Heartstone

by Phillip Margolin

“What about the other boy, Bobby?”

  “He’s a little different. I think he would turn out okay if he had half a chance. Of course, he doesn’t. Father died when they were young. Mother’s an alcoholic. Bobby is bright. So is Billy, for that matter. But they don’t apply themselves in school.”

  “What was Bobby’s problem?”

  “Also fighting. He beat up a banker’s son at school. The kid had it coming, but the father made a stink. The banker’s kid had made some remark about Bobby’s clothes. He told me that his mother had been drunk and he had washed them himself. He admitted, in an indirect way, that he was jealous of the other boy’s clothes.”

  “You mean he disliked the other boy for being rich?”

  “That was Billy’s favorite theme. He’s in a juvenile gang, you know. It’s called the Cobras. I would get him talking about the gang and you couldn’t stop him. He felt that the gang membership gave him status. He told me that he had earned his membership and that made him better than the kids at school who were rich only because of their parents. They both resent their parents. They feel that the father somehow betrayed them by dying and leaving them to fend for themselves.”

  “Have Billy or Bobby ever gotten into trouble for using a knife?”

  George thought for a moment.

  “Not that I can recall.”

  “George, do you mind if I keep these files for a day? I want to study them and I don’t have the time now.”

  “I shouldn’t, but go ahead. Just don’t get caught. I’d be in real trouble if anyone found out.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll have them back to you by tomorrow.”

  “This is important, huh?”

  “Very. I’d tell you about it if I could, but I want to be sure before I accuse anyone.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I’ll admit it’s a possibility,” Harvey said.

  “Then you agree that I should bring them in for questioning?”

  Marcus thumbed through the stack of papers that Shindler had put on his desk forty-five minutes ago. They contained police reports, notes from juvenile records and a psychiatric profile that had been done on William Ray Coolidge. The stack of papers painted a picture of two alienated, low-income juveniles who harbored a deep resentment against a society with which they could not cope. Shindler thought that he saw a pattern.

  “They crash the party to see how the other half lives. They are jealous of these kids. One of the boys I talked to said he thought that Billy might even have a crush on Alice Fay, the girl who threw the party.

  “Then, they’re beaten up and humiliated by the very people they despise. They get drunk. Later, they run into Walters and Murray. They know them from school. They see two perfect representatives of the very social class they hate.”

  “Nice theory. But you have nothing to connect the Coolidges with the killings.”

  “Esther Freemont’s glasses.”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “Not enough. According to her, she didn’t even have them on the evening of the crime.”

  “She’s lying. I know it.”

  “But you have to prove it. Only don’t go off half-cocked to the D.A. until you can.”

  “What about questioning the Coolidges?”

  Marcus looked down at the reports again.

  “All right, let’s bring them in.”

  Shindler had developed a mental image of Billy Coolidge and he was surprised at how accurate it was. The thing that surprised him most was the physical reaction the boy produced in him. There was something there that repelled him. The boy was good looking in an almost effeminate way. His lips were too thick and they curled naturally into a sneer. The hair was thick with grease. Whenever he saw one of these punks with their slicked-back hair and black leather jackets, he felt a slow hate. They stood for too many things that he did not.

  “Have a seat, Billy,” Shindler said, motioning to a wooden chair on the other side of a wooden table. Shindler was seated in a comfortable chair on the far side of the small, bare interrogation room.

  Billy took a cautious look around. There was nothing to rest his eyes on except Shindler, so he stopped there. His brother had been taken to a room on another floor by a policeman as big as the one who was standing behind him. There did not seem to be much he could do, so he looked at Shindler.

  “What is this all about?” he asked.

  “I’d like to have a talk with you,” Shindler replied.

  “Well, I don’t want to talk to you. So let me go, or let me call a lawyer.”

  “You don’t need a lawyer, son. All I want you to do is answer a few questions.”

  “About what?”

  “Sit down, first,” Shindler said in a voice still calm.

  “I don’t want to sit down and I’m not answering any questions. Now, let me out.”

  The defiant tone. The scared, defiant look. Like Nazis. Shindler hated them. He nodded and the big policeman twisted the boy’s arm behind him and sat him down.

  “Listen to me, asshole,” he whispered, “when Detective Shindler asks you to do something, you do it. Do you understand?”

  Billy groaned and writhed in the big man’s grasp. He gasped out an “okay” and grunted with relief when he was released. He rubbed his shoulder and cast a frightened look behind him. He was scared now. That was good.

  “Would you like a cigarette?” Shindler offered. Billy shook his head and Shindler lit one for himself.

  “You were born in Portsmouth, weren’t you?”

  “You know that shit from my records, so why ask?”

  The policeman took a step forward and Billy swiveled his head to watch him. Shindler raised his hand.

  “All right. Yeah. I was born in Portsmouth. So what?”

  “You and your brother have been pretty much on your own since your father died, haven’t you?”

  “I guess,” Billy replied grudgingly.

  “Are you working now?”

  “You know I’m working at McNary Esso.”

