Cyber Way

CHAPTER 2

Moody didnt like leaving his car. In the patrol cruiser he felt safe and protected from an uncompromisingly hostile world, encased in armored flexan and carbonate, coddled by air conditioning, lunch, the drink dispenser, and as many other creature comforts as the department could pry out of the taxpayers by claiming they were vital to ongoing police operations. It was unfortunate, but every now and then he had to leave his office and get in the car, and less frequently, abandon the car to work in the real world. There were two real worlds as far as Moody was concerned: the one he worked in and the one he fled to as often as possible. All they had in common was that both were located on the same planet.

You had to leave the car to net outgrabed crazyboys, or interview witnesses, or check the backbays for waterstriders trying to run pharmecuties up from Koobah or Whackaragua. At least the waterstriders made life exciting, though things had quieted down some since Haiti had become a U.S. Territory, providing the DEA with an ideal base from which to monitor flights out of SudAm. There was a rumor the striders were using trained porpoises to bring the stuff right into the bay. The bastards never gave up. You could almost admire their persistence and ingenuity, until the first time you saw some eleven-year-old outgrabed on sizzle, standing over his dead six-year-old sister with a bloody kitchen knife in his hand, the familiar feral glaze in his eyes and that horrid unknowing grin on his face. A couple of encounters like that would kill any admiration for the striders.

Moody had suffered through more than a couple.

Nobody, including the Interdiction Corps, had actually found a porp running drugs. That didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Only that they hadn’t been caught. The detective wondered if you could hook a porp on pharmacuties. He wouldn’t put anything past a damn strider.

It was so very different from Mississippi. In many ways the Sip was much nicer than Flo-ree-dah: quieter, friendlier, laid-back and relaxed. Less need to flinch when someone approaching you on the street reached into his coat. It was also a helluva lot duller, he reminded himself. Which was why after graduating from the Academy he’d moved to the Greater Tampa area with his first wife. His appraisal of his prospects in West Florida had been borne out by quick advancement. He’d also lost his wife, married a second time, and lost her as well, along with the physical conditioning he’d acquired at the Academy.

Every year when the regular examinations came round he always managed to shed just enough poundage to scrape by, subsequent to which profuse ingestion of beer rapidly returned him to the rotund form to which his colleagues had become accustomed.

Another reason for his early move to Florida had been a misplaced desire for excitement and sophistication. What a letdown to discover that in a highly charged urban environment those were only euphemisms for more degenerate forms of crime. He stayed anyway.

He could have joined a Mississippi department but without ever enjoying the prospect of rapid and regular promotion, simply because there weren’t as many people to police. Nevertheless, he was surprised when he’d made detective. His background and lack of personality worked against him, not to mention the fact that he was no ass-kisser like half the kids in the department.

What he did have was a dogged, pit-bull persistence that insisted no case was unsolvable, no mystery too convoluted to crack. When others gave up, he persevered. Turn out to be right a few times in such matters and even disinterested higher-ups take notice. Apparently one or two had done just that. His was an attitude that would have been a hindrance on a SWAT team but which in a detective was a positive attribute.

Even after his unexpected promotion they rarely threw any of the glamour jobs his way. That suited Moody just fine. He didn’t like seeing his picture on the vid, because he took a lousy picture. If someone stuck a vocup in his face he became helplessly inarticulate. When not assigned to the street he actually enjoyed being stuck at a desk, accessing the mollys with his desk spinner, doing the tedious, boring, dirty bits of police work that never made the evening news. He abhorred publicity. If a vidwit showed up at the station asking questions about a case he happened to be involved with, Moody always managed to find a colleague willing to usurp his place in the spotlight. No wonder his fellow officers loved him.

An officer who actually enjoyed mollywork was an invaluable component of whatever police department happened to be fortunate enough to have the use of his services. Moody knew he could have hooked on with any department in the country. Maybe that was why he’d received the unexpected promotion. No matter. He was comfortable enough in Greater Tampa, just a good ol’ Southern boy with maybe a few more brains than his buddies back home and a few less than some of the men and women he worked with daily.

