Ghost Sudoku (8 page)

“I’m sure she was genuinely upset,” Michael said.

“Of course! Think how I’d feel if something happened to Rusty!”

Hearing his name, Rusty twined his way around Liza’s legs and barked.

“Well, yes, that would be terrible.” A bit of the sympathy leaked away from Michael’s voice, but then, he was allergic to dogs.

“It’s as though things aren’t really real unless people see them through the lens of celebrity. That can’t be good.”

“No, it can’t.” Michael paused for a second, then added, “That’s why I thought I should get the real story from you.”

“It was a suicide,” Liza told him. “Didn’t the news report say that?”

“They called it an
apparent
suicide. And with your track record . . .” Michael let that thought die away into silence.

Liza quickly filled him in on the political skullduggery, her run-in with Chad, and her later grisly discovery. “I think he’d gotten himself boxed into an impossible position. When I went to his office, I bumped into Ted Everard—”

“What was he doing there?” Michael interrupted, his voice going a bit flat at the mention of a romantic rival.

“Interrogating Chad, I think, trying to get the lowdown on the voter lists Chad controlled. If the government gets this statewide voter database established—well, it’s not a case of
if
but
when
—a whole lot of phony voters are going to show up. There’s no getting out of it, and I guess Chad saw himself being set up as the scapegoat.”

“So he killed himself?” Michael asked in disbelief.

“You didn’t know Chad,” Liza said. “He wasn’t the toughest guy in the world. Maybe he thought it was better than suffering a long, drawn-out public trial with all his former colleagues vilifying him.”

“Well, however it happened, it can’t have been enjoyable for you, finding him hanging.” Michael’s voice softened. “I have a little downtime between projects, and I was thinking of coming up to see you. Could you use some company? I checked some computer travel sites and could be on a flight tomorrow.”

“That would be fine.” Liza hesitated for a second. “In fact, maybe you could do me a favor. Do you still have my spare set of car keys?”

“They’re probably in the back of the junk drawer,” Michael said.

“Could you check? I left my car at the Portland Airport. If you come in that way, maybe you could pick it up for the drive here. The long-term parking ticket and the registration are both in the glove compartment.”

“That’s not the safest place to leave them,” Michael said dubiously as he rattled his way through the contents of the junk drawer.

“Safer, I think, than floating around in the bottom of a carry-on bag,” Liza replied.

She heard a jingle of keys.

“Okay, got ’em,” Michael announced. “Let’s just hope the car will be waiting for me.”

“That’s what I always loved about you, Langley,” Liza told him, “that cheerful, upbeat personality.”

She got an ETA from him, they said good-bye, and she hung up.

“Okay,” she told Rusty. “Back to work. No more telephone calls.”

The doorbell rang.

“If this turns out to be Avon calling . . .” Liza muttered as she went to the kitchen door.

But it wasn’t—unless Avon had taken to hiring big, bearlike men in khaki police uniforms.

“Sheriff Clements,” Liza said in surprise. “What brings you here?”

Even as she spoke, she had a sinking suspicion that the news wouldn’t be good.

“There are more questions about what happened yesterday evening at the Redbourne house,” Clements told her.

“ ‘What happened,’ ” Liza echoed. “Yesterday, you were calling it the suicide at the Redbourne place.”

The sheriff nodded. “That’s what the questions are about. For example, how did the deceased get up in the air?”

“Chad must have tied off the rope—I’m afraid I didn’t notice—probably using the bench in the folly, and then he jumped off,” Liza said.

“The problem is, the bench is against the back wall. It’s too far away, given the length of rope. Redbourne would have had to set up the rope, then take a flying leap for the noose.”

“That doesn’t sound likely,” Liza slowly said.

Clements nodded in agreement. “And then there’s the state of the ground. It had been raining, and that path through the trees isn’t paved. If someone had climbed on the cushions, you’d expect a transfer of dirt.”

Liza closed her eyes, trying to remember her glance at the bench. The cushions were clean, no dirty footprints.

“Damnation,” she muttered. “What else have you got? I can tell from your face that there’s something.”

“The noose itself,” Clements said. “It was just a simple slipknot, not the traditional hangman’s knot. Redbourne should have choked to death—a very slow and agonizing way to go.”

Liza remembered the sight of Chad’s distorted face and shuddered.

“The thing is, Chad caught a break, you might say. He didn’t choke; he was killed when the blood flow through the carotid artery was cut off. But the noose didn’t do that. The ligature mark that accomplished the job doesn’t match the rope around his neck. He was choked garrote style, and then strung up to make it look like a suicide.”

“The rope didn’t do it?” Liza repeated.

“We’re not sure what did,” Clements admitted. “It left an odd, regular pattern on his neck . . .”

“Can’t you run that through your computers?” Liza asked. “I thought there was a special database . . .”

The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that would work fine if this were
CSI: Maiden’s Bay
. We’d probably get a hit in five minutes so we could solve the case in an hour minus commercials. Unfortunately, this is real life, so we weren’t so lucky—the pattern isn’t all that clear. The closest thing we’ve been able to find is some of the cabling for the outdoor sound system. It has a layer of metal reinforcement wires set within the insulation.”

“That would suggest that Chad was strangled out on the terrace,” Liza said, almost to herself. “I didn’t see any signs of a struggle out there—not that I was looking, of course.”

“The only place we’re sure of getting any signs is around that artificial cave—what did you call it? The Grotto?” Clements said. “Of course, your little scramble around there with Hagen doesn’t help.”

“How was I to know . . .” Liza began, but the sheriff raised his hands in a placating gesture.

