask if maybe you’d come with me and tell me what you think.”
I tossed the baseball underhanded to Clay, dropped my glove on the grass and said, “Wait here, Clay. We’ll be right back.”
“Can I come?” Clay said.
Oliver shot me a concerned look. I turned back to Clay. “Wait here. I won’t be long. Go help your mother until I get back.”
“Oh, all right,” Clay said, disappointed.
Oliver and I walked past his house and on to the next house, which belonged to Art and Louise Travis. The yard was always immaculately cut and trimmed, as were the bushes. The house had been recently painted along with the white picket fence that surrounded the yard. The front gate was closed but even from the sidewalk I could see at least four newspapers rolled up with a rubber band around them lying on the cement stoop at the front door. The mailbox had eight or nine envelopes stuffed in it and it seemed to be full.
I turned to Oliver and said, “You think maybe they went on vacation and forgot to stop the mail and the paper?”
“Not a chance,” Oliver said. “I can set my watch by those two. They always take their vacation the second week of August. That’s still seven or eight weeks off.”
I reached over the gate and lifted the latch that secured it to the post. Oliver and I walked up the sidewalk to the front door and hesitated. After a moment I rang the bell. I could hear it ringing inside the house but I didn’t hear any movement or sounds of any kind. I tried knocking and still got no response.
“Come on,” I told Oliver. “Let’s go around the back.”
Oliver followed me to the back yard. Right away I noticed that it needed mowing. I tried the back door, knocking several times.
“Smell that?” Oliver said. “That’s what I smelled yesterday when I walked by the front of the house. But yesterday the wind was out of the north.”
“That is pretty pungent,” I said. “Why don’t you go around to the other end of the house and see if you can see anything through any of the windows. I’ll start here and work my way around to the front. I’ll meet you back there.”
We separated, cupping our hands to our faces as we tried to see inside the Travis house. I stepped over to the last window on the east end of the house and peered in. Immediately I could see the inside screen covered with flies and the odor was stronger here. I tried the window. It was locked. I kept walking around the house and finally met Oliver at the front door.
“See anything?” I said.
“Just a lot of flies,” Oliver said. “And the odor is really strong today.”
On a hunch I tried the front doorknob. It rotated easily and the door swung in. Now I could really hear the constant buzz of hungry insects. We stepped inside.
“Hello,” I said. “Anyone here?” I wasn’t really expecting an answer.
In the corner of the living room I saw a furry pile. I guessed it to be their dog. Its tongue hung out and it was most definitely dead. I spotted a hallway that lead to the east end of the house. I assumed the end rooms to be bedrooms. Oliver looked in the south bedroom. It was empty. I opened the door to the north bedroom and was overtaken by the unmistakable odor of decaying flesh. There on the floor lay an elderly couple, both bloated almost to the bursting point. I quickly closed the door again and turned to Oliver.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here and call in the police.”
“Are they in there?” Oliver said.
I nodded. “What’s left of them is in there.”
We hurried out the front door and closed it tightly behind us. I closed the front gate as well. Oliver’s house was closer so we used the phone in his kitchen to call downtown. I dialed a number that I knew by heart.
“Lieutenant Hollister’s office, “Hannah said.
“Hannah, it’s Matt,” I said. “I need to talk to Dan right away. It’s an emergency.” I knew if I hadn’t included that last part that Hannah would have wanted to make small talk and we had no time for that now.
“Matt, what is it?” Dan said just a moment later.
“Dan,” I said. “You’ll want to get over here right away and bring the crime lab boys and Jack Walsh with you.”
Jack Walsh was the county medical examiner and I’d worked with him on several occasions in the past.
“What do you have?” Dan said.
“Two bodies,” I said. “Both in their sixties. Looks like they’ve been dead for several days. It ain’t pretty, Dan.” I gave him the address. “It’s just three doors down from my house. My neighbor and I will be waiting out in front.”
“You touch anything, Matt?” Dan said.
“Just the front doorknob,” I said and then remembered the bedrooms. “And two bedroom doorknobs.”
“Stay outside,” Dan said. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I hung up Oliver’s phone and the two of us returned to the front gate at the Travis house. It wouldn’t do for anyone else to wander into that area. It took Dan less than ten minutes to pull up in front of the Travis house. Two black and white radio cars also pulled up behind Dan’s car. Behind the two black and whites I could see Jack Walsh’s ambulance screeching to a stop. Jack and two attendants got out. Jack had his black bag with him and both of the attendants pulled gurneys behind them.
Dan had another man with him in his car. I didn’t know him but he had a large box camera with an attached flash unit on it. I assumed he was the police photographer. He followed Dan over to where we were standing.
