Tagged for Murder

by Jack Fredrickson

  ‘I’ll need the name of the cop who rode with her to the hospital,’ I said.

  ‘He forgot to leave it.’ He held up his hand. ‘I know, I know, we should have demanded, but like I said, it was a rookie working the phones.’

  I didn’t need the map he’d scribbled, because the park was big and the town was small, and I began walking the running trail fifteen minutes later. I spotted the Belle Plain patrolman almost immediately, pacing back and forth, looking at the ground alongside the path like he was hunting a lost contact lens. He was in his early twenties, young enough to have been the rookie who’d misfired, working the phones.

  I gave him a card. ‘Are you the officer that took the call?’

  ‘That was Jake. He’s younger,’ he said.

  ‘Find anything interesting?’ I asked, gesturing toward the ground he’d been scrutinizing.

  ‘No signs of struggle, which means nothing if she was clubbed on the pavement. For sure, there is no blood evidence.’

  ‘It could have been scooped up by the county’s forensics team.’

  ‘Sure enough, except …’

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Except I can’t find any trace of their work, either.’

  ‘They can be especially tidy,’ I said, because it was true. I’d been at a hundred crime scenes. Some technicians were slobs but most were fanatical neatniks.

  ‘I’ve asked everyone running by if they saw or heard anything yesterday,’ the cop said. ‘They asked what time, I said early to mid-afternoon. They asked what happened, I said assault. They asked if the victim is OK, I said no. They said they didn’t see anything.’

  I probed the scrub alongside the path for fifteen minutes, not at all sure what I was looking for but owing diligence to Violet just the same. It was no use. Last autumn’s fallen leaves were saturated from the winter’s snow, and would have almost immediately plumped back up no matter how hard they’d been pressed down by a killer or a victim.

  I thought, then, of the green Volt she’d driven out to the turret, a car the cops hadn’t been able to trace to her, according to Kopek. I left the trail, walked the several blocks surrounding the park and then drove back to the police station. The same sergeant was sitting behind the front desk, but all that remained of the meatball sandwich were specks of red sauce on both sides of his mouth.

  ‘What happened to her car?’ I asked.

  He didn’t bother to get up and come to the window. ‘Her car?’

  ‘She drove an electric car, a green Chevy Volt. I walked the blocks surrounding the park and couldn’t find it on any of the streets.’

  ‘Don’t know about her car,’ he said.

  ‘You have signs prohibiting overnight street parking, two a.m. to six a.m. Your patrol officers must have ticketed it.’

  ‘I review the overnights myself before sending them to accounting. We ticketed no such car.’

  ‘It had a decal in the back window, showing a round cartoon head with an index finger raised to its lips, whispering.’

  He smiled, perhaps at knowing something I did not. ‘That’s a Responsible Rentals car. They rent to moonbeams, the environmentally conscious. They also rent lawnmowers, weed-whackers and such. Everything’s electric with them, nice and quiet. Bunch of ex-hippies probably, maybe tree huggers. Dopers, no doubt. They’re in the city someplace.’

  ‘It makes no sense, not finding her car. You say Responsible Rentals is in the city?’

  ‘You could look in the phone book,’ he said.

  I thanked him for the tip and said I’d be sure to do that, as soon as I found someone who owned a phone book.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Responsible Rentals was on Chicago’s trendy north side, in a neighborhood of health-food restaurants, basket and artificial flower shops, and, most appropriate of all, a folk music school for folks inclined to zither.

  The narrow side lot was crammed with four Chevy Volts. All were green and had shushing cartoon heads on their rear windows. Any one of them could have been the car Violet drove out to my place.

  I walked through multicolored jangly beads and into the sound of Joan Baez singing of the night someone drove old Dixie down, though, judging by her lyrics, it was likely not in an electric car. The shop was small and contained three electric lawnmowers, three electric weed-whackers and one electric outdoor grill. All looked brand new, never used.

  ‘Business good?’ I asked the slender fellow behind the counter, handing him a business card.

  ‘Insurance investigation?’ he asked.

