| Subject: INSTALLMENT 9 |
Author:
C ROWE - MYERS
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Date Posted: 20:53:03 03/02/04 Tue
Installment 9
The corner’s office was located in the back of a seedy-looking office building one block off the town square with several other city departments. The governmental structure, which had at one time appeared stately and impressive, had peeled and faded into a mottled pale green and brown.
Price climbed the steps, keeping a nervous eye on the people he passed, as well as the ones loitering outside the building on smoking breaks. He knew that his paranoia was unfounded, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.
The inside of the building was not much different from the outside in terms of color or state of repair, preserving the original fifteen-foot ceilings, heavy oak doors—now dark with age, and cut-glass light fixtures from the mid-nineteen-hundreds. A framed, laminated map of the building’s inside offices told him that the corner’s office was sitting on the right back side of a floor designated as B1. About one hundred steps and a flight of stairs later, he was standing in front of a door with words Coroner’s Office stenciled on the textured glass.
“May I help you?”
The words rang out as soon as he had opened the door, the tone sounding anything but helpful. He looked at the stern-faced older woman sitting in the windowless office with interest. How many years had she spent locked in this under-ground prison? Did she have a family—friends? Or was this pitiful space the sum total of her life?
He put on his best smile. “Hello. I’m Detective Price Denotta, and I was needing some information on the Stedman Case.”
She eyed his suspiciously. “May I see your badge?”
Did he need one? Her words stopped him even as his brain scrambled for the words he needed to overcome this obstacle. He pulled a newly printed business card out of his wallet. “I’m assisting Police Detective Frank Daniels on the case.”
Her face relaxed slightly, and he knew that Officer Daniels was familiar to her. “Then why isn’t he here?”
“He is gathering information from the scene and interviewing neighbors. I am supposed to bring him a copy of the coroner’s report.”
She appeared to be satisfied with this information, but continued to find roadblocks. “I can only hand over the file to a member of the police force.”
“Hmmm….” Price said, pursing his lips as if mulling over her predicament. “Well, I wouldn’t want to cause you any trouble. Would it be possible for me to just glance through the file for a few minutes?”
She hesitated, but then shrugged, eager to finish with the man intruding on her daily routine, not to mention her lunch. “I guess you could look through the file, but it can’t leave this office.” Such an act would have not been permitted before all the freedom of information mumbo jumbo, but now the rules were blurred and able to be bent. Leaving her desk, she retrieved a manila folder from the file cabinet on the opposite wall and handed it to Price.
He sat down and opened it immediately. Inside were the usual forms and reports as to cause of death as well as detailed physical information from the autopsy. Price scanned the pages, but found nothing useful. He was about to read the reports a second time when he came to a picture taped to the back of the folder. The woman was attractive, middle-aged with short-cropped hair, dark with silver threads.
“Who is this?” he asked, holding up the picture for the secretary to identify.
For a moment, she looked blank, and Price wondered if he could have given him the wrong folder by mistake.
“The victim—Mrs. Stedman. Pretty, wasn’t she? Mr. Stedman was quite broken-up about it.”
Price heard the words in disbelief, his head beginning a slow spin.
What should have been an open and shut case was steadily taking on the more puzzling aspects of a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
End of Installment 9
INSTALLMENT 10
Price stared long at the photograph, trying hard to merge the image woman in the picture with his memories of the woman who had hired him six weeks earlier. His previous work with Detective Daniels had taught him that pictures can lie—that a person’s photograph could bare little resemblance to a person’s look in their everyday life.
“Did Mr. Stedman ID the body?”
The woman looked annoyed. “Yes,” she answered, clipping the word sharply.
“And did he also supply the photograph for the file?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
The inquiry was polite enough, but he knew that what she really wanted to know was “What is your problem?” “No. No problem. I’m just trying to put everything together in my mind. Was her identity verified by any other means such as fingerprints or dental records?”
The secretary turned from her computer to give him her full attention, her face pinched in disgust as if he were an unwelcome insect crawling around in her personal space. “When a husband positively identifies his wife’s body we have no reason to pursue the matter further. Do you have a reason?”
He ignored her question. “But with her face….” There was no delicate way to say it. “I understand from the report that her face was blown off. How could he make a positive identification without her face?”
“Her clothing, her jewelry, the body itself. She was his wife. Of course, there were other ways he could recognize her.” The woman’s patience was at an end. “Now, if you’re finished with the file, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Price nodded and closed the folder. He would not be able to make any further headway here. Thanking the woman for the imposition on her time, he made his way rapidly through the building and headed toward the city library, located only a few blocks away.
The two-story brick building had been built as a WPA project by local townspeople and had never been renovated. Kept afloat by a private grant, the library served as not only a source of reading for the community, but also as the main archive for the city’s history. As he entered the somber hall, the librarian at the front desk, Mrs. Woodall, greeted him with a smile of recognition. During the months he had spent working with Frank, the library had been one of his mainstays for background research.
