Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 02 - Capitol Offense (6 page)

K
ane opened the door to his hotel room and found two men in topcoats standing inside.

“Please come in, Mr. Kane,” one of them said politely. “We need to talk.”

Kane stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Who are you and what do you want?” he asked.

Both men were in their late twenties and over six feet. One was dark-haired and the other blond, but otherwise they were as alike as two peas in a pod: fit, short-haired, clear-eyed, and clean-shaven.

“Oh, he sounds crabby, doesn’t he?” the dark-haired one said.

“Yes, he does,” said the blond one. “I hope it’s not contagious. I hope we don’t get crabby, too.”

Kane took a few steps into the room, took off his overcoat, and dropped it on the bed. The two men’s eyes followed his every move.

“I’ve had a long day,” he said, “so you can cut the comedy and get to the point.”

The dark-haired man took a case from his topcoat pocket and flashed a badge.

“I’m Sergeant Smith,” he said with a smile. “This is Trooper Jones. We’re with the Alaska State Troopers Criminal Investigations Bureau.”

“Smith and Jones?” Kane said.

“Yeah,” the other man said. “We get a lot of comments about that.”

Kane said nothing. The three of them stood there looking at one another.

I really don’t need this, Kane thought. I’m sore and tired. I just want to take some aspirin and go to bed.

But the two men looked content to just stand there, so he said, “Perhaps you could tell me what the state troopers are doing breaking into hotel rooms.”

The two men looked at each other.

“We didn’t break into this room, did we, Trooper Jones?” the dark-haired one said.

“Why, no, Sergeant Smith,” the blond one said. “The door was open. Mr. Kane must have forgotten to close it.”

Smith shook his head.

“That was just an invitation to crime, wasn’t it?” he said. “Don’t you think Mr. Kane should be more careful?”

Jones nodded.

“He certainly should be more careful,” he said, “especially when he leaves something like this lying around.”

He pointed to the coffee table. Kane took a couple of steps forward, as if to see better what he was pointing at. On the table was the hotel towel, unrolled to show the pieces of the .45.

“Perhaps you could tell us what you are doing with this, Mr. Kane,” Smith said.

Kane shrugged.

“This is Alaska,” he said. “Anyone can own a gun. Or a hundred guns.”

“Not anyone,” Jones said. “Not a convicted felon.”

Kane gave him a grin.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s right. So I guess it’s a good thing I had my record wiped clean, isn’t it.”

The two men looked at each other again.

“Just what are you doing in Juneau, Mr. Kane?” Smith asked.

Kane thought about telling them the truth. But their vaudeville routine was getting on his last nerve.

“I’m here for the golf,” he said.

“Golf?” Jones said. “There’s no golf here in the winter.”

“I must have been misinformed,” Kane said.

The two men looked at each other again.

“It sounds to me like Mr. Kane thinks he’s funny,” Jones said. “Does it sound that way to you?”

“It does,” Smith said. “It sounds like he thinks he’s funny. Do you think you’re funny, Mr. Kane?”

Kane looked at the two men and shrugged.

“Why don’t the two of you just leave,” he said, his voice edgy with sudden adrenaline, “before I call some real cops.”

Smith took a step forward. His nose was nearly touching Kane’s.

“We don’t need any more comedians in Juneau right now,” he said, trying to make his voice sound hard. “We have the legislature.” He smiled at his own joke. “Why don’t you plan to be on the next airplane out of here.”

Jones moved a couple of steps to his left so he could see Kane over Smith’s shoulder. Kane took a half-step back, the backs of his legs hitting the bed.

I wonder if, to someone watching from above, it looks like the three of us are doing some odd dance, he thought.

“I don’t think I’ll be leaving soon,” he said. “Now that I’m here, I think I’ll see the sights.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Smith said and slapped Kane across the face. He leaned close and said, “On the airplane, tomorrow.”

Kane sighed and kneed Smith in the groin. Smith squealed. Kane put his hands on Smith’s shoulders and shoved. He flew backward and banged into Jones, who was trying to get something out of the pocket of his topcoat. Jones fell onto the coffee table. The coffee table collapsed and the pieces of Kane’s .45 slid onto the floor. Kane pivoted and hit Smith with his elbow. Smith went down at his feet. Jones was lying on his side amid the pieces of coffee table, still trying to get something out of his pocket. Kane took a couple of quick steps and kicked him on the chin. Jones stopped trying to do anything at all. Smith was stirring, so Kane kicked him, too. He lay still.

