The Ragman's Memory Page 22

  Manierre looked up suddenly, as if I’d interrupted a compelling daydream. “I know, I know—all the help I can spare, especially on the Sawyer case. I’ll juggle the shifts and see what I can do.”

  I smiled at his world-weary voice. “Thanks. One last thing, everybody. There’ll be a slight change in Gail’s role as contact person for the SA’s office. As before, if you’ve got questions or are dealing with anything involving town government, go through her first. But if it’s a straight legal question, as with the Sawyer killing, use whoever’s available, like we’ve always done.”

  The meeting broke up in piecemeal fashion. I gestured to Gail and led her across the squad room to my office, closing the door behind us.

  “You okay with how I handled Ned?” I asked her.

  She frowned but gave me a reassuring squeeze of the arm.

  “He’s going to have to account for it. It’s too bad he’s doing everything possible to make things worse for himself.”

  There was a knock on the door and Willy walked in without waiting for an answer. “I’m guessing,” he said, “that you’ll be riding my back on the Sawyer case?”

  “I’ll fill in where I’m needed—on all of them.” Gail got up and headed out, giving me a small wave. I reached for a sheet of paper that was lying on my desk and handed it to Kunkle. “This is what I found out from the Skyview staff and Sawyer’s next of kin. Hillstrom’s report’ll come by fax in an hour or two, but she told me on the phone that it was a two-handed attack, like J.P. thought. How d’you want to tackle this?”

  “Interviews first. We know she was whacked between ten p.m. and one in the morning. That ought to help with checking alibis. I don’t know… I thought I’d play it pretty much by ear. That a problem?”

  I caught the defiance in his eye. “Not for me.”

  He checked his watch. “All right. I’m going to see who Billy can cut loose, and maybe head over there in an hour or so.”

  · · ·

  I had been up all night, and was planning to stay up a good part of the night ahead, so, despite the flurry of activity I’d set in motion, I told Harriet where I was headed—and went home to bed.

  Under similar past circumstances, this had rarely been a successful ploy. When things got this crazy, turning my brain off became a near impossibility, and I routinely sacrificed the hope of some relief to the reality of a few restless, wakeful hours.

  This time, however, I surprised myself. As soon as I was under the covers, I fell into a deep sleep.

  Part of this may have been due to sheer exhaustion. But I think I was also comforted by having organized our caseload the way I had. Whether proven right or wrong in the long run, it gave order to what had started to become a chaotic jumble of seemingly unrelated cases. I knew the links between some of them and the convention center project were tenuous right now—a cheap pen, the location of a one-night crash pad, the sudden retreat of a firebrand activist. But I was also confident that mere happenstance hadn’t conspired to hand us five separate major cases simultaneously. There had to be a common thread linking most of them, and I felt we were on the right track to finding it.

  Unfortunately, my peaceful eclipse proved relatively short-lived. Three hours after I’d shut my eyes, the phone dragged me back to a world intolerant of daytime sleepers. Not that this particular caller would have hesitated at any hour.

  “You’re a hard man to locate,” Stan Katz said cheerfully.

  I piled several pillows behind me and sat up. “What d’ya want, Stan?”

  “We’re running dual pieces on Wallis and the Sawyer killing. I was wondering what you had to say about them.”

  “Talk to Brandt.”

  “I did. I’m going for more color—a personal angle.”

  “Not from me, you’re not. It’s too early on both cases for that. Give me a couple of days to find out what happened. Then you can have your color.”

  “Come on, Joe. I’ve got nothing right now. Didn’t you guys find anything? How ’bout the timing? Do you know if Wallis and Sawyer knew each other?”

  “Down boy. If we start hypothesizing in public right now, we’ll only do everyone dirt. We’ll give you the facts as we get them.” I could tell from the pause at the other end how much credibility that carried. “What about the other cases, then?”

