A Night at the Operation (21 page)

“Thank you.” Sharon put the bag on the coffee table and ignored it. Gregory’s eyes narrowed, but Sharon plowed on, talking just to me. “You see, Chief Dutton saw Gwen Chapman at the theatre when I arrived, and he considered it an opportunity. If he arrested me as a suspect in her father’s murder, she and the rest of the family would hear about it and figure they weren’t under suspicion. The chief thinks that will lead them to make a mistake. He thinks one or more of them is involved in Russell’s death.”

“Of course.” I nodded. Sure. Death playing chess with a guy on the beach. Nobody notices. Whatever.

“That’s why he never transferred me to East Brunswick, or the county,” Sharon continued, pretending I was absorbing what she said. “The fact is, I came home last night and had a really good sleep.”

“Wish I could say the same,” I managed. I don’t know what I was complaining about; with my worrying, I’d gotten in a healthy ten or twelve minutes of sleep the night before.

“Me, too,” Gregory said. “She came in so quietly, and left so early, I never even knew she was here.” Gregory hadn’t gotten over sleeping in the guest room yet. He wasn’t a professional ex-husband, like me. He hadn’t even moved out yet. The poor kid. Someone ought to take him aside and show him the ropes. Someone other than me, since I’d be likely to wrap the ropes around his neck.

“So now the East Brunswick detective and Chief Dutton can watch the Chapmans without them knowing they’re under surveillance.” Sharon was determined to get the whole story out. “I don’t know if it’s a good plan, but it’s the best one they had, I guess.”

“I’m going to owe Dutton an apology,” I told her. “But that is a pretty nutty plan.”

“Gregory,” Sharon said, managing not to bat her eyelashes, “would you mind getting me a cup of tea? I think it would help me relax.”

And god bless him, the poor sap fell for it again.

Once he was out of the room, Sharon said, “Look. Go home. Rest. Take a day or two and think about this. It’s a huge decision and it’s not something you should commit to when you’ve been going through hell all this time. We’ll have a chance to talk later.”

“Lunch at C’est Moi! tomorrow?” I asked.

Sharon smiled. “Sure.”

“But let’s be clear, Shar,” I said. “I don’t need the time to think. I need time to get used to the idea, but I’m not going to change my mind. I’m this baby’s father, and I’m going to be part of its life.” I stood up, and so did she.

Sharon walked over and kissed me lightly. “I never really doubted it,” she said. “No matter what I was thinking, as I went over it again and again, that part was never in question. You’re going to be a great dad.”

I put my hands on her shoulders. “And you’re going to be a great . . .”

Gregory pushed open the kitchen door. “Regular or herbal?” he asked.

 

 

“OKAY,
so I owe you an apology,” I said.

I’d had to walk back to police headquarters to get the bicycle anyway, so making amends with Dutton immediately was probably the best way to go. I’d said things that, in retrospect (it had been close to two hours ago, after all, so now I had time to think more objectively) were a little harsh.

“Yeah, you do,” the chief said. “But I can understand that you were pretty emotional at the time.”

“And by all appearances, you were railroading my ex-wife,” I said. “What kind of crazy, twisted, bizarre logic led to . . .”

“You’re not very good at apologizing,” Dutton pointed out.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been a rough week.”

“For everyone,” he answered. Dutton can sometimes come across as Superman’s older brother and other times like your aunt Mildred. It can be difficult to keep track.

“Are you convinced one of the Chapmans is responsible for Russell’s death?” I asked him.

“I’m not
convinced
of anything, but it’s the best theory for the time being,” he responded. There was a file on his desk labeled
Chapman
, which was blue, as opposed to all the other files, which were green. He opened the blue one and leafed through it idly. “None of them seemed to like him much. He had a lot of money that he won’t be needing now. There were rumors that he was leaving a chunk of it to the medical practice that seemed—and you’ll pardon me, but I want to emphasize that
seemed
—to have bungled his case. Yeah, there were a few angry people in that family, and that’s always a good breeding ground for violence.”

“What about the son-in-law, Wally?” I asked. “Did he ever get back from Japan?”

