Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (38 page)

“Great, what’s your name, sir?”

“I
ain’t telling. I don’t want to go to court as a witness.”

Kenner wrote down
three letters and a number for the tag on a late-model black Lexus convertible.
Kenner hung up and Brownlee announced the computer system was down.

“I’ll go
home and get my laptop,” Brownlee said. “That’ll be better than nothing, but we
won’t be hooked up directly to the state system to check out that tag
number.”

“On your way, call the IT guy and tell him the problem. I’ll
improvise here, like the old days.”

Kenner called Todd Ramsey, a friend at the
Atlanta police. It was his first contact with his old department since retiring. “I
need a favor,” Kenner said. “Run this partial tag number for me. It’s a black
Lexus.”

“This is not a free service, you know,” Ramsey said, but Kenner heard
the keyboard clicking. “That information matches up to one car in Georgia,
registered at an address on Lenox Road in Atlanta to a Kimberly Swinton.”

“The
bad guy drove off in the victim’s car,” Kenner said. “But she didn’t drive that car
to the dealership. Somebody gave her a lift. Had the Lexus been reported
stolen?”

It hadn’t. The Escalade was registered in Kim Collins’ name at an
address off North Paces Ferry Road in Atlanta, the new Jaguar in Millerton. One
woman, three cars.

Brownlee walked in with his laptop tucked under his arm and
a cup of coffee in each hand. “You take it black, right?” he said.

“You
remembered something! Plug in and find out who lives at this address on Lenox Road.
I’ll put out a statewide alert for the getaway car. We’re going to
Atlanta.”

 
They got in the car and Kenner called his old boss in
Atlanta and gave him the details. He next telephoned the state crime lab in Atlanta,
where Kim Collins’ body had been taken for an autopsy. Kenner wasn’t sure whom to
talk with, since the Atlanta PD gave their body business to a different place, the
Fulton County medical examiner’s office. His call bounced around before he got the
right person.

“We’ll do the autopsy tomorrow morning or this afternoon,” Dr.
Andrew Dover said. “We’re backed up with bodies from a trailer fire in Gainesville.
Four dead.”

“I have no leads. Can you tell me anything?”

“The body
hasn’t even come in the door, Detective. I can’t perform miracles.”

“Keep me
in mind when you find out something,” Kenner said.

Kenner watched the suburban
yards and cow pastures of Millerton disappear and dense and dirty Atlanta come into
view. He hadn’t been back since retirement, thinking he needed a clean break, yet he
felt euphoric as the car entered the city.

As Kenner’s old boss promised, they
found an Atlanta patrol car waiting in a Chick-fil-A parking lot on Peachtree Street
in Buckhead. Brownlee pulled parallel and the drivers’ windows slid down
simultaneously. Kenner knew the uniform cop’s round, red face, but not his name. The
cop said, “Hear you had a murder down there. Somebody trampled by
livestock?”

“Wiseass,” Kenner said. “Follow us.”

He gave Brownlee
directions to the Lenox Road address the Lexus was registered to. It was a blocky,
five-story condo building with jutting balconies about a mile from Lenox Mall. The
police officers parked their cars near the front door and one of the residents let
them inside. They took the elevator to the third floor and a lean blond man in a
pressed Oxford shirt and rep tie opened the door to unit 312. His blue eyes shot
open when he saw the uniformed Atlanta cop. He glanced up and down the hallway
before motioning the three officers into his foyer and shutting the
door.

“What the heck is going on?” he said.

“Alex Zack? I’m Detective
Joe Kenner of the Millerton Police Department. Kim Collins is dead.”

The man’s
face crumpled in what Kenner recognized as genuine grief. He put his palm on his
forehead and walked into a living room lit by floor-to-ceiling windows. He dropped
into a stuffed chair and Kenner sat on the end of a white leather sofa. Zack wore
brown tassel loafers, worn but well maintained, indicating a traditionalist
personality.