  “Look—Stanley—I know what you’re up against—”

  “Spare me the sympathy, Joe,” Katz interrupted testily. “Just because we’re operating on a shoestring doesn’t make us less viable. We don’t need your help—we deserve a little honesty from our public officials.”

  I shrugged at the phone. “All right, how ’bout if you give me some help? Beverly Hillstrom told me this morning that one of your people called her to confirm that Milo Douglas had died of rabies. Who was your source?”

  Katz burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “You called me for a favor.”

  “Meaning you’ll give me something if I tell you?”

  “Soon enough.” There was another pause before he finally said, “What the hell, I’ll play. It was an anonymous call—a man. He said, ‘The bum Milo died of rabies—check it out,’ and then hung up.”

  Echoes of an earlier conversation I’d had with Kunkle came back to mind. “Did you get another anonymous call about the Satanist inscription on Shawna Davis’s tooth?”

  This time, Katz’s silence smacked more of embarrassment. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Stan. He called you.”

  “We thought maybe he was a cop.”

  “I’ve pretty much ruled that out.” I hesitated and then added, “My personal guess—off the record—is that we’re dealing with someone who either thinks the publicity will throw us off track, or who needs the limelight for his own self-gratification. I think we’re sniffing around the edges of something pretty significant here, Stan.”

  “Damn,” he muttered. “When will you clue me in?”

  “Soon as I can—no bullshit.”

  He slipped back into his hard-bitten role, like an actor stepping on stage. “I can hardly wait,” he said, and hung up.

  · · ·

  Unable to get back to sleep, I returned to the office to deal with several days’ worth of paperwork. The squad room was empty. Everyone had either gone home or was in the field.

  Since almost before I could remember, the quiet of an after-hours office was a meditative tonic for me. It gave me an air traffic controller’s view of the world I inhabited—not just the investigations I was working on personally, but bits and pieces of every case currently active in the squad. It supplied me with a sense, however artificial, of being in control.

  Nevertheless, by almost ten p.m. I was sick of the paper shuffling.

  In truth, my timing was calculated. Sometimes, when in a jam, I had found it helpful to revisit the scene of a crime at the same time of day it had occurred. I therefore got into my cold-stiffened car and drove west toward the Skyview Nursing Home.

  The neighborhood around the home was illuminated by periodic street lamps, so I instinctively cut my lights as I entered it, preserving the sense of stealth that might’ve been used had last night’s killer been an intruder.

  I was amused, if not surprised, to discover I wasn’t the only one acting out theories. Parked under the last streetlamp, facing the Skyview’s front entrance, was Willy Kunkle’s car, a small plume of exhaust trailing from its muffler. I cut my engine and rolled to a stop as silently as a shadow, settling some ten feet behind him.

  It hadn’t been my intention to actually sneak up on him, even after my stealthy approach, but seeing the back of his head, still motionlessly facing forward after I’d quietly emerged from my car, I was bitten by pure gratuitous impulse. Kunkle was a man who took everything and everyone head-on, with no apologies or mercy. He was so assertively in your face, so stridently claiming control at all times, that I couldn’t resist exploiting this one instance of vulnerability.
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br />   With no plan in mind, I silently crept forward. I wasn’t moved to smack a snowball against the glass, or pound on the door with my fist, like some of the others would have done in a heartbeat. Merely appearing by his side and bidding him good evening seemed good enough, since I knew the effect would be the same.

  But I ended up being the one caught off guard. The reason he’d pulled up under the light, and that I’d been allowed my covert opportunity, was that Willy Kunkle was hard at work. Spread across the steering wheel, held in place by two small spring clips, was a broad, flat artist’s pad, and appearing across its surface, under Willy’s confidently held pencil, was a fanciful rendering of the scene before us—a snow-draped building, half lit by a streetlamp, huddled up against a looming black mass of hills that blended into a star-filled sky. It was beautiful—at once detailed and impressionistic, realistically capturing the night-clad nursing home, and yet endowing it with a grace and charm that escaped the clinical eye.

