The Authorities, page 25
“I will not!”
Rutherford said, “Okay, fine.” He threw open the driver’s-side door of the van, nearly hitting Vanessa in the process. He scooted to the side so that most of the driver’s seat was empty, and said, “Then get in the van, quick!”
Vanessa said, “What?”
Rutherford shouted, “Get in the van!”
“I don’t think I should.”
The timer reached zero. A deafening hiss filled the air, like God’s cat was angry at the world. The superheated steam and fine calcium particles shot straight up into the air. Most of the steam evaporated and all of the remaining moisture and calcium cooled to a safe temperature before it fell back to the ground, but there was an instant, inescapable rise in both the ambient heat and humidity of the parking lot.
For the next twenty minutes, Rutherford and Vanessa sat in the van and talked. Once she had calmed down, he explained that the van, the clothes, and the videos were all part of his new job, which was related to law enforcement, and about which he could tell her nothing further at this time. She was left with the impression that he was working undercover, which, in a sense, he was. He promised not to do anything stupid or dangerous, and she promised to tell their mother that her fears were unjustified, and that her only son hadn’t turned into a crumb-bum. Then they shared a laugh over their mother’s use of the phrase crumb-bum. He offered to take her to dinner, but she declined. The humidity from the descale cycle had ruined her makeup and left her feeling like she needed a shower.
Rutherford watched his sister drive away, then walked briskly from the van to his apartment, pausing only to note how many curtains shifted as the neighbors peered out at him.
The descaling instructions said he’d need to top off the water tank, but he decided to do it in the morning. He’d already made enough of a spectacle of himself without stretching a garden hose out to his van.
Once his apartment door was closed behind him, he let out a long, relieved sigh, and went to his kitchen counter to sort through his mail.
For the most part, it was the usual assortment of business enterprises offering to supply goods or services because they wanted his money, and business enterprises asking for his money in exchange for goods or services they had supplied. The only genuinely interesting envelope was addressed simply to his apartment number in a swoopy hand and blue ballpoint ink. It was from the property management company that handled his building. He opened it. A formally worded letter on office stationary told him the good news that he was being let out of his lease several months early, as per his lawyer’s request, and that he could move into his new accommodations at the end of the month.
The fact that he had new accommodations was news to him, as were the facts that he’d been trying to get out of his lease and that he had a lawyer.
Rutherford hung his leather jacket on a hook by the door and shoved his fingerless leather gloves in one of the pockets. He brought his shoulder holster and enormous pistol into the bedroom, where he placed them in their assigned spot on top of his dresser. The tail end of his workday had been spent with Albert, examining his TP-82 after its first official use, going over its cleaning procedure, and trading imitation Bond movie banter. As a result, he now understood his weapon much better, and he’d managed to have a few good laughs.
His smartphone and his fake cigar stayed in the pockets of his jacket. Even though the cigar hadn’t hit the pavement this time, it still didn’t seem quite sanitary enough for his liking. He spent a second trying to imagine a means of sanitizing it every night.
It’s a shame it isn’t watertight, he thought. If it were, I could just let it soak overnight in that blue stuff old-timey barbers used to soak their combs in.
He’d had the e-cigar for two days, and it already looked terribly abused. Rutherford had to admit, it looked like exactly the kind of item the fictional character he was portraying would own, which meant that it was exactly the kind of thing the real Rutherford didn’t want in his home, let alone in his mouth.
He took out his earpiece, then peeled off the rest of his costume and deposited it directly in the washing machine so it would be clean when he put it on tomorrow. At least he could just leave the clothes in the dryer when they were done. Wrinkles were not a problem.
He looked forward to the day that the rest of his new wardrobe would arrive. Of course, the idea of a closet full of slightly different distressed jeans and a variety of sweat-stained arena-rock tour T-shirts held little appeal, but it was better than wearing the same jeans and shirt every day.
Having successfully shed his work identity, he took a long, hot shower and put on thick socks, sweatpants, and a clean T-shirt. He grabbed a beer, made a salad, and sat down with his tablet propped up on the table. As he ate, he scrolled through case-related documents, images of the crime scene, and photos of the involved parties.
That’s what they are, he thought. Involved parties. We don’t have any suspects. We have a victim, a time of death, a cause of death, and a wife, coworkers, and patients, all of whom seem to have thought well of the doctor. None of whom have an apparent motive for murder. We also have a bunch of bouncers who were hired to attack us with a credit card from one of the patients, but that doesn’t mean he did it. Anyone could have stolen that card: another patient, another comedian, a waiter who took his card. Maybe a server at a comedy club? I bet working in that environment could teach a person to hate.
Rutherford took another bite of his salad and mentally shifted gears. We don’t have any physical evidence, a murder weapon, or any witnesses. The one piece of physical evidence we do have has been ruled out as the murder weapon, despite the fact that it seems to have been wiped down and hidden like one. We don’t know who used Loomis’s credit card, or what they hoped to accomplish by having us attacked. The prostitute who spoke to them only said it was a male with spotty cell phone coverage. If we’re getting too close, it’s news to us. Anyway, their orders weren’t to kill us, just rough us up. Unless it’s some kind of distraction, all the perpetrator accomplished was to make himself guilty of another crime. It makes no sense.
