6 - The Eye of the Virgin: Ike Schwartz Mystery 6

by Frederick Ramsay

  “So, Frank, we’ll start with you. I read your report. I have the details. Just give me the sense of it.”

  Frank Sutherlin screwed up his face in concentration. “Hard to figure, Ike. We’ll have to wait for the ME’s report, but the guy on the scene last night…By the way we were lucky to find someone as quick as we did to come out from the ME’s office, or one of us would have had to camp out all night with the stiff—sorry, the victim. Anyway, the guy from the ME’s office said our shooting victim looked like he’d been shot with a small caliber weapon under the arm. I wrote that up but either it was a light load or it hit bone because we couldn’t find an exit wound. He guessed the bullet might have severed that big blood vessel in the chest.”

  “There are two, if I remember my freshman biology right. One is the vena cava, or some such, and the other is the aorta.”

  “Yeah, that last one I think he said, and then the guy bled out. Best guess, that would be the cause of death, doc says. It looked like whoever he was had been shot someplace else and then the person who shot him changed his shirt and put an oversized jacket on him before he was dumped in the clinic.”

  “Nobody saw him brought in?”

  “Apparently not. We quizzed all the staff and everyone we could locate, but nobody could remember seeing him come in or even noticed him after he got there. The staff was run ragged by a bunch of sick scouts and a mini-flu epidemic. Most of the people I talked to assumed he was a parent of one of the patients. But, like I said, there’s a bunch of people we couldn’t question last night.”

  “Will you have any trouble finding out who all was there?”

  “No. We have the names from the admission forms. Addresses too. We should be able to interview them all pretty quick.”

  “It brings up the question, though, doesn’t it?”

  “How so?”

  “Why would anyone go to all that trouble? Why not leave him in an alley or a parking lot?”

  “It’s a poser for sure.”

  Billy sipped his coffee and made a face. “Maybe whoever did it hoped that the hospital could do something, like, after the fact. You know, an accident, shooter feels guilty and brings him in but is afraid to stick around. Sort of like a denial thing.”

  “It’s a stretch but, okay, maybe. We’ll have to wait for the ME’s final report. Either way we have a homicide. You wrote there was no identification on the vic. Was there anything to tell us who he was or why he was here? I gather he’s not local.”

  “Nothing, Ike, no wallet, no cards, no receipts, nothing. Nobody knew him, you know. Out-of-town person, it seems.”

  “We have any finger prints?”

  “They should be coming over this afternoon. I’ll have Samantha run them through her fancy computer program thing—AFIS.”

  Frank had not yet been able to call Samantha Ryder by her nickname, Sam, although everyone else did and she’d asked him to more than once. Her main contribution to the Sheriff’s office was her computer skills. She made the television versions seen on CSI in its many permutations seem inept. Most of that stemmed from her ability to hack into nearly any program she wished to. Ike made a point of not asking how she did it or whether she was siphoning off information he’d otherwise have to pay for with a license fee. Picketsville did not have a large budget devoted to technology. Not in the sheriff’s office, not anywhere. Depending on the availability of federal subsidies, small towns were either annoying in their sophistication or they were in the electronic Stone Age, computer-wise. Except for Sam and her machinery tucked away in the back corner, Picketsville was Early Pleistocene.

  “Let’s hope. I am, for one, not that eager to have a John Doe on my hands. Okay. We’ll have to wait. Okay Billy, your turn.

  Chapter Three

  “Straight up and down breaking and entering, Ike. This guy…” Billy consulted his notes. “Louis Dakis, came back from doing an evening class up at the college—”

  “University now.”

  “Tell me the difference. One day it’s Callend College for women. A week later it’s Callend University. What happened in a week?”

