Leopold’s Way

Detective Stories

Edward D. Hoch

Edited by Francis M. Nevins, Jr. & Martin H. Greenberg

Introduction by Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Contents

Introduction

Circus

Death in the Harbor

A Place for Bleeding

Reunion

The House by the Ferris

The Oblong Room

The Vanishing of Velma

The Rainy-Day Bandit

The Athanasia League

End of the Day

Christmas Is for Cops

The Jersey Devil

The Leopold Locked Room

A Melee of Diamonds

Captain Leopold Plays a Hunch

Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer

Captain Leopold Goes Home

No Crime for Captain Leopold

The Most Dangerous Man Alive

A Captain Leopold Checklist Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Introduction

Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

IF EVER THERE WAS a member of an endangered species it’s Edward D. Hoch, the only person alive who makes his living as an author of mystery short stories. By the time this collection is published, he will have sold approximately 700 tales, and at his current rate of productivity he should hit the 1,000 mark in the early 1990s. As if turning out two to three dozen stories a year were not enough, he fills his odd moments with writing a monthly column for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, editing the annual Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories anthologies, and serving tirelessly on various committees of the Mystery Writers of America organization. In addition he has published five novels and is presently collaborating on a series of mystery-puzzle paperbacks. Not exactly the lightest of work schedules; and yet he never seems harried or overcommitted and comes across in person and correspondence as an amazingly placid and easy-going fellow. His secret? If you are doing precisely what you want to do with your life, and making it pay besides, the distinction between work and play becomes meaningless and every hour is a pleasure.

Edward Dentinger Hoch was a Washington’s Birthday boy, born in Rochester, New York, on February 22, 1930. His father, Earl G. Hoch, was a banker, but despite the precarious nature of that line of work during the Depression, the family weathered the ’30s without serious problems.

From a very early age Ed was fascinated by mystery fiction. “When I was a young child,” he said, “I used to draw cartoon strips and have masked villains running around. They were terrible, just stick figures, because I wasn’t much of an artist, but I’d try to draw in cloaks and masks to identify the villains so that I could have a final unmasking to surprise the reader. Of course, I was the only reader. No one else saw those strips.”

In June of 1939, when the 60-minute Adventures of Ellery Queen series debuted on the CBS radio network, nine-year-old Ed Hoch was one of its staunchest fans. Later that year, when Pocket Books, Inc., launched its first 25¢ paperback reprint books, the boy discovered that his hero Ellery Queen had been the protagonist of many novels as well as a radio sleuth. The first adult book he ever read was the Pocket Books edition of Queen’s 1934 classic The Chinese Orange Mystery. “It was among the first group of paperbacks published, and I recall going down to the corner drugstore and seeing them all lined up with their laminated covers. I debated for some time between James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and an Agatha Christie title [probably The Murder of Roger Ackroyd], and finally settled on Ellery Queen because I had heard the Ellery Queen radio program which was so popular in those days. I bought The Chinese Orange Mystery and was completely fascinated by it, sought out all the other Ellery Queen novels I could find in paperback, as Pocket Books published them over the next few years, and from there went on to read other things. I read Sherlock Holmes at about that time too.”

It was during the ’40s that, one by one, Ed Hoch discovered the masters of fair-play detection: Conan Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson, and countless others besides of course the cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee who wrote as Ellery Queen. In 1947, after completing high school, he entered the University of Rochester, but left two years later to take a researcher’s job at the local public library. He enlisted in the army in 1950, during the Korean conflict, and once out of basic training he was assigned to Fort Jay, on Governor’s Island just off Manhattan, as a military policeman. He took advantage of being stationed near the headquarters of Mystery Writers of America, which was then only five or six years old, to attend the organization’s monthly meetings (in uniform) and to mingle with the giants of deductive puzzlement whose books he’d been hooked on since age nine. Discharged from the service in 1952, he went to work in the adjustments department of Pocket Books, the house that had started him reading detective fiction, and continued to write short mysteries as he had since high school. In 1954, back in Rochester, he took a copywriter’s job with the Hutchins advertising agency, and late the following year he knew the special pleasure of seeing his first published story on the newsstands. That was the start of Ed Hoch’s real career, one that is still going strong thirty years and almost seven hundred stories later.

For more than a dozen years after that first sale he kept his job at the ad agency and saved his fiction writing for evenings, weekends, and vacations. But he was so fertile with story ideas and such a swift writer that editors and readers could easily have mistaken him for a full-timer even in those early years. In 1957 he married Patricia McMahon, with whom he still shares a small neat house in suburban Rochester. (Two of its three bedrooms were long ago converted into his office space, and the basement into a library filled with thousands of mystery novels, short story collections, and magazine issues, few of them without at least one Hoch story.) The field’s top publications, Ellery Queen’s and Alfred Hitchcock’s mystery magazines, began printing his tales in 1962. Six years later, having won the coveted Mystery Writers of America Edgar award for the best short story of 1967, he decided that he could support the family on his writing income and left the advertising agency. He continues to write full time (many would say more than full time) today. During 1982–83 he served as president of the organization to whose annual dinners he had first come in military khaki more than thirty years earlier. In his mid-fifties he shows not the least sign of slowing down, and readers around the world hope he’ll stay active well beyond his thousandth story.

Why so few novels and so incredibly many short stories? It boils down to Hoch’s special affinity for the short form. “Writing a novel has always been, to me, a task to be finished as quickly as possible. Writing a short story is a pleasure one can linger over, with delight in the concept and surprise at the finished product.” Or, as he put it elsewhere, “I guess ideas just come easily to me. That’s why I’ve always been more attracted to the short story form than the novel. I am more interested in the basic plotting than in the development of various sub-plots. And I think the basic plot, or gimmick—the type of twist you have in detective stories—is the thing that I can do best, which explains why so many of my stories tend to be formal detective stories rather than the crime-suspense tales that so many writers are switching to today.”

Those words are misleading in one sense: more than two hundred of his published stories are nonseries tales of crime and suspense, and the best of them—like “I’d Know You Anywhere” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1963), “The Long Way Down” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, February 1965) and “Second Chance” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1977)—would fill a book the size of the present collection. But most of Hoch’s energies have gone into the creation of short-story series characters and the chronicling of their exploits. To date he’s launched 23 separate series, dealing with all sorts of protagonists from an occult detective who claims to be more than two thousand years old to a Western drifter who may be a reincarnation of Billy the Kid to a science-fictional Computer Investigation Bureau. Whatever the concept of a series, whatever its roots, Hoch’s tendency is to turn it into a series of miniature detective novels, complete with bizarre crimes, subtle clues, brilliant deductions and of course the ethos of playing fair with the reader that distinguishes the work of Carr, Christie, and Queen. The best introduction to the world of Ed Hoch is a quick tour through each of his series in the order in which they were created.

SIMON ARK, the two-millennia-old Satan-hunter, was the central character in Hoch’s first published story, “Village of the Dead” (Famous Detective Stories, December 1955), and appeared in many tales which editor Robert A. W. Lowndes bought for the Columbia chain of pulp magazines during the late ’50s. The ideas in these apprentice stories are occasionally quite original (e.g. the murder of one of a sect of Penitentes while the cult members are hanging on crucifixes in a dark cellar), but the execution tends to be crude and naïve at times, and the Roman Catholic viewpoint somewhat obtrusive. Eight of the early Arks were collected in two already rare paperback volumes, The Judges of Hades and City of Brass, both published by Leisure Books in 1971, but the most readily accessible book about this character is the recently published The Quests of Simon Ark (Mysterious Press, 1984). In the late 1970s Hoch resurrected Simon for new cases in the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines, but these tales play down the occult aspects to a bare minimum and present Ark simply as an eccentric old mastersleuth.

PROFESSOR DARK, apparently an alter ego of Simon Ark, popped up in two obscure pulp magazine stories of the mid-’50s under Hoch’s pseudonym of Stephen Dentinger, but they have never been reprinted and are of interest only to completists.

AL DIAMOND, a private eye character, began life in “Jealous Lover” (Crime and Justice, March 1957), which featured a walk-on part by a certain Captain Leopold. After two appearances Hoch changed his shamus’ name to AL DARLAN so as to prevent confusion with Blake Edwards’ radio and TV private-eye character Richard Diamond. Although little known and rarely reprinted, Hoch’s best Darlan tales, like “Where There’s Smoke” (Manhunt, March 1964), are beautiful examples of fair-play detection within the PI framework.

BEN SNOW, the Westerner who may be Billy the Kid redux, was created by Hoch for editor Hans Stefan Santesson, who ran Ben’s adventures in The Saint Mystery Magazine beginning in 1961. Perhaps the best of the Snows is “The Ripper of Storyville” (The Saint Mystery Magazine, December 1963), a first-rate Western detective story if ever there was one. Recently Hoch has revived the character for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

CAPTAIN LEOPOLD, the protagonist of the present collection, will be considered at greater length after the rest of the parade has passed by.

FATHER DAVID NOONE, parish priest and occasional detective, was Hoch’s version of a clerical sleuth in the great tradition of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, but was dropped after two rather feeble cases, beginning in 1964.

RAND, of Britain’s Department of Concealed Communications, was created in 1964 for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and has since appeared in more than fifty short episodes of espionage with strong elements of cryptography and fair-play deduction. Originally called Randolph, the character was renamed at the suggestion of EQMM editor Fred Dannay, who wanted a name that subliminally evoked James Bond even though there wasn’t a thing Bond-like about the stories. The series began with “The Spy Who Did Nothing” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1965), and most of the Rands retain “The Spy Who” in their titles, reminding us that the greatest espionage novel of the era in which Rand came to life was John LeCarré’s The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Rand is now officially in retirement, but Hoch still brings him back for an EQMM assignment once or twice a year. Seven of his early cases are collected in the paperback volume The Spy and the Thief (Davis Publications, 1971).

NICK VELVET is perhaps Hoch’s best-known character, a thief who steals only objects of no value and who is usually forced to play detective in the course of his thieving. He debuted in “The Theft of the Clouded Tiger” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1966) and quickly became an international hit. More than fifty short Velvets have been published over the past twenty years. Seven of Nick’s early capers are included in The Spy and the Thief, and a total of fourteen (of which two come from the earlier volume) are collected in The Thefts of Nick Velvet (Mysterious Press, 1978). Several books of Velvet stories have been published in Japan and, re-christened Nick Verlaine, our contemporary Raffles has been the star of a French TV mini-series. The character is presently under option by 20th Century-Fox and may receive prime-time exposure on NBC if all goes well.

HARRY PONDER, a short-lived spy-cum-sleuth whose name subliminally suggests the Len Deighton-Michael Caine movie spy Harry Palmer, first appeared in “The Magic Bullet” (Argosy, January 1969), an excellent mixture of espionage and impossible-crime detection, but was dropped after one more case.

BARNEY HAMET, a New York mystery writer, turned amateur sleuth in Hoch’s first novel, The Shattered Raven (Lancer, 1969), and helped untangle a murder at the Mystery Writers of America organization’s annual dinner. In a recent short story, “Murder at the Bouchercon” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1983), Hamet probes another killing among his colleagues and adds himself to the roster of Hoch series characters.

CARL CRADER and EARL JAZINE, who solve crimes for the Federal Computer Investigation Bureau in the early 21st century, were created by Hoch in “Computer Cops,” a story he wrote for Hans Stefan Santesson’s science fiction-mystery anthology Crime Prevention in the 30th Century (Walker, 1969). Later Hoch made them the protagonists in his trilogy of futuristic detective novels: The Transvection Machine (Walker, 1971), The Fellowship of the Hand (Walker, 1972), and The Frankenstein Factory (Warner Paperback Library, 1975). They haven’t been seen since.

DAVID PIPER, director of the Department of Apprehension and popularly known as The Manhunter, shows that even when Hoch creates a character in the tradition of The Executioner, The Butcher, and other macho action heroes, he converts the man into a mainstream detective. Piper starred in a six-installment serial, “The Will-o’-the-Wisp Mystery,” published in EQMM between April and September of 1971 under the byline of Mr. X. The entire serial was reprinted under Hoch’s own name in Ellery Queen’s Anthology, Spring-Summer 1982.

ULYSSES S. BIRD was Hoch’s attempt to fashion a criminal character who would not turn into a detective-in-spite-of-himself. The first of this con artist’s four published exploits was “The Million-Dollar Jewel Caper” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 1973), but all of them were negligible except the third, “The Credit Card Caper” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1974), which is a gem.

SEBASTIAN BLUE and LAURA CHARME, investigators for Interpol, vaguely resemble the stars of the popular British TV series The Avengers, but as usual when Hoch spins off a series from a preexisting source, he moves it into the domain of fair-play detection. The characters have appeared more than fifteen times in EQMM, beginning with “The Case of the Third Apostle” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February 1973).

PAUL TOWER, who becomes involved in criminal problems while visiting local schools as part of the police department’s public relations program, was suggested to Hoch as a character by Fred Dannay. “The Lollipop Cop” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1974) and Tower’s two subsequent cases were excellent, and it’s a shame the character was dropped so quickly.

DR. SAM HAWTHORNE, Hoch’s most successful character of the 1970s, narrates his own reminiscences of impossible crime puzzles which he unofficially investigated in the late 1920s and early ’30s while serving as a young physician in the New England village of Northmont. To date he has spun yarns and offered “a small libation” to his listeners more than two dozen times, beginning with “The Problem of the Covered Bridge” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1974), which remains one of the best in the series. Hoch’s Northmont has long ago overtaken Ellery Queen’s Wrightsville as small-town America’s Mecca for bizarre crimes.

BARNABUS REX, a humorous sleuth of the future who debuted in “The Homesick Chicken” (Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Spring 1977), has since appeared in only one more story. But two cases make a series character even in the world of tomorrow.

TOMMY PRESTON, the young son of a zookeeper, was created by Hoch for the juvenile book market. In The Monkey’s Clue & The Stolen Sapphire (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978) he solves a pair of mysteries involving animals.

NANCY TRENTINO, an attractive policewoman with a deductive flair, could almost be Connie Trent from the Captain Leopold series under a different name. Which is precisely what she was, until the editors of Hers (later Woman’s World), who bought her first solo case, asked Hoch to give her more of an ethnic flavor. Since her debut in “The Dog That Barked All Day” (Hers, October 1, 1979) she has solved a handful of puzzles.

CHARLES SPACER, electronics executive and undercover U.S. agent, figures in espionage detective tales, the first of which was “Assignment: Enigma” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 10, 1980), published as by Anthony Circus. (Later Spacers are under Hoch’s own byline.) The ambience of all these tales and the pseudonym on the first may vaguely suggest John Le Carré, but the leitmotif as usual in Hoch is the game of wits.

SIR GIDEON PARROT, whose name reminds us of two of John Dickson Carr’s mastersleuths and one of Agatha Christie’s, stars in a series of gently nostalgic parodies of the Golden Age deductive puzzles on which Hoch was weaned. His first appearance was in “Lady of the Impossible” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 20, 1981).

LIBBY KNOWLES, ex-cop and professional bodyguard, debuted in “Five-Day Forecast,” a Hoch story first published in Ellery Queen’s Prime Crimes, edited by Eleanor Sullivan (Davis, 1984). With her second case, published in EQMM late in 1984, she becomes the latest affirmative action recruit in Hoch’s small army of series characters.

MATTHEW PRIZE, criminology professor and ex-private eye, is the detective in a pair of paperback mystery puzzles inspired by Thomas Chastain’s best-selling Who Killed the Robins Family? (1983). Hoch created the plot outlines for these books, just as Fred Dannay did for the Ellery Queen novels, and the writing was done by others. Prize Meets Murder (Pocket Books, 1984) and This Prize Is Dangerous (Pocket Books, 1985) are published as by R. T. Edwards. (As this collection went to press, it became uncertain whether Pocket Books would actually publish This Prize Is Dangerous.)

Now that the troops have passed in review, it’s time we turned to the protagonist of this collection and the most durable Hoch sleuth of them all.

When Captain Leopold first appeared in print, no one noticed, for he began life as a subsidiary character in two Hoch short stories of 1957, and only five years later, in “Circus” (The Saint Mystery Magazine, January 1962), did he become a protagonist in his own right. The saga has since grown mightily, with a total of seventy-two Leopolds published as of the end of 1984, making it the most numerous of Hoch’s twenty-three series. (Rand and Nick Velvet with a few over fifty exploits apiece are the nearest runners-up.)

Why has Hoch written more about Leopold than about any other continuing character? I suspect because it’s the most flexible of his series, the least restrictive in terms of plot requirements: for a Leopold he needn’t come up with a new worthless object to be stolen or a new espionage-detection wrinkle but simply has to create a fresh detective plot, and these seem to come to him as naturally as breathing. But if anything sets off the Leopolds from Hoch’s other series, it’s that they frequently offer so much more than clever plots and gimmicks. In the best Leopold tales Hoch fuses the detective gamesmanship stuff of the Ellery Queen tradition with elements derived from Georges Simenon and Graham Greene, burying unexpected nuances of character and emotion and meaning beneath the surface of his deceptively simple style.

