1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (8 page)

“You been here all this time, Ms. Harris?”

“Most of it, Sheriff, all except when your Boy Scouts took my fingerprints.” She looked at her fingers, which still showed the smudges of ink on their tips. “Do you think any of us would—?”

“I don’t think anything, Ma’am. I just do police work. You were in there. There may be prints left by the thieves. I have to know which belong to whom, if you follow me. Frankly, I don’t think we’ll find any prints in there. They were pros, and pros make few mistakes. Certainly, they won’t leave their fingerprints.”

“Then, why in Heaven’s name were we subjected to this harassment?” she retorted.

“Routine, Ms. Harris, just routine. Could we finish this somewhere
else—say, your office?”

“Of course, Sheriff, my office will be fine. By the way, I have reported your behavior to Mr. Dillon. I thought you ought to know. We take a dim view of the kind of inept—”

“Your office, please. You can skewer me there.”

Chapter Twelve

Ruth ushered Ike into her office and gestured toward one of the two large wing chairs opposite her desk. Ike sat with a sigh. Ruth sat behind the ornately carved library table she used for a desk. She placed her hands palms down on its glass surface and faced him. Her back was ramrod straight, masking the bone weariness she felt.

“All right, Sheriff, what do we do now?” she said, a trifle too loud, a trifle too patronizing.

Ike slouched back in the chair and extended his feet straight out, eyes closed. His hands, thumbs hooked into his belt, lay idle in his lap. Ruth felt edgy and tired, and Ike’s calm grated on her nerves. Nothing he did or said all afternoon was anything but correct. He moved through the confusion, fended off offers of help from a variety of well-intentioned but useless people, others who wanted to exploit the publicity implications or the political consequences. He took notes, made endless phone calls and, she had to admit, deported himself as a competent police officer—confident, in charge, and able. Damn, she thought, I ought to be grateful. But the habits of youth still held her fast. Schwartz represented authority and stood at the other end of the span that ran from right thinking to unthinking. He was the cops—the Jackie Gleason to her Burt Reynolds. All the years of demonstrating, posturing, and commitment to a doctrine of distrust of authority had left her no place to go except to dismiss Ike and all that he stood for. Every year, she found it harder to hold on to those convictions, and tonight she realized the struggle might well be lost. In addition, something about this particular cop did not resonate with her biases.

“Dr. Harris,” Ike responded, eyes still closed, “
we
do nothing.
I
put people to work.
I
make phone calls.
I
go back over the building with a fine-toothed comb, the whole area, in fact, interview and ask endless questions. I guess. I sort through information. I start all over again and I wait. I wait for whatever it is that comes next.
I
do that…not
we.

“You, on the other hand, should go home, pour yourself a stiff drink, climb into a hot tub, and call your boyfriend.”

Ruth bridled. Her eyes flickered and sent invisible poisoned darts at Ike’s forehead.

“I don’t have a boyfriend, Sheriff, and I don’t need you playing drug store psychiatrist for me.”

Ike opened his eyes, surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that, well, there is nothing for you to do. Just go about your business. If you notice something, remember something, anything—no matter how trivial, that you haven’t told us, let me know.”

Ruth studied him, dispassionately.

“That is not good enough, Sheriff,” she said. “I am worried about this investigation. You have dismissed the state police. You have refused to even talk to the FBI. Do you think you and the rest of your rural constabulary are up to something as important, as big as this? Face it, Sheriff, neither you nor your people have the experience, the training—”

“That is presumption, Dr. Harris. An untested assumption, a—”

“What you must do,” Ruth continued, ignoring him, “is clear out an area at the police station—no, it would be better up here, I think. I will call Mr. Dillon’s contacts and get the real experts in here. Captain Parker will handle operations at this end. The press, of course, will be cleared through my office, and—”

“And I should do what? Boil water?”

“Sheriff, you don’t have to get defensive. I just feel that a case this big should be handled by the best, and you have to admit that the sheriff’s office of Picketsville is hardly in that league. You said yourself, whoever did it are real professionals. I want my own real professionals to find them.”

So absorbed was Ruth in her directive, she missed the flash of anger in Ike’s eyes, a look that he replaced by one of weary resignation. Ike hitched himself up in his chair and leveled his gaze at Ruth. Finally, he spoke, his voice patient, like a school principal explaining for the fifth or sixth time why there would be no beer at the junior prom.

“Dr. Harris, there are some things you need to understand. First, as I told you before, neither the FBI nor the state police can enter the case, because they have no jurisdiction. The county police can, but only if I ask them, or they feel the investigation is not being handled correctly. That is not yet the case, and if any of these folks were here, they would be doing what we, my deputies and I, are doing now.

