Death Under the Lilacs (19 page)

Lyon walked slowly through the building, opening office and closet doors. It was midshift, and except for the murmur of the men downstairs, the main floor was quiet. The communications officer sat by the front door eating a tuna fish sandwich. A single uniformed officer was typing with two fingers at a desk behind the radio equipment. There was no one else on the floor.

It was a well-lit building, relying for its cheerful interior on natural sunlight falling through a dozen vertical windows and a large skylight. Lyon stood behind the communications module and stared up at the skylight, which was V-shaped with the glass slanting to a central support beam. It was double-thickness safety glass, strong enough to support a heavy snowfall and without openings or breaks. The other windows were constructed not to open due to the central heating and air-conditioning.

A whooping alarm went off!

Lyon's body jerked at the alien sound. He turned toward the communications desk and saw that the clerk looked as puzzled as he felt. The only other exit from the station was the heavy metal door that led to the rear parking lot.

The two paramedics with their shrouded body on the gurney stood half-in and half-out of the rear entrance looking perplexed.

“Who the hell did that?” Rocco bellowed from downstairs as he took the steps three at a time.

“We didn't know, Chief,” one of the paramedics replied.

“I told you the front door,” Rocco shouted over the sound of the alarm.

“The ambulance is in the rear and we just thought …”

“Never mind.” Rocco stretched toward a metal box mounted directly under the alarm at the right of the rear door. He pressed a red reset button, and the alarm immediately stopped.

“Sorry about that,” the second paramedic said as they rolled the gurney back into the building.

“You're out now,” Rocco said. “Go on.” He waited until the gurney was out of the door before he pulled it shut and reached for the control box and pressed the reset button again.

Lyon had walked down the hall toward the angry Rocco. “That's the only other exit out of here, except through the front, isn't it?”

“Yes. This door is locked and can only be opened from the inside by pressing down on the bar. Either way, it sets off the alarm.”

“Then the murderer did not go out this back door?”

“Not hardly,” Rocco said.

Lyon walked back the length of the building to the communications desk. He glanced at the name badge on the woman's uniform shirt. “Elsie Summers,” it read. She looked vaguely familiar, like a caricature of someone he had once known.

“Can I see the sign-in sheet?” he asked.

She squinted up at him as irritation briefly flicked across her features, to be replaced by a broad smile. “You're Lyon Wentworth.”

Lyon took the clipboard containing the list. “Yes.”

“When I was in high school you spoke to our English class. I even read one of your books,
The Wobblies Take Over
.”

“I hope you liked it,” Lyon said as he glanced down at the list. Their names were all there, with the times they had arrived. Only his and Bea's names were still open, without a sign-out time.

“Is it true that the Wobblies are symbolic of the hidden forces of good and evil?”

“I suppose so.” He handed the clipboard back. “The officers on duty don't sign in?”

“Chief Herbert felt that would be carrying things a little too far. I mean, there aren't that many and I know them all. Besides, they have to punch a time clock when they come on and off a shift.”

“But no one else comes in or out without going past you?”

She nodded in agreement. “No one.”

“But if you have to leave your post for a minute or two …”

“One of the other officers sits in while I'm gone.”

“Did anyone this morning?”

“No. I haven't left since I came on duty at eight.”

Lyon tapped the clipboard. “Are you absolutely positive that no one else except those on this list came in here this morning?”

“I'd swear to it.”

“Thank you.” Lyon walked pensively down the hall toward Rocco's office. Unless one considered the preposterous idea that one of Rocco's people had committed the murder, everyone else was accounted for.

Everyone but Bea and himself was signed out—but that was impossible.

He turned and hurried back to the desk. “Let me see that list again.”

She handed it to him without a word.

Reuven had been signed out.

A dead man had been officially logged out of the building.

“Something wrong?”

He turned the board around so that she could see it and rah his finger along Reuven's line. “According to your records, this man left the building.”

She looked up at him with astonishment. “That's the dead man.”

“Yes.”

“He couldn't have signed out.”

“You don't happen to remember the person who went out?”

She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I could have been on the phone or busy doing something else and just didn't pay attention.”

“You had better take good care of that sheet; it's going to be needed.” Lyon started back to Rocco's office.

In the chief's office, Rocco and Bea were huddled over the desk. Rocco was working with the tape recorder, and Bea held a stopwatch in one hand, a pencil in the other.

“Now,” Rocco snapped.

Bea clicked the stopwatch, looked at the time, and wrote it down. “Got it.”

“What are you two doing?” Lyon asked.

“We recorded everything that happened this morning,” Rocco said. “That will give us an exact fix on the time everyone entered and left the office.”

“That'll help. I checked; there's no way in or out of this building except through the front door, and no one is hiding in here.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Reuven is signed out,” Lyon said.

“What?”

“Somehow Reuven was signed out in that new system you have at the front door.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Bea said.

“Maybe it does,” Rocco said as he took his place in the desk chair and tilted it as far back as it would go. “I can hardly tell the Winthrop twins apart. Suppose Roy, or whoever it was, came in with Burt, then the other one presents himself at the receptionist's window and says he had to get something from the car. She lets him in.”

Bea nodded. “That puts two of them inside, but only one is signed in. The second twin leaves and signs out in Reuven's name … after killing him.”

Rocco tilted his chair forward with a crunch. “Makes sense.” He looked at Lyon expectantly. “It solves our problem. We had a guy loose in here in perfect position to slip a wire around Reuven's neck and carry him downstairs to the cell.”

Captain Norbert did not open doors, he flung them against walls. Rocco winced as the door handle dug into the plaster. “You can have your station back, Herbert. We've got everything we need from down there.”

“You come up with anything?”

“Take a couple of days for the lab people to go through it. We're going to pick up Traxis for interrogation. He's our man, no doubt about it.”

