Scent of Evil

25

I was waiting outside Fred McDermott’s door when he walked in at 7:45.

He looked surprised to see me, perhaps even startled. “Hi, Joe, long time. How’s the investigation going?” He fumbled to extract his keys from his pocket, dropped them, and let out a nervous laugh as he bent over to retrieve them. “Oh, oh. Sign of a bad day coming.”

I followed him inside. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

The dimensions of his office were almost precisely the same as mine, but he still had the older, taller ceiling, and no window to the reception area. The mad renovator had yet to cast his hellish spell on McDermott’s corner of the building. Indeed, he even had an air-conditioner, which he switched on before putting his briefcase on the desk. The initial blast of warm air smelled dusty and oddly electrical.

He motioned me to sit, as he did so himself. He looked quite pleased at my comment. “Bringing me in as an expert witness?”

“No. I’m interested in what you were doing on Horton Place the day Milly Crawford was killed.” I’d picked my words carefully, fully intending their implied suspicion.

His face went through a fast series of expressions, from very still to bemused to mournful. “Yeah, can you believe that? Talk about bad timing. You guys scared the hell out of me.”

“What were you doing there?”

He blinked at me several times in silence, as if slowly getting the gist of my question. “I went there to meet someone…”

“Who?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly. I got a phone call from some guy, telling me he was working on that new motel going up near the Reformer building, and that there were a bunch of violations he thought I should know about.”

“He told you to meet in Milly’s building?”

“In the alleyway out back.”

“When did you get the call?”

“Just before. He sounded real nervous, said he’d been sitting on this a long time, trying to get up the nerve to tell someone. I drove right over and got there just as everything went crazy.”

“If the guy was on the motel job, why wasn’t he working then? It was the middle of the day.”

McDermott’s mouth was now half open. “I get calls like that all the time, pissant stuff, like when some tenant gets mad at a landlord.”

“You get a similar call to go to the Brooks House yesterday?”

The mouth fell all the way. “Have you been following me?”

“Let’s say we’ve been bumping into you. What did the guy sound like who called you out to Milly’s neighborhood?”

He gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. Intense-talking about how people were going to die if the motel went up the way it was being built.”

“Didn’t any of that strike you as unusual?”

“Well, sure, but if what he was saying was true… I mean, I wasn’t going to tell him to call my secretary for an appointment.”

“Did you hear or see anyone or anything unusual?”

He loosened his tie. “No. No one showed up.”

“Anyone enter the building?”

“A couple of kids left just before all hell broke loose, but that was it. I never heard any shots or anything.”

“You never heard from the guy who’d called you?”

McDermott shook his head. “I went out to the motel site; checked it over with a fine-tooth comb. Place was as clean as a whistle; it’s being built closer to code than my own house.”

“Who called you about Brooks House?”

He held up his hand at my renewed, colder tone of voice. “Joe, do you think I’m up to something? ’Cause if you do, maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

Good move, I thought, too much naïveté could be as bad as too little. “Do you feel the urge to call your lawyer?”

He loosened his already tortured tie some more. “The urge? I want to know if there’s a need. What the hell is going on?”

His voice had finally gained an edge. “We have a lot of people out there right now looking under every rock they can find. If a name pops up, we check it out. Yours popped up twice, once at Milly’s place, and again when we were speaking with the manager of the Brooks House. What brought you out to Brooks House, Fred?”

“Again, I got a call, from somebody telling me-”

“Same guy as before?”

“Huh? No, this one had an accent.”

“But it was a man?”

“Yeah.”

“Could the accent’ve been faked?”

He paused, his brow furrowed. “Well, I… Maybe. I don’t know; I hadn’t thought about it. I mean, I hadn’t put the two voices together before.”

“What did the guy tell you?”

“He said Weller was renting out his tower room to a bunch of bums, that they were using the fire escape as a front door, and that, quote-unquote, ‘weird shit’ was going on in the apartment that the town ought to know about.”

“This caller didn’t leave a name or number?”

