Michael Koryta: Tonight I Said Goodbye

Joe pointed at the piles of paper wads. “That.”

Kraus grinned. “Stuck already, eh?”

“Hey,” Joe said, “it’s our first morning on the job.”

“Just for the record,” I said, “I want to point out that most of those paper balls on the floor are Joe’s. Mine went in the basket.”

“You guys think Weston was a suicide?” Joe asked.

“Yeah,” Kraus said, and Swanders nodded. “The evidence at the scene makes it hard to call it anything else.”

“What about the psychological profile?” I asked. “Any signs of a problem, some indication that Weston wasn’t too stable?”

Kraus squinted and frowned, and Swanders nodded at him to speak.

“Yes and no,” Kraus said. “Some acquaintances told us that he’d been tense, morose, whatever. But I never put much stock in those stories, because after the newspaper declares a guy was a suicide, everyone who knew him starts imagining these things, you know, trying to rationalize it in their own minds.”

“But you couldn’t come up with any reason for him to have offed himself, let alone the family?” I said. “The wife wasn’t cheating on him, he wasn’t an alcoholic or a cokehead, nothing like that?”

Kraus and Swanders exchanged another glance, silently consulting on what they should offer to us.

“He was a gambler,” Kraus said eventually, after Swanders gave him some sort of osmosis approval. “Sounds like a pretty high roller, too. Frequent trips up to Windsor, and lots of betting on sports.”

Windsor, just across the river from Detroit, was home to Canada’s largest casino. I wasn’t necessarily surprised by the statement; it fit my image of Weston just fine.

“Lots of people enjoy gambling,” Joe said. “Doesn’t mean they’re suicidal. Just foolish.”

“His bank accounts were cleared out,” Swanders said. “We’re expecting to find he was in some pretty serious debt.”

“Any idea who he might have owed?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. That’s what we’re working on.”

“If that’s the truth, I’d think it would open up some other theories,” Joe said. “I mean, I can see the gambling debts as a reason for suicide, but what about his family? Is it possible the people he was stiffing on the debts could have grabbed the wife and daughter, maybe even killed him?”

Swanders and Kraus shared a frown. “Possible,” Swanders said. “But damn near anything is possible at this juncture. There’s absolutely no physical evidence at that house to suggest a break-in or any sort of violence. The neighbors say both Mrs. Weston and the daughter were at the home Tuesday evening, but they never showed up anywhere Wednesday morning. Weston’s time of death was somewhere between midnight and four in the morning Wednesday, according to the medical guys. That means whatever happened had to happen Tuesday night, and the neighbors didn’t hear or see anything unusual. It makes an intruder scenario less likely, unless they were taken out by the damned Delta Force or something.”

“What about the gunshot?” Joe asked.

“Nobody’s claimed they heard one, but that’s not surprising,” Swanders said. “Three in the morning, one shot fired from a handgun? That’s easier to sleep through than people would think. Besides, this is in Brecksville. People out there hear a handgun fired, they probably think it’s a backfire on the gardener’s leaf blower.”

“Any chance we could take a look at the crime scene report?” Joe asked.

Swanders shrugged. “I’d say no just to be a bastard, but that report’s not going to offer you much help anyhow, so what the hell. You got a fax machine?” he asked, looking around the office doubtfully, as if unsure we even had a phone.

“Yeah,” Joe said, and gave him the number.

“All right.” Swanders got to his feet. “We’ll keep in touch with you boys, and I expect you’ll do the same.”

“We will,” Joe said.

“Hey,” I said as they were heading for the door, “did you talk to April Sortigan? Some student who worked with Weston, I think?”

Kraus waved his hand. “Yeah, she’s nothing to bother with. Just some kid who met Weston through a class project, and he liked her and let her do some bullshit court records research now and then so she could add to the résumé. I talked to her on the phone, and it was a waste of time.”

They left, and Joe and I sat and stared at the closed door. “Well,” Joe said, “I suppose we ought to get to work.”

“Probably.”

“The gambling angle sounds interesting,” he said. “Depending who he owed, or who he pissed off.”

“I don’t like it. Too cute and simple.”

“Perfect,” Joe said. “I’m cute and you’re simple. Just the case for us.”

“You know anyone in Windsor?”

“Not yet, but give me an hour or two on the phone and I’ll have some friends.”

“Sounds good. I’ve got to see this April girl in half an hour, so we can rendezvous later this afternoon, if you’re still awake.”

He faked a heavy yawn. “You’re going to see her even though Kraus said it was a waste of time?”

“Two things about cops,” I said. “One, they’ve been known to overlook leads before, and, two, they’ve been known to lie to pain-in-the-ass private operators like us. So, yeah, I’ll go see her.”

April Sortigan lived in a cluttered apartment about ten minutes from our building. She didn’t have a roommate, but she did have seven cats. In the tiny living room, they seemed to be coming out of the walls. At first I assumed there had to be at least three dozen. Sortigan was a tall, slender girl with raven-colored hair, a slim, slightly hooked nose, and glasses with square black frames. Her body was willowy and firm, not unattractive, but nothing that would draw wolf whistles on the street. She sat with her legs crossed and drummed her fingers on the arm of the couch while we talked. After a few minutes of questioning, she’d assured me of her general ignorance of Weston’s life and business. Maybe Kraus had been right. She looked like a dead end-and, unfortunately, a talkative dead end. That would have been all right, but the focus of her talkativeness was herself, not Weston. I tried to pay attention while counting the rings on her fingers. I was up to nine and still going when she fell silent.

“You met Wayne Weston during your undergraduate years?” I asked, trying to steer her back to the point before she began listing her personal references and extracurricular activities.

“That’s right. I was working on a project about structural accidents, and I learned he’d investigated one in a liability lawsuit. I interviewed him, and the work interested me, so I kept in touch. He offered to give me some background in public records before I went on to law school.”

A large tiger-striped cat sprinted into the center of the room and attacked a newspaper that was lying on the floor. Apparently, the cat believed the paper had been ready to make an aggressive move at any second. April Sortigan ignored it.

“How much work did you do for him?” I asked.

“Oh, not too much. He showed me around the process; you know, the clerk’s office and auditor’s office and all of that. I probably did a few checks for him each month. Just minor research.”

“Anything recently?”

“Actually, yes. About two weeks ago he sent me a list of three names and asked for a basic check through some of the computer databases and the county clerk’s office. He said he couldn’t do it because he was going out of town, and asked me to fax a report to him.”

“You know where he went?”

“Nope, but I still have the fax number.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.”

An obese gray cat waddled out from behind my chair and, with the great effort necessary to move such bulk, hoisted itself up on the couch beside Sortigan, meowing loudly. It wasn’t really a meow, more like an air raid siren. Sortigan cooed softly to it and scratched under its chin.