The Motive (6 page)

“I’m just saying…”

“I know. That I’ll be tempted to reason with him, tell him Gerson was dirty and it was pure self-defense, we had no choice.” He shook his head at the absurdity of the idea. “You have my word I won’t go there.”

Hardy came back and boosted himself onto his desk. “Even if you don’t, though, you’re back on his radar. He might remember what he forgot to keep up on.”

“Forget nothing. There wasn’t any evidence, thank God, and he got ordered off.”

“I remember, but he needs to stay off. For both our sakes. And working with you is going to bring up old memories. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I was aware of that even before I came in here, believe it or not. If you have any ideas, I’m listening, but otherwise the mayor’s ordered me to work with the guy. What do you want me to do, quit?”

Hardy brightened. “It’s a thought.”

“Great. Let me just borrow your phone and I’ll call Treya and let her know.” He stood up and went to pull some darts from the board. Turning back with them, he shrugged. “I’ve kept a close eye on him, as you might guess. The plain fact—and good news for us—is that he’s careless and sloppy. This morning’s an example. He’s at Hanover’s fifteen minutes and tells the press it’s murder/suicide.”

“So it’s not?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a couple of questions. I don’t see Hanover burning down his house, for one big one. He just shoots the woman, stands there a minute, then does himself, okay, that flies. But Becker, the arson inspector out there, he says it looks like he did her, then in no particular order after that poured gasoline on her, wadded up a bunch of newspapers, and opened the lower-floor windows and at least one in the back on the top floor for ventilation. After all that, he goes back to where she’s lying in the lobby, starts the fire, then shoots himself.”

“That does sound complicated,” Hardy said.

Glitsky nodded. “At least. Did you know him?”

“Hanover? Slightly, to look at. I met him a couple of times, but never faced him in court. I can’t say he made a huge impression.”

“Kathy West wouldn’t agree.”

Hardy broke a small grin. “He gave Kathy West a lot of money, Abe. If he gave me a lot of money, I’d remember him better, too.” Pushing himself off his desk, he took the darts from Glitsky, threw one of them. “You know, here’s a
real idea, and you won’t have to quit. Use the opportunity to mend fences with Cuneo. He tells the media it looks like a murder/suicide, you back him up, say he did a fine job. Everybody wins.”

“Everybody but Kathy. But that’s what I will do if that’s what it turns out to be. In the meantime, Cuneo’s going to resent me being involved at all, I guarantee it. That’s my real problem. It’s going to look like I’m checking up on his work.”

“That’s what you
are
doing.”

Glitsky sat back down, elbows on his knees, hung his head and shook it from side to side. Finally, he looked back up. “I’ve got to talk to him,” he said.

G
litsky got Cuneo’s extension at work and, calling from his car phone, left a message that they needed to talk. He was going to make every effort to be both conciliatory and cooperative. They would be in this investigation together, and would share information both with each other and with the arson inspectors—a mini task force. But Cuneo wasn’t scheduled to be back on duty until six o’clock. And Glitsky, who preferred murder investigations to all other forms of police work, thought he might spend some useful time long before that with the city’s medical examiner.

John Strout worked on the ground floor behind the Hall of Justice, in the morgue and its accompanying rooms. When Glitsky got there, somebody in the outer office buzzed him inside and he crossed through the clerical desks and knocked at Strout’s door. Getting no answer, he turned the knob, stuck his head in.

Behind him, one of the clerks said, “He’s probably in the cold room.”

Glitsky nodded his acknowledgment and kept going, closing the door behind him. The office was good-sized by city bureaucratic standards, perhaps twenty by thirty feet, with a large, wide window facing the freeway on the end behind Strout’s desk. During his dozen years as head of the homicide detail, Glitsky would have occasion to come down here several times a month—certainly at least once a week. But now, struck by an unfamiliar clutter, he stopped in the middle of the office and suddenly realized that it had probably been close to five years since he’d set foot down here. Or since he’d had any substantive discussion with the good doctor.

In the interim, he noticed, Strout had continued to indulge
his proclivity for the bizarre, if not to say macabre. He’d always kept a couple of shelves of unusual murder weapons—a bayonet, two different fire pokers, a baseball bat, an impact shotgun intended for sharks—and medieval torture implements out on display. But now he’d acquired what looked to Glitsky like a small museum. The center-piece was an ancient garroting chair—complete with its red silk scarf for ease of strangulation (or maximum pain) hanging from the beam in the back—that he’d given pride of place directly in front of his desk. A large glass-enclosed case featured an impressive collection of knives and other cutting and slashing implements, brass knuckles and spiked gloves. One whole side of his desk was covered with hand grenades and other apparent incendiary and explosive devices of different design and vintage. Strout had the obligatory skeleton, of course, but instead of its old place standing next to the morgue cold room entrance, the bones now sat in an easy chair, legs crossed comfortably, apparently enjoying a volume of the
Compendium of Drug Therapy.

Suddenly the door to the cold room opened. Strout, long and lean, still in his white lab coat, albeit smudged with black and reddish brown, broke a genuine smile. “Doctuh Glitsky.” He spoke with a familiar baritone drawl, bending from the waist in a courtly bow. “It’s been a hound’s age.”

Glitsky extended a hand. “How are you, John?”

