“Intriguing,” Moellmann murmured.
“Doc,” said Harris, “there’s going to be more than the usual pressure to get this one locked up. . and soon. Hunsinger was a celebrity, especially in this area. This is going to be in the papers, prominently, and on all the newscasts, not just locally, but nationally.” Harris hated to get where he was going with this plea. He well knew how Moellmann resisted any pressure to expedite a case. But, in this instance, it needed saying. “So can you hurry this one along a bit?”
Moellmann gave no indication of having heard Harris’s plea. He kept looking from the rashes on Hunsinger’s corpse to the DMSO to the container Ewing was holding. “Intriguing,” he murmured. “A very simple plan. So simple one might even call it ingenious. That is, if it all works out.” Then, to the officers, “We’ll want to get at this first thing in the morning. Have it all shipped down as soon as the technicians finish.” He ambled distractedly toward the door, rubbing his hands together. “How clever,” he muttered. “What a clever plan. But how did he make it work?” He resembled a crossword addict confronted with the world’s toughest puzzle, to which he might hold the ultimate clue.
As Moellmann exited, the police technicians arrived. Harris and Ewing briefed them on the situation and the probable evidence that should be gathered. Shortly, officers were everywhere, taking pictures, dusting for fingerprints, packaging evidence-taking particular care with the twin containers of DMSO and shampoo-and interviewing neighbors of the Hunsinger apartment.
Ewing and Harris disengaged themselves from the hubbub.
“Whatever we got here?” Harris was gearing up for an up-to-the-moment summary.
“One dead football player,” Ewing responded. “A probable homicide by means as yet undetermined. If a homicide, then the perpetrator had to be in this apartment before Hunsinger arrived this evening, or while he was here.”
“That’s right. Hunsinger was alive this afternoon. Some eighty thousand people saw him at the Silverdome. And additional hundreds of thousands saw him on TV. He left the stadium, as far as we know, under his own power. He gets home-something, something, something-he steps into the shower, and bingo, he’s dead.”
“He gets home,” Ewing supplied, “he puts a skin-flick cassette on TV-something, something, something-he showers, he dies, his girlfriend arrives. What about her?”
“Too early to tell. Not likely she’d off him and then report it to the police. Though it’s happened.”
“We’ll have to find out where she’s been today.”
“It’d be good to know when’s the last time Hunsinger showered at home before tonight. If something in that shower killed him-something in the DMSO bottle maybe-and if Hunsinger is the creature of habit he seems to be, then whatever killed him was put in there sometime between his previous shower and the one tonight.”
“And”-Ewing glanced around the room, but he was so familiar with investigative routine he was not distracted-“if not the Taylor woman, someone else got in here and set it up.”
“There’s a security guard on duty downstairs. Let’s go down and check on just how secure this building is-oh, and let me do most of the talking.”
Ewing grinned. “What’s the matter? I get along pretty good with black people.”
Harris winked. “You do okay for a honky. But there was something familiar about that guy when we came in. I think I might know him from a previous bust.”
The two took the elevator down twenty-one floors to the lobby. In the foyer, they spotted the guard. Clearly he had been flustered, first by Harris and Ewing, then by the arrival of the investigating crew. He had phoned his supervisor, who was with him now.
Introductions were exchanged. The officers explained that they wanted to question the guard. The supervisor took over door duties while the three men moved to a nearby empty office.
“We want to know all about the security here, Mr. Malone,” Ewing began. “We know you only work here. It’s not your security system, so you can be very frank.”
“In fact, Mr. Malone,” Harris was gazing at the guard so intently that Malone was becoming visibly upset, “this is a homicide investigation, so it is not to be taken lightly. Answer carefully and be sure you tell the whole truth.”
“Homicide!” Malone licked his dry lips. “Mr. Hunsinger!” He knew which apartment they had come from. “Mr. Hunsinger dead? Oh, God almighty!”
“He’s dead, Mr. Malone. And we’ve got to know everything you know about him,” said Harris. “Start with when he got home after today’s game.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Harris’s tone suggested a short fuse that was burning.
“I don’t know. He’s a resident. He probably parked his car in the basement garage, then took the elevator from there directly up to his floor. He wouldn’t have passed through the lobby.”
“That’s all the security you got? People walk into the basement and go anywhere in the building they want?”
“Wait; it ain’t that bad. At least not now. It’s better than it was.”
“Why don’t you just tell us about the security system, Mr. Malone?” Ewing was more conciliatory.
“Sure.” It was comfortable in the apartment’s all-season climate control, but Malone had begun to perspire. “See, the way it used to be, we’d be in this cubicle, all glassed in, just next to the front door in the lobby. Visitors come, we’d let ’em in, check with whoever they come to see. If everything checked out, we’d let ’em take the elevator up.
“Wasn’t too good a system. For one thing, we never had no record of who the visitor was. Sometimes they’d slip by. You know, come in with a resident or something like that. Then, we was right up front, you know. If someone wanted to take out the guard, they could just do it. You know, Mr. Hunsinger ain’t the first one to get killed here. This can get to be a pretty lively place from time to time.”
Ewing nodded. He easily recalled that within the past year a couple had been victims of a drug-related homicide here. Neither he nor Harris had been in on that case. But he remembered how the investigating officers had complained of the odor. The couple had been dead four days before their bodies were discovered. The place could indeed be pretty lively, or, more properly, deadly.
“Not good. Not good.” Malone shook his head. “But just last Monday they installed a new system. See, Mr. Hunsinger could enter either in the basement-the garage-or through the lobby ’cause he got a key. But them who don’t have keys gotta come through the lobby. See, they can enter the lobby, but when they do, we got this camera that’s mounted on one wall and swings back and forth. Then, whoever’s on guard monitors the camera. We can see everybody who comes through the lobby.
“Then, ’cause the visitor don’t have a key, they gotta ring the bell. When we buzz ’em through, we already got a look at ’em. Then, when we let ’em in they gotta register in the guestbook. Then we still check with the resident before we let ’em go up. That is, unless the resident lets us know ahead of time that he’s expecting this particular person.” Malone seemed pleased with his performance. “See, it works pretty good now.”
After a moment’s silence, Harris said, “Yeah, we saw your system when we came in.” He turned to Ewing. “Think you could break it, Sergeant?”
Ewing smiled. “I’ll give it a crack.”
Harris and Malone joined the supervisor in the guard’s station, while Ewing went into the lobby. He knew what to do.
First, he stood outside, peering into the lobby. He watched the TV camera as it panned the lobby. Carefully, he timed its swing. Eight seconds from left to right; eight seconds, right to left.
Ewing timed his entry for the moment the camera’s focus left the front door. He flattened himself against the wall on which the camera was mounted. Stiffly, he walked the length of the wall to the inner door. At a short distance, he studied the lock. It appeared to be no different from other locks on doors that could be buzzed open.
Once more, he waited for the moment the camera’s focus moved away from the door. Quickly, he moved to the door, inserted the thin blade of his pocketknife, and lifted the lock from its catch. He entered, opening the door just enough to let himself in, then letting it close behind him. He crouched beneath the window of the guard’s station, moved beyond the station, stood erect, then nonchalantly strolled back to the room from within the inner lobby.
Both Malone and his supervisor stared at Ewing open-mouthed.
