Dream Man

They knocked on the front door. There was no answer, no sound of movement inside the house. Trammell went around to the back door, with the same results. All of the curtains were pulled, so they couldn’t see in any of the windows.

Both doors were locked. They banged again, identifying themselves. Nothing.

Dane walked next door. A woman came out on the porch at his knock.

“I’m Detective Hollister,” he said, flipping his ID wallet open. “Have you seen Mr. Vinick? His car is here, but we can’t get anyone to the door.”

She frowned, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “No, I haven’t seen him since the funeral. I went to it; just about everyone on the street did. She was such a nice lady. I don’t know when he parked his car in the driveway. It wasn’t there late yesterday afternoon, but was when I got up this morning.”

“You haven’t seen anyone over there at all?”

“No. Of course, I haven’t been here all day, but no one has been there that I’ve seen.”

“Thanks.” Dane nodded in good-bye and walked back to the Vinick house. “I don’t like it,” he said, after telling Trammell what the neighbor had said. “How do you feel about forced entry?”

“I think we’d better,” Trammell said soberly. “If we’re wrong, we’ll grovel and apologize and pay for the damages.”

They went around back. The top half of the kitchen door was small, diamond-shaped panes of glass. Dane pulled out the Beretta and used the butt to knock out the corner pane closest to the doorknob. He was always surprised at how hard it was to actually break out a window. Shattered glass tinkled on the tile floor inside. Carefully wrapping his hand in a handkerchief, he reached inside and unlocked the door.

The house was hot, and foul with the odor of death that had been closed up inside it. The silence was almost physical.

Dane unwrapped the handkerchief from his hand and held it over his nose. “Shit,” he muttered, then raised his voice. “Mr. Vinick? Detectives Hollister and Trammell.”

Nothing.

The smell seeped through the cloth. It wasn’t the cloying, sickeningly sweet odor of decayed flesh, but a pungent smell of human waste underlaid with the metallic scent of blood, both old and new. Dane’s stomach knotted. He cursed again, quietly, and stepped inside.

The living room was empty; he had expected it to be. The walls were still splattered with Mrs. Vinick’s blood, the stains turned brown.

Mr. Vinick was in the bedroom.

It hadn’t been cleaned, either. Chalk still outlined the position of her body, there in the corner. Mr. Vinick lay beside the outline. There was a small pistol lying close by his head.

He hadn’t taken any chances with botching the job. Anyone who jams the barrel into his mouth is serious about the attempt.

“Ah, shit,” Trammell said tiredly. “I’ll call it in.”

Dane squatted by the body, being careful not to touch anything. Nothing he could see indicated that it was anything but a suicide, but it was habit not to disturb a scene.

He looked around, and saw a sheet of paper lying on the bed. The sheets had been stripped off, leaving only the bare mattress, and the white paper wasn’t immediately noticeable against the white ticking. He could read what it said without bending down.

I don’t have any family now, with Nadine gone, so I don’t guess it matters much. I just don’t want to go on. He had dated and signed it, even noted the time. Eleven-thirty P.M., just about the same time of night his wife had been murdered.

Dane rubbed the back of his neck, his mouth set in a grim line. Damn, this was tough. The guy had buried his wife, then returned to where she had been murdered and put a bullet in his head.

Trammell came back into the room and stood beside Dane, reading the note himself. “Was it guilt or depression?”

“Who the hell knows?”

“Shit,” Trammell said. There was just something about this house of death that reduced comment to that crude, simple word. It was sad.

By the time the scene had been secured, the body taken away, and the paperwork dealt with, it was almost nine o’clock. Dane thought about calling Marlie, but decided against it. He wasn’t in a good mood, and didn’t feel up to any romancing. Trammell had had a date, but he was as surly as Dane, and called to cancel. Instead they went to the cops’ favorite bar and slugged back a couple of beers. A lot of cops had a drink or two, or three, before they went home. It was the easiest way to wind down, and an opportunity to dump all the tension on people who knew exactly what they were talking about, before they went home to the spouse and kiddies and pretended everything was sweetness and light.

“If he was the perp, we’ll never find out now,” Trammell grunted, licking foam off his upper lip.

Dane had always liked it about Trammell that the man drank beer, instead of some hoity-toity wine. He could accept the Italian suits and silk shirts, the Gucci loafers, but he would have had a hard time connecting with a wine drinker. He didn’t know why Trammell had suddenly decided that Ansel Vinick was their best bet as a suspect, but they all got maggots in their heads from time to time. “I don’t think he did it. I think the poor sad son of a bitch just couldn’t face living after finding his wife like that.”

“I wasn’t convinced he did it,” Trammell denied grumpily. “I just wanted to make sure he didn’t get away because we were too busy looking for phantoms.”

Dane finished his beer. “Well, innocent or guilty, he didn’t get away. You want another one?”