Red Man Down (18 page)

‘You believe him?’

‘Absolutely. The guy was scared, but not of me. I think the next time we look at that place it’s gonna be locked up and empty.’

‘All right.’ Delaney looked around, nodding. ‘That pretty much confirms what we’ve been thinking about the Ed Lacey shooting, doesn’t it? Very nice police work there, Jason.’

‘Thanks,’ Jason said. ‘Please consider me your go-to guy for bar-hopping jobs from now on.’

‘Don’t spoil it, now,’ Delaney said. ‘Anybody else have any cute stories? If not let’s back up to the first suicide. Frank Martin was living alone at the time, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ Leo said. ‘Ed and Angela were in their own house by then.’

‘And there was no girlfriend? Never a woman in his life after his wife died?’

‘No mention of one, that I found. And I found a lot.’ Leo held up his floppy stack of newspaper copies. ‘His nephew lived with him from young boyhood on, and he seems to have devoted himself to that. Well, and all those favors he did for people – there’s a lot in all these reports about that.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Delaney brooded briefly. ‘Kind of makes you wish you had a psychologist on call, doesn’t it?’ He looked around the circle of Monday morning faces, all of them taut with the desire to come up with something – anything. ‘I mean, a man’s been married several years, his wife dies in childbirth and he, what, stays faithful to her memory forever after?’

‘Sounds pretty Victorian, when you put it like that,’ Leo said.

‘Doesn’t it? I haven’t had time to review any of those newspaper reports, so remind me, he put up his own bail?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he stayed in his own house, I suppose, waiting for a court date?’

‘Yes. He made a date to talk to an attorney, but he didn’t show up for the appointment. When the lawyer inquired, a patrolman went to his house and found him missing. His car was gone too, so Dispatch put out a Need to Locate, and a couple of hours later the car was found parked in the lot in front of the Sears store in the Tucson Mall. Frank was in it, sitting behind the wheel. He’d been dead for at least a couple of hours, the ME said. But you know how those estimates go. “Between two and ten hours” was his actual estimate.’

‘What killed him? Oscar?’

‘One shot in the ear.’ Oscar, anxious to show his mastery of the files, didn’t even glance at his notes.

‘Which ear?’

‘The left one. The gun was between his legs on the seat, and his left hand was resting near it, on top of his left thigh.’

‘Make and model of the weapon?’

‘A .22 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol. The 22A Sport Series, semi-auto, four-inch barrel. Equipped with a ten-round magazine, holds .22 caliber long rifle rimfire cartridges. Had eight rounds left in the magazine, one in the chamber. When tested, it showed residue from recent firing.’

‘Was he left-handed?’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘One bullet recovered from the body?’

‘Yes. A .22 caliber slug was found lodged against his skull just above his right eye. It showed lands and grooves consistent with having been fired by the gun on the seat.’

‘So all the forensics lined up just right?’

‘Yes, they did.’

‘It looked like a suicide, and all the evidence supported that conclusion?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the empty casing was found in the car?’

‘By his left foot, yes.’

‘It’s funny I remember so little about it. Who’d we send from here to that autopsy?’

For the first time, Cifuentes consulted his notes. He read off the name, ‘Harold C. Eisenstaat,’ with a little hesitation about the pronunciation of the last syllable. Sarah saw Delaney’s mouth clamp down in a grim line.

‘Any chance we got lucky and found a record of purchase of the weapon, from an authorized dealer?’

‘Not in anything I read,’ Leo said.

‘I didn’t find anything on it either,’ Oscar said.

Sarah said, ‘We touched on it in our interview with Angela, remember?’ and looked at Oscar intently. She had read through her notes again over the weekend.

‘Oh, ah, yes, that’s right,’ Oscar said. ‘We asked her if she knew Frank Martin had a gun and she said no. And she couldn’t remember him ever talking about guns with Ed – he wasn’t a hobby shooter or anything like that. So Sarah asked her …’ Having abandoned his pretense of having done the whole interview himself, Oscar’s face was wrinkled fiercely in the effort to remember. ‘Sarah said, “Do you think he bought a gun just to shoot himself?” And she said, let me think, it was something sardonic …’

‘She said, “Or borrowed it,” Sarah said. ‘She claimed that Frank was “like most accountants, always very careful with a dollar.”’

‘Anybody else suggest Frank was a miser? Sarah?’

