Unforced Error (7 page)

Chapter 11

“Here's your toothpick back, Yank, and a souvenir for your trouble.”

Rep took the saber that Pendleton handed to him, along with a strip of paper not quite three inches wide and eight inches long. Two columns of letters and numbers ran down the strip. The numbers on the left seemed a lot different than the numbers on the right.

“There doesn't seem to be a drop of sweat, a dab of blood, or a smidgeon of dexoyribonucleic acid in the deceased's body that matches up with anything on that saber,” Pendleton said. “He apparently never even breathed on it, much less got his throat slit and his head damn near cut off with it.”

“Not a surprise,” Rep said, “but it's nice to have it confirmed.”

Pendleton dropped to the ground and lounged beside Rep, propping himself up on one elbow. Rep still didn't have a watch but Pendleton did—a large, stem-wound pocket watch that Henry Clay might have used—and he reported that it was just past nine in the morning. They were lying about fifty feet from the crime scene, which was now surrounded by yellow tape and swarming with deputy sheriffs from two counties and detectives from the Kansas City Police Department.

“First thing you think about with a guy his age killed out in the middle of nowhere like this is some kind of drug deal gone sour,” Pendleton mused.

“You have a lot of drug dealers running around northwest Missouri with machetes or cutlasses?” Rep asked.

“Nope, and that's a fact,” Pendleton said. “Uzis and up for them. Don't kid yourself, though. Plenty of those boys favor knives for detail work, and a Buck skinning knife with a five-inch blade could've done the job our stiff got done on him. You wouldn't need a saber for it.”

Rep nodded politely but didn't comment.

“They oughta have your statement printed out before too much longer. Sorry about all this waitin' around, but there's nothin' for it when you're the one stumbles over a body.”

“That's okay,” Rep said. “You can learn things while you're waiting, if you pay attention.”

“That a fact?” Pendleton asked jovially. “You learned anything so far?”

“Well,” Rep said lazily, “I learned that pan-fried sausage patties in between slices of cornbread steeped in bacon grease makes a breakfast that sticks with you for a long time. I appreciate you having some of your boys bring that up, by the way.”

“That's an interesting thing,” Pendleton said. “How some foods that you generally eat hot actually taste better cold. Bacon, for one example. You almost always eat bacon warm off the griddle, but bacon at room temperature or even with a little chill on it—man, that's meat for me. Nothin' like it.”

“I'd never really thought about it, but you're absolutely right,” Rep said. “Steak is that way. Sizzling hot it's great, but if you save a little chunk, wrap it in wax paper and aluminum foil, put it in the refrigerator over night, then pull it out the next morning when you're wife isn't looking, sprinkle a little salt on it and eat it like finger food—man, that's good.”

“Yessir!” Pendleton said with an enthusiasm bordering on passion. “I can almost taste it right now. And how about fried chicken?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rep said with a vigorous nod. “Not in aluminum foil, though. In a sandwich bag, two pieces per bag. Especially wings and thighs, pan fried and then in the fridge maybe, what, thirty-six hours.”

“My word, my word, you are onto something there, my friend. I could jaw about this all morning. It doesn't work for everything. Eggs have to be hot, and hot dogs. But a lot of main course food out there is best eaten cold.”

Like revenge,
Rep thought.
According to Francis Bacon, a dish best tasted cold. As opposed to the way revenge had been tasted when the corpse here launched his bark on the dark seas of eternity last night
. Rep suspected that Pendleton's literary allusion was perfectly deliberate, and he readily deciphered the hint. Pendleton wasn't a hayseed, despite the act. He wasn't buying his own eyewash about a drug deal, and he wanted Rep to know it.

Rep had also learned some other things in the past few hours. He had learned that, like so many things in life, relieving yourself in the woods without benefit of a privy is only hard the first time you do it. More important, he had learned that the murder victim was named R. Thomas Quinlan and had had some kind of connection with Jackrabbit Press. Rep hadn't exactly been chatty before learning that, but he'd gotten downright laconic since. Now he was learning that Pendleton thought he knew something about this murder that he hadn't mentioned yet. Rep suspected that this might be so, but he was going to go on not mentioning it until he'd talked to Melissa. And to Peter.

“What's General Order Number 11?” he asked Pendleton, pulling himself to a sitting position as he saw a plainclothes officer in shirtsleeves approaching him with a notebook.

“‘All persons living in Jackson, Cass and Bates Counties, Missouri…are hereby ordered to remove from their present places of residence within fifteen days…. [A]ll grain and hay found in such district after the ninth of September next…will be destroyed.' ”

“Pretty drastic.”

“Do you remember a movie from the ' eighties, I think it was, called
The Outlaw Josey Wales
?” Pendleton asked.

“Sure. Clint Eastwood. Shows up on TBS all the time.”

