A Quiet Death Page 9

‘Oh, nothing.’ The man was positively twinkling.

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘A guy showed up today, asking for you.’

  ‘Oh?’ I grabbed a pretzel out of a bag I’d left open on the table and took a bite.

  ‘He said he understood you had found a package on the Metro that belonged to him.’

  I stopped in mid-nibble. ‘He what?’

  ‘I told him you weren’t home.’

  I pointed at the kitchen table with the pretzel. ‘Sit.’ When we were both sitting down, I asked, ‘Do you think it was Skip?’

  ‘No. He introduced himself as Jim Hoffner.’

  ‘Hoffner, Hoffner. Why does that name sound familiar? Do we know any Hoffners?’ I took a bite of pretzel, chased it with a gulp of wine. ‘Please don’t tell me that you gave him Lilith’s box!’

  Paul reached out and stroked my arm. ‘Of course not. Mostly because he didn’t look at all like the guy on the train as you described him to me. So, I told Hoffner, sorry, you weren’t home, and that I didn’t know where you’d put the package. Which is perfectly true.’

  ‘Was he in a wheelchair? On crutches? Limping?’

  ‘No, and I found that most peculiar, Watson. The way he sashayed down the steps was just a tad too spry for someone who less than a month ago had his lower body pinned under a couple of tons of twisted steel.’

  ‘Can you describe the guy for me?’

  ‘Better than that. I managed to snap a picture of him with my cell phone.’

  ‘Clever boy! How did you do that?’

  ‘Pure dumb luck. I’d just finished checking in with Emily when the doorbell rang, so I had the phone in my hand. When Hoffner left, I knew he’d have to turn one way or the other on the sidewalk, so when he headed up toward Maryland Avenue, I was able to get off a couple of shots through the living-room window.’

  Paul slipped his iPhone out of the breast pocket of his shirt and thumbed the screen on. A few taps later, he turned the screen in my direction. There, in profile, was a guy I’d never laid eyes on before.

  He was tall, at least six feet, big-boned, but not heavy. He kept his dark hair closely trimmed and was already working on a five o’clock shadow. ‘What color were his eyes?’ I asked my husband.

  ‘You think I gaze deeply into the eyes of other men?’

  ‘Paul!’

  ‘They were brown.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I mused. ‘Brown hair, brown eyes, khaki pants and a brown jacket. I’ll bet his shoes and socks are brown, too. What we have here is Mysterious Mocha Man.’

  Using my thumb and forefinger, I flicked the image to enlarge it. Whoever this man was, he was not the man whose hand I had held on the doomed train. ‘This guy is definitely not Skip.’

  ‘I didn’t think he was. The absence of a full-body cast was a bit of a clue.’

  ‘But why would he claim to be the guy I helped on the train when he wasn’t? Whoever he is, he’d have to know that I’d realize he wasn’t Skip.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Paul said. ‘But once I told him you weren’t home, the danger of being recognized was past. Maybe he thought I’d simply hand over the bag and he could leave, and you’d never be the wiser.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I studied the image again, flicked it until the subject’s face filled the screen. Something clicked. ‘I know why this guy looks vaguely familiar!’ I turned the screen in Paul’s direction, hooting in triumph. ‘He’s that guy on late-night TV.’ I waggled my fingers and made mysterious woo-woo noises. ‘Dark, rain-soaked highways and cars careening out of control. Kee-runch! Got a telephone? Got a lawyer!’

  Paul slipped the phone out of my fingers. Illuminated by the light from the screen, I watched his eyes widen. ‘By golly, I think you’re right. Hoffner’s one of those ambulance chasers.’

  ‘Do you think he’s working for Skip?’ I wondered.

  Paul turned his iPhone face down on the table. ‘Could be, but why didn’t he say so, then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I lowered my head, resting my forehead against the tabletop. ‘God, I’m tired.’

  Paul got up from his chair and began to massage the tension out of my shoulders. ‘Let’s rustle up some dinner then, cowgirl, and talk about it in the morning.’

  ‘Did the guy leave a card?’ I mumbled as Paul worked his magic on the muscles in my neck.

