In the Drink (4 page)

He was there all right, and he wasn't alone. There was a woman with him, a woman wearing a faux fur coat, a miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and stiletto heels. Her hair was teased, her makeup was way overdone, and the smell of her perfume made me hear a sound like rattling chains. I recognized the sound—and hence the smell that triggered it—as Calvin Klein's Eternity. I was given a small bottle of it as a gift by my ex-boyfriend, who had a hard time understanding why I never wore it. I don't wear any fragrances and I use only fragrance-free shampoos and soaps whenever possible. Otherwise, the resultant cacophony of sound and visual sensations makes it difficult for me to function. It's hard enough dealing with other people's smells without adding any of my own.

Duncan was dressed in a bulky winter coat, which was open at the moment because the weather that day had been warmer than usual. Beneath the coat he was wearing a flannel shirt and loose-fitting bib overalls. His feet were clad in heavy work boots, and he had a stocking cap on his head, pulled down so low that none of his hair was visible. On his face was a pair of black-rimmed, big-lensed eyeglasses. He had the woman who was with him pushed up against the wall beside the door, his body against hers, their faces nearly touching. Had he not looked directly at me when I opened the door, I wouldn't have known it was him, and even then I had to look twice to be sure.

My jaw dropped, but before I could utter a word I heard the woman say just above a whisper, “I haven't seen anyone. I think you're clear.”

With that, Duncan pushed himself away from her, said, “Thanks, Libby,” and stepped inside. The woman turned and sashayed down the alley toward the street.

I closed the door, gaping at Duncan in disbelief.

“What?” he said, with a mischievous grin. “I told you I was going to create a cover.”

“That's your cover? Some hot tamale you picked up somewhere?”

“That tamale would be quite offended to hear you speak of her in that manner. Libby happens to be one of the best undercover cops in our district. I asked her if she would pretend to be my drunken girlfriend while we walked the streets to get here so that if anyone was watching, they wouldn't suspect it was me.”

I glared at him, too stymied to say anything. The sound of laughter from the women's restroom down the hall brought me back to reality. “We can discuss this more later. Grab that bag,” I said, pointing to the paper sack I had set on the floor and holding the apartment door open. “Let's get upstairs and out of sight.”

Still holding on to the pizza box, I let Duncan slide past me into the foyer at the base of the stairs. “Go on upstairs,” I told him. “I need to go turn the alarm back on and then I'll meet you up there.”

I went to hand him the pizza box and he said, “You didn't have to provide me with dinner.”

“I didn't. The letter is in there.” Duncan looked momentarily horrified until I added, “The box is clean. It was never used.”

I stepped out into the hallway, returned to my office, and switched the alarm back on. Then I headed upstairs to my apartment. A man and a woman both entered the hallway at the same time I did, but now that Duncan was safely ensconced upstairs, I didn't care who saw me. As soon as I was inside the foyer at the base of my stairs, I pulled the door closed and locked it on the inside with the slide bolt.

Duncan was waiting for me at the top of the stairs and as soon as I reached him, he pulled me into his arms. “Man, have I missed you, Mack Dalton,” he said in a half whisper. I was about to say I'd missed him, too, but he didn't give me a chance. Instead we reunited with a long, heated kiss that said it all. Things progressed to a point where I knew we would end up in my bedroom if we didn't stop so, reluctantly, I pushed myself away from him.

“I want to be with you, believe me I do,” I said, a bit breathless. “But the clock is ticking and I can't focus on anything else with this letter-writing whacko thing hanging over my head.”

“I'm betting I can alter your focus,” Duncan said, his eyes dark and deliciously dangerous.

“I'm sure you could,” I countered, “which is why I pushed away.”

Duncan sighed, nodded slowly, and turned his attention to the dining room table where he had set the pizza box and the bag of letters. He went for the box first, opened it, and removed the baggie with the letter.

“Nice job,” he said, holding the baggie by one corner.

“Not really. I didn't know what it was until after I'd read it, so I'd already touched and held it before I put it in the baggie.”

“That couldn't be helped,” he said. “What you've done here is the best you could. It's what the cops would have done.” He held the page up then so he could read it through the plastic. I watched his facial expression change, from mild curiosity to worry, and then anger.

“What's in the paper bag?” he asked when he was done.

“All the letters I've gotten since the media storm started. Most of them are either friendly or neutral, but there are some that are not so friendly. Of those, most are simply critical but a few are downright mean. I thought we might want to go through them to see if there are any connections between this letter and any of those.”

“Excellent idea,” Duncan said, bestowing me with a smile. “You're getting better at this crime stuff.”

“Yeah, now that I can't use it.”

“We'll see about that,” he said, piquing my curiosity. Then he switched his focus back to the baggie and said, “This is the envelope the letter came in?”

“It is. It's one of those peel and stick business-sized envelopes you can buy anywhere. In fact, I have a whole box of the same ones in my office. I put it in a baggie even though I don't know what good it will do. Between the post office and here, who knows how many people have handled it? And since it's a self-stick envelope, there won't be any DNA.”

“Don't be so sure,” Duncan said. “Those adhesive strips can sometimes catch skin cells, hairs, or other debris. Same thing with the stamp; in fact, it might even have a partial print on it.”

“That's all fine, but what good does it do if we can't run it?”

Duncan looked puzzled. “Why can't we run it?”

“Because the writer of that letter made it very clear that if I involved you in this, someone would die as a result.”

“Someone has already died.”

“Yes, but I couldn't stop that death. I can, however, stop any others from happening if I play by the rules outlined in that letter.”

“You've already broken the rules by contacting me. So what difference does it make if we run some stuff through the lab? I have some connections there. We can keep it as secret as my being here.”

“I don't know,” I said, shaking my head. “The more people who get involved, the greater the odds are the writer will find out. I don't want to risk that.”

