Page 151 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

avoid tripping any alarms or breaking into an empty house or
apartment.”
“You had more than one chance to perceive the inadequacies of
that strategy.”
“Sorry again. But each time we got closer to the perpetrator.”
“We shall see. First I need to reconstruct what actually transpired.”
As opposed to my cockeyed theories, she did not need to add.
The Simulians, a tightly-knit family of immigrants from a former
Soviet republic, had found this country to be truly the land of
opportunity for their criminal activities. As ruthless as the old Lansky
mob and as close-mouthed as any mafia clan, this group of six
brothers and cousins eluded conviction for several years in more than
one American city. Then they set up shop here and soon developed a
need to eliminate a local business associate, Marcus Downs. Big
mistake: he was one of Labelle’s most valuable informants. It had
taken months, but her uncompromising methods of investigation and
interrogation finally enabled the D.A. to put one of them, Sherman
Simulian, on trial for premeditated murder. And how could a witness
feel intimidated by these gangsters after a session with Lieutenant
Gramercy? No comparison.
At any rate, the trial resulted in a guilty verdict and Sherman would
be inside for more years than he could expect or desire to live. More
than enough circumstantial evidence had been produced to nail him,
proceeding with the distinctive ritual the Simulians performed when
executing a traitor: the victim was always stabbed twice in the back of
the skull with an ice pick, the body then laid out on its back, hands
folded over mouth—left over right, head sticking out of a bedroom
door; entry to the prey’s inner sanctum gained just before dawn
through an unprotected window or door, by means of cutting away a
screen or removing a pane of glass; and finally, the signature left as a
warning to others: a snuffed kitchen match next to the corpse.
Labelle had rummaged through the files of every city in which the
Simulians had spent more than a few days as they migrated across
Europe and the United States. She found three other unsolved cases
matching the Downs murder in those bizarre details, both here and
abroad.
Further digging showed her that the Simulians had a motive in
each case to kill those particular people: reprisal for betrayal or

150