Murder on Washington Square

by Victoria Thompson

  That seemed to please her very much. “I’ll see you at the doctor’s office, then. And Malloy, thank you for working so hard on this case.” She gave him her hand, just the way she had to Dennis. “I know the Ellsworths will want to thank you, too, but I wanted you to know how much I appreciate it.”

  Her gloved hand felt small and fragile in his, and once again he experienced the rage he’d known last night when he’d realized how close Walcott had come to murdering her. “Just don’t think you’re going to be investigating any more murders, Mrs. Brandt,” he told her gruffly. “This is the last time I’m going to see you almost get killed.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree with you, Malloy,” she said with a wan smile, “and you know how much I hate agreeing with you on anything.”

  It took a moment for him to realize the emotion he was feeling was regret. As much as he wanted to protect her from danger, he also didn’t like the thought of never having her involved with his life again. Not that he had any right to be involved with her under any circumstances. This was really for the best. After what he’d done in the cab, he knew he could no longer be trusted to keep his feelings for her in check. At least she didn’t remember his indiscretion. He was sure now, because if she did, she wouldn’t still be so friendly to him.

  He realized he was still holding her hand, and he released it. “Uh, I guess I should get back to work.”

  “And I should go to the hospital to check on Mr. Prescott.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s still alive. That’s always good.”

  They’d run out of things to say, but Frank didn’t want to say good-bye. He was also acutely aware that he had no other choice. “I’ll see you on Wednesday, then. Unless something comes up, and you can’t make it,” he added quickly, giving her permission to cut him completely out of her life, if that’s what she wanted to do.

  “Good day, Malloy,” she said and turned away.

  She’d gone a few steps before he thought of something else. “Mrs. Brandt?”

  She turned, an expectant look on her face.

  “Tell Prescott I hope he’s feeling better.”

  “I will,” she said. She started to turn away again, but stopped and looked back at him with a small grin. “And Malloy, after all we’ve been through, I think you should call me Sarah.”

  Had she winked? Malloy was sure she’d winked just before she turned away again, but it was probably just a trick of the bright sunlight. Women like Sarah Brandt didn’t wink. But if she did wink, that meant . . . No, she couldn’t possibly remember. She wouldn’t even be speaking to him if she remembered.

  Would she?

  Frank had to admit he didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Just leave well enough alone, he told himself. And keep on pretending nothing untoward had happened. Unless she brought it up, of course, which she’d never do because she didn’t even remember.

  By the time he’d settled all that in his mind, Sarah Brandt had rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Frank made his way back to Mulberry Street.

  The desk sergeant greeted him with the usual lack of enthusiasm and informed him that someone they’d locked up overnight wanted to see him.

  “Says he has information you want,” the sergeant said.

  “I don’t need any information,” Frank replied wearily. “I locked up the killer last night.”

  “We told him, but he said it wasn’t about that case. Said it was something else, something real important, and you’d want to hear what he had to say.”

  Since most of Frank’s cases were solved by some bum who wanted a bribe for turning in a friend, he figured he should at least hear what this fellow had to say. There was still that warehouse robbery he was working on. The owner had offered a big reward, but so far he hadn’t had any luck finding the missing merchandise. In cases like that, a lot of crooks didn’t even bother trying to fence the stolen goods. They’d just wait for the police detective to track them down, turn the merchandise over, and split the reward with him. Just another cost of doing business for the merchant, and everybody benefited.

  Frank found the right cell, and at the sight of him, one of the prisoners inside hurried over to the bars. “Malloy, do you remember me?”

  He was shabbily dressed, his hair long and greasy, his face small and sharp, like a weasel’s. “Finn, is it?” Frank asked.

  “Finnegan,” he corrected with a grin that showed blackened teeth. “I heard you was asking around about a murder.”

  “You’re too late, Finnegan. I already arrested the killer.”

  “The one what killed the doctor?” he asked in dismay.

  “What doctor?” Malloy asked.

