Many Words

“His death bears all the hallmarks of an intelligent man’s last frame job. There is an obvious target in Heath. There is a clear motive for the man being framed—Heath discovers that he is being framed, and the police laugh at him when he suggests he is not involved. They send him to trial, the state’s prosecutor explains that he was simply silencing his accomplice, and he rots in prison, or, as McKenzie likely hoped, swings from the gallows. McKenzie’s vengeance is complete.” I realized I’d been pacing, and sheepishly I stopped.

“What of the man on the security footage?” Carpenter asked.

“Coincidence,” I said. Carpenter rolled his eyes. “Did Heath’s alibi check out?”

“To the extent that a doorman is an alibi,” said Baker. “Nobody can conclusively place him at home that evening.” Amber’s desk comm rang, and she stared at it in surprise while Baker kept talking. “Circumstantial evidence that Heath was at home doesn’t discount circumstantial evidence that suggests he had motive and opportunity to kill McKenzie.”

“Were there cameras in Heath’s building?” I said.

“No,” said Baker. “Not enough to verify whether Heath left the building. The landlord says he caters to people who value their privacy. The technicians are going over what footage there is regardless.”

“I wonder if his split with Marchand had anything to do with his valuing his privacy,” I mused. “Perhaps—”

Amber cut me short. “Would you do me a favor, Sam, and think back to the night of the murder?”

“Or suicide,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Amber replied. “Start from just before it got interesting.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back. “We’d just gone over the affair of Doctor Larson, and why he couldn’t have written that note, I believe, when we heard the gunshot.”

“Describe it,” Amber said. I heard a note of emphasis in her voice, and cracked an eye to see her watching me intently. I closed it again, and again called to mind the scene that night.

“Loud,” I said. Another word darted around at the edge of my awareness, evading my attempts to seize upon it. “More a crack than a boom,” I said, and some association with ‘boom’ got me far enough ahead of my elusive word to lay my hands on it. “Echoing. Hmm.” I let the memory play on in my head. “There was one sharp echo, to begin with, almost immediate. I would guess it came from the building across the street. The second echo was very clear, almost louder than the first, and—” I strained my ears to hear it amidst the muddle of my recollection “—yes, it was followed by an echo that also sounded as though it had bounced off the building across the street.” I could all but hear Amber’s smile, so I opened my eyes.

“Or perhaps the suicide,” I said. As one, Baker and Carpenter gave me a look. “Hear me out,” I said hurriedly, and before they could interject, I continued. “Abbot McKenzie had no great love for Dalton Heath. Marchand leaves McKenzie for Heath, then won’t give McKenzie a second chance when it turns out Heath wasn’t such a good choice, either. Heath presents himself as the senior partner in a partnership that wouldn’t exist without McKenzie’s knowledge and expertise, and then we catch him embezzling from that partnership with little motive. There are two possibilities: Heath was indeed embezzling, and he was discovered, or McKenzie—the director of finance, recall—might have been framing him. Heath discovers the oddity in his accounts, panics, and attempts to move the money back quietly, without raising the question of how it came into his possession in the first place. I discard the former possibility. Heath is worth nearly one million marks; it’s suspected he embezzled fifty thousand. Without some evidence that he wanted for an amount so trifling to him, and in light of McKenzie’s many reasons to harbor a dislike for Heath, I consider it more likely that McKenzie was indeed attempting to set up Heath to take a fall. The question then becomes, what follows from that assumption?

“Let us consider Dalton Heath, and how he might have behaved were he at the scene of the crime that night. If he had come with the purpose of killing McKenzie, he would have had a plan. We would never have caught him on tape fleeing the building, nor would have he tossed the murder weapon out the window. He might have gone to the apartment to confront McKenzie, but how would he have known to look there rather than at McKenzie’s own apartment? If it were McKenzie embezzling in Heath’s name, might not it be the case that Heath knew nothing about it? That he would not have had any motive to be at his company’s apartment the night McKenzie died?

“If Heath wasn’t present, what are we left with? A random killing? It seems unlikelier even than usual in a building with security in a well-off neighborhood in a well-off district. We are led back to McKenzie. A close friend of his remarks that he is a great talent at nursing grudges, and he certainly has cause for one here. He frames his foe for theft on a large scale, but it isn’t nearly enough. The woman he loves is gone, out of reach, and any time he thinks proudly of his work, he must also think of the man to whom he owes his success, a man who has taken all the credit while contributing nothing of the scientific knowledge required in their line of business, the man who has been doing so since the beginning and cuckolding him along the way. McKenzie ignores the success the partnership has seen, and discounts out of hand any suggestion of benign intent on Heath’s part—filtered as McKenzie’s perceptions were by two years of cold hatred, how could he not regard almost every one of Heath’s actions as a calculated insult? Finally, he reaches the breaking point. He says to himself, ‘I may die, but I will die with the knowledge that Dalton Heath will be called thief and murderer to the end of his days.'”

“That’s interesting news indeed,” I said, sitting at the table, “the victim owning a weapon identical to the murder weapon.” I skewered Amber with a pointed look, or would have if she had been paying me any attention at all.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Carpenter replied. “I’ve two more tidbits for you. There’s been a great deal of activity in the finances of Heath, McKenzie, and Company lately. Vast sums quietly moved from the corporate accounts into the personal account of Mr. Heath, then moved elsewhere last morning. The forensics boffins are tracking it down. We tried to have a word with Mr. Heath, but his solicitor would have none of it. I understand he isn’t happy with our earlier liberties taken.”

