DEATH AND TAXES 
  By Jim Doherty


  It was 0930 when I reached Sac Prairie City, Wisconsin, after a four hour 
  drive from Chicago’s Loop. That made me thirty minutes late for 
  “Problem-Solving Day.” 
  “Problem-Solving Day” is a program the “kinder, gentler” IRS puts on to “help” 
  delinquent taxpayers pay off their debts to Uncle Sam. The idea’s that a local 
  IRS office will schedule a Problem-Solving Day, hopefully generating a lot of 
  publicity, so that taxpayers who are behind will be encouraged to come in and 
  meet with an IRS employee in a non-confrontational, low-stress kind of 
  environment, and work out reasonable payment schedules, settle disputed 
  claims, or do whatever else it takes to get the citizen out of debt.
  Of course, this being the Government, nothing ever gets settled that day, 
  because any solution that might be proposed has to be approved through 
  channels, which means that the problems that brought those citizens into the 
  office aren’t really solved, which, potentially, makes for a lot of 
  frustration. Which is why I was there.
  I’m a uniformed officer in the Federal Protective Service, one of the 
  Government’s more obscure cop shops. We’re the law enforcement arm of the US 
  General Services Administration, and since GSA is, among other things, Uncle 
  Sam’s real estate manager, our job is providing basic police service on 
  federal property and in federal buildings. The easiest way to think of it is 
  that, if you shoved all the roughly nine thousand Government buildings and 
  offices in the country together so that they formed one big city, we’re that 
  city’s police force. This is necessary, but not particularly prestigious work, 
  and it puts us considerably lower on the federal law enforcement food chain 
  than glamor agencies like the FBI, the Secret Service, or the DEA.
  My role that day was just to stand around Sac Prairie’s local IRS office, and, 
  by my uniformed presence, discourage any frustrated taxpayers from acting out 
  their frustrations violently. Basically, it was, like a lot of FPS’s 
  activities, low-level security guard stuff rather than real police work, but 
  the IRS had requested actual cops, rather than contract guards, so here I was.
  The local office turned out to be in a small, and rather charming enclosed 
  shopping mall just outside the city limits. Late as I was, it turned out I’d 
  still gotten there before any customers. Apparently they’d had a hard time 
  getting the word out. Of course it might have just been the weather. It was 
  mid-January, and, though the skies were clear and blue, it was bitterly cold. 
  Not the kind of climate you’d necessarily venture out in even to do something 
  you enjoyed, let alone voluntarily walk into an IRS office when you were in 
  arrears.
  Quite a few IRS employees from the regional headquarters in Madison, some 
  forty miles to the east, were in Sac Prairie County to help out the locals. 
  Revenue agents, auditors, tax lawyers, at least one criminal investigator, 
  even the district director himself, Paul Coogan, were all there to lend a 
  hand. I introduced myself to Coogan, apologized for being a little late, and 
  explained that the second officer who’d been scheduled for this detail had 
  come down with the flu, delaying my departure, and reducing the number of 
  assigned coppers to one.
  He replied that it was quite all right, that I wasn’t that late, and that he 
  was sure one officer would be sufficient. We spent a few minutes chatting. 
  Turned out Coogan’d been a copper himself once, having started his Government 
  career as an agent for the ATF (another hotshot outfit), before transferring 
  over to Central Intelligence and, eventually, Internal Revenue.
  I called the Sheriff’s Office to inform the watch commander that I was 
  operating in his jurisdiction, then grabbed a doughnut off of the tray that 
  had been set out for visitors, bought a can of Coke out of a vending machine 
  in the employees lunch room, and went out into the corridor to take up a fixed 
  post by the front door. Supposedly anyone with trouble on his mind would be 
  pacified if the first thing he saw before entering the office was an armed, 
  uniformed policeman. But so few people were showing up that I wasn’t really 
  doing a whole lot of pacifying.
  Coogan was right; this wasn’t really a two-man detail. In fact, for the amount 
  of business they were getting they probably could have gotten by with a 
  cardboard cutout of Jack Webb. But a partner would have at least been someone 
  to talk to and pass the time. As it was, the hours were dragging by with 
  agonizing slowness.
