“That’s fine,” Leopold said.
“I got a crown and a dozen roses. Then I came home and put the weight all back on.”
“That’s life, I guess. I wanted to ask you more about last night.”
“What about last night?” She didn’t ask him to sit down, so he stood.
“You see, all five of you positively identified Kurt Aspeth as the murderer of his wife. And you identified the body at the morgue as being his.”
“That’s right.”
“But he died around 8:30, and you didn’t report the shooting till about 9:05.”
“That’s when it happened,” she insisted.
Leopold sighed. “The thing’s an impossibility, Mrs. Youst. Two things seem certain—Aspeth was dead at 8:30, and Aspeth shot his wife a half hour later. One element must be wrong. The killing must have taken place a full hour earlier than you said. Why did you wait an hour before summoning the police, Mrs. Youst?”
“But I didn’t!”
He couldn’t doubt her words. The idea of five cleaning women dancing around the body in some obscene rite for an hour before calling the police was just too preposterous. And yet, if he accepted her story, he was left with no one but Aspeth’s ghost as the murderer.
“Maybe the shock was so great you lost all sense of time. An hour might have gone by without your realizing it.”
“Impossible! For one thing, we have our schedule. I never reach the fifteenth floor till nine o’clock. That’s where I was, so it had to be after nine.”
“All right,” he said. There was no attacking her logic. But as he started to leave, a new thought struck him. “If you just reached the fifteenth floor at nine, how was it that the floor was already freshly polished?”
She sighed, as if at his stupidity. “I said I got there at nine. The girls who do the floors work about twenty minutes ahead of me.”
He left her standing in the doorway and went home to meditate on the ghost of Kurt Aspeth.
In the morning Fletcher had more bad news. “We checked out the fingerprints, Captain. The dead man really is Kurt Aspeth. He’s got a minor record for drunkenness and assault.”
“Is the body still at the morgue?”
“The brother claimed it. There’s a funeral service this morning.”
Leopold stared out the window, wondering what had happened to the bright May sunshine of the previous day. It was a good day for a funeral, but not much else. “We’ve hit a blank wall so far, Fletcher. Let’s see what happened around 9:27 that night, at the time the accident should have occurred. Communications keeps a tape on incoming accident and trouble calls. Get it over here and let’s play it. There has to be something we’re missing, and I want to find it before the press gets onto this story.”
But the tape that Fletcher produced an hour later seemed merely a jumble of radio calls and phone conversations. It took them some time to sort out the accidents from the crime reports, and this was what they heard, in part:
“…8:05—truck-bicycle collision at Maple and York. Car 124 responding…8:27—car accident near the Wilson Avenue exit on the Expressway. Cycle 404 radioed in from scene…”
“That must be Pete Franklin,” Fletcher said.
“Let’s hear what happened later.”
“…8:54—two-car collision at West and Saratoga. Injuries. Car 212 responding with ambulance…9:02—Cycle 404 investigating possible hit-and-run fatality on Small Street…9:06—Police? A woman’s been shot! She’s been murdered! I’m on the 15th floor of Grant Tower! Come quick!…”
“That was Hilda Youst,” Leopold said.
Fletcher nodded. “The patrolman got there first and verified it was a murder. That’s when I was called along with the medical examiner, the technicians, and the morgue wagon.”
“Let’s see what else there is.”
But there was no other accident recorded until “…9:59—two-car collision on Park Place. Car 23 responded. Drivers will see own doctors…”
“Nothing around the right time,” Leopold grumbled. “What was that hit-and-run?”
“The boys are working on it. Terrible thing—a high school girl on her way home from the store, cutting across a narrow alley behind some apartment houses. Nobody even saw it happen. Some damn fool swung out of the parking area too fast, I suppose.”
Leopold puzzled over the tape, rewinding it to play it again. Finally he gave it up. It was nearly time to start believing in ghosts…
Connie Trent was ready when Officer Pete Franklin rang her bell at seven. He looked different out of uniform—less handsome, somehow—and she felt a bit cheated.
“All set?” he asked. “Where do you want to eat?”
“Your choice.” She knew his salary as a motorcycle cop would exclude the sort of places she really liked.
“I know a great place down on the Sound, if you like fish.”
“Love it! Let’s go.”
Over an expensive dinner of lobster and white wine she began to change her opinion of Pete Franklin. His easy-going manner with women was something of an act, and he used money to compensate for some lack he felt in himself. “That cost you a lot,” she said as they left.
“I’m celebrating. I may be coming into some money soon. Besides, it’s a long time since I’ve been out with a girl as pretty as you.”
As he pulled out of the parking lot, Connie asked, “Where to?”
“It’s a great night for a drive. Look, the moon’s even come out from behind the clouds. Let’s ride around a bit, then go back to my place and listen to records. How’s that grab you?”
“Fine.” She was already plotting excuses for an early escape, but it was only nine o’clock, just barely dark, and she could hardly ask to be taken home that early.
His apartment was on the north side of the city and they reached it a half hour later. He drove around back and pulled into an assigned space in the parking area. “This place must cost you something,” she commented.
“It’s not cheap.”
