False Negative (Hard Case Crime)

by Joseph Koenig

  It bothered him that Pelfrey didn’t want to know why he’d left the Press. Was Real Detective so hungry for copy that they accepted stories from anyone, no questions asked?

  “Read all the papers in your neck of the woods, and clip the promising murders,” Pelfrey said. “The Palmer case is one of the best first stories I’ve published. You have a future with us, if you want it.”

  “I’ll start looking.”

  When he was a Pressman, he’d barely glanced at the suburban dailies, didn’t think of them as serious competition, if he thought of them at all. Coming back from the corner with a stack of them under his arm, he felt ashamed, the way he would bringing home dirty books.

  They were lousy papers. He hated to consider that he might end up working on one. The coverage was terrible. Reporters stinted on the news in favor of garden parties, and bridge club meetings, and the churches. The only mention of murder was a squib in the Margate Light, a couple of graphs from the United Press on the investigation in Little Egg Harbor that was going nowhere.

  It wasn’t just killers that he faulted for not doing their job. Potential victims were not making themselves easy prey. The cops had been struck blind. Poisonings were misdiagnosed as tummy aches, cases going begging because corpses remained undiscovered under freshly poured patios. Bumblers were preventing him from making a living.

  He filled a thermos and drove south, stopping for the papers in every town. At Cape May he turned back along Delaware Bay. He steered clear of the police stations and newsrooms where he had no contacts. His interest in bloody murder would mark him as a suspicious character to the cops. Enterprising reporters would hear him out, then pitch Pelfrey themselves. If he learned of a good story, he’d introduce himself. In the meantime it was enough to find out what was going on.

  At Dennisville he went into Cumberland County. The isolated farm country was an unlikely setting for skillful homicide. In the sticks husbands bludgeoned cheating wives and were stabbed in their sleep by them. Jealous boyfriends gunned down love rivals on the high school playing field. Straight razors mediated craps games in the migrant camps. Killers lacked the ingenuity that Real Detective demanded.

  A wife-killing outside Vineland seemed promising. But with an arrest barely two days after the body was found, it failed Pelfrey’s criterion for a Real Detective case. Jordan wanted Pelfrey to love his stories, to put them on the cover with his name in 96-point type. Real Detective was the springboard to... he didn’t know what. But he wouldn’t spring far as just another contributor. He took a pass.

  In May’s Landing a third grade teacher was charged with sprinkling arsenic in her husband’s lunchpail. Jordan studied pictures of a bottle blonde in handcuffs and a torpedo bra. Not his type. But he’d make the readers fall in love with her, and break their hearts. He’d make Pelfrey love her, too. Love him.

  The trial could go on for weeks before ending in a hung jury or acquittal. He’d sat in enough dreary courtrooms when he was collecting a check from the Press to know he didn’t want to be in one on his own time. If there was a conviction, he’d write the story from clips. It was cheating—but Pelfrey hadn’t said it wasn’t kosher. He didn’t anticipate a moral crisis.

  Every hour he wasn’t at the typewriter was an hour that he wasn’t making a buck. He hurried back to Vineland. At the circulation department of the Times he bought the back issues for the last couple of weeks. The wife-killing violated Pelfrey’s three-day rule between the murder and arrest. The pacing was sloppy, but Jordan gave the husband an A-minus for inventiveness, a solid B for the elements of high melodrama. Together they would craft a memorable story.

  He called Pelfrey without reversing the charges. “I’ve got one for you,” he said.

  “Convince me.”

  “I’m in the boondocks,” he said. “Manumuskin. The suspect’s the undertaker here, Elmer Lambert—38, ex-B-17 pilot, POW, double Purple Heart winner. The victim’s his better half.”

  “Why’d he do it?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. The cops are playing it close to the vest.”

  “Find out, and call me back.”

  “The story’s not about why,” Jordan said.

  “They’re all about why.”

