The 56th Man (16 page)

"I don't think that's ever happened," Jackson
said slowly.

"But if it did?"

"Then I think the priest would go running to
the police," Mangioni volunteered.

"Right," his partner agreed. "But in this
case no one from Crimestoppers told us anything about a phoned-in
confession."

"I only offered it as a theoretical
possibility," Ari shrugged apologetically.

"What was it you were burning?" Jackson
sniffed, looking at the aluminum foil bundle in which he had
wrapped his dinner. "Fish?"

"Carp," said Ari. "I'd be glad to share some
with you."

Both policemen shook their heads.

"Too bony for me," said Jackson.

"Too fishy for me," said Mangioni.

And too much for me, thought Ari, who briefly
considered keeping it warm in the oven before concluding that would
dry it out. Better moist and cold than hot and dry.

"If you want to eat, we can skip the
walk-through." Jackson said this in a manner fully confident that
Ari would prefer going hungry. It smacked too much of expectation,
of premeditation. Was this another favor, like the flowers? Had
Carrington asked (or ordered) them to put a scare into him, for the
purpose of getting him to move out?

"Walk-through," Ari said without
hesitation.

"We were on Forest Hill when the call came,"
Jackson began. "There was trouble at The Crossroads a few nights
ago. A shoot-out, actually. You wouldn't expect that kind of thing
at a cappuccino joint, but there it is. We made a few passes,
keeping an eye out, but there wasn't much more than the usual
caffeine freaks.

"So we weren't far away from here around
midnight."

"What do you mean when you say 'the
call'?"

"Not much. Just an address and a report of a
loud disturbance."

"And when you arrived?"

"Not a peep. We put a spot on the
house--"

"I'm sorry..." Ari smacked himself on the
forehead as evidence of his stupidity.

"We shined a spotlight on the house," Jackson
amended with exaggerated courtesy.

"It was dark, then? No lights on in the
house?"

Jackson took the question with poor grace,
giving Ari a testy look. "I didn't think you'd want so much
detail."

"I'm sorry. I only--"

"You ask like a cop."

For an instant, Ari's ear mis-tuned the word
as 'act'. But no, Jackson had said 'ask'. It came to the same
thing.

"I have a curiosity for detail," Ari
confessed.

"I don't remember what was on or off," said
Jackson. "The yard was dark, that's all."

"The upstairs bedroom lights were on,"
Mangioni said quietly.

"You saw the boys' lights on?" Ari asked in a
voice just as low. Jackson, standing in front of them, heard every
word.

"Why the hell are you two whispering?"

Ari thought Mangioni was marking the
solemnity of that fatal night and had followed suit. But the fierce
exchange of glances between the two officers told him otherwise.
Mangioni was alerting Jackson that, now that he had embarked on
this walk-through, he'd better get his facts straight. Why the
warning should be necessary at all piqued Ari's interest even
further. In the space of a few minutes, the 'good cop, bad cop'
roles had already been switched twice. Due, no doubt, to opposing
agendas.

"I couldn't see the rear bedrooms at first,"
Mangioni elaborated, no longer half-whispering. "We circled around
at the end of the street."

"The front..." Ari nodded.

"We only saw the other lights after we walked
out back."

"So all right!" Jackson's outburst reminded
Ari of Carrington, who was inclined to dominate conversations.
"Anyway, there wasn't enough light to see much of anything. That's
why we used the spots. All right?"

"Did you pull up the Riggins' phone number on
your computer?" Ari asked Jackson.

"Eh?"

"Did you call them from your car? That would
be the wise thing to do, if for no other reason than to alert
anyone inside that two strangers would be arriving in the middle of
the night."

"We're not strangers!" Jackson protested.
"We're cops!"

Ari turned to Mangioni, who was staring
blankly at the aluminum-wrapped fish on the counter. There were
some details that he, too, apparently wanted to dodge. Ari prepared
himself for a highly selective evening.

"We called, all right?" Jackson said in a
macho huff. "No one answered, all right? Now can we get on with
this?" Jackson brushed past Ari, towards the front of the
house.

