Investigation

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  Of course, Tim ignores facts that don’t fit with his plans. He considers it no big deal that my wife and I have sold our home in Queens; bought a condominium in Florida, where my wife is waiting for me to join her come the end of November. She fully expects that I’ll pack up and leave the two-room apartment we took on a short-term lease in one of the old buildings near the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. And go down to Florida. And take a job in her brother’s construction company. Her brother, as far as I’m concerned, is a crooked, smug, stupid bastard who thinks the same of me. I’m not sure how all of this came about. It just seems to have happened, according to a plan worked out so long ago I can’t remember when it wasn’t part of our understanding. Once the girl was married, and she was last year, once the boy graduated high school and was set in college, which he was, once my twenty years were in, that would be it. All set. The rest of my life. Except that now that it was practically reality I have been taking a good hard look at what the rest of my life would be with brother-in-law Fred, and I don’t like it. At all. And another strange thing. After twenty-three years of marriage, of living with Jen and the kids, this was the first time I’d ever lived alone. In my whole life. I had gone from my parents to the Army to Jen. Now I wasn’t accountable, in any way, to anyone. I had thought I’d be lonely. Jen thought I’d be lonely.

  The funny thing was, I wasn’t lonely at all.

  “All right. Let’s take a statement from the parents, Joe. We’ll talk about the other thing later.”

  In a monotone, Kitty Keeler answered Neary’s questions. She stared at the reels of the tape recorder on the desk and seemed to pace herself to the slow revolutions. She repeated what she had already told us. That she had last seen her sons between one and one-thirty this morning. Had taken sleeping pills; showered; gone to bed. Woke up at seven-thirty. The boys were gone.

  “I thought George had the boys. I thought—” She didn’t cry or anything. She just stopped speaking.

  She had changed; she was a different version of the same woman. She seemed translucent. Her paleness had gone almost to the bones of her face. Her cheekbones seemed to shine and protrude through the tightly stretched skin. She reminded me of a small, shining, transparent glass animal: fragile, breakable, easily shattered. And yet she had a curious strength, directed toward her husband.

  George Keeler, in his grief, seemed to bloat and swell; the lines of his body became indefinite and unclear. He turned to his wife, his face totally trusting and dependent. Kitty took control of both her husband and herself with a hard tenderness, direct and businesslike and effective. It was a surprise, this tough concern for George. She had been totally uncaring of him earlier. Before the bodies of their children had been found.

  “Mr. Keeler, do you have any idea, at all, who might have done this to your sons?”

  A wildness came into George Keeler’s voice. He waved his arms in front of him as he spoke, then stared at his hands, which trembled violently.

  “Look at that,” he said, needing to account for his hands. “The adrenalin shot makes them shake like that.”

  His wife reached over, touched his arm, her fingers closed on his wrist. Her touch settled him. He told his story for a second time in almost the exact same phrases. He had come over to the apartment after Kitty called him; searched briefly; called the police. He raised his arms in a terrible, empty gesture, then let them fall heavily onto his thighs.

  “And then he took me to that park.” Keeler looked at me for confirmation. “And then I saw them. The boys. I saw them. My boys.”

  His meaty shoulders heaved forward, his hands dangled and shook between his knees. He began to gasp for air.

  Kitty Keeler reached into her husband’s pocket, then adjusted the nebulizer. She instructed George firmly and patiently; directed his breathing, his inhalation of medication. There was an oddly maternal quality in her way of handling him; she had an assurance, a willingness to be leaned on; her strength seemed to expand as his need increased.

  “Could someone take us to my brother’s house now?” she asked Neary.

  Catalano moved toward the Keelers, comforting arm extended.

  “Sam, tell Tom Flynn to drive the Keelers. Where is your brother’s house, Mrs. Keeler? You said Yonkers?”

  Catalano extended a slip of paper. “I have the address, Captain. I could drive—”

  Neary spoke right over Catalano. “You stick around the office and handle the telephones, Detective Catalano. Sergeant Gelber called in sick.”

