In A Strange City

Chapter 30

I could yank your licenses for this.“ Tess and Gretchen bowed their heads, two fake-repentant schoolgirls in the principal’s office. Gretchen’s profile was stony, almost angry, as she endured this harangue in a place where she had already seen more than her share of humiliation. Tess was too tired to feel anything except numb. The threat was so predictable, so cliché.

The only surprise was that it came from Tyner, while Detective Rainer watched, his face calm, his mouth curved in a mysterious but clearly unironic smile.

“We did uncover the motive at least,” Tess said, surprised at how squeaky her voice sounded. Only Tyner could put her so thoroughly on the defensive.

“What motive?” Tyner countered. Rainer jumped, as if Tyner had been yelling at him, and stole a covert look at the case file spread out in front of him. Tess realized he relied on notes more than any other homicide detective she knew. Trained as a traffic cop, he was better at the physics of a car accident than he was at remembering a simple chronology.

“I’m a little confused there myself,” the detective said. “Pitts told them Bobby stole items that don’t even exist, according to the girls’ own research.”

The “girls” exchanged sidelong glances but said nothing.

“Pitts set them up,” Tyner bellowed at Rainer, “so he could make his escape, and they fell for it!”

Rainer shrugged, as if none of this mattered to him.

“Bobby Hilliard worked for these men, then turned on them and began stealing from them, knowing they were powerless to do anything about it,” Gretchen ventured, but even she didn’t sound quite convinced.

Tess picked up the thread. “Either one could have killed him just to ensure his silence. Or because he figured out that one, perhaps both of them, could be linked to the attack on Shawn Hayes. This trio certainly proves the adage about no honor among thieves. They stole from their friends; they double-crossed one another; they even tried to kill one another. Have you gotten search warrants for their homes?”

Rainer nodded, still smiling that same cheerful little smile.

Tyner had more than enough rage to go around. “Doesn’t it bother you that all we have now are two paths colder than the graveyard where all this started? If the Hardy Girls here could have clued you in earlier, those guys might be in custody right now. It’s no good knowing who to arrest if you don’t know where he is. Where they are,” he amended.

“Actually,” Rainer said, “we like it when they run. Because then we know we’re chasing the right guys.”

Not two hours ago, the police had found Ensor’s robin’s-egg-blue Mercedes in the long-term lot at the Philadelphia airport. A clerk said a man with Ensor’s photo ID had purchased a ticket to Mexico City with cash. The assumption was that Mexico was a jumping-off spot for a country where he’d be harder to find- and harder to extradite. Tess had to give him credit for a shrewd move: By using a charter service that flew out of Philly he had eluded the cops, who had given his name and description to all the major airlines at the Baltimore and Washington airports.

Pitts hadn’t even left that much of a trace. He and his coral-colored van had simply disappeared. Tess couldn’t fault the earnest young Dr. Massinger: Pitts hadn’t checked out, he merely walked out, grabbing a cab and heading over to Bayard to get his van. The cops had found the cabbie who took him there, but that’s all they had. Oh, and they knew that Pitts had filled his painkiller prescription at an all-night Rite Aid in White Marsh about 2 a.m. White Marsh was north of town, just off I-95, on the way to Philadelphia, among other places. Tess decided there was no percentage in pointing this out. If Rainer didn’t make a connection on his own, it had no credence for him.

“Ensor attacked Pitts in front of your clients,” Rainer said. “Pitts’s hospital confession to Tess-the details about what he stole, how he did it-will be admissible in court, if you find him. I know the Hilliard case can’t be officially cleared, but I can tell the media that we have identified a suspect.”

“Only in the Hilliard case. We still don’t know who stabbed Yeager.”

Rainer shrugged. “Not my case, not my problem.”

“Pitts thinks Ensor killed Yeager,” Tess put in.

“Why?”

“He was worried about what might be in Bobby’s little black book, apparently. He didn’t know it was all Yeager’s invention. Besides, he’ll have to come back to Baltimore.”

“How do you figure?”

Tess thought of the house in Bolton Hill. “Ensor lives for his possessions. I don’t think he can handle being exiled from them. His obsession with material goods is his Achilles heel. It led him to steal and kill. It will bring him back to Baltimore and his things, against his better judgment. He won’t be able to help himself.”

“Great,” Rainer said. “Then he’ll probably find some psychiatrist who says he’s got a disease.”

“Why don’t you concentrate on getting him to court before you lose the case on some expert’s testimony?” Tyner suggested. “Don’t you need to make an actual arrest before you can claim the case is cleared?”

Rainer fell into an abstracted silence. You could literally hear him think, Tess marveled. He ground his teeth, clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and rapped his knuckles on his desk. The whole performance made Tess think of a mechanical chicken she had once seen at an old country store out Frederick way. You put a quarter in the slot and it strained and clucked and fluffed its metal plumage, and, after what felt like eons, a tiny dusty gumball rolled out.

