Dies Irae Read online

  Sarg put his notepad away. “Can we get you something else?”

  “I’ll drink a glass of water, take some pills, go straight to bed.” He seemed to have forgotten Janet and her chicken soup.

  Drayco said, “Just a couple of other items, Liam. Did Cailan mention a stalker, a guy named Elvis Loomis?”

  “Once. Wondered whether she needed to get a restraining order.”

  “Did Cailan mention some unusual notes she’d received in the mail, ones that contained sheet music?”

  Liam shook his head. “Sounds like something Zabowski would do.”

  Back inside the car, Sarg said, “Gary didn’t lie about one thing. Liam Futino did have it bad for Cailan. Still does.”

  Drayco glanced back at the house. “I’m a little sorry we’ll have to sic the MPD on him.”

  “Yeah, but they can do all the leg work, talk with neighbors, try and verify his shaky alibi. Why is it suspects are always home alone?”

  It was too early in October for the time to have flipped from daylight savings to standard. The dance of light late in the day was definitely changing, with the longer shadows of autumn tripping over newly obscured sidewalks and yards. It was dark enough to need the headlights before five. By the time Sarg’s train pulled in to Fredericksburg, it would be pitch black.

  Sarg turned on Drayco’s satellite radio and flipped around until he found a channel he liked and sat back with a happy sigh.

  Drayco said, “What is it with you and polka?”

  “My grandfather listened to polka when I was a kid. Every time I hear it, I picture Papik and Tati dancing around the living room.” Sarg added, “Besides, it annoys you.”

  Drayco leaned forward to switch the station, but Sarg batted his hand away.

  Drayco said, “I’ll get back at you by playing Stockhausen sometime.”

  “Shtok houses”?

  Drayco gritted his teeth, though not at Sarg’s comment. Listening to any music on the radio while driving was dangerous for him. The colors and shapes were more distracting than a construction zone with flashing lights at night in the pouring rain. Polka wasn’t so bad. He almost laughed when he realized polka music made him see green blobs.

  * * *

  Tara knew her Dad and Mr. Drayco wouldn’t like what she was up to, but she didn’t care. She’d never tailed anybody before. Maybe she wasn’t doing it right, but it seemed like this was how they did it in the movies. She was convinced Gary Zabowski was involved with Cailan’s death somehow, and he was acting weird. Even for him.

  She watched as he ducked into Jedd’s Emporium on the strip two blocks from the psych lab. Should she go in? Gary knew her by sight, so waltzing right in there probably wasn’t a bright idea. How else could she find out what he was doing?

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad—Jedd’s was half imported goods and half party supplies. The place was so packed with bins, baskets, and racks of costumes, she could dodge almost anybody in there.

  Upon opening the door, she immediately spied Gary in the back, so she moved behind a display of hats. When she peeked around the bowlers and pith helmets, he was still there and arguing with someone she couldn’t quite see.

  Well, she’d come this far. She looked to her right and saw a possible solution to her dilemma. Moving as nonchalantly as she could manage, she sidled over to shelves filled with masks and pulled out a rubber witch’s face. She checked a mirror on the counter. Yep, it covered her entire face.

  She picked up a shopping basket and threw a pair of gloves and tubes of body paint in it. Just another customer shopping. She added another item or two as she worked her way to the back of the shop. Then she slid into a row next to Gary, separated by jars of pickled ghost peppers and boxes of chocolate-covered insects.

  She still couldn’t see the person Gary was arguing with, so she moved one of the jars aside a few inches. It was that hippy custodian, Elvis, the one who’d stalked Cailan. His face was red as he waved his arms around. Gary, Mister I’m-Better-Than-Everyone, just smirked at the other guy.

  What were they arguing about? She bumped into the shelves, and a box of the chocolates tumbled down toward the floor. With athletic grace she didn’t know she had, she reached out and caught the box in her basket.

  She held her breath for a moment, but the two men kept talking. Then, she heard Elvis say “It’s worth more than that. You short-changing me?”

  Gary uttered a muted laugh. “It’s a fair price. Besides, what are you going to do, turn me in? You’re in this as deep as I am. They’d arrest both of us.”

  Elvis grumbled, “Your Daddy’d get you off. Not me. I’d be the one going down for this.”

