Night Work

by Steve Hamilton

  “Mr. Trumbull,” he said, “I wonder if we can have a word.”

  “What is it?”

  He looked at the other men in the room, then back at me. “We need to talk to you,” he said. He was carrying his notebook with him. “Maybe we can go up to your apartment?”

  “You don’t want to go up there, believe me. Is it something you can’t tell me right here?”

  Shea stepped forward. He was close to me now, like he was about to reach out and put a hand on my shoulder. But he didn’t touch me.

  “Joe,” he said, “we’d like to ask you for permission to search your place.”

  “What?”

  “This comes from Albany. It’s a direct request from our superior officer.”

  “You’re kidding me. Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “We’re not joking,” Rhinehart said. “I’m sure we can go get a search warrant if we really need one. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

  “You know why we’re here,” Shea said. “You know we’re just doing our jobs. The sooner we can eliminate you as a suspect, the sooner we can focus our energy elsewhere.”

  “I thought we already got past this,” I said. “I thought you guys were already ‘focusing your energy elsewhere.’”

  “As Detective Shea has already indicated,” Rhine-hart said, “we’ve been given a directive from our headquarters. It’s our responsibility to carry it out.”

  Anderson was already standing by now. There wasn’t much room between me and Rhinehart, but he seemed determined to get between us. “You guys have a lot of nerve,” he said to them. “Why aren’t you out there finding the guy who killed those women?”

  “Mr. Anderson,” Rhinehart said, “I’ll thank you to step aside.”

  “And I’ll thank you to blow it right out your ass.”

  That got Maurice and Rolando out of their chairs. I didn’t think either of them would do something stupid, but I didn’t want to find out for sure.

  “All right, everybody calm down,” I said. “If somebody in Albany wants these guys to look through my underwear drawer, they can go ahead. If that’s what it takes for all of us to get back on track.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Anderson said. “You know they can’t search your place without a warrant.”

  “There’s nothing for them to find. So let me prove it to them.”

  He stood his ground for another long moment, then finally shook his head and walked away from us. “Maurice,” he said. “Rolando. Are you two gonna stand around all day?”

  “So come on already,” I said to Shea and Rhine-hart. “Let’s go do this.”

  As I led them up the back stairs, I could still hear Anderson yelling.

  “That’s quite a landlord you’ve got,” Shea said. He was right behind me, Rhinehart a few steps behind him.

  “He’s just looking out for me. He always does, whether I like it or not.”

  “We apologize for the inconvenience, Joe.”

  I looked back at him. “This boss of yours in Albany, he’s like sixty miles away right now, isn’t he?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Does he always run your cases like this?”

  “This is a big one,” Shea said. “You know that. He just wants us to cover all the bases.”

  I opened my door. “Excuse the mess,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

  Shea had already been there, of course. That very morning, in fact. So now it was Rhinehart’s turn to do the double take. “You have a lot of music up here,” he said. He stepped closer to the wall of CDs and did a quick scan. “I see quite a few Ellingtons here. I’m impressed.”

  “Will that be in your report?”

  I didn’t mean to slam the door so quickly on him, after one brief moment of acting like a human being, but this whole scene was pushing me off balance.

  “We’d like to see the clothes you were wearing the night you went out with Miss Frost,” he said, his voice like granite again. “Unless you’ve washed them already.”

  “That was three days ago,” I said, pointing to the pile of dirty clothes next to the dresser. “What do you think?”

  “Can you collect them, please?”

  I went to the pile and dug through it. I found the pants I had worn, the white shirt. “Please tell me you don’t want the socks and underwear. It’s not like I have special pairs for Saturday nights.”

  “The shirt and pants are fine,” he said. “Is that all you were wearing?”

  “I had a tie on, and a jacket.”

  “Can you find them, please?”

  “The jacket’s hung up in the closet.” I went in and pulled it off the hanger. “The tie’s around here somewhere. Maybe I put it in my pocket.”

  I picked up the pants and went through the pockets. I found the ticket stub from the jazz club. But no tie.

  “I know I wore it home.” I played it back in my mind, remembered it clearly, putting my clothes back on at Marlene’s place, feeling a little self-conscious about it. How quick everything had been, and here I was on my way out the door already. Picking up my tie, draping it around my neck, thinking to myself, now I look like some kind of lounge singer or something. Like Frank Sinatra at the end of a long night. But I can’t tie the stupid thing again.

  “I wore the tie home,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe it fell off,” Shea said.

  I went through the rest of the laundry. “I don’t see it here.”

  “What color was it, anyway?”

  “It was red.” I looked on the floor, under the bed. Behind the dresser.

  “Would you mind if I take a quick look in the bottom of your closet?” Rhinehart said. “That’s where you keep your shoes, isn’t it?”

  “No need,” I said, picking up my pair of brown loafers. “I was wearing these shoes that night.”

  “I’m more interested in your other shoes,” he said. He went to my closet and stopped at the doorway. “May I?”