“Second, your man, Captain Parker, has been missing since eleven o’clock last night. But if he were here, I would tell him to stay out of the way. If he wanted to be useful, he could do something about the parking problem on campus. He is the last, I repeat, the last person on earth I want mixed up in this investigation.

“Third, you may do with the press and television what you wish, but I am telling you now that details of the case, what we know and what we don’t know, will be cleared through me. If you cannot accept that, I will get a court order and have you gagged.

“And last, just for the record, I don’t give a damn what you think of me and my deputies. I was elected to this job because folks here believed I could do the job better than your Captain Parker, and I hired the men who work for me. I know what they can and cannot do. I am here to tell you that if anyone is going to find your little collection of pictures, it’s me, me and my rural constabulary. So I will give the orders here, not you.” Ike was up and pacing, trying to keep his temper under control.

“Now wait a minute, Sheriff.” Ruth was aware that she had been told off, and she did not like it.

“No, you wait a minute,” he shot back. “You are the single most tiresome person I have met in the past decade. I cannot think of anything that I or any of my people have done today to earn the back of your hand. They know their job and they are pretty good at it. More importantly, they know when they are in over their heads and how to ask for help. Police work is almost all routine and it works best when one group stays with the problem from beginning to end.”

She watched as he walked back and forth between two chairs, punctuating his remarks with gentle stabs at the upholstered backs with his right index finger.

“We don’t need a lot of jurisdictions and agencies swimming in this pond. All they will do is muddy the waters.”

He stopped and dropped into his chair. Ruth stared at him. She was angry and frustrated. She fought off the feeling that, somehow, she was losing. She knew she had asked for the lecture, but she did not like Schwartz giving it to her. Most of her anger, she admitted, was due to the fact that she had underestimated this man and was on the defensive.

“You’re not wearing one of those belts,” she blurted. “Where’s your cop belt?”

“Excuse me? My cop belt?”

“You know, the big bulky one with the big stick and the little boxes and guns and things like that hanging on it…where’s yours?”

“Never wear it…too bulky. Anything else?”

She closed her eyes and wondered what possessed her to ask about his belt. She decided to make one last stab at reestablishing her position. Gathering her strength and the last vestiges of outrage, she flared out at him.

“Look, Sheriff, you can give orders, take orders, or go screw yourself. I do not care. I’m just telling you straight out, I think you lack the expertise, the equipment, and the brains to handle this business, and I intend to get some people in here who know what they’re doing, and I don’t care whether you like it or not.”

He did not reply, did not react to the determined set of her chin, the fire in her hazel eyes. He gazed at her, his face expressionless. Thirty seconds passed—a minute. Ruth felt her determination beginning to crumble. She had lost. A minute and a half slid by like molasses on cold pancakes. Finally, he spoke. His voice was quiet, but his words and the force behind them were unmistakable.

“Dr. Harris. If you would just put aside all that radical crap that used to be your credo fifteen, twenty years ago. And if you could be, if not pleasant, at least tolerant of others, irrespective of their background, their profession, or political persuasion, and if, in short, you would shed all that left-liberal bigotry and concentrate on the problem at hand, we would get along fine. If you will not or cannot, I will come down on you like Godzilla.

“I am a very patient man, most of the time. People tell me I am good at what I do. We will soon find out how good, but until I screw up, please stay out of this investigation. I do not want to fight with you or anyone else. On the contrary, I need your help. And I need the cooperation of your staff, faculty, and students. So please, please, make it easy for all of us and back off.”

Ruth relaxed and leaned back in her chair. Her hands fell into her lap. She blinked and let out a sigh. Enough, she thought, I have had enough. I am tired. I am hungry, and there is no fight left in me. Maybe he is right—a stiff drink, and a hot bath. She closed her eyes. God, I do not even know why I am giving this man a hard time. He is right. She opened her eyes and studied him, took in his angular frame, dark eyes and hair, and rugged good looks. Not handsome, she mused, but well put together. His face fits the rest of him. And, God help me, he even seems like a decent sort of man.

“Okay, Sheriff,” she said. “For now, you win. I will back off. I might even owe you an apology. Will you settle for a truce?”

“On one condition.…”

“What’s that?”

“Let me buy you dinner.”

“What? You’re kidding.” Ruth was amazed.

“I never kid…well, not often, not now anyway.”

