The Man Who Understood Cats Read online

  “Mr. Questor canceled. He said his grandfather died.”

  Caleb smiled humorlessly. “That’s the fourth grandfather in six months. You’d better call his parole officer. And bill him for the missed appointment.”

  “Very well. And Mrs. Reston called. An emergency. She has to see you.”

  He smiled wryly. “If it’s a genuine emergency, Dr. Fenwick can see her. Did you get hold of Mr. Finley?”

  “No. His office said he didn’t come in today. They presume he’ll be in tomorrow. I left a message on his answering machine at home.”

  “Thank you. The next appointment’s at one?”

  “That’s right. Ms. Goodwin.”

  Caleb let the implied disapproval pass, knowing Ms. Goodwin would never hear it. “I’ll be back by then.”

  He used the car phone to call his answering service. They usually relayed messages from patients to Irene, but he’d check anyway. He said, “This is Dr. Caleb. Did you have a message for me from a Mr. Finley?” No. “No one took a message for a Mr. Finley from Dr. Caleb?” Messages had been scrambled that way before, but not this time it seemed. It was very strange. In three years Allan hadn’t missed an appointment.

  On impulse, Caleb changed his plans for lunch. Instead of turning east on Superior, he continued north, onto the Drive.

  Three

  Thinnes always drove. As senior dick, he could have had Crowne do it, but he didn’t trust Crowne’s judgment or his over-reliance on the brakes. And Thinnes preferred to be in control of things.

  They were headed south on Lincoln. He kept his eyes moving, noticing things he was no longer paid to concern himself with—a car parked in a fire lane, an expired tag, traffic violators. You still go through the motions, he thought. Today his mood matched the weather. It seemed like half of Lake Michigan had boiled into the sky and hung over the city like a climax that wouldn’t come. His skin and nerves and muscles, even his attention span seemed stretched too tight. He knew he wasn’t really with it. He felt as if he’d slept too long, or waked right after nodding off; everything looked and sounded slightly out of focus. He wished he’d had less to drink last night, but Christ, he’d only had three beers! He hadn’t slept well.

  At thirty-eight, he’d seen too many homicides. Too many weird incidents. Too much Chicago politics. His outlook had gotten gray as the industrial atmosphere hanging over the city, his hopes as thin as his lank frame. The need to build an airtight, closed case for every incident, to fill out a rap sheet on everyone he met had gone beyond habit, had become obsessive. And exhausting. The burned-out cop syndrome. The mid-life crisis. Boring. He wished he could flip a switch in his head and turn it all off.

  You’re a cliché, Thinnes, he told himself as he turned onto Webster and took in Grant Hospital on his left without really noticing it, slowing automatically to maneuver around the double-parked cars and the pedestrians. He took one of the two polystyrene cups from the dash and watched his partner watching him.

  Crowne knew better than to talk before Thinnes had his coffee. The junior detective was twenty-nine, average height, weight, looks, and intelligence. And above average cynicism. Weren’t all cops?

  Thinnes slugged down the coffee. It was too hot, and he swallowed fast to get it out of his mouth. It burned all the way down. He put the cup back on the dash and made himself say, “What’ve we got?”

  Crowne pulled the notebook from his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Twenty-one twenty-three Cleveland, apartment three-B. Death investigation; a one Allan Finley; male cauc; probable suicide.” He snapped the book shut. “They said step on it ’cause Bendix is there already and they want the coppers back on the street. This ought to be a cinch.”

  Thinnes kept his eyes on the street. Cleveland was the next corner. “You volunteer?” Even without looking directly, he could see Crowne’s annoyance.

  “If you’d be on time for work,” Crowne said, “you could volunteer us for your idea of easy duty.”

  Thinnes let it pass, but Crowne wasn’t going to let it drop. “How do you get away with it? Evanger’s got to know.”

  Thinnes stopped for the sign at Cleveland. “I’ve got a partner who covers for me.”

  “Right.”

  Thinnes glanced sideways and noted Crowne had gone beyond annoyed. “Evanger’s button is the bottom line,” Thinnes said. “You want to push it, just give him lots of good busts and keep your nose clean—he’ll let you do anything.”