  Since I was solo, the criminal investigator came out and spelled me a couple 
  of times for pitstops and lunch. During one of my breaks, I happened on a nice 
  little antique shop in another corner of the mall, where I found a Fiestaware 
  covered soup bowl for my wife, Katie Anne, who collects the stuff. During 
  another I browsed a used bookstore where I snagged a copy of The Trail of the 
  Poppy the autobiography of legendary US Narcotics Agent Charles “Charlie 
  Cigars” Siragusa. I’d read the book before, of course, but this was the first 
  decent copy I d ever found for sale. Katie collects plates; I collect cop 
  memoirs.
  With Charlie Cigars to keep me company, the second half of the shift went a 
  little quicker, and when they decided to call it a day at 1630, I didn’t feel 
  as washed out as I’d expected to. Due the distance of my trip, I didn’t have 
  to drive back that night. I looked forward to a relaxing evening.
  “Daniel Sullivan,” I said to desk clerk at the Red Barn Inn. “I’ve got a 
  reservation.” 
  She smiled pleasantly, immediately erasing the momentary surprise her face 
  betrayed at a uniformed policeman in a marked squad car asking for a night s 
  lodging, and said, “Yessir. You asked for a federal employees’ rate?”
  “That’s right,” I answered, sliding a credit card over to her. In a few 
  moments the formalities of commerce had been completed, and she handed me the 
  key to Room 9.
  Though Sac Prairie County is more of a working agricultural community than a 
  resort area, it still boasts a number of hostelries notable for being both 
  picturesque and comfortable. The Red Barn Inn is one of the most picturesque 
  and perhaps the most comfortable. Designed (by a graduate of a nearby, 
  world-renowned architectural institute) to resemble the circular-roofed barns 
  found on so many Wisconsin farms, its spacious rooms and convenient location 
  in the town of Greenspring make it very popular with tourists. The last time 
  I’d stayed here, during a weekend of antiquing with Katie, I’d been one of 
  those tourists.
  The drive from the outskirts of Sac Prairie City to Greenspring had taken 
  fifteen or twenty minutes, and the process of checking in, finding my room, 
  stripping off my uniform, showering, and changing into civvies another 
  forty-five, so it was roughly 1730 (well, I was off-duty, now; it was 5:30 PM) 
  when I walked into the Inn’s lounge/restaurant.
  The Inn had few guests staying that night, it being the middle of the week in 
  winter, not exactly peak tourist time. Coogan and two of his IRS subordinates 
  were seated around a table in the lounge watching a basketball game on the 
  lounge TV. A thin, ascetic-looking priest, presumably off-duty like me, but 
  still wearing his uniform of a well-fitting black business suit and 
  turned-around-collar, was sitting by himself at the bar, tapping a ring that 
  looked too big for his left ring finger against a glass of wine from which he 
  took an occasional sip, his eyes on the same game. A young couple, casually 
  dressed, sat by themselves at one of the smaller tables, ignoring both their 
  drinks and the TV, eyes only for each other. Two men were seated at a third 
  table, engaged in quiet conversation. One of them was a familiar acquaintance.
  I walked over to their table. “Shep,” I said. One of the men looked up. “Dan 
  Sullivan,” I went on. “Katie Anne’s husband.” 
  Shep Michaels and I had met on one or two previous occasions. His wife and 
  mine worked together. A computer consultant, his photographic hobby had turned 
  into a part-time paying business when he’d begun to sell wilderness photos, 
  taken during weekend camping trips, to such prestigious publications as the 
  Chicago Tribune Magazine and Wisconsin Monthly. Now, I guess he could 
  legitimately describe himself as a free-lance photo-journalist.
  He smiled, shook hands, asked me how I was, and invited me to join him and his 
  friend, whom he introduced as Peter Carpenter.
  “The psychiatrist?” I asked.
  “The same,” he answered. “Do you listen?” 
  “Not too much. I don’t get up to Milwaukee that often, and your show hasn’t 
  made it to Chicago, yet. I’ve read a few of your articles, though.” 
