Cerebral Lights
By
Thursday. Jan 12, 12:07 AM
Chapter five: the puzzle pieces not fitting.

As Thomas re-entered his “guest room,” the party had departed and the lights had been switched off. It was a ploy that had been dreamed up by Joe and Thomas some years ago, and was used to great effect. The mortician needed to know if there had been a positive identification: paperwork needed to be updated and people would need to be informed. But to have the poor relative wait in there room while the doctor steps back in again and asks “well? Was it her? Want another look? Maybe from the other side this time?” went against the moral fibers of the two men. If the identification was positive, the Joe would turn out the lights when they left. If it was negative, then he would leave them on. Simple but successful. Thomas was glad to see darkness when he entered. He did, of course, feel most terribly upset for the poor Mr. Gilbert, but he always preferred that the body be of the person they were looking for. Better to get it over with, and better that somebody missing a loved one does not go through the anguish of being brought to the morgue to look at the body of a stranger for no reason. Going back into the morgue, he began his preparations for autopsy.

The car ride from the hospital to the Gilbert residence was a somber one. While Pedro and Joe were silent, Charles sat, again in the back seat, sobbing and clutching his head tightly between his hands. When they pulled up to the house, Joe noticed Charles looking up in terror.

“We can take you somewhere else if you would prefer,” Joe told him. “Anywhere you want to go, we can take you.”

Charles did not reply, instead pulling at the door handle in a vain attempt to escape the police vehicle. Although unmarked, it still had the child/criminal safety locks in the rear, and Pedro had to rapidly exit the car to open the door for his passenger. Walking with him, again on both sides of him as though he were the condemned man being led to execution, Charles almost lost his footing twice and had to be steadied by the kind hands of the two police officers. As they entered the house, going through the cluttered porch on their way in, Pedro went with Charles to the living room while Joe proceeded into the kitchen to make coffee for the boys.

Returning five minutes later – and after struggling in vain to find the sugar – he brought in three mugs of black coffee and a carton of half and half, precariously grasped between his elbow and side.

Charles looked up at him and then rapidly his eyes fell toward the floor. “Susan took cream,” he said. “I always hated the stuff.” Setting the offensive cream on the coffee table, Joe handed out the coffees to their intended recipients. He already knew that Pedro took cream, and had already poured some into one of the mugs. Going to hand a black coffee to Charles, he saw that Charles was again head-in-hands. Joe placed the drink on the table.

“You know?” said Charles, “I think I’ll take that ‘something stronger’ now. Is that ok?”

“That’s fine,” responded Joe. “We do have a couple of questions for you today, but nothing too strenuous.”

“Okay,” Charles said. “Would you want to come with me to the kitchen?”

“Sure.”

As Charles walked, Pedro and Joe followed. The kitchen was at the end of a corridor, and was small inside with a view of the rear garden. As Charles opened the cabinet to reveal an assortment of hard liquors, the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get that,” said Charles. “You wait here if you want.”

As Charles walked toward the door, closing it behind him as he entered the porch, Joe and Pedro conducted a whispered huddle. Just as they reached the conclusion that they could probably leave Charles alone pretty soon, the widowed man re-entered the room holding a package delivered by FedEx. As the detectives watched, he opened the container and pulled out a battered brown leather wallet.

“Strange,” said Charles. “I lost this about a week ago: someone must have gotten my address from the driving license and returned it. They took the money, of course.”

“How much did you have in there?” asked Pedro.

“Not much, about 30 dollars. Here,” he said, passing the wallet to Joe. “This is a photo of Susan, I took it on our honeymoon two years ago. Do you want to use it?”

“Thank you, but do you have anything more recent?”

“Of course,” Charles said. “I’ll look for one.”

As Charles went to search for a more updated image of his late wife, Joe took the time to look at the photograph in the wallet. Taken against a beach background, she beamed into the lens, winking with a large cocktail in her hand. The photo, slightly aged, was eerily blurred, giving Susan a ghost like appearance.

“I’ve never taken it out of the wallet,” said Charles, standing in the doorway with a photo album in his hand. “That was the thing I wanted back. Credit cards and driver’s license can be replaced, you know?”