  He turned right. Cleveland was a quiet, tree-lined street. A block down, they could see a marked squad and the crime lab van. Twenty-one twenty-three was a modern three-story apartment building in an area of exclusive rehabbed yuppie residences. Thinnes double-parked their unmarked squad in front of the door, allowing just enough room for cars to squeeze by if no one parked in the empty space by the fire hydrant. They took their cups from the dash and went inside the building.

  The coffee was starting to do its work by the time the elevator doors opened on the third floor. As Thinnes stepped into the hallway outside Finley’s apartment, he felt more alert. He kept his eyes moving, taking in details—the last of which was the familiar personnel. He nodded as he flashed his star at the two uniform coppers. He noted that the male officer’s paunch hung over his belt and he stood with the careless authority old street cops have. The female had it to an extent lessened by her shorter tenure. She rested her fist on her hip, near her piece, but casually and out of habit. Thinnes observed these things the way a professional driver takes in traffic signals—almost without noticing.

  A. Finley’s L-shaped front room was expensively furnished—regulation Yuppie decor—but there was a slickness about it that suggested a lack of imagination, as if Finley had bought the furniture store display. There was almost no personal stamp. The only things that were not perfectly coordinated were in the dining room: a very businesslike office desk and a blood-spattered lithograph on the wall to its left. At the far left-hand corner of the desk there was a checkbook, a book of stamps, and a neat pile of addressed, sealed envelopes. Finley himself lay slumped on the floor near the desk, with a .38 caliber revolver and a gold pen just beyond reach of his empty hand.

  Something about the scene was a little off, and Thinnes tried to define just what. It wasn’t simply the fact of death—apparent suicide, or the corpse with its head blown half away, or the gross spray of blood and brain tissue on the wall and picture.

  The body was being photographed by a pimply-faced junior evidence technician supervised by Bendix, the senior tech. Bendix spotted Thinnes and groaned to his colleague. “Christ! They sent Thinnes. Might as well send out dinner orders now.” He was fiftyish, balding, out of shape, congenitally insensitive and professionally cheerful. His nod at Thinnes wasn’t cordial; his nod to Crowne was friendlier. He jerked his thumb to indicate Thinnes. “Why’d they send him?”

  “Just your lucky day,” Crowne told him sourly. He stayed where he didn’t have to look at the body.

  As he walked over for a closer look at the corpse, Thinnes ignored Bendix. He sipped his coffee thoughtfully while he studied the body, then squatted and used a pen from his pocket to pick up the gun by its trigger guard so he could examine it without damaging latent prints. He looked up at Bendix. “Pretty heavy artillery for a civilian, wouldn’t you say?”

  Bendix shrugged. Thinnes put the gun back. “This guy live alone?”

  “Landlord said he did.”

  Thinnes looked around the room. Except for the bloody spray pattern on the wall, the apartment was unusually clean and orderly. “Maid service?”

  “Landlord said no. Compulsive neatnik.”

  “Gay?”

  “Not the sort of thing you put on a lease application,” Bendix said. Thinnes gave him a moderately disgusted look. “If he was,” Bendix added, “he was discreet.” He very deliberately took out a cigar and lit it, putting the spent match carefully in his pocket and creating a toxic haze.

  Thinnes pointed to the door. “Out with
that.”

  Bendix went to the doorway and stood just inside, holding the cigar out in the hall, flicking the ash against the wall, where it wouldn’t be tracked into the apartment. “What’s the difference?” he said. “The stiff has a gun in his hand, gunshot residue in the right places, and all the doors were locked from the inside. So why are you asking questions like it was homicide?”

  Thinnes ignored him and turned to Bendix’s assistant. “You get pictures in the other rooms?” The technician shook his head. “Do it.”

  As the tech left, Thinnes pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, put them on, and started poking through the pile of bills. They were addressed to American Express, the Blessing Realty Company, Commonwealth Edison, North Michigan Avenue Associates, People’s Gas, Visa. Bills.

  Bendix said, “Jesus Christ, Thinnes, you been at it too long. You fried your wires—you’re seein’ murder in everything. If he’d had a heart attack, you’d probably try to make it out someone scared him to death.”

