“How long have you been a detective, Alders?” Felix asked suddenly.
“Three years in the homicide unit.”
“You’re a murder investigator?”
“Yes.”
“And you agree with me that this crime has the appearance of premeditation?”
“Yes. The murderer would have had to have hidden behind this wooden barrier ahead of time and waited for precisely the right moment to fire, such that the gunshot was masked by the sounds of demolition.”
“Then answer me this: if you were a murderer, why would you use this weapon to commit your premeditated murder?”
Alders frowned and bent down to inspect the weapon.
“Is there any reason I wouldn’t?” Alders asked.
“Yes. This weapon is in very poor condition. Look at the crack running down the barrel, and this damage to the stock.” Felix stared around the armory. “There are any number of other weapons here that look like they’re in better condition, at least at first glance.” His eyes skimmed over the line of rifles on an opposite wall. “I’m no expert with firearms, but I’d say that if I wanted to commit a murder, I’d use a different weapon. This one is visibly damaged.”
“It would have been dark in here before the construction workers knocked a hole in the ceiling,” Alders pointed out. “Maybe I couldn’t have seen the damage to the rifle.”
“True. But even so, I’m not sure I’d use this rifle. I’d be very interested in the results of the ballistics tests. They’ll tell us whether this really was the weapon that killed her.”
With this observation he stepped back from the rifle and focused on the floor, looking around.
“What are you doing?” asked Alders with interest.
“I’m looking for footprints,” Felix replied. He ran his eyes along the floor, noting various gaps in the dust and muck, but shook his head. “Nothing definite,” he declared reluctantly. “But that’s alright. This is the way I prefer it.”
“What do you mean you ‘prefer it’ this way?”
“It would be all very easy if we found footprints to match the murderer or finger prints on the trigger or a signed confession or something of that sort. But I like my mysteries to be mysterious, don’t you? We have here a dead woman, Ms. Adriana Kettering, shot through the heart. If the murder was premeditated, then why use such an ancient weapon? And how did the murderer ensure that Ms. Kettering was here at exactly the right time? If the murder was not premeditated, then was it simply luck that the killer found himself in this room, with Ms. Kettering in his gunsights? Was it simply luck that he fired at exactly the right time so that the gunshot was masked?”
Alders face was stony. “It’s too early to say,” he answered swiftly.
“Is it now?” Felix reached down and scooped something up off the ground a few feet away from the rifle.
“What have you got there?” Alders asked, his eyes narrowing.
Felix held up a small, curly object. It glinted in the light.
“It’s a spring,” Felix announced after examining. “A small spring.”
After rummaging around in his pocket, Alders produced an evidence bag and held it open. With apparent reluctance, Felix dropped the little spring into the bag. Alders examined the spring; it was small, about half the length and width of his little finger, and black with either grease or dirt.
“You think this is a clue?” Alders asked with forced politeness.
Felix just shrugged.
Alders shook his head. “We’ll get a better picture of things when we start questioning these six people you say were speaking to the victim just prior to her murder.”
“You might also want to obtain that video footage I mentioned, as it will be quite useful in exonerating me,” Felix mentioned. “I, for my part, will try to find out more about this place. I have a contact at the Department of Defense. This is obviously some sort of military structure. He might be able to tell me more about it, not to mention more about this rifle. I’d better take some pictures.”
Felix reached into the pockets of his baggy overcoat and drew out a cell phone, then started snapping pictures of the rifle. Alders stared at it as the little white flash lit the chamber.
“That’s my cell phone,” Alders exclaimed with outrage.
“Is it? My dear Sammy, you should learn to take better care of your things,” Felix remarked as he fiddled with the phone. “And you should really get Instagram. It makes sending photos so much faster. Here we go.”
Alders glared at him and held out his hand for his phone back. When Felix returned it to him, Alders started rapidly checking his pockets to make sure nothing else was missing.
“See you tomorrow - say, at the station on Fourteenth Street at 9:00?” Felix asked, and without waiting for an answer, walked briskly away from the crime scene.
Chapter 3
Alders had an unpleasant night with dreams full of rifles and springs. When he returned to the police station the following morning, he made a strong pot of coffee on the idle department coffee maker, walked to his cubicle, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he found Felix sitting in his chair. Unfortunately, this response caused Alders to spill coffee all over himself, and he hastily put his cup down while he reached for something to dry himself with.
“I’ve heard back from my colleague at the Defense Department,” Felix said calmly. “He owed me a few favors so I think he rushed this a bit. This bunker beneath the construction site is a World War I era armory. Most of the documents regarding the site have been long since lost, but there was an army supply depot on that land long before there were ever apartments. It was destroyed in the Great 1918 Earthquake and taken for lost. The city must have built right over it. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how any of this is relevant to our inquiries.”
Felix calmly took a sip from Alders’ coffee.
“That’s mine!” Alders said, outraged.
