White Mountain

2

The grandfather clock in the hotel lobby was striking the hour as Isabella came out of her room. It was already midnight, and she still had not been able to sleep. Luckily the hotel was almost empty, although two guests had arrived to check in during the wake following her father’s funeral and she hadn’t had the heart to turn them away.

Her head ached. Her eyes were swollen from crying. Every time she closed them, she saw her father’s casket being lowered into the grave. Unable to lie still in her comfortable bed when she knew her father was in a box six feet under the ground, she’d crawled out of bed.

But it wasn’t sorrow that had pulled her out of her room. It was hunger. She felt guilty—almost ashamed of the fact—but it was the first time in three days that she’d felt like eating.

The family quarters were on the lower floor of the house, behind the main staircase, and as she came around the corner, she stopped at the foot of the stairs beneath the painting on the opposite wall. It was a massive canvas, almost life-size, and the first thing to be seen upon entering the hotel. Isabella paused in the shadows, looking intently at the first Isabella. The woman who’d been her mother, and who had died giving birth to her, was little more than a face with a name.

She stared at the painting, accepting the fact that, except for the different hairstyle and clothing, it could very well have been a portrait of herself. She sighed, the sound little more than a soft shifting of air in the silent room.

But for a vague longing for something she’d never known, she had no emotional ties to the woman, although her father had never been able to look at that painting without coming close to tears. At the thought of her father, she wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to cry. At least one positive thing had come out of this nightmare. Her parents were now together.

When her stomach rumbled again, she dropped her gaze and headed for the kitchen. The large commercial-sized refrigerators were full of leftovers from the wake, so she had a wide variety of foods from which to choose. Getting a plate from the cabinet, she settled on a piece of cold chicken and a small helping of pasta salad. The silverware drawer squeaked as she opened it to get a fork, and when it did, she winced. The uncles’ rooms were on the top floor, which was two flights up from where she was, yet it wouldn’t be the first time in her life she’d gotten caught during a midnight snack attack.

She stood for a moment, listening for the sound of footsteps coming down the staircase, and when she heard nothing but the ticking of the grandfather clock out in the lobby, she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to talk any more today—not even to them.

She went onto the back stoop and sat down on the steps, balancing her plate on her lap as she took her first bite. The pasta in the salad was perfectly al dente and coated with a tangy vinaigrette. When the first bite of food hit her stomach, she inhaled slowly, allowing herself to get past the guilt of self-satisfaction and admit that it was good. As she ate, her gaze moved beyond the backyard of the hotel to the mountain looming on the horizon.

White Mountain.

For as long as she could remember, it had been the backdrop for her life. Somewhere in the ancient past of this land, a massive shift in the tectonic plates below the earth’s surface had created heat and pressure beyond man’s imagination, resulting in the birth of the mountain range of which White Mountain was a part.

She had often wondered why it was called White Mountain, because it was black as a witch’s heart, with a thick stand of trees halfway up its steep slopes. Her father had suggested that it must have been named during the winter months, because then it was usually covered with snow.

It was some time later before Isabella noticed she’d eaten all her food. As she stood, she also realized that part of her melancholy had eased. She wanted to smile, but her heart was too sore to allow herself the notion, although her father would have been pleased. He’d always said that the world looked far too grim on an empty stomach.

With one last look at the overpowering peak, she went back in the house, quietly locking the door behind her. She set her plate in the sink and then started back to her room. It wasn’t going to be easy without her father, but she accepted his death as an inevitable part of life. The uncles were all of the same generation as her father, and she didn’t want to think of the days when she would eventually have to give them up, too. The saddest thing was knowing that Uncle Frank had yet to learn of her father’s death. He was going to be devastated that he hadn’t known, and guilt-ridden at not being here to help her through the ordeal. Isabella just wished he would come back, or at least call. He’d never been away this long before.

A few moments later she entered her room and went back to bed. It wasn’t long before exhaustion claimed her and she finally fell asleep.

Detective Mike Butoli swung his sore foot over the curb and stepped up with a hop as he headed into the crime lab. The coroner’s office had yet to perform the autopsy on his latest case, and he was chafing under the delay.

An unidentified stiff in a Brighton Beach alley was not high priority, nor was it the only unidentified victim awaiting dissection, but for some reason the case was weighing heavily on Butoli’s mind. They’d put the stiff’s fingerprints into the system, hoping for a match, and at Lieutenant Flanagan’s suggestion had sent them to Interpol, as well. With the high concentration of Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach, it stood to reason that one or the other would result in an identification.

He had been a cop for almost twenty years, the last twelve as a detective. He’d seen far more of the evil and depravity of the human condition than anyone should be exposed to and couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a case personally.

Until now.

Maybe it was because his headache was competing with the pain in his foot to see which could rack up the most misery. Maybe it was the guilt he was feeling for having fallen off the wagon after six long months of sobriety. But whatever the reason, yesterday, as he stood in that alley looking down into the old man’s face, he kept wondering what journey the man’s life had been on would cause it to end in an alley in Brighton Beach.