“Anybody else been in there beside you?” Dan said.
I gestured toward Oliver and said, “Just my neighbor. Dan, this is Oliver Delaney. Oliver, this is Lieutenant Dan Hollister.”
The two men shook hands briefly and Dan got back to the matter at hand. Dan opened the gate latch and let himself into the yard. The police photographer followed Dan and I followed the photog. Oliver took a few steps toward the gate but was held back by one of the uniformed cops. Dan looked back at the cop and said, “No one else comes in here until we’re finished.”
“No sir,” the cop said, latching the gate again.
Dan pulled out his handkerchief as he stepped up onto the cement stoop and grabbed the doorknob with it and twisted. The three of us entered the Travis’s living room and closed the front door behind us. I pointed down the hall.
“This way,” I said.
Dan carefully stepped down the hallway and stopped at the end of the hall. He looked back at me. I pointed to the door on Dan’s left.
“In there,” I sa
id.
Handkerchief still in hand, Dan twisted this knob and pushed the door open. The handkerchief went immediately to his face, covering his mouth and nose. I did the same with my handkerchief. The photographer didn’t have one and did the best he could with just his hand.
Art Travis lay near the closet, his right hand stretched out in front of him and his legs splayed out at different angles. Even from where I stood I could see a small hole in his palm. No doubt he had held it up in a defensive gesture and had been shot clean through it and into his body. Art’s stomach was bloated to more than eighteen inches higher than the floor. Flies covered his face and crawled in and out of his mouth, nose and ears. He was wearing pajamas with a string tie at the waist. The string cut into his fleshy abdomen and the buttons of the pajama top had popped open as the bloating had set in.
Art’s wife, Louise was across the room, on the other side of the bed. She had also been shot. Her long gray hair swirled across her face, making it impossible to see any of her facial features. She was wearing a long nightgown and one slipper on her right foot. The other slipper lay two feet from her left foot. The bed was still made. It looked like whoever killed them, caught them just as they were getting ready for bed, most likely on Wednesday night.
“Get a couple shots of both of them, Hank,” Dan told the photographer. “And get some of the bedroom, hallway, living room and kitchen before you leave.
Hank nodded and gave Dan a strange look, waving flies away from his face.
“I know, Hank,” Dan said. “Just do what you can and then get back outside.”
Dan and I left the bedroom and followed the hallway back to the living room and out the front door. Once outside we both took big gulps of air as we ran our fingers through our hair and brushed flies off us, real and imagined.
“That’s as bad as I’ve ever seen,” Dan said.
“I’m with you there,” I said. “Imagine what they’ve have looked like if Oliver hadn’t smelled that odor coming from inside. They could have laid there for weeks.”
“That’s nobody’s idea of the golden years,” Dan said. He turned and gestured to Walsh to come into the yard. The cop at the gate let Jack pass and he walked over to where Dan and I stood.
“What’d you find?” Jack said.
“What a mess,” Dan said. “Old couple, been dead probably three days or so.”
“Want me to go in and have a look?” Jack said.
“You’re not going to be able to tell anything from looking at that mess,” Dan said. “Why don’t you just have your men take them back to the morgue and you can work on them there. There are just too many flies inside that room.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Jack said. “If this had to happen, why couldn’t it have waited another six months?”
“Why six months?” I said to Jack.
“Because then it would be someone else’s mess,” Jack said. “I’m retiring after the first of the year.”
“No kidding,” I said. “They let you retire at fifty now?”
“Matt,” Jack said. “I was forty-nine when we met back in ‘46, right after you started your investigation business. Even I have to age, so how could I only be fifty?”
I did the mental math. “Whatever you’ve been doing,” I said, “it’s working. I’d have never taken you for sixty-two.”
“Not quite,” Jack said. “Not until November, but I’m waiting until after the first of the year so I can drain that much more out of the system before I leave.”
“Well, whatever they give you is not enough,” I said. “They don’t have enough money to pay me to do what you’ve been doing all these years.”
“Speaking of which, I’d better get those bodies back to the morgue and do my job,” Jack said.
The photographer came out of the house, shoeing flies away from his face. The screen door closed behind him and he set his camera down on the lawn and brushed wildly at his head and body. I knew the feeling. He retrieved his camera and walked it back to Dan’s car, setting it on the back seat. He leaned up against Dan’s car and just took deep breaths.
Jack motioned his men over. They came, pulling their gurneys behind them. “Better take a face mask in with you,” Jack told the men. “You sure don’t want to be breathing in any flies.”
The two attendants maneuvered their gurneys through the front door and down the hallway. One of them emerged two minutes later, sweating and breathing heavily once he got back outside. He waved to Dan and Dan went over to talk to the man.
