Death by Nostalgia

by Andrew Stanek

  “Heard what?”

  “The gunshot! It was even louder than the explosions, it was deafening. I knew it was a gunshot. I had no idea what happened but I started to run. I rounded the last corner - can’t have been more than a second later, and I ran up to the bunker, and there was Adriana, lying dead on the floor. Look, I saw the killer. I couldn’t see his face, whoever it was. It was dark, but he was standing over Adriana’s body, and when he saw me he moved to the other side of that wooden wall. But he was wearing something that glowed, like a vest-”

  “A construction worker’s vest, maybe?” Felix suggested quietly.

  “Yeah, I think so, and I think there was a flashlight or something nearby, because there was a flickering light in the room. Anyway, he was on the other side of the chain link fence. I could see the door was open and I saw him through the open door, I could see his vest... And then he just sort of disappeared. I didn’t understand what was happening. I couldn’t see so well.”

  “You say he disappeared,” Alders said intently. “He was standing in the back room - the armory - and how did he get out?”

  “He couldn’t have gotten past me - that’s what I’m telling you. He just walked into the back room and disappeared.”

  “So you saw Adriana dead, and you saw her killer. You say he was wearing a construction vest but you couldn’t see what he looked like-”

  “-yeah, like I said, he had a flashlight or something, I could only see what he pointed it at-”

  “-and when he saw you, he just walked into the back room and disappeared.”

  “Look, when the shaking stopped I took out a match and struck it to look around. I saw Adriana. It nearly made me sick. And I looked around the back room. I saw all the guns and stuff, and the rifle on those sticks. It was practically still smoking. But I’m telling you, there was no killer there. No one. And he couldn’t have gotten past me, he would have had to shove me out of the way. I was standing in the doorway to that back room. He was there one minute and then he just vanished.”

  “He just vanished,” repeated Alders. “And why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”

  “Because I thought you wouldn’t believe me!” he exclaimed. “I thought you’d think I killed her for sure. Who’d believe in a disappearing murderer? Without him, it’s just me standing over Adriana’s body.”

  “You want to know what I think?” Alders growled. “I do think you killed her, Davey, and I think you’ve invented this vanishing murderer to save yourself-”

  “Alders,” said Felix suddenly, “a word?”

  With a vicious look back at Davey, Alders consented to step outside and speak to Felix.

  “What?” Alders asked viciously.

  “I believe him. I think I know who he saw down in that tunnel and how he got there, and if we go back and inspect the crime scene, I think we’ll also know how he vanished.”

  Alders stared at him. “You don’t seriously think he really saw a murderer who disappeared?”

  “I don’t know that the person he saw was the murderer, but his story fits perfectly into what I already know.”

  “It’s absurd! It’s clearly something he made up.”

  Felix shook his head. “It’s not absurd, and I think it’s the truth. Don’t arrest him for murder just yet.”

  Alders walked moodily back into the interview room, Felix not far behind. Before Alders could say a word, Felix suddenly launched a question at Davey.

  “Did you tip off the police that Jack’s dealership was dealing in stolen cars?”

  Davey look genuinely surprised by this sudden shift in the line of questioning. “No. No, I didn’t. Is that something that Vicky told you?”

  “Yes,” Felix answered quietly.

  “Well, I’m not sure you should believe everything she says. Vicky makes stuff up and she always has. Earlier this morning, I passed her outside this police station. Jack and I were on our way out and Vicky was on her way in. We stopped to chat and she started telling us about how Adriana was blackmailing Mr. Hamilton and how she was going to tell you all about it. It was a steaming pack of lies, obviously.”

  “So you think it’s not true that Adriana was blackmailing Mr. Hamilton?”

  “Nah. I wouldn’t take it seriously. Classic Vicky nonsense. It’s same with how she tells people I got Jack’s dealership shut down. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I don’t even work in claims. On the other hand, she does say stuff that turns out to be true sometimes...” He trailed off.