“No, but when I went over there, I had a feeling there might be something to it. The fire escape had obviously been used, and a few of the other tenants admitted hearing people going over the roof. And Weller was very belligerent. Still, I can’t do anything until I catch them at it, which isn’t likely. I don’t have the staff.”

“You didn’t see any of them?”

“No. Of course, Weller wouldn’t let me into his apartment. He might have had an army of bums in there, for all I know. I looked around from the outside, you know, checking out the fire escape, but I didn’t see anything that caught my eye.”

I let a few seconds of silence pass by. Now was the time for him to flaunt his innocence again, to bring up lawyers and the appearance that he felt he’d been falsely accused.

He remained quiet.

I got up and moved toward the door.

“Joe,” he blurted out, like an actor missing his cue.

I paused at the threshold.

He gave me an awkward smile. “I’m not in any trouble, am I? You’re not thinking I had anything to do with people dying?”

I hesitated. Nothing he’d told me had diminished him as a suspect, which meant he was either as pure as fresh snow or very clever. “I don’t know what to think, Fred. Sure as hell somebody killed those people.”

I had left a note with Harriet to schedule a staff meeting at eight, after I’d finished with McDermott. I therefore entered a detective bureau that was fully manned and waiting. Everyone followed me into the meeting room.

I waited for them to sit. “We found Charlie Jardine in the ground four long days ago. That’s not good for our side. Assuming John Woll’s innocent, then the scent that might lead us to Jardine’s killer is getting colder and colder. That means we’re going to have to depend on each other like never before. This is the first time the entire squad has had to work on a single case. We all have different styles, different paces, and I know that can cause problems.”

No one debated the point. “If you start running into each other, I want to hear about it. Maybe we can arrange it so the friction is reduced. But keep in mind, there aren’t enough of us to go around, so there’ll be some head butting.”

There were some barely discernible nods around the table.

“Okay, in case anyone is keeping score, we now have three lawsuits filed against us and a fourth pending. Mark Cappelli and the motorist who almost got swiped by one of our guys have been joined by the bridge-repair people, and Arthur Clyde is still scratching his head on whether to join the crowd or not.”

I paused to let the bad news settle in. “The point to all this is: forget it. Let everyone else focus on the fireworks. The more we stick to our job, the more likely it is we’ll come out ahead. Let’s go over what we have so far.”

I filled them in on what Willette had dug up on Jardine and ABC Investments, underscoring what I’d put in my daily report.

Klesczewski cleared his throat. “It sounds like hard evidence might be a little difficult to come by on that.”

“Maybe. We may not need it if we can get other people to corroborate Willette’s suspicions. Ron, you were looking into the names on Milly’s list; what’ve you got so far? Do the two Putney Road bankers have a connection with ABC?”

Ron looked a little uneasy. “Well, I don’t know. The ABC angle didn’t surface until your talk with Willette last night, which occurred after my check on them. All I found out was pretty routine: what they did, how long they’d worked there, did they have any criminal history… I did find out that Kenny Thomas was reputed to be fond of an occasional toot of cocaine.”

“Reliable source?”

“I think so.”

“But you didn’t interview Thomas or Atwater?”

“No, they weren’t there. I plan to do that today.”

“What about Jake Hanson? You told me he owned two warehouses on Birge Street. How does he check out?”

Klesczewski looked at his notes. “He does have a record. Got nabbed a couple of times hauling goods across the Canadian border illegally. Fish and Game got him once for slipping out-of-season venison into the legitimate market. He was buying from a bunch of poachers, most of them up north, and then selling the meat in Boston and New York, where it was trendy and no questions were asked. He copped a plea and turned in most of the hunters to avoid doing time.”

“Friendly fella,” DeFlorio muttered.

“Any narcotics?” I asked.

“No. The list goes on, but it’s mostly along the same lines; nothing violent, nothing hard-core.”

“Did you check out the warehouses?”

“Yes. Seemed on the up-and-up. He’s got them divided into sections. Some he rents to businesses, like a mail-order outfit, others he just rents the space for storage. There’s a tree surgery business that parks its trucks in one part. I interviewed several of the tenants. Most of them had never met the man, and those who had reported that Hanson was your typical old chummy type, full of bad jokes and easy talk.”

