Chapter 3

           In the office the next morning, Philman worked on the case and phoned Johnson at 9:30.

            “ … so while his writings had political dimensions to them, there is as yet, no evidence linking him to any specific political group,” he concluded.

            “You’re not giving me much,” she said, in the brisk, near-abrupt style he now recognized as hers.

            “I really don’t have much yet.  Analysis of the phone call, and of net traffic may give something.  His income and tax records may give us something as well.”

            “When can you expect to solve it?”

            “You know better than that.”

            “You know I’ll be asked that.”

            “In two days, we’ll have those analyses I mentioned.”

            “That’s answering a different question.  What about the autopsy?”

            “Only preliminary results in.  He was killed with a knife, which we don’t have.”

            “Will you have a suspect in two days?”

            “I can’t say that.”

            “What’s your guess?”

            “Murders are usually solved immediately or not at all, you know that.”

            “I’ll never say that.  That suggests that the police don’t actually do anything.”

            “I’d say that in only one case in ten does the quality of our work matter.  The rest, anyone could solve - or not solve.”

            “Thank God you aren’t permitted to talk to the media.”

            “I wasn’t aware it was an actual prohibition.”

            “Keep me informed.”  She hung up.

            He felt angry with himself.  Dancing with her just made him appear to be a flake or a troublemaker, personalities he didn’t respect and was desperately trying to avoid being labeled with.  Stay below the radar screen, don’t attract attention from headquarters, and you can go on doing your job.

            He hoped the autopsy didn’t have anything else in it, because he still hadn’t really studied the preliminary report.  If there was some bombshell in there he’d look foolish to her if she found that out later.  He pulled up the preliminary report and started reading it.  Subject was 34 years old, no interesting injuries other than he’d broken his arm as a youth.  Had eaten fruit for dinner, apparently.  Genetic predisposition to loose his hair.  What does any of this have to do with the murder?  Calm down, he told himself, cases have been solved on this. 

He clicked on the chapter labeled “Exogenous Trace Evidence Associated with Discenent.”  There was a lot of it.  DuBois’ hair had several kinds of mites, dust from several locations and several trace heavy metals common in carpets.  All the stuff any person had and all linked to substances in DuBois’ house.  The wound had no other blood or trace materials that didn’t belong to the deceased.  No other wounds than the single knife thrust.  No defensive wounds.  A couple of blood splatters but all from the wound itself.  In other words, no sign of a fight. 

But there was some cigarette smoke residue in his hair.  DuBois didn’t smoke, he knew that.  So either he’d been someplace with smoke, or someone who smoked had been talking to him.  The report indicated the contact was 2 or 3 days prior to the murder.  Could they identify the brand of cigarette?  No, apparently the smoke was too generic.

            So a single thrust of the knife, unexpected perhaps.  No struggle, no fight.  Nothing very much disturbed in the trailer either, so that was consistent.  Barely possible that some of DuBois’ blood went on to the murderer and if they ever found him or her, they might use that to prove the connection. 

            Time of death was 11 to 11:20 pm, or at least with 67% probability.  Philman hung on to that fact.  The absence of trace evidence suggested the murder had not been in the house long before the crime.  So no drinking party that got out of hand, DuBois had no alcohol in him anyway.  He had a feeling he’d be coming back to that time later, but for now he had nothing to match it with.

            Once again this case had an absence as it’s most obvious fact.  There wasn’t even a fiber on DuBois’ shirt that didn’t belong there or to the carpet or to his other clothes.  Philman backed off from the computer screen.  He looked at the clock and realized what time it was.

            He didn’t watch news conferences by police spokespersons, not even the ones for his cases, but for some reason he wanted to see hers.  She turned his “two days to get the analysis back” into a dynamic, aggressive plan by a police force that would leave no computer unturned to find the killer.  He was impressed, and not the least by the fact that she never actually lied.

            Sam had been detailed to track down the mysterious call informing them of the murder, and he came to Robert’s office to talk instead of calling him on the video phone.  Sam was odd that way.

            “This call is odd.  He goes to the trouble of finding a phone booth, and one that doesn’t have a surveillance camera.  He turns off the videophone link.  Leaves no fingerprints on the booth, though there is some evidence it was wiped down.  And get this: his voice is disguised.” 

            “Plenty of anonymous tipsters do that.”

            “You’re out of date.  We don’t get many anonymous tips any more.  Everyone wants the reward and wants to know how many media outlets we’ll contact for them and if we will release images from their interview to their agents.  But here’s the rub: the disguise is not just a hand over the mouth or an accent.  It’s electronic.  Maybe not even a real voice at all, computer-generated.  Totally digital.”

            “No background noise?”

            “None, he used the wireless connection to go from a disk or program.”

            “But went to a physical phone to do that, not the net?”

            “Yup.”

            “Can we detect which digital source?  Which computer program?”

