1 52 Steps to Murder

by Steve Demaree

  As I caught up with him, the medical examiner filled me in.

  “Looks like we’ve found a letter, Cy. It’s addressed to Irene Penrod. She’s the lady who’s gone away, isn’t she?”

  “That’s right, Frank. Who’s it from?”

  “There’s no return address, and the postmark is smudged.

  “Has it been opened?”

  “Yes. You want me to take it out and read it?”

  “Might as well. Read it, then bag it, although I doubt if we find any prints on it. But maybe it can tell us something.”

  “Dear Irene,” Frank read. “I’m so happy you’ll be coming to spend a few days with us. Herbert and I are looking forward to your visit. I wanted to let you know that Donald might be able to bring you. He’s on his way home, and he might come through Hilldale Saturday morning. If he gets there before your bus leaves, he can bring you, and you’ll get here quicker. Just go to the bus station as planned, and wait until the last minute to buy your ticket. If Donald makes it through there Saturday, he can meet you there and bring you to us. Love, Martha.”

  “What do you think, Lou?” I asked.

  “It could be anything. Maybe it’s genuine. Maybe it’s phony.”

  There were a few murmurs as Lou paused.

  “Maybe Hartley murdered the old ladies and dropped this letter as he sneaked from one house to the other without being detected. Or possibly the letter was delivered and someone entered Miss Penrod’s house and took the letter in order to draw suspicion to her or Hartley. And then there’s even a chance that Miss Penrod wrote this herself to give herself time to get away after the murders, knowing that we’ll be told that she has gone away for a few days. She could be out of the country by now.”

  There were too many possibilities to suit me. I realized that the further we delved into the case, the more we were coming up with more questions than answers. Did Mrs. Reynolds get caught with her hand in the cookie jar, or was the disguise buried there by someone else, as Mrs. Reynolds claimed? Was Irene Penrod’s letter a clue that would be vital in solving the murders, or did someone plant it to muddy the waters?

  I had no idea. I knew only that my pains were increasing more than my results. I felt there were more clues to be found, so I instructed each man to return to work. No one found anything else until we got to the dead-end portion of the underground.

  “Hey, Lieutenant! We’ve found another shovel here!”

  Everyone hurried to the officer who located the shovel. The sum of each man’s light flooded the tunnel. Not only did we find a shovel, but someone had been digging. Careful examination revealed something hidden under a tarpaulin. One officer worked feverishly to untie the knots and toss away the rope. Whoever had been digging had some help of a sort. Under the tarp we found a device used to locate buried treasure. I looked up at the house beside us. It was the second house on the street. I remembered Mrs. Wilkens told me someone had rented this house. Was this device the reason someone rented it? Or did someone put this apparatus here because he or she knew the house was empty? And was this the house Mrs. Wilkens said she saw Hartley come out of last night? I rounded up the print crew, told them to see if they found anything. Then, we planned to recover the device and retie the rope. I was not yet ready to alert the digger that we were on to him or her, but I did want to look inside the house and see if I found anything when time permitted. First, I needed to follow proper procedure and get a search warrant.

  “Okay, men, we’re halfway done, so to speak. Let’s backtrack and do a thorough search of the underground on the other side of the street.”

  Each of us paused as we returned to the steps leading from the Reynolds house. I sent a man up to check the door, but it was still locked. Mrs. Reynolds didn’t want to be followed. A second search revealed nothing more, so we continued around the curve to the steps behind the houses on the other side of the street.

  32

  I labored as I walked. It had been some time since a case had been this tough on me physically. I looked around and noticed that Frank hovered over me like a vulture waiting for an opportunity, or at least a medical examiner who knew where his next victim was coming from.

  “It’s okay, Frank. I’ve got a few more good days in me,” I said, as he walked abreast of me. I think I was trying to convince myself as much as I was my friend. I looked at Frank, who was of medium build and height, wore rimless glasses, and had sandy brown hair. He looked like he had more days left than I did.

