Man in the Middle Read online

  I should mention one interesting personal touch I observed as I passed through his living room: a silver frame inside which was a studio-posed photograph of a mildly attractive, middle-aged lady, a smiling young boy, and a frowning teenage girl.

  This seemed incongruous with Clifford’s living arrangements, and could suggest that we had just stumbled into his secret nooky nest, or he was divorced, or something in between.

  Finally, we were just inside the border of the county of Arlington, which explained all the Arlington cops, homicide dicks, and forensics people trying to get a fix on this thing.

  Were this suicide, they were wrapping up and about to knock off for an early lunch. If murder, on the other hand, their day was just starting.

  As I mentioned, the smell was really rank, and I was the only one without a patch of white neutralizing disinfectant under my nose—or the only one still breathing.

  At least I looked manly and cool while everybody else looked like character actors in a stunningly pathetic milk commercial. But in my short time with the Agency, I had learned that image is all-important: The image creates the illusion, and the illusion creates the reality. Or maybe it was the other way around. The Agency has a school for this stuff, but I was working on the fly.

  Anyway, Bian Tran was staring at her watch, and she sort of sighed and said, “Okay, let’s get through this. Quickly.” She looked at me and continued, “I spoke with the lead detective when I arrived. It happened last night. Around midnight.” She said, “I think your nose is already telling you that. Am I right?”

  After five or six hours at room temperature, a body begins purging gases, and in a small and enclosed space such as this, the effect was worse than the men’s room in a Mexican restaurant. Whatever Cliff had for dinner the night before was revolting.

  She noted, “Statistically, that’s the witching hour for suicides. Not the exact hour, per se. Just late at night.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “About 70 percent of the time.”

  “Okay.” I was looking at the window. Unfortunately, we were on the twelfth floor of a modern high-rise and the windows were permasealed. I would either have to breathe slower or get her to talk faster.

  She said, “Think about it. Exhaustion, mental defenses are worn down, darkness means gloominess, and if the victim lives alone, a mood of depression and isolation sets in.” I must have looked interested in this tutorial because she continued, “Spring. That’s the usual season. Holidays, though, like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s are also fatally popular.”

  “Weird.”

  “Isn’t it? When normal people’s moods go on the upswing, theirs sink into the danger zone.”

  “Sounds like you know this stuff.”

  “I’m certainly no expert. I’ve helped investigate seven or eight suicides. How about you?”

  “Strictly homicides. A little mob stuff, a few fatal kidnappings, that kind of thing.” I asked her, “Did you ever investigate a suicide that looked like this?”

  “I’ve never even heard of one like this.”

  “Was there a note?”

  She shook her head. “But that’s not conclusive. I’ve heard of cases where the note was left at the office, or even mailed.”

  She walked over to the dresser and began a visual inspection of the items on top: a comb and brush, small wooden jewelry box, small mirror, a few male trinkets. I followed her and asked, “How was the body discovered?”

  “The victim uses . . . used a maid service. The maid had a key, at nine she let herself in and walked into this mess.”

  “Implying the apartment door was locked when she arrived. Right?”

  “It has a self-locking mechanism.” She added, “And no . . . there are no signs of burglary or break-in.”

  “The cops already checked for that?” I knew the same question would later be asked of me, so I asked.

  “They did. The front door and a glass slider to the outdoor porch are the only entrances. The slider door was also locked, if you’re interested. Anyway, we’re on the twelfth floor.”

  “Who called the police?”

  “The maid. She dialed 911, and they switched her to the police department.”

  I already knew that, but when you fail to raise the predictable questions, people get suspicious and start asking you questions. My FBI creds looked genuine enough to get me past the crime recorder at the door; now all I had to do was avoid any serious discussions that would expose what an utter phony I was. I’m good at that.

  Checking the next box, I asked, “Where’s the maid?”

  “In the kitchen. Name’s Juanita Perez. Young, about twenty. Hispanic, and very Catholic, probably illegal, and at the moment, extremely distraught.”

