Without Warning (4 page)

She certainly had no way of knowing that his car would swerve off the two-lane road on the way home and smash into a tree, killing him instantly.

But she would miss him, and miss their Wednesday nights together.

My plan had been to watch the Red Sox game and then get six hours sleep. That would get me up in time to finish off the pizza and get to my seven o’clock meeting. Of course, I can’t remember the last time one of my plans went according to plan, and this one wasn’t even close.

I have a rule that everyone in the department knows very well. If any citizen of Wilton dies, I am to be notified immediately. It doesn’t matter if foul play is suspected, or if it’s a ninety-five-year-old dying in a nursing home; I want to know about it as soon as anyone in my command learns of it.

The call came at three in the morning with the news that George Myerson, an insurance agent who had lived in Wilton for more than twenty years, had died in an auto accident. His car had gone off the road and plunged down into a ditch and into a tree, and had apparently been undiscovered for as much as a few hours.

The officer who had responded to the call was Terry Bresnick, one of the best in the department. Terry was twenty-eight years old, smart and aggressive. If Hank and I had a natural successor in the department, it was Terry, though my guess was that other opportunities would beckon him before we were ready to leave.

Terry had no idea why Myerson’s car had left the road, but at that hour there was always the chance of alcohol being involved. He had already made arrangements to get Myerson’s blood level tested.

I knew George as I knew most of the citizens of Wilton, and he had handled my personal insurance until about four years ago. The business side of our relationship didn’t end well. Among the policies he held was a small life insurance policy on Jenny, and after her death it was discovered that he had mishandled the paperwork.

Instead of getting a hundred thousand dollars, I got fifty. Financially it was a significant hit to me, on a cop’s salary, but it was about one millionth on the list of things I was concerned about at the time.

In any event, I moved the remaining policies to another agent, and George was apologetic and certainly understood. So we weren’t close friends, but nor were we enemies, and he was a resident in my town, so I felt I should go out to the scene and look around.

When I got out there, the situation was already well under control. Hank Mickelson had beaten me to the scene, had been updated by Terry, and the coroners were already loading George’s body into their van. Hank took me through the accident as he and Terry figured it, showing where the car went off the road. It was still down in the ditch, but the tow operators were about to do their work.

“DUI?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Could be. Especially if he was coming from Marston.”

“Why is that?”

“He had a woman there. Met her in Marston almost every Wednesday night.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Everybody knows that; you’re the only one who doesn’t.”

Gossip is not really my thing, and everybody also knows that, so no one tells me anything. It leaves me probably the most clueless person in Wilton. Hank considers monitoring gossip a vital part of police work.

“What about George’s wife?” I asked. “Does she know about the affair?”

“Carla? Of course she knows. Just like George knew that she meets a guy in Carson every Thursday night.”

Hank said that he knew Carla Myerson pretty well and volunteered to go to her house to break the bad news about George’s death.

I went back to the house but couldn’t sleep, so it was easy for me to be at Russell Connor’s office at seven, and Danny and Hank were already there. Russell’s office was right off the main examining room, and for that reason it was always cold.

I think Russell always wanted to meet at his office because he knew that most of his guests would be uncomfortable with the fact that so many dead bodies were just feet away. My guess is he felt that it gave him sort of a home field advantage.

I’ve known Russell for eight years, and except for complaining about how busy he is, the next time he “chit-chats” will be the first. He treats “hello” as frivolous conversation, choosing instead to get right to work. It’s not a bad trait, though he has some. For instance, not offering his guests coffee at seven in the morning is one.

“This is preliminary,” Russell began in his discussion of the body found on the capsule, “but there’s little doubt that his skull was fractured. Most likely blunt force trauma.”

“His?’ I asked, since I hadn’t been sure of that.

He nodded. “Male adult, age to be determined, but I would guess older than fifty. There is some evidence of arthritis, but not excessive.”

“Could he have fractured his skull by falling into the hole once it was dug?” Hank asked.

I pointed out that it would have been a neat trick to have cracked his skull open in a fall, and then summoned the energy and desire to cover himself by filling in the hole with dirt. “Do we know when he died?” I asked.

Instead of answering directly, Russell turned to Danny, who said, “Best guess is around the time the capsule was buried, but very likely not before.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, for one thing, the body was resting on the capsule. No one saw the body at the ceremony, so unless it was moved there afterwards, the body followed the capsule. We also found a watch that we presume belonged to the victim. It had a date on it, but only the month and day.”

“Can we find out when the watch was purchased?” I asked.

“Maybe, but certainly we can learn when it was made, or at least when the model was manufactured. It also had a battery that we can probably date.”

I turned to Russell. “What about from your end?”

“Based on the feel and smell, I think Danny has it about right. I’ll send a sample to the state lab for carbon dating, which might narrow it down further.”

I nodded, but I already had an idea where the case was going. “I think we’re going to find out that the guy who dug the hole was either the murderer or the victim.”

“We know who that is yet?”

I shook my head. “Katie Sanford is finding that out.”

We scheduled the capsule opening at three o’clock that afternoon. There was no reason to believe that anything in the capsule was of any significance, and I was sorry I had turned it into a meeting at all. It was a forensics job, and they had already gone over the exterior of the capsule. There were some blood and trace tissue samples from the body that was laying on top of it, and they had already been sent to the lab.

But Katie had started all this because of her plans to open the capsule and make sure there was no water damage, and I wanted us to supervise that process, hence the meeting.

I met with Katie at two thirty in my office, so that she could update me on what information she had gathered about the capsule ceremony and burial. It wasn’t a lot.

“We hired Jack McKinnon to do the physical work,” she said, talking about a local construction guy. “He was doing some remodeling of our offices at the time, so he probably offered to have one of his workers take a couple of hours to do it.”

