Murder & Sullivan Read online

  “David had a backhoe over here one day. I thought he gave up on it.”

  “He gave up too soon.” He looked a little huffy. “The damage will be easy to repair.”

  “Oh, really?” Zach had made it sound ominous. She was glad she hadn’t quoted him to his boss. But Virgil was still frowning.

  “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  “Not really. I’m in the orchestra for Ruddigore. I live next door—Zach Yoder’s rebuilding my front porch.” And if you don’t like that, tough.

  He eyed the porch, but kept his opinions to himself. She decided she’d better do the same and went back home.

  Andrew hailed her from the kitchen. He was waving some pages in the air.

  “Look what Steve brought!”

  “Hi, Steve.” Joan smiled at him. She couldn’t look at this young man without seeing him as Robin Oakapple.

  “Hi, Mrs. Spencer.” He hopped to his feet. Gracious. She waved him back down.

  “So tell me, what is it?”

  “It’s Professor Ucello’s first journal article about the research we’re in,” Andrew said. “It came out yesterday. Steve just copied it at the library.”

  “That’s pretty quick turnaround,” Joan said.

  “Oh, Andrew’s data won’t be in this article,” Steve said. “He just started spring semester. This one reports on what we did a year ago. Dr. Ucello had to hurry to get it published—he’s applying for another NSF grant.”

  “That’s how he can pay us,” Andrew said. “We made three hundred eighty-four bucks last semester.”

  “Between you?”

  “Each. If he gets his grant renewal, we’ll end up with around twelve hundred apiece. All we have to do is reach out and touch these targets while we’re looking through lenses that change how we see things. It’s a lot easier than working in the lab.” Andrew had been a lab assistant to Professor Werner of Biology since volunteering in high school. That, plus a hefty tuition scholarship and living rent-free at home, made it possible for him to attend Oliver College. If he’d mentioned being a human subject, Joan had missed it, or confused it with his lab job. “You have to keep your mind on what you’re doing, though,” Andrew continued. “If you drift off, you’ll distort the results.”

  Steve pored over a graph on the second page of the article.

  “That’s odd,” he said.

  “What’s odd?” Andrew and Joan asked in unison.

  “My graph is wrong.”

  “What do you mean, your graph?” Joan said.

  “This one, with SD on it—it shows my data. And it’s wrong.”

  “How?” Andrew said.

  “It fits his mathematical model all right, but I had one data point way up here, not down where the line is.”

  “What about the error bars?” Andrew asked. Joan wondered what error bars were, not to mention how Andrew would know. College must be doing him some good.

  “They don’t account for that big a difference. That point was way off. Maybe that’s why he left it out.”

  “You can’t dump anomalous data that don’t fit your model.” Andrew sounded shocked.

  “Yeah, well. It looks like he did—or changed it.”

  “That’s even worse!”

  “Maybe he had a good reason.”

  Andrew shook his head.

  “He’d better hope NSF doesn’t find out about it. You violate scientific ethics, and you’re out on your ear—or worse.”

  “Well, they won’t find out from me,” Steve said. “I need the money.”

  14

  A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

  —SERGEANT, The Pirates of Penzance

  Fred left the Saturday paper unread on the floor of his spartan apartment. He showered the sleep out of his eyes, shaved, and pulled the pins out of a new shirt. Tying his four-in-hand precisely, he brushed the shoulders of his good summer suit and gave his already shining shoes an extra swipe. It was his routine before appearing in court. Not that court would be in session today, but there was no telling what bigwigs he’d deal with. Not that they’d notice how he looked.

  He stopped for a sack of doughnuts at Dan’s Donuts, an Oliver fixture often patronized by the police force. They’d go fast at the station. He wasn’t the only cop who skipped breakfast.

  “Well, now, Fred.” Dan reached for the doughnuts with a slick tissue. “You reckon it was his wife killed the judge?”

