“And you don’t think that happened here?”
“Nope. I think this was an act of desperation, done at the last second to stop us from talking to Milly, but not by a hothead. Whoever it was kept his cool. That tells me we’re facing a planner by nature; someone who thinks before he jumps, even on short notice.”
The radio muttered my name from the back pocket of my green pants.
“Go ahead.”
“You might want to come down here and check this out. Second floor.”
I glanced at Brandt, who shrugged and followed me back into the gloomy, stifling stairwell.
We found several officers, including Ron Klesczewski, gathered on the second-story landing. With them was a red-faced, sullen man with a peeved expression and a large set of keys on a ring.
“This is Mr. Blossom,” Klesczewski said, with a palpable touch of sarcasm. “He’s the landlord here and has been kind enough to open whatever doors need opening.”
Blossom and I nodded curtly to one another. I could see from his face that proffering a handshake would only invite a rebuke and probably a smirk to match.
Klesczewski indicated an apartment door labeled “21.” “No one was home, so we asked Mr. Blossom to do the honors and found out the jamb was busted.”
Brandt gave me a look and bent down to study the door. It opened to the inside and was held shut by a simple keyed doorknob. The interior jamb, where the lock’s catch plate had been mounted, had been splintered by a heavy force coming against the outside of the door.
I pointed at several small wooden shards lying on the inside of the threshold, evidence that the breakage was recent. Brandt grunted, “The exposed wood looks fresh, too.”
The whole setup made me feel slightly hollow.
I didn’t want to say too much in front of Blossom, whom I regarded as little more than a loudspeaker to the neighborhood and the press, which couldn’t be far off. I turned back to Klesczewski. “Better seal this off and get Tyler on it as soon as possible. Be easier all around if he got it done before the tenant comes back home.”
Brandt motioned to me to follow him downstairs. “So what do you make of it?” he asked, once we were out of earshot, heading out the front door of the building.
“Pure guesswork?” I said, with an artificial brightness.
“Sure.”
“Then I think I probably came close enough to the killer to touch him. Either he broke open that door to hide when Dummy came upstairs, which he really didn’t have any reason to do unless they know each other, or he was in Milly’s room when Dummy walked in, ducked downstairs when I was being called from the balcony, and hid behind that door as I was coming up.”
Brandt was silent as we both crossed the street, walking toward Canal. He spoke up as I stopped by my car. “You’re also saying someone in the police department told the killer about Milly, right?”
“It looks that way.”
He frowned. “Just like he told him about a bum being under that bridge.”
I didn’t respond.
“Which means we’re back to John Woll.”
“Or we’re being led back to him.”
Brandt pursed his lips, considering that much more complicated possibility. “By who?”
“Take your pick. A lot of people had access to Milly’s identity, just as soon as we did. Tyler dug his card out of the fingerprint file; he made no secret of his pleasure to me, and I doubt he did to anyone else he met on his way to my office. And you gave the paperwork I filled out for the money to your secretary, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She’s out in the open, near where half the department and a good many visitors pass by on the way to the coffee machine or the copier or whatever. Anybody could have paused there to say hi, glanced at the paperwork, and put it all together.”
Brandt shook his head. “That one’s slim.”
“Okay, but I also told Dispatch where I was when I parked here. Someone familiar with how we work could figure it out, especially if Jardine was buried so we would find him. It would further reinforce the theory that this whole investigation is being manipulated somehow.”
“But that points to police involvement again, doesn’t it?”
I doggedly refused to be cornered, if only to stave off becoming too tunnel-visioned. “Not necessarily. Look, someone could have been tailing me. He sees me meet Dummy, follows me here, realizes Milly’s been blown, and goes upstairs to kill him just before Dummy arrives to make the buy. There was a five-minute gap while Dummy and I just watched the front of the building from the car. Same thing identifying the bum angle. We spent a few hours crawling under a bridge that’s obviously served as somebody’s home. What conclusions would you draw, as a reasonably bright onlooker?”
Brandt stared at the sidewalk. He had my sympathies. Not only did he have two homicides in two days-with the attending heat from both media and selectmen-he also had a chief detective who seemed ready to embrace any theory that popped into his head.
In the brief silence, I almost hated counterbalancing my own broad view of the case with John Woll’s latest coffin nail; but there it was, as hard as evidence could get. “One other piece of bad news,” I said, as I circled my car and opened the driver’s door. “The saliva on the cigarette butt found in Jardine’s grave was AB, same as John Woll’s. It’s a pretty rare type.”
Brandt absorbed that glumly. “Which brings up the most obvious possibility of all-that Woll knocked off Milly.”
“True. Tell Ron to look into that, would you? Have him check on John’s whereabouts today.” I slid behind the wheel and started the engine.
“Where’re you going?”
“To change my clothes.” I ignored his look of irritation and backed the car around to face Canal.
Reasonably, I should have stayed at the scene and looked over the shoulders of my men. But they knew what they were doing. I, on the other hand, needed no more than fifteen minutes of meditative quiet, just enough to distance myself from Milly’s grotesque and bloody passing, and my own unknowing escape from his killer. I needed a touch of the routine, a familiar setting in which I could shift gears and begin to move forward again.
My apartment is on the corner of High and Oak, just a stroll up the hill from the center of town. It’s actually a pretty ritzy neighborhood, with lots of Victorian homes, heavy on stained glass and gingerbread molding, made all the more exclusive for being a stroll away from the business district. Gail had once pointed out that, were it not for the building’s appearance, I couldn’t afford to live there. It was true that home wasn’t much to look at. It too had once been Victorian, but a bargain-basement remodeler had pretty much butchered whatever grace it might have had. Now it was just large, lumpy, and painted urine yellow. Also, its location, within immediate earshot of High Street’s grinding gears and squealing brakes, helped keep the rent low and the yuppies away.
I lived on the top floor in a ramshackle place, comfortably old and dusty, as filled with dark wood, ancient overstuffed furniture, and low ceilings as Gail’s place was open and airy and modern. Indeed, its one striking architectural feature was its massive number of books; they lined my walls, were piled in odd corners, and covered much of my furniture. An obsession planted by my educationally minded mother, reading books had become my primary off-duty pastime, besides spending time with Gail. The apartment had therefore become, over the years, a cavelike shelter against the outside world, a museum of my past, my passions, and my deep-rooted pleasure in solitude.
I stripped off the hospital greens, turned on the various fans I’d acquired of late, and settled in my nest of choice, an enormous, comforting, bulging armchair, surrounded by a cluster of lights, books, side tables, and a mismatched ottoman, all of which normally tended to most of my needs.