What the Fly Saw Page 4

  “Don’t take too long. I’m hungry now that I’m thinking about food.”

  “I should have stayed out a little bit longer and you would have remembered to make dinner.”

  Actually, she was glad to see he was working on something. And that it was important enough to him to write the first draft by hand was a good sign. Even with a signed contract for his memoir about his turbulent years as a newspaper editor, he had spent most of the past six months not writing. But now he had found something he wanted to write about. That was good news.

  McCabe headed upstairs to change. The dog followed on her heels.

  7

  Sunday evening

  7:41 P.M.

  Sarah Novak glanced up from the old-fashioned jigsaw puzzle, dumped out onto the table a couple of hours ago when the book she was trying to read failed to hold her attention.

  “Trying on your new ski outfit?” she asked, taking in her husband’s hooded jacket and matching pants.

  Kevin reached for his gloves. They were on the dining room table from the last time he came in from looking outside. “I’m going to go in and see what’s happening.”

  “Go in where?”

  “The funeral home.”

  “Kevin, you are not going out in this weather.”

  “The snow stopped a while ago. Now, it’s just blowing around in the wind.”

  “And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t be out there driving in it. That’s why they’re telling people to stay home unless they have an emergency.”

  “I have an emergency, Sarah. I’ve got five unattended bodies no one has checked on since Saturday afternoon.”

  “And what do you think they’re going to do? Get up and walk away?”

  “Funny. But seriously, Arthur isn’t going to be in to start work on them until tomorrow morning. When he left on Saturday, I told him not to try to make it in tonight. Someone needs to make sure everything’s all right.”

  “If everything wasn’t all right, the security company would have called.”

  “They would have called if an alarm had gone off. They aren’t monitoring the bodies.”

  “Monitoring them for what?” Sarah said. “They’re dead. What do you expect to happen to them?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I just don’t like to leave them there …

  unattended. Normally, Arthur would be there doing the embalming.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Arthur’s braver than I am to work in a funeral home at night.”

  Kevin smiled. “And even after all these years, you still haven’t gotten over the fact you married a funeral director.”

  Sarah smiled back. “If you’d told me what you did for a living when we met at that first church social … So you’re going to go out in the cold and the snow to keep the bodies at the funeral home company. And you’re going to be able to explain that to a police officer who wants to know why you were out in the first place after you skid into something.”

  “I’m not going to take the car. I’ll take my snowmobile and go through the park.”

  “You really are crazy. You know that?”

  “And you are a good and understanding wife. I’ll be careful.”

  “Just tag me when you get there.”

  “I will.”

  He kissed her cheek.

  When the back door closed behind him, Sarah stared down at the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle until the colors blurred.

  She looked up when her son, Scott, said, “Mom? You okay?”

  “Of course, sweetheart. You need something? How about some milk and cookies?”

  Lanky like his father, she thought with a mother’s pride, and turning into a handsome young man. “I’ll throw in some ice cream,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry. I heard Dad go out. Everything okay?”

  “You know your father. Blizzard or no blizzard, he wanted to go check on the funeral home.”

  “I got a tag from Meg. She said to tell you everything’s okay at Nikki’s house.”

  “And I suppose your sister had some reason for tagging you instead of me.”

  “She thought it would be faster to tag me,” Scott said. “You sure you’re okay? When I came in, you looked … kind of sad or something.”

  “A tiny touch of winter blues,” Sarah said. “Sure I can’t talk you into a snack?”

  “I’m in training, Mom.”

  “I keep forgetting.”

  “I’m going up to my room and listen to some music.”

  “Okay. Try not to blow the roof off the house.”

  She listened to his footsteps as he took the stairs at a run. More training.

  A few minutes later, the interstellar rock music he loved and she found unfathomable shook the house.

  “Scott!” she yelled. “Turn it down.”

  The volume dropped to a muted rumble. She picked up a piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

  * * *

  Seeing his wife’s worried expression, Kevin Novak pasted on a smile he hoped was reassuring. “Everything’s okay here,” he said.

  “Then why weren’t you answering your ORB before?” she asked.

  “A pipe down in the basement was leaking. I was down there trying to do a temporary patch job.”

  “Did you get it fixed?” she asked.

  “For now. But I’m going to hang around and keep an eye on it until Arthur gets here in the morning.”

  “You’re going to spend the night there?”

  “You and Scott will be okay. If the heat goes off, I brought in some wood. You can make a fire in the fireplace.”

  “I’ve already done that,” Sarah said. “I wanted a fire. And now I’m sitting here with my stupid jigsaw puzzle while you’re there. Kevin, I—”

  She paused, her brown eyes wide, the way they were when she was trying not to cry.

  “What?” he said, as if he hadn’t noticed.

  “Nothing. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Sleep well,” he said.

  “You do that, too.”

  “As well as I can on the cot in the basement.”

  “Well, that’s your choice, isn’t it? You want to keep your corpses company.”

  “Sarah—”

  His ORB went blank.

  Not quite the understanding wife, Kevin thought. But he couldn’t blame her. He was pushing her away, and she knew it. After eighteen years of marriage, she knew when something was wrong between them.

