Nasty Cutter

by Tim O'Mara

  Edgar let out a sound I’d never heard from him before. It was somewhere between ecstasy and fear. The detective stepped over to the door and said something I couldn’t quite hear. A few seconds later, Mueller came inside.

  ‘If you find anything, I wanna be the first to know,’ Carney said. ‘The offices are behind those doors.’ He pointed to the one he’d come out of. ‘That is Senior’s. And the other one is where Junior works. You probably know all this, right?’ He pointed over to our left. ‘You wanna check the upstairs first? Mr Stover rented out the office space up there on a month-to-month basis.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, and Carney and I headed up the stairs as Edgar and Mueller stepped into Marty’s office. It was all he could do, I thought, not to trip over his own feet.

  The upper floor of the law firm was laid out quite simply: two former bedrooms had been turned into offices and were separated by a short hallway and a bathroom. I followed Carney into the office to the left.

  ‘This is where the burglar came in,’ he said as he walked me over to the window. ‘Just slipped something – crowbar or big screwdriver – between the window and the wood and slipped inside. I guess when he didn’t hear an alarm, he knew it was safe to go in.’

  I stepped over to the window and noticed a few scratch marks on the wood. I also noticed that it would be an easy climb from the ground up to the top of the attached garage, an easy reach to the window. Marty had added the attached garage to the old house, apparently not considering the security aspects.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I heard myself say out loud.

  ‘What’s interesting?’ Detective Carney asked.

  ‘Why would you break into a house from the second floor and then leave the front door open when you left?’

  ‘Huh. Hadn’t thought of that.’ But now he did, and a light bulb went off over his head. ‘Maybe the burglar wanted to make sure Mr Stover knew his place had been burglarized for some reason.’

  That was an interesting thought. But then that would mean …

  ‘Then that would mean the burglar didn’t know that Marty had been murdered.’

  ‘Which,’ Carney said without missing a beat, ‘would mean that the murder and the burglary are not related. What are the odds of that, I wonder?’

  Having taught math for a few years, I knew this was one of those situations where you couldn’t apply actual odds and percentages, but the detective’s point was well taken. Any reasonable person would connect the murder to the break-in. Of course, reasonable people didn’t go around killing other people at their own benefits. And the idea that the burglar wanted Marty to know the place had been broken into was just that – an idea.

  I looked around the office and, to my eye, everything looked fine. There was a desk, two chairs, a couch, and a small fridge. No computer on the desk told me the tenant-lawyer probably did all his work on a laptop. I guessed the other office on this floor would look pretty much the same, and I was right. People who rented by the month didn’t need a lot of stuff.

  ‘Ready to check in downstairs with your guy?’ Carney asked.

  ‘Yeah. Everything looks … I don’t know, fine up here.’

  We found Edgar in front of Marty’s computer, tapping away, unaware of us entering the office. He even seemed oblivious to the female officer standing behind him. Between his job, his love of baseball, and his ‘security/research’ work, I thought about how many hours a day Edgar spent in front of some sort of screen. No wonder he kept getting his eyeglasses updated.

  ‘Anything, Edgar?’ I asked from across the room.

  He startled a bit at our presence, like we’d interrupted a meditation session. He took his glasses off and said, ‘If anyone breached the system, he’s better than I am. Mr Stover’s computer is password-protected, of course, and there’s no log-in info since yesterday morning.’

  ‘So the burglar didn’t – or couldn’t – access the computer,’ I said. ‘Maybe he was looking for something else.’ I felt that tingly feeling I still got sometimes when faced with a puzzle. Probably similar to the feeling a poker player gets after drawing a straight.

  There was silence in the room for a moment. Officer Mueller used this silence as an opportunity to head back outside. Carney said, ‘Unless we’re overlooking the complete obvious and this was just a couple of knucklehead kids out for a joy ride, you know, “Let’s see if we can get in/get out without setting off the alarm.” Something like that.’

  That was another thought.

  ‘Edgar,’ I said. ‘The alarm system to the house. You wouldn’t need the code to deactivate it? Shouldn’t Marty have updated that?’

  ‘Years ago,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to judge, but I’m guessing Marty was maybe a bit on the cheap side? The system’s old, Ray. I don’t know why people skimp on such things. A good alarm system is worth every penny you pay for it.’

  Edgar managed to sound both judgmental and offended at the same time. He could not understand why everyone didn’t treat technology with the same respect he did.

  ‘What about the computers?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re pretty up-to-date. At least enough to satisfy the needs of a law firm.’

  Carney stepped forward. ‘Are all his records stored on there?’ he asked. ‘I mean, how long has the firm been around?’

  ‘Almost thirty years,’ I said and then saw the detective’s point. ‘Are there three decades of files on that computer, Edgar?’

  ‘Nope. You know I’m not one to assume, Raymond, but I would say he’s got hard copies of the years before his latest upgrade. Probably on CDs and, older than that, floppy disks. Where are they stored? This house has no basement, so that’s a good question.’

  ‘We can find that out from his wife or son,’ I said. ‘But right now you’re telling us nothing on that computer’s been compromised?’

  ‘That is what I’m telling you,’ Edgar said.

