Columbo: The Game Show Killer

by William Harrington

  Fred brought the bottle and glass and poured in front of her. He put a glass of ice water on the side. “I’d know you anywhere,” he said. ‘You come in one or two nights a week, drink a couple doubles of black Jack, and talk a lot with Sonya, not very often with me. You are a friend of Sonya, as I judge, but to me you are only an acquaintance/’

  “And sometimes I get a little schnocked.”

  “And sometimes you get a little schnocked.”

  “You’ve never seen me in anything but skirts. I always show a lot of leg, and you’ve always noticed.”

  Fred nodded.

  “And you don’t say anything more than that,” Sonya said. “When you complicate your story, they find something to trip you up. So that’s all, absolutely all.”

  A man in a blue shirt emblazoned with the emblem of a bowling league hoisted himself on a bar stool. “How ’bout a Bud Light, Freddy?”

  “You got it.”

  “Some nights it seems like it’s not worth coming in. God, I bowled a mess!”

  “And finished early. God, Mike, you are early ”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure are. Anyway, don’t stare right now, but sitting over there in the booth with Sonya—”

  The man did stare right now. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Right. Erika Björling. She comes in once in a while. Look at the legs.”

  “How could I miss ’em? You know her? Could you introduce me?”

  “Maybe Sonya can. I’ll ask her when she comes over.”

  “Hey, Linda. How’d you like to have a figure like that?” The muscular woman, a regular bowler at Ten Strikes, glanced at the young woman in the booth, then smiled wanly and spoke to Sonya. “Erika Björling. If I’ve seen her once on TV, I’ve seen her five hundred times. Y’ know, it’s a damned shame that show was canceled. I mean, she was so good! She doesn’t bowl?”

  “No. Just comes in for a drink now and then.”

  “Looka the dress. To die for! I mean, to be able to wear it. Well… you could.”

  “Y’ gotta feel sorry for her. She lost her daughter that awful way. Now she’s out of work. Frankly, she drinks too much. You’d think she’d do her drinking in some great club, but… well, she comes in here and snorts a few once or twice a week. Always alone. We try to be friendly to her.”

  His name was Hugo, and in some way the name fit. He was a huge black man, and a joke around the alley had it that he broke pins. He drank pints of Bass Ale on draft, three or four of them without showing the slightest sign of inebriation. Another joke was that he was a piano mover and could carry a piano all by himself. In fact, he was a chiropractor.

  “Well, that’s for sure some woman,” he said of Erika. “I remember her. She was a favorite of my wife’s. She was a favorite of my kids. God almighty, a man wishes he could do something for her. But— I guess you can always think about it.”

  5

  11:10 P.M.

  “How much have you had to drink, for Christ sake?”

  “Not enough to screw up.”

  “It’s on television already.”

  “I saw.”

  They were in the parking lot behind the bowling alley: Grant and Erika. Furtively he transferred the Van Gogh from her MG to his silver-gray Cadillac. She handed him the purse with the Colt automatic in it.

  “I don’t dare kiss you right now,” he said. “God knows I’d like to. But if anybody saw that—”

  “Anybody seeing us together is bad enough.”

  “So—” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Have courage, my darling. You’re going to need it. But don’t lose faith. We’ve done it right. In the morning I’ll deep-six the gun and the painting and—”

  “About that time I’ll be waking up in my new little cell.”

  “On your way to being a millionaire.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. It’s all that’s going to sustain me.”

  6

  12:34 A.M.

  Erika left the Ten Strikes Lounge reluctantly, knowing she would be in jail before the night was over.

  Sonya put another martini in front of Grant. “By god, she did it!”

  “If she just doesn’t lose her cool.”

  “Well, I’m glad I’m not in her position. And not in yours, to tell you the truth. I’m in as far as I want to be.”

  “The only problem I have with you is your confidence in Fred.”

  “Fred will be no problem.”

  “I’ve relied on your word about that.”

  “Erika has a long night ahead of her. And sometime before dawn, she’s going to be calling her lawyer. You going to stay up all night?”

  He nodded. “I suppose. I know I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “Want some TLC?”