“Yes,” said Joe, folding the wallet and handing it back to Charles.

Taking a 6×4 studio portrait from Charles’ outstretched hand, Joe thanked him and promised its return. While this picture was more professionally done, its subject was not the carefree Susan of the photograph in the wallet: sitting in a pensive pose she smiled, but was not apparently happy. Her eyes were dulled and tired.

“Just a couple of things before we go,” said Joe. “When did you last see your wife?”

“Yesterday morning I guess, when she left for work.”

“When did you first notice that she had disappeared?”

“This morning. I went to the sports bar last night before she came home. When I got in I was a little… well, a lot drunk, so I slept on the sofa. If I go to bed drunk I wake her up. When I woke up at around 10 this morning, I saw her car still in the driveway, but she wasn’t here. That’s when I turned on the television and saw the news reports… and, well, then I called you.”

“I just have one more question for today,” said Joe, anxious not to put too much pressure onto the rapidly deteriorating Mr. Gilbert. “Where did Susan work?”

“Anderson and Grant,” came the reply. “They have an office in Boston.”

“Thank you,” said an appreciative Joe. “If it’s okay with you, then Pedro and I are going to go and start working this out.”

“That’s fine,” said Charles, still ashen faced and looking very tired. “I guess I’d better start calling people.”

“Sure,” replied Joe, passing a card to Charles. “If you need to call me at any time at all, this is my cell number. Otherwise we will probably come around tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Charles, walking with the detectives toward the door. “Oh,” he added. “Catch the bastard, won’t you?”

“I won’t rest until I do,” said Joe. “You have my word on that.”

Back in the precinct, Gerald Lincoln from the crime scene investigation team was awaiting the detectives in C-12, a brightly lit room which was fairly small in size but containing all of the usual fixtures. White boards covered three of the walls, a telephone and a PC sat on the desk, with the rest of the room filled with blank tables and four chairs. Gerald sat with his hands locked together on the table, his unseasonably warm jacket folded on the floor beside him. Both of the men had met him before, and had both found him to be entirely professional but at the same time wholly unfriendly in his approach. In his late 40s, with 20 years of experience in the field, Gerald was unparalleled in his ability to decipher a crime scene and to find evidence in minutes where it would take a team of four hours.

“Well the blood doesn’t tell us much,” he began, skipping the pleasantries. “Initial testing shows us that it is all from the victim: blood type O Negative it is, very rare and universal. I hope she donated.”
“Anything else?” asked Joe.

“Rhe knife that your tramp had was covered in the victim’s blood, so we can take it as read that it was our murder weapon.”

“Any fingerprints?” asked Pedro.

“Plenty,” came the reply. “All from the tramp.”

“Wilmont. He’s called Wilmont,” Joe interrupted.

“Right… Wilmont,” said Gerald scornfully. “Well, unless you are sure that Wilmont was the murderer, then you can assume that the blade was either wiped or the assailant wore gloves. There were a few threads of a woolen material on the handle: that could have been from gloves.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“There is something interesting,” Gerald said, putting his hands behind his head and crossing his legs. “There are two trees that stand in parallel on either side of the path, about 20 yards from where the body was found. In each are small cuts in the wood around the base of the trunk.”

“What could have made them?” asked Joe.

“It looks to me as though some kind of trip wire was used. There was some blood at the scene, again the victim’s, and there was displaced earth to the right. It appears as though she was tripped, stabbed, and then dragged to the side of the path where she was left.”

“Is the wire still there?”

“All gone. It looks like your murderer set up, waited, killed, and then tidied up after himself.”

“And put the knife at Wilmont’s side,” said Joe, standing and walking over to gaze out of the solitary window that offered a view only of the parking lot below.

“Like I said, Joe,” said Gerald. “That’s if you eliminate Wilmont from your list of suspects. All of the forensic evidence that we have right now points in his direction.”

“Okay,” said Joe abruptly, getting visibly tired of Gerald. “You can go now.”

“Sure,” mumbled Gerald, collecting his jacket and walking to the door. “You know where I am if you need me.”

“Well that was a little harsh!” said Pedro, after Gerald had left and was safely out of earshot. “You really didn’t like him pointing the finger at Wilmont, did you?”