  My astonishment was absolute. I forgot the cold, and my earlier intentions. All was wiped away by this glimpse of a curmudgeon’s heart. Hopefulness, serenity, and insight poured from his pencil as they refused to in his everyday life, and with obviously practiced ease. The clips on the steering wheel were evidence this was a long-standing habit. I had often thought he had to have an outlet to keep his inner core quiet, something he could call his own. That it turned out to be so utterly out of character made me feel at a loss.

  I had never felt myself such a trespasser and now wished I had warned him of my approach, giving him time to protect his privacy. Moving twice as furtively, I tried to slip away.

  But I’d lingered too long. Responding to some territorial instinct, Willy suddenly turned and caught sight of my shadow. His reaction was startling, frantic, and terrifying, leaving me rooted in place with my hands held up in instinctive surrender. He moved in a blur, slipping from my line of sight, knocking the pad from its perch, sending it sailing to the floor, and reappearing through the half-opened door, crouched behind the very wide barrel of a .357 Magnum.

  “You fucking asshole,” he hissed at me through clenched teeth.

  “Relax, Willy,” I said calmly, seriously.

  “How long you been there?” The gun had not moved—a telling oversight.

  “Just got here,” I lied. “What’re you so twitchy about?”

  The gun vanished, the door swung wider, and he got out of the car, closing it behind him with his hip. “You’re no cop if you have to ask that.”

  It was a typical comment—melodramatic, wrong-headed, and hurtful—which I just as typically ignored. But given my newfound knowledge—and his lingering doubts—I felt entitled to return with a veiled warning shot. “I don’t have as much to hide as you do.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”

  “Nothing.” I glanced toward the building and changed the subject. “It’s almost ten. I take it that’s what you were waiting for.”

  When he answered, his words were no softer, but his tone had been muted several notches. My generosity, however roundabout, had been acknowledged. “I thought you said I was running this one.”

  “With as much help as you can get.”

  He quickly moved into a self-serving compromise. “How ’bout we split up, then? You take the bottom, I take the top.”

  Sawyer had been killed on the second floor. I accepted without hesitation.

  The only unlocked door at this hour was the front entrance, opening onto the lobby with the guard’s alcove off to one side. He was sitting there now and asked if he could help us. We both showed our badges, and Willy left for the stairwell.

  We watched him go, the guard scratching his head. “What’s wrong with his arm? He bust it or something?”

  “It’s permanently disabled—sniper bullet, years ago.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “And he’s a cop?”

  I didn’t bother confirming the obvious. “What’re your hours?” I asked him.

  “Ten to six. I just got on… Little early tonight—had to drop off the wife. Other car’s in the shop.”

  “You were on last night?”

  He suddenly looked uneasy. “Yeah, but I never heard a thing and I didn’t take a nap, like that other guy said—the one who came to my house.”

  I didn’t inquire who that had been. I would’ve asked the same question. “What happens when you have to pee?”

  He gestured with his thumb. “It’s around the corner, but I lock the front door. It’s a deadbolt, so nobody can get in or out.”

  I looked at the telltale bulge of a pack of cigarettes in the left breast pocket of his uniform shirt, and at the “Absolutely No Smoking” sign stuck to the wall behind him.

  “You have a flashlight I can borrow?” I asked. Mystified, he handed over a long, black, metal brain-basher. “Be right back,” I told him and left the building. Between the front entrance and the curb was a short, well-shoveled walkway bordered by hedges on both sides. I played the light along where the bushes met the cement until I found what I was looking for—a five-inch-wide gap, leading off into the gloom. Stepping through it, I followed a narrow footpath along the wall for some twenty feet, to the far side of a darkened bay window. There, the path ended at a well-trampled four-foot-wide circle shielded from view by several tall plants. Around the edges of the circle were a dozen dead cigarette butts, all of the same brand.

  I cupped my eyes with my hands and pressed my face against the window. Dimly, I could make out a room with several desks in it, with all the earmarks of a business office.

  I collected one of the butts from the ground and returned to the lobby.

