Authors: Parnell Hall
“See, that’s a threat. Much easier, don’t you think?”
The cop was not amused. He raised his head, bellowed, “Perkins!”
“Is that your safe word?” Cora said. “When the situation’s out of hand and you’re afraid you’ll get hurt, you say ‘Perkins.’”
The door opened and the uniformed cop stuck his head in. “Sir?”
“Miss Felton doesn’t want to play nice. Why don’t you take her back into the holding cell until she’s arraigned?”
“Arraigned?” Cora said. “On what charge?”
“Well, that’s something that the ADA you were talking about is going to come up with. Me, I’m just a dumb cop.”
“Dumb like a fox,” Cora said. “Okay, Perkins, cool your heels. Look, Sergeant, it’s not that I like your company much, but you got the holding cell beat all to hell. Send your flunky away and let’s give it another shot.”
Perkins, who apparently didn’t like being called a flunky, said, “You want me to handcuff her, Sergeant?”
“Not if you think you can handle her.”
“Okay, lady, let’s go.”
“Hang on! Geez, you really know how to rub it in. You wanna talk, let’s talk. And I will call this fine, upstanding officer anything he wants if he will just go away.”
“That’ll do, Perkins,” Crowley said.
Perkins gave Cora the benefit of a cold, hard stare before going out and closing the door.
Cora watched him go. She turned back to find Sergeant Crowley looking at her expectantly.
“All right,” Cora said. “I give up. You bluff better than I do.”
“I wasn’t bluffing.”
“That’s the basis of a good bluff. The fact that it isn’t. You wanna talk, talk.”
“You’re the one wants to talk. What were you doing in the apartment of a man who got shot with a gun that had recently been fired?”
“Would that be a crime?”
“You’re the one answering the questions.”
“Yes, I am. But if you suspect me of a crime, I have the right to an attorney. That is not the right to hear you make clever remarks about how attorneys shouldn’t get arrested. That is the right to have you produce my attorney so that I can make my statement without violating my constitutional rights. Please note I am not refusing to talk. I am merely attempting to make sure my rights are protected when I do.”
Sergeant Crowley glared at her for a moment. “Perkins!” he bellowed again. Cora understood why there were no pictures on the walls. They never would have survived the vibrations.
The young officer must have been right outside. “Sergeant?” he said, popping in the door. He had a triumphant look on his face.
He was bound to be disappointed.
“Go to the women’s lockup and bring me Miss Felton’s lawyer.”
“Yes, sir. And who would that be?” Perkins said.
“Are you gay?” Cora said.
Perkins’s mouth fell open.
Sergeant Crowley blinked. “What?”
“If he’s not gay, send him down to lockup, tell him to bring back anyone he wants.” Cora smiled. “He’ll pick the right one.”
Chapter
9
Becky was madder
than a wet hen. Cora had never seen a wet hen, but she was sure Becky qualified. She came into the office in handcuffs. Her first words were, “Have they manhandled you?”
“Not so far,” Cora said.
“Too bad. I’m adding up the charges here. A few more, and I’ll be able to take a nice vacation.”
“Are the handcuffs necessary, Perkins?” Crowley said.
Perkins shrugged. “The young lady didn’t wish to accompany me. I didn’t wish to have my eyes scratched out.”
“Ah,” Becky said. “May I add resisting arrest to the list of false charges for which I’ll be seeking compensation?”
“I think we can dispense with the handcuffs, Perkins.”
Becky’s wrists were handcuffed behind her back. Perkins bent down, fitted the key.
“Nice back there, isn’t it?” Cora said. She was gratified to see the young officer blush.
“Ah, Miss Baldwin, is it?” Crowley said.
“Yes.”
“Are you appearing for Miss Felton?”
“I’m appearing because I was dragged here in handcuffs.”
Sergeant Crowley exhaled slowly through his mouth. He seemed to be trying awfully hard to control his temper. “I was not so much concerned with how you got here as the capacity in which you appear.”
“I appear in the capacity of a woman who’s been wrongfully arrested on a bogus charge.”
The sergeant waved it away. “Yeah, yeah. I got that. I’m asking Cora Felton here some questions. She is at the very least a witness in a homicide. We assume she’d like to do her civic duty and assist in an investigation. We’re sure she has no wish to obstruct the investigation.”
