MASS MURDER

by Lynn Bohart

  The game had gained momentum, but Giorgio didn’t budge.

  “I suppose the fact you changed out of your tuxedo into casual clothes that night would be a fact more to your liking.” Giorgio held Poindexter’s gaze even though he had no testimony about a change in clothes. The look on Poindexter’s face told him he’d hit pay dirt.

  “You know, Detective, I’d be careful. You’re fishing and you know it. You’re just a small town cop who thinks he’s finally got some big case to show off your stuff. Well, you don’t have the stuff, not here, not with me. Now, I really have to get ready to go.” He reached past Giorgio and opened the door.

  Giorgio stepped into the late afternoon shadows and paused, turning back to Poindexter. “Perhaps a polygraph will change that.”

  “You really shouldn’t carry the roles you play on stage into real life, Detective. You’re not that good.” With that, Poindexter slammed the door.

  Giorgio turned and headed for his car, smiling to himself. Halfway there, he met the Southern Belle returning with a few letters in her hands. Giorgio stopped her, hoping to draw her into a casual conversation.

  “Well, a night on the town,” he smiled. “Sounds like fun. Where did you say you were going?”

  “Some fundraiser for a kids’ camp. After dinner we all go to the Pasadena Playhouse for the opening of some contemporary play. Cory says he has to be seen at these things.” She shrugged as if she wasn’t interested. “He’s trying to move up into the executive office, I guess.”

  “Well, that’s how it’s done. Go out, wear your tuxedo and attract the right kind of attention.”

  “Not tonight,” she drawled. “His tux is still at the cleaners. He must have rolled in the dirt at that conference the other night,” she said with a smirk. “He won’t get it back until this weekend.”

  Giorgio grinned. “Too bad. Well, enjoy yourselves.”

  She smiled vacuously in return and continued in the direction of the apartment. He returned to his car feeling satisfied and more than a little smug.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Giorgio worked late that night, piecing together information that could eliminate suspects and help determine how the three murders might be related. Young Father Daniel, though a long shot with no apparent motive, certainly couldn’t be eliminated. Nor could John Marsh. Then there was Corey Poindexter and Colin Jewett. Poindexter had been outside alone at the right time, but was it to kill Mallery Olsen or Jeff Dorman? Even Anya Peter s couldn’t be ruled out as a suspect. Mallery Olsen was quite small and Peters had both the resolve and the knowledge about the tunnels to have pulled it off. Lastly, there was Father Damian. He had opportunity although Giorgio found it implausible he had the constitution for murder. But he might know more than he was confessing.

  It was after eleven when Giorgio finally dragged himself through his front door. He had one thing on his mind − a late supper and a hot bath. He’d only made it to the kitchen when Angie emerged from the den with a message from the theater.

  “Marvin called a half hour ago,” she said quietly. “Apparently there’s a major problem at the theater. He wants you to come down as soon as you can.”

  Giorgio groaned. “Damn! I’m beat.” He shuffled into the kitchen and grabbed a frozen cheese enchilada from the freezer and threw it into the microwave.

  “He sounded pretty desperate,” Angie added, finding a plate and silverware. She set a place for him at the table and then turned and slipped her arms around his waist as he waited at the microwave. He grabbed her hands and pulled her arms tight around him.

  “How’s our baby?”

  She smiled and kissed him on the neck. “He, or she, is doing just fine. I was just looking through our old baby name books. What do you think of Carter or Emily?”

  He laughed and turned around, pulling her close. “Well, they’re not Italian names, but I think you’ve earned the right to name this baby anything you want.”

  Just then, the microwave beeped. Reluctantly, Giorgio released his wife and turned to remove his dinner. He grabbed a can of pop and sat down to eat.

  “I’ll see you when you get home,” she said seductively, giving him a parting kiss on the top of the head. “Fix whatever it is and come back soon.”

