The Distant Clue

by Frances Lockridge

  But it would be foolish to contend that, as a practical matter, the difference is not considerable. Sitting at his desk, having told Forniss to come in to the barracks, Captain Heimrich considered the difference. For one thing, and one of the most immediate things, reporters would rain from heaven, if—which Heimrich doubted—that was where reporters rained from. For another thing, and one of more significance: It had been difficult to think of anyone who would have wanted to kill an aged recluse named only Old Tom. Prospective murderers of T. Lyman Mitchell crowded the mind. It was a crowd of shadows, certainly. But there would be no dearth.

  Heimrich could not put a date to it, offhand. It would be easy enough to find the date. Six years ago, or a little more? That felt right. In the spring—on a cold and rainy spring day in the upstate city of Tonaganda. T. Lyman Mitchell had been just over sixty. He had been a justice of the New York Supreme Court. He had told his wife goodbye at the door of their house—their hundred-thousand-dollar house, as the newspapers had pointed out tirelessly—and got into his car and driven off for his courtroom. He had driven off into nowhere.

  In the state of New York, the Supreme Court is not especially supreme. It is a trial court of varied jurisdiction. It issues, or declines to issue, injunctions. It hears damage claims, if the relief sought is of any considerable consequence. Public officials charged with corruption may be called to answer before a judge and jury in Supreme Court. And men and women charged with murder may answer there. Supreme Court justices are jurists of numerous responsibilities, although the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals sit above them. As such, they are reasonably well paid.

  One of the suggestions, made cautiously between the lines, at the time of Justice Mitchell’s disappearance was that, for a man only reasonably well paid, he appeared to be more than reasonably well off. ‘Hundred-thousand-dollar house.’ (In one upstate paper it became a ‘mansion.’) That his nomination as a justice—the office is elective—came as a reward for political service loyally performed nobody had ever doubted, and Justice Mitchell had never denied. That there are occasions when a political machine finds fidelity to its advantage on the bench can hardly be questioned.

  If Justice Mitchell had been rewarded, in any direct manner, for extracurricular services to anybody—corporations to which he granted injunctions against labor; labor leaders (there had been one such) he might have been thought to have befriended in court; political leaders who had found a jurist most considerate—it had never been proved, nor had it been directly charged. It was true that he had, during his career on the bench, made some very fortunate purchases, and subsequent sales, of real estate. It was true that he was one of the owners of a construction firm—but a silent, nonparticipating owner—which did occasional jobs for the state. It was true that—

  Heimrich sighed, thinking how many things might have been true of Justice T. Lyman Mitchell, and of how impossible it had been, six years or so ago, to prove any of them. In wrong with ruthless politicians, and even more ruthless associates of such? The possibility had been considered. It had remained only a possibility.

  There were many other possibilities. Men have left wives who had come to annoy them. There was no real indication that Mrs Mitchell had particularly annoyed Justice Mitchell. (‘A devoted couple, according to all their friends.’—Tonaganda Republican.) Men have run out their physical and mental strings, and driven cars off steep places into deep waters. Justice Mitchell had had no record of serious illness, physical or mental.

  He had certainly, Heimrich thought, turned out rather odd toward the end. Perhaps he had been odder six years ago than had been suspected. Perhaps—

  Perhaps almost anything. Several accused of murder had been tried before him and, no doubt by a coincidence, all had been found guilty. On appeal all defense counsel had alleged prejudice on the part of the presiding justice. (Which defense counsel usually did.) And higher courts had found no evidence of reversible error. A member of the Court of Appeals, Heimrich rather vaguely remembered, had registered sharp dissent from the majority findings in one of the cases. Families of convicted murderers often hold grudges against judges who sentence them. Heimrich tried to think of any such grudge-bearing relative who had done anything about it, and couldn’t.

  He wasted time, Heimrich thought. Speculation on the basis of the half-remembered would get him no place. A man named T. (‘T’ for Thomas?) Lyman Mitchell had disappeared, voluntarily or involuntarily, upwards of six years ago in the city of Tonaganda. Why? He had reappeared in the town of Van Brunt. Why? It was to be hoped that one answer would lead to the other. Heimrich telephoned the chief inspector of the Tonaganda police department. It was a place to start.

