Seduction of the Innocent (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

I knelt. Gingerly I touched two fingers to the dampness and brought them back and sniffed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if it’s urine. His bladder might have evacuated when he died.”

  “...Is it?”

  I stood. “No. It’s water. And it’s cool. Almost cold.”

  She stepped just inside, tentatively, her intellect taking precedence over her emotions. “Why would the floor be wet?”

  I thought I knew. It was crazy, but I thought I might know.

  “I need to check something,” I told her.

  I got a handkerchief out and used it carefully on a rung of the chair.

  “You said this was a crime scene! Why are you touching that?”

  The chair was upright now.

  “Notice anything?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “The doctor is hanging a good three inches above where his feet would have been, standing on that chair.”

  She came tentatively over, edged beside me, held onto my arm. We have our uses. “Could he have been...on his toes, tying the rope above him, and then stepped off, knocking the chair over as he did?”

  “Very damn doubtful.”

  “Then what did happen here...?”

  I touched the doctor’s hand. “He’s cool, but rigor hasn’t set in yet. Usually takes three to four hours, unless the conditions are really warm, which speeds it up.”

  She was hugging her arms to herself. “Or cold and slows it down? It’s freezing in here.”

  “I wouldn’t call it freezing. And not cold enough to drastically affect rigor.” I added archly, “I mean, we might want to check with the coroner on this. Still...I wonder...”

  “What?”

  “There’s this old wheeze they use in those ‘minute mysteries’—ever read those?”

  “Yes, they’re sort of puzzles, right?”

  “Right. Well, there’s one where the hanged man is just dangling in a room with no furniture, and the solution is, he stood on a block of ice. And it melted, and...”

  I gestured to Dr. Frederick, who had no opinion.

  “Oh, Jack, you can’t be serious. Why would anyone commit suicide that way?”

  “They wouldn’t. It would be a murder. A particularly sadistic one.” I gestured to the corpse, which made a handy visual aid. “You stun or drug your victim, sling him up by that rope so tight around his neck that he can’t speak or cry out. Even with his arms free, he can’t do anything, the knot’s too tight, his every motion hastening his demise. Gradually the ice melts, and your victim is hanged.”

  “And that’s why the carpet is wet?”

  I pawed the air. “Yeah, but that’s just a story. A puzzle. I don’t know that it would really work. How does a murderer get a great big block of ice into the Waldorf and up a tower elevator, exactly? Or maybe he comes up the fire escape, carrying the damn thing with tongs. Naw, it’s stupid.”

  “But the carpet is wet.”

  “It is. But maybe...”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe this is a murder, meant to look like a suicide. Maybe Frederick was killed and then strung up. The police should be able to tell. Hell, I could probably tell, but I’d have to get cozier with that corpse than would be wise.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She was looking at me. She’d been mostly looking at me through this exchange, only occasionally glancing the dead man’s way.

  “If the doctor was killed,” I said, “and the body set down anywhere, even on that bed, while the murderer rigged up the rope and a fake suicide, there will be lividity...a kind of bruising...where the body lay. It’s the lowest point where blood collects after the heart stops pumping.”

  “But where does the ice block fit in?”

  “Who says it’s an ice block? This is a hotel, isn’t it? Ice machines on every floor? A great big heaping pile of ice cubes under the doctor, plus the cool night, might be enough to screw up time of death and the onslaught of rigor. The ice is evidence that melts. I mean, can you prove water soaking a carpet used to be ice?”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “Doesn’t it.” I sighed. “Somebody may have gotten very cute killing Dr. Frederick. This killer knew some of the science, but maybe not the lividity part. If the doc’s back is bruised, baby, this is a set-up.”

  Sylvia, quite used to the presence of the dangling doc by now, said, “Couldn’t we...check? Carefully?”

  “No,” I said, and took her by the arm. “I have a couple of phone calls to make.”

  “The police?”

  “Yeah, right after I call Maggie.”

