"Business For the Undertaker"
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dochermes"Business For the Undertaker"
[4/8/2000]
5/29/1997
I.
Jeremy Bane opened the front door to the small vestibule and stepped aside to let Inspector Klein in. Even on a gorgeous June morning, the inspector kept his ancient white raincoat on. "How ya doin', Bane?" asked Klein in an authentic New York growl. He was a short, stocky man close to sixty, with curly hair more grey than black at this point. His left eye was glass, a good version, but Bane had never found a likely moment to ask about it.
"I'm bored and restless," said the Dire Wolf in complete honesty. "Come on in and tell me you have something good lined up."
"Something weird and dangerous, you mean." Klein took a cigar stub from his pocket and started chewing on it. "I know you. You love it when the bullets are missing your head by an inch and some maniac with a cleaver is jumping on you from behind."
"You've got my number," Bane admitted. He ushered Klein into the reception room that he used as his office, which was large and sparsely furnished. There was a couch under the high narrow windows, with a coffee table holding old magazines and newspapers. On the far wall, on top of a waist-high bookcase holding legal volumes and reference material was a fish tank in which bizarre creatures lived. Against the right as one entered was a plain dark wood desk with a swivel chair behind it and three leatherbound straightback chairs facing it in an arc.
Bane dropped down behind the desk, which was almost bare, with only a reading lamp and a cordless phone in its charger. The Dire Wolf leaned back and waited for Klein to seat himself in the chair to the right. The Inspector glanced up at the map which took up most of the wall behind the desk. "I always wanted to ask you about that thing."
The Dire Wolf swivelled to glance up at it. "Kenneth Dred had it made in 1937. He told me it was painted by a Swedish artist named Ryndborg."
"It's gorgeous all right. I like the blues and greens. But time to get to business. Do I have to tell you every time I come here that my visits are strictly off the record and unofficial?"
Bane smiled as much as he ever did, a very slight tightening of the corners of his mouth. He was deadpan by nature. He had a narrow feral face with short black hair and pale grey eyes under heavy brows. At best, he was not a friendly-looking man. "I don't think so, inspector. After the past year, I think we've worked out an understanding."
Klein tossed his wet, mutilated cigar stub in a waste paper basket with distaste. "I have plenty of detectives on the force. Solid, well-trained men. The only reason I would need to come to an outsider is when there's a situation beyond the normal bounds of the world. Bane, it took me a long time to realize that there ARE things beyond what we call the real world. I began to realize a lot of unsolved cases remain unsolved because they involve, well, the supernatural."
"Same with me," the Dire Wolf replied. "When I first started working for Mr Dred, I laughed when he told me what I would be facing. My reaction was 'Oh Come ON!' but that got dropped pretty quick after tangling with a howler and Dos Manos and a couple of Snake men. After that, my ideas about what is possible widened a little."
Klein fumbled a fresh cigar from its cellophane wrapper and started chewing it. "My problem is I still can't put any of that stuff in my reports. If I filed a case involving a den of vampires or a rogue Troll eating homeless people, I'd be on the unemployment line so fast my chair would still be warm."
"Luckily, you just happen to know a Private Investigator who specializes in fighting monsters and maniacs," Bane said.
"Yeah. I do. And that's another sticky part of my situation. I can't hire you or give you orders. You're a free agent and unless I come to you as a client on my own, I shouldn't even know you except as a suspect."
"That's not really a problem," Bane said with a predatory gleam starting in his grey eyes. "You know I'm not built for hanging around. I live for trouble, and I'm always glad when you drop something sinister and gruesome in my lap."
"Yeah," Klein grumbled. "The Dire Wolf. You sure picked the right nickname. All right, let me throw some information at you and see if it catches your interest. We start with a murder last Monday night. Susan Collinson, aged eighteen, just graduated high school and looking for work as a temp. She was shot once in the back of the head with a .32 revolver. No likely suspects, no obvious leads. Then the following night, a man named Henry Dwyer got it the same way, with the same weapon. But this time a suspect was on the scene. It was a P.I. named Dennis Lang. He claimed to have just arrived seconds before the police, his fingerprints were nowhere on any evidence and he was released on a substantial bail."
"I've heard that name," Bane interrupted. "Dennis Lang. Yeah, he works for some master detective who has a reputation for never failing. What is his name? Caleb Thorne, right?"
"That's the one. He's a character. Claims to be a genius and his record backs it up. He has outmanuevered NYPD a dozen times, got evidence to convict a few hundred murderers and embezzlers, and he brags that he has never had a client go to prison."
Bane raised an eyebrow. "Is he really that good?"
"As far as I can tell, yeah. The problem is, he's slippery and he plays tricks that are just shady enough he'd be arrested if he slipped up. I've only met him once, but colleagues tell me he's pulled some dubious ploys that somehow always ended up with his client vindicated and someone else taking the rap."
"Why the anger in your voice, inspector? Isn't this just the natural rivalry between police and PIs, like between lawyers and doctors?"
"Ahh, maybe. I never had good cause to go after him or his buddy Lang. Maybe it's just personal dislike. He IS a smug old bastard."
Bane frowned and swung around in his swivel chair to look toward the window. "Inspector, how does this fall into my specialized area? Where's the weirdness, the supernatural?"
"You'd have to see the apartment where Dwyer lived to understand. But mostly, I have a feeling you're itchy for action and you'd jump at a chance to take Caleb Thorne down a peg or two, not to mention his boy Lang. That guy is obnoxious."
"Maybe I would," the Dire Wolf said. "You know what? Okay, I'm on it. You sure know how to give me enough to make me curious."
Klein stood up and took a thick manila envelope from inside his raincoat. "These are copies of reports I xeroxed myself when the office was empty. Of course, you're going to destroy them as soon as you've read them?"
"Absolutely. I haven't saved anything you've handed me, inspector. Just memories." He took the envelope and locked it in the center drawer of his desk, then came around to walk Klein toward the door. "I'll let you know as soon as I have anything worth reporting."
"Glad to hear it," Klein grumbled. "Good luck. I wasn't even here today, I'm at the scene of a hit and run." The inspector went down the steps to where his own personal car was parked on 38th Street without a driver. His use of Bane as a loose cannon was discreetly condoned by his superiors but they would have denied everything if it came out in the open.
II.
Returning to his office, Bane took the file and went out into the front hall, trotting up the staircase. He was too hyper to sit still for long. The same enhanced metabolism that gave him his superior reflexes also made him hopelessly restless. He walked up to the seventh floor, skimming through the report as he went. The gym took up the entire floor, with its array of modified Nautilus machines, treadmills, lockers and showers. Bane felt again how absurd it was to have all this equipment just for himself. When the KDF had been active, there had always been two or three members here working out here. He sighed. Maybe a new KDF was not such a hopeless project. It had been three years since that horrendous night in Nekropolis...
The Dire Wolf went to his locker and changed into shorts, a plain white T-shirt and sneakers. Even now, the matched silver daggers remained sheathed on his forearms. He went to one of the three treadmills and set the file up on the control panel. Setting the treadmill at a forty-five degree angle, he hit the controls for full run. As he loped easily along, he started reading slowly and carefully.
