The Witchfinder (27 page)

“Detroit Chamber of Commerce faxed us his mug. He’s a member.” He adjusted his frames. “I wasn’t sure it was him downstairs, though, until I got close. I thought he was you.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not kidding. Your build and coloring, except his tan’s nicer. Even your way of moving, like something you’d see on Wild Kingdom. If he shaved off his moustache you could be brothers.”

“It’s not just the moustache.”

“Says you. You both spell more work for me. What did you two find to talk about?”

“Hypothetical situations. Where’s your shadow?”

“Shadow? Oh, Redburn. He’s got snazzy ideas about taking a day off every few weeks. He’s new like I said. Anyway we’re not sold as a set.” He took the chair Grayling had vacated and rested a manila envelope on his side of the desk. He saw the paste-up on the blotter. “That the note you told me about at your place? Kind of him to bring it back. Are you pressing charges against him, by the way?”

I opened the middle drawer, swept the note inside, and pushed it shut. “Why ask? It isn’t your jurisdiction.”

“Professionally, I’d just as soon his aim were better. Downriver we like our homicides sell-contained: wives and husbands, fathers and families, disgruntled factory workers with pink slips and automatic weapons. We don’t need to import mysteries from the big city. I was just being polite.” He drummed his fingers on the envelope.

“Your warrants are getting bigger,” I said. “You’ll need a hand truck for the next one.”

“It’s not a warrant.” He slid it toward the corner, farther out of my reach.

When no explanation was forthcoming, I drew a pencil out of the cup and played with it. I wanted something between my fingers and my throat was raw from smoking a pack since sunup. “Anything yet on the secretary that fingered Grayling? Greta Whatsername?”

“Griswold. We don’t know where she is yet, but we know a little more about her. Griswold is her married name. It’s old Detroit, like we figured.”

“Like you figured.”

“I was being modest. When her late husband gave it to her he also gave her U.S. citizenship. The background check stops at Immigration, where she applied for resident status ten years ago under the name Cathlin Margareta Faolin.”

“Irish?”

“Sounds like. The folk at Imminent Visions say the brogue came out when she got upset. We’re waiting on a callback from Washington for the rest.”

“Any make on her car?”

He got out his leatherbound notebook. “She wasn’t as flashy as her boss. Blue nineteen-seventy-four Olds eighty-eight. Remember them?”

“Big car. Big trunk.”

“Big trunk.” He nodded and put away the notebook.

“Think she’s in it?”

“The good people of Allen Park don’t pay me to think.” His eyes shone behind glass. “I’m on my way back from Lieutenant Thaler’s office. We’ve been matching collars and cuffs on our respective homicides. Thought you’d like to know the autopsy results on Millender.”

I watched him pull the manila envelope into his lap. “Time of death?”

“Not an exact science, given the circumstances. Forget body temperature. The bloating screws up postmortem lividity and accelerates decomposition. Not the digestive process, though. That stops shortly after death. Still no help, unless you know when the deceased consumed certain items found in the stomach and intestines.”

“Tomatoes,” I said.

“Thought you’d remember them. He was seen eating one in a store in Grosse Pointe Farms at eight o’clock Friday morning. His stomach stopped digesting it and a few others approximately an hour later. Which means if Lieutenant Thaler, clever woman, nails Grayling with the Detroit murder, he’s got an airtight alibi for the one in Allen Park. At the time Arsenault died he was busy killing Millender.”

“He said he had a conflict.”

“What else did he say?”

I ducked it. “What about vice versa?”

“I sure hope it is vice versa,” he said. “Not to wish any fresh headaches on our brothers and sisters here in the big city, but I’ve got a drug killing and two robbery-murders on my desk besides this one and I’d just as soon tack it on Grayling as anyone so I can think about the others. Let the prosecution worry about swinging an indictment. That’s their job, just as running down the bad guys is mine.”

“Two killers.”

“One’s all I’m concerned about. Just thought you’d like to know. Now you owe me.”

“I pay my debts sooner or later.”

“So does Russia. What did you and Grayling find to talk about?”

I twirled the pencil and holstered it in the cup. “It’s not vice versa.”

