The Unquiet Dead (3 page)

On the floor in front of the chair lay a 9-millimeter pistol, pointed away at the windows.

“Uh, sir…”

“I see it.”

“What's it still doing here? Has it been printed?”

“There are only Drayton's prints on the gun. It isn't loaded. The forensic team was asked to leave the room once it had finished, so we could take a look.”

Rachel knelt down for a closer look. She knew it was a 9-millimeter, but the make was unfamiliar. There was a black star inside the circle on the plastic grip. Something else caught her eye on the floor not far from the gun. It was a resinous puddle the size of a quarter plate. She scraped it lightly, her nails raising a white line on the puddle as the flaky residue came off beneath her fingertips.

“Candle wax,” she breathed. She rose to her feet, perplexed. “Sir.”

She described a semicircle with her index finger.

“There's several of them.”

She counted the puddles under her breath.

“Someone's tried the door as well.”

He showed her the scratch marks around the keyhole.

“But they couldn't get in or they would have cleaned this mess up?” Rachel hazarded. “What does any of it mean? Drayton didn't die here. The gun hasn't been fired, his injuries were consistent with a fall.” She looked around.

“There aren't any candles in the study, sir.”

“Rachel.”

Khattak was at the desk, trying the drawers. One was locked.

“Maybe he kept the gun there.”

Her guess proved correct. The wide drawer yielded to Khattak's key. Inside, a kerchief was folded to one side, boxes of ammunition were stacked on the other.

“What did Drayton do?” she asked slowly. There was no permit in the drawer. It didn't make sense that a retired man in his sixties would need a small army's worth of firepower.

“He was a businessman.”

“What kind of business, drugs?”

Khattak shrugged, not meeting her eyes.

That was Rachel's first clue. Khattak was never evasive with her. When he withheld information, he told her the reason for withholding it. His leadership at CPS had been characterized by a spirit of inclusion. He wore his authority more lightly than any other police officer Rachel had ever worked with. He was certainly nothing like the old bull Don Getty, thirty-five years in the police service, the last fifteen as superintendent, and God help you if you got under his skin or in his way. As Rachel, being his daughter, was prone to do.

Khattak was the polar opposite of Don Getty's bluster. Urbane, soft-spoken, respectful, decisive. The only thing he had in common with her Da was his insight into human behavior. And he'd been candid about his shortcomings as well, something Don Getty could never be. With the great Don Getty, one didn't participate or contribute ideas. One merely bowed and scraped like the rest of his sycophants.
Yes, Chief. No, Chief. Of course you have it right, Chief.

Khattak allowed her to tell him when he got it wrong. He
asked
her to tell him. Just as he had told her to do during their first case in Waverley, when she'd thrown his affair with Laine Stoicheva in his face, using the well-known sexual harassment claim Laine had brought against him like a machine-gun attack. His composure hadn't altered. He'd taken her aside and in simple, blunt phrases told her the truth about Laine.

There'd been no need to share the truth with Rachel: she was no threat to him. Rachel had fallen as far as she could go before Khattak had brought her into CPS. She'd thought it a consolation prize of sorts, won for her by her father's influence when no one else was prepared to take her on.

But Don Getty had had nothing to do with it. Esa Khattak had asked for her. He had chosen her specially.

We're not just two birds wounded by the same stone, Rachel. Your evaluations were phenomenal.

They had been. It was the claim she had brought against her former boss, Inspector MacInerney, that had seen her fall as swiftly as she had risen. The claim that had died for lack of evidence when his other victims had stayed quiet to salvage their careers.

And just like that, she was a pariah in the service.

You know what it's like to be judged, Rachel. You know in your bones what it's like to shatter the truth against a wall of disbelief.

Khattak had been cleared of all charges brought by his former partner, Laine Stoicheva. He hadn't gone into details, Rachel hadn't asked. It was enough to know they had this in common. His confidence earned her trust. She didn't always agree with him, but she'd learned to respect him. She didn't want to take a step back.