  He watched her disappear and quickly stuffed the enchilada down his throat. With any luck, Marvin would have the problem fixed by the time he got there. He and Marvin constituted the entire theater building committee, and together they took care of a wide variety of maintenance problems. Over time they had fixed everything from a leaky roof to a squeaky stage floor. Giorgio’s uncle had been an apartment super in Brooklyn, and he’d picked up a fair amount of do-it-yourself tips. Marvin worked with his father as an electrical contractor and was a whiz with anything that required wiring.

  It was almost midnight when Giorgio arrived to find the two-story building sitting in the dark. The nearby streetlights outlined the bloodless fingers of ivy that crawled up the brick exterior. Giorgio suspected that an electrical cable had blown and silently hoped it hadn’t interrupted a rehearsal. Since Marvin was an electrician by trade, he assumed his job would be to hold a flashlight while Marvin fixed the problem.

  The side parking lot was empty except for Marvin’s old gray sedan. Giorgio grabbed the flashlight from his glove compartment and stepped out next to Marvin’s car. A crisp breeze rustled the trees overhead, making Giorgio think of the night the button had bounced to within an inch of his foot. His fingers sought out the small piece of metal in his pocket before he climbed the short set of stairs to the side entrance.

  The door was propped open with a block of wood, as they often did during a performance. He found the light switch just inside the door, but as he suspected, flicking it up and down produced nothing. He called out Marvin’s name. Only a penetrating silence called back. Giorgio passed the door to the dressing rooms and moved to the end of the hallway where a door led to the south side of the two hundred-seat auditorium. He paused in the curtained doorway, playing the beam of light over the empty seats.

  There was something intoxicating about a theater, even when it was empty. Every night was different. Mistakes were made. Lines were read with passion, or not, and the audience, though sometimes feared and hated by the actors, was always the wild card. Each one of those seats held the promise of another laugh, a gasp, a tear, or the threat of awkward silence. Giorgio loved it.

  He glanced around. The exit lights were dark, leaving the entire room as black as the bottom of a dry well. Giorgio called Marvin’s name a second time. A noise drew his attention to the back of the stage where a door led to the basement and the fuse box. He moved down the side aisle and up the steps when an inner voice told him to stop.

  Giorgio allowed the flashlight to inch across the stage where the theater company had begun building the set for their annual production of “A Christmas Carol”. The skeleton of a London street scene rose out of the murky depths of the stage floor at irregular angles. Here a pawnshop. There a bakery. Giorgio stepped onto the stage and drifted to his right, moving behind the stage-left curtains and toward the back wall.

  The basement door stood ajar. He peeked around the doorframe into the basement. Marvin’s red toolbox sat on the floor next to a battery operated work light. A can of gasoline sat next to the theater generator, along with the small CD player Marvin always carried. The breaker box was open on the wall above. Although Marvin wasn’t visible, Giorgio relaxed.

  “Marvin,” Giorgio called out. “It’s me. Where the hell are you?”

  He moved down the steps, peering into the shadows filled with boxes of stage props. A piece of paper lying next to the toolbox caught his eye. He picked it up, using his flashlight to read a short, hand written message.

  I told you, you weren’t that good!

  Giorgio immediately reached for his gun, but too late. A hammer slammed his forearm almost cracking the bone as he brought it out and sending the gun skidding across the floor. Giorgio spun away,
tripping over the stool and landing on his back. A man in a hooded sweatshirt and ski mask lunged at him from the shadows. Giorgio fish-tailed sideways and clamped his feet around the man’s lower leg, yanking him off balance and bringing him down right on top of him. His attacker rolled sideways, jumping back onto his feet and lifting the hammer again. Giorgio jack-knifed backwards, getting himself clumsily to his feet.

  The man lunged a third time, but Giorgio grabbed the hammer with his left hand. The two struggled back and forth, bumping first against the generator and then slamming into the hot water heater. The other man was taller by several inches and felt younger and more agile. Was it Poindexter? At one point, Giorgio yanked one of the man’s hands behind his back and then smashed his face into the fuse box. The cry of pain was a voice Giorgio recognized.

