Simple Genius (11 page)

THE TEMPORARY MORGUE was set up in a small, empty office in the main town area of tiny White Feather. It was staffed by a medical examiner sent over from Williamsburg who didn’t look the least bit happy being away from his home turf. He pulled Monk Turing’s body out of the portable freezer.

Monk had not been a handsome man in life and death had not improved his looks. He was short and muscular with a paunch that had been obscured by the Y-incision that had split him from his neck to his pubis. Sean tried to see a resemblance between him and his daughter, but couldn’t find one. She must take after her mother, he thought.

The ME dutifully went over his official findings with Sean.
Monk Turing; age, thirty-seven; height, five-six; weight, one-seventy,
etc.
The man had clearly died from a gunshot wound to the right temple.

“Monk was right-handed,” Sean commented. “That would fit with the suicide theory.”

“I hadn’t gotten to that part yet,” the ME said a little suspiciously. “How’d you know?”

“Right hand’s a little bigger, more calloused. And I saw a baseball glove at his house. It wasn’t made for a left-hander.”

Hayes nodded approvingly while the ME glanced back at his notes.

Sean eyed Monk’s hands again.
“Looks to be some trace on his hands.”

“Ground into the palm and fingers. Reddish fragments,” the ME said.

Using what amounted to a high-tech magnifying
glass,
the ME showed them the traces and then laid the dead man’s hand back down.

“Looks like rust stains. Could have come from climbing the chain link fence at Camp Peary,” Hayes said.

Sean looked at the ME. “You have the clothes he was wearing?”

They were produced and examined.
A pair of black corduroy trousers, a cotton, blue-striped shirt, dark jacket with a hood, underwear, socks and muddy shoes.

Hayes handed Sean a small waterproof bag. “This was found next to the body. It’s been confirmed as belonging to Turing.” Inside were a blanket and a flashlight.

“He probably used the blanket to get over the razor wire on top of the fence,” Sean said, noting some tears on the fabric.
“Still a dicey proposition.
No cuts on the body from the wire?”

The ME shook his head.

“Surprised we didn’t find any gloves,” Hayes added. “I mean for getting over the fence and wire.”

“Well, if he had worn gloves we wouldn’t have his prints on the gun. It’s starting to look like he killed himself, Sheriff,” Sean said.

The ME looked up. “I can’t say for sure if it was suicide or not. Forensics can only go so far.”

Sean remarked, “Your report says that the wound was a
near
contact, not a contact wound. Also there are no defensive injuries on the victim or evidence that he was bound. Someone getting that close to the guy with the gun and him not defending himself? That’s a little implausible.”

“Could’ve been drugged,” Hayes suggested.

“Which was my next question,” Sean said. “What’s the tox report say?”

“Don’t have it back yet.”

“So we really can’t rule out suicide,” Sean said. “And if he did kill himself, why at Camp Peary?
Any connection between him and the CIA?
Did he ever work there? Did he want to but got rejected?”

Hayes shook his head. “We haven’t run that down yet.” He turned to the ME. “Do you have an approximate time of death on Rivest yet?”

“He wasn’t in the water all that long. Maybe five to six hours. There was what looked to be hemorrhagic edema fluid in his mouth. That indicates he died by drowning. When I open him I’ll be able to confirm that of course by water in his lungs.”

Hayes consulted his wristwatch. “Five to six hours. Based on when the body was discovered, if he wasn’t in the tub all that long before he drowned we’re looking at
between one to two o’clock in the morning as the time of death
.”

“Not that long after I left him,” Sean said.
And
that tallies
with the time I might have seen Champ come home.
“He’d had a lot to drink,” Sean volunteered.
“Cocktails and some red wine.”

The ME noted this down. “Thanks.”

“Could he have been drunk enough to just pass out and drown himself? Wouldn’t the water going in his mouth and nose have woken him up?” Hayes asked.

The ME shook his head. “If he was unconscious from too much alcohol, the shock of the water would not have necessarily revived him.”

“I left him pretty much passed out. I wonder what made him decide to take a bath after he came
to?
” Sean said.

The ME said, “Maybe he threw up and decided to get cleaned up.”

Sean shook his head. “You’ve got puke all over
you,
you’re not going to wait for the bathtub to fill up. You’d jump in the shower.” As soon as he said it, Sean froze.

“Good point,” Hayes said, not catching the look on Sean’s face.

Back in the car Hayes said, “Where to now?”

Sean didn’t try to conceal his excitement. “I want to have another look at that bathroom. Something just occurred to me.”

“Like what?”

“I know that Len Rivest
was
murdered.”

WHEN THEY GOT BACK to Len Rivest’s house, Sean led the way to the bathroom and stopped at the doorway.

He said, “I came in here last night around eleven or eleven-fifteen to use the toilet. This is the only bathroom in the place.”

“Okay,” Hayes said expectantly.
“And?”

“And was anything removed from the bathroom by any of your men or the FBI?”

“No. Only the body’s been removed. Why?”

“Well, look around, what’s missing?”

Hayes studied the interior of the small place. “I give up. What?”

“There are no towels, no washcloths.” He pointed at the floor. “And no bath mat. Now all those things were in this room when I was here last night. And there’s something else.” He walked over to the commode and looked behind it. “There was a long, wooden-handled plunger here too. Only it’s not here now.”

Hayes said, “So you’re saying . . .?”

Sean knelt on the floor and ran his hand along the tile and then along the wall above the tub.
“Damp, but not soaked.”
He stood. “I’m saying you have to take the towels if you used them to wipe up the water that would have splashed on the floor and walls while you were struggling with Rivest.”

“And the plunger?”

