Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

That’s a Switch by John H. Dirckx

At twilight the crickets and frogs began serenading one another, the bats made their first low flights over the tree-tops, and Midgy Lunken emerged from her underground burrow into the shadows of the night. Everything she wore had been salvaged from trashcans or stolen from careless shopkeepers. Everything she possessed in the world she carried in a dingy, threadbare knapsack.

Her home was the transformer vault of an abandoned tire factory where mice ate anything not stored in metal and sometimes bit her while she slept on her bed of newspapers and rags. Midgy Lunken was just under five feet tall, with eyes like a ferret’s and a nose like a blob of putty. It was three weeks since she’d washed her hair, in the ladies’ room at the bus station, when both of the female security guards were off on the same night.

She started her nightly round at the trash receptacle behind the Elite Bakery. Working in the dark, she searched a long time before finding and consuming a couple of stale rolls. Then she emptied a heavy-duty plastic garbage bag of its contents and set off to fill it with aluminum cans picked up from the wayside and salvaged from the hundred or so trashcans along her regular route.

She kept to the alleys, the unlighted passages, the dark sides of walls and fences. It wasn’t other nocturnal predators she feared — on them she could exercise nails and teeth, and fists hardened by hunger into hammers. But the police were merciless toward vagrants, and she had vowed not to survive another stretch in the workhouse.

Around two o’clock in the morning, with her bag full of cans, she slipped through a hedge and followed her usual course along Pemberton Avenue, a.k.a. Business Route 5. A high chain-link fence followed the curve of the road here, hugging the gravelly shoulder so closely as to leave no room for pedestrians. Midgy Lunken’s path lay between the fence and a dense thicket that cloaked the slope rising sharply to her right, above which the rooflines of houses showed vaguely against the velvet sky.

The traffic on Route 5 never quite died down at any hour of the night. Guided by the lights of passing cars, Midgy made her way with ease through the shadows. All the same, she nearly fell over the figure huddled motionless on the path before a stray beam of light limned it momentarily.

A hungry belly has no conscience, much less a scrap of compassion. Midgy had rolled a few drunks in her day. Her only concern was that some sharp-eyed driver would see her at it and have the police on the scene before she could get away. She knelt quickly in the mud and ran her hands over the prostrate form. A man — a big man, muscular, but just now limp as a rag. A wallet where it ought to be. She snatched it and scampered back along the path by which she’d come, trailing her bag of empty cans noisily behind her.

At length she stopped under a viaduct to examine her spoils by the feeble glow of a streetlight. Besides the usual cards and papers, the wallet contained a substantial wad of bills. With many a glance over her shoulder she counted them out — sixty-eight dollars’ worth of them.

Midgy Lunken dropped the plundered wallet down a storm sewer and left her bag of cans tumbled in the gutter for somebody else to find and redeem. She padded off into the night, her mind astir with plans for spending her windfall. First a visit to the coffeeshop at the bus station. Then a bath and a four dollar bed for the rest of the night at the Brethren’s Hostel. And in the morning, Eleanor’s Beauty Salon as soon as it opened — if they’d let her in.

Not long after first fight, two people on their way to work called the police on cellular phones to report that they’d seen what looked like a man lying inert against the fence alongside Route 5. A patrol crew dispatched to the scene found the dead body of an adult white male in his thirties facedown on the narrow path that ran along the fence on the side away from the road. Death had apparently resulted from a severe head wound, which had crushed in the right temple. No identification was found on the body.

When Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn reported for duty at eight A.M., his immediate superior, Lieutenant Savage, met him in the hall outside his office. “Don’t take off your jacket,” said Savage. “We’ve got a citizen down, over in Harmony Heights.”

Auburn had no trouble finding the place along Route 5 where the body was lying, covered now by a blanket and surrounded by an investigative team. Figuring out where they’d parked and how they had made their way to the site on the other side of the fence took considerably more effort.

A chance glimpse of a strip of yellow plastic tape fluttering in the morning breeze led him to a cul-de-sac under a viaduct where a cruiser and an evidence van were parked. As he pulled in next to them, another van, belonging to the coroner’s office, stopped behind him with a squeal of brakes. A dark-haired, heavy-featured man stepped out and pulled a camera case and a square leather grip after him with an air of urgency.

“Turn off your siren, Nick,” said Auburn. “They don’t call you for live ones, remember?”

Nick Stamaty’s greeting was goodnatured but sardonic. “I want to get in there before Kestrel has him posted and pickled and shoved in a box.”

Together they walked along the fence and passed under the yellow tape with which the first officers on the scene had cordoned off the area. Three ten-year-olds, who should have been on their way to school, were hovering near the tape, seeing nothing but hiding their disappointment under a brave show of nonchalance.

Kestrel, the police evidence technician, was making measurements with a spring tape and entering them on a sketch map mounted on a clipboard. The older of the two uniformed officers stood over the body while the other combed the dense growth of brush and weeds that covered the slope overhanging the path, looking for a castoff weapon or a wallet emptied of cash. All three lanes northbound on Route 5 were busy, but the pace was so brisk that most of the drivers probably didn’t notice anything unusual going on on the other side of the fence.

Auburn stooped and uncovered the dead man’s face briefly. “Any I.D. yet?” he asked the nearer patrolman.

“No, sir. Somebody cleaned him out good.”

Stamaty squeezed past Auburn with his camera and took the first of several pictures. Kestrel, habitually dour and reticent, went on with his work as if there were nobody within a mile but him and the body.

“Nothing on him at all?” Auburn asked him.

Kestrel fished a clear plastic bag out of his field kit, which lay open on the path, and held it up for Auburn to see without really offering it to him. It contained a ring of keys, a few coins, a cheap pen, a quartz wristwatch, and two sizes of stubby screwdriver.

“Some kind of a mechanical type?” suggested Auburn.

“His hands would tell you that,” said Kestrel. “Calluses, abrasions, ground-in grit, nails broken off to the quick...” Auburn and Stamaty exchanged glances.

“You got his blood type yet?” asked Stamaty with a coy twinkle in his eye.

