Three Dogs in a Row

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I shook my head. “I don’t think Rochester did either. When I got there, he was standing about six feet away, staring at the bodies and barking. I don’t think he got any closer than that.”

  “If you would, please, walk me through what you did since you were released from the hospital after the hit and run—that was Wednesday?”

  Hunter interrupted. “What’s your purpose here, Detective? Are you suggesting that Professor Levitan needs an alibi for the time the murders were committed?”

  “Until the coroner establishes the time of death for the victims I’m not suggesting anything like that, counselor. However, it would make my life easier if I already had the information at hand that let me eliminate Professor Levitan as a suspect.”

  “I’d advise you to hold off on answering that, Steve,” Hunter said. “You’re upset, your mind might not be working too clearly right now, and that’s such a vague question I’d worry you might get some details wrong that might make Detective Rinaldi’s life more difficult rather than easier.”

  Rinaldi shrugged. “We can go on,” he said. “I have just one more question for you, Professor. Do you own a nine-millimeter gun?”

  The problem was I did, and I wasn’t supposed to.

  30 – The Gun

  Hunter jumped in before I had the chance to say anything. “I think we’re well beyond ‘helping you get some background,’ and into the kind of questions you’d be asking of a suspect,” he said. “If you’re going to charge my client, you should do so. Otherwise, I think it’s time for us to go.”

  “If I have any more questions, I’ll be back in touch.” Rinaldi clicked off the tape recorder and stood up, then took the machine and left the room.

  I started to speak, but Hunter put his finger to his lips. “We’ll talk outside.”

  We stopped at the front desk, where Rochester was lying watchfully at the feet of the sergeant, a heavy-set Polish guy in his mid-sixties. When the dog saw me come down the hall, he jumped up and nearly strangled himself trying to come down the hall to me. “Yes, here I am,” I said, as the sergeant followed him down the hall and handed me the leash.

  I reached down and rubbed behind Rochester’s ears as I thanked the sergeant for taking care of him. “Sweet dog,” the sergeant said. “I’ve got Labs myself.”

  “Yes, he’s a sweetheart, aren’t you, Rochester?” I asked.

  We walked outside, and Rochester made a beeline for a boxwood hedge next to the war memorial, where he let loose a long stream of urine. “Thanks for coming out tonight, Hunter,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. I don’t get this kind of call very often any more. Helps me keep my hand in, you know.”

  We were standing there watching Rochester when Rick Stemper exited the front door of the station. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “Not you, too,” I said. I turned to Hunter. “You still on the clock?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t need an attorney,” Rick said. “I’m not asking questions. I’m telling you. This is why I told you to lay off the Nancy Drew routine a long time ago. Because you just get yourself in more and more trouble.”

  “Joe Hardy,” I said. “Not Nancy Drew.”

  “Are you suggesting my client is under investigation?” Hunter asked.

  “Cut the crap, Hunter. This is not Brooklyn Juvie. I know that Steve didn’t shoot those students, though he had the motive and the opportunity.”

  I looked at Rick. Though we’d been out of touch while I was in New York and California, I’d known him longer than anybody in town other than Edith Passis. If I was going to trust anybody, it had to be him. I took a deep breath. “I’ll cooperate.”

  “Good.” Rick looked at his watch. “It’s seven-thirty. Gail closes in an hour and a half. You want to meet me down there?”

  I looked at Hunter. “I can do this on my own. Thanks.” We shook hands.

  “Give me a ride to my car?” I asked Rick, as Hunter walked away. “It’s up at the college.”

  As Rick drove, I considered my options. Suppose Rinaldi got a search warrant for my house? It wasn’t out of consideration. I was an ex-felon, after all, and I had connections to three murder victims. “Do you have to tell Rinaldi everything I tell you?” I asked.

  We stopped at a traffic light and Rick looked over at me. I saw the side of his face outlined in red. “What have you done, Steve?”

  My heart started to race, but I knew I had to go through with it. “Rinaldi asked me if I had a gun.”

  The light turned green, but Rick didn’t move. “You’re an ex-con on parole, Steve,” he said, his voice tight. “You can’t have a gun in your possession.”

  The car behind us beeped, and Rick rolled down his window and motioned the car past, turning on his flashers at the same time.

  “You know I inherited my dad’s house,” I said. “It took me a while to go through all the stuff he left. I didn’t find the gun until a couple of months after I moved in, in the back of the night table next to the bed.”

  “Have you touched it?”

  “It’s in a leather case. I opened it up and looked at it. It was a little dry, so I oiled it.”

  “But you’ve never shot it?”

  “Nope.”

  The light had gone through a full cycle, and was green again. Rick turned off his flashers and started to move again, but he didn’t say anything until we’d pulled up at my car, all alone in the lot next to the dog park.

  “I want you to go home, drop the dog off, and get the gun,” he said. “Bring it to The Chocolate Ear with you. I’ll take it from there.”

  “It’s my dad’s gun,” I said.

