The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard - Страница 9

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Davis had asked me what news story Bryan Kim had been working on, but he had not asked me what Wenske had been working on at the time of his disappearance. So I said, “There’s nothing I can think of.”

CHAPTER SIX

Marsden Davis helpfully provided me with Elvis Gummer’s cell number, and I reached him at what he said was a friend’s apartment. He sounded badly shaken up, but when I told him I’d been hired by Eddie Wenske’s mother he agreed to talk to me in the morning. He said he’d be back in his apartment and to come there. Since Gummer had a key to Bryan Kim’s apartment, I figured I might also give it my own onceover if I could.

Meanwhile, I had a key to Wenske’s apartment on Charles Street near Beacon that Susan Wenske had given me. She had been paying the exorbitant rent there, hoping against hope that her son would return. I had a quick Sam Adams and a Cobb salad in the hotel and then took a cab over to Charles.

Wenske’s place was on the top floor of a four-story nineteenth century brick walk-up on elegant lower Beacon Hill, with views of brick-chimneyed rooftops like in Mary Poppins. His garret was more spacious than some. It had a good-sized living room with a big fold-out couch, a bedroom with a queen-sized bed, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom with a stall shower and no tub. Susan Wenske said her daughter Marilyn had gone there with a cop at some point, and they hadn’t found anything useful or revealing, and they hadn’t taken anything away. There was no desktop computer, just a space on a desk where a laptop had probably rested, so I figured when Wenske left he must have taken it with him.

There were lots of books on shelves in the two rooms—history, current affairs, both literary and pop fiction, and a small bedside porn stash that included well-thumbed magazines that I took a few moments to have a look at. There was nothing weird about the porn—no “dark side” stuff, just plenty of busy Czech and German working-class lads as well as some somber Japanese and a few laid-back Thais. The music set-up in the living room included jazz and pop CDs, plus a turntable and amplifier and a row of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross LPs that must have been fifty years old but appeared to be in tip-top shape. Although there was no Buddha figure or Christian icon or likeness of Ganesh, the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross part of the apartment had a shrine-like feel to it.

I checked the bedroom closet for luggage. Two well-worn suitcases, airline-overhead-bin size, were stacked one atop the other. If Wenske owned a smaller overnight bag, there was no trace of it. Nor could I find a toiletries travel kit. So it seemed, if all this meant anything, he left two months earlier on what was to have been a brief trip and then didn’t return. Not good.

I snooped in and around Wenske’s desk and found a November bank statement. At that time, he had over six thousand dollars in a checking account. Susan Wenske had told me her daughter had arranged for a neighbor to pick up her son’s mail, and Marilyn retrieved it periodically and dealt with anything that needed attention. She lived in Waltham, one of the closer-in west-of-Boston suburbs, and my plan had been to meet her the next day, although now it seemed that maybe that would have to be postponed in the wake of Bryan Kim’s murder.

I looked for any sign of the research Wenske had been doing for his media book but found nothing. I concluded that he probably had it all on the missing computer.

It was a cool but pleasantly dry early spring night, so I hoofed it across the Public Garden and on over to Back Bay and the hotel. On Saturday night the diners and drinkers and theater-goers were out and about. Bryan Kim and I were to have been among the culinary fun-seekers—he had suggested a Hungarian place near the hotel—and despite my not really knowing the man at all, I felt a terrible loneliness without him.

Back in the hotel room, I phoned Timmy. He didn’t answer his cell, and I remembered that he was dining with friends in Troy and then going to a performance by a blues group at the Music Hall. I left a message telling him not to call, that I’d be asleep. Then I lay awake for well over an hour going over it all again and again.

§ § §

Marilyn Fogle, Wenske’s sister, called my cell just after eight Sunday morning. I was in a hotel coffee shop reading the Globe’s account of the death of the popular and well-respected local television news reporter. The story added nothing to what I had learned from Marsden Davis about the crime itself. There were no suspects, the paper said, and robbery was not believed to have been a motive, since Bryan Kim had let the killer enter his building and nothing valuable seemed to be missing. His colleagues at Channel Six were said to be shocked and saddened. His parents and siblings were flying in from Seattle. Gay-rights advocates were quoted as saying Bryan’s death was a terrible loss to that community. One spokesperson said there was no indication that this was a gay-bashing. No one was speculating—yet—that this might have been a sexual pick-up gone wrong. It hadn’t been, of course, what with Elvis Gummer expected at four o’clock for some gay-singles cheesecake palaver, if in fact that’s what it was.

Marilyn Fogle and I cancelled our planned lunch in Waltham and made a tentative dinner date instead. She asked me if I thought Bryan Kim’s murder had anything to do with Eddie’s disappearance, and I said I had no idea.

I walked over to the South End through the nearly deserted Sunday morning streets. Gummer buzzed me into his building, a stalwart, big-roomed five-story brick block on the neighborhood’s main drag, Tremont Street.

“God, I am still freaked,” Gummer said, and he looked it. He was appealingly stocky and muscular in jeans, a tank top, and bare feet, but his pug nose was red and his big brown eyes were bloodshot. “I know it’s irrational—I’m sure the killer isn’t still here in the building somewhere, but after something like this you just feel so incredibly vulnerable. Poor Bryan, the poor guy, what he went through. It’s just so cruel and so totally ridiculous.”

“It is.”

“I’m like, I mean, is blood going to start dripping through the ceiling? I keep looking up, even though I’m two floors down from Bryan. I’ve never seen so much blood. I really did try not to panic, and I didn’t. I called nine-one-one on Bryan’s land line—thank God he still had one, although I guess a cell would work. But I didn’t have mine with me. I knew he must be dead. How could anybody have that much blood drain out and still be alive? His jeans were soaked and his t-shirt was all ripped up and soaked with blood that was turning black. I wanted to help him, and I’m not that squeamish, but what could I do?”

“It sounds as though you did everything you could.”

“I didn’t really know Bryan all that well. We were just neighbors, but he was really a nice guy and I just feel so terrible for him. Why would anybody do that to Bryan? Maybe it had something to do with his reporter’s job—I don’t know. The police asked me who his enemies were, and I said I had no idea.”

“Detective Davis told me you and Bryan were into exchanging recipes. So if you were friendly enough to be doing that, I can see why you’re upset.”

He gave me a look. “You sound suspicious or something.”

“No.”

“Bryan saw me on the stairs one time carrying a cheesecake box. He said he had the best ginger cheesecake recipe in the world, and when he made one sometime he’d give me a piece. He never got around to it—he was so busy being on the news and all—but then when I wanted to make a cheesecake for a friend’s birthday on Saturday, I ran into Bryan and thought I’d ask him for that recipe. He said he’d make a copy, and I was supposed to pick up the recipe at four.”

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