“Uh huh”
“The dead guy in the cold case was apparently involved in some kind of blackmail racket before he was killed. There was a woman’s DNA all over his apartment. The word on the street was that he’d been killed to keep him quiet – but it’s equally possible that he was double-crossed by his partner in crime. The manner of his death was highly unusual and strikingly similar to Delmar’s death. I’m beginning to think that the mystery woman’s DNA might match that at the cold case crime scene.”
Lucy thought for a few moments, absorbing all this.
“So all you need to do is to get something from her apartment with her DNA on it. You could call Calley and he could get a search warrant for the woman’s apartment. They’d find Delmar’s stuff there – his ID, driver’s license etcetera. That would tie her to his death too. And then she’d be arrested and Lisa wouldn’t be at risk anymore. And if what you say is right then it puts Don in the clear. He couldn’t have possibly been involved in the cold case.”
“Hey, hold on,” I said. “It isn’t as easy as that. Let’s go sit down somewhere more comfortable.”
Lucy sat on the sofa, drawing her legs up underneath her, and I sat on the recliner opposite her.
“First of all, getting a search warrant isn’t that easy. We don’t know who that apartment belongs to. We don’t know whether she’s the tenant or not. Second, at this stage we’re the only ones who know about her association with Delmar. Only we know that they were together shortly before Delmar was killed. Only we know that the pair of them were apparently blackmailing Lisa. Only we know that she’s living in the South End apartment – and only we know that inside that apartment are identification documents relating to Delmar.”
“Oh,” said Lucy. “Yes, I see.”
For the police to obtain a search warrant for the South End apartment they’d have to convince a judge that they have probable cause – some evidence linking her with Delmar’s death. But they don’t have anything of the kind. Of course, they could apply on the basis of ‘reliable information received’. That might work, because I have a good track record with the police. But it would mean that I’d have to reveal everything – and I’m not at liberty to do that. I have to put my client’s interests first. Of course, if I had evidence that Don himself was involved in a crime then his right to anonymity would cease; but I don’t have such evidence. And I also have to keep Lisa’s interests in mind. She has gone to great lengths to keep whatever it is a secret from Don. She has a right to our protection too, provided that she hasn’t committed some crime either.”
“Yes, of course you’re right. It’s all so complicated isn’t it?” Lucy said.
“What I can do − and I’ll do it right now – is give Calley Delmar’s name and he can run a check to see if anything’s known about him. Eventually the police will run his prints themselves, but I need to know right away. The next thing is to get back inside the woman’s apartment as soon as possible. If it’s not her own apartment she could disappear at any time.”
I called Calley. His less than dulcet tones greeted me the other end of the line.
“You know who the dead guy is yet, Lance?”
“Nobody’s told me anything so far,” he said.
“He’s called Delmar Ditto,” I said, and I spelled the name for him.
“What kind of a name’s that?” he said.
“I want you to run his prints for me. You got a pen? Okay, here’s his ID card number – he’s from Minnesota.” I read the details to him. “If you want me to get this case moving for you I need the information pronto.”
“I’m supposed to take the wife and kids to the mall today,” he said.
“Take them another day. Meet them later. You know what’s at stake here.”
“Sure, okay,” he said wearily. “I’ll get on it. You wanna call my wife and apologize for me? You’ll need to hold the phone about a yard from your ear,” he said.
“Just think about those chevrons,” I said. We hung up.
“Do you think they’ll really make him a sergeant?” Lucy said.
“I doubt it, but with Calley a carrot works better than a stick.”
I called Tony. “She’s still home,” he said.
“Okay, I’m on my way over there again and I’m bringing Lucy. If there’s any movement before we get there let me know.”
“I’ll put the stuff in the dishwasher,” I said to Lucy. “You go and get ready for a day out.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Accident
Lucy and I arrived at the café in South End at about ten thirty. Tony said she was still home.
“I guess the two of you can handle it now,” he said.
“No, I still want you to stick around, Tony. If she takes a cab somewhere I’m going to need your expertise, and if she comes out and goes somewhere on foot I’d like you to follow her with Lucy. For one thing it’ll be less obvious, and for another Lucy is still a novice. She could learn a lot from you if you don’t mind giving her a bit of coaching.”
“Okay, I’d be glad to,” he said.
The three of us sat there and drank our way through countless cups of coffee as the morning wore on but finally, at just after twelve, she showed. She was dressed in a fawn-colored overcoat and knee-length suede boots and she was carrying a sling bag over her shoulder.
“Okay,” I said, time for you two to head off. I’ll wait a few minutes and maybe you can give me a call when you can work out if it’s going to be a long or a short trip.”
The pair of them headed off in the same direction as the woman but staying on the opposite side of the street. In less than a minute I’d lost sight of them. I walked across to the entrance of the apartment building and waited. After a few more minutes my cell phone rang. It was Tony.
“You’re set to go, boss.” He hung up.