Kane stood there taking deep breaths for a few moments, waiting for his heartbeat to slow, then went through their pockets. Smith’s badge said, “Souvenir of MGM.” Jones’s overcoat pocket contained a .38 revolver, the hammer snagged on the pocket’s lining. Jones didn’t have a badge, but he did have a .32 automatic in an ankle holster. Smith wore a .38 on his belt and a matching .32 auto on his ankle. Each had a roll of bills in his pocket, but neither carried any ID whatsoever.

Kane piled all the guns on the bed. Then he dialed the Juneau police and asked the dispatcher to send somebody up. He picked up the pieces of his own gun, wrapped them in the towel, and put them back on the closet shelf.

The two men were just beginning to stir when the police arrived.

“These men broke into my hotel room and threatened me,” Kane said. “They pretended to be Alaska State Troopers. The dark-haired one hit me. They don’t seem to be carrying ID. Their guns and phony badge are on the bed.”

“How do we know that’s what happened?” one of the cops asked.

“Just that I say it,” Kane said, “but you can see the guns and phony badge on the bed. And the desk clerk will confirm that this is my room. I’m telling you that I didn’t let them in. That’s enough for a collar right there.”

There was more palaver when the two men were on their feet, but the police took the men and weapons away on Kane’s promise to come down in the morning and swear out a complaint.

Kane locked the door behind them, retrieved the towel from the closet, sat, turned on a lamp, and examined the pieces of the .45. They looked okay, but he was too tired to assemble them to be sure. He left the pieces on the nightstand, got up, opened the dresser, and unrolled a pair of socks, revealing two wedges. He put the wedges in the crack under the door and tapped them into place with his foot. Maybe it’s locking the barn door, he thought, but I’ll sleep better.

He brushed his teeth, took a couple of aspirin, removed his clothes, and climbed into bed. He lay for a while thinking about the two men, but didn’t get very far. So he thought instead about Dylan. What I need is a plan, he decided as he fell asleep.

T
he next morning, showered and dressed, Kane sat down at the little desk, poured himself a cup of watery room-service coffee, and read through Doyle’s files. There wasn’t much there: a brief statement from the janitor who had found Matthew Hope with the body, a statement from a security guard, the arresting officer’s preliminary report, and a preliminary medical report.

The janitor’s statement was straightforward enough: He’d been cleaning, saw a light, found Hope standing over the body, fled. He didn’t remember seeing Senator Hope or anyone else in the hallways, but he’d been in and out of many rooms, cleaning.

The security guard heard the janitor’s screams, intercepted him, and, when he’d managed to get a coherent statement, dialed 911. The guard had found Hope sitting on a coffee table with his head in his hands and kept him there until the police arrived. While they waited, Hope told the security guard he hadn’t done it. The guard, who was stationed on the ground floor, had no idea who might have been on the fifth floor that night.

The arresting officer reported that, by the time the first officers responded, Hope would only say that he wanted a lawyer. Hope was taken to the police station. A lawyer named Simmons, who was also in the legislature and one of Hope’s allies, arrived and said his client wouldn’t be answering questions. Hope was booked on suspicion of murder.

The arresting officer’s report included several photos of the crime scene. They showed the body lying very close to the desk belonging to the office’s inhabitant, Senate Finance Committee Chairman O. B. Potter. There were no signs of a struggle. A white blouse and black skirt belonging to the victim were neatly folded on an armchair. A white lace bra lay at one end of the big, leather couch, a pair of white lace thong panties at the other end. The body wore white stockings and a white lace garter belt, embroidered with the now-famous white rose, that held them up.

The body had been identified by a coworker, a Letitia Potter. Ms. Potter had answered the phone when investigators called the home of Senator O. B. Potter, and volunteered to come to the crime scene.

Some relation of Senator O. B. Potter, Kane thought. Ah, nepotism.

The medical examiner said the victim had been freshly dead when the janitor discovered Hope standing over her body. The cause of death was blunt-force trauma. The killer managed to do the job with a single blow, which, the ME noted, suggested both strength and luck. The wound was consistent with the crystal paperweight Hope had been holding when discovered. The only other thing he noted was indications that the victim had recently engaged in vigorous sexual intercourse. Maybe rape, maybe not.

Kane bundled the files back together, got up from the table, and looked out the window. Juneau was spread out below him, going about its early-morning business on icy streets and sidewalks. A steady stream of automobile and foot traffic was headed toward the three big government buildings on the hillside to his right. To his left, the land and buildings sloped away to the water. Clouds obscured the tops of the mountains across the channel on Douglas Island, and a fog bank hugged the water. He could just make out the mast of a fishing boat groping its way down the channel toward open water.

