by Ed McBain
“Work.”
“Do you usually get home at about this time?”
“I was a little late tonight. We were waiting for a call from the Coast.”
“What sort of work do you do?”
“I work for the Parapsychological Society.” She paused and then said, “I’m a medium.”
“A medium?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, what…?”
“I’m gifted with psychic powers,” she said.
Carella looked at her. She seemed sane enough, sitting there in her wet overcoat, her hands clenched on her pocketbook, her eyes beginning to mist with tears. In his notebook, he wrote the word “Medium” and then put a question mark after it. When he looked up again, she was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief she’d taken from her bag.
“Where did Mr. Craig work?” he asked.
“Here,” she said.
“Here?”
“He’s a writer,” she said, and paused. “Gregory Craig, the writer.”
The name meant nothing to Carella. In his notebook, under the word “Medium,” he wrote “Victim writer,” and then realized she had said, “Gregory Craig, the writer,” and further realized she’d been expecting recognition of the name all along. Cautiously he asked, “What sort of writing did he do?”
“He wrote Deadly Shades,” she said, and again looked directly into his eyes, and he was certain this time that he was supposed to recognize the title of the book Craig had written—if it was a book. He did not ask what it was.
“And he worked here in the apartment, is that it?” he said.
“Yes, in the bedroom. There’s a desk in the bedroom. That’s where he worked.”
“All day long?”
“He usually began about noon and quit about six.”
“And wrote, uh, books or—what is it he wrote, actually, Miss Scott?”
“You haven’t read Deadly Shades?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“It’s already sold three million copies in paperback. The movie is being shot right this minute.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with it.”
She said nothing. She simply looked at him. He cleared his throat, glanced at his notebook again, looked up, and said, “Any idea who might have done this?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Craig have any enemies that you might know of?”
“None.”
“Had he received any threatening telephone calls or letters in the past—”
“No.”
“—several weeks? Anything like that?”
“No, nothing.”
“Did he owe anybody money?”
“No.”
“How long have you been living in this building, Miss Scott?”
“Six months.”
“Any trouble with the neighbors?”
“None.”
“When you got home tonight, was the door locked?”
“Yes. I told you I opened it with my key.”
“You’re sure it was locked?”
“Yes.”
“You heard the tumblers falling when you turned your key?”
“Yes, I know it was locked.”
“Did anyone beside you and Mr. Craig have a key to this apartment?”
“No,” she said. “Just the two of us.”
“Thank you, Miss Scott,” he said, and closed the notebook. He tried a smile and then said, “I’ll have to look for Deadly Shades. What’s it about?”
“Ghosts,” she said.
The head security officer was waiting downstairs with Karlson when Carella got back to the lobby. His name was Randy Judd, and he was a big, beefy Irishman in his sixties. He told Carella at once that he used to be a patrolman working out of the Three-Two. He also mentioned there’d never been any trouble here at Harborview since the complex was built a year ago. Not even a burglary. Nothing.
“The security is very tight at Harborview,” he said.
“Very tight,” Karlson said. He still looked apprehensive, as if more than ever certain the cops would somehow blame him for this.
“Mr. Karlson,” Carella said, “you told me a little while ago that you came to work at six tonight…”
“A little after.”
“A little after six, right. Did you announce anyone to Mr. Craig between the time you came on and…”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“Is that usual procedure? Announcing visitors?”
“Standard practice,” Judd said.
“All visitors,” Karlson said. “Even delivery boys.”
“Then what happens?”
“When we get clearance from the tenant, the visitor can go up.”
“On the elevators there?”
“Unless it’s a delivery. The service elevator is around to the back.”
“And no one came here asking for Mr. Craig?”
“No one.”
“Who had the shift before you? The noon to six?”
“Jerry Mandel.”
“Have you got his home phone number?” Carella asked.
“Yes, but it won’t do you any good,” Judd said.
“Why not?”
“He was going skiing this weekend,” Karlson said. “Had his skis on top of the car, in fact, was driving upstate the minute I relieved him.”
“When will he be back?”
“Day after Christmas,” Judd said. “He had vacation time coming. I gave him the okay. He’s a big skier.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Someplace upstate,” Karlson said.
“Did he mention the name of the hotel or the lodge?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Can I have that phone number anyway?” Carella said.
“Sure,” Judd said. “It’s right in the office here.”
From the office phone Carella dialed Mandel’s home number. He let the phone ring twelve times and then hung up.
“No luck, huh?” Judd said.
“No,” Carella said, and shook his head.
“I told you,” Karlson said. “He was leaving straight from here.”
“Any way of getting in this building except through the front entrance?” Carella asked.
“The garbage is collected out back,” Judd said. “There’s a big door there, we unlock it when the garbage truck gets here.”
“What kind of lock on it?”
“Schlage deadbolt.”
“Who has the key?”
“Building superintendent.”
“Is he here now?”
“Sure. You want to talk to him?”