“Good God,” Zack said after Kenner described the shooting. “Kim
was headstrong and made people mad, but to shoot her? Why did you come
here?”

“The killer drove away in a car registered at this address.”

“A
black Lexus convertible? I bought that car for Kim right before she, uh, moved
away.”

“Can you account for your whereabouts when the shooting
happened?”

“I was with customers at my store,” Zack said. “You don’t think I
had anything to do with Kim’s death, do you? Call the store and check. Lighting
Designs, near the mall.”

Kenner looked at Brownlee, who nodded and walked out
of the condo.

Zack dropped his head into his hands and stayed in that position
a full minute. Kenner looked around. He recognized the furniture
style—contemporary—because he read Brenda’s design magazines while sitting on the
toilet. The room was neat but dusty, and he got the feeing nobody else lived there,
certainly no woman. Zack lifted his head with tears leaking from his eyes.

“I
used to think I’d be happy to hear about Kim’s death,” he said. “I hated her when
she dumped me for that lawyer. Now I hate myself for feeling that way.”

“I’m
sorry to be the one to break the news.”

“I still miss her,” Zack said. “I’d
had girlfriends before and almost got married once, but nothing like Kim. She was
something, so stylish and confident.” He wiped his right eye with the heel of his
hand. “She was always together, always making sure her toenail polish matched her
fingernails, even if she was wearing cowboy boots. She had ten thousand bottles of
polish.”

Kenner smiled and said, “How’d you meet?”

“On a flight. I
ordered a Coke and she made a joke about Atlanta being the home of Coke. Then a
teenager had an anxiety attack after we took off and Kim calmed her down in a very
expert way. Her voice was so calming.” His own voice slipped into a lower register
and he gazed out the window. “I saw her in the terminal and complimented her and
asked her out, which is the kind of impulsive thing I never do. I couldn’t believe
it when she said yes. We got serious pretty fast. She wanted to ‘start fresh’ with
me, so I bought this condo and we decorated it together. Actually, she did most of
the decorating and I just paid for it.”

“Sounds beautiful. What went
wrong?”

“I proposed marriage,” he said. “She said yes, with two conditions.
She wanted to redecorate the place all over again with a whole new color scheme. I
told her I couldn’t afford that.”

“And?”

Zack blushed and said, “She
wanted me to have a vasectomy.”

“A vasectomy?” Kenner said. “That’s not asking
for much.”

“Now it seems incredible, but at the time I considered doing it.
I’ve always wanted children and I thought she might change her mind. I’m forty-five,
that’s not too late to become a father. But she was firm. She wanted to be
absolutely sure she didn’t get pregnant. We argued for weeks and she said she wanted
to think about it. What I didn’t know is, she started looking around.”

Kenner
arched his eyebrows, though he wasn’t surprised.

“His name is Jon Stitcher.
He’s a lawyer. He lives on North Paces Ferry Road. His office is on Peachtree, a
half-mile from Piedmont Hospital. I’ve driven by that office many times and I always
looked, hoping Kim would walk out the door so I could see her one more time. Once
she left, she never returned my calls or e-mails. She cut me off, like I didn’t
exist.”

A knock broke the interview. The Atlanta cop opened the door and
Brownlee walked in.

“His alibi checked out,” he said.

In the car,
Brownlee used his cell phone to look up the business address for Jon Stitcher, also
discovering his home address matched the registration for Kim Collins’ Escalade.
They drove down Peachtree Street again and stopped at a squat brick building with an
English script sign out front. It said, “The Law Complex.”

“The law is
complex,” Kenner said to Brownlee and got out of the car.

The receptionist was
a skinny black woman who didn’t blink when the three cops walked in and asked for
Stitcher. Two minutes later a door opened and he strode into the room—yet another
slender blond man. This one slicked his hair straight back and wore a dark blue
double-breasted suit with a thin chalk stripe and shoulder padding. He spread his
legs into a commanding stance and positioned his fists on his hips. Kenner thought
he looked like an extra from a 1940s gangster movie.