“The first bad guy in that flick is a Union general nicknamed Redlegs. That was General Thomas Ewing, and General Order Number 11 was his handiwork. Missouri had stayed in the Union, but the idea wasn't exactly unanimous. Lots of secessionist guerrilla activity. General Order Number 11 was supposed to stop it, and if a few thousand civilians got in the way that was just too bad for them. George Caleb Bingham made a famous painting about families being uprooted and homes abandoned. My grandmother kept a print of that painting in her front hallway until the day she died. She'd heard stories from her grandma about the day the Yankees burned the crop, and when she told me those stories it was like it happened the day before yesterday.”

“Desperate times, I guess,” Rep said, resorting to banality to mask his interest in the answer.
Was Lawrence a closet Confederate sympathizer?
Did the framed document he'd seen in Lawrence's study suggest some pathological obsession with the Lost Cause?

Rep and Pendleton rose to greet the detective, who handed Rep a three-ring binder he was carrying.

“This is the statement we took from you earlier, sir,” the man said, all business. “Please read it carefully, initial each page, sign the last page, and return it to me. The copy is for you. If you wish to make any changes, please consult with me before altering the document.”

“Certainly,” Rep said.
I have a feeling that's not the first time he's ever made that speech
, he thought. Thought, but didn't say. He read, initialed, and signed as instructed and returned the binder to the detective.

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir. Please contact the department before leaving the state.”

“Wound pretty tight, isn't he?” Rep commented to Pendleton after the detective had marched away.

“Oh, you send one of those city boys to Quantico for baby detective school and he comes back thinkin' he has a square asshole. He thought it was high-handed for me to bring a county crime scene team in here. If I hadn't, though, you'd have waited ' til noon to sign that statement.”

“Much obliged,” Rep said.

“What's on your mind, soldier?” Pendleton bellowed then over his shoulder.

Startled, Rep looked around. A Union private was standing about ten feet away, apparently hanging back.

“I have a message for Trooper Pennyworth,” the man said.

“Well if he's a trooper he'd be the one with boots instead of brogans,” Pendleton said.

The man advanced and handed Rep a folded slip of paper. “Need to see you ASAP. I'm with the car at Jackrabbit Press. M”

“Orders,” Rep said to Pendleton as he sketched a casual salute. “I'll be in touch.”

“Oh, I expect you will at that,” Pendleton said as Rep strode away. “I expect you will.”

Chapter 12

“In the eight years we've been married, Melissa, how many times have I put my foot down?”

“Twice.” Melissa glanced demurely downward before raising her eyes earnestly to meet her husband's. “You were quite thrilling on both occasions.”

“Well, time for the hat trick. We're talking about a homicide. That saber on the chair over there could be a murder weapon.”

“Yes, dear, I do grasp that.”

They were standing in the Damons' bedroom just before ten-thirty in the morning. During the drive from the encampment, as mile after mile of Kansas City pavement had slipped under their wheels, Melissa had told Rep about the Problem. With Peter's disappearance, the Problem had had a capital P even when it was just a regrettable, one-time slipping of the marital traces—that is, even before Rep mentioned the corpse.

“Linda and I got back to their home around eleven-thirty last night,” Melissa had explained as they drove through the Plaza. “We found Peter's uniform but not Peter. Linda went out checking some all night haunts while I called a few friends she told me about. Nada. No answer at his work number or on his cell-phone. We were out of ideas when she got back around three, so we decided to stay there and wait for him to show up.”

“Sounds like the right move,” Rep had commented.

“Except that by eight-thirty this morning, Peter still hadn't come home. No contact, no messages. Linda was frantic, and I wasn't feeling so great myself. So she went out looking for him while I drove to the encampment to see if he'd gone back there. That's when I asked someone to track you down.”

“So I'm up to date,” Rep had said.

“Right. Peter's disappearing act would be troubling under any circumstances, but coming so soon after Linda let R. Thomas Quinlan talk her into the sack on a vulnerable night it's hard not to get shook about it.”

“
WHAT?
The guy she slept with was Quinlan?”

These emphatic questions, fortunately, had come while they were stopped at a red light just before turning onto the southbound leg of Ward Parkway.

“Yes. I forgot, you've never met him. He has his own imprint at Jackrabbit Press, and Linda works with him a lot.”

“‘
Had
his own imprint,' ” Rep had said. “Last night, R. Thomas Quinlan passed away. Passed away, as it happens, courtesy of a very sharp blade
after
Peter retrieved his saber and said he had something to take care of.”

“That was what all the excitement at the encampment was about?”

“Yes.”

“This just got vastly worse, didn't it?”

“And it's headed downhill from there,” Rep had said. “I was the one who found the body. So you might say that I have met Quinlan, although I suppose that raises a metaphysical issue.”

