Death Benefits (9 page)

Chapter Nine

I could have understood Stretch, since he was as tall as a professional basketball player. He was skinny, too, so they could have called him Slim. And he was bald, which could have earned him one of those antonym nicknames, like Curly, or Fuzzy.

But Mouse? You certainly couldn't tell from looking at him. There just wasn't anything mousey about Bridgeton Police Detective Mario Aloni. He was perched behind his metal desk, his shoulders hunched forward, as he peered at the notes from the Stoddard Anderson file. He had a long, solemn face with a hooked beak of a nose. His large eyes were dark brown—deep set beneath large projecting eyebrows. If anything, Mario Aloni looked like a predator—the kind that swooped down and carried off mice in its claws.

It was 8:40 a.m. I had been in Mouse Aloni's cubicle at the Bridgeton Police Department on Natural Bridge Road for about twenty minutes. Although he had been reluctant to talk to me at first, he became less guarded after I showed him the letter from Ishmael, countersigned by Dottie Anderson, confirming that I was her lawyer on this matter.

I had asked him a question and he was slowly leafing through the Stoddard Anderson file for the answer. He stopped to study a document. “Anderson checked into the hotel under an assumed name,” he said.

“What was the name?” I asked, taking a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup.

“Unusual one. Giovanni Careri, Esquire,” he read from his notes.

“Who's that?”

Aloni looked up and shook his head. “No idea, ma'am.”

“Did Anderson use a credit card when he checked in?”

“No, ma'am. Paid cash in advance. For a week.”

“Did he ever leave the hotel room?”

Aloni tugged at the skin covering his prominent Adam's apple. “He left the hotel, or at least his room, for some part of the next two days. The hotel maid cleaned his room both days around noon. According to her, he wasn't in the room either day.”

“How about the third day?”

“Door chained shut from inside. One of those Do Not Disturb signs hanging from the doorknob. Maid didn't go in. We don't know whether he was inside the room the whole day.”

“Room service?” I asked.

Aloni shook his head. “Didn't use room service. No telephone calls from his room, either. Outgoing or incoming.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

“And the fourth day?”

“Mr. Anderson was dead by the morning of the fourth day. He died somewhere between midnight and about three a.m., according to the ME.”

“ME—Medical Examiner?”

“Yes, ma'am.” He glanced down at the notes. “On the fourth day the room was no longer chained from the inside, and the Do Not Disturb sign was gone. Maid started to go in his room around noon. Heard the shower, so she left. Came back an hour later. Went in, heard the shower, left. Same thing an hour later. Finally, at three o'clock, when she heard the shower still going, she got worried and called for the manager. They went in together. They found the body in the bathtub.”

“With the shower on?”

“Yes, ma'am. He died in the rain.”

“He cut his wrists with a razor?”

Aloni nodded solemnly. “Slashed his neck on both sides, then slit his wrists. From the stain lines in the tub, it appears he filled it with water, got in, turned on the shower, pulled the plug, and then started cutting.”

The image made me shiver. “Was he—just sitting there when they found him?”

“Sort of slumped down. Body probably slid lower as the blood drained.” Aloni leafed through the file. “Had a crime scene technician in there before we moved the body. That's S.O.P. on suicides. He took photographs of the body.” He looked at me. “I have one here, ma'am.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.” I once prosecuted a wrongful death claim on behalf of the widow of a man killed in a motel fire. Although the case settled quickly, the charred corpse continued to appear in my nightmares for almost a year.

“Were you able to find any evidence of what he'd been doing in the room for those three days?”

“Not much, Miss Gold. His last supper was a Big Mac, large fries, and a medium Coke. We found the McDonald's bags and containers in the bedroom. Coroner found the contents in his stomach.”

“Any indication of where he went when he left the room?”

“Just general observations, ma'am. From his clothing and his car. We never sent any of it through the lab, seeing as how it wasn't much of an issue, him having committed suicide and all.”

“What kind of observations?”