Whatever they thought of him privately, none of them ever called him out in public. Because if you were caught making fun of Vernon Moody, why then when you needed his services he might decline to sit down and do the weeks of tedious research vital to your case. Moody’s work had probably been responsible for more promotions than any other single factor in the department. So if any of his fellow cops laughed at his background or his girth, they did so well behind his back.

Only the insecure were guilty of that. The majority respected Moody and his abilities. He socialized readily if quietly, and had made a few casual friends—easygoing types like himself. He wasn’t the only one in the department content to parlay his off-time into a few beers, a ball game, fishing trips to the Glades, or the company of women not too much younger than himself. In a department aswarm with ambitious hares, the presence of a happy tortoise or two was more than welcome.

It helped too that Moody’s appearance was not threatening. He looked fat, slow, and stupid. Striders and ninlocos had discovered to their dismay that in the detective’s case, appearances were more than slightly deceiving.

Despite his usefulness on the street, he much preferred spending his time at his desk, sieving the departmental molly spheres, researching and preparing reports. You didn’t have to be smart to use a spinner. Just persistent and good at following directions. The ability to follow directions had extracted him from a dirt-poor existence in Mississippi, had made him a detective on the largest police force in Florida. He enjoyed the respect of his peers, the admiration of the folks back home, a decent income, and the prospect of a comfortable retirement if some nameless crazyboy didn’t someday expunge his guts on a filthy downtown back street.

None of that could help him now. No vehicles were allowed on Steel Key, not even those representing municipal authorities. The call which had come in demanded that he leave his office. Now he was forced to abandon his beloved cruiser as well.

Was a time when there’d been no barrier islands between Honeymoon Key and the Anclote Refuge. Then the gulf waters had been forced to make way for Steel, Steadman, Briarwood, and Cypress Keys. Artificial islets all, built of fill dredged from the gulf bottom and fortified with vitamins and minerals. Not to mention polycrete and titanium. Rich imported soil from the mainland provided regular employment for a small army of gardeners, and Bahamanian sand fringed each island like vanilla cream on a wedding cake.

There were no bridges to the artificial keys. Instead they were connected to the mainland and to one another by a tube which ran from Steel to just south of Tarpon Springs. Though fragile in appearance, the tube was in fact far more stable and secure than any roadway. Come a hurricane, Moody would much rather be trapped on artificial Briarwood than organic Caladesi. The latter was composed solely of natural materials, and no matter what the ecoengineers said, he’d take titanium over pulverized coral any day.

It was unusually hot and humid for March and Moody was sweating as soon as he stepped out of the cruiser. One of the pleasures of being a detective was that he was allowed to wear plainclothes on the job, but the special light fabrics he wore could evaporate only so much of a body’s moisture. Bad enough to be doomed to a physique like the Graf Zeppelin’s but why did the Good Lord have to add to the tribulations of the plump by making them sweat three times as much as everyone else?

He knew he was luckier than some. Beer gut aside, he didn’t look obese, just big. He’d been told that if he gave up beer he could lose the gut. But giving up beer would’ve meant giving up a large chunk of whatever it was that comprised Vernon Moody. Shoot, he’d even miss being the butt of familiar jokes around the station. Besides which, it would mean an end to his fishing. A man could sooner fish without tackle than without beer.

He controlled his irritation while he waited for the tube system’s web to process his police ID. From a security standpoint it was far from perfect—anyone could still land a boat on one of the perfect, groomed key beaches. But it kept the small-time thieves from having easy access to the respected, wealthy ones.

He stepped up into the air-conditioned tube car gratefully, punched in the address, and settled back in the padded seat as the maglide accelerated over the intracoastal waterway. As it neared Steel Key it began to slow, shunting onto an alley lane, to finally deposit him outside one of the contemporary mansions that faced the sea. Since none of the artificial keys was more than two lots wide, builders had the choice of facing the Gulf or the mainland. Of course “lot” was a relative term when speaking of property on the artificial islets.