They had gone into the Damons' house hoping that Linda, at least, would have returned. But they had found the house empty. Their search had ended in the bedroom, where Melissa had started hinting about Rep giving Peter some legal help and Rep had put his foot down.

“We can hold their hands and be here for them and find out who the best criminal lawyer in Kansas City is if it turns out Peter needs one,” Rep said after Melissa shrugged off his initial demurrer. “But I can't play Ben Matlock. In this little mess I'm not a lawyer, I'm a witness. And so are you.”

“I'm duly admonished,” Melissa said. “But you don't seriously believe that Peter killed Quinlan, do you?”

“I don't know. But I know that heavy cavalry sabers have long, substantial blades. And I'll feel much better if the cops don't find any blood on Peter's when they examine it.”

“Now there's an interesting point,” Melissa said brightly.

Darting around her husband, she crossed to the woven wicker chair where Peter had apparently thrown his uniform and equipment (other than his bugle) sometime late last night. She pulled on the white gauntlets lying there, picked up the saber, and awkwardly slipped the weapon from its scabbard.

“I suppose it's pointless for me to note that you're tampering with evidence,” Rep said resignedly, but he made no effort to stop her. He wanted to know the answer as much as she did.

“I'm doing my level best
not
to tamper with it,” Melissa answered.

They examined the blade together. Rep pointed to a few specks of dark discoloration about two-thirds of the way down.

“It looks too brown for blood,” Melissa said.

“Thank you, Doctor Quincy.”

“And if Peter had cut a man's throat you'd think there'd be a lot more.”

“I don't know what color dried blood is, and I don't know if those specks are what's left after a lot more blood was wiped off. But I'm surprised to see any at all. I would have expected Peter to keep this thing in mint condition.”

Pulling his own gauntlets on, Rep worked a loose, broken wicker strut free from the chair back. He extended his right hand toward Melissa, who with some reluctance turned the saber over to him. Rep tossed the wicker into the air and slashed theatrically at it with the saber. Unfortunately, he missed, which somewhat diluted his gesture's dramatic impact. He tried again and this time made contact. The saber sliced cleanly through half an inch of wood.

“Very impressive, dear, but isn't that what sabers are supposed to do?”

“Mine didn't. These things are supposed to be props. Re-enactments aren't intended to spill real blood.”

Melissa realized that what she was about to do was manipulative, and reminded herself to feel ashamed later on. Her face formed an exasperated pout, which she turned away from Rep as soon as she was sure he'd seen it.

“You're upset with my dogmatic, left-brained, patriarchal, stereotypically male logical empiricism, right?” Rep asked.

“Let's just say that if I gave you a swat right now it would be aggravation, not flirtation,” Melissa said. “Which wouldn't be fair, because you're right. Logically, things don't look particularly good.”

“Well, it's not
all
one way,” Rep allowed. “There's no blood on the uniform, which should have gotten thoroughly spattered from the kind of attack that killed Quinlan. Peter certainly didn't seem coldly homicidal when he was retrieving his saber and talking to me. And with a guy like Quinlan seems to have been, there are probably several cuckolded husbands in the Kansas City metropolitan area who would have been happy to cut his throat.”

“Go on,” Melissa said, her face glowing with ostensible admiration for her husband's rhetorical brilliance. “You're certainly convincing me.”

With a mordant smile at his wife, Rep took the scabbard from her and decisively re-sheathed the saber.

“You don't really think I'm swallowing that little routine, do you, Doctor Pennyworth?” he asked then.

“Uh oh,” Melissa said. “I rather thought you were, actually.”

“Listen,” he said tenderly, putting the saber back the chair. “I know how much Linda means to you. I know you feel that Linda confiding in you and you giving her advice means you have a special responsibility.”

“But,” Melissa prompted.

“But Peter had a sharp piece of metal there when someone he had a motive to kill got killed with a sharp piece of metal. You're resisting the obvious. With anyone else I'd say emotional involvement got in the way of objectivity. But you're too smart for me to blow your argument off like that.”

“Rep, dearest, ” Melissa said, “I know exactly what you're up to.”

“So I want you to do something,” Rep continued. “Think about it for a minute, and then tell me how much of your attitude is coming from your heart and how much is coming from your head.”

“You're not playing fair,” Melissa said.

“That doesn't exactly set a precedent in this conversation, does it?”

“Okay.” Melissa took a deep breath. She closed her eyes. She forced herself to think methodically for sixty seconds. “Okay,” she said again. “Time for a little dose of G.K. Chesterton.”

“Dose away.”

“Suppose an eleven-year old girl told you that she'd seen a vision of the Blessed Virgin or Mother Teresa. Would you believe her?”

“No,” Rep said.

“Neither would I. But would you be absolutely certain?”

Rep opened his mouth for a hip-shot answer, then stopped and thought for a few seconds.

