Archer Mayor - The Skeleton's knee

The search took the rest of the day. We used a line method, stringing out four abreast and working our way, on hands and knees, across the floor to the kitchen area’s far wall. It was a painstaking effort, involving the occasional use of tweezers and a magnifying lens; transparent sticky tape for lifting hair and soil samples; and tiny Ziploc bags for storing minute particles whose origin only a lab analysis could reveal. As one of us located some item of interest, the rest had to stop where we were and wait, so the integrity of the line would be maintained. Traveling twenty-five feet of open floor took over an hour.

Tyler was in his element. This, rather than working street snitches and following up leads, was his idea of police work at its best. Due to our small staff and the mundane quality of most of our cases, however, Tyler’s forensic expertise was only rarely called upon.

Four long hours later J.P. had a cornucopia of hair, dirt, and fiber samples to keep him busy for days, and I had a headache and nothing more to show for our efforts than what I’d discovered earlier on my own.

I also had nothing linking the chart’s disappearance to Fred Coyner.

I sent my three colleagues back to the office with the evidence, the film from my camera, and the duffel bag full of money from under the kitchen sink, while I remained behind. All sense that this was a paperwork case destined to pass from our hands to some other agency’s had vanished along with the chart on that wall. Its disappearance had served notice that Fuller’s crimes, if he had committed any, might not be as remote in time or distance as we’d imagined.

I made my way back to Coyner’s house. What warmth there’d been was fading with the day, and an autumnal chill ran down my back and numbed my face. As before, Coyner looked impassively out at me following my knock on his front door. This time, however, the door opened.

“What.” It was less a question than a demand, but gently put, as if the old man was resigned to whatever Fuller’s death would bring down upon him.

“I wanted to tell you that our investigation into Abraham Fuller is going to be stepped up. Removing that chart from his wall while I was on the portable phone was illegal, and we’re going to have to pursue it. That also means we’ll be digging into his past and yours, and looking under every rock we come across.”

His face didn’t change, but I sensed a new tension in the man. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I shrugged. He hadn’t invited me in, and while the cold didn’t seem to affect him, I was beginning to shiver, which rarely adds to a cop’s credibility. “Maybe, but we’ll have to figure that out on our own. I think I ought to warn you, though, that cooperating with us might help you in the long run.”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t even blink.

“Left to our own devices, not knowing exactly what we’re after, we’re going to have to put you under a microscope, and we’ll find out things you wouldn’t believe. Information like that gets hard to control, once it gets out.”

“Look all you want.”

The door shut in my face, quietly but firmly. It was apparent that the connection between Coyner and his tenant would have to be uncovered the hard way-if at all.

By the time I got back to my office, the medical examiner’s courier had dropped off what little information on Abraham Fuller Beverly Hillstrom had been able to gather, which boiled down to a set of fingerprints, some photographs, and a detailed analysis of her physical findings.

Morgue pictures are hardly the most scintillating of art forms, but in this case I looked them over with keen interest. They showed a tall, slim, clean-cut man, well muscled, with strong facial features. Even with his eyes half-closed in death-a cadaver’s typically sleepy drunk appearance-Fuller’s angular nose, his hollow cheeks, and powerful chin all told of a driven intensity.

He had taken on a personality for me by now, still vague and elusive, but tinted with enough unusual character traits to capture my imagination. Homicides are generally uncomplicated affairs-brutal, forthright, displaying little planning or subtlety. Most of the time, the investigator doesn’t have to look far beyond the victim’s immediate circle of acquaintances to find the one with the gun or knife.

But not here. Unless the fingerprint card in my hand had all the answers we needed, this case had the elements of a true mystery.

I carried the card to Harriet Fritter’s desk. “Could you have J.P. classify these and forward them on to the FBI? And is Ron in the building?”

She gestured with a nod of the head. “In the conference room.” The conference room was a dead end beyond the cluster of detectives’ desks and marked the second half of our office space. It held a long table, some blackboards, a few lockers, and a TV–VCR setup. Some of us used it individually for either private interviews or the extra table space. As I walked in, I saw Ron was taking advantage of the latter; the table’s entire surface was covered with the fruits of a paper trail he’d established to nail a local bank embezzler, a case he’d been on for the better part of a month.

“Getting anywhere?”

He looked up and gave a weary smile. “Yeah, but for all the time and effort, I doubt it’s worth it. Prosecuting this guy’s going to cost a whole lot more than what he stole in the first place.”

I nodded at the sheaf of papers still in his hand. “Sorry if this afternoon screwed up your fun here. How much longer before you can hand it over to the State’s Attorney?”

“Not long-a few days. You got something you want me to do?”

I laughed at his eagerness. “Don’t you wish. No, I’ll use people with a little less on their plates. There is one thing, though; in your digging through bank statements and whatnot, have you ever run across someone who knows a lot about currency?”

He frowned and knitted his brows, muttering, “Right, the moldy C notes…” His face then cleared somewhat. “I don’t know the guy personally, but one of the people I’m working with on this case mentioned that one of his colleagues collects money as a hobby. I could give him a call and get a name.”

I thanked him, but he stopped me as I turned to leave. “I’m almost wrapped up here, you know. Just waiting for a few more items to come in the mail. The pressure’s really off of it.”

I smiled at his excess eagerness. There were times when he made me almost as weary as Kunkle did. “I’ll keep that in mind, Ron. Thanks again.”

I stopped by Harriet’s desk on my way back to my corner cubicle and asked her to get a list of all the bookstores-new and used-in the immediate vicinity. I also asked her to locate the two missing members of the detective squad, Martens and DeFlorio, for a quick meeting in my office in one hour.

I then retrieved the roll of film I’d shot that morning, along with the others that J.P. had taken during the search, and headed for the freedom of the street.

The front door of the Municipal Building gives out onto a sweeping view of a busy intersection to the impartial observer, a Gordian knot to the traffic-pattern expert, and a pain in the butt to anyone in a car. I took the steep stone steps down to street level and turned right to walk downtown.

This particular Main Street is fairly rare in the lexicon of American downtowns. Its industrial heyday having peaked at the end of the previous century, Brattleboro didn’t have the money to tear its architectural heart out and rebuild it according to the latest fashions. Businesses came and went, storefronts changed as with the seasons, but the buildings they inhabited remained like ponderous, ancient redwood trees, host to a nonstop stream of temporary inhabitants.