“Not my department.” Nobody knew whether Kestrel’s inability to see a joke was genuine or just a colossal put-on. But none of his colleagues could remember ever having heard him laugh.

“How did he get here?” queried Auburn. “He didn’t walk in here with his head bashed in like that. And it would take four men and a boy to hoist him over that fence from the highway, even if the traffic over there ever died down long enough.”

“We figured a couple, three guys jumped him in here sometime last night,” said the patrolman. “Grabbed his wallet and took off.”

“Why in here?”

“They were probably just hanging out, and he picked the wrong night to take a shortcut.”

“Is he stiff yet?”

“Getting there,” said Kestrel. “There’s no dew under him. He’s been here since midnight anyway.”

“Did you see any blood anywhere except right by the body?”

“Zero.”

Auburn followed the path beyond the body for a couple of hundred yards. Owing to the curve of the highway, he was out of sight of the others by the time he reached the point where the path petered out under the Slade Street overpass. He made his way thoughtfully back. The patrolman on the hill was having a rough time struggling through tangles of wild honeysuckle and brushwood, and finding nothing but litter for his pains.

Kestrel and Stamaty were going over the body together, the blanket now draped over the fence to screen them from the passing cars. “The sooner we get him downtown and roll some prints,” said Stamaty, “the closer we’ll be to an I.D.” He made an entry in his notebook.

“Let me see that bunch of keys,” said Auburn. Legally the dead man’s personal effects belonged to the coroner until identity and cause of death had been established. Without getting up from his squatting position, Stamaty twisted on his heels and passed the plastic bag up to Auburn. Auburn fished out the keys.

“The knockout plugs are gone,” said Kestrel without looking up.

“I’ll bet this car is parked less than a quarter of a mile from here,” said Auburn “He didn’t live around here. Not if he made a living working with his hands.”

“What would he be doing around here at night?” asked Stamaty.

Auburn shrugged. “Probably not selling Bibles. Maybe a drug deal that went sour. While you guys are finding the square of his hypotenuse, I’m going to find his car.”

He went on foot because Stamaty’s van had his car blocked. It took him less than fifteen minutes to find the car that went with the keys — an economy sport coupe parked in conspicuous isolation on a residential cul-de-sac. He unlocked the passenger door and locked it again without opening it or touching the car. The interior looked empty except for the typical scattering of sunglasses, coins, odd scraps of paper, and beer cans. He hiked back to his car and called in the license number of the dead man’s car.

When he rejoined the others, they were packing up. “So what’s his blood type?” asked Kestrel, whose hawk’s eye had caught the slip of paper in Auburn’s hand.

“Lee Dana Brendel. His car is parked at the north end of Wilcox.”

“Have they got anything on him downtown?”

“Bunch of speeding tickets. No arrests.”

“Where’d he live?”

“In an apartment on Whatman.”

“Family?”

“Not at that address, according to the city directory.” They moved back along the path in single file toward their cars, leaving one patrolman to watch the body.

“I’m heading for his apartment now,” said Auburn. “You coming, Stamaty?” It was understood that Kestrel would be going over the dead man’s car for latent prints and other trace evidence.

“I better hang around till the mortuary squad gets here. I don’t want to tie up these uniform guys any more.”

“Okay. His place’ll keep. I’ll go around to those houses up on the hill first and see if anybody heard anything last night. When your people come, give a couple of honks and I’ll catch up with you, and we can run over to his place together.”

“Together but separately,” Stamaty agreed.

The tract of land that sloped down to end at the curving fence along Route 5 consisted of three residential lots, all facing away from the highway toward Roseland Court and each “improved” with a house in the three-hundred-thousand-dollar range. Auburn had to negotiate a steep path over rough terrain to reach Roseland Court without making a wide detour.

The first house he came to, nestled among tall old trees, was built in the Spanish style with white stucco walls, a red tile roof, and a central patio facing the street. It was nine thirty-five by his wristwatch when he rang the bell.

From the porch he could see through a window that the garage, which formed one side of the patio, was empty. He rang twice more and was about to give up when the door was opened a few inches on a security chain.

“Who is it?” asked a male voice from the dark entry hall.

“Police officer, sir,” said Auburn, holding up his identification to the crack between door and jamb. “Making a routine investigation. Can I come in?”

“Investigation of what?”

“A man was found dead early this morning near the rear of your property.”

A longish silence ensued. Auburn could smell coffee brewing in the house. “Who was he?”

“We don’t have a positive I.D. yet. Would you mind if I came in and asked you a few questions?”

“How do I know you’re the police?”

Auburn held up his badge again, mounted in a leatherette case along with a photo identification card. “Here’s my I.D.”

“I can’t see,” said the voice. A pale, sinewy hand came through the crack, moved down until it touched the I.D., and went over it swiftly, the index and middle fingers twitching like the antennae of an insect. The hand disappeared, and the door closed and opened again.

“Come in.”

Auburn stepped into the shadowy hall to confront a man in his thirties wearing wraparound sunglasses of an inky blackness. “Come on back to the kitchen.”

Light flooding in through a south window lit up a big kitchen with a tile floor. On the table in the breakfast nook was a half-eaten meal of sausage and prefabricated waffles. The digital clock on the microwave oven said four twenty-two. “Like some coffee?”

“Sure. Thanks. I’ll get it.” Somewhere in the house a stereo was playing what Auburn took to be a modem opera — a flat, metallic soprano voice shrieking acidly to the accompaniment of orchestral discords. “Do you live here alone?”

“Part of the time. My sister stays here until we start getting on each other’s nerves, and then she disappears for a while.”

Auburn poured himself a cup of coffee and took a seat opposite his host, who had gone back to his breakfast. He took out a three-by-five-inch file card, laid it on the kitchen table, and uncapped his pen. “Your name, sir?”

“Conrad Neldrick. What’s yours?”

“Cyrus Auburn. Detective Sergeant.”