Twenty minutes later, he still had some pages to go, so he reset the treadmill and finished. Except for the gun used, there didn't seem to be any obvious connection between the murders. The gun had been found in Dwyer's apartment but there were no prints and it was a cheap disposable weapon quite a few years old. Susan Collins had been just a young woman starting out in life, and Dwyer was an established research consultant for a television production company. There was no evidence they even knew the other existed. But some connection had to be there.
In one paragraph, he spotted a hint of why Klein said that Dwyer's work was in Bane's area of interest. The TV series he worked on was syndicated as MYSTERIES OF UNEXPLAINED WORLDS. The Dire Wolf scowled. He never watched TV but that title did not sound promising. He shut down the treadmills and wiped it off with a cloth, then took the file downstairs to his rooms on the third floor. After a hot shower, he put on a fresh outfit of the black slacks and turtleneck, but the same jacket with its hidden gadgets. Trotting back down to the first floor and his office, he felt refreshed and alert and ready to dig into a mystery. The file went into a paper shredder as he had promised Klein, and the strips were mashed together into a soggy wad no one could decipher.
Before he started the case, he wanted to check in with his partner. He phoned Cindy in New Mexico. He had the unlisted number of the Human Capability Enhancement Project, where the Trom secretly worked with Humans behind the cover of a government research facility. Since the death of Leonard Slade, the Trom Monitor who had been a KDF member, both Bane and Cindy worked at maintaining contact with that elusive and secretive Race.
"Cin! Hi. How's the visit going? Really. Well, if anyone can talk them into keeping relations with people, it's you. Is Steve there? I know he's not Black Angel anymore but I don't want to lose touch with him. Maybe he can come back with you for a visit here." Bane listened silently for the next few minutes, and then asked her to repeat everything.
"Let me see if I've got this straight. The Trom have raised a Human girl from birth, training her to someday be a liaison between our two Races? They want her to work with us the way Len did, but she won't be eighteen for a few years yet. As a minor she can't join our new KDF until then. Everyone seems to have decided there's going to be a new Kenneth Dred Foundation team except me!" His voice calmed down. "No, it sounds great. And we do have to start planning early. We'll talk about little Trom Girl when you get back home. But listen, that's not what I called about, really. Klein turned up with a case that sounds interesting in a minor way. A couple of unrelated murders, I'm going to poke around and see what I can stir up. If you come back tomorrow, I might be out sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. Yes. Like always, I know. I miss you too. See you when you get back."
Next, Bane started calling some of his network of reporters. Over the twenty years of his career, he had saved many lives and returned many hostages, and he did not accept rewards as such. Instead, he asked that they keep an eye out for the inexplicable and the eerie, and to keep him informed. Most were glad to help out. He asked for any information about the two murders and he also wanted to know what was new with Caleb Thorne. The pickings were slim until he called his two best informants, Bleak and Wilbur Schlegel. As always, Bleak prowled the badlands between crime and the Midnight War, and he knew much that was meant to be secret. Schlegel was a retired journalist who lived on the Internet and who loved digging. Between the two of them, Bane usually ended up with something to work with.
All this took an hour and a half. Finally hanging up, Bane stretched and yawned. Holding still was a major effort for him. After his stomach made an audible rumble, he headed down to the kitchen at the back of the main hall. He finished off a bowl of macaroni salad with chopped chicken pieces, fried some bacon and drank a bottle of cranberry juice before he felt more human. His metabolism burned calories instantly. Cleaning up, he headed out of the building. Bane went through the back panel of a walk-in closet by the front door, down steep concrete steps and along a corridor to a wooden door which opened into the garage. This was just big enough to hold two cars. He chose the dark green Ford Mustang partly because it was parked more accessibly. Bane went up the ramp with its sharp twist at the top, eased out onto Lexington Avenue as the steel panel closed behind him and headed north. It would not be dark for more than an hour yet this time of year.
At 89th Street, he found the apartment building where Dwyer had lived, but the closest parking spot was on a side street three blocks away. Getting out, he circled the block warily. The building didn't seem anything special, just another twenty-story stone hive designed to house as many people as feasible in reasonable comfort for exorbitant rent. No one was near the front door as he walked casually up.
Bane had kept any number of useful gadgets from the KDF days, which gave him huge and slightly unfair advantages over other investigators. From an inner pocket, he took out an odd-looking gizmo with a dozen thin wires on one end and pressed it against the lock. The Trom device inserted several hair-slim wires inside which shaped themselves to fit the tumblers, then rotated and unlocked the door so promptly any observer would have thought Bane had used a proper key. There was a foyer, with a row of mailboxes on one wall and a strip of buzzers with name tags on the other. Bane ignored them and sprinted up the stairs. Decades of Kumundu training at Tel Shai and experience in the field had made his tread as hard to detect as that of a real wolf but he hardly was aware of it anymore. Being silent was normal for him. As he neared the second floor landing, he automatically froze and held his breath for thirty seconds. Had anyone been lying in wait, Bane would almost certainly have been aware of the presence.
There was the door, 217. The yellow police tape had been taken down. Bane used the Trom opener again and stepped into the late Dwyer's apartment as if it were his own, closing the door behind him. He was acting without any legal justification at this point, not having a client or any sanction by the authorities. He was used to this. Now was the time for quick action. He knew the police had scoured these four rooms with their usual procedures and he saw no reason to try to repeat what they had done. He needed to come up with his own angle.
The Dire Wolf stepped over to the window of the living room where the body had been found, and looked down at the sidewalk just ten feet below. According to the report, the window had been opened three inches when the police arrived. It looked out on a side street with a delicatessen opposite and a boarded-up shoe store. Nothing much to draw passers-by. It was getting gloomy in the apartment as he made a quick survey of the bookshelves and racks of VHS cassettes. There was a lot about the occult and the mysterious, but just the obvious stuff known to the public. There was nothing to indicate that Dwyer had known anything about the real Midnight War. He took a minute to go through a drawer of file folders and found the same. The usual topics.. Bigfoot, Loch Ness, UFO abductions, Bermuda Triangle. Inspector Klein had been way off base on this. Dwyer had nothing to do with the secret dangerous Midnight War that Bane moved in. For a few minutes, the Dire Wolf stood in the center of the room, reconstructing events in his head. The basic crime remained obvious. The killer had stepped up close behind Dwyer, fired once at close range and left. But there had to be something more. He just needed to let go and let it strike him.
There was something odd. There was a HEPA air filter in every room. A large air conditioner was fixed in the bedroom window. The police reports had noted that Dwyer had suffered from chronic asthma and frequent upper respiratory infections. He obviously wanted to keep the air in here as clean as possible. Bane went back and looked at the window of the living room again, with its HEPA filter sitting right below it. The grey eyes narrowed for a second, then Bane decided he had pushed his luck enough with his illegal entry into a homicide scene. He left the apartment, rushed down the stairs and back out onto the street. It was dark now. Bane went to where he had left his car and headed south, toward the East Side.
Using his Link to patch into the regular phone system, he called Wilbur Schlegel. "Hey! Any luck?"
"Hah! You bet," came the triumphant voice. "You know, Jeremy, in a better world I should not be able to tap into bank accounts this easily. The Trom systems that Slade installed for helping you make it way too tempting."
"Well, he gave me the responsibility to stop you if you misused it," Bane said. "So fair you've been moderate. Anyway, this just streamlines things. I would spend a day questioning the girl's family and another day snooping through Dwyer's papers looking for his check book stubs and receipts. Did you find anything useful?"