"Where...?"

"To show you where the bodies were."

"Shouldn't a proper walk-through begin at the
beginning?" Ari's smile overflowed with innocent inquiry.

Jackson stopped. "You want Adam and Eve?"

"Did you pull up in the driveway when you
arrived?"

"Of course not. We parked on the street and
got out."

"How was the weather?"

"The weather?" Jackson said in exasperation.
"Cold as a witches tit."

"I mean, was it clear? Cloudy? Raining?
Snowing?"

"No snow, clear skies."

"You went straight to the back door?"

"We knocked on the front door first."

"The front curtains were open?"

"Yes."

"I don't suppose you would have seen Mr.
Riggins through the window as you came up the sidewalk?" Ari
conjectured. "According to the chart in the newspaper the chair he
was in was turned away from the window."

"No," said Mangioni, sighing. "It was facing
the window. But it was dark. We didn't see him."

"Why would the papers--"

"An easy enough mistake. People would assume
an easy chair faces inside."

"If it
was
a mistake," Jackson said, a little more
subdued. "The city desk might've figured they'd get a few more
readers if they had him facing the Christmas tree when he was shot.
It's an American thing. Bottom line, though, we don't know how that
chair got turned around in the diagram."

"You don't know who supplied them with the
chart?"

"We don't mess with the newsies. That's up to
the PR people, or the precinct commander, or the Chief. Sometimes a
captain or lieutenant something or other gets into the act.
Carrington--he's handling the investigation--is a Detective
Sergeant." Jackson's eyes narrowed. "It's not a plant, Mr.
Ciminon."

"Meaning...?"

"Meaning no one doctored the evidence. The
official report shows the chair the right way."

"I never thought otherwise." Ari cleared his
throat. "So you knocked at the front door. I presume no one
answered."

"So we go around back."

"When you saw the lights on in the boys'
bedrooms."

"Uh...yeah...I guess. That's when we saw the
door, all busted to hell."

"I saw the picture of it online," said
Ari.

"Then you know." Jackson went into the narrow
corridor and pointed at the new door. "There were wood splinters
all over, like a train just blasted through."

"Which a neighbor heard," Ari shook his head.
"But the residents of this house were completely oblivious."

"Your English is pretty good."

"I was taught by an itinerant Hebrew scholar.
They know all the languages."

Mangioni barked a laugh.

"Anyway, we thought of that," Jackson said,
aping Carrington's remark on the subject. "We figured Jerry and his
family didn't hear because they were deep asleep. Really deep."

"Phenomenally deep, I would say."

"So we came in--"

"Through the gap, or did you reach through
and turn the knob? That hole was very big."

"You
are
picky. We reached through, just like the perps did. We know
that because I checked before turning the knob. It's the kind of
lock that pops open when you turn it."

"And it was unlocked."

"Yes."

"He...they...could have turned it while
leaving."

"Okay, that's possible."

"You of course checked the sliding door in
the basement?"

"Sure," said Jackson uneasily. His discomfort
increased when Ari posed his next question.

"Did you radio your headquarters for
assistance?"

"Uh..." Jackson turned to Mangioni. "We
called for backup, right?"

"That's the procedure," said Mangioni, who
then said nothing.

It might be the procedure, but it certainly
was no answer.

"We called out and no one answered," Jackson
continued--reluctantly, Ari thought. So much for his eagerness to
share the gore. "We went through this way and found Jerry."

Their footsteps thudded loudly in the empty
house. They sounded like a herd of grazing wildebeests.

Jackson pointed to a spot near the picture
window. "He was slumped forward."

"Would you mind standing where the chair
was?"

Jackson went over to the window, facing
inside. Ari moved next to him and faced outside. The murky weather
was bringing the day to a premature end. The river was a gray mass,
the island invisible behind the blowing sheets of rain. "What was
he looking at when he died?"

"Nothing. He was asleep."

"Was he wearing pajamas?"

Jackson didn't answer. Mangioni said, "Half
and half. Trousers, pajama top.”

“
Shoes?”

“
Yes.”

