Cy decided to check up on the men in Agatha Rossner's life chronologically in the light of what he now knew. That meant Timothy first. He could have asked him point-blank, and maybe he would later, but he took the indirect route first. If the thing had gone beyond drinks after work, where had the couple gone for the main act? Aggie's modus operandi was never to take a man home, but go to his place so that when she left, it was over. Imagine trying to get a man out of the house in the morning. Aggie had been full of such folk wisdom, a courtesan's guide to the etiquette of random coupling. That is why she had stayed over at Jack's.
Tim Gallagher could scarcely have taken her home. So, where? They had first met at the Hacienda Motel, where the legal seminar had been held. It was a place favored by many legal groups and firms. That might tell against it, from the point of view of discretion, but either there was some legal event on or there wasn't. If there wasn't, it was just another motel. There was a photograph of Tim in the morning paper, striding from the courthouse. Cy figured it would serve as well as anything for identification purposes.
While he was crossing the enormous lobby, Mr. Lawrence Wagner popped out of his office like a cuckoo, all but throwing up his arms at the sight of Horvath. Then he was scooting across the floor to intercept Cy before he got to the corridor leading to Ruby's office.
“Lieutenant Horvath. I asked specifically that you come around the back.”
“You were expecting me?”
Lawrence frowned. “I called 911 ten minutes ago.”
“What about?”
“Don't you know?”
“Not until you tell me.”
Lawrence checked the lobby, then led Horvath into the corridor. “I don't want the guests alarmed. It's Ruby.”
Cy started for her office, on the run, with Lawrence coming afterward, urging calm and consideration for the guests.
Ruby had been sitting at her desk in the little office that was more like a linen closet. The murder weapon had been a cord pulled from a laundry bag and twisted around her neck until she was dead. Her head was flung back and she stared unseeing at the neon light above her. The cord must have been dropped over her head from behind. A ballpoint pen had been used in the twisting, tourniquet style. Cy picked up the phone and called Dr. Pippen, but she was already on her way. While he waited, he kept gawkers out of the room and warned the 911 crew about messing up the scene.
“The coroner's on her way.”
“Nothing we can do for her.”
“Wait until Dr. Pippen gets here.”
Why? Did he want company? Mainly he didn't want the housekeepers who took turns peeking in at Ruby, their eyes wide and horrified, to think that this was getting anything but the complete attention of the Fox River police. He wished Agnes Lamb was here to reassure them further.
Meanwhile he considered what Ruby's death meant for Harry Paquette. Harry was under lock and key downtown, so there was no way he was going to be accused of doing away with a woman who would have tied him tightly to Linda Hopkins and knew all the ups
and downs of their relationship and thought he should be hanged. But Cy had come with the idea that Ruby might be able to identify Timothy Gallagher as the lawyer who had tried to be so friendly with Linda. It was not the sort of speculation he would have voiced, certainly not to Phil Keegan, but if Ruby had made the identification of Tim Gallagher, the two murders he was investigating would no longer be unrelated. But related in what way? Not even in the privacy of his own mind did Cy attempt an answer to that question.
If Cy Horvath had a primary virtue, it was his Hungarian doggedness. On the other hand, that was his main vice too. Phil Keegan had let Cy wrap up the investigation of the woman pushed into traffic but he was supposed to be devoting himself primarily to the Agatha Rossner strangling. So what the hell was he doing out at the Hacienda Motel and calling in to report the murder of Ruby Otter?
“Nine-one-one got that, Cy.”
“Phil, this is the woman who knew the girl who was pushed into traffic.”
“I thought you were looking into the woman Jack Gallagher claims he strangled.”
“That's the funny thing. I am.”
“You got anyone with you?”
“No.”
“Why don't I come by there and hear what you've got.”
Before a death could be turned over to the prosecutor as a case of murder of whatever degree, Phil Keegan's division had to establish a number of things. Identify a suspect, or suspects, of course, and then show there was motive and opportunity and, most important of all, gather physical evidence that the suspect had done the deed. What
someone might have going on in his own mind, God only knew, and that went for the jury as well as the one indicted for a crime. Leave too much margin for thought on the part of the men and women of the jury, and all hell could break loose. The thing had to be tied down in such a way that, like it or not, whatever the defendant might claim he meant to do, no one could reasonably deny that he did kill the other person. A confession of guilt? These were so rare as to be nonexistentâeven years afterward.
