by Ed McBain
“Was he in the play, too?”
“Yes.”
“Why was he doing it? Why was he killing all those people?”
“We’re not sure yet. We think it had something to do with a party he went to.”
“A party?” Redfield asked.
“Well, it’s pretty complicated, sir. That’s why I’d like to talk to your wife.”
“Of course,” Redfield said. “The number is Grover 6-2100. I think you can reach her there now.”
“Is that your home number, sir?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Will she be able to come down here right away?”
“I think so, yes.”
“You have no children, sir?”
“What?”
“Children. Will she have to make arrangements? If so, I can go…”
“No. No children.” Quickly Redfield added, “We’ve only been married a short time.”
“I see,” Carella said. He pulled the phone to him and began dialing.
“Two years, actually. I’m Margaret’s second husband.”
“I see.”
“Yes, she divorced her first husband in 1956.”
Carella put the receiver to his ear and listened to the ringing on the other end. “We’re anxious to get her down here, because we’ve either got to book Cohen for homicide or let him go. A man from the DA’s office is coming up soon, and anything concrete we can provide him with will be a big help. Your wife just might be able to…”
“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.
“Hello, Mrs. Redfield?”
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad. Your husband is here with me, Mrs. Redfield. We’ve been trying to locate you on these sniper killings.”
“Oh. Oh, yes,” she said. Her voice was curiously toneless.
“I wonder if you could come down to the station house. We have a suspect, and we’re very anxious to talk to you.”
“All right.”
“Can you come down right now?”
“All right.”
“Fine, Mrs. Redfield. When you get here, just tell the desk sergeant you want to see me, Detective Carella, and he’ll pass you through.”
“All right. Where is it?”
“On Grover Avenue, right opposite the park’s carousel entrance.”
“All right. Is Lewis there?”
“Yes. Do you want to speak to him?”
“No, that’s all right.”
“We’ll see you soon, then.”
“All right,” Margaret Redfield said, and then she hung up.
“She’s coming over,” Carella said.
“Good,” Redfield answered.
Carella smiled and put the phone back onto its cradle. It rang almost instantly. He pulled the receiver up again and said, “87th Squad, Carella.”
“Carella, this is Freddie Holt, the Eight-Eight across the park.”
“Hi, Freddie,” Carella said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
“You still working on the sniper case?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. We got your boy.”
“What?” Carella said.
“Your boy, the guy who’s been doing it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We picked him up maybe ten minutes ago. Shields and Durante made the collar. Got him on a rooftop on Rexworth. Shot two ladies in the street before we could pin him down.” Holt paused. “Carella? You with me?”
“I’m with you,” Carella said wearily.
The man in the cage in the squadroom of the 88th Precinct was a raving lunatic. He was wearing dungarees and a tattered white shirt, and his hair was long and matted, and his eyes were wild. He climbed the sides of the small mesh prison like a monkey, peering out at the detectives in the room, snarling and spitting, rolling his eyes.
When Carella came into the room, the man in the cage shouted, “Here’s another one! Shoot the sinner!”
“That’s the man?” Carella asked Holt.
“That’s him, all right. Hey, Danny!” Holt called, and a detective sitting at one of the desks rose and walked to where Carella and Holt were standing.
“Steve Carella, Danny Shields.”
“Hi,” Shields said. “I think we met once, didn’t we? That fire over on Fourteenth?”
“I think so, yeah,” Carella said.
“Don’t go too near the cage,” Shields warned. “He spits.”
“Want to fill me in on it, Danny?” Carella said.
Shields shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. The beat cop called in about a half-hour ago—it was about a half-hour, huh, Freddie?”
“Yeah, about that,” Holt said.
“Told us some nut was up on the roof shooting down into the street. So Durante and me, we took the squeal, and he was still blasting away when we got there. I went up the hallway, and Durante took the building next door, to go up the roof, you know, catch him by surprise. By the time we got up there, he’d plugged two dames in the street. One was an old lady, the other was a pregnant woman. They’re both in the hospital now.” Shields shook his head. “I just spoke to the doctor on the phone. He thinks the pregnant one’s gonna die. The old lady has a chance, he says. That’s the way it always is, huh?”
“What happened on the roof, Danny?”
“Well, Durante opened fire from the next building, and I come in and got him from behind. He was some bundle, believe me. Look at him. He thinks he’s Tarzan.”
“Shoot the sinners!” the man in the cage yelled. “Shoot all the filthy sinners!”
“Did you get his weapon?”
“Yeah. It’s over there on the desk, tagged and ready to go.”
Carella glanced at the desk. “That looks like a .22,” he said.
“That’s what it is.”
“You can’t fire a .308 slug from that,” Carella said.
“Who said you could?”
“Well, what makes you think this is my boy?”
“We figured it was a chance. We been getting a lot of heat on this, Carella. The loot got a call from downtown only yesterday, asking if we was really helping you guys or just fooling around up here.”
