Eleven Little Piggies (18 page)

Maxine sipped coffee while she watched me crunch crackers into chili and said, as casual as if it was regular news, ‘I've been doing some Internet searches.'

‘Oh? Since when do you go roaming in cyberspace?' She has an ancient computer I gave her when we upgraded at home. I thought she wanted it mostly to trade emails with her daughter.

‘I don't even know what that means. But I think I may have located the placement service that assigned you to your first foster mother. I sent a couple of queries.'

‘You did? Maxine, you fox, I've never known you to – you always claim to be so baffled by technology.'

‘Oh . . . well.' She looked inscrutable for a few seconds and then laughed. ‘I am! But on Google it's so simple . . . you just type in the words you're thinking, and something's going to come up. Maybe not what you're looking for, but sometimes better stuff that you never thought of.'

‘That's an interesting search plan. I must try that.'

‘Yes, well, I know I'm a . . . what's that Eddy says? A dork. But I'm willing to try most new things, if they don't have claws.'

‘You're not a dork. Don't let anybody tell you that.'

She smiled. ‘OK. Is mincemeat pie good for Thanksgiving?'

‘Perfect.' I kissed her cheek. She smelled like talcum and onions. ‘I gotta go.'

 

Ray hailed me from the door of his office before I even got into mine. He was talking on the phone but waved me in and kept me there with one pointing finger while he said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Can I call you back? Good.'

He hung up and said, ‘I think we just got a fresh body.'

O
f the dozen questions needing immediate answers, I picked the most obvious, ‘Where?'

‘That's what's giving him fits. It's in his car.'

‘Whose car?'

‘Ethan's. Parked behind his office in his marked space. When he came down just now to go to lunch there was a man sitting in the passenger's seat. He opened the door and the man fell out on the asphalt and a shotgun fell out on top of him. It must have been leaning on him, Ethan says. He said he's sure he's dead because he's very cold and not breathing but he called nine-one-one and asked them to send an ambulance, and what did I advise him to do next?'

Bewildered by the way his pronouns were stacking up, I put my hand up like a traffic cop and said, ‘What did you say?'

‘Told Ethan he did fine and now he should tell me his address so I could send somebody to help him. Turns out his office is two blocks from Pokey's so I called him . . .'

‘Pokey?'

‘Yes. Isn't that who I said? Told Pokey what Ethan said and asked him to see if he could beat the ambulance over there. Because you know how long we'll all be at this if an ambulance takes that dead guy to the hospital? Midnight, at least.'

Ray paused, a little winded. I said, ‘OK, what's the problem?'

‘Right now there's nobody here but me and I hate to call anybody off the farm because they all got God knows enough to do where they are. So could you anchor this end while I run over there? Are you free this afternoon?'

‘If I've got anything I'll cancel it. Go ahead.'

Ray charged down the stairs and out the door. I told LeeAnn I was taking all the calls for People Crimes, unlocked my office, and got a notebook ready to take a lot of notes. I thought I'd be flooded with anxious calls from the detectives on the farm, but either they were staying afloat on their own or they were too overwhelmed to talk. While I waited to find out which, I got all my emails answered. I was down to leafing through yesterday's phone messages when Kevin Evjan poked his head in my door. He frowned at my empty room, said, ‘God, nothing's happening over here, either', and slumped into my visitors' chair.

The genes of the sergeant who runs Property Crimes section are split evenly between his Irish mother and Norwegian father. Somehow, he got all the best of both. The result is a tall, confident Nordic type, much handsomer than anybody has a right to be. As a result of all that good fortune, underneath his surface charm he's even happier than he usually lets on. A bachelor, he scores easily and often with the ladies of his choice, so he radiates optimism. Ray, of course, can't stand him.

I picked him to run Property Crimes because I guessed, rightly, that his high self-esteem would support him during the endless slog of stolen autos, sports gear and electronics that his section must record. We describe so much and find so little! You look at the lists and say, ‘Why are people so damn rotten?' Alternate that with ‘Bugger all' and you've nailed the attitude for a Property Crimes detective. Kevin just smiles and keeps up his stats.