  I deposited her in the living room on one of the facing couches. She was shivering and I was tempted to light a fire. But I didn’t live here, did I? Right now, nobody did.

  I used the phone on the desk in Frederick’s office, got Bryce as expected, and was put right through to Maggie.

  “Frederick’s dead,” I said without preamble. “Suite was unlocked. We went on in and found him hanging by a rope in his bedroom.”

  As casual as if I’d just reported picking up theater tickets, she said, “He doesn’t seem the suicide type.”

  “With that ego, he’d have needed two ropes.”

  “Don’t be ungracious, Jack.”

  “It’s almost certainly murder. His feet were three inches higher than the chair. There are some other hinky aspects that I can fill you in on later.”

  “Do it now.”

  I did, briefly.

  “Dr. Winters is with you?”

  “Yeah. She did well.”

  “I’m not surprised. You know, Jack, you just can’t leave this to the police.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Bob Price is going to be suspect number one, and we’re doing business with him—you accompanied him to the Senate hearing. And Dr. Frederick was negotiating with us for a column, in case you bumped your head and got amnesia. None of that’s well-known, but it will come out.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Anyway, if Frederick is a murder victim, this stands likely to tarnish the entire comics community. But if you can bring the murderer in, that might cast the Starr Syndicate in a positive light.”

  “Pretty shaken up by the doc’s death, aren’t you, Maggie?”

  “Like you are. Call Chandler.”

  She hung up.

  So I called Captain Chandler of the Homicide Bureau.

  Sitting there in the dead doc’s desk chair, I waited for the switchboard at the Tenth Precinct to put me through to the Homicide captain when I noticed the comic book on top of the stack, a Dick Tracy. I was thumbing through it idly, waiting for Chandler to come on, when I got to the minute mystery in back.

  You know the one.

  About a suicide and a block of ice?

  Captain Pat Chandler of Homicide had the rugged good looks of a TV cop, which made him all wrong for real life. A broad-shouldered six-feet, Chandler had brownish blond hair and strong features in his narrow face, including piercing sky-blue movie-star eyes and a Kirk Douglas cleft chin.

  Hollywood would have done better for him than the rumpled raincoat and formless tan porkpie he sported, which he tossed on the sofa opposite Dr. Winters in Frederick’s living room. The pressed blue suit, however, and the striped shades-of-blue tie against his button-down white shirt, looked sharp. Maybe his good-looking better half was doing her housewifely duties, although when a woman looks like a blonde Maureen O’Hara, a guy might be up for ironing his own shirts and getting his own goddamn suits to the cleaners.

  I introduced Sylvia to him, and gave him a quick rundown on how we’d come into the unlocked suite and found the hanged man. Very briefly I explained our business here— that Dr. Winters was being interviewed to assist Frederick on a prospective advice column for the Starr Syndicate.

  After asking her a few questions, Chandler directed Sylvia to stay put in the living room. Two uniformed men were posted in the hall, but the Homic
ide captain seemed otherwise alone, no sign of the lab boys yet. We went into the bedroom.

  Patiently I watched while he made most of the same deductions I had—the disparity between the chair seat and where the victim’s feet reached, for instance. I expected him to haul the doc down, but he was waiting for the forensics team. He noticed the damp floor, knelt to check if it was urine, and so on. He did not make the leap to melted ice, but he did wonder if the room—with those balcony doors open—had been cold enough to screw up determination of time of death.

  “Rigor’s just starting,” he said.

  Then he asked me to steady the corpse, which I did, hugging the dead man around the legs and lower torso, so the captain could lift up the white lab coat and untuck the doctor’s shirt and check for lividity.

  “You can let go,” he said.

  I did.

  “Check this out,” he said. He was still holding up the lab coat and the untucked shirt.

  The exposed skin was purple, almost black, with lividity.

  “Killed and moved,” I said.

  He nodded. “Probably strangled before he was strung up. If it was right before, cause of death gets murky, too. The hanging may have broken his neck. That’s supposition, obviously. The coroner will give us a better idea.”

