Beneath a Buried House (Detective Elliot Mystery Book 2) (6 page)

Elliot frowned. “That’d be funny if it wasn’t so true.”

That got a laugh out of Cunningham. He left the break room and started toward his office. Elliot followed. Once there, Cunningham sat in his chair then took a bite of the cereal. “I’ll tell you this,” he said. “If it’d been a little more one-sided, I wouldn’t have gotten so miffed.” He paused then shook his head. “She was checking you out, too. Do you know each other?”

Elliot recalled that same thought going through his mind earlier. “No. Not that I’m aware of.” He immediately realized no man in his right mind would forget someone like Cyndi. “Well, anyway, I’m sorry.” He turned to leave. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Not if I see you first.”

Elliot walked away, wondering about Cunningham’s last statement. It was a common enough thing to say, but he’d never heard Cunningham say it. When he reached his office, Elliot called Sergeant Conley and asked him to meet him for coffee so they could talk about possible witnesses at Windhall.

Less than an hour later, Elliot talked with Stella Martin, his only witness at the apartment building where the incident occurred.

The trip hadn’t been wasted. Stella described the woman who had been with the John Doe in such detail that a sketch artist could easily work up a drawing.

Elliot’s luck didn’t stop there. When he pulled onto the roadway, leaving the parking lot, he saw the man with the dirty blond hair, the same one that’d come out of the apartment building when he and Dombrowski were there, investigating. Patches of ice dotted the sidewalk, but the man maneuvered past the other pedestrians, weaving around them with a practiced skill, his eyes seemingly trained on a distant focal point. Elliot wondered where he might be going.

He decided to find out. He waved traffic past, then crept onto 15th Street, staying behind the suspect, out of his field of vision.

The leisurely drive didn’t last. Impatient drivers blew their horns and swerved around. Not wanting to draw attention, Elliot drove past the suspect and pulled into the parking lot of an insurance agency, just west of Lewis Avenue. Seconds later, the man stepped from the sidewalk and crossed the street. Elliot grabbed some papers from the seat of the car and pretended to examine them. When the suspect drew near, he slowed his pace then altered his course and continued to the other side. He was now heading east.

When he reached what was once an old church, he climbed the steps then pulled the door, pausing briefly to glance in Elliot’s direction before he turned and entered the building. Elliot considered going after him, but decided against it. Instead, he drove west a few more blocks, then pulled into another lot and parked again. He didn’t think the church was the man’s destination, and he hoped that after a moment or two, thinking Elliot was gone, he would resume his original journey.

Elliot’s guess proved right. About ten minutes later, he caught sight of the suspect, again strolling west along the sidewalk. Elliot climbed out of his car and followed on foot, keeping his distance, trying to blend in with the crowd whenever he could. When the wind picked up, he pulled his coat together and buttoned it. He felt conspicuous, a lone gunman chasing his prey, but as far as he could determine the man hadn’t noticed he was once again being followed.

By the time they reached the area of restaurants and antique shops where 15th becomes Cherry Street, the cold air had begun to blur Elliot’s vision, but he managed to keep the suspect in visual range. Turning north on St. Louis, he followed him past empty houses and uncut bushes. Just off Cherry Street, the north end of St. Louis Avenue was a step back in time to an era of Tulsa when oil was king and Ford, parked proudly in the narrow drives of cute bungalows, the automobile of choice. The bungalows were still there, but like an old photograph that had lost its sheen, they, too, had faded, mere shadows of the symbols of wealth they had once been, their wildcatters and drillers having moved on taking their shiny Fords and leaving behind poverty and Japanese imports.

Elliot kept his distance, following the man as he walked toward a small apartment building nestled among oaks and evergreens. When the suspect stopped and dug his keys from his pocket, Elliot came forward and showed his badge. The look in the man’s eyes said he wanted to run, but he held his ground. “I need to talk to you,” Elliot said.

The man swallowed, licked his lips. “What about? I haven’t done anything.”

“I didn’t say you had. But I have to tell you, your nervousness concerns me.”

The man unlocked the door and started to go inside, acting as if Elliot was nothing more than a nosey neighbor that he didn’t have time for.