"Absolutely. Susan Collinson was getting two thousand dollars a month from some unknown source. And Dwyer was losing two thousand a month. The dates match up. You could get this admitted in any court, it's solid correlation. Jeremy, I would guess this is semi-voluntary child support payments."
The Dire Wolf stopped short at a red light as the van in front of him suddenly jammed on its brakes. "Jerk!"
"What did you say?"
"The driver in front of me. I'm heading down Park Avenue," Bane explained. "Yeah, that sounds probable. Dwyer was either the father or representing him. Did the payments increase recently?"
"How did you know? Yeah, they went up to four thousand for the last two months. What made you suspect that?"
"Oh, you know, just a few theories floating around. Listen, Wilbur, thanks. You're on a retainer but you've been doing exceptional fast work lately. I'll meet you in a few days and we'll see how you can upgrade your equipment."
"Great, love it. I'll see you then."
Bane hung up and swung right onto 22nd Street, the same neighborhood where only a few years earlier he had captured the grotesque Dos Manos. To his surprise, there were two parking spots available right in front of his destination and he could pull in without having to parallel park. How often did that happen? He locked the car and stood in front of the old brownstone building he had heard so many stories about. The vestibule had listings for a massage therapist, an insurance company,and the one he was looking for: THORNE AND LANG, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS with a phone number. The front door was unlocked and he went through the foyer to the first door on the right. The hallway was clean and well-kept, with two healthy potted plants on either side of a bench. A door with a frosted glass panel repeated THORNE AND LANG. Bane knocked sharply and a young man's voice called, "It's open, come in."
The Dire Wolf entered, closing the door behind him and taking in every detail at a glance. It was quite a change from the usual threadbare, shabby set-ups most PIs had. There was an expensive rug, two original paintings and fresh flowers in a blue ceramic vase. Behind a desk facing the door, a man sat at a word processor and regarded Bane critically.
"You don't have an appointment," said Dennis Lang, rising as he checked the visitor out. Lang was a year or two over thirty, tall and broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. He was well-dressed, perhaps a bit too much so, in a dark blue suit with a powder blue shirt and black narrow tie, shoes shining and fingers manicured. He had a plain, square face with dark brown hair combed straight back and deepset brown eyes. He looked tough enough for the job, but a sudden smile made him boyish. "Say, let me guess. Jeremy Bane, right?"
"Yes. We haven't met."
"The Dire Wolf himself. I read the papers. Your description is easy to recognize in the flesh. Well, what brings you to our humble establishment? It's hard to think of anything you couldn't handle by yourself."
Bane glanced around the office, which seemed more like a private den in a home. Set back in an alcove was another door with no writing on the frosted glass and he nodded in that direction. "I need to see your partner, Mr Thorne."
Lang flashed what was meant to be a likeable smile. "He's the boss and the mastermind. I'm just a pair of legs to fetch things. I have no delusions, Mr Bane."
"Can I see him?"
"I'll ask. Hold on a second." Lang went through the private door with the most perfunctory of knocks and closed it behind him. Looking around, Bane wondered what Thorne's home was like if this was just an outer office. Almost at once, Lang was back. "You're in luck, he's not in a foul mood. This should be good, two legends in crimefighting meeting."
"Easy," Bane muttered. He went through as Dennis Lang held the door and faced Caleb Thorne.
III.
The inner office was twenty by twenty, holding a huge desk laden with loose papers. There was a simple writing desk sat at a right angle nearby, and Lang took his seat there. The walls were lined with shelves crammed with books and magazines. Five lamps were on, and the room was warm and a bit stuffy. Standing by a globe of the Earth two feet in diameter, Caleb Thorne turned and bowed slightly, but did not offer to shake hands. He was huge, well over six feet tall and well over three hundred pounds. A broad face dominated by a pair of shrewd, intelligent blue eyes, turned toward Bane. Thorne had a full head of thick white hair and a neatly kept beard.
Thorne was wearing a tailored brown suit with a canary yellow shirt and a solid tan necktie. As he sat down behind his desk, his stomach pressed against it. The man was obese but not soft-looking at all and Bane guessed he had been athletic not too many years earlier. "It's remarkable we have not met before," he said in a cultured bass. "Some coffee or tea, perhaps?"
"Nothing, thank you." There was a comfortable red leatherbound chair in front of Thorne's desk and Bane sat down without waiting for an offer. "Our activities overlap, but we are not quite in the same field."
"Did you know that I was acquainted with Kenneth Dred?" asked Thorne. "Ah, I see that caught your attention. In the late 1960s, when I first opened my practice. Dred engaged my services a number of times. I was young and limber in those days, much as you and Dennis are now. Time buries us in weary flesh. By 1976, Dred was getting too old to investigate by himself, and he wanted a young aide to handle the occasional encounters with the children of the night."
Bane said nothing, waiting and watching the great man thoughtfully.
"By that time, I myself had slowed down considerably and become much more settled. My talents were more in deduction and analysis than gunfights and slugfests, in any case. Some of my associates did work for Dred for time to time, but he was looking for a someone permanent, a sort of protege and even a successor."
"He found one," Bane said simply.
"So I see. I have naturally followed your career over the years with interest. The KDF. Kenneth Dred and I were never close friends, but I am content to say he was satisfied with the way I handled his assignments. Remarkable man."
The Dire Wolf exhaled sharply. "I'm glad to learn all this, Mr Thorne, and perhaps at some point you can tell me more. Right now, business is pressing. You do know that the KDF was disbanded three years ago?"
"Sadly, yes. Fewer heroes for a world that needs all it can get."
"True. Right now, I am operating my own detective agency. Licensed by the State of New York and tending to specialize in the unusual and even the occult, as you might expect."
Thorne's bushy eyebrows lifted. "Ah. And this leads to what brings you here tonight?"
"Yes." Bane leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. "There were two murders committed within the past five days. Susan Collinson and Henry Dwyer, seemingly unrelated. As far as the police know, the only connection is that both were shot with a .32 but the ballistics tests are inconclusive."
Thorne held up a broad palm to interrupt. "I must interject something here, Mr Bane. We ourselves are involved in this case. A client has retained our services to identify the murderer of Miss Collinson. In the course of our investigation, Dennis has gone to the apartment of Henry Dwyer but too late. He found only the body. In fact, my associate was standing there as the police arrived but they had nothing to hold him on and released him after some verbal sparring."
"All of this was in the newspapers," Bane said. "You are not betraying any confidences by telling me this."
"Certainly not."
"I have been asked to do a little digging myself," the Dire Wolf went on. "We don't reveal our clients unless compelled to, but I agreed to see if I could turn up something helpful. I think I have."
"Indeed?" rumbled Caleb Thorne.
At this point, Lang stood up and went over to rest one hip on the corner of Thorne's desk. He stood with folded arms and an attentive expression.
"Eighteen years ago, Dwyer had an encounter with a woman named Fay Collinson, and the result was a little girl, Susan. There was another potential father and no one considered marriage, but Dwyer had a conscience and he felt child support was his duty. Secrecy was a requirement. All these years, he has sent the money. A thousand dollars a month, tax free cash. Recently, the demand came for more as Susan moved here to the city and now had more expenses. Dwyer made a good living in TV production but that's still a chunk of money each month to lose. Especially since he was not legally bound to pay at all."