  “Two more chocolate.” Fred wasn’t surprised at the question. Mounted on a shelf behind the counter, Dan’s police scanner searched for something to make his life more exciting. A man about Putnam’s age, Dan might have known him for years. And he was a born gossip. “What do you know about it, Dan?”

  “Nothin’.” Dan tucked the tissue on top of the last doughnut and folded the top of the sack down over it. “But I figure maybe she didn’t take to him playin’ around.”

  “Who says?”

  “You hear things. I wouldn’t want to name names.”

  “But you’re going to.” Fred didn’t expect to have to lean on him much. Dan generally took great pleasure in telling him everything he knew, or thought he knew, about any case. “Come on, Dan, this is murder. And you knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Hell, yes. Me and David played ball together.” Fred stared at him until he looked away and fiddled with the doughnuts under the glass counter. “It was Chris Eads—you know Chris?” Fred remembered Eads, the muscular ghost who claimed to be the last person Putnam had spoken to.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said David had the hots for his wife.” Dan looked him in the eye again.

  “Liz MacDonald? His ex-wife?”

  “Well, sure. But you know who gave Liz that divorce.”

  “No, who?” Fred gave him a twenty.

  “Judge Putnam, that’s who.” Of course. “Chris fought it—he figures David had his own reasons.” Dan handed back his change.

  “Thanks, Dan.” Expressionless, Fred picked up his doughnuts and left.

  At the station, he set the sack on the table by the coffee maker and tore it open. Crumpling the tissue into a tight ball, he banked it off the wall into the wastepaper basket. If there was any point in keeping Dan’s fingers off the doughnuts, he thought while he bit into a cruller, then why stick the paper in the bag with them? Or was it the other way around? Was the paper to keep the doughnuts from making Dan’s fingers sticky? He suspected that Dan and the board of health had different views on that subject.

  Ketcham and Terry arrived together and helped themselves to doughnuts and coffee. No autopsy results yet. Dr. Henshaw had promised to do it early this morning.

  “Not that we’re likely to learn much,” Ketcham said. “We already know the knife handle was wiped clean.”

  “We bagged his hands,” Terry said. “But the man didn’t have a chance to fight back.”

  “And the autopsy isn’t going to narrow down the time of death any,” Ketcham said.

  “We’ve got his keys and his wallet,” Terry said. “He was carrying ID, insurance and credit cards, a picture of his wife and kids, and $47.26.”

  “Check the keys,” Fred said. “Dan the doughnut man thinks he’s been carrying on with Liz MacDonald.”

  “He’d be crazy to have her key on him.”

  “Yeah, well. He had no reason to think we’d be looking in his pockets.”

  “I’ll start with Mrs. Putnam,” Terry said. “She ought to know what locks most of them fit.”

  “You haven’t met her yet, have you? See what you think. Dan thinks she killed him over Liz.”

  “Mrs. Putnam sure wasn’t happy about having her spend time with the family.” Ketcham polished his glasses with his handkerchief. “But she volunteered that.”

  “She knew we’d hear something.”

  “Uh-huh,” Terry said.

  “From there, come on over to the courthouse,” Fred said. “Check his office key and then help us search through the records to s
ee whether any of the men who were backstage or in those frames before Putnam died ever appeared before him in court.”

  “On my way.” Terry took off, and Fred handed Ketcham the list he’d made with Biggy’s help.

  “Run these names through the computer and see whether any of them has a criminal record. I’ll call the clerk of courts for the rest.”

  “Go easy on her. Maude’s always had a soft spot for Judge Putnam. She used to be his Cub Scout den mother.”

  Trust Ketcham to know. Fred wasn’t surprised to hear Maude Kelly snuffling over the phone when she agreed to meet him at the courthouse in half an hour.

  The computer yielded little useful information. Dr. Cutts had a couple of moving traffic violations, and Chris Eads had once been arrested for possession of a small quantity of marijuana—nothing that suggested murder. No one on the list had a juvenile record.

