The Sundown Speech (19 page)

He poked the square toe of a shoe at a brass shell casing on the linoleum. “Magnum round, I'm guessing. He's getting careless, forgetting to pick up after himself and not bothering anymore about the noise. Normally that's a good sign.”

“I don't like it,” I said.

“Me neither. When a nice neat killer forgets himself, it means he's coming unglued. What's in there?”

The plainclothesman followed his pointing finger to a narrow open door in back, shingled all over with Polaroids. “Darkroom, L.T. It's a mess too. We figured our thief ransacked it for equipment and chemicals, stuff he could turn into cash; but Bonaparte there's a dabbler, and says everything that should be there still is.”

A black officer built like a linebacker, only too short by six inches, nodded when Karyl looked at him. “I do friends' weddings and like that, sir. I squeak by, but I can't afford half the stuff he's got. Had.”

The lieutenant stepped into the darkroom, stepped out a second later. “No good. Place is a wreck.”

“But if all photographers are as messy as you say—”

He cut Rogers off. “Never in their darkrooms. They're as tidy as Aunt Tillie in there.”

Bonaparte said, “That's right. I was too busy checking out the supplies and equipment to think about it. You have to move fast once the stuff's in the soup. Can't afford to bump into stuff and waste time looking for things. Our victim wouldn't tear up his own place unless he was desperate.”

Karyl looked around. “Anybody we know answers that description?”

I wandered over to another door standing open, on the other side of the model setup. It was an outside door. Gridded steel steps led down to a stretch of gray asphalt where Moselle had parked the ten-foot Airstream trailer he took out on location. I went down to it. The door was unlocked.

A mug with a photo screen-printed on it of a sea of naked flesh—probably one of his—stood on the table in the dinette area with the tag of a tea bag hanging outside the rim and some greenish-brown grains pasted inside at the bottom. It was the only thing that hadn't been there before, or anyway that I'd noticed. I tried reading the tea leaves, but I needed Lieutenant Karyl's Gypsy blood for that.

Just to be thorough I swung open a couple of doors mounted at floor level, looked at what was inside, and shut them. Empty.

I had a thought, almost; it was stillborn.

I went back upstairs, shaking my head. It might come back, or not. I'd worn all the whorls off my brain, and lost gripping power.

The uniform with the notebook was escorting Myra into the studio with a hand cupped under her elbow. She made a whimpering noise when they passed Moselle's body, but he patted her arm and took her into the darkroom. Karyl was back inside.

“What's he keep in these cabinets?”

I leaned in for a look. The room was no bigger than a half-bath, with a pair of stainless-steel sinks, shelves like the ones in the trailer, all in use, and some sleek black electronics, including an enormous copy camera for blowups that took up most of the space. A plastic clothesline with some glistening photographic prints still pinned to it dangled by only one hook above the sink; it had come loose from the hook opposite and hung nearly to the floor, which was littered with similar prints that had probably come loose from it when it fell or was torn loose. Bottles of developing fluid stood and lay on their sides in both sinks and there was an eye-stinging stench of solvent; an expensive spill, I thought.

The receptionist was looking at a built-in recess under the sink. The steel doors that belonged to it were flayed open. The cabinet was empty.

“Big plastic jugs.” Her voice wobbled. “I don't remember what was on the labels. He said he kept them there because if he dropped one taking it down from above, he'd blow up the building. I thought he was joking.” She started sobbing again.

“Magnesium and silver nitrate.”

Everyone looked at Sergeant Bonaparte.

“Obsolete process,” he said, “but some photogs still use it for artistic effect. They have to know what they're doing, though. He wasn't joking. Magnesium powder's what they used to call flash powder; goes up faster than gunpowder at the touch of a match. Silver nitrate is a rapid oxidant; they stopped using it in photography because it was self-destructive. Mix the two and you won't need the match. A gallon of each could take out the block.”

The thought came back. It was a breech birth.

“He had more in his trailer.”

Now everyone was looking at me.

“Just a guess. I checked it out just now. Every shelf was packed tight, like here, but a floor cabinet was empty. I didn't make the connection. Space is limited in a trailer. You need every inch, like in here. So why waste it? Last time I visited, he warned me against lighting a cigarette in there. He even patted the cabinet.”