His catlike eyes were watching her. She could tell he knew what she was thinking.

“What's up then, sir? You know more about this than you're telling me.”

Blunt as ever. Direct and to the point. It was the thing about her she knew Khattak valued most. And she couldn't change her spots if she tried.

The handsome face that looked back at her in the dimmed light of the study was troubled. And not about the case, she thought, or noncase, as it were. It was something deeper. His fingers were working the beads again.

“Tell me what you see,” he said.

She nodded, trying to ignore the stale, slightly smoky scent in the room. This was often how they began.

“No photograph of Drayton yet, but here we are in a house that looks and feels expensive, probably about right for a retired businessman. It's a little large for a man on his own, at least four bedrooms, I'm guessing. It's well kept, somewhat impersonal, suggesting he might have had a touch of OCD and maybe not much personality. There's no art anywhere on this floor, just a map above the desk. He keeps a gun in a locked drawer with plenty of ammo, but on the night of his death the gun is found on the floor in this room, although it hasn't been fired. And there's several puddles of what looks like candle wax on the floor without any sign of candles. Maybe they're in the garbage. Maybe he took them with him on his walk and dumped them over the Bluffs.”

She ran over the summary in her mind.

“I haven't seen that make before,” she added. “Nine millimeter is my guess. We'll have to look more thoroughly to see if there's a license anywhere. Has it been identified?”

“Not yet.”

“I admit it's odd, but there's no sign of a struggle here, nothing in the coroner's report to indicate that he was restrained or dragged or pushed over the cliff with unusual force. But, if he was taken by surprise, I don't know that we'd see any evidence of that. He was probably sitting here looking out at his garden before he went for his walk and lost his way. So I ask you again, sir, what's going on?”

Khattak hesitated, then he picked up a set of picture frames that rested on the desk, handing one to Rachel.

“There's Drayton for you. Possibly with his girlfriend. I don't know who this is.”

Primming her lips at the evasion, Rachel studied the first photograph. It had been taken in broad daylight in Drayton's garden. A stocky man with a head of white hair and a square jaw had his arm around a beautiful woman who came to his shoulder. She was petite and curvy. Rachel squinted at it. Maybe not beautiful, with those bloated lips and that hyperinflated chest. She looked like a Barbie doll, her clothes straining over a nipped-in waist and the flare of her hips. Her loosely curled hair was an unlikely shade of platinum blond. It tumbled over her chest in a style suited to a much younger woman. Like Drayton, she wore sunglasses.

The other photo was of two teenage girls in tank tops and shorts. They looked alike with their clever heart-shaped faces, a smattering of freckles, and long, straight, toffee-colored hair. The younger one was smiling at the camera.

“His daughters? An estranged former family?”

Khattak shook his head.

“I haven't answered your question, I know. There's a reason for that. I'd like to see what conclusions you draw without the weight of prior knowledge.”

Weight
was a peculiar choice of word, Rachel thought. Maybe that was the reason that Khattak looked almost haggard. Or spoke to her so formally.

She gave him back the photographs, marched over to the bookshelves she hadn't inspected yet.

“But eventually you'll tell me. It's not exactly a thrill to work in the dark.”

“The light's no better, believe me.”

*   *   *

As Khattak worked through the other drawers, she turned her attention to Drayton's library. Nathan Clare had said he was an educated man. The books reflected that. An educated businessman with a more than passing interest in languages. Italian, Russian, Albanian, German. He also had a complete set of the works of Nathan Clare. Several volumes of essays and at least a dozen novels. All except
Apologia
. The rest of the selection was unremarkable, available at any bookstore display. Some new fiction, some books on health, a little political humor, and a set of gardening books. Plus the classics, with new hardbound covers.

On the last shelf she found a curious assortment of teen fiction interspersed with atlases and books on medieval history. A navy wool jacket hung on a peg beside the shelf. Absently, she checked the pockets.