Thorne interrupted, "I can neither confirm nor deny any of this of course, but you understand we are greatly interested. Is there more?"
"Much more. The payments would continue until Susan was twenty-one or married. Another three years of money out the window for a one-night stand, as Dwyer saw it. He was finding it intolerable."
Lang cut in, "Are you considering that Dwyer killed his own daughter?"
"Not directly. Fay Collinson still lives upstate, near Syracuse, in a house with her sister and brother-in-laws. A difficult target to reach discreetly. Susan moved here right out of high school and got a tiny apartment on her own. She didn't know anyone in the city. Two weeks later, she was dead. Someone must have been tempted by how accessible she suddenly was. I seriously doubt Dwyer handled it himself. He didn't have the ruthless touch. But he had never spent any time with Susan and she was just his daughter in an abstract sense. He might hire someone to get her out of his life."
"I have considered this, of course," Thorne said. "It is one of four conjectures I have in mind, but I can see how you arrived at it."
"It gets worse," Bane assured him. "Dwyer had been gathering more cash than usual. His records indicate he had been withdrawing extra recently, adding up to five thousand dollars. No purchases or bill payments indicate it was spent. I think he had it in cash to pay someone off."
Dennis Lang said, "This ought to be good."
"Good? I don't know if that's the word. All these years and I still can't take this business lightly."
"It's just business for the undertaker," Lang replied. "After a few years, twenty or twenty-five murders a year to be solved, you learn to distance yourself. You'd have a breakdown if every homicide upsets you. That's why I say, business for the undertaker. It's how I deal with it."
Bane did not reply for a long moment. "I've heard some on the force mention you. You've solved a lot of tough cases, but you also fought with the police every time, even when it wasn't necessary. That's not unusual for PIs. You've been caught at the scene of eleven homicides in the past six years, each time you were released asa material witness and each time you found evidence that got someone convicted."
Suddenly tense, Lang stood up. "Wait a minute..."
"Something else first. Dwyer had chronic asthma, maybe the beginning of emphysema, and he was in the ER several times a year. In each room of his apartment he had one of those HEPA air purifiers running. Air quality meant a great deal to him." Bane turned his cold grey eyes from Lang to Caleb Thorne. "It's surprising that the window in the living room was open a few inches, letting in city air during hay fever season. What do you make of that?"
"I did not have that information," Thorne rumbled ominously. "I suspect, sir, we are heading for a conclusion neither of us will like."
"How about filling in those of us who are not geniuses?" demanded Lang.
"I think you're following this perfectly well," Bane said. "Dwyer had at least five thousand dollars on hand, the second half of a payment for the murder of Susan Collinson. As has happened many times before, the man who hires an assassin finds himself the next target. The killer shot Dwyer in the back of the head, threw the gun aside and pocketed the envelope with the cash. He had been wearing gloves, of course. It was just his bad luck that a cop car happened to be right nearby when someone reported the gunshot and the officers charged in to find him standing there."
"Stop! Hold it right there, are you daring to accuse ME?" Lang shouted with his face suddenly red. "I was searched. You know that. There was nothing suspicious on me and I was released on bail as a material witness, not a suspect."
"The envelope with the money could have been thrown out the window," Caleb Thorne put in gently. "A crack of three inches would be more than enough. Your car was parked outside, its top down as is your custom. Not a difficult throw."
"I didn't know you own a convertible, Lang," said Bane. "I figured you were just desperate and hoping no one picked up the envelope before you could get to it. Your car outside makes it tidier."
"This is ridiculous! Mr Thorne, I have worked for you for six years. Have you ever known me to let you down? Have I ever given you an incomplete report?"
"Not to my knowledge," said Caleb Thorne, his shaggy eyebrows lowered so far his eyes themselves could barely be seen.
Bane went on, "What caught my attention was all the times you were caught by the police at murder scenes and simply released. It's happened to detectives. It's happened to me, in fact. But eleven times? Even if you were innocent each time, after a while the cops would stop putting their full attention on you, even dismiss you quicker than they should. It would be, oh this guy again! And they would move on."
"That's enough!" Lang yelled. "Mr Thorne, you can't be giving this any credibility."
"Continue," Thorne said to Bane.
"After a while, you began to grow complacent yourself. You stopped being worried and didn't try to get away from the scene before being discovered. In fact, you figured maybe you should start taking advantage of the trend. Here was a perfect chance. Henry Dwyer had put out word that someone needed to be eliminated, and you heard about it. We'll trace that later. You shot Susan Collinson without feeling strongly about it. Just business for the undertaker, as you say," Bane said with obvious disgust. "The next night, you met with Dwyer to get the second half of the payment and you shot him too. But then you saw the police drive by the window and it was time to act fast. You opened that window and tossed the money envelope in the back seat where it conveniently fell out of sight. The cops should have searched your car, too, but they skipped it because they were just getting to blase about you. You knew them by name by now, didn't you?"
"Sure, we'd met a few times. That doesn't mean anything. This is all wild unfounded conjecture."
.
Bane stood up and took a video cassette from his jacket pocket. It had no label and no box. "Ah, but what you overlooked was this. Every one of the more than one hundred tapes in his apartment was neatly labelled. Names, dates, running times. Except this one." He put the cassette on the desk between Thorne's hands.
Turning back to Dennis Lang, Bane said, "Dwyer worked in television and he had a lot of up to date equipment. So. Here he is, meeting with the man he has just hired to kill his daughter. Maybe he wants some insurance for his own protection, maybe he just wants to avenged if anything goes fatally wrong... as it did. So he sets up a video camera in a cabinet and sets it to record just as the assassin knocks on the door. This tape will be Exhibit A at the trial..."
Lang went for his gun without premlinary moves. He had certainly practiced enough, he was quick and smooth with the draw. Against the Dire Wolf, though, he didn't have a prayer. Bane was standing within reach. He whipped out a right backfist and left cross that connected almost simultaneously. Dennis Lang reeled back wildly, dropping his revolver and sagged with his defenses down. Bane drew back his left hand behind his own head and smacked the rigid outer edge to the base of Lang's neck with a decisive crunch. He let the limp form drop to the rich carpeting.
Kneading his hands together to prevent soreness, the Dire Wolf turned to face Caleb Thorne, who was just now getting to his feet.
"I'm sorry to deprive you of your assistant," Bane said. "I kept hoping it wasn't him. But I couldn't figure it any other way."
"He didn't have any cover story planned. Very short-sighted." Thorne sighed and added in a whisper, "I treated him like the son I never had."
"Time to call Inspector Klein, sir."
"You know Klein? Oh, I will phone him now. Dennis is my responsibility."
As he placed the call and waited for Klein to be brought to the other end, Thorne muttered, "This may well cost me my license."
"I don't see why."
"Guilt by association. Well, thirty-five years catching murderers is more than enough. I can write my memoirs at last. Hello? Harold?" As he started talking, Bane bent and retrieved Lang's gun, watching the man for signs of returning consciousnss. Caleb Thorne hung up the phone. "The inspector is on his way with a pair of his uniformed brutes. Ah, Dennis. Premeditated murder, planned in advance and paid for. If he were back home in Texas, he'd sit in the chair for certain."
Bane nodded grimly. "Business for the undertaker."