  “Take a look at this, Bendix.” Thinnes indicated the entire scene. “What do you see?”

  Bendix looked at the corpse. “Just a poor SOB who blew his brains out.”

  Thinnes shook his head. He said wearily, “Who’s got the data?”

  Bendix hitched his thumb toward the hall behind him. “Copper.”

  Thinnes didn’t try to hide his annoyance. “Which one?”

  “The pretty one. You’re gettin’ nuts, Thinnes. You need six months in New Zealand or someplace they don’t have homicides.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that we don’t have a clue he was suicidal? No note, no motive. Nothing.”

  “Guy kills himself, he’s crazy. Crazy people don’t need motives. Or if you need a motive, how’s his lover left him, or his stocks just bottomed out, or how’s his laundry put too much starch in his shorts?”

  Thinnes wasn’t listening. “Ray,” he said to Crowne, “go see what the coppers have and send them back to work.”

  As Thinnes left the room to follow the technician, he could hear Bendix ask Crowne, “How do you stand that?”

  “You want to give me odds he’s wrong?”

  The bedroom looked brand new. Unused. Like a setup at Wickes or Homemakers. Everything was too well coordinated to have been bought piecemeal. One each: masculine bedroom set, with matching drapes, and bedspread. The plush, chocolate brown carpet still showed marks from the vacuum cleaner. Thinnes stared, as if he could flush some clue or motive out of hiding. He looked at the tech, who shrugged as if to say, what’s to shoot?

  “Just a couple of angles for reference,” Thinnes told him. When the tech’d shot the dresser, Thinnes sorted through it. He found what you’d expect to find—socks and shirts and Jockeys, only folded neater than they’d come from the factory. He checked behind the color-coordinated starving-artist’s-sale still life and the mirror over the dresser. Not even cobwebs. The only personal item in the room was a framed photo of Finley standing with his arms around a woman who had to be his sister.

  When the tech had photographed the bed, Thinnes stripped it, finding only clean sheets. There was nothing under it but more vacuum tracks. The closet had sliding doors. Thinnes opened one side, then the other, standing back to let the tech shoot the contents. The clothes were on the low end of the high-price category, not Perry Ellis, but out of Thinnes’s range. Finley seemed to have had a suit for every occasion. None of the shirts looked like they’d been worn since they came from the laundry. The shoes were all expensive, carefully polished and lined up like marines, prompting the technician to remark, “This guy wasn’t real.” Thinnes went through every shoe and the pocket of every piece of clothing but found nothing. Not even lint.

  The utility closet between the bedroom and the bathroom was a wonder. Crammed onto its narrow shelves was every cleaning product available in the city. Brushes and rags, mops and pails and rubber cleaning gloves hung from hooks below the shelves. There was a dust mop and a broom, and both upright and canister vacuums filled the floor space. Thinnes squeezed the dust bag on the upright. It was empty. When he opened the top of the canister, he wasn’t surprised to find an unused liner.

  He half expected to find a paper strip on the toilet—the can was cleaner than the ritziest hotel john he’d ever been in. There wasn’t a spot on the mirror or a drip on the counter. There was a single hair in the brush—red, like the victim’s. The wastebasket had been emptied and rinsed out. There was a single change of clothes in the hamper, used but not dirty, as far as he could see. After the technician photographed the open medicine cabinet, Thinnes rummaged through it: toothpaste, squeezed and rolled from the end, Maalox, Excedrin, a razor with a virgin blade and not a trace of soap scum, shaving cream and aftershave, deodorant—the usual things, and a prescription vial half full of pumpkin orange capsules. Thinnes noted the particulars on the label and told the tech, “After you dust and log these, make sure it is what it says.”

  When Thinnes returned to the dining room with the technician, Bendix had gone out into the hall, and Crowne was looking aimlessly around.

  “Well?” Thinnes demanded.

  Crowne consulted his notebook. “According to the officer, the building manager signed for a UPS shipment for this guy around ten A.M., then let himself into the apartment to leave the package so it wouldn’t get ripped off. When he opened the door and saw the blood, he dropped the box, backed out fast, and dialed nine-one-one. Said he didn’t know Finley personally, but he was a good tenant—paid his rent and didn’t make noise or complain. End of story.”