  “This one’s about how,” Jordan said. “The Lamberts lived on Main Street next to the funeral parlor. When he wasn’t embalming a client or burying him, Lambert liked to sit in the living room with the papers. Never drew the shades. People on the street would see a sober man in a dark suit content in his own home, and know God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world. Never gave anybody a smile. But if they dropped dead they knew he’d take good care of them.”

  “How’d he kill her?”

  “Used a .38 he found in a client’s pocket.”

  “Undertaker’s generally a cold fish,” Pelfrey said. “I’d be shocked, the wife’s anything to look at.”

  “Just listen,” Jordan said. “Lambert told her they were getting stale, and how did a weekend at the shore sound? It must’ve sounded good because one morning her body came in with the tide at Ocean Grove. Lambert wasn’t seen there with her, but I don’t have to tell you he was the automatic suspect. He told the cops he hated the shore, had never been within a hundred miles of Ocean Grove, that his wife had wanted to get away a few days on her own, and while she was being shot he was home with the papers. He had plenty of witnesses to back him up. Twenty or a couple dozen passersby on Main saw him on his couch the same time Mrs. Lambert was in Ocean Grove. Too many alibi witnesses to argue with. Lambert was officially a non-suspect.”

  Pelfrey said, “So?”

  “Thirty-six hours later the cops got a tip he’d killed somebody else.”

  “The wife’s boyfriend?” Pelfrey said. “Lambert’s? The story can use one.”

  “There’s no boyfriend,” Jordan said, “for which I apologize. Lambert had been seen outside the cemetery with a man’s body slung over his shoulder. He was pleasant when the cops came to see him again, said they’d made a natural mistake. He hadn’t murdered anyone this time either, just brought a corpse to the graveyard to bury it. The cops asked if he carried all his customers on his shoulder. Wouldn’t it be easier to drive them in his hearse? Lambert stopped being pleasant, and said he wanted a lawyer.

  “A fresh grave had been dug in the cemetery. The D.A. got a court order to open it.”

  “And?” Pelfrey said. “Who’d they find? Judge Crater? Amelia Earhart?”

  “A mahogany casket,” Jordan said, “belonging to the woman who was buried there. Stretched out on the lid was a clothes dummy in a black suit with a moustache and a wig parted on the right like Lambert. Lambert had dressed the dummy in old clothes, and painted his face on it the way he restored stiffs who went through a windshield. The same dummy he left on the couch before taking his wife to Ocean Grove. What do you think?”

  Pelfrey said, “That was awful clever of him.”

  “You know what they say about truth being stranger than fiction.”

  “It’s bunk,” Pelfrey said. “If truth were strange, I’d go to Hollywood and get rich selling story ideas to the studios. Truth is bland, forgettable, and often ridiculous. It’s the work of amateurs with spare imagination. That’s why scriptwriters make the money they do. A story like the one you told me almost never reaches my desk. How much did you make up?”

  “I have the clips in front of me,” Jordan said. “Every fact is documented.”

  Pelfrey said, “Pictures?”

  “I’ll make some calls,” Jordan said. “Let me tell you what else I’m looking at. A young schoolteacher in May’s Landing poisoned her husband. She’s been married before, and both previous husbands died under suspicious circum—”

  “Nice-looking woman?” Pelfrey said.

  He stopped for sliders, ate them reading through the Lambert clips for ideas. The case didn’t require ideas beyond a good opening sentence. After that he’d get out of the way.

  He got home at ten, and
went straight to the typewriter. At three, when he pushed back his chair, he had to force himself not to drive the story to New York. He wanted to be there when Pelfrey apologized for doubting him. What he didn’t want was Pelfrey expecting door-to-door service for every case. He put the manuscript in an envelope, and went to bed.

  He couldn’t sleep. He turned on the lights, and had a look at the May’s Landing clips. The hook was staring him in the face—the pretty teacher’s hard-working husband wracked with stomach pains as doctors struggled to diagnose the mystery ailment. Other angles might be more effective, but he wasn’t going to knock himself out trying to find one. Clever plotting was not the mark of a Real Detective staffer. Fast typing was.