  “If he was strangled in here,” I said, pointing to the writing desk, “maybe seated there, the body could have been moved to the bed while the rope was rigged.”

  “I’d have to agree. That’s consistent with the lividity. What do you make of the damp carpet?”

  We’d been getting along just fine, but I had a hunch that was about to change.

  “Why don’t we go sit down in the doctor’s office,” I said, putting an amiable hand on his shoulder, “and talk about it.”

  Chandler glanced around the bedroom, realizing nothing much was to be done until the lab boys and photographers showed. So he followed me through the living room into the dining-room turned psychiatrist’s den. Sylvia glanced at us curiously and I raised a hand as if to say, “I’ve got this.”

  I took the liberty of sitting behind the doc’s desk and Chandler took the visitor’s chair. I was tempted to stretch out on the couch, or maybe suggest the captain do that. What I had to tell him was screwy enough for any shrink’s office.

  I began with the minute mystery notion—he began smirking halfway through—then moved to my own variation, which traded a block of ice for heaping piles of ice-machine cubes.

  “Well,” he said thoughtfully, his arms folded, an ankle over a knee, “there’s no shortage of those in a hotel. You’re saying this person knew enough to try to slow down the rigor process and foul up the coroner, and what? Give himself an alibi?”

  “Or herself. Certainly muddy the waters.”

  “But this mastermind didn’t know about lividity.”

  I shrugged. “Lots of people don’t. I think our killer is clever, even cute, but...”

  His hand was up; if he’d had a whistle in his mouth, he’d have blown it. “Our killer?”

  I raised both hands in surrender. “Your killer. I’m just the guy who found the body.”

  “Not the first time. Not even the first time in this hotel.”

  “Granted, which speaks for my expert status. Mine is an informed opinion, Captain. I think our killer learned about science reading mystery novels and, well, comic books. He or she picked up on slowing down the body’s decomposition by cooling it off, but never learned the lividity lesson. But I think there may be even more to it than that.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  Before he got there, I had opened the Dick Tracy comic book to the one-page mystery feature about the man hanged to death in a room without furniture. Though I’d already touched the comic, I’d taken care thereafter not to add any more fingerprints. I used a crystal inkwell to hold the comic book open to the specific page.

  “Check this out,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Just do it. Don’t touch it, though. Eyeballs only.”

  He seemed mildly irritated, but got to his feet and leaned over the desk.

  “Jesus,” he said, his baby-blue eyes tilting up at me. “Where did you find this?”

  “Right here on the blotter. On top of this stack.” I indicated the pile of horror and crime comics that were apparently evidence the late doctor had collected for his anti-comics crusade. That particular comic was a new kind of evidence now.

  “I touched it,” I admitted, “before I knew it might have any significance. You have my prints on file to check against any you find. The pulp paper inside won’t be helpful, probably, but that slick cover may be.”

  He sat slowly, almost collapsing into the chair. “What the hell does this mean?”

  “It’s your case, remember? Your killer.”

  “Spare me the clowning. You’ve had time to think about it. And you’re part of this nutty comic-book crowd.”

  “More like comic-strip crowd, but yeah, I think I may have some insights for you. My gut instinct is that somebody staged that suicide with a couple of things in mind. First, if the Homicide Bureau calls it a suicide, no problem. The killer moves on with his or her life.”

  “But this is a cute, clever killer, you said.”

  “Yeah. This thing has...levels. The first level is, maybe it gets written off as suicide. Second level is, maybe somebody tried to cool off the body by opening the balcony doors onto an unseasonably cold night, plus piling a ton of ice under the dead man.”

  “So where does the comic book come in?”

  “It’s the third level.”

  “Purpose being...?”