  Fred walked with Ketcham over to the Alcorn County Courthouse, a plain brick building with white pillars and a white tower that looked like a steeple. It might have been mistaken for a church, except for the Stars and Stripes flapping over the memorial to Oliver’s fallen heroes of every war since 1860 and the cannons on the perfect green lawn. Brick storefronts facing the courthouse made up the bulk of Oliver’s business district, with the town hall, police station, jail, and fire department only a block from the central square.

  The two men flushed a flock of pigeons roosting on the cannons. Fred sniffed the humid air, pleasant for July. The temperature was still in the low eighties, but the morning sun was already beating down on them.

  “Gonna be another scorcher,” Ketcham said.

  “Yeah. Let’s hope they don’t store their records in the attic.”

  They did. Some of them, anyway. Maude Kelly, a plump, sweet-faced, white-haired little woman wearing shorts and sneakers on a Saturday morning, fussed while she unlocked the courthouse door for them.

  “I keep telling them we need some help around here. It’s no way to do, having records here, there, and everywhere. My predecessor just poked them wherever he found space, and now there’s no time to clean it up. You’ll find my records in much better order. Before I came, no one bothered to have them computerized. Costs too much, the commissioners said, and Mr. You Know Who didn’t care—probably was afraid he couldn’t learn how. After I took office, I made them join the information age. At least we can check the computer for the past year and a half.” They waited while she brought it up and running and then typed in the names, but she found nothing. It was too much to hope for, Fred thought.

  “Now what?” he said.

  “Now you get to look through the entry books. I’ll show you.”

  The temperature dropped and the humidity rose as Mrs. Kelly led them down a steep flight of stairs to the courthouse basement. At the bottom, she turned on fluorescent lights and paused before stepping onto the floor. Looking over her shoulder, Fred saw big black water bugs scurry like cockroaches.

  “Watch out for the slugs,” she said. “There aren’t as many, but they can’t get out of your way as fast as those things do.”

  Metal shelving along the walls held huge books labeled with recent dates.

  “These are from the last three years,” she said. “The current session’s records are upstairs, but they were on the computer. It’s a good thing you don’t need anything from before Judge Putnam came on the bench.”

  “Do you keep records that far back?” Ketcham asked.

  “Have to. The state requires us to keep files for at least ten years, and David’s only been a judge for eight.” Suddenly her eyes filled up. “I can’t believe he’s gone—he was the sweetest little boy.” She pulled a handkerchief out of her shorts pocket and honked once. Then she folded it into quarters and tucked it away. “I’m sorry. Records for the past nine years are down here. Before that, they’re up in the tower. I don’t know how far back the tower goes. I don’t think that pack rat ever purged anything—just stashed them away. Pigeons got into the tower a few years ago when a window broke and no one bothered to fix it. Now there’s pigeon droppings all over everything. You’re lucky you’ll find what you want down here.”

  She opened the door into the next room and turned on the light. Again, the bugs ran. But here they saw no neat shelves. Instead, cardboard boxes, stacked three and four high, were filled with massive books. Water stains on the bottom boxes suggested damage to the records stored inside them. She waved her arm.

  “This is the mess he left me! Can you believe it?”

  Behind his spectacles, Ketcham rolled his eyes at Fred, who cleared his throat.

  “I, uh, don’t suppose you’ve got them catalogued.”

  “Are you kidding?” She looked up at him. “No, you’re not, are you?” She opened the top volume in the closest box. “Here, you see, there’s an index in each book. You can check it for the names of people you’re hunting—saves looking through all the cases on the docket. Course, the correct information might not be in the index. Shouldn’t happen, but it does.”

  Ketcham picked up a book, read the date on the back, and put it down.

  “Where’s the book for eight years ago?”

  “Could be anywhere. I told you it was a mess. People looking for something in these boxes put them back any which way.”

  Ketcham groaned.

  “But don’t let me catch you doing that on my shelves. They’re in strict chronological order. Too bad you don’t know what date you’re looking for. Then we’d have you out of here in no time.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Fred said.