  ‘No, he said he’d call again. But I know how you can reach him, if you want.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘One-eight-hundred-GOTALAW. If you’ve got a telephone, Hannah, you’ve got a lawyer.

  FIFTEEN

  The next morning, around ten, I telephoned the Ellicott City offices of Hoffner, Smith and Gallagher – world headquarters of the Got a Telephone? Got a Lawyer! guys – and asked to speak to James Hoffner. A secretary took my number and promised she’d have him call me back.

  While I waited, I poured a cup of coffee and flipped on the TV where I learned from CNN, to my horror, that the body of another young woman had just been discovered.

  Earlier the previous morning, a young man walking his dog on the Mount Vernon Trail north of Reagan Airport near Gravelly Point had found Juliet Henderson’s body behind the Porta-Potties. Like Meredith Logan, the twenty-four-year-old pharmacy technician had been strangled. Furthermore, the reporter said, another woman had been attacked a day earlier on a jogging trail in Rock Creek Park, but had beaten off her attacker using her aluminum water bottle. Police were hoping the Rock Creek victim could identify her assailant.

  A police sketch of a ‘person of interest’ filled the screen. Clean-shaven, the suspect wore a ball cap pulled low over his forehead; a pair of dark glasses hid his eyes. He could have been anybody: the guy ahead of me in line at the gas station, the ticket taker at Orioles Park, even my nattily dressed son-in-law, Dante, when he was slumming.

  Speculation was mounting that the three crimes were linked, the work of a serial killer.

  The two murders and the attempted murder resurrected the media frenzy surrounding the Chandra Levy case. Levy, a twenty-four-year-old intern for California congressman Gary Condit, disappeared on May 1, 2001, while jogging in DC’s Rock Creek Park. The young woman’s body wasn’t discovered until more than a year later. Now, as then, the public was demanding action, and the press was stirring the pot.

  When Paul came home for lunch, I was still sprawled on the sofa in front of the TV with the remote balanced on my chest. ‘Another murder, Paul. It’s really distressing. They’re saying the girls had been clotheslined and dragged into the bushes. What the hell does that mean – clotheslined?’

  ‘It’s a wrestling move,’ he explained. ‘You come running at someone with your arm straight out at your side. If your opponent is running, too, you can knock them for a loop.’

  I shivered. ‘Ideal mugging technique for a jogging trail, then, isn’t it?’

  Paul wandered off to the kitchen. ‘CNN reported that there was a spontaneous candlelight vigil for Meredith and the other victim on the steps of the Capitol last night.’

  ‘I saw some video clips this morning,’ I called after him. ‘I wonder what Lynx News has to say. Meredith Logan was one of theirs, after all.’ I aimed the remote and switched the channel.

  On Lynx, John Chandler was reporting. Either his regular make-up person was on vacation, or something was getting to him. Meredith’s murder? Me? Something had deepened the railroad tracks that ran across his forehead, the creases on either side of his nose, darkened the shadows under his eyes. As I watched him talk, I found myself trying his face on against the few pictures I had of Zan.

  Recently, I’d been doing a lot of mental Photoshopping with men of a certain age. Dying their hair, styling it differently, moving their parting from the right to the left and vice versa. I’d drawn a full head of hair on James Carville, given Bill O’Riley eyeglasses and a beard, taken fifty pounds off Rush Limbaugh. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t exempt. Clinton’s hair was right, but I decided his nose was too big to be Zan’s. You never know, though. The former pr
esident did get around.

  Nothing was happening on the TV, so I decided to go high-tech. Carrying the few photographs I had of Zan, I trotted downstairs to Paul’s office and powered up the scanner. While it was digesting the photographs of Zan, I went online to Google, selected Images, and downloaded several full-face publicity shots of John Chandler.

  Finally, I imported the images into iPhoto and clicked on ‘Faces,’ bringing up Apple’s face recognition software, an iLife application I’d never gotten around to using. I informed the software that the guy standing on the church steps was Zan, then sat back to watch as the software suggested matches.

  A picture of Paul. Not Zan, I clicked.

  A picture of Dante. Not Zan either.

  A photo of me, mugging it up for Halloween. Definitely not Zan.

