This was a living room that got lived in, or it had been before the murder — TV with lounger opposite, a bookcase with bestsellers (The Fountainhead, Something of Value, Anatomy of a Murder), an old scarred-up desk consuming one corner. His phone was on it and a blotter, and a row of reference books; but no stacked papers or files or anything. I knelt for a look at the three desk drawers. No sign that any one of them had been pried open.
Pat was checking out the kitchen and I was tempted to go through that desk and those drawers, using a handkerchief so as not to leave prints; but that search was rightly Pat’s bailiwick — him and the lab boys.
He returned and I met him at the corpse.
“So,” I said, “how do you read this?”
His hat was on now, pushed back. “No sign of a struggle. No sign anything’s been gone through. Somebody wanted Casey dead. Simple as that.”
“Simple,” I said. “Some fucker just rolled his civil war cannon in and lit the fuse and aimed at your friend’s chest.”
He ignored that. “Casey knew the killer. A friend, maybe. Or at least an acquaintance.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh?”
“You can rule out a stranger, because Shannon let the person in, obviously at night, and they ended up across the room. So they spoke a while. I don’t think the killer was here long — no coffee cups or beer bottles in the kitchen?”
“None.”
I shrugged. “But that doesn’t rule out somebody he knew from a case he was working. Somebody who stopped by and said he had some info for Casey and got invited in.”
Pat twitched a frown. “And did that to him, somehow.”
“Yeah.”
“But Casey was retired.”
“Casey was still looking into something having to do with Vincent Colby. For some reason, that was the case that was eating at him enough that he couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t hang it up till he resolved the damn thing to his investigative mind’s satisfaction.”
Almost to himself, Pat said, “Every cop has one of those cases.”
I walked in a small circle, my hands in the air. “But what was it? Vincent Colby’s the common denominator, but appears to just have been on the periphery of those things.”
“‘Those things,’ Mike, are called homicide investigations. And, judging by what little I know, both of those deaths are tied to Colby, Daltree & Levine.” He waggled a finger at me. “I don’t know the details, but I will very damn soon, my friend, that I promise you.”
Right on cue, Chris Peters burst in, tramping through the entryway, the badge he’d used to get past the two cops at the door still in hand.
“I heard the call in my car,” he said, breathless. The slim blond detective, who’d been Shannon’s last partner, reminded me of the young Patrick Chambers. His eyes went white all around. “Jesus! Will you look at him.”
He almost ran to his fallen colleague, then stopped short, the cop in him not wanting to disturb anything. Then he dropped to his knees, as if at a shrine.
Swallowing hard, he said, “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Pat admitted, putting a hand on the detective’s shoulder. “Somehow someone crushed his chest in. The M.E. can tell us more, after the autopsy.”
Then the young man hung his head, mirroring the corpse nearby. They might have been praying together, but only one of them was crying, the other way past that.
Pat let this go on a while, then helped the boy to his feet. “We’ll find who did this. He’ll pay.”
“He or she,” I reminded them. “There’s always those two possibilities.”
I knew that too well.
Pat walked Shannon’s heartsick partner away from the body and positioned the young man and himself so that their backs were to the grim tableau. I came along.
Pat told him, “Mike is working the Colby hit-and-run.”
I said, “I’m working for the father’s client. Old man Vance Colby.”
Of course, Chris had been there that night.
“Well,” Peters said, “that whole hit-run thing threw Casey for a curve.”
“How so?”
His expression grew thoughtful. “He was at least a little suspicious of Colby’s role in those two other homicides. One was a low-level broker at the Colby firm, the other a secretary there.”
“Vincent Colby’s secretary?”
“No, not exactly. He doesn’t have a secretary, even though he’s all but running the place. They have a secretarial pool. But the young woman had been in frequent contact with him, taking dictation and such.”
As good-looking as the women at that firm seemed to be, I wondered exactly what kind of dictation she’d taken.
“Attractive girl?” I asked.
“Very. Tragic circumstances. She was found raped and strangled in her apartment. Her roommate was away for the weekend and found the body when she got back late on a Sunday night.”
Just the kind of thing that could get its claws into a detective, even one who’d seen everything — like Casey Shannon.
I said, “If I’m remembering right, the other homicide was also a hit-and-run.”
Peters nodded. “Yes. Different circumstances. The young employee was in the ramp of a parking garage where he kept his own car when he was struck down. No witnesses. Casey thought that one stunk.”
My laugh was short and harsh. “I can see why. That reads more as a murder than an accident — you don’t work up that kind of speed in a parking ramp unless you’re homicidal in one way or another.”
Pat said to Peters, “Remind me when these homicides went down.”
“The secretary over a year ago,” he said. “The other one a good two years ago. But now we have two hit-and-run incidents at the Colby firm, and Vincent is at least a peripheral figure on the two earlier homicides, and the target of the more recent one.”
I asked, “Have you been working with Casey on this?”
He shook his head. “Not since he retired. I’m partnered up with another guy and up to my ass in the usual alligators. And even before that, I was encouraging Casey to let the Colby thing drop. We weren’t getting anywhere and we had bigger fish to fry. Other fish, anyway. No shortage of homicides in Manhattan.”
“No shortage,” Pat sighed.
I asked, “Why would he tell you he was going to Florida when he was sticking around to, what? Keep digging?”
“You got me,” Peters said, throwing his hands up. “His message came in at work when I was out, so I didn’t question him about it.”
Pat said, “He knew you didn’t agree with him keeping at this thing.”
Peters was shaking his head hard, now, exasperated. “But we’re at three homicides now, and an apparent attempted murder, all tied to that same brokerage? Something’s going on.”
“Four homicides,” I said, and told him about the Kraft kill, and its identical kill MO.
The young detective listened intently, a haunted blankness gradually curdling into something else, his handsome face getting ugly; and he looked like he might start crying again. I couldn’t blame him.
Trembling with rage and sorrow, he said, “I want a piece of this, Captain Chambers.”
Pat put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I understand. But you’re too personally involved with this one. I’m taking charge of this myself. Of course, I’ll need you to be available to me. I want to know everything you’ve got on those first two homicides.”
“Whatever you need, Captain.”
“Good. And I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
Pat shooed him off and, after a pathetic look back at his dead partner, Detective Chris Peters left the crime scene.
“What a hypocrite you are,” I said, but I was smiling.