Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

When my father died this was a flourishing agency but I am a failure as an agent. I have watched my sales and profits go in a downward spiral for five years. I thought I could cheat my way out of debt but now that the detective is watching me I’m afraid I would be a failure even at that. I’ve never married, I’ve never known how to attract women, I can’t face myself any longer. I don’t know how to pay my bills. If anyone cares, perhaps my mother, I’m sorry. Howard

I printed it out and stuffed the paper in my pocket. My hands inside their latex gloves were wet. Black spots swam around my eyes. I was very aware of Fepple’s shattered head next to me, but I couldn’t look at it. I wanted to leave the obscene mess, but I might not get another chance to find the Sommers file.

The cabinets were open, which surprised me: when I was here last week, Fepple had made quite a point of unlocking them when he wanted to put the papers away, then promptly locking them again. The third drawer, the one where he’d stuck the Sommers file, was labeled Rick Hoffman’s clients.

The files were jammed into the drawer, some upside down, none in any kind of order. When I pulled out the first file, Barney Williams, I thought I was at the end of the alphabet, but it was followed by Larry Jenks. With an uneasy eye on the clock, I emptied the drawer and replaced the folders one at a time. The Sommers file wasn’t there.

I flipped through the folders looking for anything that related to Sommers. There wasn’t anything in them but copies of policies and payment schedules. About three-quarters of them were closed cases, where the policy was stamped Paid with the date or Lapsed for nonpayment with the date. I looked in the other drawers but found nothing. I took a half dozen of the paid policies: I could get Mary Louise to check on whether they’d been paid to the beneficiary.

I listened uneasily to voices coming from the hall, but I couldn’t leave until I’d looked for the Sommers papers in the mess on the desk. The papers were flecked with bits of blood and brain. I didn’t want to disturb them-an experienced tech could tell in a flash that someone had been searching-but I wanted that file.

Bracing myself, keeping my eyes shielded, willing myself to believe there was nothing in the chair, I leaned over the desk, pulling back the edges of the documents in front of Fepple. I worked my way outward from the middle in a circle. When I found nothing, I moved around to Fepple’s side of the desk, trying not to step in anything, and looked in the desk drawers. Nothing but signs of his dismal life. Half-eaten bags of chips, an unopened box of condoms covered in cracker crumbs, diaries dating back to the 1980’s when his father was booking appointments, books on how to improve your table-tennis game. Who would have thought he had enough stick-to-it-iveness to pursue a sport?

It was nine now. The longer I stayed, the more likely it was that someone would come in on me. I went to the door, standing to the left of the frame so I couldn’t be seen through the glass, listening for sounds from the hall. A group of women was passing, laughing about something, wishing each other a good morning: how was the weekend, heavy workload this morning in Dr. Zabar’s office, how was Melissa’s birthday party. Silence, then the elevator bell and a pair of women with an infant. When they had gone, I slid the door open a crack. The hall was empty.

As I went out, I saw Fepple’s briefcase in the corner behind me. On an impulse, I picked it up. While I waited for the elevator, I stuffed the latex gloves into the case along with the files I was borrowing.

I hoped I didn’t have anything on me to link me to the crime scene, but when I got off the elevator at the bottom, I saw my shoe had left a nasty brownish smear on the car floor. I somehow managed to walk out the door with my head up, but as soon as I was out of the guard’s sight lines I skittered around the corner, barely making it to the alley before throwing up my orange juice and coffee.

Back home, I scrubbed my shoes obsessively, but all the perfumes of Dow Chemical wouldn’t wipe them clean. I couldn’t afford to throw them out, but I didn’t think I could bear to wear them again, either.

I took off the suit, inspecting every inch under a strong light. There didn’t seem to be anything of Fepple on the fabric, but I bundled it up for the dry cleaner anyway.

I had stopped at a pay phone on Lake Shore Drive to call in the news of a dead body in the Hyde Park Bank building. By now the police machinery should be in motion. I walked restlessly to the kitchen door and back. I could call one of my old friends on the force for an inside report on the investigation, but then I’d have to reveal that I’d found the body. Which would mean I’d spend the day answering questions. I tried calling Morrell, hoping for comfort, but he’d already left for his meeting at the State Department.

I wondered what Fepple had done with my business card. I hadn’t seen it on his desk, but I wasn’t looking for anything that small. The cops would come after me if they figured out I was the detective mentioned in Fepple’s suicide note. If it was a suicide note.

Of course it was. The gun had fallen from his hand to the floor underneath, after he shot himself. He felt like a failure and couldn’t face himself any longer, so he shot away the lower half of his face. I stopped at the kitchen window to stare at the dogs, which Mr. Contreras had let into the garden. I should take them for a run.

As if catching my gaze, Mitch looked up at me and grinned wolfishly. That nasty little smile of Fepple’s when he’d read the Sommers file, when he said he was going to take over Rick Hoffman’s client list. That was the smile of someone who thought he could capitalize on another person’s weakness, not the smile of a man who hated himself so much he was going to commit suicide.

This morning he’d been in the same suit and tie he’d worn on Friday. Who had he dressed up for? A woman, as he had implied? Someone he tried to romance, but who told him horrible things about himself, so horrible that he came back to the office and committed suicide? Or had he dressed for the person who’d called him when he was talking to me? The person who told him how to ditch me: go to a pay phone, await further instructions. Fepple cut through the little shopping center, where his mystery caller picked him up. Fepple figured he could cash in on some secret he’d seen in the Sommers file.

He tried to blackmail his mystery caller, who told Fepple they needed to talk privately in his office-where he shot Fepple, staging it to look like suicide. Very Edgar Wallace. In either case, the mystery caller had taken the Sommers file. I moved restlessly back to the living room. More likely Fepple had left the file on his bedside table, along with old copies of Table-Tennis Tips.

I wished I knew what the police were doing, whether they were accepting the suicide, whether they were testing for gunpowder residue on Fepple’s hands. Finally, for want of something better to do, I went down to the yard to collect the dogs. Mr. Contreras had his back door open; when I went up the half flight of stairs to tell him I was going to take the dogs with me for a run and then to my office, I could hear the radio.

Our top local story: the body of insurance agent Howard Fepple was found in his Hyde Park office this morning following an anonymous tip to police. The forty-three-year-old Fepple apparently killed himself because the Midway Insurance Agency, started by his grandfather in 1911, was on the brink of bankruptcy. His mother, Rhonda, with whom he lived, was stunned by the news. “Howie didn’t even own a gun. How can the police go around saying he shot himself with a gun he didn’t have? Hyde Park is real dangerous. I kept telling him to move the agency out here to Palos, where people actually want to buy insurance; I think someone broke in and murdered him and dressed it up to look like he killed himself.”