Cyber Way Page 3

  He questioned her a little longer before excusing himself. Follow-up interviews would provide more information, which he could study at leisure back at the office. When the initial shock wore off some, she might be able to recall useful details presently submerged in her sea of emotional distress.

  First you had to assemble the parts of the puzzle. Only then could you start putting them together. He wandered off in search of additional pieces.

  “Hi, Nance,” he said to the slight figure working the far side of the living room. She turned to grin at him.

  “Hi, good lookin’. Wonderin’ when you’d show.”

  He didn’t know why he felt so comfortable with Nancy Welles. Maybe because of all the women he knew on the force, she was the only one who shared his love of fishing. Or maybe it was her sense of humor. Most cops had one, but it was usually not gentle in nature. Nancy’s was.

  “You just got here,” she said.

  “How’d you know that?”

  She gestured past him. “Saw you talking to the widow. That’d be the first thing you’d do. I know your style.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “’Tis.”

  “So what’ve we got?” Time enough for gentle banter back at the office.

  “Not a whole lot.”

  “Motive?”

  “Preliminary psych suggests something personal. Not necessarily involving the missus. Maybe a disgruntled employee. All pure spec at this point.”

  I’ll bet it wasn’t a district manager, Moody reflected silently. Aloud he said, “I just did my own voice scan.” The sergeant nodded, looking past him. “Everybody’s been running her specs. She seems clean. If she’s covering, she’s a champ at it. As for the Jekyll alibi, it checks out too. Couple hundred witnesses.”

  “But she found the body and called in.”

  “Kettrick’s been dead approximately thirty hours this morning. She only got in a couple hours ago. Air shuttle, everything checks out.”

  “Did Kettrick play around?”

  “He was a man, wasn’t he?”

  “You’re mean-spirited, Nance.”

  “Like hell. I just know men. But they’re no dead mistresses lyin’ around, if that’s what you mean. No evidence of any live ones somewhere else, neither. Just the housekeeper.”

  Yes, the housekeeper, Moody thought. Whoever had killed Kettrick had also taken the time to eliminate the only witness.

  “So we’re back to the disgruntled employee theory.”

  “It’s as good a one to start with as any,” she responded. “Maybe some subsidiary owned by one of Kettrick’s companies up in North Dakota fired some guy ten years ago and he’s spent the last decade plotting his revenge. Happens. Kettrick might not even have known the guy who deleted him, though the evidence so far suggests otherwise.”

  “How so?”

  “No sign of forced entry and not much of a struggle.”

  “What about the housekeeper?”

  “In the same room as Kettrick.” The sergeant accessed her own pocket spinner. “Anna Hernandez, fifty-eight, single, been with the family six years seven months. Had combinations to every lock in the place, used the maglide tube to do the shopping, lived in room downstairs in front. Trusted family employee. Too bad for her.”

  “How was she killed? Same as Kettrick?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Coroner done a determination on that yet?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.” Welles frowned slightly. “Wonder what’s takin”em so long? They’re talking gun, but without real assurance.”

  “What kind?”

  “Ask ’em yourself. Me, I’m just a lowly sergeant. They don’t tell me nuthin’.”

  She led him down a hallway, past other members of the department intent on their work.

  “I just got a quick look at the body before the boys from forensics descended and shooed out everybody who didn’t know the secret handshake. If a gun was used, it was a weird little sucker.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “No blood. I got an early call, got here fast. There’s no blood anywhere, Vernon. He’s just lying dead in the middle of the floor and the old gal’s nearby on some steps, and both of ’em as clean as an embalmer’s sample pack.”

  “Then why do they think it’s a shooting?”

  “Because each of the poor dears has two holes in ’em. Kettrick in his neck, the housekeeper in the middle of her back. And no blood. Holes aren’t real helpful, either. No vital organs punctured, appears to be complete cauterization at point-of-entry, but they’re still both dead.”

  “The main veins and arteries are intact?”

  “Yup. Coroner’s been talkin’ trauma. Hell, what trauma?

  No signs of battery, use of a blunt instrument, no other marks of any kind on either of ’em.”

  Moody glanced up the long hallway. “Where y’all taking me?”

  “My secret orgy room. Where’d you think?” She let out a derisive snort. “Apparently this guy Kettrick was a world-class collector of primitive art. To me it all looks like the kind of junk you find out on lawns at Labor Day garage sales over in Clearwater, but it must be worth something to somebody, because it’s housed in a room all to its lonesome. Place is built like a vault. Hurricane-flood-proof walls, its own climate control system: you name it. Then there’s the security setup. First class. I wouldn’t give you squat for the best of the collection, but Nickerson from your office— yeah, he’s here too—he says it’s museum quality. All that tells me is that it’s the kind of stuff rich people buy for investment purposes. You can judge for yourself.”

  The big room was suffused with bright, soft light that spilled from unobtrusive sources set high in the ceiling. Bolted to the neutral gray walls were cases and cabinets of tempered glass. Sculptures of wood and bone and clay were mounted on pedestals welded to the floor. Some of the pieces in the room were oddly appealing in appearance. A few were pretty. Moody thought many downright ugly.

