Rose-colored Glasses

by Downing, John

  It was too dark for Langley to see properly. Not that it mattered. The police had long since taken down their barriers; the ground had absorbed the blood that had been spilt. There was nothing left to see. Someone who didn't know what had happened here could pass by and never guess.

  Nature's way of healing. Animals must die in the park all the time, Langley thought. Squirrels, for example. On his rare ventures into the park, he had seen the occasional squirrel crushed into the roadbed by the wheels of a car, but he had never seen a dead squirrel propped in the branches of a tree. Surely, no one went around gathering up squirrel carcasses and burying them. So what happened to them? What happened to all the pigeons and other birds, the thousands and thousands of them, when they died? Nature cleaned up after them.

  As it had cleaned up after Laurel Rose.

  Not quite. Something remained from Laurel's death, something intangible but real. It had put Burden in jail and would keep him there for the rest of his life, if it didn't kill him. It had brought Langley here today to begin to plan how he might prevent that.

  A horn sounded from the roadway below. The woods were thick enough that Langley couldn't see anything until he emerged into the open at the bottom of the hill.

  Wickersham's DeSoto was parked on the bridge, in the exact spot that, according to Burden, Luray's car had stood the week before.

  “Next time let's meet in a bar,” Wickersham said as Langley slid into the passenger seat beside him. The inside of the car stank with the smell of stale cigarette smoke.

  Wickersham was… nondescript. He was Joe Average. Forty-five years old. Five feet, eleven; one-hundred-sixty-five pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. No distinguishing marks. He was the sort of person you met and instantly forgot. In his line of work, this was an asset. Hell, it was a talent. He was a private investigator. Once, he had been a cop. Twenty years on the force had turned him volubly cynical. Which, according to Langley's Law, made him an idealist. An idealist who didn't know he was one.

  “Do you want the bad news?” Wickersham said. “Or the worse news?”

  “How about some good news?” Langley said.

  “We're all out of that today. O, they can fry your guy now and try him later. Or better yet, skip the trial altogether and save the taxpayers the expense.”

  “You're not very encouraging, Harry.”

  “I have barely had a chance to start digging. But already I've come up with a few things. About four months back Burden threw his wife buck-naked out onto the sidewalk‌—‌”

  “I know about that,” Langley said. “It might actually be good news.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “If he was going to kill her, why wouldn't he have done it then?”

  “Too many witnesses,” Wickersham said. “I've already spoken to a half dozen of them. It would be pretty stupid to kill your wife with all those people watching.”

  “It's not all that smart getting caught bent over your wife's corpse, holding in your hand a knife wet with her blood.”

  “Especially your own knife.”

  Langley felt as if he had been punched in the chest. “What did you say?”

  Wickersham lit a cigarette.

  “Don't guess Burden told you that. He used his own knife to kill Laurel Rose.”

  “According to who?”

  “Cooney‌—‌do you know who he is?”

  “Yes.”

  “He has identified the knife to the police.”

  “How did he manage that? I mean, a knife is a knife is a knife.”

  “It's the same kind of knife Burden was known to carry. Cooney got a particularly good look at it the day Burden tried to stab him with it.”

  Wonderful. Not, Langley thought, that he should be surprised at this bit of news. People who committed murder rarely had spotless backgrounds prior to the act. Almost without exception they would be found to have a history of violence. It was often possible with such people to look back and, in retrospect, “see” the murder coming.

  “How many other people has he tried to stab besides Cooney?”

  “Cooney is the only one I know of,” Wickersham said, “but the investigation is young.”

  “Does Luray confirm that the knife is Burden's?”

  “I haven't been able to talk to him. Since his discharge from the hospital, he's been staying with his mother while he recuperates. She guards the door like a dragon, refusing to let anybody in to see him. You might have better luck, since you have a possible ‘in.’”

  “What ‘in’ is that?” Langley asked.

  “Luray was at Columbia from '38 to '39. Wasn't that when you were there?”

  “Really?”

  “He was only there the one year. Then he dropped out.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Don't know.”

  “Find out, if you can. Also, I want you to look for a link between him and Laurel Rose.”

  “There isn't going to be any such link, O. Have you been listening to what I've been saying? His wife. His knife.”

  “I know. I know. Look anyway,” Langley said. “If they so much as bumped into each other on the street, I want to know about it.”

  If Wickersham could find evidence of even a casual meeting between Luray and Laurel Rose, Langley would put the fact before the jury in the hope of setting them wondering. And if no such evidence turned up, he would put that fact to Burden. Let him explain it, if he could.

  “It's Burden's contention that Luray drove Laurel Rose to the park.”

  “She came by cab,” Wickersham said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I've just come from talking to the driver. He says he dropped Laurel off just about where we're sitting now.”

  “At what time?”

  “Four-thirty, give or take five minutes.”