  There was no way Sam could argue or protest. Neary was the boss. And Sam Catalano was the District Attorney’s spy. He had been in the squad just less than a year. Within two months of Sam’s arrival, our eminent District Attorney, Jeremiah Kelleher, began needling Tim Neary about the way certain facets of certain investigations were being handled. It had long been Jeremiah’s hope to get rid of Neary, who had been, of course, a political appointment. It had taken some pressure on Kelleher to accept Tim Neary in the first place and he had done so with malice. The position of squad commander of the District Attorney’s Investigating Squad called for the rank of deputy inspector. Jeremiah refused to promote Tim from captain. Everyone was waiting everyone else out until Primary Day, which would decide who was washed out and who was on his way up. The only information Catalano had been able to pass along “upstairs” for the last ten months was bits and pieces of an inaccurate nature which I slipped him from time to time.

  Aside from splits based on politics, racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds and specific personality differences, we’re just one cohesive team.

  Catalano risked a quick semidirty look before he left the office, and Tim said between his teeth, “That sneaky son-of-a-bitch.”

  We drove over to Fresh Meadows. There was a large group of curious people gathered in front of the three-story garden-apartment building where the Keelers lived. A young patrolman, posted at the entrance, quickly saluted Neary’s captain shield, which was pinned to his dark-gray suit jacket. The patrolman looked very tense and young and eager.

  Neary motioned him closer with a jerk of his head.

  “Yes sir!” The kid saluted again.

  “Officer, why don’t you tell all these good people to go on to their own homes.” Neary waved at a second uniformed patrolman who was standing at the curb. “You and this other officer clear this entire path from the building to the sidewalk. Just let residents in; and no loitering, residents or not. And pull that damn patrol car up straight. It’s taking up two parking spaces.”

  Both patrolmen saluted and looked excited at having something to do. As we entered the building, Tim said to me, “Twelve years old, for God’s sake. They’re taking them on the job at twelve years old.”

  Which is how you tell you’re getting old on the job. A few years ago, the new cops looked fifteen.

  We stood in the living room, taking it in, getting the general effect. Tim, who married late in life and doesn’t have children and lives in a luxury apartment on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, glanced around and said, “Tacky.”

  Captain Wise appeared in the entrance of the children’s bedroom and waved us across the living room. We walked carefully around the technicians who were still dusting and squinting and photographing and testing. We stood in the doorway and absorbed the essentials: the room, approximately twelve feet by fifteen, contained twin beds, separated by a small night table on which stood a night lamp (yellow duck base, white pleated lampshade); half-empty plastic cup of water; box of tissues; a small lump of chewed-up and hardened pink gum.

  There was a long, low chest of drawers built under the windows which faced the beds. On either side of the window, shelves had been built over the chest, up to the ceiling. The shelves contained an assortment of toys, games, stuffed animals and books. Directly in front of the windows, about two feet from the chest, there was a small round white table with two small white chairs. On the table was an open coloring book with a picture of an astronaut. It was carefully
colored, not quite finished. The astronaut wore a red space suit, and the surface of the moon was purple against his green space boots. His space ship was partially filled in with a silver color; the silver crayon rested carefully in the center of the coloring book along with a large box of Crayolas.

  The windows were curtained with sheer white cotton, decorated along the sides and edges with pale-yellow daisies, the same color as the dust ruffles on the beds. The walls were sunny yellow; the floor, a bright yellow-and-white plastic pattern. There was a thick oval Rya rug between the beds; it was white and yellow and red. The room and everything in it was very clean. There was just the slightest indication that the beds had been slept in: the Keeler boys had obviously been very quiet sleepers. It took something of an effort not to visualize their distorted, bloated faces resting on the clean yellow pillowcases.

  Neary moved the curtain with his fingertip and studied the window. About four feet wide; casement type. The center pane was stationary. The panes on either side could be cranked open with a handle.

  “It’s okay, Tim,” Wise told him, “we’ve dusted that already.”

  Tim cranked one pane open as far as it would go, then measured it roughly with his hands.

  “Ten and a half inches,” Wise said.