The tube shunt and a quaint, meandering walkway ran down the center of the key. There was also a paved, lightly banked road for the use of those who might want to bicycle or powerskate. No motorized vehicles allowed, lest they disturb the tranquillity of those who had paid immense sums to leave such noises behind on the mainland.

Gonna be a hot summer, he thought to himself as he stepped clear of the maglide car and headed for the gate opposite, resenting even brief exposure to the climate of Central Florida.

Though cars were absent, there was no dearth of activity. Scavengers from the Coroner’s office were working the vine-scribed walls and flower beds. One was intently scrutinizing the trunk of a transplanted coconut palm which grew hard by the opaque blue-green glass barrier that surrounded the Kettrick compound. They were looking for heel marks, or indications of forced entry. Likely was a forced entry, he mused. Usually was, when murder was involved, though you could never be certain. Perhaps the killer had arrived by parachute or hanglider, or had scubaed onto the beach. Or burrowed through the soil like a gopher.

They must be pretty sure it was homicide, though, or they wouldn’t have called him in.

The patrolman on duty at the gate recognized him and let him through. He found himself walking through an immaculately maintained tropical garden, following a crushed coral path toward the house. An airborne mist-maker drifted past on its appointed rounds, moistening a dense clump of bright purple orchids and pungent bougainvillea. Moody was unimpressed. Downtown Tampa stank of the tropics. The unique, self-propelled aerial spray was present only because of the existence of expensive, private desalinization facilities.

As he walked he studied the scroll-up on his pocket spinner. It was standard department issue, gunmetal-gray with a four-inch-square screen, the controls well-worn and slick with skin oil. There was plenty of background on Kettrick, and Moody hadn’t been given enough time to peruse all of it back at the office. So far, the most interesting piece of information to come up on the screen was the fact that Kettrick’s son-in-law played for the Bucs. The team was cool and dry in the Northwest this week, getting ready to play the Portland Axe. The instrument informed him that Kettrick’s daughter was with her husband. No doubt she’d already been notified of her father’s demise.

There was nothing in the hastily compiled domestic dossier to suggest that this might be a family affair, something for which Moody was grateful. He was a big Bucs fan and they were short of good defensive linemen as it was.

Though the web was full of info on Kettrick, it had little to say about the killing beyond an estimated time of death. The coroner team was still plaiting. Moody knew that in the not too distant past cops had been forced to wait hours, even days for updated information. That was back before police weavers had learned how to build good webs, before the advent of pocket spinners able to access them. Wonderful devices. Not only could they keep your information up to the minute, but if you got bored with the daily grind you could surreptitiously switch over to a network or ESPN.

The house was full of professionals, a few of whom recognized Moody and paused in their endeavors long enough to acknowledge his presence with a glance or grunt. Their number was a reflection of the dead man’s importance, not the department’s desire for thoroughness. Off to his right several were orbiting a crying woman. Moody angled in their direction.

There was something about very rich people which enabled them to bawl like the Flood without disrupting their poise. Mrs. Leona Kettrick was having a composed breakdown, mopping regularly at her eyes with an absorbent yet exquisitely crafted handkerchief. She was in her mid to late forties, well-dressed, handsome rather than pretty. No doubt she was more attractive when she wasn’t crying. She had the look of someone who’d been teetering on the verge of collapse for too many hours and was keeping herself going on dignity and pills.

Moody stood quietly, able to see over everyone’s head, letting Berkowitz ask the questions. The other detective was much better at interviews of this type than his colleague. Asking no questions of his own while sorting substance from sobs, Moody determined that Mrs. Kettrick had been participating in some social function at Jekyll Island up on the south Georgia coast and had returned only this morning to discover her husband’s body, whereupon she had immediately called the police.

From the tone of Berkowitz’s questions Moody surmised that at this point she was no more than a secondary suspect as far as the department was concerned. If that supposition turned out upon further investigation to be wrong and she was in some way responsible for what had happened, then she was doing a superb job of feigning grief. She was having a difficult time controlling herself long enough to supply coherent answers to the detective’s queries. In his nearly twenty years of police work Moody had actually run across a few marrieds who’d stayed in love with their original partners. Hers might be no more than a good performance. He hoped not.