The outer pockets were empty. The inner pockets held a pen and Drayton's wallet. She went through this. Driver's license, check. Credit cards, check. Gym membership, check. The discount cards of various retail chains. The billfold contained a modest amount of cash and a folded piece of paper. She withdrew it, frowning at what she read.

“Sir. Here's something.”

She handed the paper to Khattak. Its edges were torn at the top and at the bottom, leaving no more than half a page. Even that was more than enough for the single sentence typed at its center.

Is this waiting more desperate than the shooting?

“Something's been torn away. There must have been more to it. It explains the gun, doesn't it? Maybe an indication of suicidal ideation?”

Khattak didn't answer, so Rachel went on.

“Of course, we could ask why he typed it. There's a computer and printer on his desk but suicide notes are usually handwritten, unless there's some kind of manifesto attached.”

“Was there anything else?”

“I haven't been through these cupboards yet.” She pointed to the cabinets at the base of the bookshelves. “His taste in reading is pretty bland. What about the desk?”

“Paperwork, mostly. Bills, mortgage information, insurance policies. I'll read those in a moment. There's a folder here on the museum Nate mentioned. I haven't gone through it yet.”

She went back to work. Most of the cupboards were empty. Some contained computer gadgets, speakers, printer cables, and the like. There were no photo albums, no congratulatory cards on retirement, no evidence of the business Drayton had run. Midway through, though, she found what she was looking for. The central bookcase was anchored to the wall because its cabinet contained a safe. Not a high-tech safe but the standard kind available at Walmart, weighing in at several hundred pounds with a digital lock. To open it, they'd need to call in a team member or unearth the combination among Drayton's papers.

“This is where he should have kept the gun.”

Khattak joined her at the safe, hunching down.

“Perhaps he needed the safe for something more important than the gun.”

“Like what? A will? A fortune in black-market diamonds? The guns that go with that ammo?”

“We need that combination if we're to find out.”

“It might be in his papers. It's probably not anything as obvious as his birth date.”

Khattak was studying the digital display.

“It's five digits.”

“I'll keep looking.”

There was a filing cabinet beside the printer. It was jammed tight, but most of it was old tax returns on a business Drayton had run. A profitable parking lot he had owned downtown. No evidence of drugs or guns or anything else out of the ordinary. Nothing that would necessitate the deadly black weapon on the floor. She yanked the lower drawer forward. It was caught on a file that had slid in over the others. When she pulled it out, the papers inside spilled through her fingers.

“Sir.”

The pages were identical to one she had found in Drayton's wallet. The tops and bottoms torn away, a few chopped-off sentences in the center of each page.

She read through them slowly.

This is a cat-and-mouse game. Now it's your turn to play it.

What was it you told me? You survive or you disappear. Somehow you managed both.

As you took everything from me, you asked if I was afraid.

How could I not be afraid?

Do you hear as we did the starved wolves howling in the night?

Do you feel as if you'd never been alive?

Can you right all the wrongs of the past? Because I tell you that the sky is too high and the ground is too hard.

Something about the words frightened Rachel. Alone each sentence meant nothing. Together they ran like a kind of damaged poetry.

She looked up to find Khattak's face had changed, his weariness shed for animation. The randomness of the words meant something to him.

“This doesn't read like a suicide note, sir. Maybe a confession. And what's missing here? Why are the pages torn?”

He already knew, she could tell.

“He didn't write these himself,” she went on. “Someone was sending them to him. That's what's missing from each page. The salutation and the signature. Someone was threatening him.”

“I don't think these are threats.”

“Then what?”

“Reminders. If someone did send these pages to Drayton, it's because they wanted to remind him of something.”

“And you already know what that something is,” she concluded, exasperated. “I'm not much help to you like this, sir. Wouldn't it be easier on both of us if you just told me what you know?”