by McBain, Ed
When Patricia came into the room, her face was tear-streaked. They expressed their sympathies to her, as they had to her mother, and then Carella put a manila envelope on the kitchen table and unwound the string from the cardboard button on the tie flap. He pulled the knife out by the tag attached to its handle and placed it on the kitchen table in front of Patricia.
“Have you ever seen this before?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Where?”
“It’s the knife that killed Muriel,” Patricia said. “It’s the knife the murderer used.”
They went to see Paul Gaddis because there were some things they wanted to know about his party guests. They did not expect to learn what they learned there, and they probably wouldn’t have learned it if Gaddis hadn’t suddenly become hungry. Gaddis was a good-looking young man who’d obviously begun lifting weights at an early age, and who’d just as obviously quit before he’d turned into a muscle-bound clod. He was sinewy and lean, with a firm, almost overpowering handshake, and an eager, helpful expression on his face. He led the detectives into the living room, and they sat there talking in the golden afternoon light. On Carella’s lap was the manila envelope with the tagged murder weapon inside it.
“We want to know who was here at the party,” Carella said.
“Not all the guests,” Kling said.
“Just the ones who were strangers to Patricia.”
“Guys she didn’t know, you mean?” Gaddis asked.
“Yes,” Carella said.
They were, in all honesty, clutching at straws. Muriel Stark had been murdered on Saturday night, and the case was now almost four days old. A homicide case usually begins to cool after the first twenty-four hours. If you haven’t got a lead by then, chances are the case won’t be solved except by accident. (Pick up a guy accused of rape sometime next Christmas, and during the course of the questioning he’d tell you that back in September he knocked off a little girl in an abandoned tenement on Harding.) This particular homicide looked more difficult than most because it was the result of random violence. Two girls trying to make their way home through the rain. They stop for shelter in an abandoned tenement, and are suddenly facing a man with a knife. Pure chance. So how do you solve a chance homicide except by getting a few lucky breaks of your own? Thus far, their breaks had been limited to the accidental finding of the murder weapon, but the knife told them nothing they hadn’t already known. They were here now to explore a possibility that would eliminate chance and give them at least some hope of pursuing the case along lines of logical deduction.
“Guys she didn’t know, huh?” Gaddis said. “Okay, now that would break itself down into two categories. There’d be guys she didn’t know at the beginning of the night, but who she might have met before she left the party; and there’d be guys she never got to meet at all. So which ones do you want?”
“We want anybody Patricia might have classified as a perfect stranger.”
“Well, that’d be somebody, say, who came in after she got here, and who hung around in the kitchen with the guys, drinking beer maybe, and who never got to meet her.”
“Yes,” Carella said. “But who might have seen her.”
“Mmm,” Gaddis said. “Are you thinking that somebody who was here at the party—?”
“It’s simply an angle we’re considering,” Kling said.
“Because we haven’t got much else to go on,” Carella said honestly.
“Yeah. Well, the thing is, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble by saying—”
“You won’t be getting anybody in trouble.”
“Because, you know, my own father was here the night of the party, and he never got to meet Patricia, though he probably saw her on the way to the kitchen or the bathroom or something, so that would make him one of the guys you’re talking about, am I right?”
“Well,” Kling said, and looked at Carella.
“Well, did your father happen to leave the apartment shortly after Patricia and Muriel did?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then that would let him out,” Carella said.
“Then what you want,” Gaddis said, “is the names of any guys who didn’t get to meet Patricia, and who also left early.”
“Let’s start with the ones who didn’t get to meet her.”
“I think Jackie Hogan got here about a quarter past ten, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t meet her. And there was a guy who got here earlier than that, I didn’t even know him, he’d come here with one of the girls. I don’t think Patricia ever got to meet him because this girl just dragged him in the bedroom and was necking in there with him all night long. But he may have got a look at Patricia, because he came up for air once and went out in the kitchen for a beer.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know his name, the girl never introduced him to anybody.”
“Well, what’s her name?”
“Sally Hoyt.”
“Okay, can you think of anyone else?”
“That’s about it, I think. No, wait a minute, there was this fellow came in with Charlie Cavalca, he’s an instructor of Charlie’s down at Ramsey U. Charlie had been downtown in the library, doing some work, and he’d seen the instructor there and told him he was going to a party, so the instructor asked if he could crash. He’s a young guy, he teaches English down there. So Charlie called me and asked if he could bring him along, and they picked up two girls in the library and brought them along too.”
“Sounds like it was a big party,” Kling said.
“There were about fifty people here.”
“Your eighteenth birthday party, huh?”
“Yes, but most of my friends are older than that. I run with an older crowd, I don’t know what it is. I always did. I’m going with a girl who’s twenty-four, for example. My mother can’t understand it.”
“But Patricia Lowery’s only fifteen.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have invited her, I’ll tell you the truth, if it hadn’t been for Andy. He’s my friend, not Patricia. I asked him to come to the party, and he said he wanted to bring his cousin and his sister, so what could I tell him? Could I say no? So I said okay, and then what happens is that he can’t make the damn party, so the two girls come alone. I didn’t mind Muriel, but you know, lots of the guys were kidding me about Patricia, about having jailbait here.”