“I just don’t think he did it, Pedro. I know he was there… but where would he get a knife from? What’s his motive?”

“Maybe like Yetman and Brewer thought,” replied Pedro. “Maybe he wanted a home in jail.”

“He didn’t even want a hostel for the night. I’m not buying that as a motive. The park is his home: I wouldn’t live there, but he likes it. By all accounts, the locals keep him in food and clothing. Anyway, I know the voice on my answer machine was distorted, but I don’t think it was Wilmont’s.”

“Where are we with that message?” asked Pedro.

“Last I heard, the captain was trying to get the number of whoever called me from Verizon. I’ll follow up in a minute. But that’s another thing: that call was made while Wilmont was in our custody. I hardly think that if he did it he had an accomplice… do you?”

“Doubtful,” said Pedro. “So if it’s not our Wilmont, then the only suspect we have right now is the husband, right?”

“I guess,” said Joe, standing again and yawning. “But if we can find out who returned his wallet… that might open a few more doors.”

“It could have just been a good Samaritan,” Pedro said. “It can happen.”

“Maybe. I’m going to go and have a cigarette: do you want to call the captain for me and find out about that message?”

“Sure thing.”

When Joe returned 10 minutes later, Pedro was sticking a copy of the studio picture to one of the whiteboards.

“Well?” Joe asked, closing the door behind him.

“Not good news,” replied Pedro, writing “Susan Gilbert” with a thick marker above the photograph. “The call was made on a public telephone in Liberty Square about four miles away from the park. Verizon say that they emptied the change box early this afternoon, so we don’t even have a chance to get a fingerprint from a quarter.”

“Any cameras in the area?”

“Nope, the phone is to the left hand side of a Getty gas station, but the parking lot and the phone are not covered by any cameras. I don’t fancy our chances of witnesses.”

“See if we can get uniform down there anyway. Somebody might have seen something.”

“Will do,” said Pedro, getting on the telephone to summon the troops, leaving the white board to Joe. As Pedro finished his call and turned to Joe, he saw a small list of suspects and a slightly larger list of leads to follow.

“So then,” began Joe. “The only suspects we have right now are Wilmont and Charles. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“And we can pretty much cross Wilmont off the list?”

“I think so,” said Pedro. “It’s always possible that he did it, though.”

“What do we think about Charles?”

“I believe him, but it won’t do any harm to do some digging.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. So then, as for leads, we have some investigation of Charles. What else?”

“There is the answer phone message,” said Pedro. “But I don’t know how we are going to find out anything from it.”

“We still can’t forget it, though. If the murderer, or someone who knows about the murder, has contacted me before, then we can assume that he will most probably try to contact me again.”

“Good point. You’d better get your machine back from the Captain.”

“Remind me to do that, would you? So I was thinking: tomorrow let’s go to her work and ask around there, then go back to the hospital and see if Thomas has anything more to tell us.”

“Are we done for today then?”

“Yeah, I think so. It’s been a long day. Let’s go home and get some rest and maybe we’ll think of something new tomorrow.”

********************************

After Joe had plugged his answer machine back in, he looked around his apartment and decided that – for that evening at least – he did not want to be there. If a murderer knew his telephone number, then he/she presumably also knew where he lived: and that was not a comforting thought. “Maybe Mrs. Abbotsfield wants some company,” he pondered, before grapping a Chinese food menu and running upstairs. If there was one thing that would persuade Mrs. Abbotsfield that she wanted companionship, it was the promise of crab rangoons and a pu pu platter.

As it was, Mrs. Abbotsfield was in need of a friend herself: the Chinese menu was merely a welcome distraction. She had been called a fat whore earlier in the day by a customer who had been in dispute of the payment, and her self-esteem had taken a battering as a result. When Joe had arrived, the drapes had entirely clothed all natural light. She sat in her favorite armchair and was dressed in a long black dress with a matching shawl. Within 15 minutes of his arrival her mood had lifted considerably, and she now eagerly awaited their food.

“Louis or Ella?” she asked, gliding toward the CD player.

