P. Tracy: Live Bait

‘Well, the housekeeper – her name’s Gertrude Larsen – was standing on the front steps, totally hysterical, out of control, flapping her arms, wailing… hate to see what she’d have been like if there’d actually been a body in here. Anyhow, I finally got her calmed down and brought her out to the squad, but she’s starting to drift big-time. She must have taken a pill or something. You should probably talk to her before she goes comatose.’

‘Did she move anything in here?’

‘I doubt it. The picture I got was she walked in, saw the blood, went nuts. She called from her cell instead of the inside phone, so I don’t think she made it much past the front door.’

‘Thanks, Frankie. Tell the housekeeper we’ll be right out.’

‘You got it.’

Langer walked over and looked down at his reflection in the surface of the coffee table. ‘This isn’t right.’

McLaren joined him and studied the table for a long moment, frowning. ‘Okay, I’ll bite. I see a nice shiny coffee table, no gouges, no blood, no big smeary fingerprints. So what am I missing?’

‘The books on the floor. They’re supposed to be on the coffee table.’

‘So? Are you telling me that every little thing in your house is exactly where it belongs all the time?’

‘Lord, no, not in my house. But in this one? I think so. Take a look around this room. They’re the only things out of place, Johnny.’

McLaren gave the room the once-over, considering. ‘Gotta admit, the damn place looks like a magazine picture, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Except for the sofa.’

‘And the books on the floor.’

McLaren sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Okay, then maybe they got knocked off the table in the struggle.’

Langer shook his head. ‘If that happened they’d be scattered, at least a little. Look at them. These things are in an almost perfect stack. Someone lifted them off the table and put them there.’

‘Someone being the shooter.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

Jimmy Grimm’s head popped up from behind the sofa, startling McLaren and putting a lie to the general consensus that Grimm never heard a thing when he was working a crime scene.

‘Jesus, Jimmy, I forgot you were even here. What the hell are you doing hiding back there?’

‘I got an exit hole in the fabric I’m lasering up with the entrance in that front cushion. Looks like we’re going to find a slug in that bookcase somewhere.’ He peered over at the coffee table, then grinned up at Langer. ‘Nice call on the books, Langer. I’ll bag them as soon as I finish this, put them on the top of the list at the lab.’

‘Thanks, Jimmy.’

McLaren scratched at the red haze of whiskers sprouting along his unshaven jaw. ‘Still doesn’t make sense. You walk into this place, pop a guy sitting on the couch, then you turn around and take a stack of books off the coffee table and set them on the floor. Now why the hell would you do that?’

‘Good question.’

Gertrude Larsen was obviously long past retirement age, and she looked pathetic, wrapped up in a sagging, faded cardigan and shivering in the backseat of the squad in spite of the sun warming the car’s interior. When Langer approached the open door she looked up with bleary, narcotics-glazed eyes. A few tears traveled the wrinkled valleys down her cheeks, but there was no emotion attached to them.

Langer had seen the look many times, on tranquilized survivors of murder victims, on kids flying on their parents’ Valium, but the shivering concerned him. He knelt down next to the car and touched the elderly woman’s arm. ‘How are you feeling, Ms Larsen?’

She smiled weakly and raised a quaking, arthritis-curled hand to cover his. He couldn’t imagine this work-worn woman still scrubbing and sweeping and keeping a house. ‘A little better.’

‘Did you take something?’

She nodded, a little embarrassed, and handed him a small plastic prescription bottle. ‘One of those pink ones.’

Langer opened the bottle and raised his brows when he looked inside. There were pink pills, blue pills, yellow pills, and a dusty cluster of Tums. The pink ones looked like Xanax, but he couldn’t be sure.

‘I take one of those if I get really upset,’ she explained.

‘I understand.’ Langer made a note of the clinic address on the bottle and handed it back to her. She tucked it in a little-old-lady purse with a metal clasp at the top. ‘Are you feeling well enough to answer a few questions for me?’

She nodded slowly, dabbing at her eyes with a damp handkerchief with a lace border.

Langer was exceedingly gentle with the old woman, and it was a slow-motion interview, but eventually they learned that she’d been Arlen Fischer’s housekeeper for thirty-two years, came three times during the week by bus and every Sunday morning, also by bus, to help him get ready for the nine o’clock service at St Paul of the Lakes Lutheran. She was well compensated, cared for him like a brother, and couldn’t imagine who would want to hurt him. And yes, those books were supposed to be on the coffee table, along with a lovely tapestry runner she’d bought him for his eightieth birthday, and no, she hadn’t moved anything.

‘Was the tapestry runner very valuable?’

Her watery eyes crinkled. ‘Well, you don’t often find one with birds on it; certainly not bluebirds; and yes, it was a bit pricey. Eighty dollars plus tax.’ She leaned a little closer to him and confided in a whisper, ‘But I got it on clearance. Nineteen ninety-nine.’

Langer smiled back at her. ‘Quite a bargain.’

‘Indeed it was.’

Langer thanked her, gave her his card, then asked Frankie to drive her to the Hennepin County Medical Center, stay with her until she’d been examined, then drive her home.

Frankie sighed miserably. ‘You know what the ER at HCMC looks like on a Sunday?’

Langer shrugged apologetically. ‘She lives alone, Frankie, she’s self-medicating, and she’s still shivering in that hot box of a car. I’m a little worried about shock.’

‘Okay, okay, but you should have been a missionary or something.’

He and McLaren stood in the driveway and watched the squad pull away.

‘So now what are you thinking?’ McLaren asked. ‘That the shooter moved the books to steal a twenty-dollar tapestry runner?’

‘Don’t forget, it had bluebirds on it. You don’t often find those.’

‘Jeez, Langer, was that you trying to be funny?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well stop it. You’re scaring me.’

An hour later, Jimmy and his crew were still at it, but things were wrapping up. Langer and McLaren found him prone on the living room floor with a tape measure and a notebook, scribbling down figures.

‘Hey, Jimmy,’ McLaren said with as much cheer as he could muster after spending Sunday morning in a murder house. ‘You got this thing solved yet?’

Grimm gave him a tired smile and got to his feet with some effort. ‘At this point, I’m not even sure we have a homicide. Next time, try to get a body, guys. It’ll make things a lot easier. You hear back from the hospitals?’

McLaren thumbed through his notebook. ‘Yeah. Only gunshot wounds reported last night were from a couple of sixteen-year-old gangbangers trying to pop each other with.22’s. The best they could do was soft tissue stuff, no artery hits…’

‘It wasn’t a.22.’ Jimmy held up a little bag with a slug inside. ‘.45 caliber, and some nice rifling, by the way.’

‘.45, huh? Well, in that case, whoever got shot here last night didn’t make it to any hospital or clinic we know about.’

‘Then he’s dead,’ Grimm said matter-of-factly, looking at the sofa.