He helped her out of the car and they headed across the dark asphalt toward the lighted rear entrance. Connie saw the figure in the shadows first and she tugged at Franklin’s sleeve. “Pete, someone’s there!”
“Who is it?” Franklin called out.
The answer was a blinding blast from a shotgun that toppled Pete Franklin backward like a giant fist. Connie felt the edge of the shot pattern rip into her left arm and side even as she tried to pull her own gun free from her purse. Then she went down too, seeing nothing, hearing only the running footsteps that gradually faded into silence.
Lieutenant Fletcher had phoned Leopold at home as soon as the word reached headquarters. They caught up with Connie Trent in the emergency room at General Hospital, where a doctor was bandaging her wounds with professional ease.
“She’s all right,” he told them. “I removed eleven shotgun pellets, but none of them were deep.”
Connie was trying to sit up. “Fletcher! Captain! What about Pete Franklin? They won’t tell me a thing around here!”
“Pete caught the full blast in his chest,” Leopold said quietly. “They couldn’t save him.”
“Oh, God…”
“Did you see who did it?”
“Nothing but someone standing in the shadows, waiting for him. I tried to use my gun—”
“Don’t blame yourself, Connie.”
She lay back and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them. “He told me he might come into some money.”
“What else did he say?”
“Nothing. But I think it was tied into the Aspeth killing.”
Leopold frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“He said something odd when I talked to him yesterday. That’s why I went out with him tonight—to find out more about it.”
“What did he say that was odd?”
“That it was dark at the time Kurt Aspeth smashed up his car. But it doesn’t get dark these nights till a little before nine. At 8:27, when
the accident was supposed to have happened, there’d still be daylight.”
“Thanks, Connie,” Leopold said. “I think you’ve solved the case for us.”
“But not soon enough to save Pete Franklin’s life.”
When they left the hospital, Leopold and Fletcher drove over to Small Street, a narrow alley that ran behind some old apartment buildings near the Expressway.
“A hell of a place to end your life,” Fletcher said.
“Any place is,” Leopold said. “What was her name?”
“Rose Sullivan. She was only seventeen.”
“Pete Franklin again?”
“Yeah,” Fletcher said. “We should have caught that on the tape. Cycle 404 responded to both accidents even before a call came in.”
“We had no reason to catch it. When he radioed in that he was investigating a ‘car accident near the Wilson Avenue exit on the Expressway,’ it naturally sounded as if the accident was on the Expressway. Actually it was here on Small Street, a half block from the Wilson Avenue exit. He must have been coming off the exit ramp on his cycle when he saw it happen. And see that fence down the end of the alley? I’ll bet that overlooks the Expressway. He was still here on Small Street when Aspeth cracked up nearly an hour later on the Expressway.”
“What do we do now, Captain?”
Leopold shrugged. “I guess we go back to the morgue.”
Doc Hayes was on duty again, because it was after nine. He let them in himself and led the way to his office in the rear. “Quiet night,” he said, “except for poor Pete Franklin, of course.”
“What time did they bring him in?”
“Around ten. I was late getting here myself. Had a flat tire.”
“Damn lot of car trouble lately, Doc. You were taking it into the garage yesterday, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. These things happen.”
“Doc…”
“What is it?”
“Killing the girl was only manslaughter at worst. With Pete Franklin it’s first-degree murder.”
There was a sudden flash of wildness in Hayes’s eyes and he started to move, but Fletcher was on him, handcuffing his wrists.
Connie Trent was released from the hospital the following morning and was in Leopold’s office an hour later. “What’s all this about arresting Doc Hayes? I can’t believe it!”
“He killed two people, Connie,” Leopold said.
“He shot Pete? And Martha Aspeth?”
“Pete, yes—but not Mrs. Aspeth. She was killed by her husband, just as the witnesses said. We spent our time investigating that case when we should have been investigating the hit-and-run killing of a high school girl named Rose Sullivan. You see, the answer to the problem of Aspeth’s ghost was a very simple one—the times of the two accidents were switched.”
“But how was that possible? And why?”
“Doc Hayes made a full statement last night, after his arrest. You see, he goes on duty at the morgue at nine o’clock each night. He’d been visiting the apartment of a lady friend earlier in the evening and was pulling into Small Street in a hurry to get downtown when his car hit and killed the Sullivan girl. On that back street, at dusk, no one saw the accident. But Pete Franklin, cruising the area on his motorcycle, came along just after.”
“What time was this?”
“Probably very close to 8:27, the time that was later ascribed to Aspeth’s fatal accident. Franklin’s first reaction was to radio in a report that he was investigating an accident. Once that report was on the record, as of 8:27, Doc Hayes’s troubles began. He knew Pete, of course, and maybe he even knew that Pete wasn’t above taking a little graft to keep up a nice apartment. Doc was in big trouble at this point. He’d killed a girl with his car, and if he admitted it he’d also have to explain what he was doing there. I guess he saw his marriage and his career both threatened in that moment, and he made a fatal mistake. He offered Pete Franklin money to let him go.”
“And Franklin took the money.”