“You choose,” replied Joe, his bottle of imported beer resting between his thighs as he lent into the beanbag. He was just happy to be with the one person that he felt the most comfortable with, and although he felt slightly guilty at leaving Wilt alone in his apartment, he was now giving some serious thought to spending the night upstairs.

“Shall we turn to the crossword?” asked Mrs. Abbotsfield, after the delivery man had been and gone.

“Sure,” Joe replied, now moving on to a delightful single malt.

“Ok then,” she started. “One across, ‘your own bearded woman, 1964.’ Two-four-four.”

“My Fair Lady,” Joe responded, after two or three minutes of deliberation.

“Okay,” she continued. “Three across, ‘strange stab in the dark,’ five-six.”

“Not a clue,” said Joe.

“Space Oddity.”

“How?”

“Dark is space, strange is oddity.”

“And the stab?”

“David Bowie: Bowie knife”

“Good one,” replied Joe, now beginning to thoroughly enjoy his evening.

“One each!” she screeched, moving swiftly on. “Five across, GEG question mark, nine-three”

“GEG?”

“Yes, G-E-G,” she spelt, patronizing him in the process.

“Doesn’t a question mark mean an anagram?”

“Usually yes. You mean you haven’t worked this one out yet?”

“Nope, not a clue.”

“Scrambled egg,” came the reply, sending Joe’s head backward and his free fist crashing to the floor.

The remainder of the evening carried itself along in much the same vein, friendly insults passing between the two as frequently as the Scotch. In the end, the question of a stop over was never asked: Joe being woken with a coffee and a smile at 7:30 in the morning.

“You’d better go to work, sweetheart,” she said, stroking his hair. “Do you want to use my shower?”

“No it’s okay,” he replied, gratefully taking the mug of coffee. “I have to change anyway. I’ll go downstairs.”

To Joe’s relief, Wilt seemed to have survived a night alone without too much trouble, and there were no new messages on his answer machine. Taking a leisurely shower and dressing quickly, he set out toward the precinct with vigor in his step and with a head full of ideas.

Pedro was waiting for Joe in C-12 and had already begun some research.

“Did you know that Charles Gilbert is an author?” he asked, before Joe had even had time to sit down.

“Really? Anything I might have read?”

“Self-help books, so probably,” Pedro said with a smirk. “He was quite the best-seller until about 18 months ago.”

“Then what happened?”

“Looks like his sales tailed off. He hasn’t had anything published in the last year.”

“So Susan was the breadwinner?”

“Looks that way. She was with a good firm though: these Anderson and Grant share prices are pretty healthy looking.”

“Are we going there this morning, then?” asked Joe, stretching and yawning.

“I just called them and spoke with her boss: a man named John Maier. He said that he would clear his morning for us.”

“Well haven’t you been busy! Okay then, are you driving?”

Pedro nodded and picked his car keys up from the table, spinning the ring around his index finger in an action that Joe had always found irritating for no particular reason.

As he drove slowly through rush hour traffic, Pedro thought for a while before speaking.

“Do you think we should get a criminal profiler in?”

“Why? So he or she can sit looking busy for two weeks, picking up a fat pay check before telling us that it’s possibly a man aged between 50 and 65 and who might well have something against the victim or women in general? I’d rather not if it’s all the same with you.”

“Just a suggestion, buddy,” said Pedro defensively.

“I’m sorry man, I’m just a bit cranky this morning.”

“No problem,” Pedro was by now used to Joe’s bitchy mood swings and had learned to deal with them in whatever way that the situation deserved. He had thought that his friend’s resignation would be withdrawn with a “sorry, bad hair day,” but that was now looking unlikely. If Joe wanted an apology from Rachel Listberg, then so did Pedro. He was most certainly not looking forward to working with anyone else, nor was he happy to see his proud partner so publicly humbled.

After arriving at Anderson and Grant, a company which occupies a large glass fronted building within the downtown Boston area, they were seated in the reception area until John could be located. When he arrived to greet them, he came immaculately dressed and flashed them both a winning smile as he shook their hands.

“My office is on the fifth floor,” he told the officers as they waited for the elevator. “Susan’s desk was on the third.”