“I wonder why he went to Mexico City,” he said at last. “I’d have headed to one of the beaches, Cancún or Cozumel.”

Outside the police station, Tyner made a point of going straight to his van and driving away. He was still angry with them, despite Rainer’s cavalier attitude. “Imprudent” was the word he used, and Tess was surprised at how much it stung. Whatever she had done, right or wrong, it had been thoughtful, considered.

The whole city looked gray from here-the sky, the buildings. Tess glanced over at War Memorial Plaza, thinking back to the bright Sunday that Cecilia had caused such a stir in this spot. She saw the Hilliards in her mind’s eye, dwarfed by the great horses. She had warned them she could only establish Bobby’s innocence by proving someone else’s guilt. Rainer was eager to believe she had done that. So was Gretchen, and Tyner for that matter. Even Pitts. Everyone agreed Ensor had attacked Hayes and probably killed Yeager as well, fearful he had proof about his relationship to Bobby. That’s why he had fled.

She wished she were as confident.

“I guess I can move back home now,” she said to Gretchen. “Ensor’s too busy running to bother me anymore.”

“You sure it was him who left the notes and called you that night?” Gretchen asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Clearly, I no longer represent a threat to anyone. My hunch is that Pitts sent the notes but Ensor made the call. I don’t think either one trusted the other-for good reason. Pitts was scared because he believed Ensor beat Shawn Hayes and killed Bobby Hilliard. Ensor may have suspected that Pitts was the one who had the items from Shawn Hayes’s house.”

“But there were no items stolen from Hayes’s house, remember? The guy at the museum said so.”

“The Poe docent told us there’s no gold bug and no locket,” Tess agreed. “But I think something was taken from Shawn Hayes’s house. Pitts’s lies always have chunks of honesty running through them, if only because he’s too lazy to make up anything out of whole cloth. He said as much.”

“Tess-” Gretchen stopped, suddenly shy about giving advice.

“What?”

“If you move back home, keep looking over your shoulder. I didn’t want to say anything in there, but a car at the airport doesn’t prove anything except that there’s a car at the airport.”

“What do you mean?”

“You leave your car at the curb, you buy a ticket. People assume you went somewhere. Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. It’s a whaddaya-call-it-an optical illusion of sorts. See, maybe he didn’t get on a plane. Or he got off when it made the connection in Dallas or wherever. Or he went to Mexico and turned around, came back by car or bus. That border’s pretty easy to cross, especially if you’re white. Besides, we don’t have any idea where Pitts is, and he’s a mean little man. So I’m saying be careful, because… because…” She seemed to be fumbling for another word.

“Because?”

She sighed. Her cheek was no longer swollen, but Ensor’s hand had left a mark of rich royal purple, shot through with red and gold highlights, a misshapen family crest.

“Because you’re not that good. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re good on the thinking end, but you’re not street-smart. You can’t pick up a tail to save your fuckin‘ life, and you hold your gun like it’s a hairbrush.”

And with that Gretchen was gone, their partnership apparently dissolved.

The memory of Gretchen’s words descended on Tess like a cold front when she crossed her threshold later that day siphoning much of the pleasure from her homecoming. A joyful Esskay made a beeline for the sofa, while Miata all but sighed and turned her woeful brown eyes on Tess as if to say, When do I get to go to my home? Crow went immediately to check on the kitchen cabinets, picking up a piece of steel wool and turning on his boom box. It was Mardi Gras on East Lane again.

Tess was left in the center of the living room, taking inventory of her possessions. Everything was here: the dog-flecked velvet sofa, her “Human Hair” sign, the Four Corners tortilla-chip platter she had picked up while trailing Pitts; the oyster tin that Fuzzy Iglehart had used to stave off her demands for payment. There was a restful oil painting of trees, unearthed at a local consignment shop, distinguished by nothing other than her fondness for it. She also had a painted screen, by one of Baltimore ’s best known screen painters, Dee Herget. The half circle showed the prototypical view of swans gliding through a placid pond.

All told, you couldn’t get a thousand bucks for the room’s contents. But Tess liked her stuff too much to put a price on it. In part, she defined herself through the furniture she chose and the things she hung on her wall. She made judgments about other people based on the same criteria. Funny, she knew-and disliked- women who rated men according to the cars they drove. And Whitney had once broken off a promising relationship because the man was, as she put it, “so clueless that he got the Caesar salad from Eddie’s already mixed.”

But Tess was no less silly for her preoccupations. Would it have been fatal, after all, to live in a house with avocado-green kitchen appliances? It had seemed so once, but no longer.