“Traxis?” Lyon and Bea said in unison.

“Hell yes!” the state police officer bellowed. “He paid Reuven to snatch Bea; the key proves that. He was afraid Reuven would break under questioning, so he eliminates him.”

“Can you prove that?” Rocco asked.

“Now that we have the scenario, we can fit the pieces together.” A smirk cleaved his face. “These crumbs always make mistakes. We get them in the end.” He waggled a finger at Rocco. “Better keep a sharp eye on your shop, chief. Can't have this sort of thing happening right under our noses.”

The door slammed and Norbert was gone. They could hear his progress down the hall and waited expectantly for the slam of the front door. It came, and Bea smiled at Lyon.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Rocco said. “After this, the first selectman is going to make me plant a mine field in the flower bed by the front door.”

They were silent a moment before Bea spoke. “It seems obvious that Reuven's death and my kidnapping are intertwined. Rocco thinks it's the twins working for their father with avarice as the motive.”

“Best motive there is.”

“Norbert thinks it's Traxis,” Bea continued. “Motive ideological.”

“Maybe more than that,” Rocco said. “There is that financial link between Winthrop and Traxis.”

She turned to Lyon. “And then there's your ex-student.”

“Motive, revenge,” Lyon added.

“I've been a cop a lot of years,” Rocco said. “And in my experience, I don't know of a single case where someone harbored a grudge for fifteen years before acting. Feelings tend to dissipate if they aren't acted on at once.”

“Whoever did it still has the stamps,” Lyon added. “You can increase everyone's motive by the financial worth of those stamps.”

14

Elsie Summers stood in the center of Rocco's office and smoothed down her skirt. She was obviously trying to look efficient and businesslike.

“It is possible, isn't it, Elsie?” Rocco asked.

“No, sir. I'm sure it isn't.”

“You remember Mr. Winthrop Senior?”

“Vaguely, sir. I mean, I didn't notice him in any particular way.”

“Then how are you so sure that Rob-Roy, whoever the hell it was, didn't pass in twice?”

“I think I would have noticed him.”

“They are identical twins that even their own goddamn mother can't tell apart.”

“I just would have noticed.”

Rocco's temper erupted as his fist thudded onto the desk with a resounding crack that made the young police officer jump. “You wouldn't!”

Her hand brushed her cheek, and Rocco became visibly embarrassed at his browbeating. “I just would,” she insisted.

“You noticed Roy Winthrop in particular?” Rocco asked nearly in a whisper.

“Yes, sir.”

“What made you single him out?”

A slow flush began to seep up from the collar of her uniform shirt. “He … he stopped by my desk a second and spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

“I'd rather not repeat it, Chief.” She gave a furtive glance around the room, as if looking for an avenue of escape.

Rocco forced himself to be calm. “Elsie, you handled the rape interro last year. We've trained you to repeat nasty things.”

“Well, this was addressed to me personally.”

Bea took the police officer gently by the sleeve and led her from the room. She glanced in Rocco's direction, and the large chief nodded his acquiescence.

“I've got a murder in my basement and an upstairs full of people who all seem to be out to lunch.”

Bea returned with a red face and whispered in Lyon's ear.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Lyon said.

“For God's sake, what is it?” Rocco nearly yelled.

“Forget it,” Lyon retorted. “It's not germane to the case but just proves that she really would remember Roy.”

“What is this, a conspiracy?”

Lyon bent over the desk and hastily wrote on the yellow legal pad, ripped the page off, and handed it to Rocco. “For your file. Elsie's direct quotation.”

“About time.” Rocco grabbed the sheet and scanned the words Lyon had written. His fists balled into massive clumps. “He can't talk that way to one of my people!” He rushed around the desk and headed for the door as Lyon intercepted him. “I'll cream the bastard!”

“No way,” Lyon said as he pushed his friend back around the desk and into his chair. “I don't care what Roy said; Norbie would have you up on assault charges.”

“It would make his day,” Rocco agreed.

“Look in your notes,” Lyon said, “and tell me exactly what you have on Bates Stockton's alibi.”

Rocco grunted and began to leaf through his bulky file. He located a letter written on cheap letterhead and looked up at Lyon and Bea. “I asked for a written confirmation. Bates claims that on the night of the kidnapping he was incarcerated in a local jail in Raleigh, New York. That's a little town just across the border on the Hudson River. I called the chief over there. He confirmed the alibi, and here's what he wrote me.” Rocco began to read the awkward sentences. “‘A report was received on the afternoon of June 12 at 1530 hours that a body was located on the shoulder of Route 52. A car was dispatched and the subject was picked up by Officer James R. Easley, shield number 3.…'”

Bea giggled. “Shield 3?”

For the first time Rocco smiled as he looked over the top of the letter. “Evidently Raleigh is even smaller than Murphysville.”

“On with it.”

“You ought to see the typos in this letter,” Rocco said. “Anyway: ‘The subject was obviously under the influence of intoxicating liquor or controlled substances.' That's dope,” Rocco added.

Lyon sighed. “Uh-huh.”

“Anyway,” He began to read again: “‘subject was brought to headquarters. Documentation on subject's person, in the form of a social security card, library card, and letters, identified same as Bates Stockton of Connecticut. Subject was held overnight and released on the following morning at 0900.'”

“So much for that,” Lyon said.

“We've still got to check the twins' alibi for that night,” Bea said.

“We will,” Rocco said. “You know what gets me?” He waved an arm. “When we built this place, we put in a foolproof security system. No one, but no one, gets in this building except through the front door, where they are checked in. We know the alarm system was operating and working because it went off accidentally when the paramedics tried to go out through the back door.”

“As best I can determine,” Lyon said, “at the time of the murder, Jamie Martin was in the station house with one other officer and the clerk at the front desk.”