Another thing that made no sense was that his jacket, still hanging by the door, seemed to be playing the theme song to Miami Vice. He realized that he had never heard his smartphone actually ring before, and that the tone had likely been chosen by Capp’s branding specialists. He dug the phone out of a pocket. The screen displayed a photo of Sloan, or at least her helmet. He answered the call.
“Hello? Sloan?”
“Good evening, Rutherford. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No,” he said, walking back over to his tablet and his salad. “Not at all. What’s up?”
“I was hoping you had some time to go over the case with me. Sometimes bouncing things around with someone is more productive than just stewing on them alone.”
Rutherford said, “Yeah, of course. Mind if I put you on speakerphone while I finish my salad?”
“Sure,” Sloan said. “Live it up.”
He activated the speakerphone and sat the phone on the table.
“Who else is in on the call?” he asked.
“Nobody. It’s just the two of us, although I suspect that all of our calls on these phones might be recorded for future study and publication.”
“Would Capp really do that?”
“Rutherford, Vince Capp would record our calls, run them through auto-tune, and release them over a dance beat if he thought it would turn a profit.”
Rutherford noted that hearing Sloan’s synthetic voice piped from speakerphone accentuated the sense that he was having an extended conversation with the phone’s voice-search feature.
“Yeah,” Rutherford said. “You’re right. Heck, Max would probably tell us all of our calls are being recorded by the government anyway.”
“Yes, and for once, he would probably be telling the truth.”
“What do you mean, for once?” Rutherford asked.
“Oh, Rutherford. Don’t tell me you believe all the things he says.”
“No, but I didn’t think he was lying. I thought he at least believed it. I guess I thought he was . . . I dunno, truthful, but wrong.”
“Yeah,” Sloan said. “I can understand that, but I have a theory about Max’s theories. A sort of meta-theory, I guess. See, he’s not lying about his background, so I figure he has to know a lot of real secrets. But he’s retired, and he’s getting older, and he likes to talk. I think he’s worried that someday he might get sloppy and actually let some sensitive information slip out. So he constantly makes up stuff that sounds just plausible enough that people will hear him out, but just silly enough that they’ll disregard it after he’s done. That way, if he ever does say something he shouldn’t, nobody will take it seriously anyway.”
Rutherford swallowed a bite of salad and said, “I like that idea.”
Sloan said, “Yeah. It’s one of my better theories. It’s a shame it’s not about the case we’re actually supposed to be solving.”
“Yeah.”
“So, about that, I’ve been running through things in my head. I’d like a new perspective. How do you see it?”
Rutherford was glad he had just run through all of the known facts for himself. It was relatively easy to rattle off the litany again for Sloan. He finished by saying that the closest thing they had to a lead was the fact that the brute squad had been paid for with the comedian’s credit card, which had led to Oscar Loomis being brought in for questioning.
“Yes,” Sloan said. “But I don’t see any motive for Oscar Loomis. Do you have any ideas?”
He didn’t. But Loomis was the only solid lead they had, and they were going to follow it.
“Well,” Rutherford said, setting aside his now-empty salad bowl and bringing his tablet forward to take its place, “what would he want that he could gain by killing his analyst?”
“What does he want in general?” Sloan asked. “Attention,” she said, answering her own question. “Killers get plenty of that, but only if they get caught. He wouldn’t be able to profit from it if he was behind bars.”
“Yeah, it would certainly cut down on his touring schedule.”
“And fame and a cutting wit are not attributes that set you up for success in a super-max prison.”
“No, I bet not,” Rutherford said, absently flipping through case-related images as they spoke. “But, I mean, I’m sure he wouldn’t have killed Arledge with the expectation of getting caught. He’d assume that he’d get off scot-free, and being so close to a murder could bring him attention. He’d be like that guy from the O.J. Simpson thing way back when. What’s his name?”
Sloan’s voice processor said, “Gay dough.” There was a pause, then she said, “Sorry, his name is not in my word bank. His name was kay toe. I have to work around a lot of the less common names. All this time I’ve been calling our victim doctor are-ledge.”
“Ah, I see. Anyway, yeah, Kato’s the person I was thinking of,” Rutherford said. “He was everywhere for a few years there. Of course, Nicole Simpson was a seriously high-profile murder victim. Dr. Arledge isn’t.”
“It’s about a low-to-medium-profile murder right now,” Sloan said. “Capp and his marketing team plan to blow it up huge once we find the killer. Loomis is his own marketing team. He might have planned to do the same thing. Maybe put out one of his videos identifying Arledge and Belanger as the psychologist and the clown from his act.”
Rutherford looked up from the tablet and thought for a moment. “You know what? That fits. That actually makes sense.”
“Yes,” Sloan said. “It does, until you factor in the thugs. Why would he send guys to beat us up? Not to kill us, mind you, just to beat us up.”
