Death by Jury (Alo Nudger Series Book 9) Read online

  “Is that the testimony of the witness?” MacMasters asked.

  Vincenzo, no fool, repeated Wister almost word for word.

  “Was the tiny stain of blood found on Mr. Dupont’s garage floor a match with the supposed victim’s blood?” Fleck asked, forging ahead.

  “It was the same type.”

  “I didn’t ask you that,” Fleck snapped.

  Vincenzo didn’t look the slightest bit annoyed. “The types matched,” he tried.

  “What about DNA analysis?”

  “Comparisons were made with DNA samples taken from hair follicles from hair in the victim’s comb, and from hairs imbedded in mud found on the shovel in the trunk of the defendant’s car.”

  “What were the results?”

  “We were told not to rule out that the blood could be that of Karen Dupont.”

  “Yes, but were the tests not inconclusive as to a precise DNA match?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are saying they were conclusive?”

  Vincenzo looked thoughtful. “No.”

  “Then they were inconclusive.”

  “Yes. They weren’t conclusive.”

  “Then is it not true that they did not match?”

  “No, it is not not true—I mean, yes, they did not match conclusively as to DNA analysis. But the sample was small and there was a strong likelihood of a match, and considering that the blood type was the same as Karen Dupont’s, we determined that it was probably her blood.”

  “What type was the blood?”

  “Type O.”

  Fleck smiled. “I happen to know that Judge MacMaster’s blood is type O. Have you questioned him about Karen Dupont’s disappearance? Have your officers searched his home and dug up his yard? Are you, by God, insinuating that Judge MacMasters had something to do with this alleged murder?”

  People around Nudger gasped. Now Vincenzo raised his eyebrows in surprise and a kind of awe mixed with revulsion. He stared at Fleck as if he would like to stamp him out before he had a chance to multiply. Nudger knew the feeling.

  “Objection!” Wister was on his feet, a forefinger raised to point to the ceiling.

  There were a few snickers, and a murmuring ran through the courtroom.

  MacMasters appeared pained and held out both hands as a signal for everyone to settle down. He looked at Fleck as if he were particularly unpleasant roadkill.

  “We’ll recess for a few minutes while counsel from both sides joins me in my chambers.” He stood up with slow dignity, as if his back ached, and disappeared through a door set in the wood paneling.

  Fleck and Wister followed him. Fleck made a big deal about letting Wister enter first.

  Nudger looked over at Dupont. He was sitting motionless, staring at a painting of Thomas Jefferson on the wall behind the magistrates’ bench. He might have been smiling, or maybe it was simply the way his face looked in repose.

  The hard bench seat was getting uncomfortable, and sitting hunched over and listening intently was making Nudger’s stomach twitch and threatening to give him heartburn.

  He thought he might as well leave. He could pretty much tell the way the trial was headed even at this early date. Dupont was going to be convicted and both he and his lawyer would be executed.

  He stood up, squeezed past the knees of the heavyset woman who’d been sitting next to him, and left the courtroom.

  Out in the hall, he tucked in the back of his shirt, making sure not to get the material beneath the elastic band of his underwear, then made for the elevator.

  As he stood waiting to descend, he wondered about that bloodstain on the garage floor. Fleck seemed to have known about it, even to the point of having foraged about for the presiding judge’s medical records so he could play Perry Mason in court, but he hadn’t mentioned the blood to Nudger. Nudger would have to ask him about it.

  It seemed pertinent, as Seymour Wister would say and Fleck would contest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nudger drove from the courthouse in Clayton to downtown St. Louis and parked at a meter opposite Merchant Federal Bank on Locust Street, where Roger Dupont was a Vice President. The sun had climbed high and even tall buildings cast too little shade to provide relief. It was that time of year in St. Louis where the relentless heat that subsided only slightly at night killed the old folks cooped up in their brick flats and apartments, especially those in the rougher neighborhoods where to leave a window open was to invite an intruder. Charitable organizations provided them with free fans, but when there was only heated air to move, the fans did little to ease their suffering.