“Knock-knock,” a man’s deep voice called from the other side of the door. She jumped, startled. But when she peeked through the fish-eye, it was only Daniel, his arms full of pizza boxes, a six-pack of Yuengling, and a slender black book balanced on top.

“What are you doing here?”

“I called Crow today, to see if he wanted to go hear this blues band at the Eight by Ten.” Tess’s matchmaking scheme for Whitney may have failed, but Crow and Daniel’s relationship was flourishing. “He told me he didn’t think you should be left alone tonight. So I thought I’d repay your kindnesses to me by bringing dinner and a re-housewarming present. Who’s this?”

He set his armload down on the dining room table to pay attention to the always-demanding Esskay, who believed that all who entered her domain must acknowledge her beauty. The fair-minded Daniel attempted to pet Miata as well, but Esskay kept sticking her snout into his armpit and directing his hands back to her sleek head. Apathetic Miata took no notice.

“She’s one mystery we haven’t solved,” Tess said, nodding at the Doberman.

“What do you mean?”

“The Hound of the Baskervilles. Why didn’t she bark when Shawn Hayes was attacked?”

“Maybe she wasn’t there,” Daniel said.

“Huh?”

“I’ve been thinking about this. I’m a Poe buff, after all. You’ve assumed all of this has been one-on-one. But what if the two men you followed were working together? What if one took the dog out for a walk while the other was burglarizing Shawn Hayes’s home? Hayes walks in, things get out of hand-”

“And what if a gorilla came down the chimney, à la The Murders in the Rue Morgue?” Tess asked. Her voice was gentle, with some effort. She was tired of people treating her work as if it were some double-crostic, a game for everyone to play. “Daniel, you forget. I saw Ensor try to kill Pitts.”

“Because Pitts had double-crossed him. Or maybe they did it for your benefit. Maybe it was all staged.” Esskay drunk on attention, staggered back to her sofa, and Daniel tried to show Miata some affection, scratching beneath her collar. But the Doberman would have none of it. She shrugged off his fingers and walked away, dropping to the floor and assuming as close an approximation of the fetal position as a dog could achieve.

Another knock, a real one this time. Tess opened the door and found Cecilia and Charlotte standing there, holding hands. Cecilia lagged a bit behind Charlotte, a little girl being led to her first day of school or to the doctor’s office for the required immunizations. There were hollows beneath her dark eyes, and her transparent skin had an ashy look.

“I saw on the news that the police think they have a suspect in Bobby Hilliard’s death, that they issued a warrant for someone,” she said, rushing through her words. “You were right, and I was wrong. I’d say I was sorry, but I’m not, not really. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it much the same way.” Cecilia paused to consider what she had said. “Except go on Yeager’s show.”

“Well-” Tess knew it was wrong to smile, but she couldn’t help herself. Cecilia’s apology was grudging, yet sincere. “That’s something, I guess.”

“I don’t mean because he made a fool of me,” Cecilia said, crossing the threshold. She noticed Daniel, gave him a puzzled look because he wasn’t Crow, and wasted no more time. “But if I hadn’t gone on the show, Yeager wouldn’t have asked me to meet him that night. Then I wouldn’t have seen what happened. I really wish I hadn’t seen… that. I’m still having bad dreams.”

“You’ll have them for a while.”

Maybe forever, maybe not. Tess didn’t know how long the nightmares lasted. It had been two years since she had seen a man run down by a cab, and while the nighttime replays were less frequent, they still came, often when she least expected them, after happy carefree days. But she had cared about the man she saw killed. Cecilia didn’t have that burden.

“Wait a minute. Did you say Yeager asked you to meet him? For some reason, I always thought you were just lurking there, hoping to confront him for what he did to you.”

“No, he summoned me, the neo-con prick.” She put her hand to her mouth, embarrassed. Even Cecilia realized ad hominem attacks should be suspended after a man had been murdered. “He left a note at the office the Alliance uses in the Medical Arts building, demanding to see me. Apparently Jim Yeager doesn’t traffic in anything so crude as technology-phone calls, faxes, E-mails-unless he has no other choice.”

Tess remembered the cell phone that Yeager wouldn’t turn off while drinking coffee at the Daily Grind. He had seemed perfectly comfortable with technology to her.

“Why would you go see him after the way he treated you?”

“He said he wanted to apologize because he knew something that changed everything. I didn’t care about the apology, but I sure wanted to hear what he had learned. I guess it was what you found out, that this was all about someone’s stuff. I waited on that corner for almost twenty minutes. I was about to leave when I saw him approach-”

Her voice faltered, and Tess knew she was seeing the scene in her mind. Charlotte must have realized this too, for she grabbed her hand and steadied her.

“Cecilia-this note,” Tess asked gently. “What did it look like?”

“Oh, it was so typical of him. Computer generated, but with some fancy old-fashioned font, like he was using a quill pen. Jesus, he was such a George Will wannabe. But too bombastic.”

