Deception (15 page)

10

“I must take the view that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
T
HE
A
DVENTURE OF THE
P
RIORY
S
CHOOL

M
ONDAY
, N
OVEMBER
25, 8:45
P.M
.

WE TURNED OFF FOOTBALL
. Sitting there in my living room, Clarence and I told Jake about Frederick and what he saw at the professor’s through his binoculars.

“Are you going to Frederick’s to check it out?” Clarence asked.

“It’s Karl and Tommi’s case. I have to let them sort things out first.”

“Frederick actually fell?”

“Yeah,” I said. “After he was pushed. Gravity’ll do that.”

“Why would somebody kill him?” Jake asked.

“Because they knew he saw something.”

“But how would they know?”

“My question exactly. Did someone tail us to the apartments to see who we were interviewing? I keep thinking about those narrow apartment hallways with their creaky steps and floorboards. How could somebody follow us without us seeing him?”

“But we talked with maybe ten people,” Clarence said. “Manny talked with more, didn’t he? They haven’t been killed. Why single out Frederick?”

“He’d seen the guy at the professor’s from a distance. Did the killer have eagle eyes? Did he spot him up there with the binoculars? Or was it something Frederick told us that made him worth killing? Or something he
might
tell us but hadn’t yet? But how could anyone know?”

Clarence shook his head, saying something about how short life is.

“Frederick left a handwritten will,” I said.

“He did?”

“Yeah. He designated you as Brent’s legal guardian.”

“Who’s Brent?” Jake asked.

“Forget it,” Clarence said.

“This guy Frederick getting killed,” I said. “It’s another example of why I don’t believe in God.”

“You believe in free choice?” Jake asked.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t free choice demand the freedom to choose evil?”

“Not if it causes this much suffering.”

“How much suffering is acceptable? Can you have real choices without consequences, both good and bad?”

I shrugged.

“Isn’t it inconsistent,” Clarence piped in, “to say it’s good for God to give us free choice, but then say He shouldn’t allow evil consequences from evil choices?”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Jake said.

These guys were a regular tag team.

“I’ve made some bad choices,” I said. “If I had it to do over again, I’d have been there for my daughters. But if God’s all-powerful, couldn’t He have made me do it right in the first place?”

“Made
you do it right?” Jake asked. “What do you want, for God to make us all into Stepford wives?”

“I always thought the Stepford wives were kinda cute.”

“If I were to offer to make things okay in your life, but to do it I had to take away your ability to choose, would you take me up on it? Ask me to make all your decisions for you?”

“Then it would be your life, not mine,” I said.

“Exactly. So how can you expect God to give us free choice, then fault Him because He did? What could He do to make you happy?”

“Give me Sharon back.”

Jake nodded. “He went so far as to give His life on the cross and conquer death in His resurrection so that you and Sharon and everybody who accepts His gift could be together forever.”

“So you say. I’ve looked at Christianity, and I don’t like what I see.”

“You don’t like love, grace, forgiveness, justice, feeding the hungry and caring for the sick? You know where hospitals came from? Christians. Atheists and agnostics aren’t behind prison reform. They’re not the ones who got slavery outlawed. It was Christians.”

“Don’t forget the Crusades and inquisitions and all the killjoys, like my grandmother. If I were to judge Christ by some Christians I know, He’d look pretty bad.”

“I agree,” Jake said. (I hate it when he says that. It throws me off.) “So why don’t you judge Christ by Himself instead of by others?”

“Christians are just into rules and dos and don’ts.”

“Some are,” Jake said. “But I can’t think of anything more pointless than Christianity without Christ. And nothing more exciting than knowing Jesus and following Him.”

“Pardon me for not agreeing.”

“You don’t need my pardon,” Jake said. “But you’re my friend, and friends tell each other the truth. I’m asking you, Ollie, take your focus off the church and off Christians you’ve known, and just look at Jesus. Read the Gospel of John, and judge Him by what He said and did, not by everybody who claims His name. Who did He claim to be? Investigate. Then make up your own mind about Him. And stop assuming things are as they appear.”