Leopold nodded. “It was dark by this time, and the street is little more than an alley anyway. No one came along. Doc Hayes drove away and Franklin must have spent the next several minutes tidying up the scene—picking up bits of chrome or headlight glass that might have served as clues. Then he was ready to call headquarters on the radio and report a hit-and-run, which he finally did at 9:02. The only trouble was, there was still his 8:27 report on the record. He’d called in an accident, nothing more, identifying it simply as being by the Expressway—which Small Street is. The detectives who came to examine the scene didn’t know about the earlier call, or about the missing thirty-five minutes, but it was still on the record. That was when fate brought Kurt Aspeth onto the scene.”
“He’d already killed his wife and was escaping on the Expressway. And he probably did hit that abutment deliberately.”
“Could be,” Leopold said. “Small Street dead-ends at the Expressway. Franklin could have seen—or at least heard—the crash from where he was. He got there on his motorcycle almost at once, saw that Aspeth was dead, and called for the morgue wagon. Only this accident he didn’t report. This accident became the 8:27 accident he’d already radioed in to headquarters.”
“But…” Connie still wasn’t convinced. “What about the detectives investigating the hit-and-run? They must have heard Aspeth’s crash, too. What about the other motorists who stopped? What about the morgue records?”
“The detectives already had their hands full. The motorists would never see the time on Franklin’s report. The morgue records were easily changed by Doc Hayes. It was a one-car accident, remember, so there wasn’t likely to be any court case where witnesses would be testifying. Franklin saw a lucky chance to switch the order of the two accidents and thereby explain his earlier radio report. Fortunately for him, he hadn’t mentioned Small Street in the earlier report, only the Expressway. And luckily no other patrol car happened along while he was at Aspeth’s wreck. Luck was all on his side till he asked Hayes for more money.”
“But how did you know all this?” Connie wondered. “How did you know enough to arrest Doc Hayes in the first place?”
“When you repeated Franklin’s remark about it being dark at the time Aspeth smashed up, we knew he hadn’t died in the 8:27 accident. That had to be something else Cycle 404 investigated. But Franklin had only two accidents in the crucial period—Aspeth and the hit-and-run on Small Street. If it wasn’t Aspeth at 8:27, it had to be the hit-and-run. Fletcher and I went over to Small Street last night and saw how close it was to the Wilson Avenue exit. So Franklin lied about the hit-and-run. Why? Only one answer went with his expectation of money—he was blackmailing the driver.”
“All right—but why Doc?”
“Three things pointed to him. First, he lied when he said Aspeth’s body came into the morgue before nine. Second, he told us he had to take his car into the garage, implying some necessary repair work. And third, at the time of the hit-and-run he would have been in his car, driving to the morgue. Circumstantial, sure, but it was circumstantial too when he said he had a flat tire that made him late for work while Franklin was being killed.”
“You took a gamble accusing him on that evidence.”
“I take gambles every day in this job, Connie. Just the way Pete Franklin did. After he thought of switching the accident times he had to phone Doc at the morgue and tell him to switch his records, too. The records were the important thing. The morgue drivers would never be asked, any more than those passing motorists. The time of Kurt Aspeth’s death would be an unimportant fact buried forever in police files. It would have happened that way too, except for one crazy thing—Kurt Aspeth had just come from murdering his wife. When that fact became known, Franklin asked Doc for more money to keep quiet. And Doc got out a shotgun to pay him off.”
“It kept building up, didn’t it?” Connie said. “From an auto accident to bribery to murder. But at least it wasn’t Aspeth’s ghost on the prowl. I was almost beginning to b
elieve that.”
“So was I,” Leopold said.
(1974)
Captain Leopold Goes Home
FLETCHER AND CONNIE WERE at the office to see him off, their faces grim. “There’s no need for tears,” Captain Leopold told them both. “I haven’t seen my uncle in something like twenty years. He was seventy-eight years old and he had a good life. I’ll fly out for the funeral and be back in the office on Monday.”
Fletcher walked him down to the street. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Captain. Connie and I have everything under control. Stay as long as you want. It’s been a slow month anyway.”
That wasn’t quite true because August was never slow for the Violent Crimes Division, but Leopold thanked him anyway. He waved goodbye as the taxi pulled away from the curb, taking him to the airport, and from there on to home.
Captain Leopold had always thought of Riger Falls as home even though he’d been born in Chicago and moved from Riger Falls to New York as soon as he was old enough to be on his own. The reason was Uncle Joe Leopold, who’d raised him like a son after the Captain’s parents died. He’d gone to live with Uncle Joe when he was eight, and taken the town of Riger Falls as his own.
Its shaded streets and quiet country atmosphere were a world away from the noisy crowded avenues of Chicago, and the young Leopold welcomed the change. Now, flying back after all these years, he looked forward to the quiet as something close to a vacation. He tried to remember Uncle Joe’s face the last time he’d seen him, back in the mid-fifties when Uncle Joe’s wife died. She’d been almost like a mother to Leopold and her death had saddened Joe terribly. One of the greatest surprises of Captain Leopold’s young life had come when he learned a year later that Uncle Joe had remarried.
Leopold's Way Page 32