She could not hear her husband’s voice; could not hear the siren which Heimrich set going as he drove his car fast up 11F and, unslowing, through Van Brunt Center.
They were ready in the emergency ward of Van Brunt Memorial. A resident opened her closed eyes with gentle fingers and bent down to the wheeled stretcher and looked into her eyes. “Concussion,” he told Heimrich. “That, anyway.” An attendant began to wheel the stretcher along a corridor and a nurse walked beside it. Brennan started to follow. The resident looked at Heimrich and shook his head, and Heimrich said, “Better wait here, Jim.” When Brennan did not seem to hear him, Heimrich took his arm and held him.
When the stretcher was turned into a corridor marked “X-RAY,” an intern told them they had better wait “in here,” and they—Brennan and Heimrich and Forniss—waited in a small anteroom. It was more than an hour before the resident came to the room.
“No fracture,” the resident told them. “Concussion, though. Rather severe, but nothing she shouldn’t come out of. Given time.”
Heimrich repeated the word “time?” and the physician shrugged his shoulders. Then he said, “You mean until she regains consciousness?” and Heimrich said he did.
It was hard to tell, the resident told him and looked at Brennan, who sat with his head in his hands. “Your wife will be all right, Mr. Brennan,” he said. Brennan nodded his held head to show he heard. He did not look up.
“Some hours,” the physician told Heimrich. “Depends on a good many things, none of them very predictable. Twelve hours, at a guess. Maybe twice that long. You want to question her, I suppose?”
Heimrich did.
The doctor motioned with his head and Heimrich went with him out of the waiting room into the corridor, and the doctor closed the waiting-room door behind them.
“It’s a baddish one,” the doctor told Heimrich in the corridor. “We’re pretty sure she’ll come out of it, in time. It may be a day or more. And there’s a fair chance that when she does she won’t remember what hit her. Could be, there’ll be a good many things she can’t remember. Happens sometimes with this sort of head wound.”
“Anything to show what she was hit with?”
The doctor said, “Hit with?” as if the idea were new to him. “A stone,” he said then. “If she was hit with anything. But if I had to guess I’d guess she stumbled over something and fell and hit her head on a rock. Bruises on her body. And she’s pretty scratched up. Superficial, the scratches are. Also, she’s got a sprained ankle. Been through quite a lot, the lady has. Not built for it, but she’ll come through.” He paused. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m pretty sure she will.”
A man in white came along the corridor with a clipboard and a form fastened to it. He said, “Brennan?” and Heimrich pointed toward the closed door.
Heimrich left Forniss with Brennan and with the suggestion he take Brennan home, whenever Brennan would consent to go. Driving home himself, Heimrich tried to capture the elusive, fluttering memory. It seemed to have fluttered farther away.
It fluttered in his sleep, when finally he got to sleep. It was a moth of memory. He was not even sure it was worth catching….
At about eight-thirty in the morning, Heimrich reached the floor nurse at Van Brunt Memorial. Mrs. Brennan was doing as well as could be expected. Three minutes later he reached the private nurse. Mrs. Brennan was doing as well as could be expected. He pulled rank and got an intern; he pulled it harder and got a resident—the same physician who had examined Leslie Brennan in the emergency ward. Hospital physicians, Heimrich decided, worked hours as long as those of a policeman.
“General condition’s good,” the doctor told him. “Respiration normal—well, almost normal. Pulse strong—a little slow, maybe, but within normal range. No fever. She’s coming along all right.”
But she remained unconscious and there was no sign that she was near to regaining it.
“Could she be faking it?”
“Like that, huh? No. There’s not a chance in a thousand. Damn it all, man, the woman’s concussed. No sign of any serious brain damage. No fracture. But she’s out. No way of being sure when she’ll come back in again. Or, as I told you, what she’ll remember when she does. And, when she does, she’ll be damn uncomfortable for a while. Ankle, bruises, scratches—I’d think from thorns. One of your men’s waiting around.”
Heimrich knew one of his men was waiting around. Forniss would have seen to that.