  “I’ll bet.” I mean, I arrived at this apartment anticipating a corpse, and yet, between the malignant stench and the sight, I was still appalled. Juanita expected perhaps a messy apartment, but not a dead client, definitely not one in his vulgar condition, and for sure not a green card inspection.

  I tried to imagine the moment she entered the bedroom, lured, perhaps, by the odor, lugging her cleaning bucket and possibly a duster or some other tool of her trade. She opened the bedroom door, stepped inside, and bingo—a man, totally naked, lying on his back, utterly exposed with the sheets rumpled around his feet. On the bedside table was a full glass of water, and discarded on the floor by the bed was a pile of unfolded garments: black socks, white boxers, dog-eared brown oxfords, a cheap gray two-piece business suit, white polyester shirt, and a really ugly necktie—it had little birds flying on green and brown stripes. His sartorial tastes aside, it looked like the same outfit Cliff wore to the office the day before. For the watchful observer this is a clue of sorts.

  Also, nearly beneath the bed with only a corner sticking out, was a worn and scuffed tan leather valise, which for reasons I’ll explain later, you can bet I kept a close eye on.

  In fact, I edged my way over, gingerly placed a foot on that valise, and pressed down. The contents felt hard and flat—a thick notebook, or maybe a laptop computer. I then nudged the valise farther under the bed and, to distract Ms. Tran, pointed at the pile of clothes and observed, “He undressed in a hurry.”

  “Well . . . I’ll bet messing up his clothes was the least of his worries.”

  I nodded. Behaviorally, I knew this to be partially consistent with suicide, and partially not. Those about to launch themselves off the cliff of oblivion focus on the here and now, with perhaps a thought to eternity, totally indifferent about tomorrow, because there is no tomorrow.

  But neither are suicidal people usually in a careless rush. They are, for once, masters of their own destiny, their own fate. Some wrestle with temptation, others indulge the moment. Whatever stew of miseries brought them to this point is about to be erased, banished— forever. A calm sets in, a moment of contemplation, perhaps. Some compose an informative or angry or apologetic note; many become surprisingly detached, methodical, ritualistic.

  A psychiatrist friend once explained all this to me, further mentioning that the precise method of suicide often exposes a great deal about the victim’s mood and mind-state.

  Dead men tell no tales, as our pirate friends liked to say. But they often do leave road maps.

  A common and I suppose reasonable impulse is to arrange a painless ending, or at least a swift one. But how they do it, that’s what matters.

  Scarring, scalding, or defacing their own bodies is often verboten; thus the popularity of overdosing, poisoning, carbon monoxide, or a plastic bag over the head—methods that leave the departed vessel intact, which matters for some reason. Some turn their final act into a public spectacle, flinging themselves off high buildings into busy thoroughfares, or rounding up an audience by calling the cops. Others take the opposite approach, finding an isolated spot to erase all evidence of their existence, anonymously leaping off tall bridges into deep waters, or presetting a fire to incinerate their corpse.

&n
bsp; Unfortunately, we were in a bar, the shrink was a she, I was three sheets to the wind, and I was more interested in her 38D than her PhD. I am often ashamed by own pigginess, but anyway, I understood this: Suicide is like performance art. For the investigator, if you know how to read the signs, it’s like a message from the dead. The victim is communicating something.

  Again, I tried peeking around the hefty forensic examiner’s shoulder and asked myself, what message was this guy sending, deliberately or otherwise?

  His head rested on a pillow that was soaked with dried blood and brain matter, and about two inches from his left ear rested his left hand, in which a Glock 9mm pistol was gripped. His forefinger was still inside the trigger guard, and a silencer was screwed to the end of the barrel, which was interesting. There were no obvious signs of a scuffle or struggle, further presumptive evidence that this was a solo act.

  Of course, you need to be careful about hasty conclusions when homicide is a possibility. There’s what you see, there’s what the killer wants you to see, and there’s what you should see.

