Diamond Solitaire pd-2 Page 27

  Diamond awaited his opportunity to sidle closer to Sergeant Stein, from whom he learned that a perp was a perpetrator. The common language had its pitfalls.

  A van was with them in six minutes, followed soon after by two cars. Armed men were sent around the side of the house. Lights were set up. There were dog-handlers and men in white overalls who spoke briefly with Eastland and then forced open the front door and went in.

  Diamond stayed close to Eastland and followed the search of the interior as it came over the personal radios. The house was unoccupied, they learned, but there were more signs of violence, including blood spots on the wall in one comer of the living room. There were bloody fingerprints on the phone, which was pulled from its socket and lying upside down on the floor. A bloodstained baseball bat was found beside it.

  “Looks like someone used the phone after the victim was struck,” the voice reported.

  “Or tried to,” said Eastland. “Have you checked all the rooms now?”

  “Yeah. No disturbance anywhere except the living room. This doesn’t look like robbery to me, Lieutenant. The drawers and cupboards are closed.”

  Then a crackle of static was followed by the voice of the other searcher. “I wouldn’t bet on that. His car isn’t in the garage.”

  “They took the car,” said Easdand. He turned to Stein and asked him to get a computer check on Leapman’s license plate number.

  Diamond groaned in frustration. “Can we take a look for ourselves now?”

  “Not yet. Crime Scene has to go through.”

  “How long before they get here? Look, I’m not asking to tramp through the room where the assault took place. I’d like to see the rest of the house.”

  “What exactly is your problem?” asked Eastland. “Not satisfied with the search?”

  “I’d like to take a look for myself, that’s all.”

  “There’s no evidence that the perps went anywhere except the living room.”

  But they wouldn’t permit Diamond to step inside until an hour and twenty minutes later, after the crime scene people had been through. The possibility that Eastland was exacting some kind of revenge for the liberties Diamond had taken at the murder scene in the Firbank Hotel did occur to him at the depth of his frustration while he was waiting, but probably he was wrong. They had their procedures and they observed them rigidly. Nevertheless he was hunched and resentful as he limped about the drive.

  He was unsure what he might find, if anything. He just felt driven by some inner force. Maybe, he reflected, he’d taken to heart that advice from the librarian, to unlock his sixth sense, or right hemisphere, or whatever the man had been rabbiting on about. It wasn’t easy to recall on a chilly morning.

  Eventually, the Crime Scene Unit passed on the word that, apart from the living room, the house was open to inspection. Leaving his new sneakers on the doorstep, he stepped inside with Eastland.

  “You’re looking for evidence that the kid was here, aren’t you?” the lieutenant said.

  “I’m keeping an open mind.”

  “Yeah?”

  The lights were on all over the house. It was very much the bachelor businessman establishment, with the feel of a furniture showroom rather than a home. Leapman seemed to be a man of tidy habits who favored light oak and muted colors. The pieces of furniture had their functions, and there was little in the way of ornament, and certainly no clutter.

  “Want to start upstairs?” Eastland suggested.

  “The bedrooms.”

  It wasn’t entirely Diamond’s sixth sense that was motivating him. If Naomi had been kept here for any appreciable time, it was likely that she would have been confined in a room out of sight of the neighbors.

  At the top of the stairs, they glanced into a couple of rooms, getting their bearings. A guest bedroom attracted Diamond’s attention. It was small and it faced the back of the house. However, there was nothing to suggest anyone had occupied it. The duvet was positioned foursquare on the divan, the pillow plumped and tidy. Eastland went systematically through the chest of drawers and found only some spare bedding in the bottom drawer.

  “Satisfied?” he inquired of Diamond.