4/8/2000- Rev 3/18/2014
[4/8/2000]
5/29/1997
I.
Jeremy Bane opened the front door to the small vestibule and stepped aside to let Inspector Klein in. Even on a gorgeous June morning, the inspector kept his ancient white raincoat on. "How ya doin', Bane?" asked Klein in an authentic New York growl. He was a short, stocky man close to sixty, with curly hair more grey than black at this point. His left eye was glass, a good version, but Bane had never found a likely moment to ask about it.
"I'm bored and restless," said the Dire Wolf in complete honesty. "Come on in and tell me you have something good lined up."
"Something weird and dangerous, you mean." Klein took a cigar stub from his pocket and started chewing on it. "I know you. You love it when the bullets are missing your head by an inch and some maniac with a cleaver is jumping on you from behind."
"You've got my number," Bane admitted. He ushered Klein into the reception room that he used as his office, which was large and sparsely furnished. There was a couch under the high narrow windows, with a coffee table holding old magazines and newspapers. On the far wall, on top of a waist-high bookcase holding legal volumes and reference material was a fish tank in which bizarre creatures lived. Against the right as one entered was a plain dark wood desk with a swivel chair behind it and three leatherbound straightback chairs facing it in an arc.
Bane dropped down behind the desk, which was almost bare, with only a reading lamp and a cordless phone in its charger. The Dire Wolf leaned back and waited for Klein to seat himself in the chair to the right. The Inspector glanced up at the map which took up most of the wall behind the desk. "I always wanted to ask you about that thing."
The Dire Wolf swivelled to glance up at it. "Kenneth Dred had it made in 1937. He told me it was painted by a Swedish artist named Ryndborg."
"It's gorgeous all right. I like the blues and greens. But time to get to business. Do I have to tell you every time I come here that my visits are strictly off the record and unofficial?"
Bane smiled as much as he ever did, a very slight tightening of the corners of his mouth. He was deadpan by nature. He had a narrow feral face with short black hair and pale grey eyes under heavy brows. At best, he was not a friendly-looking man. "I don't think so, inspector. After the past year, I think we've worked out an understanding."
Klein tossed his wet, mutilated cigar stub in a waste paper basket with distaste. "I have plenty of detectives on the force. Solid, well-trained men. The only reason I would need to come to an outsider is when there's a situation beyond the normal bounds of the world. Bane, it took me a long time to realize that there ARE things beyond what we call the real world. I began to realize a lot of unsolved cases remain unsolved because they involve, well, the supernatural."
"Same with me," the Dire Wolf replied. "When I first started working for Mr Dred, I laughed when he told me what I would be facing. My reaction was 'Oh Come ON!' but that got dropped pretty quick after tangling with a howler and Dos Manos and a couple of Snake men. After that, my ideas about what is possible widened a little."
Klein fumbled a fresh cigar from its cellophane wrapper and started chewing it. "My problem is I still can't put any of that stuff in my reports. If I filed a case involving a den of vampires or a rogue Troll eating homeless people, I'd be on the unemployment line so fast my chair would still be warm."
"Luckily, you just happen to know a Private Investigator who specializes in fighting monsters and maniacs," Bane said.
"Yeah. I do. And that's another sticky part of my situation. I can't hire you or give you orders. You're a free agent and unless I come to you as a client on my own, I shouldn't even know you except as a suspect."
"That's not really a problem," Bane said with a predatory gleam starting in his grey eyes. "You know I'm not built for hanging around. I live for trouble, and I'm always glad when you drop something sinister and gruesome in my lap."
"Yeah," Klein grumbled. "The Dire Wolf. You sure picked the right nickname. All right, let me throw some information at you and see if it catches your interest. We start with a murder last Monday night. Susan Collinson, aged eighteen, just graduated high school and looking for work as a temp. She was shot once in the back of the head with a .32 revolver. No likely suspects, no obvious leads. Then the following night, a man named Henry Dwyer got it the same way, with the same weapon. But this time a suspect was on the scene. It was a P.I. named Dennis Lang. He claimed to have just arrived seconds before the police, his fingerprints were nowhere on any evidence and he was released on a substantial bail."
"I've heard that name," Bane interrupted. "Dennis Lang. Yeah, he works for some master detective who has a reputation for never failing. What is his name? Caleb Thorne, right?"
"That's the one. He's a character. Claims to be a genius and his record backs it up. He has outmanuevered NYPD a dozen times, got evidence to convict a few hundred murderers and embezzlers, and he brags that he has never had a client go to prison."
Bane raised an eyebrow. "Is he really that good?"
"As far as I can tell, yeah. The problem is, he's slippery and he plays tricks that are just shady enough he'd be arrested if he slipped up. I've only met him once, but colleagues tell me he's pulled some dubious ploys that somehow always ended up with his client vindicated and someone else taking the rap."
"Why the anger in your voice, inspector? Isn't this just the natural rivalry between police and PIs, like between lawyers and doctors?"
"Ahh, maybe. I never had good cause to go after him or his buddy Lang. Maybe it's just personal dislike. He IS a smug old bastard."
Bane frowned and swung around in his swivel chair to look toward the window. "Inspector, how does this fall into my specialized area? Where's the weirdness, the supernatural?"
"You'd have to see the apartment where Dwyer lived to understand. But mostly, I have a feeling you're itchy for action and you'd jump at a chance to take Caleb Thorne down a peg or two, not to mention his boy Lang. That guy is obnoxious."
"Maybe I would," the Dire Wolf said. "You know what? Okay, I'm on it. You sure know how to give me enough to make me curious."
Klein stood up and took a thick manila envelope from inside his raincoat. "These are copies of reports I xeroxed myself when the office was empty. Of course, you're going to destroy them as soon as you've read them?"
"Absolutely. I haven't saved anything you've handed me, inspector. Just memories." He took the envelope and locked it in the center drawer of his desk, then came around to walk Klein toward the door. "I'll let you know as soon as I have anything worth reporting."
"Glad to hear it," Klein grumbled. "Good luck. I wasn't even here today, I'm at the scene of a hit and run." The inspector went down the steps to where his own personal car was parked on 38th Street without a driver. His use of Bane as a loose cannon was discreetly condoned by his superiors but they would have denied everything if it came out in the open.
II.
Returning to his office, Bane took the file and went out into the front hall, trotting up the staircase. He was too hyper to sit still for long. The same enhanced metabolism that gave him his superior reflexes also made him hopelessly restless. He walked up to the seventh floor, skimming through the report as he went. The gym took up the entire floor, with its array of modified Nautilus machines, treadmills, lockers and showers. Bane felt again how absurd it was to have all this equipment just for himself. When the KDF had been active, there had always been two or three members here working out here. He sighed. Maybe a new KDF was not such a hopeless project. It had been three years since that horrendous night in Nekropolis...
The Dire Wolf went to his locker and changed into shorts, a plain white T-shirt and sneakers. Even now, the matched silver daggers remained sheathed on his forearms. He went to one of the three treadmills and set the file up on the control panel. Setting the treadmill at a forty-five degree angle, he hit the controls for full run. As he loped easily along, he started reading slowly and carefully.
