Par Four, page 16
part #2 of Jake Hines Series
“Right. Well. After that big knife thrust, I think she somehow got away, and from then on it was a free-for-all. Looks like she threw everything she could get her hands on, and her attacker, or attackers, pursued her and cut her whenever possible. She slid across the stove, there, and on across the counter, and collapsed onto the floor. You can see that plainly, from the smears and the puddle of blood on the floor. It was probably then, while she was on the floor, that she got all those slashes on her back. A couple of dozen of them,” Jimmy said, grimly, “some so close together I can’t tell if it’s one wound or two. They would have been very painful, but none were lethal. Those wounds all argue for a family fight, you know,” he said, “because there’s a tentative quality to the depth of the cuts, and the placement of the wounds shows no planning. A person intending to kill from the beginning would have got it done faster.”
“That’s what Pokey said.”
“Yeah. Well. Pokey really nailed it, there at the river. Tell him I said so. Sometimes I find him just about unbearable, but he has a very good eye. Now–” He pointed out a trail of blood drops crossing the kitchen from the stove to the pantry wall. They crossed so many other smears of blood that I hadn’t noticed them before. “See this? The wound in her chest would have been disabling ordinarily, but it looks as if desperation kept her going. Somehow she got up again and tried one last time to get away. That’s when somebody threw this chair at her…” he picked it up and showed me the blood and hairs clinging to the bent leg. “We’ll take this one along with us, to confirm it, but I’m pretty sure the chair hit her right there, where I showed you the strings coming together. Besides causing blood to spurt out of all her wounds and spatter on the wall, the impact caused a subdural hematoma.”
“Translation?”
“Knocked her out, caused massive bleeding inside her brain. The momentum of the blow propelled her toward the wall, so she put her hand up–her last conscious act, I should think–and made that perfect print. We have to get it back to the lab to match it, but Trudy’s got a good short-term memory for prints she’s working on, and she’s almost certain it’s Mrs. Krueger’s. The smear on the lower part of the wall indicates she slid to the floor. Probably died there. See how thick the blood is?”
“That’s blood?”
“Yes. It’ll turn black and flake like that when there’s a pool of it. She must have lain there some time. Hunched on her side, I think; there’s some lividity on her right side. She may have lain right there till she was picked up and carried to the river.”
“Have you finished the autopsies on both bodies?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what about Randy? Did he drown?”
Jimmy made a wry face. “Yes, but don’t quote me. Drowning is famously hard to prove. But for your purposes, right now, Jake, while you’re trying to sort out this crime, go ahead and figure he drowned. His lungs were full of weeds and dirt from the river. That’s one thing we’ll do for you right away: we’ll match the junk in his lungs to the scrapings and samples we took from the river. Then at least you’ll know he drowned in that part of the river.”
“Good. Then all I have to do is find out who tied him to his mother.”
“Somebody who’s spent some time on boats, I bet,” Trudy said, coming in the back door. “We had quite a time with some of those bowlines, didn’t we, Jimmy?”
“They were good knots,” he said. “How close are we to hitting the road?” He began checking his list, firing rapid questions to the two women. I helped them load the big mound of evidence they were taking back. Kevin picked up a double armload of zippered bags and staggered to the van like a burro.
“You be home tonight?” I asked Trudy as I helped her out the door.
“I guess,” she said. “What day is this?”
“Thursday. I think.” We both laughed. “I’ll try to call you, okay? Maybe we can think up a plan for the weekend.”
She opened her mouth to answer but just then a silly argument erupted by the back of the van, where Kevin, standing to be offloaded, noticed Megan’s Chicago Cubs T-shirt and asked her if she enjoyed backing losers. Megan yelled, “Hey, be nice! This year’s gonna be different!” and in no time they were hurling stats at each other, arguing about Molitor’s batting average and the strikeout records of Steve Trachsel and Rick Aguilera. They quickly escalated to the loud, uncouth insults so favored by sports fans everywhere, which brought Jimmy hurrying out of the house saying irritably, “Okay, now, what’s all this nonsense?”
