A Deadly Development (13 page)

Thurber laughed hard.

“And you wonder why I moved away from my
family.”

“Believe me,” Tom responded, “I’ve never
wondered that.”

They spent their day painstakingly going
through everything they had. The only real intriguing new item was
what Thurber had uncovered. He had started the day interviewing the
staff again while the Mayor was at Vithous’ funeral. With her gone
for the day, the staff let him hold the interviews in her office.
While waiting for the next staffer to come in, Thurber started
looking around. The office was meticulous. Except there were two
books laying on their side on the third shelf of mahogany bookcase
on the north wall of the office. He noticed on the other side there
was a small, brass book end that looked like a globe. Thurber
picked it up. It was heavy in his hand. It certainly felt thick
enough to do some real damage. And the other one was missing.

“And you just took it?” Burke was impressed.
A very ballsy move.

It was sitting on Thurber’s desk in an
evidence bag. Thurber smiled. “Admit it, I am the man.”

“You are the man,” Burke repeated, not
convincingly. “We need to take this down to the M.E. – see if the
curve of the globe matches the indentations in Thurber’s
skull.”

The medical examiner’s office smelled of
disinfectant, blood and death. He tried to offset the mood with
some bucolic watercolors on his wall and a jungle of plants on his
desk and bookcase, but to no avail. He was an angel of death,
whether or not he wanted to admit it. No amount of greenery could
change that fact.

Burke was looking at the top of Dr. Dryer’s
head. Dryer was looking straight down at his desk, with a
magnifying glass in his hand, comparing the globe bookend to the
x-rays of Thurber’s crumpled skull. He was taking his time. Tom
could see that his roots were gray; it was time for another dye
job.

“Come on, Joe, you’re killing me with the
suspense,” Thurber said. He wanted to declare victory. He wanted to
let Burke know that on this day, he was the better detective.

Dr. Joseph Dryer, M.D., took his glasses off
and looked up.

“I think you guys just found your murder
weapon.”

Thurber jumped up, screamed, “Fuck yeah!” and
punched Burke in the arm.

“Well, it’s not
the
murder weapon, but
it is its twin.” Burke said, just to needle Thurber some. He
pretended that the punch hadn’t hurt, even though his armed
throbbed. He wasn’t going to give Jack any more satisfaction. He
already was going to be insufferable.

“Whatever, Tom, you know and I know this is a
big fucking deal.”

They talked about its significance all the
way back to headquarters. It meant that murderer had been in the
Mayor’s office before he killed Vithous. It also meant the murder
hadn’t been premeditated. The killer had grabbed whatever was
handy. It was less than ten feet from that bookcase to Vithous’
cube.

“Twenty bucks the killer had been in the
Mayor’s office before,” Burke wagered.

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s a straight shot from the entrance of
the Mayor’s wing to his desk. You walk in those doors you would see
the back of his head typing away. No reason to go in the Mayor’s
office.”

Thurber thought a moment. His big meat claws
of hands on the wheel. He nodded.

“That makes sense,” he conceded, “but lots of
people have been in that office.”

That was true. They had looked at the Mayor’s
schedule that day. She had a total of six meetings alone in that
office. They had started at 8:30, with the last one at 4:30.

“Who was the last meeting with?” Burke asked.
Thurber had been the one who had studied the schedule.

“It was supposed to be with Councilman
Cunningham, but they canceled it. Apparently they decided they
could just talk to each other on the road over to Bartle Hall for
the event with the realtors.” They were now pulling up to police
headquarters. Like most cops, Thurber double-parked in front of the
building. Who was going to give an unmarked police car a
ticket?

“What about before that?” Burke asked as they
climbed the stairs, past the police memorial, to the entrance.

“Don’t remember, I’ll have to look through my
notes again.”

Now it was Burke’s turn to tease. “Take some
ginseng, you memory is going bad, Jack.”

“Today I’ll let you have that one, Tom.
‘Cause I’m still the man, and you fucking know it!” Thurber
strutted through the entrance.

Oh God,
Burke thought.
Please let
me solve this case soon. I can’t take much more of this.

