The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (50 page)

“2004 8547 January 31st. 2004 8547 . . . I am in a dark room. I can see a door, but it is closed. Something is stirring above the door, where the wall joins the ceiling. Ominous. Black. A cloud . . .”

Murex stopped the tape. “Fair job of masking your voice. How hard do you think it will be to match your voiceprint to that recording?”

Trey Grandmaison turned pale and then flushed. He lunged for the recorder, fumbled it open and almost got the minicassette into his mouth before Murex and Knuckles fought it out of his hands.

After they had cuffed him, and his rights were read, Bob Knuckles asked, “Would you say that we’ve got your number, or your coordinates?”

Ray Murex said, “You can tell us about it, if you’d like.”

Grandmaison surprised them. He did exactly that.

“John Doom was a student of mine. One of my earliest students. He kept taking my courses and then he started teaching RV under another name. Using my coordinates. It was getting out of hand. He’d steal my students from my own classes. Charge half what I did. Between him and the sagging economy, I was having a hard time. Something had to be done.”

“So you decided to do away with him?” Murex prompted.

“That was Effie’s idea. She came home from Richmond on the pretext of giving Doom some private training and while he was insession, she sat on his chest, holding a pillow over his face until he suffocated. I showed her how to hold his arms down with padded knees so he wouldn’t bruise.”

“In other words,” Knuckles said, “she burked him.”

Murex looked blank. “Burked?”

Grandmaison nodded sullenly. “An old assassination technique. Leaves no marks. Looks just like natural causes. Effie had him fast for four days beforehand, promising that it would improve his session work. That was so his bowels wouldn’t empty and create a sanitary problem while the body cooled in my gray room.”

“Except the body was flipped over after telltale pinpoint haemorrhages appeared in the whites of the eyeballs,” said Murex. “Either his eye capillaries burst while he was smothered, or gravity did it. Either way, the position of the body gave the show away. You can skip the part about how you staged the death scene in the hotel room. We figured that out. Why did you do your wife?”

“She was starting to become unglued. Guilt. Fear. I don’t know. But I knew she couldn’t hold it in forever. So while everyone was asleep on the plane, I did the same thing to her she did to Doom.”

“What goes around, comes around,” clucked Knuckles.

The throbbing vein in Trey Grandmaison’s forehead became still. “It was easy. I booked seats in the last row. There was no one for six or seven rows around of us. And they were dead to the world.”

“You’re kind of a control freak, aren’t you?” Knuckles pressed. “That’s why you staged the death scene using TIRV class materials, isn’t it? To baffle us and provide you the opportunity to send us off on wild-goose chases?”

Grandmaison shrugged. “It’s elementary psychological warfare. What kind of murderer would leave a trail leading directly to his front door?”

“One who was drummed out of the Army for reasons of mental instability. You were so wound up in your Stargate razzle-dazzle, you didn’t think we’d look beyond it. You were dead wrong.”

Murex frowned. “So you killed this rival Doom because he was stealing your coordinates.”

“They’re worth thousands of dollars,” he said leadenly. “And they’re my livelihood.”

“But they’re only numbers. You told me so yourself.”

Trey Grandmaison’s composed face wavered, recovered, then fell completely apart. His voice broke.

“It’s all I salvaged from my military career,” he sobbed. “My business was everything I had. You don’t know remote viewing, so you wouldn’t understand.”

Ray Murex stood up.

“Maybe not. But I understand observable justice. Let’s go.”

“S
he sure bled a lot.”

I ignored Officer Coursey, my attention focused on the dead woman’s arm. The cut had almost severed her left wrist, a flash of pink bone peeking through. Her right hand was curled around the handle of a utility knife.

I’d been in Homicide for more than ten years, and still felt an emotional punch whenever I saw a body. The day I wasn’t affected was the day I hung up my badge.

I wore disposable plastic booties over my flats because the shag carpet oozed blood like a sponge wherever I stepped. The apartment’s air conditioning was set on
freeze
, so the decomposition wasn’t as bad as it might have been after a week – but it was still pretty bad. I got down on my haunches and swatted away some blowflies.

On her upper arm, six inches above the wound, was a bruise.

“What’s so interesting, Lieut? It’s just a suicide.”

In my blazer pocket I had some latex gloves. I snapped them on.

The victim’s name was Janet Hellerman, a real estate lawyer with a private practice. She was brunette, mid thirties, Caucasian. Her satin slip was mottled with drying brown stains, and she wore nothing underneath. I put my hand on her chin, gently turned her head.

There was another bruise on her cheek.

“Johnson’s getting a statement from the super.”

I stood up, smoothed down my skirt, and nodded at Herb, who had just entered the room. Detective First Class Herb Benedict was my partner. He had a gray mustache, Basset hound jowls, and a Santa Claus belly. Herb kept on the perimeter of the blood puddle; those little plastic booties were too hard for him to get on.

“Johnson’s story corroborates?”

Herb nodded. “Why? You see something?”

I did, but wasn’t sure how it fit. Herb had questioned both Officer Coursey and Officer Johnson, and their stories were apparently identical.

Forty minutes ago they’d arrived at apartment 3008 at the request of the victim’s mother, who lived out of state. She had been unable to get in touch with her daughter for more than a week. The building superintendent unlocked the door for them, but the safety chain was on, and a sofa had been pushed in front of the door to prevent anyone from getting inside. Coursey put his shoulder to it, broke in, and they discovered the body.

