Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (3 page)

Arlen Hagerty laughed all the time, usually right
after he said something. It was a big, braying, spit-launching cackle. He was a
toucher, always grabbing an arm, poking a chest, or slapping a back, like a
salesman who was running out of month and hadn’t made his quota. Even with his
expensive dark suit, there was no way he was ever going to look like anything
other than what he was: a five-four, two-eighty troll with a sweaty scalp
shining through a dyed combover.

I was gazing absently at the TV, watching the
sports guy interview some football coach, when SPECIAL REPORT flashed on the
screen, and the local anchorwoman appeared, announcing that James Weston had
been killed in a parasailing accident in Maui.

“Weston, 61, Montana’s only billionaire, died
tragically this afternoon,” she said, working hard to look somber, “at the
vacation home on the Maui coast that he shared with his wife, Montana state
senator Dolores Weston of Rawlings. Police believe Weston fell to his death
from approximately two-hundred feet when a sudden wind gust snapped the harness
that secured him to the parasail. The accident was recorded by an onlooker in
this video, which might be too graphic for some viewers.”

In the shaky video, the red-and-white sail jerks
upward, then the body separates from the sail and falls, arms and legs
flailing, out of the video frame, while a voice says, “Oh my God, Janet, look
at—”

I had never met my local representative, Senator
Weston, and chances are I never would—unless, of course, a scammer in an
unmarked pickup takes her for fourteen-hundred bucks on bogus replacement
windows. Funny how all the money in the world can’t protect you from bad shit,
even when you’re floating above the shoreline you own in Paradise, not a care
in the world.

One thing for certain: we were all going to see
that poor bastard’s final thrill a couple dozen more times before moving on to
the next tragedy. The anchorwoman promised us more details tomorrow morning.
Back to the sports report showing cars go round and round.

After another month or so, Ryan glanced over at
me, looking guilty as he shook hands with his two new BFFs. The three came over
to me.

“We’re awfully sorry, Detective,” Arlen Hagerty
said, the two others nodding their heads in agreement. “We were just getting
into the details of the issue and we lost track of time.”

“Stem-cell research?” I said.

“Hell, no,” Hagerty said, braying his wet laugh.
“We don’t talk about that stuff. We were talking about the BCS ranking system.”

“Ah, the BCS ranking system,” I said, nodding my
head wisely, not knowing what that was. “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”
loped along in the background, punctuated by bursts of laughter from the four
shitfaced college boys on the other side of the room.

“Your partner here played four years at BYU, you
know,” Hagerty said, putting an arm on Ryan’s shoulder.

“Four years. How ’bout that,” I said. Earlier in
the evening, I might have tried to figure out why that was important or
interesting, but not now. “Well, boys, it’s been a long evening of stem cells
and the BS ranking system,” I said. “What’d’ya say we call it a night?”

They all shook hands. Ryan leaned over and said
into my ear, “I’m sorry. I should have hurried them along better.”

“That’s okay,” I told him. “I appreciate you
helping me with them here.”

We got our guys back to the Courtyard and safely
up to their rooms.

I drove the seven minutes back to my house and
parked in the carport. My place was easy to spot: it was the house with no
lights on. Inside, I stood there in the dark. After a few seconds I started to
pick out the mechanical sounds: the ticking of the clock on the living-room
wall, the hum of the refrigerator, the faint whoosh as the gas ignited beneath
the water heater in the utility closet down the hall. Turning on the hall
light, I threw my bag down on the narrow table, took off my coat, and hung it
on the hook near the door.

I walked into the living room. There was the
bottle of Jack Daniel’s, its cap off, waiting for me. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” I
said to the silence.

Chapter 2

I was on my hands and
knees, on the ice, beating at it with my fists, crying out to him. The wind
wailed, mocking me, drowning out my voice as I screamed at him to wait, I was
coming. But I couldn’t find a hole in the ice, and I didn’t have anything to
break through it. No stick, no pistol, no rifle butt. I beat at the invisible
ice, but it wouldn’t yield. He was underneath the ice, floating in a waterless
void. He began to recede, getting smaller and smaller. I could still see his
eyes, open wide in panic, his mouth distended in a silent scream. He drifted
farther and farther away, his eyes locked on me.