  “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” And she left them, taking with her all hope that she would help them search the chaotic records for a lead to the killer of the sweet little boy she remembered.

  “Might as well start in the other room,” Ketcham said.

  “Might as well.” Fred checked his watch when he started looking. Fifteen minutes later, they’d hardly made a dent. “I’m going to get us some help,” he told Ketcham. “And Terry ought to arrive any time now. I’ll ask Mrs. Kelly to take him down to you.”

  He didn’t have to. At the top of the stairs to the first floor Fred saw Terry’s tall shadow through the window. Before he could reach the courthouse door, Terry opened it. Fred crossed the scuffed oak floor to him.

  “Learn anything?”

  Terry nodded.

  “The keys are okay.” He held out the key he had just used on the courthouse door. “This is the only one that didn’t fit his house or vehicles. Mrs. Putnam thought it would open his office door, too.”

  So there wasn’t a key to a love nest. That didn’t prove anything, one way or the other.

  “Okay.” Fred accepted the key. “I’ll tell Mrs. Kelly you’re here.” He waved at the basement stairs. “Go down there and let Ketcham fill you in.”

  The key opened the door to Putnam’s chambers. No indication of trouble there. He flipped through the appointment calendar on the desk. Putnam hadn’t kept detailed notes. Nothing cryptic, either. It looked routine, but he’d take it along. No need to preserve the scene here.

  “I’ve already been in and out a dozen times since he left yesterday afternoon,” Mrs. Kelly said, as if she’d read his mind. “Last thing I said to him was to sing pretty. I was going to hear him tonight.” Her mouth twisted briefly, and her eyes glistened, but she had herself under control. “You let me know anything I can do to help you, and I’ll do it.” Did she mean it?

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help us look through those records.”

  “For David? You bet I would,” she said. “I would have offered, but I didn’t want to get in the way.”

  “Trust me, ma’am, you won’t. We need you.” Why hadn’t he asked her before?

  She was already heading down to the basement when he left the courthouse. The heat blasted him as soon as he stepped outside. Had the temperature risen that much in the few minutes he’d spent in the dank basement, or was it just contrast? By th
e time he’d walked back to the station his new shirt was stuck to his back under his suit coat.

  He was only a little cooler half an hour later when his phone rang.

  “Lundquist.”

  “Are you sitting down?” Fred recognized the voice of Dr. Henshaw.

  “Tell me what you’ve got.” Fred wasn’t in the mood for games.

  “Cause of death is cardiac tamponade. Blood collecting in the pericardium squeezed the heart and stopped it.”

  “From the stab wound.”

  “Yes, but not the one you think.” Henshaw sounded almost gleeful.

  “Not—”

  “That little dagger didn’t do it.”

  Fred leaned back and shut his eyes, blocking out everything but the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “For a couple of reasons. The simplest one is that it didn’t reach the heart.”

  “So where’d the blood come from?”

  “Exactly. And why wasn’t there any in the pleural cavity? I expected to find blood in the pleural cavity. Zilch. None on the surface, either. That knife went in postmortem.”

  Great. Now we have to find someone who gets his jollies out of stabbing corpses.

  “You found another wound?” Fred asked.

  “Had to look hard.” Henshaw continued to sound pleased with himself, as well he might have. “It had closed up—all the bleeding was interior.”

  “Where?”

  “I found a small penetrating wound near the posterior midline, between the sixth and seventh ribs. Darn near invisible.”

  “What kind of weapon are we looking for?” Fred opened his eyes and reached for pencil and paper.

  “Something long and sharp, at least ten inches long and not more than a quarter inch in diameter. Probably less.”

  “Diameter? It’s round?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sounds like an ice pick.”

  “Yeah, that would do it.”

  “How hard a blow?”

  “Depends on how sharp the instrument was.”

  “Could a woman have done it?”

  “Sure. Penetrating the skin is the hard part.”

  Fred thought back to what witnesses had said. “He was standing there for as much as ten minutes before he fell. You think he was wounded, but alive?”