The Devil's Opera(193)

“Okay, thanks, Doc,” Byron said.

The two detectives stood and watched the medical examiner’s assistants load the corpse on a stretcher and place it in a wagon. Even after the wagon had been gone for some time, Byron continued to stand, staring at the blood that had pooled on the paving stones.

“We’re missing something,” the up-timer finally said. “With all that has happened, there’s something we haven’t picked up.”

* * *

The two detectives arrived back at the police station just as Karl Honister lugged the last box of files from Schmidt’s office to his desk. He set it down with a sigh.

“That’s all Schmidt’s stuff?” Byron asked.

“Yah.”

“Well, drag it all into the conference room. We’ll bring our files. There’s at least one piece of the puzzle missing, maybe more, and the three of us are going to go over all this stuff until we find it.”

Karl gave a long-suffering sigh, picked up the box he had just set down, and headed for the conference room.

* * *

The three detectives spent over thirty-six hours in that conference room. They reviewed every piece of paper they had. They compared notes. They talked. They argued. They shouted. They drew charts and circles and arrows on big pieces of paper. They drank—reluctantly—gallons of horrible station house coffee. They sent Peltzer out with a photo of the one-eyed man to have Demetrious confirm that he was the man the informer had been tailing.

Bill Reilly peered in on them every hour or so during the day, shook his head, and withdrew without saying anything.

They were dazed, not even sure what day it was, when it happened.

* * *

Gotthilf stared at the cold dregs of coffee in his cup. He sniffed it and shuddered, his acid-stoked stomach rebelling at the thought of pouring more of that noxious stuff into it.

“This stuff is even worse than Grade Four,” he muttered. He walked over to a window, popped it open, and tossed the dregs out right into a sudden gust of breeze, which carried the dark droplets back into the room. Many of the droplets landed on the hand holding the cup.

Gotthilf stood there, blinking, staring at his spotted hand. A thought wormed its way to the front of his mind, slowly, effortfully. When it arrived, he dropped the cup and turned back to the conference table, where he pawed through the piles of papers and files until he found what he wanted. He looked at the photograph, then at his hand, then back at the photograph, then back at his hand.

This cycle went on until Byron asked, “What are you thinking, partner?”

Gotthilf focused on the photograph. “Schmidt didn’t kill himself.”

It took a moment for that to register, then Byron straightened from his slouched position, and Honister raised his head from where it had been pillowed on his arms.

“What?” Byron again.

“Schmidt didn’t kill himself.”

“How do you know that?” Honister husked, trying to clear his throat.

Gotthilf looked at the other sergeant. “Was Schmidt right-handed?”

Honister looked in his notebook. “Yah.”

Gotthilf turned the photograph around.

“There’s no blood spatter on his hand.”

“There was blood spatter on the gun,” Byron said, looking for and holding up the report about that.

Gotthilf pointed to the photograph of the hand dangling just above the gun at the crime scene. “No blood on the hand. Blood on the gun but not on the hand means…”

“He wasn’t holding the gun!” the three of them chorused.

“So he was murdered,” Honister said. “How do we find the killer?”

“Who benefits from it?” Byron said. “And to find that…”

“Follow the money,” they chorused again, and dug into the papers before them with a new will.





Chapter 72

Gotthilf looked around the room. It looked like everyone was there. The last few days had been hectic; frenetic, even. But today’s meeting would provide closure to the events of the last few months, he thought.

He looked around at the room itself. They were in a lecture room at the hospital; appropriate enough, since the hospital expansion project seemed to have been the trigger for much of what had occurred since January. It amounted to neutral territory: not the mayor’s office, or the police station.

It was a bit sterile, though. Four bare walls, hardwood floors, big windows admitting light from the south. No decorations. Given that the room had to be able to be scrubbed down to up-time hospital standards, its utilitarian décor was understandable.

Facing him were several people—the interested parties, one might say.

Mayor Gericke was at one end of the arc of chairs. Beside him was a woman he had introduced as Frau Sophie Gericke verw. Schmidt. By the name everyone knew that she was his sister, the new widow of Georg Schmidt.