Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

“The numbers are 2006/0027… You did! When? What did you get? Interesting. What did the class get? Really? Could you do me a big favor? Would it be possible to view those coordinates now? And call me back.”

Knuckles hung up. “She’s calling back in twenty minutes.”

“And?”

“Let’s see what she comes up with.”

Twenty minutes later. Knuckles took the call. He was on less than two minutes. “That’s very helpful. Thank you.”

Murex looked his question.

“She got a guy sitting at a desk. Dejected.”

“So?”

“So. You’re sitting at a desk looking pretty forlorn to me.”

“Oh, come off it!”

“She said the class worked those numbers Tuesday night. You interviewed Mr G. on Tuesday. They got the same thing then. A guy at a desk concentrating on something serious. Three students got a law-enforcement vibe. Looks like he tagged you. Why? Forget about whether RV really works or not. Just speculate with me: why would he do that?”

“Because he’s dirty.”

“Or knows more about Doom’s demise than he’ll let on,” Knuckles countered.

Murex sat up in his chair. “Let’s go at this from another angle. Trey Grandmaison is out of town all last week. That checked out. No holes. He comes back and finds a dead guy in his gray room. He’s gotta do something.”

“Wait a minute. What’s Doom doing there?”

“We’ll figure that part out later. But maybe Mrs G – Effie – is moonlighting.”

“So why does he stage the death with TIRV material?”

“He figures his airtight alibi makes it a perfect crime. What has he got to lose? Also, this gives him a direct pipeline into any investigation.”

“No. It points any investigation directly at him.”

“Right, also. If things get hot, he sees it coming. He can take steps.”

“How was Mrs G. when you talked to her?” asked Knuckles.

“Nervous. Showed signs of being severely short on sleep too. Seemed worried about the impact of bad publicity on the business.”

“But Mr G. isn’t, is he? Why not? Think motive.”

Murex gave it some thought. “Maybe he wants the publicity.”

“Why would he want bad publicity?”

“Maybe in his business bad publicity is good publicity. Or any publicity is better than none.”

“Student RV’s Hell and drops dead,” Knuckles shot back. “How is that good?”

Murex made a face. “Maybe to the whackos who take these classes, it’ll sound like the ultimate thrill ride.”

“Maybe his business is failing and he’s teaching Doom privately. Discovers he’s an incognito rival. Offs him somehow and sets it all up.”

“Possible. But why is he so cooperative?”

“He’s ex-Army Intelligence. Versed in psychological operations. Being cooperative and up front could be a way of deflecting suspicion.”

“Which he actually wants in a perverted way.”

“Sure. It’s basic reverse psychology – mind games.” Knuckles leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. “Try this: DOA Doom croaks. His teacher couldn’t find a way to get him back into his apartment – all those steps must have been too daunting – but checking him into a hotel was easier. Calls and makes reservations to boot.”

“Why not a motel?”

Knuckles shrugged. “Big hotel, easier to penetrate. Lot of people coming and going. No car directly involved. No license plate on record with the hotel. He fakes the tape because how else are the investigating parties going to know what Doom was supposedly RVing?”

The phone rang. Knuckles took it. “Yes? Yep. Yep. Good.” He hung up. “That was the lab. The paint chips found under Doom’s fingernails match the ones I scraped off Grandmaison’s gray room. Postive match. No question.”

Murex blinked, then remembered Knuckles cleaning his nails.

“Can we use that in court?”

“Won’t need to. We can get admissible paint samples later. The question is, did Doom die naturally, or was he snuffed?”

“And if so, who did it?”

“That’s easy. Mrs G.”

“Too many unknowns to assume that.” Pressing a button on his desk, Murex picked up the telephone. He dialed the number off the TIRV card and said, “Mrs Grandmaison? This is detective Ray Murex down at Boston Homicide. Sorry to wake you. I have a few more questions, if you don’t mind. Were you in Richmond during the week your husband taught that class? You were? No reason. Except this: lab tests have proven conclusively that John Doom did not expire in his own gray room. We only know of one other in this area. That one belongs to your husband. Well, until we can rule something out, we have to consider it ruled in. So we’ll be in touch.” Murex hung up.

Knuckles looked at him. “Why did you do that?”

“Sometimes, you light a fuse. Other times you’re just setting fire to a string. Let’s see which it is.”

The call came from Trey Grandmaison within the hour.

“I’d love to help you guys close out this investigation,” he offered. His tone was fluttery.

“Because we can’t rule your gray room out of the picture?” said Murex.

“No. Because my wife is becoming upset with your questions. Look, I offered to help before. Why don’t I personally RV John Doom’s last hours and see what I come up with? Maybe that will give your investigation a fresh direction.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Murex said dryly.

“I’ll assign the coords and get back to you with whatever data I get.”

“Appreciate that.”

Knuckles looked at Murex. “This could go either way.”

Hours later, the promised pages came sliding out of the office fax machine. Knuckles read it first.

“This is interesting. Seems dead Mr Doom liked to frequent bondage and domination rooms. According to this, he died in someone’s ‘dungeon’ and his mistress relocated his inconvenient remains, using his RV hobby as a cover-”

“Forget it!” Murex snapped angrily. He slid the TIRV business card over.

Knuckles took it, compared it to the coordinates recorded on the session report. “I’ll be damned! The same coordinates. He didn’t even try. No question now that he’s dirty.”

“We’ll see what the lab says,” Murex said darkly.

“About what?”

“About the voice analysis of that call I recorded yesterday.”

Knuckles cocked a questioning eyebrow. “Mrs G?”

“I have a hunch her voice patterns will match up with the Doom tape.”

“You illegally recorded an interstate telephone call. That’s not admissible evidence, either.”

“We’ll worry about that if there’s a matchup,” muttered Ray Murex.

The aural spectrography report was three days coming through. It arrived one day too late to do any good.

Bob Knuckles was checking with the Richmond hotel that had hosted the TIRV class the week before. He thanked someone and hung up.

“That’s the last staffer,” he said. “They all confirm that Mrs G. arrived with her husband and departed with him six days later. But no one can verify her whereabouts in between.”

“So she could have flown home any time in that six-day period. Or taken a train.”

“Very possible. Boston and Richmond are at opposite ends of the Northeast corridor.”

“And the fingerprint bureau says that every print taken off that steamer trunk matches up with the people known to have handled it.”

“So Mr G’s hands are clean, after all.”

“Too clean. John Doom’s prints are not to be found, either. That old trunk was almost forensically pristine. All prints are post check-in.”

“And so another perfect crime unravels owing to excessive prep.”

“We’ll see,” Murex said.

The first news reports of the Manchester to Los Angeles airliner making an emergency landing due to a passenger emergency made no immediate impression on either Detectives Murex or Knuckles. The followup, reporting that a female passenger had been taken off dead, also passed by unremarked on. The passenger’s name was being withheld pending notification of next of kin. But when the morning papers reported that Efthemia Grandmaison had been found dead in seat 23C on the overnight flight to Los Angeles, Bob Knuckles exploded out of his chair.