  I turned the tables, telling the software that John Chandler was John and asking it to find more faces that looked like John. It suggested Paul (but not Dante), a stranger we’d photographed while hiking the Appalachian trail, and the assistant priest at St Katherine’s Episcopal Church, but never once hit on Zan.

  Google’s Picasa gave me similar results, helpfully picking out faces in the background, like photographs on people’s desks, and objects in the background – an unlaced tennis shoe? – and inquiring if they were Zan.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Paul asked, coming up behind me with a half-eaten apple in his hand.

  ‘Face recognition software,’ I said. ‘The low-tech version, apparently.’

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It always seems to work on TV,’ Paul said, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Chica, chica, chica, chica, ding! A match! Pull that guy away from the blackjack table and kick him out of the casino!’

  ‘The photos I have of Zan are too low-resolution to be of any practical use,’ I complained. ‘And the software seems to gag on facial hair or sunglasses. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it picked out that picture I took of a buffalo in Yellowstone Park and asked, “Is this Zan?”’

  Paul squeezed my shoulder. ‘I’m fixing some sandwiches, do you want one?’

  I turned off the computer and gathered up my things, feeling discouraged. ‘You go ahead, hon. I’m not particularly hungry.’

  ‘OK, but if you change your mind, I’ll be in the kitchen.’

  Back upstairs, I sulked in front of the television. Chandler was interviewing a woman who’d been Photoshopped to the max. She’d had so much plastic surgery that nothing moved when she talked except her mouth, not even her hair. I stared at the screen in morbid fascination, watching for something – anything – to shift on the smooth, flat expanse of her countenance. I failed, but was so caught up in the effort that I could only partially focus on what she had to say about self-defense tactics for women.

  And Your Point Is? devoted the last twenty minutes to coverage of Meredith Logan’s vigil, including Chandler’s interview with Meredith’s grieving parents via satellite from Lawrence, Kansas. Photographs of the slain woman slid on and off the screen, interspersed with quotes from her Facebook page, and clips from YouTube videos of Meredith in happier times, some of them clearly shot on the campus of Bryn Mawr. The dead woman was the same age as Emily and my daughter’s friend. Just thinking about it made my stomach roil.

  Chandler ended his program by announcing a survey. Did we think the DC police were handling the investigation properly? John Chandler wanted – no, begged – for my vote.

  I flipped the television off in disgust. Would it help the unfortunate victims to know that, say, seventy-six percent of the people watching Lynx News that afternoon – the ones who managed to drag their fat, conservative asses out of their chairs long enough to dial an 800-number, that is – thought the DC police were incompetent?

  ‘Sometimes I think they just make the news up,’ I sputtered, when Paul rejoined me carrying his sandwich. ‘They’re so biased that they don’t even try to be subtle about it.’

  He sat down on the arm of the sofa nearest my feet. ‘Why do you bother to watch, then, if it makes you so mad?’

  I shrugged. ‘To keep my blood pressure up?’

  ‘That’s my Hannah! Remember when Chandler was interviewing that conservative bishop from Pittsburgh, the one who made all the derogatory remarks about the Archbishop of Canterbury and that gay bishop, Gene Robinson?’ Paul took a bite of his sandwich.

  ‘Robert Duncan?’

  ‘That’s the guy.’

  ‘I can’t even stand to look at him. Those big round glasses. Fleshy face. Goofy grin. When Chandler deferred to him and kept calling him “Archbishop Bob,” I nearly barfed. Duncan’s been deposed, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Now Duncan’s aligned himself with the Anglican Church in Kenya,’ I continued. ‘Will you kindly tell me what an Archbishop in Africa has in common with an Episcopal church in Plano, Texas?’

  Paul licked mayonnaise off his fingers. ‘I think you’re being a little hard on Chandler, Hannah. He’s fair enough, I think. At least he doesn’t finish his guest’s sentences for them, or goad them into yelling at one another like brawling drunks.’

  ‘Oh, I agree. He’s polite and Catholic to the core. Yes Father, no Father, let me kiss your ring, Father.’

  ‘Since when do you have a problem with Catholics?’