“How do you do?” Neldrick put down his fork and reached across the table to shake hands, with a grip like a horse trainer’s. In the strong light Auburn noted two fresh shaving nicks on the side of his neck, of which Neldrick himself was probably unaware, and a blood blister on his left index finger. “What’s this about a dead body?”

“A man was found dead along Route 5 this morning, just this side of the road.”

“Whereabouts? On my property?”

“Not exactly.” Auburn raised his arm to point but let it drop again. “Probably straight back from your neighbor’s house here to the west. It’s hard to be sure from down there.”

“And you say you don’t know who he was?”

“He’s been tentatively identified as a Lee Brendel. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing,” said Neldrick. “What did he die of, do you know yet?”

“A head wound. It looks like a homicide.”

“Could he have been hit by a car?”

“No, there’s a high steel fence along the road there, and he was found lying on this side of it. Were you home last evening?”

“I’m always home. I work here.”

“What sort of work do you do?”

“I’m a clinical psychologist. I do mostly consulting work by telephone.”

“Did you hear anything unusual last evening or during the night?”

“No.”

“Was your sister here yesterday?”

“No, Beth took off for the West Coast the day after Labor Day.”

“Did you have any visitors yesterday? Business people, salesmen, deliveries — anything like that?”

“Not a soul.”

Auburn got up. “Okay, Mr. Neldrick — or is it doctor?”

“Conrad.”

“Thanks for the coffee. I put the cup in the sink.”

“I heard you.”

“I’ll let myself out. Do you mind if I look around the back of your property for a couple of minutes?”

“Not at all.” Auburn left him in the kitchen. The music swelled in volume as he was closing the front door.

Walking around the east side of the house to the back, he was surprised to find that it had an enormous lower level built into the side of the hill. A rock garden, ten or twelve feet wide, ran along behind the house, and beyond that the land fell sharply away to the level of the highway. The slope was covered by an almost impenetrable growth of trees and underbrush. Auburn could hear the traffic down on Route 5, but he couldn’t see it.

He completed his circuit of Neldrick’s house and grounds, reflecting that there must be plenty of money in headshrinking, even for a blind man. He went on to the next property.

The house here was in the greatest imaginable contrast to Neldrick’s — a modernistic creation of rough-sawn wooden beams stained alternately red and gray with sweeping decks on several levels daringly cantilevered out over nothing. The doorbell was answered by an elderly man with a face like a bulldog and the build of a professional wrestler. His head was shaved, and like many men below average height he held himself stiffly erect.

Auburn showed identification and announced his errand in general terms.

“Come on in here,” said the man, gesturing with a hand in which he held a small tool. Auburn followed him into a circular, skylighted living room decorated with antique pottery and figurines. The blue-gray haze of cigarette smoke swirling in the air would have taken the edge off an axe. The man picked up a cigarette from an ashtray and put down his tool, which Auburn realized was a latchhook. A half-finished hooked rug with an abstract geometric design was stretched on a frame in the corner.

A stout woman with short-bobbed iron-gray hair and a pasty complexion devoid of makeup sat staring with dead-fish eyes at a television screen on which a row of gibbering idiots was being put through their paces by a talk-show host. On his second glance, Auburn saw that she was strapped into her chair with a broad band of canvas.

“My wife has a form of Alzheimer’s disease,” said the man. “She can’t talk.”

“I’m sorry to intrude on you,” said Auburn, “but we’re trying to find out what happened here behind your house last night.”

“Sit down.”

“Thanks, I won’t be here that long. Does anybody live here besides you and your wife?”

The man fidgeted nervously with his cigarette and actually dropped it on the expensive-looking Oriental rug under his feet, but snatched it up before it could damage the fabric. “No, sir, just Lambie and I.”

“And your name, sir?” He had already entered the address on a file card.

“Karl Roetherl.” He spelled it.

The name was somehow familiar, but Auburn couldn’t place it. “Your occupation?”

“Retired,” was the abrupt reply, and Auburn left it at that.

“Early this morning, Mr. Roetherl, a man was found dead near the back of your property, just this side of the fence along Route 5. We think he was killed — murdered. Did you see or hear anything unusual around here last night?”

“Unusual? No. Who was he?”

“We think his name is Lee Brendel. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“No, sir.” A series of animal cries drew him to his wife’s side, where he spoke soothing words and adjusted the cushions behind her.

“Did you have anyone here at the house yesterday — repairmen, salesmen...?”

“Nobody. A nurse comes in most days to help me with Lambie, but she wasn’t here yesterday.”

“Did you notice any activity at your neighbors’ places yesterday or last night? Strange cars?”

Roetherl snuffed out his cigarette and lighted another before replying. “I don’t know about strange. This guy over here—” he jerked a massive thumb in the direction of Neldrick’s house “—has a steady stream of visitors. All women.”

“Did you notice anybody there yesterday?”

“Oh yes. Woman in a red sports car came around four o’clock. Pulled right into his garage, as usual.”

“You’ve seen her there before?”

“Many times.”

“Did you see her leave?”

“Wasn’t watching particularly. I noticed her coming because our kitchen window looks right down on his driveway.”

“This wouldn’t be Mr. Neldrick’s sister, who I understand—”

“No, we know Beth.”

“Did you happen to notice any cars or trucks parked out on the street yesterday?”

“No, sir.”

Before leaving the Roetherls’, Auburn walked out on an upper deck that overhung the slope to the rear. The roar of midmorning traffic on the highway was particularly evident here. Auburn almost thought he could smell exhaust fumes. But try as he might, he couldn’t catch a glimpse of the road or the fence down below, and it was obvious that Brendel’s body couldn’t conceivably have fallen or been thrown from up here to the place where it was found.

The last house on Roseland Court was a sprawling mansion of dark red brick with high-pitched slate roofs and numerous chimneys. Auburn’s ring was eventually answered by a woman who had palpably been asleep three minutes earlier. Her eyelids were swollen, her hair looked like a rat’s nest, and she had the befuddled air of someone who has just walked into a wall.

“Sorry to bother you this morning.” He showed identification. “I’m making some routine inquiries about a homicide in the neighborhood.”