The two techs from the Coroner’s office didn’t have to make room for Moody. He made his own room. Big as he was, it was easy for him to nudge his way into the circle surrounding the distraught widow. It allowed him to study her close up, take note of the details. Moody was very good with details. It was a hallmark of his work.

He noted them mentally for later inclusion in a formal file: expensive faux jewelry, designer travel-wear, no overt evidence of pharmacutie use, telltale signs of collagen injections at the neck and forehead. She must have been a very attractive young woman and she was fighting middle age with all the tenacity of a last-place team making a goal-line stand against the Superbowl bound. Why was it, he wondered not for the first time, that it was the genetically blessed who chose to employ cosmetic surgery so extensively? Having been recognized as beautiful in their youth, perhaps they felt its loss more keenly than those who had never been subject to the admiring stares of the herd.

Moody now, having never been much for looks, didn’t particularly care how he aged. He observed the good-looking guys on the force, the handsome ones with the sculpted faces and athletic bodies, as they fought losing battles with receding hairlines and sagging waists, and he found he didn’t envy them. It was not a bad thing to be content within oneself, he’d decided.

He adopted his most compassionate expression, a halfmoon smile that gave him the look of a tranquil Buddha, or a beardless Santa Claus. It made him resemble a big, sloppy, overgrown hound dog and took away from his bulk, which he knew some people found intimidating. Mrs. Kettrick took notice of him but did not cease her crying.

The coroner techs melted away. Berkowitz gave him a standard cop “Hope-you-have-better-luck-than-I-did” grimace and went off to put the make on a pretty worker from forensics.

“I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Kettrick.”

She didn’t try to reply.

“I’m Detective Moody. I know y’all have been through hell this morning, but I have to ask you some questions. It ain’t quite the way I’m supposed to work it, but if y’all don’t feel you can manage any more right now we can do this later. I’m sure you understand, though, that the more information we have and the sooner we can stick it into the web for analysis, the faster we can start following up potential leads.”

Still not looking up at him, she nodded, blew her nose softly. Moody watched in fascination. It was the first time he’d ever seen anyone blow their nose in sixty-dollar-a-foot linen.

“You’ve been away from home for how long?”

“Two weeks. Some family friends—their daughter was getting married at the Jekyll Island Club. I was helping with the arrangements. I’m supposed—I was supposed to go back next week for the ceremony.” As she spoke she waved the handkerchief around indifferently.

She was keeping herself under control. Enough control to have hired a husband killer? The speculation on his part was as inevitable as it was premature.

Motive? None visible yet. Certainly not money. Why kill to obtain what she already possessed? Still, people could weave webs as complex as anything the spingeneers could imagine.

“Mrs. Kettrick, would you know of any reason why someone might want to kill your husband?”

“Kill him?” She chose a fresh handkerchief from the endless supply in her purse. “I know of a few dozen competitors who probably wished he’d drop dead, but not who’d have him murdered. Of course, you can’t tell about people anymore, can you?”

No you couldn’t, he thought silently. Aloud he was consoling. “I expect someone in your husband’s position must have made his share of enemies. What we need to know is if you’re aware of anyone threatening him overtly.”

“If so, he never mentioned it to me. Elroy didn’t bring his business home with him. He was very good about that. I know it was hard for him, and I always respected and admired him for it. He let us have a real family life. He was such a good man, detective. He worked hard and he took care of his people. Do you know that last Christmas he called in every one of his district managers and their wives? They thought it was for business.” Her expression was tight as she fought the emotions within.

“He’d chartered a plane. He flew all of them down to Havana. For a week, in the best hotel, at company expense. In addition to their regular vacations.”

Moody smiled gently. “Sounds like a man I wouldn’t have minded working for myself.”