The sound of my beeper drifted in, out of sync
with my fast, heavy breathing. Climbing out of the nightmare, I felt the
perspiration across my chest. The beeper grew louder, more insistent. Reaching
for it, I knocked over a glass, spilling a half inch of melted ice. It rolled
toward the edge of the night table and fell off, landing softly on the carpet.

I couldn’t read the beeper in the dark. I fumbled
for the switch at the base of the lamp. The light was blinding, but after a
second I could re-open my eyes. The beeper said Rawlings Police Department.
Definitely not what I needed now. I turned it off and fell back onto the clammy
sheets, my breathing heavy and labored. Placing my hand over my heart, I felt the
thumping, wondering just how much a heart can take before it explodes.

I resolved to get up at the count of three. First,
I had to check where the glass had gone. I looked over the edge of the
mattress, couldn’t see it. Good enough. On the count of three: one, two, three.
I sat up, the back of my t-shirt peeling away from the soaked bottom sheet.
Another three-count and I wrestled my legs out from under the sheets and placed
them on the floor. My hand came up to cup my forehead, which really didn’t like
that last three-count.

I picked up the phone, pushed 1 on the speed dial.
Two rings, then a voice said, “Hello, Rawlings Police Department.” I recognized
it: it was one of the receptionists, Gladys or Glenda or something.

I forgot to say hello.

“Hello?” Gladys or Glenda said a second time.

“This is Seagate,” I said, my voice small and
distant. I cleared my throat.

“Detective, come on in. Homicide.”

My head lifted. “Where? Who?”

“Arlen Hagerty. The stem-cell guy. At the
Courtyard. Room 213.”

“Twenty minutes,” I said. I looked at my clock
radio: 6:07
am
. I’d need ten
minutes to shower and brush my teeth, ten minutes to drive to the hotel. I
should eat something, but there was no need for coffee. When I learned I was
with the croaker less than seven hours ago, I didn’t need the caffeine. I
showered, towel dried my hair, combed it straight back. Physics would part it.

I had worked about twenty murders, but this was
the first time I knew the vic. Didn’t know him well, of course, but it was
weird to think that, a few hours ago, he was laughing it up and getting real
intense about college football, while at the same time, close by, someone was
planning to kill him. Arlen was in his room, brushing his teeth, then a minute
later he didn’t exist anymore.

I could feel the excitement rising in my blood. I
was going to figure out what happened and why—and who did it. There was nothing
else like it in life. Well, not in my life, anyway.

I grabbed my coat, pulled the front door closed
behind me, feeling the morning chill on my wet hair. I trotted to the Honda
parked in my carport and drove out to the Courtyard. Last night, it was another
franchise hotel, just like all the others. It had the same college kids working
the reception desk, trying to stay awake as they did their homework and hoped
nobody would disturb them. The same sad-sack bartender trying to look happy
about having to talk about the crappy airlines with the two exhausted
businessmen at the same pathetic little bar, the same empty chairs and couches
in the lobby, the same rack of dusty brochures for the river rafting and the
ski resorts and the outfitters.

Now, it was magically changed. Now it was a crime
scene. Walking into the lobby, I scanned the ceiling, looking for the
closed-circuit TV. I checked out the location of the front desk, then looked
back over my shoulder at the main entrance, calculating whether you could get
inside and over to the elevator without being seen. There was a hallway off to
the left. That probably led to the pool area and the exercise room, maybe the
meeting rooms, too. There’d be another outside exit, so a guest or anyone with
a plastic key could slip right in and take the stairs up to the second floor. I
stood in the middle of the lobby, turning around slowly, my mind focused and my
eyes intense, as I tried to make out the shapes of the jigsaw pieces that this
building had become.

Room 213 was standard-issue, with a king-size bed.
The wallpaper was a vertical stripe of beige and bone. The furniture was oak,
good quality. The reading lights, one on each side of the huge bed, had pink
shades that complemented the beige motif. Right inside the doorway was the
thermostat, the kind that lets you choose the temperature without fiddling with
the heat or the air. The prints on the wall were abstract, tasteful. All in
all, a nice room.