  He grinned. “I take my chief alibi witness home with me the night when—”

  “We sneaked in and out of your place many, many times, and nobody saw.”

  “Well… It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Tell me something about this long night that everybody’s going to have. Did Tim Wylie really kill Tammy?” Grant glanced around the bar, as if this word would somehow slip through the air and be overheard. He leaned toward Sonya and said very quietly, “I haven’t the slightest idea. Erika thinks so, and that’s all that counts.”

  IV

  1

  THURSDAY, APRIL 13—11:39 P.M.

  Officer Daniel Mulligan recognized the man in the shabby raincoat who approached in the glaring, flashing lights of four police cars and an Emergency Squad wagon. “Hiya, Mulligan! Sorry you signed on?”

  Officer Daniel Mulligan had never been sorry he had signed on with the Los Angeles Police Department. He regretted some of the duty assignments that came his way. This one in particular was a bitch. North Perugia Way. Bel Air. Murder in a mansion. It had started to drizzle, which did nothing for the patience of the reporters who insisted they had a right to go inside the house, or at least to get closer, or for the patience of the officers who literally had to push some of them back.

  “Lieutenant… Ain’t this a night?”

  Lieutenant Columbo shook his head. “I’d ask the usual question, Mulligan. But I know the answer.”

  “The usual question?”

  “'Who got dead?’ This time I know.” He shook his head. “Give me another hour and a half, and it wouldn’t have got to be my case. I was goin’ home at midnight. I stopped in at the office, and— 'Hey, Columbo! Get up to the Tim Wylie place!’ yells Cap’n Scziegel. How ’bout you? How’d you get stuck on this one?”

  Mulligan grinned and shook his head. No matter how many times he encountered Lieutenant Columbo, he was still surprised by him. The man looked like anything but what he was: a legend in the Department. Columbo broke rules other detectives dared not break—and he cleared cases other detectives could not clear.

  Rain glistened on his tousled hair and his face—failing, however, to put out the fire in the butt that was left of his cigar. Water had to leak through his tattered veteran of a raincoat; but in spite of the hour and the rain, the lieutenant smiled wryly as he looked toward the house and at the array of emergency vehicles on the street and in the driveway.

  “Who’s inside?”

  “Sergeant Ruiz and four uniformed guys. Dr. Culp. The people from the Crime Scene Unit.”

  “How ’bout Mrs. Wylie?”

  “I understand she found the body.”

  Columbo sighed loudly. “Okay. Gotta get to work. Mrs. Columbo gets upset when I work a night tour and they find a body in the last half-hour. She figures those cases oughta go over to the next bunch of guys. I already cleared one case today. Body found along Stone Canyon Reservoir. Got dead of a heart attack, it turns out. Not a homicide.”

  “Heard the radio call on that one,” said Mulligan.

  “ ‘When constabulary’s duty’s to be done… ’ ” Columbo sighed. “At least I can get in out of the rain, Mulligan. Take it easy.” He tossed his cigar butt into the wet sh
rubbery and walked up to the door.

  * * *

  The body lay covered on the living-room floor. Dr. Harold Culp uncovered it for Columbo.

  Tim Wylie, lying on his face, was all but unrecognizable. A bullet fired into his right ear had exited through his left eye. Besides that, an immense bloodstain had spread over the carpet, obviously from other wounds to his body.

  “Before she was taken upstairs by her doctor,” said Sergeant Jesús Ruiz, “Mrs. Wylie noticed that a painting was gone from the wall. The doctor said it was a Van Gogh and worth at least a million dollars.”

  “A million or more? Must’ve been some picture. Robbery and murder, ya figure, Jesús?”

  Columbo pronounced the sergeant’s name in the Spanish way: Hay-ZOOSS. The young detective was a compact man with black, brush-cut hair, brown eyes, and an olive complexion. He was dressed neatly in a blue blazer, gray slacks, and polished black shoes.

  “That’s what the doctor said. A million, minimum. He’s upstairs with Mrs. Wylie. He has her sedated now. Her story was that she was out playing bridge, which she does every Thursday evening, and she came home and found—”

  “Y’ got people searching the house?”

  “Right. They’re upstairs right now.”