He nodded. “I was pretty sure it wasn’t when the Griswold woman rabbited. Did he tell you he’s the one who dusted Millender?”

“It’s hearsay.”

“Like I said, that’s the prosecution’s wagon. It isn’t even my case. But we’re all brothers under the blue. And you’re back to withholding information in a homicide.”

“Information. Not evidence.”

“It’s a fuzzy line. Ask the White House.” He waited.

“Millender was blackmailing others besides Arsenault. He ran the same homosexual photo scam on a local politician. Enter Royce.”

“Exit Nate.” He touched his glasses. “What’s the politician’s name?”

“He didn’t say. He didn’t say he killed Millender, either. He said it was a hypothetical situation.”

“I wondered what that meant.”

“The hell you did.”

He didn’t pursue it. “I’ll let Thaler wrestle with the gray area. At least it will tell her where to tighten the screws.”

“I’d be grateful if you told her where you got it.”

“I’ll let you do it. I’m already way ahead on brownie points with Detroit. That homesick I’m not.” He picked up the manila envelope and put it in his lap. He made no move to get up.

I bit. “What’s in the envelope?”

“Oh, this?” He looked surprised he was holding it. “Pictures of the crime scene in the garage. I dropped off duplicates with Thaler.”

“I hate to ask.”

“The hell you do.” He waited again.

“May I take a peek?”

“Be my guest.” He unwound the string and tipped the contents out on to the blotter. I picked up the glistening eight-by-tens and skimmed through them. The body and the blood on the concrete floor looked like cheap Hollywood props in the glare of the flash. Still life with bulletholes.

“We’re lucky in our crime-scene guy,” said St. Thomas. “All the really first-rate photographers work for newspapers and magazines. Good second-stringers apply straight to the forensics department in Detroit. Our guy’s as good in his way as you say Millender was. He could work anywhere, but he likes what he’s doing and he prefers to do it in Allen Park. I’d put his detail work up against anyone’s upriver.”

I started to return them, then shuffled back to a trunk shot of the corpse. “What’s this?”

He leaned forward. I turned the picture his way and pointed at a nearly perfect yellow-brown half-circle the size of a quarter on the concrete near where Arsenault’s left arm had come to rest.

He tilted his glasses and squinted through them. Then he sat back. “Blood, or maybe just grease. They look alike when they dry.”

“I didn’t notice it when I was there.”

“Some things show up in the flash that don’t under ordinary light.”

“It looks like someone drew it with a compass.”

“Who knows? Maybe somebody with oil on his hands dropped a coin and somebody picked it up. That’s the trouble with real life as opposed to murder mysteries. Most of the time a spot on the floor is just a spot on the floor.”

“Is that what you wanted me to see?”

He gave me the cop face. “It’s a small police department. Not so small we have to farm out detective work to a one-man agency with a hole in its head.”

“Excuse me all to hell.”

“Naturally you’ll share with us anything you happen to trip over. That’s just good citizenship.”

“Naturally.” I ticked the edge of the photo. “May I borrow this?”

“Any reason I should let you?”

“Call it a reward for good citizenship.”

“It’s supposed to be its own reward.” But he slid the rest of the prints into the envelope and tied the string. Then he stood.

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

“We serve and protect.”

T
HE GOOD NEWS WAS
I had all the pieces.

The bad news was they belonged to different puzzles.

The worse news was I was getting to hate good news/bad news jokes more than I hate light beer, and the case was full of them.

After Sergeant St. Thomas left I rummaged in the top drawer until I found the Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass my late partner, Dale Leopold, had presented to me the day I joined the firm. It was the size of a hand mirror, heavy as a hammer, with a smooth walnut handle where a pink ribbon had been tied. I had never used it in an investigation. With it in hand I switched on the desk lamp and went over the crime scene picture one more time. That was better, but still not conclusive.

I put the glass back in the drawer and called a number from my notebook.

“Cassandra Photo. Randy Quarrels speaking.”

“Quarrels, this is Amos Walker. We met last week.” Another life.

“I remember. Any of those names pan out?”

“One did.”

“I can guess which one. I read the papers.”

“I’ve got another job for you.”

