Collateral damage hj-2

by Austin S. Camacho

  Standing just inside the door, Hannibal said, “It’s late. What do you want?”

  “I can’t find Janet,” Isaac Ingersoll said from the other side of the door.

  Hannibal unlocked the door and opened it as far as its safety chain would allow, to stare up into Isaac’s watery blue eyes.

  “I am not the missing person’s bureau. Besides, if you can’t find her it probably means she doesn’t want to be found. I don’t think she wants to see you.”

  “I don’t care,” Isaac said, and the beer cloud drifted down into Hannibal’s face. “I need her.”

  “You see, that’s your problem,” Hannibal said. “You don’t care what she wants, but you know, she has the right to do whatever she wants. Now, I think it’s time you went home and got some sleep, don’t you?”

  Hannibal thought he had the situation under control and his mind wandered for just a second to honey-baked ham and coffee. That’s when Isaac’s eyes left Hannibal’s and turned to the darkness behind him and to his left. Hannibal turned his head in time to catch a quick glimpse of Janet’s terror-stricken face before she darted back into the darkness.

  Before he could turn his head back, the edge of the door slammed into his face. Pain lanced out from his temple to fill his head as he staggered back. Darkness flowed in around him, but a missile shot through that darkness to smash into his chest hard enough to drive all breath from his body. Even as he dropped to his knees, Hannibal knew that missile was Isaac’s fist. He felt more than heard heavy footfalls moving away toward the kitchen.

  Damn. How could he have been so stupid? To trust that monster to behave rationally was a huge mistake. Self-loathing rose like bile into Hannibal’s throat. He was the reason Janet was now in danger. And worse, Cindy was in that same room standing in the path of onrushing destruction..

  Hannibal forced himself to his feet and staggered forward through a cloud of floating blue dots. His apartment had never seemed so long, but he pressed on toward the light at the end of the tunnel and the human locomotive standing there.

  Hannibal was still out of focus when he reached the kitchen. He stepped to the right, moving around Isaac’s huge frame to a point where he could lean on the table. Now Isaac stood on his left, with Cindy on the other side of the room facing him, and Janet to his right with her back against the sink. While the husband and wife ignored him, Hannibal gathered his strength to try to deal with Isaac when he finally made his move. Too late he realized he should have stopped on his way through the apartment to pick up his gun. It would have made everything so much easier.

  Isaac looked down at his wife cowering against the sink and said, “I need you home. Let’s go. Now!”

  Hannibal crouched slightly, preparing to leap. He knew Isaac would reach out at any second to grab Janet and drag her out of the room or maybe to slap her a couple of times first to make her more cooperative. Cindy was frozen next to the refrigerator, and he could understand that. Until you share a room with one, you don’t realize just how big a professional football lineman is. But Hannibal thought once Isaac took a step he would be off balance enough that a diving man, even one Hannibal’s size, might be enough to bowl him over.

  Then Isaac’s head moved back slightly, his brows lowered in surprise. Something had changed. The air in the room was charged with a different electricity. A glance to his right showed that Janet was standing just a bit straighter. Something had snapped inside her, something wound so tight it had to spring back hard. Her jaw was thrust forward just a little. And her right hand had curled around the handle of his carving knife.

  “No,” she whispered, but then repeated more loudly, “No! That’s enough. I don’t need to take any more of this.” Her arm eased around to the side with the knife’s blade rising out of the top of her fist. Her breathing deepened, the way a person’s does when they’re working themselves up for something. Hannibal wondered how many years of rage and frustration she was focusing.

  It was obvious to Hannibal that Isaac didn’t get it. “What are you going to do now?” he asked with a derisive grin. “Going to cut me?”

  His arms opened wide as if in invitation. Shock showed on his face when Janet emitted a low coarse growl, raised the heavy knife overhead and dived toward him. Her rage drove her into the air so that for a brief speck of time her eyes were actually above his. Isaac’s mouth dropped open but he didn’t move, didn’t even raise an arm in defense as the edge of the blade arced downward toward his neck.