“Muriel was only seventeen,” Carella said.
“I didn’t realize that. She looked older. For that matter, Patricia looks older too. But she’s kind of immature, if you know what I mean. After all, fifteen is fifteen, no matter how you slice it. The party was big enough to absorb them both, though, so what the hell. I’m only sorry Andy didn’t get to come. I’m sure if he’d been here, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened later.”
“What time did he get here?”
“Just after the girls left.”
“And he left immediately, huh? To go look for them?”
“Yeah. But then he came back again because it was raining so hard, you see, he figured they might have changed their minds and run back here. But they hadn’t. So he left again.”
“About these other people you mentioned—”
“Right,” Gaddis said. “We can eliminate my father, right? Because he never left the apartment all night long.” Gaddis smiled suddenly and infectiously. “Besides, he’s a very nonviolent type, believe me.”
“Okay, let’s eliminate your father,” Carella said, and returned the smile.
“And I think we can eliminate Sally Hoyt’s boyfriend, because first of all, she didn’t let him out of her sight all night long, and secondly, by the time she got through with him the poor bastard was probably too weak to walk.”
“Okay.”
“So that leaves…Listen, is anybody hungry? I’m starved. Would anybody like a sandwich?”
“No, thank you,” Carella said.
“You mind if I make myself one?”
> “Not at all.”
“Come on in the kitchen,” Gaddis said, and rose, and continued talking as they started out of the room. “That would leave Jackie Hogan, who got here about fifteen minutes before the girls left, and who I’m sure didn’t get to meet them. And it would also leave this English instructor Charlie Cavalca brought with him. Trouble is, Jackie didn’t leave the party till way past midnight, so that lets him out, am I right?”
“That’s right.”
They were in the kitchen now. Gaddis opened the refrigerator, took out a slab of butter, a loaf of unsliced rye bread, and some ham wrapped in waxed paper. “So that leaves only the English instructor,” he said, and turned toward the detectives and smiled again, and said, “Personally, I wouldn’t put anything past English instructors, but this guy seemed very straight, and besides, he was with a gorgeous blonde he’d have to have been out of his mind to leave.” Gaddis walked to the cutting board and reached for one of the knives on the rack above it.
Both Kling and Carella saw the knives on the rack at the same moment. There was a bread knife with a nine-inch-long blade, which Paul pulled down from the rack now. There was also a carving knife with a ten-inch-long blade, and a chef’s knife with a six-inch-long blade. But their attention was caught by the paring knives which hung in a row on the rack. There were three of them. They all had wooden handles with stainless-steel rivets in them. They all had blades that appeared to be about four inches long.
“Those knives,” Carella said.
Paul Gaddis looked up from where he was slicing the rye bread.
“On the rack there,” Carella said. “The paring knives.”
“Yeah,” Gaddis said, and nodded.
“Were they here on the night of the party?”
“Oh yeah, been here forever, those knives.”
“Are any of them missing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Should there be four paring knives instead of three?”
“Well, there are four,” Gaddis said, and looked at the rack.
“No, there are only three up there,” Carella said.
“There’re supposed to be four,” Gaddis said.
“Would one of them be in the dishwasher?”
“We never put those knives in the dishwasher,” Gaddis said. “They’ve got wooden handles, we wash them by hand. Those are expensive knives. They’re made in Germany, you know.”
“Would this be the fourth knife?” Carella asked, and opened the manila envelope again, and pulled the knife out by the evidence tag, and put it down on the cutting board. Gaddis looked at the knife.
“Is that…is that the murder weapon?” he asked.
“Yes,” Carella said.
“It looks like one of our knives,” Gaddis said, “but I can’t tell for sure. I mean, I suppose there are lots of knives that are similar to these. I mean, these aren’t unique knives or anything, you can buy them in any good store in the city. But if I had to say, just looking at the knife there, I would have to say yes, it looks as if it could be the fourth knife, it looks as if it could be the fourth paring knife in the set there.” He looked up suddenly. “That means he was here, doesn’t it?” he said. “The one who killed her. If he took that knife from the rack, he was here.”
“Yes,” Carella said. “He was here.”
At 6:00 that Wednesday night, just as they were preparing to leave the squadroom, the phone on Carella’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver and said, “87th Squad, Carella.”
“Steve, this is Dave Murchison on the desk.”
“Yes, Dave.”
“Patricia Lowery here to see you.”
“Send her right up.”
Carella put the receiver back onto the cradle and turned to Kling, who was rolling down his shirt sleeves. “Bert,” he said, “Patricia Lowery’s on her way up.”
“What does she want?” Kling asked.
“I don’t know.”
Patricia was wearing blue jeans, a gray Shetland sweater, brown low-heeled walking shoes, and a striped muffler that she had wrapped around her neck so that the ends trailed down her back. The temperature outside had dropped a bit since morning, and her cheeks were glowing and pink. She greeted both detectives by name and then took a seat at Carella’s desk. The first thing she said was, “I want to make a statement.”
“What about?” Carella asked.