“Really? I thought you brought it for me. It was rather hospitable of you.” He took another sip. “Anyway, he also sent me the technical specifications of this rifle. It’s a variant of the M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle. This is a Russian weapon, though over a million were manufactured in America during World War I. As there’s no sign of a serial number, we can’t say exactly what vintage it is, but my contact says that this weapon must be ancient, and it’s in very poor condition. There’s obvious damage, particularly the crack along the barrel, that would make it dangerous to use. I stand by my statement last night, that if the murder was premeditated, the murderer picked a very poor weapon to commit the murder with. But if the murder was opportunistic, and the murderer just happened to pick up this weapon, then how do we explain the spectacular timing?”
Alders had not been listening to this entire soliloquy. Instead, he’d risen and retrieved a second cup of coffee.
“I don’t know,” he said gruffly, between sips of his own coffee. “But I intend to get answers today. I managed to track down all six of these people who you said you saw with Adriana Kettering yesterday. I’ve invited them all down to the station today to have a little chat with me.”
“You mean with us, surely?” Felix remarked airily.
Alders could see his own frown reflected in the murky brown of his coffee. He disregarded the remark and instead opened the file he assembled the previous night. A picture of a woman with long, dark hair looked back at him from the first page. “Adriana Kettering herself worked at Great Redmond General as a doctor, general practitioner. She died last night aged 32. Her mother is deceased, and there is no known address or contact information for her father. Her only family, therefore, is her brother, Jack Kettering, 28. I haven’t had time to pull any records about any of these other people, except I can say that the Ketterings, Dave Kempt, Victoria Melbrush, Peter Ulverson, and both Hamiltons lived on the same floor at the same time in the apartment complex around twenty years ago. I can also say that none of them has a criminal record of importance, except perhaps for Peter Ulverson. He
was convicted on a charge of petty shoplifting about eight years ago.”
“And have you found the video from yesterday?”
Alders nodded mutely and turned to his computer. He soon produced a video recording from the TV studio. The camera rolled as the explosions rocked the building and the old projects came tumbling down. Frowning and grimacing, Alders tinkered with the controls on the screen, replaying the same ten-second stretch over and over again. Though the sound of explosions filled the room, a small crack was audible amidst the noise.
“That’s your gunshot,” Alders said tersely.
“And you’ll be happy to see I’m right here in this video,” Felix said, pointing at himself. “So you rest easy knowing that I am not your killer.”
“Overjoyed,” Alders muttered sarcastically.
Felix, on the other hand, had paused the video and scanned the crowd intently.
“I don’t see any of them here,” he said. “The Hamiltons, or Jack Kettering, or Davey Kempt, or Vicky Melbrush, or Peter Ulverson. None of them are in view when we hear the gunshot.”
“There are a lot of people in this video. You can’t say that for certain.”
Felix did not reply. They passed the next hour in relative silence, playing over other parts of the footage. With some additional coaxing, Alders backed the video to an earlier point and located the congregation of the seven friends, just in shot: Adriana and her six cohorts, one of whom might be her murderer. Felix kept repeating the same things under his breath.
“But if it was premeditated, then how could the killer be sure she would be in the bunker at the right time?”
Surveying the video over and over again did not provide any easy answers.
At around ten o’clock, the first interviewee arrived - Jack Kettering, Adriana’s only living relative. Jack Kettering was a young man in his late twenties, medium height and build and with dark hair and eyes, like his sister. His questioning proceeded somewhat differently from the rest, since it was necessary for him to survey the body. Felix waited patiently while Alders took Jack to the morgue; when they returned, Jack was shaking madly.
“Positive identification,” Alders said shortly.
Felix nodded and clapped Jack on the shoulder, then looked him straight in the eyes. “Jack, we want to ask you some questions about your sister’s death. Is that alright?”
The boy nodded slowly. They escorted him to a police interview room. Alders brought him a cup of coffee before starting the questioning; his hand shook as he lifted it to drink. Felix leaned idly against the wall while Alders began to ask the questions.
“Could you tell us your name, please, Jack?”
“John Kettering. Everyone calls me Jack, though.”
“And your age?”
“28.”
“Place of residence?”
“1000 Falstaff Drive.” His lip wobbled as he drank.
“You lived with your sister, Jack?” Felix asked quietly.
Jack gave a small nod.
“You two live alone? Did your sister have anyone else in her life?”
“No, she didn’t have a boyfriend or anything.”
Felix nodded.
With obvious annoyance, Alders shot a vindictive glance at Felix.
“Just a thought,” Felix said in a calming tone. “Please continue.”
“Place of work?” Alders asked.
“I’m unemployed,” Jack spat. At this his lip wobbled even more.
“Last employment?”
“I used to work at the car dealership on 4th, in the service center, until it closed down last year. I haven’t been able to work since then.”
“Alright, Jack,” said Alders in the most soothing voice he could muster. “I’m going to have to ask you some difficult questions now. When did you last see your sister alive?”
“About noon, yesterday.” There was no hesitation in Jack’s voice, but he visibly quaked as he answered the question.
“Where?”
“Outside the old apartments on twentieth street. We went to the demolition. It was Adriana’s idea. She wanted to get everyone together again, for old time’s sake, before the place was demolished.”
