Harry Dolan (28 page)

“What could be a coincidence?”

“His name,” said Hideaway. “I’ve done a very unscientific search—in the Detroit phone book. There are almost a million people living in Detroit, and none of them are named Loogan. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe there are Loogans in California, maybe Texas is rife with them. Or maybe there are no Loogans in the United States, in North America, except for our David.”

A breeze came over the water and ruffled Hideaway’s white hair. “The thing is,” he said, “I’ve heard the name Loogan before. Only it’s not a name. It’s a piece of slang. Raymond Chandler used it in
The Big Sleep
. He probably invented it; he was known for inventing his own slang. Philip Marlowe used it, talking to Vivian Sternwood. A ‘loogan’ is a gunman, someone on the wrong side of the law.”

 

 

 

When Elizabeth left Hideaway’s cottage, she drove north and west, following along the course of the Huron River. Her phone rang as she crested a hill. It was Carter Shan.

“Where are you?” he asked her.

“About three minutes away from Laura Kristoll’s house,” she said.

“We’re not supposed to question Laura Kristoll.”

“I thought I’d risk it. I’ll be gentle.”

“You should get back here fast,” he said. “Something’s happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The matter of David Loogan has taken an interesting turn.”

“Have you found him?”

“No, but you should come in. You’ll want to hear this.”

Chapter 28

ELIZABETH WAS THE LAST TO ARRIVE FOR THE BRIEFING. CARTER SHAN met her at the door of the chief’s office; Harvey Mitchum and Ron Wintergreen were already inside. Owen McCaleb was leaning against his desk, talking quietly with an older man in a rumpled suit.

Shan passed Elizabeth a photograph as she came through the door—a mug shot of a man she recognized as a younger David Loogan. In the photo, Loogan’s hair was longer and curlier. He had a close-trimmed beard. He wore the expression of a man who has lost patience—the victim of a practical joke that has gone on too long. He held a small placard under his chin: a string of numbers and a name. The name was Darrell Malone.

Elizabeth was still studying the photo when the briefing got under way. She half listened as McCaleb introduced the man in the rumpled suit. She caught the man’s name—Roy Denham—and that he was a detective, retired, from a city called Nossos in upstate New York.

She put the photo aside and focused on Denham as he began to tell his story. He had weary eyes and the rough voice of a longtime smoker, but he spoke with assurance, without consulting any notes.

He said, “Darrell Malone—the man who calls himself David Loogan—was indicted nine years ago on a charge of second-degree murder. The charge stemmed from an incident that took place on a night in June, on the top level of a parking garage in the center of Nossos. Patrolmen responded to a 911 call placed from one of the garage’s emergency phones. They arrived on the scene to find a man dead from multiple stab wounds, a woman seriously injured, and Darrell Malone holding the knife.

“The dead man turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old named Jimmy Wade Peltier. He had a long list of prior arrests, from assault to auto theft, and had been released from prison only six weeks earlier. The injured woman was a dental hygienist named Charlotte Rittenour, a pretty girl, blond, twenty-eight years old.

“We got the story out of Malone. He was very cooperative. He had a minor injury, a superficial cut to his arm, and after that had been treated he was brought to the station house and my partner and I questioned him. He waived his right to counsel; he was eager to talk.

“It turned out he and the girl had been on a date. Dinner and a movie, and then they had gone up to the top of the parking garage to look at the stars. Jimmy Peltier caught them up there and tried to steal their car. The problem was, their car—both their cars—were parked on a different level of the garage. They were standing next to a car when Peltier approached them, but the car wasn’t theirs. They tried to explain that to him, but it only made him more agitated. Later, when we tested his blood, it came back positive for both alcohol and methamphetamine.

“Peltier had a knife. He had grabbed hold of the girl’s wrist. Malone tried to reach for the knife, but Peltier slashed him. At that moment the girl, Charlotte, managed to struggle free. She ran toward the elevator, and Peltier followed her, caught hold of her hair, put the knife to her neck. Malone chased after them, but before he could do anything, he watched Peltier draw the blade across the girl’s throat and push her to the ground.