Twenty minutes later, he still had some pages to go, so he reset the treadmill and finished. Except for the gun used, there didn't seem to be any obvious connection between the murders. The gun had been found in Dwyer's apartment but there were no prints and it was a cheap disposable weapon quite a few years old. Susan Collins had been just a young woman starting out in life, and Dwyer was an established research consultant for a television production company. There was no evidence they even knew the other existed. But some connection had to be there.
In one paragraph, he spotted a hint of why Klein said that Dwyer's work was in Bane's area of interest. The TV series he worked on was syndicated as MYSTERIES OF UNEXPLAINED WORLDS. The Dire Wolf scowled. He never watched TV but that title did not sound promising. He shut down the treadmills and wiped it off with a cloth, then took the file downstairs to his rooms on the third floor. After a hot shower, he put on a fresh outfit of the black slacks and turtleneck, but the same jacket with its hidden gadgets. Trotting back down to the first floor and his office, he felt refreshed and alert and ready to dig into a mystery. The file went into a paper shredder as he had promised Klein, and the strips were mashed together into a soggy wad no one could decipher.
Before he started the case, he wanted to check in with his partner. He phoned Cindy in New Mexico. He had the unlisted number of the Human Capability Enhancement Project, where the Trom secretly worked with Humans behind the cover of a government research facility. Since the death of Leonard Slade, the Trom Monitor who had been a KDF member, both Bane and Cindy worked at maintaining contact with that elusive and secretive Race.
"Cin! Hi. How's the visit going? Really. Well, if anyone can talk them into keeping relations with people, it's you. Is Steve there? I know he's not Black Angel anymore but I don't want to lose touch with him. Maybe he can come back with you for a visit here." Bane listened silently for the next few minutes, and then asked her to repeat everything.
"Let me see if I've got this straight. The Trom have raised a Human girl from birth, training her to someday be a liaison between our two Races? They want her to work with us the way Len did, but she won't be eighteen for a few years yet. As a minor she can't join our new KDF until then. Everyone seems to have decided there's going to be a new Kenneth Dred Foundation team except me!" His voice calmed down. "No, it sounds great. And we do have to start planning early. We'll talk about little Trom Girl when you get back home. But listen, that's not what I called about, really. Klein turned up with a case that sounds interesting in a minor way. A couple of unrelated murders, I'm going to poke around and see what I can stir up. If you come back tomorrow, I might be out sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. Yes. Like always, I know. I miss you too. See you when you get back."
Next, Bane started calling some of his network of reporters. Over the twenty years of his career, he had saved many lives and returned many hostages, and he did not accept rewards as such. Instead, he asked that they keep an eye out for the inexplicable and the eerie, and to keep him informed. Most were glad to help out. He asked for any information about the two murders and he also wanted to know what was new with Caleb Thorne. The pickings were slim until he called his two best informants, Bleak and Wilbur Schlegel. As always, Bleak prowled the badlands between crime and the Midnight War, and he knew much that was meant to be secret. Schlegel was a retired journalist who lived on the Internet and who loved digging. Between the two of them, Bane usually ended up with something to work with.
All this took an hour and a half. Finally hanging up, Bane stretched and yawned. Holding still was a major effort for him. After his stomach made an audible rumble, he headed down to the kitchen at the back of the main hall. He finished off a bowl of macaroni salad with chopped chicken pieces, fried some bacon and drank a bottle of cranberry juice before he felt more human. His metabolism burned calories instantly. Cleaning up, he headed out of the building. Bane went through the back panel of a walk-in closet by the front door, down steep concrete steps and along a corridor to a wooden door which opened into the garage. This was just big enough to hold two cars. He chose the dark green Ford Mustang partly because it was parked more accessibly. Bane went up the ramp with its sharp twist at the top, eased out onto Lexington Avenue as the steel panel closed behind him and headed north. It would not be dark for more than an hour yet this time of year.
At 89th Street, he found the apartment building where Dwyer had lived, but the closest parking spot was on a side street three blocks away. Getting out, he circled the block warily. The building didn't seem anything special, just another twenty-story stone hive designed to house as many people as feasible in reasonable comfort for exorbitant rent. No one was near the front door as he walked casually up.
Bane had kept any number of useful gadgets from the KDF days, which gave him huge and slightly unfair advantages over other investigators. From an inner pocket, he took out an odd-looking gizmo with a dozen thin wires on one end and pressed it against the lock. The Trom device inserted several hair-slim wires inside which shaped themselves to fit the tumblers, then rotated and unlocked the door so promptly any observer would have thought Bane had used a proper key. There was a foyer, with a row of mailboxes on one wall and a strip of buzzers with name tags on the other. Bane ignored them and sprinted up the stairs. Decades of Kumundu training at Tel Shai and experience in the field had made his tread as hard to detect as that of a real wolf but he hardly was aware of it anymore. Being silent was normal for him. As he neared the second floor landing, he automatically froze and held his breath for thirty seconds. Had anyone been lying in wait, Bane would almost certainly have been aware of the presence.
There was the door, 217. The yellow police tape had been taken down. Bane used the Trom opener again and stepped into the late Dwyer's apartment as if it were his own, closing the door behind him. He was acting without any legal justification at this point, not having a client or any sanction by the authorities. He was used to this. Now was the time for quick action. He knew the police had scoured these four rooms with their usual procedures and he saw no reason to try to repeat what they had done. He needed to come up with his own angle.
The Dire Wolf stepped over to the window of the living room where the body had been found, and looked down at the sidewalk just ten feet below. According to the report, the window had been opened three inches when the police arrived. It looked out on a side street with a delicatessen opposite and a boarded-up shoe store. Nothing much to draw passers-by. It was getting gloomy in the apartment as he made a quick survey of the bookshelves and racks of VHS cassettes. There was a lot about the occult and the mysterious, but just the obvious stuff known to the public. There was nothing to indicate that Dwyer had known anything about the real Midnight War. He took a minute to go through a drawer of file folders and found the same. The usual topics.. Bigfoot, Loch Ness, UFO abductions, Bermuda Triangle. Inspector Klein had been way off base on this. Dwyer had nothing to do with the secret dangerous Midnight War that Bane moved in. For a few minutes, the Dire Wolf stood in the center of the room, reconstructing events in his head. The basic crime remained obvious. The killer had stepped up close behind Dwyer, fired once at close range and left. But there had to be something more. He just needed to let go and let it strike him.
There was something odd. There was a HEPA air filter in every room. A large air conditioner was fixed in the bedroom window. The police reports had noted that Dwyer had suffered from chronic asthma and frequent upper respiratory infections. He obviously wanted to keep the air in here as clean as possible. Bane went back and looked at the window of the living room again, with its HEPA filter sitting right below it. The grey eyes narrowed for a second, then Bane decided he had pushed his luck enough with his illegal entry into a homicide scene. He left the apartment, rushed down the stairs and back out onto the street. It was dark now. Bane went to where he had left his car and headed south, toward the East Side.
Using his Link to patch into the regular phone system, he called Wilbur Schlegel. "Hey! Any luck?"
"Hah! You bet," came the triumphant voice. "You know, Jeremy, in a better world I should not be able to tap into bank accounts this easily. The Trom systems that Slade installed for helping you make it way too tempting."
"Well, he gave me the responsibility to stop you if you misused it," Bane said. "So fair you've been moderate. Anyway, this just streamlines things. I would spend a day questioning the girl's family and another day snooping through Dwyer's papers looking for his check book stubs and receipts. Did you find anything useful?"