  Hannibal leaped a split second behind Janet. She was slashing at a forty-five degree angle down and across her body. The blade would lay the right side of Isaac’s neck and throat open. Except that Hannibal’s back slammed into Isaac’s chest and her right wrist smacked into the space between Hannibal’s crossed wrists.

  They fell to the floor together, Hannibal on his left side, Janet lying on her right. The knife rolled free from her fingers and she lay still. Janet’s eyes were glazed over and she gazed at Hannibal as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. He was feeling very vulnerable as he turned to face Isaac, but his concerns appeared groundless. Isaac stared at his wife for a few seconds, and then flopped into one of the kitchen chairs. His mouth had not closed in that time.

  “You would have cut me. You would have cut me bad. How could you?”

  “Oh my God!” Janet screamed. She worked her way to her knees and again lunged for her husband, but this time she held her arms wide. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her face in the space between his head and his right shoulder. In her loud sobs, Hannibal could hear hate, fear, anger, frustration, all of the negative emotions pouring out at once. A tiny light appeared in Isaac’s eyes, perhaps a light of understanding. He raised his huge arms in slow motion and enfolded Janet in them. Then, at last he said the right thing.

  “Oh, God, baby, I am so sorry.” Then his eyes filled with tears and he joined his wife in pouring out all the bad.

  Sitting on the floor, Hannibal suddenly saw something too. Something obvious that he had missed. He turned to Cindy, sudden excitement brushing away his fatigue.

  “Did you see that? Old Doc Roberts was right. Francis didn’t kill Dean’s father. Or Oscar. Our murderer’s a man.”

  29

  Tuesday

  Isaac Ingersoll looked up from his plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs and said, “I owe you, Hannibal. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

  The aroma of fried bacon still hung in the air and Hannibal suspected it helped everyone’s appetite. Janet and Cindy had whipped up quite a feast out of simple ingredients. Hannibal pushed more eggs up on his fork with a slice of toast.

  “If you really feel that way, you know how you can pay me back,” Hannibal said. “Accept the counseling we talked about and get serious about overcoming your problem.”

  “I swear I’m turning over a new leaf,” Isaac said. “Guess I never realized how much I was making my Janet hate me. I can’t stand to think I could lose her forever.” As he spoke, he covered her hand and most of her forearm with his palm.

  Hannibal had to admit that Janet looked cute in Cindy’s robe. The four of them sat around Hannibal’s kitchen table enjoying some quiet time. Janet had slept on Hannibal’s sofa while her husband stayed across the hall in Hannibal’s office. Last night’s action seemed to have made an impression on him, and he was docile now.

  “I’ll be going in to the office a little late,” Cindy said. “If you guys will work with me here I’ll get on the phone and set up some counseling sessions for you through an agency that won’t charge you much. You’ll have to live apart for a while, but I think if you can be honest with yourselves and make an effort, the professionals can make your relationship work again.”

  “Okay, honey why don’t you work with these folks in here?” Hannibal said, pushing away from the table. “I want to take a closer look at those pictures you brought me.”

  “They’re out in the living room,” Cindy said, already reaching for the wall ph
one. Hannibal picked up his coffee and a table knife before shuffling off to the front room. Warm and comfortable in his sweat suit he wanted to do some relaxed thinking away from the Ingersolls’ problems. Besides, he was expecting company.

  Plopping down on the sofa, Hannibal clicked on the television and tuned in CNN. Then he slid a set of 8” X 10” photographs out of the manila envelope Cindy had left on the coffee table. Early sunlight over his shoulder spotlighted the pictures of two men who had never met but were inextricably linked in death. One of those links was the focus of the pictures. Each man had received a single vertical knife wound, just above his collarbone. Forensic scientists had studied these pictures too and told their bosses that they were the same width, the same length and almost certainly the same depth. Made with the same or extremely similar knives. It would not be hard to convict the same person of both murders.