  ‘The hell you have,’ the chief inspector said. ‘The hell he is. What do you know?’

  ‘Not enough,’ Heimrich told him. ‘What I remember, at the moment. What you passed along then, I’ll get from Albany, naturally. Are the boys who worked on it still around? The people? Mrs Mitchell, for example?’

  ‘Most of the boys,’ the inspector said. ‘Mrs Mitchell’s around as far as I know. What in hell was he doing down there?’

  Heimrich wouldn’t know. Oh, he had apparently been living as a recluse, a squatter. He had been doing odd jobs in an odd way. Beyond that—‘We’ve just started,’ he said. ‘Hardly that. You’ll have somebody tell the widow?’

  The inspector would do that.

  ‘And have the boys go over it again?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll be up, I take it?’

  ‘Probably,’ Heimrich said. ‘Perhaps Sergeant Forniss. Charlie Forniss. He’s a good man. He won’t step on anybody’s toes.’

  ‘Our toes,’ the inspector said, ‘are tough, captain. And—it’s your baby, isn’t it? No killing in our bailiwick.’

  He sounded rather pleased. Heimrich had sympathy. The hard ones in somebody else’s bailiwick. No cop objects to that. Nobody objects to that.

  ‘I know, inspector,’ Heimrich said. ‘One of us will be along tomorrow, probably.’

  He hung up.

  Old Tom had certainly looked old, lying in a huddle on the drive gravel. But not, it now occurred to Heimrich, really as old as all that. Dead, he might have been in his late seventies, or beyond them, from the looks of him. Actually, he had been only by a year or two what those who like words soaked in the milk of euphemism call ‘senior citizens.’ Sixty-six or sixty-seven, if Heimrich’s memory did not trick him. He put through a teletype to headquarters in Albany, asking for everything they had, passing on what Hawthorne Barracks had.

  Sergeant Forniss put his head in, and was invited to bring the rest of him in.

  ‘Donovan’s outside,’ Forniss said. ‘You want?’

  Donovan—Lawrence Donovan, Jr.—was a reporter on the White Plains newspaper. He was also a string man for the New York Times. He represented a hole in the dyke. After Donovan, the deluge. But there was really no dyke.

  ‘It’ll mean the usual clutter,’ Forniss said. ‘But what can we do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Heimrich said. ‘Have them give him what we’ve got, with our blessings. And stand by to repel boarders.’

  Forniss went out. He returned almost at once. He nodded his head. He sat down. He said it had been quick, hadn’t it? He said that those were prints that everybody had. Where it took days, sometimes—even weeks sometimes—they had got it in hours.

  ‘Have you ever been in Tonaganda, Charlie?’ Heimrich asked him. He could guess the answer in advance.

  ‘Couple of times,’ Forniss said.

  ‘Know people there, probably,’ Heimrich said. Forniss knows people everywhere.

  ‘Couple of guys,’ Forniss said.

  ‘Charlie,’ Heimrich said gravely, ‘how many people do you know in Tibet?’

  ‘Now captain,’ Forniss said, almost as gravely, ‘nobody as of now. A guy I know was there, but he got out a while back. Says the place isn’t what it used to be. Says it didn’t use to be much, either. I’m off to Tonaganda? It wa
s quite a while ago.’

  ‘You’re on your way,’ Heimrich said. ‘You’re expected. The chief inspector—’

  ‘Dick Norson,’ Forniss said. ‘Knew him a long time ago. Getting along a bit, but a pretty good cop. Or used to be.’

  ‘The people who worked on it are still around,’ Heimrich said. ‘Or some of them are. There’ll be dust on it.’

  ‘Yep,’ Forniss said. ‘I’ll blow off what I can.’

  ‘Take a plane, if you like.’

  ‘Unless there’s a hell of a rush,’ Forniss said, ‘and I can’t see that there is, especially, I’ll drive.’

  Heimrich was not surprised. At one time, a good many years before, Charles Forniss had been a paratrooper. He regards airplanes as things to jump out of—or away from.