Elliot reached in front of the man and stopped him by holding the doorknob.

“What are you doing?”

“We need to talk.”

“Do you have a warrant or something?”

Elliot smiled, trying to look apologetic, friendly, and yet retain an edge of command. “Why would I need anything like that? You’re not under arrest. I just need to talk to you. In fact, there’s no need to go inside at all. We can conduct our business right here.”

The man paused then shook his head. “You can come in. You just scared me, that’s all, coming up behind me like that, popping out of nowhere. You can’t be too careful these days.”

When Elliot stepped inside, the impression that no one actually lived there struck him. The apartment was so devoid of furnishings that the sound of the door closing echoed from the corners.

The man sat in the only chair, a recliner with pockets on the sides for TV guides, and remote controls. If there were any of those things in that chair’s pockets, they were flat and well hidden. Like the apartment, the chair looked brand new.

A tall bar separated the living room from the kitchen, but there were no bar stools. Elliot placed his elbow on the countertop and leaned against it. “I’ll get right to the point,” he said. “I want to know who you are and what you know about the body we found in apartment 3 at Windhall and before you say you don’t have any idea of what I’m talking about, let me remind you that I saw you coming out of the front door when I arrived there yesterday. You saw me as well.”

 A look of fear shot across the man’s face. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Let’s start with your name.”

“Douglass Wistrom. And I was just walking past the place, that’s all.”

“Go on.”

“It was cold, and I’d left without a coat. I have a friend, someone I hadn’t seen in a while, who lives there. I decided to stop in and say hello, warm up a bit. But when I saw all the commotion, with the police and all, I just turned around and walked away.”

Elliot pulled out his pad and made a note. The man looked and dressed like a transient, but he certainly didn’t speak like one. “Does your friend still live there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go in. I just walked away.”

“You didn’t call your friend later to see what was going on, see if he was okay?”

Wistrom shook his head. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. He may not even remember me.”

“I’ll need your friend’s name for my report.”

“Report? I thought you said this was unofficial.”

“I never said that. I said you weren’t under arrest. This is an investigation, Mr. Wistrom, and it is official.”

Wistrom was silent for a moment, as if he was trying to drag something out of his memory. “His name is Morris, Morris Reed.”

Elliot straightened from his position and walked around the room. “Do you know anything about the body we found in apartment 3?”

Wistrom shook his head. “I figured something was going on, but I didn’t know what, until last night. I was flipping channels when I saw you. Like you were saying, I’d seen you earlier that day, and I recognized you, so I watched the interview. I have to tell you, I nearly got sick, a real burning in my stomach when I saw what had happened. And to think I was there, not more than fifty feet away from a murder victim.”

“Interesting you should put it that way, being as we haven’t determined whether or not it is a homicide.”

Wistrom didn’t reply.

 “Do you suppose your friend, Morris Reed, might know anything?”

 “He might. If he’s still there.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Wistrom wrinkled his forehead. “I think it was about six months ago.”

“That’s a long time, not to speak to a friend.”

“We weren’t that close, just casual acquaintances.”

Elliot looked around the sparsely furnished room. “How long have you lived here, Mr. Wistrom?”

“Several years,” he said. After a pause he added, “I’m a simple person, Detective, with simple needs. Life tends to get complicated, even messy. I can’t control the world, but I can keep my place clean and uncluttered.”

Wistrom came across as guarded, evasive, and yet Elliot got the impression he was telling the truth, about the John Doe anyway. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Wistrom?”

Wistrom’s face went blank, as if he’d been asked a question he hadn’t studied for. Finally he said, “I work with computer applications.”

It sounded like he had read his answer from a cheat sheet hidden in the palm of his hand. “With what company?”

“Business Solutions.”

“Why are you home today? Did you take the day off?”

Again his answer was slow in coming, his actions mechanical. “Yes, that’s exactly what I did.”

Elliot stepped closer to the suspect. His pale eyes darted back and forth, and he licked his lips. Elliot suspected he made the man nervous, but that wasn’t unusual. He made a lot of people nervous. “That makes twice that I’ve seen you at Windhall. What exactly were you doing there?”