“You wanted to see me?”
Stitcher said.

“Kim Collins is dead. She was shot to death this
morning.”

“That’s terrible news.” His voice was dry as Death Valley but his
upper lip glistened with perspiration. “I know you’re here because of my
relationship with Kim. I’ll be glad to answer questions. Let me call my
lawyer.”

While Kenner waited, he stepped outside the building and telephoned
the Honda dealership.

“It’s three-fifteen,” Kenner said.

“I was about to
call you,” Nick Glass said. “I’m sitting in my office with the service rep from the
security company. One camera outside was working off and on. We have a few frames
you’ll want to see.”

“I need those images right away. I mean now.”

“Give
me an e-mail address.”

Kenner sat down at a conference table in a back room
with Stitcher and Ned Jennings. He was a lawyer Kenner had seen in Atlanta
courtrooms when upper-class people committed lower-class crimes like beating up
their girlfriends or buying street drugs. He was a dark-haired version of Stitcher,
but ten years older. Both lawyers wore black cap-toe oxfords, a serious shoe. Kenner
approved.

“My client broke up with that woman months ago,” Jennings said.
“She’s ancient history. Do you think Jon Stitcher is a killer? Do you know who he
is? He’s one of the top asbestos lawyers in the country.”

Stitcher’s
tanning-bed glow increased ten megawatts.

“We’ve got information that says
otherwise,” Brownlee said.

Kenner held up his hand and shot Brownlee a shut-up
look. “He fits the description of the shooter,” Kenner said. “We think witnesses
will pick him out of a lineup. He used to live with the victim. We’re going to
search his home and find other evidence.”

“That’s not much. You’re wasting his
valuable time. He canceled an appointment for this.”

Kenner said to Stitcher,
“When did you last talk to Kim?”

He tightened his already crossed legs. “About
three months ago.”

“Bad breakup?”

“It was for the best.”

“When you
met Kim on the flight, what city were you going to?”

“To Atlanta. From
Dallas,” he said with a cough.

“At what point did you leave your
wife?”

Jennings said, “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“The Escalade,
how much did that cost?”

“Wait a minute,” Jennings said. “What Escalade are we
talking about?”

“The Escalade registered in Kim Collins’ name at Mister
Stitcher’s home address on North Paces Ferry Road. The one Kim Collins tried to pick
up at the dealership this morning before she was killed.”

“I’ve never been to
Millerton,” Stitcher said.

“Stop talking,” Jennings said.

Jennings and
Stitcher stood and walked to a back corner of the conference room and started
whispering, their voices sounding like shoes sliding across a concrete floor. Kenner
looked around. Why did city lawyers always decorate their offices with fox-hunting
prints?

“Counselors,” he called, “we’re feeling left out.”

Jennings
walked back to the table and said, “This is bullshit.”

Brownlee opened his
laptop and clicked an e-mail attachment. A grainy black-and-white photo opened
showing a man in a dark shirt, light-colored pants, and baseball cap walking across
the parking lot of the dealership. Brownlee clicked open a second attachment that
caught the man’s profile from a distance. It looked a little like Stitcher. Kenner
tapped the screen with a pencil and said, “That’s your client.”

“No more
questions,” Jennings said, slicing the air with his palm.

“You mean no more
answers,” Kenner said. “We’ll be asking lots of questions.”

Brownlee recited
the Miranda warning. Stitcher tried to set his face into a mask of impassivity while
the Atlanta cop cuffed his hands behind his back, but Kenner saw his eyes flick
around the room, focusing on nothing and nobody.

“Don’t say anything, Jon,”
Jennings said. “I’ll visit you tomorrow and get you out on bail. I’ll call your
father.”

 
Brownlee drove again. It was seven at night and the rush-hour
traffic had thinned. The lawyer sat like a statue in the backseat. Just south of the
airport Kenner’s cell buzzed. It was Dover, from the medical examiner’s
office.