I went back up to the fourth floor and let myself into apartment 410. I donned my gloves and went into the bedroom to check the Gladstone bag. If anything was missing it could be a sign that she knew someone had been there, but everything was as I’d left it. I rifled through the wallet. There was a credit card and a debit card. There were a couple of retail loyalty cards and about eighty bucks in cash. None of those things were of any interest to me. I looked at the men’s clothes hanging in the closet and soon satisfied myself that they had nothing to do with Mr. Ditto – they were too large. If I had time I’d come back and search the pockets, but I had more important places to look first.
I picked up the cell phone. I tried to turn it on but it seemed that the battery was flat. I peeled off the back. The Sim card was still in place. I was tempted to pocket it but I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t afford to leave any sign that it had been tampered with. The keys were just keys. There didn’t appear to be any car key on the ring.
I walked over to search the two matching bedside tables and drawers. The bed was still unmade and I could tell that she slept on the left side, so I looked there first. There was nothing there of any particular interest to me. A search of the other table was similarly unpromising.
I moved into the living room. I noticed a coffee cup on the drainer in the kitchen which hadn’t been washed. I took out some cotton swabs I’d brought with me and swabbed the rim of the cup, and put them in a zip lock bag in my pocket. There was a hardwood desk in the living room. None of the drawers was locked. Inside I found a number of receipts for utilities, cable TV and the apartment’s management fees. All were in the name of Paul Withers. I could find nothing bearing a woman’s name. Each of the drawers was about half full of assorted paraphernalia, but none of it was what I was looking for. I spent a long time looking carefully at various documents, searching for anything that related to Lisa Burrows, but to no avail.
There was a credenza, atop which was a flat screen TV. Inside was a DVD player, a router and some compact discs. There was a cocktail cabinet, liberally stocked with all kinds of bottles of various colo
rs. I searched the bookcase, carefully looking between and behind the books. I opened the larger books and flipped through the pages to see whether anything had been tucked inside. I was drawing a blank. I looked at my watch. I’d been searching for over forty-five minutes. I scanned the room to see if there could be any places where documents or money could be secreted away, but I could see none.
I went back into the bedroom and started to search through the men’s and women’s clothing in the closets. I found nothing. More than an hour had passed. I hadn’t expected to find a charger for the phone in the Gladstone bag, and I didn’t. I made a note of the make and model. The best I could do was to get myself a charger and maybe come back another time. After my success earlier in the morning it was a major anti-climax. If the woman was in possession of anything relating to the blackmail – or anything incriminating at all – then she must have taken it with her. I went into the bathroom again and looked at the items there more carefully than I’d had time to do on my previous visit to the apartment. There was no shaver, nor anything else to suggest that a man was residing there. Whilst I’d been searching the desk it had occurred to me that Mr. Withers might suddenly walk in on me, but nothing I’d seen in the apartment suggested the recent presence of a male. I lifted the lid of the toilet tank, but there was only bluish-tinted water inside.
I went back into the living room. I checked the kitchen cupboards. I looked inside the dishwasher and found only dirty dishes; the washing machine was empty and so was the drier.
When I was finally satisfied that further searching was pointless I let myself out, locked the door again and went back to the café across the road. I wondered what Tony and Lucy were doing and where they were. I ordered a coffee and a sandwich and then, just as I was about to call Lucy, my cell phone rang. It was Tony.
“Have you had enough time yet?” he said.
“Yes, I’m all done,” I replied.
“Only I just called to say that if you need longer it’ll be okay. The lady won’t be back for some considerable time.”
“Oh, why’s that? Where are you both?” I said.
“There’s been an accident.” My heart jumped. “I’ll hand you over to Lucy,” he said.
“Lucy, what kind of accident? What happened?”
“The mystery woman was clipped by a taxi while she was crossing the street,” she said. “I don’t know how badly she’s hurt – she’s still conscious, I mean her eyes are open but she seems a bit out of it − but anyway the ambulance has just shown up.”
“Where are you?”
“Corner of Tremont and West Dedham.”
“I’ll get over there.”
“No, wait a minute.” There was a pause. “Tony says we’re going to follow the ambulance to see where they take her. It’ll probably be the Boston Medical Center. I’ll call you as soon as we know. Just a minute.” There was another pause. “Tony says because we’re witnesses it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out about her condition and stuff like that. I’ve got to go.”
Well, I thought to myself. We shouldn’t have too much difficulty finding out who she is now either.
Chapter Seventeen
A Moral Dilemma
I went to look for a charger for Ditto’s phone. It took me more than twenty minutes to find a shop that sold one, and then I went back to apartment 410. I let myself in and went over to the Gladstone bag in the closet. I took out the phone and plugged it into the charger. After a minute it glowed encouragingly. There were a few numbers which were stored in the phone rather than the Sim and I made a note of them. There were no messages, either sent or received. I removed the sim card, inserted it into my phone, and copied the contents. Then I replaced it in Ditto’s phone and took out my notebook. I unplugged the charger and put it in my pocket. I put the phone back in the Gladstone bag, let myself out and went back to the café across the street.