“Any sign of a poison ivy rash?” Heimrich asked the doctor, who said, “Huh? With everything else she’s got? No. Not an hour or so ago, anyway. When was she exposed?”
“Late yesterday afternoon,” Heimrich said. “Yesterday evening some time.”
“Takes twenty-four hours or so,” the doctor said. “With most people.”
“I want to talk to her as soon as possible.”
“Sure. When she’s up to it. And we’ll decide that, Captain.”
“Your breakfast’s ready,” Susan Heimrich told her husband. She spoke firmly. “It’s on the terrace,” she said. “Get going.” He got going.
Susan, in blouse and summer slacks, looked at him carefully as she drank coffee with him. He looked all right for a man who didn’t get enough sleep, whose mind was doing its job far from her. “I’m here,” she said, and spoke gently. “Remember me, darling?”
The moth in his mind had gone back to its fluttering. It remained just beyond reach. He told Susan about Leslie Brennan.
“The poor child,” Susan said. “Who would hurt a child like Leslie?”
“Probably,” Heimrich told her, “someone she could hurt. And, probably she’s lucky the job wasn’t finished. That she fell into a ditch and bushes hid her.”
Absently, he lighted a cigarette. He was told to finish his eggs. He finished his eggs.
“You saw a bit of Annette Weaver,” he said. “More than I did. And—you listen, Susan. What was her voice like?”
“Deeper than you’d expect,” Susan said. “What they call throaty.” She lighted a cigarette and looked at the sky, in which a single puffy white cloud went absently about its business. “Say Tallulah Bankhead, junior grade,” Susan Heimrich said. “Not as special, but like that.”
“Can you sound like her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” Susan said, in her light, clear voice. But she repeated the words, in a voice a little lower pitched, but still not much different. “On the other hand,” Susan said, “I can match colors. Why?”
He told her.
“Surely,” she said, “he’d know her voice. He heard it for however long it was he was married to her. Heard all her voices.”
Heimrich said he supposed so. He said, “Do you know if she made any records?”
“She couldn’t sing, they say,” Susan told him. “She did play musical roles once or twice, but they dubbed her voice. Anyway, that’s what people say. There’s been a lot of talk about her the last twenty-four hours or so.”
Heimrich didn’t doubt that.
“Of course,” Susan said, “she’s done a lot of television commercials. On film, I suppose. Or tape.” She put her cigarette out and looked intently across the table at her big man, dressed in a summer suit. I’ll have to get him to get a new suit, she thought. A really good suit. “You’ve got a lead,” she said, after she had finished looking carefully at his face.
“No,” he said. “Nothing even substantial enough to call a notion. But I may go and listen to a tape. While we wait for Leslie Brennan to come out of it, and tell us who tried to kill her.”
“People can wander around in a hospital,” Susan said. “Get a white suit somewhere. Or just carry a little black bag.”
“You look at TV a lot.”
“A woman who marries a policeman is alone a lot,” Susan told him. “And Michael likes it. Only, he likes Channel Thirteen. Educational things. Sometimes I worry about him, Merton.”
“Don’t,” Heimrich said. “He’s been playing baseball all summer
. When he wasn’t playing tennis.”
“I suppose so. He still says ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am,’ but I suppose so. Finish your coffee.”
He finished his coffee.
It was when he was beginning to back the car out of the garage that he caught his moth. It was an even smaller moth than he had expected.
The “In” basket on his desk was full. He had supposed it would be. A good deal of what was in it required only “M. L. H.” Some related to the murder of Annette Weaver, and went into a pile in front of Heimrich. He turned report pages.
There had been no change in the condition of Mrs. Leslie Brennan. Her husband had been allowed into her room and had stood by her bed and looked down at her and had spoken her name. He had not been answered. Nobody else but her nurse and an intern had gone into her room since the early-morning rounds. A trooper was sitting outside the door to her room. The room was on the fifth floor of an air-conditioned building and had a window which could not be opened.
