Last Call

by Allyson K. Abbott

  Linz walked over to check it out, and the two men moved the refrigerator out from the wall, making the hole easier to see. Linz eyed the hole and then turned and looked at the rest of the house. “It looks like this bullet must have been fired from the living room,” he said. “It went over the bar and zinged right in here between the fridge and the bigger cabinets.” He frowned and scratched his head. “What the hell? This scene doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

  “You’re assuming that bullet is from the same gun that killed our victim,” Duncan said. “Until you get it out and verify that, you have to consider there might have been another gun that fired that second bullet.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” Linz said. “Somebody fired a bullet into the kitchen and our victim, here, felt comfortable turning his back to this person? Or did they fire into the kitchen after they shot our victim? Why would anyone do that?” He looked over at Wesley and Charlie. “I want prints off that gun yesterday,” he grumbled.

  Charlie was the person actually holding the gun, and Wesley was typing a serial number into the tablet. “Got it,” Wesley said when he was done, and then Charlie carried the gun into a corner so he could dust it for prints.

  Duncan moved in closer to the dead man and studied the scene. “It looks like our victim was shot in the back of the head,” he said. “Maybe there was a struggle before that and the gun fired during the struggle. That might explain your kitchen bullet. The killer won that struggle and shot our victim in the back of the head as he was trying to get away.” He paused and bent down to look at the victim’s head wound more closely. “It looks like the fatal shot was fired up close because I can see stippling in the victim’s scalp.” He stood and looked over at the back wall of the dining area. “Is that a hole in those drapes over there?” he asked, pointing toward the window.

  Linz walked over and spread the drape fabric out, revealing a hole in it. Then he pushed the fabric aside to reveal another hole in the wall behind the drape.

  I carefully stepped closer for a better look, saw something shiny in the hole, and realized the bullet was almost flush with the wall’s surface.

  Wesley set his tablet down on top of a duffel bag on the floor and removed a camera from the bag. He then approached the window and shot pictures of the drape fabric, which Linz once again spread out for him, and the bullet in the wall behind it. When that was done, he returned the camera to the bag and took out a small implement that looked like an ice pick or a screwdriver—I couldn’t see it that well from where I was standing—and some needle-nosed pliers, and proceeded to work at removing the bullet. It came out easily, but the one in the kitchen wall proved to be a bit more labor-intensive. It was fascinating to watch all this, but I felt a little useless just standing around watching, offering up an occasional insight.

  Officer Miguel Ortega, who had ventured into the living room after the discovery of the kitchen bullet hole, said, “Here’s our second casing.” He pulled it out from behind a cushion on the couch positioned on the front wall of the house. “Looks like your theory about a struggle starting here in the living room might be right.”

  “So we can’t assume the victim was shot by someone he knew, someone he invited into the house,” said Duncan. “The front door is too close to the living room. Someone could have knocked on the door and then forced their way in when the victim answered.”

  Linz nodded and sighed. “Let’s hope it was someone he knew. Random crime involving random victims is too hard to solve.”

  “Do we know who our victim is?” Duncan asked.

  Hank answered. “Assuming the wallet we found in his back pants pocket is his, the victim is the owner of the house, Sheldon Janssen.”

  I saw Duncan’s face draw down into a frown. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Well,” Hank equivocated, “it’s not a definitive identification. Obviously, we haven’t seen his face, and even if we had, I’m not sure it would be helpful given the damage the bullet might’ve caused. As soon as the medical examiner gets here we can get a better look. But his lack of hair, his size, and his build, match what was on the driver’s license in his wallet.”

  “If someone killed him, why leave the gun here at the scene?” I asked Duncan. “Isn’t that risky?”

  “Not in this case,” said Wesley, who was once again looking at his tablet. “The serial number came back to our victim here.” He paused and looked at the rest of us with a puzzled expression. “He was killed with his own gun.”

  “Well, that shoots some holes in our theory,” Linz said. “Pun intended, of course,” he added with a roll of his eyes. “Did our victim answer the door with his gun at the ready? And if he did, why? Or did things escalate with someone who was already inside, forcing our victim to go for his gun?”