“Aw, we’re just–” Kevin said but Jimmy brushed past him, snapping at Megan, “Could you at least try to behave like a professional?” He stomped to the front of the van and got in on the passenger side, slamming the door.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” Kevin muttered, but Megan made a shushing gesture and said softly, “Don’t worry. I think he’s getting his period,” and they giggled hilariously. Trudy waved good-bye to me and climbed quickly into the back seat. Megan hopped up in the driver’s seat, started the motor, checked the traffic, and began to back out. Suddenly Kevin said, “Oh, Jeez, that kid’s clothes are still in my car,” and I ran wildly after the van yelling, “Wait! Wait!” Megan rolled down her window and said, “What?”
“Remember, I told you we’d be sending the clothes from the little girl who was kidnapped?” I said. “Remember, Jimmy? For hair and fiber sampling?” Kevin trotted up with the bag of Jessica’s clothes, handed them to Megan, and said, “Forgot your lunch, darlin,’ ” and they started another giggling fit. Jimmy, glowering blackly, reached across Megan and grabbed the sack of clothes out of Kevin’s hand, hissing, “Can we for Chrissake get going?” Megan backed fast into the middle of the street, reversed gears with a head-snapping screech, and left a trail of hot rubber on the turn at the end of the block.
“God, it’s after four o’clock,” I said. “How much have we got to take back with us?”
“Just the two chairs in my car,” Kevin said. He was grinning at the corner where the BCA van had just disappeared. “Isn’t that Megan a kick in the pants?”
“Yup. Let’s lock up and see if we can get back to the station before all our guys go home.”
Lou and Ray were standing by the elevator when we walked out of it. “Good, you’re right here,” I said. “Come to a meeting at eight in the morning, will you? In the small meeting room. We’re gonna divide up the tasks on the double drowning and the kidnapping, all work together for a while.”
Hustling on down the hall, I asked Kevin, “Go see if Darrell’s back, will you? I’m gonna try to find Bo and Rosie.”
They were in Bo’s office, transcribing notes off my tape recorder.
“You get anything worthwhile from Farah?”
“He did it for the money,” Rosie said.
“No kidding. Where is it?”
“In a coffee can, he says, buried in the woods.”
“He draw you a map?”
“Not yet. He’s trying to find a way to trade it for something. We explained to him that until he leads us to the money, we’ve got nothing to trade. He’s thinking about it.”
“How’s his story compare to Scott’s?” I asked Bo.
“Well, the masks, he says they were long knit things with holes. Sounds like balaclavas. He gave us some details on the money. A close estimate on the cash, and a couple of checks he remembered. He described Babe’s office. We’ll have this run off for you in a few minutes, both the interviews.”
“Bring it in as soon as you’re finished, will you? The tape too. And while I’m thinking of it, come to the small meeting room at eight in the morning. Work is piling up; we’re gonna each take a chunk and run with it.”
Darrell Betts was waiting in my office, trying not to smirk. “Hey,” I said, “how’d you like spying?”
“We did some good, I think,” he said, bouncing a couple of times in his chair.
“Those evildoers lead you to the loot?”
“Led me around, anyway. I waited about an hour in the van, and then Clint called me to follow the pawn shop man, that Sewell guy. Did you know the kids in the neighborhood call him ‘Mr. Sewage’? Good name for him. What a dork.”
“So, did he do this terrible thing Clint is talking about? Go to Fourteenth Avenue and turn right?”
“Yeah, Clint said you made fun of that, but listen! Clint’s right, there’s something very odd about that operation. Clint called and said Sewell was closing his shop, so I pulled around to his street and waited a couple doors down, and when he pulled out of the alley just like Clint said he would I followed him and sure enough, he turned right on Fourteenth Avenue. He followed Fourteenth to the highway, went south on Fifty-two and turned in at that storage place out there on the Stevensville road, Southeast Self-Storage.”
“Well, so then?”
“Well, I couldn’t follow him inside; it’s just a couple of rows of storage spaces. I didn’t want to blow my cover, y’know,” Darrell said, grinning all over his face. “Might have to dive off a cliff then, and kill a buncha guys.”