            “No.  No match at all.”  Sam sounded depressed.

            “Then by his perfect preparations our caller has made his first mistake.”

            “Don’t start in on the Zen Buddha detective shit.”

            “I mean that if we don’t have a record of a residual match to the digital spectrum of the call, that means the call was generated by someone using a classified program and that is most likely a government intelligence agency.”  Robert hadn’t meant to jump to that big a conclusion.

            “What!?  That’s a huge leap.”

            I’ll slow down. 

            “If the call was a neighbor who didn’t want to get involved, even a neighbor who knew computers, they’d still have used some commercial voice synthesis package.  We’d know which one.  Still wouldn’t tell us who actually used it, but we’d know which package.  The only packages we can’t track are ones the government doesn’t want us to know about.”

            “That’s a lot to conclude.”

             “I know, but the absence of a signature match is quite revealing.”

            “How do you know those secret programs haven’t leaked out to the public yet?”

            “Well, I suppose I haven’t checked lately, so look into it, but I do think that is remarkable.”  So I leapt too far.

            “OK.”

            “The call came from a physical phone, one of the very few left out there.  Why didn’t he start the call over the net?  Why actually go to a phone booth?”

            “That is interesting, isn’t it? 

“Does he want us to go chasing at the neighbors, or is this not something whoever he works for didn’t authorize and he doesn’t want a trace left on his own computers.”

”That could be true for anyone – he just didn’t want us tracing it back to his own computer.”

“Yea, you’re probably right.  But he could have used a library or common access point.”

“Under surveillance.”

“So this guy is very careful.  He doesn’t want to be found.  More likely to be the criminal then.  By the way, did you check with that mutual masturbation place next to the booth?”

            “’Pleasure Ahoy’, you mean?  I thought I’d leave that for you.”

            Seeing Robert’s look, Sam continued.  “No, of course we went there immediately.  What a throwback.  Dim lighting, tacky rooms with loud music.  That Lysol smell.  And incomplete surveillance.”

            “Did you get a client list?”

            “Signed the proper waivers, and yes.  But their surveillance is so incomplete internally, it might not be everyone.  One client entered two minutes after the phone call.”

            “Interesting.  Would it be too much to hope that this is our caller?”

            “If it is, our caller is 48 years old, looks like a spy, but isn’t.”

            “Yes?”

            “Guy’s name is Jack J. Jackson, VP of a car dealership.  He checks out.”

            “As what?”

            “As a guy who works at a car dealership.”

            “What do you mean, looks like a spy?”

            Sam showed Philman a picture.  It was a hard-looking man with short hair.  The face would be at home in a uniform, perhaps one with swastikas.

            “What is he VP of, at the dealership?”

            “You mean he doesn’t look like a sales guy?  We’ll check, if you think it matters.”

            Philman shrugged.  “It could.  This is the only person we’ve got to look at so far.  Approach him; ask him if he saw anything at the phone booth.  See if you get a reaction to the sex parlor thing being known.”

            “You forgot, we signed the waivers.  We need probable cause for a direct link before we can mention that to him. That means a court trip.”

            “How carefully we protect the rights of the citizen.  Truly, ours is a noble calling.”

            “I am allowed, however, to slap the hooker around a bit.”

            “You mean the sex industry worker.”

            “You mean the disadvantaged child of an abusive family.”

            “Did she have sex with him?”

            Sam consulted his notebook.  It was actually made of leather and had paper note pages in it.  “Her name is Sabrina.  Or at least, that is her officially registered alias, Sabrina NF27 to be exact.  Another court trip to get the actual name.  No, Sabrina says she did not.  She doesn’t do that, you might catch something.  She did a strip show and he masturbated.  Perhaps we could send forensics in to sniff the semen on the floor and confirm his DNA.”

            “And infer the size of his cock, which we could then compare to the size of other cocks of car dealers that we have in our cock database.  No, no, no, let’s save forensics for things that are truly important.”

            Robert thought for a second.  Sam said, “We could talk to him.”

            “Just say hi.  But what would we say?  Why are we approaching him?  What reason would we give?”

            “The Pleasure Ahoy connection.”

            “We’re going to ask him if he made a call?  I mean, after he says no, then what do we do?”

            Sam shook his head.  “You think too much.  We ask him and see if he gets embarrassed, blurts out something that gives us something more to go on.”

            “He works in a car dealership; he doesn’t get embarrassed.” 

            “Funny.  We ask him if he saw anyone else.”

            “OK. I’m not opposed to you talking to him, but what do we get from that?”

            “Don’t know till we ask.”

            Philman knew he always lost these arguments, but he couldn’t figure out why.  Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

            “Sam, get court permission to talk to the car dealer.  I’ll sign the request.  Ask if he saw anything odd regarding the phone booth.  And watch his reaction.  Oh, and see who else visited the strip parlor in the last week.”