  It was after five when Forniss went, to get done by the long June daylight what he could of the more than two hundred miles separating Hawthorne from the city of Tonaganda. There was then, Heimrich thought, no special reason he should sit at a desk in a hot office—he would be as much a center of the web of routine if he sat on a shady terrace, with a gray-eyed woman and a gray-eyed boy—and, to be sure, a mammoth brown-eyed dog. He was standing up to go when the telephone rang on his desk. A report on the routine, he thought; one, it appeared, to be made orally. He said, ‘Heimrich.’

  ‘There’s a Miss Mitchell,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Mitchell. Wants to talk to someone in authority.’

  It occurred to Heimrich that Sergeant Neil Blake spoke guardedly. Presumably Miss Mitchell was within earshot.

  ‘Related to?’ Heimrich said.

  ‘That’s it,’ Blake said, and was told to ask Miss Mitchell to come in.

  It was interesting. It was also not a little surprising. Larry Donovan would have used the telephone by now. Probably the wire services would be getting it about now. But only about now. It wouldn’t be on the radio yet, and not for some time in print. So how—?

  A heavy hand knocked at the door, and, when Heimrich said, ‘Yes,’ a trooper opened it, and held it open. ‘Miss Mitchell,’ the trooper said, and Heimrich stood up behind his desk.

  She was, Heimrich guessed, in her middle twenties. About the rest, he did not have to guess—she was slender and brown-haired; her face was tanned. And she had the most remarkable eyes Heimrich could remember having seen—green eyes or gray eyes or—what color eyes? Very large eyes, and very far apart. Blue eyes with green in them or—? Eyes heavily, darkly, lashed.

  ‘I’m Enid Mitchell,’ she said. She had a soft, low voice. ‘I’m—I’m trying to find my father. Are you the man I ought—’ She did not finish. She left space for an answer, having said enough.

  Trying to find?

  ‘I’ll help you if I can,’ Heimrich said. ‘My name’s—’

  ‘They told me,’ she said. ‘My father’s Justice Mitchell, captain.’

  She waited, looking at him through improbable eyes.

  ‘Lyman Mitchell,’ she said. She looked at him for seconds more. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That Justice Mitchell. I think—there’s a place near here called Van Brunt? A town—a village? It has a post office.’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘Sit down, Miss Mitchell.’ He gestured toward a chair. She sat down. ‘Why Van Brunt?’ he asked her.

  ‘A letter,’ she said. ‘Postmarked “Van Brunt.”’ She opened a summer handbag; the bag was pale green and matched the green linen dress she wore. She held out an envelope—a pre-stamped envelope which had come across a post office counter. It was addressed in pencil—‘Miss Enid Mitchell, 2713 Fernside Road, Tonaganda, New York.’ But the street number had been crossed out and another written in, and that crossed out in turn, and still another written, this in a different hand.

  ‘Where we used to live,’ she said. ‘Mother rented the house after—’ She paused. ‘After she decided father wasn’t coming back,’ she said. ‘Before she—’ Again she broke off. ‘I’ve my own place now,’ she said. ‘This went to where mother’s living now and she—’

  Enid Mitchell lifted her shoulders slightly.

  ‘I don’t know why I go on about that,’ she said, impatient with herself.

  Heimrich opened the letter. It was written in pencil on lined paper which might have come from a child’s tablet. It was brief:

  ‘Dear Enid: I’m not dead. I may even come back some time, now that things are different. So tell them not to bother the courts.’

  It was signed, without subscription, ‘T. Lyman Mitchell.’

  Heimrich looked up from the letter to the girl.

  ‘That’s all I know,’ she said. ‘It’s father’s signature. His handwriting, I think. It’s a strange letter, isn’t it?’

  It was.

  ‘He’s a strange man,’ she said. ‘When I was—oh, quite a little girl—he was different. I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Or,’ Heimrich said, ‘why he went away?’

  She shook her head. She did not, Heimrich thought, shake her head decisively. She was, he thought, somewhat tentative.

  ‘The first address,’ Heimrich said. ‘That’s where you—you and your mother and father—used to live? And the second?’

  ‘Where mother lives now,’ she said. She looked at him for several seconds. ‘Mother got a divorce,’ she said. ‘In another state. On grounds of desertion.’ She paused once more. ‘She’s married again,’ she said. ‘A man named Thompson. Wade Thompson.’