Today he had a dead man with no identification, no witnesses to the crime, and he wanted answers to both. Information from the coroner’s office would have to wait, but he was coming to the crime lab with more optimism. If he got lucky, the analysis of the crime scene evidence would give him something to go on.

Since he was expected, he walked into the lab without knocking and headed toward the small middle-aged man who was feeding information into a computer.

“Hey, Yoda, what have you got for me?”

Malcolm Wise had long ago accepted his nickname, but not without some disgust. It wasn’t his fault that nature had doomed him to look more like the famous character from the Star Wars series than he did his own parents. He turned to see Detective Butoli coming toward him and hit Save on the keyboard before giving him his full attention.

“Why are you limping?” Wise asked.

“Broke my toe.”

Wise smirked. “I won’t ask how.”

“Well hell, now I am disappointed. I thought Yoda had all the answers.”

“Can the crap,” Wise said. “Short and balding is sexy to some women.”

“Then thank God I was born a man,” Butoli countered. “About my stiff…got anything that will help?”

Wise moved toward his desk. “The knife in his chest that was found in a Dumpster was Russian-made.”

Butoli rolled his eyes. “Damn, Yoda. This is Brighton Beach. It’s full of Russian immigrants. Give me something I can use.”

“The skin under his fingernails isn’t his own.” Butoli stifled a curse and popped a couple of breath mints in his mouth.

“Anything that might help me put a name to the man?”

Wise grinned as he lifted a plastic bag from a box and slid it across the table.

Butoli caught it before it slipped off onto the floor.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“The victim’s shirt.”

“What’s so special about a shirt?”

“Maybe the name underneath the tag might help you.”

Butoli’s eyes lit up.

“His name? As in a laundry mark?”

“At least part of it,” Wise said. “F. Walton. Now all you have to do is find someone missing a man named Walton and your mystery is solved.”

“Only part of it,” Butoli said, thinking of who had put the knife in the old man’s chest. “Anything else that might help?”

Wise shrugged. “You’re the detective. I just got through faxing a preliminary report to your office. It should be on your desk when you get back. Some of the tests will take longer. I’ll let you know when the lab work is done.”

Butoli slapped the little man on the back.

“Thanks, Yoda. This is the first good news I’ve had in two days.”

Wise smirked. “May the force be with you. Now go away. I have work to do.”

Butoli left the crime lab with a bounce in his step that had little to do with his sore toe. Finally a name to go with the face—at least most of a name. He was going to swing by the office, pick up Marshall and a picture of the victim, and then take a ride back down to Brighton Beach. Maybe someone would remember a man named Walton. Hell. Maybe he was kin to John Boy. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

Five hours later, Butoli slid into the passenger seat as Larry Marshall got in behind the wheel. They’d been in and out of every place of business within a fifteen block radius of the area where the old man’s body had been found, with no response. It wasn’t until they’d gone into a small Russian restaurant adjacent to a thrift store that they’d gotten lucky.

The manager had frowned at their badges as he stubbed out a roll-your-own cigarette, glanced at the picture, then shook his head without looking up.

But Butoli had persisted.

“Come on, buddy. Look again. Somebody stuck a knife in his heart and left him to die in an alley alone. Somewhere he’s probably got family who are worried sick. I’m not asking you to ID a killer, just the man. It’s the least he deserves. Now look again. Have you seen him before?”

The manager looked up with a distrustful glare. His experience with public authority had begun at the age of seventeen, half a world away in a Soviet prison. He felt no need to cooperate. But the look on the cop’s face seemed less threatening than most, so when Butoli shoved the picture back toward him, he shrugged, then looked down.

“Yeah…maybe I see him before…two…three times. He liked my borscht.”

“Is he a local?”

“Nyet,” the manager answered, then qualified the Russian “no” with a negative shake of his head.

“How do you know?” Butoli asked.

“One time I think he pay with what you call traveler’s check.”

“Did you see anyone with him?”

The manager shook his head again.

Larry Marshall leaned against the counter, putting himself in the man’s personal space with only a small bit of wood and glass between them. The manager took a defensive step back as Larry fired his first question.

“Any idea where he was staying?”

The manager shook his head again. “But maybe not too far away.”

“What makes you say that?” Marshall asked.

“He was old…sick, too, I think.”

“How do you know?”

The manager shrugged again, then glanced nervously around. It wasn’t good business to be friendly with the police.

“His skin…it was not a good color. But he did not ask for cab, so maybe he had room not too far away.”

“Good deduction,” Butoli said, and slipped the picture in his pocket. “Sir, I thank you for your help. If you think of anything else…anything at all…give me a call.”

He handed the manager his card, and then they left.

“Next on the list, hotels and rooming houses,” Marshall said, as he started the car and pulled away from the curb.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky again,” Butoli said. “But in the meantime, don’t get pushy with these people. Few of them have any reason to trust authority.”

Marshall patted the part in his hair without heeding Butoli’s caution.

“They’re in America now. If they don’t like the way we do things here, they can go back where they came from.”

Butoli’s toe was killing him, and his patience was gone. He had the strongest urge to slap the back of Larry Marshall’s head just to see the look on his face. Instead, he popped a couple of painkillers and leaned back against the seat.