  He was sulking. He had turned away from Shindler so that his profile was to him and his eyes were on the floor.

  “Do you like working at McNary’s?”

  “What are you? Some kind of social worker? I want out of here and I’m not answering any more questions.”

  “Not even about what you were doing on the evening of Friday, November twenty-fifth?”

  Uncertainty. Coolidge cocked his head and looked at Shindler.

  “What’s that?”

  “Last November twenty-fifth. The Friday after Thanksgiving.”

  “How the fuck should I know what I was doing then. That’s six months ago.”

  “Maybe I can help you. You had a little fight at Alice Fay’s house. Do you remember that?”

  “I don’t remember nothing.”

  “Now you’re being stupid, Billy. We have a dozen eyewitnesses who will swear under oath that you had a fight with Tommy Cooper, his brother and some other boys that night.”

  “Did that son of a bitch Cooper swear out a complaint on me?”

  “No one has sworn out a complaint. We just want to know what happened that night.”

  “It was Cooper’s fault. They tried to throw us out. I was just defending myself.”

  “With a knife?”

  That stopped him, Shindler thought. He doesn’t know what we know.

  “Okay, so I had a knife. That fat bastard that hit me had a broken bottle, so I pulled my knife.”

  “Do you have the knife now?”

  “The knife? No, I lost the knife.”

  “That’s too bad. Where did you lose it?”

  “I don’t know. I just lost it.”

  “When?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “What did you do after you left Alice Fay’s house?”

  “I don’t know. Cruised around, I guess.”

  “Who was with you?”

  “You know wh
o was with me. You got a dozen eyewitnesses.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  He clammed up again, half turning from Shindler and refocusing on the floor.

  “How soon after you left Alice’s house did you cop the wine?”

  “Who said I took some wine?”

  “We had a long talk with Esther Freemont.”

  “Then you know everything, so why waste my time?”

  “I like your company.”

  Coolidge laughed suddenly.

  “You must think I’m really stupid. You expect me to come in here and just admit I stole something. Why don’t you just give me the key to the jail so I can lock myself up, too?”

  “We don’t care about the wine, Billy. We care about what happened later.”

  “Later?”

  “After you and Bobby and Esther drank the wine.”

  “Nothing happened later. What are you talking about?”

  “You just tell me what you did after you drank the wine and you can go home.”

  Coolidge eyed Shindler suspiciously. When he answered, he answered in a slow, even tone. The anger and outrage had disappeared from his voice.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you think I did after we supposedly drank this wine.”

  “That’s not the way we work things around here, Billy. Now I asked you a question and I want an answer.”

  Coolidge was staring at Shindler. His eyes were on Shindler’s eyes. Shindler knew that this was high chess. Coolidge was straining to read his mind. Trying to figure out the move that would end the game for him, knowing that the wrong move would be fatal.

  Then, Coolidge smiled and relaxed.

  “Sure. Why not. You promise none of us will get in any trouble over…Well, let’s say there was some wine. No one would get in trouble over that, would he?”

  “No one will get in any trouble over the wine,” Shindler said.

  “Okay. Say, I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time. It’s just that I’ve been rousted by the cops before and I don’t like it.

  “About afterwards. We just sat on a side street and drank the wine. There was a couple of bottles, ’cause we had some in the car already. Then Esther got blotto and we took her home. That’s all.”

  “Where was this side street?”

  “I don’t remember. It was a couple of blocks from the grocery store where I took the wine. That’s over by Lake and Grant.”

  “So you drank some wine and Esther got drunk and you took her straight home.”

  “Not straight home. I think we cruised a little downtown. But Esther was feeling pretty bad, so we didn’t stay downtown long.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember the hour you were downtown?”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you there.”

  “We know it didn’t happen that way, Billy.”

  “What do you mean? I just told you what happened.”

  “I’m afraid you left something out. Think hard.”

  Coolidge looked at Shindler. A little of the cool was fading, but the veneer was still there.

  “I didn’t leave anything out. We drank the wine, cruised downtown and took Esther home.”

  “You left out the park.”

  “What park?”

  “Lookout Park.”

  “What are you talking about? We didn’t go to Lookout Park.”

  He was nervous now. There was strain in his voice. Shindler could sense it.

  “You can stop pretending, Billy. We found Esther Freemont’s glasses at the park. We know you were there that night.”

  Shindler stared at Coolidge. The boy’s eyes were bright with fear and Shindler sensed something alien and hideous in their depth.

  “I wasn’t in the park that night,” Coolidge insisted. Coolidge’s breathing had become more rapid and the boy was constantly shifting in his seat.

  “You were there, Billy. Telling us about it will make it easier on you.”

  “Easier for what? I didn’t do anything and I wasn’t in the park.”

  “Did you know Richie Walters and Elaine Murray, Billy?”

  Coolidge’s mouth hung open and he stared wide-eyed at the detective.

  “Is that what this is all about? You think…I want out of here. Now.”

  His voice had risen to a scream.

  “You ain’t gonna make me guilty of that. Let me out.”

