The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  By the time they arrived near the center of the UCLA campus in Westwood, Scheiber seemed more confused and irritated than ever. Tucker found himself praying that Urquhart was off in Timbuktu or somewhere equally inaccessible, so he could lose the Newport detective and get on with his own business.

  They found the way into the parking lot nearest Dickson Plaza, where Urquhart’s office was apparently located, blocked by an LAPD cruiser parked at an angle across the drive. As Scheiber slowed his car, a uniformed officer walked toward them, hand raised, urging them back. Scheiber killed the air-conditioning, and as both he and Tucker rolled down their windows, a blast of dry heat blew across the front of the car. It wasn’t awful for this time of year, Tucker thought. At least there was none of the dense, dripping humidity he’d left behind in Virginia.

  “Hey, Stern, you old son of a gun,” Scheiber called. “How you doing?”

  The officer leaned down and peered into the window. “Detective Scheiber? That you? Well, hey! What brings you back to this neck of the woods?” he asked, reaching through the open window.

  “Just couldn’t stay away from the big-city lights,” Scheiber said as they shook hands. The cop glanced across the front seat. “Frank Tucker,” Scheiber added, cocking his thumb.

  The young cop nodded briefly, then turned his attention back to the detective. “I hear you got married,” he said.

  “Yup. Just got back from the honeymoon in Rosarita.”

  “Tough life. How you liking it down in Newport?”

  “Quieter than here, that’s for sure. What’s going on?” he added, nodding in the direction of the spinning red lights.

  “Some professor croaked in his office. Campus cops were caught short-handed, what with the holiday, and all, so they called us in.”

  Scheiber glanced over, and Tucker knew they were both experiencing the same sinking premonition of having arrived too late. “This professor,” Scheiber said, “his name wouldn’t be Urquhart, by any chance, would it?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?” the cop asked, surprised.

  Scheiber sighed heavily. “We were just on our way to look for the guy. Was he murdered?”

  “Could be. Not obvious how, I gather, but they say a witness thinks something fishy went down here.”

  Tucker watched as Scheiber closed his eyes briefly. “Déjà vu all over again,” the detective said, head shaking. “When did this happen?”

  “Couple of hours ago,” the patrol officer replied.

  “Who’s working the case?”

  “Ripley and a guy named McEvoy from the U.C.L.A. P.D.”

  “You want to let me through?” Scheiber asked. “I think I’d better go have a talk with them. We might have some information they could use.”

  “Yeah, sure thing. Park in the lot up ahead, in front of my cruiser.”

  “Where’s the professor’s office?”

  “Hertzberg Building, Dickson Plaza. Third floor. You’ll see the guys when you get there. They can direct you.”

  “Okay, thanks. Good to see you.”

  “Yeah, you, too, Detective.”

  Scheiber parked the car. “Damn, it’s hot,” he complained, getting out of the car. “I think the bloody temperature rose instead of falling when the sun set.”

  “No kidding.” Tucker nodded. “Okay if I leave my jacket in your car?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Scheiber said, waving distractedly.

  Tucker slipped it off and dropped it on the seat. Scheiber locked the vehicle, and they headed up a tree-lined walk-way to a broad plaza at the heart of the campus. Sodium vapor streetlights cast dappled yellow light across the pavement.

  “I guess this lends some credence to your theory Korman was murdered, too,” Scheiber said.

  “I didn’t actually say that,” Tucker pointed out as they approached the wide front steps of a castlelike stone building. A brass plaque next to the carved oak double doors identified it as the Hertzberg Building of the Arts and Humanities. They made slow progress going up the steps. Scheiber, as advertised, seemed to know every LAPD cop on the beat, all of whom stopped to shake his hand, then wave him forward to the next in the gauntlet. Tucker sailed by in his wake, presumed, he knew, to be one of Scheiber’s Newport police colleagues.

  When they finally made it inside and up the stairs to the third floor, Scheiber explained again that they had information for the detectives in charge of the investigation. This time, although the cop standing guard outside the scene was friendly toward the detective, he frowned when he caught sight of Tucker. “Who’s he?” he asked point-blank.