“In this neighborhood?” She yawned and clutched her terrycloth bathrobe more tightly around her. “Come in.”

As Auburn stepped into the entry hall, she touched a wall switch. Instantly a long corridor came alive with a blaze of multicolored fights that was like nothing he had ever seen outside of a penny arcade. Illuminated beer signs in seven colors of neon, some flashing off and on and others with moving parts, clustered so thickly along both sides of the passage from floor to ceiling that hardly a square inch of wall showed anywhere. The blaze of fight was so sudden and so dazzling that Auburn couldn’t suppress a start.

“Wild, isn’t it?” said the woman.

“Makes me thirsty just looking at them.” It seemed the sort of thing he was expected to say, though as a matter of feet beer gave him violent headaches. “You’ve got some money tied up there.”

“Oh, beer signs are cheap. It’s the animated displays and antique toys that break you up.” She padded ahead of him in her furry mules to a sunny morning room where half a dozen miniature merry-go-rounds were set out on tables and stands. One was a miracle of gold filigree work. Another had been built along the fines of a Gothic cathedral and had statues of the twelve apostles instead of horses.

“We’re doing a book on elektrokitsch,” she explained through another colossal yawn.

“A book on which?”

“Elektrokitsch. You know what kitsch is, right? Tacky, tasteless junk that passes for high art with the working classes? Extruded plastic stuff, gimcrack souvenirs, paintings on black velvet. That kind of trash. Well, we collect elektrokitsch. Statues of saints with haloes that light up. Statues of Elvis that wiggle their pelvis. Here, look at this.”

She turned on one of the merry-go-rounds, which sprang into life with flashing multicolored lights and a raucous carnival tune produced by a miniature band organ.

Auburn smiled and nodded. He was relieved when his pulling out a blank file card prompted her to shut the thing off.

“May I ask your name?”

“Monica Rayster,” she said, adding, “Mrs. John D.,” as if that should mean something to him. It didn’t.

“Were you home all day yesterday?”

“Yes. All day and all night. My husband’s in South America buying wood.”

“Did you have any visitors here at the house yesterday or last evening?”

“No.” She was struggling desperately to wake up. “Did I hear you say somebody was killed?”

“A body was found this morning down by Route 5.”

“Oh, I’m not surprised. You wouldn’t believe what goes on down there at night. Sometimes we can hear them yelling at three o’clock in the morning. Mostly kids. And they love to throw their beer cans up in our woods.”

“Did you hear anything last night?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Did you notice anything happening in the neighborhood last evening — unusual activity at the neighbors’, strange cars...”

“Oh no. The Roetherls go to bed at eight o’clock, and there’s never any traffic on the road out there.” She was yawning so intensely and repeatedly that Auburn had to struggle to keep from doing it, too.

On his way out he caught glimpses of two other rooms full of elektrokitsch. As he retraced his steps along Roseland Court, he pondered the irony that a woman who expressed such contempt for the taste of the working class — to which Auburn was proud to belong — should fill her house with the very rubbish she affected to despise.

He arrived back at his car just as the mortuary crew — private contractors looking more than ever this morning like a couple of hoodlums — drove away with the body in an unmarked, low-slung, silver-gray hearse that belonged in a museum.

Stamaty was rolling up pieces of yellow plastic tape and stuffing them in his pockets. “Get anything up there?”

“I don’t think so.” He filled Stamaty in on the residents of Rose-land Court.

“Karl Roetherl? How old?”

“Maybe sixty-five.”

Stamaty meditated. “Couldn’t be the same guy. A Karl Roetherl built both of the steel bridges downtown and half the buildings, including the county courthouse and Pierce Hall. But that was back in the twenties and thirties. This guy could be his son, maybe grandson.”

“Let’s head for Brendel’s place.” Auburn gave him the number on Whatman, and they drove there, together but separately.

Kestrel had taken Brendel’s car keys, but Stamaty had the rest of the ring. They knocked twice before entering the apartment, which was on the ground floor and had its own entrance off a closed court.

It was clean and neat for a bachelor apartment. The refrigerator was well stocked with premium beer. One of the two bedrooms had been converted into an electronics lab, with an oscilloscope, soldering irons, racks of tools, and trays of parts. A locked closet, whose key was on the ring, was crammed with VCR’s, midget TV’s, camcorders, CD players, parts, and chests of silverware — obviously a cache of stolen property. “Another job for Kestrel,” said Auburn, locking the closet again.

Stamaty was rooting through Brendel’s papers and personal articles. He came up with a stack of shiny metallic stickers bearing the legend “For Service Call 275-4224.”

In the other bedroom Auburn found a phone with an answering machine. “Same phone number as on the stickers,” he said.

He pressed a button on the machine. A voice, presumably the dead man’s, announced, “Hot Shot Fundamentals” — Stamaty heard it as “One Shot from the Middle” — “Please leave your name and number after the tone.”

Auburn pressed another button to playback messages. The first caller was a woman who didn’t identify herself. All she said was, “Lee, I’ll be at Dad’s all evening if you want to come over.” The only other message wasn’t so cordial. “Hey, Lee, this’s Hick,” snarled a harsh, surly male voice. “If you’re lost again, buddy, you better get found quick, or you ain’t gonna have no job. I mean it, now.”

Auburn went back to the workshop and picked up a bundle of discount coupons from Hick’s Red Carpet Transmission.

“Are they making them electronic now?” he wondered out loud.

Stamaty grunted. “Let’s go find the building manager.”

The woman who answered the door marked “Office” froze up when Auburn showed his I.D. She seemed inclined to feign feeblemindedness until he explained why they were there.

She said Brendel had lived in the building about a year and a half, was prompt with his rent, and didn’t give wild parties or feud with other tenants. She didn’t know of any relatives and couldn’t identify any regular visitors. She thought he sometimes worked on TV’s or stereos in his spare time but didn’t feel he was running a business from the apartment.

It took all of Stamaty’s very considerable finesse and diplomacy to persuade her to accompany him to the county morgue to identify the body. Before they left, Auburn asked her for directions to the garage Brendel had used.