  “Ah,” he said, nodding. Though still a comparatively young man, not yet 50, 
  Dr. Carpenter had pretty much retired from clinical practice, becoming a local 
  radio personality who hosted a call-in medical advice show on a talk station 
  in Beer City. Sort of a Midwest Dr. Dean Edell. He supplemented his broadcast 
  income by writing self-help pieces.
  He was, it turned out, working on a book about the therapeutic benefits of 
  spending time in the wilderness, and was meeting Shep to discuss the 
  possibility of illustrating it with his photos.
  We went into the dining room, spent a bit more than an hour sharing a good 
  meal and pleasant conversation, at the end of which I begged off joining them 
  as they scouted locations for night-time shots.
  “I’ve got to make an early start tomorrow,” I explained.
  Since I hadn’t ordered dessert after finishing dinner, I felt relatively 
  guilt-free buying a couple of chocolate bars and a can of Coke from the 
  vending machines in the lobby. These I took to my room and set on the 
  nightstand next to my bed. The Inn’s cable system had a few channels Katie and 
  I don t get at home, so I fed my sweet tooth to an uncut, uninterrupted 
  broadcast of a dandy 1948 film noir called T-Men, in which Dennis O’Keefe and 
  Alfred Ryder, as undercover Secret Service agents, get the goods on a 
  murderous counterfeiting gang. When that ended, I relaxed through a few more 
  chapters of Siragusa. Sustained by both visual and literary accounts of what 
  federal policing was supposed to be like (as opposed to the reality I’d 
  experienced with FPS), I drifted off to sleep.
  During the night it snowed. And I mean snowed. Cold as it was the day before, 
  the skies had been clear and blue, but I awoke the next morning to find that 
  storm clouds had gathered over Sac Prairie County during the night and dumped 
  several feet of the stuff in the matter of a few hours. Had dumped and were 
  continuing to dump. It took me over fifteen minutes, after I’d checked out, to 
  dig my squad out of all the accumulated snow, and another fifteen minutes to 
  warm it up enough that I felt reasonably confident I could proceed without the 
  engine dying. Once started, it took me a another half-hour to go all of one 
  mile down US 14 toward Madison with the snow, ice, and wind flaying 
  unmercifully at my windshield and my wipers ineffectually trying to give me a 
  reasonably clear picture of the road ahead.
  “Hell with this!” I said out loud. I stopped, turned the squad around, and 
  headed back to the Red Barn. As I walked into the lobby, the desk clerk was 
  already holding up the key to Room 9.
  “Figured you’d be back,” she said.
  By the time I d returned to my room it was past 0800. I called the office in 
  Chicago to inform my supervisor, Sergeant Albin, that weather conditions would 
  prevent me from returning.
  “The way it’s coming down, I’m not even sure I’d make it to Madison, let alone 
  Chicago, and if I’m going to spend the night away from home, I might as well 
  just stay here. 
  The sergeant reluctantly agreed. I said that I’d probably see him the next 
  day, if the weather moderated. He said he hoped so, and to keep him informed. 
  I told him I certainly would, and we rang off. Katie Anne wasn’t expecting me 
  home till that evening so I figured I could call her later.
  There’s something about heavy snowfall that makes crawling under nice warm 
  covers particularly appealing, and, as I still hadn’t completely made up the 
  sleep deficit of the night before last, and was now off the hook with the 
  sarge, I saw no reason not to try to catch a few more hours shuteye. Fifteen 
  minutes and a chapter of Siragusa later, that’s just what I was doing.
  The knocking at the door was loud and insistent. So was the voice that 
  accompanied it.
  “Mr. Sullivan? Please open up!” 
  I shook myself awake. Damn! Had I forgotten to put out the “Do Not Disturb” 
  sign? I looked at my watch on the nightstand. 1000 hours. Well, that was 
  probably time to get up anyway. I called, “Just a minute,” pulled on a t-shirt 
  and jeans, and opened the door to find the desk clerk, in a state of extreme 
  agitation, on the other side.
