Bad Things Happen Read online

  Denham pointed to a paperback lying on the dashboard. Kendel’s Key, by Casimir Hiffl yn.

  “I picked it up in a secondhand store to pass the time,” he said. “The detective, Kendel, travels across country to investigate a woman’s murder. She lived alone, and her apartment is sitting empty, so he decides to sleep there instead of staying at a hotel.”

  He touched his temple with an aged hand. “So then a light went off and I figured there must be at least a couple empty places here in town. Sean Wrentmore lived alone, and so did Adrian Tully. I thought I’d try here fi rst.”

  He nodded toward Wrentmore’s condo, a single-story unit at the end of 2 7 4 h a r r y

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  a long brick building. The blinds were closed behind the two front windows. No glow from the porch lamp above the door.

  “Nothing stirring,” he said, and turned back to Elizabeth. “What about you? You’re working late on a Saturday night. Anything new?”

  “Our friend’s been on the move,” she said. Briefly, she sketched Loogan’s strange visit to the Kristoll house, and the stakeout currently under way at the Gray Streets building.

  “I’ll take my turn there later,” she said. “But I got to thinking about where else Loogan might be. He came here last weekend and talked to Wrentmore’s neighbor. She saw him coming out of Wrentmore’s place. He had a key. I should have thought of it before.”

  “It’s a long shot anyway,” said Denham. “He might not turn up here.”

  “Wrentmore’s involved in this though. He may be at the heart of it.”

  Elizabeth picked up the Hifflyn book from the dash.

  “I talked to him today,” she said. “Cass Hifflyn. He’s a man with a secret.”

  She dropped the book on the seat between them. “He didn’t write this.”

  Denham looked puzzled.

  “Sean Wrentmore wrote it,” Elizabeth explained. “He and Hiffl yn had an arrangement.” With Denham listening intently, she described her encounter with Hifflyn at the cemetery. She went over her theory of Tom Kristoll’s murder: how Kristoll had covered up Wrentmore’s death; how he and Hifflyn had been blackmailed; how Kristoll had decided to go to the police; how Hifflyn had murdered him to keep him silent.

  “Hifflyn denies it,” she said. “He insists his arrangement with Wrentmore was no big deal. Not something he would kill to keep secret. Either I’m right and he’s lying, or he’s telling the truth and I’m way off base.”

  Denham stared off thoughtfully into the night. “But those aren’t the only alternatives,” he said. “There’s a third way, isn’t there?”

  The words caught Elizabeth by surprise. A third way. She looked at Denham keenly. “What do you mean?”

  “Say you’re right about why Kristoll was killed, but you’re wrong about b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  the killer. Hifflyn’s telling the truth. Someone else killed Kristoll.” Denham raised his bristly eyebrows. “Who else was Wrentmore writing books for?”

  David Loogan crept up the slope behind Wrentmore’s condo. He had a canister of pepper spray in his pocket and Wrentmore’s shotgun at his side, pointed at the ground. He slipped through the sliding glass door and closed it behind him.

  Quiet in Wrentmore’s bedroom. Loogan made his way through in the dark. Reconnoitered the empty house and then doubled back to the bathroom. He had been sitting in his car a long time. Two minutes later he stood in Wrentmore’s living room before one of the two front windows. He had closed the blinds earlier but now he turned the rod to open them so he could scan the parking lot. He knew Hiffl yn’s car, and Hideaway’s, and Shellcross’s. He saw none of them. Off out of the way, beneath the bare gnarled branches of a tree, he saw a nondescript sedan with someone sitting behind the wheel. After a while he made out a second form in the passenger seat. He couldn’t make out faces.

  “Nathan Hideaway,” Elizabeth said.

  Her mind worked, putting together the details. She spoke them aloud to Roy Denham.

  “Hideaway lost his wife six years ago. Cancer. He couldn’t work after that. He told me so. Then Tom Kristoll brought him to Ann Arbor, got him a fellowship at the university. And his writer’s block was cured. Tom was the one who introduced Hifflyn to Sean Wrentmore. He could have done the same for Hideaway.”

