Murder on Their Minds

by George Harmon Coxe

  Hughes was back in the doorway now, wide eyed and silent, and Murdock pushed past him and went to his office, some impulse making him open the center drawer.

  When he saw no envelope here with Tom Brady’s name on it he knew that it was not for this that Carey had been struck down. No one but Brady, Carey, and himself knew that there would be such an envelope there. That left Al Parenti, and now, as his thoughts focused, the anger came.

  4

  THEY STOOD silent as the two ambulance attendants lifted the still unconscious man onto the narrow stretcher and covered the form with a blanket—Murdock, Hughes, the doctor, and T. A. Wyman, who was the managing editor of the Courier. They waited until the stretcher was gone and then Wyman turned again to the doctor, a note of exasperation in his voice.

  “You think he might have been hit with a blackjack, but you still can’t say how bad he’s hurt, is that it?”

  The doctor put on his coat and hat. “He’s got a lump on the back of his head but the scalp shows no laceration; that’s why I suggested the blackjack. It’s lucky he took it on the back of the head because the skull is thicker there, but it’ll take X rays to tell us if there’s been a fracture.”

  “When’ll you know?” Wyman said. “Will you go along and see to it?”

  The doctor nodded. He said they should know about the fracture in an hour or so.

  “Suppose there’s no fracture,” Wyman persisted. “You still can’t say when he’ll recover consciousness.”

  “No. He’s got a concussion, possibly a severe one, but there’s no way of telling now whether there’s been a brain injury. He might come to in the ambulance, in an hour, a day or—” He shrugged faintly and let the implication dangle. “I’d better get along.”

  Murdock cleared his throat. “I think I’ll go too.”

  “If you like,” the doctor said, “but there’s no hurry; I doubt if you’ll be able to talk to him tonight.”

  He went away and Wyman turned to Murdock, a chunky, broad-faced man with thick brows and a blunt, efficient manner. A cigar seemed to be an integral part of his features and his teeth were clamped on one now, half smoked and no longer alight.

  “You figure the guy took all six negatives?” he asked.

  “If he was an amateur he’d have to,” Murdock said. “He probably wanted the two shots I’d taken at Kelleher’s, but Carey also had the two I’d taken at the airport and apparently two he got in Cambridge. To be sure he got the right negatives he took them all.”

  Wyman removed his cigar, considered it glumly. One end had been chewed flat and after a moment he threw it into the wastebasket. “Tell me again about Al Parenti,” he said, and when he had listened to Murdock repeat his story, he said: “Who do you know at the precinct house?”

  “I know the lieutenant in charge of detectives.”

  “Call him,” Wyman said. “Fill him in and let him get started on this.… Keep me posted,” he said as he turned toward the door. “I’ll be around for a couple of hours anyway.”

  Murdock sat down behind his desk and told the operator what he wanted. When he had his connection he asked for Lieutenant Walsh, identified himself, and told what had happened.

  “Okay,” Walsh said. “Can you narrow down the time?”

  “It has to be between seven and eight fifteen.”

  “We’ll see what Parenti was doing but I wouldn’t count on it too much. I know the guy. If he wanted to put the slug on someone he’d probably hire it done. Until we can get some identification from Carey—how is he, anyway? He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”

  Murdock started to say yes; he wanted to say: “He has to be all right.” But the way he felt he was afraid to speak the words aloud. He said he did not know. “The doc won’t even guess when Walt will come around,” he said.

  “Well, we’ll get on it,” Walsh said. “I’ll have Parenti checked and I’ll send someone over to see your elevator man. There’s a chance he might remember something that’ll help.”

  Murdock put the telephone aside and slumped back in his chair, chin on chest and his dark gaze sightless and brooding. In the mirror of his mind he could still see the crumpled figure on the printing room floor and for the moment there seemed to be no help for his seemingly incurable depression. Only his smoldering anger kept his mind working and this was directed not only at Al Parenti but at his own helplessness.

