KATE was on her seventh call to people who hadn’t heard from Philip Gilbert in months, whose voices gave her no sense of avoidance or deceit, when Al Hawkin came in and pulled the preliminary autopsy results from the fax machine. He stood at his desk reading the pages, then sorted through his accumulated messages; when she hung up, Kate growled at him, “I hope you’re not going to tell me Philip Gilbert was killed by a poison unknown to science.”
He peered at her over the top of his reading glasses. “Had a bit too much of the detective story business, have we?”
“Bunch of loonies, all of them.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “An attitude I always find productive. Did you skip lunch today?”
“Christ, Al, what are you, my mother?”
“Did you?” he pressed.
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess I did, I’ve been busy.”
“Martinelli, step away from the phone. Let’s go get a sandwich. And put on your coat, it’s beginning to rain.”
“I’m nearly done here, Al—”
“Well, I’m not, and low blood sugar makes you too irritable to talk to. Either we eat or I head home.”
“All right, I’m coming. Jeez, you’re bossier than Nora.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
In fact, Kate was ravenous, and tore into the first half of her ham on ciabatta like an unfed wolf. She slowed long enough to drink half the iced tea in her glass, folded a couple of French fries into her mouth, and felt her body relax.
“Okay,” she said. “You want to go first, or shall I?”
“Philip Gilbert died of a heart attack.”
“Damn,” she said with feeling. Improper disposal of a body was nowhere near as serious a charge as murder, even manslaughter.
“However, in the coroner’s opinion, it would have been directly related to the blow on the head.”
“That’s in the report?”
“It will be. There’s a lot of technical language, but what it boils down to is, the shock of the blow killed him. Which, by the way, was from a blunt instrument that left no traces behind. And because whoever did it might have saved him by sticking one of his pills under his tongue, it’s probably good for a murder charge, not just manslaughter.”
Somewhat mollified that their efforts since Saturday hadn’t been entirely wasted, Kate ate another French fry and waited for Al to go on. When he had swallowed a bite of his hamburger, he did so.
“He was healthy enough, other than the weak ticker—that skinniness wasn’t AIDS or anything. Time of death confirmed as approximately six to seven days before he was found.”
“He was on his feet on Saturday morning, the twenty-fourth, phoning Ian Nicholson and then giving him the manuscript.”
“And the ranger thought the body would have been discovered if it had been there on Saturday.”
“He wasn’t absolutely certain. However, Sunday it was definitely raining and nobody went hiking around the headlands. So Gilbert could have been there as early as Saturday night.”
“Stomach contents indicated a heavy meal, something with meat and white beans in it, several hours before. And he might have had sex not long before he died, although the ME thinks he’d bathed afterwards. He took swabs, but there doesn’t seem to be much.”
Kate continued eating, long immune to any squeamishness at the contents of a dead man’s stomach or anus. “We haven’t found who he had dinner with. There was nothing of that sort in his refrigerator—either of his refrigerators—and it doesn’t sound like the kind of meal he’d cook for one.”
“Probably a restaurant, then?”
“I’d guess.”
“Sherlock Holmes would say that guessing was a habit shockingly bad to the rational facilities,” Al said placidly.
Kate dropped her sandwich and stared at him. “Oh Christ, Al, please tell me you haven’t become one of the loonies.”
He grinned at her. “Nope. I read the stories a very long time ago. Don’t worry, I’ll leave my deerstalker at home.”
“You wear a deerstalker, I’ll shoot it off your old gray head. What else did the autopsy come up with? Signs of that broken statue?”
“Oddly enough, no.”
Kate sat up sharply. “No?”
“Not in his scalp, not even in his clothing. Nothing.”
“How can that be? It was all over the floor.”
“Maybe it just broke into a few pieces, then got smashed further underfoot. You haven’t heard anything from the lab?”
“I’ll call and harass them some.”
“The ME did find some foreign matter in the scalp wound. Coarse fibers, like—”
Her head came up sharply. “Like from a towel?”
“How’d you guess? Er, know?”
She sighed, and at his raised eyebrow, explained how towel fibers in a scalp wound came into the story she had read.
“Maybe I’d better take a look at the thing, too,” Al said.
“I’ll make you a copy.”
“There were also indications that he was wrapped in something else for a while, either a sheet or a tarpaulin. Their lab will take a closer look at his clothes, see if they give anything, but I think it’s safe to say that he was well bundled before he was transported, so we’re not going to find any trunk fibers on him.”
That was too bad. Fibers from a car’s trunk carpeting could be both revealing and incriminating, first pointing them at a specific make of car, later nailing down a conviction. Trouble was, even the amateurs knew that, and worse, were firmly convinced that every lab did every conceivable test for any case under investigation, and did them all within twenty-four hours. The victims were even more troublesome, complaining when the lab didn’t vacuum and do DNA testing on hairs found at a burglary. “TV has a lot to answer for,” she grumbled.
“So, where are we?” Hawkin asked rhetorically. “We’ve got the autopsy results and the labs will process what they found at the two sites when they can.”