“He didn’t have a car,” she said. “Just a motorcycle. It’s around in the back with a tarp over it.”

That explained the last key on Brendel’s ring, but raised the question where he’d kept the sports car. “Are you sure he didn’t park a car on the street?”

“That I couldn’t say, but he woke me up every morning at six thirty starting his motorcycle to go to work.”

After she and Stamaty left, Auburn had a look at the motorcycle and then called headquarters from a pay phone. First he reported the closet full of stolen property in Brendel’s apartment. The man on the desk in Robbery promised they’d wait until Auburn returned to headquarters with the keys before going to the apartment. Then he requested background checks on Neldrick, the Roetherls, and the Raysters, including finding out if any of them had recently reported thefts to the police. Finally he asked to be connected with Kestrel in the lab.

“Did you find anything in his car?” he asked.

“Not yet. I got some latent prints and the usual bags of dirt. Dollinger just drove it in to the Sixth Street garage.”

“Did you notice the garage door opener on the passenger side visor?”

“Robina model AA. I’ve got the serial number here if you want it.”

“You would. What would it be if it wasn’t a garage door opener?”

In the ensuing silence Auburn could almost see Kestrel’s scowl of impatience through the telephone wire. “Why wouldn’t it be a garage door opener?”

“Because he didn’t have a garage. Not at his apartment, anyway.”

“Well, it’s a remote switch for something. I opened it to check for drugs and test the batteries. They’re good, and it’s got all the original circuitry.”

Auburn decided to let word of Brendel’s hoard of stolen property reach Kestrel through Robbery. “I’ll get back to you later.”

Hick’s Red Carpet Transmission was in a part of town where prudent people didn’t go after dark and nervous people didn’t go at all. There were cars on hoists in all six bays, but only two or three mechanics were at work. A broad “carpet” of red paint led from the parking area to the office door.

At Auburn’s entry a man stood up behind a massive steel desk littered with work orders, car keys, and Styrofoam cups. “What can I help you with today, sir?” Auburn recognized the voice from the answering machine recording. Hick was a big man with deep-set eyes and a waxed mustache.

His mercenary exuberance evaporated as soon as Auburn showed identification. “Just a routine investigation. Does Lee Brendel work here?”

“He does when he ain’t chucking beer and chasing women.” He hitched up his trousers belt and left his thumbs inside. “You know where he’s at?”

“How long has he worked here?”

“About three years. He’s my best transmission builder when he shows up. Is he in jail?”

“No, sir. He was found dead along Route 5 this morning.”

Hick sat down again and recited the names of one or two biblical figures with explosive fervor. “He get hit by a car, or what?”

“We think it’s a homicide. Blunt injury to the head. Would you know offhand of anybody who might have wanted him out of the way?”

“No. No, I sure wouldn’t. He got along good with everybody here. My guys’ private life I don’t mess with.” The phone rang and he made an appointment for a transmission tuneup the first of the following week.

“What can you tell me about a TV repair service Brendel ran on his own?”

“He had some kind of a thing going, Hot Rod Enterprises, something like that. Lee was handy. He could set up a torque converter in the dark. I ain’t so sure about TV, though. I thought it was custom cars.”

“What kind of car did he drive?”

“Lee was mostly a biker. Sometimes he showed up in different cars, but most generally it was a ’cycle. You can lose five or six minutes of a lunch hour just waiting to pull a car out in that traffic at noon. He used to shoot out of here on his bike every noon and ride along the lane markers between the cars. You sure he didn’t get hit?”

“We’re sure. Did he have any special friends here at the shop?”

“Not special. Like I said, he got along good with all the guys.”

“You mentioned women. Would you know any by name?”

Hick stood up again, put his thumbs back inside his belt, and shook his head. “Their name,” he said with a hoarse chuckle, “was legion.”

Although there was no departmental regulation on the subject, officers working on a homicide were encouraged to attend the autopsy whenever possible. Unfortunately it usually wasn’t possible without delaying critical steps in the investigation. At two o’clock Auburn reported to the county morgue to witness the autopsy on Lee Brendel, whose body had been formally identified by his apartment manager.

Dr. Valentine, the forensic pathologist, was just taking photographs of the head wound with the help of his assistant, an ancient, wizened man in a rubber apron with tattoos all over both arms. Auburn stood outside a chest-high Plexiglas partition that enclosed the autopsy table. Next to him Stamaty, the only other observer, was busy shuffling papers and making notes. He told Stamaty about his visit to Hick’s transmission shop.

On the strength of several years’ experience as a beat cop in another city, Stamaty fended himself a pretty good detective. “I would have talked to all the guys in that shop,” he said. “You can bet they know more about Brendel than his boss does. They could probably put a name to that woman on the answering machine, too. And one of them probably helped him steal all that stuff we found in his closet.”

“If he did, he isn’t going to tell me about it. But I see Brendel working as a lone wolf.”

“Somebody got close enough to him last night to give him a terminal headache,” objected Stamaty.

“But why in that particular place? There’s got to be a reason why he ended up on that path, ten miles from his apartment and twelve or thirteen from where he worked.”

“Maybe the girl lives around there.”

“Or anyway her dad. Let’s watch the show.”

After an hour and a half of meticulous examination, Dr. Valentine concluded that death was due to laceration and hemorrhage of the brain in an otherwise healthy adult male.

Auburn was back at his desk updating his memoirs when, around four, background checks came in on the residents of Roseland Court. Conrad Neldrick, Ph.D., was a licensed clinical psychologist. Blind from birth, he had an IQ that was off the charts, spoke four languages, and carried on an international practice by telephone. His sister Beth, widowed for years, traveled widely as the spirit moved her.

Karl Roetherl was a retired architect, grandson of the Karl Roetherl who had designed and built half the big buildings in town. He and his wife had also traveled extensively until she fell victim to senile dementia. Their record was clean except that, years ago, Roetherl had been held for some weeks in Canada as a suspect in the death of a cousin, also named Karl Roetherl. The death had eventually been ruled a hunting accident.