But beyond their individual strengths, when these stories are read in chronological order, as they are arranged in Leopold’s Way, they take on something of the nature of an episodic novel, with characters who appear, vanish and return, grow and suffer and die. Leopold is around forty years old when we first meet him in “Circus” and near sixty when we say goodbye to him in “The Most Dangerous Man Alive,” and the stories reflect not only his own development from the early 1960s through the end of the ’70s but also that of the large northeastern city in which he serves as the resident Maigret.

The city is not named in any story collected here, but in “The Killer and the Clown” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 14, 1981) it’s given the name of Monroe, which is the name of the county in which Hoch’s native Rochester is situated. As he visualizes the fictitious city, he says, it “bears some slight resemblance to Rochester turned upside-down, with the Sound substituting for Lake Ontario.”

The origins of Leopold himself are more complex. Hoch says he took the name “from Jules Leopold, a frequent contributor to a puzzle magazine I read as a youth.” In “Suddenly in September” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1983), a recent story not collected here, Leopold admits for the first time in the series that his first name is Jules—which of course is the first name of Simenon’s immortal Maigret. Although in one sense this is a coincidence—Hoch says that he read very little of Simenon till around 1964—it’s one of the most fitting coincidences in crime fiction. For the Simenonian feel in many of the best Leopold tales is palpable, and Leopold himself is a sort of Maigret who works by rational deduction rather than immersion in a milieu and intuition.

The main events of his life are described at various points in the saga and form a biography as complete as the sketches Simenon habitually prepared for the protagonists of his nonseries novels. Jules Leopold was born in Chicago in 1921. His parents died in an accident when he was eight, and he spent the next six years in the Midwest community of Riger Falls, being raised by relatives whom we meet in “Captain Leopold Goes Home” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 1975). At age fourteen he came to Monroe, apparently to stay with other relatives, and graduated from George Washington High in 1939. Even then he was considered the class brain. He entered Columbia University, was awarded his degree during World War II and joined Army Intelligence, serving first in Washington and later in North Africa, where he interrogated Italian prisoners. After the war he opted for a career in police work and spent a short time with a force out west, then a stint in Monroe, then a period with the New York City Police Department. In the late 1950s he returned to head the city’s Homicide Squad. He had married several years earlier but the ten-year relationship shattered a few years after he accepted the Monroe position, and he never saw his wife again until her tragic reunion with him in “The Leopold Locked Room” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1971). After the divorce he lives an exceptionally lonely life, drowning his solitude in work. His one serious affair of the ’60s comes to an end when he has to arrest the woman for murder in “The Rusty Rose” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1966.) Thereafter his only pleasures in life are the solitary satisfactions of smoking and reading. By the late ’60s he’s fighting to kick the tobacco habit, as were countless Americans who were frightened by the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report, and apparently he licks it at last. But he remains as avid a reader as ever, referring at various times to Chesterton, Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, Oscar Wilde, Hemingway and Le Carré among others. In the tales of the ’70s he’s described as “middle-aged and stocky,” but gratifyingly enough, feminism and the sexual revolution enrich his emotional life as he encounters a number of younger professional women. With policewoman Connie Trent, who enters the saga in “Captain Leopold Gets Angry” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1973) and presently holds the rank of Detective Sergeant, he is clearly tempted to have more than a working relationship, but he resists for the same reason that he won’t bring his personal auto to be washed at the police garage, and forces himself to think of her only as the daughter he never had. His relationship with pathologist Dr. Lawn Gaylord, whom he first meets in “Captain Leopold Looks for the Cause” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1977), is less inhibited but leads nowhere. His luck improves with defense attorney Molly Calendar, whom he first encounters in “Captain Leopold Beats the Machine” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1983) and who becomes the second Mrs. Leopold at the close of “Finding Joe Finch” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February 1984). Whether this marriage will work out or run into snags like that of another divorced police captain with a beautiful defense attorney who are the Thursday evening favorites of millions of televiewers (including Ed and Pat Hoch), only time will tell.

In many respects the Leopold stories mirror the development of American social concerns over the past quarter century. There’s a clear line of evolution, for example, from the primitive brutalizing tactics of Mat Slater in the pre-Miranda days of “Circus” to the quiet professional interrogations of suspects in the later tales, and another evolution in Leopold’s attitude towards women from the early years when he says flat out that their function is to stay home and have babies to the affirmative action decade when he comes to accept the opposite sex not only in his personal life but in the police department. But not every detail in the lives of Leopold and the other continuing characters of the saga is worked out in advance. Indeed the Leopold stories are like virtually every other long-running series—including the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Hopalong Cassidy, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, and my own modest creations—in being strewn with inconsistencies that reflect the author’s forgetfulness or changes of mind or both. Some of those in the Leopolds can readily be explained away. In the early “Death in the Harbor” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1962) the captain’s office is on the upper floor of a high-rise headquarters building, and in “Reunion” (The Saint Mystery Magazine, December 1964) and all subsequent tales it’s located on the second floor rear, but this hardly counts as an inconsistency: what career bureaucrat hasn’t changed offices on occasion? Then there’s the fact that even though Leopold and his first wife are clearly together in “The Tattooed Priest” (The Saint Mystery Magazine, British edition, November 1962), he tells several people in later stories that they’d broken up before his move back to Monroe. Again, no huge problem. Many divorced men misremember or lie about the circumstances surrounding the collapse of their marriage, and Leopold in “Circus” and other early tales seems exceptionally sensitive to questions about his marital status and whether he has children. But what are we to make of the remarkable ocular transformations of Connie Trent, who enters the police department with brown eyes which turn green a few months later (in “Captain Leopold Plays a Hunch,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1973) and then go back again to brown? And how do we account for the miraculous move of the entire city of Monroe from upstate New York, where it’s firmly situated in “A Place for Bleeding” and “Reunion,” to Connecticut, where it has stayed since “Bag of Tricks” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1970)? Here’s a puzzle by which even Dr. Sam Hawthorne might be stumped!

But these glitches in the continuity are at best of minor importance. What makes the finest Leopold stories outstanding in the Hoch repertoire is their fusion of expert plotting and clueing with the human dimensions characteristic of Simenon and of Hoch’s favorite living novelist, Graham Greene. With the help of the checklist at the end of this book, which lists every Leopold story through the end of 1984 and provides data on its original publication and all U.S. re-printings, readers may explore the whole saga. We hope that Leopold’s Way will entice many to do just that.

Circus

THE RAIN HAD STOPPED, and once again the quiet residential street was filled with the laughter of children. Here and there a puddle still remained, but now the sun was out, and that was all that really mattered.

Leopold parked his car behind the other one and walked through the wet grass of the vacant lot to the place near the trees where a small group of men stood silently waiting.

“I’m Leopold, from Homicide. What’s the story?”

“A kid got killed, Captain.”

“A kid? How?”

“Strangled.”

“Lift the blanket and let’s have a look.”

He couldn’t have been more than ten, a good-looking boy with sandy hair and blue eyes. There was a blue rope-mark on his throat. Leopold sighed and looked away. Sometimes it still bothered him when he saw them like that. Even after six years on Homicide it still bothered him.

“Who is he?”

“We think his name’s Tommy Cranston. Lives in that brown house over there. Mat’s checking.”

“All right.” Leopold rubbed his eyes. “I’ll be over there, too. Call me when the doc comes.”

“Right, Captain.”

Leopold walked back through the wet grass and crossed the lot toward the brown house. There were many children on this street, he noticed. They were running and playing and having fun. It was a good street. Or at least it had been.

“Mister Cranston?”

“Yes…”

“I’m Captain Leopold.”

“Come…come in…We just heard…”

“I’m very sorry.”

“Yes…Of course…”

“Is Mrs. Cranston…?”

“She…It was a great shock to her. One of your men is with her in the living room…”

One of his men…Mat Slater, a big tough hard cop who’d seen the city at its worst. Leopold knew him, but didn’t like him. He was the type of cop you found in the tough mystery novels. Only once in a while you found him in real life, too.

“Hello, Leopold. I just told them about it.”

“Yeah.” To Slater he was always “Leopold,” never “Captain.”

Mrs. Cranston was crying in a big green chair. Right at that moment she looked very small and very helpless.

“My boy…My boy…He…he was on his way to the circus…”

Leopold felt suddenly cold and he wanted to be out of that big brown house and away from the crying woman in the green chair.

“Come on, Slater. We can talk to them later.”

“Right.”

They went back outside and crossed the lot to the trees once again, and Leopold cursed the wet grass that clung to his shoes.

Slater lit a cigarette. “Something like this always happens on a Saturday afternoon. We’ll probably be up all night chasing down leads.”

“Yeah.”

“The doc’s here.” The doc was the coroner’s assistant, a middle-aged man who’d met death many times while working for the city. Leopold had seen him like this a hundred times before, bending over a silent form in some dim alley or crowded street. This was what the doc lived for.

Leopold frowned at the wet grass and the thing under the blanket. “How long’s he been dead, Doc?”

“About an hour.”

“Before or after the rain?”

The doc looked puzzled at that one. Finally he answered. “Body and the ground under it are both wet, but the ground’s not as wet as the rest of the place. Guess that means he was killed just after the rain started, but it’s hard to tell for sure.”

“Yeah.” Leopold had a vision of the killer tightening his rope around Tommy’s throat and killing him as the rain began to beat down upon them.

Slater ground out his cigarette and lit another one. “And nobody saw him?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out. Come on, Slater. We’ll see you a little later, Doc.”

The lot was filled with people now, and they had to push their way through the crowd.

“You know, Leopold, we should sell tickets to this thing. We’d probably get a bigger crowd than the circus.”

“Shut up, Slater.”

“What?”

“Shut up. I’m tired of listening to you. We’ve got a job to do. Let’s get it done and clear out of here.”

“Sure, Leopold, sure.”

Leopold looked up and down the quiet street with its puddles of water reflecting the grey clouds above. Even with the crowd in the lot, the street still had the silence of death about it. He wondered if it was always like this.

“What did you find out about the parents?”

“Not much,” Slater mumbled. “Kid left just before the rain started. He was going over to the circus. They’d taken him the night before, but he wanted to go again. It’s just a few blocks away. He was cutting through the lot on his way there. In fact, his mother watched him out the window until he got around the side of the house.”

Leopold was sweating now. He almost wished the rain would start again. “Did she see anything?”

“No. Nothing.”

“They got any other kids?”

“No. He was the only one.”

Leopold swore again and thought about the woman in the green chair. Maybe it was better in a way that Tommy was the only one. Then at least she’d never have to go through it all again. There were so many ways that sons could die these days. In front of a speeding car, or on some distant, half-remembered battlefield. Or in a vacant lot in the rain.

“Take the houses on this side of the street, Slater. See if the people noticed anything.”

“Sure.”

Leopold left him and headed for the nearest house. He glanced back at the lot and saw that the trees where Tommy had died were out of view now. There were only the police, clearing the crowd away. The body would be gone now, but men would still be working over the spot. There was much to be done before nightfall.

Leopold began ringing doorbells and talking to people, but the answer was always the same. They had seen nothing, or if they had it was only the usual mysterious stranger who could be found any day in any neighborhood.

The sun was disappearing behind a low cloud when Leopold met Slater again.

“Get anything?”

“Nothing, Leopold. How about you?”

“Nothing. Listen, take a run over to that circus and start checking. Find out who could have been away at the time of the killing.”

“You think it’s somebody from over there?”

“No, but it’s worth trying anyway. I’ll be at the Cranstons’ house.”

Slater muttered something and walked away toward his car. Leopold watched him for a moment and then walked slowly toward the big house.

Across the street the cars of police and newspaper reporters were still parked, and in the lot next to the house there was still activity. Now and then a flashbulb would light the dim twilight for a second, and then fade away. Reporters, getting plenty of pictures for Sunday’s edition.

“Captain…Captain Leopold! How about a statement?”

A young kid, probably just out of journalism school.

“No statement. We’re following a few leads…”

“Are you personally conducting the investigation?”

“I’m here. I’ve been here since two o’clock this afternoon. And maybe I’ll be here all night.”

The reporter made quick notes on a small pad.

“Do you have any children yourself, Captain?”

Leopold looked at the young face for a long while, and then he walked away without replying.

“Captain…Captain…”

But he kept walking. It was just a story to them. Just a shocking story of a kid’s murder. Just something to sell a few more Sunday papers.

And to Slater it was just a job, a job he was paid for, but one that interfered with his Saturday nights.

Leopold went up the steps and knocked on the door of the brown house. Mr. Cranston came to the door, looking pale and very tired. He led Leopold into the living room without a word.

The green chair was empty now, and Cranston motioned toward the upstairs. “My wife’s resting. Her mother’s up there with her. It’s…it’s been a great shock to all of us.”

“Yes…”

“Did you get him yet?”

“The man who did it? No, we didn’t get him yet.”

“You’ve got to catch him before he does it again.”

“I know.”

“Someone’s got to pay for Tommy.”

“Yes, someone’s got to pay.”

Cranston kept pacing as he talked. Back and forth, across the living room floor.

Leopold sat down and began asking the usual questions. How old was the boy? Was he quiet or wild? Did he make friends with strangers? The father answered, and Leopold carefully noted the answers in a little book. But he knew there was nothing to be found here. The killer had probably not even known little Tommy Cranston.

He had just been a boy walking in the rain. And the killer had caught up with him in that vacant lot.

Cranston sat down and tried to light a cigarette. “Who…who found him, Captain?”

“One of our police cars saw something in the lot, and investigated. They found him just after the rain stopped.”

“I can still see them over there, taking pictures. Won’t they ever stop? Won’t they ever go away?”

“They’ll stop.”

Yes, they would stop. When the next body was found. Then it would be someone else’s turn to watch the prowling men and listen to the sobbing women.

The phone rang and Cranston answered it in a broken voice. “It’s for you.”

“Leopold here.”

“This is Slater. I’m at the circus. Think I’ve found something. Come on over.”

“Right.”

“I’ll meet you in front, at the main entrance.”

“Be there in five minutes.”

He left Cranston and the brown house, and it was dark outside.

Dark.

But the circus was a blaze of light; light and noise and laughter. Here was happiness, undampened by the silence a few blocks away.

And there were children here, too. Gay children. Living, laughing children.

Perhaps one of these would be the next. It might not be tomorrow, or next week, but someday, somewhere, perhaps the killer of little Tommy Cranston would see another child running alone through the rain. Then the hands would loop the strong rope around a tiny throat once more.

“What kept you, Leopold?”

“Oh, there you are, Slater. What’s up?”

“I asked a few questions around here and I found out there’s a guy they hired a couple of weeks ago that’s been acting queer. Last week they caught him over near the girls’ tent, and last night one of the girls complained he was prowling around again.”

Leopold sighed. “Let’s talk to him.”

His name was Charlie. Charlie Watts. Around forty, strong, well-built, but with a gleam behind his blue eyes that told you to watch out for him. Leopold had seen that look before, too many times.

“We’re police, Charlie. We want to talk to you.”

“I ain’t done nothing. Honest.”

From the big top came the blare of the circus band as the evening show got under way. It was a dying profession, yet here in the midst of it everything was still somehow full of life.

Slater moved in closer. “You were bothering the girls.”

“No. No, honest.”

“What about the boy this afternoon?”

“What boy?”

The trumpeting of an elephant, the growl of a lion…

“How many times you been locked up, Charlie?”

“Never. Never!”

Leopold spoke from the shadow. “We can take you downtown and check your prints.”

“No!”

From the distance came the booming voice of the ringmaster. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, in the center ring we have the death-defying rope-spin! An unbelievable stunt that will…”

Slater hit Charlie Watts with the back of his hand. “Then talk, damn you!”

“Lay off the rough stuff, Slater,” Leopold spoke quietly.

“No…No, don’t hit me again. I…I was arrested once for…for looking in windows…”

“You get the idea, Charlie. Keep talking. Tell us about the kid this afternoon.”

“What…what kid?”

Slater drove his fist into the soft flesh of Charlie’s stomach. The man doubled against a tent post.

“Damn it, Slater. Touch him again and I’ll have your badge.”

“This is the only way to deal with his kind, Leopold. Beat it out of them. Give me five minutes and I’ll have a confession.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“And leave him?”

“He’s a nut all right, but he’s not the kind we’re looking for. The guy that looks in girls’ windows isn’t the same guy that strangles little boys for no reason at all. Come on.”

They left Charlie on his knees, with his forehead pressed against the hard earth. Outside the tent the world was living again. Light and laughter and fellows out with their girls on a Saturday night.

Leopold watched a green balloon break free from a child’s grip and sail up into the blue sea above their heads. He watched it until it disappeared against a cluster of stars. Then the stars themselves vanished behind a sudden unseen cloud.

“Where to now, Leopold?”

“Back. Back to the vacant lot.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe the parents killed him accidentally and then put the body in the lot. It’s happened before.”

“They couldn’t do it in broad daylight.”

“He was killed in broad daylight, Leopold. Back by those trees it’s hard to see things from the street.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you explain it, Leopold?”

“I don’t know. It was raining. The street was empty. Anything might have happened in that lot without anybody noticing it, I suppose.”

“But it didn’t start raining until fifteen minutes after he left the house. Did it take him fifteen minutes to…?”