  He was not sure how long he sat there unmoving and inert, but the impulse to do something finally came and he reached for the telephone and spoke to the city desk. He said he was going to the hospital and that he’d take a company car.…

  They couldn’t tell him anything at the hospital when he first arrived, so he sat in the waiting room, chain smoking for half an hour until a young doctor approached on rubber-soled shoes and asked if he was Mr. Murdock.

  “The brain X rays on Mr. Carey are negative,” he said. “They’re making the spinal tests now.”

  Murdock said: “Ahh—” and some obscure band inside him let go and he took a long, satisfied breath. “Is he conscious?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you have an idea—”

  “None at the moment, except that he’s reacting well. As a guess I’d say he should come around all right. You can check with us in the morning. Until then there’s not much we can do except wait and see.”

  Murdock felt a lot better when he got back into the car and started back toward the office. As a matter of habit he snapped on the police radio and presently there came the first of a series of instructions from the dispatcher at police headquarters.

  The pattern was much the same. First the division number and a letter to designate the proper car—A-car, L-car, O-car—followed by an address and the instructions. To complete every second or third call the time of day was added, since all of this was tape recorded for possible future reference.

  The rain that had been threatening all during the day finally broke with a windy violence just after Murdock left the hospital. He turned on the wipers and slowed down slightly, still listening as the dispatcher called an L-car.

  “Cable and Company,” he said and gave the address. “See the night watchman.… Nine-o-one.”

  The next message had to do with a citizen alarm at one of the city’s police alarm boxes. The following one came from a radio car saying that a certain investigation had been completed. Then at 9:07 the call came that made Murdock sit up and pay attention.

  It was the address that tipped him off but he had some luck too. He was on Columbus Avenue at the time, peering through the arc of his windshield, when the dispatcher gave a division number and said:

  “A-car. Come in.”

  The answer came immediately and the dispatcher mentioned the address and added: “Second floor.… Rear.… Investigate.… Signal Y.”

  Murdock was not sure what signal “Y” meant but he knew that for some time the police, aware that the press often beat them to the scene of a crime, had been using a changing set of letters at the end of a message to indicate a crime of more than usual significance. Sometimes these letters were decoys, more often they had a meaning. Now, the letter “Y,” added to the familiar address, brought Murdock to attention, and at almost the same moment he saw an on-coming car make a quick U turn. When his lights picked it up broadside, he knew it was a police sedan.

  Murdock had to step on the throttle to keep up with the sedan, and now he steered with one hand while he reached for the company microphone to call the city desk and say where he was going.

  “We got that one,” the city editor said. “Do you know what signal ‘Y’ means?”

  “No.”

  “You think it’s hot?”

  “I don’t know,” Murdock said. “I’ll call you back.”

  Then he was making the left turn behind the police car, up over the railroad tracks now and seeing the black sedan wheel round the corner. When he followed, the car was already at the curb, and as he slowed down two officers ran across the s
idewalk and vanished into a doorway set between an office-supply concern and an appliance store which occupied the ground floor of the three-story building.

  Murdock knew there was a stairway beyond the doorway. He had been up it often. He had never climbed as high as the third floor, but he knew that on the second floor, rear, the office of Tom Brady stood on the left-hand side.

  He could feel the rain pelting on his bare head as he pulled camera and equipment case from the car, and then he was in the dimly lighted entryway and taking the metal-banded stairs two at a time, trying to think what might have happened to Brady and then trying not to.

  “It doesn’t have to be Tom,” he said to himself, and the answer to that was: “No.”

  Until he reached the second-floor landing and saw the line of office doors stretching in front of him. Most of these had upper panels of frosted glass and in only one of them did light shine through: the one on the left, rear.

  The picture that came to Murdock as he opened the door remained with him for a long time to come. It took him a moment to realize fully what must have happened and the shock stayed with him for several minutes so that what he saw did not completely register, and what he did was automatic.