  Thinnes pointed out more shots he wanted the tech to get, then went into the kitchen. Crowne followed, looking around indifferently as Thinnes studied the room. It was clean enough to be pronounced sterile, with matching appliances and few gadgets. The refrigerator appeared to have been cleaned recently and contained only unopened packages of perishables and domestic beer. With so little to see, they finished quickly and started back into the dining room. Thinnes went ahead, looking back at Crowne to say, “It wasn’t suicide.”

  Crowne stiffened subtly, looking into the dining room beyond Thinnes. Thinnes turned to see a tall man staring with a strange, sad expression, at the wall above Finley and at the blood-spattered print.

  “Who are you?” Thinnes demanded.

  The man’s eyes dropped to the remains of Finley, and he answered without looking up. “I was Allan’s therapist…” He looked at Thinnes with obvious dismay. “And I agree. He wasn’t suicidal.”

  Thinnes studied him. He was a big man, very fit, six two or three, with a bland face, thinning brown hair, and mild blue eyes, a man who—if he got fat—would be ugly, since fat would blur the masculine features of his face and figure. His suit had been made for him and was such a definite if modest statement about his income that Thinnes was surprised he didn’t also wear jewelry. He seemed easygoing enough, but—Thinnes wasn’t prejudiced in these matters—he was a big man, and size brought advantages in life and fights, advantages often concealed for further gain.

  “How’d you get in here?” Thinnes demanded. “Bendix!” he shouted, then said to the intruder, “Let’s see some ID.”

  The man took out his wallet and removed his driver’s license. Thinnes glanced at it, read JAMES A. CALEB, and handed it to Crowne, who recorded the particulars in his notebook.

  Bendix entered with his cigar, no longer lit, in his mouth. “Yeah?”

  Thinnes indicated Caleb. “Why’d you let him in?”

  “Isn’t he…? I thought he was the new department shrink.”

  Thinnes turned to Caleb. “You touch anything in here?”

  Caleb appeared flustered. “I…ah…don’t know.”

  “Would you wait out in the hall?”

  Caleb nodded and stepped past Bendix, who started to retreat.

  Thinnes said, “Hold it Bendix.” Bendix stopped. “Where’s your print man?”

  “I sent him out for coffee.” Bendix took out matches to relight hi
s cigar, then looked at Thinnes and changed his mind.

  “Then you get your box of tricks and get printing.”

  “Five’ll get you ten they’re all the victim’s.”

  Thinnes was inclined to agree. Anyone smart enough to make murder look so much like suicide wouldn’t destroy the victim’s prints or leave any of his own. The only hope in such a case was based on the huge number of things to overlook. With luck the murderer had overlooked one. Thinnes gestured with his thumb toward the hall door. “Start with the shrink’s.”

  When Bendix had gone, and Thinnes was trying to get his thoughts back to where they’d been before the interruption, Crowne quietly announced, “The medical examiner’s here.”

  They ended up interviewing Dr. Caleb in the rental office, a cramped cubbyhole of a room adjoining the manager’s apartment on the first floor.

  “Tell me about Allan Finley, Dr. Caleb.”

  “He was a CPA, a very controlled, meticulous man, with a passion for order that served him well in his work. He liked things black and white, unambiguous, all lined up facing the same direction. And he liked puzzles, especially mathematical ones. Anything with a discrete solution. He found human interactions frustrating in their ambiguity. He wasn’t suicidal.”

  “Mightn’t the ambiguity have gotten to be too much?”

  “When it did, he would bring it to me.”

  “He have any enemies?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “What exactly was he seeing you for?”

  “I suppose, under the circumstances, he wouldn’t mind my telling. My diagnosis was a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Allan’s overwhelming need for order and cleanliness was interfering with his life and his relationships. I was helping him loosen up a bit.”

  “He was on medication?”

  “Tofranil-PM, seventy-five milligrams daily, to be taken at bedtime. That’s a minimum dose for an adult.”

  Thinnes checked his notebook. Caleb might have been reading from Finley’s prescription label. But then according to the label, he’d written the prescription. Thinnes said, “What does it do?”