Very Bad Men (5 page)

“Yes. He thinks he's the next Raymond Chandler. Leans heavily on the similes, so I figured one more wouldn't hurt.”

Bridget flipped through the pages. “You've done a lot of tinkering with this.”

“I have a theory about editing. You can do anything you want with a manuscript, you can rewrite it line by line, as long as your handwriting is very small and very neat. If the pages look tidy, the author'll go along.”

“That's your theory?”

“It helps if the publisher backs you up.”

“Don't drag me into this.”

I took the pages back from her. “You think Fletcher will object?”

“I imagine he'll scream bloody murder, but I've never met the man. Do what you want. If he doesn't like it, he can send it to
Ellery Queen
. See how far he gets with them.”

The waitress from Café Felix had been waiting for a break in our conversation. Now she asked me if there was a problem with my vodka gimlet.

“It's fine,” I told her. “But it seems to have lost its way.” I slid it over in front of Bridget, who surrendered her empty glass.

“David'll have Scotch,” she said. “Neat.”

I shook my head no. “David'll have lemonade.”

The waitress left, and by the time she came back the crowd in the street had thinned a little—people drifting south to listen to a band playing covers of Bob Dylan songs. An overlong harmonica solo turned out to be the opening of “All Along the Watchtower.”

Bridget caught me staring across the street. “What's the matter?” she asked.

I drank some lemonade. “There he is again.”

“Who?”

“Do you see him? He's wearing sunglasses and a safari hat.”

She frowned. “David, they're all wearing sunglasses and safari hats.”

“He's standing under the awning of the gift shop there, holding a bottle of water.”

“They're all holding bottles of water.”

I waited for her to follow my gaze and pick him out. He looked about thirty years old, with wide shoulders, a short neck, a lean jaw. He stood with his head slightly bowed, the way tall people do sometimes when they don't want you to notice they're tall. But he was no more than average height. He wore a plaid shirt and cargo pants.

“What do you make of him?” I said to Bridget.

“Well,” she said, “he has no fashion sense.”

“Notice how he looks around, taking things in. But he's not looking over here.”

She decided to humor me. “That's suspicious.”

“I've seen him before. Earlier today, outside Starbucks. I think he's been following me.”

“He's probably here for the Art Fair.”

“I don't like the look of him. Do you have a gun?”

Her handbag, on the table, was roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes.

“Where would I put it?” she said.

“All I've got is a Swiss Army knife. I'd rather have a gun.”

“I don't think you'll need to shoot him.”

“If I had a gun, I could let him see it and maybe he'd go away. If I let him see I've got a pocketknife, I don't know what that gets me. Maybe a merit badge.”

“He looks harmless, David.”

“They all look harmless. I don't like the cargo pants. Too many places to conceal a weapon. I'd like to go over there and make him empty out his pockets.”

“I think you should stay put and drink your lemonade.”

I nodded toward the entrance of Café Felix. “If he starts to come over here, you should duck inside.”

“We'll both duck inside. But he's not going to come over here.”

“I've got the knife. I think I could hit his femoral artery. He'd bleed out in about a minute. Does that sound right?”

“I'd rather not find out.”

Bridget was wearing sunglasses like everyone else—hers were rimless and black—but now she took them off and graced me with a look of concern.

I smiled to let her know that I wasn't really going to get into a knife fight in the middle of the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I wasn't going to cut anyone's femoral artery. And she relaxed, because David Loogan says some wild things now and then but he's reliable. And the sun was shining and the sky was blue, and she was right to think I'd been kidding. Mostly.

I took another look at the man in the plaid shirt and cargo pants. He was still under the awning, looking south toward the band playing Dylan. I brushed my fingers over my pocket to reassure myself the knife was there. And I revised my estimate. It wouldn't take a minute for him to bleed out. Maybe thirty seconds.

 

 

BRIDGET AND I moved on to other subjects. She asked after Elizabeth, who had been investigating a ring of book thieves: high school kids who'd been shoplifting textbooks from the university store and selling them to a used bookshop. The key question was whether the bookshop owner was in on the scheme or whether he was merely stupid and careless—and it wasn't really a question, because one of the kids had already flipped on him. But all that was on hold, I told Bridget, because right now Elizabeth was looking into a murder on Linden Street.

After a while Bridget's latest squeeze stopped by, an ethereal woman with blond hair who lives off a trust fund and plays the lute in darkened coffeehouses on Saturday nights. Her name is Ariel or Amber, and I may be wrong about the lute. It may be a cittern.

Eventually the two of them slipped off for dinner at Palio, but I stayed behind. The band had run through many of the more familiar Dylan songs and had started in on “Things Have Changed.” The unfashionable fellow across the street was still keeping me company. I noticed something now that I hadn't seen before. He had a bandage wrapped around his left hand.

I polished off my second lemonade and picked up the envelope I'd brought down from the hallway. Nine by twelve, no writing on the outside, sealed with a strip of tape. I hauled out my knife and unfolded a blade, and if the fellow in the plaid shirt was intimidated he didn't let it show. One slice along the flap and the knife went back in my pocket.

I drew out the thin manuscript—eight or ten pages clipped together. I read the first line and it turned out that Dylan was right. Things had changed.

When I looked up, my companion was staring at me from across the street. And though he'd been loitering under the awning all this time, now he turned on his heel and headed south at a rapid clip.

I jumped up from the table, nearly colliding with an older couple who'd been waiting for me to leave. The wife was fanning herself with an Art Fair brochure, and the husband was hefting a stone garden ornament, a jauntylooking duck, which he thumped down on the table to claim it.