Leopold stopped walking. “You are right. His mother watched him start through the lot and it wasn’t raining then. What was he doing for those fifteen minutes?”

“Maybe a car stopped. Maybe someone called him over.”

“And lured him into the car and strangled him with a length of rope. And then, when the rain started, carried his body into the lot. That would explain why the rope wasn’t found.”

“It would have been dangerous, Leopold.”

“No more dangerous than keeping the body in the car with him.”

“But,” Slater protested, “to carry the body through a lot right next to the kid’s house!”

Leopold sighed. “I suppose you’re right. It would be too big a risk.”

Slater lit a cigarette. “Then what did happen? Where do we find this killer?”

“Not in that neighborhood. He wouldn’t kill in broad daylight in his own neighborhood. He must be a stranger.”

They went back to Slater’s car and drove away, back to the vacant lot a few blocks off, and as they rode the lights and noise of the circus grew smaller in the background.

The lot was hidden in darkness now, covered by the sheltering night which so often screened the movements of evil. Even now the grass was still damp against Leopold’s legs, but he noticed it only in a far corner of his mind.

In the rest of his mind he was a boy again, a boy much like Tommy Cranston, thinking the thoughts he must have thought just before he died. Thoughts of the circus, and the joy of growing up. Thoughts…

What was it?

A boy on his way to the circus…

What had halted Tommy on his way to the circus?

It would not be a stranger after all. It would have to be someone that Tommy knew and trusted. Someone that lived on the same street, in one of those houses, behind one of those windows. Or else…

“This is getting us nowhere,” Slater complained.

“Maybe not.”

“Let’s go question his folks again.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the answer isn’t with them. The answer is out here, in the street, where Tommy Cranston died.”

“Well, hell, you can prowl around as much as you like. I’m going back to Headquarters.”

“All right, Slater. Tell them I’ll be in soon.”

He watched the big cop walk back to the street and get into his car. He watched while the car drove away and left him alone in the damp grass.

He looked up again at the night sky, at the moon, and at the clouds passing slowly across the sky.

Fifteen minutes.

What had Tommy Cranston done during those fifteen minutes?

Perhaps no one had stopped him. Perhaps he’d gone on his way.

To the circus?

Leopold sighed and followed the weed-covered path across the lot. He went down a slight incline and then across the railroad tracks.

And then there was the circus, in front of him again, just as Tommy might have seen it.

And Slater’s car.

He hadn’t gone back to headquarters after all! He’d driven around the block and come back for another crack at Charlie Watts!

Leopold ran across the damp earth toward the bright lights of the midway and the dark shapes of the tents. He found the one where they’d left Charlie a half-hour before.

Slater was in there, as Leopold knew he would be.

“Damn it, Slater, what have you done?”

“Just gotten a confession for you, that’s all,” the big detective said between his teeth.

Leopold looked down at the ground by the cop’s feet. Charlie Watts was sprawled in the dust, clutching his stomach. “I did it,” he managed to gasp. “Don’t hit me again.”

“Get out of here, Slater. The Commissioner’s going to hear about this.”

“I’m not going anywhere. He confessed, and he’s my prisoner. I’m taking him in.”

Leopold looked into his face and knew that he meant it.

“All right. Bring him along. We’ll settle this at Headquarters, then.”

And they left the tent with Charlie Watts leaning heavily on Leopold’s shoulder. Behind them the night was full of music and shouting and the laughter of children.

The ride downtown was long and silent. The session with the District Attorney and the Police Commissioner was even longer.

The District Attorney was a big, powerful man, a man who’d devoted his life to crusading against crime in his city. He was a man who rarely made a mistake and expected others to follow his example.

“Damn it, Leopold, why can’t we charge him with murder? He’s confessed, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, he confessed. After Slater here beat it out of him.”

“Well, sometimes that’s the only way to deal with child murderers.”

“Is that what you really think?”

The D.A. sighed. “It doesn’t make any difference what you and I think, Leopold. The papers are screaming for an arrest, and I’ve got to give them one.”

“Even if it’s an innocent man?”

“Watts isn’t innocent,” the D.A. insisted. “We’ve got a dozen circus girls that’ll testify to the kind of scum he is. And he’s got a record a yard long for that sort of thing.”

“But never for bothering a child.”

“The boy wasn’t molested sexually. Maybe he just caught Watts doing something else, looking in a window or something.”

“During the daytime? During a rainstorm?”

“What difference does it make? Maybe he just felt like killing somebody and there weren’t any girls around. What the hell! He confessed, didn’t he?”

“Let’s go down and talk to him again,” Leopold suggested. “I’ll bet he’s changed his tune by this time, especially with Slater away from him.”

Slater stirred in his chair. “Sure, go on. Turn him loose. See what I care! I haven’t got any kids for him to kill.”

The D.A. sighed. “That’s just it, Leopold. Those parents want an arrest, and we’ve got to give them one.”

“And since you’ve got a convenient ex-con from out of town who happened to be near the scene, you figure he’s the one to pin it on, is that it?”

The D.A. rose from his desk. “That’ll be enough from you, Leopold. I’m indicting this man for first-degree murder, and nothing you can say will change my mind.”

Leopold walked to the door. “Go ahead. Send him to the chair if you want to. But don’t come running to me if there’s another murder a week or a month or a year from now, after you’ve pulled the switch.”

“There’s always another murder. They never stop.”

And then Leopold left the office, and walked quickly along the hollow corridor of the building. It was night in the city now, past midnight on a Saturday evening, and the city was going to sleep.

But here there were places where they did not sleep. Here there were rooms where the lights always burned. Like the crime lab…

“Hi, Leopold.”

“Hello, boys. Anything on that kid killing?”

“I guess not. It’s a funny thing, too, in a way.”

“In what way?”

“Well…You know how it was raining this afternoon?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there just wasn’t any wet grass or anything on his shoes or in his pants cuffs. You know the way it sticks when it’s wet.”

“I know. What does it mean?”

“That he didn’t walk through the wet grass. Yet the ground under him was wet from the rain.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Either he was killed elsewhere and carried out there, or else he went out there before the rain started and stood around waiting for the killer.”

Leopold grunted. “Anything else? How about signs of a struggle?”

“That’s funny, too. His clothes weren’t ripped or anything like you might expect. Oh, he tried to claw the rope away from his neck, but that was all. As far as we can tell from examining his fingernails, he didn’t even manage to scratch his murderer.”

“No sexual assault of any kind?”

“Nothing. It’s just as if the killer dropped out of the sky with his rope and strangled the kid for no reason at all.”

Leopold paced up and down, thinking about it, thinking about the facts as he knew them, waiting for them to drop neatly into place.

“Somebody from the circus,” he muttered, half to himself.

“What?”

“Isn’t there somebody from the circus who does some sort of rope trick?”

“The guy who confessed?”

“No, someone else. Someone who spins around on the end of a rope.”

“Yeah,” one of the men said. “I remember reading about it. He ties a rope around his ankle, and his arm, and even around his neck somehow, and he spins in mid-air. It’s quite a trick.”

“Around his neck?”

“Well, it looks like it’s around his neck. Actually it catches him just under the chin. The trick takes strong neck muscles, but if the rope is positioned right it doesn’t stop his breathing.”

“Yeah,” Leopold said. “Yeah.”

“Think he killed the kid?”

Leopold shook his head slowly. “He went on first at the evening show. If he went on first in the afternoon too, he’d have been performing at the time the boy died.”

“Another dead end.”

“No,” Leopold said. “Not this time, I don’t think.” He left them and walked back down the hall.

It was so late, so late at night.

What time was it, anyway? Somewhere past midnight.

He went through the dim passages that connected the city buildings and presently he was alone in his office.

He stretched out on the battered leather sofa and thought about it some more.

Of course he knew.

He’d known for a long time, somewhere back in the deep recesses of his mind.

It wasn’t a satisfactory solution, not nearly as satisfactory as would have been the guilt of the fellow Slater had arrested. But then life was not always satisfactory. Sometimes, quite often, fellows like that had to be turned loose again.

Perhaps some day Charlie Watts really would kill someone. But until that day he must walk free, protected from such cops as Slater. It was the system. Right or wrong, it was the system.

Leopold closed his eyes and drifted into a dazed and gratifying sleep. For it was night, and there was nothing to be done until daybreak.

He woke with the rising sun in his eyes, slanting along the empty streets not yet crowded with Sunday church-goers. He rubbed the grit from his eyes and adjusted his necktie, and then he left the office.

“Hi, Leopold. Did you sleep?”

“Yeah. Do me a favor, will you? Call Slater and the D.A. and tell them to meet me out at Cranston’s place.”

“On Sunday morning?”

“Call them.”

“If you say so, Leopold.”

Leopold nodded and walked away slowly, feeling suddenly very old. He couldn’t take these long hours like he used to.

“And get me a car, too,” he called back as an afterthought.

“O.K., Leopold…”

The street was much the same as he remembered it, only now the children were not playing there. It was Sunday morning, and the light mist near the grass seemed to hint at a street still asleep.

He waited in the car until Slater drove up, sleepy and cursing. “What is this, Leopold? Another of your crazy ideas?”

“Perhaps.”

“What in the hell’s the idea getting me up at dawn?”

“I just wanted you to be in on it, Slater. The D.A.’s coming, too.”

Slater laughed. “I’ll bet he’ll like that. He’s planning to indict Watts for first-degree murder, you know.”

“I think he’ll change his mind.”

Another car drew up, and the D.A. got out. “What’s the meaning of this, Leopold? Do you know what time it is?”

“Yeah. I just thought you might want to be in on it.”

“In on what?”

“On the end of the Tommy Cranston case.”

“It’s ended already, as far as Slater and I are concerned.”

Leopold shook his head. “Watts didn’t kill him.”

“Then who did?”

“Nobody.”

“What?”

“Nobody. It was an accident.”

“Accident!” Slater snorted. “Since when do killers strangle kids by accident?”

“No one strangled Tommy. He strangled himself, trying to duplicate a trick he’d seen in the circus.”

They looked at Leopold, unbelieving, uncertain.

“There’s a man there who spins on a rope tied around his neck. Tommy tried it, and it killed him.”

Slater snorted. “You forget he was on his way to the circus when he died.”

Leopold sighed and brushed a hand across his eyes. “But he’d already been there once, the night before. His father told you so. He saw the spinning man, and on his way to the circus for the second time he decided to try the trick. He tied a rope in one of those trees, and tied the other end around his neck, and then he strangled to death…”

“And nobody saw this?”

“It’s far back from the street, and who would pay attention to a kid in a tree, anyway? By the time the rope had tightened around his throat, he couldn’t call for help.”

The D.A. thought about it. “Maybe,” he said finally. “Maybe. Go ahead and prove it.”

Leopold led the way through the grass of the vacant lot, toward the waiting trees. “There was no wet grass on his shoes, so we knew he’d been here before the rain started. He had to be doing something for those missing fifteen minutes, and I finally decided this was it.”

They followed him, less unbelieving now. “What happened to the rope?” Slater asked.

“Since it wasn’t still around his neck, it must be still in the tree. Tommy’s struggles, and perhaps the rain hitting it, loosened the knot of the rope and his body fell to the ground. The tree limb, released of its burden, shot back up—hurling the rope high up into the branches.”

“A good theory, but we’ve still got a confession.”

“Will you believe me if we find the rope?”

“I suppose so.”

They paused beneath the tree, in the spot where the body had been found. And the three of them looked up, into the sheltering branches of the tree.

And it was there.

Curling among the branches like some waiting serpent.

“There’s your rope,” the D.A. said. “I guess that finishes it.”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s going to tell his parents?”

Leopold sighed. “I am, I guess.”

He walked away from them, across the lot to the waiting house. This was the toughest part, now, when there was no villain for the parents to punish.

No revenge, only sorrow.

He rang the doorbell and waited, and presently Mister Cranston came.

“Oh…Captain Leopold! Do you have any news?”

Leopold sighed and walked through the doorway. “Yes, I have some news…”

(1962)

Death in the Harbor

DR. OSCAR FLOWN WAS a yachtsman. The joy of his life was a 47-foot twin Diesel cruiser with a fiberglass hull, built to his specifications in England. It could accommodate six people and a crew of two, and only a week-end of bad weather or an emergency case kept him from enjoying the warmth and splendor of the Sound by starlight. His boat, the High Flown, was usually anchored in the harbor within rowing distance of the yacht club; and if its 3’2” draft kept it inconveniently far from shore at this point, it also discouraged some of the livelier drunks frequenting the club on Saturday nights from invading its decks.

It was an odd combination of circumstances that found Dr. Flown alone aboard his craft at eleven o’clock on this Saturday night. His wife and the two youths who served him week-ends as a makeshift crew had gone ashore—the boys for groceries and Mrs. Flown to meet the couples who were to join them on an overnight cruise. Dr. Flown had stayed behind, mainly to call the hospital about an operation he had performed in the morning.

He had just replaced the radio telephone in its cradle when he felt the cruiser lurch slightly. It might only have been the passing wake of another boat, but he knew that none had passed. Was someone climbing aboard?

“Who’s there?” the doctor called out, not really expecting an answer. He went up on deck to satisfy himself it was his imagination.

He saw the thing clearly in the moonlight and had just time enough to ask, “What do you want?” before he dropped to the deck wondering why he had to die.

The black waters rippled for a moment, then crystallized again.

Leopold had a headache. Sitting there shuffling the Monday morning reports around on his cluttered desk, he groaned at the injustice of it all. Two or three drinks the night before, and he was suffering like an alcoholic.

“Morning, Captain.”

Leopold shoved the unread reports aside. “Good morning, Fletcher. What happened over the week-end?”

“Not much. Knifing down by the marsh. We got a boy locked up. And you probably saw in the papers that Doc Flown shot himself on his boat.”

Leopold nodded. “I never figured Doc for that.”

“Who did? Funny case, too.”

“Funny?” Leopold reached for a cigarette, remembered that smoking always made his headache worse, and changed his mind.

“Funny. Flown radiophoned the city hospital to check on a patient just before he did it. Nurse says he even joked with her. And he didn’t leave a note.”

“Any chance it was murder?”

Fletcher shrugged. “He was alone on the boat. The shot attracted some people on shore and they rowed out and found him. They all swear they saw nobody leave the yacht.”

“What about the gun?”

“Fell overboard, I guess. We didn’t find it.”

“Powder burns?”

“Inconclusive. Could be the gun was fired from several feet away.”

Leopold sighed. “Spend a little time on it, Fletcher. Check out his wife for boy friends, disgruntled patients, that sort of thing. Just in case.”

That was the way things still stood in the Flown case on the following Saturday evening, just after dusk, when in the same harbor a tramp fisherman named Thad Proctor had the back of his head blown off by a contact shot from a .38 revolver. Like Dr. Flown, Proctor had apparently been alone aboard his ancient, paint-peeling trawler when it happened.

The harbor was calm beneath a warmish Sunday morning sun. Overhead a few noisy gulls circled; the only other sound was the gentle slap of water against the dockside.

To Leopold, it did not seem a day for investigating murder, and the trawler tied to the dock did not seem a vehicle worthy of the crime. It was a smelly old tub full of fish pens. On deck, just behind the pilot house, stood the trawl winch; farther back, the fish checker. It was a boat designed for the work of the sea, not of the police.

“Where was he found?” Leopold asked Fletcher.

“The companionway by the pilot house door. He was a mess.”

“Alone on the boat, I understand.”

Fletcher said, “Just like Dr. Flown, Captain. And the papers have already linked them up.” He handed Leopold the first section of the Sunday Chronicle. An eight-column banner screamed, SECOND VICTIM FOR HARBOR PHANTOM?

“Have we got a report on the bullet yet?”

“I just called the lab. Same gun killed both of them.”

“Then the paper’s right,” Leopold said. “Where’s this man’s brother?”

Fletcher nodded toward a shabby fisherman on the trawler’s deck, and Leopold climbed aboard. “You’re Bill Proctor?”

“Might call me that.”

“Your brother Thad have any enemies?”

“Who doesn’t?” The fisherman’s jaws kept grinding away at a plug of tobacco.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Boat was tied up right here. I’d been in town and was coming back when I heard the shot.”

“See anyone?”

The man spattered a glob of tobacco juice on the deck. “Nobody. Thought I heard a splash to starboard, but I didn’t see anything come to the surface.”

Leopold frowned. “Anybody else hear this?”

“A lot of them heard the shot.”

“How about you? Ever fight with Thad?”

The man looked surprised. “We were brothers. We fought.”

“You don’t seem too sorry he’s dead.”

“Should I be? Now the boat’s all mine.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “He was a good man, though.”

Leopold returned to where Fletcher was waiting. “Only the brother? No other family?”

“None.”

“This one certainly has nothing in common with the Flown case.”

“Nothing but the bullet, Captain.”

“That’s right, nothing but the bullet. What about Flown’s wife?”

Fletcher shrugged. “They had their troubles. Oh, and a patient of Doc’s died last month—it blew up a storm.”

Leopold lit a cigarette, watching a seagull head into the sun. “Tell me more.”

