“Okay, Joe,” Priscilla said, turning to her own food. “I was hoping it was something like that.”
“All right, then,” Rizzo said. “Let’s skip the awkward silence, okay, and get back to business.”
“You got it,” she said. “Tell me.”
“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “Now she’s gonna start talkin’ like me. A fuckin’ Frankenstein I’m creatin’ here.”
“That invite for Thanksgiving still stand?”
“Sure,” he said. “If you decide to come, I’ll tell Jen to fry you up some chicken. You know, sos you’ll have somethin’ to eat.”
Priscilla tossed her crumpled napkin at him. “Okay, Joe. I get it. Okay.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Later that afternoon, Rizzo and Jackson arrived at Lauria’s apartment just as the two plainclothes CSU officers sent by Detective Schillings were leaving. The officers held fiber samples from the victim’s wardrobe labeled and packaged in clear plastic evidence bags.
Once inside the apartment, Priscilla opened some windows and let the cold November air breeze through, further dispelling the lingering odor of rotting flesh.
“Let’s start in the bedroom,” Rizzo said. “Anything you find of cash value, make a note of it. Maybe this cousin of his can tell us if anything he owned is missing.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” Priscilla asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t worry. What ever it is, we’ll know it when we find it. We gotta get to know this guy, Cil. If it turns out he was killed by a burglar, this is just a waste a time, but, if it was premeditated, or the killer was somebody he knew, maybe there’s somethin’ in here that’ll point us somewhere. Maybe the guy was a closet case-gay, pedophile, s and m dude, somethin’ like that. Maybe he was a skell gambler. What ever. If he had a secret, if there’s somethin’ more to this guy than just a sad-sack loser life rolled over, we have to find it.
“And when you’re tryin’ to find somebody’s secrets, remember this: start lookin’ in the bedroom.”
Yesterday’s search of the apartment had been cursory, surface deep, a search for the clues and debris of the crime itself. Now the two detectives methodically went through drawers, rummaged through bundled stacks of paid bills, legal papers, books and magazines. After a while, Rizzo moved to the large closet at the far wall. He slid open one of the doors and looked in.
Some moments later, he called to Priscilla.
“Hey, come check this out.”
She came to stand beside him as he knelt on the worn, brown carpeting, “What you got there, Joe?”
He looked up at her. “It’s a typewriter-in the original case. Friggin’ thing’s gotta be thirty years old. It’s an old IBM Selectric. Years ago these were standard issue in all the precincts. It’s a goddamn antique.”
Priscilla shrugged. “Okay, so what?”
Rizzo stood, wiping carpet lint from his hands. “Take a look at it,” he said. “A close look.”
She knelt, eyeing the machine carefully. “What am I lookin’ at here, Joe?”
“Fuckin’ thing looks like it came outta the factory last week,” Rizzo said. “Look at the ball-the letters have hardly any ink buildup. Check out the cartridge, it’s been used, but it isn’t very old. And look under the cover-freshly oiled parts, no dust stuck all over everything. This machine was worked on and very well maintained.”
Priscilla examined the machine. “Yeah, okay. So what?”
Rizzo shrugged. “So… I don’t know. But like I said, we gotta get to know the real Robbie Lauria. And since we can’t go have a few beers with the guy and shoot the shit, this is how we gotta do it. By pokin’ around his life and finding stuff like this.”
Priscilla pursed her lips. “So okay, the guy has a functioning thirty-year-old typewriter. What does that mean?”
“I don’t know yet. See, we detect stuff. That’s why they call us detect ives.”
“Okay, Joe, I got it. We keep looking.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s.”
Against the inside wall of the closet stood a large, green Samsonite hard-shell luggage case.
“This guy liked old stuff,” Rizzo said. “I had a Samsonite just like this, same color and everything. Me and Jen used it on our honeymoon. I think it’s up in our attic somewheres full of the girls’ baby clothes.”
Priscilla leaned into the closet, brushing against Rizzo, and grabbed hold of the handle of the suitcase.
“Wonder if he’s got some of his stuff in here,” she said, tugging on the case. She stumbled forward against its unexpected weight. “Wow, goddamn heavy.”
“Easy,” Rizzo said, as he took hold of her arm to stabilize her. “Let’s get it out here.”
Once they’d wrestled the case out of the closet, Priscilla placed it down flat on the brown rug and opened the two clasps securing it.
“What the fuck is all that?” Rizzo asked from over her shoulder as she lifted the top and they looked in.
“Looks like manuscripts,” Priscilla said. “Typewritten manuscripts.”
Rizzo crouched beside her, reaching into the suitcase and taking hold of a stack of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch papers, tightly bound by thick rubber bands. He thumbed through the first few pages, nodding his head.
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like.” He rubbed at his eye, examining the pages. “Must be five hundred friggin’ pages in this one alone.”
“This one, too,” said Priscilla, holding a second bundle.
The two detectives sat on the floor, rummaging through the contents of the case. It held six separate, book-length manuscripts, each carefully typed and double-spaced, apparently on the old Selectric. Each bundle was secured with multiple rubber bands, and each contained a title page with Lauria listed as the author, his address and phone number beneath his name. There were one or two duplicate copies of each manuscript and nearly a thousand pages of shorter works, each dated in ink with a neat, precise hand.
Rizzo shook his head. “This guy’s been writin’ this crap for over twenty years.”
Priscilla looked up from the page she had been reading.
“This isn’t necessarily crap, Joe. From just what I’ve read, the guy’s got the basics down pat. He may even be pretty good.”
Rizzo dismissed her assessment with a disinterested shrug. “Yeah, well, anything sittin’ inside a closet for twenty years in a thirty-year-old suitcase is crap, far as I’m concerned.”
He stood, dropping the bundle he held back into the Samsonite. “I’m gonna take a look around the living room. Why don’t you finish checkin’ this closet.”
“Okay,” Priscilla said, barely looking up from her reading. “In a minute.”
Rizzo entered the small parlor. Its floor was covered with the same worn, brown carpeting as in the bedroom. An old sofa sat against one wall and faced a small wooden table that held a nineteen-inch television. A stereo turntable stood on a second small table in the corner. He opened the lid and looked in. A Frank Sinatra Reprise LP sat on the turntable, the black vinyl shining against the light of the room, its surface unmarred by scratches. It looked as if it was brand new.
“Fuckin’ guy,” Rizzo said to himself. “More of a dinosaur than me.”
He crossed the room, dropping into a battered easy chair beside a small lamp table. He switched on the light and slid open the table’s lone drawer. He looked in, poking objects aside with his pen and examining them-a three-week-old TV Guide, an old popular Mechanics magazine, a nail clipper set in a cheap black plastic case, an empty Dr. Scholl’s bunion pad package, a clear plastic vial of toothpicks, a New York Times crossword puzzle book, three Bic pens, and a short number-two pencil.
Rizzo slid the drawer closed, then took out what he firmly believed would be his very last pack of Chesterfields. He lit a cigarette and sighed.
“Come on, Robbie,” he said softly. “Help me out a little. Give me somethin’.”
He rubbed a forefinger at his eye.
“Any goddamned thing.”
Later, the two detectives sat at Lauria’s kitchen table, glancing at the dark bloodstains and yellow coroner’s chalk marks on the pale green vinyl flooring.