  If only she could see them better. She did hear what sounded like Gary opening up a wallet and pulling out some money. Then came a crinkling sound, like a bag. Gary said, “See, this works for both of us. Win-win,” and before Tara could react, he came around behind her shelf and started toward her.

  She reached out for a jar of the peppers while Gary grabbed some of the chocolates. He glanced at her jar and then her mask and laughed. “So that’s what witches eat. Who knew?”

  After he’d paid for the chocolates at the front register, he left, and Elvis followed soon after. Tara waited ten minutes, then put back all of the items including the mask. She explained to the cashier, “Forgot my wallet,” and headed outside. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw no signs of either Gary or Elvis.

  So what did she do now? If she told her Dad, she’d get the lecture and a docked allowance. Maybe this whole exchange had nothing to do with Cailan’s murder? And maybe she should have bought those peppers. They’d make her so sick, Dad would feel sorry for her. But at least she had a new appreciation for detective work—enough to know it wasn’t genetic, because she didn’t like it all that much.

  16

  Tuesday, 21 October

  Sarg’s car was out of the shop, but the next morning he took the train, anyway. “In my next life, I wanna be a train engineer. Riding the rails, seeing the sights.”

  “Blowing the horn to avoid hitting drunks walking on the trestles. Or cars jumping the gates.” Drayco felt like blowing the horn himself, narrowly avoiding a red-light runner as Leonora’s brakes squealed in protest.

  “You can be a downer, you know that?” As they pulled up in front of the warehouse where Elvis Loomis had a loft apartment, Sarg added, “Talk about downers.”

  No worries of D.C. gentrification here. The billions of dollars being spent on the Capital Riverfront along the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers a few miles south hadn’t reached this place. Amazingly, the building wasn’t condemned, and Elvis proved he did indeed live here when he opened the door.

  He was in a mellower mood than in their last meeting. Probably had to do with the tangy aroma of marijuana Drayco smelled on his clothing. Was he in mellow-mood when he’d followed Cailan around, worrying her so much she considered taking out a restraining order?

  “I must be important to have such esteemed dudes hovering around my hovel. Come on in. But I’m not paying out any lawsuits if you fall through the floor.”

  He led them upstairs to a room that if anything, made the exterior look fashionable. A new-looking laptop perched on a small table in one corner. Otherwise, the decor consisted of peeling paint, cement block tables, and rickety tie-dyed furniture like ’60s escapees through a time machine. One of the few places to sit was a lounge with one of its front legs missing, propped up on stacked wooden blocks. Drayco eyed it skeptically.

  “I think we’ll stand,” Sarg said.

  “Suit yourself.” Elvis flung himself down on the lounge. It jiggled, but held.

  A clicking of heels behind them made Drayco and Sarg whip around as a woman in a form-fitting dress and ebony hair joined them. It was the same young woman who’d left with Shannon at the music school.

  Elvis blew kisses at her. “Happy Ilsley, the Feds. Feds, Happy Ilsley.”

  She walked right up to them and looked them bo
th up and down. “You are,” she pointed at the ring on Sarg’s hand, “married. And you,” she looked at Drayco’s ringless hand, “aren’t.”

  “Miss Ilsley, I’m Agent Mark Sargosian with the FBI and this is Scott Drayco, who is consulting for us.”

  “Umm. What other consulting do you do?” She pinched Drayco’s butt, which made him jump.

  Elvis just laughed. “Oooh, dude, you’re pinch-worthy.”

  Drayco regretted his decision to leave his jacket in the car. He was absolutely not going to look over at Sarg.

  Happy smoothed her dress with her hands. “I doubt you’re here for a threesome.” She looked at Sarg. “I can tell you’re the disgustingly happily married type, so you wouldn’t be invited. This is about that murdered singer, am I right?”

  “Yes, it is, Miss Ilsley.” Sarg flipped out his notebook. Drayco knew he used it as much to prod his subjects to concentrate and get down to business as he did to get details.

  “I was at work.”

  “And I was here in a drunken stupor.” Elvis grinned up at them and stroked the beads in his beard. “That’s what I told the cops. And I’m sticking to it.”

  “Where exactly do you work, Miss Ilsley?” Sarg’s pen poised above the paper.