John D. Rayster’s firm supplied specialty hardwoods to shipbuilders, furniture manufacturers, and cabinetmakers. He and his wife Martha were patrons of the arts and champions of oddball causes, but had no criminal records or associations. The last report of a break-in on Roseland Court had been six years ago.

Preliminary laboratory reports showed no drugs or alcohol in Brendel’s blood. So far, none of the property in his closet had been traced to its rightful owners. His car was still being studied. Kestrel had found Brendel’s own prints in it and a few partials that hadn’t been identified yet and probably never would be. There were no bloodstains in or on the car. It contained no significant trace evidence and nothing that didn’t belong in it.

Except the garage door opener. Kestrel had turned it over to an electronics technician, who reported that it emitted a shortwave signal with an effective range of about forty meters. The unit was adjustable, with sixty-four possible frequency settings. It had been manufactured and marketed as a remote controller for an electric garage door opener, but it could just as well be used to start a pump or detonate a bomb.

The end of his shift was approaching and he was getting hungry, but Auburn sought out Lieutenant Savage for a conference on the Brendel murder. Savage shoved some folders aside and made room on his desk for the reports Auburn had collected. “Why isn’t this just robbery with violence?” he asked.

“I think it’s burglary with violence,” said Auburn, “and I think Brendel himself was the one who did the burgling.”

“What happened to his wallet?”

“Maybe he didn’t have one. Maybe somebody lifted it after he was dead. According to the neighbors that’s a pretty wild spot after dark.”

“In Harmony Heights?”

“You’d have to see the place. If you’re walking north along Route 5, the sidewalk ends at the viaduct. From there you can either make an eight or ten block detour to pick up Route 5 again north of Slade, or you can duck through some hedges and follow the highway between a chain-link fence and a steep hill full of trees and bushes. Or I guess if you were completely wasted you might try walking in the street.”

“Which you’re pretty sure Brendel didn’t do?”

“Not unless whatever hit him flipped him over an eight foot fence without damaging anything except his right temple. Dr. Valentine thinks he was hit with a hammer.”

“Which you think happened while he was committing a burglary in the neighborhood.”

“Well, look at the facts. He had a cache of stolen property locked in a closet—”

“Probably stolen. Which he could have been fencing for someone else.”

“Okay. For my money this guy was a professional burglar. In his car is a remote control for a garage door opener. Only he hasn’t got a garage.”

“And you think his M.O. was to gain entry to houses by opening their garage doors with this thing?”

“Why not? He had a whole workshop full of electronic equipment. That remote controller is adjustable.”

“But, Cy, you can’t put up a garage door without waking up the whole house. Not with an electric motor. Ours shakes every dish in the china cupboard.”

“Maybe he only hit houses he thought were vacant.”

“What about the neighbors? Attached garages usually face the street. When a door goes up automatically, a light comes on inside.”

“Okay, forget the garage door opener. You can’t get away from the fact that he was almost certainly a professional burglar and that he was killed in the middle of the night in a place where he had no legitimate business.”

“None that you know of. Maybe he went out there to fix somebody’s TV—”

“With two screwdrivers in his pocket?”

“—took a shortcut through the woods, ran into some muggers—”

“—who killed him with a hammer.”

Savage fell into a thoughtful silence. “Well, you’ve got to play your own hunches. But I think you’ll find the garage door opener is just what it appears to be. This death will be on the six o’clock news, and I’d bet anything we’ll hear from somebody who rented Brendel garage space, or a girlfriend that let him park in hers.”

“Could be. Meanwhile I think I’ll get that unit back from Kestrel and take it up there. Drive around the neighborhood, hit the button a few times, see if any garage doors go up. Or any bombs go off.”

“Are you trying to make me nervous?” Savage squinted at him and chewed his cheek. “Before you push that button, get with Kestrel and make sure they didn’t find any explosives at Brendel’s place. That’s an order.”

He reached for his jacket. “A detective sergeant accidentally setting off a bomb in somebody’s living room in Harmony Heights,” said Savage, “would be, as my daughter would put it, majorly uncool.”

One of the hassles of working overtime into the dogwatch was that businesses closed, witnesses and suspects went out on the town, and other members of the force — including one’s own superior officer — knocked off and went home to catch the six o’clock news. But Auburn wasn’t surprised to find Kestrel still in his office on the top floor of headquarters at a few minutes past five.

Kestrel’s reply to his query about explosives was a categorical negative. “I want you to look at something, though,” he said, leading Auburn into a small lab that was as clean and orderly as an operating room. On the workbench lay four or five tagged articles, including the garage door controller from Brendel’s car. Kestrel picked up two identical black metal boxes a little larger than the controller.

“These came from Brendel’s shop,” he said. “Each of them contains a remote-controlled solenoid. If you hook these two wires up to a hundred-and-ten-volt power source and beam a radio signal at this thing, the solenoid will jerk this rod inward with a force of about ten kilograms.”

“A signal from that garage door controller?”

“Not as it was set when we found it. But it could be reset to the right frequency for either one of these. Do you want a demonstration?”

Auburn looked at his watch. “I haven’t time right now. Just tell me what those things are for.”

“I’ve already told you. They’re remote-controlled solenoids.” Kestrel was visibly piqued that Auburn didn’t care to watch him playing wizard. “They can do anything that requires a pull of ten kilos. They were not mass-produced. Brendel made them. What he made them for isn’t deducible from the available data.”

A neat formula, thought Auburn, for admitting ignorance without admitting ignorance. He consulted a file card and, from Kestrel’s phone, dialed a number. A recorded message told him that Hick’s Red Carpet Transmission was closed until seven next morning. Mentally buffeting himself about the head and face for not calling earlier, he went back to headquarters.

While he ate a solitary dinner in the canteen, he pored over the Brendel file. Then he headed for the downtown branch of the public library, which was open until ten o’clock on weeknights.

He was back in his office before seven P.M. Auburn seldom wore his service revolver as he went about his daily chores, but tonight he spent time putting it in order before strapping it on. When he left headquarters for Roseland Court, he had the garage door controller in his pocket.

