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:
By ten o’clock I had given up. Julius had long since returned to the Shirley Jackson biography, but I could tell from the way he had started drumming his fingers on the chair’s arm that he was beginning to get antsy. At two minutes past ten, he cleared his throat and asked that I try calling Prescott again.
I made the call, and a harried but familiar voice that wasn’t Prescott’s answered. We talked for a minute and then I told Julius that I had Detective Mike Griff on the phone. “Prescott was arrested and is being processed as we speak. Griff wants to talk to you. Should I patch him through?”
“What charge?”
“Homicide. I didn’t get that or any of it from Griff, but from hacking into the Boston Police Department’s computer system. At eight twenty-three this evening police responded to a nine-one-one call and found Prescott leaving the apartment of his employee, Jim Duncan, carrying a case of the previously purloined Lafite Rothschild. Inside the apartment they found Duncan dead in his bedroom with his head bashed in by a tire iron.”
“Who made the nine-one-one call?”
“The report doesn’t say. I searched through the call logs and it appears to have been made by a burner phone. What should I tell Griff?”
“Patch him through.”
Julius picked up his cell phone and I did as he asked. Griff sounded more harried than earlier as he tried to get Julius to tell him why he was calling Prescott. Julius played dumb and asked Griff why a homicide detective was answering Prescott’s phone.
Julius said, “Was Donald Prescott murdered?”
“No.”
“I see. So he must’ve been arrested for homicide. Was a case of Lafite Rothschild found at the murder site?”
Now Griff’s voice became more suspicious than harried. “What do you know about that wine?” he demanded.
“My assistant, Archie Smith, took a freelance job from Prescott four days ago to find out which of his employees was responsible for the theft. Archie told me about this today and it sparked my curiosity, which I have since satisfied, at least to a degree. I wanted to speak to Prescott because if a theory I’m working on turns out to be correct, his stolen wine would be turning up soon.”
“What’s your theory?”
“Perhaps it would be better if we spoke in person.”
Julius was lucky the murder happened in Boston and not Cambridge, because if he had been dealing with Detective Mark Cramer instead of Griff, Cramer would’ve told him to go to hell and hung up on him, or possibly even tried having him arrested for interfering with a police investigation. Griff, though, understood the value of having Julius’s eyes on a case, and after some grumbling, he agreed to Julius’s terms.
Fifty minutes later Julius, his attorney, Henry Zack, and a worn-out looking Donald Prescott met in a holding cell at the New Sudbury Street police station, which was one of the conditions that Julius had insisted upon with Griff.
Prescott, sixty-two, looked as badly rumpled as the dark blue suit he was wearing. His tie had been removed, but he hadn’t bothered to unbutton the top shirt button, and his jowls drooped over the collar as he sat slumped on a steel cot. After nodding bleakly to Julius, he tried to profess his innocence, but Julius stopped him and instead focused on the matter at hand: namely, having Prescott hire Zack as his lawyer, and further, hire Julius to get him out of the mess he was in. While Prescott blanched at the terms Julius demanded, he nonetheless signed the contract that was presented to him. After that, Julius made a phone call, and the three of them were brought to one of the precinct’s conference rooms, where Griff sat waiting. Another condition that Julius had insisted on was that Griff delay Prescott’s processing until after they met, so Prescott hadn’t yet officially been charged with murder.
As with the other times I’d seen him, Griff looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, and his five-o’clock shadow was thick enough to give the bottom half of his face the appearance of being smeared with a coat of bluish-black paint.
“Julius, I’ve been playing nice even though we caught Prescott red-handed in what looks like an open-and-shut case,” the Boston homicide detective said. “Let’s hear your theory.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Zack offered.
Griff gave the bantamweight lawyer an annoyed look, but before he could say anything cutting, Julius spoke up.
“Mike, I’ve got every intention of fulfilling my obligation, but first, a couple of questions. What sent the police to Jim Duncan’s apartment? A nine-one-one call?”
“Yeah.”
“Did the caller leave his or her name?”
“No. It was made anonymously and with a burner phone. Someone claiming to hear a scream. The operator couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a husky-sounding woman. That type of call isn’t as suspicious as it might sound given Duncan’s neighborhood.” He turned to glare at Zack. “We’ve gotten convictions with less.”
“Did the police find Mr. Prescott carrying a case of Lafite Rothschild?”
“If that’s what that wine is, yeah. They stopped him just as he was stepping out of Duncan’s apartment.”
“Can you describe the apartment?”
“A one-bedroom in a brownstone.”
“What floor?”
“Basement level.”
“So it has its own entrance?”
“Yeah.” Griff fixed his glare on Prescott. “Anyone could go in and out of it without other tenants seeing him.”
Julius turned to Prescott. “Where’d you get the wine?”
Prescott blinked twice and turned to Zack, who nodded for him to answer Julius’s question.
“That should be obvious,” he said. “From Jim Duncan’s apartment.”
“You’re trying to pull his bacon out of the fire, and he has to be a smartass,” I told Julius.
Julius ignored me. He asked Prescott, “You expected to find the wine there?”
“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have gone there otherwise.”
Patiently, Julius asked him why he expected to find the wine there.
Prescott cleared his throat. “I received a text message from Duncan that he had the wine and if I wanted it I needed to go to his apartment.”
“When you got this message you headed straight over?”
“I tried calling him first, but he didn’t answer.”
Julius turned again to Griff. “I’m sure you’ve looked at Mr. Prescott’s text messages and call logs.”
Griff had folded his arms across his chest. “So? It doesn’t prove he didn’t go there and kill Duncan and grab the wine, which is exactly how it looks.”
Julius didn’t bother to agree or disagree with Griff about how it looked. Instead he asked Prescott, “What happened when you arrived at Duncan’s apartment?”
Prescott looked again at Zack and got another nod from the attorney.
“I rang the bell,” he said. “When no one answered, I tried the door, found it unlocked, and saw the stolen Lafite Rothschild on the living room floor. I tried calling out for Duncan. When he didn’t answer I took the wine. I was walking out the door when I was stopped by the police.”