  Denham nodded, listening. He got out a pack of cigarettes, started to shake one loose, and then thought better of it.

  “The timing is right,” Elizabeth said. “It was about five years ago when 2 7 6 h a r r y

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  Wrentmore’s fortunes started looking up. He wrote three books for Hiffl yn. He could’ve written one or two more for Hideaway. I should have thought of that before.”

  “You’re awfully hard on yourself,” said Denham. “You can’t think of everything.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “He’s a charming old rogue. Hideaway. Whitehaired. Grandfatherly. That’s what threw me off, I think.”

  “The old ones are the ones you have to watch out for,” Denham said with a wink. “But if he’s guilty you still need proof. How will you get it?”

  She had been asking herself the same question. “Tattoos, for starters,”

  she said. “Wrentmore had the words ‘Kendel’s Fortune’ tattooed on his arm. That’s one of the novels he wrote for Hifflyn. He may have had other tattoos. We need to recover his body. And Loogan’s the one who can lead us to it.”

  Denham leaned forward suddenly, staring at the front of Wrentmore’s condo. “I think he’s in there. That window on the left—the blinds are open. They were closed before. I’ve been waiting for him to go in through the door. Maybe he’s been in there all the time.”

  “He might have just gone in,” Elizabeth said. “There’s an entrance in the back, a sliding patio door.”

  Denham’s hands fidgeted on the steering wheel. “I could watch the back if you want. You and I could pick him up right now.”

  “Easy, Roy,” she said. “Let me call in for backup. Do this by the book. You’ll have to sit it out, I’m afraid.”

  Denham flashed her a self-deprecating grin. “I guess you’re right.” He sighed and his right hand went to an inner pocket of his rumpled jacket.

  “Do you want to use my phone?”

  “I’ve got mine.” It was in her coat pocket. As her fingers closed around it, it began to ring.

  At the same moment, Denham’s hand came out of his jacket, gripping something that was not a cell phone. Elizabeth had time to register colors: yellow and black. She had time to think: Taser. Then the current leaped to b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  her body and her phone slipped away from her and a searing pain made her cry out.

  Carter Shan jerked awake. He had lingered at City Hall to catch up on paper work and then had settled in for a nap in the Investigation Division’s break room. Now he bolted up on the cushions of the tattered couch and swung his feet onto the floor.

  Alice Marrowicz, who had only touched his shoulder, stumbled backward, startled. She should have turned on the light, she thought. Not the wisest thing, to wake an armed man in the dark. “Sorry,” she said. She faded back to the wall and flipped the switch. Fluorescents buzzed overhead.

  Shan blinked. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Is it one o’clock?”

  “What happens at one o’clock?”

  “Alice,” he said impatiently, “what can I do for you?”

  She turned shy for a moment, searching for the right words. “I tried calling Detective Waishkey. She didn’t answer her cell. And she’s not home—

  her daughter answered there.”

  “What do you need her for?”

  “It’s about David Loogan—Darrell Malone.”

  Shan became alert then. “I’m listening.”

  “On Wednesday,” Alice said, “Detective Waishkey asked me to do some research on Loogan. This was before that New Y
ork detective showed up—

  Roy Denham. We had an address for Loogan in Cleveland, and the name of his landlord there.

  “I got through to the landlord Thursday morning and learned that Loogan had moved to Cleveland from Philadelphia. The landlord was able to give me Loogan’s Philadelphia address and the name of the woman he rented from there. So I tried calling her, but I only got her voice mail.”

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  She was watching Shan’s face, and his impatience seemed to be growing. She hurried on. “Then Denham came in on Thursday afternoon and we knew who Loogan was, and where he was from originally—Nossos, New York. So I never followed up with the woman in Philadelphia. I figured it didn’t matter anymore—”

  He interrupted her. “Where’s this going, Alice?”

  “She called me today. She’d been on a trip and just got my message. She was intrigued to hear from the police about Loogan. She was hoping for some juicy gossip, I think. Anyway, she told me something odd about him—

  he changed his name.”

  Shan relaxed into the tattered cushions. “Well, we knew that. He was Darrell Malone when he lived in New York, and at some point he started using the name David Loogan.”