“I know, I know. It could have been worse. You might have barfed all over the scene.”

Before Liza even had a chance to ask, he nodded grimly. “Sometimes discovering a body can be a pretty sickening experience. When I was on the beat back in Portland, I wound up as the first responder for some pretty nasty bits of business. At least then, all I had to do was take one look, get out, and keep anyone else from getting in. As a detective, though, I had to work some pretty gruesome murder scenes—”

He broke off gruffly. “Let’s just say vomit doesn’t do a heck of a lot for DNA evidence.”

Clements rose to his full height, just like a bear catching a new and baffling scent on the breeze. Then he shook his head, impatient with himself. “I’ll give this to you straight, Liza. You’ve been a big help to us in several investigations—investigations that would never have been solved thanks to my inept administration, if you listen to my old friend Oscar Smutz.”

He took a deep breath. “But Smutz is out there, this is an election year, and it promises to get pretty dirty. In this case, in spite of my personal opinion about you, my appreciation of what you’ve done in the past, how much respect I might have for your brains, I’ve got to treat you like a suspect. I hope you understand.”

Shrugging, Clements tried to lighten the mood. “Besides, you don’t want that jackass Smutz calling you my crony.”

Liza couldn’t help smiling. “Right. Sounds too much like ‘crone.’ ”

That at least got a laugh from the sheriff. Then his face got serious. “I’m going to need the shoes and the clothes you were wearing yesterday.”

“I hope you don’t mind the smell,” Liza told him. “I’ve been soaking them in bleach—”

She broke off at the look on Clements’s face. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I couldn’t resist another CSI joke. The shoes are in the corner over by the door—I was going to scrub off the mud today. The other stuff is up in the laundry hamper.”

Retrieving the clothes, Liza came back downstairs. Clements was sealing a plastic evidence bag, with her running shoes inside.

“I hope you don’t have to cut them up,” Liza said. “They’re kind of expensive.”

“Shouldn’t,” the sheriff told her. “Though God knows what the statie techs get up to.” He produced a larger bag to receive the bundle of clothing Liza had brought down.

“When I used to go over there, the Redbournes had a white shag rug in the living room. If that’s still there, you might get lucky with fibers—not on these,” she hastily added.

“I sure as hell hope not,” Clements replied. “Just so you know, I sent Curt Walters over to the motel where Clark Hagen is staying, to get the same stuff from him.”

Liza nodded, then suddenly said, “You know, Curt used to be on the Killamook High football team.”

Clements stopped halfway in turning from the door, the bags dangling from his hands. “You figure he’ll have to tackle Hagen?”

She shrugged. “No. It’s just that he must have known about the first hanging in the Grotto—the tackling dummy.”

“Well, thank you—for your cooperation,” Clements said, hefting the evidence bags. “I sincerely hope this will be your last involvement in our investigation.”

 

 

 

Liza said nothing, giving Clements the “no comment” smile she’d practiced through her years in the publicity biz.

“Stupid,” she reproved herself. “Clements will just be after me in a minute.”

But the expected knock never came.
Looks as if the sheriff has adopted a “don’t ask” policy to go with my “don’t tell” one,
she thought

Liza leaned against the shut door, sighing as her eyes took in the view of a kitchen in need of a thorough cleaning.

Why did she even bother to yank Clements’s chain like that? No way did she intend to launch her own investigation into this. Chad Redbourne had never been a friend, not even twenty years ago in high school. She’d just felt sorry for the guy.

Well, Chad was well past the point where she could help him now.

She headed for the living room—specifically, the somewhat rickety card table in the corner that held up her computer. Rusty twined himself around her legs a couple of times before she finally sat down. Then he padded off to find the pool of sunlight coming in from the window. Twice in a circle, and he settled himself comfortably, closing his eyes.

Liza wished it were as easy for her to get started on work. She really didn’t have a choice—Ava Barnes would have her hide for a hat if there weren’t fresh columns to print.

Turning on the computer, Liza launched the Solv-a-doku program and put a blank sudoku matrix on the screen. A couple of quick keystrokes established one of the symmetrical clue patterns she’d developed earlier.

Let’s start off easy, with a nice, simple puzzle,
she thought.
Set up a hidden single for 3s here, here . . . and here.

With the ease of long practice, she inserted 3s into three of the colored clue spaces so that the intersection of their spheres of influence—the columns, rows, and nine-space boxes where their existence prohibited any other 3s—forced the placement of a fourth 3 in one and only one possible spot.

Whistling tunelessly, Liza worked her way through the techniques in the lower half of her twelve steps to sudoku perfection to create a serviceable but simple puzzle.

Liza tried to up her game by creating a more complicated sudoku for her next attempt. Instead she found her attention wandering.

Clearing her work, she began again. But her effort unraveled just as quickly.

With a sigh, Liza hit a few more keys, letting the program shift from puzzle construction mode to playing for a puzzle solution.

Just to clear my head,
she thought.

Solv-a-doku spit up a prefab puzzle on the screen, and Liza began trying to solve it. But she quickly lost the thread.

She called up a simpler puzzle and proceeded to screw up that one, too.

“Damn,” she muttered. Well, it happened sometimes. Liza called up another puzzle on the same level and did just as badly.

She shrugged and shook her head, trying to loosen up the muscles in her shoulders. Then, grimacing, she grabbed the computer mouse and went to the games menu, determined to find something else.

Pinball? She never liked that. Minesweeper? No.

She shuddered to discover a game of computerized Hangman on the list. At last she opened the window for Spider Solitaire.