“A ten-year-old boy was hit by a car a few months back and badly injured. Flown was the family doctor. The kid died a couple of weeks back. Doc Flown ruled he died of pneumonia, not as a result of the accident. The mother and father are furious. They blame Flown, not only for their son’s death, but for keeping them from collecting the insurance they had on the kid.”

“Accident policy?”

“Yeah. All they got was a settlement on the hospital bills.”

“What are their names?”

“A Mr. and Mrs. Reever. Here’s the address.”

Leopold pocketed the paper. “You stay here and see what you can find out about this Proctor. And, Fletcher, when you get back to headquarters, run through the IBM cards and find me a cop who knows something about skindiving. I want him assigned to these cases.”

“Skindiving?” Fletcher echoed.

“That’s right,” Captain Leopold said. “Have him in my office first thing tomorrow morning.”

Mrs. Oscar Flown greeted Leopold in a Chinese-silk housecoat with a half-empty glass in one hand and a bottle in the other. Middle-aged, perhaps beautiful once, now a drunk.

She led him into a living room big enough for a bowling alley, and poured him a drink without asking if he wanted one.

“It’s about your husband, Mrs. Flown.”

“Isn’t everything?” she said, making it a sort of sob. “I buried him Thursday and I haven’t been sober since.”

“It’s not suicide any more, Mrs. Flown. The same gun killed another man last night. Dr. Flown was murdered.”

Her shaky hand tried to set down the glass. It overturned, spilling its contents over the table top. “Even dead, Oscar’s a troublemaker,” she sobbed.

“You didn’t get along with him?”

“I got along with his money. He and his crummy patients could have rotted in that hospital for all I cared. I’m not drinking because he’s gone, damn him—I’m drinking because the money’s gone.”

Leopold got to his feet. “I’ll be back when you’re sober, Mrs. Flown.”

“That’ll be the day. Don’t you want your drink?”

“Not right now, thanks.”

He drove across town to a far different kind of house, a dull frame structure in a shabby neighborhood, and rang the Reevers’ bell. If they were home, they chose not to answer. The dingy street was empty even of children, and Captain Leopold felt uncomfortably alone. Finally he gave up and drove away.

In the morning Leopold was at his desk before nine. He did not bother with the accumulation of routine week-end reports; instead he turned his attention to the lab sheets and other reports on the Flown-Proctor case. He had hardly begun when Fletcher stuck his head into the office.

“Captain, I’ve got Patrolman Browning outside.”

“Browning? Jack Browning? What for?”

“He’s the only man in the department with skindiving experience.”

“Browning?”

“Yes, Captain,” Fletcher said, grinning.

“Well? Send him in!”

Leopold hastily reached for a cigarette. Of all the men in the department it had to be Jack Browning! Tall, handsome, a devil with the women. The best man on the Vice Squad until two years ago, when Leopold had had to bust him back to a beat cop for departmental violations. Browning thereafter had no love for Leopold, and the Captain avoided him whenever possible.

Leopold was shaking his head when Browning came in, handsome as ever.

“You wanted me, Captain?”

“I sent for a man with skindiving experience. It turns out you’re elected. I hope you won’t let personal feelings stand in the way of your doing a good job.”

“Of course not,” Browning said, sounding insincere. “What’s the job?”

“The two killings in the harbor—Dr. Flown last week-end, and now this fisherman, Thad Proctor. Both killed with the same gun, both while they were apparently alone on their boats.”

Browning pulled up a chair and sat down. “You think the killer was a skindiver?”

“It figures. With a Scuba tank and mask, the killer could have escaped unnoticed from Dr. Flown’s yacht. And the fisherman’s brother thinks he heard a splash after the shot.”

“What’s the motive?”

“He might be a nut of some sort. If so, there may be more killings. We’ve got to find him fast.” Captain Leopold sat forward in his chair. “How would a skindiver transport a gun underwater?”

“Simple. A waterproof pouch of some sort. There are several on the market.”

Leopold frowned. “The gun bugs me. Why use a gun at all? A knife would be a lot safer—no noise. Skindivers usually carry knives, don’t they?”

Browning nodded. “But maybe the killer’s a woman, or a man who doesn’t like knives. It takes strength and a certain kind of guts to kill with a knife.”

“And maniacs have both.” But Leopold still looked unhappy. “How can we get a list of all the skindivers in this area?”

Browning thought for a moment. “Two ways, Captain. A local Scuba group puts out a sort of newsletter. Goes to about two hundred names. I can latch onto that list easy enough. The second possibility is the supply stores. Those air tanks have to be filled, and there are only three places in town that do it. Since most customers of that sort have charge accounts or are known to the clerks, I should be able to get another list there and check the two lists against each other.”

“Okay, Browning, go to it. Try to have a report for me by tomorrow morning.”

For a time, after Browning went out, Leopold sat watching the comings and goings of the city below. Somewhere down there stalked a killer, a man or a woman who appeared, murdered, and vanished like a phantom. Had Dr. Flown and Thad Proctor been the random victims of a psycho, or had they been coldly chosen pawns in an overall plan whose design was still obscure?

He dialed the harbor patrol and spoke briefly to the officer on duty. “This is Captain Leopold of Homicide. I want a boat dockside on twenty-four-hour duty, ready to move out at five minutes’ notice. That’s right…I’ll clear it with the Commissioner.”

He hung up and thought some more. All right, suppose Flown was the real objective, and Proctor’s murder was only a cover for it. Suppose…He suddenly remembered that he should talk to the Reevers.

The street was as silent as it had been on Sunday. But this time, after his second ring, a tired-looking woman with gray hair answered the door.

“Yes, that’s my name. What are you selling?”

Leopold showed her his shield. “I’ve got a few questions to ask you, Mrs. Reever.”

“If it’s about the dog, we don’t know a thing! He’s been gone all week. Anyway, it wasn’t him that bit that woman.”

Leopold smiled. “It’s not about the dog, Mrs. Reever. It’s about Dr. Flown.”

The woman stepped aside and he entered a room with dirty windows. The room looked as tired as she did. “I can’t say I was sorry to hear about him dying. That man killed my Donald, and after that he does us out of the insurance money from the accident policy.”

“Mrs. Reever, if you really believe Dr. Flown was responsible for your son’s death, you can’t also hold that the accident caused it. You can’t have it both ways.”

She waved a hand in listless despair. “I don’t know. Talk to my husband.”

“Did either of you ever threaten Dr. Flown’s life?”

“I don’t know what my husband said.” Her eyes flashed into vicious life for a moment. “Him and his damn yacht—bought with blood money from poor people like us!”

“I’d like to talk to your husband, Mrs. Reever. Where can I find him?”

“At work! He puts in an honest eight hours every day. Down at the Harbor Fish Market.”

As Leopold made his way through the fish markets, seeking Frank Reever, it occurred to him that a man working daily among these sights and sounds and smells might at times find his eye wandering across the stretch of open water to the yacht basin, might find himself increasingly resentful of the plush life there, just out of reach. A man like Frank Reever might even decide to do something about it.

Reever was big, built like a gorilla. His handshake was a closing vise, his breath a blowtorch of fishy decay. “Police?” the man growled. “What about?”

“About the murder of Dr. Flown. I understand you made certain threats against him.”

Someone wheeled in a new barrel of fish, and the men around them got to work. Reever seemed glad of the break in the routine; he led Leopold to an out-of-the-way corner. “Sure, I threatened him. What he did to my kid, he deserved to die. I told him someday I’d come out to that fancy yacht of his and work him over good with a fish knife.”

“Did you?”

“He was shot, wasn’t he? If it was me, I’d ’a’ used a knife.”

“Where were you a week ago Saturday night?”

“Home with my wife. Or maybe down at the bar for a while.”

“Which was it?”

“You think I killed him?”

“I’m just asking you where you were,” Leopold said. “If that’s too tough a question, Reever, I can give you plenty of time down at headquarters to think up a good answer.”

“I was down at the bar till around eleven,” the man said sullenly. “Then I went home.”

“Flown was killed around eleven. Ever do any skindiving?”

“Me? You kidding?”

Someone in the crowd around the fish barrel yelled at Reever to get back to work. Leopold stood in the corner a few minutes, watching. Then he went over to the man. “Did you know Thad Proctor, too?”

Reever frowned. Finally he answered, “We get to know all the regular fishermen. Sure I knew him.”

“Thanks. We’ll be in touch with you.”

Driving back downtown, Leopold felt he had accomplished something. Frank Reever was a link between the two murdered men—he had known the fisherman, Proctor, and he admitted having threatened Dr. Flown. It was something for the boys to work on…

But, by Tuesday morning, Leopold’s fire had cooled. The Reever lead seemed remote and the calendar on his desk made the coming Saturday night loom large with another possible killing. Well, all right, if he didn’t get a break by Saturday he could put a dozen police boats out on patrol. He might even persuade the Safety Commissioner to ban all boats from the harbor. Or were two murders the end of it?

Fletcher poked his head into the office. “The Commissioner was looking for you yesterday on those harbor killings, Captain.”

“I was working on them.”

“I told him that. But he doesn’t think a captain of Homicide should have to pound the pavements himself. Said that’s what you’ve got us for.”

“Hell! Does he want this nut or doesn’t he?” Leopold exploded. “I could use another ten men on this case! Oh, Browning, come in.”

Browning had appeared in the doorway behind Fletcher, holding a stapled sheaf of typewritten sheets. “Here’s the dope, Captain. Every skindiver within fifty miles.”

“How many are there?” Leopold asked eagerly.

“I counted 252 on the mailing list of that newsletter, and we picked up an additional 28 names at the area stores—I mean, names that weren’t on the newsletter list. I’ve combined them into one master list—280 names and addresses, arranged alphabetically. Of course, not all these people are active skindivers. Some just have a casual interest in it.”

“Leave one copy with me, and you and Fletcher start working down the other one. Get help if you need it. Check every name, report anything suspicious. Oh, one other thing, Browning. Get me a list of expert swimmers in the area—the college swimming team, that sort of thing. Just in case we’re on the wrong track with this skindiver angle.”

Leopold went carefully through the skindiver list, studying each name in an attempt to jog some dormant memory: Adams, Aldrich, Anderson, Appelbaum, Babcock, Bailey, Bauer, Beckerman, Bentley, Bishop, Bond, Brown, Brozzi, Burns, Callario, Childs…

His eyes skipped to the P’s, but there was no Proctor. Also no Reever, and no Mrs. Flown. Which proved nothing, really. But the thought of Mrs. Flown reminded him of unfinished business. He left the list on his desk and reached for his hat.

This time Mrs. Flown was sober. But she was in no better spirits. He found her working in the garden behind the house, and she was on the defensive from the beginning. “You trying to pin Oscar’s murder on me?”

Leopold said, “Only if you’re guilty, Mrs. Flown.”

“I was with a dozen people when he was shot.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about. Did you know this other man who was killed—Thad Proctor?”

“The fisherman?” She made it a dirty word. “Of course not.”

“Your husband ever have any dealings with him?”

“He never mentioned a Thad Proctor to me.”

“Can you give me a list of your husband’s patients, Mrs. Flown?”

“Some. The hospital would have the rest.”

She took Captain Leopold into the house and he went through the names. He could not recall seeing any of them on the skindiver list. So he thanked her and drove downtown to the hospital, where he obtained a list of all the patients Flown had treated there during the past year. Again, there was nothing familiar about any of the names.

Leopold went to bed early that night. He was awakened at eleven thirty by his bedside telephone. “Hello?” he mumbled.

“Captain, this is Browning. I’m at the harbor. There’s been another one.

“Another one?” His mind snapped into focus.

“Another killing.”

Leopold cursed. “Meet me at the police boat. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes!”

Leopold stood beside Browning in the sea-swept bow of the police boat as it churned through the harbor, its high-powered searchlight sweeping the water in random arcs. They followed a zigzag route leading nowhere, and before they had completed their second pass the police captain was convinced it was useless.

“It’s been a good forty-five minutes,” he said. “Time enough to swim to any of those boats or to shore. We’re wasting our time.” He ordered the police boat to head in toward the battery of lights that marked the scene of the latest crime.

It was a converted whaleboat fitted with sails and an eight-horsepower motor, an odd sort of craft even for this portion of the Sound. Leopold guessed it had come from up north, somewhere along the New England coastline.

There was a young man in swimming trunks aboard, crying like a baby over the body of a pretty girl. She had been shot. The bikini she was wearing accented the youthful curves of her body. Leopold dropped the canvas with a sigh.

“I’m Captain Leopold, Homicide. Suppose you tell me what happened.”

The young man looked up, his eyes still blurred with tears. “She’s dead. She’s dead.”

“Did you see the killer?”

“Yes. We were going for a late swim. Jean had already changed to her suit, and I was below getting into mine. I felt the boat sway a bit, heard Jean scream. There…there was a shot. I ran up on deck and saw a figure in shiny black bending over her. It was horrible—he seemed to be looking at the wound his bullet had just made. Even though he saw me, he stayed long enough to fire one more shot into her. Then he went over the side. I went in after him, but I lost him in the dark. So I came back on board, and…”

Leopold turned to one of the uniformed men. “You got their names?” he asked softly.

“He’s Martin Irving, and the girl’s name is Jean Young. Down from the Cape, pulled in tonight. Hadn’t heard about the murders, Irving says.”

“Engaged?”

The patrolman shook his head. “Week’s vacation together. Just shacking up.”

“All right. If the Doc finds she was pregnant, let me know right away.”

Browning edged forward. “You think the guy killed her, Captain?”

“Maybe. Two bullets in this one. Change of pattern. He could have heard about our murders and decided to tie in.”

They stood around while photographers snapped flash photos and the doctor made a preliminary examination. As the body was being carried ashore, Leopold asked the medic what he thought. “Funny thing,” the doctor answered. “Looks to me like the first shot killed her. Why he would stop for a second shot this time beats me.”

“Let me have your report first thing in the morning.”

Leopold went home, but he did not sleep. He spent the rest of the night pacing the floor, seeing the mysterious figure in its glistening black skindiver’s suit.

On Wednesday morning the papers had a ball: HARBOR PHANTOM KILLS AGAIN! THIRD MURDER IN 11 DAYS! Leopold read it all, even the editorial he could have written himself. “Citizens demand action.” Sure they did!

Fletcher slipped some typed sheets onto Leopold’s desk.

The Captain skimmed through the lab reports. Not pregnant. First shot passed through the body, killing her instantly. Slug not recovered, probably skidded overside. Second shot in the chest as she lay on the deck. Bullet identical with the ones that had killed Flown and Proctor.

He picked up the report on Martin Irving. Apparently the young man had been a hundred miles away at the time of the first and second murders, each of which had been committed on a Saturday night.

Leopold flicked a button on his desk. “Browning?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Find out if this fellow Irving does any skindiving back home. And assemble everyone for a meeting right after lunch. We’ve got to move fast if we’re going to get the newspapers off our backs.”

But the noon editions moved faster. The morning’s HARBOR PHANTOM KILLS AGAIN! had been replaced by POLICE HELPLESS AGAINST MADMAN. And when Leopold returned from lunch, the hallway outside his office was crowded with reporters. He slipped through another door before they noticed him, and buzzed Fletcher, Browning, and the others.

When they were all in the tiny office, Leopold lolled back in his chair in his deceptively sleepy manner. “Killings—three in eleven days. All by the same man, with the same gun, and you wouldn’t bet he’s through yet. Our skindiving killer may be nuts—but even nuttiness can make sense of a sort.

“The killer may be after just one of the victims. It’s the old A, B, C theory, in which only A or B or C is the real victim, the others serving merely to confuse the issue. Bearing this out is the fact that we’ve found nothing linking the three victims together. A second possibility is that he hates people with boats. Any people, any boats.”

“That would make him a nut,” Fletcher agreed.

“But not too much of a nut,” Leopold said dryly. “If this Martin Irving is telling the truth, the skindiver paused over his third victim long enough to fire a second bullet into her, though it must have been obvious to him she was dead. Why risk capture or identification in order to fire an apparently unnecessary bullet? Because the first bullet had passed clean through her and was lost. Looks to me as if the skindiver took the time and risk to fire that second shot just so we’d have a bullet to compare with the ones from the other two victims’ bodies. This man may be mad, but he’s intent on making us believe the killings are connected.

“That would also explain the use of a pistol rather than a knife. It’s next to impossible to prove three people were stabbed with the same knife, but with the same gun there’s proof positive. It’s important enough for our killer to bother with a waterproof holster, which must certainly slow down his movements.”

“You’re sure it’s a skindiver?” Browning asked.

“The evidence all points to it, and this fellow Irving claims he actually saw him. I think we can reasonably assume it’s someone on this master list. We’ve got to redouble our efforts to check out every name. I want some action by tomorrow!”

And he got it, surprisingly enough. At ten the next morning, which was Thursday, Fletcher caught him returning from the usual pep talk in the Commissioner’s office. “I got someone for you, Captain.”

“Who?”

“Appelbaum, one of the skindivers. He’s been talking up a skindivers’ club in the harbor. Sort of a nut on the subject—wanted all boating banned on week-ends. I’ve got him outside.”

“Get him in here!”