  The office itself was familiar, the big room with two flat-topped desks placed back to back, the tiny conference room partitioned in one corner. In addition to the desk chairs, there were two other straight-backed chairs, a wooden settee, and a table on which two green metal filing cabinets stood side by side, and even in that first awful moment of incredulity Murdock noticed that one drawer was open and empty.

  A felt hat that had rolled to one side with the sweatband visible lay on the floor some distance from a raincoat that looked as if it had been dropped there. Beyond, partly hidden by the second desk, a man lay on his back. One of the officers was kneeling beside him while the other bent over the telephone. On the settee, elbows on knees and head down, sat Frank Kirby.

  For that first instant when Murdock stopped inside the door there was no sound. All three men looked at him, the two officers instantly, Frank Kirby more slowly and, it seemed, without recognition. Then, ignoring him for the moment, the kneeling officer glanced at his companion and shook his head.

  “The guy is dead,” he said.

  “You know who he is?” the other said.

  “Tom Brady. He was at Station 16 for years before he went to Headquarters. You’d better call in.” He straightened and dusted his knee. He cocked his head as he looked at Murdock and his tone was grim and arbitrary. “You’re Murdock, aren’t you? With the Courier? How the hell did you get here so quick?”

  “Heard the radio call,” Murdock said. “Saw your car and followed you.”

  What he did then would have been difficult to explain, even to himself. To understand any part of the next couple of minutes he had to accept the fact that his reactions took place in a state of shock. He seemed to know that what the policeman said was true and yet some part of his mind simply rejected the thought that Tom Brady was dead. He could not yet believe this and in the emotional struggle that followed some small, superficial part of his mind went through a routine that had been developed by long years of experience.

  He could see the two officers studying him with narrowed eyes. He could practically see them thinking and he knew the subject matter: should they throw him out or not? And in that moment when the decision seemed to hang by a thread he drew from his experience the one approach that seldom failed because it was based on vanity and the almost universal desire for a cop to want his picture in the paper.

  The camera was already at his shoulder and now he said: “You with the telephone, move over a step, will you?… That’s it. Okay.”

  The flashbulb exploded as the man obeyed and a second later Murdock was juggling the hot bulb he had ejected, rolling it on the desk and twisting a fresh bulb in place. Still moving he said: “One more,” and took the second picture from a different angle.

  “What are your names?” he said, taking command of the situation.

  “Handy.… Goldman,” they replied.

  Then, before anything more could be said, he had backed away, slipping out the film holder and putting the camera on the settee beside Frank Kirby. He was at the door before one of the policemen yelled at him.

  “Hey! Where you going?”

  “I have to cut the motor on my car,” he said. “I have to call the office. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

  He was gone then, the half-hearted protest that followed him unheeded. To stop him now someone would have to chase him and no one did. He went alone along the hall and it was here that the full emotional impact of what he had just seen caught up with him.

  With his thoughts choked off, without knowing how or why Brady had been killed, his steps began to drag. “No,” he said, as though the protest could make it true. “No.” And though he spoke the word savagely, the sickness came.

  His face was suddenly hot and damp. There was a curious weakness along his spine and his sight was blurred. Saliva welled in his mouth and he swallowed and swallowed again. He went down the stairs like a man with an insupportable burden on his back; still protesting, but silently now as he came out on the sidewalk and felt the welcome coolness of the steady rain on his face and head.

  In the car he picked up the microphone of the company radio and pressed the switch. “Car 93 calling Courier desk.… Car 93 calling Courier desk.”

  There was a scratching sound and then: “Come in, car 93.”

  Murdock cleared his throat and spoke his piece.

  “Wait a minute,” the desk said. “I’ll give you rewrite.”

  “I’ve got nothing to give him yet,” Murdock said bitterly. “Just the name and address. It has to be murder but I don’t know how. Send over for a film holder I’ll leave on the front seat of the car. I’ll leave the keys in it so whoever comes over can have it if he wants it. I’ll keep the camera.”

