Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018
- Автор: Ловси Питер, Зельцерман Дэйв
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018». Краткое содержание книги:
But along with the preliminary report on the autopsy, Stamaty sent a note to the effect that a test at the mortuary had detected primer residue on Roveling’s right hand. Suicide being more or less out of the question, this finding suggested that Roveling had died in a shootout, unless by chance his hand had been wrapped around the weapon that killed him when his assailant pulled the trigger.
Kestrel had found no usable fingerprints on the fragments of window glass or elsewhere in the basement. But tests carried out at the lab not only confirmed the finding of human blood in the basement of the house on Addison Street and in Vandyke’s truck, but also showed that both sets of stains matched Kent Roveling’s ABO and Rh types. By now there could be little doubt that the murder and the theft were linked, and Vandyke seemed to be more deeply implicated than ever in both crimes.
Moreover, a preliminary background profile assembled from local sources scarcely portrayed Vandyke as a model citizen. Besides having been fined on several occasions for various traffic violations and breaches of the peace, he had served two stretches in the county workhouse for petty theft.
In a separate report, the astute and indefatigable Kestrel submitted a photograph of the reassembled basement window. He had found most of the fragments of glass still adherent to the criss-crossed strips of adhesive strapping that the thief had applied to the pane before breaking it. Conspicuously absent was an irregular piece of glass about the size of a credit card. The section of tape corresponding to its position bore a circular mark that clearly suggested a bullet hole. In fact, Kestrel quite confidently stated that the projectile that made the hole had penetrated the glass from inside the basement.
“Riddle me this,” said Auburn. “When and how did a bullet hole get in the basement window?”
“Could have been there for the last fifty years,” said Dollinger.
“Then why, after the window was taped and broken in, did the one piece of glass with the hole in it disappear? Somebody removed that piece of glass to conceal the fact that there was ever a bullet hole in the window.”
“Okay, but if whoever made the hole was already inside the house, why did they need to break the window?”
“That’s kind of what I was asking you. Maybe we need to have another talk with Vandyke. If he hasn’t jumped bail.”
“And if he can find J.C. Pulfresh to hold his hand.”
When they returned to headquarters after lunch, Auburn found a folded piece of green paper taped to his computer screen. Before unfolding it he guessed correctly that it was going to say, “See the Pope.” He never knew who delivered these notes, and he had better sense than to try to find out. He checked his service revolver and headed for Water Street.
The sign on the front of the building said “Carmilla’s Beauty Salon,” but Auburn approached it from the alley, knocking on an unmarked steel door between two battered and overflowing garbage cans. As he stood there waiting amid tepid, malodorous shadows, he asked himself whether he would venture into this dragons’ mouth of a place if he were white, and came up with a negative answer. He knocked twice more before the door was thrown abruptly open. A woman taller than Auburn, and built like a piano mover, thrust out a hand, jerked him bodily through the doorway into a nearly dark room where dense fumes coiled, and slammed the door behind him.
The back room of the beauty parlor was crammed with bottles of shampoo, conditioner, hair dyes and rinses in fifty different tints, and miscellaneous other chemicals. Against a side wall stood an age-scarred mahogany buffet, arranged as an altar with dozens of religious statues and framed pictures. Lighted votive candles in colored glass globes provided the only illumination in the room. The pungent, sickening-sweet fumes of a half-dozen smoldering incense burners mingled with the odor of cosmetics.
Carmilla was wearing a plastic apron and she had a pair of rubber gloves tucked under one arm. “Sweetie,” she said, in a tone both benevolent and domineering, “you be thrashing around in the dark and you need all the help you can get. You call yourself a cop and you ain’t figured out yet what them orange cones means?”
A video clip of Fremantle giving Roveling’s car the once-over at the mall parking lot had appeared on a late-morning newscast.
“Roveling was in the tire business.”
“Tire business my foot! That was his day job. Nighttimes he’d find him a empty space in some lighted parking lot, set out them cones, and make like he was practicing parking. You know, like they make the kids do for a driver license?”
“But he wasn’t really practicing parking?”
“Uh-uh, no way.”
“Was he maybe setting up shop to do a little dealing?”
“Now you connected. But you gonna have to work the rest of it out for yourself. You get yourself on outa here now — I got work to do. You know where to send some money? Cash, no check.”
“Dania. She’s still at West Hampton?”
“Still there and still in full control.”
Auburn moved toward the door to the alley. Just before he reached it, Carmilla came after him, gripped his right shoulder from behind, and swung him around so violently that he might have fallen if she hadn’t held him up. “Remember one thing, Sweetie: I ain’t never heard of you and you ain’t never heard of me. And listen here — anything funny ever happen to my granddaughter, you are chop’ liver.”
On his way back to his car Auburn reflected that there were hardened and desperate killers on the streets that he would rather go up against than some of his most valued informants.
A routine search of law-enforcement databases had turned up no traces of a criminal past for Roveling, much less any open warrants or wanted notices. Auburn requisitioned a full background probe, then called Kestrel at the lab. “How well do you think Fremantle went over Roveling’s car?” he asked.
“Fremantle does journeyman work,” was the somewhat cryptic reply. “The only usable prints he lifted were Roveling’s.”
“Where’s the car now?”
“Around the corner here in the garage.”
“Can I get you to take another look at it?”
Before three o’clock Kestrel called back to report on his examination of Kent Roveling’s car. On unbolting the spare tire and lifting it out of its well, he had found the underside slashed open as if to serve as a cache for something. Traces of off-white crystals in the interior of the tire tested positive for cocaine.
Auburn was still pondering possible relationships between a drug deal gone fatally sour and the theft of copper pipe when he got a call from Graves, the late Roveling’s employer in Westrup.
“Hey, I saw my car on the news awhile ago. When and where can I pick it up?”
“We need to talk about that. Can you get here to town before five today?”
“Sure. Damage to the car?”
“Not that, exactly. But we’ll be holding certain parts of it as evidence.”
“Understood.” Then, after a moment of silence, “What parts?”
“We’ll talk about that when you get here.” They made an appointment for four-thirty P.M. Auburn instructed Graves to bring any lease documents he had, and gave him directions to the Public Safety garage downtown. Then he called the district office of the Drug Enforcement Administration and asked for Al Michelwicz.
Promptly at four-thirty Graves was dropped off outside the Public Safety garage on Gates Street by a flunky in a red panel truck labeled “Economy Treads.” Auburn showed his badge and led Graves into the garage. “See your driver’s license, sir? Papers about the lease?”