Harry Dolan (24 page)

“That’s what you say. Look, there’s more I need to tell you, but it’s complicated. It starts with the disc and the letter. The disc had a manuscript on it. The letter was from a blackmailer. Do you have a pen? You’re going to want to write some of this down.”

Chapter 24

ELIZABETH’S EYES OPENED. “DID YOU SAY A BLACKMAILER?”

 

“I can’t remember the text of the letter exactly, but it started with ‘Dear Mr. Kristoll, I know about Sean Wrentmore.’ Then there was a demand for fifty thousand dollars and an address to send it to in Chicago. The letter was signed, but that won’t help you. Whoever wrote it used a pseudonym: M. L. Black.”

A few steps took Elizabeth to the kitchen, where she had left her coat.

“Should I know who Sean Wrentmore is?”

“I’m getting to that,” Loogan said. “The thing is, there’s something more I haven’t told you. I suppose I should have. Sean Wrentmore’s dead. Have you found a pen?” His tone was matter-of-fact; the energy had returned to his voice.

She pulled her notebook from her coat. “Yes. Go on.”

“Sean Wrentmore was a writer. He died on the night of October seventh in Tom Kristoll’s study. Wrentmore wrote a novel and Tom edited the manuscript—that’s the manuscript that was on the disc, by the way. Adrian Tully helped Tom work on the manuscript. There was an argument over the editing and it turned into a fight and Wrentmore was killed. Tully was the one who killed him. Am I going too fast?”

“I’m keeping up,” she said. “How do you know all this? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Some of it I found out only recently. Some of it I can’t be certain of. I know for sure that Wrentmore’s dead. I believe Tully killed him. If you want to check my story, you should talk to Laura Kristoll. She told me what happened. She heard it from Tom.”

Elizabeth turned a page in her notebook. “You say you know Sean Wrentmore’s dead. How? And what happened to the body?”

“Buried in the woods,” Loogan said. “Look, there are a few more things. I can save you some time on Wrentmore. He lived in a condo on Carpenter Road.” He recited the address for her. “He also rented a storage unit, at a place called Self-Storage USA. I think he kept something important there. Unit 401. He gave his neighbor a key and told her that if anything ever happened to him she should go there. The neighbor’s name is Delia Ross. She and I drove out to the storage place on Saturday, but whatever Wrentmore kept there was gone by then. It would be interesting to know if anyone else has gone to that unit recently.”

Elizabeth tapped her pen against the page. “Did Tom Kristoll bury Sean Wrentmore’s body?”

“Didn’t I already say that?”

“Not exactly. Did you help Tom bury the body?”

His silence stretched so long that she thought he had put down the phone.

“That’s a question I’d rather not answer,” he said finally.

“Mr. Loogan, I need to know where to find Sean Wrentmore’s body.”

“I liked it better when you called me David,” he said. “Look at it from my perspective. If I helped Tom bury the body, I may be the only one alive who knows where it is. That gives me a certain advantage. A certain leverage.”

“Listen,” she said. “The story you’ve told me is outlandish. This Wrentmore was killed over a manuscript. Without a body, I don’t know how I’ll get anyone to take it seriously.”

“I’ve said all I’m going to say for now. I think they’ll take it seriously.”

“I don’t know why
I
should take it seriously.”

“Because you believe me.”

“I haven’t said so. Not about this.”

“You believe me, and you want to find out who killed Tom,” he said, as if the matter were decided. “I’ve got to go. You’ll do what you think is best.”

She tried to come up with something that would keep him on the phone.

“David—” she began.

But the line had already gone dead.

 

 

 

Her phone rang again as she drove to the end of Loogan’s block, heading for City Hall. She heard Sarah’s voice when she answered.

“Hi, Mom. Did he call you?”

Though she knew what the answer would be, she asked, “Did who call me?”

“David. He called here a while ago, looking for you. I gave him your cell. He said he didn’t stab that man.”

