Schemers

20

DiSantis and I parted company in the elevator and I went on into General Works and the Homicide Division on the fourth floor. Linda Yin was away from her desk in the inspectors’ bullpen, but Sam Davis sat working at his. I gave him my signed witness statement, then asked if he had a few minutes to spare.

“Not really,” he said, but he gestured me into a vacant chair anyway. “What’s on your mind?”

“Couple of things. Gregory Pollexfen’s missing books turn up yet?”

“No. We figure they were sold off right away. By the vic or Mrs. Pollexfen or the two of them together.”

“But you haven’t found any record-large bank deposits, large amounts of cash, that kind of thing.”

“Not so far.”

“Well, if you can’t get some kind of trace, Great Western Insurance is stuck with paying off Pollexfen’s claim. So their claims adjuster wants me to keep on with my investigation.”

“We don’t have any problem with that.”

“How about with me doing a little sniffing on the homicide? As long as I don’t get in your way?”

“Better check with my partner on that. Why the interest?”

“I just had a talk with Mrs. Pollexfen, at her and her attorney’s request. I think she’s telling a straight story.”

One of Davis’s bushy eyebrows tilted upward. “Nine out of ten claim they’re innocent.”

“She could be the tenth who isn’t lying.”

“All the evidence says otherwise.”

“Evidence can sometimes be misleading. We both know that.”

“Sometimes. Not this time. Not according to forensics, ballistics, and pathology. We-”

His phone rang. Davis picked up, listened, pulled a grimace. “It won’t do you any good to keep calling, Mr. Pollexfen. I told you, my partner told you, you’ll have access when-What’s that?” He listened some more. “Look, just be patient, all right? Tomorrow, probably, that’s the best answer I can give you.”

When he hung up, I said, “Pollexfen seems anxious to get into his library.”

“Second time he’s called, demanding his keys so he can clean up in there. If he wasn’t a relentless pain in the ass, he might’ve got them back today.”

Keys, plural. Pollexfen’s and the duplicate found on Cullrane’s body. Standard police procedure to hold on to them, to ensure that the room remained sealed in case another examination of the crime scene was necessary.

I said, “Can I ask you some questions about the evidence?”

Long study before he said, “My partner and I asked around about you. You’ve got a good rep for cooperation with the department.”

“I was on the job myself before I went out on my own.”

“So we heard. Go ahead, ask your questions.”

“Nitrate tests indicate Mrs. Pollexfen fired the shotgun?”

“No. They came up negative.”

“But positive on Jeremy Cullrane?”

“That’s right. It could’ve been suicide-that’s what her lawyers’ll claim-but we don’t see it that way.”

“How’d it happen, then? She was threatening him with the weapon, he grabbed it and yanked it out of her hands, and the barrel jabbed into his mouth as it went off?”

Davis nodded. “Hair triggers on that shotgun, the pull lightened down to less than four pounds’ pressure. Wouldn’t have taken much of a yank with her finger on the foretrigger to fire the round when he jerked it up into his face as he was falling backward.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Hers on the grip, stock, and barrel. Three of ’em, nice and clear.”

“None on the trigger?”

“Smudges.”

“Cullrane’s prints on the weapon?”

“None that were clear enough to identify.”

“How about burn marks on his hands?”

“No,” Davis said, “but that doesn’t prove anything. He didn’t have to’ve grabbed the hot barrel. Could’ve caught the grip close to the chamber area.”

“What about this drug, clonazepam, she had in her system? Did it show up in Cullrane’s, too?”

“Yes, but so what? She could’ve spiked his drink and hers both.”

“Or Pollexfen could’ve done it. He made the drinks.”

“She says he did. Says he arranged the whole thing to get rid of her brother and frame her. You buy into that?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“Hell, man, you were out in the hallway with Pollexfen and the secretary when Cullrane died. And you were the one who used the keys to get into the library. The old man couldn’t have done it, now could he?”

“Doesn’t seem like it. I don’t suppose there was anything unusual on the weapon-scratches, marks, some kind of attachment that didn’t belong?”

“Nothing,” Davis said. “Good condition, clean, oiled. What’re you thinking? Fix an antique shotgun to fire by some trick? Can’t be done.”

“No,” I said, “I guess it can’t.”

A t the agency I asked Tamara to find out what she could about the aviation company business five or six years ago, and about the drug clonazepam. It didn’t take her long in either case.

The aviation company turned out to be a Bay Area outfit, Greenfield Aeronautics. Hostile takeover by a larger outfit, Drexel Aviation. Head of Drexel’s board of directors: Gregory Pollexfen. Hints of bribery and coercion, but nothing proven and no criminal charges or lawsuits filed. Cullrane must have had some documentary evidence against Pollexfen to make the blackmail work. Had Pollexfen found out where it was hidden? Another possibility: whatever the crime, the statute of limitations had run out and he couldn’t be prosecuted for it any longer. And another: his hatred for Cullrane had grown powerful enough to outweigh any concern over the consequences of his illegal business actions. In any event, the information gave substance to Angelina Pollexfen’s claim.

As for clonazepam-

“It’s a benzodiazepine drug,” Tamara said, reading from her computer screen. “Used to treat epilepsy, anxiety disorders, panic attacks and night terrors, chronic fatigue syndrome, a few other things. Stimulates the action of gamma-aminobutyric acid on the central nervous system.”

“Sure it does,” I said. “Everybody knows that.”

“Says here clonazepam is a highly potent variety of benzodiazepine because of strong anxiolytic properties and euphoric side effects. Use of alcohol while taking it intensifies these side effects.”

“Which are?”

“Impaired motor function, impaired coordination and balance, disorientation, something called anterograde amnesia.”

“Short-term memory loss, probably.”

“Add all that together and you got one mother of a hangover. You’d have to be crazy to mix up clonazepam and martinis on purpose.”

“Unless you weren’t planning to drink them yourself. Unless you had a good reason for serving them to two other people.”

I sat closed inside my office, brooding. Pollexfen, not his wife-my gut said it and my head said it. But how could he have arranged the murder? There had to be some angle none of us had thought of yet. It wouldn’t be fancy or complicated, either. Simple. The kind of thing that’s obvious once you put all the facts together and look at them in the right way.

Yeah. Simple, obvious.

Except that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with any plausible explanation.