White Ghost Ridge

by Carol Coffey

  Outside the apartment, Mendoza buzzed the janitor’s storeroom and waited while Matteo Moretti made his way to the door. He didn’t look too pleased to see her on the doorstep but after a brief conversation he agreed to let her back into Holton’s home.

  They took the elevator to the second-floor apartment and Moretti opened the door.

  “This place will be sold at some stage of course,” he said. “Soon as the lawyers are finished up doing whatever it is they do.”

  “Is everything OK?” Moretti had been more than helpful to her when they last spoke but now he appeared somewhat unfriendly.

  “Not really. The building’s board has moved to retire me. That’s a nice word for ‘fired’. Five votes. Used to be Mr Holton voted against and it was an all or nothing deal.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s probably for the best. There have been too many changes here. I’m tired and I’m old.”

  “I heard about the money Mr Holton left you,” Mendoza said.

  Moretti smiled for the first time. “I guess he knew they’d fire me as soon as he was gone.”

  Mendoza wandered down the hallway to the kitchen. The kitchen table, which was still covered with a long, old-fashioned tablecloth, was pushed up against the wall as Horowitz had said.

  Mendoza pulled back the table, revealing a squat chute door.

  “Can you give me the key, please?”

  “Sure,” Moretti said as he singled out a long silver key and handed it to her.

  Mendoza felt around her pockets but found no gloves. She took a paper towel from beside the sink and covered her fingers with it. She slid the key in but the hinged door opened before she had a chance to turn the key.

  “It wasn’t locked,” Mendoza said as she pointed at the open chute.

  Moretti came forward and stared at the lock. “But ... how?”

  Mendoza borrowed the janitor’s torch. She pointed it down into the metal shaft which was probably less than two feet wide and would allow only the slightest-framed person to climb up. About fifteen feet down she saw a suction cup, obviously left behind by the killer in his rush to get away.

  She phoned O’Brien and told him to get forensics down to the building ASAP. O’Brien tried to argue with her about what he’d tell Benson but she ended the call and stared at Moretti.

  “No-one uses the chute until after the cops are done with it, OK?”

  “OK,” Moretti replied weakly as he anticipated the wrath of the well-heeled residents who wouldn’t take too kindly to having to travel to the basement with their garbage.

  “Can you show me where the chute ends?”

  She followed the janitor down the stairs into the basement. A large black dumpster sat underneath the end of the metal opening. Mendoza shone her torch into the dumpster but it was less than a quarter full.

  “When was it collected?”

  “Three days ago. It’s collected once a week. Time before that was the day before Mr Holton died.”

  Mendoza scanned the distance between the metal chute, the opening to which was finished with a sharp, serrated metal edge and the bottom of the dumpster. Even if the dumpster had been a quarter way full, a person of average height standing inside the bin would have found it impossible to reach the opening and, if they did manage it somehow, would have cut their hands to shreds trying to hold on to its razor-sharp edge. She looked around the basement to see if there was anything a murderer could have used to give them height but there was nothing.

  “So, if it was almost empty there’s no way someone would have reached up to grab onto the chute. There was nothing to stand on.”

  Moretti looked up at the metal opening and shook his head. “Not unless he was ten feet tall and had hands made of leather.”

  “What’s outside there?” Mendoza asked as she pointed towards a shard of light coming through a door at the back of the basement.

  “It’s small yard that leads onto a side street. Directly across the yard is the building’s parking lot. The owners got together and bought a derelict house behind here, knocked it down and put in some parking spaces. Before that there was only on-street parking and there were always rows about it.”

  Moretti opened the exit door which led onto the paved yard. Strong sunlight flooded into the musty basement. Mendoza walked across the yard to the parking area which was accessed through a locked metal gate. There were no vehicles in the small lot which looked as though it would hold no more than eight cars.

  “Everybody’s at work. Just Miss Henschel here by day and she needs a janitor all to herself,” he quipped.

  “Yeah. She’s a real piece of work alright.”