I said, ‘Heard you found some bad guys carting off a houseful of stuff.'

‘My keen-eyed detectives noticed that their truck license was expired and one tire looked a little flat, and said, “Gosh, fellas, what kind of a moving company is that?”'

‘So they stopped to chat.'

‘Yes. To write a ticket actually, but then everybody ran away, so they got to play Chase-the-Thief instead. I have to say, these idiots came along just in time. That cold snap we had at the first of the month sent a lot of homeless guys scurrying for the bus station, I think. Burglaries are down, vandalism's all but vanished. In terms of job security, this month has been a disaster.'

‘A disaster with no overtime, I love it. Been thinking maybe I should transfer a couple of your guys to People Crimes for a few days –
they've
got plenty to do.'

‘Would you? Could you? Come to think of it, how about me? Give me a chance to broaden my horizons.'

‘And work for Ray Bailey?'

‘Why not? I'm flexible. I mean, I wouldn't have to actually take ord—' He paused with his mouth open, closed it before anything flew in and said, ‘No, I guess that wouldn't work.' He recrossed his legs and said, ‘OK, which one of my guys are you after? Since that's obviously your devious plan.'

‘You came to see me, remember? And now you're conducting this dialogue with yourself and doing just fine on your own.' I picked up a handful of pens and dumped them in their mug. ‘I'm just here to observe.'

‘I mean, you won't keep him over there forever, will you? Because as soon as things get back to normal . . . what particular skills are you looking for?'

‘They've got a lot of interviews to do.'

‘Ben Kellogg then. He's a whiz at interviews, nails them with his eyes and just burrows in.'

‘Kevin, he's hard of hearing and about two months from retirement, come on.'

‘Oh, well, picky picky. How about Jimmy Vee? I know his expertise is mostly automotive but—'

‘Jaime Valenzuela knows the insides of every car made in the world in the last twenty years. And his accent makes him perfect for interviewing any recently arrived tourist from south of the border who accidentally got in the wrong car by mistake after he popped the lock with the Slim Jim tool he just happened to be carrying. Jimmy Vee is not ideal for the jobs I have right now. Who else you got?'

‘Jake, what are you looking for, your dream date?'

‘Well . . . we need to search some records now too. You got anybody good at that?'

‘Oh. Then you should take Josh Felder – he's a real nerd.'

‘Is he free? Can you spare him?'

‘This week I can spare anybody. But if we get another rash of break-ins like we got over the Easter holidays, I'll be yelling to reclaim him, don't forget.'

‘I won't. Can he start tomorrow?'

He stared. ‘Jake, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.'

‘Oh, that's right. Damn, I keep forgetting. Rats! We've got about a hundred people coming to eat. Do you realize how many loaves of stale bread I have to break up? I don't have time to give thanks!'

‘Really, Jake.' Kevin Evjan shook his head sadly. ‘Where would this country be if everybody had your attitude?'

‘Free of this silly habit of basing an entire national holiday on turkey gravy, for one thing. Can Josh start Friday morning?'

‘You bet. Can you remember all the words to the Thanksgiving hymn? Come on, all together now . . .' He went out air-conducting his own orchestra, singing in his pleasing baritone, ‘We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing . . .'

Kevin knows all the coolest ways to rub your nose in it.

Ray phoned in from time to time, told me Pokey was there, had determined the man on the asphalt was in fact plenty dead, and turned the ambulance around as it drove into the lot. He had commandeered a couple of uniforms to string crime scene tape and help him keep people away, and called the lab for a couple of techies to come do the prelims.

‘Lab people are slow today,' Ray said, ‘so I took a bunch of pictures in case we have to move him before they— Oh, here's a couple of them now.'

When he phoned again, an hour-and-a-half later, the lab crew had come and gone. Pokey had finished his preliminary exams and ridden away with the body to the morgue, and Ray said, ‘I'm coming back to the station now. I want Ethan to follow me in – I offered him a ride because we had to impound his car, of course. But his uncle insists on bringing him to the station and coming back for him later. These people like to show their independence, don't they?'