  Tran asked, “Do you have a clear view?”

  “I . . . Am I missing something?”

  This question for some reason elicited a smirk. “Yes, I think you probably are.”

  I took this as a suggestion and walked across the room to a position on the far side of the body where the forensics dick no longer obscured my view. I began at mid-body and worked up, then back down.

  The first thing I noted was a purpling around his butt and upper arms, as you would expect a few hours after his heart went out of business and gravity cornered the market on blood flow. His stomach had already bloated with gas, and I saw no bruising or abrasions on the corpse. His eyes were frozen open, and his facial expression indicated surprise, or shock, or both. I spent a moment thinking about that.

  About two inches above his left ear was a small dark hole, roughly the size of a 9mm bullet, which was indicative that the Glock in his left hand was the weapon that did the dirty deed. I took a moment and examined the pistol more closely. As I said, a silencer was screwed to the barrel, and as I also said, it was a Glock, but a specialty model known as the Glock 17 Pro, which I knew to be expensive and usually imported.

  The bullet had been fired straight and level, and part of his right ear, half his brain, and chunks of his skull had produced a sort of Jackson Pollock splatter arrangement on the far, formerly white wall.

  No wedding ring—thus Cliff Daniels either was not married or, based on the photographic evidence in his living room, was keeping it a secret.

  More interesting, for a man who in so many ways seemed so inconspicuous, in one very notable way Clifford Daniels, at least in his present state, was anything but—I mean, I’m fairly comfortable about my own manhood, but I wouldn’t want to have a locker beside Cliff’s.

  And most interesting of all, his right hand was gripped around his other gun, and at the moment of passing he appeared to have been in a state of sexual arousal. Goodness.

  I walked back over to Ms. Tran. She looked at me and asked, “You saw it?”

  “It?”

  Silence.

  Somebody had to say something, and eventually she defined It. “He’s so . . . large.”

  “Oh . . . that? I don’t call that big.”

  She smiled.

  “Of course, it’s not about the size,” I told her.

  “Wrong.”

  “Right.”

  We suddenly found ourselves on thin ice. I mean, here we were, a man and a woman, barely acquainted professionals, sharing a small room with a monster Mr. Johnson flying at full mast.

  She suggested, “I suppose we have to address his, well . . . his state of . . .”

  “His what?”

  “You know . . . his . . .”

  “Spell it out.”

  She said, sounding annoyed, “That’s enough, Drummond. We’re both adults.”

  “Really? You should ask my boss about that.”

  “Look . . . the corpse has . . . had an erection—okay? Let’s just keep it clinical. Act like professionals. We can deal with this.”

  “Good idea. After all, you can’t ignore the elephant in the room.”

  She put a hand over her mouth and smiled, or maybe frowned. Then she mustered a stern look and said, “I hope that’s out of your system.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Well . . . now, here’s the good news. I think we can rule out erectile dysfunction or penile insecurities as motives for suicide.”

  We laughed.

  I mean, we both were affected by this man’s death, sympathetic about the miseries that led to such a tragic act, and professionally dedicated to getting to the bottom of this.

  Eros and Thanatos—sex and death. When the ancient Greeks wrote about sex, it was comedy, and of death, tragedy. So the scene before us was a combination of sad, nauseating, and ridiculous. As every cop knows, satire is a coping mechanism, a path to detachment, without which you haven’t a prayer of catching the bad guys.

  Anyway, that was her excuse. My dog ate mine.

  I cleared my throat, and tried to clear my mind, and asked, “So, was it murder or was it suicide?”

  “Well . . . the lead detective mentioned a few other things you should be aware of.”

  “Go on.”

  “When the maid entered the bedroom, the TV was on . . . as was the DVD player, albeit in passive mode.”

  “So he watched a little tube before he pulled the plug. Maybe he didn’t like the show. Rather than get up and turn the channel, maybe he pushed his own stop button.” I recalled a lady friend who once made me watch a full episode of General Hospital; I thought seriously about killing myself.

