Shred of Evidence

Jimmy Hanson was a sallow man who enjoyed little in life save for his bird watching. Actually, he looked like a birdwatcher—which he was. He did not look like a blackmailer—which he also was.

Ross Deacon couldn’t believe his eyes when Hanson emptied the envelope of photos onto Deacon’s desk and then sat back in the office chair. Deacon didn’t freeze when he saw them, he didn’t shake as he picked up each one to examine it more closely. In fact, he rather admired the quality of the photos. Not only were they crystal clear—remarkable for telephoto shots—but the composition was excellent, with Ross and the car in the lower left, a tree overhanging the roadside cliff on the right and a cottony bank of clouds at the top nicely providing a balance for both.

There were no doubts about the scene, all laid out in sequence—Deacon pulling right up to the edge of the drop-off, getting out from behind the wheel, reaching in to yank a still figure from the passenger’s side over to the driver’s side, slamming shut the car door and, finally, bracing his back against the rear of the vehicle and slowly pushing it over the edge. Included were a few additional “post accident” photos, the most telling of which focused on his face as he turned to go back to his own car. There was no mistaking who he was. There was even less chance of mistaking the self-satisfied smile on his face.

Even as he said, “How much?” Deacon was already making his plans to kill Hanson, someone whose existence he hadn’t been aware of only a few minutes previously.

Hanson shrugged. “I’m not greedy. I’m not too happy with my job.” He almost smiled. “I’d much rather be out watching birds. Have you ever seen those red-tailed hawks rise with the thermals? They don’t move a wing. All they do is tilt their bodies and ride the current. It’s…”

“Let’s get to the point. How much?”

Another shrug. “As I said, I’m not greedy. How about my salary—which isn’t much above the minimum? And that shack I rent outside of town is kind of depressing. Maybe rent for a cottage out in the Shady Glen subdivision.”

The negotiations really weren’t much different from hundreds of others Deacon had had over the years with developers, contractors, other real estate agents and property managers. But there was a difference. Nothing on paper. Well, some of those weren’t on paper either, come to think of it. Only this time, Deacon was really in no position to bargain, nor did his position bother him much. He had other plans.

The plans were only slightly modified by Hanson’s parting remark. “I thought you might like to know I’ve given my attorney a manila envelope containing a safety deposit key and the name of the bank. He’s to use it only if I should die or disappear. It’s a kind of life insurance, you might say.” They didn’t shake hands.

The door had hardly closed behind his visitor when Deacon reached for the phone book, looked down the short list of private investigators, and tore out the page. He had never been one to hesitate. The day his partner had begun to question Deacon’s handling of company funds, he had spent the next hours carefully working out the latter’s demise. A trip to the backcountry above Cottrell Canyon followed, for inspection of a vast acreage being considered by mythical developers. The use of both cars based on the flimsiest of excuses. Then careful selection of a seldom-traveled back road, where drop-offs were dangerous and unguarded. From there it was easy. A blow to the head—and the rest all secretly recorded by a scruffy birdwatcher hidden in the trees above the road.

Deacon had figured the partner would be listed as missing, and probably not found until turkey season, which wouldn’t open for a good two months. All in all, a brilliant plan only slightly marred by the unchallengeable photos. Getting rid of the photographer would be a bit of a challenge, but not much.

The first two private investigators proved unsatisfactory. One was obviously curious. Curiosity was the last thing Deacon wanted. The second seemed altogether too prosperous. The large office staff was a turn-off. Number three was ideal.

Fran Ellis, of Enterprise Investigators, was the one and only investigator in the company. Her office was miniscule—two file cabinets, a chair, a desk overflowing with paper, a butt-filled ashtray and a computer that could undoubtedly pass for an antique.

Her appearance was no more prepossessing than her office space. Not a woman a man would look at twice. Somewhat athletic in appearance. Short, slightly graying hair. Small eyes, set too close to a prominent nose, along with a doughy complexion. “Probably a dyke,” Deacon thought. Whatever her other proclivities, she was obviously hungry, took the assignment without question, and simply wanted him to point her in the right direction. Deacon’s only qualm was that she might be too unintelligent to carry out even this simple task.