Justice is imperfect in this world, of course, and many of those who walked free after a trial, or who by bargaining and the like spent a short time in prison because their action had been redescribed out of all comparison with what the evidence showed, were guilty as sin and everyone including their attorneys knew it. There were protests against such decisions only if there were factors involved that could ignite a segment of the population. If a cop is set free by a jury when he is up for shooting a citizen, you can count on protests. Demonstrations on the other side are far more sure, particularly if it is a question of capital punishment. It didn't matter to antiâdeath penalty zealots if the prisoner himself accepted the justice of his sentence. It was barbaric to exact a life in the name of justice, however guilty that life was. Life imprisonment was the fallback position: Better to lock the murderer up forever and throw away the key. But now life imprisonment too, was coming under attack, now it is thought barbaric to confine a man in a penitentiary for life. The whole damned society has gone nuts, Phil was sure of it. It was punishment itself that horrified people.
“They don't think anyone is really responsible for anything, Roger,” he had said to Father Dowling when he had philosophized about this subject at the rectory.
“A comforting doctrine. But I don't think it has many adherents, Phil.”
“Come on.” Phil had been ticking off examples of what he meant.
“Think of the ref at a ball game. Fans are ready to hang him in a minute for a bad call.”
“It might bring back real baseball,” Phil growled.
It was the anger he felt about Jack Gallagher that had brought all these thoughts up like heartburn. With Jack they had had a confession before he got his chair warm downtown.
“I did it. It's that simple. I strangled that poor girl and I am here to pay the price.”
What good is a confession? They still had to do their job. Jack would not be permitted to plead guilty. Like everyone else he would be the beneficiary of the legal system, rival attorneys, the prosecutor trying to convince the jury he had done it, the defense rebutting and mocking the prosecutor's case. Jack Gallagher's confession was not going to figure in that procedure.
The medical examiner's team had been all over Jack's condo, fingerprints, photographs, the works. And the area outside where the body had been found was still marked off, but the word was that it was useless. The area had been stomped to death by the 911 ambulance crew and then Dr. Pippen and her bunch. What could they do? They had to walk on the ground. Now a slight thaw had made it even more worthless. The autopsy report, the lab's examinations of the siteâmeaning largely Jack's condoâwould give them facts. But until someone like Cy got working on it, it would not take a shape that any prosecutor would accept. So why in the hell was Cy out here at the Hacienda Motel checking out a call that had been made to 911?
“I didn't come because of the call, Phil.”
They were in Ruby's little office and Phil was bent over, studying the throat, still tightly caught in the laundry-bag cord. “Either she fought pretty good or the strangler didn't know his business. See how the marks jump all over before the final twisting?” Dispassionate. Of course Phil hadn't known Ruby.
“I came to talk with her.”
“What about?”
Pippen blew in then, her leather coat open and flying around her, red hair swept efficiently back to set off her Grace Kelly cheeks. She nodded at the detectives and then she too was bent over Ruby.
“How about a drink, Phil?”
“Sure. Why not?”
The medical examiner's van was pulling in as they crossed the lobby to the lounge. Lawrence Wagner came athwart them, wringing his hands. “Must they use all those damnable sirens?”
“Those are the low ones,” Cy said. “You should hear them full blast.”
“Who's he?” Phil said as they entered the ill-lit, chilly lounge.
“The manager.”
Phil made a sound.
They sat at the bar, and ordered glasses of stout. “The reason I was coming to see Ruby was to show her this.”
Phil took the newspaper and looked at the picture of Timothy Gallagher. “She know him?”
“We'll never know.” Cy drank off his glass in one steady swallow and shook his head when the bartender came over. Phil was a sipper, but this was no place to hear what Cy wanted to say. Phil put away half his stout and said, “Come on.”
They sat in Keegan's car and, listening, Phil remembered his annoyance that Cy wasn't concentrating on the death of Agatha Rossner. Cy spoke matter-of-factly, of course, but not even his phlegmatic disposition could lessen the bizarre menagerie that had formed prior to the murder. The facts, as Cy would write them up when he got back to his desk, were these:
⢠Colleen Gallagher heard that her brother Tim was involved with Agatha Rossner, whom he had met at a legal seminar at the Hacienda Motel.
⢠Colleen thought this affair was revenge on Agatha's part because Mario Liberati, now Colleen's fiancé, had spurned her advances.
⢠Fearful that Agatha could, intentionally or not, ruin Tim's family life, Colleen spoke to her uncle Austin Rooney about it and he agreed to talk to his nephew. He saw the couple together at the Willard Bar downtown and thought being observed was all the lesson Tim needed.
⢠When the affair continued, Colleen asked her father to talk sense into her brother. She contrived a tour of Mallard and Bill so her father could see what Agatha was like, and the two went off together afterward, Jack indicating that he would work on the girl first.