“Elroy was no saint, mind. That man could be hard. But he was honest and fair. What I’m tryin’ to say, I guess, is that I don’t think he had any more or less enemies than any other man in his position.”

“What about outside the business?”

As he listened to her replies he would glance occasionally at his spinner. Not to make sure it was recording: that function was practically fail-safe. He was studying the shifting readout on the voice analyzer. The little telltale stayed solid cool green, indicating she was continuing to tell the truth. Though not admissible in a court of law, it was a useful little tool for on-site analysis. There were times when a little ambivalence on the part of a suspect could be highly informative.

Moody wasn’t one of those old-fashioned cops who relied on instinct and personal observation. He was a ready convert to whatever new equipment police R&D managed to chum out. Anything that made his job easier made life easier, and God knew he was all for easy. Experienced cops claimed to have a sixth sense about crime. Moody preferred to use the web.

His spinner told him that he was talking to a truly agonized, distraught widow and not some West Florida version of Lady Mac. It confirmed his initial impressions. Despite that, he would not rule her out as a suspect. Moody never ruled anyone out as a suspect until a case was declared closed. And even then, there were times when he was reluctant.

He questioned her a little longer before excusing himself. Follow-up interviews would provide more information, which he could study at leisure back at the office. When the initial shock wore off some, she might be able to recall useful details presently submerged in her sea of emotional distress.

First you had to assemble the parts of the puzzle. Only then could you start putting them together. He wandered off in search of additional pieces.

“Hi, Nance,” he said to the slight figure working the far side of the living room. She turned to grin at him.

“Hi, good lookin’. Wonderin’ when you’d show.”

He didn’t know why he felt so comfortable with Nancy Welles. Maybe because of all the women he knew on the force, she was the only one who shared his love of fishing. Or maybe it was her sense of humor. Most cops had one, but it was usually not gentle in nature. Nancy’s was.

“You just got here,” she said.

“How’d you know that?”

She gestured past him. “Saw you talking to the widow. That’d be the first thing you’d do. I know your style.”

“Is that a fact?”

“’Tis.”

“So what’ve we got?” Time enough for gentle banter back at the office.

“Not a whole lot.”

“Motive?”

“Preliminary psych suggests something personal. Not necessarily involving the missus. Maybe a disgruntled employee. All pure spec at this point.”

I’ll bet it wasn’t a district manager, Moody reflected silently. Aloud he said, “I just did my own voice scan.” The sergeant nodded, looking past him. “Everybody’s been running her specs. She seems clean. If she’s covering, she’s a champ at it. As for the Jekyll alibi, it checks out too. Couple hundred witnesses.”

“But she found the body and called in.”

“Kettrick’s been dead approximately thirty hours this morning. She only got in a couple hours ago. Air shuttle, everything checks out.”

“Did Kettrick play around?”

“He was a man, wasn’t he?”

“You’re mean-spirited, Nance.”

“Like hell. I just know men. But they’re no dead mistresses lyin’ around, if that’s what you mean. No evidence of any live ones somewhere else, neither. Just the housekeeper.”

Yes, the housekeeper, Moody thought. Whoever had killed Kettrick had also taken the time to eliminate the only witness.

“So we’re back to the disgruntled employee theory.”

“It’s as good a one to start with as any,” she responded. “Maybe some subsidiary owned by one of Kettrick’s companies up in North Dakota fired some guy ten years ago and he’s spent the last decade plotting his revenge. Happens. Kettrick might not even have known the guy who deleted him, though the evidence so far suggests otherwise.”

“How so?”

“No sign of forced entry and not much of a struggle.”

“What about the housekeeper?”

“In the same room as Kettrick.” The sergeant accessed her own pocket spinner. “Anna Hernandez, fifty-eight, single, been with the family six years seven months. Had combinations to every lock in the place, used the maglide tube to do the shopping, lived in room downstairs in front. Trusted family employee. Too bad for her.”

“How was she killed? Same as Kettrick?”

“Looks that way.”

“Coroner done a determination on that yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard.” Welles frowned slightly. “Wonder what’s takin”em so long? They’re talking gun, but without real assurance.”