  “Not weeks, months. Callend was, for a hundred years or so a college. It started as a ladies’ finishing school, very popular back in the day in this part of the world. Then, it evolved into a liberal arts college, but still only for women, and then last summer it merged with Carter Union, a business college, added a business school offering advanced degrees, and became coed. Because it has a school of liberal arts, a school of business, and now a separate school of fine arts, it qualifies as a university, which is usually defined as a collection of schools or colleges gathered in one place. Not always, however. Being called a university doesn’t mean what it used to.”

  “Yeah, whatever, college, university, school for rich kids is what that place is. Anyway, Dakis says he comes back to his house and finds somebody busted a window and climbed in and ransacked a bunch of holy pictures he had stacked up in the dining room.”

  “Holy pictures? What kind of holy pictures are we talking about here?”

  “Like in them foreign churches. You know, lots of pictures of Jesus with his fingers crossed, Mary and the baby Jesus all pretty like only she looks like she’s wearing a football helmet, and other people, saints, I guess the kind of pictures that they hang up in them churches. Not like normal ones like you see in somebody’s front room, Jesus Knocks at the Door, and like that, but stiff and a little, you know, hard-looking. Like they know what you’re thinking. Can’t think why anybody would want a picture like that.”

  “Icons?”

  “What? Yeah, now that you mention it, that’s what he called them. But they didn’t look nothing like them little things on the computer screen so I didn’t pay much attention. But yeah, that’s what he said they were.”

  “Any follow-up?”

  “Crime scene techs came and dusted. Dakis took a quick inventory and said nothing was missing. Looked like somebody had knocked over a big bottle of nail polish remover. I asked him what he used it for because I didn’t see no sign of a woman in the place. He said he cleaned his brushes with it sometimes. Me, I’d a thought he’d be better off with turp or gasoline but he said no, the kind of paint he used to paint up them pictures, them icons, only dissolved in acetone, which, he said, is found in nail polish remover. He used water first and the remover only if the paint had dried before he could wash them. New to me.”

  “You said he taught at the university?”

  “That’s what he said. I didn’t recognize him, so I guess he wasn’t one of the regulars up there at the college.”

  “I’ll call the school and find out. He might be adjunct. Since the economy’s gone south, they, like many places, are making do with part-time people where they don’t have to fund the fringe package, pay tenured professor salaries, and so on. He’s one of them, I’m guessing. Any luck on the prints?”

  “Tech said the guy who broke in must have been wearing gloves. All he could find were Dakis’ prints and smudges on the door knob and some of the pictures. Dakis had a duck fit when he saw the tech dusting them. He said they were, like, valuable and they should be careful not to disturb the surface. I tell you what, Ike, some of them pictures was so old and chipped, and dirty, you would never have known if they messed with the surface or not. Who’d want to buy an old beat-up picture like that, anyway? I mean, they weren’t even painted on cloth like a real picture. I swear it looked like somebody went out to the barn and got him couple of old boards and slap-dashed a picture of a saint or something on it, then decided it weren’t much to look at after all and tossed it on the compost pile.”

  Ike resisted the temptation to lecture Billy on iconography in general and the collectability of ancient icons in particular. “No accounting for taste, Billy.”

  “You can say that again. Ma was telling me about one of them college professors that had a collection of dinner plates. Some all chipped and cracked. She said she
, that’s the professor, a lady, kept them in a locked china cabinet. And Mrs. Pettigrew, that’s Amos’ granny, has a passel of cat statues that Amos says is insured for a bunch of money. Me, I’d take the money.”

  “Right. Okay, you two take it easy today and try to stay awake. I don’t expect much will happen around here until later tonight and the Saturday night partying begins up at Callend and/or down at Eddie Knox’s Roadhouse, but still…Put a watch on Dakis’ house. Whoever was in there didn’t take anything, so maybe he was spooked before he found what he was looking for and left. If so, he might try again.”

  “Say, Ike, maybe we could get us some adjunct deputies. You know, cheap help. Ain’t you got a slot open?”

  “No, but I’d be happy to turn yours into one if you think it’s that good an idea.”

