Daniel rose and retrieved his gym bag. “I don’t envy the day you two just had. You need anything else, however remote, to help solve this please call me.”
“We will,” Connor replied.
Daniel held up his hand in farewell and resolved to clear his calendar for the weekend to try and make more progress on those files Henry had left behind. That message meant something. And the simple fact was Nolan Price had worked for Henry for thirty-four years, and there had been secrets kept by Henry in the past. The paperwork hadn’t been as important as dealing with Marie and Tracey and getting them settled in with the new reality of being wealthy, but the priorities had just changed. He wanted no more surprises coming from his uncle’s past that he didn’t discover first.
Connor knew he’d missed calling Marie as promised, but sometimes the best-laid plans fell apart. The eighth interview took them until the end of the late news, and in deference to the time, they stopped ringing doorbells.
“What do you think?”
Connor tossed his notebook on the car dash and looked at his partner. “I think we’ve been running in circles. Nolan’s brother is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; you don’t need a doctor to figure that out. Nolan had no other family according to the county birth and death records. There’s no history in our records of family abuse between the two boys and their long-departed father. That message is a red herring. We just got spun by some schmuck who gets his jollies out of stabbing an old guy to death and sending the cops down a wild-goose chase.”
“How many other stabbing deaths do we have open right now?”
“Only one, but it was a knife picked up in the middle of a barroom fight where the guy got his throat slit and bled to death. We know what happened, why; we just haven’t found the guy that swung the knife. So mark that one off.”
“We need to talk to the surrounding towns tomorrow.”
“This could have been the first murder. He brings the knife with him; he’s overly aggressive with the killing, leaving blood everywhere; he’s thought to try and wash up afterward and use bleach, but he doesn’t finish that cleanup. He has a message he wants to leave scattered around the house as a distraction but wants to write it in a clever way. I put all those pieces together and I get the picture of a young man wanting his fifteen minutes of fame with his crime across page one of the newspaper. Forget the fact Nolan was a retired chauffeur for Henry Benton- think old man, retired, living in a reasonably safe area of town on his own, and not all that cautious about strangers with a line to spin-I put our guy as seeing a soft target he could go kill for the thrill of it. And it was a full moon Monday night.”
Marsh started the car. “Are you comfortable giving that assessment to Granger tomorrow morning?”
“It sure fits this case a lot better than some buried family secret and somebody finally snapping and killing the old man. About the only thing that might type that way was if Nolan had a leaning toward boys and had molested someone years before. The fact he never married is a touch of a red flag, but if that happened, there would be more justification in that message the killer left.”
Marsh, the more cynical of the two of them, Connor thought, for once shook his head at the suggestion and dismissed it. “The man who lived in that house was not into boys. Look at what wasn’t in that house-nothing suggestive in the reading material, no easy Internet access to suggestive materials, no questionable videos. He was a solitary man who probably came back from the war not ready to talk about what he did in the service and chose to love his job and his cars as his life.”
Marsh turned toward the side of town where Connor lived. “I’m with you. This was someone killing and wanting to make enough of a splash to get good news coverage of his crime. The neighborhood he chose, the victim, the message, the crime scene-maybe we should just feed this all to the reporters ourselves and see who laps it up and offers us information that might help us solve the case.”
“Let the killer make contact with us.”
Marsh nodded. “We fumble around not figuring out how to solve the case, whine to the press about no leads and the case going cold, annoy a couple reporters who are pestering us-” He smiled. “Our guy will show up somewhere to try to help us out or to gloat about how badly we are doing solving his spectacular crime. He thinks he got away with something-he wore the gloves, he used the bleach, he took the weapon with him, he got away unseen-he thinks he’s smarter than the cops and that he’s got his fame and his freedom.”
“You wind up that image in his mind too far and he’ll just kill again.”
Marsh’s smile disappeared. “Oh, he’ll kill again. And I think he’s already decided who. If this case doesn’t lead very quickly to someone who knew Nolan and had an actual reason to kill him, then we are looking at someone who simply chose Nolan as his victim. You don’t premeditate murder for a thrill and plan to do it just once. And that’s what this is really beginning to feel like. A murder for a thrill.”
“What do we tell Tracey and Marie? They’re going to read the newspaper tomorrow and find out their father’s former chauffeur was just murdered. They’re going to be talking to Daniel.”
“What we say to every neighbor and friend in cases like this-it’s a coincidence that there is a connection between you and the victim. The six-degrees-of-separation-between-everyone theory applies again.”
“I may mention it to Marie myself to head her off. She’s wound up to worry about everything right now.”
“I would.”
Connor tried to shove the murder scene into the side of his mind marked “work” and let it go for a bit. “How’s Tracey doing with Amy being back?”
Marsh smiled. “She’s chomping at the bit for when she can next go out and see her again. It’s been over a week and that’s about Tracey’s patience limit, I think.”
“You want to suggest something for this weekend?”
“Let’s see how this case unfolds first. I’d rather give short notice and be able to keep the appointment than schedule something that work just has us canceling.” Marsh clicked on blinkers to turn toward Connor’s apartment building. “You’ve been seeing a lot of Marie.”
“I like her.”
“Tracey’s been inquiring on your intentions,” Marsh offered.
“Has she?” Connor found the thought amusing. “Better Tracey than Granger. I think he’s not so sure what to think these days, us dating sisters, and wealthy ones at that.”
“He’s afraid he’s going to lose two homicide cops at the same time.”
“Do you ever think about quitting or shifting over to administration after you and Tracey get married?”
Marsh snorted.
“That’s what I thought. These hours are going to be killers on a wife though.”
“We’ll adjust.” Marsh pulled up to the apartment door. “Don’t forget to set the alarm; I don’t plan to face the boss alone.”
Connor looked around the area and then slid out of the car. “I’ll be there.”
The alarm was not going off-that was the phone. Connor struggled to get his eyes open and groaned at the red digits blinking back at him: 4 a.m. This was brutal on his body and his mind. “Yeah?”
“The boss is already en route; he’ll be at your door in ten minutes.” “Marsh?”
“Not the tooth fairy. We’ve got another murder, same MO.” “My feet are on the floor,” Connor promised. “Where?” “I’m struggling to find the address now. One of those pricey towers over by the lake. A resident complained about the smell, and the building super used a master to open the door. Now we’ve got complaining rich people annoyed to have cops walking around their building in the middle of the night. There it is. Forty-nine twelve Ulysses Street, the one with the square-cut balconies jutting into those triangular architectural features.”
“I vaguely remember it. Why Granger?”
“Daniel called him after the building super called him. This one was Henry’s retired personal bookkeeper.”
Connor winced. “Tell me the boss isn’t going to be working this personally.”
“Granger? He’ll let us do our jobs. But if he wants to run interference for us with the press, I’m all for it.”
“True.” Connor found slacks and a relatively clean shirt.
“Fill him in on every detail you can think of on the drive over here, as well as your speculation on this being a media thrill seeker. This second murder-we’ll see if there is a note and what it says, but I’m leaning even more to someone trying to grab the sisters’ fame and making it his springboard to a notoriety and infamy all his own.