‘Not a miser. Cecelia mentioned that he was very frugal, always bought two-year-old cars and kept them for eight or nine years. Oh, and Luz said something about carrying his own lunch from home. But they said it in a praising way, as though it was kind of quaint.’

‘And everybody in the family stressed his generosity to Ed,’ Oscar said.

‘Isn’t it wonderful how the truth keeps changing shape? Was there a will? Who got what?’

‘Frank left his house to Ed,’ Leo said. ‘The rest of his estate was divided among the surviving Garcías. Not much – no big piles of money, for sure.’

‘Did Ed leave a will?’

‘He died intestate, but it didn’t really matter – he left almost nothing. He’d sold Frank’s house and used the money to support himself and his drug habit.’

‘So we’ve got one suicide disguised as a burglary shootout, and one declared suicide we’re beginning to have doubts about. What about the third one? Any strong opinions about Angela?’

‘Marjorie Springer sounds like she might have some,’ Sarah said, ‘but I haven’t had a chance to interview her yet.’

‘Who?’

‘Angela’s employer and her landlady. Oh, and Luz – Ed Lacey’s mother – said she didn’t believe Angela was suicidal.’

‘OK. Who stands to gain by her death?’

‘She left behind a recently-made will in favor of Marjorie,’ Ollie said. ‘But besides her house, which was mortgaged for just about current market value, she had only a small savings account, her trunk and her car. Anybody find anything of value in the items from the trunk?’

All around the desk, detectives shook their heads. ‘Evidence of good taste,’ Leo said, ‘but not much value.’

‘Angela mentioned that she’d been doing “a little research in the evenings,”’ Sarah said. ‘That’s how she learned that Ed’s father and grandfather were both addicted to drugs and alcohol.’

‘So?’

‘So what if we think about it the other way around? What if she found something? Maybe we should quit looking for what somebody stood to gain, and think about what somebody has to lose?’

‘Hey, now,’ Jason said, and Delaney turned his pop-eyed stare on her – in fact, everybody in the room was looking at Sarah now.

‘Just a thought.’ She made a fending-off gesture. ‘I don’t, you know,
know anything
.’

‘I like the thought, though,’ Delaney said. ‘Let’s pursue it. What might somebody have to lose? Let’s make a list.’

‘The truth about something,’ Jason said.

‘Well, of course. But what?’

‘Where the gun came from,’ Ray said.

‘That’s good.’ Delaney started a list.

‘The money,’ Leo said. ‘Nobody’s ever found the money. Maybe somebody’s getting ready to use it.’

‘That’s even better,’ Delaney said. ‘Gold star, that one.’

‘Who has a taser handy?’ Ollie said.

‘Anybody who wants one,’ Delaney said. ‘This is Arizona. Easy to buy a taser similar to the ones we use.’

‘What Frank Martin was so sorry about?’ Oscar said.

Delaney looked at him, surprised. Oscar hardly ever volunteered anything in meetings. Delaney said, ‘What? Say that again.’

‘In the farewell letter he left, right at the end, he says …’ Oscar had that same slip of paper out of that breast pocket again – he really was carrying it around with him, ‘At the end he says, “Eddie, I’m sorry for everything. I’ve loved you all your life – please try to forgive me.”’

‘Isn’t he apologizing for stealing the money?’

‘Why would he need to apologize to Ed for that? It was the credit union that got hurt. And the depositors. Ed didn’t lose anything.’

‘And while we’re on the subject of the message,’ Sarah said, and turned to Leo, ‘let’s ask him about our idea.’

‘Go ahead,’ Leo said.

Delaney said, ‘What now?’

‘Well, you know, we’ve never found the letter.’

‘I know. I thought we’d find it in the trunk, but no, huh?’

They all shook their heads.

‘So over the weekend I started to think, what if it wasn’t a letter? And this morning I asked Leo, any chance it was an email?’

‘Sarah, surely that must have been settled three years ago.’

‘Well, see,’ Leo carefully scrutinized the corner of the desk, ‘we thought maybe Eisenstaat might not have, you know,
thought to check
.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Delaney said. ‘That does sound entirely possible, doesn’t it?’

‘So I was just going to ask you, shall we ask Tracy to look for it on the laptop, as long as he’s going through it anyway—’

Delaney looked at Ollie. ‘You gave the laptop to Tracy? The one I signed out to you?’

Ollie said, ‘Oops. I’m afraid I did. Was I supposed to make a note on the whiteboard or something?’