  Columbo squatted beside the body. “That where a slug went?” he asked, pointing to a hole in the carpet.

  Ruiz nodded. “It’s in the floor. Crime Scene will have to cut a piece of the wood out to get the slug.”

  “Crime Scene— That’s you, uh… You’re Sergeant—”

  “Davidson, Lieutenant.” The sergeant in charge of the Crime Scene Unit was a stocky redheaded woman, wearing a badge on her blue blazer. She and her three people were responsible for taking photographs, taking samples of hair and fluids—blood especially—and anything else found at the scene of a crime.

  “Right. Davidson. We’ve worked together on other cases.” Columbo shook his head. “This one’s messy, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” said the sergeant.

  Columbo turned to Dr. Culp. “Guess I don’t need to ask how the man died. Got any idea when, Doc?”

  “I knew you’d ask. I’d say he’s been dead three hours, roughly.”

  “Meanin’, like eight-thirty?”

  “Based on body temperature and the onset of rigor mortis, I’d place the time of death as between, oh, eight-thirty and… nine. The ambient temperature—that is, room temperature—is about seventy. The body has been cooling for roughly three hours. You can’t be one-hundred- percent accurate, you know.” He ran a hand across the bald spot on the back of his head. “What are you doing working in the middle of the night, Columbo?”

  “Same thing you are, Doc. With murder you don’t get nine-to-five days and forty-hourweeks.”

  “Can we move him?”

  Columbo turned to Sergeant Davidson. “If Crime Scene has got all the pictures it wants.” The sergeant nodded. “Let’s turn him over, then.”

  Columbo and Davidson rolled the body over gently.

  The carpet underneath was stained with blood. Both of Wylie’s hands had bullet holes in them.

  “Whatta ya figure, 9 mm?” Columbo asked.

  “7.65 mm—.32 caliber,” said Sergeant Davidson.

  Ya sure?”

  She nodded. “The shooter didn’t bother to pick up the ejected shell casings. They were fired from an automatic.

  I’d guess a Colt. The ballistics boys will be able to tell.” Columbo tugged at his ear. “Thirty-two… Little bitty automatic. Concealable.”

  “Right,” said Sergeant Davidson.

  “Well, Jesús— How about entry? You found any busted locks or anything like that?”

  Sergeant Ruiz shook his head. “No. We’ve checked all the doors and windows. First thing we did.”

  Columbo shook his head. “Which makes it sound like he let somebody in.” Then he turned to Dr. Culp. “If it’s okay with Sergeant Davidson, you can have the body.”

  Summoned by Dr. Culp, two men from the coroner’s office wheeled in a gurney and lifted the body of Tim Wylie.

  Columbo took a fresh cigar from a pocket of his raincoat. “Seein’ a cigar butt in the ashtray, I guess Mr. Wylie smoked cigars. So the smell of mine won’t offend Mrs. Wylie. Anybody got a match?” One of the men from the coroner’s office offered flame from his lighter. Columbo puffed for a moment. “Sure does look like somebody came to steal that painting and killed Mr. Wylie in the process. On the other hand— No break-in. That doesn’t fit.” Columbo walked to the bar. He bent over the two glasses sitting there and sniffed. “Bourbon. Scotch. Glasses are full. Ice has melted in them, I betcha. Drinks poured and not a sip taken. Hey, Davidson, better have the contents of these glasses analyzed, besides checkin’ ’em for fingerprints. What I’ll wanta know is this: was there ice in these glasses? If yes, then we know the murder didn’t happen within the past hour and a half, say. It’d take ice cubes that long to melt.”

  “Right,” said Sergeant Carol Davidson.

  “Looka this. The cap’s loose on the Scotch bottle. Just barely on there. Gotta think of another scenario. Mr. Wylie let somebody in. Somebody he knew. Poured two drinks, but before either of them could take a sip—bang! And it’s gotta be the person he poured a drink for, doesn’t it? Otherwise there’d be two bodies.”

  A man came in. Bustled in. He was white-haired, flushed of face, and he glared at the LAPD team with an air of condescension and impatience.

  “I’m Dr. Gilbert Haas. Who’s in charge?”

  “Lieutenant Columbo. Homicide. LAPD.”