By the time I gathered up the envelope and the pages and my folder, I'd lost sight of my peculiar companion. I moved into the middle of the street, into the sea of tourists—all of them wearing sunglasses, half of them wearing safari hats. I bounced on my toes to get a better view. Facing south, I could see the stage where the band was playing on the eastern side of the street, and beyond it a line of food vendors. On the western side was a long row of artists' booths—open tents of white canvas. Down the center were two solid lanes of people, one traveling away from me, the other approaching.

I spotted a patch of plaid half a block away, but it was gone the next instant. I started off at a run, slipping between a pair of college kids in basketball jerseys, aiming for a landmark I had chosen: a gangly sculpture of a figure in bronze. But before long I got stuck behind a woman pushing a baby in a stroller, and by the time I reached the sculpture there was no plaid in sight.

I pressed on, due south, past ceramic tiles and photographs of wildlife. I came to a booth selling Celtic jewelry and caught a glimpse of plaid turning a corner and disappearing behind a wall of white canvas. When I rounded the corner he was there, close enough for me to clap my hand on his plaid shoulder and spin him around. He tripped on the curb and fell backward onto the sidewalk. The safari hat went flying, his sunglasses were askew, and I could see he was wearing khakis, not cargo pants. There was no bandage around his hand. It was the wrong man.

He said, “What the hell?” and waved me away angrily when I tried to help him up. He went after his hat, ignoring my apologies. I wandered back into the street. I thought about heading farther south, but I realized the man I was looking for could be anywhere now—down an alley, onto another street, into any one of a score of shops or restaurants.

I decided to go back to the office. I had the folder and the envelope and the pages rolled into a tube in my left hand, and I unrolled them as I walked and brought the thin manuscript to the top. I flipped to a page in the middle and scanned the lines of type, catching random words:
pushed, broken, table lamp, headache.
It was all a jumble, but it didn't matter. The opening line was enough; the rest was just detail.

I turned back to the beginning and read it again, a simple declarative sentence:

T
he apartment had a steel-gray door with the number (
105
) on a plate above the peephole. The first thing Elizabeth Waishkey saw when she passed through was a chair overturned in the kitchen. Then a steak knife and drops of blood on the linoleum.

The disorder continued in the living room, where a cheap coffee table was listing on three legs. The fourth was halfway across the room, lying on the carpet in front of the gas fireplace. A yellowed photograph lay nearby, its top corners torn away.

The glass front of the fireplace sparkled with reflected light. A flat-screen television was tuned to CNN with the sound muted.

A lamp shade rested on the cushions of a sofa. Elizabeth looked around for the lamp. Down a narrow hallway off the living room she found the broken remnants of a bulb. Two doorways at the end of the hall, and from one of them came a flash of light.

She called out to Carter Shan to let him know she was there.

From the doorway, she could see Shan standing at the foot of the victim's bed, framing a shot with a digital camera. His brow furrowed beneath his brush-cut hair and he pressed the button. The flash brightened the room.

There was a wallet on the night table by the bed. Inside, Elizabeth found a driver's license that bore a picture of a man with a plain, pleasant face and eyes that twinkled for the camera. Henry Kormoran in life.

She couldn't see his face now. His body lay prone across the narrow bed. He had on a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and sweatpants. White socks with a hole in one heel. There was a bald spot at the crown of his head, and a single fly buzzing around the circle of pale scalp.

The smell had been faint in the hallway, but now it was strong. Rank and sweet, the smell of decay. It would have been even worse if not for the air-conditioning. A hot day outside, but in here the air was cool.

The lamp that Elizabeth had been looking for was lying on the bed beside the body. Its cord was wrapped around Kormoran's neck.

Shan stepped around the bed to frame another shot. “You saw the mess out there,” he said.

“I saw.”

“Looks like the fight started in the kitchen. The blood on the floor, I don't think it's his. I don't see any cuts on him.”

“You think he grabbed the steak knife to defend himself.”

Shan nodded his agreement. “And nicked his attacker. Then they move into the living room. One of them tackles the other, they crash into the coffee table, knock over the lamp. Kormoran breaks loose, runs down the hall.”

“His attacker throws the lamp at him. That's when the bulb breaks.”

“Kormoran reaches the bedroom, but there's no way to lock the door. The killer pushes it in. He's got the lamp. He hits Kormoran with it—there's dried blood in Kormoran's hair. Then he wraps the cord around Kormoran's neck and strangles him.”

The flash from the camera lit up the room.

“You called Eakins?” Elizabeth said.

“She's on her way.” Lillian Eakins, the medical examiner.

A last look at Kormoran's license and Elizabeth put it back in the wallet.

“How long do you think he's been here?”

Detective Carter Shan leaned in to frame a close-up of the neck. He was a slim, serious-looking man, medium height, tie clipped to his shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

“More than a day,” he said, “but less than two.”

“What are you basing that on?”

“Eyes are cloudy. Rigor has come and gone. Hands and face are just starting to swell. Flies on him, but no visible larvae.”

“That's all very scientific.”

He lowered the camera and smiled faintly. “Also, his sister talked to him almost exactly forty-eight hours ago. Around six on Monday. She arranged to meet him yesterday for lunch but he never showed. She tried calling him and got no answer, so she came here today and convinced the apartment manager to let her in. She's the one who found the body.”

“What's she like?”

“She's a looker—I think she got all the best DNA in the Kormoran family. A little cold. I didn't see any tears. I got her name and number. Told her she'd need to make a statement.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Good. Are you finished here?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I could use some better air.”

She watched Shan tuck the camera into a pouch on his belt and the two of them walked down the hall to the living room. She breathed deep and looked around. Noticed something she had missed before: four small strips of masking tape on the wall above the fireplace.