  Poindexter twisted away, pulling Giorgio with him. The two fell, rolling sideways until a knee caught Giorgio sharply in the abdomen. He let go and groaned halfway to a standing position just as Poindexter headed for the gun lying on the floor a few feet away. Giorgio stumbled after him, tackling him from behind and sending the two of them head first into a stack of boxes. Giorgio grasped the arm holding the gun and yanked it behind him. First rule of the police force – never surrender your weapon.

  Poindexter struggled to rise, but Giorgio pinned him with one knee while trying to release the gun. The injury to his right arm prevented him from closing his hand around the gun, and the hesitation allowed Poindexter to jerk around. Giorgio toppled into the stack of boxes. Poindexter got nimbly to his feet just as Giorgio’s good hand found something on the floor. He threw whatever it was, forcing Poindexter to jerk to his left. The skull from Hamlet smashed against the wall.

  Giorgio followed it, coming in low but the younger man spun and clipped him with the barrel of the gun exactly where Anya Peters had hit him. It didn’t take much. Giorgio went face down in the decades old dirt blinded with pain. He lay motionless, his head swimming. Within seconds, he was being dragged backwards and dumped a few feet from the water heater. A moment later, the suffocating odor of gasoline filled his nostrils, and his mind began to scream.

  A soft chuckle accompanied the strike of a match, and in less than a heartbeat, the room was ablaze. As flames leapt toward him, Giorgio forced himself to his knees. The room came into focus revealing the foot of the stairs already engulfed in flames. Poindexter was gone. The room filled quickly with a mind-bending heat. He had to move fast.

  Giorgio had visited the basement only a few times before. It was situated below ground level where there were no windows. Too bad for that. Small and cluttered with cardboard boxes, furniture, and a couple of bookcases, it also provided an abundance of fuel. Really too bad. He made one attempt to break through the flames now halfway up the stairs, but was stopped by the roaring heat. He turned and searched for another means of escape as a fleeting thought entered his mind.

  It was a play he’d done in college, in which a twentieth-century protagonist was trapped in a twelfth-century dungeon. The fiendish bad guy had pumped gas into the closed room leaving the hero to die. But, voila! At the last moment, the hero remembered a secret doorway and escaped. The memory reminded Giorgio there was a second door to the prop room.

  When the theater was built, the basement had been used by the actors to travel unencumbered from one side of the stage to the other. Today, a catwalk at the back of the building provided easier access, but the door was still there. He’d only seen it once and was pretty sure it was on the opposite side of the room. If only he could find it through the smoke.

  He staggered forward. It was so hot his skin felt raw, and he was having difficulty breathing. Reaching inside his coat, he grabbed his handkerchief and placed it over his mouth. He stumbled past shelves of old dishes until he reached a tall stack of boxes. Somewhere in there was a door. He threw aside containers filled with old tea sets, wigs, and artificial food, spilling their contents across the floor. A wax apple rolled into the flames and melted instantly, its red dye staining the floor like draining blood. Giorgio was coughing now and gasping for air. He was getting dizzy and tripped over an old baby buggy, falling onto one knee. One hand hit the floor and he used it to steady himself. As he lifted himself up, the same hand brushed against something metal. It was his gun.

  Without thinking, he stuffed the gun into his pocket, then lunged forward again, pushing furniture and boxes away from the wall in a frenzy. He could hardly see more than a foot in front of him now and tears ran down his face as the smoke stripped his eyes like acid. A heavy beam toppled from a shelf blocking him and he let out a cry of frustration. He squatted to lift the heavy beam, but it came up so easily he was thrown backwards onto the floor. Like everything else, it was only a prop.

  He looked up from the floor, his head spinning, his arm throbbing, his lungs burning. This could be his last moment alive. Just then, the hazy outline of a door tucked behind a flimsy set of movable shelves flickered through the smoke. Though his lungs felt as if they might collapse at any moment, he threw off the false beam and mustered the energy to pull the shelving unit forward, throwing it contents onto the floor. He squeezed behind it and reached for the doorknob. The door was stuck. Using both hands, he yanked and pulled, but the door wouldn’t budge. In one desperate move he slammed his whole body against the door, hoping to loosen it like the stubborn lid to a pickle jar. When he pulled again, the door scraped open.