“What about Mark Cappelli?”

Ron pulled another sheet of paper from the folder before him. “Got an armed robbery conviction; several assaults; he’s done time. It’s a grab bag, but it’s all violent, and he seems to keep it up to date.”

I leaned back in my chair and locked my fingers behind my neck. “So what do we make of Milly’s list so far?”

Tyler addressed Ron. “No connections between any of them?”

“Nope-except for Thomas and Paula Atwater, the bankers. They work in the same building. Of course, this is all preliminary. If we dig deeper, we may find something.”

Sammie tapped the tabletop with her pencil. “A guy with a warehouse, an ex-con who drives trucks, two more who handle money, one of which does cocaine. It’s got potential, you have to admit.”

I smiled at that-Sammie had made the same connections I had, especially concerning Thomas’s drug habit. “I agree. I want you and Ron to look for the connection. And keep the ABC angle in your sights, too. It might be pure coincidence that ABC landed the Putney Road Bank’s pension fund, but it also might be that the bank is the link between Jardine, Wentworth, and Clyde on one side, and Milly and his list of folks on the other.”

I looked at Dennis. “What’s happening with your efforts? Both the Jardine and the Crawford canvasses have been dumped in your lap. Anything new?”

Dennis cleared his throat. “Well, technically, it’s no longer our jurisdiction, but I did find someone who claims to have seen John Woll at the embankment the night Jardine was killed. A woman who lives in the Elliot Street Apartments, complete with a pair of binoculars. She says a bright flame first caught her attention. That’s good news, of course, but she also says she thought the policeman was acting ‘very suspicious,’ to use her words, and that he was lighting the flare, not putting it out.”

“But it was a policeman?” I asked.

DeFlorio gave me a lopsided frown. “I have my doubts. That’s what she claims. She may have seen something, but I think the policeman thing came to her after the press reports. There were a few other details that sounded fuzzy, too. Anyhow, it’s out of our hands now.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing much. Jardine was seen going to work the morning of the day he was killed, but that just corroborates what Clyde told us. He wasn’t seen coming home, although he must’ve to change clothes and turn on the air-conditioning. I couldn’t find any restaurant that served him dinner or any storeowners that saw him. I did find his car, by the way, in the lot by his office, covered with parking violations.”

“I took a look,” Tyler interrupted. “Nothing.”

DeFlorio resumed. “As far as I can tell, the guy vanished as soon as he left work.”

“Assuming he did leave work, at least under his own power,” Sammie interjected.

I turned to Pierre Lavoie, the temporary member of our group. “Pierre, what about the background searches into Jardine and the Wolls?”

Lavoie glanced around uncomfortably. Not only was he low man on the totem pole, but the recent fireworks in the room had made him a little gun-shy. “I’ve found several people who knew all three of them. I didn’t find much new-the Wolls were an item, but Rose had eyes for Jardine as well. It turns out that wasn’t too unusual for her… I mean, Jardine wasn’t the only one.”

“You haven’t found anything about Jardine that might tie into his death?”

“He did a lot of drugs. I was hoping I could track the drugs to a supplier, but so far, it’s been no luck.”

I turned to J.P. and raised my eyebrows.

He started right in. “One of the reasons I checked Jardine’s car was I had found some dirt on his shoes that didn’t correspond to the grave site. Turns out it’s got a lot of fuel oil in it, along with some old brick dust-totally incompatible with any dirt in or around his house. None of it was ingrained, and beneath it was soil that did fit the soil outside the house.”

“Which tells you what?”

“That he picked it up at the time of his death, in an area where number-two crude oil is handled, like around a furnace in a dirt-floor basement somewhere.”

“But not his own basement?”

