“Hey buddy … I know today was a rough one. I just wanted to check in. If you need anything, give me a buzz; Mary’s offering the spare bedroom if you’d like some company. You can stay as long as you want. Fredericks is working us hard so this gets wrapped up quick. I asked Marek Bagowski for a rush job on the ballistics and blood work, so maybe we’ll hear something soon. I’m pulling an all-nighter; if you need to get in touch, I’ll be at the station. Don’t hesitate to call. Anyway — I know I’m rambling. Take care of yourself, brother.”
Ethan couldn’t help but notice that Arthur had called him brother. It was true, over the years they’d developed a comfortable rapport, almost like siblings. It was nice to know he wasn’t totally alone; that Art had his back meant more than Ethan could express.
The sound of static signaled the end of Art’s message. Ethan pressed rewind until the tape stopped at the beginning of the reel. It took a while for the recording to play, and he started to think the caller had hung up once they’d heard the greeting. He started to turn off the machine, but stopped when a crackling sound burst out, as if whoever had been on the phone dropped the receiver and was struggling to get it back into position. Ethan heard labored breathing and then a recognizable voice broke through the silence:
“Ethan … it’s Tobias. I know this isn’t the way you would have preferred to hear this, but … I’m very sick … and I won’t get better.”
A pause while Tobias caught his breath, then:
“So I’m going to deal with it now, rather than endure the end. But first, I need to tell you some things. And when this message is over, erase it immediately.”
Tobias’s voice had grown stronger as he uttered the last sentence. Tell me what? Ethan waited. A lengthy space of tape played static. He shrugged and reached forward once more to stop the tape, thinking he’d heard the last of his uncle’s goodbyes. His finger brushed the erase button, but a wet cough erupted from the speaker, and he stilled. Tobias’s croaky voice sounded again:
“Check the safe … I’ve changed the combination to your birthday. Look into the old case file, and keep my journal close at hand. You’ll have many questions. Some of them will be answered; most won’t. You’ll come across an important name: Ben Wallace. Don’t bother searching for him, he’ll probably find you.”
Another fit of coughing came through the machine. Ethan stood frozen in expectation, eyes wide and darting from side to side, ears straining to hear whatever his uncle had to say next. Then it filtered out into the air; Tobias was speaking, but not to him:
“What are you doing here?”
Ethan waited for more, but this time nothing came. The tape stopped with a loud click.
Wait — what? His breathing quickened as he rewound the tape and listened again. Yes, he’d heard right. Someone had been in the house with Tobias. Perhaps his uncle had been on the verge of suicide, but that didn’t mean he’d gone through with it.
I knew it — Tobias didn’t kill himself; he was murdered. Ethan’s hands were shaking now, his heart thundering like a jackhammer.
Then a new revelation dawned on him. Whoever had been there — if they’d been listening long enough — would have heard about the safe. The contents Tobias was talking about might already be gone. Those items sounded extremely important to his uncle. He had to get them. Or at least see if they were gone.
Ethan punched the erase button, turning to leave the room as the machine began to cycle back and remove the messages. He snatched his uncle’s spare keys from the bedside table with such haste that the Steelers emblem scraped a jagged line on its surface.
In seconds, he was in the hallway outside the condo and sprinting for the stairs. He didn’t even bother to lock up. If Ethan hadn’t been in such a frenzy to leave, he might have noticed the dried blood on the outside knob of his door.
06
Dirty Larry
“Seven letter word for rotten that ends with ‘D’. Geez, It could be anything.” Officer Stan Bailey stared at the crossword puzzle, clueless. He’d never been very good at these things. It’s not that he wasn’t a smart guy, but sometimes he just couldn’t see the sense in the questions. His wife rarely came across one that stumped her, filling out the solutions in just a handful of minutes.
Stan checked his watch; it was almost nine in the morning. In a little more than two hours his relief would show up, and it couldn’t happen soon enough. He was past ready to leave this current post of just sitting like a lump on Yorkshire Way. He looked up at the massive frame. A ten foot high wall surrounded the house, the brick pattern interrupted only by a motorized gate for the entrance. These people had some serious dough!
It had been a pretty quiet night but also a long one. His instructions were to not leave the premises for any reason, so he’d had to recruit one of his buddies to drop off some breakfast and the newspaper early this morning. As per usual with crime scenes, no one was allowed in without proper clearance.
Stan looked back at the puzzle and began talking to himself. “Okay, donkey has to be right so the ‘D’ is correct. Tainted, spoiled, decayed … bah!” He crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the floorboard of the passenger side seat.
Officer Bailey was beyond bored and restless, so he turned on the radio to listen to the morning news. Maybe something interesting was happening in the world. As the top of the hour intro sounded, he turned back to the house and saw a homeless man limping in its direction. The vagrant stopped at the trashcans that were sitting curbside and pushed away the yellow tape to rifle through the bins.
“What the hell …” Stan shut off the radio, pulled the keys from the ignition, and opened the door of the squad car. He got out and approached the man. “Excuse me sir, you can’t go through those.”
Startled, the old man weaved unsteadily on his feet as he looked up, then went back to rifling through the containers while he spoke. “Why not sonny? Seems like no one else has a need for this stuff, that’s why they gone and thrown it out, in’nit?”
The smell of stale beer, hard liquor, and rotten breath from a mouth that apparently hadn’t seen a toothbrush this side of the decade assaulted Stan’s nose like a Mack truck. He backed away from the onslaught of unpleasant aromas.
“You’re going to have to move it along, buddy. We can’t have any dumpster diving here. There’s a police investigation underway and they may come back for those trashcans.”
The scraggly man made a noise of protest, then pleaded, “Awwwww c’mon man, jus’ let me take the glass bottles and cans and at least I can get some food in me ‘fore noon.”
“If it were any other day, I’d cut you a break. But today you need to shove off and look elsewhere.”
Stan felt bad for the man, he really did, but two things were certain: one, the pungent scavenger had to leave, and two, it was not going to be in handcuffs in the backseat of Stan’s patrol unit.
In one of his early days on the force he’d wrestled a homeless man down, and the stink took forever to come off. He’d showered twice in a row after the scuffle and used almost a whole bar of Irish Spring before he finally felt clean. In the end his mission was accomplished, but Stan could swear to God he smelled like shamrocks for a week.