The ride toward the fifth was interrupted only by nervous whistling from John and a constant tapping of the feet from Pedro who disliked traveling in anything that moved him upward at any velocity greater than walking speed. As the elevator passed the third floor, Joe and Pedro both made a mental note to visit Susan’s office after they had spoken to John. Walking along the corridor toward John’s office, they were alert to the whispers that followed them. Bad news obviously traveled fast in this office, and the sense of unease was palpable. As they entered the office, they were shown to two seats that had been set out for them opposite to the large mahogany desk. Declining John’s offer of coffee, but allowing him to leave while he secured himself a cup, the three men waited patiently for the others to speak. Breaking the deadlock, John began by asking the detectives to pass his condolences onto Charles.

“She was a good worker,” he told them. “I never had any trouble from her at all.”

“Were you aware of any personal problems?” asked Joe.

“None,” John replied. “They always seemed to me to be the perfect couple. My wife, Maureen, and I have dined with them on a number of occasions. Our relationship was purely professional, but we were always able to talk about things if there was anything bothering either of us. She was telling me just yesterday that she was planning on applying for a job in New York. The last time I spoke to her was to wish her luck. It’s so very sad.”

“Was she planning on moving there if she got the job?” inquired Pedro.

“Yes, with Charlie. She said that the move would do them both good.”

“I understand that you live close to the Liberty Square Park?” posed Joe.

“That’s right. We moved there about six years ago after the birth of our son James,” John answered, directing the detectives toward the photograph on the wall. “The views are wonderful and the park is safe to play in… or so we thought, anyway.”

“Do you know anyone who may have something against Susan? May have wanted her dead?”

“No one. She was liked by everyone here.”

With feelings of disappointment, the detectives moved to ask John if they could be allowed to inspect Susan’s working area. After being told that nothing had been touched, they rejected the offer of being walked personally to the third floor, setting out to find the level themselves.

“Thank you for your time,” Pedro said. “If you think of anything that you feel could be useful, please call us.”

“Of course,” John replied. “I wish you both best of luck.”

As they took the stairwell – at the insistence of Pedro – to the third floor, they discussed their findings. Both had found John Maier to be a likeable, if slightly imperious, man, although Joe admitted that his opinion may have been clouded slightly by his fondness for a man who is aware of what it is to coordinate his clothing. Arriving through the double doors to the office which housed Susan’s cubicle, they were struck by the difference in the two floors. While the fifth had been serene and proficient, the third was obviously the area in which the work was done. Jeans and tee shirts were the uniform here; local radio stations the soundtrack. After being directed to the corner cube – which allowed the lucky occupier the only view of a window in the office – by a tearful colleague, they began the delicate process of picking through the personal effects of the murdered woman.

As Joe made an inspection of the desk drawers, Pedro leaned over the fabricated wall of the cubicle to address the neighbor.

“Excuse me,” he asked. “Is there any chance that we could get access to her computer system?”

“I should think that that would be okay,” came the reply. “You’ll have to ask John for the password though. He has all of them in a file in his office.”

A quick call from the helpful Carol resulted in John’s appearance with the file in his hand.

“Her logon ID is sgilbert,” he told Pedro. “Her password is Maine1.”

Logging onto the system, Pedro began his examination. Joe took a back seat on these matters, leaving anything technical to his more proficient partner.

“That’s strange” Pedro said.

“What is?”

“This account was last accessed this morning at 7:30.”

“Does anyone else have access to this system?” Joe asked, turning to the ever-watchful John.

“No,” he said. “I am the only person who has the passwords.”

“Did you access the system this morning?”

“No. I have no need to.”

“So then,” said Joe, turning back to address his partner. “Seems as though someone else who knows her password accessed the system.” Turning back toward John, he posed another question. “Do you have remote access on these systems through the Internet?”

“Yes,” came the reply. “If someone knew her password, then they could gain access through our webpage.”

“Interesting,” said Joe.

As Pedro continued to play on the system, Joe resumed his search through the desk drawers.

“Here’s another thing,” Pedro said. “Her mailbox is totally empty except for this one new message.”

“Who is the new message from?” asked Joe, leaning over Pedro’s shoulder to get a look for himself.

“Shirley Abbotsfield.”

Jeremy Crossland

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