  “Okay. You’re going to stay with it?”

  “As long as I can. I’ll call you back.”

  He switched off both radios and put the film holder beside him. For another second or two he sat there, too beaten and depressed to move until he realized that very shortly there would be other cars and other reporters crowding about.…

  The officer who had been on the telephone was talking to Kirby when Murdock re-entered the office. The second man had hunkered down beside a short-barreled revolver which lay a foot or two from Brady’s hand.

  “Shot?” Murdock said.

  “Once.”

  Murdock stopped at the edge of the desk. Because of the angle he could not see Brady’s face. He did not want to see Brady’s face. He wanted to remember it another way, and so his glance moved on to notice physical details.

  He saw the open jacket, the dark wet stain on the shirt. The chair behind the desk had been overturned and the second drawer on the right side, the one nearest the wall, had been yanked out and lay upside down, its contents scattered. Beyond, a metal wastebasket had been upset, its original elliptical shape bent now. Spilling from it were some torn papers and a tangled wad of narrow ribbon that might have come from a typewriter.

  For another moment Murdock stood there, his face white around the mouth from the pressure of his jaws, his eyes still sick. The straight dark hair that was incipiently graying above the ears was wet and shiny now and there were rain spots on his cheeks. It was then that the rage began to kindle deep inside him, overriding his grief to become a new and dominant focal point. For though he had seen and photographed death in many forms it had never before seemed quite so personal or outrageous, and he seemed to know that whatever he might do now, whatever little help he might give, would be for Brady rather than for the Courier.

  He backed up to glance at Frank Kirby, hearing the monotone of his voice as he answered the officer’s questions.

  “He was there when I came in,” he said. “I didn’t see the gun at first; I didn’t know what had happened. I thought may
be it was his heart—until I saw the blood.”

  He said other things, but Murdock no longer heard him as he picked up his camera and went over to place it with his equipment case in the corner behind the door. There was a chair here with Kirby’s raincoat slung over the back, a lightweight showerproof almost identical with his own. Kirby’s new-looking and spotless light-gray hat had been tossed on top of it and Murdock had time to realize that both were in character, since Kirby was a dressy man who liked to buy the latest in fashions for men.

  Now Murdock slipped out of his own coat, folded it, and because it was wet, put it on the floor next to his camera. He did the same with Kirby’s coat, putting it on top of his and adding the hat. Then as the quick rap of approaching footsteps sounded in the hall, he sat down in the chair, folded his arms, and prepared himself for the business to follow.

  5

  A PRECINCT lieutenant and two detectives were the first to arrive, but before they had time to do more than glance about, Lieutenant Bacon, of Homicide, came in with his alter ego, a blocky, blunt-jawed man named Sergeant Keogh. The medical examiner was next, and as he began the routine of his examination the police photographer and fingerprint man came in to round out the official forces.

  Seated as he was in the far corner behind the door, Murdock was not immediately noticed and it was Bacon who spotted him first while the precinct lieutenant was getting the story from the two uniformed men. This did not take long and he sent them on their way, telling one of them to stay at the main-floor entrance until relieved.

  “To keep out the press,” he said.

  By that time Bacon had fixed his gray gaze on Murdock, not advancing, just standing there, a stiff-backed, beanpole of a man in a raincoat and a rain-spotted hat set squarely on his head. At the first glance he opened his mouth and annoyance brightened his eyes. Then they narrowed and his mouth closed and he was momentarily still; for he had known Murdock a long time and this was not the first occasion when he had found the photographer at the scene of a murder.

  Murdock stared back at him, silent and unmoving, and now, Bacon, his expression like that of a disapproving teacher who would take care of an errant pupil at the proper time, walked over to the doctor and stood looking down while the examination continued. It did not take long. The doctor stood up and tipped one hand.