Three feet inside the door, I recognized the broad
back of Ryan Miner, who was standing there, hands on hips, looking at the body
of Arlen Hagerty. Ryan turned when he heard me.

“Hey,” I said. He looked a little green around the
gills. “You okay?”

Ryan just shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”
I didn’t know what he was trying to say: that he’s looking at a murdered guy,
that someone would kill Arlen Hagerty, that this was his first homicide? “We
were talking to him just last night.”

“Yeah, it’s a strange feeling,” I said. Ryan just
shook his head. “Well, let’s start investigating your first murder.”

Standing next to the bed was Harold Breen, the
Medical Examiner, who had been on the job for over fifteen years. “Hey, Karen,
I’ve just been talking with your new partner about this skinny stiff on the bed
here.” Arlen Hagerty was fat, but Breen couldn’t remember when he himself
passed three hundred. The simple act of bending down over the corpse made Breen
breathe hard. He was wearing cheap brown polyester pants, shiny, and black Hush
Puppies with Velcro straps. His shirt was poly, short sleeve, a plaid from the
K-Mart Clan.

As Breen stood up, his pants slipped farther down
under his paunch, exposing the undershirt where one of the shirt buttons had
come undone. It was real lucky for Harold he was about the nicest guy in the
world. Otherwise, no way his wife, a decent-looking woman who shopped in the
petite section and loved him completely, would have married him twenty years
ago.

“Hi, Harold, tell me what you see,” I said. Even
if Arlen Hagerty hadn’t been dead, it would have been a gross image. His
liver-spotted scalp was exposed; the few dozen chestnut-dyed strands of hair
that were grown long for the combover had surrendered to gravity, forming a
delicate canopy over his ear. His grey eyes were half open, as if he was
struggling to stay awake. His mouth was open, the jaw pulled down by his heavy
chin.

He was flat on his back on the bed, his arms
splayed out to the sides, each weighty breast, almost touching the sheets,
capped with a large, soft pink nipple encircled by long, wiry grey hairs. The
belly was a mass of pink wounds, the coagulated crimson blood coating the
patchy hair. He was wearing boxers, which exposed, on the left side, an inch of
fleshy scrotum. The legs were stumpy, hairless, the calves covered by heavy,
squiggly blue broken blood vessels. He was wearing black nylon socks.

Breen spoke. “Well, there’s about twenty puncture
wounds across his chest and abdomen. I don’t see a weapon, but I’m guessing
something blunt, like a screwdriver, not a knife. And the splatter
evidence—blood on the carpet, the side of the mattress, even on the other side
of the bed—suggests the victim was a few feet away from the bed when the attack
started, but he retreated toward the bed and fell onto it, or was pushed onto
it.”

Ryan said, “So we’re looking at an amateur job,
most likely a crime of rage.”

“Yeah,” I said, “something made the murderer flip
out. You don’t need twenty jabs to kill a guy. What else do you see, Ryan?”

“The bed is unmade, like he’s been in it. Looks
pretty rumpled up, like maybe he wasn’t alone. The pillows are set up two and
two, each with an indent in it, which also suggests more than one person. And
he’s lying on top of the top sheet and the blanket, like if he was in bed, he
got up to do something. Maybe to open the door to the killer.”

“Tell me about what his clothing says,” I said to
Ryan.

“Well, he might have been getting undressed,
getting ready for bed, when he was attacked. Or maybe he just sleeps in his
underwear and his socks.” He paused a second. “What’s that thing under his body
there?” he said, pointing to a black plastic device sticking out from under
Hagerty’s kidney area.

Harold Breen was wearing gloves. He rolled the
heavy midsection a few inches up, exposing the TV remote control.

Ryan said, “So maybe he’s in bed, alone or with
someone else, watching TV. He gets up to open the door, tosses the remote on
the bed. Lets the murderer in. The guy attacks him, punches these holes in him,
he falls back onto the bed, landing on top of the remote.”

