Endangered Species (10 page)

“Any facial hair or jewelry?”

“No. Tinted sunglasses—you know the kind that shooters or aviators like? Gold rims.”

“Do you know what kind of car he drives?”

“Doesn’t. Bicycles. Locks it up on that No Parking sign out front. Says that’s the way he gets his exercise, so I figure he lives near here somewhere.”

The newsstand wasn’t more than two miles from the Wyandot address, and he’d have his choice of three or four bridges over the South Platte into downtown. Probably the new Speer Bridge and then along the Cherry Creek bike path, which was only two blocks away from this corner of Fifteenth.

“Did he ever mention where he works?”

“No. He usually comes in midmorning, though, so I figure he works nights.”

“Can you remember anything at all he’s said? Even talking about the weather. Anything.”

“Well, he doesn’t really say much. He’s friendly—says hello. But. …” The man frowned at the cigars and pipes and brightly colored tobacco tins in the fluorescent light of the display case. “His friend said something about the arsenal—made some kind of comment about it when he saw a headline on it.”

The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a major army depot for chemical weapons. It was on Denver’s northeast corner. “What kind of comment?”

He thought back. “Something about the government shutting it down but not really wanting to clean it up. It’s been in the news a lot lately, you know—all the delays and the politics.” He added, “The federal government wants to make a nature preserve out of it so they won’t have to clean it up.”

Wager knew, but he hadn’t paid much attention. People had been screaming for years about closing the arsenal, with its stockpile of biological and chemical weapons, and the newspapers periodically ran scare stories about nerve gas leaks or water table contamination. It was supposed to be the worst—and most expensive—Superfund site in the country. He handed the man a business card. “If he comes back, give me a call right away, OK? It’s very important.”

“What’s he done?”

“There’s been a death. He might know something about it.”

“Holy cow, a murderer?”

Wager shook his head and lied. “Looks like an accidental death. But he’s a possible witness. It’s very important.” A suspect was more likely to call if he thought it was safe enough to make him seem a good citizen.

The man read the cardboard and placed it next to the cash register. “I hear you, Detective Wager.”

On his way back to the office, he swung by the Satire Lounge for enchiladas and green chili. As usual, a blue-and-white sat in the parking lot beside the building and a pair of uniforms were eating their cut-rate lunch at the window booth. Wager recognized one of the patrolmen, who slid closer to the wall to offer him a seat. The other officer was a new face, one of a growing number in the department, and he was very interested in the requirements for detective. Wager finished the eager young officer’s questions and his own enchiladas at about the same time, and it was a little after two when he reached his desk. Before he turned to the small stack of messages from his box, he once more called Mr. McClinton’s office. The man was in a meeting, but his secretary recognized Wager’s voice and gave him the information from her reverse directory.

“The number at that Wyandot address, Detective Wager, is 629-2493, a Mr. John Marshall.”

“Can I get a record of calls from that number?”

“Only any long-distance calls billed to that number. If it’s a local call or direct dial from somewhere else, we won’t be able to help you.”

“I’d appreciate what you can get me.”

“Yessir.”

The first of his messages was from Henry Stover: Important, please call, followed by a number. Wager put that at the bottom of his list. The next was a copy of the arson investigator’s report, and he scanned those pages but found nothing that Archy Douglas hadn’t already told him. An interoffice memo from Sergeant Politzky told him that he and his people had heard no mention of any narcotics activity at the Wyandot address—“But we got plenty of other places if you need one, Gabe!” A copy of a memo from the coroner’s laboratory to Dr. Hefley said that traces of gasoline or a gasoline-like substance had been found on pieces of the clothes and skin of the victim. A hard-to-read note scrawled at the bottom of the sheet added, “Dental X-rays and hands sent to FBI—Hefley.” That meant that the doc couldn’t get any decent fingerprints off the corpse with his equipment. Severing the hands and mailing them to the FBI was the last resort. It usually took a long time to get results, and occasionally there were no results at all. But it seemed the best Hefley could do.

Max stopped by Wager’s desk to ask if he’d heard anything from Trujillo yet. The answer was no, and the big man grunted disappointment. “I’ll be in court this afternoon.” His finger tapped the radio on his hip. “Call me if you hear anything from him.” Wager nodded; he guessed that Trujillo—if he did have any information—was holding it for a day or so as a way of showing the cops he wasn’t anybody’s snitch.