“For sure. So what did you do, quick-thinking action hero that you are?”
“Waited in the parking lot of the little strip mall just past there, the one with the paint store and the feed-and-seed place. He stayed almost half an hour, then he pulled out and went right back to his shop.”
“Well, there you have it,” I said, “we’ve got to put a stop to this right away. Can’t have guys going to their storage bins and then back to their stores in the middle of the day.”
“Jake, I know it’s funny on the face of it, but do you understand that Clint really thinks he’s on to something?”
“Or he’d like to be. The old-timers in that area, Tony and Larry and their pals, they hate those new people that they believe are ruining the neighborhood. Clint has adopted their attitude toward the X-rated book store and the pawnshop: they’re sleazy, they don’t work hard enough, they must be doing something illegal. He’s just about ready to start a witch-hunt. We can’t do that.”
“You don’t think it’s odd when a small storekeeper has something more important to do than tend the store?”
“A pawn shop takes in stuff. It’s what pawn shops do. Stuff has to be stored.”
“And adult book stores? What stuff do they take in?”
“You followed him too?”
“He goes a different way,” Darrell said, “but he ends up at the same storage place.”
“Huh.” I kicked my desk a couple of times.
“Besides,” he said, “both these outfits are run so funny.”
“Funny how?”
“They don’t care whether they take care of customers or not. Small stores, Jake, they really have to hustle to make it.”
“So maybe they’re not making it.”
“The pawn shop’s been in that location for a year and a half. The dirty book store moved once, but it’s been in the North End almost two years.”
“All this you learned in one day?”
“Clint’s been asking questions. And we talked to Tony Pease a while.”
“Well, I’m impressed you learned so much so fast, and I’m glad you got along with Clint Maddox; he’s a damn good cop. Tell you what. Write a report on what you saw today, leave it on my desk. Later, if we can clear up the kidnapping and double homicide we’re currently working on, I’ll assign you to some more undercover work with Clint and we’ll see what the two of you can dig up.”
Darrell looked sad. “I told him you wouldn’t go for it.”
“For what?”
“Clint was hoping I could hang around his section tomorrow, watch these two stores for him while he’s off. He works four twelves, y’know, like all the uniforms. So he can only cover Monday through Thursday.”
“Right. And he’s got his assignment, which is policing the North End, and we’ve got ours, which right now is finding out who killed Babe Krueger and her son, and also who kidnapped Schultzy’s child. Big jobs, lotta people counting on us to do ‘em right, you hear what I’m saying?”
“Sure. Hey, I didn’t mean to rag on you, Jake.”
“No problem. Small meeting room, Darrell, eight in the morning. We’ve got a shitload of work to do; we’re gonna divvy up the tasks and run like hell.”
As soon as he was out the door I called Frank and said, “Got a minute?”
“Just about. If you come right now.”
“I’ll do it by phone. Has anybody talked to Jessica Schultz?”
“No. Lou went over there but Marlys said the kid was still too upset to talk. You get the clothes to BCA okay?”
“Yes. You know anybody in Planning and Zoning?”
“Uh, yeah, a couple guys, why?”
“I’d like to find some old city hand who’d come up with a map of the sewer lines in the North End, in a hurry, without making me get down on my knees.”
“Well, lessee.” I heard his big chair groaning as he leaned back, shifting his weight. “Y’know who you really probably oughta try is Building and Safety. Ask for Angus Ferguson.”
“He’s an engineer?”
“Self-taught, mostly. Planning and Zoning’s got all those bureaucratic engineers now with Master’s Degrees, you can start a turf war over there just asking for a paper clip. But Angus is an old-fart tinkerer who goes back to the days when the whole town was managed by five or six guys with a few tools in a pickup. Betcha he knows where a set of those old plans are buried, and he’d probably enjoy walking you through ‘em.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait. How’d it go at the house with BCA?”
“Fine. They went away with about a ton of blood samples and broken dishes, and they’ll call when they’re ready to talk about it. Bloody clothes in the hamper upstairs. It’s looking more and more like a family fight that got out of control”
“That so? You’re thinking the son killed the mother?”