“In other words,” Clarence said, “practice what you preach.”

It was time to change the subject. I pulled out my yellow notepad. “Here’s my verse for the day. It’s from Dashiell Hammett’s
The Continental Op
. He says, ‘In the case of a murder it is possible sometimes to take a shortcut to the end of the trail, by first finding the motive.’ ”

“How do you find that shortcut?” Jake asked.

“By figuring out who benefits from Palatine’s death. Someone’s trying to come out ahead. Possible motives? Money. Power. Romance. Business. Revenge. Self-preservation. Justice. Somebody thinks the murder makes perfect sense. They think they’ll sleep better knowing he’s dead. It’s 99 percent motive. Remember that
Purpose Driven Life
study you guys tried to con me into?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “We were hoping to bilk you out of your mansion in the Caribbean.”

“Well, let me tell you about the purpose driven murder. There’s always a purpose, always a motive. Find it and you have the killer. But to find the killer you must know the victim. That’s why I listened to the professor’s lectures and why I’m becoming a student of philosophy. That’s why I’m reading Bertrand Russell.” Okay, I’d read eight pages. “Which reminds me, has somebody written
Nietzsche for Dummies?”

“So what are the possible motives?” Clarence asked.

“Nothing unusual about the professor’s finances. Doesn’t appear to have been a big gambler. Manny called his attorney about the will. Has no kids. Divorced. Looks like it goes to his brother, a wealthy doctor.”

“Romance?” Jake asked.

“Possibly. Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned. Isn’t that in the Bible?”

“Nice try,” Jake said.

“What about a student?” Clarence asked.

“Maybe a student was humiliated by the professor. Manny says last term three students were caught plagiarizing papers from the Internet. Palatine flunked them. Manny’ll pay them a visit.”

Clarence was taking notes.

“The question with murder,” I said, “is always this—
who’s better off
because this person is dead? Better off in body, mind, or bank account? A victim’s abused wife is better off. A victim’s girlfriend’s husband is better off because he’s eliminated the competition and gotten revenge. Whose life’s easier because Palatine’s gone? Or rather, who might imagine his life would be easier? Because murder complicates his life in ways he never imagined.”

“Your sins will find you out,” Jake said.

“A man reaps what he sows,” Clarence said.

After a pause, I cleared my throat and said, “A rolling stone gathers no moss?”

11:00 Monday night, Mulch and I kicked back on the couch. I was still pondering Frederick’s murder. Suddenly, I thought of something he’d said to us. A mental picture formed. Why hadn’t it dawned on me before?

If I was right, it would explain how the killer might have known what Frederick said to us. And why, knowing that, he might kill him. The two fit, like gun and holster.

I thought it through backward and forward. Usually I fear that I won’t discover the truth. This was one of the few times I’d been afraid I
had
discovered it.

My nerves were like worms on a fishhook.

The one thing that keeps me from drinking at night is the need to stay sharp to figure out a case. But this time, if my mind was catching the right scent, the last thing I wanted to do was stay sharp. I didn’t want to go where the evidence was leading me.

I had to say yes either to the train of thought or to the six-pack.

It was an easy choice.

11

“Let us get a firm grip of the very little which we do know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places.”

S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
,
T
HE
A
DVENTURE OF THE
D
EVIL’S
F
OOT

T
UESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
26, 8:00
A.M
.

I WOKE UP
with a hippopotamus sitting on my head. The fact that it was invisible unnerved me.

By the time I got to the office the hippo was the size of a rock badger—not overwhelming, just annoying. At nine, crime lab said the toxicology report was ready. Clarence joined me.

“It’s bizarre,” the tech said, handing me his report. “Somebody injected this guy with over twelve ounces of ink. Pelikan ink, royal blue, same stuff in the bottle, only more. Maybe he found extra bottles. Or brought his own. He used that syringe you found at the scene.”

“Injection was where we saw the marks in his shoulder?”

“Yeah.”

“Why so many?”