Dutton’s eyelids fluttered a bit, but he said, “Wally showed up last night, jet-lagged and cranky. At least, he said it was the jet lag that made him so cranky. I get the feeling Wally is cranky most of the time, jet lag or no.”

“You questioned him?”

He shook his head. “No, East Brunswick is doing the investigation. But I was sitting in. Kowalski let me watch from behind one-way glass. He did a good job.”

“Wally, or Kowalski?”

“Actually, both. Kowalski asked all the questions I would have asked, and Wally dodged most of them without looking like he was dodging anything. It was an interesting interrogation to watch.”

I watched him closely. “So you think our pal Wally knows more than he’s saying.”

“I don’t think anything. I just watch.”

“I think you know more than
you’re
saying,” I tried.

Dutton looked as coy as an eighth-grade girl when you ask if she, you know,
likes
you likes you. “Maybe,” he said.

“Come on, spill.”

“Meg Vidal checked the airline records. The only reason Wally took so long to get back from Tokyo was that he had to fly out there yesterday.”

He got the response he’d been seeking:
“Huh?”
I asked.

“Yeah. Wally was somewhere else when he was supposedly doing business with the Kyoto Blue Fin consortium. Russell’s death caught him off guard, and he hightailed it to Tokyo yesterday, to make it look good, never left the airport, and flew right back.”

“Lucky for him he doesn’t have deep vein thrombosis,” I said. “So, where was he?”

“Meg’s working on that.”

He started to close the blue file, and I caught a glimpse of something that flashed by, and did a double take. “Wait a second,” I said.

Dutton looked up. “What?”

“Let me see that.”

“Elliot, this is a file I got from another police department.
I’m
not even supposed to have it. If you think for one second I’m going to let a civilian see it . . .”

“The picture, Chief. The picture from the autopsy. Just let me see the picture, okay?” It would nag at me for days if I didn’t get to figure it out.

Dutton considered, but saw the look on my freshly shaved face. He was very careful about extracting the photo without showing me anything else in the file. He took it out gingerly and held it up for me to see without handing it to me. I leaned over to take a close look. My throat suddenly felt dry.

“If you’re not used to seeing autopsy photos, it can be . . .”

“It’s not that, Chief. I mean, it’s probably not the best picture he ever took, but that’s not what’s bothering me.”

“What
is
bothering you?” Dutton knew how to deliver a straight line when it would further his own agenda.

“That’s not Russell Chapman,” I said.

Dutton withdrew the picture and put his head down on his desk blotter. “Not again,” he said.

 

 

 

 

BEFORE
this trip to the morgue at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, I stopped at home to pick up an item I thought I’d need and give an update to Meg, who was staying in my guest room for the duration. Homicide detective that she is, Meg couldn’t give up on the Chapman case until she was at least satisfied that she’d done everything possible, and that hadn’t happened yet.

She was also working out of my house half the time because someone needed to guard the door against Leo Munson, who had abused the privilege of watching DVDs. Leo came by every three hours, and Meg would block the door. I wasn’t sure if Leo was really deluded enough to think I’d given him a lifetime pass to my home, or if he just liked seeing Meg.

In any event, I told her everything I knew, and Meg went to work on the phone while Dutton and I drove to the hospital for another corpse viewing.

It still wasn’t a comfortable place to be, but I didn’t feel like all my internal organs were melding into one, as I had the last time I was here. Yes, I was going to view a dead body, but there was absolutely no possibility it was that of a woman I had loved at any time in my life. There’s a feeling of security that goes with that knowledge.

The procedure, however, was very similar: Dutton and I stood outside the room with Detective Eugene Kowalski of the East Brunswick Police Department until the same little curly-haired guy came out and told us the corpse was ready for his close-up. But this time we stayed in the waiting room, at the ME’s insistence, since none of us was the next of kin, and viewed the body on the video monitor.

Of course, the body was covered with a sheet, presumably to allow the morgue attendant his moment of high drama as the sheet was lifted to reveal the face of the victim. The face itself was largely undamaged, but there was the equivalent of a scar on his throat. I tried to focus on the facial features.

