The Dead Detective (26 page)

Marty LeBaron arrived with his CSI team a half hour later. He listened to Harry’s concerns, did a quick turn of all the rooms, and then motioned Harry to follow him outside.

“I see what you’re getting at, Harry. You’re right on every point, except one.”

“The surveillance,” Harry said.

“That’s it. Now unless Nick didn’t shoot himself until Vicky was on watch, and went off to have a piss, we’ve got a situation where a killer would have had to break in through a rear window. There is an open window in Nick’s bedroom, but I can’t imagine Nick laying there watching a movie and not doing anything when some asshole starts climbing in his window.”

“He could have been in the bathroom,” Harry said. “He could have gone into the kitchen for a beer. There are several viable scenarios.”

“Yeah, there are, Harry. But each one’s a stretch.” Marty rubbed his chin. “Nick was a cop and a good one. If some asshole climbed in his window, my bet is he’d either be in cuffs, or stretched out in a morgue wagon.”

Marty and his team spent the next two hours going over Nick’s condo and car. Mort Janlow arrived when they were halfway through the crime scene and began a thorough examination of the body. Harry decided to wait for preliminary results from each of them. Janlow finished first.

They left the body to the morgue attendants and went out to Harry’s car. Janlow rested his considerable bulk against the left front fender.

“I love being called out on a Saturday morning,” he groused. “I work sixteen hours a day, five days a week, and half the time I end up working part of the weekend.”

“Yeah, but you get the big bucks,” Harry said.

Janlow gave him a fish-eye. He toed the ground and began to study his shoe. “Harry, why do you think this isn’t a suicide?” He raised a hand. “I’m not rejecting the idea. I just want to hear your reasons.”

“You noticed the feather in his hair, right?”

“Yes, I did. But he was lying in bed watching a movie before he … died. We’ll have to compare that feather to the type of feathers in his pillows.”

“They’re foam pillows,” Harry said. “I already checked them.”

Janlow nodded, conceding the point.

“It also bothers me that the next-door neighbor, who was already awake because of the music, didn’t hear a shot,” Harry said. “A 9mm Glock is a noisy weapon. But if you place the barrel in somebody’s mouth and a pillow over the receiver, the noise can be reduced significantly.”

“Did you find a pillow with gunshot residue, or scorching?”

“No.”

“So you’re thinking the killer took it away with him—another assumption we can’t prove.”

“That’s right.”

“What else?”

“The neighbor was awakened by the loud music, that we assume was turned on to cover the sound of the shot. Why cover the sound of the shot if this was suicide?”

Janlow nodded, but said nothing.

“Nick had just ordered a movie on pay TV, so if we buy into a suicide scenario we have to assume that he reached a decision to kill himself in the middle of a movie he was watching, that he left his bedroom, turned on the CD player at high volume, and ate his gun.”

“It’s possible.”

“He
paused
the movie, Mort … just like someone would if they had to go to the bathroom, or to the kitchen to get themselves a beer.”

“It’s still possible he did it that way. I mean suicides can be irrational, but okay, that’s another point in your favor.”

“And finally there’s the confession. It’s too well written, Mort. I’ve read a lot of Nick’s reports over the years, and frankly, like a lot of cops, he wasn’t that articulate. The confession doesn’t say anything about the masks that were used to cover the faces of the victims, or the words carved into their foreheads. Nick was a homicide detective, Mort, and homicide cops don’t like loose ends. He would have told us why he did what he did; he would have told us all of it.”

Mort Janlow issued a heavy sigh. “Alright, you’ve made your point. There are some legitimate concerns so there won’t be any rush to judgment on my end. I’m scheduled to do Bobby Joe Waldo’s post early this afternoon, and I’ll do Nick’s right after that. You’re welcome to be there, or you can check in with me about four o’clock.”

“I’m going to send Jim Morgan down to observe the posts. Vicky and I are going to canvass the neighbors, and then I’ve got to get Pete Rourke to buy us some time. If news about this confession leaks to the media, all hell is gonna break loose.”

When Harry returned to the condo Nick’s body had already been loaded on a gurney. He told the morgue attendants to take a break so he could make a final examination of the body, then undid the straps holding down the covering sheet and pulled it back.