The lack of information in the files didn’t surprise Kane. He’d done hundreds of investigations in his years on the force, dozens involving death. He knew that the paperwork would pile up as the investigation went on: statements from people who had been in the building that night, statements from people who knew the victim and the suspect, reports on all the forensics that were popular on TV these days, the grand jury report. All of the information would make its way, as the law required, to the suspect’s attorney and then to Kane. In two weeks, the files would be an inch thick. In a month, three inches.

Eventually, the files would contain Matthew Hope’s life, at least as much as investigators could discover.

This attempt to capture a human being on paper always struck Kane as a bizarre form of literary endeavor. Kane had often joked about it with other cops. “The Case File as Novel,” he’d say. Cops were among the most prosaic people in the world, much more comfortable in the world of physical objects than the world of ideas. When Kane talked like that—usually, he had to admit, after he’d had a few drinks—they gave him the fish eye and mumbled that he was crazy. And by their lights, Kane knew, he was.

The files wouldn’t be a complete portrait of Matthew Hope. The picture would be most vivid on the day of the murder, then fade as it moved back in time. There might be half of the Matthew Hope who’d gotten off the airplane in January to begin the legislative session, only a bit of the Matthew Hope who celebrated his first election to public office, a trace of the Matthew Hope who walked across the front of the multipurpose room to take his high school diploma, nothing of the Matthew Hope who entered school for the first time clutching his mother’s hand.

But by the time they were complete, the files would contain all of one part of Matthew Hope’s life: his future. What was in them would dictate whether he returned to the legislature or spent the rest of his life inside concrete walls topped with ribbon wire.

Most of the prosecutors Kane had worked with had seen the detective’s job as helping them write just that conclusion to the life stories in the files. Oil Can Doyle would no doubt say that it was now Kane’s job to make sure Matthew Hope’s story ended with him walking out of the courtroom a free man. But Kane had never seen his job the way lawyers did. The question he wanted to answer wasn’t “How do I get Matthew Hope off?” It was “Who killed Melinda Foxx?”

Kane shook his head and turned from the window. He knew he’d been staring for some time without really seeing anything. “Woolgathering,” Laurie always called it.

Kane was suddenly overwhelmed by an urge to call her on the telephone, to hear her voice. He missed just talking with her, about things both trivial and important. But she was making a new life for herself now, just as Kane guessed he was, and she didn’t want him trying to drag her back into the old one. Maybe later, when they were both more securely the people they were becoming, he could call her and they could chat. But not now.

He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. Now it was cold as well as watery. He dumped what was left in the sink, rinsed the cup, and set it on the room-service tray. Time to get going. His first move would be to return the files to the lawyer and ask him what he’d learned from Hope. Kane sat on the bed, picked up the pieces of the automatic, and assembled them. He thought about carrying the gun with him, but in the light of day he couldn’t imagine why he’d need it. Besides, it would be a problem at some of the places he planned to go.

He ejected the clip, wrapped it and the gun in a towel, and set them back on the closet shelf. He got down on his knees, wiggled the wedges loose, and put them back in his suitcase. He put on his coat and left the room.

When he got off the elevator on the ground floor, he went looking for the bellman. The day shift had taken over, so Kane gave the new man a $20 handshake.

“I’ve got a pile of splinters where my coffee table used to be,” he said. “Can you have somebody take care of it and put it on my bill?”

“Sure thing,” the bellman said. “Big party?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Kane said, and asked for directions to a coffee shop and Doyle’s office.

“We have a coffee shop right here in the hotel,” the bellman said.

Kane gave him a look.

“I’ve had the hotel coffee,” he said. “Try again.”

The coffee shop the bellman sent him to was a bakery, too, so Kane breakfasted on a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a large coffee. One sip convinced him that he wasn’t going to be drinking the hotel coffee anymore.

Fortified, Kane followed the bellman’s directions to the address Doyle had given him. He’d walked to the coffee shop on nearly level ground, but Doyle’s office was downhill and Kane had to creep along. Shop owners had thrown rock salt and blue or pink ice melt onto the sidewalk in front of their stores, but the footing was still treacherous and Kane found himself flailing to stay upright more than once.