  She said, “A porn video was in the DVD player.”

  We exchanged eye contact.

  She added, “I’ve never seen or heard of this with a suicide. Have you?”

  “I’ve read of cases where certain sexual fetishes resulted in death. For example, asphyxiation, or near asphyxiation, apparently heightens the sexual sensation.”

  “I’ve heard of it. In those cases, though, death is accidental, an unwanted by-product. That doesn’t apply here.”

  “Maybe he was holding his breath when he blew out his brains.”

  I thought she was going to make me stand in the corner. She said, “Sexual asphyxia . . . that’s the clinical expression for the fetish you’ve raised. It involves strangulation, a sudden disruption of blood, and therefore of oxygen, to the brain. But that’s not what happened here, was it? He watched a dirty movie, he put a pistol to his head, and he blew out his brain.”

  I had a really funny response to that, having to do with the possibility that he accidentally blew out the wrong brain. But I sometimes obey my better angels, and instead I suggested, “You could theorize that he used the tape as a distraction from a task that was surely unpleasant. A mental diversion . . . a form of mental anesthesia.” Recalling the conversation with my lady shrink friend, I informed her, “Here’s another thing to consider. With suicide victims, the manner of their death often expresses what they were thinking, their final thoughts.”

  “All right . . . I can see where that makes sense.” She gazed thoughtfully at Clifford Daniels’s body and asked, “What do you think was the last thing that passed through his mind?”

  “A 9mm bullet.”

  I think I had worn out her stamina for my bad jokes. In fact she said, “Try again.”

  “Well, it’s not necessarily a conscious or even deliberate arrangement on the victim’s part. Maybe he was experiencing a final narcissistic impulse. You know, like subliminal exhibitionism run amok.”

  “You think?”

  “I think it’s fair to say that Clifford had one exemplary feature. Wouldn’t you agree? Maybe he wanted to be remembered for that.”

  I couldn’t tell what she was thinking about this, but she remarked, “Men are really strange.”

  “Check the nearest magazine rac
k. Males have no monopoly on sexual exhibitionism . . . or oversize organs, or weirdness.”

  “And you consider who buys those magazines, and why.” She then concluded, “You raise an intriguing point, though. I’ll be sure to consult with a psychiatrist about this.”

  Which offered the opening I’d been waiting for. “Why are you here? Have you got a piece of this case?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Ladies before gentlemen.”

  “Oh . . . now you’re a gentleman?” It wasn’t that funny, but she laughed.

  I should mention why I asked. Bian Tran’s tan- and loam-colored outfit was not your ordinary feminine attire, but a desert-style camouflage battle dress uniform with Uncle Sam’s Army embroidered above her right breast.

  The Army uniform can be both illustrative and informative. For instance, the insignia on her right collar—crossed dueling pistols— designated her a member of the Military Police Corps, which might have something to do with her presence here. And from the gold leaf on her other collar, she was a major, with the combat patch on her right shoulder indicating she had a full combat tour under her belt, and had done her part to secure Western civilization, such as it is.

  Regarding the person inside the uniform: thick, straight hair, parted down the middle, black in color, and shoulder length, as per regulations, which not all women follow. Eyes large, black, Asiatic in cast, with arched eyebrows that were slyly expressive. I estimated her age at about thirty—young for her rank—so she probably was very good at her job, and there was a warm intelligence in her eyes.

  “I asked why you’re here,” she said.

  Vietnamese by name and by race, though her English carried no hint of an accent, in fact was flawless—idiomatically correct, native in tone and inflection, and so forth. Light on the makeup and, if you’re interested, as I sometimes am, no wedding band, just a practical black plastic runner’s watch, tiny gold West Point ring, and a plastic-wrapped dog-tag chain around her neck.

  All in all, I thought Bian Tran was an impressive specimen of soldierly attributes—fit, wholesome, and freshly scrubbed; ready to launch a volleyball on the beach, or a fire mission on an enemy village, whichever the occasion calls for.