  After the principal characters took the stage, he didn’t know where the story was going. Investigators hadn’t revealed how they’d gotten on to the wife, or what she had told them. The detective work would remain under wraps until the witnesses gave evidence from the stand. If the testimony wasn’t credible, where the story was going was into the garbage.

  Jordan chain-smoked as he filled around the holes in his case. More than sleep he needed to write. In Princeton, John O’Hara, his literary hero, was up every night at the typewriter. O’Hara produced underrated art, and Adam Jordan was churning out copy for the pulps that no serious reader would see. He liked to think that what he was doing could also be called writing. That was where the similarities ended.

  He quit beating himself up, and concentrated on his story. By six he’d gone as far as the facts would take him. A couple of hours of sleep were under his belt when he left for the post office. He came back with the papers, determined to make slow work of them. With nothing left to write he had a long day to kill.

  Van Pelt was reporting that the state police had identified the Little Egg Harbor strangling victim. Twenty-two-year-old Susannah Chase, originally from Manalapan, had been a waitress at a Brigantine restaurant, the Rusty Scupper. There were typical quotes from family members devastated by news of her death. Not much else. Accompanying the short piece were photos of a gorgeous girl in a waitress’ outfit, high school cheerleader’s uniform, and looking serious but no less attractive in cap and gown.

  Susannah Chase’s name had not come to the attention of the police without other facts. That was not the way investigations progressed. The cops were sitting on information, and van Pelt was too lazy or inept to pry it loose. Jordan looked out at a gray sky promising sleet. Before the roads turned treacherous he’d find out what else the troopers had learned.

  The Absecon barracks looked like nothing so much as the suburban home of an unusually patriotic family. It was somewhat larger than other houses in the area, red brick at street level and aluminum siding on the upper floor. The stars and stripes and New Jersey flag flew above a grassy triangle edged in gravel. On a petrified log a brass plaque was inscribed with the names of town residents who had fought in every military conflict since the Battle of Trenton. Jordan ran his fingers down a shiny roster from the Second World War, lingering at the asterisks awarded to those who had died in combat.

  No one asked what his business was. Everyone knew him. Outside the basement lockup he had the run of the building. Security wasn’t tight because there was no call for it. It was a theory of Jordan’s that troopers who screwed up in sensitive postings were stashed out of the way in Absecon where nothing happened and it was impossible to resuscitate their careers.

  He went along the corridor nodding to officers who didn’t deliberately avoid him. From time to time the brass barred him from the station. Threats of legal action, and editorials he scripted himself, had forced a reversal of the bans. The heaviest burden that democracy put upon the state police was having a reporter look over their shoulder. Adam Jordan in particular.

  Day was in the communications room, watching the teletype. When the clattering stopped he tore off the paper, and saw Jordan looking in.

  “What’s new, Lieutenant?”

  “We talked to the papers yesterday.”

  Jordan remained in the doorway. All he’d meant was hello, and Day had taken it the wrong way. How did you misinterpret hello? “I was busy with something else.”

  “Watch your rear. The other fellow from the Press has the right stuff.”

  “No hard questions?”

  “Good questions,” Day said. “He’s after your job.”

  “I have one or two he forgot to ask. Where did you get Miss Chase’s name?”

  “It’s Mrs. Chase.”

  Jordan made a note. “Where—?”

  “You’ll have everything when we’re ready to give it out.”

  “I can’t hang a story on changing Miss to Mrs.”

  Day held the printout between his hands as though it were a royal proclamation, and then he looked up. “You’ve done it with less.”

  From anyone else it would have prompted a smile.

  “My next stop’s the Rusty Scupper,” Jordan said. “My readers are entitled to the stuff you’re holding back. If it comes as an exclusive, they’ll get the idea you’re not trying.”

  “Does everyone tell you what an SOB you are?”

  “I thought we were friends, Lieutenant. Did I spell your name wrong?”

  “I can’t stop you from going.” Day went to his office with Jordan on his heels.

  “Give it a shot.”

  Day hesitated before opening his door and letting Jordan in ahead of him. “The victim was ID’d by her husband.”

  “What took him?”