He smiled in return, pointing to the room containing the microfiche machines where old editions of the local paper resided in immortality. Somewhere, in the months or years preceding the tragedy, there had to be a picture of Mrs. Stedman with her husband. Not that he doubted the information he had obtained from the Coroner’s office, not really that is, but he had to see for himself that the woman in the picture was the real Mrs. Stedman.
Once he had accomplished that, his next step was clear. He would establish to his own satisfaction that the woman lying in the morgue and the woman pictured in the file was the same. He glanced at his watch. Three hours had passed since his flight from the hospital. How much longer would he have before finding his own picture plastered across the front page of the newspapers? The gnawing fear in his gut spurred him with a sense of urgency. His time of freedom was limited, and all he had gained so far from his efforts were more questions.
End of Installment 10
INSTALLMENT 11
By the time Denotta left the library, he knew more than he wanted to about Antonio Stedman and his debutante wife, Betty Thorne Stedman, but had learned little to help him solve the case. There had been no pictures of the mysterious woman who had hired him and passed herself off as Mrs. Stedman, an omission he found puzzling, considering the prominent role she had played in the deception. Hadn’t she acted the role of hostess in the Stedman home in front of the hired help? Someone had to know who she was. He would question Mary, the maid who had waited on him the day he had visited the Stedman estate.
Having decided on a course of action was only the first step in carrying it out. Now, he had to devise a plan that would let him into the house without a call involving the police, who might be running surveillance on the premises. For the next few minutes, he drove through the city, mulling over ideas involving disguises, rented vehicles, and imaginative stories promising to gain him an unobtrusive entrance into the palatial residence. In the end he discarded them all, opting for a more direct approach, whereby he advanced stealthily through the bordering woods to the back door and rapped loudly. Seconds later, a hurried scuffling and fluttering curtain told him that his knock had been acknowledged.
“Could I help you, sir?” demanded a plus-sized woman filling the doorway, her fists pressed against her broad hips in the attitude of a bouncer.
Price was reminded of a pit bull that had once lived next door to him before being removed by an edict from the neighborhood architectural committee. The woman’s face hosted the same pug features, and he suspected a similar disposition rested just beneath the surface. “Hello, I’m Detective Denotta. I’m working on the Stedman case, and I’d like to speak to Mary, please.”
The woman eyed him suspiciously. “We’ve already talked to the police.”
“Yes, I realize that, but I have a few follow-up questions. Is Mary available? I promise that my questions won’t take long.”
“There’s no Mary, here.” She took a half-step back and started to close the door.
“Wait,” Denotta said, quickly inserting the toe of his shoe into the narrowing space in the manner of a persistent salesman. “It’s very important that I talk to her. Is this her day off? Perhaps you could give me her home number.”
The woman stared down at his foot. “There is no one named Mary who works here.”
“But I met her a few weeks ago. Was she fired?”
The woman opened the door and stepped forward. “Listen mister, I don’t know what game you’re playing at, but there is not now or ever has been a woman named Mary working here. I have been the head of housekeeping for over two years, and I should know. Now, get out before I call the police.”
Price backed away, knowing instinctively that the woman wasn’t bluffing. Oddly enough, he knew she wasn’t lying either. Although, after what had happened to him over the last month he had to acknowledge that he could place little trust in his ability to discern truth from fiction. A sense of discouragement settled around his shoulders like a warm cloak, and he hugged it tightly, comforted by its validity. He had been searching for a woman who had vanished without leaving a trace, and in his quest had now discovered another. The ground, once solid beneath his feet was dissolving, and unless he discovered the truth soon, he, too, would melt away, leaving fiction as the only reality.
End of Installment 11
INSTALLMENT 12
Tired and discouraged after a long day of searching for answers, Price Denotta called a cab and headed for his apartment. With a cautious eye over his shoulder as well as a vigilant awareness of his surroundings, he
scanned the traffic uneasily, expecting at any moment to hear the roar of sirens heralding his arrest. Progress was slow, giving him ample time to feed his growing unease with imaginative ventures into paranoia. Every businessman had the look of an undercover cop and every woman under the age of sixty resembled Mrs. Stedman—his Mrs. Stedman, not the one lying in the morgue.
He remembered the day she had first stepped inside his office—her smart, sophisticated look—the sweet scent of her perfume. They had met many times during the next few weeks, but the first meeting was the one he recalled most clearly. He could still hear the rich tones of her voice and the lilt of her laugh when something amused her. If she wasn’t dead, then where was she? As if on cue, a woman appeared at the front door of Macy’s Department Store wearing a beige skirt and jacket similar to the one she had worn at their last meeting, and for a moment he was taken aback, wanting to yell out her name, but as the cab moved slowly past, he could tell that he was mistaken. The face was too narrow—the eyes too close set—and the mouth with the thin lips was far removed from the warm, full smile of the woman he had known.