  Welles pointed out Nickerson, pinched Moody on the butt, and left him with a wink. Moody watched her go, then turned and entered the vault.

  He knew Nickerson well enough. They’d teamed together on several cases, even though Moody kept mostly to headquarters while his younger counterpart worked the glamour districts along the coast. Moody didn’t envy the younger detective his rapid advancement or notoriety. Every cat to its ashcan. In a beachfront pit the sly, slim Nickerson would blend in effectively while Moody would stand out like a beached baleen. Maybe the guy got laid more often, but he

  didn’t make any more money than Moody and he didn’t command any more respect.

  In his own defense, Nickerson wasn’t responsible for his good looks. Nor was he a poseur. Every cop in the Greater Tampa Bay area knew Moody’s reputation, and Nickerson was no exception. He valued the big man’s advice and opinions and didn’t make fun of him.

  “What d’you think of this stuff, Vernon?” he said by way of greeting.

  Moody looked round the museum. That was the only way to think of it, as a museum.

  “Not my taste. Y’all know how it is with art. You got this here stuff at one end and black velvet paintings of St. Elvis at the other.” He held up a big hand and wiggled his fingers. “The kind of stuff I like’s somewheres in the middle.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Want to see the latest exhibit?”

  Near the back of the room someone from forensics was running a scanner over Kettrick’s body. The industrialist had been a big man, older than Moody and packing a lot less excess avoirdupois. Six-three or -four, the detective estimated. About two-ten, two-twenty. Someone who could manhandle an attacker, middle-aged or not. It hadn’t saved him, just as age hadn’t protected the unlucky housekeeper. Moody decided Mrs. Kettrick was damn lucky she’d been in Georgia this past Tuesday. Otherwise this room would be serving as morgue for three bodies instead of two.

  He didn’t linger. The coroner’s report would tell him everything u
seful.

  What caught his interest was the wall behind the body. Bright art lights illuminated every square inch of it. Something had been displayed there quite recently. Now there was nothing except four chromed bolts from which hung jagged shards of shattered plexan.

  At the base of the wall was a pile of debris composed of more transparent fragments mixed with broken bits of wood and colored sand. Kneeling, Moody picked up a handful and let the brightly dyed grains trickle through his fingers. That’s all it was: sand and sawdust. It smelled dry and musty. He glanced up at Nickerson.

  “What the hell’s this stuff?”

  “You mean, what was it.” The younger detective eyed the pile bemusedly. “A big picture of some kind. We checked with the widow.”

  Moody rose. “She had enough sense to tell you what was missing and what wasn’t?”

  “Nope, but she did know where her husband stored the catalog for his collection. Easy enough to access.” He waved at the rest of the room. “There’s nothing else missing, and this isn’t really missing either. Just vandalized.” Moody grunted, studying the pile. “Pulverized is more like it. Y’all said it was a picture. What’s with the sand?”

  “It was a sandpainting.”

  “You mean, a painting on sand?”

  “That’s what I thought.” Nickerson brushed self-consciously at his hair. “The sand itself is colored first, then applied to a background. In this case, a wooden one. Cheap wood at that.”

  “Great. So we’re looking for a homicidal critic.”

  “Doesn’t this look like more than just vandalism to you, Vernon? I mean, whoever busted up this piece of work wanted to make sure nobody could put it back together again.”

  “Okay, so we’re looking for a serious homicidal critic.” The detective shook his head slowly. “Somebody slips in here, murders Kettrick, kills his housekeeper ’cause she’s a witness, takes nothing. All he or she does is waste one piece of primitive art, which if it was as gruesome as the rest of the stuff in here, hardly seems worth the price of a cheap arson job, much less a double murder.”

  Nickerson was nodding. “That’s about what we’ve got. You make anything off that?”

  “Off the top of my head?” Moody responded without hesitation.

  “Off the top of your head.”

  “A nut, but a nut with a purpose.”

  “Why purposeful?”

  “Because he only went after this one item. A total psycho would’ve trashed more than this. Since he only wasted one piece, it stands to reason his purpose in coming here was to do just that. He knew what he wanted to do before he got here, knew what he was after.” Moody studied the pile of debris thoughtfully. “Whoever did this took their time making sure. Not much of a motive to work with.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Nickerson.

  “Mrs. Kettrick have anything to say about sandpainting phobics?”

  Nickerson shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense to her either.” He was staring at the body, watching forensics work.

  Moody knew that the younger detective didn’t like psycho cases. Drug deals were more to his liking. They made sense. Buyers and sellers and users, everything fitted together nice and neat. Something like this, that made less sense the longer you looked at it, unsettled him. That meant he would leave all the legwork to Moody, which suited the senior detective just fine. Psycho cases didn’t bother him. Logic was always present. It was just twisted.

  Nickerson was talking again. “The missus said she hardly ever came in here. She didn’t care much for this stuff. It was her husband’s passion. He’d show her a new piece when he had it delivered and she’d smile and forget about it. Not her style.”

  “Something we can all agree on.” Moody gestured at the empty wall. “So she couldn’t tell us anything about this one?”