  “But she’s had a difficult life with a lot of sadness. Must be hard to carry around all that anger. I think about my blessings every day. Life in a new country. I thank God for my wife, children, grandchildren. I’ve even got a great- grandchild on the way. I’m grateful. Each time I feel angry about the way she treats me, I think, ‘Matteo, God blessed you more than he did this old lady so be kind’ and I am. I do my best for her.”

  “Even though she voted to fire you?”

  “Maybe she did me a favour?” he said with a laugh.

  Mendoza looked up at the back wall of the building and was disappointed to see no cameras. She turned to the parking area and could see no cameras there either. She walked onto the side street and glanced up at the fire escape which gave access to the side window of the apartment’s bedroom. But Locklear had discounted entry by the fire escape from the start. A camera was placed on the gable end looking towards the main road and away from Mendoza’s area of interest.

  “There are no cameras at the back of the building?” she asked.

  Moretti shook his head.

  “Sometimes rich people are too mean to protect their riches. It makes no sense to me.”

  Mendoza turned and looked across the road to where a pizza shop blared Italian music from two huge speakers which hung on each side of its store front. The music stopped abruptly, made a booming noise and began to play again. The noise had sounded a little like a gun firing and Mendoza had jumped.

  “That noise makes Miss Henschel mad. She makes all her carers go to the store and complain but it’s a problem with the music system. It makes a loud noise when it rewinds to the beginning again. I don’t know how she can even hear it. She says she’s a little deaf and her apartment is on the other side of the building, but I guess she looks for any reason to complain. The owner doesn’t care if she is mad because Miss Henschel doesn’t buy any pizzas.”

  Mendoza nodded. “All her carers? Rosa isn’t the only one?”

  “She is now but they come and go so quickly. An agency sends them and they all get sick of Miss Henschel ordering them about and they leave. Last one stayed three days and never came back. Never said she was going neither. Just left Miss Henschel high and dry. I was surprised. She seemed nice. She got the job after the previous carer was in an accident. She didn’t make it. It was a hit and run. Cops haven’t got anyone for it yet.”

  “So how long has Rosa been working for Miss Henschel?” Mendoza asked as an idea popped into her head.

  “Eh … I think she started on June 1st. I remember because the day before was my grandson’s birthday. The carer didn’t show and I was late getting home because I had to run an errand for Miss Henschel. She can’t get to the store on her own anymore.”

  “So, she started working here just over a week before Mr Holton died?”

  “Yeah, that’d be about right.”

  “And you say the previous carer just never showed up on, what, May 31st?”

  “Yes. She only stayed three days. I figured she’d last longer because she was quiet and very timid. Just the type Miss Henschel likes to boss around.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Her first name was unusual – Nubia. She had a name tag on her with the agency logo. Her last name was Ardavan.”

  “American?”

  Morett
i shrugged. “No, she was foreign-born but she never said where she was from. She hardly spoke to me. Like I said, she seemed shy.”

  “Do you still have security tapes from then?” Mendoza asked hopefully.

  Moretti smiled. “I keep the footage for a month before I delete it and not for the reason you’d think. I get paid once a month – second week of every month. Miss Henschel made three complaints about me going home early or coming in late which were not true. She got me brought in front of the committee. I got a warning so I began to save the tape for four weeks at a time. When I get paid, I delete them. That way, if she ever accuses me again, I can be clearly seen on the front-door tape coming in and going home.”

  “What about the hallway surveillance?”

  “It all runs on the same system so anything you want, I got.”

  “So, you’d need a key to get into the basement but you can only open the chute from inside the apartment?”

  “Yes. The doors came with locks so kids in the apartments couldn’t open the chute and fall down.”

  Mendoza nodded as she thought about how someone had managed to jump up to the chute. There was no way a killer would arrive carrying a ladder. Mendoza figured she knew the answer.