  “Reckon I’ll get on my rounds. Oh, wait, there is one thing I forgot to mention.”

  Ike waited as Billy scratched his head and pursed his lips. “It’s probably nothing but, you know the place smelled like nail polish remover and like I said, that has acetone in it, right?”

  “If I remember my practical chemistry correctly, it does. And that is important how?”

  “I noticed this guy had a couple of bottles of peroxide in the bathroom too. I seem to recall that bomb makers used them two ingredients with some kind of acid to make explosives. That’s all.”

  “I’ll check it out. I don’t think that is where this is going, however…but you never know. You’re sure about the peroxide?”

  “Billy rolled his eyes toward Essie and her Dolly Parton locks. “Oh yeah, I know all about that stuff.”

  Ike dismissed them with a grin. What had Dolly Parton said? “You have to spend some real money to look this cheap.” When they’d cleared the office he lifted the phone from its cradle and dialed the university. He raised the president’s office. Agnes Ewalt, Ruth Harris’ secretary, answered.

  Agnes Ewalt sat at her desk outside Ruth Harris’ office like Horatio at the bridge, screening her boss’ visitors and phone calls with a diligence bordering on compulsion. She was a stereotypical spinster who had spent the previous year trying to keep Ruth, as president of the then college, now university, and Ike apart. She seemed to feel it her duty to maintain what she assumed to be a respectable and necessary distance between town and gown. And the town’s sheriff, in her estimation, was the quintessential townie who needed to be kept at bay. She had failed in that, but her efforts had exacted a cost in the general area of aggravation. Since the fall, however, she had moved not quite one hundred and eighty degrees in her estimation of Ike, and now provided aid and comfort to her boss and the man Agnes insisted on calling her boyfriend against the as yet still hostile faculty.

  “Sheriff, she has a visitor. I’m afraid I can’t disturb her short of an emergency. She did leave a message for you though.”

  “That’s okay, Agnes. I can ask you the question I had for her. But what was the message?”

  “Tonight, dash, dash, A-frame, question mark.”

  “Got it. Tell her yes, and leave me a voice message telling me what she wants for dinner. Okay? Now, what can you tell me about a man named Louis Dakis?”

  “He’s an adjunct faculty member. I know that. I think he joined this quarter, sort of at the last minute. The chairman of the Art Department had an FTE line in his budget open up and he knew his friend Mr. Dakis needed a place temporarily, so he brought him down.”

  “FTE means full time equivalent, I assume. Down from where, exactly?”

  “FTE—correct. Down from Washington, D.C., I think. He is something of an expert in his field, whatever it is, and the department thinks they have pulled off a coup. I don’t know. But anyway, that’s the story.”

  “He’s an iconographer. Is that right?”

  “You know, Sheriff, that sounds about right. Hold on a sec.” The line went silent and Ike thought he could hear paper rustling. “Here it is, in the supplemental catalogue. ‘Iconography 101’—you were right—‘a course which will explore the history of the icon, or holy images, as practiced in the East and the recent resurgence of interest in them in the West.’ There’s an optional lab offered, too. Let’s see, students will be taught the basics of icon making and will paint one for themselves. There’s a note attached in Dr. Harris’ handwriting that says the optional lab filled in two hours after the course was announced. My, my, imagine that.”

  “Thank you, Agnes. You wouldn’t happen to have Dakis’ phone number and schedule handy, too, would you?”

  “Phone number, yes. Schedule, no. But I’ll look it up and have Dr. Harris give it to you this evening.”

  “Perfect. Thank you.” Ike took down the phone number and hung up. Question: why would someone break into an iconographer’s house, ransack the inventory, and leave empty-handed? Whoever it was had something else in mind other than to steal icons, but what? Perhaps Dakis came home too soon and he or she had to duck out before loading up. Maybe. Or the person was searching for a particular image and didn’t find it. He would need to talk to Dakis.

