A Dance at the Slaughter House (Matthew Scudder #9) 4

" 'It'll be exciting, honey, like before we were married.' "

"That's the idea. He gets her in there, he kills her, he makes it look like rape, he plants the physical evidence, the sperm and the pubic hairs. Did they find anything under her nails, anything to suggest she scratched anybody?"

"No, but he didn't say anything about her fighting them off. And you had two of them, so one could hold her hands while the other made whoopee."

"Let's get back to the idea of him doing it all by himself. He kills her and fakes the rape. He sets the stage in the Gottschalk apartment, makes it look like the place was burglarized. Did you get the Gottschalks to come up and see what was missing?"

He nodded. "He came up, Alfred. He said his wife's been ill, she's supposed to avoid unnecessary travel. They keep a couple hundred dollars cash in the refrigerator for emergencies, and that was gone. There was some jewelry missing, heirloom stuff, cuff links and rings he'd inherited but doesn't wear. Jewelry of hers, but he couldn't describe it because he didn't know what she'd taken to Florida and what was in the safe-deposit box. The good stuff was all in the bank or in Florida, so he didn't expect the loss would amount to much, but he'd have to have Ruth make up a detailed list of what was missing. That's the wife's name, Ruth. I knew it would come to me."

"What about furs?"

"She doesn't own any. She's an animal-rights activist. Not that she'd need a fur coat in the first place, spending six months and a day in Florida every year."

"Six months and a day?"

"Minimum, so they qualify as Florida residents for tax purposes. There's no state income tax in Florida."

"I thought he was retired."

"Well, he still has an income. From investments and so on."

"Anyway, no furs," I said. "Anything bulky? A stereo, a television set?"

"Nothing. There were two TVs, a big rear-projection set in the living room and a smaller model in the back bedroom. They unplugged the bedroom set and moved it into the living room but left it there. The way it reads, they were planning on taking the set and they either forgot it in the excitement or decided not to risk looking suspicious, not with a dead woman in the apartment."

"Assuming they knew she was dead."

"They beat her face in and wrapped her panty hose around her neck. They damn well knew she was in worse shape than before she ran into them."

"So they took some cash and some jewelry."

"That's what it looks like. That's all Gottschalk could come up with. Thing is, Matt, they turned the apartment upside down."

"The lab crew?"

"No, the burglars. They gave it a very thorough toss and made a mess doing it. Every drawer dumped, books off the shelves, that kind of thing. Not like they were searching for a secret stash, no mattresses slashed or cushions cut open, but a very thorough job all the same. I would guess they were looking for cash, and not a couple hundred dollars in the butter-keeper compartment in the refrigerator."

"What did Gottschalk say?"

"What could he say? 'I had a hundred grand in unreported cash and the bastards found it.' He said there wasn't anything really valuable in the apartment, except for some artwork, and they never touched that. He had some framed prints, signed and numbered stuff, Matisse and Chagall and I forget what else, and he had a floater policy covering them. I think the value of all the art came to something like eighty grand. The thieves took some of the stuff off the wall, probably looking for a wall safe, but they didn't steal any of it."

"Say he did it himself," I said.

"We're back to that, huh? Go ahead."

"The place is really ransacked, so it looks like a bona fide burglary, but all he has to stash is a wad of cash and a handful of jewelry. Did you search him?"

"Thurman?" He shook his head. "Man's all beat up, hands tied behind his back, his wife's lying there dead, how are you gonna strip search him, look up his asshole for somebody's platinum cuff links? Anyway, your scenario, he could have stowed everything in his own apartment."

"I was just going to say that."

"Still with your scenario, he gets into the Gottschalk place with a key, two keys, whatever it takes, he does his wife, he fakes the rape scene, he steals the cash and the jewelry and takes them upstairs, rolls them up in a pair of socks and stashes them in his sock drawer. Then he comes back downstairs and uses a pry bar on the door, makes it look like forced entry. Then I suppose he goes back upstairs and stashes the pry bar, because we didn't find it in the Gottschalk place."

"Did you search Thurman's apartment?"

"That we did," he said. "With his permission. I told him there was a good possibility the burglars had started in his place and worked their way down, which I knew they hadn't because there was no sign of forced entry at the Thurman apartment. Of course they could have got in from the fire escape, but the hell with what they could have done, because nobody had been in there. But I searched it just the same, looking for anything that might have been lifted from downstairs."

"And you didn't find anything."

"Not a thing, but I don't know what that proves. I didn't have a chance to fine-comb the place. And he could have added the Gottschalks' jewelry to his and his wife's jewelry boxes and I wouldn't have known the difference, because I didn't know what I was looking for. And the cash, a couple hundred dollars in cash, he could have stuck that in his fucking wallet."

"I thought the burglars took his wallet."

"Yeah, right. His watch and his wallet. They left it on the first floor on their way out of the building, just dropped it at the foot of the stairs. Stripped the cash but left the credit cards."