  I shrugged. “I figure it for a plant. Somebody official notices this prominently placed funny book on the dead man’s desk, and now the Homicide Bureau is taking seriously the possibility that an ice block was used in a very sadistic kill. Suddenly you’re looking for a maniac with an ice block, in the Waldorf Hotel! Pretty funny.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “But there’s another level. A fourth level—if you boys buy the ice block notion, then you start to think the killer is a comic book reader. Maybe one of the kids Frederick worked with. Just last night, I saw a teen hoodlum pull a knife on Frederick at his Harlem clinic.”

  “Christ, why didn’t you mention that?” He was fumbling for his notebook and pencil. “What’s the kid’s name?”

  “Ennis,” I said. “That’s all I know, but it’ll be easy enough to track.”

  He was writing that down. He flashed me a smile that was almost a sneer. “Of course, suspect number one is going to be your buddy, Bob Price.”

  “Bob’s not my buddy exactly. We were friends as kids. We have mutual business interests as adults. But I do know him well enough to say that I can’t see him as a murderer.”

  “Plus there’s some young cartoonist who threatened Dr. Frederick at the hearing...”

  “Will Allison,” I said. Why hide it? “I can probably get you contact info. Anything to make your job easier, Captain.”

  He sighed. Tucked the notebook away, and leaned back. Crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes and said, “Okay, I don’t mind having you conduct your own parallel investigation, as long as you keep me informed.”

  “Who said I was going to investigate? But, all right—sure, as long as you do the same.”

  His grin was almost as rumpled as that raincoat he’d dumped out on the sofa.

  A Negro plainclothes dick, Sgt. Jeffords, stuck his head in. “Captain? We informed the chief house detective of the circumstances, as you instructed. And he’s here now. Would you like a word with him?”

  “Send him in,” Chandler said. His eyes found me. “Maybe you better step out, Jack.”

  “No thanks,” I said, leaning back in the swivel chair. “We’re keeping each other informed, remember.”

  He made a face, but nodded.

  “Jack Starr!” Bill Griffin said, coming in, grinning. “Don’t tell me you found another body? If I were C
handler, I’d check your damn alibi.”

  He was a skinny five-nine nondescript character in a nondescript brown suit and hat—the perfect guy for the house dick job at any hotel, but at the Waldorf he was in charge of a small army of ten detectives.

  “Treating Jack like a suspect is not a bad idea,” Chandler said to Griffin, getting up, shaking the man’s hand.

  Then the Homicide man sat and so did Griffin, over on the patient’s couch. The skinny dick took off his hat and began turning it like a prospector panning for gold. But he already had some gold for us.

  “When I heard the suspicious-death victim was Dr. Frederick,” Griffin said to Chandler, who’d angled his chair toward the house dick, “I thought I better talk to you.”

  Chandler’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

  Griffin nodded. His face was so ordinary, you could see him Monday and not identify him in a line-up Tuesday. “I may have a suspect or two for you. If this is a homicide.”

  “It may be a suicide,” Chandler said, “but homicide is a strong possibility. Of course, we won’t make that determination until the coroner’s findings come in. And even that isn’t for public consumption, okay, Bill?”

  “Sure, Pat.”

  They were on a first-name basis now. Not a surprise—Bill Griffin was an ex-New York cop, as were virtually all the house dicks in town.

  “There was a kid last night,” he said, wheeling the hat, “a scruffy little nigger kid?”

  I said, “I thought you called them Negroes at the Waldorf, Bill.”

  “Hey, it was a colored kid, black as the ace of spades, rose by any other name. He was millin’ around the lobby. Finally, he went to the desk and said he wanted to see ‘Doc Frederick.’ The desk clerk said he’d check with the doctor, but really he called me.”

  I asked, “You were on duty, Bill?”

  “Yeah. I work the occasional night. Even big chiefs gotta make like an Indian, y’know, now and then. Anyway, I haul the Negro kid’s ass into our office and we frisk him and he has a goddamn switchblade on him. These punks! I still got it, if you want it, Captain. The kid was a handful, and kept saying he had to see Frederick, that it was important. Guess what? We showed him to a rear exit and said if we saw him around here again, we’d be turning his black ass in to the cops.”