  “I’ll let you out, you little scumbag, when you tell me the truth,” Shindler said in a voice tight with hate. “When you tell me how you stabbed that poor boy and gang-fucked that girl.”

  Shindler was standing. His body quivered and he moved slowly toward Coolidge. The boy turned to the policeman with a silent plea for help. His hands were thrust forward, palms out, as if to ward off some invisible blow.

  The sight of the boy before him filled Shindler with rage. He could see the girl, naked, pleading in terror for her life. He wanted to smash, to hit. The boy was yelling something. The policeman was looking at Shindler with alarm. Shindler realized where he was. His hand was shaking uncontrollably. He opened the door and left the room.

  There was a men’s room in the hallway. He plunged into it. He leaned against the wall. His body shook. His breathing was shallow. The face in the wall mirror frightened him. It was not his face. It was possessed of emotions as alien to him as the acts of the boy. It was the face of the primeval hunter. The killer in man.

  He splashed himself with cold water. He sat on a folding chair. Slowly, he gained control. Harvey was on the second floor. He got up and walked downstairs.

  Marcus came out at his knock. He looked at Shindler uncertainly.

  “What happened?”

  Shindler shook his head.

  “I lost my temper. It’s okay now. Are you getting anywhere?”

  “Lost your temper? What do you mean?” Marcus asked, concerned. He did not like Shindler’s intense interest in the case. He considered it unhealthy and unprofessional.

  “It was nothing. How are you doing?”

  “I don’t think the kid is involved, Roy.”

  “Not involved?”

  “He’s been polite and cooperative. He answers all the questions. And he tells the same story as the Freemont girl.”

  “You’re wrong, Harvey. You have to be. You didn’t see that little punk. They invented a cover story, that’s all.”

  “Or they are telling the truth.”

  “No, damn it. It’s them. I know it.”

  “Roy, these feelings are all subjective. You don’t have a single piece of evidence tying these boys to the killings. If you want to know, I think you are getting personally involved in this case and it is affecting your judgment. I’m going to release Bobby Coolidge and I think you should do the same with his brother.”

  That evening Shindler ate a TV dinner and drank a bottle of beer. Then he took off his shoes and tie and stretched out, still dressed, on his bed. He placed his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He noticed a tiny crack in the ceiling plaster and traced it with his eye. A car hummed by outside. He closed his eyes and listened to his breathing.

  Sometimes he felt that he was leaving his sanity behind. Moving so slowly into the world of the mad that he would not notice until it was too late. It was not healthy to encounter violent death so frequently. When death became part of each day, it started to lose its meaning. The next step was for life to lose its value.

  Recently he had investigated the murder of a grocer who had been brutally beaten by two men. The face had been obliterated. The grocer had been a good family man with two beautiful children. Shindler had calmly directed the investigation at the scene. He had posed the body for pictures with bored detachment. He had conducted the interviews in a bored monotone. The death had meant nothing to him. When he realized this, hours later, it had shaken him.

  The Murray-Walters case was a spiritual lifeline. He was grateful for a death that had awakened something human in him. Something that Harvey suggested was making it impossible
for him to continue with the investigation.

  He felt lost. Was that the choice? Did feeling lead to failure? Did success have to be purchased with a loss of human qualities? Were his emotions blinding him to the truth?

  Harvey had talked to him for a long time after they had let the Coolidges go. He had tried to convince him that he should forget them. That the truth lay elsewhere. Shindler did not buy that. Somewhere there was a key. He had never been this sure about a case. Those glasses. The personalities. The knife. The fight on the same evening. There were too many coincidences.

  Shindler looked at his watch. He had been lying in the dark for an hour. Esther Freemont. He could see her large brown eyes. Doe’s eyes. Soft eyes. An animal at bay. She was not made of the same stuff as the Coolidges. She was soft. She would bend to his will. He could break her if she was lying. He closed his eyes and thought about it. He would see her in the morning.

  Shindler had the plan worked out by the time he arrived at Esther’s house. The day was sunny and warm. There were no clouds in the sky. He told Esther’s mother that he wanted to ask her some more questions about the glasses and that he would bring her home shortly.

  Esther went with him reluctantly. She never relaxed. Her eyes moved constantly. Her hands would not keep still. Shindler approved. He wanted her nervous and without reserves, so that there would be nothing there but truth when the moment came.

  Shindler engaged Esther in small talk so that she would not notice that they were not headed toward the station house. He headed up Monroe Boulevard and he noticed her looking out the window uncertainly.

  “This isn’t the way downtown.”

  “I wanted to show you where we found the glasses.”

  “Are we going to the park?”

  Shindler nodded.

  “To where Richie…?”

  “To where we found the glasses.”

  “I don’t want to go there,” she said suddenly. Shindler noticed that she was gripping the seat hard enough to make her knuckles turn white.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I really don’t want to go up there. Please, Mr. Shindler. It scares me.”

  “It shouldn’t frighten you, Esther. The place doesn’t look the same anymore. I’ll take you to the meadow where we found Richie. You’ll see. You would never know that someone died there.”