A Knight at the Opera (27 page)

I called Stone's office number, and also got voice mail. "Stone, this is Adam
Larsen. I just wanted to make sure you're aware of the woman who was strangled in her
apartment yesterday. She's the same woman whose services were billed on Karl
Markowsky's Bank of America card. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Have a nice
day."

That would get his attention.

When I reached the door marked ADAM LARSEN & ASSOCIATES, P.C., Diana had
her coat on and was getting ready to leave for lunch. She pushed the little button on her
desk to buzz me in.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"Better than I could have ever expected."

"Well done," she said. "I'll be back before one. I've an errand to run."

Maurice was just coming out of his office. "What's going on?" He studied my face.
"Or should I say, what have you done that we don't want to know about?"

"That obvious?"

"You're as transparent as a plate glass window. How about Mongolian
barbecue?"

"Sounds great."

There was a restaurant on Wazee Street that served Mongolian barbecue. It was
always a zoo during lunch hours, so we didn't go there very often. You had to stand in line
to assemble a bowlful of vegetables and meat--in whatever combination and with whatever
sauces suited you-- and then stand there while one of the cooks grilled it for you.

As we ate, I filled him in on the morning's events, including the details about
Amos Rawlings and the blonde Jillian. When I was done, he said, "This chump did all that
just to keep it secret that he was getting laid?"

"Apparently so. His reputation was on the line and possibly his future with the
firm. I can see how he became increasingly desperate as time went on."

"I guess that makes sense."

As we were finishing lunch, I asked idly, "Are you still seeing Robin?"

"Sort of. I figured that once we were done rehashing what happened at the
opera, we'd run out of things to talk about. But I don't know, she's actually okay. Although
right now, she's a bit stressed. I probably won't see her until the weekend."

"Oh? What's going on?"

"The head of her company's finance department came in on Monday and gave
two weeks notice. He's decided to retire at age forty and move to Hawaii."

"I'm sure she'll get through it," I told him. "In this economy, she'll be able to find
a replacement."

"Yeah, that's probably true." He added with a lopsided smile. "I don't know if it's
going to be anything long term, but for now she's nice to be around."

I smiled inwardly. It sounded like Maurice was falling in love. So far, other than
his disastrous marriage, the longest relationship he'd had that I was aware of lasted about
six months. Most of his other involvements had lasted a mere couple of hours.

There was hope for him.

* * * *

When we got back to the office, things were happening. As we emerged from the
elevator, I could see Diana standing at her desk, looking frazzled. She was still wearing her
coat. Stone was standing in front of her desk, waving his arms around like one of the crazies
who sometimes wander the Sixteenth Street Mall, talking to themselves. He looked to be
shouting at her. She spotted me and a look of relief washed over her face. Stone followed
her gaze and turned around.

When he saw me, he beelined for the door and opened it for me. "That was a hell
of a message, Larsen." He jerked his head sideways, toward the library. "In here."

I followed him into the room and shut the door behind us. Maurice had piles of
papers spread out on the large round conference table, so Stone and I had to sit
perpendicular to each other at the small table in the corner of the room. He demanded,
"What do you know about that dead woman?"

"I don't
know
anything. But I have some solid guesses, about her and
Drew Bonners. Do you want to hear them?"

That was a sore point between us. In the past, there had been several times
when I tried to warn him he was on the wrong track with one of his investigations. He had
always refused to listen. He wasn't interested in my theories, just facts.

This time, he didn't do that. "Go on."

"After Markowsky died, his widow found a credit bureau report her husband
had gotten online and printed out. One of the entries was marked with an exclamation
point. I think he marked it because he saw the entry for a Bank of America card and knew it
wasn't his. Someone had opened an account in his name. That part is fact. You have the
credit card bills and you know they were for services rendered by Rawlings Professional
Service."

"Yeah, and the woman who was killed yesterday was the woman he was
screwing," Stone said. "We would have made that connection sooner or later."

"Probably so. The next point is an educated guess. The receptionist at the
accounting firm where Markowsky worked has a habit of mixing people's mail. I think
Markowsky received a credit card offer at the office and the receptionist accidentally
routed to someone else at the firm. That person decided to take advantage of it, and
ordered the card in Markowsky's name, using a post office box as the mailing
address."

"Why would anyone want to do that?"

This was a bit of a delicate issue, but I did the best I could with it. "To use the
services of Rawlings Professional Services, whatever those services turn out to be."

He said, "You mean to hire a hooker." The way he said it, it wasn't a question. He
explained, "Look, I don't work the vice squad. I don't give a damn about anything that's not
a homicide. But I can see why someone would want to use an alias. Go on."

"Okay, more educated guesswork. Markowsky wanted to know what this
Rawlings company was. He decided to engage one of their for-hire employees, to try to find
out. He followed the lead of whoever was impersonating him and opened up another credit
card, this one with JP Morgan Chase. Probably a credit card offer he received. Somehow it
ended up in the name of Murkowsky. That's what he was doing with the blonde at the
opera."

"How do you know it wasn't his wife?"

"I'll get to that later. But it wasn't his wife. I'm one hundred percent sure of that.
That's why he had the Rohypnol in that little orange container."

"I'm not admitting he had--"

"You don't have to. We're just talking. Off the record. He had that container
because he decided if he couldn't cajole the information out of the woman, he was going to
drug her and find out that way."

He stared at me. "You're serious about this?"

"Can you think of any other reason the drug would be in his pocket? Or why his
fingerprints were the only ones you found on the pill bottle? That is what you found, isn't
it?"

"Keep talking," he said.

I knew I had hit a home run. Or, at least, a double. "Something happened, and he
ended up ingesting some of the drug himself. How that happened is something I couldn't
even speculate about."

"Why not? You don't seem to mind speculating about everything else."