Elizabeth drove past lines of bare trees. “He said the same thing to me. I think it’s probably true.”

“Well, no kidding,” Sarah said. “He’s an editor. He knows how to juggle. It’s not like he’s dangerous or anything.”

 

 

 

Elizabeth didn’t have to convince anyone to take Sean Wrentmore’s death seriously. Loogan had been right about that.

She arrived at City Hall to find that Laura Kristoll had just left. She and her lawyer, Rex Chatterjee, had met with Owen McCaleb in his office. The purpose of their visit was to deliver a brief statement—three pages, single-spaced. Elizabeth found a copy waiting on her desk. It was Laura Kristoll’s description of the circumstances of Wrentmore’s death, as they had been related to her by her husband.

Carter Shan had sat in on the meeting. He told Elizabeth all about it. “I asked her why she didn’t come in sooner,” he said. “But Chatterjee wouldn’t let her answer. He said any further questions should be submitted to his office. Apparently we’re supposed to be grateful that she came in at all. We’re not supposed to notice that she’s been withholding knowledge of a homicide for nearly a month.”

Elizabeth thought she understood why Laura had decided to make a statement now. Loogan must have warned her that he intended to talk about Sean Wrentmore.

Shan nodded toward McCaleb’s office. “The chief ’s on the phone with the county prosecutor,” he said. “Chatterjee’s attitude ticked him off. He wants to see if any charges can be brought against Laura Kristoll.”

A moment later, McCaleb appeared at his office door and summoned Elizabeth and Shan inside. He shook his head wearily when Shan asked him about his conversation with the prosecutor.

“He wants us to treat Laura Kristoll gently,” McCaleb said. “He thinks she’s suffered enough already, given the death of her husband.” He scowled. “He won’t admit it, but I think Chatterjee already talked to him. The two of them went to the same law school.”

As he sank into the chair behind his desk, Elizabeth began to tell him about the phone call she had received from David Loogan. She passed along Loogan’s version of what had happened at his house the night before. She saved the part about the blackmail letter for last.

“So someone was blackmailing Tom Kristoll,” McCaleb said. “Someone who knew Sean Wrentmore was dead.”

“Apparently.”

Shan picked up the pages of Laura Kristoll’s statement from McCaleb’s desk. “There’s nothing in here about blackmail,” he said.

“No,” McCaleb said mildly. “Mrs. Kristoll neglected to mention it.”

“Do we think it’s possible she didn’t know?”

“It’s possible,” said McCaleb. “We’ll have to ask her.”

Pointedly, Elizabeth said, “Are we allowed to ask her?”

McCaleb gave her a bitter smile. “We’ll ask her gently, through her lawyer. In the meantime, we’ll act on the information we’ve been given. Let’s see what we can find out about Sean Wrentmore.”

The bedroom of Wrentmore’s condominium had a set of vertical blinds along one wall. The blinds covered a sliding glass door opening onto a rectangle of cement that served as a patio.

Elizabeth stepped out onto the cement. The sun had set and the grass beyond the edge of the patio looked sickly in the dark. A few pine trees made a broken row at the border of Wrentmore’s yard. Beyond those trees, the ground sloped down to the parking lot of a franchise restaurant. The sign above the restaurant’s entrance was a bright half-circle, like an enormous moon hanging low in the sky.

Elizabeth was beginning to form an image of Sean Wrentmore. This was his view, the circumscribed world he lived in. Sitting at the desk in his bedroom, he would have looked out at that artificial half-moon, the same every night.

He had been thirty-two years old, quiet, disciplined, slightly eccentric. Elizabeth had interviewed his neighbor, Delia Ross, and these were the words the woman had used to describe him. The photograph on his old college ID showed a plain, lean face, blond hair, eyes that seemed determined to stare down the camera.

According to Laura Kristoll’s statement, Wrentmore had owned a laptop computer. Tom Kristoll had taken it and disposed of it after Wrentmore’s death. A laptop would have allowed Wrentmore the freedom to write anywhere, out in public or in any room of the house, but Elizabeth imagined him sitting at his desk, facing off against a white screen night after night.