  “It’s Mr. Coogan in Room 6,” she said. “Please come look.” 
  “What’s the problem?”
  “Just please come!” she said.
  We went down the hall to Coogan’s room. She fumbled with a key ring, found the 
  room master, slipped it into the lock, and led me into the room.
  Coogan was still in bed, turned on his left side. As I moved closer, I saw a 
  brownish-red stain, not as large as you might imagine, but still noticeable, 
  on his pillow. There was a small hole, like a puncture, under his right ear, 
  but the black burn marks around it suggested a gunshot with a small caliber 
  weapon, maybe a .22.
  His face, or anyway the right side of it, was unnaturally pale, and cold to 
  the touch. The left side, still resting on the pillow, seemed to be one large 
  purplish/reddish bruise. I pulled up the covers and saw that the bruise-like 
  mark continued down his whole left side. Post-mortem lividity. When the heart 
  stops pumping all the blood still in the body starts to settle to whatever 
  part of the body is closest to the pull of gravity. It’s what they call a 
  “positive sign of death.” It means you don’t have to go through the motions of 
  administering first aid. You can consider the subject irredeemably deceased.
  “Guess he’s made his final audit,” I said softly.
  “What do we do?” asked the desk clerk.
  “Call the police.” 
  “I thought you were a policeman.” 
  “Not unless the Government’s bought the Inn.” 
  “It’s not my jurisdiction!” I shouted into the phone.
  “Why not?” asked Douglas Cody, Sheriff of Sac Prairie County, and top-ranking 
  peace officer around these here parts.
  I’d been a little surprised, but not dismayed, to find that the Red Barn was 
  part of Greenspring only for postal purposes. The inn was actually situated a 
  bit beyond Greenspring’s city limits, which put it outside the jurisdiction of 
  the Greenspring PD. I hadn’t thought that would be a problem. It was just a 
  question of calling the Sheriff’s Office instead. However, fifteen minutes of 
  buck-passing over the phone had finally gotten me put through to the top man, 
  who was trying to pass it right back to me.
  “Isn’t he a federal employee?” Cody went on. “Aren’t you a federal officer?” 
  “It’s beyond the scope of my responsibility,” I said firmly. “And there’s no 
  proof that he was killed because of anything arising from his employment. 
  Until there is, it’s a local case.” 
  “Fair enough,” he said. “But this is a small department, and right now we’ve 
  got all we can do handling the emergencies this blizzard’s generating. I don’t 
  know when me or any of my deputies’ll be able to get out to you. In the 
  meantime, you’re right there, and you’re a trained law enforcement officer.”
  “This is a homicide!” 
  “That’s right. And that means the victim’s already dead, so there’s nothing I 
  can do for him. I’ve got people in this county who are still alive needing 
  whatever service I can give ‘em. Until the blizzard stops they’ve got to be my 
  main priority.” “What about the Greenspring Police?” 
  “Son, you and I both know the reason you’re calling me is ‘cause you’re a 
  hundred feet outside of Greenspring’s municipal boundaries, and I’m here to 
  tell you no Greenspring cop is going to set one toe over that boundary to get 
  himself mixed up in a murder case that’s not his business. Just hold the fort 
  ‘til we can get somebody out there. The weather reports say the storm should 
  start tapering off around midnight. You won’t be able to leave ‘til then 
  anyway. Y’might as well make yourself useful. 
  “Sheriff, I am not the constabulary giant you seem to think. I don’t know 
  anything about processing a homicide scene. I’m just a uniformed beat cop, and 
  my beat’s nothing but a bunch of office buildings. I’m not too much more than 
  a glorified security guard.” 
  “Well, I’m just a hick sheriff in a farming community, and I don’t get lot of 
  murder cases, either. Just do the best you can. That’s all I’m asking, one cop 
  to another. 