  ‘A minor accident, yesterday. One of your Volts is still out for rental?’

  ‘Sadly, they’re all here and accounted for. That part of our business is killing us, what with the car payments and all.’

  I resisted the urge to eyeball the unused mowers and whackers, thinking the guy must have been selling weed out of his back room to get by.

  ‘You’re sure? One of our insureds reported she had a, uh, malfeasance in one of your rental cars.’

  ‘A woman, you say? No, not today, not yesterday, not for a long while. It’s been two months since a woman rented one of our cars, and she’s a holistic healer in her sixties. Our cars are all here, undamaged and mostly unused.’

  ‘A slender woman, curly brown hair, thick glasses, about thirty years old. Talks in a whisper?’

  ‘Like our logo?’ he asked, smiling as he pointed to a larger rendering of the shushing cartoon head above the cash register. ‘No. The last Volt we rented was to a man in his early thirties.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Real recent. I don’t like to give out customer information.’

  I supposed it could have been the day Violet drove out to the turret. ‘Maybe he rented it for his wife to use,’ I said.

  ‘That I couldn’t say.’

  ‘How long was that car out on rental?’

  ‘Just for a day. What’s the name of your insured person?’

  ‘Violet Krumfeld.’

  ‘Rings no bells.’

  ‘Can you tell me the name of the man who rented that Volt?’

  ‘No can do,’ he said, pressing his forefinger to his lips to mimic his cartoon logo. ‘Like I said, we respect all confidences.’

  He wanted to walk out to his side lot, then, to make sure his cars were undamaged. I had to pretend interest in doing that as well, and we spent the next fifteen minutes looking for damage that was never there.

  ‘You’re sure I can’t have the name of the man who rented your car?’ I asked.

  He put his finger to his lips, and so I left him and his confidences, not at all confident about what I’d just learned. Violet had driven out to Rivertown in a car someone else had rented. Conceivably, that could have been because her own car was being repaired, though that was a long shot because the cops had been unable to link her to any vehicle. More likely, she didn’t own a car and simply borrowed the rental – a car that had only been rented for a day and perhaps only to be used to drive out to the turret, though that seemed too far-fetched to be believed.

  I called the Belle Plaine police department when I got outside, and got the desk man I’d spoken with earlier.

  ‘This is Elstrom,’ I said. ‘What sorts of cars were ticketed recently for overnight violations after the woman was found dead?’

  ‘None. Not one for a week,’ the desk sergeant said.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Nothing for a whole week. But since you’re so eager, let’s find out what she does drive, shall we?’ He set the phone down and I could hear him tapping at a keyboard. Embarrassment over his rookie’s lack of curiosity must have energized him.

  After a moment, he picked up the phone and asked, ‘We are talking Violet Krumfeld, right?’ He spelled out both first and last names.

  ‘Violet Krumfeld, yes,’ I said.

  More tapping came, and then he put me on hold.

  Fifteen long minutes later, he came back on the line. ‘Something’s wrong, Elstrom. The Illinois Se
cretary of State has no record of issuing either a driver’s license or a vehicle license plate to a Violet Krumfeld. The Illinois Department of Revenue shows no one by that name as ever paying sales tax on an automobile purchase. In other words—’

  ‘In other words,’ I interrupted, ‘she’s now using a different last name.’ It was no surprise; Kopek’s people would have gone through the same exercise.

  ‘Happens all the time,’ he said. ‘Women get married or divorced. Plus, she could have been given a ride out here to run, or taken a bus or a train.’

  ‘Want to know what my next questions are?’ I asked.

  He sighed. ‘What hospital was she taken to, what ambulance took her and what cops are now investigating her murder?’

  ‘You can get answers faster than I can.’

  He called me an hour later, just I was stepping into the gloom of Herbie’s half-lit office hallway.

  ‘Nothing,’ the desk sergeant said.

  ‘No Violets with any last name were pronounced dead anywhere?’

  ‘No Violets, no Krumfelds, no blunt force traumas anywhere that fit her description,’ he said. ‘And believe me, I checked it right.’