  “You made a decision a few years ago, Steve. You knew it was illegal to break into computer databases, and you did it anyway. The moment you did that, you left the ordinary world, the place where you had a whole lot of rights and privileges. Listen to me carefully. You are a felon. You are an ex-con. You don’t get to keep a gun, even if it belonged to your dad. Even if it was some kind of heirloom that’s been in your family since your great-great-grandfather shot some Cossack with it.”

  I remembered Mary, in a hospital bed after her second miscarriage. The way she had cried, and I had tried to comfort her, knowing that as soon as she was able to she’d be charging her credit cards to the limit again, moving us to the edge of bankruptcy. I couldn’t make her feel better, but I could protect her from the consequences of her actions.

  That’s when I took that step, when I left the ordinary world. I went home that night and hacked into all three of the major credit bureaus, putting a flag on Mary’s account that indicated possible fraud, shutting off her access to credit.

  Would I do it again? Damn, I didn’t know. Could there have been a different solution? We’d tried counseling after the first miscarriage, and it hadn’t helped. The only thing that had made her feel better at all was becoming pregnant again a few months later.

  How many times could we have kept on trying?

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Look, I’ll talk to Rinaldi for you. And when this is over, I’ll get him to turn the gun over to me, and I’ll hold it until you get your rights back.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said. I took a deep breath. Should I tell him about Caroline’s laptop, and the hacking software I had installed on it? Or had I exhausted all his patience by then?

  Rochester made the decision for me, jumping up and sticking his head between us. “Guess the pup wants you to get moving,” Rick said. “See you at the Chocolate Ear.”

  The time for confessions was over. I got the dog and set out for home.

  I dropped Rochester off, got the gun from the night stand, and pulled up at The Chocolate Ear about thirty minutes later. The glass display cases were nearly empty, most of the delicious smells gone. Rick and Gail were the only ones in the place. She was busy at the espresso machine, and he sat in the front window of the café, at a white metal table for two. I laid
the leather case containing my father’s 9 millimeter Glock on the table in front of him, then sat down. “It’s unloaded.”

  He opened the case and ejected the cartridge, just to be sure, holding the pistol aimed down at the floor as he did so.

  “I’m going to work this with Tony,” Rick said, leaning forward in his straight-backed white wrought-iron chair. The room, which had always seemed homey when it was filled with customers, now was creepy and desolate. The lighting was too bright, and the French pop music that Gail always played in the background had been shut off. “Because there’s such a clear connection to Caroline’s homicide. Now, I don’t want you to do ANYTHING on your own, but I do need your brain power working with me.”

  I nodded. “There’s someone else involved,” I said. “Someone we haven’t considered yet.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Someone who killed Melissa and Menno.” I shivered, and hoped Gail would hurry up with the hot coffee. “You know, once we figured out that the people behind Edith’s identity theft were college kids, I was surprised. Did you know that much about investments were you were their age?”

  He shook his head. “Hell, I didn’t know half of what you were talking about when you went over Edith’s investments with her. I’ve got the state pension plan and a couple of grand in an IRA. That’s it.”

  “So now it’s clear that someone who knew more about money was pulling the strings,” I said.

  Gail brought out a cappuccino for Rick and a raspberry mocha for me, both in oversized white china coffee cups. A moment later, she was back with chicken salad sandwiches on croissants for us, and a couple of pumpkin-flavored biscuits for Rochester. There was something running around in my head about money and students. Finally it came to me. “Menno’s research paper,” I said.

  Rick was on a different track, though. “Yeah, we matched a fingerprint from the paper to the shell casing,” he said. “Now that we have the actual fingers, we can verify that the prints both belong to him. I have a feeling his prints will match the ones from the burglary at Caroline’s house, too.”

  “Good. But that wasn’t what I was thinking. Menno’s paper was on offshore banking. Usually if a student picks a topic like that it’s because he or she wants to be an accountant or major in economics or something. Menno must have been looking into ways to hide the money they were stealing from Edith.”

  “Even with that, I still think somebody was directing them both.” Rick took a deep drink of his coffee. “You have any suggestions?”

  “Menno’s dad, for starters,” I said. “We already know he’s a crook.”

  “He stole a couple of cows,” Rick said. “Hardly qualifies him to know about sophisticated financial stuff.” He frowned. “Amish don’t even use banks, do they?”

  “Doesn’t he have any record beyond the cattle theft?” I asked.

  Rick shrugged. “Some petty crime. He associates with some known low-lifes.”

  “Low-lifes who could get Menno a gun and Melissa a fake license?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He pulled out a pad and started making notes. “Tony’s going to start nosing around at the college for anyone who knew either of them,” he said when he finished writing.

  “Good luck. It’s the end of the term, remember? Students are gone, faculty on vacation—he won’t have much success.”

  “You know any other students they hung out with?”

  I closed my eyes and thought. I knew Menno had fought with Tasheba Lewis, but I didn’t remember any students in the class he particularly had bonded with. Hell, I hadn’t even known he and Melissa were dating. They had sat on opposite sides of the room and hadn’t betrayed any boyfriend-girlfriend behavior.

  Then an image jumped into my head. I had seen them once, together, on campus. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember. I had been walking Rochester, I remembered. And Jeremy Eisenberg had been with them.

