I asked Conroy, "Were these lights already on?"
"Yeah, that's why I decided to take a look," he said. "Everything's exactly the way I found it." He sounded defensive, and I wondered why.
The four-poster bed was shoved over against a wall, fresh drag marks clearly visible on the polished hardwood. Where the bed had been standing was a hole in the floor, maybe a foot square. The matching pieces of wood used to conceal it had been pried up and tossed aside.
Inside the hole was a safe with its heavy door open. I looked inside and saw cash, lots of it, although there was plenty of room left. The bills were divided into stacks bound with rubber bands.
Now I knew what had gotten up Conroy's ass: he was afraid we might accuse him of helping himself to some of the dead guy's money.
I straightened up and looked at Karl. "Whoever it was, he didn't come here for money," I said. "The bills haven't been messed with at all." The last part was for Conroy's benefit, although it was also true.
"Unless maybe he was after the money," Karl said, "but got scared off by somebody before he could grab it."
I shook my head. "Anybody who's hard-core enough to do all that-" I pointed with my chin toward the study "he's not gonna be stopped by a surprise visitor."
"Yeah, maybe you're right." Karl turned to Conroy. "We got a name on the vic?"
Conroy checked his notebook. "Kulick, George Lived alone."
"Who called it in?" I asked him.
"There's a housekeeper, Alma Lutinski, comes in once a week. Has her own key. She found the stiff, went all hysterical, and started screaming her lungs out. The neighbors heard her and called 911."
"We'll need to talk to her," Karl said. "Where is she?"
"She really lost her shit, so they took her to Mercy Hospital. The docs'll probably give her a shot, get her calmed down a little."
"I doubt she got a look at the perp," I said. "Otherwise, he would've iced her, too. But we'll find out what she has to say for herself, later. Maybe she knows what the late Mr Kulick's been up to lately. And with who."
There were voices coming from the hallway now. "Sounds like forensics is here," I said. "Finally."
"Wanna start canvassing the neighborhood?" Karl asked.
"Might as well," I said. "Shit, we might even find a witness. That happens every three or four years."
I looked at Conroy. "Make sure the forensics guys pay close attention to that safe, okay? I'd like to know what else was in there besides money."
We went back out through the study, careful not to trip over the forensics techs, who were crawling all over the place like ants on a candy bar. "Guess whatever was in that steel box was real important to somebody, haina?" Karl said.
"Two somebodies."
"Two?" Karl's brow wrinkled. "The perp, for sure…"
"Kulick was the other one." I looked once more at the savaged piece of meat that had once been a human being. "Otherwise, he would have given it up long before all that was done to him."
Our canvass of the neighborhood turned up precisely zip. Richie Masalava, the M.E.'s guy at the crime scene, guesstimated that Kulick had been cold about twenty-four hours, but nobody we talked to remembered seeing or hearing anything unusual the day before.
When Karl and I got to the hospital, the tranquilizers had worn off enough so that Alma Lutinski was more or less coherent. She said she had been George Kulick's housekeeper for about two and a half years.
"I dust, I vacuum, I sweep and mop up. That's all." Her voice sounded husky, like the kind you get with heavy smokers, but I couldn't smell any tobacco on her. I wondered if Alma had screamed herself hoarse inside George Kulick's house.
"Once in a while he leaves a note," she said. "'Dust the venetian blinds,' so I dust them. 'Clean the shower,' two-three times, maybe. He leaves a check on the kitchen table, every week. Never bounces. Not like some."
"You never saw him when you came over to do your cleaning?" Karl asked Alma.
"A few times, he's there. But then he goes into that room, his 'study' and closes the door. It's like I'm there by myself. I like that, nobody bothers me."
"But didn't you have to get into the study to dust?" I said.
"Oh, no." Alma shook her head. "Never the study. 'Stay out,' he says. 'Don't worry about the dust, the dirt,' he says. Why should I argue – I need more work to do?"
Karl gave her his special smile then, the one he once claimed could charm the knickers off a nun. "Bet you went in at least once, though, didn't you? Looked around a little, maybe checked out his desk, all that crazy stuff he had in there. Weren't you curious? Just a little?"
The look she gave him reminded me of a nun, all right, but not the kind who'll slip her knickers off for you. Her expression was right out of Sister Yolanda's playbook, and I was glad for Karl's sake that there wasn't a big wooden ruler handy.
"You little snot," Alma said venomously. "You think I snoop? Look around? You think I steal, maybe, too, huh? He says stay out, I stay out. I'm a good Catholic woman, you German bastard."
Karl and I backed away slowly, the way you do from a Doberman that's slipped its chain. Once we were safely outside, Karl said, "I think maybe she took a dislike to me. He shook his head. "'German bastard.' Talk about old country."
"Maybe you should have tried for her knickers, instead," I said.
Things were quiet among the supe community the next few nights – nothing that the other detectives couldn't handle, anyway. Karl and I spent the time going through George Kulick's personal effects. We were looking for names of friends, associates, relatives, even enemies – anybody who could tell us what Kulick kept in that safe besides money.
We came up empty on all counts. The only letters we found were professional correspondence, like the letter from a magical supply house, saying that the shipment of powdered bat wings he'd ordered would be delayed. Stuff like that. If he had an address book, we didn't find it. No diary, of course. My luck never runs that good. No answering machine for somebody to leave a juicy message or two.
Phone records revealed no incoming calls for the last four months, and only two outgoing. Both of those were made to the local Domino's Pizza place.
Kulick didn't even have a home computer. Guess he did his communicating in ways that Bill Gates had never heard of – although there were news stories that Microsoft was getting ready to release a new product line called Spell Software.
I checked with my contacts in the magical community, but nobody knew George Kulick – or would admit to it, anyway. And no relative ever claimed the body, so it was buried in some land that the city owns in a local cemetery just for that purpose. In the old days, I guess it would have been called the potter's field.
Driving home at the end of the third fruitless night, I found myself wishing that the forensics guys would pull off one of those miracles that you see on TV every week – the kind where they find some microscopic bit of evidence that would give us the perp's name, address, phone number, and astrological sign.
Because what we had right now was shit.
After two more nights of no leads, no evidence, no witnesses and no dice, McGuire was talking about putting this one in the Pending Cases file, the place where unsolved crimes go to die.
I could see his point. The other detectives in the unit were overworked, picking up the slack we'd left to work Kulick's murder. Things were getting busy again – the supes don't stay quiet for long. But the idea of just letting this one go made my whole face hurt. Nobody should have to die the way George Kulick did. Nobody. Except maybe the bastard who'd killed him.
Near the end of our shift on the fifth night, I closed another cardboard box full of Kulick's stuff and said to Karl, "I guess if we're going to clear this one, we're going to have to go to the source."