Murder in the Library (21 page)

We let all but two
people leave, to go back to their homes, to go back to their lives, much as
they were. One of those who remained would be charged with murder. Lou and I
sat behind a desk as another officer led our murderer into the room.

“Please be seated.”

The murderer complied,
ready to listen to what I had to say, so I began.

“When this murder
occurred, Sgt. Murdock and I looked over our list of suspects. Most of them fit
into three groups; family members and close friends, workmen who’d been in the
Hardesty house sometime within the last few months, and people who’d threatened
the deceased at some point in time. We looked carefully at each of the
suspects, no matter in which group he or she fit. Common sense told us that
more than likely the murderer was someone who had threatened Col. Hardesty at
some point in time.

“Every murderer makes a
mistake as some point. This time the murderer made a mistake of sending the
deceased a threatening note. The note was meant to scare the old man, to make
him feel unsafe in his own home, in his sacred library. Instead, it allowed
Col. Hardesty to call his two friends he mentored since their childhood, Cy
Dekker and Lou Murdock, now of the Hilldale Police Department homicide
division. Without that phone call, Sgt. Murdock and I might never have learned
the names of the three men who had reasons why they wanted to end Col.
Hardesty’s life. Even at well past seventy, the old man had a great memory, and
shared with us the only three people he could think of who wished him ill will.

“We found the first man
quite easily. He’d never left town, and he’d never ceased to wish ill will on
our friend. The other two took a lot more effort, and involved a lot more
people, before we found them. One of them recently returned to Hilldale, after
ten years away. When we confronted him, he seemed as carefree as anyone we’d
ever met. He said he no longer wished harm on the old man, and, as it turned
out, he spoke the truth. This young man proved that you can give up old
grievances, if you’re willing to do what must be done.

“As we learned early on
in our investigation, the third person, Carla Bauerman, died in a tragic
accident some time back. We learned that her mother had also died, but her
father was still living. We traced him to New York, and later to California, but in recent years, while he appeared in California from time to time, he
seemed to disappear for longer periods of time. Through the cooperation of
other police departments, and other organizations, we were able to secure sets
of Carl Bauerman’s fingerprints. The ones here in the state matched those we
received from New York, and the ones we received from California, so we deduced
that Bauerman was Bauerman, no matter where he lived.

“Around a year ago, a
man named Tom Johnson moved to Hilldale, came from Indiana. He worked in pest
control in Indiana and continued the work he’d learned so well when he moved
here. A few weeks ago, Johnson left Hilldale, but he left behind something when
he left. Oh, he didn’t mean to leave anything behind, but there were a couple
of places Johnson forgot to scrub, and, in short time, we were able to learn
that Bauerman and Johnson were one and the same.

“But there’s more. This
morning we lifted the prints of all those whom we invited to join us today, and
so we learned that Bauerman and Johnson had a third identity. So, what do you
propose we call you? Should we call you Bauerman, because that’s the name
you’ve gone by the longest?”

“That's fine, but just
because I’m Bauerman doesn’t mean I killed the old man.”

“I’d agree with that.
But there’s more. One of our witnesses identified you as the man with the long
hair and beard.”

“Again, it’s just his
opinion against mine.”

“Maybe. That would be
for a jury to decide, but then I don’t think we’ll need a jury. A couple of
hours ago, a judge granted us a search warrant, and what do you think we found.
Not only did we find three drivers licenses and three passports, one in the
name of each man whose identity you assumed, but we found all kinds of
disguises, including the one you wore when you murdered our friend, the
Colonel. So, what do you have to say about that, Mr. Bauerman?”

With that, Bauerman
broke down and began to cry. In a minute or so, he composed himself, and began
to speak.

“You don’t understand.
Have you ever lost someone you love, Lieutenant?”

I covered my face so
Bauerman wouldn’t see my reaction, the tears I almost shed.

I could tell that
Bauerman was about to confess. We read him his rights before he began.