“His clothes and shoes were kind of muddy. There were traces of what looked like concrete on his shoes and on the floor of his car.”

“Which tells you what?”

Aloni shrugged. “Tells me some, not much. Tells me that sometime between the time he disappeared and the time he killed himself, he was probably walking around near a construction site. That'd explain the concrete, and probably the mud as well. Since it hadn't rained for a couple weeks before he disappeared, the mud part's a little curious. Which is why I say a construction site. Then again, he could have been walking down near a river or some other body of water, but then where'd the concrete come from? Like I say, the mud and concrete tell me some, but not much.”

“Why didn't you have the lab run some tests?”

Aloni sighed. “This is a busy department, Miss Gold. We got limited resources, limited manpower. Look at it from our point of view. A suicide is the easiest homicide to solve. You always catch the killer right there at the scene of the crime. And that means it's a file you can close. We've got hundreds of files we still can't close. Mud in an open file gets sent to the lab. Mud in a closed file—well, it'd be nice if we had the time. We don't.”

“I understand,” I said with a sympathetic smile. “I've got a few open files with mud in them. Where did you find the suicide note?”

“On the bed.”

“Not in the bathroom?”

“No, ma'am. It was right in the center of the bed.”

“Hmmm.”

“You seem surprised.”

“More confused than surprised, I guess. Did you find any rough drafts?”

“We did, ma'am. Several, in fact. Found three in the waste can. Some were torn into several pieces. Took me a while to piece 'em together.” He reached into the folder and pulled out three sealed plastic bags. “These are them.” He handed the bags to me.

I skimmed each draft. Anderson had tightened the language from draft to draft, a good lawyer to the end. In one draft he spoke of the Executor “having crossed the River Styx.” In another draft he wrote that he was “the only Executor above ground.”

“It looks like his handwriting,” I said as I compared the photocopy of the final version—the one Dottie gave me—with the earlier drafts. The handwriting seemed to match the handwriting in his appointment book and time sheets.

“Our expert agrees,” Aloni said.

“What's his suicide note mean?”

Aloni shrugged. “Doesn't make any sense to us. So far.”

“How ‘bout these drafts? River Styx?”

Aloni shrugged and gave me a palms-up gesture.

I reminded myself of the original purpose of my trip to St. Louis. “The suicide note sounds a little crazy,” I said, hopefully.

“That's because we don't have all the facts, Miss Gold. These things tend to make sense once you learn all the facts.”

“When will that be?”

“Can't say.”

“Are you still working on the case?”

Aloni shook his head. “No, ma'am. Like I say…”

I finished the thought: “Closed file.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

I stared at my photocopy of the suicide note. “You say you didn't find this in the bathroom?”

“Found it in the bedroom.”

“Was there any evidence that he'd taken an overdose of sleeping pills or some other medicine before he slit his wrists?”

“No.”

“Was he on drugs or alcohol?”

“Drugs, no. Alcohol, yes. He consumed two fifths of Scotch during his stay. Maybe more. We found two empty bottles in his room. Autopsy report showed a blood alcohol content of almost point two. No evidence of drug use—not in the room and not in the blood.”

“Would you have the autopsy report?”

“Sure do.” He leafed through the folder until he found it. He glanced at it and shook his head. “There just wasn't much blood to send to toxicology. The ME said the bathwater must have been warm. Shower was, too. Blood just kept draining out. Even after his heart stopped.”

He handed me the report and then came around behind my chair to look at it over my shoulder. He pointed to the toxicology results. “They were able to get enough blood to test for alcohol,” he said. “The deceased was pretty well intoxicated when he died. Tests don't show the presence of any drugs. No barbiturates, no amphetamines, no controlled substances of any type. Not that it really matters. Cause of death was obvious,” he said, pointing to the outline of the human body at the bottom of the report. Someone had drawn slash marks on each wrist and on both sides of the neck. “We found the razor blade in the tub.”