His gaze swept the crowded street, lighting here, lingering there, but failing to match any of the faces he saw with the one implanted so firmly in his mind’s eye. Shoulders slumping in resignation, he chided himself for even attempting such a foolish mission, not to mention feeling disheartened at its predictable failure. He turned resolutely away, determined to squelch the compulsion to continue trying when a spot of red brought his attention instantly back to the busy street. A woman in a red hat was leaving a tiny boutique, packages in tow.
“Stop the car,” he yelled, letting the drama of the moment raise his voice much higher than he had intended. “I want to get out,” he added unnecessarily, considering the fact that he was halfway out of the door already. Without waiting for the cab to come to a complete halt, he threw a large bill toward the front seat and bolted into the traffic, causing an scattered flurry of squealing tires, honking horns, and angry shouts to ripple across the four-lane thoroughfare in a wave. In the confusion she looked up, and for an instant their eyes met and locked, assuring him of her identity and her of his. By the time he reached the sidewalk, she had vanished, disappearing into the sea of curious faces as if she’d never been, but he refused to be discouraged.
Pushing his way through the throng, he focused on the color red and the image of a wide-brimmed hat, perched haughtily atop a bed of dark curls. So intent was he on his venture that he failed to notice that he, too, had become the object of someone’s search. He was beginning to close in on a red flash bobbing about a block and a half in front of him when his quest came to a sudden and abrupt end.
“Stop! ”
The single-worded command struck him like a bullet, leaving him no doubt as to the speaker’s confidence in his ability to enforce the command. He turned reluctantly, a slow motion tearing away from the real center of his attention, to stare blankly into the face of the policeman bearing down on him, nightstick in hand. His heart sank even as his head turned involuntarily, hoping for one last glance at the woman in the red hat.
End of Installment 12
INSTALLMENT 13
“I need to see some identification,” the beat cop said to Price, effectively ending any hope he might have had of catching up to the woman he had recognized to be Mrs. Stedman.
“Is there a problem, officer?”
The uniformed policeman recognized the high level of distress portrayed in the man’s eloquent body language even though the tone of his words was one of calm—bordering on unconcern. He waited until Price had produced his Driver’s License before giving him an answer. “You jumped out of a moving cab, disrupting traffic and endangering lives. Officially, the law refers to it as jay walking. If there had been a resulting accident, you would have been cited for precipitating negligence.” He paused for a moment to catch his breath. “What was the rush?”
The officer had been edging Price back to a parked patrol car as he talked, and Price knew that it would only be a matter of minutes before his license information would be verified and the details of his impending arrest be brought to the officer’s attention. He glanced down the busy sidewalk, the idea of escape looming tantalizingly around the fringes of his mind. Why couldn’t he just blend in and disappear as easily as the woman in red?
As if having read his thoughts the policeman waved him into the back seat of the car and closed the door. “You’re Price Denotta, the PI who worked with Frank Daniels a few months back—right?”
“That’s right,” Price agreed, thinking that maybe his luck had changed.
“Yeah, I thought I recognized you. Was real surprised when the warrant was issued for your arrest.”
Price’s hope slithered off like a kicked dog as the fervent fist of fate reared back eagerly to punch him solidly in the gut. “I didn’t do it,” he said without any expectation of being believed.
“Un huh,” the officer replied without interest. His mind was already poised on the praise and possible bonus he would receive from the apprehension of this dangerous felon. Never mind that he had picked him up on a minor traffic violation—the result was the same.
Denotta sat quietly for the remainder of the ride to the station, his mind seduced into complacency by the ever-tightening noose of futility winding around him. If the chance to clear his name had been small before, it would grow anorexic following his incarceration. Trying to revive some small nugget of optimism, he reminded himself that Frank believed him and would be working on his behalf. The thought was small comfort, but he hugged it like a drowning man would clutch a lifeline.
Two reporters dogged his walk from the car to the door of the police station, shouting questions laced with innuendo and accusation. What happened next was routine, beginning with the reading of his rights. Up until then, he had not been formally charged. After being photographed and fingerprinted, he was led past a row of desks toward a locked metal door. Focused on placing one foot in front of the other, he turned in surprise at the sound of his name.
“Tough break, Denotta,” Daniels said in a low voice, after motioning to the duty officer that he wanted to talk. “Did you find out anything to help your case?”
Price gave his head a negative shake, and Daniels nodded that he understood. Price had a lot of things he wanted to say, but now was not the time or the place. “We need to talk,” he mumbled and was turning to go when a photograph on the edge of the desk nearest him caught his attention.
“That girl,” he said, raising his cuffed hands to point.
Daniels picked up the picture. “We found the body this morning,” he said. She had been shot and dumped in the Neches River about ten miles below town. Why? Is she someone you know?”
“Yes,” Denotta admitted, as he stared at the pallid face of the dead woman, the maid he had been searching for the day before. “Her name was Mary.” So saying, he turned his back on the pitiful image and walked compliantly to his awaiting cell, his mind numb from the revelation that his only witness was gone.
End of Installment 13
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