A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 8

The Grand Royale was a two-story eyesore, a deteriorating stucco box whose attempt at style began and ended with the modish design of the letters of its name tacked over the entranceway. The streets of West Hollywood and elsewhere in the flats were lined with such banal designs, the high-density apartments that crowded out smaller bungalow courts in the fifties and sixties. They replaced true style with phony ornamental flourishes and names that reflected exactly what they were not.

McCaleb and Winston entered the second-floor apartment that had belonged to Edward Gunn with the building manager, a man named Rohrshak – “Like the test, only spelled different.”

If he hadn’t known where to look, McCaleb would have missed what was left of the bloodstain on the carpet where Gunn had died. The carpet had not been replaced. Instead it had been shampooed, leaving only a small, light brown trace stain that would probably be mistaken by the next renter as the remnant of a soda or coffee spill.

The place had been cleaned and readied for renting. But the furnishings were the same. McCaleb recognized them from the crime scene video.

He looked across the room at the china cabinet but it was empty. There was no plastic owl perched atop it. He looked at Winston.

“It’s gone.”

Winston turned to the manager.

“Mr. Rohrshak. The owl that was on top of that cabinet. We think it was important. Are you sure you don’t know what happened to it?”

Rohrshak spread his arms wide and then dropped them to his side.

“No, I don’t know. You asked before and I thought, ‘I don’t remember any owl.’ But if you say so…”

He shrugged his shoulders and jutted his chin, then nodded as if reluctantly agreeing that there had been an owl on the china cabinet.

McCaleb read his body language and words as the classic mannerisms of a liar. Deny the existence of the object you have stolen and you eliminate the theft. He assumed Winston had picked up on it as well.

“Jaye, you have a phone? Can you call the sister to double-check?”

“I’ve been holding out until the county buys me one.”

McCaleb had wanted to keep his phone free in case Brass Doran called back but put his leather bag down on an overstuffed couch and dug out his phone and handed it to her.

She had to get the sister’s number out of a notebook in her briefcase. While she made the call McCaleb walked slowly around the apartment, taking it all in and trying to get a vibe from the place. In the dining area he stopped in front of the round wooden table with four straight-back chairs placed around it. The crime scene analysis report said that three of the chairs had numerous smears, partials and complete latent fingerprints on them – all of them belonging to the victim, Edward Gunn. The fourth chair, the one found on the north side of the table, was completely devoid of fingerprint evidence in any condition. The chair had been wiped down. Most likely, the killer had done this after handling the chair for some reason.

McCaleb checked his directions and went to the chair on the north side of the table. Careful not to touch the back of it, he hooked his hand under the seat and pulled it away from the table and over to the china cabinet. He positioned it at center and then stepped up onto the seat. He raised his arms as if placing something on top of the cabinet. The chair wobbled on its uneven legs and McCaleb instinctively reached one hand to the top edge of the china cabinet to steady himself. Before he grabbed on he realized something and stopped himself. He braced his forearm across the frame of one of the cabinet’s glass doors instead.

“Steady there, Terry.”

He looked down. Winston was standing next to him. His phone was folded closed in her hand.

“I am. So does she have the bird?”

“No, she didn’t know what I was talking about.” McCaleb raised himself on his toes and looked over the top edge of the cabinet.

“She tell you what she did take?”

“Just some clothes and some old photos of them when they were kids. She didn’t want anything else.”

McCaleb nodded. He was still looking up and down the top of the cabinet. There was a thick layer of dust on top.

“You say anything about me coming down to talk to her?”

“I forgot. I can call her back.”

“You have a flashlight, Jaye?”

She dug through her purse and then handed up a small penlight. McCaleb flicked it on and held it at a low angle to the top of the cabinet. The light made the surface dust more distinct and now he could clearly see an octagonal-shaped impression that had been left by something that had been put on top of the cabinet and the dust. The base of the owl.

He next moved the light along the edges of the top board, then turned it off and got down off the chair. He handed Jaye the penlight.

“Thanks. You might want to think about getting a print team back out here.”

“How come? The owl’s not up there, is it?”

McCaleb glanced at Rohrshak for a moment.

“Nope, it’s gone. But whoever put it up there used that chair. When it wobbled they grabbed a hold.”

He took a pen out of his pocket and reached up and tapped the front edge of the cabinet in the area where he had seen finger impressions in the dust.

“It’s pretty dusty but there might be prints.”

“What if it was whoever took the owl?”

McCaleb looked pointedly at Rohrshak when he answered.

“Same thing. There might be prints.”

Rohrshak looked away.

“Can I use this again?”

Winston held up his phone.

“Go ahead.”

As Winston called for a print team, McCaleb dragged the chair into the middle of the living room, positioning it a few feet from the bloodstain. He then sat down on it and took in the room. In this position the owl would have looked down on the killer as well as the victim. Some instinct told McCaleb that this was the configuration the killer had wanted. He looked down at the bloodstain and imagined he was looking down at Edward Gunn struggling for his life and slowly losing the battle. The bucket, he thought. Everything fit but the bucket. The killer had set the stage but then couldn’t watch the play. He needed the bucket so that he wouldn’t see his victim’s face. It bothered McCaleb that it didn’t fit.

Winston came over and handed him the phone.

“There’s a crew just finishing a break-in on Kings. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s lucky.”

“Very. What are you doing?”

“Just thinking. I think he sat here and watched but then couldn’t take it. He struck the victim on the head, to maybe hurry it up. Then he got the bucket and put it on so he wouldn’t have to watch.”

Winston nodded.

“Where’d the bucket come from? There was nothing in the -”

“We think it came from under the sink in the kitchen. There’s a ring, a water ring on the shelf that fits the base of the bucket. It’s on a supplemental Kurt typed up. He must’ve forgotten to put it in the book.”