  Finally, after I reluctantly agreed, Sheriff Cody officially authorized me to 
  act for Sac Prairie County until relieved. My next call was to the US Attorney 
  s Office in Milwaukee. I spoke to the duty prosecutor, explained my 
  jurisdictional predicament, and told him my position vis-a-vis my supervisors 
  in Chicago was going to be lot stronger if I could say that he approved my 
  remaining in charge until the arrival of local authorities. Most Assistant US 
  Attorneys are buck-passers, but, fortunately, this guy was a little more 
  decisive. He told me to have my bosses get in touch with him if they gave me 
  any grief, and to go ahead and handle things ‘til the sheriff’s men arrived.
  It was the next call I dreaded most. GSA hates the idea of its police arm 
  getting involved in any law enforcement activity “off-property.” And I was 
  sure Sergeant Albin and Lieutenant Miller would tell me that I was to do 
  absolutely nothing ‘til the locals got there, no matter how long their getting 
  there took.
  Which is exactly what they did.
  Being advised that the sheriff had deputized me, not only legally entitling me 
  to act but legally requiring me to, and that the AUSA had also given his 
  imprimatur, left them both somewhat nonplused. 
  Finally, they admitted defeat, and, all bureaucratic obstacles swept aside, I 
  was, however temporarily, the primary investigator of a high-ranking federal 
  official’s murder.
  “But I’m not a forensic pathologist,” Carpenter protested.
  “You’re an MD, aren’t you?” 
  “Of course.” 
  “Well, I’m not asking you to autopsy the guy. Just tell me whether or not he’s 
  dead.” 
  “But you said lividity had already set in. Why do I need to confirm it?” 
  “I say he’s dead, and it’s one man’s opinion. You say he’s dead, and it’s a 
  pronouncement by competent medical authority.” 
  With that, I led him and Shep down to Room 6. Inside, Carpenter made a cursory 
  examination of the corpse, and announced that he was officially dead, that he 
  had been for at least six hours. I noted the time, told him he could leave 
  now, then turned to Shep.
  “Is there a roll in that camera now?” 
  “Six or seven shots.” 
  “Go outside and burn ‘em off,” I said. “Then put in a fresh roll. Once you 
  start shooting, don’t stop ‘til you’ve gone through the roll. Any rolls you 
  start with in that room, finish in that room. Eventually, they’re going to 
  have to be booked into evidence, so any roll you use for this crime scene has 
  to be used exclusively for this crime scene.” 
  Shep nodded, did as I instructed, and, in a few moments, was snapping off 
  shots of the body and the room from every conceivable angle.
  What a trio we made. Carpenter, as he took such pains to point out to me, 
  wasn’t a medical examiner. Shep wasn’t a crime scene tech. And I sure as hell 
  wasn’t a homicide detective. But we were all I had.
  While Carpenter and I stood outside the door, Shep snapped away, taking care 
  not to touch anything but his camera, and doing his best to tread lightly so 
  as to contaminate the scene as little as possible.
  When he’d gone through three rolls, he stopped and asked whether I thought 
  that was enough. I decided it probably was. Undoubtedly, the sheriff’s techs 
  would want to take their own photos, but I’d wanted a set taken as soon after 
  the actual crime as possible.
  I turned to Carpenter. “Think we should move him?” 
  “Where?” 
  “Restaurant has a big, walk-in fridge. I figure he’ll keep better there. God 
  knows when the locals’ll be able to get here, and I don’t like the idea of him 
  putrefying ‘til they do. On the other hand, moving the body’s kind of a major 
  disturbance of the crime scene. It won’t exactly endear me to Sheriff Cody.” 
  “Well, it’s awfully cold outside,” Carpenter said. “If the heat in the room is 
  turned off, he should keep as well right there as he would in the 
  refrigerator.” 
  I nodded, closed and locked the door, and tacked an “X” in yellow, plastic 
  “Police Line” tape across it. Then I took Shep’s three rolls, placed them in a 
  manila envelope, sealed it, and stapled an evidence tag to it.
  “I’m going to lock this in one of the safety deposit boxes at the front desk,” 
  I said. “Here’s the key to my room. Why don’t both of you meet me there? I 
  want you to help me brainstorm.” 
  “Why us?” asked Shep.
  “’Cause I’m reasonably sure neither one of you’s the killer.” 
  *
  “The way I see it,” I said to my ad hoc staff, “this was a professional hit.” 