The building superintendent was a black man named Charles Whittier. He was eating his dinner when Judd introduced him to Carella. A television set was going in the other room, and Carella could see through the open door to where a black woman in a robe and slippers was sitting watching the screen, a dinner plate on her lap. She got up the moment she realized visitors were in the apartment and closed the door. Behind the closed door the television voices droned. A cop show. Carella hated cop shows.
“Mr. Whittier,” Carella said, “a murder was committed upstairs in Apartment 304, we clocked the call in at seven-ten. Was the door back here open at any time today?”
“Yes, sir, it was,” Whittier said.
“Who opened it?”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Twelve noon, when the garbage truck come.”
“Did you let anyone inside the building?”
“Just the garbage men. We keeps the garbage cans inside here ‘cause we don’t want rats to get at them. There’s rats in this neighborhood, you know.”
“Every neighborhood,” Judd said, defending his turf.
“So the garbage men come inside here to pick up the cans, is that it?”
“They’re not obliged to,” Judd said, “but we give them a few bucks each year around this time.”
“How many garbage men?” Carella asked
.
“Two,” Whittier said.
“Were you here while they were in the building?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Either of them remain inside the building?”
“No, sir. They picked up the garbage, and I locked the door after them.”
“Did you open that door again at any time after that?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“When?”
“When it started snowing bad. I wanted to get out and do a little shoveling before it got too heavy to move.”
“What’d you shovel?”
“The ramp back there. So’s the garbage truck can get in tomorrow.”
“Did you lock the door while you were outside?”
“No, sir, I did not. But I could see it all the time I was shoveling.”
“See anybody come in here?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you watching the door every minute?”
“No, sir, not every minute. But I had my eye on it.”
“What time was this?”
“When I started shovelin’? Musta been about five-thirty thereabouts.”
“And you didn’t see anyone going into the building?”
“No, sir. I’da called Security right off had I seen anybody.”
“Okay, thanks, Mr. Whittier,” Carella said. “Sorry to have interrupted your meal.”
On the way upstairs, Judd said, “Security’s very tight here at Harborview, like I told you.”
Carella was thinking it hadn’t been tight enough to prevent a murder on the third floor or one outside on the sidewalk.
There were nineteen wounds on the body of Gregory Craig. Carella received the typewritten list from the morgue at Buena Vista Hospital ten minutes before Hawes came in with the morning newspaper. The list read:
WOUNDS CHART, GREGORY CRAIG:
Slash wound across throat 3/4” long.
Slash wound across throat just under first one, 21/2” long.
Stab wound 11/2” right of midline just over collarbone.
Stab wound 41/2” right of midline and 4” above nipple.
Stab wound over midline and in line with nipples.
Slash wound on chest beginning on midline approx. 5” below chin and tailing downward and to the left 2” long.
Stab wound 11/2” left of midline and over collarbone.
Stab wound 81/2” left of midline and 3” below nipple.
Stab wound (entry and exit) midway between elbow and armpit, on inside of arm.
Slash wound 1” long on outside of left wrist.
Slash wound 11/4” long on inside of right wrist.
Stab wound on back 15” below base of skull and 51/2” left of midline.
Stab wound on back 15” below base of skull and 3” left of midline.
Stab wound on back 131/4” below base of skull and 31/2” left of midline.
Stab wound on back 12” below base of skull and 8” left of midline.
Stab wound on back 20” below base of skull and 31/2” left of midline.
Slash wound on inside of ring finger of right hand.
Stab wound (entry and exit) on top side of middle finger of right hand.
Slash wound right side of head above ear and tailing downward 11/2” long.
That was a whole hell of a lot of stab and slash wounds. They didn’t quite add up to the estimate Carella had given the Homicide cops at the scene, but they were sufficient to indicate that whoever had killed Craig had really and truly wanted him dead; you do not hack away at a person nineteen times unless you want to make sure. On the other hand, Marian Esposito—as she’d been identified from a driver’s license in her shoulder bag—had been stabbed only once, just below the left breast, the blade entering her chest and her heart and apparently killing her at once. If the crimes were related, as they seemed to be, the logical assumption was that she had got in the killer’s way as he was fleeing the scene of the first murder. Even before Hawes came in with the morning paper, Carella had decided that the line of investigation should concentrate on Craig. He marked the case folder “R-76532,” and on the folder for Marian Esposi to, he wrote in the words “Companion Case R-76532” following her case number, R-76533.
The squadroom that Friday morning, December 22, was relatively quiet. The suicides would not start till Christmas Eve, and then they’d taper off a bit till New Year’s Eve, when there’d be another rash of them. Miscolo in the Clerical Office had casually mentioned that there’d be a full moon on New Year’s Eve. The full moon would compound the number of suicides. Holidays and full moons, it never failed. In the meantime, there’d been an increase in incidents of shoplifting and picking pockets, but burglaries, muggings, rapes, and robberies had fallen off; go figure it. Maybe all the burglars, muggers, rapists, and armed robbers were out shopping the department stores and getting their pockets picked.
