07-Past Imperfect

by Margaret Maron

  “I suppose it’ll be cows and chickens next?”

  “Fat chance, Claude!” Adam called to her as he left for school.

  A message was waiting at the office from the captain who’d specialed Cluett over to New York. He thought we ought to meet.

  His office at ten.

  Davidowitz shrugged when I told him. “What’d you expect? That he was going to come over to Brooklyn? Captains do not come to sergeants, or haven’t you noticed? Anyhow,” he added, stroking his droopy mustache, “you know the answer to Mick’s death is over there. We were going anyhow, weren’t we?”

  Sometimes he’s too goddamn reasonable.

  Cluett’s desk and locker had been cleaned out and his personal effects would be sent to Irene. Davidowitz had rounded up Cluett’s current notes and worksheets and they were as messy as I expected. Someone’d had to sort it all out and as his boss, I’d elected myself and done most of it the night before. Cases were still pending. If his notes were complete though, his death shouldn’t affect the outcome of any pending files.

  We got all the case notes on Cluett’s homicide in order and Davidowitz made an extra copy in case we wound up swapping with the Twelfth, then we took the train over.

  When we walked into Captain McKinnon’s office, we found three officers from the precinct detective unit with him: a skinny brunette, a good-looking blonde, and a white male about six years younger than me.

  “Thanks for coming,” said McKinnon, all professional courtesy. As if it’d been an invitation and not a quasi-command. Introductions. The skinny one was a Lieutenant Harald, the other two were Detectives Albee and Lowry. I gave them Davidowitz.

  Handshakes all around.

  There was the usual chitchat. The skinny lieutenant sat tight as the captain asked us if we wanted anything hot to drink. She had even less than me to say about the cold and snow and how many inches we’d got, all that small talk stuff while you wait for the rookie in blue to pass around the coffee and get out. I could feel her giving off tense vibes, but nobody else seemed to notice so maybe that was her normal mode.

  The captain was built like Davidowitz: not fat, but plenty big and solid.

  The looey was about my age. Thin face, interesting eyes. No rings on her fingers. Married to the job? No curves under the black slacks or baggy gray jacket. Almost as flat-chested as me.

  Albee. Blonde. More laid-back. Sharp in black leather boots and a loose royal blue sweater. Not flat-chested. Rings on her fingers, though nothing on the important finger.

  Lowry. About six-foot-nothing, one-seventy. No wedding band either. Something cooking with him and the blonde? I never partnered with a woman, so it’s hard to judge sometimes.

  Just as I was beginning to wonder what the holdup was, someone opened the door and peered in. Another white male. Easy smile, crinkly brown hair, twinkly brown eyes, expensive hand-tooled cowboy boots. Twinkly eyes always make me check my back.

  The tension level immediately went up three notches.

  “Come in, Rawson,” said McKinnon. “I believe you know Lieutenant Harald, Detectives Lowry and Albee?”

  There were mutual Yeah, sures, then McKinnon turned to us. “Sergeant Vaughn and Detective Davidowitz from the Six-Four, Sheepshead Bay. Sergeant Rawson, F.I.A.U.”

  My nerves suddenly turned into piano wires, too.

  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

  You don’t take a legal course at John Jay College of Criminal Justice without getting some Latin thrown at you. Not much sticks, but this was one of those things you only have to hear once to remember forever: Who polices the police?

  Answer: That great Internal Affairs Division in the sky. And who is its vicar on earth?

  The precinct’s Field Internal Affairs Unit.

  Sergeant Rawson.

  No wonder the looey was so uptight.

  “Tell you what,” said Rawson, hitching up a chair like he was just folks. “Why don’t you begin like I’m not here?”

  “Fine,” said McKinnon.

  Everybody was stiff getting started. I suspected that Albee and Lowry weren’t sure why they were there; but I knew it was you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine even though I had a feeling it wasn’t going to belong to either of us very long. Since Cluett was killed first, McKinnon asked me to start.