He cruised slowly past each of the houses he had visited that morning, hitting the button on the remote opposite each garage. Nothing happened. He parked opposite the Raysters’ and went up to the door. It was now nearly dark and lights showed in several windows.

Monica Rayster came to the door in a hot pink sweatsuit with a matching elastic band around her head. Somewhere in the house a tape player or VCR was pounding out an aerobic dance routine. “Oh, it’s the policeman again!”

“Just a few more questions, Mrs. Rayster. Maybe I should’ve phoned first.”

“No problem. Come in.” She ushered him into the room with the merry-go-rounds, went away to turn off the tape, and came back with a towel.

“This won’t take long,” said Auburn. “I wonder, did you or your husband have any transmission work done on your cars recently?”

She looked stunned. “Our cars? No. Why?”

“Did you have any work done on your garage door opener?”

Her surprise increased. “No. John would have fixed that himself. He installed it in the first place.”

“I imagine you’re probably into doing some electrical work yourself, aren’t you?” He glanced at the examples of “elektrokitsch” displayed in the room.

“Oh, not really. I know not to connect the black wire to the white wire, but John does all the repairs and restorations on the mechanisms. Why do you ask?”

“One more question. Are any of the pieces in your collection operated by remote control?”

She was now completely bewildered. “What do you mean by remote control?”

“Radio controlled. Like these little cars the kids have, with the—”

“Oh no. The only toys we collect are antiques, from before the days of radio. How does all this tie in with that man getting killed? Or does it?” She gave him a bemused smile, as if she thought he had just dreamed up some idiotic questions so as to have an excuse for coming back for a second interview.

“Apparently it doesn’t,” he said, matching her smile as he rose to leave.

Things hadn’t changed much at the Roetherls’. The fog of cigarette smoke was perhaps a few degrees denser and more acrid, and a tray with soiled dishes showed that Mrs. Roetherl had lately had her dinner. But the television still babbled unheeded, and Roetherl was still puttering over his hooked rug. Auburn asked him if he’d had any work done on his garage door recently.

“The garage door?” Roetherl inhaled smoke deeply and expelled it in billows from his nostrils. “You mean repairs?”

“Yes. In particular, on the electric door opener. If you have one.”

“I have one, and it works fine. I just greased the chain in August. What’s your point?”

“Do you do your own automotive repairs, too?”

“Some of them. We don’t use the car much now. Lambie gets carsick, and I don’t dare leave her alone.”

“What about transmission work?”

“I wouldn’t touch that. But I’ve never had any transmission trouble with this car.”

“Does Mrs. Roetherl — I mean — can she walk?”

Roetherl grimaced through another cloud of smoke. “The doctor says the muscles are okay but she just can’t get it together up here.” He pounded his temple with his forefinger, spilling ashes. “I carry her down those stairs every morning and carry her up every night. I asked the doctor about a chair lift, and he said wait a while. You know what that means.” He selected a length of colored yam and fitted it into his latchhook. “We had some good times, though, Lambie and I. Went around the world three times.”

“I understand you’ve been retired for quite a number of years.”

“More than twenty-five. I inherited my grandfather’s engineering business but unfortunately not his genius as an architect. I never knew a pilaster from an architrave. That’s why I sold out while I was ahead.”

“Earlier today you said you saw a car entering the garage next door sometime yesterday afternoon.”

“That’s right,” nodded Roetherl, clearly relieved that the spotlight was off his own affairs. “Around four. A red Alfa Romeo.”

“And you’d seen that same car there before?”

“Often.”

“Did you happen to notice whether the garage door went up automatically?”

“No. I can’t see the door from the kitchen window.”

“And you didn’t see it leave later?”

“For all I know, she’s still there.”

Auburn took his leave while Roetherl was shifting his wife into a more comfortable position.

Neldrick’s house was dark except for a dim glow in the entry hall. But the blind man answered Auburn’s ring at once and on hearing his voice released the chain and let him in. He wasn’t wearing his dark glasses this evening. Touching chairs and door frames lightly as he went and putting on one or two lights for Auburn’s benefit, he led the way into a large, comfortable living room.

“You’ll have to excuse any dust in here,” said Neldrick, sinking into an overstuffed chair. “When Beth isn’t around, the cleaning lady gets a little slack.”

“Does your cleaning lady come every day?”

“No, only Mondays and Fridays.” It was uncanny how the blind man’s eyes, guided by Auburn’s voice, seemed almost to be meeting his with their glassy stare. “She’s due again tomorrow.”

Auburn sat down opposite Neldrick and slowly and silently drew his revolver. “You said this morning that you hadn’t had any visitors yesterday. Do you still hold to that?”

“Certainly.”

“What if I told you somebody saw a small red sports car pull into your garage yesterday afternoon around four o’clock?” The revolver was now pointed straight between Neldrick’s idly roving eyes. Auburn’s heart was hammering in his throat; he could feel sweat trickling down his sides.

A shadow of annoyance passed over Neldrick’s face but nothing more. “A client did visit me yesterday afternoon, by appointment,” he conceded.

“You mean a patient?” Auburn’s voice sounded hollow and distant to his own ears.

“Psychologists don’t use that word, since we’re not physicians. The real doctors don’t like it. But, yes, it was a professional visit. The visitor’s identity, of course, is privileged information.”

Auburn wrapped his left hand around his right wrist to steady it and began slowly squeezing the trigger of the revolver.

“I’m not asking for a name,” he said, keeping his voice level with an effort. “I just wonder why you denied having had a visitor yesterday when I asked about it before.”

Neldrick was leaning back and indulging in a sour grin as the firing pin snapped forward. “Because,” he said, “the local zoning regulations prohibit me from seeing clients in my home. There’s a fighter on the shelf behind you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I thought you were having trouble fighting a cigarette. You sound as if you needed one.”

Auburn’s empty revolver was back in its holster. “I’ll be okay. I’ve just got a touch of indigestion.” Which was true enough.