I shrugged. "It's the only way I can think of that it could have ended up in his
bloodstream. If you have a better idea, tell me. If the woman had drugged him, she certainly
wouldn't put the container in his coat pocket. And if she had done it that way, it would have
had her fingerprints on it." I paused, waiting for a reaction.

"I'm listening," he told me. This was history in the making. For once, he wasn't
telling me to keep my damned theories to myself.

"I still don't know how Markowsky got his hands on the Rohypnol, but I do know
that when he went over that balcony, it caused major heartburn for the person who had
been impersonating him. The identity thief had patronized Rawlings once during the past
month, and another credit card bill would be arriving any day. He knew it would come to
the P.O. box in Englewood, but was afraid to go there himself. The police were looking for
the mystery woman, and the press was spinning all sorts of theories about Markowsky's
death, so the culprit decided to hire someone to check the mail for him. By pure fortuity, he
chose Jana."

"I see where you're going there," Stone said. "He's the one who assaulted her at
the mall. Why did he do it?"

"Back to guesswork. She didn't leave the envelope because there was a security
guard on duty. She was afraid he might see her. She hung around for about fifteen minutes
and then decided not to leave the envelope. Our man panicked, grabbed the first weapon he
could find--which I assume was the jack handle in the trunk of his car--and went after Jana.
He probably hadn't planned to hurt her, although I could be wrong about that. He obviously
had the ski hat and gloves in his vehicle. If he expected her to just hand over the envelope,
he didn't know Jana. She fought him and punched him in the face."

I continued, "All he could think about was getting his hands on that envelope.
Later on, after he had time to think things over, he started worrying about whether she'd
noticed that the envelope was addressed to a man who had died the previous Saturday
night. "

He said, "And he hired Drew Bonners to try to find her. You're making sense, for
once, Larsen. Go on."

I let that pass. "You know what happened when Jana found the GPS device and I
talked with Bonners. Obviously he communicated with the man who had hired him, and it
got him killed. By now, our man was in it up to his eyeballs. He was in a panic. He knew that
the brunette he had been seeing, Linda Lawrence, could identify him."

"So he killed her," Stone said.

"Right. My guess is that he'd spent enough time with her to know where she
lived--which might have also been her place of business--and he probably just showed up
unannounced. He wouldn't dare to call the company and schedule a date, because he had
supposedly died at the opera. Since she would have recognized him, he couldn't sneak up
on her with his trusty jack handle. So, he changed his modus operandi and strangled
her."

"How much of this can you prove?"

"This part, none. But I can tell you his real name."

"Yeah? Who?"

I told him. "He still has the faintest trace of bruising around his nose and right
eye. And once you start investigating, there are several possibilities. You might find
someone who saw him walking around with a shiner. Or you might find out where the
Rohypnol came from. You can check to see if he has an alibi for the night Bonners
was--"

"I get it, Larsen. You don't have to tell me how to investigate a murder."

He stood up. "You and I both know you haven't told me everything you know.
But, for now, this will do. Don't leave town."

He opened the door and marched out of the conference room.

* * * *

Something new had occurred to me while I was meeting with Stone. As I laid out
my theories about the bogus Markowsky, one aspect of it sounded hollow to me. There
were still some missing pieces. Jillian Piper had made a comment that was left dangling like
a loose thread. I'd meant to follow up on it, but it had gotten lost in the shuffle. Maurice had
made a point at lunch that also tickled something in the back of my mind. While I was
talking with Stone, those two thoughts suddenly coalesced into something specific.

I took a few minutes to think it through. It would explain Markowsky's odd
behavior and might even lead to where he procured the Rohypnol. It was wildly impossible,
but I figured that with unlimited minutes on my cell phone, it wouldn't cost me a penny to
make a couple of calls and follow up.

Unfortunately, the man I needed to talk to didn't answer his phone. I left him a
voice message, asking him to call me, giving him a quick outline of what I was looking for. I
followed up with an email, sent to the web address I'd found on his company's web
site.

I also placed a call to Joyce Markowsky. It was a short conversation, since I had
only one question to ask her. It flowed from my new theory.

To my surprise, her answer made my idea more plausible. I didn't tell her why I
needed the information, and she didn't ask.

The way my luck was going, I figured I ought to go out and buy a couple of
Powerball tickets.

Maurice and I decided to work late. He said he needed to walk me through the
papers he'd sorted into piles on the conference room table. Diana and Ann had gone home,
and there were no phone calls, faxes or emails to distract us. Our client in a slip and fall
case had provided releases so we could collect her medical records. Evidently she had
neglected to tell us about several pre-existing conditions and a prior disability claim.

At a few minutes after nine, my phone beeped. It was a text from Jana: "I've got
something!!"

I pressed the "call" button. "Hi, I just got your text. What's up?"

She sounded excited. "This morning, I had a brainstorm. You're starting to wear
off on me. I went back to the mall and talked to that security guard. They have video
cameras set up, and I thought maybe they'd show the bastard who assaulted me. That
didn't pan out, because he wouldn't let me look at the videos. But he did tell me something
useful. The guard isn't as goofy as you thought he was. He'd noticed a vehicle earlier in the
evening, because it was the only one left in the outside lot. They don't like people leaving
their cars overnight."

"And?" I prompted.

"Adam, he'd written down the license number. He didn't think it was important
when he talked with you and Maurice. I talked him into letting me copy it down. I figured
that whoever owned it might have seen something helpful. I checked with DMV and found
out who it was registered to. He's an accountant."

A shiver shot down my spine. "An accountant?"

"Right. I contacted him to ask him about it. He just called me back. He was very
nice about it. He said he did actually see someone, but he'd been afraid to come forward
and tell anyone about it. I'm at the mall, in the west side parking lot. Second level. He'll be
here in a few minutes."