  Duncan’s frown deepened. “Wesley, don’t you have a way to scan fingerprints in on that tablet you have there?”

  “Sure do. I’ve already scanned in several prints that Charlie lifted from the gun, and I’m running them through AFIS as we speak.” Wesley shifted his gaze to me. “AFIS is an acronym for automated fingerprint identification system,” he explained.

  “She knows that,” Duncan said irritably.

  I gave Duncan an annoyed look and then said to Wesley, “I’ve had AFIS explained to me before, but it’s helpful to hear it again. Thank you. I’m still pretty new to this, so don’t hesitate to explain things to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Wesley said. “And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a smile.

  Duncan, apparently impatient with our proprieties, cleared his throat loudly. “The reason I asked about your tablet, Wesley, is that I’m wondering if you can run the dead man’s prints for a definitive ID.”

  “I could,” Wesley said. “But it’s better to wait for the medical examiner to get here.”

  “Well, where the hell is he?” Duncan grumbled.

  “I’m right here,” said a voice behind us.

  I turned and saw a short, portly fellow of about fifty approaching, carrying something that looked like a large tackle box, huffing and puffing with each step. His cheeks were slap red, his nose somewhat bulbous and heavily veined—a physical characteristic I knew was often associated with someone who has had a close relationship with alcohol—and from beneath the Packers knit cap he had pulled down on his head I saw tufts of gray, curly hair protruding. His crystal blue eyes were rimmed with crow’s feet. They looked alert and lively, and I got an immediate sense that they, and their owner, didn’t miss much.

  “Dr. Al Spencer at your service,” he said, looking at me. Presumably he knew the others in the room.

  “Hi,” I said with a nod and a smile. “I’m Mack Dalton.”

  “She’s a consultant working with the police department,” Duncan added.

  Dr. Spencer had no reaction to this. He set down his tackle box, removed his winter gloves, and then slid off his cap, revealing a wild tangle of that curly gray hair. His eyes were focused on the dead man. He stood there for a good minute or more, just staring. Then he stuffed his gloves inside his hat, crammed the whole thing into a side pocket of the down-filled parka he was wearing, and proceeded to bend down and open up his tackle box. He removed a pair of latex gloves and pulled them on. Next, he removed a camera from the box and began snapping pictures of the body, slowly moving around it and getting as many angles as he could.

  While he was doing that, Duncan was having a whispered chat with Wesley in the corner. Despite his attempts to be quiet, I was able to hear every word. At times my hypersensitivity could be a nuisance, but in moments like this one, it came in handy.

  “I need to verify the victim’s identity as soon as possible,” I heard Duncan say.

  “Why the urgency?” Wesley asked, giving Duncan a curious look.

  Duncan opened his mouth to answer, but before he could say anything, Wesley’s tablet emitted a chime. Wesley swept his finger acros
s the surface.

  “I have an ID on one of the fingerprints from the gun,” he said. He gave Duncan a surprised look. “It belongs to someone named Malachi O’Reilly,” Wesley added. “And according to this, he’s a cop.”

  Chapter 3

  I stared at Duncan in disbelief. “Mal’s fingerprint is on that gun?” I said.

  Duncan gave me a sobering look. “This is worse than I thought,” he said. “Is that the only print you’ve identified from the gun so far?” he asked Wesley.

  Wesley nodded. “The others had less detail, so they may take longer to run and might not be identifiable. But given that the gun belongs to the victim, I’m guessing some of the prints must be his.”

  “Where are you going with this, Albright?” Linz asked.

  “If this victim is Sheldon Janssen,” Duncan said, “then Mal may be in trouble. He’s been undercover for a couple of months investigating a construction company and its owner, Wade Klein. Klein is suspected of cutting corners, violating building codes, paying bribes, money laundering, and maybe drug dealing. Sheldon Janssen is the name of his number one, his right-hand man, so to speak. He has a reputation for being something of a goon who roughs people up whenever the owner asks him to. Maybe more than that,” he added in an ominous tone. “Though from what Mal has told me, they haven’t been able to pin anything on him yet.”