  Kevin dropped his ORB onto his desk.

  He stood there, considering how he would occupy the time. A glance around his office landed on a photo of Scott posing beside the elk they bagged when they had joined some friends on a hunting trip to Montana a couple of years ago. Kevin had brought the elk down with his compound bow.

  Bob had been along on that trip. He had preferred a shotgun. They’d had a running debate about the virtues of gun versus bow. Cowboys versus Indians, Bob always joked.

  Kevin walked over to his office closet where he kept his favorite bow.

  8

  Monday, January 20, 2020

  7:49 A.M.

  Monday morning got off to a bad start. McCabe heard the dispatcher’s message on her ORB and took a detour on her way to the station house. She pulled up behind one of the police cruisers on a side street and reached for her protective vest.

  The uniforms monitoring activity in the park across from City Hall were calling for reinforcements. Knowing how thin they were spread, she felt obliged to respond.

  In Albany, political and social action groups commemorated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by rallying their members to protest in the park. A few of the less committed fringe groups had probably taken the day off, but it had been too much to hope that the stalwarts would decide to stay home because there’s been a blizzard over the weekend. This year, with a presidential election looming, tensions ran higher than usual. The right-wing conservatives were waving AMERICA FIRST, SECURE BORDERS signs. Their far-left counterparts had their own signs call
ing for open borders and an end to international conflict. The animal rights people were out, too. McCabe wasn’t sure what new issue had galvanized them.

  So far nothing had happened. But only a section of the park had been cleared of snow and that meant the groups were packed in close together. The uniforms were concerned about the barbs being exchanged by members of two opposing immigration groups. One of the groups was displaying HOWARD MILLER FOR PRESIDENT signs.

  Halfway across the street, McCabe heard a whizzing sound. Smoke bellowed around the demonstrators. Shrieks, coughs, and choking sounds. And then ripples of anger. One of the protestors rushed the cops. Others followed him into the fray.

  McCabe touched the transmitter on her vest. “Dispatch, this is Detective McCabe. Officers need immediate assistance in the park. Smoke bomb tossed into the crowd. We’ve got a brawl.”

  “More uniforms en route, McCabe.”

  Terrific, McCabe thought. I’ll get back in my vehicle and wait for them to arrive. She ran toward the chaos.

  * * *

  “Hey, what happened at the protests in the park?” Baxter asked before McCabe could sit down at her desk. “I caught the last bit of it on my ORB as I was pulling into the parking lot. Unless my ears deceived me, I could have sworn I heard something about a raccoon.”

  “Someone threw a smoke bomb into the crowd. That started a brawl between cops and protestors. And either the smoke bomb or the shouting brought this raccoon out of the bushes.” McCabe opened the drawer of her desk and put her field bag inside. “The raccoon was showing his teeth and acting weird. Someone yelled, ‘Rabid raccoon!’ And we’re all—protestors and cops—yielding soggy ground to this raccoon. A cop tries to stun him, but he doesn’t go down. He darts right at the cop. A couple of other cops fire and kill him. That got this woman in the crowd yelling about police brutality.”

  “Toward a rabid raccoon?”

  “As she told the reporters who’d showed up just in time to cover the story, there was no way of knowing if the raccoon really was rabid. He might have been angry at being awoken. She said we should have waited for animal control and taken him into ‘humane custody.’”

  “‘Humane custody,’” Baxter said. “Well, gee whiz.”

  “Exactly what the uniform who’d almost been bitten said about it.”

  “So the raccoon incident broke up the brawl?”

  “We still had to make some arrests. But when the media arrived, the protestors decided to hold up their signs instead of hitting cops with them. Of course, they still accused us of throwing the smoke bomb.”

  “Sorry I missed the fun. But now you’re here, the lou wants us to have another look at that bar shooting you were working last week. The ADA wants to meet to discuss charging.”

  The video from the scene was up on the wall, and they were going over McCabe’s notes, when Lt. Dole came in to tell them they’d caught a call.

  “Funeral director,” Dole said. “His embalmer found him dead in the basement of the funeral home when he came in this morning.”

  * * *

  “Drive carefully, Detective Baxter,” the Voice said as the vehicle they had been assigned rolled out of its slot in the garage and stopped in front of them.

  “That would be easier if we’d gotten something better than this piece of junk,” Baxter said, eyeing the sedan.

  “It’ll get us where we need to go,” McCabe said. “When the streets are as sloppy as they are today, I’d rather have one of the old cars than be responsible for one of the expensive new ones.”

  “The department has insurance. And we’re less likely to have an accident in a car that has collision avoidance technology.”

  “That would make sense if you didn’t always insist on driving manually.”

  On Central Avenue, a delivery truck had skidded in the slush and set off a chain reaction of fender benders. Baxter drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while two uniforms tried to cope with angry drivers and clear the lanes; finally, he turned on the siren. The uniforms waved the cars to the left and right. Baxter squeezed through and turned onto a side street.

  McCabe didn’t remind her partner they were not on an emergency call. She had been tired of waiting, too.

  When they pulled into the parking lot behind the funeral home, both the medical examiner’s car and the forensics unit van were already there.