Appelbaum was a youngish, intense man with an athlete’s body and a fanatical look in his eyes.

“Am I to be charged?” he asked in a rasping voice. “If so, I demand a lawyer.”

“Calm down,” Leopold told him. “Tell me about your scheme for the harbor, Mr. Appelbaum.”

“Is this about those three murders?”

“Yes.”

“I just wanted to clear out the boats on Saturdays and Sundays, so our skindivers’ club could explore the harbor area.”

“Did you ever go diving out there? At night?”

“It would be damned dangerous. Nobody but a nut would dive around those power boats.”

“Some nut did. Where were you Tuesday night?”

“Out with my girl.”

“And last Saturday?”

“At a movie—alone.”

“A week ago Saturday?”

“At a poker game.”

“You have a fast memory.” Then, to Fletcher, “Check him out and let me know what you find.”

Leopold went back to his office to brood over the piles of reports. Then he got out a Department of Commerce chart of the harbor and studied it for a long time. It told him nothing.

Toward evening Fletcher came back, looking discouraged.

“I checked Appelbaum out. The poker game alibi is cast-iron, although the other two have holes in them. If the same guy did all three jobs, he’s in the clear.”

Leopold stared out the window at the lowering sun. “Could it be that’s why the same gun was used?—to make it look like one killer when it was actually several? Three men, passing the gun on from one to another, enabling one of them to always have an unbreakable alibi?”

“Three nuts?” Fletcher asked. “Three nuts who are expert skindivers—and killers, too?”

“You’re right,” Leopold sighed. “Mass murder like this is a one-man crime.”

Fletcher nodded and went out, closing the office door behind him. For some time Leopold stared out the window again, watching the lights of the city as they turned on for still another night. He felt sick.

Finally he pulled out the long list and went over it once more, from Adams to Zwigg. But it always came out the same…

Browning came in with a harbor map. “Can I bother you a second, Captain? I think I’ve got an idea on the phantom.”

Leopold’s eyes lit up. “Let’s hear it.”

Browning spread the chart out on Leopold’s desk. “The killer had to come from somewhere—right? I don’t think he came off another boat; that would be too risky. We might search them and find his gun and suit, or someone might see him climbing on board, or notice the same boat in the area on all three occasions. No, I think he swam from land.”

“I’ll buy that,” Leopold agreed. “Keep talking.”

“Well, the harbor is open to the Sound on the southeast, which leaves land on the other three sides. Did he come from the southwest? I don’t think so—it’s true a finger of marshland stretches out into the water there, but it disappears at high tide, and the last two murders were committed around high tide.”

“Get to the point.”

“The diver must be operating from one hidden spot where he can get into his gear unnoticed. Look at this chart again: the entire northwest quadrant is taken up with bathing beaches and the casino grounds. He certainly wouldn’t take a chance on entering or leaving the water there, with midnight lovers and beach parties in full swing. Due north of the harbor are the docks, another busy area night and day. It narrows down to the northeast quadrant—where there are a number of cottages, but also one or two fairly deserted stretches. He wouldn’t be a cottage owner—crazy killers don’t strike that close to home. So that leaves one of these stretches of bluff right along here.” His finger jabbed at the map. “I know this area, Captain—it’s quite rocky, with not enough land below the bluff for a beach. It would be perfect for our man. It’s my hunch he has his gear and the gun hidden there.”

Leopold felt a rising excitement. “It’s worth a try. Good work.”

“Want me to run you out there tonight, Captain?”

“Get your car—I’ll be down in five minutes!”

The bluffs overlooking the harbor were pale in the moonlight, a little sinister. Below, in the silvery waters, Leopold could see that the killings had taken their toll of the pleasure craft. The usually crowded area now held only three boats, and one of these was the police launch, on patrol duty.

Leopold followed the younger man down over the slippery rocks. Browning was right—this would be the perfect base for the killer’s operations. Lonely, remote, yet only a five-minute swim to the harbor anchorage area.

“Down this way, Captain,” Browning whispered, hopping noiselessly to the next half-buried rock. “Keep it quiet, Captain. This might be another of his nights.”

“I don’t think he’d try anything with that police boat out there,” Leopold whispered back.

“You never know with a nut.”

They crept along the rocks, watching for evidence of recent human presence. Around them now was only the sound of the water, ever in motion, ever changing.

“What’s that?” Browning gripped Leopold’s arm. “There!”

It was a bundle wrapped in rubber sheeting, hidden in a crevice between two boulders. Browning went in for it, lifting it carefully out for Leopold’s examination. Leopold removed the sheeting. A black-painted air tank…a black rubber suit…flippers…a mask…Leopold had a fleeting sense of exhilaration.

“All here. You were right, Browning.” He unzipped the waterproof pouch, not surprised to find it empty. “At least, it’s all here but the gun.

“The gun’s here, Captain.”

Leopold looked up. Browning was raising the glistening .38, slowly, as if he had all eternity to train it on the captain’s middle.

“The gun’s here, Leopold. And this time it’s for you.”

Leopold stood very still on the rock, his death a mere tightened finger away. He stood very still and he said distinctly, “You killed those three people, Browning?”

Browning’s eyes were as wild as they had been in Leopold’s office a few days before. “Damned right I killed them. You had that A, B, C business all figured out, Leopold—all but the payoff. I killed Doc Flown and Proctor and that girl just to cover up my real pigeon—you. In a minute you’ll be dead and I’ll have a perfect story. We surprised the phantom and he shot you. The bullet will match and no one’s going to doubt it. You’ll just be D after A, B, C. And they’ll probably give you a medal with your funeral, Leopold, which is more than you gave me!”

“You deserved what you got, Browning.” I must keep him talking, Leopold thought.

“I’ve spent two years of my life planning how I’d get even with you for busting me back to a beat. That’s why the first three killings had to be on boats. I knew when you tumbled to the skindiving, you’d request an officer with skindiving experience to work with you on the case. And I was the only man in the department who could qualify. It takes a good detective to think up a perfect crime, Captain!”

“What if I hadn’t thought of the skindiving right away?”

“Then I’d have gone on killing till you did. I’m hiding you in a forest of bodies, Leopold, and I’m even going to cover you up with one or two more. What’s one or two more murders to a nut?” Browning laughed. “Of course, I’ve got to leave this diving gear for the boys, to back up my story. But it’s not traceable, and I’ve another outfit stashed away. The gun stays on me. Who’ll think of searching me?”

“Browning…wait…”

“I’ve waited too long already.” The .38 in Browning’s big hand steadied.

“Put down the gun.” Leopold flipped open his jacket. A box was strapped to his chest.

“What’s that?” Browning asked, childishly.

“A short-range radio transmitter. Fletcher and the others heard every word you said.”

A blinding spotlight shot down from above; another cut in from the harbor patrol boat offshore. The lights pinned Browning to the rocks.

“You knew! Damn you, you knew…”

As Leopold flung himself aside the gun roared once and he felt the slug tearing through the flesh of his shoulder and then a dozen other weapons answered and Browning toppled, clawing at the air, into the shallow water.

Someone was bandaging Leopold’s shoulder. Someone else was taking a picture. Fletcher stood watchfully by, his right fist still holding his revolver.

“How did you know, Captain? How did you know in time to call us?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know half of it, Fletcher, or at least I wouldn’t admit to myself that I knew. There was just one little slip—the fact that he didn’t include his own name in the list of skindivers he made up for me. I noticed that after a while—no Browning on what was supposed to be a complete list of names. I kept asking myself why—why he’d left it out. I didn’t like the answer, but I couldn’t afford to take chances. That’s why I wore the radio and had you follow me tonight.”

“Have a cigarette?”

“Thanks.”

Offshore, the police boat coughed and started back across the harbor.

“Don’t blame yourself for anything, Captain. Like you said, he was nuts.”

Leopold stared out over the black water at his harbor. “I hope so, Fletcher. I hope so.”

(1962)

A Place for Bleeding

THE HOUSE SAT HIGH on Glory Hill, overlooking all of the city and the river and the lush farmlands beyond. By rights it should have been in the wealthy suburbs that stretched to the south, but by a casual fluke of mapmaking in the distant past it was within the city limits, and thus the body in the garage was very much the business of Captain Leopold.

His first sight of it, when he slid out of the patrol car and walked up the dark driveway with his shadow outlined in red from the car’s flasher, was of a crumpled heap of manhood, seeming almost to swim in the blood that now covered nearly the entire garage floor. At this hour of the morning there were only police in view, though he could hear the quiet sobbing of a woman somewhere inside.

“What is it, Fletcher?” he asked the man on his knees at the very edge of the bloody pool.

“Looks like murder and kidnapping. A messy one, Captain.”

“Kidnapping? Was there a note?”

Fletcher nodded. “In the mailbox.”

“Call the F.B.I.?”

“Already did,” Fletcher said, straightening up. “Dain’s on his way out.”

“Who’s this guy?” The flash of the police photographer’s bulb lit the garage in a sudden white glow. It was a big place, large enough for two Cadillacs or three Volkswagens, take your choice. Just then, in addition to the body, it was occupied by one Cadillac, a power lawn mower, an assortment of garden tools, and two hundred feet of snakey green hose.

“He was the chauffeur,” Fletcher answered.

Leopold grunted. “Didn’t know people still had chauffeurs.”

“On Glory Hill they do. Name’s Thomas Sane.”

“Sane like in crazy?”

“Sane like in crazy. He’s—was—thirty-four years old, divorced, worked for the Clements about three years.”

Leopold watched closely while the medical examiner turned him over. Thomas Sane had been a handsome man of a type, with greying hair worn in a short brush-cut which gave him a boyish but balding look. He might have been hell on the ladies. He looked the type to Leopold. “What killed him?”

“This,” Fletcher said, holding up a three-pronged garden implement of some sort. “He got all three, right, Doc?”

The doctor looked up distastefully. “It would appear that one prong hit the main artery of the heart. There’s a great deal of blood.”

“I can see it,” Leopold said. “What about this kidnapping?”

“A girl, the daughter. Fifteen years old. Doesn’t look good for her. Sane was driving her home from a school play. Apparently someone was waiting in the garage, killed the chauffeur and grabbed the girl.”

“Let’s go inside and talk to them. Clements, you say?”

“Clement. He’s the personnel director at Bacon Industries. It’s good for forty thousand a year.”

Leopold grunted. “With a chauffeur, I’d have figured twice that amount. Come on.”

They entered through the kitchen, finding a quietly plush setting where the tablecloth was golden and the wall clock chimed the hour. Just then it was chiming one in the morning, and the sight of it made Leopold yawn. In the living-room Mrs. Clement was sobbing, more softly now, into her handkerchief. Her husband, a big man who might once have been a football player, paced the floor with face drawn taut. His expression lightened as Leopold entered, as if now he felt that the end of the nightmare was suddenly at hand. “Have you found her?” he asked hopefully.

“Not quite yet, I’m afraid, Mr. Clement. My name is Leopold. I’m with the local police, and right now my concern is the murdered man in your garage. The F.B.I, will be here soon about the other.”

Clement frowned and seemed to grow an inch or two in anger. “Sane is dead. You can’t help him any more. Your job is to find my daughter before something happens to her.”

Leopold nodded. “I’m sorry if I seemed to speak harshly, Mr. Clement. But of course if we find the murderer, we’ll have the kidnapper too, won’t we? Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

Mrs. Clement, overweight, overdressed, overexposed in a tight evening dress, withdrew the handkerchief from her face long enough to offer a framed portrait. It showed a girl in her obviously early teens, smiling against a background of artsy studio lighting. To Leopold, the girl was handsome but certainly not a beauty. “Her name is Karen,” Clement offered. “She just turned fifteen.”

Leopold nodded. “Can you tell me everything that happened?”

Mr. Clement cleared his throat, as if he were about to outline a million-dollar business deal. And, thought Leopold, perhaps he was. “My wife and I were invited out to dinner this evening. At the Chamber.” In his circles, it wasn’t necessary to say Chamber of Commerce. Everyone knew what was meant by Chamber and Club and Party. “Karen is appearing in this school play—we went last night, Macbeth, of all things—and we didn’t feel she should come home by herself.”

“Couldn’t some boy have brought her home?” Leopold asked.

“They’re mostly seniors, two or three years older than Karen. With a good-looking girl like her, we can never be too careful. Anyway, we told Thomas to leave us at the Chamber and pick up Karen after the play.”

“What time did you last see Sane?”

“Oh, it must have been around nine-fifteen or nine-thirty when he dropped us off, wasn’t it, Jean?” His wife nodded in agreement.

“You’re late eaters.”

Clement shrugged. “This was quite a formal affair, with cocktails and speeches first. We came late.”

“And you took a cab home?”

“Correct. We arrived here just at midnight. The house was dark and the garage door was closed. We thought it was odd—the play’s over just a bit after eleven. I opened the garage door to see if the car was there, and I found him.”

“That Cadillac is the car he was driving?”

“Yes. It’s the only one we have at present.”

“Did Sane live here with you?”

“Oh, no. He drove his own car over here every morning and left it in the garage while he was working. Actually, we only employed him a few days a week—when something like this came up and we needed a driver.”

Leopold blinked. “And just why was that, Mr. Clement? Surely a taxi would have been as convenient and far less expensive.”

“Oh, Thomas was my driver at the office for the past several years. Then they decided the executives could drive their own cars and he was let go. I felt a little sorry for the fellow, so I hired him myself, on a part-time basis.”

“How old a man was he?”

“Thirty-five, maybe. He limped a bit from a war injury. Just bad enough to keep him from getting a decent job anywhere. Unfortunately, Thomas wasn’t the smartest fellow in the world. He was married briefly, but his wife left him and moved to Florida with another man.”

“Was he friendly with your daughter?”

The big man shrugged his massive shoulders. “Just normally so. He did his job.”

Leopold turned to Fletcher. “Where’s this note?”

The detective passed over a piece of ruled notepaper protected by a plastic bag. “They found it in the mailbox.”

Leopold read over the crudely printed words. They were all in capitals, written with a soft lead pencil:

THE GIRL IS SAFE IF YOU PAY $10,000 IN SMALL BILLS IN BROWN PAPER BAG. LEAVE BEHIND STATUE OF HUDSON TOMORROW NIGHT AT SIX. DON’T TELL COPS OR GIRL DIES.

“You’re in the habit of looking in your mailbox at midnight?” Leopold asked.

“My wife saw it sticking out of the box while she was waiting for me to open the front door. While I was checking the garage.”

“Funny thing,” Fletcher said. “How’d he expect to keep it from the police when he left a body in your garage?”

Leopold had his own ideas, but just then he wasn’t commenting. Instead, he asked, “Do you intend to pay this amount, Mr. Clement?”

“Certainly! I’d pay twice that to have her back again.”

“Fine. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, sir. In the meantime, a Mr. Dain Moore of the F.B.I. should be here any moment. Tell him just what you’ve told me.”

When Leopold went back outside he saw them loading Thomas Sane’s remains into the morgue wagon. Dain Moore and another agent were just pulling up in their car. “Evening, Captain,” Moore said. “What have we got here?”

“They snatched the daughter, killed the family chauffeur when he tried to protect her. It’s a messy one.”

“Note?”

“In the mailbox. They want ten thousand tomorrow.”

Dain Moore looked up at the big house, now alive with light. “Their only child? That makes it rough. A place like this shouldn’t be for violence. Just for happiness.”

Leopold lit a cigarette. “Things don’t work out that way any more. If they ever did. Any place can be a place for tragedy, or happiness. For Thomas Sane that garage was a place for bleeding and dying.”

The F.B.I. man nodded sadly. “I’ll go in and talk to them.” Then he added, “See what you can do to keep the snatch angle out of the papers. Kidnapping for ransom is so rare these days that the reporters have a field day with it.”

Leopold found Fletcher back in the garage. “Two things before I go. Check on Sane’s ex-wife in Florida. Make sure she’s still there. And get a description of Sane’s car broadcast all over the area.”

“His car?”

Leopold nodded. “He parked it in the garage and it’s not there now. The kidnappers might have taken it.”

“Right, Captain. You going home?”

“Not yet. I’m going downtown first. Gotta see a newspaper editor and then a corpse. This isn’t a night for sleeping, Fletcher. It just isn’t…

In the morning, Leopold was up with only three hours’ sleep, heading for the school Karen Clement would not be attending that day. That day or maybe any day again. A kidnapper who has killed once already has very little to lose by killing again. Nothing to lose. He felt a great sorrow for the parents.

The school building, low, gleaming and modernistically glassy, was alive with mid-May activity. Leopold moved through the crowded between-classes corridors with the air of an alien from a distant planet. The girls, tightskirted and pouting, looked him over quickly before dismissing him as Too Old. The boys for the most part didn’t look at all. Perhaps they took him for a substitute teacher, or a politician touring the place on behalf of City Hall. Someone had once told him he looked like a politician.

He found finally a senior named Harry Waygon, who’d been pointed out as Karen’s best friend. “Did you ever date her, Harry?” Leopold asked in the quiet of the gym, watching the youth’s muscles ripple as he exercised on a padded horse.