  “Did the driver see anyone else on the bridge?”

  “No one. He asked Laurel if she was sure she wanted to be left here, and she insisted.”

  Wickersham had the heater turned up full blast. The heat and the smoke were getting to be too much for Langley. He cracked the window a couple of inches to let in some air.

  “Look out there,” he said.

  By now night had fallen. The park lights had come on. Off to the right, toward the Nethermead, they cast a half dozen scattered pools of light, each no more than a couple of yards in diameter. On the bridge and in the woods off to the left, everything was in darkness.

  “What was she doing here, Harry? Did she come here of her own accord? If so, why? Or did Burden lure her here? And if he did, how did he manage that?”

  “Better question: Why would he want to lure her here, so close to where he worked? Even if he had gotten clean away, suspicion was bound to fall on him.”

  It was a better question. Had he asked her here just to talk to her and then one word led to another…?

  “Have you talked to Laurel's neighbors? Did any of them see Burden hanging about her place?”

  “No. I showed his picture around, and no one recognized him.”

  And Burden, Langley thought, should be easy to remember.

  “Another thing,” he said. He pointed off to the right. “Burden works over there. Just beyond the Boathouse, in a direct line about a quarter mile from where we sit. You can walk it in five minutes. Which is less time than it would take to drive it, because if you want to get there from here by car, you have to make a U-turn and then loop around the park, a distance of at least two miles. Same thing if you wanted to drive from the playground to here. You have to loop the whole park. I tried it earlier.”

  “Why couldn't you just go around the corner up ahead?” Wickersham asked.

  “I could have, but then my car would have been pointing in the opposite direction.”

  “You could have made a U-turn,” Wickersham said logically.

  “I didn't make a U-turn.”

  “Well, so what?
”

  “So Luray's car was pointing in the same direction this car is pointing now.”

  “Who says?”

  “Burden does.”

  “Maybe Burden lies. Anyway, so what?”

  “In the first place, I'd like to know what Luray was doing here at all. According to Burden, he'd left the playground nearly thirty minutes earlier. I know: maybe Burden lies. If not, Luray should have been long gone. Secondly, if his car was pointing in this direction, it means he looped the park‌—‌”

  “Or made a U-turn.”

  “‌—‌to return to within four hundred yards of the same spot he started from. I'd like to know why he did that.”

  “I'll see if I can find out.”

  “What can you tell me about Laurel Rose?”

  “At this point, not a hell of a lot. One thing. Something for Ripley's. At around the same time Laurel was getting herself murdered, her apartment was being burgled. Talk about a bad day.”

  “At least they can't blame that on my boy. Anything else?”

  “The police arrived on the scene‌—‌expeditiously; is that the right word?”

  “I've wondered about that,” Langley said.

  “They were tipped, anonymously; a phone call from someone who said he saw a girl being attacked in the vicinity of the bridge.”

  Wonderful. Somewhere out there, there was a second witness. How long before he came forward to point his finger at Burden?

  “But get this, O,” Wickersham said. “The call was logged at 5:05.”

  “So?”

  “So your boy was arrested at 4:45, twenty minutes earlier.”

  “Some idiot logged the time wrong.”

  “No. The car answering the tip arrived to find that Burden had already been arrested.”

  “How did the first cops come to be on the scene?” Langley asked.

  “They just happened to be passing on routine patrol, when they saw the car parked on the bridge. They stopped to check it out and heard a commotion in the woods.”

  “How do you explain the phone call coming in twenty minutes later? It wouldn't take that long for someone in a car to reach a phone.”

  “My guess: it took that long for our civic-minded friend to decide to get involved‌—‌anonymously.”

  If he hesitated to get involved anonymously then, Langley thought, he would probably hesitate to do so publicly now. Add to that the fact that he'd have some explaining to do for why he waited more than a quarter of an hour during which a woman was being stabbed to death, and it suddenly became even less likely that he would ever come forward. The first bit of good news, such as it was, for Burden.

  “Are you ready to hear what I've found out about Burden?” Wickersham said.

  “Will I like what I hear?” Langley asked.

  “Not one tiny little bit.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “I should begin by saying I'm not making this up.”

  “Come on, Harry. Stop pulling my chain.”

  “Burden is adopted, but that you already know. I don't guess you know the circumstances. This is the second time in his life that he's been a celebrity. Two or three days after he was born he was found in a trash can, apparently dumped there by his mother, who has never been traced. The story made all the newspapers.”

  Wickersham threw the stub of his cigarette out the window and immediately lit another one.

  “He was nearly dead when they found him. But after a period of treatment in a hospital, he recovered. And you probably would never have heard about him again: he would have been placed in an orphanage or been adopted by some anonymous family. He was adopted, but by Ardel DeBrough.

  “Yes, that Ardel DeBrough. The DeBroughs are one of the richest families in America. In the world. Made their money in broadcasting. But you already know that, so I'll skip it.