  The music from the Italian pizzeria changed to a slow melodic tune. She turned to look at the store again and noticed a camera placed high to the left of the door. She crossed the road, followed by Moretti, and stood under it to see what direction it was pointing. Mendoza grinned. The killers, because she knew now there was not one, but two, had come into the basement on the night Holton was killed and would have been caught on the pizzeria’s camera.

  She looked into the store and saw one man standing at the counter staring into space. She could see the arms of a woman through the service hatch, beating dough into a flat round shape.

  “Matteo, would you please bring the tapes from the hallway outside Mr Holton’s apartment from May 30th and 31st over to the pizzeria? I can view them at the same time that I view their footage.”

  “Sure,” he said and left.

  After a two-minute conversation with the proprietor, Mendoza was directed to a small room at the back of the store to view their security tapes.

  The owner’s wife, Sofia, brought the tape of the night Holton was killed to her.

  “I knew the man who died – he came in here a lot. It’s sad,” she said.

  Mendoza insisted on viewing the tape alone and Sofia left her. She waited while the grainy tape moved slowly, recounting each minute of the rainy evening. Several people passed the store with umbrellas, blocking her view. She exhaled and moved the tape on a little, aware that the killer might have been in the building for hours before the murder actually took place. Ten painstakingly slow minutes passed with no movement other than the normal customers coming and going.

  Matteo arrived with the two tapes from Holton’s building. Mendoza popped the tape from May 30th into the pizzeria’s second monitor and watched as Miss Henschel and the carer she now knew to be Nubia Ardavan came and went on their landing. She watched Holton leave for work and arrive home looking exhausted. She fast-forwarded her way through the tape and, with nothing to see, ejected it and placed the tape from May 31st into the machine. She let the tape roll slowly while she watched the second screen of the roadside outside the pizzeria. Then she took a chance and fast-forwarded the pizzeria tape to 10.10pm on the night Holton died. She slowed the tape again and watched. Business at the store slowed and between ten-fifteen and ten-twenty only three customers collected pizzas from the store. She moved back to the apartment-landing screen and watched it in fast motion until her attention was drawn to the pretty young carer walking across the hall from Meara Henschel’s door to Holton’s at 11.30am, with a small rucksack on her back, three and a half hours after the man had left for work and possibly the time the old woman took a nap. The woman let herself into Holton’s apartment, presumably having relieved the sleeping Henschel of her set of keys, and closed the door behind her. Mendoza noted the time. Fifteen minutes later the cool young woman exited the apartment. Mendoza locked in on her company ID: Nightingale Home Care Services. Then the carer re-entered Henschel’s home to complete her work at the job she was never to show up at again.

  Mendoza phoned the company while she watched the tapes from the pizzeria move slowly. By the time she finished the call, she had learnt that the carer had only joined the agency a few days before she got a post with Henschel and had insisted on a post on Creek Avenue, stating that her child attended the school at the top of the small avenue and as she was a lone parent, who did not own a car, she needed work close to her child’s school. The woman, or whoever had put her up to posing as a carer in order to unlock the chute leading up to Holton’s apartment, had done her homework and must have known that Henschel was the only customer the company had on the avenue. The company rep she spoke to also said that Ardavan never showed up for work again and their attempts to contact her had failed. Ardavan had completed her mission and had provided access to the apartment to someone who could not afford to be seen on the premises. Someone who would be easily recognisable on camera. Someone Holton knew.

  Mendoza moved her focus back to the pizzeria footage and at exactly 10.22 pm a dark sedan pulled up and parked at the curb across the street. Two people dressed in dark hooded clothing got out and walked into the yard at the back of the building and towards the locked basement.

  Mendoza froze the screen and scanned the back of the figures. One was very tall and broad and most probably male and the other short and thin. Mendoza felt that the shape of the figure of the smaller person was that of a woman but she couldn’t be sure. She moved the tape on a little and watched as the smaller of the two handed the other a set of keys. The door to the basement opened and the pair disappeared inside the building. Mendoza waited. She could feel her breathing quicken, knowing that these were to be the last few minutes of Alec Holton’s life. She waited for ten minutes and did not take her eyes from the screen. The small moths that flew across the screen were the only movements on the isolated street. Her finger itched to fast-forward the camera but she knew she couldn’t. She knew that each moment unfolding before her could unlock the mystery of Alec Holton’s murder.