Nick’s features were even more grotesque lying on his back. His bulging eyes had begun to cloud, and the facial features seemed even more distorted. Beneath the clouding in his eyes Harry thought he could detect a strong sense of fear. He leaned in closer studying them more carefully. Yes, it was there. He was certain of it. He had seen many suicides by gunshot. Fear had been there when the fatal wound was to the victim’s torso and death was not immediate. But not when death came quickly. Not when death came from a head wound. Everything he had read, every psychologist he had ever questioned about suicide, agreed that a great sense of calm came to the victim when that final decision had been made. From that point fear was seldom a factor. But Harry felt fear here. Nick had not been seeking his own death. It was not something he welcomed.

Who was it, Nick? Who scared you before you died? He placed his latex-covered hands on Nick’s chest but no sensation came to him. He looked up and saw members of the CSI team watching him. Marty LeBaron was smiling.

“Doing your dead detective thing, Harry?”

Harry ignored him, turning his attention back to the body. Staring down at Nick’s swollen, deformed face he recalled the first time the cop had been braced about his relationship with Darlene Beckett. He had been peppered with questions from the four of them—Rourke, Vicky, Jim, and Harry, himself. The questions had produced concern, embarrassment, and anger. But beneath that montage of emotions there had been a hint of fear as well. It was the same fear Harry had seen so many times with suspects he was out to nail, suspects who had come to the realization that nothing they said or did would get them off the hook.

Was that it? Was that what he was seeing in Nick’s dead eyes? He wondered if it was that simple—that in the last moments of his life, Nick had realized that there was nothing he could do to stop his own killer. It had to be, Harry decided. If Nick had taken his own life, his final emotion would have been a sense of resignation, perhaps with a touch of relief—a final release from all the pressure that had driven him to that end. But fear? There would have been some, certainly, but fear would not have been a major part of that final equation.

Harry and Vicky came up dry with Nick’s neighbors. Only a few had heard the late-night music and only the woman who lived next door had made any attempt to stop it. The music apparently had only been loud enough to disturb people in the adjoining apartments—and to cover the sound of one very loud pistol shot.

When they returned to the crime scene the CSI team was just packing up their gear. Mary LeBaron approached Harry with a handful of Polaroid photos in his hand.

“Something new?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, one more complication you’re not going to like,” Marty said. “Or maybe you will.” The photos showed a pair of brown wing-tipped shoes shot from every conceivable angle. “We found them way back in Nick’s closet. I haven’t compared them to the photos from the Waldo murder scene, but I’m pretty certain they’re going to match.”

“Are the shoes the right size?” Harry asked.

“Eleven-C, the same as Nick’s other shoes.”

Vicky took the photos and began looking through them. “So if these are the shoes from the Waldo crime scene, it means he wore them home and saved them for us to find, rather than drop them in some dumpster, right?”

“Right,” Marty said.

“If he wore them home there should be some blood on the driver’s-side floor of his car,” Harry said. “Is there?”

Marty LeBaron gave him a slow smile. “I happened to check that. There was no blood evidence in Nick’s car.”

“So the shoes were planted,” Vicky said.

“I can’t prove that, but it sure would be my guess.”

Harry thought over what he had been told, letting various possibilities run through his mind. “I’d like you to hold back on this for a day,” he finally said.

“Why?” Vicky and Marty spoke the word in unison.

“I want to keep this between us—you and me and Marty and Mort Janlow. It will just be for a few days. But right now I don’t want to tell Rourke or any of the other detectives on the team. I don’t want even the smallest chance that any of this will leak to the press.”

Pete Rourke sat behind his desk and listened to Harry’s plea for more time. Vicky sat next to Harry, uncharacteristically quiet.

“Why don’t you buy it as a suicide, Harry? All the physical evidence fits.”

“We don’t know that yet. We haven’t gotten a CSI report, and Mort Janlow still has the autopsy this afternoon.”

“Harry, I haven’t talked to Mort or Marty LeBaron, but I gotta tell you, as of right now everything I’ve seen points straight at Nick. Plus, there’s the confession.”

“Unsigned, just sitting on a computer,” Harry argued. “Nick was a good detective, Pete. He knew that type of confession wasn’t very solid. He could have easily printed it out and signed it. The printer was working and loaded with paper. But he didn’t.”