  “I don’t understand, but go ahead.”

  I watched him get down on his knees and look through my shoes. It didn’t take long. I might have owned ten pairs of them, maybe a dozen tops. Half a minute later, he was back on his feet, holding a pair of old boxing shoes. They were the kind that went halfway up your calves. The laces were gone.

  “You don’t wear these anymore?” he said.

  “They gave me blisters.”

  “Where are the laces?”

  “You got me. Maybe on the floor in there?”

  “I didn’t see them.”

  “Maybe I put them in some other shoes.”

  “Another pair of boxing shoes? Don’t they come with laces already?”

  “Detective, I have no idea where the laces are. I haven’t touched those shoes in months.”

  “Do you mind if I keep these for a while?”

  “I don’t understand …”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give you a receipt for them.”

  “Just wait a minute,” I said. “Is this what your boss asked you to do? Come search my place for anything you could strangle somebody with? A tie? Shoelaces? What about the extension cord over here? You gonna take that, too?”

  Rhinehart didn’t say anything. He stood there holding my old boxing shoes.

  “How about belts?” I said, looking around the room. “I’ve got a few of those. I’m pretty sure I have a rope, too. Somewhere. Just let me find it.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Rhinehart said. “I think we’re about done here.”

  “That’s it? That was your whole search?”

  “Now, if you don’t mind,” he said, “I wonder if we could talk about this some more. Down at the station.”

  TEN

  “You’re a law enforcement professional,” Rhinehart said. “You know why we have to cover this.” We were sitting in the same interview room. One mirror, no windows. No clock. No connection to the outside world whatsoever.

 
; “Yes, I know,” I said. “I told you that before. I know you had to start with me and then move on.”

  “Okay, good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

  “Well, that’s just it. I thought we had already turned that page, Detective. I thought we were on page two now. Where we go out and figure out who killed Marlene and Sandra.”

  “You understand, Mr. Trumbull, that if we turn that page too quickly, we’re simply not doing our jobs, right? That’s not good for us. It’s certainly not good for the victims and their families. It’s not even good for you.”

  “Okay, you lost me on the last one.”

  “If we do this the right way and eliminate you as a suspect, then you stand clear. You’re not only above suspicion, you’re above any kind of scrutiny that anyone else might bring to bear. No matter who it is—other police officers, family members of the victims …”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” I said, “but—”

  “Nobody will be able to say you got special treatment because you’re close to the police officers in this town,” he went on. “Nobody will be able to say you weren’t considered objectively before being cleared. In a way, we’re doing you a real favor here.”

  “All right,” I said. “I get it. Thanks a lot. Now can we please get this over with so we can get out and find the right guy?”

  I had to stop myself for a moment. I had to run my hands through my hair and take a deep breath. I imagined a man laughing at me somewhere, a man whose face I couldn’t see. He had been watching me, and following me, and God help us all, killing people. Now, with me sitting here in this interview room once again, while he was still out there, walking free …

  “Let’s look at the facts,” Rhinehart said. “On Saturday night, you were the last person seen with Miss Frost. By your own admission, you were with her at her residence until it was very late. If it wasn’t you who killed her, then it must have been somebody else. Somebody who somehow gained entry to her apartment almost immediately after you left.”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  “On that same Saturday, you claim to have met Mrs. Barron for the first time. If that’s true, you must have made quite an impression on her, because she came to see you the very next night. At your residence.”

  “I had offered to help her,” I said. “She was taking me up on it.”

  “As you say. In any case, she came to see you again, the next day. Although this time, you apparently were not home.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t see her at all that day.”

  “Yet, by your own admission, you did go to her house that evening. The same evening she ended up being killed.”

  “I wanted to see if she was all right. What are you getting at?”

  “I’m just telling you how it looks from our perspective,” he said. “From anyone’s perspective, looking at the facts alone.” He opened up his case and took out a manila folder.

  “Do you recognize this?” he said, opening the folder and turning it to me. It was the written statement I had given Shea, my little exercise writing down every detail I could remember from my night with Marlene.

  “Yes. I did this for your partner, the first time we talked.”

  “There are a few things I have to ask you about,” Rhinehart said. “If you don’t mind.”

  “There’s nothing there. I didn’t come up with anything.”

  “This is Detective Rhinehart’s area of expertise,” Shea said, finally opening his mouth. “Please bear with him.”

  “Fine, go ahead.”

  He started sorting through the pages. “If I hadn’t met you in person and this was all I had to go on … Well, I’d have to say it would be pretty interesting.”

  “How would it be interesting?”

  “Interesting in two ways, actually. In what you wrote down here, and maybe even more in what you didn’t write.”

  “I spent a couple of hours trying to think of everything. What could I possibly not have written?”

  “You went into very specific detail all through the evening—what you ate, what you talked about, where you walked after dinner …”

  “That’s what Detective Shea asked me to do.”