  I gave the captain the copy we’d made of the case and laid out what we had: Cluett’s wallet recovered with everything, including cash and credit cards intact; the lack of suspects with solid motives in Cluett’s personal life; the nurse’s eyewitness account of seeing someone meet up with him a little after ten on Tuesday night; and finally that Browning .380 semi-automatic. The postmortem had turned up two wounds. The first shot was from behind. It’d pierced the heart, ricocheted off a rib and torn up some abdominal organs.

  “Powder burns indicate the gun was pressed up against his coat,” I said. “The second shot was to the right temple, probably after he was down. Powder traces for that one show the gun approximately two feet away.”

  “We put it on the net for the usual check,” Davidowitz said. “No record of previous owners or that it’d ever been used in a crime.”

  “But the Bureau keeps a record of every serial number requested,” McKinnon said heavily, “and they bounced it back to Central Data Wednesday night.”

  He looked down the table to Lowry and Albee. “Seems Lotty Fischer ran a check on the gun four years ago.”

  They still didn’t get it. “And?”

  “There’s no record of why she checked it out. Just that she did. Lieutenant?”

  She didn’t make a big production out of it. “I went over to Central Data last night and spoke to the people on duty Wednesday night. The clerk that processed the Bureau’s reply finally admitted that she was a friend of Lotty Fischer’s. She says she talked with Fischer around ten that night and, in the course of the conversation, casually mentioned Fischer’s connection with the murder gun.”

  “Did Lotty remember running the check?” asked Lowry.

  The looey shook her head. “No. According to the clerk, Fischer sounded curious about that herself and planned to check her log.”

  “So tell us about this Lotty Fischer,” I said.

  “Detectives Lowry and Albee have handled the investigation so far,” she said, and turned it over to them.

  They weren’t as together as the looey and they were rattled by the whole idea of F.I.A.U. Kept interrupting each other, repeating things as they explained the Fischer girl’s work situation, that she’d been assigned here just over four years, how she’d missed her bus and wound up at the subway; the trainman’s description of the incident and his fleeting impression of the perp who’d pushed her. There was some foul-up at the crime scene, an extra man that they didn’t tumble to till after he’d got away; but they thought they had a good lead on him—some skell called Jerry the Canary who built nests for himself up in subway girders instead of flopping in a corner or on a steam grate like everybody else.

  Nests, for Christ’s sake.

  Getting harder to find a deserted place to do murder, we all agreed. The homeless were everywhere and some of them were getting creative about it. Davidowitz got a smile when he told them about our Leviticus Jones and his bungalow by the sea. (For one crazy minute, I found myself wondering if the troll under the bridge in Adam’s bedtime story “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” could have had its beginning in some medieval Leviticus Jones.)

  Fun and games to cover what wasn’t being said about why F.I.A.U. was sitting in on this session.

  To do her credit, Harald was the one who put it on the table. “Either the gun belonged to Lotty Fischer and her murder’s an unconnected coincidence—which seems highly unlikely on the face of it—or we go with the assumption that she was killed to prevent her telling who she ran the gun check for.”

  Albee’s baby blues got bigger as it finally sunk in exactly why Rawson was there.

  Even though I knew Davidowitz and I were probably going
to get bounced from the case, I put to McKinnon the question that’d been bugging me ever since Cluett got shot.

  “I wonder if you’d tell us, Captain,” I said politely, “why you requested Cluett last fall?”

  “We were shorthanded here,” he answered promptly. “One of our detectives had been injured, we needed a temporary replacement, I thought you could spare him.”

  “All year,” I said. “But why Cluett? Why not Davidowitz? Why not the luck of the draw?”

  He stiffened. “If it’s any of your business, Sergeant Vaughn—” he began.

  Then he broke off as his eyes met the looey’s, watching him across the table.

  She hadn’t said a word and her face showed nothing more than polite attention, but I suddenly realized that she was pretty damn interested in hearing him answer my question.

  So was Rawson.

  The captain realized it, too. He climbed off his high horse and said: “It was personal, Sergeant. I knew Cluett from my rookie days, thought it might be nice to have him around awhile, for old time’s sake.”