⢠As a result of this, Agatha dropped the son in favor of the father. At least one previous time she had stayed most of the night with Jack. On the night she was killed, she left earlier and was killed not far from the entrance of Jack's condo.
⢠Jack confessed to the murder, but that was bunk. He was calm as could be when the police came to his door the following morning.
⢠If Jack is just a distraction, who are the possible suspects?
Timothy Gallagher.
Austin Rooney.
Mario Liberati
.
Colleen Gallagher.
Unknown.
“In that order?” Phil asked. He had lit a cigar and nodded his head among the clouds.
“I think so,” Cy replied.
“What would Ruby have been able to prove if she had lived to see that picture of Timothy?”
“That he and Aggie went there after their drinks. We can't just take a woman's saying so for the fact that they had an affair. That may be good enough, or bad enough, for the man's sister, but we have to know.”
“Who do you want working with you?”
“Maybe Agnes, in a little bit. There is one more item, Phil. How did Agatha get to Jack's place and how did she expect to get home when she left?”
“It would be hard to get a cab at that hour, except by phoning first.”
“The hood of the car was still warm when we checked her garage, Phil.”
Phil Keegan munched on his cigar and scowled.
“Maybe somebody drove her there and dumped her in the snow.”
“But if she drove there ⦔
“The car may be the key to the whole thing.”
Fred came up, knocked on his door, and told Austin Rooney that the police had been here asking about him.
“That's hard to believe.”
“They seem to be interested in why you was out all last night.”
Austin looked at the loathsome Fred Crosley. The man rented out units of his building but did not thereby lose interest in the space he himself did not occupy. Except when repairs were needed, of course. He was the most intrusive busybody Austin had ever known.
“So what did you tell them?”
“Me? How would I know where you spend your nights?”
“How would you know that I wasn't home in bed?”
“Were you?” Fred asked, a sly expression on his face.
“Maybe I'll hold that answer until the police ask me.”
“Where were you?” Fred asked, unable to face the prospect of not knowing.
“A gentleman never tells.”
Sometime later, Colleen called to tell him that the police had been to see Timothy. “At his office, thank God. I suppose we will all be grilled now.”
“They've already been here.”
“What did they ask you?”
“They came in my absence. The ineffable Crosley apparently told them I didn't come home that night so I will have to come up with a story to account for it.”
Colleen laughed. Austin was impressed by the way the Gallaghers were handling what for any other family would be an unmitigated tragedy. The head of the clan's confession, of strangling a young woman, was all over the news. Of course the worst was yet to be, as Colleen herself must know. Jack's ridiculous confession would not dissuade the police from doing their job, and sooner or later they would find out that Tim as well as his father had had liaisons with the Messalina of Mallard and Bill. And they would learn that Colleen had asked Austin to do something about Tim and the young woman.
“Oh, Austin, what a terrible fool I was.”
“That means they will learn about Tim and Agatha.”
“Austin, I told them all about it.”
“You can see now the reason for Jack's confession.”
“What do you mean?”
“He must think Timothy killed her. This is the grand patriarchal gesture. â“Shoot if you must this old gray head, but spare my only son,” he said.'”
Grudgingly Austin admired Jack for what he had done, assuming that he had confessed in order to divert suspicion from Tim. It was credible that Jack would march off to prison with head held high if he were convicted, his consolation that he had saved Tim and Jane and their children. But what he could not very likely prevent was Jane's learning of her husband's infidelity.
Thinking of all that the various Gallaghers had yet to undergo, Austin nonetheless dreaded his own exposure more. He had mocked the news of Jack's liaison to Maud who had said, “Of course he wouldn't be capable of anything. Not at his age.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Would he?” Her head was lowered and her innocent blue eyes looked at him, the palm of her hand warm in his.
Lusting after a woman Maud's age might be ridiculous, but it made more sense than wanting a woman half his age. Maud was a flirt, of course, but there was more than the mere memory of desire in her manner. He drew her close against him. They were in his car. Austin had gone to a doctor who did not know him and received a prescription for Viagra. Now he was stirred by its effects. He took Maud masterfully in his arms and kissed her. She clung to him, all shyness gone. Eventually, as he had hoped, they went inside and there in her chintzy bedroom, all blues and pinks, they fell upon the bed and outdid themselves.
He would die before subjecting Maud to exposure. That was why he had slipped away in the early-morning hours, though Maud thought it was an unnecessary precaution. There was that in her reluctance to see him go that suggested that she had not yet had her fill of carnal memories. He knelt beside the bed and put his face next to hers.
“I'll make an honest woman of you, Maud.”
“I thought you'd never ask.”