  “It was while he was renting from her,” Alice said. “He signed his first lease as Darrell Malone. His second, as David Loogan. He changed his name. Legally.”

  Shan’s eyes narrowed. “That can’t be right.”

  “He gave her proof,” Alice said. “A certified copy of the petition, approved by the court. She’s going to look for it in her files and fax me a copy.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “He shouldn’t have been able to do that, should he? If he was really a fugitive?”

  The Nossos Tribune had a Web site, but no archives online. Carter Shan called the city desk and got a number for the paper’s crime reporter. She had covered the Malone case when she was just starting out, and after some cajoling—he had interrupted her Saturday-night dinner date—she told him what he needed to know about Darrell Malone.

  Malone had been indicted nine years earlier in the stabbing death of Jimmy Wade Peltier. That much was true. But he had never fled. He had been put on trial for murder in the second degree, and the jury had been b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The reporter claimed to know that they had been split nine to three in favor of acquittal. The prosecutor had declined to retry the case. Darrell Malone was a free man. Owen McCaleb received the news stoically. He stood at his offi ce window, looking out into the dark.

  “Is there a Detective Roy Denham in the Nossos Police Department?”

  he asked Shan.

  “There was. He died year before last. Stroke.”

  “So the Denham we talked to—”

  “James Peltier,” Shan said. “Jimmy Wade’s father. The reporter gave me a description. She interviewed him a few times, before and after Malone’s trial. He wasn’t happy with the outcome.”

  The weight of the situation descended on McCaleb. It showed in his posture—the energy seemed to drain out of him.

  “He showed me an ID card,” McCaleb said faintly.

  “According to the reporter, he owned a printing shop for thirty years,”

  said Shan. “He could manage a fake ID.”

  “I imagine he has a wife. A tough old broad. Does a good impersonation of a chief of police.”

  “They planned this well. She calls to let you know he’s coming. He appears right on cue. The faxed case file seals it. What is there to doubt? The file was probably more or less authentic. The reporter told me the real Denham befriended James Peltier. It wouldn’t be the first time a detective felt sorry for a grieving father. Peltier could have asked for a copy of the file and held on to it. It would only require a few alterations, to make it look like Malone had skipped out before his trial. Probably the wife handled that, after Peltier told her what he needed.”

  “What led them to Loogan in the first place?” asked McCaleb. “How did they know he was here?”

  “I haven’t checked on that yet, but it probably happened just about the way Denham—Peltier—described. Loogan goes shopping for a shovel. The cashier recognizes him, because she went to school with him. She mentions 2 8 0 h a r r y

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  him to her sister—who, instead of passing it along to the police, passes it along to the Peltiers.”

  McCaleb gathered himself and turned away from the window. “All right,”

  he said. “I’ll send a patrol car around to James Peltier’s hotel. See if we can pick him up. You should call Elizabeth in. She’ll want to hear about this.”

  Shan took out his cell phone and dialed Elizabeth’s number. His call cycled through to her voice mail, and he began to feel uneasy as he remembered that Alice too had tried to reach her earlier and had gotten no answer. He left a message and then tried Elizabeth’s home number. His conversation with Sarah did nothing to reassure him. He turned to McCaleb. “Lizzie’s not answering her phone. She called her daughter around seven-fifteen, said she had errands to run. No word from her since.”

  McCaleb frowned. They both knew that Elizabeth kept her phone close. It wasn’t like her to be out of touch.

  “Maybe nothing’s wrong,” McCaleb said, “but I’m not willing to make that assumption. Not tonight. We need to find her. I want you to work with Harvey Mitchum on that. I’ll call him and tell him to pull everyone off the Gray Streets stakeout.”

  “Right.”

  McCaleb sank into the chair behind his desk. “Maybe her phone isn’t working,” he said wistfully. “Maybe she really is running errands. Do you think she’s running errands?”