“Do we even know the blood on the chair was Gilbert’s?”
“Something else for you to harass them about. What about the vic’s history and contacts?”
“That’s what I’ve been working on. I got a list of the people he might have asked to look at this story of his, in addition to a list of known acquaintances the lawyer sent on Sunday. I’ve reached about half of them. Nobody so far says they talked to him in the days before he was killed—I think the latest anyone admitted to, other than Ian Nicholson, was Thursday.”
“And Nicholson saw him on Saturday. What about family?”
“Nada. The wife hasn’t talked with him in maybe ten years, his nieces said they got Christmas cards from him every year so they knew he was still alive, but that’s about it.”
“No known enemies, no greedy relations. What about his love life?” Hawkin knew a lot of this, he was merely conducting a review.
“His lawyer seemed to think he didn’t have any close relationships, period. Gilbert’s friends-of-Sherlock dining club to a man said he was a nice guy who knew a lot and kept to himself. Hardly an indicator of extreme passion.”
“And not burglary? He was sitting watching the television with his back to the door, someone could have snuck up the stairs, tried to just knock him out a little, and accidentally killed him.”
“Someone who then immediately thought of the gun emplacement as an appropriate hiding place for his corpse.”
“Pinning down who knew the story would be very helpful, true.”
Kate snorted. “Understatement of the week.”
“That doesn’t entirely rule out burglary, since there could have been copies of the story lying around, or Gilbert could have told someone about it. You say the only thing missing seems to be the statue of the Maltese Falcon?”
“And his cell phone, and his pocket watch. I hope you’re not going to suggest that Gilbert’s missing trophy is really a golden, jewel-encrusted Crusader statue. The Maltese Falcon.”
“I think that was later than the Crusades.”
“Whatever. Al, I absolutely refuse to let Sam Spade walk into this case as well.”
“It would seem a surfeit of detectives, I agree. But we’re basing that on the lawyer’s statement that the statue’s the only thing missing.”
“You think the lawyer bashed him and robbed the place?”
“I haven’t met him; is he strong enough to carry a body down the stairs and up that hill?”
“He looks it. Hell. Do we need to do a complete inventory of the place? It’s an absolute museum.”
“I haven’t even been out there yet, and yes, I think we should at least take a closer look at its contents. Maybe not a complete inventory; if it’s going to be donated to an institution, maybe the lawyer could be talked into stepping the process up, and we could have the inventory checked that way.”
“Good idea.”
“I’d also like to go out to the dump site again. I was too busy with the interviews yesterday to look at the emplacement.”
“Today?”
“We’d hit too much bridge traffic. And maybe it’ll be dry by morning. Let’s take a run at the rest of those phone calls today, and go off on a little field trip tomorrow.” He picked up the bill from the table. “I think this one’s my turn?”
“Yep.” She put on her coat while he sorted out some bills and tucked them under the edge of his coffee cup. It had begun to drizzle, that halfway phase between heavy fog and actual rain, and they turned up their collars as they walked back to the Hall of Justice.
“You know, I think it might be a better idea for you to take a look at that story before tomorrow,” she said after a while. “Why don’t you get on that, I’ll do the phone calls?”
“I can take it home and read it tonight.”
“It’s more than a hundred pages. I know you read faster than I do, but you’ll be up late with it.”
“You just really want all those phone calls to yourself,” he said.
“Oh yeah.”
“How about if I start it now, and then check with you after dinner and see if you have any left you want me to do?”
“Actually, I thought I might go to the Sherlock dinner club meeting—not for the whole time, but they have coffee at the end, and I’d like to get a take on what Lee would call the group dynamics. Two of them invited me.”
“You want me to come?”
“Only if you’re interested. I don’t know that it’s worth coming back into the city for it.”
“Would I have to wear a tux?”
“They’re not going to get ankle-length velvet from me. No, I think they only wear costumes when they’re meeting in someone’s house, and this is at Tony’s. Coffee’s at eight, if you want, followed by the ever exciting ‘nuts and Port,’ but you should expect to have your brain picked about being a cop. At least one of them writes mysteries.”
He gave an exaggerated shudder, and said, “You really should have armed backup before you go in.”
She laughed. “Give me a buzz if you’re coming.”
“Will do.”
While Kate glued the phone back onto her ear, Hawkin ran the manuscript through the photocopier. Two of the other detectives came in with a suspect to interview, a big guy who really wasn’t happy about the whole thing; his voice reverberated through the homicide room even from behind the closed door of the interrogation room. Hawkin dropped Kate’s copy of the story on her desk and retreated to the empty interrogation room, but it didn’t take long before he was standing by her desk again.
Kate recited her usual message into yet another voice mail and looked up.
“You really don’t mind if I go home with this?” he asked.
“I would if I were you. You’ll go nuts trying to read in here.” Al had prodigious powers of concentration, but even he had his limits, and all three men behind the doors were now shouting.
“Okay. I’ll call you one way or another around seven, to see if you have any calls you want me to make.”
“Have fun,” she replied, then, “You know, I think I’d do better at home myself. Hold on a sec and I’ll walk down with you.”