He paused in Neldrick’s dark driveway to reload his weapon before returning to the Roetherls’. On impulse he walked down their driveway to the garage and tried lifting the overhead door on the right. It rolled up easily on its tracks to reveal Karl Roetherl doing something inside with a flashlight and screwdriver.

“What’s the idea?” sputtered Roetherl with canine ferocity. “You just about knocked me off this step-ladder. You’re on private property.”

“Settle down, Mr. Roetherl,” said Auburn, staying at the open end of the garage. “Tell me about the garage door.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I think there is. When did you have it worked on?”

“I don’t know. Several weeks ago. In August.”

“Back when you told me you greased it?”

“Yes. He greased it.”

“Who?”

“The man who came to work on it.” He got down off the ladder and fit a cigarette. “The controller wouldn’t work. I replaced the battery, but that didn’t help. Inside the battery compartment there was a sticker with a phone number for service. I called, and they sent a man out.”

“And did he fix it?”

“Yes. He also told me the safety code now requires some kind of automatic release, and he put one on for me.”

“That little black box you were just looking at?” Roetherl smoked furiously, peering into the twilight behind Auburn. “When was the next time you saw him?”

Getting no answer, Auburn supplied one himself. “Last night you heard a noise here in the garage. You came down and found that the man who worked on the door in August had come back. That black box he put on enabled him to disconnect the door from the opener mechanism by using a remote control unit from outside. He was getting ready to cover his tracks by taking the box off again when you surprised him and hit him with — what? A golf club? A hammer?”

Roetherl ground out his cigarette on the garage floor with the toe of his shoe. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “I can’t hear Lambie from here.”

“You go on in,” said Auburn. “I’ll put the door back down and come around to the porch. Better lock the door to the basement until you get this door fixed.”

Before Auburn had time to ring at the front door, Roetherl opened it for him and led him once again into the venomous atmosphere of the living room. Mrs. Roetherl seemed to be dozing.

“Why didn’t you admit a while ago that you’d had transmission work done on your car?”

“Because I thought you were getting around to telling me this fellow had been rim down by my car. I knew that wasn’t true, but I wanted to avoid—” After stopping to light another cigarette he picked up his narrative on a different tack. “Sometimes I let my wife’s nurse, Mrs. DePaul, use my car. Last summer I had her take it in for some transmission work.”

“And that was when Brendel pulled a wire loose in the remote unit for your garage door opener and put in a label inviting you to call a number to get it fixed — his number.”

Roetherl, smoking in silence, shrugged and nodded.

“So what did you hit him with?”

“A crowbar he swung at me. It’s in the Raysters’ fishpond along with some other tools he had. Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?”

“I wasn’t planning to arrest you for killing Brendel. At the very worst it was manslaughter. But I do have to read you your rights about another matter. I think I know why you went to the trouble of carrying Brendel’s body all the way down to the road in the dark last night instead of calling the police and telling them what had happened.”

As Auburn recited the Miranda formula, the bravado glare died out of Roetherl’s eyes, to be replaced by a dark gleam of fear.

“I read over some old newspaper accounts of your trouble in Canada back in the fifties,” said Auburn. “You were accused of shooting your cousin and making it look like a hunting accident.”

“And I was fully exonerated,” said Roetherl. “It was an accident.”

“Your cousin was a Marine on leave. You had just inherited your grandfather’s business — all of it. You and your cousin were both named Karl after your grandfather. You had the same name, the same build, almost the same face—”

“That’s ancient history.”

“But you, sir, were the Marine on leave, weren’t you? The man who died was the architect, the successor to your grandfather’s business and fortune. After shooting him in the head, a day and a half away from civilization, you exchanged clothes and personal effects with him.” Roetherl was shaking his head and indeed the whole upper half of his squat body in a frenzy of denial.

“You and your cousin were the only surviving representatives of your family. After your acquittal you traveled outside the country for years before you could safely return and step into the other Karl Roetherl’s shoes.”

“That’s the most fantastic, idiotic—”

“Six years ago you had a break-in here and failed to report it. One of your neighbors did. When the police came to investigate, you claimed you’d broken the window yourself and refused to let them in. Why? For the same reason you didn’t call the police last night and tell them you’d surprised an intruder and hit him a little too hard — because you couldn’t risk having them go over the place and find the fingerprints of a man who’s supposed to have died forty years ago.”

Roetherl collapsed into a chair. “I’ve dreaded this moment every waking hour of my life for all those forty years. All right, yes, I changed places with my cousin. What are you going to do about it now? There isn’t much left of the money. There isn’t much left of me.”

An overwhelming wave of pity threatened to wipe away Auburn’s objectivity. “There’s no statute of limitations on first-degree murder,” he forced himself to say.

“I tell you I was acquitted,” Roetherl snarled, with something like a return of his former pugnacity. “You can’t try a man twice for the same crime.”

“That won’t work, sir. You weren’t acquitted because you never came to trial. You were exonerated of a charge that you had murdered Karl Roetherl the Marine. If your prints match his in military records, you can be tried for the murder of the man you’ve been claiming to be. The case against Karl Roetherl the millionaire architect fell apart because there was no apparent motive. But Karl Roetherl the disinherited grandson, the instructor in hand-to-hand combat—”

Roetherl ran a jerky hand over his shaven scalp. “I’ll have to make some arrangements about Lambie,” he said. “And it’s time for her medicine.”

They went to the kitchen, where Roetherl emptied a bottle of clear liquid into a drinking glass and added grape juice. In the nick of time Auburn woke up to the fact that Roetherl was on the point of giving his wife a lethal overdose. Preferring not to scuffle with an ex-Marine who had carried the hundred eighty-eight pound Brendel a quarter of a mile over rough ground in the dark, he drew his weapon.

He nearly had to put a bullet through Roetherl to stop him. Keeping the big man covered, he called headquarters on the kitchen phone. Funny how steady his hand was now, holding a loaded revolver, when his charade with an empty one to verify Neldrick’s blindness had turned him into a shivering wreck.

At least he had recovered his self-command in time to prevent Roetherl from committing deliberate murder right under his nose. That, as the lieutenant’s daughter might express it, would have been majorly uncool.