  ‘I assume you checked the desks for any signs of a break-in, Detective?’

  ‘All the drawers – upstairs and downstairs – are locked, and there’s no evidence of anyone trying to force them open,’ Carney said.

  I stood there in the middle of the office trying to think of something else to ask or add to the conversation. After thirty seconds, I had to admit I was done.

  ‘If that’s all, Detective Carney,’ I said, ‘I’ll sign whatever you need me to sign, and we can get out of your hair.’

  ‘You’re signing for the Donne family, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Happy not to ask any questions as that task was completed, the detective locked up the house and stood on the front lawn. Officer Mueller had made her way to the street and was talking on her phone. Carney said to me, ‘You don’t by any chance have a key to the place, do you? Or the password to the alarm system?’

  I smiled. He was interrogating me, which made sense. Of course he should ask a family member about a key and the alarm code.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘My mother might, but I doubt it. And just to offer her an alibi, she was in the city most of yesterday and definitely when the house was broken into.’

  Carney gave me a smile of his own and said, ‘Had to ask, you know?’

  ‘I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t.’ We shook hands. ‘If there’s anything else I can do, you can reach me through the Stover family.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ he said. ‘But I do have one more question.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘How long were you a cop?’

  I looked down at the grass and laughed. ‘It’s that obvious, huh?’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s not unobvious.’

  Edgar and I were sitting in his car behind the house: I was in the driver’s seat, and he was in the passenger’s, the picture of two guys with nowhere to go. Maybe we should have grabbed a six-pack and turned to the classic rock station. If the trip out to the Island had gained us anything, I wasn’t sure what it was beyond doing a favor for the
Stovers. That would have to be enough.

  One thing was bugging me, though. How did the burglar know about Marty’s crappy security system? Before I could give that much thought, Edgar spoke.

  ‘Didn’t you grow up around here, Ray?’

  I put my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. ‘Five minutes away,’ I said.

  ‘You wanna go by the house?’

  ‘For what?’ I said, maybe a little too harshly. ‘No one’s home.’

  ‘I just figured since we were so close …’

  ‘You want to see where I grew up, Edgar? Is that it? If that’s what you want, just come out and ask, OK?’

  Even I could tell I sounded like an asshole.

  ‘That’s not it, Ray,’ Edgar said, his voice letting me know his feelings had been hurt. ‘Let’s go back to Williamsburg then, OK? Maybe watch some preseason at The LineUp. Yanks are playing the Cards. And I’m hungry.’

  I turned to my friend. ‘I’m sorry, Edgar. I’m tired and still shaken up by what happened to Marty. Going into my dad’s old office didn’t help much, either. It feels like we wasted a few hours just so I could take a trip down memory lane.’

  ‘It wasn’t a complete waste.’ He reached into his pocket.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.

  He pulled out a flash drive. ‘I downloaded some of the contents of Marty’s computer. I thought we might find something useful.’

  ‘Holy fuck, Edgar! I invite you out to a crime scene for a little experience and you not only contaminate the scene but you walk away with evidence? What the hell were you thinking?’

  He adjusted his glasses. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘that you might wanna know what was on the murder victim’s computer. And it’s not technically evidence, Ray.’

  ‘Don’t do that, Edgar.’ I took a breath. ‘I’m not going to sit here and play legal semantics with you. Everything is evidence until the cops say otherwise. You of all people should know that. Just because I referred to you as my security guy doesn’t mean you get to play the role of hacker. Jesus.’

  He turned away to look out his window. ‘I’m sorry, Ray,’ he said. ‘I got a little carried away. I was sitting there at Stover’s computer and the urge just came over me. You and the detective were upstairs. The cop was back on her cell phone, so I figured there was no harm in it.’

  ‘You figured wrong,’ I said to the back of his head.

  He reached down by his feet and grabbed his laptop bag. For a moment, I thought he was going to hug it like a security blanket. Instead, he unzipped it, pulled out his computer, inserted the flash drive into a USB port, and said, ‘You want me to delete what I downloaded? It’ll take five minutes, and no one’ll know anything.’

  That was exactly what I wanted him to do. It was exactly what I should have told him to do. Instead, I turned the ignition key and shifted the car into reverse.

  ‘You got until we get back to Brooklyn,’ I said. ‘If you find anything by the time we get to my place, let me know. If not, then you will delete whatever you got off the computer. Understand?’

  ‘Yeah, Ray. I understand.’

  ‘Good.’

  I pulled out of the parking lot and pointed Edgar’s car toward Brooklyn.

  We had just arrived at the entrance ramp to the Meadowbrook Parkway when I heard Edgar go, ‘Huh.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You know anything about a company called HMS Realty?’

  ‘No.’ I looked over my left shoulder and merged on to the parkway. ‘Should I?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But it says here that your friend Marty Stover owns two properties in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. One residential, one mixed-use.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  He read me the addresses and it took me five seconds to realize why one sounded very familiar.

  The mixed-used property – part residential, part commercial – was on the Northside of Williamsburg. The residential address was on the Southside. It was the building where Hector Robles and his family resided. You would think that would have come up in our conversation this morning.