  “The couple had stopped living together, but they talked several times a week. When he couldn’t reach her, he went to her place on North Carolina Avenue.”

  It was good information that Jordan didn’t think he’d have gotten at the restaurant. He looked at Day as though Day was wasting his time.

  “The papers were on the doorstep...the mailbox was full... he let himself in, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary... till he noticed the drawing of the dead girl in the Press.”

  The pauses were becoming longer, invitations for Jordan to pick up his marbles and go. He pulled up a chair. “The husband have a first name?”

  “In a few days I’ll call back all the reporters for another heads-up.”

  “All of us are here now,” Jordan said. “Van Pelt was pinch-hitting.”

  Day gave him a sour look. Jordan decided that van Pelt was entitled to part.

  “Susannah Chase’s husband is Hub Chase.”

  “Should I know him?”

  “He does some pinch-hitting, too. For the Newark Bears. He’s an outfielder, a .300 hitter with some power.”

  “You like him for killing her?”

  Day shook his head.

  “How come? The husband’s always guilty till proven innocent. Estranged husbands are the gold standard of homicide suspects.”

  “He was with his club at the time of the murder.”

  “This much I do know about minor league baseball,” Jordan said. “The season ended two months ago.”

  “The Bears were barnstorming with the Havana Sugar Kings. Hub’s teammates, coaches, manager, a batboy, several batting practice pitchers, and about two hundred thousand fans will swear he was playing ball in Cuba while his wife was getting herself strangled. He says he still loved her. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  Jordan scribbled in his notebook. When he looked up, Day was watching the door.

  “I talked to the Chase broad’s sister,” Riley said as he came in. “Nice piece of tail, but she doesn’t have anything we don’t—” His expression changed several times before settling on a sorry look that was entirely for Jordan. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Don’t mind him,” Day said. “I’m tossing him a few bones.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “It’s the price for having him say nice things about us in the Press.”

  “You won’t get much,” Riley said. “He doesn’t work there any more. You didn
’t hear they canned him for making stuff up?”

  Day’s hand slapped against his side. To Jordan it almost looked like he was going for his gun. Not to shoot the messenger.

  “I’m covering the case for another publication,” Jordan said.

  “What other?” Day said.

  “It doesn’t make a difference. The story’s the same.”

  “Don’t tell me what makes a difference to me,” Day said.

  “Real Detective magazine.”

  “Those rags don’t print anything real,” Riley said. “They’re whaddayacallit, fiction.”

  “I’m just as careful with the facts.”

  “What’s that worth?” Riley said.

  “I’m not giving up on a good story because you don’t approve of the publication I work for.”

  “A writer for one of those magazines came through right before the war,” Day said. “He picked a young cop’s brains on a big murder, and stiffed him for the pictures. It cost the cop his job, and I should know. He was my old man. Get out of my sight before I toss you in a cell.”

  “This isn’t Russia. You can’t threaten me.”

  “It is till I stand corrected. Who’s going to read me the First Amendment riot act now that you don’t have the Press behind you? A fancypants New York editor?”

  Jordan didn’t have answers but was ready to argue. Riley hauled him out of his seat with an arm bent behind his back, and he was waltzed down the corridor smoothly and without a lot of pain except when he struggled hard. Outside, in the fresh air, it didn’t seem like a bad argument to have lost.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jordan swung back around Atlantic City for the road through the salt marshes to Brigantine. Summer’s grassy tangle had decayed into muck, and he lit up against the rotten egg smell. On the horizon, the picturesque Brigantine lighthouse, erected as a tourist draw, warned the new money toward Cape Cod and the east end of Long Island. Jordan, without money of any kind, shied away from the sticky bungalows thrown up in the pre-Depression boom and reshuffled by the mortgage companies ever since.

  He kept the Hornet pointed down the center of oceanfront streets where the pavement showed beneath drifting sand. The Rusty Scupper, in the former Brigantine casino, looked to be a greasy spoon with airs. The stop sign at the corner was the best reason to stop. Half a dozen cars in back seemed too many for late November, made him wonder if everyone was looking into murder till the beaches opened.