Delaney, looking ready to eat glass, said, ‘Might have been a good idea, don’t you think? So the system would work the way I set it up and we’d all know where everything is?’ He collected himself and said, ‘Sarah, will you find out if Tracy’s here? And get him over here if he’s in the building.’

Sarah stepped outside and around the corner to the support staff bullpen where the head stenographer sat talking on two phones and pulling notes out of a pile to hand to an aide. When she got to something resembling a pause, Sarah said, ‘Elsie, is Tracy working this morning?’

‘Can’t you tell by the quiet that he isn’t?’

‘Oh dear. Back in school, huh? I thought Christmas vacation …’

‘No, he was on the schedule but he called in sick. Woke up with a cough, could be flu or valley fever. I told him not to come near us till he’d seen a doctor.’ Elsie frowned. ‘You really want the little nutcase?’

‘I need to ask him a question, yes.’

‘Well, here, I’ll give you his home phone.’ Elsie kept neat records; she found it right away. ‘Be careful, if he coughs he’ll break your eardrum.’

Tracy wasn’t coughing when he answered the phone, but he wasn’t home, either.

‘I’m waiting at the clinic where I go to get my allergies tested. I told the Dragon Lady I get this allergy every year – something pollinates after a winter rain. But she’s sure I’ve turned into Typhoid Mary so I can’t come back to work until I get a slip from my doctor. I offered to take the laptop home and finish the job I was doing for you and Leo, but Our Lady of Perpetual Dread was sure that would be a hanging offense, so—’

‘No, Tracy, she’s right. I’m very glad you didn’t do that. But did you work on it on Friday?’

‘No. The Dragon Lady came up with some emergency data entry for me to do.’

‘Well, soon as you get back will you go to Oscar or Leo or me – whoever’s handy when you get here – and ask for a copy of the Frank Martin note … you got that? … Martin, yes. And see if you can find any trace of it on the laptop.’

‘It’s an email? And you think it was sent from the laptop?’

‘Hmm, no, I think it came in, not out. Can you do that?’

‘Dear lady, surely by now you’ve noticed that Genius Geek rarely fails?’

‘And the laptop – where is it?’

‘Back in the trunk. Isn’t that what you wanted?’

‘Ah, GG, sometimes you’re good and other times you’re just outstanding.’

‘Thanks. I do like it when people notice.’

She went back and told Delaney, ‘The laptop’s back in the trunk and Tracy’s going to look for the message when he gets back. He’s ill today.’

‘I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. He’s going to find it if it’s there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Let’s try a quick re-boot, here. In the first death, the big question that remains is, where’s the money? Leo, make that your problem. Start from the premise that you’re Frank and you just took the money. Now answer the obvious questions. Why? You lived all these years without that money – why do you need it now? Then, how? I’m going to give you this card from the forensic accountants we used on the Barrie case. Get them to explain to you exactly how he stole it. Finally, where? He had to put it somewhere.’

‘Damn funny the bank examiners couldn’t find it,’ Leo said.

‘Well, right. But it was cash money. Money takes up space and is heavy – if he took it, where did he put it? And in that connection, Jason?’

‘Mmm?’

‘I want you to find out who got Frank’s car. Did the family sell it or keep it? Be very nice if they still have it, hmm? You see where I’m going with this?’

‘No.’

‘The money went somewhere. If it was actual green money, it probably didn’t travel away in a backpack being carried by a hiker, do you think?’

‘Ah. So Frank’s car …’ Jason patted his shaved head, his habit when he was deep in thought. ‘Where is it, though?’

Leo said, ‘Frank’s house went to Ed, and everything else to the rest of the family. It’s hard to say who got what.’

Delaney said, ‘You’ll just have to ask. Ray, go after Frank’s suicide weapon. Dig into that case file – Oscar can help you. Find out how much we learned about the weapon and what we did with it. Talk to Banjo, see how far he went with it. Check all the usual databases – well, you know. Get me something on that gun. I’m very disappointed we know so little.

‘Ollie, I want you to go back to Angela’s autopsy. Ambiguous just won’t cut it. I want more information about that bruise on the back of the head.

‘Oscar, I want you to canvass the people in that building and in the neighborhood, find anybody who was familiar with her movements, anything they noticed different about the last day or week. Anything she said that might indicate she was afraid or suspicious.’

Sarah said, ‘Why did she get her hair cut?’

‘What?’ Looking at his watch, getting ready to leave, Delaney appeared to be dumbfounded by the question.