CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
"Come again?!" Murdoch was certain he misheard Brackenreid. He had to have misheard.
"I said we caught exactly no one except three truck drivers, who will say they were paid to deliver and are not responsible for the contents of the truck. Someone wanted this investigation scotched and you dead. What was that explosion? Was it booby trapped?" Brackenreid asked.
He nodded and was immediately sorry he moved his head like that. "I heard and smelled gas. All it took was a spark. No one was in the building?"
"Just one man. The bastards went out using a tunnel between the buildings. According to the plant manager, he says they are a leftover from when it was a munitions works. Perri's men dispersed into dark corners like roaches or went la-tee-dah right out the gate. As for the distilling operation, not much of an explosion or fire. One poor sod is still in there, upstairs. Looks like he was a laggard in making his getaway."
"I must see to the body, Inspector." Julia cut in. She brandished her medical bag for emphasis. "You cannot move it before then."
"And I have to see the crime scene before anything more gets cleared away or disturbed," he insisted.
Brackenreid looked at both of them as if they were daft. "There is no need. The floor upstairs is in bad shape. The building may not be stable."
Julia answered before he had a chance to come up with words. "The fire has gone out. If it was a weak explosion and the building was designed to be bomb-proof, and it is still standing, what more could you ask?" she pointed out.
The inspector glared at them. "We have taken preliminary photographs. Send in one attendant to just get him out of there. That should be enough for both of you."
Murdoch kept eye contact, waited only for Brackenreid's shoulders to slump a fraction before he moved off towards the building, demanding his legs and his balance to carry him with dignity over to the door. The building appeared intact from the outside if one overlooked a broken window or two. The doors were open and he was halfway through before he noticed Julia following him.
"You cannot come in here, Doctor. I think this one time it is not necessary for the coroner to see the body in situ." He gave her what he hoped was a smile and a small bow. It was hard to tell because he was a little woozy. For some reason he thought that was going to stop her.
She shouldered past him. He sighed and followed. Inside was dim. He could see outlines of the distilling equipment which were a little dented but upright. The wooden interior was torn up, much of the bracing gone. Barrels were smashed but since low proof alcohol was not particularly flammable, there was no conflagration. He wondered if whoever set the gas off knew that. Julia did let him walk up creaking stairs to the second floor first to test the risers. They seemed sound enough under his weight, so she came up behind him. All the glass was blown out of the windows up here, and the floor protested alarmingly. In between rows of heavy wooden desks was a man's body. He was prone on the floor, pieces of glass shrapnel and window mullions sticking out of his back. Stepping gingerly, he and Julia approached the corpse, the floor creaking under each footstep.
"Cause of death?" he asked, half joking. He automatically sketched the sign of the cross with his fingers, then made his own survey of the crime scene, trusting his own senses, even in their scrambled condition, more than any photograph.
"Other than debris being violently propelled through his flesh by explosive force? We both saw this in the war." She knelt next to the body, struggling with her dress, shawl and medical bag to get there without damaging her outfit or shoes. "He's still warm. I'd say he died within the last hour at the most, consistent with the time of the explosion. No bullet holes, no blunt force to the back of his head. Not much blood from the wounds, but that can be explained several ways. Could be other damage we cannot see from this angle. Can you help me turn him over?"
He knelt across from her and got his hands on the dead man's shoulder and hip, pulling the corpse toward himself so she could see the dead man's front, making sure he did not stab himself with anything sharp in the process. "What do you see?"
She pulled something out from the corpse's jacket. "Well, this, for one." She showed him a leather portfolio and set it aside. "And this." She pulled out a bill fold and handed that over, going back to poking and prodding the corpse with her fingers. "No obvious wounds on this side. His skin has vibices marks from the rough floor and is mottled, but the body has been prone, so blood collects for livor mortis. That usually takes at least thirty minutes, but...well, that is an average. Oh...but this is unusual around his neck, though. I wonder about..." Her eyes widened when the floor made a huge pop and jerked downward under their feet.
The cement block building might be bomb-proof, but the wooden interior was not. The weight of all three of them in one concentrated spot was making the floor fail, and that was pulling the cinder-block walls inward as well. He released the corpse to grab Julia with one hand and the evidence from the body with the other. He pulled her to the back corner as the floor beneath them caved in. Then the whole building made a threatening crack and groan.
"William. We have got to get out of here!" Julia was at the back window, twenty feet up from the ground outside, trying to get it open.