  The medical examiner squatted down beside the body—the cracks from his knees sounding loud as gunshots to my ears—and placed his hands on either side of the victim’s head. Then he gently lifted it. Duncan bent down to get a good look, and instructed Wesley to snap a picture. Wesley fetched his camera and did so. When he was done, the medical examiner gently lowered the head back into the position it had been in originally.

  I backed away from the scene, disturbed by this revelation. “When’s the last time you saw or talked to Mal?” I asked Duncan.

  “Two days ago,” he answered. “You?”

  “Yesterday,” I said. “He’s been sleeping in my basement for the past week or so, but I didn’t see him this morning before we left . . . or last night, now that I think about it. He was there working with his family on the elevator installation early yesterday morning, but then he left because he had to go to work at his job site. I don’t know if any of them heard from him again after that.”

  Duncan nodded, looking troubled. “I’ll give them a call to see if they’ve heard from him today at all.” He walked off into the living room area and took out his phone. I listened as he called the bar and asked someone—presumably Pete, my day bartender—to get one of Mal’s family members for him to talk to. After a minute or so of waiting, I heard him greet Mal’s father, Connor, and ask the last time any of them had seen or heard from Mal. He listened for a moment and then said, “I don’t know. But I need to find him. If you hear anything from him, please have him get in touch with me.” He then gave him his cell number and disconnected the call.

  I distanced myself from the bloody scene even more, in part to be closer to Duncan and listen in on his phone conversation, and in part to dull some of the sensory input I was getting. There was a hallway running off the kitchen and living room area that presumably led to the bedrooms, and I felt oddly drawn to it. I looked down it and saw there were four doors, two on the right, one on the left, and one at the far end. The one at the end was a master bedroom. There was a large, king-size bed in view, the sheets and bedspread still rumpled. But halfway down the hallway I saw a bunch of balloons floating in the air, wavering slowly back and forth. I realized the balloons were a synesthetic reaction, because it was one I’d had before. It typically manifested whenever I heard the sound of someone breathing heavily, or when there was a strong breeze nearby. The presence of the balloons in the empty hallway was perplexing.

  I backed up a few steps, keeping an eye on the balloons. They were ephemeral in nature—many of my synesthetic reactions were, and it helped me distinguish them from reality—and they became fainter, more ghostly. I reversed direction and moved back toward the hallway, and the balloons grew more solid. Puzzled, I looked along the walls and then studied the ceiling, searching for an air vent connected to the HVAC system. There was one located almost dead center between the doors on the right and directly above the door on the left. Satisfied that this was the cause of the balloon image, I started to turn away and go back to Duncan. But then I heard and felt a rumble, accompanied by the sound of air movement. The balloons began to dance.

  I realized then that the HVAC system had just kicked on. The air from the vent set the balloons to dancing, but what had created them in the first place? It was mid-January, so it was unlikely that there were any windows open to allow a breeze into the house.

  My confusion must have attracted Duncan’s attention because suddenly he was standing beside me. “What is it, Mack?” he asked. “You have that look on your face, the one you get when you’re experiencing a significant synesthetic reaction.”

  I looked over at the others to see if they were listening in, but they were paying us no attention. In a low voice, I explained to Duncan about the balloons and what happened when the HVAC system kicked on. “I’m a bit stymied as to why those balloons were there in the first place,” I told him. “I saw something similar when Dr. Spencer first arrived. He was breathing very heavily, and I think that’s why. Once his breathing was more regulated, the balloons disappeared. And these balloons do the same when I back away from the hallway.”

  “So . . . what are you saying, Mack?” Duncan asked.

  “I assume the first guys here on the scene searched the entire apartment?”

  “That’s our normal protocol,” Duncan said. “So I imagine they did.” He turned and, in a louder voice, addressed one of the uniformed cops. “Ortega, did you guys search this place when you first got here?”

