PrivateSector

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Speaking of cats, the manager of Lisa’sapartment complex was actually named Felix. Lisa had lived in a pleasant yet sprawling maze of cookie-cutter townhouses in Alexandria, a few turns after the Duke Street exit off I-395. The complex appeared modern, perhaps fifteen years old, was spacious, clean, and well-tended; a nice starter village for upwardly mobile professionals. There were plentiful Saabs and Volvos, and also trees, shrubs, and flower beds, and had it not been December, the place would’ve been bursting with manicured prettiness and gleeful yuppies flipping burgers on backyard grills.

After I showed my military orders appointing me as survival assistance officer, and Janet flashed the ID that verified she was the victim’s sister, Felix, who seemed friendly enough, agreed to let us into her apartment. Felix, incidentally, was built like an old spark plug, and had the appearance of a former fighter, with the shambling, disjointed movements of a guy who got better than he gave.

We walked a few yards with Felix in the direction of Lisa’s townhouse before he said to Janet, “Listen, yer sister, she was somethin’ special. A real sweetie, that one.”

Janet replied, “Thank you.”

He seemed uncomfortable. “I, uh, well, we were pals.”

“Oh… I didn’t know. We didn’t know a lot about her life down here. She usually traveled up to see us.”

“Yeah, I know that. I always kept an eye on the place when she left.” After a moment, he added, “Everybody ’round here liked her, y’know. Real popular, that girl.” After another moment, he asked, “Hey, there gonna be a funeral?”

“Yes. We just haven’t decided where yet.”

“Keep me in mind, would ya?”

“I will, Felix.”

We walked on in silence for a while. He finally said, “She used to have me over for barbecues, when the weather was decent. Most folks here… I hear from ’em when they got complaints, y’know. Always appreciated that about Lisa. She was real special.”

Janet smiled warmly. “You must’ve been very special to her, too.”

He grinned, stared down at his big feet, and led us up the path to her townhouse door. He dug a ring of keys out of his pocket, studied them, then selected one. He stuck it in the keyhole and tried turning it. Nothing.

He bent over and studied the key. “I don’t get it. It’s the right key.”

I suggested, “Maybe she changed her lock.”

He shook his head. “I used it to get in, y’know, the day she died, to shut off the heat and gas, so the bill don’t run up.”

He reached down to his toolman belt, withdrew a flashlight from a loop, flipped it on, and directed the beam through a side window. He stuck his face to the pane of glass and then muttered, “Ah, Christ.. . would ya look at that.”

I peeked over his shoulder. Coats were littered on the floor, some chairs tipped over, and I remarked, “I take it this wasn’t like that when you went in?”

“Lisa kept the place real neat. Good tenant that way.”

My question had obviously been misconstrued, but his reply placed the timing of the break-in somewhere between the day of Lisa’s death and this moment.

I asked him, “Can you replace windows?”

“I’ll do it,” he insisted, “No charge to you.”

He pulled a wrench off his toolman belt, crashed it into the living room window, then swung it around, enlarging the hole, proving himself to be a man of deed and little thought. A line of smaller windows was beside the door; knock in one of them, reach through, unlock the door, and voila. He climbed over the sill and worked his way to the front door, unlocked it, and allowed us to enter. Janet flipped the light switch that illuminated the hallway. Felix flipped the switch for the living room and kitchen.

The sight was a combination of mayhem and efficiency. Janet wandered around, stepping over broken pictures and toppled furniture.

I said, “What were they looking for?”

Janet said, “I… oh my God… let’s check Lisa’s bedroom.”

We rushed down a short hallway to the bedroom at the end. As with the rest of the apartment, it had been violently tossed. The mattress had been yanked off the bed, a bookshelf flung over, pictures torn off the walls. A jewelry box lay on the floor. I used a foot to flip it on its side-empty.

“Don’t worry about that. There should’ve been a computer in here,” said Janet, pointing at a small desk in the corner.

We returned to the living room. I asked, “Did Lisa have a stereo, a television, a microwave?”

“Of course.”

“They’re all gone.” My eyes caught on a family photo of Lisa, her father, and her sisters; the same one I’d seen in her father’s home, the five of them laughing and sailing, their hair whipped by the wind. The picture lay on the floor, covered by shards of broken glass. Janet caught my eye and noticed it also. We both froze for a moment.

I suggested to Janet, “Lisa’s address is in the phone book. Her murder was announced on the news. There are thieves who listen for those kinds of things.”

“Or maybe it was arranged to appear that way.”

“Maybe.” She looked at me and I asked, “Do you have reason to suspect that?”

She didn’t reply.

Felix was shuffling his feet. He said to Janet, “I’m real sorry. Shoulda kept an eye on the place.”

I said, “Happens all the time, Felix. Nothing you could do.”

He shuffled his feet some more, but did not appear mollified.

Janet wandered around a minute more, then faced us and said, “I’d like you two to leave me alone for a minute.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I replied. “This is a crime scene.”

“It’s my sister’s apartment, for Godsakes.”

“ And a crime scene. You shouldn’t touch anything, and we should call the police.”

“Spare me the lecture. I just… She was my sister. These are her things, all I have left to remember her by. Please… a moment of privacy?”