  “I work at a club. Do waitressing and stuff.”

  “What’s the name of the club?”

  She walked over to a table to pick up a pack of cigarettes, pulling one out that she lit up. “You haven’t heard of it. Just this little dive.” She blew smoke in perfect rings that circled to the ceiling. Sarg held his pen above the paper and stared at her.

  “Okay, if you must know, the Potomac Pleasure Palace.” Sarg jotted it down. Drayco guessed Sarg knew as well as he did the “Palace” was a strip joint, one of a handful within the District. The owner, interviewed recently by The Post, preferred to call it a “Gentleman’s Club.”

  Drayco moved out of the smoky line of fire. Onweller would be thrilled if word got back Drayco and Sarg smelled of cigarettes and marijuana. “Happy, how did you meet Shannon Krugh?”

  She smiled at him. “Been to a rave party?”

  “I’m allergic to loud noises.”

  She laughed. “We could have a lot of fun together, I’ll bet. That’s where I met Shannon, at a rave. She’s a good kid. Not uppity like those other Parkhurst divas. The kind that look at you and see white trash. But then, she doesn’t have money. She’s regular folk.”

  “Unlike Cailan Jaffray?”

  “Ask Elvis. I didn’t know her.”

  “Did Shannon talk about her?”

  “Some. They both wanted the same boy. Shannon won out.”

  Elvis was humming to himself. On the surface it sounded tuneless, but Drayco detected hints of Bellini. Elvis stopped and said, “‘Mira, O Norma.’ A rivalry between this Druid priestess babe Norma and this other chick over the same guy. Don’t know what either Shannon or Cailan saw in that kid, Gary. Money, I guess. Always comes down to money, don’t it?”

  Drayco said, “Speaking of Druids. Since you’re on campus a lot, you pick up on any cults, any voodoo, animal sacrifices?”

  “Whoa, that’s heavy. Me? Don’t believe in anything that doesn’t come out of a can, bottle, or bong.” He was grinning as he said it, though his hands gripped the edges of a tie-dyed throw hanging over the lounge. “Religion is the true evil, man.”

  Elvis relaxed, stretched out on his side and propped his head in one hand. “Didja know my padre was a Pentecostal preacher? Hellfire, holy water and a whip he used to keep his brats on the straight and narrow. Beat me right on over to the other side, didn’t he?”

  Elvis seemed to notice Sarg’s ring for the first time. “You got kids, Agent Gozian?” Sarg wisely didn’t answer. “I got a kid. Ill-ee-jit-a-mit son. In Californ-eye-ay. Haven’t seen him in five years. And he’s seven, now.”

  Happy stubbed out her cigarette and grabbed her purse. “If you’re going to get all maudlin on me, I’m outee. Besides, I’ve got to practice.” She winked at Drayco on her way out, walking in the odd way models do on a catwalk, heel-toe, heel-toe.

  Elvis watched her go and sighed. “She doesn’t love me. Says she does. She’ll flirt with any guy who’s got his equipment intact.” Elvis sat up and managed to fold his legs into a lotus position on the lounge, with his knees protruding over the side. “Her money plus my money equals no cardboard tent under a bridge.”

  Drayco said, “What did she mean, practice?”

  “She’s a singer too. Not opera. Got an audition coming up for a plum role at Signature. Has ambitions of New York, don’t they all? Too bad she wasn’t friends with Cailan. That godmother of hers is all pally wally with one or two of the Board of Trustees. Raises money for ’em.”

  “Adele Gilbow?”

  “Yep, yep, yep. That’s the one. Her husband’s a dick-amundo. She’s okay.”

  “You’ve met them?”

  “I run into everybody on campus, in passing. You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat peons, don’t ya think?”

  Drayco eyed Sarg, who’d once said the exact same thing. He looked over at the laptop in the corner. “Does Happy read music or does she learn her songs by ear?”

  “Dunno. Ask the Tony-winner wannabe herself. I think I seen some music here somewhere,” Elvis squinted around the room.

  Sarg stowed his notebook. “Mr. Loomis, in your stalking of Cailan, did you see anyone else, well, stalking her, too?”