Wager was elbow deep in the day’s reports and queries when the telephone rang and a hesitant voice asked for Detective Wager. “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

“My name’s John Marshall—I got a message on my telephone answerer to call you.”

“Yes, sir! Are you the John Marshall who lives at 3514 Wyandot?”

Relief in the man’s voice. “No. I live on South Pearl—1574.”

“Do you know the John Marshall who lives on Wyandot?”

“Sure don’t. Sorry.”

He didn’t sound very sorry; just relieved. Wager thanked the man for returning his call and crossed that John Marshall off his list. Now the only one left was the missing one. Mildly disappointed but not surprised, Wager called the dispatcher to see if any reports had come in on the BAC license plate.

“Nothing yet, Detective Wager.” She reminded him, “The APB just went out this morning.”

“Yeah—I know. Thanks.”

He turned back to the steady flow of paperwork. Most of it was time wasted, and the rest wasn’t of much importance. The department was undergoing another of its periodic convulsions over efficiency. Long questionnaires had been handed out to all personnel, and they were supposed to break down the hours of the week into percentages spent doing various tasks: interviewing witnesses, crime scene analysis, telephoning, traveling, lunch breaks and other leisure time … The only category not listed was one for filling out stupid forms.

The telephone’s ring was a welcome break from figuring the percent of the week he spent in conferences. The percentages were supposed to add up to one hundred, but the numbers wouldn’t fall into place that neatly, and he was wondering which figures to cheat on. “Homicide. Detective Wager.”

“Gabe—man, I been trying to reach you!”

“Hello, Stovepipe. I got your message; I just haven’t had a chance to call back yet.”

“OK, man, that’s cool, no problem. But listen, I need some advice. Mother and I want to sell her house and move into a place up in Weld County. Remember I told you about her and me moving someplace out on the prairie where we can raise chickens and shit?”

He didn’t, but he grunted something like a “yes.”

“Well, I been looking around, and I found this place ain’t too far from Brighton, so I won’t have to drive too far when I get that janitor’s job, you know?”

Another grunt as he tried to add up twelve and three quarters percent and seven and an eighth.

“I mean, when I get out of the halfway house. Anyway, we want to borrow against her house to make a down payment on this other place. Understand?”

Wager understood that, but he didn’t understand what Stovepipe needed from him. “That’s fine.”

“No, man, it ain’t. I tried talking to somebody in the bank. They don’t want to lend us the money. Mother’s not employed, and I’m, you know, an ex-con.”

He wasn’t even ex yet; Wager could see the bank’s point of view. “Why don’t you wait until you’re off parole?”

“Aw, man, that’ll be more’n a year! And this place we want ain’t going to stay on the market that long. What I want to do, see, is borrow against our equity for a down payment on the other place and then sell this house and pay off the new one. It’s not like I’m asking the bank to goddamn give me the money—this house is good collateral!”

“This is interesting and all, Stovepipe, but—”

“A character reference, Gabe! Maybe if you talk to this person at the bank—you know, you’re a cop an’ all. Tell her I’m good for it. Christ, they can’t lose on this house—the loan would be a hundred percent secured.”

Wager sighed. “All right. Give me her name.”

Stovepipe did. “Thanks a lot, Gabe! Mother appreciates it too.”

He dog-eared the page in his little green notebook with Stovepipe’s name and a cryptic abbreviation for memory’s sake, then turned to finish the time study. If he put in the actual hours he worked each week, he’d come out to damn near two hundred percent. But officially he only worked forty, so he scaled down the hours, balanced the percentages, said “Screw it,” and initialed the form’s signature line.

“Gabe—how’s it going,
hombre
?” Golding strode in briskly, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He wore sharply creased gray slacks, a dark-blue blazer, a scarlet power tie. “Air conditioner’s on the blink in the courtrooms again. Judge Zell’s about to have a conniption—she threatened to dismiss all cases until the city fixes it.”

“Too goddamn bad a judge has to be a little uncomfortable.” Especially one whose findings kept getting overturned on appeal.

“Kolagny’s about to shit his pants. He’s got four cases scheduled in front of Zell this week.”