  ‘Did your mother get a letter too?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She—I think she’d have told me.’

  ‘You told her about this?’

  The answer was some seconds in coming. A negatively shaken head preceded the words.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I—Mr Thompson and I don’t—get along particularly well. I—Captain Heimrich, can you help me find my father? On your door it says—“Criminal Investigation.” Isn’t that it? I thought it would be—something different. “Missing Persons”—something like that.’

  She half knew already, Heimrich thought.

  ‘Your father is dead, Miss Mitchell,’ he said. There is no good way; the simplest way is the quickest way.

  She closed her eyes. The slender tanned hands clenched into fists. There is no good way to go on with it. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you,’ he said. ‘You’ve come a long way to hear.’

  Her improbable eyes opened. They were dry; they were for an instant fixed. Then focus came back into them, and the clenched hands relaxed.

  ‘I was afraid,’ she said. ‘When I saw what was on the door, I was afraid. Was he—was he killed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘He was shot, Miss Mitchell. This morning.’

  She looked at him and waited.

  ‘Apparently,’ Heimrich said, ‘he was on his way to see me. Not here. Where I live. Perhaps to—’ It was his turn to hesitate momentarily. The words ‘turn himself in,’ offered themselves. But it would not have been that. ‘To tell us who he was,’ Heimrich said. ‘Perhaps to have us help him get home.’

  ‘Help him?’

  ‘He had no money, apparently,’ Heimrich said. ‘He—he had changed a great deal, Miss Mitchell. Lived rather strangely.’

  ‘How—’ she began, but then said, ‘that doesn’t matter, does it? You say he went to your house? Not here or—or to a police station?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘As if he knew you,’ she said. ‘Did you know him, captain?’

  ‘No,’ Heimrich said. ‘I’ve no idea why he would come to me if he had decided to go back. Wanted help.’

  Again she was silent, seemed to be making up her mind. This time the silence lasted for more than a minute, which can be a long time of silence.

  ‘Captain Heimrich,’ she said, and spoke very slowly, in her soft voice, as if she were counting the words she used. ‘I think his letter had been opened before it came to me. Opened and sealed up again. Mother—mother and Wade Thompson—were going to apply to the courts to have father presum
ed dead. She does what—what he wants her to do. It’s—’

  Her voice faltered. Suddenly, she seemed vulnerable, as she had not before.

  ‘Mr Thompson’s younger than mother,’ Enid Mitchell said. ‘Years younger. While—while father was merely missing, the estate was tied up, of course. There’s a good deal of money, I think. Mother couldn’t touch it. And—Mr Thompson couldn’t touch it. Now—’

  She did not finish what did not need finishing.

  ‘Do you know who killed him?’ she said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Heimrich said. ‘He was shot once. There was nobody else in sight.’

  ‘A—a bullet out of nowhere,’ she said.

  ‘Now Miss Mitchell,’ Heimrich said. ‘Not that, of course. A bullet out of a rifle.’

  Not, he thought, that her phrasing was bad phrasing. The hardness of facts is best; the obvious is best, for the most part. The obvious can be tonic. He thought that, although it did not much show, the girl might need the tonic of the obvious.

  ‘There is a formality,’ Heimrich said, and the girl said, ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘You’ll find him very changed,’ Heimrich said. ‘He—he looks much older than he was.’

  But there was really no way to prepare her. At the mortuary she looked at the old man, and trembled and said, ‘I suppose so. I—no. No.!’ The nurse who had gone with them thought the girl swayed, and reached toward her, but Enid Mitchell shook her head, almost angrily, and stood steadily and looked once more and then said, ‘Yes. This is my father’s body,’ and then turned and walked, still quite steadily, out of the place.

  In the car, she did not, for some time, say anything. Heimrich drove back toward the barracks. She looked through the windshield, and he did not think she saw anything. They were on the long driveway up to the barracks from the Bronx River Parkway Extension when she finally spoke, and then it was only to ask if he could tell her some place to stay.

  ‘I didn’t have any plans,’ she said. ‘I—I just drove down and found out where to go—how to get here. And came here. My bag’s in the car.’