  I blew a big breath out. “I know one kid Rinaldi can talk to.” I gave him Jeremy’s name. “I’m sure he can get Jeremy’s home address from registration.”

  “How about any other faculty?”

  I told him that Melissa had worked in the music department. “I know she was close to Strings Livorno,” I said.

  Of course then I had to stop and explain the whole ‘Strings’ business to Rick, who had been at Penn State at the time rather than at Eastern.

  “You’re saying this professor had Mafia connections?”

  “If you want to call it that,” I said. “And Menno took a course last semester with one of my colleagues, Jackie Devere. I remember seeing him in her office once or twice. Maybe she knows something.”

  Rick took a bunch of notes and we ate our sandwiches and drank our coffee. He and I walked outside together as Gail shut down the lights and locked the door.

  I realized that I still hadn’t told Rick about Caroline’s laptop, and wondered if that information would come back to haunt me in the future.

  31 - Ballistics

  I spent most of Wednesday catching up on emails, following a couple of the leads Santiago Santos had given me, and trying desperately to find some new business. My next paycheck from Eastern would be my last, and without that regular infusion of cash I’d be back to dipping into my savings.

  Around noon, an email came in from Dee Gamay, the adjunct at Eastern who didn’t speak Spanish. She had accepted a full-time job as a writer for a medical equipment company, and needed someone to take over a couple of freelance jobs for her. I called her immediately and agreed. The biggest client was a local hospital, where she worked for the risk manager, editing and polishing manuals and forms. I didn’t have much health care experience, but I knew I could learn fast.

  “Thanks, Dee, I appreciate it,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “He writes like a third grader and gets angry when you try and improve his grammar.” Even over the phone her accent came through as heavy as soup, with ‘writes’ sounding like ‘rats.’

  “I’ve taught at Eastern,” I said. “I can handle third-graders.”

  She laughed, and when she hung up I called the risk manager and introduced myself. “I’ve got an inspection coming up next week and changes to make to three manuals and a ton of forms,” he said. “How fast can you get on this?”

  “If you buy, I fly,” I said. “Send me what you need and I’ll get right on it.”

  A few minutes later, an email arrived from him, with a huge document attached that took forever to download. When I opened it, I discovered that it was full of red markups—every page had multiple comments and changes, often referring to other sections of the document that needed to be moved, clarified or rewritten.

  It was a much bigger project than the risk manager had led me to believe, not least because as Dee had said, he wrote like a third-grader. I could barely understand the changes he wanted, and sometimes they were contradictory. It was full of made up words, too, like ‘cardio-preliminary’ when it was clear he meant ‘cardiopulmonary’ and ‘dignosticate’ which could either be diagnose or diagnosis.

  I could see it was going to be a major pain, but the money was good and with my papers graded and my Eastern responsibilities complete, I had nothing else to do but work on it and take care of Rochester.

  The work was mind-numbingly boring, reviewing policies and procedures for all kinds of medical procedures I knew nothing about. But I focused on correcting the grammar, making notes and coming up with questions. A lot of the forms were for patient consent to procedures, and I figured that if I didn’t understand what was being said the patients wouldn’t either.

  Inside, though, I was delighted. From the way the risk manager talked, he had a constant stream of work, keeping up with new regulations and new equipment, and the money we’d agreed on would be enough to replace most of my Eastern paycheck.

  The phone rang around five o’clock, and I snapped out of my concentration. As I reached for it, I realized my back was stiff and my shoulders ne
eded flexing.

  “Can you be at Gail’s café at six?” Rick asked. “Tony Rinaldi wants to talk to both of us.”

  “That’s certainly better than the interrogation room at the Leighville Station,” I said, but Rick had already hung up.

  I didn’t like the idea of putting aside this new work so soon after I’d gotten it, but I figured I could get back to work after our meeting. I hurried Rochester through his evening walk, tugging him past any number of interesting smells in the interest of getting liquid and solid results. As soon as I scooped the poop, we were on our way back home, and shortly afterward I was out the door.

  It was a beautiful spring evening, and we’d switched out of Daylight Savings Time so the sun was positioned just over the horizon, bathing the canal in a warm, golden light. Wildflowers had sprung up everywhere, and I passed half a dozen joggers on Ferry Road.

  I got to The Chocolate Ear just at six, and found Tony Rinaldi already there, sipping a cappuccino and talking on his cell phone. He’d shucked the tie I saw sticking out of his sports jacket, but he still looked professional and focused. By the time I had a coffee of my own, he was finished with his call.

  “You’ll be happy to know that I got the ballistics results,” he said. “You’re in the clear.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” I asked.

  Rick wasn’t there yet, so we had a couple of minutes to kill, and I guess the guy decided to humor me.

  “When a bullet is shot through the barrel of a gun, it gets marks on it,” he said. “Initially, all guns of the same model from the same manufacturer will produce similar marks. But the older a gun gets, and the more bullets that travel through its barrel, the more distinctive the marks become.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “The gun that was used in these three homicides is a few years old, and it’s been shot a number of times, so it has had time to develop a particular ‘signature.’ In addition, Glocks leave a distinctive image on the cartridge case.”