“Maybe he just didn’t give a rat’s ass,” Rourke said. “Maybe he just wanted out of this world and didn’t give a damn what he left behind.”

“Then why confess at all? Why rent a movie and watch half of it? Why blast gospel music to cover the sound of the shot?” It was Vicky, and hearing her suddenly list Harry’s concerns startled both men. “There’s even the question of a pillow that might have been used to help silence Nick’s Glock.”

Rourke nodded slowly. “Who’s covering the autopsy?”

“Jim Morgan,” Harry said.

“Alright, if Mort has even the slightest doubt, I’ll hold the confession. Just keep your fingers crossed that somebody else doesn’t release it for me. What are you and Vicky doing in the meantime?”

“I’m going to check in with Mort and then I want to take another look at Bobby Joe’s church.”

“Why take another look at Waldo’s church? You still think there’s a tie between the killer and that church?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Harry said.

“What makes sense, Harry, is that you just don’t like churches,” Rourke said.

“Do I get the time I need, or not?”

Rourke scratched his chin. “For once—and maybe the
only
time in your police career—the brass is on your side. They don’t like the idea of one of our own being tagged as a damn serial killer, so when I told them that you didn’t buy Nick for the murder, they told me to give you time to prove it.” He watched a smile form on Harry’s lips, then wiped it away with his next words. “You’ve got seventy-two hours, Harry, and not a minute more. And that’s straight from the top. When it’s up, no matter what Mort comes up with, Nick’s confession goes to the media.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

J
im Morgan looked a bit queasy
, his well-tanned face now showing a hint of gray.

“First autopsy?” Harry asked as he stepped up beside him.

Jim nodded, but didn’t speak, afraid his voice might crack if he did.

“I don’t like them much myself,” Harry said. “I’ve seen dozens and each one is as bad as the first.”

Mort Janlow was leaning over Nick Benevuto’s open body cavity preparing to remove the heart. He looked up at the two detectives. “No puking,” he said with a faint grin. “You have to puke, you go outside.” He looked at Harry and the grin widened. “That especially goes for you, Harry.”

Janlow began removing each organ in turn, weighing it, examining it for abnormalities; then setting it aside for further examination later.

“Anything?” Harry asked.

Janlow nodded. “Nick had an enlarged heart. If his brain hadn’t been vaporized by that 9mm slug he probably would have dropped dead the next time he chased some kid down an alley. Even without that kind of strain, I doubt he would have lasted another five years.”

“But no cause of death other than the head wound.”

“No.”

“And the feather we found in his hair?”

“It doesn’t match with any of the pillows in the condo, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t pick it up somewhere else. Maybe he visited a lady friend in another condo and had a roll in her hayloft. But it also means a killer could have used a pillow to silence the shot, and then taken it with him. We just don’t know yet.”

“Killer … Aren’t we talking about suicide here?” There was a look of complete bafflement on Jim Morgan’s face.

Janlow threw Harry a look and Harry gave a small shake of his head in return. The medical examiner turned to Morgan. “We’re just exploring all the possibilities. It’s what we do here.”

“I’d almost be relieved if it turned out to be murder,” Morgan said.

“Why?” Janlow asked.

“Because right now I feel like I hounded him into killing himself.”

Harry looked at the concern etched into the young deputy’s face. There was nothing he could do about it. If Nick’s death turned out to be suicide, Morgan would have to live with it. And if Harry was right and Nick was innocent of the other murders, Jim would have to live with that as well. Homicide cops make mistakes. You just try not to make too many. He placed a hand on Morgan’s shoulder. “Go get some fresh air. I’ll cover for you here.”

When Morgan left Janlow gave Harry a questioning look.

“Marty found some shoes hidden in Nick’s closet. There was blood on the soles and heels and Marty feels pretty certain they’ll match the blood footprint in Waldo’s apartment.”

“Was there blood evidence on the floor of Nick’s car?”

“No.”

“So Marty thinks they were planted,” Janlow said.

Harry nodded.

“And you’re keeping a lid on it?”

“I am for now. I need a few days to work this angle without the press climbing all over me.”

“What about the knife? From the wounds I examined my guess is that the same blade was used on both Darlene and the Waldo kid. From the marks made on the spines I’d say you’re looking for a fairly substantial hunting knife with a nick in the blade.”

“No sign of that either,” Harry said.

