Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

The pose is enough to piss Harry off.

There is a small swastika planted on the inside of Arnsberg’s forearm, discreet and neat. It has all the sharp lines of something recent, none of the blurring that comes as flesh sags and stretches with age. His other arm is a piece of art. The words OUR RACE IS OUR NATION wrap his right forearm. This is followed by a number of pagan symbols in ink.

Arnsberg’s pale blue eyes project contempt for the system that placed him here. It is an expression sufficiently broad to embrace Harry and me. I’m sure Arnsberg sees both of us as part of the process that keeps him here, in the lockup of the county jail.

“I asked you a question,” says Harry.

“I told you what happened. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Until I’m satisfied that I’ve heard the truth,” says Harry.

“You think I’m lying.”

“Trust me, son, you don’t want to know what I’m thinking right now.”

“Fine! I brought him his lunch to the room,” says Arnsberg.

“Thought you said it was breakfast?” says Harry.

“Maybe it was. Maybe he slept late. I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

“Go on.” Harry has his notebook open and is jotting a few items now and then.

“I knocked on the door. Like I told you before, and like I told the cops, the door opened when I hit it with my hand. Not all the way, just a crack. I didn’t use a passkey. I guess whoever closed it last, it didn’t catch. That would probably be your killer,” he says. “That’s who you should be looking for.”

“You didn’t see anybody pass you in the hall, between the elevator and the door?” I ask.

“No. Not that I remember.”

“Go on.”

“So when the door opened, I just leaned toward the crack a little and hollered ‘Hello?’-like that. Nobody answered, so I pushed the door open a little more. I didn’t look in, I just yelled again. Nothing. I knew I had the right room, the big Presidential Suite on the top floor. I’d been there plenty of times, delivering meals and picking up trays. So I sorta backed in, pushing the door with my back and shoulder. I yelled again. Nobody answered. At the same time, I started to undo the tablecloth with one hand, let it sorta drop down in front of me.”

“Why did you do that?” I ask.

“You learn to do it so you can fling it out on the table and put the tray down on top. But I did it for another reason, too. To give myself some cover,” he says. “You hear stories-waiters who barged into a room and found the guest, maybe a woman who didn’t hear ’em knock, coming out of the shower in the buff. It’s happened.”

“So you thought whoever was inside was probably in the shower?”

“There or maybe in the bedroom. It’s a big suite.”

“So you’re standing there inside the door with your back to the room, tablecloth in front of your face. How did you find your way around the room?” says Harry.

“Like I say, I’ve been in that room enough times to know the layout. It never changes. I knew where the table was, the chairs, and I could see enough light and shadow through the cloth. So I just moved in the right direction with the tray up on my shoulder. Listen, I tol’ all this to the cops.”

“We want to hear it from you,” says Harry. “Humor us.”

“Fine. I couldn’t see exactly where I was going. Just enough to know I wasn’t gonna walk into any furniture. It wasn’t until I got to the carpet off the tile in the living room, when I noticed something was wrong. I felt the squishing, you know, under my feet. I thought somebody musta spilled water. My first thought was the bathtub overflowed.” With this his face comes up off his propped-up hand. From the look in his eyes, he’s starting to relive the moment.

“I had to put the tray down before I could look. So I found the table.”

“You didn’t look down to see what it was, the dampness in the carpet?” asks Harry.

Arnsberg shakes his head. “I was juggling the tray. All I needed was to drop coffee and orange juice, on whatever else was there on the floor. And all the time I kept yelling, ‘Hello? Anybody here?’”

“How far away was it, the distance to the table from where you were then, when you first felt the wetness in the carpet?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It was just a small table. It was off to the right as you entered the living room, a few feet. Maybe a couple of steps.”

“Go on.”

“I could sort of see the shadow of the table through the tablecloth.”

“Do you remember whether the carpet was wet all the way to the table as you walked?”

“I don’t remember,” he says. “No. No, it musta been, because of what I saw later.”

“Go on,” I tell him.

“So I spread the tablecloth, put the tray down, and turned around. That’s when I saw him, on the floor. His head was down. His butt was sorta crunched up against the chair. All that blood. I remember I looked down, and I was standing in it. And his head, I panicked. I started to run for the door. Musta got maybe two steps onto the tile when I went down. That’s what I remember. That’s how I got the blood on my pants. I figure that’s probably when I musta done it,” he says. “Touched the hammer, I mean.”

The cops had found a single partial print on the murder weapon, one finger that seems to match the little finger, the pinkie, of Arnsberg’s right hand.

“That’s the only way it could have happened,” says Arnsberg.

“Not according to the cops,” says Harry.

“Well, they’re wrong. All I remember is I got the hell outta there fast as I could. You would, too, you walked in on somethin’ like that.”

“Have you ever seen this item?” Harry slides a photograph across the table. It’s a picture of one of those cheap clear-plastic raincoats, the kind you can fold up and slip into a pocket or a purse. Some of them come with their own tiny little bag for storage. This one doesn’t, but it is covered in the rust hue of dried blood.

Arnsberg shakes his head. “No. Never seen it before.”

“The police found it in a Dumpster behind the hotel, near one of the parking lots. But you’ve never seen it before?”

“No.”

The cops have confirmed that the blood on the raincoat belonged to Scarborough. They have scoured it inside out and subjected it in a chamber to the vapor of hot superglue, looking for any sign of fingerprints. They’ve found none.

“After you found the body, why didn’t you tell somebody?” asks Harry.

This was the clincher as far as the police were concerned, the fact that Arnsberg ran rather than reporting what he’d found. Though he didn’t run far. It took them just one day to track him down at his apartment before they could question him. By then they had enough to book him.

“I don’t know. I panicked. You’d panic, too, if you had some dead guy’s blood on your pants, all over the bottom of your shoes.”

“And that’s the only reason you ran? The blood on your clothes?” Harry pushes him.

“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I guess I knew what people would think.”

“And what was that?” says Harry.

“Just what you’re thinking now. That I did it. That I might have a reason to kill him.”

“Because of the artwork there on your arm?” Harry points with his pen at the tattoo.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Or was it because of some of the friends you’re keeping these days?”

He looks at Harry, the devil with all the questions. “That, too.”

“Let’s talk about some of your friends,” I say. “Did any of them discuss with you the fact that Terry Scarborough was staying at the hotel where you worked? That you might actually see him, have access to him?”