“Trust me on this, okay? I promise you I can keep what I do off the record, at least for now. And if you don't want me to provide some investigative assistance, why did you ask me here?”

“Well, for one, I wanted to see you.” That got me a wink and a smile. “And for another, we both know that I'm not very good at this deductive reasoning stuff. I've played at it when the Capone Club presents their puzzle cases and with one or two exceptions that were more accident than anything, I can't make my mind work that way. I may have unique abilities with the synesthesia thing, but I don't have the ability to think like a detective. Maybe it's
because
of my synesthesia that I can't seem to think that way. Whatever the reason, I suck at it. And that's why I need you.”

“Okay, so where do you want to start?”

“The body you found, has it been on the news yet?”

Duncan nodded and glanced at his watch. “The first news report should have aired at five.”

“Good. That means my knowing about it didn't have to come from you. I'm guessing the killer counted on me hearing about it on the news, otherwise the “happy days” reference would have been for naught, assuming the newscasts announce where the body was found.”

“They not only announced it, they shot their segment right in front of the statue.”

“Good, I guess.”

Duncan nodded thoughtfully, staring at the letter. “You said this ink smelled different . . . unusual. Can you be more specific?”

“I'll try. Each type of ink has certain sounds that go with it. For instance, inkjet printer inks sound like random low notes on a piano. In contrast, the toner from a laser printer triggers a crackling sound, kind of like a fire. The inks used in ballpoint pens all smell more or less the same, very similar to the inkjet printer but they trigger higher notes. Gel pen inks have a distinct odor, too, different from regular ink. They also sound like high notes on a piano, but with a tinnier sound, as if it they're being played on a child's piano. I've always assumed that the subtle differences in the smells and sounds the inks trigger are due to slightly different ingredients, but they all have something in common. They all have a squeaky underlying sound. But whatever ink was used in this letter triggers a totally different sound, sort of a deep bass thrum mixed in with some watery sounds, like sloshing waves. And there's no squeak.”

“Okay,” Duncan said, frowning. “How can you be sure the smell is from the ink as opposed to something infused into the paper?”

“Because if something was added to the paper it would feel different, and I'd see something different as a result. The paper used for the letter appears to be generic copier/printer stuff. When I was holding it, the feel of it made me see white fibers with the ends unraveling. That's the exact same thing I see when I hold the printer paper I use in my office. When I hold the morning newspaper, the feel of it makes me see more of a mesh than a fiber, and it's gray, not white. Once, when I spilled my coffee on the morning newspaper and let it dry, it felt different to me when I picked it up, and the mesh I typically see looked more like a piece of brown paper bag.”

“Could it have been the smell of the coffee that made it different in that case?”

I considered this for a second or two. “I don't think so. Smells don't trigger visual manifestations. Sounds, touch, and emotions do.”

“Maybe you were upset that you spilled the coffee?” Duncan posed with a wry grin. I cocked my head and gave him a give-me-a-break look. He shrugged. “Just exploring all the possibilities.”

“Besides,” I went on, “if there was something on or in the paper to make it smell different, the envelope would pick it up, and I didn't get any sense that the envelope was affected at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure the address on the envelope was done with an inkjet printer.”

“If so, it might be a lucky break for us. We might be able to track it.”

I looked askance at him. “Seriously? That sounds like sci-fi, Big Brother stuff to me.”

“I know, but it's true. Some printers are set up so that they will leave a series of small yellow dots on every page it prints. If you can see them and know how to interpret them, it will give you the date and time the page was printed, and the serial number of the printer.”

“That is scary,” I said.

“I suppose, but if you aren't doing anything wrong, it shouldn't be a problem.”

“I guess. But it still seems like an invasion of privacy.”

“I suppose it is,” Duncan agreed. “But it helps make my job easier. Mostly it's the laser printers that leave the dots behind, but there are some inkjet manufacturers that are starting to do it now, too.”

I took the baggie with the envelope from him and held it up close to my eyes, scrutinizing the surface. “I don't see any dots.”

“They can't be seen with the naked eye. You have to use a special light and sometimes you need a magnifying glass or even a microscope. Don't you have a black light down in the bar?”

“I do. Want me to get it?”

Duncan thought a moment and then said, “Maybe it would be best to have the professionals look at it. There are other things that might be useful. For instance, inkjet printers sometimes create tiny defects in the printing, defects that are visible under magnification and caused by an uneven spray from one of the jets. It can prove as specific as a fingerprint, though if a cartridge is changed between when the original was printed and when the sample is printed, all bets are off because the spray is often altered by the realignment and cleaning of the jets. Plus we'd have to have a specific suspect printer first.”

“My dad has an old microscope in his office. It's one he used in college but I think it still works. And I have this,” I said, grabbing my key ring. On it was a small flashlight, a promotional giveaway I got from one of my beer suppliers. The light it gave out was an ultrabright blue. “Think this would work to show up the yellow dots?”

“It might,” Duncan admitted.

I handed him the little flashlight and then went into my father's office to get the microscope. I had to blow some dust off it, and before I gave it to Duncan I went into the kitchen and got a paper towel to wipe off the lenses. By the time I returned to the dining room table, Duncan was scrutinizing the envelope with the flashlight.

“Find anything?” I asked.

“Nope, but I'll look at it again under the microscope.” He placed the envelope, still inside the baggie, on the microscope's platform while I plugged in the cord to a wall outlet. Duncan flipped a switch and the microscope's light source came on. He spent the next several minutes adjusting the focus and moving the envelope back and forth, up and down beneath the lens. At one point he took my key ring light and shined it down on top of the envelope. Finally he looked at me and shook his head. “Nothing,” he announced. “Let's try a different tack. Let's say you're right about the letter ink being unique or different—”