William Rabkin - The Call of the Mild

Rasmussen stared as if Henry had just offered to turn all the station’s water into wine. “You want me to present the case to you?”

“Unless Detectives Lassiter and O’Hara have a problem with that.”

Both detectives quickly waved off any possible objection. Rasmussen took a deep breath and stepped to the far left side of the board. He gestured with the marker and was about to begin when Henry interrupted. “Just remember, details are crucial, but so is the overview. We need to start with the general first, then work down to the specific.”

Rasmussen nodded happily at the lesson, then turned back to the board. “Victim is Ellen Svaco, forty-three years old, second-grade teacher at Isla Vista Elementary. She was single, lived alone; only immediate relative a cousin in Pasadena, waiting notification; no pets. Finances were what you’d expect from a woman in her profession: she made fifty-seven thousand dollars a year, had thirteen thousand and change in a 401(k), and a few hundred in the bank. She was friendly with her neighbors, but only on a superficial level. They really only spoke to her when she was outside working in her garden. Apparently she was partial to sweet peas, although in the fall-”

Henry cleared his throat gently. “Big picture, right?”

He was surprised to see Officer Rasmussen blush. “Right. Sorry.” Rasmussen moved his marker a few inches down the board. “She was a popular teacher, and while some parents were upset over a recent field trip in which some of the children came back with poison oak, no one was angry enough to want her harmed. She sat on several school committees and-”

This time Rasmussen cut himself off without needing Henry’s prompting. His marker jumped all over the board as he reeled off more facts. “No sign of forced entry at the house. Victim was strangled with some kind of cord, probably nylon, although we’re waiting for lab work on that. Motive didn’t seem to be robbery, as nothing was taken, as far as we can tell. The entire house was ransacked, as though the killer was either sending a message or looking for something.”

“In brief, we have no motive, no suspects, and no leads. Is that what you’ve been trying to tell us, Officer?” Lassiter said.

“Yes,” Rasmussen said.

“And it’s only taken eighty-five minutes,” O’Hara said.

“There was one thing that seemed odd,” Rasmussen said. “Ms. Svaco had a cat box filled with litter, plus cat dishes and cat toys. They were all inscribed with a name: Fluffy. But according to all her neighbors she didn’t have a cat.”

“Maybe she was going to get one,” O’Hara said.

“I did consider that, Detective,” Rasmussen said. “But I keep thinking about something Detective Spencer once said: ‘A life properly lived fits together like a puzzle. When there’s a piece that won’t go, that means there’s something wrong with the life.’ ”

O’Hara glared at Henry, as if she thought he’d come up with the phrase years ago simply to prolong this meeting. But Lassiter jumped up out of his chair excitedly.

“Who can argue with that?” Lassiter said. “This is our first and only lead. You and Detective Spencer must follow it up.”

“That’s a general rule, but-” Henry started, but Lassiter was already leading Rasmussen towards the door.

“This could be the break we’ve been looking for, and you’re just the man to crack it wide open,” Lassiter said, pushing Rasmussen into the corridor. “You and Henry Spencer, of course.”

He pulled the door closed, then turned to Henry, a pleading look on his face. “Please do this.”

“You said you wanted my help solving this case,” Henry said.

“I do,” Lassiter said. “And getting this kid out of our way is the biggest help anyone could ever be. I’m begging you. Please.”

If the offices of Rushton, Morelock, and Weiss had been in Los Angeles or New York, they would have commanded the upper stories of the tallest skyscraper in the city, and Rushton’s office would have been the penthouse. But Santa Barbara didn’t have skyscrapers; no building in the city was allowed to rise higher than sixty feet. Instead, the firm demonstrated its power and success in the idiom understood by the locals: beachfront access.

The offices occupied the bottom two floors of a sprawling, four-story Cape Cod situated directly behind a long, curving strip of white sand and an endless stretch of ocean. At either end of the property the beach jutted out into stony promontories resembling the claws of an enormous crab; there was no way onto this sand except by boat or through the multiple guard gates along the winding private lane that ran through a dense pine forest, also part of Rushton’s property. Or, of course, by helicopter, Gus noted as he steered the Echo around a vacant helipad.

Gus hadn’t known what to expect when Shawn started mouthing off to Oliver Rushton, but the one thing he hadn’t anticipated was an invitation to this private estate. Apparently it was Shawn’s plan all along.

“You’ve got to figure a guy like Rushton only does business with the biggest detective agencies in the business,” he explained as Gus drove back and forth along Edgecliff Lane, searching for the promised turnoff to the lawyer’s private road.

“Those guys probably get him what he needs before we even get up out of bed. But on that level they’re practically law firms themselves, or insurance companies. They’re totally corporate, which is great when you need someone to testify in a lawsuit. But I figured that someone like Rushton grew up watching classic detective movies. Deep down that’s what he thinks a private eye is supposed to be like. A tough, hard-boiled gumshoe.”

“And that’s us?”

“Me, anyway,” Shawn said. “I don’t think he saw you as hard-boiled. More like scrambled. Say, are you hungry?”

Shawn spent the rest of the drive hunting through Gus’ glove compartment looking for stray Skittles that had spilled there months ago and explaining his plan for their meeting, and by the time Gus parked the Echo among a fleet of Jaguars, Mercedeses, and Maybachs, he was feeling confident about the day for the first time. Even the appearance of a tuxedoed butler at the ring of the mansion’s doorbell didn’t throw him off.

The butler led them down a long, dark corridor and threw open a door. Gus was nearly blinded by the sun blasting through a wall of windows looking out onto the ocean. No doubt that was the purpose of the dark hallway, he thought. To make this view even more spectacular.

The office itself was furnished and decorated in a nautical theme, from the signal flags on the walls to the ship’s steering wheel in front of the windows. Just as well, Gus thought. This close to the ocean, the house felt like it was only one big storm away from being swept out to sea. Maybe that wheel would actually work.

A door in the side of the room opened. Oliver Rushton glided in and positioned himself behind his massive mahogany desk. “Please sit down,” he said brusquely.

As he took his seat in a large armchair, Gus studied the lawyer carefully. For one moment when Rushton first saw the body he identified as Archie Kane, Gus was certain that he saw a flash of vulnerability in the old man. Now he couldn’t imagine how that could have been. Gus might as well have been staring at a steel rod.

“Nice place,” Shawn said, glancing around him. “We’ve been thinking about moving our offices. Mind saying what the rent is on something like this?”

Gus knew what Shawn was doing: He was channeling Humphrey Bogart. But he still had to fight off a wince. There was a fine line between cocky insouciance and the kind of rudeness that could get you keelhauled, and Shawn had never been particularly good with fine lines.