  “Such as?” Felix prompted.

  “Well, once - and this was back when we were kids - she came back home from school all giddy and laughing, telling everyone that Mrs. Hamilton had been fired as a teacher. Mrs. Hamilton taught at a school nearby, you see, and she got wrapped up in a cheating scandal. It turned out that she’d been helping some of the kids to cheat on their exams, so it seemed like they were up to testing standard when they weren’t. That turned out to be true. And you know what else? Vicky said Adriana turned Mrs. Hamilton in, and I don’t think she was lying that time. I asked Adriana about it once and she wouldn’t give me a straight answer. Adriana took academics very seriously.”

  “I’ll bet,” Alders said with crossed arms.

  “But I just can’t believe Adriana was blackmailing Mr. Hamilton over some STDs. No, that doesn’t make any sense. Adriana wasn’t that kind of person.”

  “Right, well,” Alders broke in heavily. “To get back to the point, I don’t believe your story about this disappearing killer of yours, Davey. We’re going to hold you here while we have another look around the crime scene to see if we can find any trace of this killer of yours.”

  “I want my lawyer.”

  Alders shrugged. Felix, meanwhile, offered Davey his cigarettes and nicotine patches back. Davey took the patches but pushed the pack of cigarettes back towards Felix.

  “No thanks,” he said as he left the cigarettes on the table. “I shouldn’t have had them in the first place. You keep them.”

  Felix nodded, then followed Alders out of the room.

  “We can’t question him any further until his lawyer gets here,” Alders said, en route back to his desk. “Not that I’ve arrested him yet.” His eyes fell on the pack of cigarettes that Felix was holding. “You know, you can’t keep stealing from suspects,” he hissed angrily. “Any lawyer worth his salt could probably get the whole case thrown out if they knew all the things you’ve been taking.”

  “I never steal,” Felix replied calmly.

  Alders gave him an angry glare, then turned back to look at his desk. There was a large envelope sitting on his keyboard.

  “Ballistics?” he said. “That was quick.” He opened the envelope, but his face fell as he began to read through the contents.

  “‘Based on visual inspection of the weapon and the bullet, we can guess with a high degree of certainty that the bullet was fired from the provided weapon. However, we cannot test...’” Alders abruptly stopped reading aloud, then scowled. “What the hell is this? They’re saying they can’t test the rifle because it’s too badly damaged. They don’t want to fire it. They want my permission to repair it enough to test it or an explicit order to fire it unrepaired.”

  “I’m sure they’re just being cautious,” Felix commented indifferently.

  “They’re covering their own backsides is what they’re doing,” Alders snarled back. “They want my permission to fire the rifle so it’s my head on a stick on not theirs if it explodes or something.”

  “You should ask them for a full assessment of the damage to the rifle before you decide either way,” Felix suggested.

  “Yeah, I think I will,” Alders said, and quickly drafted and sent an email. While he did, Felix toyed with his cell phone in a leisurely manner.

  “What do you want to go back to the crime scene for?” Alders asked, grabbing the phone back from Felix.

  “To confirm a guess of mine. If Davey is telling the truth, the person he saw in the luminous v
est cannot have simply disappeared, which means there must be another way into and out of the back room of the bunker.”

  Alders shrugged. “If you want to go on a wild goose chase, that’s your business. You can go investigate the crime scene if you like - but if I find out there’s anything missing I’ll have you in a cell so fast you’ll think the bars appeared out of nowhere. I’m going to wait here for Davey’s lawyer. Call me if you find anything interesting, will you? I assume you have my phone number?”

  “Better. I have your phone.”

  “Give - me - that?” Alders snapped grabbing it out of Felix’s hands for a second time. “Will you please stop stealing my phone from me?”

  “I never steal. You must have a hole in your pocket.”

  Alders glowered at Felix as the latter departed.

