by Ed McBain
'Here? No. I didn't say here.'
'Then where?'
'We went out.'
'Where?'
'To a party. One of Julie's friends. A girl named Sarah.'
'Sarah what?'
'I don't remember. Ask Julie.'
'You're not too good on names, are you, Mike?'
'All right, you want to tell me what happened to this girl?'
'Who said anything happened to her?'
'You come here, you bang down the door . . .'
'Nobody banged down the door, Mike.'
'I mean, what the hell is this?'
The outraged citizen now. Guilty or innocent, they all became outraged at some point in the questioning. Or at least expressed outrage. People of Italian descent, guilty or innocent, always pulled the 'Conesce chi son'io? line. Indignantly. Roughly translated as 'Do you realize who I am?' You could be talking to a street cleaner, he came on like the governor of the state. 'Do you realize who I am?' Fournier was doing the same high-horse bit now. 'What the hell is this?' Outrage on his face and in his blue eyes. The innocent bystander, falsely accused. But they still didn't know where he'd been on New Year's Eve while Susan and her sitter were getting killed.
'What time did you leave here?' Meyer asked.
'Around ten. Ask Julie.'
'And got home when?'
'Around four.'
'Where were you between twelve-thirty and two-thirty?'
'Still at the party.'
'What time did you leave there?'
'Around two-thirty, three.'
'Which?'
'In there. Closer to three, I guess.'
'And went where?'
'Came straight back here.'
'How?'
'On the subway.'
'From where?'
'Riverhead. The party was all the way up in Riverhead. Something happened to this girl, am I right?'
'No.'
'Then what happened?'
'Her daughter got killed,' Carella said, and watched his eyes.
'I didn't know she had a kid,' Fournier said.
'She didn't.'
Still watching the eyes.
'You just said . . .'
'Not when you knew her. The baby was six months old.'
Both detectives watching his eyes now.
'The baby was yours,' Carella said.
He looked first at Carella and then at Meyer. Meyer nodded. In the kitchen, a water tap was dripping. Fournier was silent for a long time. When he spoke again, it was stop and go. A sentence, a silence, another sentence, another silence.
'I didn't know that,' he said.
'I'm sorry,' he said.
'I wish I'd known,' he said.
'Will you tell her how sorry I am?' he said.
'Do you know where I can reach her?' he said.
The detectives said nothing.
'Or maybe you can give her the number here,' he said. 'If you talk to her. If she'd like to call me or anything.'
In the kitchen, the water tap dripped steadily.
'You don't know how sorry I am,' he said.
And then:
'What was the baby's name?'
'Susan,' Meyer said.
'That's my mother's name,' he said. 'Well, Suzanne.'
There was another long silence.
'I wish I'd known,' he said again.
'Mr Fournier,' Carella said, 'we'd like to talk to Miss Endicott now.'
'Sure,' Fournier said. 'I really wish I could . . .'
And let the sentence trail.
Julie Endicott told them that on New Year's Eve they had left the apartment here at a little past ten o'clock. They had gone to a party at the home of a friend named Sarah Epstein, who lived at 7133 Washington Boulevard in Riverhead, apartment 36. Julie Endicott went on to say that they had stayed at the party until ten minutes to three, had walked the two blocks to the subway station on Washington and Knowles, and had got back to the apartment here at a few minutes after four. They had gone straight to bed. Mike Fournier had been with her all night long. He had never left her side all night long.
'Did you want Sarah's phone number?' she asked. 'In case you plan to call her?'
'Yes, please,' Carella said.
Sarah Epstein corroborated everything they'd been told.
They were back to square one.
* * * *
12
Carella placed the call to Seattle on Thursday morning, at a little after nine Pacific time. He tried the number for the Pines, and got no answer. He then called the Chapman Lumber Company, and spoke to the same woman he'd spoken to nine days ago. Pearl Ogilvy, his notes read. Miss. He explained that he had a message for Joyce Chapman, and couldn't reach her at the house. He wondered if she might pass the message on to her.
'Just tell her that Mike Fournier would like to talk to her. His number here is . . .'
'Mr Carella? Excuse me, but . . .'
There was a sudden silence on the line.
'Miss Ogilvy?' Carella said, puzzled.
'Sir . . . I'm sorry, but . . . Joyce is dead.'
'What?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What?'
'She was murdered, sir.'
'When?'
'Monday night.'
Carella realized he was frowning. He also realized he was shocked. He had not been shocked in a long, long time. Why the murder of Joyce Chapman should now have such an effect on him . . .
