CHAPTER TWO
2369 Words
CHAPTER TWO
FBI Agent Daniel Walker of the Antiquities Division surveyed the murder scene. He had never been in the Hamptons before, and the b****y body of a billionaire was not the best introduction to one of America’s most expensive zip codes.
The murder had happened more than eight hours ago. CSI had already done their thing and taken away the body. Since the FBI had become involved, the body should have stayed in place so he could get a firsthand view of it, but Montgomery Dyson was no ordinary murder victim. The file said he was the twenty-seventh richest man in the United States, a billionaire owning a vast real estate empire inherited from his father. He had seven homes, three yachts, a private jet, a Swiss bank account, and God knows what else.
Odd that Daniel had never heard of him. The company did not bear his name and a quick Google turned up almost nothing. No flashy donations, no directorships other than for his own company, not even anything in the society pages. Every other rich guy with a tenth of his net worth was all over the Internet.
Which made Daniel wonder what Mr. Dyson had been up to.
Collecting art, for one. “The East Gallery,” as the house staff called it to distinguish it from “The West Gallery” (because why have just one?) looked like a small-scale city museum. Italian Renaissance, Dutch masters, French Impressionists. The guy had taste.
Which brought Daniel to a significant gap on the wall that showed nothing but a hook and enough room to fit a medium-sized painting.
That was the only thing missing.
Wait. Maybe not. A shelf of antiquarian books, none of them looking like they were less than a couple of hundred years old, sat beneath a landscape by Manet. The books were tightly shelved, advisable so the pages wouldn’t get warped by moisture, except for one gap. A book of about two inches thickness was missing. A hefty tome, or two less hefty tomes.
Daniel took a turn about the room. There were no books anywhere else but the shelf. Dyson, or more likely his servants, kept the room neat and tidy. A gap in the bookshelf most likely meant a missing book.
The CSI team had already given him a rundown of the rest of the house—no signs of forced entry, no other people killed, and a trail of bloodstains leading from the East Gallery to the pool.
Daniel followed it, a series of crusty drops on the carpet that led down the hall. The crackle of a police radio in the living room made him turn. The local PD was still holding the three members of staff, lined up like guilty schoolchildren and looking at him with nervous eyes.
He passed them by without a word. Let them stew for a bit.
The blood trail continued, the dots getting smaller and more widely spaced as the murder weapon—a curved, sharp object from the initial analysis—began to run out of gore.
There was enough still dripping from it that when Daniel made it out to the deck, he could follow the trail straight to the pool. There the trail stopped and did not resume.
Cleaned his murder weapon. Hardly seems necessary at this point.
Daniel stood a moment next to the pool on a deck with a fabulous view of the Atlantic, thinking over this odd detail. The deck had not only a pool, but a wet bar and expensive sound system. The view was unobstructed because it was raised up. A flight of stairs took him down to ground level, where a narrow garden surrounding the deck was enclosed by a ten-foot wall topped with spikes of elaborate ironwork. Artistically done, but still pointy enough to hurt someone trying to climb over.
Unless you’ve brought along a short step ladder and a heavy tarpaulin you fold over several times and lay on top of the spikes. The murderer had left those behind.
Daniel shook his head. How many times had he seen rich people get robbed because they didn’t take better security measures? They all thought their exclusive neighborhood would protect them. Well, Dyson had certainly learned different.
He climbed the step ladder, dusty from where CSI had checked for fingerprints and found none and peeked over the fence. Grass clung to sandy soil, quickly giving way to beach. In the near portion he could see a long, flattened area where the murderer had dragged something to obscure his tracks. Something about a yard wide. The trail ended at the high tide point.
Daniel got on his phone and checked the tide schedule for the local area. Yep, high tide was about an hour after estimated time of death. He’d bet a hundred bucks that hadn’t been coincidental.
He climbed down off the ladder and looked it over. He found a small, sticky rectangular area with a bit of blown sand clinging to it. The killer had removed the price tag, of course. The guy thought of everything. At least he thought he thought of everything. No perp in the history of crime ever really did. They all slipped up somehow.
He went up the wooden steps back to the deck to find a member of the East Hampton police department waiting for him. A soft man, soft in the belly and soft in the eyes thanks to his cushy job. Not like the tough big-city cops Daniel had admired as a kid.
Not like Daniel either. He had a spare tire too, but his eyes were not soft. They hadn’t been soft since he was twelve.
“You want to speak to the staff now?” the police officer asked. Daniel couldn’t think of him as a “cop.” That word implied gritty streets and strong-arming perps. Those guys had been the heroes of Daniel’s childhood. If only he had summoned the strength to talk to one.
“Let them sweat it out for a bit,” Daniel said. “Show me the security footage.”
The officer shook its head. “It’s a hell of a sight.”
He led Daniel through the kitchen—bright lights, gleaming chrome, a bowl of exotic tropical fruit Daniel couldn’t identify—to a little annex where a battery of CCTVs took up a portion of one wall.
“I already have it ready,” the officer said.
The officer pushed a button. A camera showed the back deck from a high angle, obviously near the roof. In the lower righthand corner the time said 2:14 a.m. and today’s date. The wall was at the limit of the frame. The silent image showed a pair of hands come into view and lay the tarp over the spikes.
Then a figure appeared, cowled like a medieval monk. It brought one leg over the wall, revealing light slacks and deck shoes, then straddled the fence.