  “Almost.” Intuition was prompting him strongly now, spurred on by something Julia Musgrave had said. He told Eastland, “Autistic kids quite like to hide things, toys and so on, objects that they value. If I’m right, it’s just possible mat she used a hiding place she once favored before, in another place.” He crouched by the bed. “It was this side last time.” He slipped his hand between the mattress and the spring box of the divan with a sense of anticipation little less than Lord Caernarvon’s at the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb. His fingertips had touched something solid. He took it out in triumph: a ballpoint pen. “I would say that it’s ninety-nine percent certain that Naomi was here.”

  “You knew it would be in there?” said Eastland.

  Elated, Diamond risked more strain on his battered body by pulling up the mattress. There may be something to intuition, but good luck is a deception. There was no drawing pad lying under the mattress. Not even a sheet of paper.

  Cause for celebration: Naomi was alive-or had been at the time she hid the pen here. Cause for concern: the trail had gone cold again; there was no telling who was holding her now. The forensic tests might provide clues, but the men in white coats always take days to report their findings.

  “Did Sergeant Stein get anything on the stolen car?” he asked Eastland.

  “Leapman’s car? It was a dark blue Chevy Citation. We have the license plate number from Central. Every radio car in New York has it”

  There was nothing to detain them any longer. Knowing that he would keel over if he didn’t get some sleep soon, Diamond asked for a lift to his hotel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  One can only guess at Lieutenant Eastland’s thoughts next morning when he arrived at the station house to find his office occupied by Peter Diamond wearing just an unbuttoned shirt and red jockey shorts. The fat Englishman was standing with the phone anchored between his shoulder and his fleshy jowl. The desk was heaped with clothes, some discarded, some obviously back from the cleaner. Judging by the clutter of phone books, notepads, pens and screwed-up tissues, he had been installed there for some time. “Beef, for a start,” he was saying. “Have you got beef?��� Right. What else? Liver, I should think. Lamb, yes��� Well, as much as you can manage at short notice��� Excellent. How soon?��� Oh, give me strength! I’m talking about lunchtime today��� Yes, today��� Right, I know you will. I’ll call you back around noon��� One o’clock, then. No later.” He put down the phone. “Morning, Lieutenant. Did you oversleep?”

  Eastland regarded him with glazed, red-lidded eyes.

  Diamond told him, “My clothes came back.”

  “So I see.”

  “There’s just time to get down to the Sheraton Center.”

  Eastland said, “This used to be my office.”

  Diamond announced in the same up-lads-and-at-‘em tone, “The conference opens at eleven.”

  “Conference?”

  “Manflex. Remember? This is the big one, when they unveil the wonder drug. David Flexner will be there and so will Professor Churchward. We’ve got to be there.”

  “Who do you mean-weT

  “You and I. Sergeant Stein as well if you want.”

  Eastland ran his fingertips down the side of his face as if to discover whether he’d shaved yet “The Sheraton Center, you said?”

  “Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third.”

  “I know where the Sheraton is,” Eastland said in a growl.

  “Snap it up, then.”

  “Diamond, you have all the finesse of a sawed-off shotgun.”

  To be charitable to Eastland, he hadn’t seen Diamond so animated before. The Englishman was unstoppable. Within three minutes they were in a car heading downtown.

  “I’ve been turning things over in my mind,” Diamond said, as if
to explain the transformation. “Last night, the scene at Leapman’s house seemed all wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “What we found.”

  “The ballpoint?”

  Diamond stared in surprise at the lieutenant. “No. The ballpoint wasn’t wrong. That was a genuine find. Just about everything else was wrong.”

  “For instance?”

  “The damage to the front room. It looked impressive at first, as if there’d been a fight, but what did it amount to in breakages? One smashed TV screen. The shelf unit had tipped across the sofa and some books and things were on the floor, a chair was overturned and lying across a table and that was it”

  “The phone was pulled from its socket,” Eastland added.

  ‘True-but it wasn’t damaged. To me, the scene looked as if it had been staged by a rather fastidious owner who didn’t want to damage his living room more than was necessary.”

  “You think that was staged?”