“What kind?”

“Ask ’em yourself. Me, I’m just a lowly sergeant. They don’t tell me nuthin’.”

She led him down a hallway, past other members of the department intent on their work.

“I just got a quick look at the body before the boys from forensics descended and shooed out everybody who didn’t know the secret handshake. If a gun was used, it was a weird little sucker.”

“Why do you think that?”

“No blood. I got an early call, got here fast. There’s no blood anywhere, Vernon. He’s just lying dead in the middle of the floor and the old gal’s nearby on some steps, and both of ’em as clean as an embalmer’s sample pack.”

“Then why do they think it’s a shooting?”

“Because each of the poor dears has two holes in ’em. Kettrick in his neck, the housekeeper in the middle of her back. And no blood. Holes aren’t real helpful, either. No vital organs punctured, appears to be complete cauterization at point-of-entry, but they’re still both dead.”

“The main veins and arteries are intact?”

“Yup. Coroner’s been talkin’ trauma. Hell, what trauma?

No signs of battery, use of a blunt instrument, no other marks of any kind on either of ’em.”

Moody glanced up the long hallway. “Where y’all taking me?”

“My secret orgy room. Where’d you think?” She let out a derisive snort. “Apparently this guy Kettrick was a world-class collector of primitive art. To me it all looks like the kind of junk you find out on lawns at Labor Day garage sales over in Clearwater, but it must be worth something to somebody, because it’s housed in a room all to its lonesome. Place is built like a vault. Hurricane-flood-proof walls, its own climate control system: you name it. Then there’s the security setup. First class. I wouldn’t give you squat for the best of the collection, but Nickerson from your office— yeah, he’s here too—he says it’s museum quality. All that tells me is that it’s the kind of stuff rich people buy for investment purposes. You can judge for yourself.”

The big room was suffused with bright, soft light that spilled from unobtrusive sources set high in the ceiling. Bolted to the neutral gray walls were cases and cabinets of tempered glass. Sculptures of wood and bone and clay were mounted on pedestals welded to the floor. Some of the pieces in the room were oddly appealing in appearance. A few were pretty. Moody thought many downright ugly.

Welles pointed out Nickerson, pinched Moody on the butt, and left him with a wink. Moody watched her go, then turned and entered the vault.

He knew Nickerson well enough. They’d teamed together on several cases, even though Moody kept mostly to headquarters while his younger counterpart worked the glamour districts along the coast. Moody didn’t envy the younger detective his rapid advancement or notoriety. Every cat to its ashcan. In a beachfront pit the sly, slim Nickerson would blend in effectively while Moody would stand out like a beached baleen. Maybe the guy got laid more often, but he

didn’t make any more money than Moody and he didn’t command any more respect.

In his own defense, Nickerson wasn’t responsible for his good looks. Nor was he a poseur. Every cop in the Greater Tampa Bay area knew Moody’s reputation, and Nickerson was no exception. He valued the big man’s advice and opinions and didn’t make fun of him.

“What d’you think of this stuff, Vernon?” he said by way of greeting.

Moody looked round the museum. That was the only way to think of it, as a museum.

“Not my taste. Y’all know how it is with art. You got this here stuff at one end and black velvet paintings of St. Elvis at the other.” He held up a big hand and wiggled his fingers. “The kind of stuff I like’s somewheres in the middle.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Want to see the latest exhibit?”

Near the back of the room someone from forensics was running a scanner over Kettrick’s body. The industrialist had been a big man, older than Moody and packing a lot less excess avoirdupois. Six-three or -four, the detective estimated. About two-ten, two-twenty. Someone who could manhandle an attacker, middle-aged or not. It hadn’t saved him, just as age hadn’t protected the unlucky housekeeper. Moody decided Mrs. Kettrick was damn lucky she’d been in Georgia this past Tuesday. Otherwise this room would be serving as morgue for three bodies instead of two.

He didn’t linger. The coroner’s report would tell him everything useful.