“The murder,” Patricia said. “I want to tell you who killed my cousin Muriel.”
The detectives glanced at each other in surprise. Neither of them said anything. They waited. Her bandaged hands were in her lap. She sat unmoving in the straight-backed chair, and when finally she began speaking, her voice was almost a whisper, a pained and halting monotone.
“My brother killed her,” she said.
Again the detectives looked at each other.
“Yes,” Patricia said, and nodded. “My brother.”
“Patricia, do—?”
“My brother killed her.”
“That’s a very serious accusation,” Kling said. “Are you sure—?”
“Patricia, do you know what you’re saying?” Carella asked.
“I know what I’m saying. My brother killed her.”
“On the night of the murder, you told us—”
“I was lying. My brother killed her.”
“Patricia, I want to tape this,” Carella said. “Is that all right with you?”
“Yes. Tape it. I want you to have a record.”
Carella went to one of the metal filing cabinets, opened a drawer in it, and pulled out a tape recorder, which he brought immediately to the desk. On the face of the recorder, someone had pasted a label that read PROPERTY OF 87TH SQUAD—DO NOT REMOVE FROM THIS OFFICE!!!! He placed the microphone on the desk in front of Patricia, and then said, “All right, Patricia, you can begin talking now.”
PATRICIA: Is it on?
CARELLA: Yes, it’s on. Would you repeat what you said just a moment ago?
PATRICIA: I said my brother killed her.
CARELLA: Your brother killed Muriel Stark?
PATRICIA: Yes. My brother killed Muriel Stark.
CARELLA: Okay, just a second, Patricia, I want to make sure we’re getting this. He rewound the tape, played back the segment they had just recorded, and then said, “Okay, we’re fine. I’m going to turn this on again, and I want you to tell us exactly what happened. Are you ready, Patricia?”
CARELLA: We’re talking now about the night of September sixth. Tell us what happened on that night, Patricia.
PATRICIA: We were at the party. You know about the party, I already told you about the party.
CARELLA: Tell us again, Patricia. Who was at the party?
PATRICIA: Muriel and I.
CARELLA: Was your brother there as well?
PATRICIA: No. He wasn’t there. He was working. I thought he was working. But it turned out he got through early and came looking for us.
CARELLA: All right, you and your cousin were at this party. Is this the birthday party that took place in Paul Gaddis’s apartment?
PATRICIA: Yes, it was Paul’s eighteenth birthday party.
CARELLA: What time did you get there, Patricia?
PATRICIA: At about eight.
CARELLA: And what time did you leave?
PATRICIA: At ten-thirty. We were supposed to be home by eleven.
CARELLA: Were you and your cousin alone?
PATRICIA: Yes. We left the party alone.
CARELLA: Go ahead, Patricia.
PATRICIA: It began raining again. It had let up a little, but it started pouring cats and dogs again, so we ran up Harding Avenue to Sixteenth Street, where all the stores are. We were standing under an awning there when he came up to us.
CARELLA: Who?
PATRICIA: My brother, Andrew Lowery, my brother.
CARELLA: Came up to you where you were standing under the awning?
PATRICIA: Yes.
CARELLA: Patricia, this isn’t what you tol
d us on the night of the murder. When we talked to you then—
PATRICIA: I know. I was lying. I was trying to protect my brother. But I realize now that he did a terrible thing, and…and no matter how much I love him, I’ve got to…to tell the truth.
CARELLA: All right, Patricia, you were standing under the awning—
PATRICIA: Yes, and Andy came up to us, he just came running through the rain, we were so surprised to see him. He said Hi, girls, I’ve been looking all over for you, or something like that, I can’t remember what he said exactly, but it was something like that. And he told us he’d got through work early and went over to Paul’s house to pick us up, but we’d already left. So he’d gone downstairs to look for us, and when it began pouring again he went back to Paul’s, but we still weren’t there, so he came looking for us again, and now he’d found us. I’m just giving you the gist of what he said, those aren’t the exact words.
CARELLA: What time was this, Patricia?
PATRICIA: When he found us? Oh, I can’t be sure, I guess it must’ve been about ten to eleven. Maybe five to eleven.
CARELLA: All right, what happened then?
PATRICIA: The rain let up, and we began walking down Harding again, toward Fourteenth, where the construction site is.
CARELLA: The three of you?
PATRICIA: Yes. Muriel, my brother, and me. By the time we got to Fourteenth, it started raining very hard again, so we ran into the hallway of this abandoned tenement. To get out of the rain. We were only three or four blocks from home. And we weren’t worried about getting home late, because now Andy was with us, we knew my mother wouldn’t raise a fuss. Because he could protect us, you see. So we were in the hallway there, looking out at the rain, and I remember I said we should just make a run for it, and Muriel said, No, she didn’t want to ruin her dress, and Andy said, Why don’t you take the dress off, Mure? We both thought he was kidding, you know, I mean…well, I don’t know what Muriel was thinking, but I certainly thought he was kidding. I mean, Muriel was our cousin, you know? So you don’t go around saying things like that to your own cousin—you know, about taking off her dress. You just don’t say something, well, sexy, like that to your own cousin.