  “I think it’s more than likely.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting the bloodstains?”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten them. First, consider the state of the bedroom where the child was held. Immaculate-apart from the ballpoint There was no other evidence that Naomi had ever been there. Not so much as a hair on the pillow. Wouldn’t you expect some sign that she’d been removed from there in a hurry?”

  “Maybe she was already downstairs when the fight started,” said Eastland.

  “Dressed in her coat and shoes and everything? They’re not in the house.”

  “Whoever took the kid must have taken her things.”

  “Picked them up with his bloodstained hands and helped her into her coat? Does it sound likely?”

  “Do you have a better explanation?” asked Eastland.

  “Then there’s the matter of the car,” Diamond continued as if the question hadn’t been put. “How did the assailant-what do you call him, the prep?-how did he travel to the house. On foot? If he came in a car, where is it, because he couldn’t have driven two vehicles away from the house after the attack.”

  “Two perps,” said Eastland doggedly. “One drove his car, one drove Leapman’s.”

  ‘Taking Leapman with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right-then why was it necessary to take Leapman as well as the child?”

  “Maybe they killed him. There’s enough blood, for sure. They got rid of the body.”

  ‘To hinder your investigation, do you mean?”

  “Sure,” said Eastland. “They carried him to the garage, loaded him in the car and then opened the garage door and drove out with the body in the back. That way they avoided carrying him out into the street in the view of the neighbors.”

  “And that’s how you see it?”

  “Do you have a better explanation?” Eastland asked for the second time.

  “Let me take you back a bit,” said Diamond. “Leapman definitely took the child to his house at some stage. We found the ballpoint where I said it would be. We agree on that, right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Look at this from Leapman’s point of view. Yesterday when David Flexner arranged to meet me at the ferry, Leapman was listening. Either the office or the phone was bugged. He has links with organized crime and he alerted his criminal friends and asked them to meet me and dispose of me, while he created a smoke alarm diversion at Manflex Headquarters to delay David Flexner. Is that a reasonable inference from the facts as we know them?”

  “It’s conceivable.”

  “Conceivable? I was dumped in the river. You won’t question that?”

  “No, I don’t question that.”

  “Leapman must have believed I was dead, but he still had a problem, because you-the cops-brought David Flexner in for questioning the same night. He couldn’t understand how you made the connection, but he knew how dangerous it was. It was getting too close to home. And home was where he was holding Naomi.”

  Eastland was waking up. “He didn’t want the cops calling. This is not a good time in his life to get arrested.”

  “Right. If he’s going to cash in on PDM3, it’s essential that the conference goes ahead. Are you with me so far?”

  Eastland only gave a shrug and said, “Let’s say I’ve been listening.”

  “Now, Leapman isn’t the spokesman for PDM3. He’s just the Vice Chairman. It isn’t absolutely necessary that he puts in an appearance at the conference. David Flexner and the professor can handle it. The only thing liable to ruin the day-and the big hike in his shares-is if he-Leapman-has a visit from the cops and is found to have the child in his possession. That would be a disaster.”

  “So?”

  “So he arranges to disappear. He will take the child with him, leaving no evidence that she was ever in the house. First he dresses the child and puts her in the car. Then he tidies her room so well that you wouldn’t know she was ever there.”

  “Unless you were smart enough to look under the mattress,” said Eastland in a bland tone that didn’t amount to mockery, but wasn’t respectful either.

  Diamond’s eyes narrowed, and one of them hurt. The black eye was still swollen. He sensed that he was being sent up, but he refused to be deflected. “Then he fakes the attack. Tips over several items of furniture and smashes the TV screen.”

  “How about the blood? You telling me it was ketchup?”

  “No.”

  “Self-inflicted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s a switch.”

  There followed an interval when neither man spoke. Diamond needed to draw breath and Eastland was gathering himself to demolish the theory. “It’s one hell of a scenario to build on one ballpoint,” he said finally. “In a nutshell, you believe Leapman arranged the scene himself, leaving us to deduce that he was beaten up and probably murdered?”