  “Young fellow. Doc Brandt, his name was. It’s been a couple years now, but—”

  “What do you know about it?” Frank snapped, reaching through the bars and grabbing the man by his lapel. He hauled him up against the bars until his face was squished between them.

  “Easy there, boss,” Finnegan said, his voice high with apprehension. “You don’t have to get rough. I’ll tell you without that!”

  “Tell me, then,” Frank said, not letting him go.

  “Well, I . . . I don’t know much myself, you understand, but I can give you a name, somebody what does know.”

  “You’re right, that’s not much,” Frank said, releasing him slightly, then banging him against the bars again. He figured Finnegan was just angling to get out of whatever fix he’d gotten into and knew somehow that Frank had been asking around about Dr. Brandt’s death.

  “You can trust Ol’ Finnegan,” he said desperately. “I wouldn’t lead you wrong. This fellow, he knows all about what happened to the young doctor. There’s some swell involved in it, too. I don’t know his name, but Danny does.”

  “Danny who?” Frank asked skeptically.

  Finnegan grabbed on to the bars so Frank couldn’t slam him again. “I don’t know his last name, but if you get me out of here, I’ll take you to him.”

  “And this Danny will just tell me everything out of the goodness of his heart?”

  “I didn’t say he’d tell it willing, did I? All I said was he knows. Getting him to tell, I guess that’s your job, ain’t it?”

  Frank stared at the little weasel of a man. Chances were he was lying through his teeth. Chances were there was no man named Danny, and if there was, he didn’t know a thing about Tom Brandt’s death.

  Frank had already warned Sarah Brandt that she wasn’t going to be involved in any more murder investigations. This meant she wasn’t going to be involved with Frank, either. She’d soon lose interest in Brian, too, and then he’d never see her again. That was exactly what should happen, too. Hadn’t he just told himself he didn’t even have a right to know her? If he started investigating her husband’s death in earnest, though, sooner or later he’d have to involve her again. That would be wrong. And cruel. Selfish, too.

  “Guard,” he called, releasing Finnegan. “Open the cell. I want to question this prisoner privately.”

  Author’s Note

  WHEN I WAS DOING RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK, I CAME across an account of the trials of Maria Barbella, the Italian woman I mentioned in the story who had slashed her lover’s throat because he refused to marry her. Her story was a classic case of justice denied because the defendant was a poor immigrant. Maria was fortunate to attract the attention of a wealthy patroness who championed her cause and won her a new trial. The second time, she was found not guilty because she was temporarily insane, one of the first individuals to be acquitted on those grounds.

  As I read Maria’s story, I was struck by how contemporary it sounded. Maria’s case was first tried in the media of her era, the dozens of scandal sheets that passed for newspapers at the time. They judged her guilty and made a case against her before she ever came to trial. As reporters vied to make the story more sensational so they could sell more papers, the truth was mangled beyond recognition. Maria spent a long year on deat
h row before she was granted a new trial.

  Maria became a media celebrity in particular because she was the killer. In most cases where a lover was killed, the victim was the woman, and the man went on trial. In such cases, the woman’s reputation was often destroyed in the press until the public came to believe she’d only gotten what she deserved. Today we call this putting the victim on trial, and the tactic continues to work, convincing juries to free even the most heinous of murderers.

  I continue to be amazed at how little has changed in the hundred years since Frank and Sarah walked the streets of New York City. I hope you find reading about it as fascinating as I find writing about it. Please let me know what you thought of this book. You may contact me at:

  Victoria Thompson

  PO Box 638

  Duncansville, PA 16635

  http://members.aol.com/vestinpa/index.html

  And now

  an exclusive preview of

  Savage Run

  the new Joe Pickett novel

  by acclaimed mystery writer

  C. J. Box

  Targhee National Forest, Idaho June 10

  ON THE THIRD DAY OF THEIR HONEYMOON, INFAMOUS environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride Annabel Bellotti were spiking trees in the Bighorn National Forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy.