Some fancy old-fashioned font. Shit, shit, shit. Tess didn’t have her Visitor’s notes any more, not even the copies. She caught Daniel’s eye, and he nodded. He had picked up on this detail, too.

“How did it arrive?” She was trying not to lead Cecilia, not to plant anything in her mind.

“By carrier pigeon,” Cecilia said impatiently. “Jesus, Tess, what do you mean, how did it arrive? He slipped it under the door. We had a meeting Sunday afternoon, the way we always do. It was there when I arrived to open the office at four.”

And Yeager was a man of regular habits, Tess was remembering, not unlike herself. He ate at the same Inner Harbor restaurant every night-McCormick and Schmick’s, because God forbid he should go to one of the local places when a high-end chain was available- walking back to the hotel as if this would balance out his indulgences.

“I was curious about the stationery, whether it came in a certain kind of envelope.”

“I don’t recall, but I think it was just a plain piece of paper folded in quarters. The door is pretty low to the ground, and there’s a carpet. Something thicker wouldn’t have fit.”

“Did Rainer know about the note? Did you show it to him?”

“I talked to the other detective, Tull, more than I talked to Rainer. Remember, the one working on the Yeager case? I guess I told Tull, but Rainer was pretty cursory with me. He might have assumed it was a phone call, I don’t know. What’s the big deal?”

Rainer assumed, the ass. How in character. He didn’t even read Tull’s notes, because he didn’t care if anyone else’s homicide was cleared.

“The big deal, Cecilia, is I don’t think Yeager wrote the note. If you hadn’t been avoiding me, you’d know I was getting notes, in an old-fashioned computer font, like clues in some mysterious scavenger hunt. I think Yeager’s killer wanted you there. He wanted a witness.”

“But why?” Daniel asked. “Why would someone invite an eyewitness to a murder?”

Tess was thinking about Gretchen’s remark, that En-sor might have faked his getaway, how inferences can be sparked by simple facts we choose to interpret.

“The killer wanted Cecilia to see a tall man in a cloak, a man with roses and cognac, because it fits the pattern of what happened at Poe’s grave. But what if Cecilia didn’t see what she thought she saw? You know, I think you ought to go to a hypnotist, see if someone could shake out more details of what you might remember but have suppressed out of shock or fear.”

“A hypnotist? Oh, Tess, please. You’re getting weird on me.”

“Maybe I am.” But she was only growing more convinced of her own theory. Perhaps she could draw Cecilia’s memories out of her, under the guise of concern and friendship. “You want to stay for pizza? Daniel here brought enough for ten people.”

“I have a big appetite,” he said, blushing. “I guess I overestimate how much others need.”

Charlotte and Cecilia shook their heads at the offer, almost in unison.

“I’ve done what I came to do, Tess,” Cecilia said, her voice shaking with some unidentified emotion. “I said I couldn’t say I was sorry, but I am sorry for one thing. I wish I had realized I didn’t have to fight you so hard.”

She broke down and began to cry. Tess would have embraced Cecilia then, but Charlotte had already taken her into her arms, so she settled for patting her arm awkwardly.

“Cecilia, it’s not that bad. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I thought… I thought I did,” she said, in the broken voice that comes on the heels of a hard cry. “That’s why I’ve been avoiding you. All this time, I believed Yeager’s death was my fault, because I must have stirred someone up somehow. Maybe that is what happened. Maybe someone summoned me to that corner to see the consequences of my rhetoric. Good Lord, maybe someone thought it was what I wanted. If it turns out Yeager was killed by one of us…” She broke down again.

“You didn’t stir anyone up, Cecilia,” Tess told her, in her most soothing voice. “Yeager did. That datebook he wagged on the air? It was a prop. If anything got him killed, it was his own stupidity. Jerold Ensor probably thought his name was in that book. Or Arnold Pitts. If they set you up to witness the killing, it was only to implicate the Visitor. Who’s a better murder suspect than the man no one knows by name? Maybe they thought turning the Visitor into a homicide suspect would force police to do everything they could to identify him, which would lead them to whatever it was Bobby Hilliard gave him that night.”

Cecilia’s shoulders continued to shake as she suppressed another wave of sobs. Daniel, embarrassed by all this emotion, escaped to the kitchen with a beer, in search of Crow.

And Tess realized that her words, intended to do no more than comfort, may have stumbled into the vicinity of the truth.

Yeager’s killer wanted the Visitor, any way he could get him. Enough to pretend to be him, in order to get the police to flush out the real one. Yeager’s killer believed Bobby had passed to the Visitor that still-mysterious “they,” the things worth killing for. The plan had failed, which could mean the Poe Toaster’s life was in danger. But how can you protect someone, or even warn him, if you don’t know who he is?