  Neary nodded and leaned forward, looked out the window directly into the eyes of a homicide man outside.

  “How far a drop?” Neary asked him.

  “Six feet from the sill to the ground, Captain.” The detective saw me. “How ya doin’, Joe?” Then he shook his head. “Not a mark around here; no signs of footprints, no ladder, nothin’.”

  “C’mon,” Captain Wise said to us. “You seen the parents’ bedroom, Joe?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  We trailed him through the apartment to the second bedroom. Wise stood to one side, watching our reactions as though he had offered us some kind of a treat. It was a room without any connection to the rest of the apartment. The carpeting was thick and soft, slightly lighter than the rose-beige color of the heavy satin bedspread and matching drapes. There was a chaise longue of the same satin, with an assortment of pillows tossed casually against the back of it; it faced toward a small portable color television set which was perched on the corner of a huge triple dresser.

  “French provincial,” Tim told us. He looked at himself in the ornate mirror over the dresser. “This is good stuff; expensive.” He checked with Wise before touching, lightly, the assortment of perfume bottles which were displayed on a mirrored tray on the dresser. Tim leaned forward, sniffed, then said, “Sixty bucks an ounce. It’s the real thing.” He sniffed at a couple of other bottles, reeled off some French names. Tim was impressed. He pointed at the empty double-picture frame.

  “We removed the pictures of the boys, Tim, for reproduction. I’ll see your squad gets copies.” Wise pulled at Neary’s arm, anxious to get on with his show.

  “Real silver; heavy, good quality,” Tim said about the picture frame, then turned to watch Wise.

  Using one finger, like an impresario, Wise opened a folding louvered door to expose one half of a custom-built closet which took up the whole long wall.

  Aside from the sheer amounts of garments and items, what was fascinating was the organization of the closet. Everything was in an assigned place: every dress, blouse, pants suit, short or long skirt was precisely placed for quick reference. Two shelves over the hanging bar were filled with clear plastic boxes, through which an array of colors showed. It took a few seconds to realize that everything had been arranged according to color: from pale cream sweaters to pale yellow to bright yellow to gold to beige; from palest blue to sky blue to deep blue.

  Wise gave us about a minute, then went to the other side of the closet and repeated his performance, opening the louvered door with a flourish. Here was the other side of the spectrum: deeper, darker, more blatant colors of clothing of all kinds, including a selection of long and apparently expensive gowns, carefully enclosed in clear plastic garment-protector bags. Shoes were arranged on slide-out trays along the floor of the closet.

  Neary whistled between his teeth.

  “Where are George’s clothes?”

  Wise winked at me, then reached up and shoved some of Kitty Keeler’s clothes to one side. There was a section, approximately two and a half feet wide, of double hanging bars filled with men’s clothing.

  Tim pulled out the arm of a butter-soft suede jacket, let his fingers move expertly. “Expensive stuff,” he told us. “Not very much here, but what’s here is good quality.” He fingered through the rest of George Keeler’s clothes. Tim, since his marriage to the lady lawyer, had taken to wearing custom-made suits, jackets, slacks, shirts—maybe custom-made socks and shorts too. He’s developed a passionate interest in clothes, and one of the things he had against Jeremiah Kelleher was that “the phony bum buys his suits at Barney’s, then has his wife sew in good labels.”

  I checked the windows underneath the heavy drapes and filmy curtains. Same-type casement window; directly ahead and to the left was a fairly new twenty-story building just at the edge of the development of garden apartments. To the right, at a distance of about a hundred yards, was a circular playground where some kids were shooting baskets. To the back of the playground was a thirteen-story apartment building, also set just outside the border of the development. I closed the window, let the curtains and drapes fall back into place. The voices of kids playing could still be heard; muffled, but still audible. Wise closed the bedroom door, and the three of us stood motionless, listening. The voices of the detectives in other parts of the apartment could be heard again, softer, but clearly audible, so that while the heavy carpeting and drapery buffered noise, they didn’t eliminate it.

  “Want to show you something,” Chris Wise said, offering us another treat. He reached up and adjusted something on the inside of the bedroom door, then stepped back so that we could examine it.