'Tell me what happened,' he said.
'Well, sir, maybe you ought to talk to her sister. She was out here when it happened.'
'Could I have her number, please?'
'I don't have her number back east, but I'm sure it's in the phone book.'
'Where would that be, Miss Ogilvy? Back east where?'
'Why, right where you're calling from,' she said.
'Here? She lives here in this city?'
'Yes, sir. She came out because Mr Chapman was so sick and all, and everybody was expecting him to die. Instead, it was poor Joyce who . . .'
Her voice caught.
'And she's back here now?' Carella asked.
'Yes, sir, they flew home yesterday, her and her husband. Right after the funeral.'
'Which part of the city, would you know?'
'Does Calm's Point sound right? Is there a Calm's Point?'
'Yes, there is,' Carella said. 'Can you tell me what her married name is?'
'Hammond. Melissa Hammond. Well, it'd probably be under Richard Hammond.'
'Thank you,' Carella said.
'Not at all,' she said, and hung up.
Carella immediately dialed Seattle Directory Assistance, asked for the Seattle PD and looked up at the clock. 9:15 a.m. their time. If it worked the way it did here, the day shift would have been in for an hour and a half already. He dialed the number. Identified himself. Asked to talk to someone in Homicide. A sergeant told him he was just passing through with some papers, heard the phone ringing, picked it up. Didn't seem to be anyone up here at the moment, could he have someone get back? Carella told him he was trying to reach whoever was handling the Chapman case. Joyce Chapman. The Monday night murder. He said it was urgent. The sergeant gave his solemn word.
The man who called back at one o'clock Carella's time identified himself as Jamie Bonnem. He said he and his partner were working the Chapman case. He wanted to know what Carella's interest was.
'Her daughter was murdered here on New Year's Eve,' Carella said.
'Didn't know she was married,' Bonnem said.
Sort of a Western drawl. Carella didn't know they talked that way in Seattle. Maybe he was from someplace else.
'She was single, but that's another story,' he said. 'Can you tell me what happened out there?'
Bonnem told him what had happened.
Killed in her own bed.
Pistol in her mouth.
Two shots fired.
Gun was a Smith & Wesson 59.
'That's a nine-millimeter auto,' Bonn
em said. 'We recovered both bullets and one of the cartridge cases. We figure the killer picked up the other one, couldn't find the one he left behind. He couldn't do anything about the bullets 'cause they were buried in the wall behind the bed.'
'Anything else involved?' Carella asked.
'What do you mean?'
'Was she raped?'
'No.'
'What've you got so far?'
'Nothing but the ballistics make. What've you got?'
Carella told him what he had.
'So we've both got nothing, right?' Bonnem said.
* * * *
'He asks for protection, and then he disappears on me,' Kling said.
He had the floor.
The detectives were gathered in Lieutenant Byrnes's office for the weekly Thursday afternoon meeting. The meetings were the lieutenant's idea. They took place at three-thirty every Thursday, catching the off-going day shift and the on-coming night shift. This way, he hoped for input from eight detectives, all of them airing their various cases. If he ended up with six of them in his office, what with vacations and people out sick, he considered himself lucky. The lieutenant called these meetings his Thursday Afternoon Think Tank. Detective Andy Parker called them the Thursday Afternoon Stink Tank.
There were only five detectives with Byrnes that afternoon. O'Brien and Fujiwara were on stakeout and had relieved on post. Hawes was out interviewing a burglary victim. Parker wished he could have thought up some good excuse to miss the meeting. He hated these fucking meetings. He didn't like hanging around late if his shift happened to be the one getting relieved, and he didn't like coming in early if he was the one about to do the relieving. Anyway, he had enough problems with his own case load without having to listen to somebody else's troubles. Who gave a damn what was happening with Kling and this Herrera character? Not Parker.
He sat in a straight-backed chair, looking out the window. He was willing to bet anyone in the room that it would start snowing again any minute. He wondered if that blue parka was still downstairs in his locker. He was glad he hadn't shaved this morning. A two-day growth of beard kept you warm when it was snowing. He was wearing rumpled gray flannel trousers, unpolished black shoes, a Harris tweed sport jacket with a stain on the right sleeve, and a white shirt with the collar open, no tie. He looked like one of the city's homeless who had wandered into a warm place for the afternoon.
'Maybe he only needed cover till they turned off the heat,' Brown suggested.