“His name’s Alfred Hanson. He goes by Freddy.” Deacon handed her a paper. “Here’s his address. All I want you to do is to find out who his attorney is. How much?”

Not a moment’s hesitation. “Five hundred.” The cigarette rasp to the voice didn’t mask the eagerness. “I’ll have the name and address by next week. Anything else?”

Deacon opened his wallet, counted out five hundred-dollar bills in one pile and five in another. “Both of these are yours if you get me the name by tomorrow noon.”

Ellis looked up, her dull grey eyes now separated by a double frown-line. “Need a receipt?”

Deacon shook his head, ignored the proffered hand and headed back to his office. There was work to do. Hanson had insisted on cash, which made the work that much easier. Claiming that it would take several days to liquidate some assets, Deacon had agreed to meet him in a remote part of the Wal-Mart parking lot within a week. If Ellis did produce the address by the following day, Deacon was reasonably certain something could be done about that manila envelope and key before the weekend. If not, the meeting could be delayed. Hanson didn’t seem impatient, and he really had no reason to hurry his benefactor.

Initially, Deacon had assumed that the solution—once he knew who the attorney was—would be to arrange Hanson’s death, then hire someone to burglarize the attorney’s office, steal and trash enough besides the manila envelope to throw the police off the trail. Once in possession of the key, Deacon could remove the contents from the safety deposit box. That might be the more difficult step, but forged documents would do the trick.

In reality, he wasn’t happy with the scenario. The call from Ellis the next morning with the name of the attorney, and some additional information she provided, opened the possibility of a far more satisfactory solution.

The raspy voice read off the name and address, “Mandy Bart, 12 South Westlake, third floor.”

That someone like her could have found the connection so quickly annoyed him. It must have been a very easy thousand dollars. About to hang up, curiosity got the better of him. “Isn’t that in the warehouse district?”

A snort. “Block away. Seedy area. Seedy attorney. Boozer.” A pause, as though she were thinking better of having said that much. “Need anything else?”

He really didn’t. Conceivably there was now a far better solution than a burglary, which would have to involve someone else knowing about the folder—perhaps getting ideas.

Deacon left a message on Attorney Bart’s answering phone, identifying himself as John Holloway. The return call came through late the following morning. Deacon could almost feel the hangover in the latter’s voice. Even so, he sounded eager, and Deacon’s choice of legal problems—drunk driving—clearly struck a responsive chord.

Dressed appropriately for the occasion in a suit he had long ago planned to donate to the Salvation Army—with a receipt for income tax purposes, of course—he drove off to keep the afternoon appointment. Mandy Bart turned out to be all Deacon could ask for and a little more besides. A quick retreat to a local bar to “discuss the case,” a few drinks to lubricate a slope already slippery from the contents of what must have been a bottle in the desk’s bottom drawer, and Bart would have given Deacon the combination to Fort Knox had he known it and been in any condition to remember it.

Deacon’s biggest problem was spacing out the drinks to keep the attorney sufficiently coherent, but not allowing him to sober up enough to realize he was being taken on a fishing expedition. The lead-in was talk about strange clients, with strange requests. An hour’s dredging through maudlin divorce cases, defense of child molesters and a pyropile of arsonists brought up the strange case of a client who was guaranteeing he wouldn’t be killed by leaving the key to a mysterious safety deposit box with Bart.

The attorney leaned forward, and in a stage whisper that could be heard through much of the noisy bar, said, “Blackmail. That’s what it is. Blackmail. Blackmail, I tell you. There’s something in that box, something that’s guaranteeing him a nice income, I’ll bet.”

“You mean you’ve got the key in your office?”

“Yup.” A nod, a long drink and a rattling of the ice left in the glass.

“Why don’t you check it out and see if it is blackmail?”

Deacon had half expected that this remark would produce indignation. Instead, the lugubrious face seemed to express disappointment. “Can’t. Power of attorney doesn’t kick in until he dies or disappears.”