“No.” He sprang over the horse, landing in front of Leopold. “Her folks said she was too young for dating. They watched her like a hawk. Didn’t even want her to have the lead in the school play until she raised a big fuss about it. What happened to her, anyway? I heard on the radio about that guy getting killed in her garage.”

Leopold cleared his throat. There wasn’t really much harm in telling. The newspapers had only agreed to lay off the story till evening, anyway. “She’s been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped!” The sweat was streaming off his naked chest.

“That’s right. But keep it quiet till evening, will you? Now about this play—wasn’t it a bit demanding for a girl of only fifteen?”

“Not for Karen. She was tremendous in it.”

“Was she friendly with any of the other fellows?”

“Not really. None of the girls, either. She was pretty much of a loner.”

“Where were you last night, after the play?”

“I stopped for a beer with a couple of the guys.”

“A beer?”

“Sure. I’m eighteen. They haven’t changed the law yet in New York State.”

Leopold smiled. “I know, if you’re old enough to fight you’re old enough to drink.”

“Right.”

“Did you ever notice anyone—an older man—eyeing Karen? Recently?”

“Not really. She wasn’t that much of an eyeball-grabber.”

“You don’t have to refer to her in the past tense, you know. She’s not dead yet.”

“Sure. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, start thinking, boy. Think about some of the times you maybe sneaked dates with her.”

“No, honest, I…” He flushed a bit. “There was something, just last week. It was after one of the play rehearsals that finished early. I was driving her home and we stopped at the Blazer’s for a case of beer. My dad asked me to pick it up for him.”

“The Blazer’s?”

“It’s a big ice house over on Grant Avenue. Sells nothing but cold beer and pop. Great for picnics. Everybody knows where the Blazer’s is.”

“Yeah. Go on, what about it?”

“Well, Karen came in with me, and the Blazer himself was there. He gave her the eye, kidded with her a little.”

“What’s his name?”

“Who knows? Everybody just calls him the Blazer. Probably on account of his red hair.”

“Grant Avenue, eh?”

“That’s right. Near the corner of Brook.”

“There was nobody else lately who noticed her?”

“No, like I say, she wasn’t…isn’t one you notice. Swell kid, though. I hope she’s O.K.”

“I hope so too.”

Leopold left the high school after a brief chat with two of Karen Clement’s teachers. They pictured her as a quiet girl with a flair for acting. That was all there was. He drove the few blocks over to Grant Avenue and found the set-back ice house proclaiming the name of Blazer’s. It was built on stilts, so that cars could pull up before its loading platform and pick up the cases of iced beer with a minimum of effort. Two young boys lounged in front of the place, apparently waiting to serve car-bound customers.

“Help you, mister?”

“Is the Blazer around?”

“He’s back in the cold room. Come on.” One of the boys pulled open the great ice house door and led him into its interior. The place was stocked high on every side with cases of beer. Leopold looked at it and a chill went through him. He followed the boy deeper into the place until they came to a little red-haired man who was busily counting cases and checking them against a clipboard sheet.

“You’re Blazer?”

The red hair seemed to ripple like a tide. “Right, mister. Schlitz? Ballentine? Black Label?”

“Answers.”

“Huh? What brand?”

“Answers. I’m Captain Leopold, Homicide.”

“Police, you mean?”

“Boy Scouts.” Leopold flipped open his wallet. “Can we talk in your office? Where it’s warmer?”

“Sure. Sure. This way.”

The office was filled to capacity by a battered old desk and two ancient straight chairs. It was only slightly warmer than the ice room. “Isn’t it a little early for the beer business?” Leopold asked.

“I open the first of May. Every year. First of May till first of November. I go to Florida in the winter. Got a place down there too, but it’s not as nice as this one.”

“I’ll bet.” Leopold took out a cigarette.

“What did you want to know?”

“Last week, a girl named Karen Clement was in here. With a boy.”

“I get lots of customers.”

Leopold showed him the picture. “This girl. Maybe a little older than here.”

“Oh. Yeah, I sorta remember her. Cute little trick.”

“That all you know about her?”

“What should I know?”

The Blazer’s blank innocence was getting him down. He slapped the desk with his open palm. “Damn it, you make a practice of selling beer to fifteen-year-old girls?”

The blankness vanished, replaced by a sudden fear. “Hell, mister, the kid was eighteen. Harry. He’s in here a lot. He’s eighteen. I don’t sell to no minors.”

“The girl’s missing. We’re trying to find her.”

“I don’t know a thing. Honest! Did you ask Harry? He was pretty sweet on her.”

“They go out much?”

“They’d stop here some nights for a six-pack. On the way to the park.” The Blazer leered. It didn’t go well with the red hair.

“She have any other boyfriends?”

“Not that I know of. Nice girl, but quiet.”

“If you think of anything that might help, give us a call.”

“Sure. Sure will. Always glad to co-operate.”

Leopold went back to the car, where the two kids were hanging in the window listening to the police calls. He was about a block away from the Blazer’s when a call came in for him. “23 Charlie 4.”

“Leopold here.”

“Urgent message from Dain Moore. Please go at once to the Glory Hill address.”

“Right.” Leopold made a U-turn and headed back in the general direction of the Clement house, wondering what in hell had happened now….

Moore and Fletcher were waiting for him when he pulled up in front of the house, a few minutes after noon. He noticed that Clement’s car was in the driveway. If he’d gone to the bank for the money, he was back already.

“What’s up?” Leopold asked.

“Another ransom note. Just came by special delivery.”

“Different instructions?”

“No,” Moore said quietly. “Different kidnapper.”

“What?” Leopold didn’t understand.

“Read it. We’ve already checked for prints.”

Leopold accepted the unfolded sheet of paper gingerly, as if it might explode. It was neatly typewritten on a letterhead of the Hotel Hudson:

MISTER GEORGE CLEMENT—IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE YOUR DAUGHTER ALIVE AGAIN, WITHDRAW FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN TWENTY-DOLLAR BILLS FROM YOUR BANK AND HOLD THEM FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

L. M.

“Who in hell is L. M.?” Leopold asked, of nobody in particular.

“Leopold and Moore,” the F.B.I, man answered. “We already asked her father that one. Went over his Christmas card lists and the list of officers at his company. No L. M. Fletcher here phoned Karen’s high school. There’s a junior named Lawrence McCarthy, but he never even knew Karen.”

Fletcher shrugged. “Probably stands for Lotsa Money or something. A kidnapper would never sign his right initials anyway, so why worry?”

Moore tapped the note. “The important thing is that it was obviously written by a different person. Different amount, different instructions, everything. So which note do we believe?”

“At this point, both of them,” Leopold said. “Any trace on the typewriter?”

Moore smiled. “We haven’t been sleeping. The letter got here thirty-five minutes ago, and ten minutes later I had a man checking typewriters in the lobby of the Hudson. It was done on a pay typewriter they keep up on the mezzanine. You know, quarter in the slot and you can type for a half-hour. The letterheads are there for the taking.”

“And nobody noticed anyone using it?”

“Nope. Letter was postmarked at the main post office at three this morning, which narrows the timing a bit.”

“But doesn’t help us,” Leopold said. “Nothing helps on this damned case. Fletcher, get on the phone and see that the newspapers hold off a little longer. We can’t have this story breaking tonight. Not with this new note.”

Moore accepted one of Leopold’s cigarettes and settled down in a chair. “Mrs. Clement’s sleeping upstairs,” he said. “The doctor was in, gave her some pills. It’s been tough on her.”

Leopold nodded. “It may get a whole lot tougher, when we find Karen.”

“You think she’s dead?”

“Fifty-fifty at this point. What about that typewriter? You got a man watching it in case he tries to use it for the next note?”

Dain Moore nodded. “But if the guy’s got any brains he typed all his messages at once so he wouldn’t have to go back there.”

“Clement’s got the money?”

“Yeah. It makes a good-sized package in small bills. He figures he’s getting out of it easy. Ten thousand’s not much to him.”

“Five thousand’s even less.” Leopold could feel a headache coming on, probably from his lack of sleep. He knew he wasn’t as young as he used to be. The long hours and the chasing bothered him now. “We’ve got a two-bit kidnapper who still finds the game important enough to commit murder.”

“So we go to the park at six?”

Leopold shrugged. “That part’s your show, Dain.”

“Then we go to the park at six….”

The statue of Henry Hudson stood in Hudson Park, a few blocks from the hotel of the same name. It was a small, bushy green park in a corner of downtown overlooking the river, and during the summer months it was a favorite noontime gathering place for secretaries and young businessmen who brought their sandwiches to eat on one of the green-and-white benches scattered about the area. Though the park in May was constantly full of people, Leopold saw at once that the deposit point for the money had been chosen with care. The statue of Hudson backed up to a heavy backdrop of bushes and, once the money was deposited behind it, anyone could approach it through these bushes without fear of being seen.

But Moore had placed his men with care, and Leopold had supplemented them with some of his own. One man ran a lawn mower over a growth of grass hardly yet in need of its first seasonal cutting. Another lounged on a park bench, reading a newspaper. Fletcher sat behind the wheel of a taxi, and Moore himself was on the scene in the guise of a balloon salesman.

At exactly six o’clock, George Clement left his car at the curb and walked quickly across the damp grass to the statue of Hudson. He carried a brown paper bag about the size of an unabridged dictionary. As he reached the statue, he looked around once, a bit too casually, and deposited his burden behind the statue. The bushes immediately swallowed it up.

Ten minutes after Clement had departed, Leopold cautiously drove his car into a vacant parking space and got out. He stood by the car for another five minutes, glancing at his watch, then strolled over to the balloon seller who was doing no business at all. “What do you think?” he asked Dain Moore.

“Too early to tell. Want a balloon?”

“No thanks.” Leopold’s casual eyes swept the area of the park. “Your men are in the bushes?”

Moore nodded. “Five of them. One’s practically sitting on that bundle.”

“Who’s that?” Leopold said suddenly. “He’s not one of us.” A middle-aged man in not-quite-shabby clothes had left the walk and was crossing the grass in the general direction of the statue. He carried a sort of knapsack over his shoulder and in his hand were a number of small red flowers.

Moore squinted into the lowering sun. “He’s one of these veterans selling poppies. Memorial Day is coming up, you know.”

“He’s going to sell one to Henry Hudson’s statue, maybe? Come on!”

Just as the man reached the statue and started around to the rear of it, one of the F.B.I. men sprang on him from the bushes. Leopold and Moore, trailing balloons, were on him from the rear, and Fletcher was hopping out of his cab.

“What the hell!” the captive gasped, his knapsack of poppies toppling to the grass. “Get your damned paws off me!”

“I know him,” Leopold said, letting out his breath. “Zingo Charlie Taft. A narcotics pusher.”

“Like hell!” Zingo Charlie growled, struggling to be free.

“What were you doing behind the statue, Zingo?”

“Drop dead.”

“This is a federal rap, Zingo. These are F.B.I.”

That scared him. “I don’t know a thing! I was across the square ’bout fifteen minutes ago and I see this guy drop a package there, behind the statue. I just come over to see what it was.”

Fletcher was going through the poppies on the ground. Suddenly he held up a handful of small packets. “Morphine,” he said. “Zingo’s still in business.”

Leopold sighed and took out his handcuffs. “Zingo, only you would think of selling morphine along with poppies for Memorial Day. But I’m sorry you happened along just now. Take him down to headquarters, boys. Nothing more’s going to happen here now….”

They sat around in Leopold’s office, watching the hands of the big wall clock work their way around to eleven. Depression was heavy in the air. As heavy as the cigarette smoke.

“You’re sure Zingo’s not involved?” Dain Moore asked for the tenth time.

Leopold shook his head. “The guy’s not smart enough for a kidnapper. Besides, nobody would be peddling morphine on the way to pick up ten thousand bucks in ransom money. No, he probably just saw the money drop, like he said.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Where does it leave Karen Clement?”

Fletcher lit another cigarette. “God, I’d hate to be her about now. Ten to one we don’t find her alive.”

Moore squinted into the smoke. “Well, there’s still the second kidnapper to be heard from, whoever he might be.”

“If the first kidnapper was there within sight of the statue tonight, he might already have killed her.” Fletcher was in a glum mood.

But Leopold was more hopeful. “We must assume that kidnapper number one is no longer active. Otherwise why did this L. M. send the second note? And cut the ransom in half?”

The phone at Fletcher’s elbow buzzed and he picked it up. “Captain Leopold’s office. Fletcher here…. Yes? Where?…Good, bring it in and check for prints.” He hung up and rose from his chair. “A little action. They just found Thomas Sane’s car, abandoned in a parking lot over on Grant Avenue.”

Leopold came alert. “Where?”

“Grant Avenue near River Street.” River was some three blocks from the Blazer’s.

“Look, get a couple of men to cover an ice house at Grant and Brook, will you, Fletcher? It’s a beer place called Blazer’s. Probably just a coincidence, but we can’t overlook a thing. Maybe in the morning I’ll ask for a search warrant. In the meantime, I want it watched.”

Fletcher went out and Moore stayed a while longer with Leopold. By midnight they were all ready to go home, but Leopold stopped first at the police garage to look at the car they’d towed in. Fletcher was down there with a finger-print man.

“Any luck, Fletcher?”

“Not a thing. Wiped clean around the steering wheel. Found a print on the mirror that looks like Sane’s.”

“I’m going home to bed.”

“One thing, Captain.”

“What?”

“The seat’s pushed up to the forward position. The car was driven by a shorter man than Sane. This Blazer fellow…”

Leopold thought back to the little red-haired man. “Yeah, he’s short, all right.”

“Should we get that search warrant?”

“Let’s see what morning brings.”

Outside, it was starting to rain….

Morning—the morning mail—brought the second letter from L. M. Leopold read it in Clement’s living-room at twenty minutes after ten. It was short and to the point:

MISTER GEORGE CLEMENT—BRING THE MONEY TO THE BASEMENT MEN’S ROOM AT HUDSON HOTEL. LEAVE IT IN WASTE BASKET UNDER PAPER TOWELS. BEFORE NINE TONIGHT.

L. M.

It had been written on the same typewriter, using the same Hudson Hotel letterhead. Their kidnapper seemed to be partial to the Hudson.

“All right, what are you going to do now?” Clement demanded. “Is it going to be another botched-up job like last night?”

Leopold was solemn. “I hope not.”

“If anything’s happened to Karen, it’ll kill my wife.”

“I think your daughter’s still alive, Mr. Clement. I think with a little luck we can keep her that way.”

He was very near the point of collapse. “What do you want me to do?”

Dain Moore was unhappy. “This is a lot trickier than just leaving the money behind a statue in the park. Our man knows we can’t search everybody coming out of that men’s room, and naturally he’ll wait till the place is empty before he goes after the money. He’ll hide it in his clothes and be gone before we know what’s happened.”

Fletcher thought about that. “If it’s the Captain’s friend Blazer we’ll recognize him.”

“And if it isn’t?” Clement asked. “Do you really think he’ll release my daughter after he already has a murder against him?”

Moore ran his tongue over dry lips. “About all we can do, sir, is hide a camera somewhere outside the door to this men’s room. If he gets by us, at least we’ll have his picture.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “You work on that angle. I’ve got a few things of my own to check on. Fletcher, you examined Sane’s apartment, didn’t you?”

“Went over every inch of it. Didn’t find a thing.”

“Let’s go look at it again.”

“You on to something?”

“Just maybe. Mr. Clement, you’ll take your instructions from Moore. But you might start getting the five thousand ready.”

“It’s little enough to pay for her return.”

Leopold stared at him for some seconds. “It may end up costing you more. Let’s hope not.”

They drove to the run-down section of the city where Thomas Sane had lived out his last years on earth. His apartment was over a little neighborhood grocery store where a woman customer was arguing loudly with the clerk about the price of oranges. “Nice place,” Leopold said.

“Sane was on his way out.”

“He made it.”

Upstairs, Fletcher unlocked the door and waited patiently while Leopold went over the two rooms with care. He went first to the kitchen, where he rummaged through the drawers, then to the bedroom, concentrating his attention on a battered little desk bulging with unpaid bills.

“You’re looking for something special,” Fletcher said.

“You guessed it.”

“What?”

Leopold smiled and let his hand dive into one of the open drawers. “This!” he said triumphantly, holding it up for Fletcher to see.

“It’s nothing but a blank sheet of paper from a kid’s tablet.”

“It’s only blank for those who will not see, Fletcher. Come on.”

“Where to now?”

“You’re going up to the hotel to check on things there. I’m paying a return visit to Karen’s high school.”

Classes were still in session, and it took him some time to locate Harry Waygon. The youth was secreted in a little room behind the auditorium stage, poring over a script. Leopold pushed through a tangle of hanging costumes that would have done credit to a Broadway house, and said, “We meet again, Harry.”

“What?” He looked up, a bit startled. “Oh! It’s you again.”

“It’s me. Still learning the script?”

“We’re doing another play next week, a modern comedy by a local author. I’ve got a part in that, too.”

“You fellows are ambitious.”

“Our teachers are.”

“How are you getting along without Karen in the cast?”

“Terrible! The girl who took her place doesn’t know anything!”

“You haven’t heard anything about Karen?”

“Not a word.”

“I suppose the story’s all over school that she’s been kidnapped.”

