Quick & Dirty

9

Stone leaned against the limestone shower wall and let the water cascade over him. He was feeling something oddly like guilt, a rare emotion for him.

Holly Barker, with whom he had been entwined for years, but nearly always separated from by work or distance, had, at their last meeting, renewed her granting of his sexual freedom, as long as it was committed outside the city limits of Washington, D.C. While he had played by her rules, he gave himself a moment to regret the night before. After that moment, his regret evaporated. He had needed that night as much as Morgan had.

He dressed and went down to his office.

Joan came in with some messages and dropped them on his desk. “Uncharacteristically late, aren’t we?” she asked.

“I overslept,” he replied.

“I’m sorry, overwhat?”

“Please go away,” he said, and she did.

Dino’s message was on top of the pile, and he dealt with that first.

“Bacchetti.”

“Good morning, it’s Stone.”

“Well,” Dino said, “that was quite a dinner last evening.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I mean, if you didn’t mind the occasional whiff of sulfur.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Dino?”

“I mean that Morgan Tillman has a first-rate chance of being the actual Antichrist.”

“Are you coming over all Catholic on me?”

“I have my ecclesiastical moments — especially in the presence of evil.”

“All right, all right, lay out your evidence.”

“Gladly. Her story is, she came home from shopping and as she entered the living room she saw her husband struggling with another man, dressed in black, on the terrace outside. She dropped her shopping bags and ran to help him, but as she did, he was pushed backward and tumbled over the parapet.”

“Wait a minute, what does the building code say on the minimum height of parapets?”

“How the fuck should I know? Am I a bricklayer? In any case the parapet was undergoing repairs, and several running feet of bricks had been removed in aid of the work. It was low enough that he could have tripped over it and fallen. Shall I continue?”

“Please do.”

“The man ran along the parapet, and she noticed that he had some sort of canvas bag slung over his back. She looked down and saw her husband sprawled in the alley in a spreading pool of blood. She looked back at the ‘burglar,’ and he was rappelling — she used that word — down a rope that was hooked to the parapet. At that point she ran into the house and called nine-one-one. While she was waiting for them to answer, she noted a bare spot on the wall a few yards from her, where her husband’s prized van Gogh had been affixed. When the operator answered — we checked, it was on the fifth ring, they were busy that day — she said that her husband had been fighting with someone on their terrace, and that he had been pushed over the parapet and was lying in the alley, fifteen stories below, and to send an ambulance and the police.”

“Did you listen to the tape?” Stone asked.

“I did, and it substantially matched her story. We had a patrol car there in under four minutes and a pair of detectives three minutes after that.”

“Pretty good response.”

“Thank you. While she was being questioned, Mrs. Tillman took the uniforms to the parapet and looked down to see paramedics attending to her husband. The detectives arrived and she showed them the parapet, then took them further along to where the perp had hooked his rope to the bricks, leaving scrape marks. She suggested the burglar must have had some technique for unhooking his rope. The detectives spent nearly an hour with her, going over her story again and again — you know how that goes — and questioning her about her background and her marriage. They noted that she was unusually calm and lucid during the questioning and answered them without hesitation.”

“Unusually calm as compared to what?”

“You get a wide range of emotions on such occasions, ranging from hysteria and weeping all the way down to calm and reasonable, or as one detective described it, ‘cold and calculating.’”

“How did the other detective describe it?”

“‘Calm and reasonable.’ She also pointed out the bare spot on a wall of pictures and said it had contained a small painting of some golden fields, by Vincent van Gogh, when she had last seen the wall, and she suggested that the picture must have been in the bag slung onto the burglar’s back.”

“And I’m sure your people did all their work thoroughly, with respect to the burglar.”

“Your confidence is not misplaced,” Dino replied.

“Now tell me how she might have killed her husband herself.”

“All right, she came home from shopping and immediately fell into an argument with her husband that may have become physical on either or both of their parts. The argument moved to the terrace, where there may have been a struggle such as that she described with the burglar, and her husband went over the parapet.”

“What reason do you have to think that his going over wasn’t an accident?”

“It’s possible, but all those involved felt that she engineered it.”

“And they felt that on what basis?”

“The couple had a history of domestic disputes. Some of the building’s staff had heard them at it, and she had called the police on one occasion. The officer’s record states that they were both calm when he arrived, and she told him she had overreacted to something he had said to her, and he had since apologized and everything was now fine.”

“And that’s it?”

“Did I mention that she is six feet one inch tall and very fit, and that her husband was seven inches shorter and a doughboy?”

“You can’t blame a girl for going to the gym.”

“No, but you can blame her for planning his death and executing her plan.”

“What about the van Gogh?”

“The apartment was thoroughly searched and it was not found.”

“When she came home from shopping, did any of the staff see her?”

“The two men on the desk both saw her go upstairs.”

“And how long after that was the call to nine-one-one?”

“Six minutes, as far as we can tell.”

“Was the elevator on the ground floor when she arrived?”

“Yes, it’s passenger-operated and trained to return to the ground floor after delivering a passenger. We feel that six minutes is a little too much time to have elapsed, if her story were true.”

“Had there been any reports in the city of a cat burglar operating?”

“Three in the two months prior.”

“So her account is plausible?”

“Then how the fuck did the guy get up to the penthouse? Do you really believe he could climb, hand over hand, on a rope, fifteen stories? And how the hell would he have gotten the rope hooked on the parapet?”

“Two ways spring to mind. One, he fired a rocket that took the rope to the top. That’s how the soldiers on D-Day got up the cliffs at Normandy.”

“Implausible. What’s your second theory?”

“He somehow got into the building and made his way to the penthouse and hooked on the rope before continuing. The husband interrupted him just after he had detached the painting from the wall. Rappelling down was a one-way trip.”

“That building is arguably as secure as any on the East Side.”

“I’ve been in that building a couple of dozen times. I had a client there for a while, and I’ve never noticed anything in the way of security, except the two men at the desk.”

“There’s a camera in the elevator, so a burglar didn’t get in that way.”

“How many people used the elevator in the hour before she called nine-one-one?”

“Thirteen, four of them men, who were noted by the deskmen.”

“How many of the men were workers or repairmen?”

“All of them.”

“Did they keep a record of them at the desk?”

“No, but they recognized two of them, and they called up to ask the occupants if they were expecting visitors.”

“Did they call Mr. Tillman for that purpose?”

“No, he had told his wife that he didn’t feel well and was going to take a nap.”

“How was his body dressed when the EMTs got there?”

“Pajamas.”

“Dino, if Morgan were tried in court on the basis of that evidence, the jury wouldn’t be out for an hour before they acquitted her, and half that time they would have spent filling out the required forms.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s not guilty.”

“Sorry, pal, you’ve got nothing but suppositions.”

“Yeah, that’s what the DA said, and Tillman was a friend and campaign contributor of his.”

“And you still smell sulfur?”

“Yeah. What was she like in the sack?”

“That’s a rude question. Like somebody who hadn’t had sex since her husband died. Did you find a boyfriend in her life, before or since her husband’s death?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. See ya.” Stone hung up, fuming.