  “Stalking sounds so cloak and dagger. What you dudes do, right? If you mean following, there was this one guy. Curly hair, glasses. Hadn’t seen him before. Or since.”

  “You don’t know his name?”

  “Can’t say I do. Had a kinda John Doe-ish look to him.” Elvis grinned.

  They let themselves out, afraid Elvis would break his neck trying to navigate the steep stairs in his condition. Drayco had a moment of déjà vu that he couldn’t quite place and shook it off.

  He stopped to study a yawning mini-chasm in the asphalt, one of thousands that made D.C. a Pothole Paradise. “If Happy can read music and is proficient with that laptop, she, Shannon and Elvis could have conspired together on those puzzles, if not the murder.”

  “I told you he was hiding something.” Sarg pointed to an original VW bug parked in front. “Guess who that belongs to?”

  “The world’s last remaining hippie.”

  “Uh huh.” Sarg looked at the bug, then up to the loft, then back to the bug. He hadn’t made a move toward Drayco’s car but kept shifting his feet in place. “It’s nine-thirty.”

  “And we should go so we can keep our appointment at ten.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You going to be okay?” Sarg had agreed to set up the appointment, but Drayco knew he wasn’t happy about it. It was one of his least favorite places though he’d kept his fears hidden from everyone at the Bureau except Drayco.

  “Just drive. And turn on the air conditioning.”

  The only time chronic-popsicle Sargosian liked air conditioning was when he was afraid he was going to throw up. They climbed into the car, and despite the 50-degree day, Drayco cranked up the AC to max.

  17

  When the District’s one and only public hospital, DC General, closed after two hundred years of community service, it became the temporary headquarters of the Chief Medical Examiner and labs. Deputy Medical Examiner Harriet Zachman greeted them, her hands full of reports she plonked on her desk. The one on the top was a Report of Investigation concerning a thirteen-year-old boy.

  Zachman scrunched her nose while glancing at the report as if it were a personal offense. “I’ll be glad when we move into the Consolidated Forensic Lab. Right now, it’s more work we don’t need.”

  She led them to the refrigerated body storage rooms. “Guess every step is one in the right direction. Especially after the problems in the ’90s.”

  Some of that went all the way back to when Drayco was a grad student. The old facility was plagued by unsani
tary conditions someone likened to a third-world country—roaches, rodents, no air conditioning, and unrefrigerated bodies, some piled on top of each other. Add in low morale, rapid staff turnover, uncertified pathologists, and it all led to a backlog of over a thousand cases, including homicides.

  New leadership and help from the military had made a difference. As Drayco and Sarg walked through the lab area, the improvements were noticeable, to both the eyes and the nose. Zachman even made them wear shoe covers.

  “Most of the time we need the sixty to ninety days we’re allowed to close out a case. What with thirteen hundred autopsies a year. That’s one reason we still have Miss Jaffray’s body. Unusual, but not unprecedented. Plus, her guardian authorized us to keep it as long as we needed.”

  She put on plastic gloves and a paper cap over her Halle Berry-pixie hair. Was her golden skull necklace her choice or a gift? Drayco had never seen one like it before.

  “I’d let you speak with our Supervisory Medicolegal Investigator, but there was a shooting this morning. Sixth time this month some dumb kid got in the way of a drug deal gone bad. The Narc Division loves it when our guy shows up. We got more law enforcement officers in the twenty-some-odd agencies covering the District than we do citizens. Talk about pissing contests.”

  Their paper shoe covers made a soft swishing on the concrete floor. The only other sound was a slight turquoise humming from the fluorescent overhead lights. The relative quiet made it feel like Drayco was in a church crypt.

  Zackman stopped in front of a row of shelves stacked with body bags. “Don’t get Bureau types much. Not for shooting victims, most connected to drugs or gangs.”

  She handed Drayco the case file with exam pictures and then stopped in front of one shelf and zipped open the bag. “And yet, here you are for a Parkhurst College student. Money doth have its privileges.”

  Even in death, it was easy to tell Cailan Jaffray had been a lovely young woman. The victim-corpses he encountered in his line of work always drew him in. Fragile and broken shells of what once held life. The M.E. dissected the pieces to tell a story, while Drayco tried to bring them back from the dead, jagged piece by jagged piece.