The man was not tall, although it was hard to tell on a video screen, even if he’d been in HD. He was almost bald, in his late sixties or early seventies, and clean-shaven. His face was lean, and he reminded me of photographs I’d seen of the Marx Brothers when they were “off duty” and not wearing the familiar makeup.

“That’s not Russell Chapman,” I said.

Kowalski, who at first glance seemed a trifle peeved at all the people in the room who weren’t from the East Brunswick Police Department, sighed. “Yes, it is,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” I insisted.

“It is.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not.”

“Boys,” Dutton said.

“We have Russell Chapman’s fingerprints on file,” Kowalski said, looking straight at me. “He was in the Army, during peacetime. The fingerprints match. That’s him.”

“You thought it was him the first time,” I pointed out.

Kowalski eyed the morgue attendant with a certain disdain. “That’s what we were
told
,” he said, shooting words like bullets in the attendant’s direction. Even through the closed door, he could hear that.

The attendant reddened, as he was being challenged. “The daughter came in and identified him,” he said over the monitor. “You’re lucky we did the fingerprints on him at all; normally we wouldn’t with a positive ID. Besides, Doc said it was Chapman. How am I supposed to know it’s some drunk fell on the tracks at the railroad station? It wasn’t until I checked the toxicology that I saw he’d had alcohol in his blood, and not Valium.”

Doc! I’d seen him hand in the autopsy report, with Chapman’s name on it, at Midland Heights headquarters the night Sharon had first left for Lake Carey. It was a blue folder, too, and being delivered to Dutton. Must have been from the Middlesex County ME’s office, courtesy of East Brunswick.

But that was beside the point. I shifted back toward Kowalski. “I don’t doubt that you did everything that needed to be done, Detective,” I told him, and noticed Dutton nodding with agreement that I was showing the other officer the respect to which he was entitled. “But I’m telling you, I know that man”—I indicated the body—“isn’t Russell Chapman.”

“And how do you know?” Kowalski put his hands on his hips and glared. At me. It wasn’t pleasant.

“I’ll show you.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a special piece of equipment I’d gotten when we’d stopped home to update Meg. Then I dragged one of the chairs in the waiting room to a spot under the monitor, and stood on it. I placed the object on the picture of the man’s face. “See?” I said to Dutton. “You met him, didn’t you?”

“Damn,” Dutton said.

“Hey . . .” the morgue attendant tried to say, but Kowalski, who appeared annoyed, deferred to Dutton, and held up his hand: Hold it.

Dutton walked over to get a better look at the man on the slab. “You’re right, Elliot. I do recognize him.” He looked at the corpse, then back at Kowalski, then at me, then the corpse, then Kowalski again.

“I don’t care what you say,” Kowalski reiterated. “That’s Russell Chapman.”

“Maybe it is,” Dutton said. “But with the Groucho glasses on his face, I can tell you for sure that when Elliot and I met this man, he was calling himself Martin Tovarich.”

 

 

 

 

“SO
Mr. Chapman was pretending to be this Tovarich guy?” Sharon and I sat inside at C’est Moi!, our favorite lunch place in Midland Heights, and she was, at the moment, halfway through a french fry dipped in cheese.

“That’s the theory,” I answered. “It’s a good thing you’re eating for two, you know, or I’d be worried about the amount of food you’re scarfing down.”

Sharon dropped her voice a number of decibels and said, “Let’s try and keep that just between us for the time being, all right? I haven’t said anything to the others at the practice yet.”

“You haven’t told Gregory either, have you?”

She blushed a little. “It’s not easy.”

“I’ll be happy to tell him for you.”

“No!” Her head snapped up and she stared at me. So did a few people at neighboring tables. One redheaded guy, in particular, glared. Jeez; sorry to have ruined
his
day.

I stifled a laugh. “Okay. But soon, all right? My mother’s going to be mad enough that I didn’t tell her before
I
knew.”

“Tovarich. Russell Chapman. Tell me what you know.” She took a bite of her California burger and listened as I updated her on everything I had heard or discovered about her dead patient. Sharon listens very well, and did not interrupt with any questions until I was clearly finished with my twisted tale.