  Thinking of his own violence-filled life, Hannibal realized he was glad his mother would never be presented with this view of her son. Considering his violent life, Hannibal fully expected his last photo to be posed by a police forensics scientist examining a knife or gunshot wound. By leaving ahead of him, Hannibal’s mother was safe from this shock. It reminded him of a couple of small debts he owed to two mothers he had spoken to in the last week. Francis Edwards, now Irons, had trusted him and was now in jail for that trust. He owed it to her to prove her innocence. And he owed Ruth Peters two things. First, the identity of her son’s killer. Also, he must return Oscar’s high school yearbook to her. He was foolish not to give it to her right away. It might be her last, most valuable keepsake of her lost son.

  This time when a knock came at the door Hannibal just called, “Come in. Coffee’s in the kitchen.” Sarge stepped in and passed Hannibal, who had already gone back to examining the photos. When Sarge returned to the room with a big mug, he was crunching on a piece of bacon.

  “That’s a big boy you got back there,” Sarge said. “Now what’s up? You want a fuller report of our Vegas vacation?”

  “Just glad you got back safe and sound,” Hannibal said. “Want you to take a look at these two pictures.”

  Sarge accepted them as Hannibal stood up. “Nasty business. But effective, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah,” Hannibal said, “and the best clue we have to the murder. Now I’ve been thinking I had the murderer in my sights, a woman, but what happened here last night changed my mind. That little petite blonde in there went after the big guy with a knife.”

  “You’re kidding?” Sarge grinned big. “Bet he was surprised as hell. Guys like that never expect the worm to turn.”

  “Yeah, it changed his world view, all right,” Hannibal said. “But check this out. When she went at him, she held the knife wide, like this, and swung in on him to slash him.” Hannibal mimed her actions with the table knife.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve seen as a bouncer,” Sarge said, nodding. “When women get mad they swing at you like that, or backhand, the same way, to get more force.” He glanced quickly toward the kitchen to make sure no female ears were tuned to him. Then with his voice lowered he said, “When a woman hates you, she doesn’t want to kill you. She wants to hurt you. There’s a big difference.”

  Hannibal nodded, smiling. “Right. That’s what I figured. So I thought, got to be a man. But men I’ve seen in fights generally go for the gut. I mean, who stabs at the throat? You’ve seen a lot more knife fights than I have in bars and such. How do you get a wound like that?”

  Sarge held out a hand and Hannibal surrendered the little knife. Sarge stood facing him and tried a couple of tentative moves toward Hannibal. Then he stopped to think. “Do I have to be facing you?”

  That raised one of Hannibal’s eyebrows. “Hm. I guess not.”

  Sarge stepped quickly toward Hannibal but to his right. Sarge’s left arm looped quickly around Hannibal’s throat as Sarge stepped around him. The knife in his right fist moved to a position just an inch away from Hannibal’s throat. Then he froze and loosened his grip enough for Hannibal to look down.

  “Yow,” Hannibal said, bent backward by the shorter man’s grip. “Yep, that would do it all right.”

  “That’s the way they taught me to take out a sentry in the corps,” Sarge said, relaxing and releasing his friend.

  Hannibal rolled his shoulders forward. “Sure. Should have been obvious to everyone. Not just a man, but a man who’s had military training. He stepped in silently after the argument, but before Francis came in. One quick strike and out. Maybe Dean wasn’t so far off after all.”

  “I’m not sure what all that means,” Sarge said, “except I’m pretty sure it means a busy day for you.”

  “You got that right,” Hannibal said, sliding the police photos back into their envelope. “I need to see the man who might be able to tell me where Joan Kitteridge ran off to. I have to return an item to the most recent murder victim’s mother. And I guess I need to know a lot more about Joan’s ex-husband. I can think of two people who might be able to tell me about him. I’ll question one, and I think I can get Cindy to talk to the other.”

  Each time Hannibal pulled into the Kitteridge driveway, his tension level was a little bit higher. This time he arrived intending to be downright confrontational, and that did not feel good to him. Langford Kitteridge was certainly spry and energetic, but he was still a lonely old man, whose only family was missing and presumed in hiding.