  “Cy, as far as your body is concerned, I think your best days are well behind you. It’s that gristle between your ears that keeps you going.”

  “As you know, Frank, there are times when we must forge ahead on autopilot.”

  Turning serious, Frank asked, “Cy, do you know what you’re looking for down here, or have you already found it?”

  “Frank, I’m not sure what we’re looking for anywhere, other than the fact that I’m trying to come up with who murdered these two women and why they did it. I’m running into more dead ends than I’m finding in this underground tunnel. I’m finding all kinds of accessibility, but very little motive. Even the granddaughter is not eager to inherit her grandmother’s estate, and I’ve checked into the financial records of everyone concerned. Everyone’s sitting pretty except the grocery boy, but he’s the only one we know has done something wrong. The mailman doesn’t have nearly as much money as the rest of the suspects, but he’s doing okay.”

  “If it wasn’t for the fact that both women were poisoned, Cy, I’d be inclined to think they were random murders, but random and poison seldom walk hand in hand.”

  “Lieutenant, it looks like we might have something else,” one of the men in front of the pack exclaimed, putting an end to the conversation between Frank and me.

  I hurried toward the officer as quickly as my aching body allowed.

  “What have you found, Son?”

  “It may not be anything, Lieutenant, but it looks like someone’s been digging here, too, only I’d say this dirt’s been back in place a lot longer than what we just found.”

  I looked down at the dirt. It took a lot of light and a careful eye to see where dirt had been removed and replaced, which was why we didn’t find it on our previous visit. I tried to get my bearings. After I did so, I realized that this archaeological dig was very near Stanley Silverman’s steps.

  “Son, go up there and try the door and see if it opens.”

  The instructed officer climbed the steps, found the door secured. I remembered that on our previous visit when we apprehended the incoherent man, the door to Silverman’s house was quite accessible. That meant that Silverman had descended the steps to the underground, or at least someone had walked down his steps.

  “Officer Davis,” I called.

  “Yes sir, Lieutenant.”

  “Officer Davis, I believe I’ve got some more digging for you to do. Can you locate Mrs. Reynolds’s shovel? I would ask her if we can borrow it, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  Officer Davis ran to the place where he’d left the shovel.

  “What are you expecting this time, Cy? More raincoats?” George asked.

  “As my dear partner tells me from time to time, we need to be patient. We’ll soon know.”

  Officer Davis located the shovel, returned to the group gathered around the excavation project. He sank the shovel into the dirt and tossed the dirt to one side. A second and third shovelful produced nothing but more dirt.

  “What do you think, Lieutenant? Do you want me to go down or wide?”

  “Just keep digging deeper and see what you find. We’ve got nothing but time, and I’m convinced that someone has been doing something more than moving some dirt around.”

  Another five minutes of digging produced nothing but more dirt. Idle conversation had started. No one was doing any work other than Officer Davis.

  “Are you tired yet, Officer Davis? Do you want me to have someone relieve you?”

  “No, I
’m fine, Lieutenant.”

  “Okay, listen up, men. While Officer Davis continues to dig, why don’t the rest of you carry on with your search and see if you can find anything else.”

  The group separated and the search continued. With each new shovelful, I began to anticipate what we might find. Lou and Frank sensed what I was thinking. Officer Davis might have too, because he dug with more fervor.

  After a few more minutes, and after a few feet of dirt had been unearthed, I heard the sound I’d expected. Officer Davis had struck something other than dirt.

  “Okay, Officer Davis, I think we’ve gotten the depth that we want. Now, try to get me a little more width. Let’s see what we’ve found.”

  “Lieutenant Dekker,” one of the returning men called out. “We’re through. We didn’t find anything else, but I did find another shovel. Do you want me to get it and help Officer Davis?”

  “If we’ve got as big of an area to clear as I think we have, Officer Davis will need all the help he can get.”