  “Just that it was a big picture composed of lots of smaller pictures; very organized, very geometric.”

  “Swell. Our motive, and we don’t even know what it looked like. All this stuff must be insured.”

  “Already checked with the local rep for the company. Everything’s heavily insured, all right, but they couldn’t find Kettrick’s file when we asked about it. Seems it’s been wiped recently. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Moody’s eyebrows lifted. “Definitely not a nut,” he asserted slowly. “Nuts don’t know how to penetrate insurance company security.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t kill people who own art they don’t like, either.” Nickerson smiled. “Fortunately, we do know what the damn thing looked like.”

  The detective regarded his colleague in surprise. “How?”

  “Kettrick had an old-fashioned still camera. You remember those; the kind that printed two-D images on paper? He kept his own little file locked away, a snapshot of everything.” He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small square of hard paper.

  Moody examined the image. It showed a painting some six feet square composed of brightly colored, intricately rendered symbols and designs. Some resembled highly stylized human beings, others looked like plants; much of it was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It was tremendously complicated and as tightly organized as if it had been laid out with a cadcam program. Colored sand on wood. Aesthetically it meant nothing to Moody, whose idea of fine art was a well-crafted beer can, but he could appreciate the amount of time and effort that had gone into the composition.

  It certainly didn’t look like anything worth killing two people over. But after twenty years as a cop Moody hadn’t found anything that was.

  “Sandpainting, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Nickerson nudged the photo. “There’s a little descriptive info on the back. Got it out of Kettrick’s catalog. It isn’t much.”

  Moody turned the photo over. His eyes moved, not his lips. “Navaho, it says. Out West somewhere, aren’t they?”

  Nickerson shrugged. “Thought you’d want to be the one to dig into it.” In other words, Moody mused, the younger man saw no vid opportunities here and was washing his hands of the whole business unless some arose.

  “Phone?”

  Nickerson jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back up the hall.”

  Moody nodded once and turned to leave, pausing only long enough to study the corpse of the unfortunate housekeeper. She lay face-down near the entrance, dropped by the killer as she’d tried to flee. The detective’s expression hardened. He had no sympathy or understanding for those responsible for the deaths of innocent people whose sole crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It took a real first-class cold-blooded bastard to shoot an old lady in the back. If she had been shot.

  Lean close and the holes above her heart were clearly visible. Two of them, three inches apart. No sign of bleeding, just as Welles had said. Death by trauma induced by some kind of invasive presence. But what kind of presence if not metal slugs?

  Coroner would let him know. He couldn’t do everybody’s job.

  He found the phone, unclipped his spinner from his belt and jacked in. Department mollyserve found the Museum of the American Indian in New York, the Museum of the Southwest in Albuquerque, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Museum of, Museum of…

  He settled on the Museum of Native American Art in Fort Worth, waited for clearance, then entered his queries. Two minutes later replies began a slow scroll on his screen. When he found what he was looking for, he thumbed Re

  cord, waited another two minutes, then hung up.

  The department was beginning to pull out. Forensic techs had scoured every room in the house for hair, dandruff, fingerprints, loose skin, blood, sweat, tears, and anything else that might help them eventually identify the murderer. Moody found Nickerson waiting to use the john.

  “Arizona,” he told the younger man. “Also parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. That’s where you find sandpainting Navahos.”

  Nickerson tried to sound interested. “So what does that give us, Vernon? A Navaho with a grudge?”


  “We don’t know that it was a Navaho. We just know that this involves a piece of Navaho art.”

  More often than most people think, the obvious pans out in police work. From starting with nothing, they went to having a prime suspect in no time at all, as soon as they began taking depositions from Kettrick’s office staff. Someone who consistently bypassed Security to telephone Kettrick and then broke into his office to confront him directly made a pretty good suspect in Moody’s eyes. The fact that several eyewitnesses described him as unmistakably Amerindian in appearance was conclusive as far as the department was concerned. It did not require a great leap of faith to assume for the purposes of additional investigation that he might well be Navaho.

  They acquired a motive simultaneously with their suspect, because Kettrick’s secretary had heard the two men arguing about the sandpainting. What the detective still didn’t understand was what about it was worth killing for.

  The first thing Moody did on returning to his desk was make several copies of the precious photograph. A couple went into the evidence vault beneath police headquarters, incongruous among tagged heavy weapons and ampules of self-injecting pharmacuties. A third he shoved under the mattress of his bed when he got home that night. Only then did he allow himself to relax.

  As far as the murder suspect was concerned, no copies of the sandpainting existed. He’d wiped the insurance company’s file and destroyed the original. With luck it might make him overconfident.

  What didn’t make any sense to Moody and what puzzled him all through the night was why a murderer would go to elaborate lengths to conceal a painting’s identity rather than his own.

  CHAPTER 3

  By the following morning a preliminary determination had been rendered as to the cause of death in the Kettrick case. Nancy Welles told him about it before he had a chance to read it for himself.

  They were in the commissary and she spotted him at one of the vending machines.

  “Hi, Nance.”

  “Vernon. They think they found out how Kettrick and his housekeeper died. But not what caused it.” Moody waited while she drew coffee from a nearby machine.