  Again Hannibal rang the doorbell in his working suit and tie, glasses and gloves. This time when the door to the big colonial swung open, Langford looked at Hannibal with both familiarity and hopefulness. His face seemed even more deeply lined than before, worry pulling the skin of his face downward.

  “Mr. Jones! Please come in. Do you have word of my niece?”

  Hannibal stepped inside, but stopped in the cavernous living room in front of the long black leather sofa. “No sir, I haven’t been able to turn up anything. I was hoping you could give me some more information that might help.”

  “Yes, yes. Anything.” Langford waved Hannibal down into the couch and lowered himself into the one opposite. They faced each other over the top of a wide glass-topped coffee table. Track lighting softened the older man’s face, but not enough to make Hannibal’s job any easier.

  “Sir, I don’t know if Joan is in trouble or not. But if you haven’t heard from her in all this time she might be. And if she is, I think it could be some trouble returning from her past. Specifically, trouble being caused by her ex-husband.” Not a lie exactly, Hannibal thought. In fact, it could well turn out to be one interpretation of the truth. He watched Langford’s face, following his white bushy eyebrows as they rose and lowered.

  “I told you, Mr. Jones, Joanie has never been married.”

  Hannibal sighed. “Yes sir, you did tell me that. But now I know that was a lie. And I was hoping, with her safety in question, you might be willing to now tell me the truth. I think it must have been when she was very young, and I think he must have been a military man.”

  It happened almost too quickly to follow. The color drained out of Langford’s face, then rushed back up into it. He turned away, and his eyes focused on some imaginary spot in the distance. A grandfather clock ticked somewhere in the house, and Hannibal imagined the sound was connected to Langford’s mind grinding away. Hannibal reminded himself that Joan Kitteridge had probably learned her calculating ways at this old man’s knee. But when Langford turned back to Hannibal, his face was clear and relaxed again. His eyes were hooded, but Hannibal knew that shame could cause that in men old enough to still occasionally feel it.

  “She was barely eighteen,” Langford said softly. “Had no interest in listening to the old man. Just took off to be with this fellow. I still don’t know what the attraction was. For her, anyway. Anybody could see the attraction for him, eh? But it didn’t last long. He treated her poorly and she soon understood her mistake.”

  Hannibal tried to buoy the mood with a small smile. “Young peopl
e make mistakes. But sometimes the mistakes don’t go away as quickly or as permanently as we think. What can you tell me about the boy?”

  “Nothing really,” Langford said. “I never cared to know anything about him. Except as you say, he was a soldier.”

  “All right,” Hannibal said. “I guess that’s no surprise. How about a description? Can you tell me what he looked like?”

  “Back then?” Langford’s eyes turned up as he called his memory into play. “Well, let’s see. I seem to recall a handsome man, a tall man, on the slim side but well muscled, as a soldier would be. Dark brown hair and eyes. High cheekbones. Not a dark complexion but well tanned I’d say.”

  “You’ve a good memory, Mr. Kitteridge,” Hannibal said. “It almost sounds like someone I know.”

  The address was neither hard to find nor a surprise.

  Standing on the roof of Mark Norton’s condominium complex Hannibal could have thrown a football with a reasonable expectation of hitting the building Mark worked in before the ball hit the ground. He parked his Volvo in the only unmarked space he could find. Almost as an afterthought he grabbed Oscar’s yearbook, thinking it might make a useful prop when questioning Mark. Once inside, Hannibal called for an elevator. Mark lived on the 11th floor and just as Hannibal touched that button in the elevator his telephone hummed at him.

  “Hannibal? It’s Cindy.”

  Even on the worst of days, it brightened his heart to hear her voice. “I know who it is sweetheart. Have you talked to Francis? What did she think of Dean’s theory?”

  “Well she was sure glad to know her son doesn’t think she’s a murderer,” Cindy said. “But his basic idea is all wrong. She says she didn’t know that Joan was married and never met or talked to her husband. She couldn’t have told him about her husband’s affair with his wife, and she says she wouldn’t have told him anyway.”