This wasn’t a positive development, since Jack had died of a heart attack about two years earlier. “Does Tommy remember it?” I asked. Tommy is Jack’s son, and he had started in the business a couple of years before his father died, and then had taken over full time afterwards.

She shook her head. “He doesn’t, and there are no records of who actually did the job. Tommy asked the workers who were involved with our work, and they all said that it wasn’t them.”

“Great.”

“It gets worse. Tommy said that Jack was hiring a lot of day laborers in those days, migrants who went from town to town looking for work. He paid them in cash, and never recorded or reported it.” She smiled. “Tommy says he stopped the practice when he took over.”

“We’ll need to interview Tommy and all the other employees.”

She nodded. “I told them to gather the names for you.”

“Thanks. What else have you got?”

She held up a folder. “A list of the contributors to the capsule. There are eighteen sets of predictions, each in its own box, and a number of artifacts.”

“What kind of artifacts?”

“Nothing of any importance. A phone book, two local beer bottles, a cell phone, restaurant menu…”

“Remnants of a lost culture,” I said.

She smiled. “Exactly. What are you expecting to find?”

“Eighteen sets of predictions, and a number of boring artifacts.”

“You look awful,” she said. A lack of directness had never been one of Katie’s faults.

I nodded. “Thanks. George Myerson. Three
AM
.”

“We have a story on it. Poor George … Was alcohol involved?”

“Don’t know yet. Let’s go.”

We headed into the lab conference room, and the capsule was sitting on a table, resting on a towel so as not to damage the table. It looked sort of ridiculous and out of place, like some kind of ceramic bird that had flown in through the window.

Waiting for us were Hank Mickelson, Danny Martinez, Sheila Anthony, who worked for Danny, and Matt Higgins. They were all sitting around the capsule at the conference table. There was an empty chair waiting for Katie next to Matt, and another one for me at the end where the capsule sat.

I must have reacted slightly when I saw Matt, and Katie picked up on it. “Matt’s going to write the story.”

“It’s not a bar mitzvah,” I said. “I was hoping to limit the guest list.”

“Matt’s going to write the story,” she repeated, though I heard her the first time.

“Let’s get started,” I said, as she took her seat next to Matt. “Danny, you want to do the honors?”

Instead of responding, he nodded to Sheila, who was already putting on sterile gloves. She opened the capsule by releasing the pressure lock and started taking out items and putting them on the table, next to the capsule. The ones that contained the predictions were small boxes, each one maybe nine by twelve inches, and only a few inches deep. The artifacts were of varying sizes, but none very large. Everything seemed dry.

I’ve always had a weird habit of counting things; it’s my substitute for letting my mind wander. So I counted as she took things out of the capsule, and when she removed the last box, I turned and looked toward Katie at the other end of the table.

She nodded; she’d noticed it also. “Nineteen,” she said, meaning that it was one more than the number of boxes that were said to be in the capsule.

I stood up and looked down at the boxes. Each one was labeled with the name of the person or organization that provided the predictions inside.

“This one has no label,” Sheila said, but I had already noticed that fact.

“Open it please,” I said, as everyone else seemed to crane their necks to look.

Sheila opened the box, which was identical to all of the others in all respects except for the label. She did so carefully, so as to contaminate it as little as possible. The sheets of paper were about half the size of the box itself, and she took one out and handed it to me. The words on it were in red ink, slightly faded. No one else could see it, as I read this first prediction, fortunately not out loud.

It was typewritten, and it said M
RS.
C
HIEF WILL DIE … AT THE HANDS OF HER LOVER
?

I tried not to react, just as I tried to continue to breathe, but both of those goals were very difficult to achieve. All I could manage were two words.

“Everybody out.”

No one knew quite what to make of my reaction, and they just basically sat where they were, not understanding what I was saying.

But Hank Mickelson could read me well enough that he didn’t ask questions, he just quickly took over and ushered everyone out of the room. Katie started to argue, pointing out that our deal was that she could be present when the capsule was opened. She walked toward me as she was talking, and I could tell that she was trying to get a look at the piece of paper still in my hand.

I had actually lived up to our deal, since in fact she was there when the capsule was opened, but that didn’t matter, because I was not about to engage in a technical debate. The situation had changed dramatically. That much I understood, even in my bewildered state.

Hank intercepted her and led her and everyone else out the door, but before he could follow, I signaled him to stay. “What the hell happened?” he asked, when we were alone.

I handed him the paper with the prediction on it. It only took him a second to react. “Holy shit,” he said, and I couldn’t have put it better myself. Then, “When…”

I knew where he was going. “Jenny was murdered about eight months after the capsule was buried.”

“So Hagel did both killings.”

I nodded. “He must have. But why would he have known that far in advance that he was going to kill her? I always thought it was because she broke it off.”

“So maybe we had a serial on our hands and didn’t know it.”

I had been shaken by what I read, and hadn’t focused on the key fact. Hank was right, and if Hagel had killed two people, maybe there were others. And there were more “predictions” in the capsule. “Let’s see what else is in there.”

“You want Danny and Sheila to come in?”

I shook my head. “No, we can handle this ourselves, at least for now.”

Hank and I went over to the already opened prediction box nineteen, and he put on the gloves that Sheila had left on the table. They were comically small for his hand, barely covering his fingers. But he kept them on, as he gently took the next sheet off the top.

It read 23
RD STREET BURNS BRIGHTLY IN OUR MEMORY.

Neither Hank nor I had to remind the other that there had been an apartment house fire on Twenty-third Street in a nearby town, Union Hills, three years ago. Eleven people died in the blaze, which was ruled arson. Even though state experts were called to help in the investigation, the perpetrator was never caught.