  Sofia knocked and offered her a coffee. Mendoza refused as she kept her eyes fixed on the footage. Suddenly, the basement door opened and the two figures emerged. Mendoza checked the clock. 10.55pm. An unwitting Carter was probably parking his car at this very moment outside the front of the building, thinking that he was visiting to make peace with his colleague who was gasping for breath in his office on the second floor.

  “Come on!” Mendoza said to the two figures as they skulked towards the car.

  “Look up!” she shouted but the figures kept moving towards their parked car with their heads down.

  Then abruptly they halted and their heads shot up.

  They were looking across at the pizzeria and Mendoza knew why.

  The pizzeria’s music system must have come to a halt with its usual loud bang.

  Mendoza froze the screen and smiled at the faces that she had never seen in person but whose identities she knew.

  “Gotcha.”

  Chapter 24

  By the time she’d made the seventh unanswered call to Locklear’s phone, Mendoza knew something was wrong. As she made her way to the airport, she called O’Brien from her cab but he had not heard from the detective sergeant. O’Brien had managed to get forensics to Holton’s apartment and had avoided telling Diaz and Hill who he knew would somehow mess up the crime scene.

  “You don’t trust Diaz or Hill, do you?” Mendoza asked.

  “No,” O’Brien replied simply.

  “I want to know more about that, O’Brien, but right now I need to find Sergeant Locklear.”

  O’Brien made no reply.

  “O’Brien?”

  “Yes?”

  “First, I need you to talk Benson into contacting the DC police and arrange fo
r a man by the name of David Horowitz to be taken into protective custody.”

  “Are you crazy, Mendoza? I’m a desk officer. A computer nerd. How do you suppose I’ll talk Benson into that?”

  “Use your head, O’Brien. If you can’t talk Benson into taking Horowitz to safety then make something up about him and have him taken in for questioning. He’ll be safer in a jail cell than on the streets.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Second, find out everything you can about a young woman named Nubia Ardavan.”

  O’Brien went quiet again.

  “O’Brien!” Mendoza yelled.

  “She’s the daughter of an Iranian diplomat based in Paris. Until two years ago he was the curator of the National Museum of Iran. She has no convictions, holds full diplomatic immunity and last flew out of Richmond on the evening of June 1st. She married an American in Paris a few days later. I guess she’s waiting for her new passport to arrive before we see her again. If we ever do.”

  “O’Brien, how do you know all this? And, more importantly, why? Why are you watching Ardavan?”

  “It’s a hobby,” he replied quietly.

  Mendoza thought for a moment. “O’Brien ... what are you not telling me?”

  “Mendoza, this post was supposed to be my fresh start – my last move. I ... I’ve had to move around a lot and it’s been hell. All I ever wanted was to be a police officer, a good one, but the past keeps coming back to bite me and old habits die hard. That’s all you need to know.”

  Mendoza remained silent, surprised by the sudden emotion O’Brien was displaying. She suddenly felt like Locklear, uncomfortable and unskilled in the face of human emotion. Perhaps she was learning a little too much from her boss.

  “Alright, O’Brien, but I’ll be telling the sergeant about this. If he finds out you’ve been hiding things from him, for whatever reason, you’ll be sorry you ever heard his name.”

  As Mendoza moved the phone from her ear she thought she heard O’Brien mutter something. She put the phone back to her ear but he was gone. Mendoza thought about phoning Kowalski but the captain was still on vacation and if something had happened, Locklear would have called her and not Kowalski who was most likely spending some of his time off thinking of ways he would punish them for ruining his much-awaited vacation. She took out her notes and decided to call Eddie Grass whose number Locklear had given her and who appeared to be the only person her sergeant knew in Pine Ridge.