  It was a bolt lock, installed at eye level. Neary tested it, whistled tunelessly between his teeth, which is what he does when he’s not ready to comment on something.

  “Unusual, huh?” Wise asked. “Now, Tim, Joe, take another good look at this room. This is exactly as Mrs. Keeler left it.”

  The implication was clear, but Wise spelled it out anyway. “Not a thing out of place, right? The mother wakes up, looks around, sees her kids are missing, calls her husband, right? Then,” Wise turned and gestured toward the bed, “she very calmly turns around and makes up the bed.”

  “How do you know she was calm at that point?”

  “C’mon, Joe, don’t be a wise guy. You know what I mean. Some distraught mother, huh? And how did she look, Joe, when you first got here?”

  “Not bad if you like the type.”

  “You know what I mean, Joey. Makeup on, hair combed, nicely dressed, right? Some distraught mother,” he repeated.

  Neary watched the technicians at the door to the apartment. It had been dusted, prints lifted, photographed from all angles.

  “This lock wasn’t forced, Captain, no sir, no way.”

  “No signs of forced entry. Tim,” Captain Wise told us. “Not via door or window.” He turned to me, took a few seconds to control his annoyance. “Collins gave you that?”

  He was referring to a pink-leather-covered telephone book; stamped in gold script letters on the cover was the name “Kitty Keeler.” Just a quick scan through the pages revealed a lot of men’s names; just first names and telephone numbers.

  “Well, you are senior man in the team catching this, right? So I guess it’s rightfully yours, but make sure I get a Xerox of every page, right, Joey?”

  Neary said, not kidding. “You can have the case, lock, stock and whorey bedroom, Chris. Just say the word and it’s all yours.”

  “Well, it would be the first time I got handed something as easy as this.” Wise recited the facts for us. “Mama is alone with the kids. Mama goes to bed and sleeps through the night, doesn’t hear a thing. Wakes up in the mornin
g and the kids are gone. No forced entry; no signs of violence. Nothing. Kids are found dead six blocks away. And Mama didn’t hear nothing at all.” He leaned close to me, winked and said confidently, “Come on, Joe, show Captain Timmy here what you learned working for me for four years. Give him the answer to the whole damn thing. Give him the windup, Joe, before we go further.” He poked me in the ribs with his elbow. “Who done it, Joe? In one word.”

  The first place you look for a perpetrator is within the immediate family: husbands kill wives; wives kill husbands; brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, in-laws all kill each other. Only after they’ve all been cleared do you start looking at the wider circle of friends, old friends, new friends, ex-friends; then the circle widens and you begin to look at strangers.

  In most cases, you don’t have to go that far.

  In most cases, the murderer is found right inside the four walls of the victim’s home. Instead of stalking the streets looking for new victims, the murderer is usually at home helping to make the funeral plans.

  I rocked back on my heels a little, looked toward the Hollywood-style bedroom, thought about the clothes and then about the woman and the little boys who had been taken from their beds without anyone hearing anything unusual at all.

  Wise had stopped smiling. I gave him his one-word answer.

  “Mama.”

  Tim Neary whistled thoughtfully between his teeth, and Chris Wise said in a raspy, certain voice, “You betcha balls it’s Mama.”

  CHAPTER 3

  DR. ALEXANDER FRIEDMAN WAS a neat, compact man with a clipped precise manner and intelligent eyes. He was Viennese. According to the various framed documents decorating the wall of his office, he was a pediatrician with diplomat status, which meant he was qualified to teach pediatrics.

  His time was tightly scheduled. Every morning, between 7 and 8 A.M., he was available for telephone consultation, and, barring emergency, he would not discuss symptoms with parents during another person’s scheduled appointment. He made hospital rounds between 8:30 and noon; had lunch between noon and 1 P.M. His first office appointment was scheduled for 1 P.M. He took no break between appointments; he saw patients at his office until 5:30 or 6 P.M. His house calls began at 7 P.M., allowing him an hour for dinner. House calls were limited to communicable diseases, high-fever patients and emergencies.