  “Why do you say that?” asked Carpenter
  “Manner of the death. It happened during the night, while we were all asleep. 
  None of us heard the shot, suggesting some kind of suppressor was used. One 
  shot, a contact wound to the base of the skull. Very cold-blooded. Small 
  caliber weapon, probably a .22. Supposed to be a favorite with pros from what 
  I hear. Plus, Coogan had a resume that might have made him a target. Before 
  joining Internal Revenue, he was in the CIA. ATF prior to that. Good places to 
  make enemies.” 
  As I spoke, I was removing my civvies, and putting on my uniform. Once, a few 
  months earlier, Sergeant Albin had called me in the middle of the night and 
  ordered me down to the Loop because some whacko’d called in a bomb threat to 
  the Dirksen Building and they wanted me to mount a search. I immediately drove 
  from my home to 219 South Dearborn, organized some contract guards into a 
  makeshift search team, and conducted a floor-by-floor canvass. We didn’t find 
  anything, but the effort had to be made.
  Anyway, the point is, instead of being thanked for getting out of my nice warm 
  bed and handling this potential emergency in as expeditious a manner as 
  possible, I got a chewed out for not first stopping at the FPS District Office 
  a few block south of the Dirksen and changing into my uniform. “You can’t 
  operate in plainclothes without the express approval of the FPS Commissioner 
  in DC,” I was told. That turned out to be bullshit, of course, but, just the 
  same, I wanted to avoid that argument this time.
  “All right,” said Shep. “So, it’s a professional hit. So what?” 
  “Okay, now we start playing the odds. According to the desk clerk, nobody’s 
  checked out. A few people were upset about being snowbound, but no one wanted 
  to take a chance on driving in the blizzard except me, and I gave it up after 
  a mile or so. Everybody on the Inn staff who was here last night is still 
  here. So everybody that was here when Coogan got killed is still here. 
  Conclusion: The killer’s still here.” 
  “Couldn’t it have been somebody from the outside?” asked Carpenter.
  “Possible, but not likely. The doors are all locked at midnight. The only way 
  in is with a key or by buzzing the front desk clerk. That would mean he’d be 
  seen. Of course, he could have picked the lock to one of the side entrances of 
  the room wings. I doubt they’re exactly state-of-the-art, but why bother when 
  all he has to do is check in, wait ‘til the few guests staying here are 
  asleep, and take care of business at his leisure. Besides, if it was somebody 
  from the outside, we’re screwed before we start. He’s long gone by now. ‘Til 
  we can prove different, let’s just play the percentages, and assume it’s 
  somebody at hand. 
  “How do we eliminate suspects?” asked Carpenter. He and Shep were starting to 
  get into this. Me too. I hadn’t exactly been passionate about being dragooned 
  into a murder case, but I had to admit it was stimulating. I mean, really this 
  was a transcendent law enforcement experience! Here I was snowbound in a 
  remote rural area with a small group of people, one of whom was (probably) a 
  professional killer, and I didn’t know which one. I was living an Agatha 
  Christie situation! How many cops’d that ever happened to?
  “Again, we play the odds. If we’re right about its being a professional job, 
  it wasn’t any of the Inn staff. They’ve all been working here for years. 
  Yesterday’s Problem-Solving Day was scheduled just a few months ago, and 
  Coogan didn’t make reservations to stay here ‘til last week. Too much of a 
  coincidence for a contract killer to already be employed by the place his 
  victim’s staying.” 
  “Okay,” said Shep. “Who else?” 
  “Well, I know I didn’t do it, so I immediately eliminate myself. And as I 
  said, I’m reasonably sure you guys didn’t do it, because I happen to know that 
  you,” I pointed at Shep, “really are a computer consultant and free-lance 
  photographer, and you,” indicating Carpenter, “really are an eminent 
  psychiatrist and broadcast personality. Of course, these could be really 
  well-developed covers for your activities as hit men, but the odds are against 
  it. Getting a genuine degree in medicine or computer science is a lot of 
  trouble to go to just to conceal your criminal career. Coming up here was 
  whose idea?”