Doyle’s office was in a 1930s building, a narrow flight of stairs above an Italian restaurant, then along a narrow hallway that provided access to the offices of an accountant, a fish buyer, and a lobbyist, as well as a lawyer named Alan Prell. The outer office held a desk, a fax machine, a couple of mismatched chairs, some old hunting and fishing magazines, and a receptionist who appeared to be at least eighty, brick-red hair notwithstanding. The receptionist grilled Kane for minutes. Many of her questions were about whether he was a reporter, but Kane got the feeling he’d have gotten the same treatment even if there hadn’t been a White Rose Murder. Finally, she ushered him into a dusty office that contained a metal desk, a metal filing cabinet, two metal chairs, and Oil Can Doyle.

Doyle wore a linty polypropylene pullover with the collar of what looked like a Hawaiian shirt sticking out of it. His toupee sat at a slightly different angle than it had the night before. The watery sunlight revealed a coating of dust on the toupee. Doyle had a spot of what appeared to be dried egg yolk on his chin.

“You were lucky to get past Helga,” he said, motioning Kane to the unoccupied metal chair. “She must like you.”

Kane set the file folders on the desk and shed his coat. Seeing nowhere to hang it, he dropped it on the floor against the wall and sat.

“All Helga likes is being in charge,” he said. “She did everything but check my prostate.” He gestured with his arms. “Swell place you got here. Sending Mrs. Foster’s money straight to the Caymans?”

Doyle looked at him for a long moment before speaking.

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “That’s supposed to be a joke.”

The lawyer arranged his mouth in his grimace of a smile. Then his face went deadpan again.

“One of the things you’ll discover when we get to know each other better is that I have no sense of humor,” Doyle said. “I have no friends. I have no hobbies. I have no romantic entanglements. I don’t follow sports or play high-stakes Texas Hold ’Em. I don’t do anything but work to keep my clients out of jail. I work hard. I have to work hard to overcome my lack of talent, my lack of charm, my lack of humor, and all the other things God forgot to give me. So don’t waste my time making jokes or small talk or anything else. Just do your job and let me do mine.”

Kane nodded.

“Fine by me,” he said. He shifted in his seat, knowing that nothing he did would make the metal chair more comfortable.

“I read the files,” he said. “Not much there. What else do you know?”

The lawyer shook his head.

“Very little,” he said. “At the preliminary hearing, the DA put on the janitor, security guard, arresting officer, and medical examiner. That was enough to bind my client over. The judge also compelled a DNA swab, so there may be some forensics they won’t show us until they’re done testing. There’s a bail hearing tomorrow morning. In a case like this, the state will want to keep Senator Hope in jail and, if he decides to let the senator out, the judge will probably want a big number. But, with Mrs. Foster’s financial help, Senator Hope should be able to make bail.”

Doyle looked at a yellow legal pad that lay on the desk.

“There’s a grand jury meeting, but I don’t expect that they’ll indict for a couple of weeks. They’ll want to try to nail down the corners of the case before they do.”

He looked up at Kane.

“They should have detectives talking to pretty much everybody in the Capitol. I’ll get copies of the statements, and of the full autopsy, but I won’t be getting any of that for a while. The DA doesn’t want to make this any easier for me than he has to.”

He reached up and patted his toupee a couple of times like he was patting a dog.

“I think you should conduct your own interviews up there in the Capitol, if you can get people to talk to you,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t people want to talk to me?” Kane asked.

“Politics,” the lawyer said. “It’s a good thing for some people if Senator Hope is carrying this charge around as long as possible, even if he isn’t found guilty in the end. The removal of his vote, and his voice, from the process advances their political agendas.”

Kane nodded. He was already thinking about how hard it would be to get a straight story out of anybody involved with the legislature. Even if they wanted to be honest, their political ambitions and animosities would color everything. It’ll be like trying to grab a handful of snakes in a vat of olive oil, he thought.

“What about your client’s version of events?” Kane asked.

“Our client,” the lawyer said. “He’s our client now. I’ll let you read his statement to me, but there’s nothing very revealing in it. He says he knew the victim, had dealt with her once in a while because she worked for the Senate Finance chairman. He says he’d been at a reception, returned to the Capitol to do some work, and went to Potter’s office on the off chance he’d be there. Said he wanted to talk about a domestic partners bill of his that’s hung up in the committee. Said he found the woman’s body and the next thing he really remembered was somebody reading him his rights.”

Kane let the silence gather before he spoke.

“That’s it?” he said. “Nothing about who saw him at the reception. In the Capitol? Nothing about what kind of work he had to go back to the office to do? Nothing about how often he’d seen the victim? What he thought of her?”