  Dr. Haas nodded crisply at the odd-looking detective. “Mrs. Wylie is my patient. I must insist that she not be disturbed tonight. Your people will have to stay out of her room and leave her alone. Needless to say, she’s in shock. Besides, she’s seventy years old. I have her sedated. Her daughter will arrive shortly. I’ll stay until she does.”

  “Who called you, Doctor?” Columbo asked.

  “Mrs. Wylie called me.”

  “Are you familiar with this house?”

  Dr. Haas nodded.

  “You see the place on the walls where the painting is gone?” Columbo asked.

  “Whoever did this,” said the doctor, “knew exactly what he was here for. Any one of those paintings was worth a million dollars. The Van Gogh that’s missing could have been worth two or three million. Somebody knew the value of priceless art.”

  “You’d guess, then,” said Columbo, “that Mr. Wylie surprised a burglar—or two burglars—in the act of stealing that picture. Caught, they killed him and took the picture.”

  “That is precisely what I would surmise,” Dr. Haas said coldly.

  “You say those two others there are worth a million apiece?”

  “Easily. The missing painting is “Printemps du verger” by Vincent van Gogh. The title means “Springtime in the Orchard.” The one on the left there is “Entrer en danse ” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and the one on the right is “Harlequins nus” by Pablo Picasso.”

  “I’m gonna lose sleep over this until I figure out why a burglar would kill a man and then take one painting and leave two million worth of others hanging there. That doesn’t make sense, does it, Doctor?”

  “Well, I’ll leave you to lose sleep over it, Lieutenant. My concern is my patient.”

  “Was Mr. Wylie your patient, too?”

  “Yes. For many years.”

  “Was he in good health, generally?”

  “Very good for a man his age.”

  “Didn’t use drugs by any chance?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You would have known?”

  “I would have known.”

  “Well, thank ya, Doctor. I hope I don’t have to ask you any more questions.”

  One of the uniformed officers had come into the room. His name tag said he was Heath. He was carrying a piece of paper, carrying it gingerly, holding it by one corner. “What ya got?”

  Heath put
the note down on the escritoire at one end of the room, and Columbo sat down and read it.

  Tim, you are an evil bastard! I know now what happened to Tammy. A man who would kidnap and murder his own daughter is— Well, I don’t know what to call you. I hope you can live with it. Actually, I hope you can’t. Keep an eye out for who’s behind you.

  Erika

  Columbo got up and made room for Ruiz and Davidson to read the note. Dr. Haas couldn’t restrain his curiosity and stepped up to read it, too.

  “Erika… Tammy… Uhhm… Lessee… What was that case? Tammy disappeared. They found her body out in a canyon. She was the daughter of… Erika Björling. Right?”

  “My god!” Davidson exclaimed. “She’s accusing Wylie of having killed his daughter!”

  “Yeah. We never knew who Tammy’s father was. Erika wouldn’t say, and nobody ever figured it out.”

  “This is an outrageous accusation!” Dr. Haas protested. “Tim Wylie had an impeccable reputation. An accusation like this could have ruined him. I’d suggest to you, Lieutenant, that this note may well represent an attempt at blackmail.” The doctor showed a twisted, bitter smile. “In any case, Tim had a vasectomy ten years ago.”

  “Tammy was born nineteen or twenty years ago,” said Sergeant Davidson.

  “I don’t believe it,” the doctor insisted. “I don’t give a damn; I don’t believe it.”

  “There’s a way to find out,” Columbo said. He turned to Dr. Culp, who was sitting on a couch watching and listening. “Take a good blood sample for DNA testing, Doc. We may want to exhume the body of Tammy Björling and get a tissue sample for a DNA match.”

  “I suppose when one is murdered, he and his family are subjected to all sorts of intrusive procedures,” remarked Dr. Haas.

  “Well, Sir, we do like to find out who kills people and why.”

  “Yes. I’m sure you do. I’ll go back upstairs to my patient. The daughter, Mrs. Glassman, will be here soon. I hope there won’t be any problem about her getting in.”

  “No problem. Jesús, the man outside in the rain is Mulligan. Would you step out and tell him to be looking for Mrs. Glassman?”