What caught his interest was the wall behind the body. Bright art lights illuminated every square inch of it. Something had been displayed there quite recently. Now there was nothing except four chromed bolts from which hung jagged shards of shattered plexan.

At the base of the wall was a pile of debris composed of more transparent fragments mixed with broken bits of wood and colored sand. Kneeling, Moody picked up a handful and let the brightly dyed grains trickle through his fingers. That’s all it was: sand and sawdust. It smelled dry and musty. He glanced up at Nickerson.

“What the hell’s this stuff?”

“You mean, what was it.” The younger detective eyed the pile bemusedly. “A big picture of some kind. We checked with the widow.”

Moody rose. “She had enough sense to tell you what was missing and what wasn’t?”

“Nope, but she did know where her husband stored the catalog for his collection. Easy enough to access.” He waved at the rest of the room. “There’s nothing else missing, and this isn’t really missing either. Just vandalized.” Moody grunted, studying the pile. “Pulverized is more like it. Y’all said it was a picture. What’s with the sand?”

“It was a sandpainting.”

“You mean, a painting on sand?”

“That’s what I thought.” Nickerson brushed self-consciously at his hair. “The sand itself is colored first, then applied to a background. In this case, a wooden one. Cheap wood at that.”

“Great. So we’re looking for a homicidal critic.”

“Doesn’t this look like more than just vandalism to you, Vernon? I mean, whoever busted up this piece of work wanted to make sure nobody could put it back together again.”

“Okay, so we’re looking for a serious homicidal critic.” The detective shook his head slowly. “Somebody slips in here, murders Kettrick, kills his housekeeper ’cause she’s a witness, takes nothing. All he or she does is waste one piece of primitive art, which if it was as gruesome as the rest of the stuff in here, hardly seems worth the price of a cheap arson job, much less a double murder.”

Nickerson was nodding. “That’s about what we’ve got. You make anything off that?”

“Off the top of my head?” Moody responded without hesitation.

“Off the top of your head.”

“A nut, but a nut with a purpose.”

“Why purposeful?”

“Because he only went after this one item. A total psycho would’ve trashed more than this. Since he only wasted one piece, it stands to reason his purpose in coming here was to do just that. He knew what he wanted to do before he got here, knew what he was after.” Moody studied the pile of debris thoughtfully. “Whoever did this took their time making sure. Not much of a motive to work with.”

“You’re telling me,” said Nickerson.

“Mrs. Kettrick have anything to say about sandpainting phobics?”

Nickerson shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense to her either.” He was staring at the body, watching forensics work.

Moody knew that the younger detective didn’t like psycho cases. Drug deals were more to his liking. They made sense. Buyers and sellers and users, everything fitted together nice and neat. Something like this, that made less sense the longer you looked at it, unsettled him. That meant he would leave all the legwork to Moody, which suited the senior detective just fine. Psycho cases didn’t bother him. Logic was always present. It was just twisted.

Nickerson was talking again. “The missus said she hardly ever came in here. She didn’t care much for this stuff. It was her husband’s passion. He’d show her a new piece when he had it delivered and she’d smile and forget about it. Not her style.”

“Something we can all agree on.” Moody gestured at the empty wall. “So she couldn’t tell us anything about this one?”

“Just that it was a big picture composed of lots of smaller pictures; very organized, very geometric.”

“Swell. Our motive, and we don’t even know what it looked like. All this stuff must be insured.”

“Already checked with the local rep for the company. Everything’s heavily insured, all right, but they couldn’t find Kettrick’s file when we asked about it. Seems it’s been wiped recently. Isn’t that interesting?”

Moody’s eyebrows lifted. “Definitely not a nut,” he asserted slowly. “Nuts don’t know how to penetrate insurance company security.”

“Yeah, but they don’t kill people who own art they don’t like, either.” Nickerson smiled. “Fortunately, we do know what the damn thing looked like.”

The detective regarded his colleague in surprise. “How?”

“Kettrick had an old-fashioned still camera. You remember those; the kind that printed two-D images on paper? He kept his own little file locked away, a snapshot of everything.” He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small square of hard paper.

