John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“Call for a CSU, Harold,” Vitali said. “Tell them about the flies. They’ll need to get rid of the damned things before they can get her out.”

Mishkin didn’t answer, but pulled his cell phone from his pocket and walked down to the end of the hall. He tried to open the window there, but it was jammed tightly closed, so he contented himself with standing, staring outside, as he made his call. Considering his own reaction, Vitali was surprised that Mishkin had managed to keep down his breakfast.

“Stick here,” Vitali told Henderson. “Keep the scene frozen. That means you don’t go in there, either.”

“I was just about to go check out that bathroom again,” Henderson said.

Vitali had to smile. Humor, no less. The kid with the old eyes was going to be okay. For a second Vitali considered explaining to Henderson how they were going to have to put what they’d seen somewhere in the dark cellars of their minds and not look at it or think about it, never let it escape back into the light. It wasn’t exactly forgetting, but it passed. Then he realized none of this would be news to the young cop. Besides, it wasn’t the kind of thing easily put into words.

“Don’t you even think of going back in there,” he growled at the kid, shaking a finger at him.

Then he went to get Mishkin so they could talk to some of the neighbors before the crime scene unit showed up.

“They’re on the way,” Mishkin said, still staring out the window at the end of the hall. “I was thinking, Sal, how this one looks like it could be habitual.”

Mishkin knew what he meant. A murder like this one, committed in such a brutal and bloody ritualistic manner, might not be the first such crime.

And it might not be the last.

“Here!” Fedderman said.

At first Quinn wondered where Fedderman had gotten the white board he was holding. Then he realized it was one of the bottom shelves of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. They were searching the Galin house’s den, or family room, wherein was a large red leather sofa and matching recliner, as well as the oversized oak desk where all the family’s bills were paid and correspondence was written.

Fedderman and Nancy Weaver had removed almost everything from the shelves, even the large encyclopedia set and coffee table art books on the bottom ones. One of the end-bottom shelves had a hole about half an inch in diameter drilled through it at a sharp angle toward the room, so that it was barely noticeable when the white enameled shelf was viewed by anyone facing it. But if it happened to be noticed, you could insert a finger at the angle of the hole, crook it, and easily lift out the shelf. The bottom shelves were set on a baseboard about five inches above the dark brown carpet, and in the space between this shelf and the floor had been hidden stacks of rubberbanded bills of large denominations. Along with the money were several large, plain brown envelopes.

Pearl had also heard Fedderman and came over with Quinn to see what he’d found.

“Neat little hidey-hole,” Fedderman said, nodding toward the space beneath the removed shelf.

“There’s a small fortune there,” Weaver said.

“Large fortune for a cop,” Pearl said. She glanced over at Weaver’s trancelike stare at the money. “Is it giving you ideas?” She and Weaver had never gotten along for more than minutes at a time.

Weaver’s face reddened, but she said nothing and moved away.

“Don’t start, Pearl,” Quinn said softly.

She didn’t bother to look at him.

Fedderman began opening the envelopes. Some of them contained more money, stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Others contained gold and silver jewelry. Even some gold coins.

“Looks like pirate treasure,” Pearl said.

Still miffed at Pearl and feigning disinterest, Weaver had gone into another room where her partner Vern Shults was working. Quinn saw movement near the door and thought she might have calmed down and was returning, but June Galin entered the den.

She stared at the books stacked on the floor, then at the white shelf, which was now leaning against the wall. Then she saw what was going on, and her eyes widened. Quinn watched her closely. She really did seem surprised.

When she got closer and saw what had been hidden beneath the removed shelf, she seemed genuinely shocked. Quinn was afraid her legs might buckle and braced himself to be ready to catch her if she fell.

But she managed to maintain her equilibrium.

“I don’t understand…” she said. But Quinn knew she did. The knowledge had come suddenly, and at a cost.

“Your husband never told you about this?” he asked.

She began to stammer and then clamped her lips shut. Obviously holding back tears, she looked bitterly up at him. “Who do you think he was hiding all this from?”

Quinn understood how she must feel, betrayed by her husband even after his death. Their relationship hadn’t been as loving and trusting as she’d imagined. It had to be difficult for her.

“I don’t know what to believe now,” she said, rubbing the heel of a hand into her eye. “What else might not be true?”

“We’re going to try to find out,” Quinn said, as gently as he could. He believed-his years of experience and his gut told him-this woman was an innocent caught up in her dead husband’s game.

She swiped the back of her hand across her nose, which had started to run. “I’m so goddamned confused…”

Quinn wasn’t confused. What he felt was rage toward the late Joseph Galin, dirty cop, almost certainly planning on keeping his ill-gotten gains and at some point leaving his wife.

“I’m sure your husband loved you,” he said, “whatever his faults.”

Pearl gave him a look, letting him know this was no way to talk to a suspect. That’s what June Galin had suddenly become, though Pearl had come to the same conclusion as Quinn: it was unlikely that June had known her husband Joe was a bent cop. The hiding place beneath the bottom shelf had been created mostly to keep her from finding that out.

June began sobbing in earnest now, and went to the red recliner and sat on its edge, her face buried in her hands.

Pearl and Fedderman both stared at Quinn, question marks in their eyes. Were they going to regard June Galin as a suspected coconspirator? Cuff her, read her her rights, and take her in?

Quinn, almost imperceptiblly, shook his head no.

Fedderman came over to stand near him, keeping his voice low. “If Galin was dirty, it could be his murder’s got nothing to do with the Twenty-five-Caliber Killer.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said, thinking the investigation was leaning in that direction. There was no shortage of motives when it came to who might have killed Galin.

Then he recalled that inside-out pocket in Galin’s suit coat. And there was something else…

“Hey!” a woman’s voice said.

Everyone turned to look at Nancy Weaver standing in the doorway. She was holding a six-foot-long oak board beneath her right arm, as if she might go surfing, but the surfboard was obviously a bookshelf. And she was grinning.

Quinn remembered the bookshelves in the living room, crowded with glass figurines and a pewter collection.

“There was one of those removable bottom shelves in the living room, too,” Weaver said. “Come see.”

The hiding place in the living room held more money and jewelry, along with an envelope containing three deposit box keys.

When the tally was completed the next day, it was determined that Joe Galin had hidden in his modest home two hundred thousand dollars in cash, as well as ninety thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. The three deposit boxes had held another fifty thousand and a coin collection that hadn’t yet been appraised.