  “Mine,” said Carpenter.
  “Well, Doc, of the two of you, you’re the least likely to be an undercover hit 
  man, just on account of your being way too high-profile. And if coming up here 
  was your idea, that helps eliminate Shep, because that means his being here at 
  the same time as Coogan is just a coincidence, not part of a carefully 
  worked-out plan.” 
  “You’ve convinced me,” said Shep. “We’re both innocent. Who else?” 
  “I think Nelson and Fleischer, the two IRS guys staying up here, are out of 
  it,” I said, “for the same reason as both of you. We know they’re bona fide 
  IRS employees. Of course, infiltrating a government agency would be very 
  advantageous for a professional criminal, but, once more, the percentages are 
  against it. I haven’t eliminated them as completely as you two, but, for the 
  moment, I’m not seriously considering them. The killer’s far more likely to be 
  someone whose background we know nothing about. That narrows it down to three 
  possibilities.”
  “Who’re they?” asked Carpenter.
  “Father Hannigan, the priest, and Mr. and Mrs. Scalisi, the young couple. The 
  desk clerk says that the Scalisis made their reservation a few days after 
  Coogan and his staff, and Hannigan’s a walk-in. They’re unknown to anybody 
  else in the Inn.” 
  “It’s not Father Hannigan,” said Carpenter, firmly.
  “How can you be so sure?” 
  “He’s got advanced cancer. He’s dying.” 
  “How do you know that? A little while ago you were insisting you weren’t 
  qualified to pronounce death over a cold stiff with plainly visible lividity. 
  Now you can diagnose terminal cancer from a distance?” 
  “I worked with cancer patients when I interned,” said Carpenter. “And, when I 
  was still in clinical practice, I used to lead a group of terminal patients, 
  help them come to terms with their passing. Most of them had cancer. Of 
  course, I can’t be absolutely sure without doing a full check-up, and even 
  then I’d recommend getting a second opinion from an oncologist, but, if we’re 
  playing the percentages, as you say, I’d bet the man is very close to death. 
  All the symptoms are there. He’s got to be innocent. Who’d send a dying man 
  out to do murder?” 
  “Who indeed?” I said.
  I knocked loudly on the door. 
  “Hannigan,” I said in a loud voice, “it’s the police! I need to talk to you!” 
  Carpenter’s diagnosis had clinched it, as far as I was concerned. I still 
  didn’t have evidence that would convict in court, but that evidence would be 
  in his room. It might be fibers from the carpet in Coogan’s room on the soles 
  of Hannigan’s shoes. It might be bloodstains that he’d missed when he cleaned 
  up after himself. It might even be the gun, if it was a sentimental favorite 
  and he didn’t expect to get caught. It was in there, and I meant to get him 
  out of there so he couldn’t destroy it before Cody could get inside with a 
  warrant and a forensics team.
  Masquerading as a priest was inspired. Nobody looks at a priest. Not as 
  person. They just see the collar. Like a cop that people regard as simply a 
  badge and a gun. The symbol overrides the personality.
  But he’d made a few glitches. For one thing, Greenspring has a Catholic 
  church. I knew because Katie and I’d attended Mass there during that weekend 
  of antiquing. If there was a church, there was a rectory. Why was he spending 
  money at the Inn, walking in at the last minute, when he could have stayed at 
  the rectory for free?
  Then there was business of that over-sized ring. Carpenter saw it as a sign of 
  emaciation, a symptom of his illness. What he missed was that it was on his 
  left ring finger. His wedding finger. What was a priest doing with a wedding 
  ring?
  Then there was the fact that his clerical garb fit so well. If he d gone 
  through a recent period of rapid weight loss, his clothes should have hung on 
  him the way his ring did. Unless they were brand new, bought for a specific 
  purpose. Like a costume, bought to fit a specific role.
  The fatal illness was the clincher. A cop-killing, or any other high-profile 
  killing, is something most organized crime types try to avoid. Whichever wise 
  guy said, “We only kill each other,” may not have been completely accurate, 
  but for the most part he was right. Killing other gangsters doesn’t really 
  stir up a lot of public or official anger. Killing cops, or outsiders, or 
  political figures does.
