“No,” I said. “She ran off to be sick.”
“Did you touch the victim or the weapon or anything else in there?”
“Only Mrs. Pollexfen. She was on the floor, moaning. Looked like she was suffering from shock.”
“Blowing a man’s head off would shock anybody,” Pollexfen said.
“So you picked her up and carried her into the spare bedroom.”
“While Mr. Pollexfen went to call nine-eleven, yes. Seemed like the best thing to do to make sure the crime scene wasn’t compromised. Then I went back and locked the library doors again.”
“Still have the key?”
I did and I gave it to her. She put it into an evidence bag, handed the bag to her partner, then the two of them went out into the hallway for a brief, whispered conference. Davis disappeared in the direction of the library. Yin stayed put, raised a beckoning hand toward me. “Come on outside for a minute.”
I went out with her onto the front terrace. The street below was teeming with police vehicles and uniformed officers, the coroner’s ambulance, a couple of TV remote crews, and the usual knot of neighbors and other gawkers. The thick fog and cold wind coming through the Gate didn’t seem to be bothering them, but it chilled me in five seconds flat.
Yin gave the scene below a sour look and turned her back to it. “You have anything to add to what you told us earlier, what was said inside just now?”
“No. I’ve told you everything I know.”
“You arrived a little before four, saw the Porsche in the driveway, figured somebody was home, and rang the bell. Right?”
“Right. No answer, so I waited in my car. Brenda Koehler showed up a few minutes past four and we went in together. She said the Jag down there belonged to Mrs. Pollexfen and the Porsche to Cullrane, so they were both home. I asked her to find the two of them-”
“Why?”
“Talk to them again. I interviewed both yesterday and I wasn’t satisfied with the answers I got about the stolen books.”
“Meaning you thought one or both might be guilty?”
“Not exactly. I wasn’t satisfied with Pollexfen’s answers, either. That’s why I arranged to come here today-another talk with him.”
“Why weren’t you satisfied?”
“Well, only the three of them, and Brenda Koehler, had any kind of ready access to the library. One had to be responsible, but I couldn’t get a handle on which. Or the motive behind the theft.”
“Money. Half a million dollars.”
“Not if Pollexfen took the books himself. He doesn’t need to try pulling off an insurance fraud-not even for half a million. We did enough checking to be reasonably certain of that.”
“Then why would he pretend to steal his own books?”
“Like I said, I don’t have any idea. Just a feeling that he may not have been completely honest with me.”
“Does he get along with his wife?”
“No. One big unhappy family.”
“Reasons?”
“Lots of them. Complicated. You’d better ask Pollexfen.”
“I will.”
“Anyway, I guess I was wrong about him. Victim, not perpetrator, assuming his wife and brother-in-law are guilty.”
“Assuming? Doubts about that, too?”
“Some,” I admitted. “Unfounded, maybe.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Well, Cullrane and Mrs. Pollexfen didn’t like each other. Each of them made that plain. I can’t quite picture them plotting a theft together.”
“The dislike could have been an act.”
“Could have, but I don’t think so. Pollexfen confirmed that they didn’t get along. So did the checking we did.”
“A large sum of money can make partners out of enemies,” Yin observed.
“Sure. I know it.”
“You still don’t sound convinced.”
I shrugged. “There’s one other possible explanation for what happened today.”
“And that is?”
“Cullrane was alone, stealing more first editions, and Mrs. Pollexfen came home and caught him in the act. But a couple of things argue against it. One, Pollexfen told me she never went near the library.”
“She might have today,” Yin said, “for the same reason you rang the bell. Saw her brother’s car in the driveway and couldn’t find him anywhere else in the house.”
“True enough. But she couldn’t’ve gone into the library unless the door was unlocked. And if it was, then why would Cullrane lock it-double lock it-after she was inside? I can’t think of any good reason.”
“Good point. Neither can I.”
“Same question applies if the two of them were working together,” I said. “Why double lock the door from the inside? Why not prop it open while they were gathering up another batch of books? That way, if Pollexfen or Brenda Koehler came home suddenly, they’d hear and have time to beat it out of there quick.”
“Another good point. Any answers occur to you?”
“Not at the moment. Maybe Mrs. Pollexfen can sort it out for you.”
“When she sobers up enough to tell a coherent story.”
The house door opened and Davis came out. “Assistant coroner’s done with his prelim,” he said to Yin.
“Forensics?”
“Almost finished. Okay to release the body?”
“Go ahead.” Davis went back inside and Yin turned to me again. “You can go now. All your contact numbers on the business card you gave my partner?”
“Agency, cell, and home.”
“We’ll need a signed statement. If you don’t hear from us in the meantime, stop by the Hall tomorrow.”
I said I would. She favored me with a tired professional smile and we went our separate ways, me to fend off cameras, microphones, and noisy media people on my way to my car. It took me a few more minutes to get out of there; a police car had blocked me in and one of the uniforms took his time about moving it.
Crime scenes: studies in organized chaos.
On the way home I tried to put the whole sorry business out of my head. None of my concern anymore. Chances were the cops would either find the eight missing first editions eventually or discover where they’d been sold. I’d send my report and expense sheet and bill for services to Great Western, and before Rivera authorized payment he’d jab me with his frigging needle and keep on jabbing afterward for his own amusement. My own damn fault for taking the case in the first place.
No, I didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. But that didn’t mean I had an easy time not thinking about it. Screwy business, full of all sorts of weird angles and nagging questions. The double-locked door. Why would Cullrane lock it if he was in there, alone or with his sister, to steal more books? And the time element. Why would they wait three hours to do the job when they could have done it immediately after Pollexfen left for his auction?
Didn’t add up. Didn’t feel right.
But you couldn’t get around the rest of the facts. Irrefutable, or sure seemed to be. The two of them had been locked inside that room together-I knew that for an absolute certainty-and one of them was dead, and unless it was suicide, which was improbable as hell, the other one had had a hand in the killing. Had to be that way. Pollexfen and Brenda Koehler and I had been together when we heard the shot; that eliminated them as well as me. Unless some sort of gimmick had been used to trigger the shotgun… oh, hell no. You can’t rig a heavy weapon like that to fire one barrel by using strings or wires or trick gadgets or remote control or any of that nonsense, and even if you could, Yin and Davis and the forensics people would have found it. The police aren’t stupid. You can fool them, just like you can fool anybody else, but not on a crime scene like this one. Cullrane shot himself or Angelina Pollexfen shot him willfully or accidentally, it couldn’t have happened any other way.
Still-it just didn’t feel right.
17
JAKE RUNYON
Before he drove to Deer Run to talk to Jenny Noakes’s aunt, he wanted more information on the homicide. He spent the better part of an hour in the Fort Bragg library, going through microfiche files of the Advocate-News and the North Bay region’s largest newspaper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, for the latter half of 1989. Both carried news reports about the slaying, neither very long, and there was one brief followup in the Press Democrat. That was all.