  Nudger got out of the car and stood in the heat, then crossed the street when the light at the corner turned red and the flow of traffic temporarily ceased.

  It was cool inside Merchant Federal, made to seem cooler by the high-ceilinged vastness and all the cold black-veined gray marble, and maybe all that cold cash. Where there wasn’t marble there was dark, heavily grained walnut.

  Nudger walked over to one of several long walnut tables. On it were pens attached with cords to black plastic holders, next to wooden racks stuffed with deposit and withdrawal slips and interest rate information. He stood and doodled for a while on the back of a deposit slip while he studied the tellers behind the old-fashioned brass-barred cages, the gray-haired, helpful woman behind the information desk, the conservatively dressed men and women seated at desks. To his right was the loan department with separate frosted glass cubicles making up small offices. At the opposite end of the long lobby was a small area defined by a low wooden rail, where a man and a woman sat at desks facing each other and sold mutual funds to those savers unhappy with interest rates on their savings. These were uncertain times, for savers and for bank vice presidents accused of murder.

  He looked down at what he’d absently doodled on the deposit slip, just in case his unconscious mind knew something his conscious mind didn’t. A number of crude, identical fish, and some simple five-pointed stars. What did they mean?

  He stared for a while then decided they probably meant that his meager artistic talent was confined to drawing fish and stars.

  After crumpling the deposit slip and dropping it into one of the green metal trash receptacles under the table, he walked back outside and returned to the parked Granada.

  Pigeons had fouled its windshield. Nudger tried the windshield squirts but they were out of water and the wipers made more of a mess. He sat in the hot Granada, slightly sick to his stomach, and kept his eyes trained to the side, on Merchant Federal. It was almost noon, and some of the employees would surely be leaving soon to go to lunch.

  A fluttering in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Through the smeared windshield he saw that a gray and white pigeon had flapped to a landing on the car’s hood. Actually on the hood, where it strutted about with its feathered chest puffed out, too proud to notice the heated metal that should be making it uncomfortable.

  Nudger refused to pay attention to it.

  At four minutes past noon, two of the tellers, a man and a woman Nudger had made note of inside the bank, walked out onto the sidewalk and headed east together. He thought about getting out of the car and following them, when one of the women he’d seen behind a new-accounts desk emerged from the bank. She walked west along Locust.

  He climbed out of the car, hurriedly stuffed another quarter into the meter, and followed her.

  Near Sixteenth Street she entered a small restaurant. Nudger stood across the street for a while and was about to go in after her, but she came out carrying a waxed cup with a straw stuck in it. In her other hand was a lidded white foam container she was being careful to hold perfectly level.

  He followed her several blocks south, until she got to the Serra Sculpture, a piece of artwork that to Nudger looked like a rusty iron temporary wall surrounding a construction site in the middle of a grassy lot. None of the walls met at the corners. That was how Serra saw the world, Nudger guessed. He might have a point there.


  The woman sat down on the grass near where two of the walls did not meet, crossed her legs beneath her, and set the cup down on the grass. Then she opened the foam container. She began eating her carryout lunch—some sort of pasta—with a white plastic fork.

  Nudger strolled over and smiled down at her. She was a pale blonde woman in her forties with a blotchy complexion and strangely oblong hazel eyes. She wore no makeup. The slight breeze plastered her thin dress to her skinny frame. It was a white dress with a blue flower print on it and a crinkly kind of white panel over her meager breasts that came high up on her neck. From his extreme angle, Nudger glimpsed what might have been burn scars beneath the edge of the panel’s delicate material.

  “Millie Cookson?” he asked, remembering her name from her brass desk plaque.

  She chewed pasta and gazed up at him with her oblong eyes, then nodded. He got the impression she would have walked away from him if she hadn’t been sitting there cross-legged on the grass with her lunch spread out before her.

