Authors: Jeremiah Healy
O’Boy worked his hands as if he was lathering them with soap. “Cuddy, you were in the service, right?”
“Yeah.”
“MPs,” said Cross.
O’Boy said, “Then you can understand the spot I’m in. The chief says bring you in, but not to tell you why. What can I do?”
“Sure you won’t have some coffee?” I said, settling back into the chair as though I had all day.
Cross read the hint. “Cuddy, with what he’s got, he might be able to get a warrant.”
“Arrest or search?”
She said, “Look, why force something that might embarrass someone?”
Meaning Murphy? I watched her closely. Cross was tired and on the verge of decking me, but she was trying to pull off a distasteful task professionally.
“I’ll go with him,” I said. “He can drive his car, and I can drive mine.”
O’Boy said, “Cuddy …”
I said, “Or I can drive his car and he can drive mine.”
O’Boy moved his head, more in resignation than in disagreement. “I’ll follow you out there.”
I got up and moved to the coffee table. “This thing’s busted,” I said, picking up the blaster, “but I can turn on the stereo if you’d like some music while I shower and shave.”
Cross looked up at me as though she wished she carried a concealed chainsaw. I took William’s machine into the bedroom and got ready as quickly as I could.
O’Boy drove Cross to her apartment house in the South End, then followed me as I wound him out of there and to the Mass Pike. We made it to Calem in about thirty-five minutes. Parking in the police lot, we walked abreast into the station house.
O’Boy put me in the same room I’d seen before. He returned ten minutes later with a slim, crew-cut man in a turquoise short-sleeved sport shirt. There was a fading Navy tattoo on the man’s right forearm and an unlit filterless cigarette in the man’s mouth.
O’Boy said, “Chief Wooten, John Cuddy.”
“Chief,” I said.
Wooten turned to O’Boy. “He been frisked and advised of his rights?”
O’Boy reddened. “No, Chief.”
“Do it.”
I felt sorry for O’Boy, so I assumed the position against the wall while O’Boy gave me a desultory pat-down and recited this year’s interpretation of
Miranda
and
Escobedo
. I sat back down.
“Where were you last night from four P.M. onward?” said Wooten.
“I want a lawyer,” I said.
Wooten turned angrily to O’Boy. “You said he’d cooperate.”
“I would have,” I said.
“What do you mean?” said Wooten.
“Just what I said. I would have.”
“Then why aren’t you?” said Wooten.
“Because I don’t like the sudden onset of Bjorkman syndrome I see in you, Chief. Tell me, does old Georgie remind you of yourself when you were young?”
O’Boy didn’t know where to look, so he just squeezed his eyes shut. What little flesh there was on Wooten’s face stretched back taut. “Who the hell do you think you are, mister?”
“A private investigator who twice has come, without any trouble, to your station. I’m guessing you’ve got a major coronary coming on, since last time you wanted me gone forever and this time you want me back before breakfast. Now, if you stop playing Felony Squad with me, I’ll be happy to cooperate. Okay?”
“Chief,” said O’Boy, “can we be straight with him?”
Wooten just glared at me.
“Chief?” said O’Boy again.
Wooten spoke with difficulty. “Lainie Bishop was found dead last night, Cuddy. Your voice was on her telephone machine, saying you were going to meet her. Now account for your whereabouts. Without any shit on the edges.”
I went through my timetable from 4:00 P.M. onward: Mariah Lopez’s office, dinner at Amrhein’s, Mrs. Feeney’s shop, Beth’s grave, Mrs. Daniels’ house. I skipped the street kids and William’s tape player.
“You figure that covers you until about nine P.M.,” said Wooten.
“More like nine-thirty, I’d say.”
“Word of a charged murderer’s mother isn’t exactly gospel.”
I added the street kids, explaining how they could verify my arrival and departure, but still deleting the music box. “When was she killed?”
Wooten looked disgusted and took a chair. O’Boy said, “Medical examiner’ll try to pin it down closer, but we got a real estate customer putting her alive at four-thirty P.M. and a date finding the back door busted and her dead at eight-thirty P.M.”
“Her house?”
“Yeah.”
“B and E?”
Wooten said, “Looks like it now.”