“To discourage us.”
“From what? Pursuing him as a suspect? We weren’t. We had no reason to suspect him and we hadn’t given him any reason to suspect that we might. Maybe he didn’t want us investigating it, but that’s not likely. His plan calls for drawing attention to the case, and you’ve gotten more YouTube views by accident than all of his videos combined. The second angle is that he doesn’t want the crime to be investigated at all, which again, works against his plan. He’d need it to be investigated, and for the cops to either find an interesting suspect or publically fail to find any.”
“Maybe he thought us getting a beating would call more attention to the case.”
“And it would,” Sloan said, “but then why use his own credit card? All that does is bring attention to himself as a suspect, which is the one kind of attention he wouldn’t want.”
Rutherford made a quiet, amused snort.
Sloan said, “That wasn’t funny. Ironic maybe, but not funny.”
Rutherford said, “What? Oh, sorry, yeah, I wasn’t laughing at what you said. I’m looking at pictures and stuff, case materials, while we talk. I came across that badly staged picture of Arledge and Shaw in his office with that stupid bust of Freud. It really does seem to be looking at Shaw’s crotch.”
“Ah, yes. Hey, one second, was that picture in the victim’s office or Shaw’s?” Sloan asked.
“The victim’s.”
“What photo is that? Give me the file name. I want to look at it again.”
Rutherford read off the string of seemingly random abbreviations and numbers that represented the photo.
When anybody else pauses during a phone call to read or study something, the person on the other end of the call usually hears breathing, rustling, maybe a solid thunk when the phone is placed on a table. Because Sloan’s voice was synthetic, there was no ambient noise in her line, just silence. After nearly thirty seconds, Rutherford asked, “Are you still there?”
“Yes.” Sloan said. “Looking at the photo.”
There was more silence.
The computer that spoke for Sloan said, “Laughing.”
“What?” Rutherford asked. “What’s so funny?”
Sloan said. “That bust, it looks to be what, eight inches tall? What do you figure it’s made out of?”
Rutherford zoomed in. “If it were porcelain, it’d be shiny, I think. Some sort of plaster, or that fake stone stuff they make small statues out of for museum gift shops.”
“Yeah, and lawn ornaments. That dull white stuff. So it’s got to be pretty heavy. Tell me, Rutherford, do you remember what I told you was a detective’s most important tool?”
“Their memory.”
“Yes. Very good. It would have been really embarrassing if you hadn’t remembered that. Your memory is what got you on the team, you know.”
“No, having a guy try to clobber me with a sex toy is what got me on the team.”
“That’s how I sold you to Capp, but your memory put you in a position to fight the three-fisted man, so my point still stands.”
“Wait, you talked Capp into hiring me?”
Sloan said, “Yes, because of your memory. You saw the same bruises on the same corpse as the rest of us, but you’re the only one who remembered seeing that fist shape on that MythBusters episode about punching sharks.”
“Well, not everyone saw that show.”
“I did. And I remember thinking, Man, that’s one funky looking fist, but when I looked at the bruise pattern, it didn’t ring a bell for me. It did for you.”
“You asked Capp to hire me because I remembered one thing you didn’t?”
“I thought the team needed a second pair of eyes attached to a brain with investigative training and good memory. Capp thought it needed someone who would draw attention. In you, I saw someone who could do both jobs. And you have.”
Rutherford said, “Thanks.”
“And the whole experience has made you squirm, which is a lot of fun to watch. Now, back to business. Do you remember seeing that bust in Arledge’s office after the murder?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. All of the other props in this stupid picture are things that a psychologist would logically keep in their office, but they’d be hidden away in drawers or closets. Not the bust. The only reason to own a bust is to display it. And it was on display in the office at one time, but it isn’t there now. It’s both small enough for a person to pick up with one hand and heavy enough to kill someone if you hit them in the head with it.”
Rutherford said, “If you caught them with the corner of the base, it might even fit the wounds. But that doesn’t mean it has to be the murder weapon.”
Sloan said, “True. What are some other reasons why it wouldn’t be there anymore?”
“Maybe he got tired of it.”
“Possible,” Sloan said. “But really, it’s a bust of Freud. It’s not like that goes in and out of style. It’s about as timeless as a piece of decoration gets. And it’s unlikely that a man who had a bust of Freud in his office ten years ago would change his mind in the time since. It’s not like there have been any shocking new revelations about him in that time.”
“Unless you believe Max,” Rutherford said.
“Which I don’t.”
Rutherford thought a moment, then said, “Maybe it wasn’t in his office. I mean, yes, obviously, we have a photo of it in his office, so it was in there at some point, but maybe it was in Shaw’s office and they grabbed it for the photo shoot.”
The line was silent for several seconds, then Sloan said, “It wasn’t in Shaw’s office either.”
“You’re sure?” Rutherford asked. “You remember Shaw’s office that clearly?”
“Albert took scans of Arledge’s and Shaw’s offices, and they’ve been loading while we’ve been talking. I’m looking at Shaw’s office right now, and there’s no bust.”