“More names? The city population’s going down plenty fast without my help.”

“No names. This one calls for your talent. I need a picture blown up but I can’t afford to lose a lot of detail.”

“The whole picture?”

“Just one part.”

“That’s a little easier. Got a negative?”

“No.”

“That’s not so easy.”

“If it were easy I’d go to Fotomat.”

“Greasy spoon.”

“I didn’t call to poll your opinion of the competition. Can you do it?”

“I can make a negative from the positive and make an enlargement from the new negative, but you’re going to lose something. How much depends on the quality of the print.”

“It’s a police photo.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“You might be surprised. This guy’s slumming.”

“I’ll have to see it.”

“On my way.” I was out the door before the receiver stopped bouncing.

Birmingham looked the same as it had on my last visit; the same as it had always looked since the first grizzled pioneer tacked up the first Neighborhood Watch sign: a patch of expensive sunlight with better police protection than the Oakland County Jail, and a lot less obtrusive. But my perspective had changed.

Today the street was just a street, for all the fresh asphalt and no potholes. The maroon plush staircase leading up from the formal-wear shop was just a set of stairs and the pictures on the walls of the customer area at Cassandra were just patterns trapped in emulsion. Even the snow leopard was just a cat with an attitude.

Randy Quarrels yelled from in back and I flipped up the gate and went behind the counter and then the blue-painted partition. There was a door in back with a red bulb mounted over it. The bulb wasn’t lighted. I knocked anyway and got an invitation. The room was a little larger than a walk-in closet and contained a stainless steel double sink, counters, shelves, and a chemical stench that would be there when the building came down. It had none of the state-of-the-art equipment I had seen in Nate Millender’s dark room; but Quarrels had more overhead and a scruple or two.

“Got it?” Cassandra’s proprietor screwed the cap back on a plastic jug he had half-emptied into one side of the sink and rinsed off his hands in what I assumed was water standing in the other side.

I said I had it. He pulled the chain on a ceiling fixture, dousing us both in harsh unshaded light, took the picture out of the file folder I handed him, and held it up. His mud-colored hair was still gathered into a ponytail and he had squeezed his short thick body into a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and jeans soiled and tattered well beyond the fashion standards of Generation X.

“That’s what I need a better look at.” I indicated the half-circle on the floor by the corpse.

“Good paper. Suburban cops, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“They farm out to custom developers. Detroit uses its own equipment and that cheapshit paper. This stuff gives us a fighting chance at least. You weren’t kidding about the photographer.”

“What’s the verdict?”

“Shut the door and we’ll deliberate.” He switched on a pink bulb over the sink and jerked the ceiling chain, washing everything in rosy light.

An hour and a half later, poorer by an additional fifty of Jay Bell Furlong’s dollars but richer by a high-quality negative, a couple of practice prints, and one reasonably clear suitable-for-framing blowup of a spot on a concrete floor, I swung into the short-term parking lot across from the Airport Marriott. I was past due to report to my client.

What I saw while I was cruising the aisles told me I was going to be later yet.

She only caught my attention because all the slots within easy trotting distance of the hotel entrance were taken. Walking between the rows of cars, fishing in a handbag, she looked like a parking space in the making. By the time she passed me, not looking at me or the Cutlass, I’d placed her.

It might have been the way she carried the handbag once she’d gotten her keys out. She’d carried a watering can the same way, freshening the plants in the reception area outside Lynn Arsenault’s office at Imminent Visions. It was enough to make me look again; and two’s the limit, dented skull or no.

I’d seen her just once, briefly, when I’d had an appointment with her boss and he’d ducked it. She wasn’t wearing the octagonal glasses now and her hair was darker, but someone had told her sometime that tailored suits were becoming to her and the compliment had stuck. Changing one’s identity requires a commitment that not every man is prepared to make, and damn few women.

I crept on in the opposite direction, keeping Greta Griswold’s straight matronly back in the rearview mirror.

Nobody would have mistaken the yellow Neon she eventually climbed into for the old blue Oldsmobile registered to the former Cathlin Margareta Faolin. The license plate frame that showed when she backed out of the space belonged to Budget Rent-a-Car.