Tyler shook his head. “No. That’s paved and clean as a whistle. I think it was an older building, possibly one with an old brick foundation where the brick is beginning to erode. I also think either the feeder pipe from the oil storage tank to the furnace is leaking, or maybe the tank itself, because a healthy system doesn’t have that much oil around it. The delivery pipe is almost always outside the building, not only because it’s convenient, but also so no oil can spill inside. One other thing,” he added, “the high concentration of oil also made me think the building’s owner is probably broke or sloppy, or maybe that the building is badly maintained. Otherwise, a serviceman would have been called in to stop the leak. Of course, that last point is pure guesswork.”

“You mentioned searching the car,” I reminded him.

“Right. No oil-tainted dirt, which would have been there if he’d driven at all. Proof again that he got that dirt sometime between when he left his car and when we found him. That means he either drove home, changed, and drove back downtown to meet someone, leaving his car in the lot, or he hitched a ride home with someone straight from work.”

“That’s it?”

He shrugged. “That’s it for the car. I compared the gum you found last night in the Brooks House to the stuff we found under the bridge-it’s a match. Otherwise, we don’t have much to show.”

Klesczewski spoke in a cautious voice. “It’s possible the murderer forced Jardine to drive back to the lot after grabbing him at home, to confuse us.”

I conceded the point. “Maybe we ought to expand the canvass to include the parking lot for that night. You up to questioning a whole new batch of people, Dennis?”

DeFlorio shook his head and grinned. “I’ve done half the town already. Why not?”

“I spoke to Billy Manierre last night,” I resumed. “Every one of his people are on the lookout for Toby Huntington, as are the state police and sheriff’s department, so I hope we’ll get lucky there. What about Jardine’s phone records?”

Ron pawed through his notes until he located the right paperwork. “The phone company was very helpful. I talked to some of the most frequently called numbers, male and female friends of his. It’s a little awkward, of course: no eye-to-eye contact, no way to check their stories without help from other departments. I didn’t get anywhere on the drug angle, but I did get a feeling that he played both sides of the fence sexually.”

“He was queer?” DeFlorio burst out.

“I think so.” Ron emphasized the think. “No one flat out said as much, but that’s the impression I got.”

“I’ll be damned,” Sammie muttered.

“Yeah, it does open up more possibilities,” I said, “blackmail being the first of them. What about Jardine’s bank files?”

Sammie raised her pencil. “I looked them over.”

“Anything unusual?” I asked her.

“Nothing obvious. I tracked down the parents’ will, to see if he really did inherit eighty-five thousand dollars; it looked legit to me. Also, I bugged Willette a bit while he was going through the ABC material to see if Jardine’s investment claims matched the income he was reporting. Again, he came out looking clean. If he was collecting blackmail money, he was subtle about where he put it.”

I nodded at Ron. “Any other leads on the homosexual angle?”

He shook his head. “The phone records were all long-distance. If Jardine made local calls, we don’t know about them. The two people who implied Jardine was gay were old high-school connections-but they wouldn’t stick their necks out far enough to actually name names.”

“The obvious choices are Wentworth or Clyde,” DeFlorio said. “The two guys with big bucks.”

“Assuming Jardine was blackmailing anyone,” I added. “I plan to see Wentworth today. He was supposed to have returned last night from a trip out of town.”

“What did you learn from McDermott?” Sammie asked.

I glanced at DeFlorio, who along with me had forgotten McDermott’s appearance at Horton Place. He was intensely studying the bottom of his Styrofoam coffee cup. “On the face of it, not much. It sounds like he was at both Milly’s and the Brooks House through sheer coincidence, or because he was set up. But he could also be lying. J.P., go after him, okay? Check out his background, likes and dislikes, finances, and anything else you can.”

Tyler nodded.

I stood up. “Okay then. I guess we’re all set. Anyone feeling underworked?”

There was a general groan around the table.

“There is one more thing,” I added, “and normally this would go without saying, but I think we have to be especially discreet from now on. There’ve been too many leaks from this department already. Things are tough enough without shooting ourselves in the foot.”

The implication that the source of some of those leaks might be sitting in this room left a sour note in the air, one I hoped they would all take to heart. I wanted not only to put an end to the idle chatter, but to plant a reminder that the heat we were beginning to feel the most had nothing to do with the lack of air-conditioning, or with the complexity of the case we were trying to solve.