“Was that a threat or a bluff?”
“He doesn’t bluff,” Cora said.
“That’s a threat? Excellent. The list of charges grows.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re clever with words. You passed the bar and all that. I need your client’s help in clearing up this crime. She refused to talk until her attorney was present. We have followed the letter of the law in producing her attorney. Now, you want to have a pissing contest or you want to get on with it?”
“Crude, isn’t he?” Cora said.
Becky shrugged. “Frankly, I prefer it to patronizing and wolfish. Look, Detective—”
“I’m a sergeant.”
“Be still my heart. Look, Sergeant. We got theater tickets. Is there anything that’s going to satisfy you short of a full confession?”
“That’s practically what she said.”
“And you wouldn’t let her confess without me. Kudos. I’m proud of you, Sergeant.”
“If you want to get out of here, let your client clean up some minor details for me.”
“Such as?”
“He wants to know what I was doing in that apartment with a recently fired gun.”
Becky nodded. “And what would you consider a
major
detail, Sergeant?”
“You see my problem,” Crowley said. “Without an explanation, it’s hard to imagine letting her go.”
“And with an explanation, you’ll thank her and give her a ride Uptown?”
Crowley exhaled again. “You want to keep sparring, that’s your business. I’m not the one pressed for time.”
“Good point. Let me help you out here, Sergeant. What’s the name of the dead man?”
Crowley shook his head. “You’re the one providing the information.”
Becky grimaced. “That’s going to be less than helpful if we don’t know what we’re talking about. You want to know our relationship with the dead man. Assuming we never met the man in question, it’s impossible to know if we’ve ever had any dealings with him unless we know who he is.”
“Does that mean you’ve had dealings with him?”
“I have no idea. Who is he?”
Sergeant Crowley frowned.
Cora grinned. She understood his frustration. He really wanted an answer, but Becky’s logic was hard to ignore.
“The dead man would appear to be the occupant of the apartment. In support of that contention is the fact that he appeared to live there, that he was identified by the doorman, that he had in his pocket a wallet with identification for the gentleman in question, including photo IDs that certainly seemed to look like the dead man, with the exception of being alive. I’m still waiting on fingerprinting, DNA testing, and the identification of a close relative, but I do not think that it would be misleading for me to suggest to you that the dead man was Charles Kessington.”
“Couldn’t have split those hairs better myself, Sergeant,” Becky said. “In light of that startling revelation, I think we are prepared to help you out. Providing we don’t compromise my client’s rights while we do so. So, assuming the hypothesis that my client and I might have had some dealings with the decedent, let’s see what we can do.”
“I don’t want to assume a hypothesis.”
“Well, unless you want to get an ADA down here so I can say charge her or release her, that’s what you’re going to get. The problem is once I say charge her or release her, the information’s going to dry up rather quickly.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No,” Becky said. “It’s a bluff. Call it and see what you get.”
“I like her,” Cora said. “Don’t you like her?”
Sergeant Crowley glowered. “Hit me with your hypothetical.”
“Fine,” Becky said. “For the sake of argument, say the decedent called me up and asked to retain my services as an attorney. Say he didn’t want to see me in my office and didn’t want me to come to his. Say I was reluctant to go alone to the gentleman’s penthouse apartment, and therefore hired Ms. Felton, who had done some investigation for me in the past, to come along as an armed chaperone/bodyguard.”
“What about the gun?”
Becky smiled, gestured to Cora. “My client hawks breakfast cereal to schoolchildren. Would you really expect her to wrestle a would-be rapist into submission?”
“I wouldn’t expect her to shoot him in the head.”
“Neither would I. I would consider that exceeding her authority.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. She was holding the gun. Are you claiming she found it and picked it up? That is beyond stupid, even for the rankest amateur detective.”
“Thank you for not suspecting me of doing that, Sergeant,” Cora said.
“I’m waiting for an explanation.”
“The killer had the gun. She surprised him in the bedroom rifling the safe. When he aimed the murder weapon at her, she fired back.”
“You didn’t say hypothetically.”