  “Find what you were looking for?” the guard asked as I returned his flashlight.

  “Yeah. Let me see your cigarettes.”

  His face froze. “What?”

  I tapped the counter with my fingertip. Slowly, as if hypnotized, he brought his hand to his breast pocket and removed a pack of Marlboros. He put it on the counter. I laid the butt I’d recovered next to it.

  “This is a one-time question. Answer it truthfully, and the conversation stops here. Jerk me around, and you can kiss this job good-bye. Got it?”

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on mine.

  “When you go outside to smoke, do you lock the door behind you?”

  “No,” he barely whispered.

  “How often do you do this?”

  “Once or twice an hour.”

  I picked up the butt and handed it to him. “Thanks.”

  I left him and turned right at the back of the lobby, down a wide hallway running the length of the building’s east wing. There were several glass-paneled doors on either side, crowned by decoratively lettered signs advertising each office’s function. Some twenty feet down, on the same side as the building’s front, I came to one labeled “Accounting.”

  Again, I cupped my eyes and peered into the darkened room. Not only was it the same office I’d seen moments earlier, but I could easily pick out the tall plants outside the bay window, clearly outlined by the street lamps beyond. A man standing in their midst would cut a clearly distinct silhouette.

  I left the east wing for its opposite number and passed through a pair of double doors leading to a section dedicated to the home’s social functions—a dining room with a locked kitchen beyond it, a well-stocked library, an exercise/game room, and—predictably occupied, probably all around the clock—the TV room.

  I opened the door and peered into the darkened space. There were six people, either fully dressed or in bathrobes, sitting in sofas and armchairs, all in silent awe of a huge glowing set mounted halfway up the wall. The volume was what I’d expect for a mostly hearing aid crowd, but the door was heavy and insulated, which I assumed was true of the ceiling and walls, too—a thoughtful touch. I retreated and took the elevator upstairs.

  Kunkle was in the corridor, leaning with his bad arm against the wall, looking down the length of the empty hallway.

  “Got anythin
g?” I asked him.

  He tilted his head slightly. “Just getting a feel for the place—the comings and goings. Fair bit of activity for a dump like this. ’Course,” he had to add in the inevitable rejoinder, “most of them just sit there and drool.”

  Down the hall, I saw Sue Pasco, now dressed in uniform whites, leave one room to cross over to another, a medicine tray in her hands.

  Willy stuck out his chin in her direction. “She’s in the section where old lady Sawyer died. Most of ’em can get around, but they need their regular meds. At the far end is the hard-case unit—the veggies, the nutsos, and whatever else. What’d you find downstairs?”

  “The guard’s a smoker. He takes periodic trips outside to feed his habit. He leaves the door unlocked and always goes to the same spot. Getting in is no problem—he can’t see the door from where he hangs out. And getting out is even easier—you can see him through one of the office windows.”

  Willy let out a small grunt. “That’s where my money is—an outside hit. I talked to a lot of these geezers this afternoon—and the staff—and no bells went off. They all thought Sawyer was a grade-A bitch, but she wasn’t the first, and everyone knows she won’t be the last. It’s part of the routine here.”

  “So why break in to kill her?”

  There was a loud shout from down the hall, followed by a distant crash. Sue Pasco appeared in the hallway and then broke into a fast trot toward the double doors at the far end.

  “She’s headed for the hard-case unit,” Willy muttered, running after her.

  I followed, hearing more as we got closer. Ahead of us Pasco paused to open the door blocking the corridor. It hadn’t quite swung to before we reached it. On the other side, the hall was more brightly lighted, the floor uncarpeted, and the overall look more institutional. A small cluster of people stood before us, looking into a room at the source of the commotion.

  Willy and I muscled our way past them to the open doorway. Inside, Sue Pasco was kneeling by a bearded man in a chair, talking to him quietly. Across the room a large muscular orderly was standing almost nose-to-nose with an old man wearing a bathrobe and pajamas.