Lee was home, but the door to the consulting rooms was shut, so Kate left a note on the kitchen blackboard, to say that she was home but would be going out again at eight. There was a bit of cold and fairly stale coffee in the machine, so she poured it into a cup, nuked it hot, and took it and her armful of work upstairs.
The unrelenting glamour of police work.
FIFTEEN
Kate turned on the computer and logged on to the HolmesCam website, keeping her eyes on it while she was making the rest of her calls. As she had suspected, the archived recordings were heavily edited down, no more than six or eight hours a month of Gilbert reading, drinking tea, playing the violin, and occasionally of Gilbert and someone else playing chess or talking. Without sound, it had all the thrill of a silent movie without the flash of words on the screen, but it did not interfere much with the phone conversations.
Those, too, were fairly rote. Because of the time differences, she began with the East Coast and worked her way west. One antiques dealer in Boston had talked to Gilbert on the Monday before his death, concerning an estate sale that included a collection of old British magazines from the early 1900s. He’d expected to hear from Gilbert about a bid, and hadn’t. Another of Nicholson’s names was a very young-sounding collector with whom Gilbert had done a fair amount of business. The collector seemed more interested in a Japanese Sherlock Holmes comic book Gilbert had promised him than in the fact of Gilbert’s death. He turned out to be thirteen years old; Kate put a line through his name.
On a roll now—even in these days of cell phones, it was often easier to reach people at night—Kate reached her third actual human in a row. This one was a document restorer and bookbinder whom Gilbert used from time to time, an elderly-sounding man named Israel who lived in Oak Park, near Chicago. On hearing his specialty, her ears pricked.
“Mr. Israel, have you been in touch with Philip Gilbert recently?”
“Not very recently,” he answered, his English faultless but with a clear German accent. “Perhaps six weeks? I could look it up in my records, if you like.”
“What did he contact you about?” Kate asked, hoping to hear him say, A typescript short story.
“He had several volumes that required restoration. All Conan Doyle stories—three Sherlock Holmes stories, two historical novels.”
“Nothing to do with an unbound typescript?”
“No. Why, did he have such a thing?”
Kate was by now good at deflecting that question. “If he did have one, would he have consulted you about it?”
“Only if he wished to have it bound. And a typescript is not always a good candidate for binding. The paper, for one thing, is generally not archival quality, and the narrow left-hand margins limit what one can do with it.”
“So he didn’t mention—” Kate began, then stopped, her attention caught by unexpected motion on the monitor in front of her. She sat forward, hitting keys to freeze the action, but Israel was going ahead as if she had finished her question.
“He said nothing about a typescript, no. Although he did seem remarkably…playful perhaps is the word. For Philip, that is.”
Kate took her hand off the keys, keeping one eye on the frozen screen. “When was this?”
“As I say, I would have to look up the precise date, but it would have been in early December. I asked him if he’d seen anything interesting lately, as one does, you know? And he gave an odd little laugh, high-pitched, which was unlike him, and said that one never knew.”
“That’s what he said? ‘One never knew’?”
“It might have been ‘You never know.’”
“I see. But that was all?”
“Yes.”
“It would be helpful to know the date of this conversation, Mr. Israel.”
“Do you wish to hold on while I look?”
/> “If you don’t mind.”
Despite its being evening already in Oak Park, Israel’s records were close at hand: Either he worked late, or his office was at home. The sound of feet scuffling across floors and down some stairs was followed by pages turning, and then the old man came back on the line.
“December the fifteenth. A Monday, in the early afternoon, as I recall.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Israel.”
She finished the conversation, wrote down the date, and turned at last to the computer screen.
She had set the recording to play the nonedited recent material, zooming forward from Gilbert’s exit on the morning of Friday, January 23. The only change on the monitor had been the gradual ebb and flow of light in the room as the clock registered the hours of the afternoon passing. And then at seven o’clock a quick blur of feet at the very top of the screen, at which point Kate had hit Pause.
Now she watched the feet more slowly: a man coming in the front door and passing through into the house, either upstairs or to the kitchen. She noted the time, then went back to eleven that morning, seeing, indeed, those same shoes and gray trouser legs passing through, left to right, as Gilbert left the house.
She set the clock moving again, and at 7:38, legs traveled from left to right, heading to the front door: a man, and with the same stride as the earlier legs, but now in black pants and shiny black shoes.
Going out to dinner? Heading for the white beans that were found in his stomach?
Nothing more happened. Kate pushed the speed up, her eyes now glued to the upper inch of the screen, but long minutes passed. Gilbert had died with undigested food in his stomach. If that was Friday dinner, it began to look as if he had not returned home afterward. He’d changed into a dark suit and good shoes, left the house at twenty to eight, and by one, one-fifteen, one-thirty, had not returned.
The screen gave a brief flicker and continued showing a dim room with light spilling from the stairs, but Kate’s fingers shot out to stop it, then reverse it.
The flicker had not been an electronic hiccup: In the blink of an eye, the clock in the corner jumped from 2:11 to 2:23. Nothing had changed, but time had passed.