  “But then when you get up to her apartment, all of a sudden you’re glossing over things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me read what you wrote, Mr. Trumbull. ‘We went upstairs to her apartment. She played some music on her keyboard for me. We became intimate at that point, and then sometime later, I left. I walked back down Wall Street to my car and drove home.’”

  “That’s what happened,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “We’re trained to find the telltale signs of deception when we read statements like this. They really do stand out, once you know what to look for.”

  I just shook my head. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Some liars are better than others,” he said. “But you know what? Turns out not even the best liar in the world can make himself slow down when he gets to the lying part. It’s just human nature, Mr. Trumbull. You don’t dwell on a lie. You get it out there, and then you move on.”

  “I don’t know where you’re going with this, but—”

  “It’s a well-established psychological technique,” he said. “Tried and tested over thousands of written statements. A liar gives himself away every time, and you …”

  “I was not lying, Detective. I don’t know what else to say to you.”

  “It looks like you’re lying here,” he said, holding the pages up to me. “That’s all I’m saying. From our point of view, you have to admit, it looks like you’re lying.”

  “Did it ever occur to you,” I said, “that I rushed through the last few sentences because I was getting tired of writing down every little thing? Or that maybe I was feeling a little self-conscious about what happened in her apartment?”

  “Why would you feel self-conscious, Mr. Trumbull? What happened up there?”

  “Exactly what I wrote down. We became intimate.”

  “Intimate in what way?”

  “How many ways are there, Detective? We kissed and then we went into her bedroom.”

  “What happened there?”

  “What do you think happened there? I’m supposed to write that all down, minute for minute?”

  “That’s what you were asked to do, yes.”

  “I didn’t figure it was anybody’s business,” I said. “And I didn’t think it would help you or anybody else figure out who killed her.”

  Rhinehart put the pages back in the folder. He carefully lined up the edges.

  “Is this why you had me do this little exercise?” I said to Shea. “So you could find something to trap me?”

  “No, Joe,” Shea said. “Come on, just bear with us here.”

  “There’s something else,” Rhinehart said. “Something else you left out.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What were you wearing on Saturday night?”

  “I was supposed to write down what I was wearing?”

  “Yes.” He picked up the first page again. “It says right here, ‘She was wearing a blue dress.’ But you never wrote down what you were wearing.”

  “Weren’t you just standing in my apartment while I showed you exactly what I was wearing that night?”

  “I saw the shirt and the pants, yes.”

  “So you want me to write that down now? Give me the page, I’ll add it. I was wearing a shirt and pants.”

  “And the tie?”

  “I was wearing a tie, yes.”

  “A tie you couldn’t seem to find today.”

  I threw up my hands. “I can’t find my tie. I confess.”

  “What color was it, again?”

  “It was red, Detective. I was wearing a red tie.”

  “You did get undressed, right? When you became intimate, as you called it? I mean, you did take your tie off at that point?”

  “Yes,” I said, slowly.
“I took my tie off.”

  “Could you have left the tie in Miss Frost’s apartment? Or are you sure you wore it home?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I wore it home. Now will you please tell me why you’re so hung up on what color tie I was wearing?”

  Rhinehart went back to his notebook. He opened it and passed me a large photograph, one of the three he had shown me the day before. It was the picture of Marlene lying in the weeds.

  “You recognize this,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Please take another good look at it.”

  It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I picked up the photograph.

  “Please tell me what you see around Miss Frost’s neck.”

  “I was there in person, remember?”

  “Your friend took you there. Detective Borello.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, so tell me … What color was the object wrapped around Miss Frost’s neck?”

  “It was black.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look at the photograph,” he said. “Look carefully.”

  I held up the photo. “It’s black.”

  “Closer, Mr. Trumbull.”

  I held it up a few inches from my face. It didn’t look so much like a pitch black now. I was picking up a hint of color … “I guess it looks a little more red here. Maybe.”

  “I’m sure it was hard to see in the darkness, but the flashbulb picks up the color. I can assure you, the object around her neck was a man’s red necktie. We have it in evidence now, of course. I can show it to you if you’d like.”

  “That won’t be necessary. It can’t be mine.”

  “You keep insisting there’s no way you could have left the tie in her apartment. Do you want to reconsider that possibility?”

  I put the photograph down. I played the whole night back in my head one more time. Leaving her apartment, going down the back steps. I had my tie on. I know it. I was wearing my tie, draped around my neck.

  “I left with it on,” I said. “I got back in my car … Could it have fallen off then? I suppose it’s possible. It seems unlikely.”

  Rhinehart took the photograph back. He put it in the folder with my statement. Detective Shea sat still in his chair, looking down at his folded hands.

  “So about those shoes,” Rhinehart finally said. I had a feeling I knew exactly what he was going to do next. He took out another photograph, another of the three I had seen the day before. Sandra lying in her living room, shoelaces around her neck.