“Doesn’t matter. There is a huge hypothetical parenthesis around this entire conversation.”
“You are now claiming the discharged weapon found in your client’s possession is her own gun?”
“You didn’t say hypothetical either.”
“I thought we had a big parenthesis. Or does that just work for you?”
“I am saying the gun found in my client’s possession had absolutely nothing to do with the murder. Compare a bullet fired from it with the fatal bullet, and that will be abundantly clear. If you step on it, we might even make the curtain.”
“Hypothetically.”
“No, it’s a real curtain.”
“You claim your client fired this gun in the bedroom?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“There was no bullet found.”
“The bullet went out the hypothetical window,” Cora said. “Surely you have a ballistics expert familiar enough with firearms to be able to discharge a weapon.”
The sergeant snatched up the phone, punched in a number. “Denton, Crowley. Who’s got the Charles Kessington evidence?… Yeah I’ll hold on.” He cupped the phone, said, “Ordinarily there’s a chain of evidence, but when there’s something as important as theater tickets … Un-huh. Thanks. Can you transfer me?… Yeah, it does that to me, too.” He pushed a button on the phone, got a dial tone, punched another number in. “Sergeant Crowley. Redburn there?… Hi, Sam. Look. You’re doing the Kessington case? We got a gun recovered at the scene, shot fired.… Yeah, that one. You match it up with the fatal bullet yet?… Yeah, I know it just happened.… Any way to hurry it along?… Who?… Millhouse?” The sergeant grimaced. “No, I understand.”
He hung up the phone. “Bad news. The postmortem’s in the hands of an ME who positively hates the theater.”
“You’re kidding,” Cora said.
“Yes, I am. He’s just notoriously slow. The result is the same. The guy’s a human rain delay. Calls from impatient ballistics experts just piss him off. Nothing to do but wait.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“The guy knows we need it. He’ll call as soon as it comes in. In the meantime, what did the decedent want to consult you about?”
“I don’t know,” Becky said.
“Hypothetically?”
“No, I really don’t know. I have never at any point in time been told what this guy wanted to consult me about. By him, or by anybody else. If you give any credence to my hypothetical at all, you may take it for granted that the man approached me about a matter which he did not in any way explain.”
“If you didn’t recognize him, this would not have been a face-to-face meeting.”
“No, it would have been a phone call.”
“Where to?”
“To my office. In Bakerhaven, Connecticut.”
“Where was he calling from?”
“You ever get a phone call, Sergeant? I don’t know about you, but I have no way of knowing where they’re from.”
“Some people have caller ID.”
“And some private calls are blocked.”
“Are you saying that was the case?”
“I’m saying I don’t know where the call came from. You can draw your own conclusions. You can also make your own investigation. I would assume these weren’t local calls. Perhaps the telephone company could be of some assistance.”
“You also might want to put out a dragnet for an armed man dressed in black with a stocking over his head,” Cora said. “Though by now a really clever murderer might have removed the stocking.”
Sergeant Crowley ignored her, said to Becky, “Is that all you care to tell us?”
“That is hypothetically all we know.”
“Actually,” Crowley said, “there was one other thing.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“The crossword puzzle.”
Cora Felton uttered a remark more suitable to a biker bar.
“Easy, Cora.”
“No, I’m interested in that reaction. Your client appears to have some opinion about the crossword puzzle. Would you care to elaborate?”
“No, I would not care to elaborate,” Cora said. “There’s a dead man. He had a crossword on him. I don’t know why. I don’t know how it got there. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“You’re the Puzzle Lady.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m responsible for every crossword created since the dawn of time.”
“No. But it happens to be your field of expertise. Don’t you think that’s significant?”
“I certainly do. It’s significant because morons who don’t know any better will assume it has something to do with me.”
“Now, now, now, now, now,” Becky said. “What my client meant to say is that since she knows absolutely nothing about the crossword puzzle, it is either a monstrous coincidence, or else someone has deliberately gone out of their way to make it appear she knows something about it.”
“Interesting,” Sergeant Crowley said. “And who knew she was going to be calling on the decedent?”
“See?” Becky said. “This is why the whole question of the crossword puzzle is so unfair. You are now asking me to speculate on who might have known of a hypothetical happenstance.”