"Absolutely. Susan Collinson was getting two thousand dollars a month from some unknown source. And Dwyer was losing two thousand a month. The dates match up. You could get this admitted in any court, it's solid correlation. Jeremy, I would guess this is semi-voluntary child support payments."
The Dire Wolf stopped short at a red light as the van in front of him suddenly jammed on its brakes. "Jerk!"
"What did you say?"
"The driver in front of me. I'm heading down Park Avenue," Bane explained. "Yeah, that sounds probable. Dwyer was either the father or representing him. Did the payments increase recently?"
"How did you know? Yeah, they went up to four thousand for the last two months. What made you suspect that?"
"Oh, you know, just a few theories floating around. Listen, Wilbur, thanks. You're on a retainer but you've been doing exceptional fast work lately. I'll meet you in a few days and we'll see how you can upgrade your equipment."
"Great, love it. I'll see you then."
Bane hung up and swung right onto 22nd Street, the same neighborhood where only a few years earlier he had captured the grotesque Dos Manos. To his surprise, there were two parking spots available right in front of his destination and he could pull in without having to parallel park. How often did that happen? He locked the car and stood in front of the old brownstone building he had heard so many stories about. The vestibule had listings for a massage therapist, an insurance company,and the one he was looking for: THORNE AND LANG, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS with a phone number. The front door was unlocked and he went through the foyer to the first door on the right. The hallway was clean and well-kept, with two healthy potted plants on either side of a bench. A door with a frosted glass panel repeated THORNE AND LANG. Bane knocked sharply and a young man's voice called, "It's open, come in."
The Dire Wolf entered, closing the door behind him and taking in every detail at a glance. It was quite a change from the usual threadbare, shabby set-ups most PIs had. There was an expensive rug, two original paintings and fresh flowers in a blue ceramic vase. Behind a desk facing the door, a man sat at a word processor and regarded Bane critically.
"You don't have an appointment," said Dennis Lang, rising as he checked the visitor out. Lang was a year or two over thirty, tall and broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. He was well-dressed, perhaps a bit too much so, in a dark blue suit with a powder blue shirt and black narrow tie, shoes shining and fingers manicured. He had a plain, square face with dark brown hair combed straight back and deepset brown eyes. He looked tough enough for the job, but a sudden smile made him boyish. "Say, let me guess. Jeremy Bane, right?"
"Yes. We haven't met."
"The Dire Wolf himself. I read the papers. Your description is easy to recognize in the flesh. Well, what brings you to our humble establishment? It's hard to think of anything you couldn't handle by yourself."
Bane glanced around the office, which seemed more like a private den in a home. Set back in an alcove was another door with no writing on the frosted glass and he nodded in that direction. "I need to see your partner, Mr Thorne."
Lang flashed what was meant to be a likeable smile. "He's the boss and the mastermind. I'm just a pair of legs to fetch things. I have no delusions, Mr Bane."
"Can I see him?"
"I'll ask. Hold on a second." Lang went through the private door with the most perfunctory of knocks and closed it behind him. Looking around, Bane wondered what Thorne's home was like if this was just an outer office. Almost at once, Lang was back. "You're in luck, he's not in a foul mood. This should be good, two legends in crimefighting meeting."
"Easy," Bane muttered. He went through as Dennis Lang held the door and faced Caleb Thorne.
III.
The inner office was twenty by twenty, holding a huge desk laden with loose papers. There was a simple writing desk sat at a right angle nearby, and Lang took his seat there. The walls were lined with shelves crammed with books and magazines. Five lamps were on, and the room was warm and a bit stuffy. Standing by a globe of the Earth two feet in diameter, Caleb Thorne turned and bowed slightly, but did not offer to shake hands. He was huge, well over six feet tall and well over three hundred pounds. A broad face dominated by a pair of shrewd, intelligent blue eyes, turned toward Bane. Thorne had a full head of thick white hair and a neatly kept beard.
Thorne was wearing a tailored brown suit with a canary yellow shirt and a solid tan necktie. As he sat down behind his desk, his stomach pressed against it. The man was obese but not soft-looking at all and Bane guessed he had been athletic not too many years earlier. "It's remarkable we have not met before," he said in a cultured bass. "Some coffee or tea, perhaps?"
"Nothing, thank you." There was a comfortable red leatherbound chair in front of Thorne's desk and Bane sat down without waiting for an offer. "Our activities overlap, but we are not quite in the same field."
"Did you know that I was acquainted with Kenneth Dred?" asked Thorne. "Ah, I see that caught your attention. In the late 1960s, when I first opened my practice. Dred engaged my services a number of times. I was young and limber in those days, much as you and Dennis are now. Time buries us in weary flesh. By 1976, Dred was getting too old to investigate by himself, and he wanted a young aide to handle the occasional encounters with the children of the night."
Bane said nothing, waiting and watching the great man thoughtfully.
"By that time, I myself had slowed down considerably and become much more settled. My talents were more in deduction and analysis than gunfights and slugfests, in any case. Some of my associates did work for Dred for time to time, but he was looking for a someone permanent, a sort of protege and even a successor."
"He found one," Bane said simply.
"So I see. I have naturally followed your career over the years with interest. The KDF. Kenneth Dred and I were never close friends, but I am content to say he was satisfied with the way I handled his assignments. Remarkable man."
The Dire Wolf exhaled sharply. "I'm glad to learn all this, Mr Thorne, and perhaps at some point you can tell me more. Right now, business is pressing. You do know that the KDF was disbanded three years ago?"
"Sadly, yes. Fewer heroes for a world that needs all it can get."
"True. Right now, I am operating my own detective agency. Licensed by the State of New York and tending to specialize in the unusual and even the occult, as you might expect."
Thorne's bushy eyebrows lifted. "Ah. And this leads to what brings you here tonight?"
"Yes." Bane leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. "There were two murders committed within the past five days. Susan Collinson and Henry Dwyer, seemingly unrelated. As far as the police know, the only connection is that both were shot with a .32 but the ballistics tests are inconclusive."
Thorne held up a broad palm to interrupt. "I must interject something here, Mr Bane. We ourselves are involved in this case. A client has retained our services to identify the murderer of Miss Collinson. In the course of our investigation, Dennis has gone to the apartment of Henry Dwyer but too late. He found only the body. In fact, my associate was standing there as the police arrived but they had nothing to hold him on and released him after some verbal sparring."
"All of this was in the newspapers," Bane said. "You are not betraying any confidences by telling me this."
"Certainly not."
"I have been asked to do a little digging myself," the Dire Wolf went on. "We don't reveal our clients unless compelled to, but I agreed to see if I could turn up something helpful. I think I have."
"Indeed?" rumbled Caleb Thorne.
At this point, Lang stood up and went over to rest one hip on the corner of Thorne's desk. He stood with folded arms and an attentive expression.
"Eighteen years ago, Dwyer had an encounter with a woman named Fay Collinson, and the result was a little girl, Susan. There was another potential father and no one considered marriage, but Dwyer had a conscience and he felt child support was his duty. Secrecy was a requirement. All these years, he has sent the money. A thousand dollars a month, tax free cash. Recently, the demand came for more as Susan moved here to the city and now had more expenses. Dwyer made a good living in TV production but that's still a chunk of money each month to lose. Especially since he was not legally bound to pay at all."