“You know how many injections from a 100-cc needle it takes to make twelve ounces?” he asked. “Do the math.”

Clarence closed his eyes, mumbling something about thirty cubic centimeters in an ounce. “Even with that big syringe, at least four shots. Could’ve been a half dozen.”

“That’s a break for us. The killer wouldn’t do that without a specific reason. You don’t just notice a couple of ink bottles in a drawer and say, ‘Hey, I’ll kill him with fountain pen ink.’ It’s too bizarre and time-consuming.”

“Maybe a sadist wanted him to die slowly.”

“In the killer’s mind it made perfect sense. It wasn’t random.”

The first seventy-two hours after a murder are critical. Unfortunately, it had been six days. Clarence couldn’t make lunch, so it was Jake and me at Lou’s.

I took the six steps to the Rock-Ola, which reminds me of the robot in
Lost in Space
, and pressed B9, “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

As we waited for burger baskets, I said, “Okay, it’s not suicide. Not the work of a serial killer. I mean, we aren’t finding other people injected with ink with nooses around their necks. And it’s not a hired killer.”

“Why not?” Jake asked.

“Too messy. All those unnecessary garnishes. Somebody’s trying to make a statement. To mock us or to tell us something. A professional killer would be in and out in two minutes. This guy hung around, maybe forty minutes. It wasn’t business. It was personal.”

“I don’t understand why the killer would leave all that evidence,” Jake said. “The insulin, the syringe, the ink, the injections, the rope, the gun. Why bother?”

“Right. And don’t forget the crumbs and the wineglasses,” I said. “Why not just whack the guy and leave? My theory is, he’s trying to overwhelm us with evidence. It’s brilliant. There’s enough evidence that we can’t tell what’s real and what’s phony.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked, squeezing a lemon slice in his Diet Coke.

“The chair, for instance. Normally you’d say this was a short person. But maybe it’s a tall person making it appear that a short person adjusted the chair.”

“Or maybe it really
is
a short person.”

“Exactly. That’s the problem. Suppose the killer tripped up and left some real evidence. How would we distinguish that from the contrived evidence? At first I thought somebody wanted to be caught. Now I think they’re smart enough to know there’re always some bread crumbs. So they’ve crumbled a whole loaf and spread it out. How do you find the real bread crumbs—or know when you’ve found them?”

“Whoever your killer is,” Jake said, “he seems to know enough about investigations to realize how to mess one up.”

“Yeah.” Jake didn’t know how close to home he was hitting.

My phone gave me its “missed a call” ring. The message was Manny saying, “Ballistics confirmed murder weapon’s the Taurus.”

“Good news,” I told Jake. “The Dumpster gun’s the murder weapon. Now we wait to see about fingerprints.”

I took a celebratory bite of cheeseburger. I’m telling you, Rory’s a master. Emeril’s got nothing on him but a TV show.

“There’s something else,” I said, wiping my mouth. “I don’t think the professor called me that night.”

“But … I thought you said he did.”

“His phone was used to call my number. That doesn’t mean he was the caller.”

“You’re thinking it was.?”

“The killer,” I said.

“How would the killer know your number?”

“Same way as the professor. There are ways to get unlisted numbers.”

“But why call you? The killer wouldn’t know you’d be investigating the case. Even
you
didn’t know, right?”

“And if he was going to call me, why linger at the murder scene to do it?” I picked up a printout. “I’ve been going over the confession. Listen: ‘I, Dr. William Palatine, do not deserve to live. I’ve crossed boundaries and forfeited my life. I admit my arrogance. I deserve judgement. I should be cast into a deep sea with a millstone around my neck.’ ”

“First time I’ve heard that,” Jake said. “Weird.”

“The prints were wiped off the keyboard, so Palatine didn’t write it. Probably the killer. But here’s the best part. Up to now, I’ve had to deal with a ninety-minute window for time of death. Computer forensics told me this afternoon that the file wasn’t saved by the user, but it was autosaved.”

“So?”