"He could have run down himself and left it there."

"Or stood at the stairs and dropped it over the railing. Saved himself running up and down."

"And the jewelry they supposedly took from his wife-"

"He could have put right back in her jewelry box. And his Rolex, well, who knows? Maybe he wasn't wearing it in the first place. Maybe he rolled it up in a sock."

I said, "Then what? He beats himself up, ties his hands behind his back, tapes his mouth-"

"I think if I was doing it I might tape my mouth before I tied my hands behind my back."

"You're a better planner than I am, Joe. How was he tied? Did you see him when he was still tied up?"

"No, dammit," he said, "and that's the one thing that never stops bothering me. I wanted to chew the hell out of the two uniforms who cut him loose, but what could you expect them to do? Here's a guy, respectable-looking man, nicely dressed, he's all tied up and hysterical on the floor and his wife's lying there dead, and how are you gonna tell him he has to stay that way until a detective gets to the scene? Of course they cut him loose. I'd have done the same thing in their position, and so would you."

"Sure."

"But I fucking well wish they hadn't. I wish I'd had a look at him first. Still sticking with your scenario, that he pulled it all off on his own, your question is could he have tied himself up. Right?"

"Right."

"His legs were tied. It's not hard to do that yourself. His hands were tied behind his back, and you would think that would be impossible, but it's not, not necessarily." He opened a drawer, rooted around, and came up with a set of cuffs. "Put your hands out, Matt." He fastened the cuffs around my wrists. "Now," he said, "bend forward and get one leg at a time through there. Sit on the edge of the desk. Go ahead, you can do it."

"Jesus."

"You see this on television all the time, a guy's cuffed, hands behind his back, and he sort of jumps through the circle of his own arms and he's still cuffed but his hands are in front of him. Okay, now stand up and work your hands up behind your back."

"I don't think this is going to work."

"Well, it would help if you were a little skinnier. Thurman's got maybe a thirty-inch waist and no ass at all."

"Has he got long arms? It'd be easier if my arms were a few inches longer."

"I didn't check his sleeve length. That'd be a good place for you to start your investigation, now that I think of it. Go to all the Chinese laundries in the neighborhood, see if you can find out his shirt size."

"Open the cuffs, will you?"

"Gee, I don't know," he said. "I kind of like the effect, the way you're sort of grabbing your own ass, can't stand up straight and can't sit down. I hate to interfere."

"Come on."

"I was sure I had a key somewhere. Hey, no problem, we can just ankle on down to the front desk, somebody must have a key. Oh, all right." He produced a key, unlocked the handcuffs. I straightened up. My shoulder was sore, and I had pulled a muscle slightly in one thigh. "I don't know," he said. "They make it look a lot easier on television."

"No kidding."

"The thing is," he said, "without seeing how he was tied, I don't know what kind of a job they did of immobilizing him, or if it was something he could have done himself. I'm gonna drop your scenario and assume that there were burglars and they tied him up. You know what bothers me?"

"What?"

"He was still tied when the cops got there. He rolled off the bed, he knocked a table over, he made a telephone call-"

"With a pipe tool clamped firmly between his teeth."

"Yeah, right. He did all that, and he even worked the tape most of the way off his mouth, which I guess you could do."

"I would think so."

"You want me to get a roll of tape and we'll see if you can do it? Just a little joke, Matt. You know what your problem is? You got no sense of humor."

"I was wondering what my problem was."

"Well, now you know. Seriously, he does all the other stuff but he doesn't work his hands loose. Now sometimes you can't unless you're Houdini. If you've got no mobility and there's no give in the bonds, there's not much you can do. But he was able to move around, and how good a job could these guys have done on him, given that they were pretty amateurish when it came to burglary? I wish I'd seen how he was tied, because my hunch is that he probably could have worked his way free, but that he chose not to try. And why would he make that choice?"

"Because he wanted to be tied up when the cops got there."

"Exactly, because that alibied him for the murder. If he gets loose we can say he could have killed her, he wasn't really tied up in the first place. But now, the way things stand, what we can say is he stayed tied up because he wanted to be found that way. It doesn't prove anything because if you look at it that way he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, but as far as his motivation-"

"I know what you mean."

"So I wish I'd seen him before they cut him loose."

"So do I. How was he tied?"

"I just said-"

"I mean what did they use? Cord, clothesline, what?"

"Oh, right. They used a kind of household twine, pretty strong stuff, like you'd use to wrap a package. Or to tie up your girlfriend, if you happened to be into that kind of thing. Did they bring it with them? I don't know. The Gottschalks had a drawer in the kitchen with pliers and screwdrivers and the usual odds and ends of household hardware. The old man couldn't say whether they might have had a ball of twine in there or not. Who remembers that sort of thing, especially when you're seventy-eight years old and you live half the year in one place and the rest of the time somewhere else? The burglars dumped that drawer, so if there was twine in it they would have seen it."