  They met by chance. Stewie Woods had been busy pouring bag after bag of sugar and sand into the gasoline tanks of a fleet of pickups that belonged to a natural gas exploration crew in a newly graded parking lot. The crew had left for the afternoon for the bars and hotel rooms of nearby Henry’s Fork. One of the crew had returned unexpectedly and caught Stewie as Stewie was ripping off the top of a bag of sugar with his teeth. The crewmember pulled a 9MM semi-automatic from beneath the dashboard and fired several wild pistol shots in Stewie’s direction. Stewie had dropped the bag and run away, crashing through the timber like a bull elk.

  Stewie had outrun and out-juked the man with the pistol and he met Annabel when he literally tripped over her as she sunbathed nude in the grass in an orange pool of late afternoon sun, unaware of his approach because she was listening to Melissa Etheridge on her Walkman’s headphones. She looked good, he thought, strawberry blonde hair with a two-day Rocky Mountain fire-engine tan (two hours in the sun at 8,000 feet created a sunburn like a whole day at the beach), small ripe breasts, and a trimmed vector of pubic hair.

  He had gathered her up and pulled her along through the timber, where they hid together in a dry spring wash until the man with the pistol gave up and went home. She had giggled while he held her—this was real adventure, she’d said—and he had used the opportunity to run his hands tentatively over her naked shoulders and hips and had found out, happily, that she did not object. They made their way back to where she had been sunbathing and while she dressed, they introduced themselves.

  She told him she liked the idea of meeting a famous environmental outlaw in the woods while she was naked, and he appreciated that. She said she had seen his picture before, maybe in Outside Magazine?, and admired his looks—tall and raw-boned, with round rimless glasses, a short-cropped full beard, and his famous red bandanna on his head.

  Her story was that she had been camping alone in a dome tent, taking a few days off from her free-wheeling cross-continent trip that had begun with her divorce from an anal-retentive investment banker named Nathan in her home town of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She was bound, eventually, for Seattle.

  “I’m falling in love with your mind,” he lied.

  “Already?” she asked.

  He encouraged her to travel with him, and they took her vehicle since the lone crewmember had disabled Stewie’s Subaru with three bullets into the engine block. Stewie was astonished by his good fortune. Every time he looked over at her and she smiled back, he was pole-axed with exuberance.

  Keeping to dirt roads, they crossed into Montana. The next afternoon, in the backseat of her SUV during a thunderstorm that rocked the car and blew shroud-like sheets of rain through the mountain passes, he asked her to marry him. Given the circumstances and the super-charged atmosphere, she accepted. When the rain stopped, they drove to Ennis, Montana and asked around about who could marry them, fast. Stewie did not want to take the chance of letting her get away. She kept saying she couldn’t believe she was doing this. He couldn’t believe she was doing this either, and he loved her even more for it.

  At the Sportsman Inn in Ennis, Montana, which was bustling with fly fishermen bound for the trout-rich waters of the Madison River, the desk clerk gave them a name and they looked up Judge Ace Cooper (Ret.) in the telephone book.

  Judge Cooper was a tired and rotund man who wore a stained white cowboy shirt and an elk horn bolo tie with his shirt collar open. He performed the ceremony in a room adjacent to his living room that was bare except for a single filing cabinet, a desk and three chairs, and two framed photographs—one of the Judge and President George H. W. Bush, who had once been up there fishing, and the other of the Judge on a horse before the Cooper family lost their ranch in the 1980s.

  The wedding ceremony had taken eleven minutes, which was just about average for Judge Cooper, although he had once performed it in eight minutes for two Indians.

  “Do you, Allan Stewart Woods, take thee Annabeth to be your lawful wedded wife?” Judge Cooper had asked, reading from the marriage application form.

  “Annabel,” Annabel had corrected in her biting Rhode Island accent.”

  “I do,” Stewie had said. He was beside himself with pure joy.