  ‘I don’t! But Chandler’s right up there with Pope Benedict on keeping the ban against allowing priests to marry. Mother Church better wake up, in my opinion, or pretty soon every Catholic priest in the United States will come from South America. Or, he’ll be a disgruntled Anglican who left the Episcopal Church because he objected to either women and/or gay and lesbian people in the priesthood. In that case, it’s OK if you’re already married. Pope Benedict said so.’

  Paul opened his mouth to put in his two cents’ worth, but was interrupted by the telephone. I raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe that’s Hoffner!’

  Paul answered, listened for a second, gave me a thumbs up, then handed the phone to me.

  ‘Hannah Ives?’ the caller said.

  ‘Yes. James Hoffner, I presume.’

  Hoffner cleared his throat. ‘I represent a client who tells me that you have some papers that belong to him.’

  ‘Who might that be?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘Then, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you whether I have any papers that belong to your client or not.’

  ‘Mrs Ives. These papers are treasured family items. Old letters and photographs. My client would like to have them back.’

  ‘How do I know that these letters and photographs actually belong to your client?’ I asked. ‘How do I know he didn’t find them on the street? For that matter, how do I know they aren’t stolen?’

  On the other end of the line, Hoffner sighed. ‘Just as I said, we’re talking about my client’s family heirlooms here.’

  ‘How is your client recovering from his injuries?’ I asked, hoping to catch the attorney off guard.

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘May I speak to your client?’

  ‘Not at this time.’

  ‘Does that mean he’s not able to speak to me?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘Look, Mr Hoffner. You tell Skip, or whatever his name is, that I’ll be happy to return the papers, but it will have to be either to Skip himself, or to his certified representative.’

  ‘I can assure you, Mrs Ives, that I have full power of attorney to represent my client in this matter.’

  ‘Good. Mail me a copy of your power of attorney, then. You know where I live. And, in the meantime, you might ask your client why his attorney was trying to pass himself off as somebody he is not. When you called at my house, you told my husband that those papers were yours. We both know that they are not.’

  ‘Your husband simply misunderstood me, I’m afraid. I said I was representing the owner.’

  I listened as Hoffner dug the hole deeper. When he’d run out of
lame excuses, I said, ‘Look, call me when Skip is well enough to see visitors, and if he can convince me that he’s the legal owner of that box of material, I’ll be happy to arrange a meeting.’ And I hung up on the jerk.

  Paul rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t mess with Hannah when she’s interrupted in the middle of homophobic bishop bashing.’

  ‘Ah, yes. It can get ugly.’

  SIXTEEN

  When you need to take it down a notch, nothing tops walking a dog. Dogs take pleasure in such basic things: barking, chewing, digging and burying, endless games of SniffMe-SmellYou, wagging their tails off from the sheer excitement of being alive.

  To make best use of dog therapy, however, it helps to have a dog, so sometimes we borrow Coco, our daughter’s irrepressible labradoodle, and walk her in nearby Quiet Waters Park.

  Paul and I had returned Coco to her owners – muddy-pawed but refreshed – and headed home, leaving our filthy running shoes outside the back door.

  ‘Funny. I thought I locked the door,’ Paul said as we let ourselves into the kitchen.

  ‘I better get the pork chops out of the freezer, or we’ll never eat tonight,’ I commented as I laid my handbag on the kitchen table.

  ‘Thaw them in the microwave.’ Paul tossed the remark over his shoulder as he headed upstairs to shower and change. He’d been gone only a few seconds when I heard him bellow, ‘Hannah! Come here!’

  ‘What?’ I dropped the pork chops on the kitchen counter and hurried to see what was bothering him.

  Paul stood in the dining room, flailing his arms. Every drawer in the sideboard stood open, and my linen tablecloths and napkins – which had been ironed and neatly folded, a task I hate – were strewn all over the carpet.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ I started toward the living room when Paul’s arm shot out, holding me back. ‘They may still be in the house,’ he cautioned. ‘Go back to the kitchen and call 9-1-1.’

  The Annapolis Police must have been sitting in their squad car right outside our door, because they appeared in less than five minutes. While we waited anxiously in the kitchen, two officers checked the house upstairs and down. The burglars were, of course, long gone. A neatly cut hole near the latch in the kitchen window illustrated where they’d come in. They’d obviously let themselves out through the back door.