  Felix arrived at the crime scene and found it exactly how they’d left it. He walked down the passage from the far side of the construction site, whistling as he went and retracing Davey’s supposed steps. When he reached the bunker, he envisioned being Davey, entering the room in semi-darkness to find a person with a construction worker’s safety jacket and a flashlight at the other end. As he stood there, it seemed perfectly true that the person at the other end of the room could not possibly have escaped without pushing past Davey, and accomplishing the task in darkness would have been a more terrific feat.

  Adriana would have been dead on the floor, between the two men.

  “Suppose I am a murderer,” Felix murmured to himself. “I have just shot and killed someone. Davey Kempt has just entered the room. He has discovered me in the act. I have left the rifle on the stand. I cannot kill him to escape, or perhaps I do not wish to kill him.”

  Felix walked around the room as he muttered, examining the floor and walls closely.

  “I retreat into the back room. The rifle is now next to me. I cannot kill Davey. I would have to pull back the rifle bolt and reload it in darkness. Perhaps I do not know how to do that. I am surrounded by other weapons but I choose not to use them... Why? But then I decide to escape. How do I escape?”

  Felix ran his hand along the grimy wall and floor, then shook his head, reached into his own pocket and produced a small pen-sized flashlight. He ran the beam of light along the floor. It caught something small and red between the dirty lines of the concrete floor.

  “A match,” Felix muttered as he reached over and picked it up. “Davey said he struck a match to see, but he could not see the murderer anywhere.”

  He started to tap his foot, here and there at first, sounding out the floor, then started to knock on the walls. As he moved around, his hand rapped against the back wall. It made an odd sound. Felix ran the beam of his penlight across the wall - this wall was bare of weapons and munitions, unlike the rest of the room’s perimeter. A line, perhaps a small seam, ran vertically along the wall from top to bottom. Felix dug his finger nails into the seam and started to pull.

  Nothing happened at first. Then, the segment of the concrete wall began to creak and groan, and with much protestation swung open. Inside, there was a something like a closet, an alcove in the concrete large enough to conceal a person. The interior was bare except for a large, empty shelf, and depression in the wall that looked like it might have once housed a safe.

  “Interesting. I think I’ve just solved the case of the disappearing murderer,” Felix said to himself. He walked into the empty closet, only to discover it was not empty. His foot struck something large and solid.

  He turned his flashlight down and saw that his foot had struck against a large, rusty metal strongbox. It, like everything else in the bunker, appeared ancient. Flakes of iron were peeling off it, and the lock had long since rusted through. It looked as if it had once fit onto the shelf. Felix bent to pick it up and examine the contents, but it was heavy, much too heavy to lift. It felt as it might be hundreds of pounds. Clenching the flashlight in one hand, he knelt down and examined the lock. The lock was broken and the latch already opened. Carefully, cautiously, Felix opened the lid. His breath caught in his throat.

  He immediately took out his phone and dialed Alders’ phone number.

  “Alders, you might want to come see this. Forget Davey; he’s telling the truth, just come see this. Yes, I found how the killer could have disappeared, but never mind that. Get over here.”

  The call ended and the line went dead.

  Inside the box were twelve bars of pure, sparkling gold, arranged in a neat row. Each must have weighed ten pounds at the very least. Twelve bars of pure, brilliant sunshine, twinkling in the dim light. Twelve bars of gold...

  ***

  “Right,” Alders asked when he arrived. “So you’re sure that’s all that was in the case. These eleven bars of gold?”

  “Yep,” Felix confirmed casually.

  Alders sighed heavily and stared at them. “Well, this does complicate matters a little. It seems like Davey is telling the truth. I’ll have to let him go. Good thing I haven’t charged him yet. But these gold bars - this case must weigh a hundred pounds, at the very least! What is it doing here?”

  “I have absolutely no idea. I was not expecting to find it here. All I knew was that there must be another passage, or at the very least a hiding place, in this back room.”

  After a brief silence, Alders regarded him with a frown.

  “How did you know that? Davey might just have been lying.”