“They're big jugs.”

Myra had taken center stage again. She'd begun to take a clinical interest. “He couldn't carry them far on foot. He came in the front, and no one drove out of that part of the lot while I was outside.”

I felt an icy breath on the back of my neck. “Where did Moselle park his truck?”

“Truck? Oh, the pickup. In back, always. He used it to pull the trailer.”

“Ford F-150, black, last year's model,” I said. “It isn't there. Just the trailer.”

Karyl glared at the woman. “Plate number.”

“Forget that,” I said. “I know where he's headed.”

 

PART FOUR

CINEMA SLAM

 

TWENTY-SIX

It's a rush whenever an entire city rears up on its hind legs.

I'd seen it only a couple of times, during the dragnet for Gross, Turkel, and Smith, accused of ambushing Detroit Police officers, and when Charlotte Sing was wanted internationally for murder, narcotics, and trafficking in stolen human organs.

But when a quiet college town goes on the alert, the sirens seem louder, the flashing lights brighter, and the radio transmissions harsher. The same energy that goes into rooting for the Michigan football team spins square around on its axis and applies itself to an arrest, and fast.

For a few minutes, everyone with a two-way radio was on the air. Calls went downtown, to Washtenaw County sheriff's headquarters on Hogback (I'm not the one who names these streets), to the state police in Lansing, and to Detroit, ordering bomb squads and Early Response teams; that's SWAT, to you. An aerial shot of southeastern Michigan would show hordes of toy-size squad cars zeroing in on Ann Arbor like reverse ripples in a pond.

If the pilot could get clearance to take off: Helicopter rotors from all four departments and the U of M hospital medivac walloped the air, kicking up dust from construction sites and buzzing every window in its frame for miles.

I was back in the unmarked gray Ford, digging finger holes in the upholstery between Sergeants Rogers and Bonaparte, with Karyl seated in front beside Officer Kinderly and his lead foot. Our siren joined the kiyoodling wave, and we parted traffic like Moses on a souped-up snowplow.

“All this didn't have to happen.” Karyl's voice was taut. “You knew Moselle was a likely target, Walker. He had too much on Marcus.”

“I warned him. It didn't take. He was spooky about cops; he spent most of his working capital bailing his models out of jail and paying fines. He'd have spotted any detail you put on him and screamed it from the bell tower. Anyway, he said Marcus gave up his plans to blow up the theater. He was pretty convincing. And Jerry was still hot on Holly. She was ground zero then.”

“We all had him wrong.” But he didn't sound as if he were shifting any burdens. “Marcus swindled his investors not to get rich, but to raise cash to buy explosives. He dumped that fertilizer when Moselle didn't go along. Had to, if he was going to convince Moze not to turn him in after he had a chance to think about it.”

“Then why kill his twin brother before he gathered what he needed?” I asked. “This guy's got the smarts to work everything out ten moves ahead. Why jump the gun so that he had to steal the stuff he needed after killing Moselle?”

“I've got a theory about that. You said the Marcuses' own mother didn't know Tom was back in the States. Maybe he dropped in on Jerry early, and
that
forced his hand. He tried to buy time by eliminating the only witness who could place him at the murder scene, carrying just the kind of box we'd be looking for once we worked out his M.O. When he saw you trailing cops, he realized he'd be committing murder in front of that many more, and shifted his focus. Moze was still a threat, and a guy that makes movies would know all about the chemicals his old partner worked with. Jerry already knew how to make a bomb, on account of his special-effects training; Moselle told you that much.”

I watched the blur of scenery. I had the spooky feeling it was the one doing the moving while I sat still in the middle of it.

“It fits,” I said.

“Fuckin' A, it fits.”

“It fits so tight it stinks.”

*   *   *

It stank as much as a madman could make it.

It should have been simple, as simple a thing as just another fast-shovel artist pulling the wool over the eyes of a couple of overripe hippies with dollar signs spinning around their heads. It didn't have to be about a spoiled genius unappreciated in his own time, with a running sore in his ego, a rotten spot in his brain, and an expert knowledge of demolitions.