He averted Leopold’s eyes. “I might have mentioned it to one or two kids.” Then, defensively, “I thought it was going to be in the papers.”

“It will be, soon enough. Right now I want to ask you some more about your relations with Karen.”

“What relations?” he asked suspiciously.

“The beer parties over in the park. I know all about them.”

“God, I didn’t do nothing wrong!” He was scared again.

“That depends. How many times did you take her there?”

“Once, just once, I swear. We stopped at the Blazer’s for some beer and went over there to neck awhile. That was all. I got sick on the beer and she had to drive home.”

“Did Karen drink much?”

“No. A sip or two, that’s all. Her mother and dad watch her like a hawk.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “Keep your nose clean.”

“Sure. That’s all you wanted?”

“All for now.” Leopold left him among the costumes, reading his script. Then he drove back downtown, trying all the way to keep from thinking of the case, trying to keep from cursing Thomas Sane who was dead now and beyond the care of curses.

The lobby of the Hudson Hotel was large and cluttered, filled to overflowing with the inevitable leather sofas and tables and lamps and potted palms. The homey touch. Magazine counter, flanked by stairs up to the fateful typewriter, stairs down to the men’s room. The ladies could stay right on the main floor, as befitted ladies.

“There’s no other way out?” Leopold asked.

“No way,” Dain Moore told him. “Clement dropped the package of money in the basket ten minutes ago, and nobody’s been down since.”

“No attendant?”

“He goes home at eight, after the dinner crowd starts to thin out. And don’t think our guy didn’t know it. I have a man up on the mezzanine with a camera in a box. That’s as close as we could get.”

“With luck you won’t need him.”

“You’ll know him?”

“I’ll know him.”

“You’ve been holding out on me, Captain. Is there just one, or will he be leaving somebody with the girl?”

“There’s just one. There’s been just one all along, ever since Sane was killed.”

They watched a limping man cross the lobby and start downstairs. “Sane had a limp, didn’t he?” Moore asked.

“Don’t jump at coincidences,” Leopold said. “It might be a long night. Where’s Fletcher?”

“Covering the outside. Just in case.”

Leopold settled down in his corner sofa, effectively shielded by a potted palm. His eyes were almost closed and he might have been sleeping.

At twenty minutes to eleven, Moore said, “I don’t think he’s coming. I’m going down and check on the money again.”

“Wait a few minutes more. There’s somebody down there now.”

“You’re sure you can spot this guy?”

“I know what to look for,” Leopold answered.

A little man wearing a raincoat and a limp hat came up the stairs. Leopold looked, looked again, and jumped to his feet. Moore was right behind him. “That our guy?”

The small figure saw them coming and turned suddenly, seeking escape. Moore signalled his men, but Leopold was already covering the ground fast. “No guns!” he called out to Moore, and then he hurled himself forward at the hatted figure.

The air was suddenly full of money as the raincoat came open, as Leopold pinned his captive’s arms and tore the hat from the struggling head. It was over in an instant. “No case for you, Dain,” Leopold said. “But I’ve still got a murder. Let me introduce Miss Karen Clement, age fifteen, the killer of Thomas Sane….”

Later, they gathered again in Leopold’s office. There had been far more cheerful endings to cases than this. Fletcher summed it up with a sour grunt. “Hell, they should give her a medal instead of a juvenile sentence.”

“They might have,” Leopold agreed, “if she hadn’t gotten the crazy idea of going through with this kidnapping scheme.”

“Run through the whole thing for me, will you?” Moore said. “I’ve got a report to write.”

“It’s a bit complex until you sort out the pieces,” Leopold said. “Of course I was suspicious of the set-up right away. The kidnapper had no getaway car and no weapon. Sane was killed with a garden tool that was in the garage, and his own car was used for the getaway. Why? Well, the note tipped me off a bit—the first note. Obviously it was written before Sane was killed, because it mentioned not telling the police. It was not only written before he was killed, but placed in the mailbox before then. Otherwise, the killer would certainly have changed the wording. But why wasn’t the note removed after the murder? Simply because its writer was dead.”

“Sane!”

Leopold nodded. “Sane. He wrote the note, left it in the mailbox, and planned to transfer Karen to his car back at the garage. I confirmed the fact that he wrote it when I found some of the same ruled paper in his apartment desk. Also, a ransom as low as ten thousand dollars certainly sounded like a one-man operation. Anyway, when he told Karen he was kidnapping her, she put up a bigger struggle than he’d figured on. She picked up the garden tool and killed him there in the garage. And in a moment of blind panic at what she’d done she decided to take his car and go into hiding. Not knowing he’d already left a ransom note in the mailbox, she sent one herself the next morning. She figured to get five thousand from her father and go to California or someplace. She got the man’s clothes from the costume room at her school. She sneaked back there last night.”

“Crazy kid,” Fletcher mumbled. “But how’d you know for sure it was her and not some partner of Sane’s sending the second and third notes?”

“Everything pointed to Karen as the one who drove Sane’s car away after the murder. The seat had been moved up for a short person, which she certainly must have been, and I found out from Harry Waygon that she knew how to drive.”

Fletcher shook his head sadly. “It’s hard to believe that any girl of fifteen could kill a man, even more or less in self-defense, and then go off to carry out this mad scheme.”

“Karen Clement is a very special sort of girl,” Leopold said. “Let’s hope an understanding judge and the right sort of confinement can do something for her before it’s too late. I imagine she could be quite an actress, even if she couldn’t fool me in her male disguise. After all, a fifteen-year-old girl who can bring off the lead in Macbeth deserves some sort of help. Even if it was the mood of that play which probably infected her conscience. I suppose it was all one big play to her after a while. Murders on-stage and off.”

“What about the L. M. she signed to the notes?”

Leopold smiled a bit, in spite of everything. “The final, all-important clue. The clue that finally convinced me my fantastic theory was true. It was, really, the sort of thing only a fifteen-year-old girl would think of doing. What part did she have in the play?”

“The lead.”

“And what is the female lead in Macbeth?”

They looked at each other. Nobody needed to answer.

(1963)

Reunion

CAPTAIN LEOPOLD’S OFFICE WAS tucked away at the rear of the second floor in the dingy, smoke-scarred building that served as police headquarters, and perhaps for this reason he was rarely bothered by social callers. The detectives, like Fletcher, who worked under him would occasionally stop in for a chat or a gripe, and when election time neared, the politicians came out of their holes. But mostly those who occupied the worn straight-backed chair opposite his desk were there on the most specific of business. They were there because they were suspected of murder.

Harry Tolliver was not a cop or a politician—nor, so far as Leopold knew, was he a murderer. He was, actually, a boiler salesman—and Leopold had not seen him in almost twenty-five years.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he was saying. “I’d still know you anywhere.”

Leopold smiled and offered him a cigarette. “Well, my hair is a bit thinner on top. And I’d hate to think that my middle bulged like this in high school.”

Harry Tolliver waved away the cigarette. “Stopped smoking three years ago, when I turned forty. This stuff you read in the papers scares you after awhile.”

“In my business, Harry, walking down a dark street at night scares you more.”

“Yeah. You’re the head of the homicide squad or something, aren’t you?”

Leopold smiled at the popular misconception of his position. “Not really. There’s no such thing in this city. It’s more of a violent crimes squad, I suppose. But most of the cases do seem to be murders of one sort or another. Let’s not talk about me, though. It’s a dull subject. What about yourself? What brings you around to see me?” He had a half-day’s work waiting, and Harry Tolliver had never been that good a friend, even in high school.

“Well, it’s been twenty-five years.”

Leopold looked blank. “Since what?”

“Since we graduated from high school. Some of us got together and decided we should have a reunion of the whole class, all the guys and gals.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. Sounds great, doesn’t it?”

Leopold tried to think back twenty-five years, to recapture those faces and names so buried now in his memory. He’d traveled in different circles during those intervening years—away to college, and the army, and a job with a police department out west, then back east for ten years of marriage that didn’t work, until finally he’d found himself a middle-aged captain of detectives, back in his old home town. He liked it here, always had. He liked the breeze off the Sound in the summertime, and even the occasional heavy snows of winter. Perhaps, he sometimes thought, being back home made him feel less lonely—at least until moments like this.

“I don’t know how it sounds,” he answered frankly.

“We were thinking of a big picnic at Venice Park, just like the old days. Wives and kids and everything.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any family to bring.”

“Oh. Well, come anyway. It’ll be great to see the old crowd. Hell, my kids probably won’t even come themselves. They’re all in high school now.”

“When is this going to be?”

“First Saturday in June, right close to the actual graduation date—just a few days early.”

“I’ll think about it, Harry.”

“Hell, I want you to do more than just think about it. I want you to help us find people, contact them.”

“Well, I really don’t have much time…”

“Sure you do. Look, I brought along my old yearbook.” He bent to a zipped brief-case and produced from it the slick-papered volume with thickly padded covers which had all but vanished from Leopold’s memory. “Remember?”

“I remember.”

Harry Tolliver ran his fingers lovingly over the imitation leather with its gold stamping now dulled and blurred by age. “Those were the days, boy! Those really were. So look, what we want you to do is take a few names—just a dozen or so—and contact the people. Hell, if anyone can find them you should be able to! You’re a detective!”

“Yeah. Well, you see…”

“Come on! For the old crowd!”

Leopold looked into those middle-aged eyes and knew it would be useless to refuse. “All right. Maybe I can call a few people for you.”

“Good, good. Look, why don’t you take everyone whose name starts with F and G? There are only thirteen of them.”

“Sure. You’d better leave me your book, though. I doubt if I could find mine any more.”

Tolliver passed over the book a bit regretfully. “Take good care of it, huh? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”

Leopold nodded. “I’ll see if I can get a list of names typed up from it. Then I can give it back to you.”

“Thanks. You’ll get right on this? We’ve only got about five weeks, you know.”

“Sure, Harry. Don’t you worry about it.”

Tolliver stood up and shook hands. “Good to see you again, Leopold, after all these years.”

“I’ll be in touch with you.”

The little man nodded. “Say, when they going to give you a new building? This place is getting pretty shabby.”

“Talk to the city council, Harry. They probably think it’s pretty plush.”

For a time after Tolliver left, Leopold sat alone at his desk, letting the pages flip through his fingers, stopping now and then at some familiar face, some scrawled greeting addressed to Harry Tolliver. The class of George Washington High School, in that good year just before the coming of war.

He remembered how it was, and the memory depressed him.

During the next two days, Leopold ran quickly through eleven of the names on the list he’d made. Eight of them were men whose names were still in the phone book, and a ninth phoneless man was located through the city directory. Two of the women had been tracked down with some help from Tolliver, and Leopold had phoned one of them in New York City to convey the invitation. Each phone call was an adventure of sorts, even when he hardly remembered the people. It made him feel old, but he’d never been one to close his eyes to reality.

The man without a phone was named Jim Groves, and he lived in an apartment on the west side of town. Leopold stopped to see him one sunny afternoon on his way home, and caught him just as he was leaving for the night trick at a nearby factory. Jim Groves in his day had been the star quarterback of the Washington High football team, and even Leopold remembered him well. The man hadn’t changed much in twenty-five years.

“Leopold! Sure, I remember you. God, it’s been a long time.”

They shook hands and Leopold told him quickly about the reunion plans. “Venice Park, the first Saturday in June. And bring the wife and kids if there are any.”

Jim Groves was suddenly glum. “They’re with her family up in Boston. We’re separated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“One of those things. After all these years she decided she’d married a failure.”

“You’ll come to the reunion anyway?” Leopold urged. Somewhere along the line he’d caught the fever of the thing.

“Sure. It’ll be good to see them all. The team and all. You finding everybody O.K.?”

Leopold glanced at his list. “Harry Tolliver’s contacting most of them. I’ve got all but two on my list. Maybe you know something about them. It’ll save me another call to Harry.”

“I see a few of them once in a while. Who you looking for?”

“Shirley Fazen…”

“Sure. She married Quain, the class president. Remember? Chuck Quain? They live in town somewhere. He went to college and got an engineering job of some sort. They got a big house out in the suburbs.”

Leopold made a note. “Thanks. One more—George Fisher.”

For a moment, Groves didn’t answer. He only looked at Leopold, his face troubled and intent. “Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember what happened to George Fisher? He drowned on the senior picnic at Venice Park.”

“Yes,” Leopold said slowly, wondering how he could ever have forgotten that night, even after so many years. “I never knew him well, and his picture was in the yearbook. I forgot it was him.”

“Sure,” Groves went on. “The yearbooks were already out by that time. I remember we were all signing them at the picnic. Poor George! You know, I always thought there was something funny about his death. I always thought maybe somebody pushed him out of that boat.”

“It was a long time ago,” Leopold answered carefully.

“Yeah. Well, I gotta get to work before that whistle blows. Keep me informed on the plans and I’ll be there.”

“All right,” Leopold answered.

“Poor George,” Groves mused as he turned away. Then, as an afterthought, he asked, “What are you doing these days anyway, Leopold? You were always the brains of the class.”

“I’m with the city, Jim,” Leopold answered, starting down the stairs. “I’m a detective.”

Chuck and Shirley Quain had made it big. Their house perched on top of a small hill, just a bit higher than the others in the suburban subdivision, and to Leopold’s untrained eye it appeared to be in the fifty-thousand-dollar class. As he climbed out of the car he wished he’d worn a better necktie.

They remembered him, because he’d “hardly changed at all,” and he remembered them. Shirley Fazen had been the best-looking girl in the senior class, and looking at her in the doorway Leopold could still remember why. Her cheer-leading at the football games had been a major attraction, and even the somewhat dull swimming meets were well attended by boys anxious for a look at Shirley Fazen in a bathing suit.

Leopold was a bit surprised to find that she’d married Chuck Quain. He’d been elected president of the senior class after a hard-fought, dirty campaign that seemed to mark him as a future politician but little else. The house on the hill showed that he’d made it to something else, but Leopold couldn’t help wondering if he was still using the same tactics.

“Come in, come in,” Quain urged. “You remember Shirley, surely. Ha, ha!” That must have been his favorite joke. “Drink? Scotch, rye, rum, vodka, anything you name. We live the good life out here.” Behind him, the setting sun was streaking through a window, turning his grey hair momentarily reddish.

Leopold followed them into a sunken living-room a bit too full of the good life. “You have a nice place here,” he managed to say.

“We like it.” Quain lit a cigar without offering one to Leopold. “How about that drink, or are you on duty?”

“I see you’ve kept up on me more than I have on you.”

“How could I miss? Every time there’s a murder Captain Leopold gets his name in the papers. Isn’t that right, Shirley?”

She nodded agreement and came over to perch on the arm of Leopold’s chair. She was wearing tight orange pants that did youthful things for her figure, and Leopold had to remind himself that she too must now be forty-three years old. “But I don’t imagine the Captain’s here on business,” she purred. “Are you, Captain? I’ll bet it’s about the big reunion. Harry Tolliver has already talked to Chuck about it.”

Leopold smiled up at her. “Then my trip was for nothing.”

“Not if you’ll take a drink.”

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Scotch and water—but just one.”

Chuck Quain produced the drink from a little bar at one end of the living-room. “The good life does have its drawbacks,” he said. “The kids are getting old enough now to sneak a swig of the booze when we’re not around. But I guess that’s the only way to learn about it. I guess I did things like that myself when I was young.”

“You’re an engineer, aren’t you?” Leopold asked.

“That’s right. That’s where the money is these days. I could tell you…”

“Chuck, no shop talk, please. We haven’t seen him for twenty-five years! I want to hear about this reunion, anyway.”

“You probably know as much as I do, from Tolliver. He’s the one who roped me in on it. Venice Park’s the place, right where we had our senior class picnic.”

“Yeah,” Chuck muttered. “I remember that.”

“Funny thing, I’d completely forgotten about George Fisher drowning that day. I stopped by to see Jim Groves this afternoon and he reminded me.”

“It’s not the sort of thing you like to remember,” Shirley said.

“But the three of us were right there when it happened,” Leopold said. “I can remember it now as if it were just yesterday. You saw him fall in, didn’t you, Chuck?”

Quain nodded. “I got there a minute later, anyway. I was taking the canoe back to the boathouse, and I guess he was doing the same thing. He was always ahead of me on the creek, just around the bend, when I heard a yell and a splash. He’d fallen out of the damned canoe and was thrashing around in the water. God, it was awful!”

“Then why talk about it?” Shirley asked. “It was awful for all of us. I was practically engaged to George at the time.”

“You helped pull him out, didn’t you?” Leopold asked.

She nodded. “Some of us had been swimming earlier, and I still had my suit on. We heard Chuck yelling for help and came running. It was pitch dark, of course, but he shouted that George had capsized his canoe and gone under. A bunch of us dived in, and finally we found him. Not in time, though.”