“Too goddamn bad about the assistant district attorney too.” Especially one who couldn’t win a conviction against Charles Manson.

“You’re sure in a good mood, Gabe. Hey.” He leaned on Wager’s desk, breath a puff of some kind of mint. “You want to try some chamomile oil—just rub on enough so you can smell it. It’ll calm you right down.”

“Do what?”

“Chamomile oil. I been studying aroma therapy up in Boulder. Ancient Chinese wisdom. They been using herb and flower scents for thousands of years, Gabe. Specific aromas can relieve tension, cure depression, improve concentration, a lot of things.”

“Golding—”

“I’m serious—it really works! I go home at night and before going to bed I rub on a little essence of mandarin orange. Right here on the inside of my wrists. Tension just floats away. Sleep like a baby.”

“I don’t want to smell like a goddamn fruit.”

“Well, hey, they got flower aromas too. Lavender oil, that comes from a flower. ‘Every perfume is a medicine.’ That’s what the ancient Chinese say.”

“The ancient Chinese died too, right?”

“Hey, just trying to help, Gabe. In France and England, you want to practice aroma therapy, you have to be a certified doctor. That’s how much they believe in it.”

“We’re in Denver, and I’ve got a case that stinks.”

“That’s a sign of unhealthiness. It’s not just a metaphor, Gabe—you can diagnose a lot from a person’s smell. The body chemistry gets out of whack, and you start getting these smells. Most people just ignore them or cover them up. But if you know your aroma therapy—”

Maybe Golding had something. A lot of homicide victims smelled, and all of them were unhealthy. “I got to make a phone call, Golding.”

“Sure, Gabe.” He moved on. “But you really ought to try the chamomile oil.”

Wager nodded thanks as he escaped by dialing the bank number Stovepipe gave him. A secretary put him through to Mrs. Lindell, and Wager explained why he was calling.

“I understand what you’re telling me, Detective Wager. But Mr. Stover’s current—ah—situation doesn’t inspire our confidence. Moreover, the home Mr. Stover wants to use as collateral is in the name of both his mother and father and would need the approval of both of them.”

“His father’s dead, I believe.”

“Then we’d need proof of death and a copy of the will naming either Mrs. Stover or her son as his heir.” She added reasonably, “If, however, you qualified and wanted to guarantee the loan, we’d be happy to process it.”

Wager didn’t want to do that.

“Then you can understand our caution too.”

“All I was asked to do was be a character reference.”

“We’re happy to note that, Detective Wager.”

He hung up with a vague feeling of insult and checked that little task off his list of chores. It wasn’t much, and Stovepipe wouldn’t like the outcome, but it was the best Wager could do. As Wager had told him, he would be better off waiting until he cleared probation and had a visible means of support before asking a bank or anyone else to give him money. After all, Stovepipe wasn’t the son of a U.S. President.

The telephone rattled again, and this time it was Archy Douglas, telling Wager that he and Adamo had finished working the crime scene. “We found a couple possibilities for murder weapons but no clear prints. They’re items one twenty-seven and one forty-one in the report. There were some fingerprints in the bathroom area, but I haven’t had a chance to check them against the elimination prints yet. In fact, I haven’t even got all the elimination prints—a couple firemen have been off duty.”

“Did you find any dope traces?”

“No. And we looked too—not a thing.”

It didn’t necessarily negate Wager’s theory about a stash house. Dope was sometimes measured and mixed on a plastic shower curtain, and if it wasn’t taken away, it could easily have melted or burned in the fire. “I’ll be down for a copy of the report.”

He hauled the thick folder of papers back to his desk and started reading through it. There were a lot of entries, but they didn’t make any kind of statement. As Archy said, that was Wager’s job; all forensics did was record the facts at the crime scene.

Finishing the long list of items and their location in respect to the body, Wager rubbed his stinging eyes and stretched against the back of his chair. Identification—that was the problem. Of the victim, of “Marshall,” of anyone else connected with the house. It was a dead end that so far said only one thing: the people in the house had been hiding something. Or someone. But what or who or why? It wasn’t that there were too many loose strings—there just weren’t any strings at all. That was what he was going to have to tell Doyle when the Bulldog called him in for another pep talk.