  “Name’s Frank Tucker.”

  “He work with you?”

  “No, he’s…um…a possible witness,” Scheiber said.

  The cop nodded slowly. “Okay, hang on. I’ll go tell Detective Ripley you’re here.”

  Tucker watched the officer head off down the brightly lit hall. Now what was that all about? The place smelled of disinfectant, he noted, the kind that brought back memories of a crusty old janitor and being detained after school for playing baseball too close to a window, which had paid the inevitable price for his grand slam home run. A custodial cleaning cart stood abandoned halfway down the hall. The speckled green linoleum on the floor was rippled from the tramping of thousands of pairs of feet over the many years since the old building had opened.

  It was several minutes before a plainclothes detective emerged from an office toward the end of the hall and approached them. Detective Will Ripley backslapped Scheiber heartily, but his smile vanished as he nodded curtly at Tucker when Scheiber made introductions. Then Ripley took his former colleague aside. They were out of earshot, but by the way the LAPD detective glanced periodically over his shoulder, it was obvious he wanted a clear explanation who Tucker was and why he had suddenly appeared at his crime scene. Finally, after some intense discussion, the two detectives returned. Now Scheiber was frowning, too.

  “CIA, huh?” Ripley said, studying Tucker closely. “What do you know? You say you were acquainted with Professor Urquhart?”

  “No, I didn’t say that at all. I only heard his name yesterday for the first time,” Tucker said, suddenly wondering whether coming along with Scheiber had been such a good idea, after all.

  “How’d you hear about the professor?” Ripley asked.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I see. Well, maybe you’ll tell me about it later.” Ripley turned to Scheiber once more. “Come on and have a look. You, too, Tucker,” he added over his shoulder.

  They followed Ripley down to the door from which he’d emerged. There, another young detective—McEvoy, from the U.C.L.A. police it seemed—came out, and was introduced over cryptic glances in Tucker’s direction.

  “I’ll have to ask you to stay back here by the door so as not to muck up the scene while the guys do their thing,” Ripley told them, “but feel free to take a look inside.” He and McEvoy stood aside, watching while Scheiber and Tucker peered in.

  The office was standard university fare, on the large side, as befit a senior professor, its stock institutional fittings supplemented by personal touches like framed photos and awards on the walls, plants, an Oriental carpet and a variety of tchotchkes on the shelves. All the dross and dreck of a long career. A couple of crime-scene investigators wearing white latex gloves were moving around the room, taking photographs and dusting for prints.

  Directly opposite the door, a man—Louis Urquhart, Tucker presumed—was slumped in a high-backed leather chair, his head lying on the big oak desk in front of him. It rested sideways on one outstretched arm, next to an open book. He looked as if he’d paused for a catnap in the middle of reading. His hair was gray and thin on top. His outstretched right hand, bearing a heavy gold signet ring on one finger, lay extended, palm down. His left arm was folded beside his head. He wore a heavy watch of buffed gold, the thick leather strap well worn—the kind of watch handed down to sons and grandsons. Urquhart looked peaceful and relaxed, but despite the abs
ence of any sign of violence, Tucker knew the man wasn’t sleeping.

  “Did he have any wounds?” he asked.

  Ripley shook his head. “Nada, aside from what looks like a tiny paper cut on his right palm. Nothing missing that we can tell, either, although we’ll have to have someone who knew the premises come in and help us make a thorough inventory. But that watch he’s wearing is an old Rolex. The ring didn’t come out of a Cracker Jack box, either. Whatever went down here, it wasn’t about robbery.”

  “Any files missing?” Scheiber asked, peering behind the door at a bank of three steel-drawered cabinets.

  Ripley arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know. Should there be?”

  The Newport detective shrugged. “You might want to talk to his secretary, find out whether he had a research assistant. He was apparently working on a biography of Benjamin Bolt—the author, you know?” Ripley nodded vaguely. “Anyway, if you can find anyone who’s familiar with his research, it would be interesting to know if any of the stuff is missing, especially as it relates to Bolt.”