The figure reached over to the far side of the wall (lefthanded) and pulled up a scythe of the kind farmers used to use.
The figure carefully set it down on the other side of the wall, then struggled back and forth a minute while gripping onto the top of the wall with both hands.
Daniel stared, unsure what he was doing.
That became clear a few second later when he lifted the ladder up with one foot.
Once he got it high enough to grab with his hands, he lifted it over the wall and set it down on the other side.
Idiot didn’t bring a tall enough ladder.
The figure (male, average build, approximately six feet tall) grabbed the scythe and climbed partway up the stairs to the deck. He paused for a moment, looking at the house, then decided the coast was clear and moved quickly across the deck and out of sight.
Healthy. Calm. Confident.
“Huh,” Daniel said. “Any footage from inside the house?”
“No cameras.”
Daniel shook his head.
The police officer fast forwarded four and a half minutes to when the figure reappeared on camera.
Familiar with the layout of the house. No way he could have snuck in past three staff members and killed the guy and reemerged in that short of a time.
The figure carried a satchel containing a rectangular, bulky object. Obviously the painting (approximately two feet by one and a half feet, that smaller bulge next to it must be the book). The scythe dripped with blood. The killer dipped it into the pool, shook it clean, and hurried to the ladder without looking back.
A moment later he was over the fence and gone.
“That’s it?” Daniel asked.
“That’s it.”
The medieval get up is part of the show. He wanted to tell something to his victim by dressing as the figure of death.
Tell something to us too. He knew the cameras were there. That’s why he kept his head down, so the cowl would hide his features.
“Let’s go talk to the staff,” Daniel said.
They were still lined up in the living room under the watchful eye of another of East Hampton’s finest. Another soft-eyed officer in uniform who was more accustomed to dealing with drunk drivers than murderers. The only difference from the first officer was that she was a woman.
The first staff member was an erect older man with jowls, a pot belly, and swept back receding gray hair. He was dressed as a butler. The second was thinner and younger and looked Italian or Italian-American. He was dressed as a chauffeur. The third was a woman who could not have been more than twenty. Blonde, buxom, with luscious lips and bright blue eyes. She was hardly dressed at all.
Daniel had already read through their initial statements on the way over.
He pointed at the butler. “You say you found him.”
The butler nodded, seemingly unphased by what had happened to his master.
“Yes, sir,” he said in a refined English accent. “I got up at six to prepare Mr. Dyson’s breakfast. The cook prepares lunch and dinner. Mr. Dyson always has his breakfast at 6:30 a.m. sharp. My room is just off the kitchen, so I didn’t notice anything amiss until I took the breakfast tray out of the kitchen and down the main hallway. I noticed the light to the East Gallery was on and the door was open. It was then that I noticed the bloodstains on the carpet. I hurried down the hallway and found Mr. Dyson. Then I called the police and woke up the other members of staff.”
“What were you doing at two in the morning?” Daniel asked.
“I was sleeping, sir. Mr. Dyson said I could go to bed at midnight after I prepared him a snack. He had made a new acquisition and wished to study it. He often studied through the night when he made a purchase.”
“We’ll get back to that.” Daniel turned to the chauffeur. “So where were you?”
“Sleeping,” the man replied. American. Brooklyn accent. “The last I saw of Mr. Dyson was when I drove him out of the city—”
“Which city?”
“New York City.”
“Go on.”
“I dropped him off in the morning at around ten and was told to pick him up at Eleven Madison Park, that’s a restaurant, at two after he had his lunch. It was strange that he didn’t have me drive him around like usual. When I picked him up he had a new painting.”
“What did it look like?”
“I didn’t see. It was wrapped.” The chauffeur said like it was obvious. “He often bought artwork in the city at various dealers or auction houses. It always made him so happy. He’d be talkative and upbeat all the way home. This time, though, he was really quiet. Not depressed, really, but thoughtful. Hardly said a word the whole way back.”
Daniel turned back to the butler. “Did you see this painting?”
“Yes, sir, when I brought him his snack. He had hung it himself in the East Gallery, taking down the Bloemaert to make room. I didn’t get much of a look at it. It was the figure of Death on a horse riding through the night sky.”
Daniel felt a little shiver go down his spine.
The figure of Death. Like the guy who visited him a few hours later.
The killer knew what the painting showed. Probably knew he had just bought it too.
“I’ll want to talk with you a bit more later,” Daniel said. “The officer will give me your numbers. Here’s mine.”
He handed each of the two men a card. Both took it with their right hand.
Now Daniel turned to the young woman, who wore a wispy little black negligée like that was the most normal thing in the world to wear when your boss had just gotten murdered.
“Did you see this painting?”
She looked him right in the eye, sizing him up. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. She breathed in a little too deeply in order to emphasize her cleavage and said, “Is it OK if we speak alone?”
Not in this context, it sure as hell isn’t.
He turned to the female police officer. “Come with us.” Looking at the male police officer he said, “Stay here with them.”
“My name’s Rebecca. I have a lot to tell you. We can talk in the bedroom,” the young woman suggested, walking too close next to Daniel for comfort.
“How about the West Gallery?” Daniel suggested, his voice coming out somewhat strangled. He’d had a hell of a dry spell since Veronica had left him.
Thank God for female police officers to keep me from temptation.
- Writer