“Looks that way. When the blood tests and autopsy results come back, we should know for sure, about Babe.”
“But the boy…?”
“Tougher,” I said. Rosie was standing in my doorway and I motioned her in. “But listen, Frank, about Jessica? I’d like to go see her myself in the morning. Any reason you know why that wouldn’t be okay? Did Schultzy say she was a real basket case, or…”
“Oh, no, no. Just that she was taking some kid’s tranquilizers their doctor prescribed and sleeping a lot. They thought it was important to give her a couple of days to calm down. Just ask Schultzy if she’s ready yet, she’ll tell you, you know Schultzy.”
“Sure do,” I said, “talk to you later, Frank.”
I hung up, took the report Rosie held out to me and asked her, “Bo gone home?”
“Yes. He said tell you his sitter’s sick and he needed to pick up his kid.”
“Didn’t know he had one,” I said, “You got a minute to go over this?”
“Sure.”
“What do you think of Farah Tur?”
“Hard to know.” She grinned, suddenly. “Bo said, ‘Ain’t no chatterbox, is he?’ ”
“Meaning he’s quieter than Bo? Wow.”
“I’d call it a toss-up myself. One thing Bo wanted me to point out, Farah gives the same time for the robbery as Scott does. Sunday night.” She flipped through pages and pointed, “Here…‘We waited in the park till all the bars closed and the street was quiet. Then we hid behind the dumpsters in the alley behind the bar, till we were sure there was nobody around. We went downstairs some time after three, maybe three-thirty.’ ”
“Huh.” We stared at each other. “Isn’t it odd? Why are they lying about the time?” “Bo figures they did something else that was worse, and they’re using the robbery to give themselves an alibi.”
“That’s what the Chief said. So we’re waiting for still another vile crime to surface? Shit. He says the same as Scott about the keys? They got them from Randy?”
“Yes.”
Farah had given a fair description of Babe’s office– “dark and stale, with one good light on the desk.” They found Babe there, he said, counting the money and putting it into bank deposit sacks, “bags like leather with zippers at the top.”
“Why didn’t you leave, when you saw she was there?” Rosie asked him.
“The money was right there too. Easy to get.”
“But attacking the owner like that made it a big-time felony, didn’t you know that?”
“We did not hurt her really.” I could imagine his leisurely shrug. “And we were wearing the knitted caps. She could not see our faces. And since we did not speak she could not describe our voices.”
“Babe said that, too.” I told Rosie. “She said that was the scariest part, that they never spoke.”
“I asked him, ‘You did all that, taped her up and everything, without talking?’ and he said, ‘That’s right, we never talk.’ So Bo asked him, ‘Never, on any of your jobs?’ and Farah said, ‘I mean we agreed before we started that we would never talk.’ ”
They put the money “in the picnic box,” he said. I sat and stared at that line, remembering how Babe had said, “They had one of those Styrofoam coolers.” All along, the idea of Farah Tur confessing to anything had seemed ludicrous to me, and I had focused on his motivation: why is he confessing? If he got away clean with a lot of money, why come in here and screw it up? But suddenly, with the inclusion of that unlikely detail, the Styrofoam cooler to carry the money in, and the spontaneous awkwardness of the phrase he used to describe it, “the picnic box,” Farah Tur had made himself a credible suspect, in my mind, for the robbery of Rowdy’s Bar, even though I had no clue why he was confessing to it.
They went home without counting the money. “I had to hurry,” he said. “My father goes to work early.” Incredibly, this handsome self-possessed warrior, who wore his air of menace like a row of medals, was also a dependent teen-ager who, at home, would be expected to explain an all-night absence. Only after both his parents had gone to work in the morning did he and Ali, his little brother, count the money. They had expected about twenty-five hundred dollars, he said, “perhaps three thousand if we were lucky,” when they went into the bar. He had known it was more than that as they loaded it in the cooler, but, “We were extremely pleased,” he said, “when we found that we had almost twelve thousand dollars.”