The drive back to Bart’s office was a quiet one, since the attorney had nodded off. It took considerable urging as well as physical support to wrestle him up the stairs to his shabby second floor office. Seated in his familiar desk chair, he revived sufficiently to find his liquor cache in the bottom drawer. Oblivious to his visitor, he drained the remnants and returned to his somnolent state. For Deacon, it was now all too easy.

The files were a mess, but the B’s produced a Hanson folder containing only one object—a manila envelope. Deacon closed the door quietly and left with it under his arm.

From there, with a few modifications, the original pattern repeated itself. By noon of the following day, Deacon had already parked his car near the cliff at Cottrell Canyon, but out of sight. He then hiked back to the main road and hitched into town. Hanson was happy to hear that he would receive his first payment earlier than expected. In the lot, once Deacon had checked to make sure no others could see the action, he used the same short iron bar he’d crushed his partner’s skull with. Except that, this time, he didn’t want the blow to kill.

With the unconscious Hanson nodding as though asleep and locked back in his shoulder and seat belt, Deacon drove the birdwatcher’s car carefully out to the highway and headed for his favorite spot. Practice made perfect. The car tumbled over the cliff in half the time it had taken to dispose of its predecessor. It took only five minutes to walk to where he’d hidden his own car earlier in the day.

The following morning, as he was catching up on some of his neglected work, his receptionist announced a Ms. Fran Ellis to see him. It took several moments for him to place the name. It took more moments to ponder what the private investigator might want—another job?

She slipped into the same chair as the birdwatcher had sat in only a few days previously. Deacon said nothing, merely raising his eyebrows, staring at the dull eyes. “I don’t think I mentioned it when I spoke to you in my office,” she began, “but my specialty is surveillance. Business has been slow lately, so I thought I’d keep in practice by following you.”

Deacon’s face remained a blank.

“I sort of had the feeling you’d pay Lawyer Bart a visit. And sure enough you did. I didn’t follow the two of you into the bar. Just waited outside. I’m good at waiting. Waited outside his office after you pretty much carried him up there. The wait wasn’t long, after that. I saw you carrying out a manila envelope. That made me curious. You’re easy to follow, by the way. You always drive real careful.

“So it wasn’t much trouble tailing you out to Cottrell Canyon. I was born and raised on a ranch out in that area, and knew better than to follow you down that dead-end road. Just waited until you came back out. It surprised me to see you hiking out. That’s when I got real curious. I drove up to that cliff overlooking the Canyon and began to figure out what was going on. It will be a while before anyone spots those cars smashed to pieces at the foot. It will be easy to believe it may have been just one accident, what with the road so narrow there and the sides crumbling off. Of course, when I looked over, the second car hadn’t arrived yet.”

Her face remained expressionless and the tone of her voice was flat as she went on. “It took me a while, but I managed to put two and two together.”

Until this moment, Deacon wouldn’t have believed his visitor was capable of adding that high.

As though reading his thoughts, she continued, “I added another two when I saw where you’d hidden your car. Even so, I couldn’t be sure. So I picked you up again at your office, followed the taxi you took to the Wal-Mart parking lot and saw what happened. That added another two, and I had a perfect eight. I didn’t have to follow you then. In fact, I raced out to Cottrell Canyon and found a perch where I could watch the whole proceedings.” As she said that, she rose, took an envelope from her purse and emptied the contents onto his desk. He fingered the photos carefully.

The focus was every bit as good as Hanson’s, though the composition lacked the birdwatcher’s aesthetic bent. But maybe there just hadn’t been any clouds out there yesterday.

Ellis rose, saying, “I’ve always wanted to live in the Caribbean.” She dropped a card on top of the photos. “This is the address of the Cayman Islands National Bank of Commerce. I’ve spoken to a mid-manager there who will be taking care of my account. The sum I’ll be expecting is written on the card. He’ll be looking for a deposit in that amount on the first of every month. If it doesn’t arrive by the tenth of any month, then his instructions are to send an envelope of photos—duplicates of those—” she pointed to the pile on the desk, “to the police here.”

For the first time, as she stood by the door about to leave, she smiled, “Oh, yes. I thought you might like to know. Cayman banks will never reveal the names of their mid-level managers. Furthermore, bank managers down there don’t drink. They aren’t allowed to.”