And when he rose from his desk, he would wander to the other rooms. He would look around his walls and see strangers in black-and-white photographs, people from Third World countries, their expressions intense, their eyes, like Wrentmore’s, staring down the camera. He would see their faces, not the faces of family members or friends. There were no snapshots that Elizabeth could find, no photographs of old girlfriends tucked away. No evidence that any woman had ever entered Wrentmore’s home.

But Wrentmore had not been completely solitary. He had turned outward and had found Delia Ross. He had given her his manuscript to read, and he had shared with her an odd secret. He had given her a key to a padlock.

 

 

 

The next morning Elizabeth drove out to Sean Wrentmore’s storage unit: number 401 at Self-Storage USA. Carter Shan accompanied her and when the metal door rolled up they looked together on Wrentmore’s sad belongings. Boxes of books and girlie magazines, scraps of furniture not worth keeping.

Under a cloud-gray sky they crunched across the gravel lane to a tiny rental office. The attendant on duty was a muscular young man in his twenties, tattoos covering his arms and curling around his neck from under his collar. He leaned his thick forearms on a Formica counter and studied Wrentmore’s photograph.

“Yeah, I’ve seen him before,” he said. “Are you really cops?”

His face was animated, his voice enthusiastic.

“We’re really cops,” Shan told him.

“So if I tell you what I know about this guy—Sean Wrentmore of unit 401—that makes me a solid citizen, right?”

Shan nodded. “Sure.”

“It earns me credit,” the attendant said with a sly grin. “Like if I ran a red light, you’d cut me some slack.”

“We’d let you off with a warning,” Elizabeth said.

“Awesome,” the attendant said. “Get ready to be dazzled then, because I’m going to tell you everything I know about Sean Wrentmore. Starting at the beginning.” He turned to the computer on the counter beside him and tapped at the keyboard. “Sean Wrentmore has had unit 401 for five years now. Since before my time.”

“How long have you worked here?” asked Shan.

“About two years. But like I said, I’ve seen him around. I talked to him once. We have the same tattoo.” The attendant raised his left arm to show them a series of linked rings, drawn in black ink, that circled his wrist. “He showed me his, asked me where I got mine. That, I’m afraid, was the extent of my conversation with Sean Wrentmore.”

Elizabeth exchanged a weary look with Shan. “We’re not dazzled,” she said.

The attendant’s grin returned. “I’m not finished. I haven’t told you about the girl.”

“What girl?” Shan asked.

“The girl from unit 401. She came here two or three weeks ago. Drove up in a Chevrolet—gray, or light green. Parked in front of 401. Rolled the door up. She was in there for a while. I wandered over. It was a slow day. Besides, she was a hot girl. I thought I might help her out, like if she needed to load something in her car.”

“And did you—help her out?”

“I lifted a box for her, put it in her trunk. That’s all she ended up taking. It was heavy, one of those fireproof file boxes.”

“Did you see what was in it?”

“I didn’t see inside,” the attendant said. “But I think she had it open before I came around. There was a key in the lock.” He braced himself against the counter and lowered his voice a notch. “Now I’d like to be able to tell you I got her name and number, and Lord knows I tried. But the number she gave me, when I called it, turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. The name is probably a dud too. Mary-Louise.”

The name caught Elizabeth’s attention. She thought of the letter Loogan had described—the letter signed M. L. Black.

“What did she look like?”

“Hot, like I said. Tall, but not too tall. Maybe twenty-four years old. Her nose wasn’t quite straight, but who cares? Great skin. Long hair—not quite red and not quite brown.”

“Auburn,” Elizabeth said softly.

Shan turned to her. “It’s Valerie Calnero. What does Valerie Calnero have to do with Sean Wrentmore?”

Elizabeth closed the cover of her notebook. “Let’s go ask her.”