McCaleb nodded and stood up.

“You’re going to wait for the print crew, right?”

“Yes, it shouldn’t be long.”

“I’m going to take a walk.”

He headed for the open door.

“I will go with you,” Rohrshak said.

McCaleb turned.

“No, Mr. Rohrshak, you need to stay here with Detective Winston. We need an independent witness to monitor what we do in the apartment.”

He glanced over Rohrshak’s shoulder at Winston. She winked, telling him she understood the phony story and what he was doing.

“Yes, Mr. Rohrshak. Please stay here, if you don’t mind.”

Rohrshak shrugged his shoulders again and raised his hands.

McCaleb went down the stairs to the enclosed courtyard in the center of the apartment building. He turned in a complete circle and his eyes traveled up to the line of the flat roof. He didn’t see the owl anywhere and turned and walked out through the entrance hall to the street.

Across Sweetzer was the Braxton Arms, a three-story, L -shaped apartment building with exterior walkways and stairwells. McCaleb crossed and found a six-foot security gate and fence at the entrance. It was more for show than as a deterrent. He took off his windbreaker, folded it and pushed it between two of the gate’s bars. He then brought his foot up onto the gate’s handle, tested it with his weight, then hoisted himself up to the top of the gate. He dropped down on the other side and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He was clear. He grabbed his windbreaker and headed for the stairwell.

He walked up to the third level and followed the walkway to the front of the building. His breathing was loud and labored from climbing the gate and then the stairs. When he got to the front he put his hands on the safety railing and leaned forward until he had caught his breath. He then looked across Sweetzer to the flat roof of the apartment building where Edward Gunn had lived. Again, the plastic owl wasn’t there.

McCaleb leaned his forearms down on the railing and continued to labor for breath. He listened to the cadence of his heart as it finally settled. He could feel sweat popping on his scalp. He knew it wasn’t his heart that was weak. It was his body, weakened by all the drugs he took to keep his heart strong. It frustrated him. He knew that he would never be strong, that he would spend the rest of his life listening to his heart the way a night burglar listens to creaks in the floor.

He looked down when he heard a vehicle and saw a white van with the sheriff’s seal on the driver’s door pull to a stop in front of the apartment building across the street. The print crew had arrived.

McCaleb glanced at the roof across the street once more and then turned to head back down, defeated. He suddenly stopped. There was the owl. It was perched atop a compressor for a central air-conditioning system on the roof of the L -extension of the building he was in.

He quickly went to the stairs and climbed up to the roof landing. He had to work his way around some furniture that was stacked and stored on the landing but found the door unlocked and hurried across the flat, gravel-strewn roof to the air conditioner.

McCaleb first studied the owl before touching it. It matched his memory of the owl on the crime scene tape. Its base was an octagonal stump. He knew it was the missing owl. He removed the wire that had been wrapped around the base and attached to the intake grill of the air conditioner. He noticed that the grill and metal covering of the unit were covered with old bird droppings. He surmised that the droppings were a maintenance problem and Rohrshak, who apparently managed this building as well as the one across the street, had taken the owl from Gunn’s apartment to use to keep the birds away.

McCaleb took the wire and looped it around the owl’s neck so that he could carry it without touching it, though he doubted there would be any usable fingerprint or fiber evidence remaining on it. He lifted it off the air conditioner and headed back to the stairs.

When McCaleb stepped back into Edward Gunn’s apartment he saw two crime scene techs getting equipment out of a toolbox. A stepladder was standing in front of the china cabinet.

“You might want to start with this,” he said.

He watched Rohrshak’s eyes widen as he entered the room and placed the plastic owl on the table.

“You manage the place across the street, don’t you, Mr. Rohrshak?”

“Uh…”

“It’s okay. It’s easy enough to find out.”

“Yes, he does,” Winston said, bending down to look at the owl. “He was over there when we needed him on the day of the murder. He lives there.”

“Any idea how this ended up on the roof?” McCaleb asked.

Rohrshak still didn’t answer.

“Guess it just flew over, right?”

Rohrshak couldn’t take his eyes off the owl.

“Tell you what, you can go now, Mr. Rohrshak. But stay around your place. If we get a print off the bird or the cabinet, we’re going to need to take a set of yours for comparison.”

Now Rohrshak looked at McCaleb and his eyes grew even wider.

“Go on, Mr. Rohrshak.”

The building manager turned and slowly headed out of the apartment.

“And shut the door, please,” McCaleb called after him.

After he was gone and the door was shut Winston almost burst into laughter.

“Terry, you’re being so hard on him. He didn’t really do anything wrong, you know. We cleared the place, he let the sister take what she wanted and then what was he supposed to do, try to rent the place with this stupid owl up there?”

McCaleb shook his head.

“He lied to us. That was wrong. I almost blew a gasket climbing that building across the street. He could have just told us it was up there.”

“Well, he’s properly scared now. I think he learned his lesson.”

“Whatever.”

He stepped back so one of the techs could go to work on the owl while the other climbed the ladder to work on the top of the cabinet.

McCaleb studied the bird as the tech brushed on black fingerprint powder. It appeared that the owl was hand painted. It was dark brown and black on its wings, head and back. Its chest was a lighter brown with some yellow highlighting. Its eyes were a shiny black.

“Has this been outside?” the tech asked.

“Unfortunately,” McCaleb answered, remembering the rains that had swept off the mainland and out to Catalina the week before.

“Well, I’m not getting anything.”

“Figures.”

McCaleb looked at Winston, his eyes portraying renewed anger with Rohrshak.

“Nothing up here, either,” the other tech said. “Too much dust.”