“The automatic file recovery was set to save every five minutes, whenever a change had been made. It backed up last at 11:40. That means the killer was still there, typing, after 11:35. And I got my phone message at 11:37. I say he was wrapping things up. He’d just finished off Palatine or was about to. Once he fires those two shots, he’s got to get out of the house. Time of death was probably 11:30 to 11:40. Given the multiple injections and everything else, I don’t see how it could have been before, say, 11:20. A ten- or twenty-minute spread’s worlds better than ninety.”

“What time did that woman say she saw the professor let the guy in?”

“Becky Butler pinpointed the commercial break that put it about 10:50 p.m. So the guy was in the house with him at least forty-five minutes.”

“Isn’t that an awfully long time?” Jake asked.

“Yeah. The killer wasn’t in a hurry. And I want to know why.”

It was twenty minutes out of my way, but after leaving Lou’s I decided to swing by Dea’s In and Out in Gresham for an orange malt. I listened to a Nero Wolfe audio,
Murder by the Book
. Sometimes I hear something I can use in my investigation.

But I was distracted, mulling over the case. I was looking for a crumb, a trace, a scrap of a hint. Anything. I was trying to discredit my unsettling hunch, unsuccessfully.

I’d attempted five times to contact the professor’s brother, the doctor. I turned off Nero Wolfe and pulled to the side of the road as we finally connected.

“You’ve heard my messages?” I asked. “I need to meet with you as soon as possible.”

“The next three days are impossible,” Dr. Warner Palatine said. “I’ve got a few minutes now while they transport a patient. Then I scrub in for an emergency surgery.”

“Let’s get started.” The orange malt could wait. “I have the impression you and your brother weren’t real close.”

“We saw each other Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays. Two years ago we spent a week together at Sunriver. It wasn’t fun. What? Thirty ccs? No way. I told you twenty.” I heard muffled voices.

“Doctor?”

“Sorry. I’m back.”

“So did you talk to your brother on the phone?”

“I used to, but I got tired of his stupid answering machine. Did you know every week he’d have a quote from a different philosopher? Even when we were kids, he was a show-off.”

“How old was he when he became a diabetic?”

“Who?”

“Your brother.”

“What are you talking about? Bill wasn’t a diabetic.”

“But … he was insulin-dependent.”

“No way … unless it happened in the last month, and that’s impossible. Too old for type 1.”

“But he was wearing one of those ID tags on a chain. Plus, a needle and insulin in the fridge.”

“Speaking of chains, somebody’s yanking yours, detective. The one thing Bill talked to me about was his medical condition, enlarged prostate and all. He’d call me to double-check his doctor’s advice. He was taking Diovan for high blood pressure.”

“Yeah, we found it in the medicine cabinet.”

“I’ve been his free medical consultant for twenty years. No co-pay. Type 1, insulin-dependent? No way. I’d know about it. Look, I’ve got to get to surgery.”

I pulled the file from my beat-up briefcase and searched my crime scene notes. Then I called the evidence room.

“I need information right now on a piece of bagged evidence. It’s on the Palatine murder, November 20. Last Wednesday. It’s the medical ID chain that was around his neck. I need to know exactly what it says.”

I sat there feeling dumb for not checking his medical records. But what’s the point of faking a medical condition on a dead man?

“Okay,” said the tech. “On the back side it says ‘MedIDs.’ On the front side, in a red imprint, it says ‘Insulin-Dependent Diabetic.’ And under that it says ‘See wallet card.’ ”

“Is his wallet still bagged?”

“It’s here.”

“Can you check for a wallet card?”

“Isn’t this your job? You want me to interview witnesses, too?”

“Just check, would you?”

“He’s got his health insurance card. The rest is credit cards, a coffee card, and a few pictures. That’s it. There’s no medical card.”

I contacted Palatine’s primary physician, assured him of my credentials, and he confirmed that Palatine wasn’t diabetic.

I left a message for Manny and called Clarence to fill him in.

“So if the professor wasn’t a diabetic,” I said, “where’d the insulin bottle come from? And whose chain was hanging around his neck?”