Thorne interrupted, "I can neither confirm nor deny any of this of course, but you understand we are greatly interested. Is there more?"
"Much more. The payments would continue until Susan was twenty-one or married. Another three years of money out the window for a one-night stand, as Dwyer saw it. He was finding it intolerable."
Lang cut in, "Are you considering that Dwyer killed his own daughter?"
"Not directly. Fay Collinson still lives upstate, near Syracuse, in a house with her sister and brother-in-laws. A difficult target to reach discreetly. Susan moved here right out of high school and got a tiny apartment on her own. She didn't know anyone in the city. Two weeks later, she was dead. Someone must have been tempted by how accessible she suddenly was. I seriously doubt Dwyer handled it himself. He didn't have the ruthless touch. But he had never spent any time with Susan and she was just his daughter in an abstract sense. He might hire someone to get her out of his life."
"I have considered this, of course," Thorne said. "It is one of four conjectures I have in mind, but I can see how you arrived at it."
"It gets worse," Bane assured him. "Dwyer had been gathering more cash than usual. His records indicate he had been withdrawing extra recently, adding up to five thousand dollars. No purchases or bill payments indicate it was spent. I think he had it in cash to pay someone off."
Dennis Lang said, "This ought to be good."
"Good? I don't know if that's the word. All these years and I still can't take this business lightly."
"It's just business for the undertaker," Lang replied. "After a few years, twenty or twenty-five murders a year to be solved, you learn to distance yourself. You'd have a breakdown if every homicide upsets you. That's why I say, business for the undertaker. It's how I deal with it."
Bane did not reply for a long moment. "I've heard some on the force mention you. You've solved a lot of tough cases, but you also fought with the police every time, even when it wasn't necessary. That's not unusual for PIs. You've been caught at the scene of eleven homicides in the past six years, each time you were released asa material witness and each time you found evidence that got someone convicted."
Suddenly tense, Lang stood up. "Wait a minute..."
"Something else first. Dwyer had chronic asthma, maybe the beginning of emphysema, and he was in the ER several times a year. In each room of his apartment he had one of those HEPA air purifiers running. Air quality meant a great deal to him." Bane turned his cold grey eyes from Lang to Caleb Thorne. "It's surprising that the window in the living room was open a few inches, letting in city air during hay fever season. What do you make of that?"
"I did not have that information," Thorne rumbled ominously. "I suspect, sir, we are heading for a conclusion neither of us will like."
"How about filling in those of us who are not geniuses?" demanded Lang.
"I think you're following this perfectly well," Bane said. "Dwyer had at least five thousand dollars on hand, the second half of a payment for the murder of Susan Collinson. As has happened many times before, the man who hires an assassin finds himself the next target. The killer shot Dwyer in the back of the head, threw the gun aside and pocketed the envelope with the cash. He had been wearing gloves, of course. It was just his bad luck that a cop car happened to be right nearby when someone reported the gunshot and the officers charged in to find him standing there."
"Stop! Hold it right there, are you daring to accuse ME?" Lang shouted with his face suddenly red. "I was searched. You know that. There was nothing suspicious on me and I was released on bail as a material witness, not a suspect."
"The envelope with the money could have been thrown out the window," Caleb Thorne put in gently. "A crack of three inches would be more than enough. Your car was parked outside, its top down as is your custom. Not a difficult throw."
"I didn't know you own a convertible, Lang," said Bane. "I figured you were just desperate and hoping no one picked up the envelope before you could get to it. Your car outside makes it tidier."
"This is ridiculous! Mr Thorne, I have worked for you for six years. Have you ever known me to let you down? Have I ever given you an incomplete report?"
"Not to my knowledge," said Caleb Thorne, his shaggy eyebrows lowered so far his eyes themselves could barely be seen.
Bane went on, "What caught my attention was all the times you were caught by the police at murder scenes and simply released. It's happened to detectives. It's happened to me, in fact. But eleven times? Even if you were innocent each time, after a while the cops would stop putting their full attention on you, even dismiss you quicker than they should. It would be, oh this guy again! And they would move on."
"That's enough!" Lang yelled. "Mr Thorne, you can't be giving this any credibility."
"Continue," Thorne said to Bane.
"After a while, you began to grow complacent yourself. You stopped being worried and didn't try to get away from the scene before being discovered. In fact, you figured maybe you should start taking advantage of the trend. Here was a perfect chance. Henry Dwyer had put out word that someone needed to be eliminated, and you heard about it. We'll trace that later. You shot Susan Collinson without feeling strongly about it. Just business for the undertaker, as you say," Bane said with obvious disgust. "The next night, you met with Dwyer to get the second half of the payment and you shot him too. But then you saw the police drive by the window and it was time to act fast. You opened that window and tossed the money envelope in the back seat where it conveniently fell out of sight. The cops should have searched your car, too, but they skipped it because they were just getting to blase about you. You knew them by name by now, didn't you?"
"Sure, we'd met a few times. That doesn't mean anything. This is all wild unfounded conjecture."
.
Bane stood up and took a video cassette from his jacket pocket. It had no label and no box. "Ah, but what you overlooked was this. Every one of the more than one hundred tapes in his apartment was neatly labelled. Names, dates, running times. Except this one." He put the cassette on the desk between Thorne's hands.
Turning back to Dennis Lang, Bane said, "Dwyer worked in television and he had a lot of up to date equipment. So. Here he is, meeting with the man he has just hired to kill his daughter. Maybe he wants some insurance for his own protection, maybe he just wants to avenged if anything goes fatally wrong... as it did. So he sets up a video camera in a cabinet and sets it to record just as the assassin knocks on the door. This tape will be Exhibit A at the trial..."
Lang went for his gun without premlinary moves. He had certainly practiced enough, he was quick and smooth with the draw. Against the Dire Wolf, though, he didn't have a prayer. Bane was standing within reach. He whipped out a right backfist and left cross that connected almost simultaneously. Dennis Lang reeled back wildly, dropping his revolver and sagged with his defenses down. Bane drew back his left hand behind his own head and smacked the rigid outer edge to the base of Lang's neck with a decisive crunch. He let the limp form drop to the rich carpeting.
Kneading his hands together to prevent soreness, the Dire Wolf turned to face Caleb Thorne, who was just now getting to his feet.
"I'm sorry to deprive you of your assistant," Bane said. "I kept hoping it wasn't him. But I couldn't figure it any other way."
"He didn't have any cover story planned. Very short-sighted." Thorne sighed and added in a whisper, "I treated him like the son I never had."
"Time to call Inspector Klein, sir."
"You know Klein? Oh, I will phone him now. Dennis is my responsibility."
As he placed the call and waited for Klein to be brought to the other end, Thorne muttered, "This may well cost me my license."
"I don't see why."
"Guilt by association. Well, thirty-five years catching murderers is more than enough. I can write my memoirs at last. Hello? Harold?" As he started talking, Bane bent and retrieved Lang's gun, watching the man for signs of returning consciousnss. Caleb Thorne hung up the phone. "The inspector is on his way with a pair of his uniformed brutes. Ah, Dennis. Premeditated murder, planned in advance and paid for. If he were back home in Texas, he'd sit in the chair for certain."
Bane nodded grimly. "Business for the undertaker."
4/8/2000- Rev 3/18/2014
