As for space, there was never enough. "We're loaded full from floor to rafters, and then some," was Iacone's constant complaint, though somehow new objects and boxes were unfailingly squeezed in.
"So what's going on?" Iacone asked Ainslie.
"One of those serial killings may not be solved, so the evidence will have to stay. But you said 'mountain.' Is there really that much?"
"There wasn't a huge amount until Commissioner Ernst and his wife were killed," Iacone answered. "That's when the big bundle came. All sealed boxes. They told me there was so much because the case was so important."
"May I see them?"
"Sure."
The Property commander led the way through offices and storerooms where a staff of twenty worked five police officers, the remainder civilians producing remarkable order from the packed miscellany around them. Anything stored no matter how old, and twenty years of storage was not unique could be located in minutes via computer, using a case number, name, or storage date.
Iacone demonstrated the procedure, stopping unhesitatingly at a pile of more than a dozen large boxes, each sealed with tape bearing the words CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE. "These were brought in right after the Ernst killings," he said. "I believe your guys collected a lot of stuff from the house, mainly papers, and were going to go through it all, but I don't believe anyone did."
It was easy to guess what had happened, Ainslie realized. Immediately after the Ernst murders, Homicide's special task force began its surveillance of suspects, using every available detective and drawing on other departments, too. As a result, the Ernsts' papers and effects, while needing to be safeguarded, would have become a secondary concern. Then, with the Tempone killings and the arrest and conviction of Doil, the Ernst case was assumed closed, and the many boxes, it now appeared, had never been carefully examined. Ainslie told Iacone, "Sorry I can't take the Doil stuff off your hands, but what we will do is take a few of those boxes at a time, study the contents, then bring them back."
Iacone shrugged. "That's your privilege, Malcolm."
"Thanks," Ainslie answered. "It could be important."
13
"What I want you to do," Ainslie told Ruby, "is go through every one of those boxes stored in Property and see what you can find."
"Are we looking for anything special?"
"Yes, something that will lead us to whoever killed the Ernsts."
"But you've nothing more specific?"
Ainslie shook his head. A sense of foreboding he could not explain warned him that uncharted seas lay ahead. Who had murdered Gustav and Eleanor Ernst, and why? Whatever answer emerged would not be simple, he was sure. A line from the Bible's Book of Job occurred to him: The land of darkness and the shadow of death. He had an instinct he had entered it, and found himself wishing someone else was handling this case.
Ruby was watching him. "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know." He forced a smile. "Let's just find out what's in those boxes."
The two of them were in a small room on the far side of the main police building, away from Homicide. Ainslie had arranged temporary use of the space because of Leo Newbold's wish to keep the revived investigation as quiet as possible. The room was little more than a cupboard with a table, two chairs, and a phone, but it would do.
"We'll go down to Property," he told her, "and I'll authorize you to remove the Ernst boxes as you're ready for them. The whole thing shouldn't take more than a few days."
A prediction that, as it turned out, was wholly wrong.
* * *
At the end of two weeks, with some impatience, Ainslie went to visit Ruby for the third time in her temporary quarters. As on the two previous visits, he found her surrounded by piles of paper, much of it spread around the floor.
On the last occasion she had told him, "I don't believe either of the Ernsts could bear to throw away any piece of paper. They squirreled everything letters, bills, handwritten reminder notes, news clippings, canceled checks, invitations you name it and most of it's here."
Ainslie had said then, "I've talked with Hank Brewmaster, who had the case at the beginning. The problem was, there was an enormous quantity of papers in the house box after box, stored in almost every room. Well, because we were so swamped at the time, no one could be spared to go through everything, though it had to be preserved in case there was important evidence. So what happened is all that stuff was scooped up from the Ernsts' house, then afterward no one got around to going through it."
Today, Ruby had a tattered exercise book open in front of her and was making notes on a pad alongside it.
Gesturing to an open cardboard carton, he asked, "Is it more of the same?"
"No," Ruby said, "I may have found something interesting."
"Tell me."
''Mrs. Ernst was the one who accumulated the most paper, and a lot is in her handwriting spidery and hard to read. All innocuous, I thought, until two days ago, when I found what's turned out to be a diary. She wrote it in exercise books lots of them, going back years."
"How many?"
"Could be twenty, thirty, maybe more." Ruby motioned to the cardboard carton. "This was full of them. My guess is, there'll be more in others."
"What do they say?"
"Well, that's a problem. Apart from the difficult handwriting, it's in a kind of code a personal shorthand, you could call it for privacy I suppose, especially from her husband; she must have concealed her diary from him over all those years. If anyone's patient enough, though, they can learn to read it."
Ruby pointed to the tattered pages in front of her. "For example, instead of using names, she uses numbers. After a while I realized '5' stood for herself and '7' for her husband. Then I caught on 'E,' for 'Eleanor,' is the fifth letter of the alphabet; 'G.' for 'Gustav,' the seventh. A simple code. Two numbers with a hyphen between is two names. I figured that '4-18-23' meant 'Dr. W.' whoever he is, or was. And she compresses words, skips the vowels mostly. I'm getting the hang of it, but wading through all these will take time.''
He must make a judgment, Ainslie knew. Was it worth keeping Ruby on this tedious search, which could drag on much longer and most likely produce nothing? Other matters in Homicide were, as usual, pressing. He asked, "Is there anything at all you can tell me? Anything important?"
Ruby considered. "Okay, maybe there is, and I guess I was holding back, wanting to have more." Her voice took on an edge. "Try this for size. What the diaries show already is that our late, high and mighty City Commissioner Gustav Ernst was a wife-beater of the worst kind. He beat his wife from the beginning of their marriage, sending her to the hospital at least once. She kept quiet because she was ashamed and scared, and thought no one would believe her, which is what her bastard of a husband told her. In the end all she could do was transfer the pain and torment in her lonely private code to these miserable pages. It's all in here!"
Abruptly, Ruby flushed. "Oh fuck! I hate this shit." Impulsively she seized one of the exercise books and flung it wildly across the tiny room.
After a pause, Ainslie retrieved the book and returned it to the table. "She was probably right; she might not have been believed, especially all those years ago, when no one ever talked about battered wives; people didn't want to know. Do you believe it all?"
"Absolutely." Ruby was calm again. "There's too much detail to have invented it, and every bit rings true. Maybe you should read some."