  It made no sense and yet it so strangely mirrored what Kopek seemed to suggest when he came to tell me of her death and to ask what I knew of her life. Violet Krumfeld was unknowable, a mist, a vapor, a chunk of the big Herbie Sunheim jigsaw puzzle that butted against the others, refusing to fit.

  ‘I sent an email blast to every hospital within fifty miles,’ the sergeant went on. ‘Not that any sane person would transport a dying or dead woman that far. They’d head for the closest place to get her pronounced dead. I got replies from every one. No woman in her early thirties suffering blunt force trauma was brought in, dead or alive, from Belle Plaine that afternoon.’

  ‘And the ambulance companies themselves?’ I asked.

  ‘There are four, though one has the lion’s share of the business. No pick-ups in Belle Plaine that afternoon. Zero, nothing, nada.’

  ‘How about a very private ambulance?’

  ‘You mean one of those one-vehicle operations that very rich people use for privacy? Possible,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t know how to get through to those.’

  ‘Neither would the cop running along the trail who found her, most likely,’ I said. ‘Speaking of the name of that cop …?’

  ‘No dice on that, yet. I emailed Chicago PD, Cook County Sheriff’s, Cook County Forest Preserve, Illinois State Police and every surrounding local within twenty miles. He could have come from any of them. I’ll let you know when they respond.’

  A credit card popped the flimsy lock to Herbie’s office. Inside, it stunk of a serious dousing with disinfectant. And that made it stink of too much orderliness.

  I’d seen previously that Violet had removed the mess of files from Herbie’s desk, thinking she’d gone through them for Triple Time documents and then refiled them. All that remained on his desk now was an empty Campbell’s Tomato Soup can full of pens liberated from the closest of Chicago’s downtown hotels and a stack of the small notepads hoteliers set out next to their room phones. It wasn’t hard to envision Herbie cruising the upper floors of the Palmer House and the Chicago Hilton, looking to replenish his office supplies from untended maids’ carts.

  Herbie’s desk drawers were completely empty and smelled strongly of the disinfectant that permeated the whole office. There were no backup office supplies, no surplus hotel pens or scratch pads or notes or files or stray anything in any of them. Not even a loose paperclip stuck in a corner. I was beginning to understand the strong disinfectant. Drawers didn’t get that clean unless they were dumped and then scrubbed.

  The drawers in the file cabinets along the wall had been completely emptied of papers and folders, and they, too, smelled strongly of disinfectant. Even the company checkbook so desperately wanted by Herbie’s wife was gone. Everything had been taken away.

  Violet’s desk was as bare as Herbie’s, the top clear except for her desk phone, headset, ancient IBM typewriter and one scratch pad from the Drake Hotel. The thought flitted through my mind that Herbie probably handed out his stolen hotel pads one at a time, to promote frugality.

  Then again, the man had died with three hundred thousand dollars stashed behind his baseboard. I wondered who else knew about that money, and who had burgled Mrs Sunheim’s house looking for it. And I wondered if Kopek and Jacks knew about that money, and if that was why they’d asked to search her house.

  Lots of people knew lots of things that I didn’t know.

  Violet’s desk drawers were also empty and smelled of the same disinfectant. On a hunch, I leaned down to sniff the typewriter. It, too, stunk of the disinfectant. The office hadn’t been cleaned; it had been scrubbed down to remove fingerprints.

  I picked up her notepad from the Drake. There were only three sheets left. The top two were marked by indentations from hard doodling on a higher sheet. Violet had sketched violets.

  It was possible she truly loved the little flowers.

  Or, it was possible she needed to be reminded of the name she was using.

  For sure, Violet Krumfeld had skipped lightly, whispering, leaving nothing but the faintest indentations of herself behind.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Driving back to Rivertown, I called the cell number printed on Kopek’s card. ‘How did you learn about Violet Krumfeld’s death?’ I heard voices in his background; he was at his precinct.

  ‘A phone message, left on my desk.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Why is this important?’

  ‘Remember you told me your people were having trouble getting a fix on Violet’s life, like where she lived and all?’

