Carnival of Shadows (5 page)

3

“Agent Travis?”

Travis looked up.

“You all right, sir?” Rourke asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Got the body here,” Rourke said. “Ready for your examination.”

“Absolutely,” Travis replied, taking the gloves that Farley offered him.

Travis removed his jacket, pulled on the gloves, and stood aside as Farley opened the drawer.

It took the three of them to lift the dead man onto a trolley, and then Farley wheeled him to the mortician’s slab. Again, it took three of them to transfer him from the trolley.

“Two hundred and forty-five pounds,” Farley said. “Give or take. He’s six foot one inches in height, he takes a size twelve shoe, and from the look of him, he’s either a gangster or a soldier.”

Farley stripped back the sheet, and the dead man was revealed in all his damaged splendor. The right side of his body—mainly focused on his shoulder, his hip, and his upper thigh—were badly discolored.

“Laking here,” Travis said.

“Precisely, and a considerable amount of it. As far as I can gather, the weapon of choice entered at the base of the skull.” Farley lifted the dead man’s head and turned it toward Travis. The hair was cut short in back, and the entry wound—now black and rigid—was little more than an inch wide.

“Whatever kind of blade was used, it went right up through the cerebellum into the temporal lobe. Two or three more inches and the tip of the blade would have touched the internal roof of the skull. It wouldn’t have taken a great deal of force. Could have been done by anyone with a modicum of strength.”

“And the lapse of time between death and discovery?”

“I’d say twelve to twenty-four hours. I’d like to be more specific, but that’s tough. As I said, there is a considerable amount of laking, so he was dead and laid on his back for a good number of hours before he was moved.”

“And the scars and the bullet holes are the reason for your assumption that he was a gangster or a soldier?” Travis asked.

“From what I can see, he has been through the mill, physically speaking. He appears to have been shot three times, once in the right shoulder, once in the right thigh, another time a through-and-through on the left side of his stomach. The oldest is the right thigh; the newest is the shoulder. Those wounds go back ten, maybe fifteen years. There are indications of defensive knife wounds to the hands, a stab wound in the lower back that narrowly missed his spine, a scar on the upper-right side of his head above the ear that would correspond to a blunt trauma injury, perhaps a tire level, a hammer even, and a host of other minor injury indications that really put him in a class of his own.”

Travis seemed to disconnect then, seemed to enter a world of his own. Farley and Rourke just stepped back and watched him as he pored over the body, literally inch by inch. He lifted the dead man’s right hand and turned it over. He inspected the wrist, the forearms, the shoulders, beneath the arms, the back of the neck. He felt along the hairline, behind the ears, along the collarbone, and across the chest. Then he inspected the lower half of the man’s body, getting Farley to help him turn the body over, looking every place possible for anything that would assist in identifying the man. He inspected every scar, every mark, every blemish.

“This means something,” Travis finally said, indicating the back of the man’s right knee.

Both Farley and Rourke came forward, and there they saw what Travis was speaking of.

It was a tattoo, no doubt about, but so small, so insignificant, that it could have been very easily overlooked. The simple fact that the tattoo was nothing but a series of small dots also meant that it could have been taken as a scattering of minor skin blemishes, perhaps lentigines or freckles.

“What the hell is that?” Rourke asked.

“Uncertain,” Travis said, “but it looks like a reversed question mark.”

Travis took his notebook from his pocket and carefully drew a precisely scaled diagram of the mark.

Travis set the diagram aside and continued to inspect the body. It was between the toes that he found further tattooed dots—seven in all, one dot at a time, three on one foot, four on the other.

He made a note of this in his book and then asked Farley to assist him in turning the body faceup again.

“So this bruising,” Travis said. “This appears more post- than premortem…”

“Hard to tell, yes,” Farley said, “but I’d go with post as well. If it is post, then at this stage we can assume that he was killed by the insertion of the blade into the brain, and then he was put under the carousel. The fact that he was under the carousel platform and on his left side indicates that the bruising on the right side came from being hit by the platform as he lay there. Truth is, we don’t know. All I can say is that from the extent of the laking, he was dead for a good while before he was found.”

Travis turned to Rourke. “The Brady woman reported seeing him beneath the carousel and got them to stop it, right?”

“Exactly,” Rourke said.

“And a couple of people from the carnival dragged him out.”

“Just like I said.”

“Okay,” Travis replied, closing his notebook. “That confirms that he could not have been on the carousel before he died, as was reported by some. That’s all for the body right now, Mr. Farley. Let’s get him back in the drawer.”

Once the body was returned, Travis asked for the man’s clothes and personal possessions. Again, with the same fastidiousness with which he had inspected the body, he pored over every inch of the man’s effects. He asked Farley for several sheets of paper and drew exact outlines of both the left and right shoes.

“You have fingerprinting ink and a roller?” he asked Farley.

“I do, yes,” Farley said, and handed them over.

Using the roller, Travis applied a thin layer of ink to the sole of each shoe and made an impression of them on two more sheets of paper. He then cleaned off the soles and returned the shoes to the bag from which they’d come.

Travis washed his hands thoroughly, smelled them, and washed them again without soap. Once satisfied that his hands carried no discernible odor, he went back to the dead man’s clothes, holding them merely an inch from his face, his eyes closed, attempting to determine anything telling. He inhaled, but as he exhaled, he turned his face away so as not to taint any existing aroma with that of his own breath.

“Cheap fragrance,” Travis said, his eyes still closed. “Coffee, oil, tobacco, sweat.”

Travis spent more time looking at the blood patterns on the back of the man’s shirt collar and the collar of the jacket. He asked for a magnifying glass, went through every pocket, turning it inside out and brushing whatever lint and fragments he found within onto a sheet of white paper and then viewing them closely. Every once in a while, he paused to make further notes in his book.