  Stewie twisted the ring off his finger and placed it on hers. It was unique; hand-made gold mounted with sterling silver monkey wrenches. It was also three sizes too large. The Judge studied the ring.

  “Monkey wrenches?” the Judge had asked.

  “It’s symbolic,” Stewie had said.

  “I’m aware of the symbolism,” the Judge said darkly, before finishing the passage.

  Annabel and Stewie had beamed at each other. Annabel said that this was, like, the wildest vacation ever. They were Mr. and Mrs. Outlaw Couple. He was now her famous outlaw, although as yet untamed. She said her father would be scandalized, and her mother would have to wear dark glasses at Newport. Only her Aunt Tildie, the one with the wild streak who had corresponded with, but never met, a Texas serial killer until he died of lethal injection, would understand.

  Stewie had to borrow a hundred dollars from her to pay the Judge, and she signed over a traveler’s check.

  After the couple had left in the SUV with Rhode Island plates, Judge Ace Cooper had gone to his lone filing cabinet and found the file. He pulled a single piece of paper out and read it as he dialed the telephone. While he waited for the right man to come to the telephone, he stared at the framed photo on the wall of himself on the horse at his former ranch. The ranch, north of Yellowstone Park, had been subdivided by a Bozeman real estate company into over thirty 50-acre “ranchettes.” Famous Hollywood celebrities, including the one who’s early-career photos he had recently seen in Penthouse, now lived there. Movies had been filmed there. There was even a crackhouse, but it was rumored that the owner wintered in LA. The only cattle that existed were purely for visual effect, like landscaping that moved and crapped and looked good when the sun threatened to drop below the mountains.

  The man he was waiting for came to the telephone. “It was Stewie Woods, all right.” He said. “The man himself. I recognized him right off, and his ID proved it.” There was a pause as the man on the other end of the telephone asked Cooper something. “Yeah, I heard him say that to her just before they left. They’re headed for the Bighorns in Wyoming. Somewhere near Saddlestring.”

  Annabel told Stewie that their honeymoon was quite unlike what she had ever imagined a honeymoon to be, and she contrasted it with her first one with Nathan. Nathan was about sailing boats, champagne, and Barbados. Stewie was about spiking trees in stifling heat in a national forest in Wyoming. He had
even asked her to carry his pack.

  Neither of them had noticed the late-model black Ford pickup that had trailed them up the mountain road and continued on when Stewie pulled over to park.

  Deep into the forest, Stewie now removed his shirt and tied the sleeves around his waist. A heavy bag of nails hung from his belt and tinkled while he strode through the undergrowth. There was a sheen of sweat on his bare chest as he straddled a three-foot thick Douglas fir and drove in spikes. He was obviously well practiced, and he got into a rhythm where he could bury the 6-inch spikes into the soft wood with three heavy blows from his sledgehammer; one tap to set the spike and two blows to bury it beyond the nail head in the bark.

  He moved from tree to tree, but didn’t spike all of them. He attacked each tree in the same method. The first of the spikes went in at eye level. A quarter-turn around the trunk, he pounded in another a foot lower than the first. He continued pounding in spikes until he had placed them in a spiral on the trunk nearly to the grass.

  “Won’t it hurt the trees?” Annabel asked as she unloaded his pack and leaned it against a tree.

  “Of course not,” he said, moving across the pine needle floor to another target. “I wouldn’t be doing this if it hurt the trees. You’ve got a lot to learn about me, Annabel.”

  “Why do you put so many in?” she asked.

  “Good question,” he said, burying a spike in three blows. “It used to be we could put in four right at knee level, at the compass points, where the trees are usually cut. But the lumber companies got wise to that and told their loggers to go higher or lower. So now we fill up a four-foot radius.”

  “And what will happen if they try to cut it down?”

  Stewie smiled, resting for a moment. “When a chainsaw blade hits a steel spike, the blade can snap and whip back. Busts the saw-teeth. That can take an eye or a nose right off.”