Moody examined the image. It showed a painting some six feet square composed of brightly colored, intricately rendered symbols and designs. Some resembled highly stylized human beings, others looked like plants; much of it was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It was tremendously complicated and as tightly organized as if it had been laid out with a cadcam program. Colored sand on wood. Aesthetically it meant nothing to Moody, whose idea of fine art was a well-crafted beer can, but he could appreciate the amount of time and effort that had gone into the composition.

It certainly didn’t look like anything worth killing two people over. But after twenty years as a cop Moody hadn’t found anything that was.

“Sandpainting, huh?”

“Yeah.” Nickerson nudged the photo. “There’s a little descriptive info on the back. Got it out of Kettrick’s catalog. It isn’t much.”

Moody turned the photo over. His eyes moved, not his lips. “Navaho, it says. Out West somewhere, aren’t they?”

Nickerson shrugged. “Thought you’d want to be the one to dig into it.” In other words, Moody mused, the younger man saw no vid opportunities here and was washing his hands of the whole business unless some arose.

“Phone?”

Nickerson jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back up the hall.”

Moody nodded once and turned to leave, pausing only long enough to study the corpse of the unfortunate housekeeper. She lay face-down near the entrance, dropped by the killer as she’d tried to flee. The detective’s expression hardened. He had no sympathy or understanding for those responsible for the deaths of innocent people whose sole crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It took a real first-class cold-blooded bastard to shoot an old lady in the back. If she had been shot.

Lean close and the holes above her heart were clearly visible. Two of them, three inches apart. No sign of bleeding, just as Welles had said. Death by trauma induced by some kind of invasive presence. But what kind of presence if not metal slugs?

Coroner would let him know. He couldn’t do everybody’s job.

He found the phone, unclipped his spinner from his belt and jacked in. Department mollyserve found the Museum of the American Indian in New York, the Museum of the Southwest in Albuquerque, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Museum of, Museum of…

He settled on the Museum of Native American Art in Fort Worth, waited for clearance, then entered his queries. Two minutes later replies began a slow scroll on his screen. When he found what he was looking for, he thumbed Re

cord, waited another two minutes, then hung up.

The department was beginning to pull out. Forensic techs had scoured every room in the house for hair, dandruff, fingerprints, loose skin, blood, sweat, tears, and anything else that might help them eventually identify the murderer. Moody found Nickerson waiting to use the john.

“Arizona,” he told the younger man. “Also parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. That’s where you find sandpainting Navahos.”

Nickerson tried to sound interested. “So what does that give us, Vernon? A Navaho with a grudge?”

“We don’t know that it was a Navaho. We just know that this involves a piece of Navaho art.”

More often than most people think, the obvious pans out in police work. From starting with nothing, they went to having a prime suspect in no time at all, as soon as they began taking depositions from Kettrick’s office staff. Someone who consistently bypassed Security to telephone Kettrick and then broke into his office to confront him directly made a pretty good suspect in Moody’s eyes. The fact that several eyewitnesses described him as unmistakably Amerindian in appearance was conclusive as far as the department was concerned. It did not require a great leap of faith to assume for the purposes of additional investigation that he might well be Navaho.

They acquired a motive simultaneously with their suspect, because Kettrick’s secretary had heard the two men arguing about the sandpainting. What the detective still didn’t understand was what about it was worth killing for.

The first thing Moody did on returning to his desk was make several copies of the precious photograph. A couple went into the evidence vault beneath police headquarters, incongruous among tagged heavy weapons and ampules of self-injecting pharmacuties. A third he shoved under the mattress of his bed when he got home that night. Only then did he allow himself to relax.

As far as the murder suspect was concerned, no copies of the sandpainting existed. He’d wiped the insurance company’s file and destroyed the original. With luck it might make him overconfident.

What didn’t make any sense to Moody and what puzzled him all through the night was why a murderer would go to elaborate lengths to conceal a painting’s identity rather than his own.