“There was a struggle after that, and Malone managed to get the knife away from Peltier. The coroner found seventeen separate wounds on Peltier’s body. From the position of the wounds, it was clear that some of them had been delivered after the man was down. Malone never tried to deny it. He told us he had left Peltier bleeding on the ground, had gone to call 911—he found an emergency phone on the next level down—and when he came back he found Peltier moving, so he stabbed him some more.

“The girl, Charlotte Rittenour, survived. Her wounds, though serious, weren’t as bad as they first appeared. She had tucked her chin down toward her chest as Peltier slashed her with the knife, so most of the damage was to her chin and her cheek. She needed extensive surgery, and her face was never the same, but when she had recovered enough to talk to us, she confirmed Malone’s version of events. She was grateful for what he’d done.

“Malone always maintained that he had been defending her, and himself. He said he had done what any reasonable man would have done, and there were plenty of people who agreed with him. My partner and I were tempted to help him out with his story, but there are limits to what you can do, no matter how much sympathy you feel for a man. And there was the physical evidence, the seventeen wounds. The coroner said that if it was self-defense, it was the most thorough case of self-defense he had ever seen.

“The county prosecutor had to make a decision—and he had to think about Jimmy Peltier too. Peltier was a louse, but he had a mother and a father, and no matter what crimes he had committed, on that night or before, he deserved some consideration. No jury had sentenced him to death; Darrell Malone had made that decision on his own. The prosecutor decided to charge Malone with second-degree murder, thinking he would plead to manslaughter and serve minimal jail time.

“But Malone wouldn’t plead, and the case was scheduled for trial. In the meantime, Malone was a free man; a sympathetic judge had granted him bail. Malone had his own business. He was trained as a structural engineer, and he worked as a consultant on building sites. He earned good money and had put a lot of it away. Some of it he paid to his lawyer, and some he took with him when he vanished.

“Because of course he did vanish. The day of his trial came up, and he was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t confided in anyone. His parents were deceased and he had no siblings. His friends, such as he had, turned out to be not very close friends. None of them could give us a clue. His lawyer was baffled.

“The search for Darrell Malone went nowhere. His car turned up in Newark, sold for cash to a private buyer. There were sightings in Baltimore that never panned out. Then, a few weeks ago, he was spotted at a discount store here in Ann Arbor—the Value Mart on Oak Valley Drive. He bought a shovel and some other items there, and the cashier thought he looked familiar. Her name is Allison Wick and she grew up in Nossos and went to high school with Malone. When she saw him at the Value Mart, he gave her a false name, but the encounter stayed with her and later on she realized who he was.

“She had no idea he was a fugitive, but the next time she talked to her sister she mentioned seeing him. The sister knew his story and got in touch with the Nossos police. It was a slim lead and people in the department weren’t inclined to act on it. It had been years since they’d thought about Darrell Malone. But one of my friends in the department mentioned it to me, because he knew I had worked on the Malone case.

“I decided to drive out here and see what I could discover. Blame it on the fact that I’ve been retired for two years now and have already had my fill of fishing and golf. I arrived here on Friday and drove around, walked through downtown. It struck me as the kind of place Malone would like; it reminded me of Nossos. That didn’t bring me any closer to finding him. The name I had for him was the one he had given to the cashier—Ted Carmady. But that didn’t lead me anywhere. I didn’t pay much attention to the news, though I gather you’ve had some excitement here in the past couple weeks. I didn’t connect Malone with that. If I was going to find him at all, I expected to find him living a quiet, anonymous life. I’ve spent the last three days driving around to engineering firms, on the theory that Malone might have gone back to what he knew. I must have shown his picture at every firm between here and Detroit. Then today I picked up a newspaper and saw his face on the front page. And here I am.”

 

 

 

At home that night Elizabeth read up on the killing of Jimmy Wade Peltier by Darrell Malone. She had a copy of the case file, transmitted by fax from the Nossos P.D. She sat on the sofa with a pillow at her back, a quilt over her legs, and sorted through the pages. There were autopsy pictures of Peltier, gruesome even in their grainy fax versions. She tucked them away when Sarah came over to see what she was reading.