  Chapter Four

  Ruth Harris and Ike Schwartz were, as they would say in grocery store check-out line magazines, an item. When they first met, it had not been their intent to become gossip fodder, and either would have said the likelihood of that happening approached zero, indeed, might even move into negative numbers. But circumstance and the magic that comes when two people have a good deal more in common than either will admit held them together, and their relationship, however spiky, had taken an erratic but always positive course over the previous fifteen months. They were, however, approaching a major decision point in their relationship: to move on to the next logical step, which meant contemplating marriage, or backing down to remain permanently uncommitted. Each had vacillated on that point at one time or another.

  Unfortunately, their respective positions rarely coincided. If, and when they did, there might be some significant forward progress. But that had not happened yet. It was not as if they were kids, nor were there any compelling reasons to advance. But Ike believed relationships either grew or they died. Ruth thought he was an incurable romantic, and besides, she had a university to run.

  Ruth stepped onto the deck of Ike’s A-frame and stood, arms folded taking in the view down the mountainside toward the valley a thousand feet beneath her. “You never get used to this, do you? It’s spectacular no matter what time of day or what the season.”

  “I suppose you might after a while. Eventually everything pales. Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt.” Ike stretched his legs out and waved his arm toward the trees. “Ready for a drink?”

  “Always. So, do you think I will eventually pale, become a familiar object of contempt?”

  “Not likely. You are uniquely unique.”

  “That’s a terrible redundancy. And not true. Maybe I should go blonde, get a makeover?”

  “No need. I will never tire of you, I don’t think, but now that you mention it, blonde…that would be something else. Do you remember the scene in I, the Jury, something about whether the bleach stung? I can’t remember exactly, but it’s a thought.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. We have tonight and Sunday and then it’s back to the grind, so let’s move along. Where’s my drink?”

  “Oh, I remember now. The girl says to Mike Hammer when he asked if the peroxide stung, ‘no, but the ammonia did.’ I think that’s right. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

  “I see. Just as well, if you’re going to clutter it up with Mickey Spillane. So, you win the trivia prize today. My drink?”

  Ike dropped ice cubes into two glasses, mixed a gin and tonic for himself, poured her a small scotch and water, and handed it over. She sat, her gaze still fixed on the panorama that spread out before her, a view that captured the mountainside and, far in the distance, the traffic on Route 11.

  “In the old days, before hair color came in two gazillion shad
es, ammonia was used to help the peroxide along. I think. It smells to high heaven. I don’t know if it would sting though,” she said.

  “You just reclaimed the prize. It would sting if you realized the reference Mickey Spillane had in mind.”

  “I don’t think I want to and don’t care anyway. You never told me about this house. I always assumed it belonged to your family, this and the farm. But the last time I talked to your dad he said it didn’t. He said it was your escape hatch, or something.”

  “It was and is. After what happened to Eloise and I left my previous employer—”

  “You mean after you wife was killed and you stormed out of the CIA.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Not quite, but go on.”

  “Okay, after that I wanted to be left alone. A friend of mine, a guy I went to high school with, started building this but he had run out of money. I relieved him of his debt, you could say. I finished it and thought I would live up here and write a book. You know, when you’re angry about something or somebody, or in my case, an institution, you think you’ll write a big exposé and get even. Something like Killing Hope.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, I bought a computer, printer, and a ream of paper, but in the end I let it go. I don’t have it in me to stay angry very long nor do I have much in the way of writerly talent. Then there is the problem of keeping faith with the facts on the one hand and not letting my anger color what I wrote. And about that time my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so I moved back to the farm and hung around town a bit. The sheriff’s office, I discovered, was an open sore on the community, and since my father had been after me to follow him into politics, I ran for sheriff. It wasn’t the career he had in mind for me, but there you are.”

  “And you had to move into town?”

  “Not so much a ‘have to,’ but, as you can appreciate, the hours are bad and I didn’t want to cause a lot of ruckus coming and going so, yeah, I took that little apartment near the college.”