I knew I was going to be in for a long wait, but there wasn’t anything for me to do. I might as well stay where I was until I could arrange to pick Lucy up, but I couldn’t help turning things over in my mind.
What about the woman’s sling bag? I wondered what was in it. Now the sling bag would be in the hospital with her and out of my reach. I wondered where they’d all been while I was searching the apartment. I thought about the woman and what little I knew about her. She’d been with Delmar Ditto an hour or so before I found him dead. There was nothing to link the two events except suspicion on my part. I’d seen her give an envelope to Lisa which I assumed contained some kind of sensitive subject matter, but that was only my assumption. Lucy thought that Lisa had thrown the envelope into a dumpster near her home – but there was no proof that it was the envelope, and even if it was, so what? I’d searched her apartment – or at least the apartment where she was currently staying; it apparently wasn’t her apartment. In any event there was nothing in it of significance – except of course Ditto’s wallet, phone and keys. I assumed that whatever else had been in the Gladstone bag had been disposed of. It had probably contained some of his clothing and other personal items. I wondered why she’d kept the wallet, phone and keys. I guessed that the wallet and phone had been removed to slow down the identification of the victim.
The police wouldn’t have any interest in the injured woman, unless their investigation showed that the taxi driver was criminally liable in some way for the accident. I briefly wondered about Withers. I wondered who he was and whether he might in some way be connected to the whole affair. After a while I stopped wondering and dug out my Somerset Maugham. I decided to lose myself in that for a couple of hours.
About an hour later Lucy called to say that the woman had been admitted to Boston Medical. As concerned witnesses to the accident they’d been able to get some information about her condition. She had a concussion and she’d been taken for x-rays. The paramedics thought she’d broken a leg. She’d at least be kept there overnight for observation. They’d been given a number to call for further information. Tony had found out her name; it was Barbara Green. Should they come back to the café or would I pick her up? Tony would go home directly, unless I wanted to talk to him; but there was nothing he could tell me that she couldn’t.
“I’ll come over there and pick you up. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Lucy. “I’ll see you later.”
I walked to my car and set off to meet Lucy. I called her on the way and she directed me to a café where she was drinking a mug of hot chocolate.
It was after three when I got to the café. I ordered a coffee and sat down.
“So, tell me everything that happened,” I said.
“We followed her up Tremont. When she got to West Dedham, she went into the Post Office. I followed her in there and joined a line. She was mailing a package to somewhere. It was about the size of a large library book – one of those with a hard cover” Lucy said, indicating the approximate size with her hands. “Then she came out and we followed her again. I think she was going home, but when she got to the corner of Tremont and Dedham she must have been distracted or not paying attention. She stepped off the sidewalk as a taxi came around the corner and she tried to step back but the fender struck her somewhere and she just went down. A load of people tried to help her but there was one guy who kind of took control and said nobody should try to move her and that he’d already called for an ambulance. After about six or seven minutes the ambulance arrived and we asked where she was being taken and they told us BMC and then we took a cab and went there.” Lucy paused for breath.
“Okay – and you found out her name and that she’ll be kept in there for a while?”
“Yes, at least for observation. She went off to have an x-ray, or x-rays. We got a number to call to inquire about her later.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s hit the road before the traffic gets too bad.”
On the drive home I told Lucy about the less than fruitful search of the apartment.
“I managed to copy the numbers and address book from Ditto’s phone,” I said. “I had to go out and buy a charger for it. Oh, and I think I know who the owner or tenant of the apartment is – it’s a guy called Withers; Paul Withers. Judging by the relatively small amount of women’s clothing in the apartment I don’t think she’s been staying there long.”
“Not all women have lots of clothes,” Lucy said.
“You do.”
“I do not. Only compared to you, because you never buy anything; you just wear things until they fall to pieces.”
“So what’ll we tell Don tomorrow?” I said.
“We’ll just tell him what happened.”
“Her name; and where she lives.” I said.
“You don’t think …?”
“I don’t know what to think. He wasn’t driving the taxi was he?” I said jokingly. Lucy told me not to be silly.
“On the one hand he’s our client and I should tell him everything, but for the time being I’m playing it safe. After I followed Barbara to her apartment building yesterday and while I was waiting outside I called Don to tell him we’d successfully tailed Lisa. I switched off the caller display before I called. He answered the call.”
“So?”
“He told us he’d be in the gym, Lucy; the gym with no phone signal.”
“Oh,” she said. “But I’ve been thinking about Don, and about the cold case. Don couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that. Maybe the signal is intermittent down there – like our old office. Don’t you think you’re being a little over-cautious?”
Till Death - Mark Kane Mysteries - Book Four: A Private Investigator Crime Series of Murder, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Stories...with a dash of Romance. A Murder, Mystery & Suspense Thriller Page 11