  “I knew he wasn’t lying. Here’s how.”

  Felix produced his cell phone and handed it to Alders.

  “Maybe I should steal your phone and run off for once,” Alders answered grumpily.

  “You’d be leaving me alone with a hundred pounds of gold bullion.”

  With a sigh of agreement, Alders looked at the screen of the phone.

  “This is the picture you took from Jack Kettering’s camera,” Alders commented, eyes running along it. “But this is just a picture of the construction site.” He stared at a pair of construction workers arguing in one corner for a moment and then shook his head.

  “Take a closer look at this man,” Felix said, tapping a particular construction worker in the lower right-hand corner.

  Alders squinted at it. “Say,” he began slowly. “That looks like...”

  “It’s Will Hamilton,” Felix completed. “It’s hard to tell because of the angle and the distance, but I’m reasonably certain that’s Will Hamilton, dressed like a construction worker.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” the other asked with a sharp glance.

  “Because I wasn’t sure it was him before. The time stamp puts this picture at shortly before one o’clock. With Davey’s story, I understand Hamilton’s movements. Hamilton sneaked onto the construction site in disguise, and he was the one that Davey saw fleeing from the bunker after the gunshot. He slipped into this closet and hid here until Davey left, then re-emerged and escaped the bunker. After discarding his disguise in a nearby dumpster, he returned to his car and awaited the return of his wife. If she asked him where he’d been, he said he was looking for Jack Kettering to try to fix their car and failed to find him.”

  A look of utter surprise crossed Alders’ face. “So Will Hamilton shot Adriana? But why? And how does this gold fit into it? Do you suppose she really was blackmailing him and he brought it to try to pay her off?”

  “Unlikely. That’s more than a million dollars in gold in that case. I don’t think Will Hamilton had that kind of money. Besides, why bring the money when you’re planning to kill the blackmailer? And if Will Hamilton did assassinate Adriana over blackmail, I still have plenty of questions. How did he know about the armory? How did he lure her here at exactly the right time? How did Vicky find out about the blackmail?”

  “They could have agreed on one o’clock in the bunker as the pre-arranged time,” Alders said slowly. “Hamilton could have found out about the armory when he was a tenant here and then loaded up and lay in wait, then taken the gold with him as a precaution, to pay her o
ff in case something went wrong. How Vicky found out I don’t know - but in any case, we’ll known soon enough. We should go arrest Hamilton for murder. There’s more than enough evidence. There can’t have been two people hiding in that closet. Hamilton must be the man we’re after.”

  Felix slowly started to nod. “Alright. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 8

  “There can’t possibly have been two people in the alcove.”

  Alders heard Felix repeat this multiple times as they drove to Mr. Hamilton’s address, far from the 20th Street housing projects he’d once lived in. Felix’s reverie was broken, however, when a police car sped past them, siren blaring. Another police cruiser passed, then two, then three. When they arrived at the Hamilton residence, a wall of police cars had appeared around the house. Alders did not need to turn on his radio to guess what had happened.

  The pair got out of the car and Alders spoke to the officer manning the perimeter.

  “Yes, single homicide. Wife came home to find her husband dead. Gunshot. Home invasion. Less than an hour ago. Name of the victim is William Hamilton.”

  The pair quickly gained admission to the crime scene.

  “They’ve already removed the body,” Alders murmured as they entered the crime scene. He swore with unexpected passion as they passed through the foyer, covered with police lights, blood, and forensic plastic.

  “I think we should take a look around the house and try to find out as much as we can about Will Hamilton,” Felix said sharply.

  In the next room, Reva Hamilton sat shaking in her chair, accompanied by two police officers, trying to soothe her.

  “Detective Alders,” she said spotting him and standing. “Detective, do you know who did this to my husband? Detective?” She appeared greatly distressed. Blotches of color were appearing and fading on her face in erratic sequence, and she was taking great gasps of air, as if she were on the verge of drowning.