  “My name’s Nudger,” he said, squatting down next to her. Gee, that hurt his knees. He scrunched around on his heels until he found a more comfortable position, but his knees still ached. “I’m investigating the death of Roger Dupont’s wife.”

  “You police?” she asked, in a way that suggested distrust.

  “No. Quite the contrary. I’m private.”

  She took a sip of what looked like iced tea from her paper cup and blatantly looked him up and down. “Who or what are you working for?”

  “Truth, justice, and the contrarian way.”

  She placed her cup back on the grass. “Sounds right.”

  “Have the police questioned you?” he asked.

  “Only briefly. They talked to just about everyone at the bank.”

  “Do you know Roger Dupont well?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he’s guilty?”

  “I’m not sure. What do you think?”

  “Innocent,” Nudger said. Maybe he could provoke her into saying something meaningful.

  “I don’t think he’s innocent,” she said slowly. “I think he might have done it.”

  “Did you tell the police that?”

  “No. But then they didn’t ask my opinion. I was thinking of something I saw about two months ago, but it might not have anything to do with anything.”

  Nudger waited, staring at the Serra Sculpture, wondering if it really was a monstrosity or if it was artistically beyond a guy who drew fish and stars. He remained silent, knowing when not to push.

  “I was eating lunch here,” Millie said, “near where I am now, when I saw him with a woman.”

  “Hmm. Could it have been his wife, come downtown to meet him for lunch?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know what she looked—looks like.”

  “Pretty, medium-length dark hair.”

  “That’s what this woman looked like.”

  “So maybe he was just having lunch with his wife.”

  “Maybe. But they were on the grass inside the walls of the sculpture, lying on something like a beach towel.”

  “It’s not unusual for people to go inside the walls,” Nudger pointed out. “I read somewhere that’s the idea of the sculpture; you go inside and look out through the spaces where the walls don’t meet at the corners. Or what would ordinarily be the corners. Do you like this thing?”

  “I never gave it much thought. But that’s how I happened to see them, when I glanced in through that space right over there.” She motioned with her hand not holding the fork. “They were side by side, and Dupont wasn’t acting toward her anything like my ex-husband used to act toward me. Are you married, Mr. ? ...

  “Nudger. No. I’m divorced.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Millie said with an air of despondence.

  “How was Dupont treating the woman?” Nudger asked. “What exactly was he doing that your husband never did?”

  “Oh, you know. Kissing her every now and then like he really meant it. They had some stuff on the towel that looked like it was carryout food, but they weren’t paying much attention to it. They were hungry for each other.” She poked at her pasta with the plastic fork. “If I sound envious, I guess I am.”

  “Envious because the woman was with Dupont.”

  Millie appeared horrified. “God, no! Dupont doesn’t appeal to me at all. And besides, he’s married. Or was. Is. Who knows for sure?”

  “Not me,” Nudger said. “But right now it looks like he’ll be convicted.”

  “Even though you said he was innocent?”

  “Everyone who gets near his lawyer in court might be found guilty,” Nudger said.

  Millie stared at him curiously but didn’t ask him to explain.

  “Would you recognize the dark-haired woman if you saw her again?” Nudger asked.

  “Oh, I doubt it. But it’s possible. Her hair wasn’t just dark brown; it was so black it shone almost blue. ‘Raven,’ they call it on the hair-coloring bottles. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I know.”

  “Almost as soon as I saw them, I scooted over a few feet. I didn’t want them seeing me.”

  “Do you think they did?”

  “No. I’m pretty sure Dupont had no idea I was here. Still doesn’t know.”

  “Then you left before they did.”

  “I started to. I stood up and crossed the street, and when I glanced back, I saw Dupont and the woman had left a few seconds after I did and were standing at the curb by a little white convertible. He kissed her on the cheek, and she got in the car and drove away. I hurried back to the bank and beat Dupont there. He didn’t seem at all suspicious that I or anyone else he knew had seen him and the woman on the beach towel inside the walls of the sculpture. For all he knows, I brown-bagged it at my desk.”