So, what do I say? Look, I suspect you’re up to something, and I’d like to know what it is, but if I step outside I’ll lose that chance? But one has to know it’s time to retreat.

I looked at Felix, and he looked at me, and then the two of us were outside. We contemplated the sky awhile. I finally asked, “You were a boxer?”

“Long time ago. Used to be pretty good, too.”

“Fight anybody I ever heard of?”

“Not that good.”

I shrugged. “Miss it?”

“Nah. Like I said, I wasn’t never that good. Took some awful beatings near the end.” He pondered the pavement and asked me, “You, uh, you were pals with Lisa?”

“Good pals.”

“Uh-huh. She was special, y’know?”

“I know.” When you have extended discussions with former boxers, go with the flow. Too many hard shots in the noggin get the circuits a little scrambled.

That was his excuse.

My dog ate my excuse.

“She did me favors,” Felix informed me. “She was a lawyer, y’know.”

“Yeah. I went against her a few times. Those were my bad beatings.” He chuckled.

After a moment, I asked him, “What kinds of favors, Felix?”

“Legal things. I don’t read so good. My eyes… I probably got hit hard too many times. She filed some papers with the VA so I could get medical benefits… invested some cash for me. I don’t got much, only she made sure it was safe. Never was too good about those things.”

“You’re a vet?”

“Yeah. Korean War.”

I dug into my pocket and withdrew a business card. “I’m a lawyer, too. You need anything, I’m available.”

“Appreciate that.” He stuffed the card in a pocket.

We stared at the sky awhile longer. The night was clear, the normal fumes and pollution banished by a cold snap. Bright stars, a chalk white half-moon, a full and unencumbered view of a spectacular universe. Yet I think Felix and I felt a common twinge of guilt, even remorse, relaxing in front of Lisa’s townhouse, stargazing, while her body was reposing in a morgue.

Janet finally emerged, eyes red and puffy, as though she’d been crying. We walked back to the management office. None of us said anything.

But Janet remarked to Felix as we got in the car, “Don’t call the police until we tell you to.” She placed a hand on his arm. “Can you do that?”

“I gotta repair that window.”

“Please do. But nothing to the police yet, okay?”

“Uh… okay.”

Anyway, Felix dug my card out of his pocket and peered at it, until I recalled that he couldn’t read. I said to him, “My name’s Sean Drummond. I’ll call in a few days, okay?”

“Uh, okay.”

We departed. Possibly it was, as I mentioned to Janet, a case of bottom-feeding crooks tossing the home of a deceased person. The world is filled with foul sorts who profit in the misery of others. Or possibly the robbers were hopheads who trashed the place in a dope-induced frenzy.

A more dubious mind, however, might suspect that the chaotic tossing was in the nature of a ruse to disguise a more calculated and painstaking search of Lisa’s belongings. But why the sheer disorder and destruction? Far safer to put everything back in place, neat and tidy, exactly as Lisa Morrow lived her life, right?

Unless.

Unless something needed to be taken away, something that had to be studied, something that had to be examined in privacy. Lisa’s personal computer, for example. Army lawyers are notoriously overworked, and Lisa probably brought work home, and she would’ve been careful to have all the modern software protections, like a password entry that would require time and a skilled nerd to get past. Under that scenario, the TV, microwave, jewelry, and so forth were lifted to disguise the true purpose of the break-in.

The law breeds lawyers to respect facts and exercise skepticism about conjecture, hunches, and so forth. A leads to B, which leads to C, but A doesn’t leap to Z. And I might have considered it far-fetched had Janet not just persuaded Felix to withhold reporting the robbery. A to Z, right? She had just involved Felix in a crime, not to mention me, and, incidentally, herself.

So we sat together in my elegant leased Jaguar, her having certain suspicions, and me entertaining certain suspicions, neither of us sharing, so to speak. I didn’t like this silly game, but I was forced to play along-for the time being.

But Janet Morrow struck me as smarter than this. When we walked through that apartment, she had bypassed the other thefts and damage, headed straight for the bedroom, and noted only that the computer was stolen. Arbitrary? I think not. Dropping bread-crumbs for clueless Sean Drummond? Possibly.

But if Lisa had been murdered by a garden-variety serial killer, why would he break into her apartment and steal her things? Trophies? Or did someone else do the theft? Was there a relationship to her murder? I was getting a headache.

Also, I was getting a better bead on Miss Janet Morrow. That ladylike exterior, those lovely Boston manners, and those oh so properly reasoned responses concealed a truly conniving mind. Her sister Lisa once informed me that my approach to life was bull-headed. I took it as a compliment, though I’m not sure it was intended as such. Janet Morrow was a spider, building a web, and slyly collecting the men and pieces she felt she needed to solve this crime.

But another thought struck me. I had thought I knew Lisa fairly well. We had worked together for long days and nights on an investigation that was dangerous, tense, and in the end forced us both to search deeply into our souls about who we were and what we believed. I had seen her in court and around the office countless times, flirted with her intermittently for two years, and yet, I was quickly realizing, I had only scratched the surface.

Since her death, I had met her family, learned she had the big-time hots for me, that she was planning on leaving the Army to join a civilian firm, and that she was the type to take a duckling with broken wings under her care.

I was falling in love with Lisa Morrow, after the fact.