  Sounded pretty, but I didn’t buy it. Had a feeling Harald didn’t either, but she caught me watching her reaction and turned to Rawson as he asked, “What’s your reading on this, Lieutenant?”

  “There would seem to be three criteria the perpetrator would have to meet,” she said carefully. “It has to be someone with no alibi for Cluett’s death at approximately 10:15 Tuesday night, no alibi for Fischer’s death at 2:20 Thursday morning, and finally, our perp was probably someone who worked in this precinct four years ago when Lotty Fischer ran the gun check.”

  She paused and Rawson looked around the table. “Agreed?”

  Qualified murmurs of agreement.

  “Very well.” She turned to Rawson and damned if she didn’t tackle it head on. “In bulky winter clothes, we can’t be certain the killer’s a man. I do not have an alibi for Fischer’s death, but I was with friends when Cluett died and I had not met Fischer before I arrived in this precinct two years ago. Albee’s been here less than a year, Lowry three years. Both were in the squad room when the call came in on Fischer. Sergeant?”

  I shrugged. “I can prove where I was when Cluett got it, but I was home in bed alone Thursday morning. I never worked Manhattan and never heard of Lotty Fischer.”

  Davidowitz: “Ditto, except my wife can vouch for me all night Wednesday.”

  The Captain didn’t like it.

  “No alibis,” he growled. “And yeah, I’ve been here five years.”

  He stood up and crushed his foam coffee cup in his big hands. “Okay, Rawson. It’s all yours. Do what you have to.”

  And with that, he dropped the cup in a wastebasket by the door and walked out.

  CHAPTER 18

  McKinnon’s exit from his own office had been a dramatic gesture, but symbolism didn’t mean squatters’ rights. As a one-man Field Internal Affairs Unit, Sergeant Rawson was theoretically independent, yet McKinnon still outranked him and was still his nominal boss. Sergeants who planned long careers in the department didn’t try to pull too many power plays on captains.

  “Okay, people, I’ll make this quick.” Rawson nodded to Jarvis Vaughn. “How long was this Michael Cluett over here?”

  “Three months,” Vaughn answered promptly. “From mid-October to mid-January.”

  “And Cluett reported to you, right, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes,” Sigrid replied.

  He gestured to the stack of file folders in front of her. “Those the cases he worked on?”

  “Yes. In most of these, though, he was—” She hesitated, as if looking for a diplomatic phrase.

  Vaughn helped her out. “Just a warm body?”

  She nodded.

  Davidowitz grinned. She didn’t have to elucidate.

  “I’ll take them for now,” said Rawson.

  “Will you be setting up a special task force?” she asked.

  “Looks like it, Lieutenant.” He held out his hand for the files Albee and Lowry had begun on the Lotty Fischer investigation.

  “You mean that’s it?” asked Elaine Albee. “We’re off the case?”

  “Yep,” said Rawson, with another of those crinkly smiles that didn’t quite make it to his penetrating eyes. “Sorry.”

  Albee started to protest, but Sigrid cut it off with a brisk, “That’ll be all, Albee. Lowry. Unless Sergeant Rawson has further questions for you—?”

  “Not now,” he said. “Later, of course.”

  Hy Davidowitz looked at Vaughn. “I’ll wait for you downstairs,” he said, then hoisted himself from the chair and followed Albee and Lowry from the office.

  Vaughn handed over his own files reluctantly. “You already have your task force set?” he asked.

  “You applying?”

  “Yes.”

  Rawson’s less-than-genuine smile faded. “Let me think about it, Sergeant. You personally may not fit two of Lieutenant Harald’s three conditions, but if some of your people back at the Six-Four do, I.A.D.’d have a problem with appearances. It’d help having somebody already up to speed on this, though. You smoke?”

  “No,” said Vaughn, who’d quit six years ago and still missed it.

  “That’s a plus,” said Rawson. “I hate smoke-filled rooms. Never put a smoker on my team if I can help it.”

  “I don’t smoke,” said Sigrid, even though she knew what the answer had to be.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. Appearances again. You’re too wired in here.”