Sean pantomimed gripping something in his hand and standing next to the tub. “You don’t want to hold Rivest under with your hands. He can reach you that way and maybe get some of your DNA or clothing fiber under his fingernails. But if you place a long-handled plunger on his chest, you can hold him down without him being able to get to you.”

“Damn!”

“But everything’s going to get soaked that way. So you have to take the towels, mat, plunger with you otherwise the police will see them, deduce a struggle and we go from accidental drowning to murder. Rivest may have come up here to take a bath and just settled in when the killer struck. If he hadn’t been drunk he might still be alive.”

“So if he was still drunk and the killer used the plunger, we can’t rule out that it was a woman who did it.”

Sean looked at him shrewdly. “That’s right. Call the ME and tell him to check for a circular ring on Rivest’s chest or stomach. A plunger might have made an abrasion that can still be seen under the scope. And also tell him to check for fragments of wood from the plunger handle under his fingernails.”

Hayes whipped out his cell phone and made the call while Sean continued to poke around.

After the sheriff finished his call he smiled at Sean. “I left a message. I gotta say
,
my decision to partner up with you is really starting to look smart.”

“Don’t get too excited. Knowing that a man was murdered and finding out who killed him is, to borrow a line from Mark Twain, the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. Now we need to really canvass the place and find out if anyone saw someone leaving Rivest’s last night. There’s security all over the place. Someone had to see
something.
Especially if my theory is correct and the person was leaving with a bunch of wet towels and a plunger.”

“Will do.
Anything else?”

Sean held an internal debate and said, “I was down at the banks of the York this morning, around six-thirty or so. I wanted to have a look at the boathouse and take a recon of the area. Somebody took a couple shots at me with a high-powered rifle. That’s what I was coming to tell Len.”

Hayes gaped at him. “Where’d the shots come from?”

“Maybe from across the river.”

“Camp Peary?” Sean nodded. “And Monk Turing was found dead on Camp Peary property,” Hayes said slowly.

Sean could easily read the man’s mind. Did the rural sheriff want to get mixed up in something that involved the
CIA.
Yet if Monk Turing and Len Rivest had been killed by the folks across the river the question was why. And Sean King had to admit, it was a very intriguing question. The only thing, was he willing to risk his life to get the answer?

“And I can’t be sure of it, but I think it’s possible that I saw Champ Pollion returning to his cottage around two this morning.”

“But you can’t be sure?”

Sean shook his head. “I couldn’t testify to it. It was too dark. But it’s still something we need to check out when we do our alibi canvass. Oh, one more thing. I understand that Monk traveled outside the country about eight or nine months ago. We need to find out where he went.”

“The Bureau has his passport and personal effects.”

“You’re the sheriff down here. Ask for copies.”

“You think it could be important?”

“Right now everything is important.”

Sean walked back out into the bright sunshine and wondered when, if ever, his life would come close to being normal.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around.

Alicia Chadwick was standing there looking very upset. “We need to talk.
Now!”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then I’ll take off my metal leg and beat you to death with it.”

“I wouldn’t want you to have that on your conscience. Let’s go.”

BARRY WALKED DOWN THE HALLWAY carrying a cardboard box. Lurking ten paces behind him was Michelle. The drop-off for mail and overnight parcels was right outside the front door.

Barry unlocked the front door with his key and headed outside. Michelle picked up her pace, reached the unoccupied foyer and ducked down behind a large potted tree.

When Barry unlocked the door and came back in, Michelle tensed. This would be tight because she didn’t have a key. With one eye on Barry and one eye on the slowly closing door, she darted out. He was less than three feet from her and never turned around, a testament to how silently she could move. As Barry disappeared around the corner, Michelle stabbed her foot inside the door to prevent it from closing. Removing her shoe she wedged it between the door and the jamb and hurried out.

It only took her a few seconds to find Barry’s package in the pile outside the building next to the mailbox. Michelle whipped out a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote down the address where the box was going. She also glanced at the sender’s name and wasn’t terribly surprised to find it wasn’t Barry’s.

“Lola Martin,” she said, reading off the sender’s name. She ducked back inside the building, grabbed her shoe and jogged back to her section of the building. She managed to distract a nurse long enough to take a peek at the patient records at the nurse’s station. Lola Martin was comfortably ensconced in the Cuckoo’s Nest, the psychotic residents of which were not known to post many packages. She ducked into the patient services center and used a telephone there to make a phone call to a buddy of hers with the Fairfax police. After she’d filled him in, he said, “How’d you score this info, Maxwell?”

“I’m, uh, working undercover.”

An hour later, Michelle went into Sandy’s empty room. The flowers were still there, but the dirt had been cleaned up off the floor. Michelle assumed that Sandy’s hands were by now spick-and-span clean too, even under the manicured nails. Michelle had never had that problem for the simple fact that she’d never had a manicure. She didn’t want anyone messing with her trigger finger.

Five minutes later, her mission accomplished, Michelle headed back to her room. That afternoon she attended a group session. She was so pleased with the progress she’d made on nailing Barry that she actually stood up and talked about herself. “I’m Michelle and I want to get better,” she said. “In fact, I think I am better.” She’d smiled at the others in the circle as they nodded approvingly. Some lightly clapped their hands while others whispered words of encouragement. A few others sat there sulking or else looking at her in disbelief.

If it occurred to Michelle that the only reason she thought she was better was because she’d made herself too busy to think about her own problems, the woman showed no sign of such an internal dilemma. She essentially lived for the adrenaline and not for the often calamitous revelations of self-examination. True to that personality trait, all she could think about was Barry and Sandy. After that she just wanted to get the hell out of here before they finally figured out she might belong in the Cuckoo’s Nest after all.