“Fingerprints?” I asked.

“The ones on the razor blade were too smudged to identify. The decedent's were all over the hotel room. Including several on the bathtub. Found other fingerprints as well, but that's pretty much what you'd expect to find in a hotel room.”

“Have you identified any of the other prints?”

“No, ma'am. Why did you keep asking where we found the suicide note?”

“He was a lawyer, Detective. When a lawyer does several drafts of a short note, you start to assume that every word that made it into the final draft was significant.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“The last sentence in the note talks about a dying man's last request. ‘Dottie,'” I read, “‘this is a dying man's last request.'” I shrugged. “Maybe I'm being too much of a lawyer myself.”

“I'm not following you, Miss Gold.”

“If he hadn't taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and if he hadn't already slit his wrists, then he wasn't actually a dying man when he wrote the suicide note. Right?” It had sounded more significant before I had explained it aloud.

Aloni raised his eyebrows as he considered the point. “I guess so,” he finally said, without much enthusiasm.

“Never mind,” I said, feeling like a real amateur. Rachel the Junior G-Man, with her plastic badge and pretend wrist-watch radio.

“Now here's something odd,” he said as he reached into his file. “Looks like the decedent even tried a note to the medical examiner.” He pulled out another sealed plastic bag. “Took me a while to put this one back together. It was torn up into more than twenty pieces.” He handed me the sealed bag. “It's some sort of riddle,” he continued. “I showed it to the ME. He can't make heads or tails out of it.”

I stared at the note. Like the others, it was written on the hotel's stationery:

Equation for ME

C = MSD/AW

RS = ROTF

“Could I have a copy of this?” I said. “Along with copies of those draft suicide notes?”

“Yes, ma'am. We've got extra photocopies of each one.”

I skimmed my notes to see whether I had covered all of the topics on my list. I hadn't. “I understand you took temporary custody of the contents of his office,” I said. “When you returned his things to the law firm, did you keep anything here?”

Aloni shifted uncomfortably. “We inventoried every item. Then we returned everything, except for…uh, certain contraceptive devices.”

“What kind?”

“Condoms.” He glanced at his notes. “Trojan brand. Lubricated. Reservoir tips. There was an opened twelve-pack in his desk drawer. Ten remaining.”

“You kept them?”

“We had them tagged and filed. The deceased certainly wasn't going to have any further use for them.” Aloni paused. “I had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Anderson in the course of my investigation. Seemed like a fine woman to me. Woman of her years wouldn't have much need for birth control. Change of life and all.” Aloni shrugged. “I made a judgment call, Miss Gold. I assumed that the decedent's personal effects would eventually be turned over to Mrs. Anderson. The only thing those contraceptive devices would do for her is cause pain. So I didn't return them. It seemed the right thing to do at the time.”

“It was, Detective.”

He nodded gravely. “Ma'am.”

“Any other property or personal effects that the police haven't returned?”

“None from the office. We did find a set of keys. They were on the nightstand of the decedent's hotel room. We were able to identify most of the keys. As I recall, there were two to his house, one for his garage door opener, two to his car, two to Mrs. Anderson's car, and one to the law firm.” He reached into the file and pulled out a sealed plastic bag that contained a single key. “The only key we couldn't match up is this little one. Looks like it might be a key to a piece of luggage. Or maybe to a storage locker.”

“Could I have a copy of that key?”

Aloni pursed his lips as he weighed the request. “Well, I suppose that'd be okay. I can go have one made for you down in the lab before you leave.”

When he returned with my copy of the unidentified key from Stoddard Anderson's key chain, I wrote down the phone numbers of Abbott & Windsor and Ann's house on the back of one of my business cards and gave it to him. He promised to call if he heard anything.

“One thing I still can't figure,” I said as I stood to leave.

“What's that?”

“The nickname?”

“Huh?”

“Mouse. Where'd it come from?”

His solemn face broke into an embarrassed smile. “Oh, that. Cheese,” he said.