“There’s a curio shop near there, that Oz place. I must have passed it a thousand times without going in. I wanted to see what was in there. They were closed yesterday, so I went back today.”

“That’s quite a walk, especially in the cold, just to satisfy a mild curiosity. There must be some other reason you were in the area.”

“No,” he said. “There isn’t. I enjoy walking. It relaxes me, helps me let go of things. You should try it sometime.”

“Maybe I’ll do that, Mr. Wistrom. I’ll be leaving now, but I suspect we’ll be meeting again. You have a good day, now.”

Chapter Eight

Douglass Wistrom’s story about Morris Reed panned out. Reed had lived at Windhall, though he no longer did. He knew Wistrom, admitting to a failed relationship, a rather one-sided affair that he’d broken off upon realizing it was fantasy, and all his doing—resulting in his moving out.

Elliot was about to cross Wistrom off his list despite the look that had gone through his eyes, leaving Elliot curious and undecided about its relevance. He’d asked Wistrom if he’d seen anyone in the area that day fitting the description of the person Stella Martin had seen with the John Doe. He’d said no, but there was a reaction. It was slight, like a lie that was so white it was barely detectible, but the more Elliot thought about it, the more it bothered him, especially now, being that he was standing in the empty parking lot of an empty building, Wistrom’s alleged place of employment.

Elliot had driven by it before, not giving it much thought, other than what a waste it seemed for such a place to be unoccupied. Sitting on the north side of 61st Street, just east of Aspen Avenue in Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa, it resembled others of its kind, abandoned monasteries of business, their inhabitants and trade having moved on, victims of an unfavorable economy.

In the quasi quiet, the only sounds coming from traffic rushing along the expressway, which ran behind the building, the eeriness intensified Elliot’s belief that Wistrom was guilty of something. He looked across the street, studying the thick groupings of oaks, and he wondered why Wistrom would lie to him about where he worked. He must have known Elliot would check it out.

He turned his attention back to the building, a rambling one-story structure constructed of rock, with large windows, which were greenish in color and reflective, though as he drew closer he could see through them. Most of the individual offices, which were block-like in design, contained no furniture, no desks, no filing cabinets, and most notably, no people. The grounds, however, were well taken care of, the bushes and shrubs that lined the walkways and defined the entrances neatly trimmed, the lawn freshly cut. Elliot suspected the owner or the leasing company kept it this way, though he saw no signs advertising the building’s availability.

He walked to the back of the building. Oak trees grew there as well, though the expressway was visible through gaps in the foliage. When he reached the east end, he found a loading dock.

When Elliot returned to the front of the ghost building, the whisper of an opening door sounded behind him. He turned to see someone approaching, a middle-aged lady in a gray business suit, who smiled and extended her hand as if none of this was the least bit out of the ordinary.

“You must be Mr. Elliot,” she said.

Detective Elliot was too intrigued to correct her. “That’s right. And who might you be?”

Her handshake was brief, wraith-like. “The name’s Patricia Orwell,” she said. “Douglass said you might be coming.”

Elliot showed his badge. “Do you always hang out in empty buildings?”

She smiled and gestured toward the door from which she’d come. “Perhaps I should show you around.”

Chapter Nine

Brighid McAlister turned another page and smoothed it, pressing it flat against her legs, trying to acquire the dream-like state that often overtook her when she examined the shrubs and flowers depicted there. She wished she could dematerialize and reappear inside the magazine, become a part of that world where she could sit on the beautiful garden bench and feel its slats against her legs as it suspended her above the fertile soil.

Still unfortunately grounded in her own reality, Brighid put the magazine aside. She couldn’t get the phone call she’d received earlier off her mind. It had been Becket, claiming to have seen her at Cymry’s Friday night, flirting with some man, a man she had left with. She had no memory of this, only vague images of meeting someone in the parking lot, and waking up in her car the next morning. The thought of it sent a current of anxiety running through her. Sure she experimented now and then, but never with anything serious and she wasn’t habitual, not even close. Had never blacked out before. All she’d had last night was a shot of scotch, maybe two. She knew she’d been drugged.