Though he seemed unaware of Rourke or Farley, he nevertheless glanced up at them and smiled knowingly.

“You’ve done this before, then?” Rourke said.

“No, Sheriff… First time for everything though, eh?”

Rourke looked at Farley. Farley just stood there, seemingly fascinated by the entire process.

Once Travis was done with the man’s clothes, he folded them again neatly and returned them to their respective bags.

“We’re done for the moment,” he told Rourke. “There are no manufacturers’ labels on his clothes or shoes; he walks heavier on the right than the left; he had low blood pressure; he was a heavy smoker, obsessively chewed his fingernails; low-protein diet, signs of diabetes, drank far too much alcohol for his own good—probably for anyone else’s as well—and when it came to crooners, he erred more toward Bing Crosby than Dean Martin.”

Rourke shook his head, unsure of whether Travis’s final comment was actually a joke or not. “I don’t know what to make of you.”

Travis smiled wryly. “You don’t have to make anything of me, Sheriff Rourke.”

Farley gathered up the paper bags and walked them back to the lockup.

“I’d like to go to my hotel now,” Travis said. “I want to take a shower, and then I want to head out to the carnival and begin questioning the personnel.”

“Very good,” Rourke said.

“How long do I gotta keep your friend here?” Farley said.

“A while yet,” Travis said. “We have to identify him before anything further can happen with the body. And I’ll need a copy of your autopsy report.”

“No problem. I got one ready for you.”

Farley gave Travis the report. Travis thanked him for his assistance, and then he and Rourke made their farewells and returned to the cars outside the building.

“Got you the best room the McCaffrey has,” Rourke said. “It ain’t the Plaza, but it should suffice.”

“I am sure it’ll be just fine,” Travis said.

The McCaffrey Hotel certainly wasn’t the Plaza. The young man who greeted Travis and Rourke at the desk was Danny McCaffrey, the brother of Rourke’s deputy, Lester.

“Honored to have you here, sir,” Danny told Travis. “And I hope you’ll be comfortable.” He insisted on taking both Travis’s overnight bag and his portable typewriter.

Rourke asked how long Travis would need.

“Forty-five minutes,” Travis said.

“I’ll be back in forty-five minutes precisely, then.”

Michael Travis and Danny McCaffrey made their way upstairs, taking a left along the landing toward the front of the building, and here—with seeming pride—McCaffrey showed Travis a room no more than eleven by fifteen, a single bed against the right-hand wall, a small desk and chair beneath the window, a tired armchair, a floor lamp standing sentry beside it, and a threadbare rug on the floor.

In that moment, Travis was reminded of the first time he had seen his given room in Esther Faulkner’s house.

He felt a twinge of something, something deep, something unidentifiable, and he pushed it aside. Once again, further memories floated up from the shadows of his past.

“This will do just fine,” Travis said, appreciating that he had no choice in where he stayed. To ask of the other hotel would be dismissive of the McCaffreys’ hospitality.

“Sorry to say that none of the rooms have their own bathrooms, so you’ll have to use the one down the hall. Third door on the right.”

“No problem at all,” Travis said.

“Breakfast you can have here in the morning,” Danny McCaffrey explained. “Dinner in the evening too, and we own a small diner in town, so you can take your lunch there if you wish. You’ll find my sister down there. Her name is Laura. She knows you’re expected.”

“That’s very good of you,” Travis said.

“More than welcome,” McCaffrey said. “Anything else you need, just holler.”

“Much appreciated, Mr. McCaffrey.”

“Please call me Danny,” he said.

“Danny it is,” Travis replied.

Danny left the room, closing the door gently behind him.

Travis laid out a clean shirt and underwear. He went down the hall, found the bathroom, and got undressed.

The first minute beneath the shower was bracingly cold, and then he increased the flow of hot water to a comfortable level and washed quickly.

He dried himself, redressed in his suit trousers and shirt, bundling his underwear into the towel and checking that the hallway was empty before he hurried back to his room. Once behind the door, he changed into his clean clothes, dried and combed his hair, and unpacked the remainder of his things. He set his typewriter on the small desk with a towel folded beneath it to reduce the noise. He put Farley’s autopsy report next to the typewriter. He glanced over his extensive notes, made another copy of the diagram from the back of the dead man’s knee. It was very definitely akin to a reversed question mark. He did not pause to consider it further. He would find the significance of it, but everything in its own time. Now he had to begin the process of questioning all those who worked at the carnival.

Travis checked that he had everything he needed—his notebook, his pens, his camera, the shoe outlines and prints, a photo of the victim—and then he locked the door and went on down to the lobby.

“Danny, how many keys are there to each room?” Travis asked.

“Well, we have three or four as a general rule. Guests are pretty forgetful when it comes to keys.”

“Okay, if you could take any copy you have of my room key and put it in the safe, that would be appreciated.”

Danny frowned. “The safe?”

“You don’t have a safe?”

“No, sir. No safe.”

“Okay, well, put them in a lockable desk drawer or something, somewhere secure, and don’t give them to anyone but me, understand? And there will be no need to clean the room on a daily basis. I will attend to that. You can change the bedclothes on the usual schedule, but forewarn me so I can be there when it’s being done.”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

Travis glanced at his watch. Rourke had another handful of minutes before he’d be late.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Travis?” Danny McCaffrey said, interrupting Travis’s thoughts. “A cup of coffee while you wait for Chas, perhaps?”

“No, thank you,” he replied. “I’m good.”

Travis turned back to the window. The street was empty of people, strangely so, and it reminded him of another day, another town, another empty street. That had been an important day, and though he tried not to think of it with pride, he could not help but think of it with a sense of accomplishment. Things had changed that day, and—as such—its importance could not be underestimated.