“My daughter had her
whole life ahead of her, and then this professor yanked it from her, denying
her her goal. It was the only thing my daughter ever wanted to do. She couldn’t
handle her life being jerked from her. She went to the professor and pleaded,
but it did no good. She tried other channels, but had no success. My wife and I
tried to reach her, but my wife was battling cancer and could do only so much.
Carla turned to drink, something so many immature young people do, and, as you
know, one night she missed a curve and wrapped her car around a tree. In a
matter of months, I had no wife. I had no daughter. I had no life. Nothing else
mattered to me, and it was then that I vowed that some day, somehow, I would
get even with the man who took my daughter away.

“So, I went away for a
few days and put a plan in motion, a meticulous plan that would take years to
implement. I taught drama in school, so I decided to use my knowledge of acting
to pull this off. I went to New York, learned how to act. I’d already decided
to muddle the waters, become as many people as I could. I knew that ultimately
fingerprints might do me in, but I figured if I became enough people in enough
distant places I might be able to see it through. I learned how to act. I
learned all about makeup and costume design. I learned how to look like one
person, but make myself into three.

“All this time, I was
still Carl Bauerman, but it came time to move on, time to become someone new,
and so I did. I decided that Carl Bauerman needed to move as far away as
possible, which turned out to be California. But as I left the east, I accepted
a ride from a trucker, and experienced firsthand the life of a trucker, albeit
briefly. But it was time for a new beginning. I contacted a friend, got a new
identity. I became Bob Downey, trucker. Over time, I learned how to handle a
rig. I split time between Bob Downey, long distance trucker, and Carl Bauerman,
actor, grieving husband and father. I met people in the trucking industry, but
not too many. I’d act in a play, then leave for a while to drive a truck.

“A few years later, I
picked up another identity, that of Tom Johnson, bug man. I worked for a pest
control company full-time, occasionally asking off to visit my sick mother. Who
is going to deny a man’s right to visit his sick mother? And so, on a limited
basis, I juggled three identities, three professions. I didn’t want someone to
think that I was moving from identity to identity, but to think that Carl
Bauerman, Bob Downey, and Tom Johnson were three different men.

“All this time, I lived
on a shoestring, slept wherever I could, saved my money. I planned ahead.
Slowly, I was moving toward a confrontation with the man who was responsible
for my daughter’s death. I moved to Indiana, to be close enough to find out
whatever I could about the professor. I followed the sale of real estate in the
area, waiting for a house to become available, a house close enough where I
could plan the old man’s murder.

“It was probably a
stupid move on my part, but when a house came on the market right next door to
the professor, I jumped at the chance to buy it. Not wanting to move too
quickly, I waited for the right chance to move Tom Johnson with me. I was
playing with fire. I knew it, but I didn’t want Johnson to go away, and I was
tired of spending so much time in Indiana.

“As time permitted, I
studied the Hardesty household to learn each person’s movements. I wanted to
learn their patterns, without getting to know them too well, even though none
of them had ever met Carl Bauerman. I learned who went where, and when. One
day, when no one was home and the neighborhood seemed deserted; I sneaked
across the back yard, removed a pane from the back patio, and deposited the
inhabitants of an ant farm onto the Hardesty enclosed porch. My trick worked.
The next day, Tom Johnson received a work order to go to the Hardesty house and
spray for ants. In all, I made five trips to the Hardesty house. The first time
I went dressed as Tom Johnson, and when I found myself alone on the second
floor, I spotted a set of keys, and made wax impressions. I almost got caught,
because Mrs. Hardesty sneaked down the hall just after I’d returned the keys to
the purse.

“I might have gotten too
cute and taken my acting experience too far, because on the second trip I
donned a different disguise, yet signed the name Tom Johnson to the work order.
I pressed my luck even further when I made a third trip. It was on that third
trip that I discovered that my house and the Hardesty house had one convenience
in common, a hook in the back of the living room closet that, if turned
correctly, caused the back wall to slide away. In my house, as you now know, it
slides away into a secret room. In the Hardesty house, it gives way to a
passageway, a passageway I hoped to navigate, but soon found out that the old
man was smarter than I. I couldn’t figure out a way to enter the library from
the passageway, or to enter the library without being photographed by that
surveillance camera. I must say I was surprised when I found out there was a
camera in the passageway, the day you showed me my picture.