“Who is everyone?”
“Me, the Hamiltons, Vicky Melbrush, and Davey Kempt,” Jack spat the last name with notable contempt. “Peter Ulverson showed up too - I guess we sort of ran into him.”
“And was everyone there when you last saw your sister?”
“Yeah. We had all just gotten together when Vicky said something about Will Hamilton, I forget what, and he lunged at her, and that sort of ended the whole thing.”
“Alright. We’ll get back to that later. First, can you think of anyone who’d want to do your sister harm?”
Jack thought about this for a minute, then slowly shook his head. “Harm? Not - not killing her, no. Vicky might have gotten a bit catty with her from time to time, but kill her-”
“Catty?” repeated Felix.
Jack shot a brief look at him. “Yeah, well, you know... Look, the seven of us who got together yesterday, we’ve all known each other for twenty years, okay? We’ve had our ups and downs, but I’m sure none of them would have killed my sister, Vicky included. I mean, for me to explain this properly, you’ve got to understand that we basically all used to live together. We were all on the same floor in Building 3, 20th Street Great Redmond City Housing Project. Sis and I were in one room, Vicky was next door, Davey was next door on the other side, Peter was across from us, and the Hamiltons were across from Vicky. All neighbors, get it?”
He looked back and forth from Alders to Felix. Both men nodded.
“Sis and me, we never knew our dad. He left our mother before I was ever born and Addy wasn’t much more than a little baby when he took off. Mom worked all day and all night to support us, so she wasn’t around much. The Hamiltons, by which I mean Mrs. Hamilton, sort of adopted Addy and me. She looked after us, or at least looked out for us, when our mom wasn’t around. Davey, Vicky, and Peter - they were our friends. We got into all sorts of trouble when we were small. We went out exploring the tunnels underneath the building.”
“Is that when you found the bunker?” Felix asked.
Jack’s expression darkened. “Yeah,” he answered slowly. “I guess we never really realized it was a real military installation. I wish we’d never heard of the place now. I don’t think we knew there were guns and stuff on the other side of that wall. We liked to sneak down there with a big lantern and play. Put on the helmets and boots and stuff, or build a big fort out of the blankets we could find, whatever. It was kind of like a secret base to us. We’d always meet back up there after school and so forth.”
“So what does this have to do with Vicky and Adriana?”
“Two things, really,” Jack answered slowly. “Vicky and Adriana, well, I’m not sure they ever really liked each other so much. Vicky was sort of... sour. And she had a big mouth. You couldn’t tell Vicky anything that you didn’t want everyone in the building to know by the end of the day. And she used to tattle on Addy to Mrs. Hamilton whenever she did something silly. It wasn’t just that, either. When they got older, Addy and Vicky sort of fell out. Vicky had a terrible crush on Peter Ulverson when she was a teenager, and I think she thought he never showed any interest in her because he liked Addy, so they sort of argued. Screamed and insulted each other. Addy was much older than Vicky was, though... I don’t think she ever had any interest in Ulverson at all. But that was years and years ago. It was a schoolkid thing. I can’t imagine her killing Addy over it. Particularly because later that day, I saw her hanging on Pete’s arm.”
After jotting down some notes, Alders tutted.
“Did you have recent contact with any of these other individuals since yesterday?”
Jack shook his head. “No. I hardly ever saw any of them.”
“Would you describe your sister as wealthy?”
“Wealthy?” Jack said. He looked plainly startled, as if he’d n
ever thought of his sister in terms of wealth before. “No, I mean, I don’t think so. She was well-off. She was a doctor, wasn’t she?”
“Let’s go back to what happened yesterday. After you left the group, what did you do before the demolition?”
“I took a walk,” said Jack, staring at the table.
“You took a walk,” Alders repeated. “Where did you walk?”
“Around.”
“Can you be more specific than that?”
“Not really.”
“Can anyone confirm your whereabouts at the time of the demolition?”
Without looking up, Jack shook his head. “There were tons of people around. One of them must have seen me, but I don’t remember anyone in particular. The demolition - was that the time of the shooting?”
Alders did not answer the question.
“Were you standing with the rest of the crowd?”
“I guess.”
“While you were taking your walk, did you see anyone else from your group from the apartments?”
Jack turned this question over in his mind once or twice.
“Yeah. I saw Dave at maybe a quarter to one, but I steered clear of him.”
“Where was this? And why?”
“It was near the back of the construction site, on the opposite side from the crowd. And I steered clear of him because Davey and I don’t exactly get along, do we?”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s always - I don’t know the right way to say it - he’s always having a go at me. About how I’m always depending on my sister. About how I don’t have a job. About how I don’t have a girlfriend. About how I never went to college. About how I don’t have a life.” Jack said this with terrible bitterness. “I don’t know why he does it - just to rub it in, I guess.”
“I see. And what was Davey doing on the opposite side of the construction site?”
Felix sipped at his coffee loudly while Jack thought about this.
“I don’t know,” Jack said at last. “Nothing. He was just standing there.”
Death by Nostalgia Page 3