The telephone operator at the offices of Sharpless, Drake, Lipsky & Brennan couldn’t remember that Mr. Brennan had got a call from Mrs. Weaver day before yesterday. How could she be expected to? Everybody got calls all the time and was she supposed to remember all of them? Mrs. Brennan, now. She had called a couple of times, once early and once late in the afternoon, and the first time her husband was out to lunch and the second time he was in court. But that was yesterday, not the day before.
The Los Angeles police had, eight years before, picked Annette LeBaron up on a reckless driving charge. (Conv. Fine $50.) They had had no contact with her as Annette Drake, Annette Brennan or Annette Weaver. Ralph Weaver was well known on the Strip. Handled quite a few well-known people. Was reported to be looking for backers for a movie an independent might do if backers showed up.
Cynthia Williams was one of four entertainers—another girl and two men—who were doing a topical revue in an off-Broadway café-theater. Successful; more or less impromptu; at the moment a fad. Performances at nine and midnight. No performances Sunday and Monday. Licensed cabaret performer, which meant that the New York City police had no adverse information on her.
Stephen Drake had been at his office until late, working on a brief. He had, for part of the time, been alone in his office. He had caught a late train to Van Brunt; got home a little before midnight. And why did the police want to know? Ralph Weaver had, about three the previous afternoon, taken a shuttle plane to Boston. He had caught a tryout and after it come back to New York by plane and gone to his apartment and gone to bed. And why did the police want to know? Why didn’t they, instead, find out who had killed his wife?
James Brennan had not caught an early train to Van Brunt the previous afternoon. He had been in his usual smoker on the 5:04. The ticket collector who worked that car and knew his regulars remembered he had punched Mr. Brennan’s ticket and that Mr. Brennan had said, ” ’Evening, Joe.” Mr. Brennan was a nice guy, not surly the way some were.
And all of it, Heimrich thought, added to very little, pinned nothing down. If it had still been light when someone chased Leslie Brennan through the wasteland, she had been chased at not much after seven. It was not certain that it had still been light; that was a guess, based on a guess that someone had seen poison ivy red on a wall and avoided it. Brennan could have got there before dark from the 5:04.
Nobody definitely out and nobody definitely in, and the truth—if she knew the truth—locked in Leslie Brennan’s closed mind. Where it might well remain, even after she regained consciousness.
He drummed with strong fingers on his desk. As if that had been a signal, his telephone rang. Father Jonathan Cunningham was downstairs. He would like to see Captain Heimrich, if Captain Heimrich was the officer in charge of the investigation of the Weaver murder.
XII
The Right Reverend Dr. Jonathan Cunningham was older than Heimrich would have expected—old to have a daughter the age of Leslie Brennan. But the lean hand he held out to Heimrich was strong and his gray hair was thick. The age was in his face—in the lines of his face. He had laughed much, Heimrich thought. Now he was far from laughter. He wore a dark gray suit, not clericals. When Heimrich indicated the heavy wooden chair which the State of New York provided for visitors to its police officers, Cunningham lifted it casually with one hand and put it in front of Heimrich’s desk.
“I’m Leslie Brennan’s father,” he said. “I’ve just come from the hospital. There was a little difficulty in getting to see her. Is she under a guard of some sort?”
“Protective guard,” Heimrich said. “They want her to have quiet.”
“Or,” Father Cunningham said, “you are afraid somebody will hurt her again. Whoever it was who hurt her before. Isn’t that it, Captain?”
“That enters in. Yes. She’s hurt. We don’t definitely know that somebody hurt her. By intention. At the hospital they think it likely that she fell and hit her head. She was still unconscious when you were there?”
“Yes. Can you tell me what happened to her?”
“We found her lying in a gully about ten miles south of Van Brunt Center,” Heimrich said. “In a field—what was once a field—of an abandoned farm. Overgrown, now. Bushes and brambles and fallen trees. A wild place. A mile or so off a main highway. It might be in the middle of nowhere.”
“What was she doing there?”