She had struggled a little over whether to tell her daughter what she had learned about David Loogan, but now she gave the girl a bare-bones account of Loogan’s crime. Sarah listened, staring all the while at the young Loogan in the mug shot.

“We ought to help him,” she said when Elizabeth came to the end of the story. “It sounds like Jimmy Peltier had it coming.”

“I’ll do what I can for him,” Elizabeth said. “But there’s nothing for you to do. If he comes here, you’re not to let him in.”

“I don’t think he’ll come here.”

“I don’t either. But if he does, call 911. Then call me. And keep the doors locked.”

Sarah gave her an impatient look. “The doors are always locked.”

“Then we won’t have any trouble. Promise me you’ll do what I’ve asked you.”

“I promise,” said Sarah firmly. “But I’m not going to be afraid of David Loogan.”

 

 

 

The case file included a copy of Denham’s notes on his conversation with the cashier Allison Wick. Elizabeth underlined the alias Loogan had used with Wick: Ted Carmady. He had used the same name when he talked to Sean Wrentmore’s neighbor, Delia Ross. Elizabeth wondered if the name held some significance. She thought of calling Denham to ask him about it. He was still in town; she had his cell phone number and the number of his hotel. But his notes were thorough and she reasoned that if he had any insights about the alias he would have recorded them.

She didn’t know how long Denham would be in town. Owen McCaleb had talked to the man’s former chief at the Nossos P.D.—a woman who, according to McCaleb, sounded like “a tough old dame” on the phone. She had given Denham her endorsement.

“She says he’s solid,” McCaleb told Elizabeth. “Reliable, a team player. A little restless. She thinks he wasn’t ready to retire, but their department rules encouraged it. He won’t be any trouble, she says, but if he is we should send him packing. It sounds like he wants to stick around, see what happens with Loogan.”

Putting the case file aside, Elizabeth got up and fixed herself a cup of tea. When she came back she dug through her notes and found Nathan Hideaway’s number. On an impulse she dialed it, and when he answered she said, “I hope I’m not calling too late.”

“Detective,” Hideaway said. “Not at all. It’s a pleasure to hear from you.”

“I have a question. Does the name Ted Carmady mean anything to you?”

She listened to his breathing. “Let me think,” he said. “I believe that’s a literary reference. In some of Raymond Chandler’s early short stories, the protagonist was named Ted Carmady.”

“I see.”

“I wonder, does this have something to do with our friend Mr. Loogan?”

She answered him in a half-amused tone. “I really shouldn’t say. Police business. Thanks for your help.”

“How awfully enigmatic. Very well. Good night, Detective.”

Sipping tea, Elizabeth wondered how attached Loogan might be to the name Ted Carmady. Would he be careless enough to register at a hotel under that name? It might be worth checking around. She made a note to put Alice Marrowicz on it in the morning.

She picked up the phone again and dialed Loogan’s number, knowing he wouldn’t answer. His phone would be turned off. Even if he did answer, she wasn’t sure what she would say. Should she let him know what she had learned about his past? She had discussed the matter with McCaleb and the others after the briefing. They had agreed that they should keep Loogan’s history from the press for the time being. But as for how to handle him, McCaleb had told Elizabeth to use her discretion. She was the one in contact with the man; she would have to make the decision.

But she wouldn’t have to make it yet. She got Loogan’s voice mail and left a message asking him to call, then finished her tea, and went up to bed.

Chapter 29

ON FRIDAY MORNING ELIZABETH PUT ASIDE THE FILE ON THE KILLING of Jimmy Wade Peltier. She had not yet heard from Loogan, and she thought about leaving him another message, but decided against it. He would call her when he was ready.

Loogan was a distraction, she thought. What she needed was to start over, to return to the beginning. From a drawer of her desk in the squad room, she took out a sheet of paper and a pencil. In the middle of the page she wrote Tom Kristoll’s name and the date of his death: October 23. But that was not the beginning. If Loogan and Laura Kristoll were to be believed, Sean Wrentmore had died on October 7.