“Chief,” I said, “just because I have an alibi doesn’t automatically make it a panicked burglar.”
Wooten flared up again. “Her skull was broke open by a poker from her fireplace, and the sliding glass door to a back deck was jimmied. We got the Daniels kid in the slam, no motive for the date who shows up, and four houses hit similar in town in the last three months. What does it add up to to you?”
“Any violence in the other hits?”
“No,” said Wooten.
“Same time of day?”
“No.”
“M.O. of the other hits in the paper?”
O’Boy said, “Local weekly’s called the
Chronicle
. It runs a ‘Police Blotter’ column. Editor says they were all in it, with enough details to warn the home owners.”
“Or to tutor a guy who’s copycatting or masking.”
“Masking what?” said Wooten.
“If somebody other than Daniels killed the Creasey girl, then maybe the somebody killed Lainie Bishop and masked it to look like a burglary.”
Wooten looked exasperated. “Cuddy, do you know how many witnesses there were to Daniels’ confession? He had the gun, the motive, the opportunity, blood on his shirt. God almighty. The Daniels boy did the first, and some other junkie from Rox’ did this one.”
“C’mon, Chief. You didn’t buy that before you heard my alibi, and you shouldn’t buy it now. Two women from the same five-patient therapy group are murdered in your town inside a month and they’re not connected? How many other homicides you had in this town in the last ten years? Three?”
O’Boy said, “Two other than these here.”
Wooten stood up. “Cuddy, I’ve about had my fill of you. Come up with some hard evidence, and I’ll be all ears. ’Til then, why’n’t you peddle your theories someplace else?” He looked to O’Boy. “Drive him back when and if you get the time.”
O’Boy and I stayed silent until Wooten closed the door behind him.
I said, “Commander like that makes the days seem longer.”
O’Boy started to say something, stopped, and said, “The chief’s a good cop. You give him something to sink his teeth into, he’s like a bulldog.”
“Come on, O’Boy. Doesn’t this case stink to you too?”
“I dunno.”
“Jesus.”
“Awright. Say, just for the sake of argument, now, that some guy other than Daniels really kills the Creasey girl. When Daniels confesses, the guy’s home free. Why spoil it by killing Lainie Bishop?”
“Blackmail?”
“By Bishop, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. So he pays her. For a while, to let things cool down. Then kills her. Maybe somewheres else. Like on a vacation. Broad like her, she musta liked Club Med or whatever. Wait it out.”
“Maybe she wants the earth and the moon.”
“So he goes in hock for a while to pay her. Good investment if you need the time and your neck’s on the line.”
“O’Boy, you in touch with anybody else from the therapy group about the Bishop killing?”
“No. Well … the old guy. Linden?”
“Homer Linden.”
“Yeah, the guy that looks like a corpse. When I pulled up to Bishop’s house, Linden was already there, talking to one of the uniforms. Claimed he heard the dispatcher on his police scanner radio.”
“Pretty convenient.”
“The guy only lives around the corner.”
“A little farther. I’ve been there. Who was the date?”
“Huh?”
“Bishop’s date. The one who found her.”
“Oh, some computer troubleshooter. He’s here for two days, staying at the Marriott in Newton. He meets her in some bar coupla months ago, dukes her that night, and calls to set up a ‘date’ for last night. Guy’s married, from Rochester, for chrissakes. I give him a lot of credit for even calling it in to us.”
“Who was the uniform?”
“That talked to Linden?”
“Yeah.”
“Clay. You met him.”
“I thought he and Bjorkman were on the day shift?”
“They were. Rotated onto four-to-twelve yesterday.”
O’Boy wouldn’t give me Clay’s home number or address but said he’d leave word for Clay to call me when he came in for his tour. I thanked him and slipped out of the building and lot without Wooten seeing I was under my own power.
I had a little trouble finding Homer Linden’s house again, but got the right street on the third try. I rang his bell.
After two minutes the door opened. He did a double take, then smiled. “Come in, come in.”
“Y
OU KNOW,
I was expecting you’d be back to see me,” said Linden as he led me down to his basement. He took the steps a little faster than I did.
“You get the local paper, Homer?”