  He racked the folders in his hands and aligned the edges. “Let’s continue this down in my office, Vaughn. We’ll be in touch, Lieutenant.”

  They left her sitting alone.

  Captain McKinnon opened the door of his office and halted. “You’re still here,” he grunted.

  “Yes, sir.” Sigrid stood as he circled the desk. “If I was out of line before, Captain—”

  He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No. You acted correctly.”

  McKinnon took his seat and looked up at her. His thick brown hair was frosted with gray and his broad face was seamed with lines at mouth and eyes. “Sit down, Lieutenant.”

  Another time and she might have argued. She had always felt awkward with this shaggy bear of a man and it didn’t help to learn four months ago that he and her father had once been partners and close friends. If anything, the knowledge only deepened the stiffness between them. She had taken the job—had earned it, she told herself fiercely—without knowing; yet to others it would appear that she had a protected position within the department if the situation became public.

  “Well,” he growled, “going to ask me if I shot Mick Cluett and pushed Lotty Fischer under a train?”

  “Would you tell me if you had?” she countered coolly.

  He gave a sour chuckle. “Spoken like a true cop. So why are you still here?”

  “I thought you’d want to know that Rawson’s going to set up a special task force to investigate both homicides. Probably with Vaughn.”

  That was all she’d intended to say, yet she found herself adding, “I also thought you’d want to know you can trust me.”

  “Yeah?”

  She didn’t try to explain what she’d meant, she wasn’t sure she knew herself, but his brown eyes almost disappeared as he narrowed them in deliberate appraisal.

  “Okay,” he said at last. He handed her the file Vaughn had given him earlier and sat back with a weary sigh. “I hope they don’t drag it out. This kind of thing plays hell with morale.”

  As Sigrid left, his voice stopped her at the doorway.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  Except for Elaine Albee, Jim Lowry, and Tillie, the squad room was empty and awkwardly silent.

  “In my office, Tillie,” Sigrid said without breaking stride. When he got there, she asked him to shut the door.

  His round face grew solemn as he heard that a task force was forming. “I wish I could be on it.”

  “Got an alibi for both nights?
” Sigrid smiled.

  “Just Marian and the kids,” he admitted.

  “And you came here three years ago from the One-Nine” she mused. “Did you know the Fischer woman before then?”

  Tillie shook his head, but his eyes began to gleam as he contemplated the shape of the investigation to come. “She ran that gun check four years ago? Think how many personnel have transferred in and out since then! It doesn’t have to be someone who was ever actually assigned to the precinct. All we have to do is show someone who knew Lotty Fischer four years ago and Mick Cluett now. I could pull personnel records, time sheets—”

  Tillie thrived on details, on taking masses of raw data and breaking it down into orderly categories. Sigrid could picture him compiling charts with every member of the whole New York City Police Department cross-referenced.

  “Sorry, Tillie,” she said. “I’d offer you to Rawson if I thought he’d use you, but even though you barely worked with Cluett, he’s not taking anyone from this unit.”

  “Not even you?” he asked.

  “Nobody.”

  Tillie’s face was as easy to read as a morning report. Raw disappointment came first, then Sigrid saw disappointment shade into apprehension as the personal aspects of the case took on flesh and blood. Originally, it had struck him as a problem of dates, statistics and intersecting bar graphs. Now, for the first time, he began to put faces beside those dates and he didn’t like what he was seeing.

  Sigrid said, “They’ll look at everybody who worked with Cluett or who was stationed here four years ago. And that includes this detective unit as well. Sam Hentz, for instance. He worked with Cluett. I haven’t gone back through all the squad files yet, but it’s my impression that he’s been stationed here at least four years.”

  Dismay filled Tillie’s blue eyes. “But that’s true of Eberstadt and Peters and who knows who else?” he protested.

  “Exactly. It isn’t just the uniforms and the P.A.A.’s that are going to feel the heat on this one. Half the precinct’s going to be under investigation till this case is solved. So do me a favor, Tillie, and see if you can determine how many of our people are under Rawson’s gun.”