Stuart Woods - Worst Fears Realized

“Does he have an accent?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, he does.”

“I’ll send him right up,” Jeff said. He walked back to the front door and opened it. “Come in,” he said to the young man. “Take the elevator to the sixteenth floor; Mr. Menzies is expecting you.”

Hausman said nothing but went straight to the elevator and pressed the button.

Jeff felt he had covered himself, but he didn’t like having someone like that in the building. The other apartment owners wouldn’t like it, either, he knew.

“Jeff,” Ralph said.

Yeah?

“Carlos called in sick, and it’s recycling day. Would you please put the cans and newspapers out?”

“Sure, Ralph,” Jeff said. He didn’t like doing this very much, but there was no one else. He took the other elevator to the garage level, where the bags of recycling material and bound newspapers waited in a corner. He hung his uniform jacket and cap on a hook, pressed the button to open the garage door, and went to work. He humped the bags up to the street, four at a time, then turned to the heavy newspaper bundles. The people in his building sure read a lot of newspapers, he thought. He had never seen the attraction, himself. He sometimes watched the local TV news, but the news, in general, seemed to have little to do with him.

He broke a sweat with the newspapers, and as he piled the last bundle on top of the others, something caught his eye. On the front of Sunday’s Metro section was a drawing of a man, and he looked alarmingly like the young man he had just let into the building. There was also a photograph of another, older man.

Jeff eased the section from the bundle and read the story accompanying the pictures. The young man in the drawing had bushy hair, but otherwise was a ringer for this Peter Hausman. He turned his attention to the photograph of the older man. There seemed to be a familial resemblance between the two, and the older man looked a little like Howard Menzies, except that Mr. Menzies had a little beard and, of course, hair. The man in the picture was bald on top, so he couldn’t be Mr. Menzies.

He tore the story from the paper, folded it, put it in his pocket, then returned the Metro section to the bundle of newspapers. As he did so, he heard a car start in the garage, and, a moment later, Mr. Menzies’s Mercedes came up the ramp with Hausman at the wheel and Menzies in the front passenger seat. Menzies gave him a smile and a wave, and Jeff returned it.

Jeff went back into the garage, closed the door, put on his coat and cap, and went back upstairs in time to help a lady with her packages. When he had a moment, he took out the clipping and read the story again. Seven murders. He shuddered.

He reflected that, if he had not been personally acquainted with Howard Menzies, he might have called the police number in the story, but a gentleman like Mr. Menzies could never be involved with something like this. He wasn’t so sure about the nephew, though. He’d have to think about that.

Jeff put the clipping back into his pocket and went to get the door for someone.

BACK IN DINO’S OFFICE, STONE ASKED TO use the phone and called Bill Eggers at Woodman & Weld. He’d called earlier, but Eggers had been late coming in.

“Hello?”

“Bill, it’s Stone.”

“Good morning.”

“How’d it go with Martin Brougham last night?”

“I didn’t make much progress; I think he still plans to subpoena you.”

“Did you mention the business about the doctored tape in the Dante trial?”

“I didn’t get a chance. I was on my way out when his wife called me to the phone, and by the time I hung up, Marty was in his bath. I’ve got a call in to him now. I saw on TV that you caught the guy you’ve been looking for. He’s your suspect for the Susan Bean murder, isn’t he? That should go a long way toward stopping Marty in his tracks.”

“Bad news there, Bill; the guy, whose name was Hausman, confessed to six killings, but he denied all knowledge of the Bean murder. I’m not sure what to think about it.”

“Well, you need to work on him some more. If he’s in a confessing mood, he can clear you completely.”

“I’m afraid he’s not in any kind of mood; he’s dead. He made a grab for an officer’s gun at the precinct, and another officer shot him.”

“Oops.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, Stone, I’ve got an idea. Are you still determined to testify if he subpoenas you?”

“Yes, I am. I’m not going to do anything to make myself look guilty.”

“Then let’s go down to the courthouse tomorrow morning; just show up outside the grand-jury room and demand for you to be allowed to testify.”

Stone thought about this. “I like it; it might rattle him.”

“There’ll be some press there, too, and we can make a point of your showing up. That’ll make the evening news.”

“I’ll tell Marty about what we know of the Dante business, too; he can worry about that while he’s questioning you, and if he makes us mad, we can mention it to the press after you’ve testified.”

“All right,” Stone said.

“Meet me down there at nine sharp tomorrow morning, and don’t tell me where you plan to be in the meantime. If they try to subpoena you, I can deny knowledge of your whereabouts.”

“See you at nine in the morning,” Stone said. He hung up.

“What’s up?” Dino asked.

Stone explained the situation to him.

“I wish we could wrap this up before you have to testify,” Dino said.

“So do I.”

There was a knock on the door, and Andy Anderson came in.

“Sit down, Andy, and tell me what’s happening,” Dino said.

Anderson took a seat and got out his notebook. “Okay,” he said, “first, the apartment. We took it apart, but there wasn’t much there, except one more rent receipt in Erwin Hausman’s name – no IDs, no notes of any kind, only two sets of fingerprints, Erwin’s and one more.”

“Nothing at all that would help us find Mitteldorfer?”

“Nothing. If there had been a phone, we could have checked the records for numbers called.”

“That’s why there was no phone,” Stone said. “Mitteldorfer is very smart.”

“Now, on fingerprints,” Andy said. “Interpol got a match for Erwin. He had been arrested half a dozen times, all over Europe, for participation in violence at international soccer matches. He’s one of a lot of repeat offenders. The Hamburg police confirm this, and, more important, they confirm that he has a younger brother who has also been arrested a number of times for the same thing, name of Peter Hausman. I’m running the other set of prints with Interpol now, on the supposition that they belong to Peter. The only other sibling is Ernst, who works at the cigarette factory and who is, apparently, a solid citizen. The boys’ mother is named Helga, and she refused to speak more than a few words with the police. She wouldn’t answer any questions about the boys’ father, who, apparently, doesn’t live in the house with them.”

“Bingo,” Dino said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Where are we getting?” Stone asked. “What have we learned that will help us find Mitteldorfer, or Hausman, or whatever his name is?”

“I checked the Hausman name against utility records,” Andy said. “There are only two Hausmans in New York City: one is an elderly, retired machinist who lives in Queens, and the other has been a cab driver for the past sixteen years.”

“Then we’re back to the pictures in the paper,” Stone said, “and we’ve had only the one report.”

“And it was on Hausman, not Mitteldorfer,” Dino said. “Andy, talk to the local TV stations and get both the photograph of Mitteldorfer and the sketch of Hausman on the air tonight, but have the Hausman sketch altered to show very short hair.”