Less than half an hour later, Butoli’s prediction was proven right. The desk clerk at the Georgian Hotel identified the picture before Larry Marshall could get out his notebook.

“Oh my…he is dead?” the clerk asked.

Butoli nodded.

“Poor man, but glad it didn’t happen here.”

Marshall smirked. “Yeah, I see your point. Not good for business, huh?”

The clerk flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t say that right. I’m sorry Mr. Walton is dead. He seemed like nice man, but you know what I mean…right?”

Butoli frowned. No luggage had been found with the body. Maybe they’d just found their motive for the old man’s death. People had been killed for far less than a suitcase of clothes.

“What name did he register under?” he asked.

“Walton…Frank Walton. I remember I teased him and asked if he was related to John Boy. You know…from TV show.”

“Exactly when did he check out?” Butoli asked.

The clerk turned to the computer and typed in the name.

“Here it is. Yesterday morning.”

Butoli’s frown deepened. The coroner had told them that the old man had probably died between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. the night before his body was discovered. So if Walton was already dead, then he couldn’t have checked himself out. His pulse skipped a beat.

“You’re sure? Did he check out at the desk?”

The clerk scanned the screen and then looked up. “I was not on duty. All I know is room key was turned in and his bill put on credit card he gave on arrival.”

“We’ll need that credit card number,” Marshall said.

The clerk frowned. “I am not supposed to give—”

“It’s to confirm identification and to make sure it wasn’t a stolen card, understand?”

The clerk hesitated and then copied it from the screen to a piece of paper and handed it to Marshall.

“Had his room been slept in?” Butoli asked.

The clerk shook his head. “I don’t know. You have to check with housekeeping.”

“Then get somebody up here,” Butoli said. “We’ll wait.”

“Can you speak Russian?” the clerk asked.

“No,” Butoli said.

“Then I need to call manager, too, or you get nowhere with the help.”

“You don’t speak Russian?” Marshall asked.

“I am not Russian. I am Slovak.”

“Whatever,” Marshall muttered.

A short while later they were in the manager’s office, conducting a half-assed interrogation through a man who quite obviously wished them to be anywhere else but here. The reluctant hotel manager was standing beside a cowering housemaid, who obviously thought she was in some kind of trouble. Despite the fact that they’d assured her otherwise, she hadn’t stopped crying since she’d entered the room.

“What the hell did you say to her?” Butoli growled.

The manager, who was also of Russian descent, glared back at Butoli.

“I said nothing,” he snapped. “She makes her own conclusion.”

“Fine,” Butoli said. “So ask her this. Did she clean Mr. Walton’s room every day?”

The manager translated the question, and the housemaid quickly nodded.

“Ask her if he ever had any visitors.”

The little maid shrank even smaller against the chair, muttering beneath her breath as she shrugged.

“She says she saw no one but him in the room.”

Butoli nodded and smiled at the woman, hoping she would take that as a sign he meant her no harm. It didn’t seem to work. She covered her face with her hands and refused to look him in the eye.

“God almighty,” Butoli mumbled, then took a deep breath and started over. “Did she clean that same room on the morning Walton checked out?”

“She says yes, but that there was not much to do. He had not slept in his bed.”

Butoli’s attention sharpened. “What about his clothing…his luggage? Was it still in the room?”

The manager relayed the questions, then translated her answer again.

“She says everything was gone. She turn in room key she found on bed later, when she finish her shift.” Then the manager added, “It is the way we do it here. Sometimes guests use speedy checkout system. Checkout on room TV. It is very up-to-date process. Georgian Hotel is finest in Brighton Beach.”

Butoli looked at his partner. It was obvious from Marshall’s expression that he was thinking the same thing Butoli was. Someone had come back to Frank Walton’s room and removed every trace of the man’s presence. But why?

He sighed. This case was turning out to be more complicated than he’d first believed. They could no longer assume it was a run-of-the-mill mugging gone bad. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to delay the identification of a dead man by removing all his personal ID, then gone to his hotel and taken everything he had with him, making it appear as if he’d checked out.

But why?

He put his notebook in his pocket and gave the manager a card.

“Please tell your employee that we appreciate her help, and that if she remembers anything else that might help us catch the man who killed Mr. Walton, to please call us.”

The manager relayed the message.

The housemaid stood, gave the men a nervous glance and bolted out the door.

Butoli shook his head. “What’s she so scared about?”

The manager didn’t bother to hide a sneer. “Being sent back, of course.”

Larry Marshall looked up from his notepad.

“Back to where?” he asked

“Russia.”

Marshall’s gaze sharpened. “What? Are you hiring illegals? You can’t do that. You have to report them to—”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Butoli said, then grabbed his partner by the arm and all but dragged him out of the hotel.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Marshall yelped.

Butoli took a deep breath, mentally counting from one to ten before he trusted himself to answer.

“Marshall, for once in your life, just shut the fuck up.”

Larry Marshall’s face turned a dark, angry red. “It’s people like you who screw up the systems we have in place.”

“Maybe,” Butoli muttered. “But it was people like you who put the cockamamie systems in place to begin with. For God’s sake! We’re trying to get them to help us find a killer, and you’re threatening to call INS? What the hell were you thinking?”