He was wearing a dress shirt and tie, the trousers and vest to a suit; he'd been in court all day, testifying on an assault case. His jacket was draped over the back of his chair. He was a huge man, his complexion the color of his name, a frown on his face as he tried to work through Kling's problem with him. The frown came out as a scowl.
'Okay, Artie,' Kling said, 'but why would the posse suddenly quit? Two weeks ago, three weeks, whenever it was, they tried to kill the man. So all at once all bets are off?'
'Maybe the color of blue scared them,' Carella said.
'What'd you have on him?' Willis asked. 'A round-the-clock?'
'No, sun-to-sun,' Kling said.
'All we could afford,' Byrnes said. 'The man's small time.'
He sat behind his desk in his shirt sleeves, a man of medium height with a compact bullet head and no-nonsense blue eyes. It was too damn hot in this room. Something wrong with the damn thermostat. He'd have to call Maintenance.
'Don't forget the one who came after me,' Kling said.
'You think that's connected, huh?' Brown said.
'Had to be,' Carella said.
'You get a make on him?'
'Nothing.'
'What you got here,' Parker said, turning from the window, 'is a two-bit courier who gave you a story so you'd put some blues on him, and you fell for it hook, line and sinker. So now he disappears, and you're surprised.'
'He told me a big buy was coming down, Andy.'
'Sure, when?'
'Next Monday night.'
'Where?'
'He didn't know where yet.'
'Sure, you know when he's gonna know? Never is when he's gonna know. 'Cause there ain't no buy. He conned you into laying some badges on him till the heat cooled, Artie's right. Now he don't need you anymore, it's goodbye and good luck.'
'Maybe,' Kling said.
'Why would he have lied?' Byrnes asked.
'To get the blue muscle,' Parker said.
'Then why didn't he lie bigger?' Carella said.
'What do you mean?'
'Give Bert the time, the place, the works. Why the slow tease?'
The room went silent.
'Which is why I figure he's really trying to find out,' Kling said.
'Why?' Parker said.
'So we can make the bust.'
'Why?' Parker said.
'So we'll put away the people who tried to kill him.'
Parker shrugged.
'That's a reason,' Byrnes said.
'Bust up the posse,' Brown said.
'Herrera walks away safe,' Meyer said.
'But something's missing,' Carella said. 'Why'd they want him dead in the first place?'
'Ah-ha,' Parker said.
The men looked at each other. Nobody seemed to know the answer.
'So what's next?' Parker asked. 'I want to go home.'
Brown scowled at him.
'You're scaring me to death, Artie,' Parker said. 'Can we get on with this, Loot?'
Byrnes scowled at him, too.
Parker sighed like a saint with arrows in him.
'This double on New Year's Eve,' Carella said. 'The baby's mother was killed Monday night, in Seattle. It may be linked, we don't know. I'll be seeing her sister later today.'
'The sister lives here?' Byrnes asked.
'Yeah. In Calm's Point.'
'They're originally from Seattle,' Meyer explained.
'So have you got any meat at all?' Parker asked impatiently.
'Not yet. According to the timetable . . .'
'Yeah, yeah, timetables,' Parker said, dismissing them as worthless.
'Let him talk,' Willis said.
'You get six different timetables from six different people,' Parker said. 'Makes it look like the person got killed six different times of day.'
'Just let the man talk,' Willis said.
'It's ten after four already,' Parker said.
'The way we've got it,' Carella said, 'the sitter was still alive at twelve-thirty in the morning. The parents got home at two-thirty and found her and the baby dead. The father had been drinking, but he was cold sober when we got there.'
'The girl was raped and stabbed,' Meyer said.
'The baby was smothered with a pillow,' Carella said.
'What was it in Seattle?' Brown asked.
'A gun.'
'Mmm.
'How do you know she was still alive at twelve-thirty?' Kling asked.
'You want to look at this?' Carella said, and handed him the timetable he and Meyer had worked up.
'Twelve-twenty a.m.,' Kling said, reading out loud. 'Harry Flynn calls to wish Annie a happy new year.'
'The sitter's father?' Willis asked.
'Yeah,' Meyer said.
'Twelve-thirty a.m.,' Kling read. 'Peter Hodding calls to check on the baby . . .'
'Peter who? Parker said.
"The baby's father.'
'His name is Peter Hard-On?
'Hodding.'
'How would you like to go through life with a name like Peter Hard-On?' Parker asked, laughing.
'He tells the sitter they'll be home in a little while, asks if everything's okay.'
'Peter Hard-On,' Parker said, still laughing.