“All right,” I said to him. “Good. Harold, you see
anything else, or anything different from what Ryan said?”

“Not yet. When I put him on the table I might see
something. He could have some tissue under his fingernails that can help us
understand who he shared his last night with. And when I open him up, there
might be all kinds of surprises. But for now, Karen, you and Ryan are probably
right. Somebody just went apeshit on this guy.”

I said, “One more thing, Harold. Can you give me a
time of death?”

“Judging by the blood coagulation and the amount
of rigor, I’d say between midnight and 2:00
am.
Have fun, kids,” Harold said, peeling off his latex gloves. “I hope to open him
up later today.”

“Thanks, Dr. Breen,” Ryan said.

“It’s Harold, okay?” Breen said, turning.

“Harold,” Ryan said.

I turned toward the bathroom. “Okay, Ryan, let’s
see what else we can see.” The Evidence Tech was in the bathroom, her head in
the bathtub. “Hey, Robin,” I said. “Got any good stuff in there?”

Robin was wearing white coveralls, her natural
blond hair streaked with green highlights and pulled back in two pigtails. With
an eyebrow ring and purple lipstick against her freckled face, still puffy with
baby fat, she looked like she’d just escaped from a residential high-school for
at-risk teenage girls. “Are you kidding?” Robin said cheerfully. “This is a
hotel bathroom. Dirty towels, biologicals in the drain. I’m in fuckin’ heaven.”

“You’re a special person,” I said.

“I’ve always known that, but I appreciate you
noticing.” Robin smiled. “I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

“Good. Ryan and I will look around out here.”

Ryan called from the main room. “Looks like we can
rule out robbery,” he said, standing at the desk, looking in Hagerty’s wallet.
“There’s over a hundred bucks in here.”

On the desk were the flyer from last night’s
debate, the plastic room key, some change, and his wallet. His bag, a
one-suiter on wheels, straddled the arms of the desk chair. The main
compartment was unzipped. I lifted the flap. Inside was a big plastic bag with
his dirty laundry. Today’s clean clothes—underwear, shirt, and socks—were
folded. I looked in the closet, where his suit from yesterday hung neatly.

Robin came out of the bathroom, wiping her brow on
her forearm.

“Okay, Robin, what do you see?”

“First I vacuumed the room. I’ll look at it when I
get it back to the lab, but I didn’t see anything—except some shitty
housekeeping. I took photos of the carpet first. No sign of anyone waiting for
Tubby inside the room. Not sure if I’ll be able to see any impressions on this
carpet to tell anything about the murderer.”

Ryan knelt down and ran his hand across the
carpet. “Yeah, the nap is too short, and the weave too tight.” Robin and I
looked at him. “One summer I laid carpets.”

I turned to Robin. “You didn’t find a big old
screwdriver, did you, with the shaft all covered in red, sticky stuff?”

“I’ll check in the vacuum-cleaner bag.” Robin
smiled. “I’m going to go over the sheets carefully once your boys bring in a
crane and remove Shamu. See if he’s been playing hide the salami.”

“What did you see in the bathroom?”

“I got some good prints off the toilet handle, and
a couple of dirty towels on the floor. I won’t know about the towels till I
bring ’em in,” she said, her face brightening, “but I think I see semen on one
of them.”

“Jesus, Robin. Semen on a towel?” I said.

Ryan said, “Like he jacked off?”

I looked at Ryan. “Guys jack off into towels?”

Ryan laughed. “Well, I’ve cut way back, Karen, but
you can’t rule it out. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s a big clump or
only a little.”

Robin said, “I don’t think he was pumping. More
like he hit the shower afterwards and didn’t do such a great job cleaning
himself up.”

Ryan said, “Karen, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing” I said, sighing. “Just that, this
morning I woke up with four or five illusions left. Now it’s down to three,
max. Maybe two.”

Robin said, “Come see me in the lab in a couple of
hours. I’ll show you the ten places in this room where you wouldn’t have
expected to find fecal matter. Then you could cross another illusion off your
list.”

“You trying to make me hurl right here?” I said.

Robin said, “If you did, I could bag it and tell
you all kinds of cool shit about yourself.”