Ruth stared at him. She had been caught off guard. The last thing she expected was a dinner invitation. She felt beaten and disappointed in herself. The angry words, in spite of the hard shell she built around herself, battered her spirit. Now this. Here, she decided, was a very unusual man. He had just won, and instead of leaving her to lick her wounds, instead of rubbing her nose in her defeat, he offered her a kindness. The man was one of those rarest of creatures, a good winner. Ruth swallowed.

“Sheriff, you are amazing. I think I had better accept, if only to find out what makes you tick. You’re sure about this?”

“Absolutely. Dinner, the works. Why not?”

“When?”

“Tonight?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I told you, I never.…”

“Kid, right, but shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, on duty or something? What about the reporters, TV hook-ups?”

“There is nothing I can do between now and tomorrow first light. The bunker is sealed off, my cell phone is on. My people are working. I’m available twenty-four seven. And anything I can do to avoid the press is a plus for me. Besides, this may be our last chance. You reported the break-in late, too late to make important deadlines. By tomorrow morning this place will be crawling with press, politicians, and all kinds of people ready to exploit the situation. Some of my law enforcement colleagues are going to find the opportunity to become celebrity cops irresistible.”

“How are you planning on avoiding all that now?”

“I know a place.”

“A place. Like a place where all those people can’t find you—find us. That kind of place?”

“Right.”

“Do I get a chance to go home and change?”

“You have half an hour—tops. Where we are going takes time and it’s almost seven already.”

Chapter Thirteen

One half hour later on the dot, Ike pulled up to the central entrance of the college just as Ruth rounded the corner of the long porch that ran the length of the main building. The building, the subject of hundreds of pictures and thousands of postcards, was famous for its wisteria. Its purple panicles covered the length of the porch, climbed upward to the second story, and back to disappear around the far corner.

Ike had had just enough time to jump into the shower and touch up his shave. Now, smelling of Old Spice, he stepped out of the car and opened the door for Ruth as she emerged from a riot of purple and descended the steps to the gravel drive.

“I could have picked you up at your house, you know,” he said.

“That would have been difficult. The driveway to the house comes up to the back, to a garage added as an afterthought. The front door is only accessible by that path you passed on your right as you drove in. Much easier to meet me here.” She looked at him and the car. “Well, it’s an improvement, Sheriff. I halfway expected to be taken to dinner in a police car.”

“That can be arranged, if you’d prefer.”

“No, this’ll do just fine. The last ride I took in a police car was anything but pleasant and I’m not sure I could rise above that.”

Ike installed her in the passenger side, walked around to the driver’s side, and slipped in.

“I’ve been thinking about your belt.”

“My belt?”

“I can’t imagine why I asked you about it this afternoon, what I was thinking about.”

“Probably had something to do with guns.”

“You think so? I guess you are right. Aren’t you supposed to pack a gun? Is that what you guys say? Pack a gun?”

“Carry. We carry, not pack.”

“Sorry. Where is it?”

“What?”

“Oh come on, where are you carrying it?”

“Stop. What is this all about?”

“Guns, I guess.”

“Okay. I do not wear my cop belt as you call it, because ninety percent of my time is spent doing things that do not require all that stuff. If I need a gun or handcuffs, they are available. But that is not what this is about, is it? You want to engage me in a debate about guns, the NRA, and all the baddies the folks in the community you come from have identified. Am I right?”

“Don’t you worry about hand guns and the rise of deaths attributable to them? I mean even the police recognize the need to get them out of the hands of people, don’t they?”

“That’s too many questions in one sentence. Sure, I worry about shootings a lot, but I am more concerned about the culture of death we have created in this country. It’s the source of most of the awful things we have to live with now.”

“The what of death?”

“The culture of death. What’s on television? What’re the lead stories on the nightly news? Last week I watched the local news and kept score of the items reported. There was a lead-off of a robbery and shooting at a local convenience store. Then there was a report of a drowning in a backyard pool. That was followed by a story on road rage and finally a fire in a local warehouse, which ended with the commentator saying, ‘luckily there were no deaths’—as if we should expect death and luck will sometimes prevent the inevitable.”

“Well, yeah, but I fail to see—”

“A culture is defined by the way it spends its leisure. Look around you. What’s at the movies? What do people do, watch, and admire most in our culture? And have you seen the video games our children play? As soon as a child is big enough to get its thumbs around a Playstation, we begin its education in violence and mayhem. The popular ones are about shooting, blasting, or one way or another demolishing some imagined enemy. We are training a whole generation of killers.”

“Oh, come on now, you don’t really—”

“People watch HBO and admire, no, award, a show about men who cheat on their wives, lie to their children, deal drugs, some of which end in the schools their children attend. They murder their friends, enemies, strangers, and the ones they don’t kill, they destroy. It is a culture of death.”