“Old and in the way, if you must know. But if they’re fool enough to let me keep on doing what I do down here, I’m fool enough to let ’em.” Strout was a few years on the other side of retirement age, but showed little sign of slowing. He looked Glitsky up and down. “But God, man, y’all are looking fit. Anybody tell you you’re supposed to start showing your age sometime? It’s like to give the rest of us a bad name.”

“I’ve got a new young wife, John. If I get to looking old, she’ll leave me, and then I’d have to go and kill her.”

“Well, wouldn’t want that. So what can I do for you? I’m assuming this isn’t strictly a social visit.”

“I’m doing some work on the fire last night.”

“Paul Hanover?”

“It
is
him, then?”

Strout took a second, then nodded. “Odds are. Wallet
says he was. I can’t tell from the body itself, and nobody else could neither, but I’ve already called his dentist and we’ll know for sure by the end of the day.” He went over to his desk, brushed some grenades out of the way and leaned against it.

Glitsky sat on the garrote.

“You want,” Strout said, “you can move Chester.” He pointed to the skeleton. “He’s got the comfortable seat.”

“This is fine,” Glitsky said. “What about the woman?”

Strout folded his arms, lifted his shoulders. “First, it definitely was a woman. I couldn’t be sure ’til I got her on the table. Crisped up terrible.”

“That’s what I heard. Gasoline?”

“Something hot. If they think it’s gas, I believe ’em. From the damage, my guess is she was on fire a good ten, fifteen minutes longer than Hanover.”

“And any ID on her?”

Strout shook his head. “Nothin’ on the body. Nothin’ under the body. Some witness said it might be Hanover’s girlfriend….” He turned and started to sort through a wire basket full of paper on the desk next to him.

Glitsky beat him to the name. “Missy D’Amiens.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Lived with him, right?”

“That’s what I hear. Evidently they were having problems, though. She was remodeling the place, spending too much money.”

“Remodeling. Well, that explains it.” Strout let out a brief chuckle. “Closest my wife and me ever came to splittin’ up. We redid a couple of rooms in the house back maybe ten years ago. S’posed to take two months. Went on over a year. Finally, I just moved down here—slept in Chester’s spot there ’til it was finally over. If I’d stayed around, I mighta killed her, too. After I killed the contractor, of course. Son of a bitch.”

“So that’s your take, John? Hanover killed her?”

“No, no, no. I got no take on that, Abe. All I can tell you is they both died of gunshot wounds to the head.”

“Any indication of who shot who? If it was either one of them at all.”

“I’d say the man.”

“Why’s that?”

“The entry wound on the woman was high occipital…” Catching himself, he continued in layman’s English. “High up on the very back. She didn’t shoot herself back up there.”

“What about the man?”

“Just over the right ear. Good a spot as any.”

Glitsky sat still for a moment, elbows on his knees. The mayor wasn’t going to like this news. “Could it have been somebody else?”

“Sure. But no way for me to tell. They would have had to have got out in a hurry, but nothin’ on the bodies rules that out.”

Glitsky nodded. “And I’m assuming you’re getting dentals on the woman, too.”

“Well, we got the teeth. Problem is, we don’t know who her dentist was.”

“It’s funny you should ask that.”

Catherine Hanover said that he hadn’t awakened her with the phone call, but he wasn’t sure he believed her. When he’d identified himself and asked her permission to record the call as soon as she picked up, her voice sounded hoarse, slightly groggy. Now she cleared her throat again before continuing.

“We both had the same dentist, Dr. Yamashiru. His first name is Toshio.” She spelled both names out. “On Webster, between Union and Green. She had some problems with her teeth and didn’t know anyone locally, so she asked me who I went to.”

“So you two were close?”

“No, not really. I was the body standing nearest to her when the question came up.”

“So where did she come from before here?”

“That was always a little vague. She had a French accent, but she spoke English very well. But where she came from didn’t matter. She had him wrapped…I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”

“Glitsky. Deputy Chief Glitsky. I’m working this case with Dan Cuneo, whom I believe you met last night.”

“Yes, I remember him.”

Glitsky found the response slightly off-key. “Did you have a problem with Inspector Cuneo?”

“No, not really. I told him I thought it was Missy and Paul in there.”

“And about the renovation?”

“Yes.” The stress in the voice was clear now. Something about Cuneo’s interview with her had been troubling. “That, too,” she said.

“That they were having some troubles?”

“Yes.”

“About the money she spent?”

Another small silence. Then, “I’m sorry, Inspector, but did you say you’d talked to Inspector Cuneo, too?”

“No, not yet. I’ve got a call in to him, but the arson inspector gave me your name and I had some questions I wanted to go over. Inspector Cuneo will be back on tonight if you’d be more comfortable talking with him.”

“No!”

Glitsky imagined her jumping in alarm at the suggestion.

She covered her reaction with a brush of nervous laughter. “I mean, no. I don’t care who I talk to. If I’ve got any information you might need, ask away.”

“All right. You told Inspector Cuneo that Mr. Hanover and Missy had been fighting over the amount she’d spent on renovations to his house. Is that right?”

“Yes. It was obscene, really. Something like a million dollars. But that was Missy, although she fooled us at first. Well, tried to.”

“Fooled you in what way?”

“In the way that attractive younger women fool older men.”

“You’re saying that she was after your father-in-law’s money?”

“Not just after it. She got a lot of it, Inspector. You should have seen the engagement ring. The hundred-thousand-dollar trophy rock, we called it. I mean, it was just way over the top. And that didn’t include the clothes and the car and…”