  ‘Can you find out who lives in those apartments, Edgar?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Give me a few minutes.’

  A few minutes later as we got back on the LIE, Edgar said, ‘You want the residents of both buildings, right?’

  ‘That’d be great. Give me the ones on the Southside first.’

  He read off a bunch of names; Robles was one of them. Then he read off the names of the residents of the Northside property, starting with the two businesses. After reading off five or six names of the other tenants, he abruptly stopped.

  ‘Cheese and crackers,’ he said. ‘That’s weird.’

  ‘What’s weird?’

  He looked at the screen and punched a few more buttons. I gave a quick glance over at him and thought he was about to pick up the laptop and shake it.

  ‘Your dad’s name was Robert, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Middle initial J?’

  ‘Robert James Donne,’ I said, and again asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘It says here,’ Edgar said, ‘that Robert J. Donne lives in one of the apartments.’

  It was all I could do to stay in my lane.

  TEN

  I’m not sure how he did it – how he always seemed to do it – but Edgar found a spot right down the block from the building on the Northside. If parking were an Olympic sport, Edgar’s face would be on a Wheaties box. We could see the edge of McCarren Park from where we were. I was sure that on a decent early spring day like this, the place would be packed with soccer players, skateboarders, handballers, and anybody else who needed some sunshine and a little exercise. I was also sure there’d be more than a few young couples getting a head start on a warm-weather romance. Some of them were probably my students.

  Edgar and I got out of the car and met up on the sidewalk.

  ‘Whatta you gonna do?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to find out who this Robert J. Donne is and see how he’s connected to Marty Stover.’ I rubbed my eyes. It had been a long twenty-four hours. Now this. ‘I gotta tell ya, this feels weird, Edgar.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, hardly containing his enthusiasm. ‘But it’s a good kinda weird. I have that feeling cops get when they’re about to find out some important key to a case.’ He saw the look I was giving him and added, ‘At least that’s what I’ve heard.’

  ‘Right. OK, we’re a couple of friends looking for Robert J. Donne. We’ll say we’re worried about him because he hasn’t been answering his cell phone in the last week and his family asked us to check his place out.’

  He grabbed his laptop bag, ready for action. ‘Sounds like a plan, Ray.’

  Like Edgar would say anything else. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  As promised, the first floor was commercial: an independent real estate company that seemed closed for the day. Or maybe they were out showing places. We headed over to the door and checked out the buzzer panel. Along with the apartment numbers, it was all first initials and last names. This was a small security measure so some knucklehead looking for trouble couldn’t tell if the resident was male or female. Some of the nametags looked so old, I was sure they were from three or four tenants ago. But we found the one we were looking for.

  It seemed strange seeing R Donne listed as the resident of Apartment 4S. That was my father. Me, too.

  I pressed the buzzer and waited. After thirty seconds, I did it again. No answer. So I started with 1N and after waiting thirty seconds, kept pressing the other buzzers until 3S finally answered.

  ‘Who is it?’ a garbled voice wanted to know.

  I leaned into the speaker. ‘My name’s James Hunter,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to reach my friend Robert Donne.’

  ‘Ya got the wrong buzzer.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘He’s in the apartment above you.’ I said that because it wasn’t that uncommon for resident
s of the same building not to know each other’s names. ‘I’m a friend of his and kind of worried. He’s not answering his phone or his buzzer.’

  There was a pause for about ten seconds. ‘If you think something’s wrong or something, why don’t you call the cops?’

  The hardened New Yorker’s answer to everything. ‘That’s my next step,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to knock on his door. See if something’s wrong with his buzzer or if maybe he’s passed out. You know Robert.’

  I thought the light touch would make this guy more likely to buzz me in. Instead, I got, ‘You check the girlfriend?’

  Girlfriend? ‘No,’ I said. ‘And I wouldn’t wanna get him in any trouble anyway.’

  More silence, followed by laughter. ‘I getcha. Hold on a sec.’

  The buzzer sounded, unlocking the door, and Edgar and I entered the building.

  We walked up to the third floor and the guy in 3S who had buzzed us in was standing in his doorway. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and gray sweatpants. I couldn’t tell if he was getting ready for the gym or for bed.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘When’s the last time you saw Robert?’

  ‘I don’t remember, man,’ he said. ‘I work nights bartending. You’re lucky I even heard the buzzer. Sometimes I don’t see any of my neighbors for weeks. Him, I see less than that.’ He looked up. ‘You think he’s OK?’

  I decided I liked this guy. As little as he knew about his upstairs neighbor, he was still worried about him. Maybe it was the kind of worry that came with thinking, if something bad had happened to the guy who lived upstairs, it could happen to me. Either way, the guy decided he cared.

  ‘That’s what we’re gonna find out,’ I said. ‘You want us to let you know on our way down?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the guy said. ‘I might be in the shower, but I’d appreciate that. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, and Edgar and I headed up to the next floor. We stopped when the guy yelled out to us.

  ‘You guys said you’re his friends?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, nothing, I guess. It’s just that you’re like twenty years younger than he is.’ He gave us a closer look. ‘Unless you guys are older than you look.’