  “Of course,” Ortega answered. “Why?”

  “What brought you guys here in the first place?” Duncan asked, ignoring Ortega’s question.

  “There was a 9-1-1 call from the house phone, but the operator said all she could hear on the other end was some heavy breathing, and then the line went dead. So basically, it was a welfare check initially. When no one answered at the door, we tried the knob and found it unlocked. We opened it and smelled the blood right away, so we went in.”

  “So who made the call?” Duncan asked.

  Ortega shrugged. “No way to know for sure. It could’ve been the victim before he was shot, but how could he have done it if he was struggling with someone and the gun?”

  “What time did the call come in?” Dr. Spencer asked.

  Ortega consulted a notebook he pulled from his pocket. “Nine twenty-eight,” he said.

  Spencer looked at his watch. “It’s ten-thirty now. I just checked a liver temp on our victim, and based on it, the temperature in the house, and the lividity in the body, I’d say he’s been dead for close to three hours.”

  “So he couldn’t have made the call,” Duncan said. “That means that whoever shot him made the call, or someone else found our victim after the fact and called.”

  “Either way, make sure you dust that phone for prints,” Linz said, nodding toward a landline sitting on an end table in the living room.

  “Did the victim live here alone?” I asked.

  Everyone turned toward me with surprised looks, as if they’d forgotten I was there or didn’t expect me to speak and participate.

  “The house is in his name alone,” Linz said. “And from the looks of the place, there doesn’t appear to be anyone else living here. There’s a spare bedroom that doubles as an office, and a third bedroom that’s completely empty.”

  “What about the bathroom, or bathrooms, if there’s more than one?” I asked. “Are there any extra personal-care items that don’t appear to belong to the victim?”

  Linz looked irritated. “We haven’t had time to go through all that stuff yet,” he grumbled. “We’ve been kind of focused on the dead guy.”

&
nbsp; Duncan looked back at me. “What are you getting at, Mack? Is there something about this balloon thing that I should know? Where are you going with this?”

  I swallowed hard and in a low voice said, “I think we need to take a closer look at those rooms off the hall, because I suspect we may not be alone.”

  Just then the HVAC shut off, and for a moment the house was utterly silent. No one said anything and nothing moved, except for those darned balloons.

  Then Duncan unholstered his gun and gave me a warning look. “Stay behind me. If you get a clue as to which way I should go, let me know.”

  I nodded, and the two of us headed down the hall. The others—their curiosity apparently piqued by our conversation—turned to watch us. Everyone remained quiet, and at that moment the HVAC system kicked on again. It seemed incredibly loud after the eerie silence from a moment ago.

  We reached the first door on the right, and a quick look inside revealed a bathroom. The shower had glass doors, and other than a large cabinet hanging on the wall, there was nowhere for anyone to hide. Even though it was too small to hold a person, Duncan opened the cabinet, which proved to be full of nothing more than towels and personal hygiene items, but they seemed to be female personal hygiene items: bubble bath soap, hair bands, and some floral-scented lotion. Inside the shower were bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and a liquid body soap—all of them floral-scented as well.

  “They could be from an occasional visitor, like a girlfriend who stays over,” Duncan whispered.

  I reached up and opened the medicine cabinet over the sink. “I don’t think it’s a girlfriend,” I said, puzzled by what I saw. On the bottom shelf in the medicine cabinet was a children’s brand of toothpaste and a toothbrush with a Disney character on the handle.

  Duncan looked as baffled as I was by this find.

  We went back out into the hallway and headed for the first bedroom door across from the bathroom. The balloons appeared more solid as we drew close, letting me know we were on the right track, and as we approached the door they disappeared inside the room. I expected to see the room being used as a bedroom and home office based on what Linz had told us, but it was neither. It was the empty room. There was no furniture, the walls were blank and painted an off-white color, and the single window in the far wall was darkened by closed blinds. Duncan reached around the corner of the door and felt along the wall until he came upon a light switch. He flipped it and light flooded the room. There was a closet along the wall to the right with double folding metal doors.