They went to Captain Michaels’ office. He was
pleased about the possibility of a murder weapon. He was not
pleased that Thurber had just grabbed the bookend without checking
first with the Mayor.

“Jesus Christ, Jack,” Michaels’ howled, “what
if the old lady notices it was missing? Don’t you think she’ll know
it’s you?” He leaned back in his chair, his face turning a
brilliant scarlet color. Burke was enjoying this part.
Now
Jack could be the man.

“I could slip in and return it, nobody will
be the wiser,” Thurber offered.

“And how are you going to do that exactly?
Last time I checked, they’ve got security over there.”

“Not as strong as you’d think,” Thurber
stated. Michaels face turned from scarlet to a very deep red. Burke
noticed that Jack regretted it the second he said it. But it was
too late. The tidal wave was about to hit the shore.

“Such a wiseass, eh, Jack? Always with the
pithy comments. Well, smart guy you need to figure how to get that
thing back into her office without anyone, and I mean
anyone
noticing!” Michaels hand had pounded on the desk to emphasis the
last words.

“Yes sir,” Thurber responded. “I’ll make sure
it happens today.”

“You’d better!”

So, they had left as quickly as they entered.
Thurber’s ecstasy had been replaced with nervousness. He lit a
cigarette the second they exited the building.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Thurber
complained.

“You know Michaels is a total stickler for
procedure,” Burke responded, “not surprised he reacted like that.
Plus, we’ve been on his shit list for days.”

“Maybe. But if you ask me the guy is just a
prick.” Thurber took a long drag into his lungs. He slowly exhaled,
the smoke floating above his head.

“No argument from me there.”

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Burke
stopped and savored the sunshine for a moment. He had been inside
way too much lately. He had four weeks of vacation built up. He was
going to use some of it the moment this case was wrapped up.

“How are you getting that back in her
office,” Burke pointed at the bookend, still sealed in the evidence
bag.

“Don’t imagine you’d take it over for me.”
Thurber even seemed serious about it.

“Not hardly, but I will walk over there with
you.”

“Never pictured you as a voyeur before,
Burke,” Thurber replied, taking one last drag before throwing it on
the ground and stomping it out with his foot. “Come on”

They were back up on the 29
^th
floor. Burke hadn’t been there since the murder on Friday, which
now seemed like years ago. He tried to imagine what the killer had
been thinking that night, walking into these doors into the Mayor’s
personal office, grabbing the bookend, feeling the heaviness in his
hands. Moving silently up to Vithous, striking downward on his
skull as hard he could, over and over. Then leaving the office,
moving to the elevator, pressing a button and waiting for it,
hoping the building was completely empty. Did he clean himself up
in the bathroom that was just a couple of steps away from
Vithous’cubicle, or did he just leave? Still clutching the bookend,
then moving into the elevator and taking the long ride down. What
was that murderer thinking that long ride down? And what did he do
with the bookend? If it had been Burke, he would have thrown it off
the Paseo Bridge into the Missouri River – it would sink under the
water, into the viscid mud. Never to be seen again. Burke doubted
if the killer had thought it out that much.

Thurber lucked out. The front desk security
guard said the Mayor was gone for the day.

“I left a notebook in her office, I was
hoping to go in and get it,” he said while flashing his badge. The
security guard buzzed them and they just walked in. Thurber slid
the bookend out of his jacket pocket, and placed it right back
where he found it.

“That the side you found it?” Burke
asked.

“Yep, right here on the left side,” Thurber
said pointing to it, “See how the side closer to the door has these
books on their side?”

Burke nodded.

“Let’s not press our luck, let’s go.” They
hurried outside and were back to their office within five
minutes.

The rest of the day had gone smoothly. Bobby
had called to say he’d have Tom’s docket information first thing in
the morning. Burke and Thurber had worked quietly for over an
hour.

“This is interesting,” Jack said, finally
breaking the silence.

“What was the name of the guy you said worked
for the Mayor and was involved in the development downtown?”

“Peter Knaak.”

“He has a standing appointment every Friday
at 3:30 with Mayor Hughes,” Thurber announced.