  McEvoy, the younger of the two LAPD detectives, looked skeptical. “We’re not even sure we’ve got a homicide on our hands here, and you’ve already got a motive? Which is what? Professional rivalry? Somebody wanting to scoop the professor? How do you know?”

  “I don’t,” Scheiber replied, “and I’m not even saying that’s what it was. I’m just saying it’s worth looking into.” He turned back to Ripley. “I was talking to Stern out in the road. He said there was a witness who saw something suspicious go down?”

  Ripley nodded. “An office cleaner. She’d finished in here, and had spoken to the professor while she was working. Said he seemed fine. Then, while she was doing next door, she heard what she thought was a cry, but she had the vacuum and a mariachi station on, so she wasn’t sure. When she finished next door and went to move on down the hall a couple of minutes later, though, she saw a guy leaving Urquhart’s office and heading for the stairs at a brisk clip.”

  “And Urquhart?” Scheiber asked.

  “Unfortunately,” Ripley said, “she didn’t think to look in on him right then.”

  “Du-uh!” young McEvoy said, rolling his eyes.

  “She thought the guy she’d seen leaving in a hurry was just some colleague of Urquhart’s,” Ripley added. “It was only when she’d finished cleaning the last office and was getting ready to leave that she finally got around to looking back in here. She found Urquhart just like this. Tried to wake him and realized he was dead. Dispatcher said she was hysterical when she called 911.”

  “She actually saw the killer?” Tucker said.

  “And the killer didn’t see her?” Scheiber added.

  “Apparently not, luckily enough, or we’d probably be without an eyewitness,” Ripley answered.

  “Looks like a very professional hit,” young McEvoy said sagely. “Guy worked fast. We know Urquhart was alive at a little after six, when the cleaner estimated she left his office, but dead by six forty-three, when the dispatcher took the call.”

  Tucker’s gaze traveled up the office walls covered in framed photographs and diplomas. Several were hanging askew, as if an earthquake had recently shaken the place. Or maybe, he thought, someone had been looking behind them, searching for hiding places. It was the only sign of disorder in the place. It was a hit and it was very professional, as McEvoy said. Very KGB.

  His eyes focused on the photos in the frames. There were about a dozen of them, mostly of the dead man, it seemed, in various locales and with various unrecognizable people. But one photo was of another man, alone—Mariah’s father, Tucker realized with a start. It was one of the most famous pictures of Bolt, reproduced on the backs of his books and elsewhere. Mariah had told him once that her mother had taken the picture with an old Instamatic camera, near the cottage at Newport where Mariah had grown up. Her father stood on sand that seemed to stretch out behind him forever, waves crashing on a pristine shoreline. He’d been a fair-haired, good-looking guy. In the photo, he was wearing a simple white cotton shirt, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his faded jeans. His bare feet sank in the sand. Brilliant light and shadow played on his even features, but his gray-eyed gaze was direct, his expression not so much serious as preoccupied, as if he’d been lost in thought a split second before being interrupted and asked to look at the camera. A portrait of the artist as a very young man—practically a kid, Tucker thought grimly—but a father, too, whose sober gray eyes he’d passed on to the little girl he’d abandoned.

  He turned away from the photo with a shake of his head, and after one last glance at the dead man, stepped back into the hall—only to be startled by the sound of a piercing shriek. He swung around to find that Ripley had slipped away while he was staring at the pictures on Urquhart’s wall, and now stood a couple of doors down, holding a middle-aged Hispanic woman by the elbow as she screamed, “El es el asesino! El es el asesino!”

  The murderer she was hysterically pointing to was himself. Before he had time to react, Tucker found himself slammed up against a wall with his hands behind his back, held there by half a dozen uniformed officers who’d appeared out of nowhere. A pair of handcuffs clamped painfully onto his wrists.

  “Scheiber!” he bellowed. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “She says you’re the one she saw in the hall,” Scheiber replied. “When the officer on the stairs saw you come up with me, he thought her description fit you to a T.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody! I was at LAX, just getting off a flight from Washington when this happened.”

  “She seems to think it was you,” Ripley said.

  “This is nuts. All you have to do is check with United Airlines. They’ll confirm I was on the flight.”