  The officer rushed off and hurried back with the second shovel. I instructed him to start digging in an area about four feet from where Officer Davis was digging.

  While they were digging the SOC team returned with news that they had found two partial fingerprints. Maybe our luck was changing.

  The two men continued to dig and several minutes later they had completely uncovered the top of a metallic blue coffin.

  “Do you think it’s Mrs. Silverman?”

  “I’m more inclined to think it’s a passel of raincoats,” I replied.

  “Are we going to exhume the body, Lieutenant?”

  “I assume so, but that comes under the jurisdiction of our esteemed colleague,” I replied, motioning toward the medical examiner, Frank Harris. “If we do so, and find out that Mrs. Silverman was poisoned with the same poison as our two latest victims, then we can presume we have a murderer on our hands.”

  “I thought the first two murders were enough to presume that we have a murderer on our hands,” George whispered in my ear.

  “I mean we’ll have a pretty good idea as to the identity of that murderer,” I whispered back, a little louder than I intended.

  “I assume you mean Mr. Silverman,” replied Officer Davis. “You don’t think he’s responsible for murdering three women, do you? Especially since one of them was his own mother.”

  “Evidently, you didn’t see Psycho.”

  “Yeah, but that was only a movie, and Mr. Silverman isn’t pretending to be his mother half of the time.”

  “At least not the half we’ve seen him. Remember, truth is stranger than fiction. Anyway, I don’t think anything at this point, but I do know that men have been murdering their mothers for years. Come on, Lou. It’s time for us to call on Stanley Silverman.”

  +++

  As quickly as our pains allowed, Lou and I plodded across the cavern’s dirt floor and up the steps through Mrs. Nelson’s house. All of a sudden, all of our pain wasn’t of a physical nature. Now, we were to confront a suspect who might have murdered his own mother and two other elderly women. The thought that someone would commit such a heinous crime repulsed us, yet our years on the force reminded us that such crimes occur much more frequently than most people think they do. Even by people who look as incapable of committing murder as Stanley Silverman.

  To ease the pain of walking down the steps from Mrs. Nelson’s front porch to the street and mounting an equally large number of steps to Silverman’s house, the two of us took some weight off our feet and put it on our hands. We grasped the railing and quickly found out this move increased our pain. I decided to reposition some of my weight. I removed a candy bar from my pocket, unwrapped it, and took a nibble. My smile caused Lou to guzzle a few M&Ms before we encountered our suspect. We trudged up the steps to Silverman’s house. As we neared the front door, I hoped that Silverman didn’t physically confront us. Even though there were two of us, neither of us was in any position to jostle with him, even though he was slight in stature. I climbed the last of the steps and glanced over at the front window where Silverman often sat spying on his neighbors, but Silverman and his binoculars were nowhere to be seen.

  Finally, out of breath and in much pain, Lou and I reached the front porch. I walked over, rang the doorbell, and waited to confront Silverman. When Silverman didn’t answer the door, I rang again. Again, no one responded. This time I reached up, pulled on the brass knocker, and let it drop. I repeated this several times. Still, our call went unanswered.

  Did Silverman realize the nature of our call? Was he upstairs visiting his mother’s shrine? Was he in hiding? Had he left the house? Or had something happened to him?

  33

  I realized that Silverman was not going to answer the door. I shuddered as I contemplated walking back down the Silverman steps, across the street, up the Nelson steps, through the Nelson house, down some more steps, and then through the underground to let the others know that our call had gone unanswered.

  As we turned to leave, I felt relieved to see that Frank, George, and two uniformed officers watched us from the porch of the Nelson house. Their presence caused me to celebrate with another small chocolate and almond delight. As Lou and I made our way down one set of steps, our compatriots made their way down another set of steps. I paused halfway down in order to lick my fingers clean. My abrupt halt surprised Lou, and both of us almost went tumbling down the remaining steps. I grasped the railing to stop my fall and encountered a new pain. Lou bumped against me and coughed. I felt a saliva-covered M&M slide down the back of my shirt. I had no idea what color it was. All M&Ms feel the same to a Hershey Almond connoisseur.