“My only hope was to
drill a hole in one of the library’s walls, and so, one day, when I checked off
that all of the house's residents had gone away, I entered the house, drilled a
hole, and blew the note into the room. I see now how stupid that was, but at
the time I only wanted to make the old man sweat for a while.

“Most of the house’s
residents were predictable in their coming and going, but Prof. and Mrs.
Hardesty were not. I took a chance that day and practiced blowing a dart into
the room to see how far it would travel. I attached a string to the dart, the
same string I used to retrieve the dart on the day I murdered the old man.

“I’m not sorry I did it,
although I’m sure the old man didn’t deserve such a fate. But ever since my
wife and daughter died, my life has been a living nightmare. I had to do it,
and now I’ve to suffer the consequences.

“Well, there you have it,
unless you have any questions.”

“None of your three
characters look anything alike. How were you able to do it?”

“Lieutenant, it’s
amazing what a person can do to make himself or herself look much different
from his or her normal self. Take that lineup, for example. I think one or two
of those people you paraded across were women, but I can’t be sure. Is it true
that that old man was able to identify me today?”

“How did you know it was
the old man?”

“Well, he’s the only one
who came close enough to see me. How did he do it?”

“He said it was the
eyes.”

“Well, I’ll admit the
eyes are harder to disguise. We can change the color with contacts, but nothing
else, other than change the skin around the eyes.”

“But back to your
disguises. You’re a slender man. Tom Johnson isn’t. How did you do that?”

“Simple, Lieutenant. I
used an inflatable vest. And Tom always wore long sleeves, no matter how warm
the weather.”

There wasn’t much more
we could do. Bauerman confessed. We had it on tape, and on paper. Lou stepped
out into the hall and motioned for an officer to take Bauerman away.

Lou closed the door and
the two of us silently gathered our thoughts. I don’t know how I’d have acted
if I was in Bauerman’s place. Belding, whose wife refused to call his attorney
before Monday, would be a resident of the city-county jail until Monday. If it had
turned out that Belding was our murderer, it would’ve been hard for me to
control myself. Belding has lost only a job. Jobs are replaceable. Bauerman
lost a daughter and a wife, and while sometimes some people learn to deal with
the loss of a loved one before his or her time, people are much harder to live
without than jobs are.

After a few minutes,
Lou’s eyes met mine, and we began to talk. I don’t know how long we talked, but
it was as long as it took. We’d lost a friend, and now it was time to give him
up. After a few more minutes, we opened the door, but our day wasn’t done. We
had another stop to make. In a way two stops.

+++

Martha must have looked
out the window, because she opened the door before we scuffed our shoes on the
porch. She knew that it was over, and that’s what we’d come to tell her. Before
words were exchanged, Lou and I embraced Martha, and a few moments later,
Jennifer and Trish, as they entered the room.

After sharing hugs with
my friend’s family, I began a difficult explanation of what had happened. I
tried my best to show them Bauerman’s point of view, without minimizing the
Colonel’s life and the grave results of what had happened because of Bauerman’s
actions.

When we’d finished,
Martha looked at me and said, “Cy, what are you going to do now?”

“You mean right this
minute?”

“I mean right this
minute.”

“I think you know what
we have to do.”

“Stay as long as you
like.”

With those words, Lou
and I turned before others saw that our eyes were beginning to water.

“We’ve got to get something
out of the car,” I mumbled.

Lou and I walked out the
door, and to the car. God had smiled upon us. There were leftovers from our
version of feed the entire police force the night before.

On the way to Martha’s
house, we stopped by my place, snatched two Strombolis and two hoagies from the
refrigerator, and warmed them in the oven. We weren’t being pigs by taking two
sandwiches each. There was no way we were warming up leftover fries, and it
would take strength to do what we planned to do.