“
Socks?”

“
I don’t remember."

"So he fell asleep wearing his street
clothes," Jackson fumed. "I do it all the time. If he was awake, he
was probably watching the moon. They say he was a moony kind of
guy. Have you seen his crappy paintings? I mean, there you have
him, right there."

"But he must have been asleep," Ari said,
looking out at the river. "Or else he would have heard the killer
coming up behind him."

"There were thick carpets then. The perp
could have sneaked up easy."

"Which means Mr. Riggins was shot first, or
else he would have heard his wife and children being murdered
upstairs." Ari turned away from the window. "But that only reverses
the problem, doesn't it? Is there any evidence that one man could
have held him prisoner while his compatriot went upstairs? The
newspapers inferred two or more killers were involved."

It was a perfectly logical scenario. Ari was
puzzled by their obvious reluctance to accept it.

"There wasn't any sign of a struggle."
Jackson hooked his thumbs on his gunbelt. It was not intended as a
threatening gesture. He was just growing tired.

"Officer Jackson, the door was smashed in,
with a great deal of violence. How could anyone sleep through such
noise? And in all that time, Mr. Riggins could have gathered his
family and escaped through the front door. Unless, of course,
someone was waiting for them to do just that."

When neither of them responded, Ari
continued:

"But then, why scatter the family back into
their separate rooms before killing them?"

"Exactly," Mangioni nodded eagerly, as though
Ari had successfully contradicted himself. "Really, we only think
it was one man."

"Your newspapers have a lot to answer for!"
Ari threw up his hands in exasperation.

The officers found this reaction amusing. Ari
was just another typical, excitable foreigner. They relaxed--just
as Ari intended.

"You know," said Jackson almost jovially,
"they had a hell of a splatter pattern on that window, a full cone.
Gore, bits of brain. Part of the skull broke the glass."

None of which they saw from the
sidewalk...?

Mangioni tapped the floor with his toe and
added in a low voice, “But no sign of cavitation, no back spatter,
no pattern transfer.

“
Just shows the perp was careful,”
Jackson said, pleased with himself. This was why he had agreed to a
walk-through. He intended to batter Ari's imagination with the
horror of the murders. Ari made a show of concealing a shudder,
behaving as though the spot was no longer tenable.

"I suppose we can go upstairs, now."

"Ready and willing." Jackson preceded him,
with a bounce in his step that drew a frown from Mangioni and a
secret shake of the head from Ari. They entered the master bedroom
first. Jackson switched on the light and went over to the corner
window.

"Mrs. Riggins was laid out so..." He
stretched his arms and leaned over, as if laying her to rest.
"There wasn’t any expiratory blood. She died instantly, like all
the rest. The tech geeks say she must have been sitting up for the
blood to spray on the headboard the way it did, that if she'd been
lying down the pillow would've soaked up most of the blood. I don't
buy it. I've seen my share of gunshot wounds, and lots of the time
blood acts pretty much the way it wants. She was lying down, I'm
sure of it."

"Because if she was sitting up she would have
been awake," Ari observed. "She would have heard the
intruders."

"You got it."

"And she would have heard the shot--if
someone else was killed first."

Jackson crossed his arms and nodded. "That's
the way I see it."

"What did the toxicology report say?"

"What toxicology report?" Jackson asked.

"If Mrs. Riggins had taken a sleeping pill,
that might explain why she didn't wake up."

Jackson's eyes widened. He almost smiled.
"Yeah, I see your point." He shook his head. "I don't think the
forensic people bothered with her blood. Cause of death was pretty
obvious."

"Maybe I've seen too many American crime
movies," Ari said.

"Come again?"

"They always say that in cases of violent
death the coroner always writes up a toxicology report."

"You've been watching too many American
movies."

Once again, Ari took up a position next to
Jackson, who seemed a little discomfited by the repeat performance.
He recalled what the young robber had said to him in the Chinese
grocery just before he stabbed him. Did all Americans think people
of Arab descent were homosexual? But he already knew Americans were
adverse to the simplest platonic same-sex intimacy.