“I don’t think he’s connected with it,” Carella said.
“Well, what do you want us to do?”
“Have you checked his apartment yet?”
“What apartment? He probably sleeps in the park.”
“Where’d he get a rifle?”
“We’re checking our stolen guns list now. There was a couple of hockshops busted into, night before last. Maybe he done it.”
“Have you questioned him yet?”
“Questioned him? He’s got a screw loose, all he does is yell about sinners and spit at anybody who goes near him. Look at him, the crazy bastard.” Shields looked at him, and then burst out laughing. “Jesus,” he said, “just like a monkey, look at him.”
“Well, if you find out where he lives, run a check for me, will you? We’re looking for any gun that might have fired a .308 Remington.”
“That’s a lot of guns, buddy,” Shields said.
“Yeah, but it’s not a .22.”
“That’s for sure.”
“You’d better call Buenavista and tell them to warm up a bed in the psycho ward.”
“I already done it,” Shields said. “Not your boy, huh?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Too bad. I’ll tell you the truth, Carella, we were a little anxious to get rid of him.”
“Why? Nice sweet old guy like that.”
“Well, we got a problem, you see.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Who’s gonna take him out of that cage?” Shields asked.
Margaret Buff Redfield was waiting for Carella when he got back to the squadroom.
She was thirty-nine years old, and she looked tired. Her hair was brown, and her eyes were brown, and she wore a shade of lipstick too red for her complexion, and a d
ress that hung limply from her figure.
She took Carella’s hand wearily when her husband introduced them, and then looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to crack her across the face. Suddenly Carella had the notion that the woman had been hit before, and often. He glanced at the soft-spoken Redfield, and then turned his attention back to Margaret.
“Mrs. Redfield,” he said, “there are some questions we’d like to ask you.”
“All right,” Margaret said.
Intuitively Carella turned to Redfield and said, “Sir, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to your wife privately.”
“Why?” Redfield said. “We’re married. We have no secrets.”
“I know that, sir, and I respect it, believe me. But we’ve found that people will often be very nervous in the presence of their husbands or wives, and we try to conduct an interview privately, if it’s at all possible.”
“I see,” Redfield said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well…”
“If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll ask Miscolo to show you to a room down the hall. There are some magazines in there, and you can smoke if you—”
“I don’t smoke,” Redfield said.
“Or perhaps Miscolo can bring you a cup of coffee.”
“Thank you, I don’t want a—”
“Miscolo!” Carella yelled, and Miscolo came running at the double. “Would you show Mr. Redfield down the hall, please, and make him comfortable?”
“Right this way, sir,” Miscolo said.
Reluctantly, Redfield got out of his chair and followed Miscolo out of the squadroom. Carella waited until he was certain Redfield was out of earshot, and then he turned to Margaret and quickly said, “Tell me about the party in 1940.”
“What?” she said, startled.
“The party at Randy Norden’s house.”
“How…how did you know about that?” she asked.
“We know about it.”
“Does my husband know?” she asked quickly.
“We didn’t ask him, Mrs. Redfield.”
“You won’t tell him, will you?”
“Of course not. We only want to know about David Arthur Cohen, Mrs. Redfield. Can you tell me how he behaved that night?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She moved back on the seat of the chair, and her voice came from her throat like a whine, as though he were holding a club and were threatening her with it. Her eyes had widened, and she visibly moved deeper into the chair, her back climbing it, her shoulders pulling away from him.
“What did he do, Mrs. Redfield?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and again the words were a whine, and her eyes were beginning to blink uncertainly now.
“Mrs. Redfield, I’m not asking you what you did that night. I only want to know—”
“I didn’t do anything!” she shouted, and she gripped the sides of the chair with both hands, as though knowing he would hit her now, and bracing herself for the shock.
“No one said you did, Mrs. Redfield. I only want to know if anything happened that might have caused Cohen to—”
“Nothing happened,” she said. “I want to go home now. I want my husband.”
“Mrs. Redfield, we think we have a murderer downstairs. He claims he had nothing to do with the murders, but if we can find something, anything, that’ll start him talking…”
“I don’t know anything. I want to go home.”
“Mrs. Redfield, I don’t want to have to…”
“I don’t know anything.”
“…embarrass you, or make this difficult for you. But unless we can find something concrete to—”
“I told you, I don’t know. I want to go home. I don’t know.”
“Mrs. Redfield,” Carella said evenly, “we know everything that happened that night at Randy Norden’s. Everything. Helen Struthers told us about it, and so did Cohen.”
“I didn’t do anything. They did it.”
“Who?”
“The…the others.”
“What others?”
“Helen and Blanche. Not me. Not me.”
“What did they do?”
“They couldn’t get me to do it,” Margaret said. “I wouldn’t, and they couldn’t force me. I knew what was right. I was only seventeen, but I certainly knew what was right and what was wrong. It was the others, you see.”