“Lieutenant,” the attendant said. “You’ll probably want to get back in there and bring the photog along with you.”
“Why?” Dan said. “You find something?”
The attendant nodded. “When we moved the woman we found a gun in her hand. You couldn’t see it initially because she’d fallen on top of it. It was under her body.”
Dan motioned to Hank and yelled, “Bring your camera. There’s another shot we need to get.”
Hank was still pale and looked like he wanted to expel his lunch, but he dutifully plucked his camera from Dan’s back seat and followed him back into the fly-ridden house. The attendant followed them both back inside. Back in the bedroom, the two attendants lifted the woman’s body just high enough so that Hank could snap a picture of the gun in her hand. Once the camera snapped, the attendants lowered her again and waited until Hank and Dan had left the room again before they continued with their thankless jobs.
When they came back out of the house again six minutes later, they were each pulling their gurneys with a tall, bloated body covered by a sheet. Some of the flies followed the gurneys out to the ambulance. The attendants slid the two gurneys into the back of the vehicle and closed the double doors. One of them signaled to Jack.
“Gotta run,” Jack said. “I’ll let you know what I find after the autopsies.”
Dan and I left the yard, latching the gate behind us. Oliver came over to where Dan and I stood, gesturing toward the house.
“Pretty bad in there, isn’t it?” Oliver said.
“Hope I never see another one like it,” Dan said. “Are you the neighbor who first suspected something wasn’t right here?”
Oliver nodded. “Yesterday I smelled something, but passed it off as coming from the garbage cans at the curb. Friday is the regular pickup day so I didn’t think any more about it. Then today I smelled it again after everyone’s cans had been taken back in so I walked over to Mr. Cooper’s house and told him about it.”
“Were the Travis’s garbage cans out at the curb, too?” Dan said.
“Come to think of it, they weren’t,” Oliver said. “I should have thought of that myself.”
“How well did you know the Travis’s?” Dan said.
Oliver pointed to his house next door and said, “We’ve been neighbors for eight years now, even before Matt moved in and it was just Amy.”
“So you were pretty familiar with their habits, their comings and goings and would have noticed if anything seemed out of the ordinary.”
“That’s right,” Oliver said. “They were creatures of habit, both of them.”
“Can I have your full name and address along with your telephone number?” Dan said. “You know, in case I need to ask you anything else about the Travis’s.
“Sure,” Oliver said. “No problem,” and proceeded to give Dan what he’d asked for.
“Thank you, Mr. Delaney,” Dan said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Oliver hurried back into his house. I imagine he was telling his wife all about what he’d discovered. He’d have bragging rights for weeks to come.
I looked over Dan’s shoulder toward my house and saw Amy and Clay walking toward the source of all this excitement. They’d been drawn like bees to honey by the revolving red lights on the black and white cruisers. I quickly met them in front of Oliver’s house and guided them away from the scene, back toward our house.
Dan waved to Amy and she waved back.
�
�Amy,” I said, “would you take Clay back home, please?”
Amy and I had long ago established silent eye and facial signals to say what we couldn’t or didn’t want to say in front of Clay. She caught my meaning immediately and turned Clay around and walked him home again. I breathed easier and returned to Dan’s side.
“They don’t need to see any of this,” I said. “It’s bad enough that I won’t sleep tonight.”
“What do you make of all this, Matt?” Dan said.
“You mean the gun?” I said.
“The gun and everything else,” Dan said. “How does this read to you?”
I thought for a moment and then offered, “One of two scenarios as I see it. One, she shoots him and then herself, or two, someone else killed them both and staged the scene to look like murder/suicide.”
“That’s pretty much what I was thinking,” Dan said. “Can’t say for sure until after the autopsies.”
“Would you let me know what you find?” I said.
“Sure thing,” Dan said. “I’m going to follow Jack back to the precinct and get the paperwork started.
I walked back home and met Amy and Clay sitting on the front porch. Amy and I made eye contact as I approached.
“Something happen to the Travis’s?” Amy said.
I looked over at Clay. “Clay,” I said. “I could sure go for a cold root beer. Would you check the refrigerator and see if we have any left and bring me one, please.”
“You don’t need the root beer for an excuse to get rid of me,” Clay said. “I know when you want to talk to mom alone.” He let the screen door slam behind him as he made his way into the kitchen.
In a low voice I quickly said, “They’re both dead. Both of them were shot. We’re not sure if someone else did it or if it’s a case of murder/suicide. That’s all we know for now.”
“Clay came back carrying a brown bottle with foam seeping over the neck. “Here you go, Dad,” he said. “Now you and mom can make believe you were talking about something else.”
“You’re pretty smart for your age, aren’t you?” I said.
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 114