Amber held up a finger in our direction and said, “Finally. Inspector…”

She went on, and Carpenter stopped. When it became evident he would be waiting politely until Amber finished, I asked, “Do you think it worthwhile to get a motion to compel testimony?”

“Not yet, I wouldn’t think,” he said. “An option to consider, but we’ve enough to work on now that I hope we won’t need one. The independent press hates them.” The local dailies would have a field day, it was true.

“You know what sort of time pressure I’m facing,” said Amber. “Yes. No, I owe you a bigger favor than usual. I’ll ring you up next time I’m in University Park. Yes. Thank you so very much. Goodbye.” She set her desk comm back in its cradle and joined us at the table. “Your third success?” she prompted.

“We called on Anneli Marchand,” said Baker. I raised my eyebrows. “She has witnesses to place her in West End for the past week, and she knows nearly nothing of interest. She had a letter from Mr. McKenzie, and rebuffed his advances in her reply. That would have been two days before the murder.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Dramatic, I admit, and it isn’t more than informed speculation, but it serves for the sake of the argument,” I said. “McKenzie had little to live for and one man the target of his ire, the destroyer of his happiness. For two months he plots, and finally he is ready. He climbs his balcony, puts the gun to his forehead, and pulls the trigger. Who would guess that a man engaged in a borderline suicidal activity would commit suicide by some other means entirely?”

Amber held her own counsel for a moment or two. I considered it less likely that she was in awe of my brilliance and more likely that she was grasping for a tactful way to call my idea stupid. “I should like some concrete evidence, and you don’t account for the man we saw on the security footage.”

I shrugged. “I’m hardly infallible,” I said. “Our man on the footage may have been unrelated.”

“Some coincidence that would be,” Amber said. She glanced over at me sympathetically. “I do see where you have an argument,” she added. “Stranger things have happened.”

“Strange it would be were I to be correct here,” I said. A moment later, I snapped my fingers. “You were to ask a favor of someone.”

Calling in that favor turned out to require the comm, so when we reached One Port Authority Plaza, Amber went to her desk while I set about bringing the big board up to date. I boxed off one corner and put down my thoughts, ending with ‘suicide?’ Amber rolled her eyes at me, then said, “Yes, hello,” into her desk comm. I didn’t eavesdrop any further, instead outlining on the board the interviews we had conducted. I looked around for somewhere to set my notepad, and instead found a note from Baker and Carpenter on the table; the summary was that they’d be back shortly. I looked up toward the elevators, and there they were, as good as their word.

Amber hadn’t finished her call when they reached the table. They wore that expression of terrier-like joy particular to detectives on the scent, but they sat without speaking. Eventually, I said, “Well?”

Baker coughed. Carpenter said, “We dinna want to have to repeat it for the lieutenant, unless she can spare an ear.” Amber glanced over and gave him a thumbs-up. “Alright. We found no dealer in Upside who recalls selling to McKenzie, but we did find a display case at McKenzie’s flat. It was made to fit the murder weapon and another identical pistol, which we didn’t find. We have it on good authority that McKenzie had a collection of firearms, which has been in local museums for some time now.”

That I wrote down with more excitement, though I kept it from my face and my voice. “Could you speak to his mental state?”

“He’d thrown himself into his work for a few weeks,” replied Culpert. “Two years ago yesterday his wife left him, and he’d learned she wasn’t happy with Dalton Heath a month or two ago. It was a hard week or two, but he’s always been able to clear his mind with work, and so he did this time. Late nights. He seemed very focused.”

Culpert looked away and coughed, and I pretended not to see him wipe away a tear or two. His characterization of McKenzie could have torpedoed a theory I’d begun to nurse, so I gave Culpert a moment or two and, figuring to put my theory to rest for good, asked, “His mood did not strike you as unusual, then?”

He looked thoughtful. “It’s true I’ve rarely seen him so determined, especially not in the last few years.”

That sufficed for my purposes. I spent the rest of the interview, another ten or fifteen minutes, looking into McKenzie’s business rivals (many, but few of note, and none with particularly cutthroat reputations) and his relationship with Heath (strained for the last two years, cold more recently on news of Anneli Marchand’s break from Heath). Culpert knew that McKenzie had contacted Marchand, but didn’t know if Marchand had replied. I thanked him for his time and left him with my card.

We shared the high points from our interviews on the drive back. I let a pause develop, and Amber glanced over at me. “Yes?” she said.

“I have a theory,” I said. “You’ll call it crazy.” She didn’t contradict me, and I forged ahead. “Mr. Culpert painted me a picture of an Abbot McKenzie lost in his work, cold and unfeeling at a time when he should have been nursing a grudge worthy of an ancient epic. Then, he dies in mysterious circumstances on the day his wife left him, and all signs point to his rival in love, Dalton Heath.”

“Sam, you aren’t seriously suggesting a suicide?”

“I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility. McKenzie’s wife, for whom by all accounts he cared for very deeply, runs off with his business partner. This he can accept, though it is painful; he will bear his unhappiness if it means her happiness, and he can hardly blame Heath for his own failures as a husband. Then, though, Marchand leaves Heath, too, and for this McKenzie can lay blame at Heath’s feet. McKenzie, a man intimately familiar with the art of the grudge, has little to live for.”