‘Oh, yes. It's who they are.'

‘Right. So will you get an interview room ready? Ethan's pretty unnerved and while he's still feeling that way I want to ask him some questions and get his answers on a disk. Because this is a freaky odd thing that's happened here and he's the only key we have to whatever the hell it is.'

LeeAnn helped me, got the video recorders loaded and the camera set. We set up the monitor so she could observe from outside if nobody else got back in time.

Ray came hurrying in, wearing surgical gloves, and dropped a lot of records and gear – hurriedly, carelessly – in his office. Then, very carefully, he laid a shotgun on his conference table. I watched him silently, since he seemed too concentrated to interrupt. He hooked his camera up to the computer on the meeting-room table, scrolled until he found a picture he liked and fiddled with it till he got the clarity he wanted. When the dead face of a fortyish white man showed clearly on his monitor he said, ‘Jake, you know this man?'

‘No. Is that the victim you just sent to the morgue?'

‘Yes.'

While we gathered up legal pads, pens and a box of tissues, he told me about his visit to the law offices. He had found Ethan miserably prowling the parking lot between Pokey's Jeep and his own car, where Pokey was kneeling over the victim.

He kept saying “I don't know what to
do
”. Wringing his hands as if indecision was the worst calamity he could imagine.'

‘Well, it might be, for a Kester,' I said.

‘Maybe so. He said, “It didn't seem right to leave him lying out like that, uncovered, but they say you're not supposed to touch anything till the coroner . . . God, I hope I did the right things”.

‘I told him, “Go back in your office, I got this”. And he did, right away – he was glad to get away. And of course it was a lot easier out there with him out of the way.'

The victim had certainly not been shot by the weapon that fell out of the car with him – in fact, on a preliminary examination there was no sign of any gunshot at all, that Pokey could see. He had no other wounds, either – he hadn't been bleeding.

‘Petechiae in his eyes and mouth indicated that he might have suffocated – Pokey'll tell me more about that later,' Ray said. ‘Otherwise . . . could be anything that . . . kills people without leaving any marks.' Big shrug. ‘I don't know.

‘The gun, though . . . wait a minute.' He pulled up the Kester case file and scrolled through. When he found the right place in the file he pointed at the gun on the table, and said, ‘Read me the numbers.'

I squinted under the light, and found the number stamped above the trigger guard. ‘629741V.'

‘Bingo.' His eyes were shining.

‘What?'

‘This is the shotgun Doris Kester said was missing from the gun cabinet in the farmhouse.'

‘No shit? Oh, Ray.'

‘Yes.'

‘You know what this means? If this gun fired the shot Pokey took out of Owen's body . . .'

‘Yeah. Ethan's in the weeds.'

‘Except why was it in a car with a dead man who didn't get shot with it?'

‘Maybe he intended to shoot somebody.'

‘Hell, maybe he
did
shoot somebody. Ray, did you bag his hands?'

‘Of course.' He looked offended, rightly so in a way, but am I going to be the top dick who forgot to ask? Never. Nobody's ever going to complain if we test and find nothing. If we forget to test, even if the victim never fired a shot in his life, we can well and truly get screwed to the wall.

‘Pokey didn't waste any time, man, he just made the calls.' The many phone calls necessary to get a crime scene organized, Ray meant. ‘Wednesday afternoon, we were afraid everybody might be trying to get away early, so we wanted to get that body put away.'

‘Good call. Some of those morgue guys can get testy if you call them back in on a holiday.'

‘True that. And Pokey's good at getting everybody mobilized, you know, so before long the meat wagon was rolling out of there and I went into Ethan's law office to see if he was ready to talk.

‘Nice big suite of offices, busy secretaries scurrying around, and these two old gents – they're both his uncles, did you know that? – in there, worried, in front of their walls of books. Ethan was stretched out in a big leather chair in one of their offices, very white, moaning and shaking. He'd been hurling in one of the lavatories. They were trying to find out what was wrong with him.