“It doesn’t make sense to get rid of the knife and leave blood-soaked shoes in your closet.” Janlow thought about what he had said for a moment, then added: “So who’s in the know about what you have and don’t have?”

“You, Marty, Vicky, and me.” Janlow’s eyebrows went up. “That’s it? Not even Rourke?”

“Not even Rourke,” Harry said.

Emily Moore was still working on Bobby Joe’s funeral arrangements when Harry and Vicky returned to the church.

“Reverend Waldo wants to see you. He told me to send you over to the sacristy if you came back.”

“I’ll see him before I leave,” Harry said. “First tell me if you came up with any copies of that church bulletin.”

“No, I didn’t, and I don’t understand it. They just disappeared. This has all been one ongoing tragedy. And it started with that evil woman abusing that poor boy.”

Vicky’s head snapped toward the woman. “Why did you use that word?”

“What word?”

“Evil,” Vicky said. “Why did you describe her as evil?”

Emily Moore looked confused. “Well, that’s what she was. And it wasn’t just Reverend Waldo who said so. Even that poor boy’s father said she was. He said she was the most evil woman he’d ever met. And he wanted her punished just like Reverend Waldo did. I heard him say so myself. He said his son had been badly hurt and he wanted that woman to be hurt just as bad. It was his wife who wanted it all to end without that Beckett woman getting what she deserved, not the father. I felt sorry for him. He’d been a volunteer youth minister here for about a year, and he always seemed like such a kind man.”

Harry was jolted by the information. He thought back to his interview with the boy’s father, Joe Hall. He pictured him in his mind, a big, burly construction supervisor with a surprisingly gentle voice and demeanor. The man had said he’d only come to the church because of his wife. Now he was being told the man had volunteered as a youth minister. He had also said he’d only been tempted to harm Darlene on one occasion—when she smiled at his family as she had left the courthouse. But according to the church secretary there had been at least one other time as well.

“I need you to give me the name of the printer,” Harry said. “I want to see if he still has a copy of that bulletin.”

The secretary opened her Rolodex and copied an address and phone number. “And please don’t forget that Reverend Waldo wants to see you.”

“I’ll see him before I leave,” Harry said.

Outside, Harry searched his notebook until he found his notes on his interview with Joe Hall, then told Vicky exactly what Hall had said. “I want you to interview him again. Brace him on what this church secretary said, and if he admits it, press him on why he told me he had only thought about hurting her that one time in court. Also ask him why he never told us he volunteered as a youth minister.”

“What if he denies it?” Vicky asked.

“He’s a suspect as far as we’re concerned. He’s not just the father of a sex crimes victim. Go after him like you would any other suspect.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” Vicky replied. “And you’re headed for the printer, right?”

“As soon as I see what Reverend Waldo wants.”

The sacristy was empty, the only light coming through the large stained-glass window behind the stage. The two massive projection screens that hung above the stage displayed the image of a slender, young woman pushing a small boy on a swing. Reverend Waldo was seated alone in the first pew, but his head was bowed, his eyes staring at the floor. As Harry approached him he could see that the man’s cheeks were stained by recent tears. On the seat next to him was an electronic device.

“Reverend?”

The minister raised his head at the sound of Harry’s voice. He did not look well. His eyes seemed to have sunk into his heavy cheeks, and he had the look of a man greatly in need of sleep. “Thank you for coming.” Reverend Waldo’s voice was barely above a whisper, and it made Harry feel as though he was the first guest to arrive for his son’s funeral.

“Your secretary said you wanted to see me.”

Reverend Waldo raised his eyes to one of the screens above the stage and began to weep again. “Bobby Joe was four then,” he whispered. “That’s his mother pushing him. She joined our Lord in heaven seven years ago— cancer.”

He touched a button on the electronic device on the seat next to him and the little boy and the woman began to move. Harry watched the home movie along with the weeping man. The child and the woman were both laughing, the little boy calling out that he wanted to go higher.

“He was always a good child, precocious but good. It was only later, as a teenager, that he got mixed up with a group of kids who were doing things they shouldn’t—drugs and liquor, even stealing on occasion. And there were, of course, always the loose young women hanging around them. It was the time right after his mother died, a time when he needed guidance most, a time when I had thrown myself into my work. You see, all I could feel was my own pain over my wife’s death, and to free myself of it I became consumed with my work. I told myself I had to make this church bigger, more influential in the faith community, and I worked at it night and day; brought it to the point it’s at now. But what I really needed to do was take care of my son. He was suffering then, but I was too busy with my own suffering to see it.”