“This will sound like a cop-out,” he said, “but I don't think I could say I was ‘absolutely certain' about anything. Things happen that we don't understand. Fatima, Lourdes. The time-space continuum bending in on itself. ‘Absolutely certain?' I guess not.”

“Now, suppose someone told you that he was sitting in the bleachers on the Capitol steps last inauguration day and he saw Laura Bush smoking a cigar while her husband was being sworn in. Would you believe him?”

“No, of course not.”

“Neither would I,” Melissa said. “Would you be absolutely certain he was wrong?”

“That's a trick question,” Rep protested.

“Why?”

“Well, it's not the same thing. I mean, yeah, I would be as close to absolutely certain as you could be. It's not the kind of thing that would happen at all, much less happen and be ignored by everyone who had to have seen it except one guy.”

“Right,” Melissa said. “It wouldn't violate any scientific laws, the way a miraculous vision would. But it would violate the laws of human nature.”

“So what are you saying? That Peter Damon couldn't have killed a man who seduced his wife?”

“No. I'm not even sure I could say that about you—not that I expect the question ever to come up.”

“So who's Laura Bush in this analogy, and what's the cigar?”

“Peter didn't have a breath of a motive unless he at least suspected that Linda had cheated on him with Quinlan.”

“How do we know he didn't suspect that?” Rep demanded. “All we know is that Linda didn't tell him about the fling. He could have spotted Quinlan's little keepsake and parsed it the same way you did.”

“If he had suspected infidelity on any grounds, he wouldn't have gone running off while his wife was in the bathroom, maybe overdosing on something in a paroxysm of remorse. Anyone can see how desperately he loves her. He might have screamed at her or—or any number of things, I suppose. But he apodictically would not have left Jackrabbit Press until he saw with his own eyes that she was physically okay.”

“If you're right, then when Peter came down to get his saber he didn't even suspect Linda had cheated, much less that Quinlan was the guy, and therefore he couldn't have been planning to kill him. Wait a minute, though. What if he'd noticed the hairs tied to the bolt but didn't tumble to what it meant until he was five miles down the road?”

“And then doubled back to kill Quinlan?” Melissa asked.

“Right.”

“The timing doesn't work. Linda and I were only about twenty minutes behind him. If he'd driven off and then backtracked to kill Quinlan, he couldn't have gotten home, changed clothes, and left before Linda and I got there.”

“Fair enough,” Rep said. “Which takes us back to the key question: if it wasn't jealous rage that sent Peter running off in the first place, what was it? If we can answer that question
and
sell your laws-of-human-nature premise, then what Peter said to me not only isn't incriminating, it's almost an alibi.”

“But the police don't sleep with me, so they won't pay any attention to metaphysical speculation borrowed from G. K. Chesterton. Once they get a sharp saber and a whiff of adultery, they'll stop looking at anything else and work on nailing Peter for the murder. He needs help from someone else.”

“Which unfortunately can't be us,” Rep said. “Apart from everything else, there's the detail that I don't know any criminal law. I deliberately forgot everything I'd learned about it fifteen minutes after the bar exam.”

“Well,” Melissa said dubiously, “nobody's perfect.”

“Although you come close, beloved. But close doesn't cut it. We can't pull a Nick-and-Nora here.”

“That verged on condescending.”

“It was a literary allusion,” Rep protested.

“I guess it was, at that. I suppose I should be flattered.”

The phone rang. They both sprang to answer it. This involved a mild collision, a moment's confusion, and a rare unladylike ejaculation from Melissa, for the Damons' bedroom phone was cunningly concealed somewhere with its ringer turned off, and Rep and Melissa had instinctively headed first for the telephone locations in their own home. Rep managed to find the Damons' phone in the living room by the fourth ring, as Melissa picked up the kitchen extension.

“Damon residence, Rep Pennyworth speaking,” Rep said.

“This isn't Peter?” a male voice that Rep didn't quite recognize asked.

“No, my wife and I are guests of the Damons. Peter isn't here right now.”

“How about Linda?”

“Not at the moment, I'm afraid. Can I take a message?”

“Yes. In fact, it's lucky you answered. This is John Paul Lawrence.”

“Yes, of course. I'm terribly sorry about Mr. Quinlan's death. That must be a terrible blow both to you and your company.”

“That is exactly right, and you're very kind to say so. I was hoping to reach Linda to talk both about a fitting memorial for Tom, and somewhat less sentimentally about keeping his projects on track.”

“I'll have her call you as soon as I see her,” Rep said.

“Ordinarily, I would have put that call off at least until tomorrow. But I heard a few minutes ago that the detectives investigating Tom's murder have been told that Linda was seen last night talking with him, even though he hadn't planned on coming to the social.”

“I see,” Rep said.