"Montague, Arthur - The Living Will Of Rupert Ames" - читать интересную книгу автора (Montague Arthur)

= "The Living Will of Rupert Ames"
by Arthur Montague


Neighbors and business associates alike said dying was the kindest thing Rupert Ames ever did. That he was shot dead in his bed made no difference to them.

Who murdered Rupert Ames? And why bother? He was eighty-eight years old and ailing. Bed-ridden, in fact. The killer had slipped into his bedroom through a second floor balcony door, whacked him, and exited by the same route.

By the time Cripps and Yablonsky, the homicide partners who caught the call, arrived at the scene, techs were already dusting for prints. Rupert Ames was well into rigor mortis, and the coroner's people were impatiently waiting to package him up before he was too distorted to fit easily into a body bag.

Cripps and Yablonsky were in their mid-thirties, fast trackers in the department. Both had powerful rabbis in the department, of course, but they were also good detectives, running an average of 92% cleared cases, 24% convictions. The department median was 65% and 8%. They were the department stars. For this case, they'd have to be.

On this day, however, Cripps and Yablonsky were not at their sparkling best. Cripps had just returned from three days of specialized baton training, and every part of his body was bruised. He vowed, "no more learn by doing courses," and was preoccupied with how to get out of that two-day chemical deterrent workshop he'd signed up for. Yablonsky had his own preoccupations. He hoped one day to do SWAT work, and he'd just come back from three days of apartment extrication training. Now he wouldn't go near a wall, fearing a ricochet might hit him, and he stood crouched in the center of every room he entered, spinning about trying to see everything at once. So, at bottom, Cripps needed a chiropractor and Yablonsky needed a deprogrammer. Neither was ready for serious homicide sleuthing.

Despite that, they went through the motions. First, the live-in housekeeper. She'd discovered the body that morning when she went to deliver Ames his breakfast.

"I've been with him twenty-six years," she volunteered. "The wage was twice what I could get anywhere else. If it wasn't for the money, I'd have left him in the first week. He looks good with an extra hole in his head."

Then, the wife. Her bedroom was separate, as far as possible from Ames' but on the same floor.

"He was a hard man to live with, but I guess I loved him dearly." She attempted a mournful sniffle, but it didn't work and she gave up. "What the hell, he was an asshole from the get go. I married him for his money, which I'm telling you right now because everyone else will tell you anyway. That was my mistake because I never saw any of the money. At least I will now." Motive, Cripps and Yablonsky decided, nor had they discounted the housekeeper as a suspect.

Because he was handy, Ames' cousin was the next to be interviewed. He'd shown up at the front door that morning with a gift-wrapped basket of fruit for Rupert.

"I heard he was sick, so I thought it'd be nice to bring him some fresh fruit. He's always hated fresh fruit."

"You didn't like your cousin?" Cripps asked.

"Does a bear have hair?" chortled the cousin.

Later, Cripps and Yablonsky nearly took the cousin off the suspect list. After all, he was seventy-nine years old. What kept him on the list awed both detectives: the old man had finished in the 28-mile Spokane Marathon the year before. He, as easily as anyone, could have scaled the wall to the balcony door.

If there was ever doubt Rupert Ames treated his own shabbily, his ex-wife erased it. The detectives found her living in the Projects.

"The man was a prick, plain and simple. I bore him a son. He said, 'Thank you, hit the road,' like I was just there to give him an heir. I'm a manicurist now. He chiseled me out of support. He had lawyers, I didn't, simple as that. Would you fellows care for some of this wine?" Both Cripps and Yablonsky cringed; it was screw top in a gallon jug. The ex definitely harbored a grievance.

The detectives needed two days to locate the son. By then, the coroner's report was in, putting the time of death between one and three a.m. The son, Roderick, was vague about his alibi.He had a criminal record. Like everyone else interviewed by the detectives, he wished Rupert Ames a long, tortured sojourn in hell. He made Number One on the suspect list.

Everybody on the stroll knew Roderick, and everybody knew his story. They knew about the father, rich as Croesus, who'd dumped his own son without education or skills to fend for himself. Roderick had managed, however. Vice reported he was strictly small time but he got along. He still had some good looks, although now, in his early fifties, he was getting a little long in the tooth for a street rounder. Record-wise, he was a two-time loser; once for assault with a weapon, which the homicide detectives liked to see, and once for grand larceny, which also fit nicely if money was a motive.

Roderick's fingerprints in Rupert's bedroom? "I visited him a week before he died," explained Roderick. "That night, too, when he died. He gave me a $200 a week allowance on the condition he personally handed it to me in cash. That way, he got to tell me week in and week out that I was a piece of white trash just like my mother. I guess he figured that was worth $200 a week in entertainment value."

The detectives had Roderick placed at the scene, if early. Early enough, they reasoned, for him to have sidled over to the balcony door and unlocked it. The more they looked at Roderick, the more enthused they became. Everyone was a suspect, but he was Number One with a bullet.

By the day of Rupert's funeral, Cripps and Yablonsky had completed extensive background checks on most of Rupert's relatives. Roderick was handy, but any of the other relatives could as easily be a stone killer. Rupert himself seemed to be all people said he was and more. Going back further, his father and grandfather had had reputations just as bad.

Rupert's will turned out to be a choice piece of work. Cripps and Yablonsky attended the reading in the cemetery chapel. The family wasn't wasting time; Rupert's plot was only half-filled by then, the sound of the backhoe coming in through the open window.

The will was clear on two points. First, all of Rupert's considerable assets were to be turned into cash and invested. Second, initially no one got a dime. The entire estate would be held in trust for the last Ames survivor, whether that was the widow, ex-wife, son, or cousin. The housekeeper didn't get mentioned.