The squad’s duty chart hung on the wall alongside the water-cooler, where the lieutenant figured it was certain to be read. The Police Department respected no holidays, but the duty chart for every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day normally listed almost exclusively the names of Jewish detectives who had traded off with their Christian colleagues. This year, however, things were different. How was this year different from all other years? This year, Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah happened to fall on the very same day—December the twenty-fifth, naturally—providing ample evidence of the brotherhood of man and the solidarity of the democratic ideal. It caused problems only for the cops. Everybody wanted to be off on Monday, when the twin holiday occurred. But everybody couldn’t be off on Monday because then all those cheap thieves out there would run amok.
Compromise.
In police work, as in marriage, compromise was essential. Henny Youngman’s repertoire included a joke about the man who wants to buy a new car and his wife who wants to buy a mink coat. They compromise. The wife buys a mink coat and keeps it in the garage. Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer compromised by tossing a coin. Carella won. He would work on Christmas Eve, and Meyer would work on the first day of Hanukkah. But that was before the Eight-Seven caught the double homicide. With a homicide case, you worked it into the ground during those first few important days. Carella had the gnawing suspicion that he’d be with this one a long time—a hot pastrami sandwich and a bottle of soda pop in the squadroom on Christmas Day. Terrific.
At his desk across the room, alongside one of the wire-mesh grilles that protected the squadroom from missiles flung at the windows by an unappreciative precinct citizenry—and incidentally kept any prisoners from leaping out to the street below—Detective Richard Genero sat typing up a report on a burglary that was three weeks old. Genero was a short dark man with curly black hair and brown eyes. He had recently taken to wearing Benjamin Franklin eyeglasses whenever he typed his reports, presumably to better his spelling. He still spelled “perpetrator” as “perpatrater,” a fatal failing in any police department. He had a transistor radio going on his desk, and the strains of “Silent Night, Holy Night” flooded the squadroom. Carella listened to the music and guessed that if Lieutenant Byrnes walked in this very minute, Genero would be back walking a beat before the new year. Genero typed in time to the music. Carella wondered when he would ask how to spell “surveillance.”
It was 10:37 A.M. by the squadroom clock. The snow of the night before had ended shortly before dawn, and the sky outside was now a blue as bright as a bride’s garter. From beyond the squadroom windows, Carella could hear the sounds of tire chains jangling, an appropriate accompaniment for “Jingle Bells,” which now replaced “Silent Night” on Genero’s transistor. He did not much feel like working today. He had told the twins he’d take them to see Santa Claus sometime this week—but that, too, was before the double homicide.
“Where is everybody?” Hawes said from beyond the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. “Did you see this, Steve?” he asked, and came through the gate in the railing. “
We got ourselves a biggie.” He tossed the morning paper onto Carella’s desk and then went to the water-cooler. The paper was folded open to the page opposite the book review.
The obit on Gregory Craig told Carella that the man had written a best-selling book titled Deadly Shades, which presumably had been based on his own experiences with ghosts in a house he’d rented in Massachusetts three summers ago. The book had topped the nonfiction best-seller list for a full year and had been reprinted six months ago, garnering a paperback advance of $1.5 million. The motion picture was currently being filmed in Wales, of all places, with a British star playing Craig and a galaxy of fading well-known actresses in cameo roles as the shades who’d plagued his hoped-for vacation. The obit went on to say that he’d written a half dozen novels before turning out his nonfiction blockbuster, listing them all by title and quoting some of the reviews the newspaper had given him over the past twelve years. There’d been a hiatus of five years between his last novel and the ghost book. His sole survivor was listed as Miss Abigail Craig, a daughter. The obit did not mention the murder of Marian Esposito, Companion Case R-76533.
“What do you think?” Hawes said, and crumpled the paper cup he was holding, and tossed it at Carella’s wastebasket, missing.
“I think they saved us some legwork,” Carella said, and opened the Isola telephone directory.
When Abigail Craig opened the door for them at 11:20 that morning, she was wearing an expensively tailored suit over a silk blouse with a scarf tied at the throat, brown high-heeled boots, gold hoop earrings. They had called first to ask if they might come over, and she had seemed a bit reluctant on the phone, but they chalked this off to the natural grief and confusion that normally followed the death of an immediate member of the family. Now, sitting opposite her in a living room dominated by a huge and lavishly decorated Christmas tree, they weren’t sure whether she was at all grieved or confused. She seemed, in fact, more interested in getting to her hairdresser than in telling them anything about her father. Her hair looked fine to Hawes. All of her looked fine to Hawes.
She was one of those creamy blondes with a flawless complexion usually attributed to British women who ride horses. Her eyes were a brilliant green fringed with lashes as blonde as her hair; her face was somewhat narrow, with high cheekbones and a generous mouth that looked richly appointed even without lipstick. Her upper lip flared a bit, showing perfect white teeth even when she wasn’t speaking. Hawes loved the ones with an overbite. Hawes wished they were here to exchange Christmas gifts instead of to ask questions about a dead man who seemed to hold little or no interest for the cool beauty who sat opposite him in brown high-heeled boots, her legs crossed.