Herb squinted at the corpse. “How many marks on the wrist?”

“Just one cut, deep.”

I took off the blood-soaked booties, put them in one of the many plastic baggies I keep in my pockets, and went over to the picture window, which covered most of the far wall. The view was expensive, overlooking Lake Shore Drive from forty stories up. Boaters swarmed over the surface of Lake Michigan like little white ants, and the street was a gridlock of toy cars. Summer was a busy time for Chicagoans-criminals included.

I motioned for Coursey, and he heeled like a chastened puppy. Beat cops were getting younger every year; this one barely needed to shave. He had the cop stare, though – hard eyes and a perpetual scowl, always expecting to be lied to.

“I need you to do a door-to-door. Get statements from everyone on this floor. Find out who knew the victim, who might have seen anything.”

Coursey frowned. “But she killed herself. The only way in the apartment is the one door, and it was locked from the inside, with the safety chain on. Plus there was a sofa pushed in front of it.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that suicides are treated as homicides in this town, Officer.”

He rolled his eyes. I could practically read his thoughts.
How did this dumb broad get to be Homicide Lieutenant? She sleep with the PC?

“Lieut, the weapon is still in her hand. Don’t you think . . .”

I sighed. Time to school the rookie.

“How many cuts are on her wrist, Coursey?”

“One.”

“Didn’t they teach you about hesitation cuts at the Academy? A suicidal person usually has to work up the courage. Where was she found?”

“On the floor.”

“Why not her bed? Or the bathtub? Or a comfy chair? If you were ending your life, would you do it standing in the middle of the living room?”

He became visibly flustered, but I wasn’t through yet.

“How would you describe the temperature in this room?”

“It’s freezing.”

“And all she’s wearing is a slip. Little cold for that, don’t you think? Did you read the suicide note?”

“She didn’t leave a note.”

“They all leave notes. I’ve worked these streets for twenty years, and never saw a suicide where the vic didn’t leave a note. But for some strange reason, there’s no note here. Which is a shame because maybe her note would explain how she got the multiple contusions on her face and arm.”

Coursey was cowed, but he managed to mumble, “The door was—”

“Speaking of doors,” I interrupted, “why are you still here when you were given an order to start the door-to-door? Move your ass.”

Coursey looked at his shoes and then left the apartment. Herb raised an eyebrow.

“Kinda hard on the newbie, Jack.”

“He wouldn’t have questioned me if I had a penis.”

“I think you have one now. You took his.”

“If he does a good job, I’ll give it back.”

Herb turned to look at the body. He rubbed his mustache.

“It could still play as suicide,” he said. “If she was hit by a sudden urge to die. Maybe she got some terrible news. She gets out of the shower, puts on a slip, cranks up the air conditioning, gets a phone call, immediately grabs the knife and with one quick slice . . .”

He made a cutting motion over his wrist.

“Do you buy it?” I asked.

Herb made a show of mulling it over.

“No,” he consented. “I think someone knocked her out, sliced her wrist, turned up the air so the smell wouldn’t get too bad, and then . . .”

“Managed to escape from a locked room.”

I sighed, my shoulders sagging.

Herb’s eyes scanned the view. “A window washer?”

I checked the window, but as expected it didn’t open. Winds this high up weren’t friendly.

“There’s no other way in?” Herb asked.

“Just the one entryway.”

I walked up to it. The safety chain hung on the door at eye level, its wall mounting and three screws dangling from it. The doorframe where it had been attached was splintered and cracked from Coursey’s entrance. There were three screw holes in the frame that matched the mounting, and a fourth screw still remained, sticking out of the frame about an inch.

The hinges on the door were dusty and showed no signs of tampering. A black leather sofa was pushed off to the side, near the doorway. I followed the tracks that its feet had made in the carpet. The sofa had been placed in front of the door and then shoved aside.

I opened the door, holding the knob with two fingers. It moved easily, even though it was heavy and solid. I closed it, stumped.

“How did the killer get out?” I said, mostly to myself.

“Maybe he didn’t get out. Maybe the killer is still in the apartment.” Herb’s eyes widened and his hand shot up, pointing over my shoulder. “Jack! Behind you!”

I rolled my eyes.

“Funny, Herb. I already searched the place.”

I peeled off the gloves and stuck them back in my pocket.

“Well, then there are only three possibilities.” Herb held up his hand, ticking off fingers. “One, Coursey and Johnson and the superintendent are all lying. Two, the killer was skinny enough to slip out of the apartment by going under the door. Or three, it was Houdini.”

“Houdini’s dead.”

“Did you check? Get an alibi?”

“I’ll send a team to the cemetery.”

While we waited for the ME to arrive, Herb and I busied ourselves with tossing the place. Bank statements told us Janet Hellerman made a comfortable living and paid her bills on time. She was financing a late model Lexus, which we confirmed was parked in the lot below. Her credit card debt was minimal, with a recent charge for plane tickets. A call to Delta confirmed two seats to Montana for next week, one in her name and one in the name of Glenn Hale.

Herb called the precinct, requesting a sheet on Hale.

I checked the answering machine and listened to thirty-eight messages. Twenty were from Janet’s distraught mother, wondering where she was. Two were telemarketers. One was from a friend named Sheila who wanted to get together for dinner, and the rest were real estate related.