  Shan was already on his way out. Without breaking stride he said, “No.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Chapter 37

  Elizabeth Waishkey felt tremors pass through her. The muscles of her back twitched as she leaned against the wall of Sean Wrentmore’s living room. Her wrists tingled within the circles of handcuffs. Her legs, extended straight along the carpeted floor and bound at the ankles with electrical tape, jerked and trembled with minor aftershocks. A single lamp lit the room, a table lamp with a shade like parchment. It gave off a golden light and the light seemed to flicker, but after a time Elizabeth realized it was steady. The flickering was in her mind. There were things she remembered. A glimpse of black and yellow in Roy Denham’s hand. The cry that escaped her when she felt the current. Her fists clenching uselessly and Denham tugging her pistol from her holster. Denham’s voice. “My dear lady, forgive me.”

  Then her feet on the ground. Knees wobbly. Tightness in her arms. The cuffs were on by then. Her own cuffs, from the leather case at her belt. A drunken march across the parking lot with Denham at her back, his fingers like talons in the flesh of her arm.

  The porch light shining suddenly over the door of Wrentmore’s condo. David Loogan in the doorway, a shotgun leveled, wavering. Denham holding the muzzle of her pistol to her temple. Cool steel. Loogan bending slowly to lay the shotgun on the step, retreating into the house with his palms open, fingers spread wide.

  “Take it easy, Mr. Peltier,” he said.

  She would have slapped her forehead then, if her mind had been less addled, if her hands had been free. Instead, the realization sank in slowly, as Peltier’s fingers dug into her biceps. As he guided her up the steps. 2 8 2 h a r r y

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  You’re awfully hard on yourself, she remembered him saying. You can’t think of everything.

  Passing through the doorway, she heard his voice again, a whisper at her ear: “Keep quiet and do what I say. You’re going to survive this.”

  Now, in the flickering golden light, she saw David Loogan in the center of the room, in a straight-back chair from Wrentmore’s kitchen. He had shaved his head. She hadn’t noticed it before.

  His hands were behind his back—Peltier had produced a second
set of cuffs.

  Loogan regarded her calmly. She looked at his mouth. She had always thought he had an interesting mouth. His lips were moving. “Elizabeth,”

  he said.

  James Peltier—the man who called himself Roy Denham—extended his arm casually. The Taser, black and yellow, touched Loogan’s chest and made a spark. Loogan grimaced and his body stiffened, but only for a moment.

  “Shut up,” Peltier snapped, and returned the Taser to the pocket of his jacket.

  He got his cigarettes out and fi red one up. Blew smoke at Sean Wrentmore’s ceiling. Another drag and he switched the cigarette to his other hand, reached into a trouser pocket, and came out with Elizabeth’s nine-millimeter.

  “Mr. Peltier,” she said, “you don’t want to do this.” Her voice sounded odd, as if it were flickering like the light.

  Peltier didn’t look at her. “I asked you to keep quiet.”

  “If you really wanted to,” she said, “you would have done it by now. And you would have brought a gun of your own.”

  Peltier still didn’t take his eyes off Loogan, but he took the cigarette from his lips and ground it into the carpet with his shoe. He tucked the ninemillimeter into his waistband and rooted in an inside pocket of his jacket. When he drew his hand out he held a metal object six inches long. A snap of his wrist and the thing unfolded as if by magic—a butterfly knife with a polished blade like a mirror.

  He held it up for Elizabeth to see, but his eyes remained on Loogan. “He b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  killed my son with a knife like this, and he ought to die the same way. That would be justice. But I guess I don’t have the stomach for it.” He tossed the knife onto the sofa behind him.

  “It’ll have to be a gun,” he said.

  His hand went to the grip of the nine-millimeter, but he didn’t draw it out. Elizabeth took that as a positive sign. She might be able to talk him down. She had precious few other options. She could yell at the top of her lungs and hope someone heard. But if Peltier panicked, that might get her shot—no matter what assurance he had given her about surviving. She scanned the room and didn’t see Loogan’s shotgun. Peltier might have left it outside on the steps. Someone might see it and get suspicious and call the police. Or they might not. If the porch light was off—and Elizabeth thought it was—the shotgun might go unnoticed. And the blinds were all closed now. No one would be able to see in.