  ‘We’re still having trouble. The woman didn’t have a phone, a car, credit cards, nothing in the name of Violet Krumfeld. Have you learned something?’

  ‘I learned you’re right. The Belle Plaine police tried to trace her through the ambulance that took her away and nearby hospitals. They found nothing, too.’

  ‘Obviously, she was working under an assumed name. Unfortunately, we can’t get at Sunheim’s federal or state payroll reports. The woman was afraid, probably of whoever caught up to her on that jogging trail, or she was up to no good in that office. Hold on.’

  He yelled to someone in his background. ‘Shirley, you’re sure the guy who phoned about Violet Krumfeld didn’t leave a name?’

  ‘I told you, he hung up before I could get it,’ a woman’s voice came back.

  Kopek sighed into the phone. ‘And there you have it, Elstrom. Police efficiency. I don’t know who called. More important, I had Shirley call around to the other agencies, to see if we could chase down more on Miss Krumfeld. Nobody has a damned thing on her, which might mean a lot, or might mean only that somebody screwed up, mislabeling a file.’

  I called Cuthbert next, and asked his voicemail who’d notified him of Violet’s death. I asked Raines’ voicemail the same thing.

  Back at the turret, I frittered myself into the evening, sitting and standing and prowling the turret, knowing what I had to do next but not knowing what to do after that. Herbie Sunheim had to be put back. And Violet Krumfeld, whoever she was, had to be known.

  The men behind Triple Time – the faceless, shapeless creatures who’d likely set off all the killing – had to be found, too, but finding them would be next to impossible. Men like them believed in multiple layers of insulation. Whoever was killing on their behalf reported to people who reported to people who reported to people who could never be identified. People on high.

  People on high.

  It was the nubbin of a thought.

  I grabbed a gray plastic shopping bag and went up the stairs to the ladder to the fifth floor, the floor to which my grandfather, contorted thinker that he was, had never extended stairs, probably because he, like me, had no idea what to do with a fifth floor. I’d brought the drone down from the roof and left it there with its belly camera faci
ng the dark of the stone wall, because I didn’t know what to do with it after I snagged it.

  Until now, perhaps.

  The camera and light were attached with Velcro to the belly of the drone. A strong tug broke them loose. I put them in the gray bag and placed it back into the shadows with the lens facing the wall.

  I sat on the rough plank floor with the drone in my lap. It was a sizable thing, about two feet square, but surprisingly light, with a helicopter rotor at each of its four corners. Big enough to carry a camera and a light, it might well be big enough to carry something else.

  I mulled that for a few minutes more, then went downstairs, slipped on my coat and went out into the night. I went on foot, having decided it would be safest for Booster Gibbs if I were not noticed arriving in my noticeable Jeep to seek his counsel, should what I’d been mulling go awry.

  ‘Don’t tell me you lost your Jeep again, Dek,’ Booster said, pulling his surgical mask down to free the huge smile in the middle of his beard.

  ‘Something more sinister, I’m afraid. I need a referral to someone who can make a device for a burn.’

  Booster turned his head slightly away, but not enough so I couldn’t see his grin being replaced by shock. ‘Not a kill, Dek.’

  Rivertown, for all its corruption, its kickbacks and hookers and illicit gambling machines, was a moral place. Modern viciousness – modern murders and modern drugs – were not allowed. Most certainly, the lizards that ran the town, mostly members of one extended family in tight control, did not allow killing.

  ‘No kill, absolutely not,’ I said. ‘I need expertise to burn a drug lab.’

  ‘Surely there’s not one here?’ he asked, clearly alarmed.

  ‘Not in Rivertown. It’s in Chicago, and it’s destined to be no trailer operation. This thing looks to become a high output manufacturer, perhaps the first of several.’

  ‘A righteous burn,’ he said, looking relieved.

  ‘So far, minor league bad people have died – the lawyer, the realtor and the property manager who set up the sites. But three innocents – a kid who tipped me to some of the goings-on, the property manager’s receptionist and, just yesterday, the realtor’s secretary, have gotten caught up in the mess, too. More innocent victims will follow when the lab gets into gear.’