“A lot of kids get into trouble as teenagers, reverend. Most of them work their way out of it.”

John Waldo began to slowly shake his head. “No, my son went far astray, and I helped lead him there.” He turned and looked up at Harry. “Do you think Bobby Joe killed that woman?”

Harry took a moment to decide how much he wanted to say. “No, I don’t. But I think he knew the killer, and I think that person scared the hell out of him, scared him so much he was afraid the tell anyone what he did know. And I think that person killed him to make sure he never would.”

“How would he even know such a person? I know he had gone astray, but not that far, never that far.”

Harry wanted to tell the man what he believed—that the killer was someone connected to his church, that the killer was a sick son of a bitch, a walking religious time bomb who had only needed the right situation and the right person to set him off, and that Darlene Beckett with her flagrant immorality, and the Reverend John Waldo with his righteous, God-fearing indignation had provided him with everything he needed all wrapped up in one tight little package. Instead, he looked the minister in the eye and said: “I don’t know.”

The minister stared at the floor for several long moments before he began to speak again. “I talked to the sheriff about you. This was before my son died, when I thought you were persecuting him. He told me what a good detective you are, and what happened to you as a child. He also told me there are some people in the department who think the dead speak to you because they recognize you as one of them. Is that true? Do the dead speak to you?”

“It’s more an intuition about what they felt just before they died,” Harry said.

“I believe that’s a form of speaking.” Reverend Waldo paused, almost as if he were afraid to ask more. Finally he seemed to gather his courage. “Did my son speak to you after his death?”

Harry slowly nodded his head. “In the sense you and I are talking about, yes, he did.”

The minister’s lips began to tremble. “What did he say to you? Please tell me.”

“He told me about his murderer.” Harry stared at the man, wondering if he’d understand. “When the dead speak to me, reverend—if that’s what they in fact do—that’s all they ever tell me … things about the person who took their life from them.”

“Do they tell you who that person was?”

Harry smiled faintly. “I wish they would, reverend. They only tell me what their killers made them feel in those last moments.”

The minister’s lips kept trembling as he prepared to ask the question Harry did not want to answer. “What did Bobby Joe feel?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

Harry nodded in resignation. “He felt terror … terror that what he had feared for so long was finally happening.” Waldo sat shocked for several moments. “So that’s why you think he knew his killer.”

“Yes, reverend. That’s the primary reason why.”

Waldo looked up with beseeching eyes. “Please catch him,” he whispered. “Catch the person who killed my son.”

“I will,” Harry said.

Vicky sat on the small lanai where Harry had first interviewed Joe Hall. She stared at the burly construction supervisor contrasting his size to the soft, gentle demeanor he presented. Then his eyes lingered on her legs longer than necessary and she decided to give him a quick dose of reality.

“How badly did you want to hurt Darlene Beckett for what she did to your son?” she began, jolting him.

He hesitated, deciding how he should answer. “Real bad,” he said at length. “You know, there were these people at work who used to joke about it. They had seen her on TV, seen how beautiful she was, and all they could talk about was how lucky the kid was who had gotten into her pants. Then, when they found out it was my kid she was having it off with, well, then it got real personal. The suck-ups would say he was a chip off the old block, and the others … the others asked if he ever told me whether she was good in bed, as if some fourteen-year-old kid would know the difference. But none of those clowns ever had to come home with me and see a kid who used to be full of fun sitting in his room not wanting to come out, a kid who was afraid to turn on the TV or the radio because he might hear something about it. They never heard him crying through his door when the goddamn school system said he had to go to a different school, had to leave all his friends behind, had to go someplace where he didn’t know anybody, just because some parents thought he’d be a bad influence on their kids, or that the school could hide what had happened by getting him out of sight. So, yeah, I wanted to hurt her for all that, for what she did to my son, for what she did to my wife and me.” He drew a deep breath. “It just wouldn’t end, not once the newspapers and the TV people got ahold of it. And she seemed to love it. She seemed to glow every time a camera was pointed at her.”