  “Ardel DeBrough was the last of the line. Before marrying Terence Burden, she had been married twice with no issue. She had been married to Burden four years and was in her early forties when, evidently, she decided to face up to the fact that she was never going to have any children of her own. And so she decided to adopt.

  “Why your boy? Maybe she figured a kid who had the stuff to survive being dumped in a garbage can had what it takes to be a DeBrough. I don't know. She adopted him straight out of the hospital. She had the pull to cut through the red tape. It was supposed to be done on the q.t., but one of the nurses leaked the story to the tabloids and they played it for all it was worth. They christened your boy The Trash Can Kid.”

  Nice. Langley wondered if Burden knew that part of his history.

  “Officially he was christened Meredith ( the maiden name of Ardel's mother), Terence (after his adoptive father), DeBrough-Burden. From the trash can to heir apparent to one of the largest fortunes in America. Little Orphan Annie with her Daddy Warbucks never had it half as good. But then less than a year later a brother comes along and he loses it all.

  “To say the arrival of the brother was unexpected is to understate the case. The shock was apparently too much for Burden Senior, who kicked off of a heart attack a few weeks after his son was born. But before he went, he and Ardel got together and in the most bizarre display of I don't know what the word is‌—‌”

  “The word is ‘stupidity,’” Langley said.

  “You've heard the story, then?”

  “No. But I know what they did. They gave their natural child the same name as their adopted one.” So that Burden had indeed lost everything, even his name.

  “That's right. Ardel just had to name her natural child Meredith. Burden Senior just had to name his son after himself. You would think they would have changed your boy's name, but they didn't. Burden was called by his middle name, Terence, and DeBrough by his first, Meredith. His mother called him ‘Merry,’ until he was old enough, I guess, to object to it.”

  “What happened to Burden, do you know? Was he stashed away in the attic, or what?”

  “I don't know. The publicity surrounding his birth and adoption was short-lived. Ardel managed quickly to draw the curtains. Burden disappeared behind them. They've been closed ever since. They're still closed. You've noticed the papers haven't played up the relationship between DeBrough and Burden. They haven't even mentioned it.”

  “Maybe they haven't made the connection.”

  “Don't be naive, O. The DeBrough family influence has been brought to bear.”

  “What did the papers make of it all back then?”

  “You or I did something like that, we'd be called crazy, or worse. Rich people are not called crazy, even when they do something that's completely nuts. They're called eccentric.”

  Burden would be called crazy, Langley thought. Maybe he was. After all that had happened to him, maybe he had a right to be.

  CHAPTER 6

  To be sure to catch Cooney on the job, Langley arrived at the playground at 2:30.

  Ordinarily he would have left the task of re-interviewing Cooney to Wickersham. But that was when he was working a normal case, the kind for which he could expect to be paid. In this case, notwithstanding Burden's promises to pay his fee (eventually) come Hell or high water, he was unlikely to see a penny. Meanwhile, he had bills to pay and his bank balance was such that it didn't leave a hell of a lot of room to breathe. And so he had decided to cut expenses where he could. There were some things that Wickersham, given his contacts with the police, could do that he couldn't; he would let Wickersham handle those. One thing that he, Langley, could do was interview the people Wickersham ran down, particularly those individuals who would be testifying at the trial.

  There was no sign of Cooney anywhere. Had he already left, two and a half hours early? It turned out that he was on an extended lunch break, from which he returned fifteen minutes later.

  The day was cold, with a brisk wind. The quarter-hour wait had left Langley chilled.

  He followed Cooney into the park
house. The building was small, perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen feet, and that included the two rest rooms. The room Cooney and he entered was cramped and cold. It was furnished with a small wooden table, a single chair and three lockers. Cooney sat in the chair.

  “I already told all I know to some guy was here the other day.”

  “That was my investigator.”

  “Why don't you ask him what I said?”

  “I'd rather hear it from you, Mr. Cooney.”

  “Like, I got work to do.”

  “We can talk while you work,” Langley said.

  Cooney made no move to rise out of the chair. He was a large man, but, unlike Burden, his bulk consisted of fat rather than muscle. He had done a clumsy job of shaving himself that morning; a clump of whiskers stood out on one side of his chin and there were nicks all over his cheeks.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Have the police asked you to identify a knife?”

  “Yeah, they did.”

  “You told them it was Burden's?”

  “I told them it looked like his.”

  “What did Burden's knife look like?”

  “Like the one the police showed me.”

  Try that on the stand, Langley thought, and I'll make a monkey out of you.

  “So it might not have been his knife at all?” he said.

  “It had the same chip missing from the handle his did.”

  Cute. “How do you know Burden had such a knife?”

  “He tried to kill me with it.”

  “He stabbed you?”

  “Well no, not exactly.”