That wasn't enough, though. It had to throw in a twin brother.

Science-fiction buffs know a lot about science fact. DNA is unique to the individual, except in the case of identical twins. Who knew at what point Jerry Marcus remembered that, and saw the whole thing laid out in front of him like a GPS map?

“Jerry was right-handed, wasn't he?” I asked.

Karyl kept his eyes on the street ahead. “Our grapholologist says so: Forward slanting hand in the scribbles we found in his room. What's it got to do with anything?”

“Only that I'm an idiot. I could have tied this whole thing up that first day.”

*   *   *

“Entertain me.”

“I looked at the watch. If in the struggle with his killer it got smashed, we'd have time of death; unless, of course, the killer shattered it on purpose, to give himself an alibi.”

“That one's got whiskers. We'd've suspected it straight off. I told you I read mysteries.”

“I overlooked the most important thing: the wrist he wore it on. Right-handers usually wear it on the left, the non-working one. Otherwise it can get in the way of a physical project, or take too much of a beating and stop. This one was on the corpse's right wrist. It's inconclusive, but it suggests the man wearing it was left-handed.”

“Well, when we nail Jerry, we'll see which hand he uses to sign his confession.”

“I read somewhere that twins are reversed that way: One's right-handed, the other left. In extreme cases, even their hearts are reversed. Anything there?”

“Seems to me the M.E. would have said something. She's a witch, but she's as thorough as my proctologist.”

“I guess it's not universal. Fingerprints, being right- or left-handed; the old-fashioned boys with their hunches never ruled them out. The trouble with all this jazzy new science is we put it in front of what worked before.”

We'd bogged down at the old bugaboo at Carpenter Road; a tractor-trailer rig had come to a stop this side of the crosswalk, leaving no room for anything wider than a bicycle to thread its way through the space. Kinderly sat drumming his fingers on the wheel. Karyl leaned hard left, shoving the pedal into the block. The engine whined against the pressure of the brake.

The driver got the message. He let up, spun the wheel right, and bucked up onto the grassy berm. We took out a sign advertising a charity car wash. It plastered itself to the windshield until he kicked it loose with the wipers.

I was getting used to that stretch of expressway, although I figured it would seem tame at a leisurely ninety.

Back on Main, over the torn-up railroad tracks, and Liberty again, turning jaywalkers into law-abiding citizens in a flash. Six blocks from the theater, an officer setting up a barricade scrambled out of our way; we might have sheared a button off his uniform.

We slowed finally, coasting to a stop a block from the action. When we got out, we were spectators.

Men and women in blue, some in combat fatigues, spilled like ants through doors on both sides of the street, blasting whistles and waving batons at the crowds they were herding out into the open. Something that resembled an armored personnel carrier trundled down the exact center of the street, blaring cautionary advice through a megaphone that sounded like a saxophone with a split reed. The usual cluster of half-wits were gathered on facing sidewalks, giving the tall-fingered salute and waving misspelled signs. A flying wedge of uniforms dashed them to pieces, scattering red Solo cups right and left. The tracked military vehicle ground a rolling bong into splinters.

The carrier stopped in front of Borders. A hatch opened up top, and from it swarmed humanoid creatures in riot gear—medieval-looking helmets with smoked-glass visors, gas masks, and quilted catchers' vests, automatic weapons slung from webbed straps across their shoulders. It was like watching clowns pour out of a car in the circus.

Karyl flashed his gold shield, stopping a Golem in Kevlar in mid-sprint. He plucked out an earpiece to hear what the lieutenant was saying, then nodded and pointed in the direction of the Michigan Theater. Its marquee was flashing, advertising a revival showing of
The Age of Innocence
: Good picture. The Ford F-150 Jerry Marcus had stolen from Alec Moselle was parked in front. We sprinted that way.

The crowd gathered under the marquee was strictly official: radios buzzed, bullhorns bawled. A giant lugging an assault rifle lifted his visor, exposing pale gray eyes in a face black as a galosh. He nodded at Karyl's shield. “Lieutenant Randolph. Detroit ERT.”