  Coogan, ex-cop, ex-spy, current high-level tax official, was just the kind of 
  guy whose murder would generate a lot of heat. Most contract killers won’t 
  take a job like that. Occasionally, however, when such a murder’s been deemed 
  absolutely necessary, the contract’s been given to a dying man, someone who 
  won’t have anything to lose if he’s caught. Someone who’s maybe supposed to 
  get caught so he’ll take all the heat, leaving the higher-ups safe.
  I pounded the door again. “Hannigan! Open up!” 
  The door opened. Hannigan’s jacket was on. He was buttoning the top button of 
  his black, clerical shirt, and sliding the starched, white insert into the 
  ends of his clerical collar. He smiled, and said pleasantly, “Yes, Officer.” 
  His eyes traveled up from my uniform to my face, and tightened threateningly. 
  I shouldn’t have been looking at his eyes. I should have been looking at his 
  hands.
  He was sweeping the right side of his jacket aside, reaching into the small of 
  his back. His hand came out holding a small automatic pistol. Looking at his 
  face, like some dumb rookie, I’d missed the beginning of the movement, so, 
  even though I’d unsnapped my holster, he was able to get a shot off before I 
  could draw and return fire.
  My Kevlar vest took the full impact of his .22 slug. I barely felt it. 
  Surprisingly effective for just-plain killing, the .22 is pretty anemic in 
  combat situations. Not enough knockdown force. The seven .40 caliber 
  hollowpoints I answered him with found his clerical shirt no obstacle at all. 
  Not quite four feet away from me, he took every one dead center. Carpenter 
  later said he was probably dead before the last four rounds hit him.
  A fingerprint check identified him as Milton “Meat” Cleaver, a “suspected” 
  button man whom the FBI had linked to over a dozen hits east of the 
  Mississippi. An autopsy confirmed Carpenter’s diagnosis of cancer. He was 
  riddled with it. 
  We never found out who’d hired Cleaver, or why. The general consensus was that 
  something arising out of Coogan s shadowy “Company” days was the reason for 
  the hit, but this has never been confirmed.
  I never could understand why he’d tried to shoot it out. It had seemed as 
  though he was going to try to play out his bluff but suddenly changed his 
  mind. Maybe he just saw me as a convenient suicide weapon to save himself all 
  those months of slow, agonizing death.
  The Inspector General’s Office of GSA clean-billed me on the shooting. Totally 
  justified, they’d said. My own superiors at FPS were less enthusiastic. 
  There’d been some mumbling about having “no legal grounds” to knock on Riley’s 
  door, or some such nonsense. My explanation of exigent circumstances (an armed 
  man, most likely still in the Inn; the necessity to protect the other guests, 
  to preserve evidence, etc.) didn’t convince them.
  Some pressure from the IRS, a particularly important GSA tenant, did. In the 
  end, I was awarded a two hundred and fifty dollar “Fast Track” cash bonus for 
  my part in the investigation.
  I once got a five hundred dollar “Fast Track” for making a suggestion that 
  simplified paperwork procedures. Ease the bureaucracy s production of stuff 
  nobody reads; get rewarded with five hundred dollars. Survive a gunfight with 
  a notorious professional killer; get half of that.
  Gives you an idea of just what GSA’s priorities are.


  A law enforcement professional for more than ten years, JIM DOHERTY, like his 
  protagonist Dan Sullivan, has worked at a number of different police agencies, 
  most recently as a uniformed officer in the Chicago District of the US Federal 
  Protective Service (though Government ethics rules require him to note that 
  neither FPS, its parent organization the General Services Administration, nor 
  any other federal agency, had anything to do with “Death and Taxes”). Dan 
  Sullivan stories have also appeared in MYSTERY BUFF MAGAZINE, BLUE MURDER, and 
  the small-press anthology TALES FROM THE RED LION. Jim’s a member of the 
  Mystery Writers of America and is currently serving a term on the Board of 
  MWA's Midwest Chapter.