  “Yes. I think you’ll find that the only prints are his own. Probably he wore gloves to handle the baseball bat and the phone.”

  Eastland supplied unexpected support here. “It’s true that whoever handled those objects wore gloves. That much we have established. And you think Leapman is alive and well? He drove off with the kid sometime before we arrived?”

  “That’s it”

  “Where to?”

  “I’ve no idea, but at least we know who to look for. We can put out a description.”

  “We circulated details last night,” Eastland said with a yawn.

  “No response?”

  “None.”

  Diamond didn’t have to be told about the problems tracing cars in New York.

  “What’s your reaction, then?”

  “To what?” said Eastland.

  ‘To what I’ve just been telling you.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  And that was that

  They arrived at the Sheraton Center and shared an elevator to the third floor with a throng of people wearing name tags marked with the Manflex logo. The conference was to be in the Georgian suite. Young women in red blazers and white skirts were handing out information packs. Diamond took one and saw with grim satisfaction that an amendment sheet was included: Mr. Michael Leapman, Vice Chairman, will not, after all, be chairing the session with Professor Churchward. His place will be taken by the Chairman, Mr. David Flexner.

  Seated inconspicuously towards the back, Diamond and Eastland watched David Flexner enter, accompanied by the professor, a slim, brown-suited man with cropped hair who took a chair beside the podium. Flexner was the first to speak. He addressed his large audience confidently, unaffected, it seemed, by the alarms of the previous twenty-four hours. After welcoming everyone, he briefly outlined the history of Manflex under his father’s management, listing the principal drugs for which the firm was known. This was a stage of the proceedings when a few latecomers were still finding seats and many of the audience were looking around them to see which faces they recognized.

  To a scattering of polite applause, the man in the bro
wn suit was introduced as Professor Alaric Churchward. Gaunt and pale, but well in control, Churchward surveyed the audience with pinpoint blue eyes for a few seconds before opening with an attention-grabbing statement. Some four million Americans, he said, could no longer remember the names of their friends and families. They couldn’t put names to everyday objects, such as chairs and tables. They were sufferers from Alzheimer’s disease and they included people who had held highly responsible and demanding jobs. The roll of victims of Alzheimer’s was as impressive as it was distressing, including the actress Rita Hayworth, film director Otto Preminger, mystery writer Ross Macdonald and artist Norman Rockwell. The cause was unknown; it was likely that a number of different areas of the brain contributed to the symptoms. Research scientists the world over had been working intensively for the last fifteen years to find a successful treatment.

  He summarized the main targets of the research in a way that signaled something new and revolutionary, describing how the bulk of the work had concentrated on finding ways of increasing supplies of the brain chemical acetylcholine, which has a vital and mysterious process in the functioning of the memory. The brain’s supply of this chemical was known to diminish rapidly with the onset of Alzheimer’s.

  Churchward went on to say that his own approach (and now more pens came out in the audience and tape recorders were switched on) was different because it was directed toward the nerve cells themselves. For twelve years, teams of scientists under his direction based in America, Europe and Asia had made animal studies to test the effectiveness of certain compounds as protective agents that could delay, or even prevent, nerve cell death. In the last eight years their work had been concentrated on a compound known as Prodermolate, or PDM3, that had proved to be something more than a protective agent

  Alaric Churchward was quite a showman. Having got to his product, he kept everyone in suspense by introducing film footage of some Alzheimer’s patients he had tested five years previously, prior to the administration of PDM3.

  The bemused people who were shown on the screen being asked which month it was and when they were born and who was the current president of the United States were not exclusively the elderly that Peter Diamond associated with the illness. There was a woman of forty-seven and a man of fifty-two, although the others were over sixty-five. The spectacle of people of intelligent appearance puzzling over quite basic facts was profoundly disturbing, particularly a couple of men who demanded angrily to be told who they were and where they came from.