“Last Friday, too?” Burke asked.

“Yep,” Thurber said looking at the printout
provided by the Mayor’s schedule, “looks like for over a year. He
also has a standing appointment every Thursday at 4 p.m. with
her.”

“Interesting. He might have had a motive,”
Burke speculated.

“Peter Knaak has to be at least 60 years
old,” Thurber replied.

“So, old people don’t ever kill?” Burke
chided Thurber. They had once investigated an eighty-five year old
man who had killed his wife with a pillow because she apparently
snored too loud. In the trial, he claimed his sleep deprivation
made him temporarily insane.

“I’ve got someone I could ask about Knaak,
the type of person he is,” Tom said, thinking about Bobby, and the
list of law firms that had been on Bethany Edward’s printout. “I am
supposed to meet him in the morning.”

“We are supposed to get our elevator records
in the morning too,” Thurber said, leaning back in his chair.

Burke chuckled and shook his head.

“What?” Thurber asked, “What is so
funny?”

“Not funny, just scary,” Burke said. “What if
it is him? What if the Mayor’s personal attorney killed John
Vithous. Can you imagine the shit storm that will bring? We’d
better be sure, that’s all I am saying.”

“We’ve already been wrong about two
suspects,” Thurber said, grabbing a pack of smokes out of his
pocket, and fingering his zippo lighter in his hand, “I wouldn’t
get my hopes up just yet.”

Burke nodded in agreement. He wasn’t getting
his hopes up.

“Smoke break,” Thurber announced and headed
out the door.

By the time Burke was finished for the day,
Thurber had been gone for over an hour. Tom had been so engrossed
in thought, looking at documentation, playing around with the
county’s economic development website Bethany had showed him, he
hadn’t noticed that most everyone had left for the day.

Burke headed south out of downtown, deep in
thought. But at the moment, he wasn’t thinking about John Vithous,
Dick Houlihan, Pete Knaak or Jane Hughes, he was thinking about an
old home in Brookside, the one he had called home for over a
decade, and now had an offer pending.

The route he was heading was one he had taken
thousands of times over the years. Heading south on Oak Street,
over I-670, past the newspaper printing facility, to Crown Center.
Rolling past hospital hill on his left – aptly named because of the
location of Truman Medical Center and Children’s Mercy Hospital.
Crown Center to his right, then Union Hill appeared ahead, on a
crescent that contained the Union Hill cemetery, with gravestones
so old that some predated Kansas City altogether. Through an
intersection that contained ‘martini corner’ a hipster hangout of
high priced drinks and hors d’oeuvres. When he was in his twenties,
the area had been pretty much abandoned, now it was making a
comeback.

He drove past 31
^st
Street, and to
his left was the El Torreon ballroom. Or what was left of it. Now
it was mostly dilapidated and housed as an antiques shop. The rest
of the building was empty, but you could still see some of its
former glory by the architecture of the building. Burke’s
grandparents had danced here on many a hot Saturday night, where
men like Count Basie refined the ‘Kansas City’ sound.

He was now in Hyde Park, Kansas City’s first
‘suburban’ neighborhood. Huge mansions that were built around 1900
doted the road, interspersed with ugly, dilapidated 1960s and 70s
apartment buildings. A hundred years earlier, Hyde Park was the
neighborhood for Kansas City’s elite, and remained so, until Ward
Parkway had come along. Then it was almost mortally wounded with
the race riots and the implosion of the Kansas City school
district. The families with real money fled to Johnson County
Kansas or Lee’s Summit or somewhere north of the river, where the
houses were new and the school districts were lily-white. In the
past twenty years, it too was seeing a bit of a renaissance, but
the movement was slow, and crime remained an issue.

Burke’s car rolled past the Nelson Atkins
Museum, a neo-classical behemoth of an art gallery that stood where
William Rockhill Nelson, the immensely powerful publisher of The
Kansas City
Star
had lived. The museum had recently added an
addition that housed modern art pieces. During the day, it looked
like a bunch of storage facilities, lined up together. But at
night, which is when Burke was driving by it, the buildings glowed
with a transparent, milky brilliance.