“You had no part of anything that happened, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then why didn’t you leave, Mrs. Redfield?”
“Because they…they held me. All of them. Even the girls. They held me while…Listen, I didn’t even want to be in the play. I was Mag, the barmaid, she was a barmaid, not a girl like the others, my mother wouldn’t let me be in the play at first because of the kind of girls they were supposed to be, I was only in the play because Randy talked me into it. But I didn’t know the kind of boy Randy was until the night of the party, when he was with Helen. That’s what started it all, his being with Helen, and everybody drinking so much…”
“Were you drunk, Mrs. Redfield?”
“No, yes, I don’t know. I must have been drunk. If I’d been sober, I wouldn’t have let them…”
Margaret stopped.
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
“Mrs. Redfield, do you want to tell this to a policewoman?”
“I have nothing to tell.”
“I’ll get a policewoman.”
“I have nothing to say to her. What happened wasn’t my fault. I’ve never…do you think I wanted what happened?”
“Miscolo, get me a policewoman, on the double!” Carella yelled.
“The others did, but not me. I was drunk, or they wouldn’t have been able to hold me. I was only seventeen. I didn’t know about such things, because I came from a good home. If I hadn’t been drunk…I wouldn’t have let them ruin my life. If I’d known the kind of boy Randy was, the kind of filth in him, in his body, and the others, Helen especially, if I’d known what she was, I wouldn’t have stayed at the party, I wouldn’t have had a single drink, I wouldn’t even have been in the play, if I’d known what kind of boys they were, and girls, if I’d known what they could do to me, if I’d only known. But I was seventeen, I didn’t even think about such things, and when they said they were going to have a party after the show, I thought it would be a nice party, after all Professor Richardson was going to be there, but they were drinking even with him in the room, and then when he left, it must have been about midnight, they really began drinking. I’d never even drunk anything stronger than beer before that, and here they were pouring drinks, and before I knew it, only the six of us were left…”
Alf Miscolo saw the policewoman going down the corridor toward the squadroom, and he figured it wouldn’t be long before he could stop the pretense of entertaining Lewis Redfield. Redfield had tired quickly of even the new Saturday Evening Post, and he fidgeted uneasily in his chair now in the sparsely furnished, loosely titled “reception room,” which was really a small cubicle off the clerical office. Miscolo wished both Redfield and his wife would go home so that he could get back to typing and filing, but instead the policewoman vanished down the corridor, and Redfield sat in his chair and fidgeted as though his wife were in the hands of heartless torturers.
Miscolo was a married man himself, so he said, “Don’t worry about her, Mr. Redfield. They’re only asking a few questions.”
“She’s a nervous woman,” Redfield answered. “I’m afraid they might upset her.” He did not look at Miscolo as he spoke. His eyes and his complete attention were riveted to the open doorway leading to the corridor. He could not see the squadroom from where he sat, nor could he hear a word spoken there, but his eyes stayed on the hallway, and he seemed to be straining to catch stray snatches of sound.
“How long you been married, sir?” Miscolo asked, making conversation.
“Two years,” Redfield said.
“You’re practical
ly newlyweds, huh?” Miscolo said, grinning. “That’s why you’re so worried about her. Me, I been married…”
“I don’t think we fall into the ‘newlywed’ category,” Redfield said. “We’re not exactly teenagers.”
“No, I didn’t mean…”
“Besides, this is my wife’s second marriage.”
“Oh,” Miscolo said, and couldn’t think of anything to add to it.
“Yes,” Redfield said.
“Well, plenty of people get married late in life,” Miscolo said lamely. “Lots of times, those turn out to be the best marriages. Both parties are ready to accept family responsibility, ready to settle…”
“We don’t have a family,” Redfield said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“We don’t have any children.”
“Well, sooner or later,” Miscolo said, smiling. “Unless, of course, you don’t want any.”
“I’d like a family,” Redfield said.
“Nothing like it,” Miscolo answered, warming to his subject, “I’ve got two kids myself, a girl and a boy. My daughter’s studying to be a secretary at one of the commercial high schools here in the city. My son’s up at MIT. That’s in Boston, you know. You ever been to Boston?”
“No.”
“I was there when I was in the Navy, oh, this was way back even before the Second World War. Were you in the service?”
“Yes.”
“What branch?”
“The Army.”
“Don’t they have a base up near Boston someplace?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seems to me I saw a lot of soldiers when I was there.” Miscolo shrugged. “Where were you stationed?”
“How much longer will they be with her?” Redfield asked suddenly.
“Oh, coupla minutes, that’s all. Where were you stationed, Mr. Redfield?”
“In Texas.”
“Doing what?”
“The usual. I was with an infantry company.”
“Ever get overseas?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I was in the Normandy invasion.”
“No kidding?”
Redfield nodded. “D-Day plus one.”
“That musta been a picnic, huh?”
“I survived,” Redfield said.