Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

Rivas’s solemn courtesy would be comforting to people whose strength was waning, but who prized their dignity. “Were the papers written or typed?”

“They were written by hand. That much I know. What they say, that I do not know.”

“And did he give them to Marc Whitby?”

“No, Mr. Taverner shows them only. The other man, he writes things from the papers into a little notebook that he carries in his pocket, but when he goes away, Mr. Taverner, he locks the papers again in his desk.” “And did Mr. Taverner say anything to you about the papers?”

“He says what the old so often say, he says, `I will die soon, the time to hold secrets is over.”’

I thanked him, but when I tried to offer him money for his time, he drew himself up to his full height and said quietly he did not take money for such things. I felt embarrassed, as one does in making a social mistake, and left the room ahead of him, stopping at the administrator’s desk to get Taverner’s address.

Rivas caught up with me at the exit. “I am thinking someone has been visiting Mr. Taverner on Monday night. Not Sunday, when this black man dies, but the next night. On Monday, I leave Mr. Taverner as always at nine-thirty, ready to go to bed but not in bed, that he likes to do by himself He likes to sit in his chair with his whisky, to read or sometimes to write, and then move into his bed when he is ready for that. For the private functions in the night, he has a bottle on his chair and one on his bed.

“But Tuesday morning, when I find him, when he is still in his chair and I know he has never gone to bed, also his glass is clean. He never has washed a glass in his whole life, I think, and now that he is old and he walks so badly, he will not start now washing glasses. When I was finding him, then everything was too-too much drama, I didn’t think about the glass, I didn’t think until tonight, until now when you ask me did this black man come back on Sunday. But someone did visit Mr. Taverner on Monday.”

My heart beat faster. “What did you do with the glass?”

“I put it in the cupboard, with the others. When someone comes for his things, they will find all of his glasses just so, everything just so.”

“Do you still have a key to Mr. Taverner’s apartment? I know you’re meeting some people, but could you take five minutes to show me which glass? It’s possible we might find something in it still, some fingerprint or something.”

And then I could stay behind and break into the drawer where Taverner had locked the papers he’d shown Marc Whitby. The weariness that enveloped me an hour ago had vanished. Excitement made my fingers tingle.

Rivas led me solemnly from the nursing facility to a nearby apartment building. He said little, except that he was meeting his “new gentleman’s” family in this same building, so he had enough time.

From the outside, the assisted living building looked like Geraldine Graham’s, but inside it had been designed for people in wheelchairs and walkers, with handrails bolted into extrawide halls. Taverner had lived on the ground floor. Rivas took a key chain from his pocket and, with the compact motions that characterized him, opened the front door.

When he turned on the lights, I saw we were in an apartment similar again to Geraldine’s, but again with wider halls and doorways to accommodate wheelchairs. The rooms as a consequence were smaller. Rivas led me past a sitting room to the kitchen, which was, as he had boasted, spotless, and opened a cupboard where the glasses stood at attention. It was only after he’d pointed out the relevant glass that he spoke.

“You think there is a problem with Mr. Taverner, with his life ending, because of this glass?”

“I’m like you: the washed glass makes me suspicious. Can you show me where you found Mr. Taverner?”

Rivas led me into the bedroom, a large room with heavy drapes covering a set of sliding doors. The bed was still as he’d left it on Monday night, the sheets turned down so that an old man could easily get under them. A leather easy chair was placed about five steps from the bed. A table stood next to it with two canes hanging from a rack; on the polished tabletop were a phone, Monday’s newspapers and a bottle of Berghoff’s fourteenyear-old bourbon.

“You’ve seen many people die, haven’t you?” I asked. “Was there anything unusual about Mr. Taverner’s body when you found him?”

He slowly shook his head. “He has gone in his sleep, I think, as we all hope will happen, without the hospital, the-the equipment, all of those things that hurt us.”

“But something wasn’t right,” I suggested, seeing his troubled frown. He looked around the room, again shaking his head. “You are right. It is something, not only this glass. Is it the pillow? I think it is, it has the”-he fumbled for a word, showing with his fist the way the head makes a hollow in the pillow after sleep-“yes, the hollow; the pillow looks like he sleeps on it, but he is in his chair. Now”-he crossed to the bed-“now it is normal, but-not quite right, not where I have been leaving it. And also, I think someone has moved this chair.”

He pointed at a cane chair on the far side of the bed, next to the drapes covering the sliding doors. You could see four indentations in the pile where the legs had stood for months; whoever replaced the chair hadn’t aligned it exactly.

I wanted to inspect the rest of the apartment, but Rivas was anxious not to be late for his meeting. I tried to get him to leave me his key, telling him the police would want to send in a forensic team, but Rivas didn’t want to be part of a police inquiry. If someone had been here with Mr. Taverner the night he died, had moved furniture, moved pillows, it would seem as though Rivas hadn’t looked after his gentleman carefully, even though Mr. Taverner always wanted to be left to go to bed alone. Besides, the new family would take it amiss to have Rivas involved in a police inquiry. The administrator would help with keys and entrance to the apartment, he said, if investigators needed to search Mr. Taverner’s apartment in greater detail.

I nodded my understanding. Following him down the hall and out the door, I took advantage of his anxiety about the time to depress the lip of the dead bolt so it wouldn’t fasten when we left. Rivas went to the elevators while I walked outside. As soon as he got into an elevator, I darted back down the hall, pushed Taverner’s door open and flipped the lights back on. A handsome old leather-topped desk stood in a corner on the far side of the sitting room. Nearer to me were the armchairs where Taverner and Whitby had presumably sat to have their conversation. I started toward the desk, then decided caution was the better part of valor. I returned to the kitchen, found some latex gloves under the sink, and put those on.

When I returned to the sitting room, I realized it was considerably colder than the kitchen and bedroom had been. I stopped on my way to the desk: a draft was seeping under the brocade drapes, which swayed with the air currents.

I crossed the room fast and flung the drapes open. Someone had broken the glass on the door to the patio and forced the lock from the inside. I pulled the heavy fabric away from the wall. A man was flattening himself into the corner. He swore and ran toward me bull-like, head lowered. I didn’t let go of the drapes fast enough. The man butted me in the stomach, shoved open the broken patio door and took off.

I doubled over, gasping and gagging, and tripped in the drapes. I fought free of the heavy fabric and staggered after the intruder across the patio, through a small garden. I could hear his feet pounding away from me, but I was too winded to move fast. I lost him on the winding paths.