  “Did you tell the police any of this?” Nudger asked.

  “No. They didn’t ask, and I didn’t want to get involved. I used to be a recreational drug user, and I have a rational fear of the police.”

  “Then why are you telling me about it now?”

  “Because you’re not the police, and I think somebody should be told. And I still don’t want to get involved.”

  “Meaning you’ll deny this conversation if you’re asked about it.”

  She smiled only with her oddly shaped eyes.

  “Let’s just say I won’t remember it,” she said. “Or remember seeing Dupont and the woman here.” She forked a generous bite of pasta into her mouth, chewed, then said, “What you do with the information is your business.”

  He thought of asking her if she intended perjuring herself if she were called as a witness for the defense, then decided not to alarm her. Or maybe she wouldn’t be alarmed. Maybe she’d just smile and lie. There was something in her smile that suggested she could do that, and he might look like the one who was lying.

  “Did you get a better look at the woman’s face when she drove away?” he asked.

  “No. She made a U-turn and went in the other direction.”

  Nudger could squat no longer. He stood up slowly, actually hearing his left knee grind.

  Millie Cookson winced at the sound. “I do remember her car’s license plate, though, because it was one of those vanity plates. It said M-E-E-E-E.”

  Nudger smiled, thanked her, and hobbled in a little circle to try to get his legs working.

  “It takes a selfish woman to have a vanity plate like that,” Millie said.

  “Obviously she could spare some love for Roger.”

  “Probably thought he was rich. Women see the suit and tie and think bankers make more money than they really do, just because they handle all that cash.”

  “Is Dupont popular with his colleagues?” Nudger asked.

  “I wouldn’t say Mr. Dupont is the best-loved vice president at the bank, even if he might be the most loved.”

  Nudger met her eyes, held her gaze. “Would you describe him as a womanizer?”

  “I would. A
nd I’d know.”

  She looked away, toward the hulking rust-colored creation that might be art, her pale face a bitter mask.

  “I understand,” Nudger told her, limping toward the sidewalk.

  Thinking, MEEEE.

  Thinking Eileen should have that license plate on her car.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nudger drove to his office and cursed as he saw that another car had claimed the space with the broken meter. He found a different parking space, half a block away, pumped a quarter into the meter, then walked back to his office. The sun was hot and heavy on his shoulders and felt almost like the weight of a backpack.

  He had his window air conditioner on a timer he’d bought at the Kmart down the street. It was supposed to click on at eight-thirty every morning except for weekends, when Nudger didn’t want to waste the electricity. He smiled with satisfaction as he heard the soft, gurgling hum of its efforts and glanced up and saw a drop of condensation, bright as a diamond in the sunlight, plummet from it to join a small puddle on the sidewalk.

  But he wasn’t in his reasonably cool office; he was down here on the hard, heated plane of the sidewalk, and he was hot and thirsty. He decided to drop into Danny’s Donuts and get a diet Coke to take upstairs.

  The doughnut shop was hot, but cooler than outside, and a few customers were still hanging around from lunchtime, when Danny did 90 percent of his sparse business. A very tall woman who worked in one of the office buildings across Manchester was seated at the counter absently munching a Dunker Delite. A sweaty-looking guy in a white shirt and bright green tie, a salesman from one of the used car lots down the street, was at the other end of the counter, sipping coffee and sneaking looks at the woman with an expression suggesting he was estimating mileage. Danny was behind the display counter, using his fingers to pluck a variety of goodies for a teenage boy and dropping them into a grease-spotted white box.

  “That’s a dozen,” he said, then noticed Nudger and nodded hello to him.

  “I only counted eleven,” the boy said.

  Danny held the box out, lid raised, and he and the kid examined the contents.

  “Thirteen,” Danny said, somewhat surprised. He lifted out a Dunker Delite and replaced it in the display case.