“I don’t know, Bishop. And won’t until she can tell us. But—I think she was running. From somebody she was afraid of. Have you any idea who she might have been afraid of?”
“I think,” Father Cunningham said, “that she knew something or had guessed at something. Or someone.”
“At the desk,” Heimrich said, “you asked for the officer in charge of the investigation of Annette Weaver’s death. Not for whoever was in charge of finding out what happened to your daughter. Why was that, Bishop? Because you think the two things are tied together?”
Bishop Cunningham took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and a cigarette from the packet. He looked at the cigarette thoughtfully for a moment before he lighted it. Heimrich waited.
“She came to me yesterday afternoon,” Cunningham said. “I suspect to tell me more than she did tell me. And to ask my advice.” He paused and drew deeply on his cigarette. “I was not receptive, Captain. Did not encourage her. Almost, I’m afraid, rejected what came close—might have come close—to being an appeal. You’ll think that strange, I suppose?”
“I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “Because I don’t know why.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “My wife is fond of your daughter,” he said. “I had gathered from her that you and your daughter were close.”
“Yes,” Cunningham said. “That is part of it. My wife died when Leslie was very young, Captain. We had no other children. The child and I depended on each other. It is the sort of thing which rather often happens. Not always for the good. I was always there for her to turn to. It was a comfort to both of us when she did. It seems to me now that I was selfish. It is difficult to be wise with a child you love. You have children, Captain?”
“Not of my own,” Heimrich said. “A stepson. I know what you mean, Father Cunningham.”
“One can grow too protective,” Cunningham said. “Not by intention. A child may put off growing up, Captain. In a sense, my daughter did. In the last few years, I have come to realize that. Have tried to help her transfer her trust to the person to whom it belongs. Should belong. Tried to set her free. For her sake; I have searched my conscience and am sure of that. And for her husband’s sake. Marriage is a sacrament, Captain. It is also a dedication, if it is to be anything.”
He put his cigarette out.
“You think I wander on,” he said. “An aging priest maundering among concepts. Perhaps you are right. You want specifics. Very well. My daughter came to me upset and uncertain. I told her to go to her husband. As gently as I could, so that she would not be hurt. She was not, I think. She has been trying—trying very hard—to stand alon
e. Alone with Jim Brennan. When she left me yesterday it was, I am certain, to go to him. To tell him what she had decided not to tell me.”
“Because of your attitude?”
Cunningham looked for a moment at the ceiling. Heimrich waited.
“I’m not sure,” Bishop Cunningham said. “At the time, I thought that. Later I had a feeling that she had reached the decision on her own. After she telephoned me; before she reached the house. That is only a feeling. It is something only she can tell us.”
He stopped speaking and Heimrich closed his eyes and waited. But when Cunningham did not at once continue, Heimrich said, “You think what she wanted to tell you, wanted your advice about, had to do with Annette Weaver’s murder?”
“Yes. I am quite certain she was troubled about something in connection with that. Something she did not tell me.”
He lighted another cigarette.
“What she did tell me,” he said, “was about a man named Knight. Or a man who called himself that. There had been something else. Something which went deeper. It was in her voice. In her eyes.”
He did not finish the sentence immediately. Then he said, “I told her to take whatever troubled her to her husband. And after she had gone and I thought about what had happened, I tried to reach her at their house to urge that again. And, of course, to intrude precisely as I had determined not to intrude. The telephone wasn’t answered. I tried several times and never got an answer.”
“When?”
“First at around six, when I was quite certain she would have got home. Then an hour or so later. Then I decided that they might have gone out to dinner and did not try again until quite late in the evening. Then I gave it up. Partly, I suppose, because the need to repeat what I had already said had become uncertain in my mind. You know, I suppose, how urgency fades as time passes?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “You said, ‘I thought about what had happened.’ What had happened, Father Cunningham?”
“A man called her at my house. A man who said his name was Knight. There were two calls. Both times a man said he was Knight. But—there were two men, Captain.”
17-Murder Roundabout Page 15