  A few seconds later we met the others in the street.

  “Well, Frank, what’s next?”

  “I’ll have to make a phone call to check, but I believe the way the city ordinance reads, the coffin is not considered to be on anyone’s property. Since we don’t know for sure who or what’s in the coffin, it’ll probably be okay for us to exhume it and take it to my lab and check it out. If there’s a body inside, we should be able to find out if it really is Mrs. Silverman, and, if so, whether or not she died of natural causes.”

  “So, the property below doesn’t belong to the street’s residents?”

  “That’s one of the things I’ll have to check. I doubt if there’s any record of the underground area. Since we’re not dealing with a marked grave, a deeded area, or an identified body, my guess is that we won’t need a court order to exhume the body. At least if we do need one, it’ll be easier to get.”

  “What do we do now, Cy?” Lou asked. “It looks like Silverman has gone on the same trip that Miss Penrod took.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Turning to the medical examiner, I asked, “What about you, Frank? What are your immediate plans?”

  “Well, I plan to make the necessary calls. Then, I’d say that sometime today or tomorrow, we’ll get an okay to remove the coffin and see what’s inside.”

  “Do you plan to post anyone with the coffin?”

  “Someone will stay with it until we get an okay, but from the looks of you two, I’d say you’d better get some rest, and call it a day. Of course, I did have you down as two of the pallbearers when the time comes to carry the body up and cart it away.”

  “But you’ll have already carted it away before you know whether or not there’s a body inside. What do you plan to do? If you find a body do you plan to bring it back here for Lou and I to hoist it back up?”

  “Of course. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Cy?”

  “Lou and I’d would’ve been hurt if you hadn’t asked, Frank. Of course we’d be glad to. You are going to ask Mrs. Reynolds, too, aren’t you?”

  The medical examiner smiled at my comment, then, once again I turned serious.

  I turned and called Officer Davis.

  “Officer Davis, I’d like for you to stay on the street until your shift ends. If you need to leave for any reason, ca
ll for someone to replace you. I want to know if you see Mr. Silverman, or anyone else you think I might want to know about.

  “And Frank, just in case Silverman is hiding in his house, I’d like someone posted underground, even after the body is removed, just in case Silverman decides to pay a visit to the dearly departed, provided there is a dearly departed inside.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Lou and I were getting ready to leave when one of the lab men came running out of Mrs. Nelson’s house. He seemed excited.

  “Something wrong?” George asked, as the man made his way down the steps as quickly as he could without falling.

  “We found a couple of things in the pocket of the raincoat. One could be poison. The other is a large magnet.”

  “Okay, you go back underground, leave one man to stay with the coffin and have the rest of the men down there see that the Reynoldses do not escape by using the tunnel to get to someone else’s house. Those of us up here will call on Mrs. Reynolds.”

  Several of us climbed the steps to the Reynolds house as quickly as we could. I rang the bell. No one answered, so I pounded on the door. Again, no one answered the door. It seemed to be harder and harder to find anyone at home on Hilltop Place.

  “George, do you mind going downtown and getting us a search warrant? It seems that Mrs. Reynolds is not inclined to answer her door. And would you get one for 101 and 105 Hilltop Place. Tell the judge that neither is occupied but both are owned by and one is rented by a couple of our murder suspects. If you need to, explain that we found some evidence outside of one of the houses.”

  “Glad to oblige, Cy.”

  +++

  George returned an hour later with search warrants. We forced our way into the Reynolds house, spread out to find Mrs. Reynolds and her son Jimmy. We searched each room, closet, and passageway. Then, I sent an officer down to the tunnel below, and he called out to the men guarding that exit. Mrs. Reynolds and Jimmy had disappeared. Hilltop Place was becoming a ghost street.