He got to the sash and the two of them pushed the huge, heavy window open. Behind them he heard Crabtree and Brackenreid shouting. He yelled at them to get a ladder and go to the back of the building. Outside the wall was shear except for an overhang above a door about five or six feet to the left and ten feet down. Another tearing screech and snap, and the building shuddered. Gravity called desks and heavy file cabinets towards the center of the floor to their doom. More dismaying was a giant steel safe about to head the same way. The effect was to peel the entire floor, edge to edge, away from the wall. He assessed the situation, stuffing the portfolio and wallet underneath his shirt. "Julia, I don't think we can wait. Give me your shawl."
"Why?" she asked but whipped it off for him anyways. She yelped when more of the second floor tilted and gave way.
He eye-balled the purple silk material and length. He stretched it diagonally and made a substantial knot in one end and wedged it at the edge of the window, then made a knot in the other end. "Do you trust me?" he asked. Part of the sidewall was bowing inwards, pulled down by the wooden beams. "Julia! Look at me! Do. You. Trust. Me?" He hoped so, because his idea was as daring as the horse divers at Scarborough.
She showed no hesitation. 'Yes!"
He got on top of the windowsill. "I am going to swing out and over to that overhang below us. Then you are going to unhook the shawl, make a tight loop in it, come out of the window holding on, and then I will swing you down to the ground. Do you understand?" He had no trouble seeing the arcing pendulum motion in his mind. He prayed she understood the physics.
Her eyes glinted. "Like the aerialists at the circus?"
The building protested again. Quite against his conscious will he reached down and kissed her. To his delight she kissed him back, then he was out and away without another word. In two tries he planted both feet on the small roof one story down, and wedged himself behind a small balustrade, his feet securing his position.
She moved immediately when he signaled her to get out of the window and swing on the makeshift silk rope. He took the strain as her weight hit the silk, dug his heels in, then redirected the downward fall with a tug for angular momentum, pulling her into an arc. Muscles in his arms and back strained to their limits, but the two of them managed to make an effective pendulum so that she did not drop like a stone, and his shoulders remained in their sockets. He swung her out and back, depositing her on the ground with some force, but unharmed. He tied the silk off again and shimmied down. The two of them were taking stock of their disheveled and torn clothing by the time the ladder arrived.
"Detective! Doctor! Are you alright?!" Crabtree looked frantic. "What happened?"
Brackenreid wasn't far behind, looking aghast as well. "Murdoch. You let her go in there with you?!"
"Sorry sir. You were right," he admitted with a wince. "We will have to use our observations and the photographs already taken. And we will have to collect the body from the rubble. I am so sorry, Doctor, for not insisting you remain behind," he apologized to Julia. "That collapse will complicate your autopsy." The effects of being blown up and their defenestration escape made everything ache and he was unable to stop a certain tremble in his legs and hands. He knew part of it was the let down from their escape - and knowledge of how close it was.
"Extracting that corpse from the mess you made will take hours!" Brackenreid was nearly beside himself. "What do you have?"
He extracted the items Julia retrieved from his shirt and handed them over. Crabtree took one and the inspector the other. "These were found with the body, perhaps…Good Lord! This wallet belongs to Giovanni Salieri, or so it says here. Why would he be dead?"
Brackenreid was holding up pages to the light. Frustrated, he got his glasses out to read better. "This folder is business records. A distillation and distribution timetable. I have batch numbers from where the denatured alcohol laced with methyl alcohol came from at G&W. I have bills of lading. Receipts. Invoices for barrels. A calendar of appointments. A list of addresses of blind pigs and speakeasies for delivery. It contains evidence that our quarry, John Salt AKA Giovanni Salieri, was involved in producing and distributing the poisoned batch of alcohol. This corroborates everything we already had on him...and more."
"We don't know it is John Salt. Not for sure. I suppose someone could have planted the wallet on him…" Crabtree cautioned.
"Whoever he is, he got himself blown up by his own still before he could clean house and get rid of all this evidence. This is a right cock-up and we have to pull something out of it or the Chief Constable will have our guts for garters," Brackenreid lamented. "Then there is the bloody press!"
His stomach churned, sending a squirt of burning liquid burning up to his throat. "Sir, I agree with Crabtree, it is just too suspicious to be a coincidence. We must determine positive identification and then..."
"Gentlemen." Julia stopped them bickering. "As I was trying to tell you, Detective, when we were so rudely interrupted by the building falling down: whoever that man is, he did not die because of the explosion, though perhaps it was only minutes before. I have to do the full autopsy, of course, to verify, but in my estimation, he was strangled."