  “Have you still got your boarding pass?” Scheiber asked him.

  He thought about it. “No, I threw it out, I think. But I’ve got the ticket stub. It’s in my rental car back at the Beverly Wilshire.”

  “We’ll be looking into that,” Detective Ripley said.

  “No, he can check it out,” Tucker said, nodding at the Newport detective. “Scheiber, the keys are in my jacket in your car. The rental’s a dark blue Taurus. You can get the ticket out of the glove compartment—and that’s all you can touch. As for you,” he added, turning his head back toward Ripley, “you do not have my permission to go anywhere near my personal property. Are we clear on that?” He was thinking of the laptop and the diskette with the Navigator’s information, locked in the trunk of the car. Scheiber was out of his jurisdiction and had no grounds to search. The LAPD detective would need a warrant incident to arrest to get into the car. With any luck, Scheiber would find the ticket and his innocence would be established long before Ripley could write up an affidavit and find a judge to approve the search warrant. At least, that was Tucker’s fervent hope.

  “Perfectly clear,” Ripley said, “but in the meantime, you’re going to have to come with us.” He nodded to one of the uniforms, who patted him down for weapons.

  “I’m not carrying,” Tucker said wearily. “I just got off a plane, for God’s sake.” They pulled him off the wall and turned him around. “Scheiber, this is completely bogus. You can’t let them arrest me. You know I didn’t do this.”

  “I don’t know that at all. All I know is that I found you rifling through a hotel room you’d broken into two hours after the professor was murdered. You had plenty of time to get from here to there.”

  “Why the hell would I have come over here with you if I had done this?”

  “You didn’t know the cleaning lady had seen you,” young McEvoy said.

  “It wasn’t me she saw, dammit!” He turned back to Scheiber. “If you’ll just check with the airline—” He paused.

  “What?” Scheiber asked.

  Tucker closed his eyes and shook his head, sighing heavily. This wasn’t the way to win friends and influence people, but he had to confess. He didn’t want to spend the weekend in jail. Scheiber,
he knew, would insist on corroborating the ticket by checking it against the airline passenger manifest before he’d vouch for him with Ripley. But he wasn’t going to find the name Frank Tucker on either the ticket or the manifest.

  “I was travelling under an alias,” he admitted. “I had good operational reasons for it. The point is, I used a different set of ID.”

  “How convenient,” McEvoy said scathingly.

  Tucker ignored him. “I’m telling you the truth, Scheiber. The name was Grant Lewis. The fake ID is also in the jacket I left in your car.” He nodded at one of the crime-scene investigators. “Let this guy take a Polaroid of me. Then try to run down the crew of United’s Washington–L.A. flight. It left Dulles at three fifty-five, local time. I was in the first class section, and I spoke with one of the flight attendants. I don’t know her name, but she was thirty-ish, blond, good-looking—”

  “Oh, yeah,” McEvoy snorted. “Should be really easy to find. There can’t be many like that.”

  Tucker ignored him. “She told me she had a real early return run tomorrow morning. That’s United Airlines, Scheiber. Do it, will you, please?”

  Scheiber still looked doubtful. “If you were going to operate undercover, why did you introduce yourself to me as Tucker? Is that even your real name?”

  “It is. I gave it to you because I thought you might cut Frank Tucker of the CIA a little more professional slack than a Grant Lewis, anonymous businessman. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure Detectives Ripley and McEvoy will follow up on the airline thing,” Scheiber said.

  “Right. While I stew in a cell all weekend. Come on, Scheiber!” Tucker said angrily. “What have you got to lose except the Korman case?”

  “Who’s Korman?” Ripley asked.

  “Another case I’m working,” Scheiber said, irritated. “That’s what brought me up here in the first place. I needed to talk to a lady at the Beverly Wilshire, and that’s where I ran into this guy.” He stood for a moment, smoothing down his peppered mustache. “Godammit, there goes my weekend.” Nodding at the CSI with the Polaroid, he asked Ripley, “Would you mind, Will? On the off chance this guy’s telling the truth and there is a link between these two cases, we’re going to have to coordinate, anyway. I might as well do a little of the legwork.”