“Sure do. If you mean the
Calem Chronicle
.”
“The one with the ‘Police Blotter.’ ”
He sat down on one of his machines, two-handedly swinging a towel over his head and onto his neck, like a jump rope. “Read it religiously. Just like I listen to the police radio.” He thought a moment. “You’re talking about Lainie now, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
He wagged his head left to right. “Damn shame. Goddamned judges don’t realize that a man who’d break into a house just as soon kill somebody who surprised them.”
“You figure that’s how it happened.”
“I was there. Afterwards, I mean. Heard the radio call on my scanner, got there just after Clay and Bjorkman. Walked around back with Bjorkman, saw the door and all.”
“That would take care of any footprints the police might cast for comparison purposes.”
Linden looked at me funny. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that your walking around there with old Georgie would bollix up any footprints you might have left there earlier.”
Linden started to laugh, then stopped. “What the hell? You mean you think I killed her?”
“Maybe both.”
“Both?”
“Both Jennifer and Lainie.”
This time Linden did laugh. “Boy, you are putting me on.”
“What makes you think so?”
He fixed me with a finger-shaking look. “Now, listen up. I was an investigator when you was still wetting yourself. Just guys tapping into other people’s lines for billing diversion or getting their rocks off listening to their neighbors talk dirty to their lovers. But I still learned my trade, boy, and I’m thinking you haven’t.”
“Then show me where I’m going wrong.”
“Well, let me give you opportunity, because I was there when Jennifer got shot and near enough when Lainie got bashed. How about means? Daniels used his own gun on Jennifer.”
“He gave it to you.”
“What?”
“You asked him for it and he gave it to you.”
“Just like that?”
“Right.”
“Fine. If that’s your reasoning on this, I don’t see we need to get to motive.”
“Motive’s easy too. You had the hots for Jennifer. She liked to ‘experiment.’ Maybe she decided a randy, well-conditioned old guy would be interesting.”
“Boy, do you have any idea how crazy you sound?”
“Homer, don’t you think it’s just a little bit odd that two people from the same counseling group get killed four weeks apart?”
“Not as odd as you thinking I had something to do with it.” He broke off. “Does seem funny that both of them got it, though.”
“Especially since William could have killed only Jennifer.”
“If William didn’t kill Jennifer …”
“Then who did? And how, with William still having his gun? And if he didn’t do it, then why did he confess to it?”
Linden rolled his lower lip down till it almost touched his chin. “If it wasn’t William, how the hell … You said before that I could have killed Jennifer because William would have just given me the gun?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why would he have given it to me?”
“Like I said. Because you asked him.”
Linden shook his head. “Boy, you make no sense at all.”
“Bear with me, all right? I want to try something out on you.”
He watched me warily. “All right,” without enthusiasm.
“When you talked to the police, you said that you, Marek, Ramelli, and Lainie Bishop were waiting for William and Jennifer when William burst in, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Were all of you already in the meeting room?”
“Yeah.”
“Did anything unusual happen before William entered?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did anyone act out of the ordinary?”
Linden sniffed. “Everybody in there was out of the ordinary. That’s why they were there in the first place, you know?”
“I mean, did anybody, any of you four, do anything different than usual?”
“No. Well, it was unusual for anybody to be late, that was kind of a rule, otherwise we all got gypped out of some of our time. Time with Marek, I mean. And it was especially odd that William was late.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, he was almost always there first. I suppose because he had the farthest of any of us to come.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, since it was bad to be late, and he lived so far away, I always figured he got there early so he wouldn’t get stuck on a bus or something and hold the rest of us up.”
“You said for one thing?”
“Huh?”
“You said that was one reason he wouldn’t be late. Was there another?”
“Oh, yeah. It was his turn to be hypnotized. So he was really gypping himself most of all by not being there on time.”
“Did anybody comment on that?”
“Comment?” Linden put his hands to the ends of the towel and drew down alternately on it, like milking a cow in slow motion. “Let’s see. Ramelli complained something about missing a Celtics play-off game—he has some kind of fancy sports cable hookup. Lainie looked like she always does, kind of moony at—Jesus, Lainie, I’m sorry. No need to be talking like that about you now.”
“Moony at whom?”