Robert Knightly - Bodies in Winter

‘To find out who killed David Lodge,’ I replied without hesitation.

Nagy turned to his left, his gaze drifting to the ceiling, and laughed, a heh-heh-heh devoid of amusement. ‘With this I cannot help you,’ he eventually admitted. ‘David wasn’t the sort of convict who made enemies. He was very quiet, very self-contained.’ Suddenly, Nagy’s hands were on the move again, bouncing over his chest and shoulders before settling at his waist. ‘You don’t know how much I miss David. This idiot they have sent me? You’ve seen him?’

‘I have,’ I admitted.

‘David, for me, wrote up the charts, kept the files, answered the phones. This lunatic, he’s all day with the vacuum cleaner and the rags and the bucket. From a medication chart, he knows nothing. From filing, he can’t tell A from Z.’ Nagy paused long enough to slide his hands beneath his thighs. ‘So, other than identify Lodge’s killers, how can I help you?’

‘How close were you to Lodge? Was he open with you?’

‘We spoke together often. David was very smart, but somewhat obsessed.’

‘Obsessed with what?’

‘With his innocence.’

Bang, a wild card, face up on the table. I saw it hit the top of Nagy’s desk, watched it quiver for a moment before settling down. ‘Were you Lodge’s therapist?’ I asked.

Nagy’s head made another left turn and he again laughed at the ceiling. ‘Therapy is not what I do here, detective. Here I treat.. ’ He shook his head. ‘No, no, no. Treat is too grand. What I do is control a population of psychotics with various medications.’ He smiled, his nearly lashless eyes narrowing slightly. ‘Left to their own devices, you see, my patients tend to disrupt the prison routine.’

‘And the warden wouldn’t like that?’

‘No, she wouldn’t. But medications were not for David. He was under control.’ Nagy’s hands fluttered up to pat the sides of his face when he paused. ‘Do you know about the blackout? David’s blackout? Do I have to explain it?’

‘Are you talking about his claim that he didn’t remember killing Spott? I always figured that was so much propaganda.’

‘There you are wrong, detective. David could not remember.’ Nagy leaned forward. ‘Think of how this would be for you. Not remembering the event that turned your life on its head. Are you guilty? Are you innocent? How can you know? And how can you accept your punishment when you are not knowing?’

I nodded, wanting nothing more, at this point, than for Nagy to continue. But the only things I encouraged were Nagy’s hands which did a ten-second dance, graceful as an aerial ballet, before he shoved them into his pockets.

‘For David,’ he finally continued, ‘the issue settled on the murder weapon, the blackjack. The blackjack belonged to him, true, but it had been sitting in his locker for months. Now, did he go to his locker that night, retrieve the weapon, then return to Spott’s cell? This is the question David asks.’

‘And what was his answer?’

‘First, David considered motive. Why did he want to kill Spott? Because Spott hit him? If this is the case, then killing is motivated by rage. But this is also very strange because if David was enraged, he could have killed Spott much earlier. David was not only having his gun and his nightstick with him, he is big enough to kill with his bare hands.’

I smiled and leaned back. ‘I see what you’re getting at. Lodge murdering Spott in a moment of rage is inconsistent with his going to his locker for a specific weapon. Inconsistent, but not impossible.’

‘And there you are seeing David’s dilemma. Logic can never bring certainty.’

‘No, it can’t. But tell me, doctor, did anybody else at the precinct know about the blackjack?’

Nagy’s lower jaw was large enough to produce a pronounced underbite. He thrust that jaw at me and raised a remarkably still finger. ‘This blackjack, it was a Kluugmann. It was collectible.’

‘Say that again?’

‘Kluugmann was a company that manufactured very high quality blackjacks and saps. They went out of business many decades ago and their products are collected. You can buy them at auction.’

‘So, Lodge showed his Kluugmann to all his buddies, then stuck it in his locker and forgot he even had it.’ Which was just what I would have done.

‘Now you are getting the deal. Would he even have remembered the weapon’s existence in the midst of a towering rage? A killing rage? This is what it boils down to with David.’

I shifted to Lodge’s stay in Cayuga at that point, but the good doctor professed ignorance, again insisting that Lodge was generally reticent except when discussing the Spott murder. And Nagy merely shrugged when I told him that Lodge was a suspect in a prison homicide.

‘This does not surprise me. In here, they are saying you must learn to walk the yard like a man. This is the first task, to walk through the yard without projecting fear. David was able to do this.’

‘And that makes him a killer?’

‘I am only saying, detective, that I am not surprised by what you are telling me.’

Nagy didn’t like being challenged, that was obvious. His head again turned to the left as his hands went into their little dance, touching, patting, pulling. By now it had become clear, even to me, that Nagy was suffering from an illness. Whether physical or psychological in nature was still up in the air.

‘Tell me,’ I finally said, ‘about Lodge’s thinking right before his release. Did he have specific plans? What was he looking forward to?’

‘Sometime in the last few months of his incarceration, David finally recovered a memory of the night Spott was killed. That was when he became convinced of his innocence.’

‘Did he say what it was that he remembered?’

‘No, only that it was a fragment, a piece of the puzzle. But this I will tell you. If he had other concerns, he did not discuss them with me.’

‘He never mentioned a man named DuWayne Spott?’

‘Never.’

‘What about a job, his wife, his old friends?’

Nagy’s face twisted to the right, then the left, both motions so exaggerated it took me a moment to realize he was merely shaking his head. ‘David was an obsessive type. You can see this in his body-building. Six days every week, never missing a day. It was how his mind worked.’

As I waited for Nagy to slow down, I played with the facts as I now understood them. A cold and sober David Lodge emerged, a Lodge obsessed with his innocence, a Lodge capable of murder. Without doubt, if Lodge was truly innocent, he’d present a formidable challenge to those who’d framed him. Killing Lodge was a rational response to that challenge, despite the risks.

Suddenly, Nagy jumped to his feet and pointed a trembling finger at the door behind me. I was startled enough to reach for my weapon (which I’d surrendered in the reception area), but when I turned it was only Nagy’s assistant. He was standing motionless in the doorway, still clutching his can of polish and his rag.

‘I have told you twenty times already to stay out my office,’ Nagy shouted. ‘Never you are to come in here. Are you hearing me? Never.’ Nagy’s donkey jaw had risen almost to his nose and his glittery blue eyes were circles of indignation. ‘If you were not my patient, I would hit you with a chair.’

It was eight o’clock by the time I got back to Queens and the One-Sixteen. Jack Petro, a squad detective and a good friend, was standing fifteen feet away when I entered. He nodded sympathetically as I walked over.

‘This one a keeper, Harry?’

Jack was asking me if the case would be transferred to Homicide or a task force at Borough Command. In the normal course of events, high-profile cases were routinely taken away from precinct detectives, a development I would have welcomed.