Lou and I walked up the
driveway, around the house. We looked up as we rounded the corner and had our
first glimpse of our tree house. We continued to walk, but looked down from
time to time to keep from falling. When the tree house was almost upon us, we
stopped.

“You first, Cy. You’re
the oldest.”

“And the heaviest.”

“You said that. I
didn’t. Okay, quit stalling.”

Lou and I knew what we
had to do, for ourselves, for the Colonel. The Colonel told us the lift would
hold up to five hundred pounds. The time had come to test that.

I set the meter, put our
food in the lift basket, stepped on board, and prayed. I pushed the button  to 
set  things  in  motion,  and in a matter of a couple of seconds, a surprised 
overweight  lieutenant  found  himself  up in the tree, and able to step into
the tree house. I heard cheers from below. I sent the apparatus down and was
soon joined by my friend and colleague.

“I just thought of
something, Lou. The Colonel didn’t say how much weight the tree house would
hold, did he?”

“Don’t worry about it,
Cy. Earthquakes aren’t common around here. If we fall, someone in the house
will come running.”

Somehow, my friend’s
words didn’t reassure me all that much. I braced myself against the tree trunk
and lowered myself to the wooden flooring of our tree house. Lou did the same.
Neither of us wondered how we’d get up, until we were seated. Oh, well! We had
just traveled back to our childhood.

I reached into our
cooler and lifted out a couple of glasses, filled them with ice, then lifted
out a couple of Diet Pepsis. We poured our drinks, prayed, and began to wolf
down two sandwiches. We scarfed down the food in record time, and returned to
the boys we once were. We sat there reminiscing for quite some time, until the
sound of footsteps warned us we were no longer alone.

“Hey, Cy, Lou! Are you
two still up there?”

“Why is the tree
sinking?”

I heard the laughter
from below, and then a reply.

“No, it’s just that
Jennifer and I think the two of you got to know a side of Gramps that we never
knew. Would you mind if we came up and you shared some stories?”

“Do you think the lift
will hold you?”

“Very funny, Nero
Wolfe.”

“So, you know him, too.
Hurry up and get your carcasses up here, but be careful.”

I did a double-take when
they showed up at the same time, but then I realized that one of me weighed
more than two of them. We were thankful that the Colonel constructed for us the
largest tree house in existence, for there was plenty of room for everyone. I
smiled as Trish reached back and lifted a pie from the basket.

I don’t know how long it
was when we finished our therapy session and four people descended from the
tree house feeling better than they had. Lou and I hugged the girls, refused an
invitation to stay for supper, and ambled off toward Lightning, who had been
patient long enough.

“Hey, Lou, do you
realize what we just did? We allowed girls in our tree house.”

+++

Lou and I left Martha’s
house feeling better about things. We were on our way back to retirement, but
it wouldn’t be long before we were once again back at work

As I drove down the
street, Lou turned to me and said, “Cy, now that things are over I need to tell
you something I’ve kept to myself the last couple of days. I didn’t want to
tell you until we’d solved the case. Cy, this past week I’ve gained over two
pounds.”

I was about to
congratulate him when he continued.

“I’ve eaten what you’ve
eaten these past few days, because solving the Colonel’s murder meant so much
to both of us, but now that things are over, you’re on your own again. Once again,
I will cut back on what I’m eating. It’s not that I don’t like to do my Wii
workout. I love it, but once a day is enough. If I eat right, I can cut back to
once a day and lose weight. These past couple of days I was too tired to get in
my second workout. And another thing, Cy, I want to invite you over to try out
my Wii. After all, best friends should Wii together.”

I knew he’d backed me
into a corner. And I knew he was right. Friends Wii with friends. But I had no intention
of hula hooping or doing any exercise that required me to try to stand on one
leg. I had enough trouble standing on two. And there was no way I was cutting
back from two pieces of pecan pie, friend or no friend.