“What’s your alternative, Sheriff? Do you want us to go back to
Father Knows Best
and
The Brady Bunch
?”

“Not really. But let me ask you this: how many Columbines and teenage murders were there when those shows defined the culture, instead of what we see now? The answer, by the way, is zero.”

“So you don’t think there ought to be limits put on guns?”

“I didn’t say that. Register them, make it hard to purchase one, close the loopholes in sales at gun shows—all that is fine with me, the tougher the better, but I think if someone wants to own one, he should. When I was growing up, everyone I knew had guns, long rifles, pistols, the works. And in those days there was not a single shooting in this town—not one. Today we have the same number of guns and ten times the shootings. What’s changed?”

“But wouldn’t your job be easier if the guns were gone?”

“Sure it would. I think anybody who has a gun and never intends to use it should get rid of it. People who do keep guns should keep them locked up, and in the event someone is injured or killed by their gun, they should expect to be charged with contributory negligence.”

Ike caught his breath. He had surprised himself with his speech. What he said, he believed, but he had never put it together that way. This woman, he thought, seemed to bring out the best and the worst in him. He did not know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“My, this is a cheerful beginning for our first date, Sheriff. You got any more thoughts on the state of the world you’d like to share?”

“Later, maybe.…It’s not a date.”

“Right…and I’m not done with this gun business.”

***

Harry stared at the two sleeping forms in the half-light. Even though the girl and boy were handcuffed to the bedstead and the phones removed or deactivated, Donati had insisted they be watched round the clock. He assigned the duty to Angelo and Harry. Red, over his protest, was not involved.

“You got a thing, Red, about young helpless girls and you hit too hard. I don’t need that on top of the screw-up with the cop, so you stay away.” Donati’s voice was always velvet smooth, but there was no mistaking the menace behind it. Red stayed away.

Harry looked forward to his watches. It got him away from the other three, the smoke, and the uncomfortable closeness to people who were and would forever be strangers to him.

The girl stirred and opened her eyes. “I was hoping it would be you.”

Harry grunted, thought a moment, and responded, “Why’s that?”

She stretched and took a few quick breaths. Her eyes focused, and with the resiliency the young and innocent seem to have, she was at once awake and alert.

“Because you let me go to the bathroom alone. The other one won’t. He doesn’t look, but, I don’t know, I just can’t get used to sitting on the john with a chaperone.”

Harry walked to the bed and unlocked the girl’s handcuffs. She rubbed her wrist and sighed. “When will this be over? Harry? Is that your real name? That’s what they call you.”

“Yes…a couple more days, then it’s over. The Dillons come through, we get paid, and we all go our separate ways.”

“Except me and Jack, we know too much. You can’t let us go, can you?”

She was right. He did not want to think about it, but she could identify all of them. The boy, Jack, presented a lesser threat. Red had rung his bell the night of the robbery and he was still out of it. He might or might not remember, someday, but not anytime soon. Harry wondered why Donati had not eliminated them sooner. But Harry knew his employer never acted without a reason. Donati must have something in mind.

“Everything’s going to be all right, I promise. You and your boyfriend will be fine.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s an oversexed jock whom I met for the first time the night you found us, and if I hadn’t listened to that honey-mouthed, social-climbing, airhead roommate of mine, I’d be back at the dorm in my own bed right now.”

The girl was a complete stranger to him and half his age, but Harry felt a sense of relief that the boy was only a date. Strange.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Harry said, “I went in town today to pick up food and I bought you these. I hope they’ll do.”

Harry handed her a paper bag and watched while she opened it. She took the items out one at a time and laid them on the bed—a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, two sets of underwear, a flannel shirt, and a pair of jeans. Her face lit up.

“Oh, my God, I know this sounds crazy, I mean, here I am, about to be murdered—it’s true, I know it, you’ll have to, sooner or later—and all I can think about is a shower and clean clothes. Underwear. Do you know how it feels to be naked under your clothes? I mean—to be that way and know that everyone around you knows it? You feel so…defenseless. Thanks, Harry.”

“I just thought you could use—”

“I mean it, Harry…can I call you Harry? I mean if you aren’t on a first-name basis with the man who buys your underwear, you’re in trouble, right?”

Harry grinned. “Go clean up and make it quick. I’m done here in forty-five minutes, and then the other guy takes over.”

“Call me Jennifer, and you are a nice man, Harry. I don’t know why you’re here or how you got into this business, but you’re not like the others. You just aren’t.”

Jennifer rushed into the bathroom, shedding her dress as she went. Harry caught a glimpse of her naked backside as she turned the corner and shut the door.