  “Looks like Jacoby’s here, too,” Baxter said.

  “Good,” McCabe replied. “Better the PIO than us trying to deal with witty remarks from the media when they hear a funeral director was murdered in his own funeral home.”

  Detective Wayne Jacoby, the public information officer, the spokesperson for the department, met McCabe and Baxter at the back entrance of the funeral home.

  “Picked up the dispatch on my ORB,” he said. “I thought you might need me.”

  “We do,” McCabe said.

  They left him talking to the uniform stationed on guard at the door, to deter curious onlookers, and went inside to see what they had.

  The funeral director’s name was Kevin Novak. His body was in the basement.

  McCabe paused in mid-stride. “Hi, Rachel,” she said to the assistant medical examiner, who was standing beside the body. “He was like this when he was found?”

  “According to the embalmer who found him,” Rachel Malone said. “I’ve been waiting for you before I moved him.”

  “Sorry for the holdup. Fender benders on Central Ave.”

  McCabe squatted down for a better look at the entangled limbs of the funeral director, who had an arrow protruding from his chest, and the human skeleton he was clutching. The skeleton grinned up at them.

  “Who’s his friend?” Baxter asked.

  “The skeleton’s name is ‘Ernie,’” Malone said. “According to the embalmer, Ernie usually stands right here by the table.”

  She pointed to the stand with the broken hook and chain.

  Baxter said, “So the vic pulled our friend Ernie down with him as he was falling?”

  “Looks like,” Malone said. “But that’s up to you guys to figure out.”

  McCabe turned to the Forensic Investigation Unit tech who was heading up the crime scene search. “Jeff, can you walk us through this?”

  “Sure.” He pointed toward the other end of the room where a target was set up. “The vic was down there by the target when he was apparently—lab results pending—shot with this bow.” He indicated the green-and-brown camouflaged bow on the floor not far from the victim’s body.

  “Then what?” Baxter asked. “What did he do after he was shot?”

  Jeff pointed to the blood spatters. “He walked from the target to the sink over there, and then to where he is now. Then he seems to have collapsed, pulling the skeleton down with him as he fell.”

  McCabe said, “Any idea what he did at the sink?”

  “Don’t know yet,” the tech said. “We’ve got residue of something we need to analyze in the sink. He might have poured something out or dropped something down the drain.”

  “So, he’s shot with an arrow and dying and instead of trying to get to his ORB to get help,” McCabe said, “he goes to the sink and pours something out?”

  “We haven’t found his ORB,” the tech said. “But we’ll do another electronics sweep when we go back upstairs. And we aren’t sure how long the residue’s been there. It may not be related to the crime. The vic might have gone to the sink to try to find something to stop the bleeding from his wound. There’s a cloth on the sink with blood on it.”

  “Okay, so we need to know about the residue. And, please, check the drain carefully,” McCabe said.

  “Got it covered,” the tech said.

  “I know you do. Just saying it for the record. What can you tell us about how the perp got in?”

  “No sign of forced entry. We checked with the security company. They say the alarm was turned off using the victim’s code.”

  “What time was the alarm turned off?”<
br />
  “Sunday evening—last night—at eight thirty-six P.M.”

  “Thanks. Are you all set with photos and video of the body?”

  “We’re good. Move him however you like. Let me know if you have anything else you want us to focus on.”

  McCabe turned back to the assistant ME. “Ready to turn him over?”

  “Rigor’s already set in. Let’s do this carefully.”

  “I’ve got Ernie,” Baxter said.

  McCabe studied the arrow sticking out of the vic’s chest. A bubble of blood had congealed in the corner of his mouth and a bit had dribbled down his chin. On his blue-and-white pullover sweater, a spray of blood, as if he had coughed.

  Remembering Baxter’s gag reflex, she glanced in his direction.

  He looked pale, but he said, “I have an uncle who’s a bow hunter. When I was a kid, he took me out with him a couple of times. When you’re shooting a deer, you always aim for the lungs. Brings ’em down fast.”

  Malone glanced up from the scan she was doing of the body. “At a guess, I’d say our vic was probably brought down the same way. Looks like the arrow punctured a lung. Internal bleeding before he drowned in his own blood. A nasty way to go.”

  “Would he have died quickly?” McCabe asked.

  “With that kind of injury, a victim can die in minutes or hours. Or not die at all if he gets help,” Malone said. “Since we know he moved around, I’d said this vic lived at least five to ten minutes. I’m going to get him out of here and back to the morgue. His wife is coming in to identify him.”

  “Who called her?”

  “The embalmer who found him,” Malone said.

  “I wonder if he’ll do the embalming on his boss,” Baxter said.

  “He might have wanted to be cremated,” McCabe replied, still studying the body.

  “Which are you going to have?” Baxter asked.

  “Neither. I don’t intend to die. Rachel, we’ll check with you later about when the autopsy’s scheduled.”

  Malone closed her bag. She arched her back, stretching. “I expect Dr. Singh will want to get this one done quickly. The quirky ones always get press, and it’s better to get out in front of that.”

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll wrap this one up before we get crime buffs taking to their threads to speculate about it,” McCabe said.