  He pushed his way through to the other side, stumbling over a stack of paint cans and up a small staircase. He had to hurry. The fire would follow him now that it had a new source of oxygen. With a frantic shove, he pushed through into the scene shop, closing the door tightly behind him. Groping blindly in the dark past work tables and sinks, half painted flats and stacks of lumber, he found his way to the exit door. With a last heavy shove, he burst outside wheezing and drawing fresh air into his lungs. When he could finally fill his lungs without pain, he leaned back against the brick wall listening to the blare of a siren in the distance. At least, he wouldn’t have to call this one in.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Giorgio sat on the edge of a gurney while a young, black doctor bandaged his arm. A nurse had helped him clean his face and hands so that he appeared less charred and more human, but his clothes smelled like the inside of an ashtray. This was a small, community hospital where the emergency room functioned like an urgent care center. The doctor had determined Giorgio’s arm wasn’t broken, but the hammer had lacerated the skin and badly bruised the bone. He’d also received first degree burns to his face, much like a bad sun burn. Giorgio was warned the arm would be swollen, and an ugly bruise would probably surround his forearm for the better part of a month. The burns would heal by themselves, but they’d had to use antiseptic on his scalp where the gun butt had split the skin. All in all, he felt like Hell.

  The doctor wrapped his arm with gauze and Giorgio flexed his fingers just to make sure he could. When the muscles rippled across the injured bone, they created a sharp pain that made him cringe. Just then, the curtain rattled and Swan stepped into the cubicle.

  “Barnes called Angie. She’s on her way.”

  “What about the theater?” Giorgio envisioned a pile of blackened rubble.

  “The fire was contained to the basement, but there was a lot of smoke damage. At least no one else was in the building.”

  “What about Marvin Palomar? His car was in the parking lot.” Giorgio felt queasy thinking about what might have happened to his friend.

  “As I said, no one else was found in the theater.”

  “Send someone to his apartment. I need to know he’s okay.”

  “I’ll call Samson. You think it was Poindexter?”

  “I’m sure of it. I recognized his voice. And he left me a note.”

  Swan arched his eyebrows. “Do you still have it?”

  Giorgio sneered. “Are you kidding? I barely got myself out, but Poindexter should have a large bruise on his left cheek where I smashed his
face into the fuse box.”

  Swan grinned. “That should help.”

  The doctor finished taping the gauze into place and left the two men alone, but not before telling Giorgio he could pick up a prescription for pain medication from the nurse. Giorgio slipped off the rolling gurney. The gauze made it difficult to roll down his sleeve, so he left it rolled up and grabbed his coat off the back of a metal chair. One whiff of the jacket made him turn up his nose.

  “Guess I’ll be getting some new clothes.”

  He threw the coat over his good arm as Swan pushed the curtain aside. They stepped into the nursing area. The room was small, with only four separate examination areas. A circular nursing station filled the center of the room, along with a crash cart, a medication cart, and assorted other equipment. Behind the nursing station were automatic double doors leading to the ambulance bay.

  “I wonder what role Poindexter plays in all of this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There have been three murders up there,” Giorgio talked as he circled the nurse’s station, heading for the waiting room. “And I don’t think they were all committed by the same person.”

  “Which one was Poindexter responsible for?” Swan stepped to one side to let a nurse pass, nearly knocking over an IV pole. He caught it just in time.

  “The mud and the cigarettes tell me he probably killed Jeff Dorman,” Giorgio said, stopping at the end of the counter. He leaned over to speak to a young nurse.

  “Dr. Bateman told me he’d leave a prescription for me.”

  “Yes, sir, here it is,” she smiled, handing him a small slip of paper. “Take one every four hours. Preferably with food.”

  “Thanks.” He pocketed the slip of paper and led Swan towards the door to the waiting room. “Look,” he said over his shoulder, “Poindexter told me today he saw two other people outside that night. He said he saw a monk tucked into the bushes having a cigarette. If he’s telling the truth, then that might have been O’Leary.”