The details were growing more vivid in Leopold’s memory as she spoke. He’d never been a good swimmer himself, and the black of the water had been too frightening that night. But he remembered running to one of the footpath bridges directly above the tragic spot, remembered looking down with flashlights playing over the water as Shirley and someone else pulled the body onto the grassy bank of the creek. The place was called Venice Park because of these creeks and footbridges, and it was a perfect setting for picnics and canoeing—a bit of Venice in New York State. For the most part, the creeks were barely six or seven feet deep, hardly enough to be very dangerous. That night, though, they’d been dangerous—deadly—to George Fisher. They’d worked over him for an hour before admitting what they all must have known. He was dead, and the senior picnic had been ended by sudden tragedy.

“Who else helped you pull him out, anyway?” Leopold asked.

“I think it was Jim Groves.”

Leopold nodded. “I thought it might have been. Funny he didn’t mention it today.”

“What did he say about it?” Chuck Quain asked.

“Oh, nothing really. Just that he thought there might have been something funny. Something not quite right.”

Shirley Quain laughed. “Are you going to make a murder case out of it after all these years, Captain?”

He joined her with a chuckle. “Hardly.”

Chuck studied the damp end of his cigar. “It would be too late now anyway, wouldn’t it? After twenty-five years?”

“Well, there’s no statute of limitations on murder, if that’s what you mean.”

“Let’s find a pleasanter subject,” Shirley suggested. “How about another drink, Captain?”

“No, no. I really have to be going. I didn’t mean to be talking shop either. Just wanted to tell you about the reunion.”

“Do you think under the circumstances that Venice Park is a very good place to have it?” Chuck asked.

Leopold got to his feet. “I’ll bring up the point with Harry Tolliver. He might have forgotten about Fisher too.”

“Everyone seems to have.”

Leopold nodded. “Everyone but Jim Groves. He still remembers it.”

That night, later, Leopold phoned Harry Tolliver at his home. The man was a bit overly jovial, as if he might have been drinking. “Hi, boy! How you doing? Did you reach everyone?”

“All but George Fisher. He’s dead.”

“George…Oh, sure. I didn’t know his name was on the list.”

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think we should consider moving the reunion to some other location? Venice Park might bring back unpleasant memories.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Well, Fisher and all.”

“Everybody’s forgotten that.”

“Some people haven’t. Some people even think his death might not have been accidental.”

“What? God, Leopold, stop letting that badge go to your head! I asked you to call a few people, that’s all.”

“Sorry.” Leopold hung up and lit a cigarette. For a long time he sat staring at the frosted glass of his office door. What was it? Was he just trying to be a big man with his former classmates? Was he overdoing the detective bit? He was forty-three years old—hardly a child any more. He’d forget about the thing. Right now!

But the next afternoon he went to see Jim Groves again.

Groves was blinking sleepy eyes as he opened the door. “Hey! We don’t see each other for twenty-five years, and then bingo—two days in a row!”

“Sorry to bother you again,” Leopold said.

“Come on in. I got some cold beer in the icebox.”

“No thanks. I just wanted to ask you something, Jim. Yesterday you said something about George Fisher’s death. You said you thought someone may have pushed him out of that boat. Why?”

“You’re working now, aren’t you? You’re going to solve the damn thing after twenty-five years!”

“If there’s anything to solve. It was a long time ago.”

“There’s something to solve, all right. Fisher was never much of a swimmer, but the damned creek was only ten feet wide!”

“How deep?”

“Six feet, maybe. He could almost have walked out.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Darn right he didn’t! Because somebody pushed him out of the canoe.”

“Somebody walking on the water?”

“Maybe somebody in another canoe,” Groves answered.

Leopold lit a cigarette. “You’ve got quite a memory. What else do you remember? Who else had a canoe out that night?”

“Quain. Chuck Quain was right behind him when it happened.”

“Were they friends?”

“That’s hard to say.” He went into the kitchen for a moment and returned with a frosty bottle of beer. “Hard to say. They both were hot for that Shirley Fazen. I remember the football games when she used to cheer. She was really built.”

“Wasn’t just about everybody hot for Shirley, as I remember it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Even me, once.”

“Was George with Shirley that day?”

“Not too much as I remember it. He had this other chick on the string. Marge Alguard. Remember her?”

“Vaguely. Short girl, dark hair?”

“That’s the one.”

“What’s she doing these days?”

“I don’t think she ever got married. I see her around town once in a while. She works at one of the department stores.”

“Thanks a lot, Jim. You’ve got quite a memory.”

“Listen, if you’ve got some time, let me tell you about one or two of my best games. Remember the time I ran eighty-five yards for a touchdown against Tech?”

“I remember, Jim. Maybe I can come again some time and we can talk about it. Right now you’d better start getting ready for work.”

“What? Yeah, it is getting late.” He downed the rest of his beer. “See you around. In June if not before.”

“Sure.” Leopold left him there, feeling vaguely sorry for Jim Groves, feeling that nobody should be cursed with that good a memory of the better days.

Marge Alguard’s name didn’t start with F or G, but Leopold went to see her anyway. He found her working behind the candy counter of the city’s largest department store, scooping multicolored jelly beans into little plastic bags. Easter was only a few weeks past, and he imagined this was the unsold remainder. He found himself wondering if they melted down the chocolate rabbits, too.

“Pardon me. Miss Alguard?”

“Yes?” She still had a pleasant smile, though she was too obviously a woman in her forties.

“You probably don’t remember me after all these years. My name’s Leopold and I went to high school with you.”

She hesitated a moment and then her tiny face lit up. “Why yes, I remember you! How are you?”

“Fine. I’d like to talk to you a few minutes if I could. Do you get a coffee break or anything?”

“I’m in charge of the department,” she answered with a superior smile, signaling to one of the other girls. “I’d be happy to have coffee with you. I see so few of the old crowd any more.”

Over coffee in the store’s gaudy restaurant they talked of old times and people they’d known, and finally after a decent interval of casualness Leopold asked her, “Remember George Fisher? The fellow that drowned at the senior picnic?”

“Oh yes, George Fisher.” Her eyes seemed suddenly to blur.

“I was thinking about that day, trying to figure what really happened. You were with George, weren’t you?”

“Not when he died.”

“No, no. I meant earlier.”

“It’s hard to remember. Twenty-five years next month. You know, Harry Tolliver called me the other day about a class reunion.”

“I know.”

“Yes, I guess I was with George most of that day. I remember he rented the canoe and we paddled all over the park, up and down those creeks and streams, under the bridges, through the branches of the trees where they touched the water.”

“Then what happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We rested for a time on the bank. I remember how nice the grass was, how soft. Then it was dark, and he said he had to return the canoe. I never saw him alive again. I heard the shouting and ran down and saw them trying to revive him. It was horrible.”

Leopold wanted to leave her in peace, but there was one other question he had to ask. “When…when you rested on the bank, did he kiss you, neck with you?”

“Say, what is this?” Her blurred eyes were suddenly sharp with suspicion. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

“I’m looking into Fisher’s death.”

“Are you a cop or something?”

“It’s not an official investigation,” he said quickly, but he saw that he had already lost her. He had gone too far with his casual questions. She finished her coffee and hurried back to the candy counter with hardly a good-bye.

Leopold sighed and ordered a second cup of coffee. He should forget the thing, then and there. Nothing good could come of what he was doing. He was just stirring up a lot of memories better left buried after twenty-five years. At times he had too much of the detective’s mentality—the ability to see evil where no evil lurked. Perhaps this was one of those times.

That night Harry Tolliver—an alarmed Harry Tolliver—phoned Leopold at his apartment. His voice over the telephone had lost now all of the friendly charm he’d tried to show that first day.

“Leopold, what in hell are you trying to do?”

“About what?”

“You know. George Fisher. You’ve got everybody all upset.”

“Oh? Who?”

“Marge Alguard, just to name one. She found out you were with the police and she’s scared half out of her wits. What did you ask her, anyway?”

“Nothing special.”

“Her name wasn’t on your list, even. What in hell are you trying to stir up?”

“Just the truth.”

“After twenty-five years there isn’t any truth, only memories. Stop bothering these people. Stop bothering me!”

“You?”

“I want this reunion to be a success. You think anyone’ll show up if you turn it into a murder investigation?”

“No one’s mentioned murder. No one till now.”

“Look, just forget I ever approached you about the reunion. Forget everything, huh?”

“That’s difficult to do at this point. Memories linger.”

Tolliver hung up in disgust. Leopold felt a bit sorry for the man, as he did for most people, but the thing was almost out of his hands. He had the decided feeling that wheels had been set in motion, wheels which could not now be stopped until they had ground exceedingly fine.

That night Leopold’s dreams were troubled, and he awoke at the first hint of dawn with a cool layer of sweat covering his body. By some trick of memory he was back there, back on that stone bridge over the creek, remembering it all as clearly as if it were yesterday. Yes, the lights playing on the water, the wet stone beneath his hands as he clutched the parapet and peered down; it was all too vividly clear. There was Shirley Quain—Shirley Fazen then—the bathing suit clinging to her strong young form, helping to pull the limp, sodden body from the water. And there too was Jim Groves, aiding her, though his clothes were soaked and his shoes lost somewhere in the creek.

Leopold came suddenly awake. Jim Groves, for all his remarkable memory, had not mentioned to Leopold that he’d helped recover Fisher’s body from the creek. Why not? Was it simply that he hadn’t been asked?

Leopold rolled out of bed and dressed quickly. He wanted to get down to headquarters, away from his thoughts, away from the memories. When he reached his desk he rang for Fletcher and asked at once for an account of the night’s activities.

“Morning report’s not ready yet,” Fletcher said. “What’s the trouble this morning, Captain?”

Leopold ran a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know. Talk to me about something, will you? What about that jewel robbery yesterday?”

Fletcher’s smile broadened. “We cracked that one. The bird they grabbed outside the building finally confessed.”

“What did he do with the diamond rings?”

“Damnedest thing you ever heard of! He’s got a girl friend working in the building and he had it set up that she’d leave her office and go down for coffee at exactly three o’clock. He staged the robbery when he saw her coming back along the hallway with her paper cup full of coffee. As he ran by her he just dropped the rings into the coffee and kept going. It was perfect.”

“Not quite perfect,” Leopold said.

“What?”

“You caught him.”

“Yeah, but if he hadn’t broken down and talked we’d never have gotten wise to the way he worked it.”

The conversation depressed Leopold. Everything seemed to depress him. “Fletcher, perfect crimes can become an obsession with detectives sometimes. I wonder if that’s what’s happening to me.”

“What’s the trouble, Captain?”

“Twenty-five years ago an eighteen-year-old boy drowned at Venice Park during a class picnic. I was practically a witness to the thing. Now I’m wondering about it, wondering if someone might have killed him.”

“Take my advice and forget it, Captain. We have enough new murders coming in every day without worrying about anything that old.”

Leopold sighed and swiveled around to look out the window. These first few days in May were always among his favorites, a special time when the earth seemed alive again not just with spring but with an electric impulse to accomplish the strident tasks of winter. Perhaps it was the weather that was against him this day. “Fletcher, I value your opinion, but I just can’t accept it. Go down to the records room and dig me out what they’ve got on this drowning, will you?”

“How long ago did you say it was?”

“Twenty-five years next month, but we must have something on it. The boy’s name was George Fisher. He was a senior at Washington High.”

“That stuff’s probably in the basement, under a ton of dust.”

“See what you can find,” Leopold said. “Just to humor me.”

Fletcher was gone for the better part of an hour, and when he returned his brow was streaked with a line of dust. He collapsed into Leopold’s straight-backed chair and blew more dust from a thin legal-sized folder. “I hope you’re satisfied, Captain.”

Leopold smiled through tight lips. “I don’t think anything could satisfy me today. What’ve you got?”

“Who knows? I only hope the paper hasn’t all crumbled into dust. Weren’t they talking about putting all this old stuff on microfilm?”

“They’ll do that about the same time they give us a new building, “Leopold said. He was now suddenly anxious to see these old reports, anxious to delve into this page from his past. He wondered if somewhere on these pages his own name might even appear, like a ghostly vision of another, forgotten life. “What’ve you got, Fletcher?”

“Not too much, really. Let’s see—autopsy report, statements by some of the kids, and the report of the investigating detective.”

“Detective?” Leopold sat up straighter in his chair. “Why a detective?”

“Don’t know. Nothing to indicate why, but apparently they thought something was funny at first.”

“Yeah. The autopsy—what were the findings?”

“Death by drowning. Nothing irregular there.”

“Any other marks or wounds on the body?”

“Not a thing. Some hair pulled out, but that probably happened when they tried to rescue him.”

Leopold stared off into space. “Do you have a statement by Chuck Quain there?”

Fletcher flipped through the papers. “Here it is…He was in a canoe about a hundred feet behind Fisher. It was dark, but there was an occasional moon through the clouds. He hadn’t been with Fisher, but had seen him earlier in the boat with a girl named Marge Alguard…”

Leopold nodded. “What about the drowning?”

“…Well, Quain heard a yell and a splash from around a bend in the creek. By the time he reached the spot, he saw Fisher struggling in the water. Quain couldn’t swim, and hesitated about going in after him. He shouted for help, and some of the others came running. It was hard to see anything, and by that time Fisher had gone under for good. But after a moment or two Shirley Fazen and Jim Groves found him and pulled him out. They applied artificial respiration, but it was too late.”

“What are the other statements?”

“Let’s see…Shirley Fazen—she was the only one who still had her bathing suit on, and she was the first to reach the creek and go in after Fisher. But she couldn’t find him until Groves joined her after a moment. He was fully dressed, but he dived in anyway and they pulled Fisher out together.”

“What did Groves say?”

“About the same thing. He’d been swimming earlier in the evening with Shirley Fazen, and she stayed in the water while he dried off and got dressed. This was at a pool about a hundred yards from the creek. The first thing he knew he heard Quain shouting for help and he started to run towards the sound. He dived into the creek and found that Shirley was already there, searching for Fisher. They found him together.”

“Is Marge Alguard mentioned anywhere?”

“In Quain’s statement.”

“Yeah. Anywhere else?”

“Here’s a very brief statement by her, just to the effect that she’d been in the canoe with Fisher earlier.”

“How about Harry Tolliver?”

Fletcher skimmed over the last remaining sheet of paper. “Nothing on him. This is just the detective’s conclusions.”

“That should be interesting.”

“It should be, but it isn’t. He figures Fisher was standing up in the canoe and fell in. That’s all.”

“Why would he stand up?”

Fletcher shrugged. “Beats me.” He fumbled for a cigarette and lit it. “But then I can’t figure out why you’re so interested in making this a murder, Captain.”

“Shouldn’t I be? Isn’t it my job?”

“After all this time?”

“If it was murder then, it’s still murder today.”

Fletcher frowned into the cigarette smoke, blue against the morning sunshine filtering through the dirty window. “Yeah. But if it’s murder, then you could be one of the suspects yourself.”

Leopold blinked. He hadn’t really thought of that.

In the afternoon he called again at the candy counter where Marge Alguard worked. He waited patiently while she conducted business with three tiny children, then stepped into her line of vision.

“You again?” she said between tight lips. “I don’t want any coffee today, thanks.”

“I just wanted to ask you a question.”

“Didn’t you ask enough already?”

“Maybe not the right ones. That day in the park—did you have a fight with Fisher for any reasons?”

She stepped very close to him, so no one else could hear her words. “Look, get out of here. Get out of here with your dirty little questions! What’s the trouble—trying to get your kicks this way? You were never much with the girls back in school, were you?”

“Marge…”

“No, I didn’t have a fight with George that day. That day was about the happiest in my life, until he died, and your questions aren’t going to turn it into something dirty. I don’t have much to remember any more, at my age, but I remember George Fisher.”

There was nothing more for Leopold to say, except, “I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again.” He went away, wondering if he’d already bothered too many lives with his needless prying. Perhaps it didn’t really make any difference, after all these years.

That night, under a clear but moonless sky, a brick fell from the roof of Leopold’s apartment building as he was entering, just missing his head. It might have been toppled by the wind, except that there was no wind. He hurried to the roof with his revolver drawn, but there was nothing to be seen. Down in the back alley, at the foot of the fire escape, he caught a split-second glimpse of a running man, who vanished around a corner. Leopold slept the rest of the night with the gun under his pillow, something he’d never done before.

Fletcher turned the unmarked police car into Venice Park, narrowly avoiding a group of bicycling teenagers on a day’s outing. “A Saturday in May,” he said, not unkindly. “Brings ’em all out.”

Leopold was smoking an old pipe he’d resurrected that morning from his dresser drawer. He watched the kids on their bicycles until they were out of sight around a curve, then said, “I guess that’s what parks are for.”

“That, and lovers after dark, and maybe sometimes a killing or two.”

They crossed a stone bridge over one of the creeks and Leopold asked him to stop. “It was in this area somewhere, I’m sure. The swimming pool’s still just over there.”

“I thought you said it was a footbridge.”

“It was, then. But times change.” He opened the door on his side and slid out. “Let’s walk awhile, Fletcher. It’s a nice day.”

The detective fell into step at his side. “You really think one of them tried to kill you last night, Captain?”

“It’s hard to say. I’ve acquired a good many enemies in my life. But this is the only thing I’ve really been working on all week.” And even that thought troubled him. Would he have devoted so much time to the drowning of George Fisher in a week when a major murder or two had occurred? Weren’t they all mere victims of time and circumstance, ultimately?

Fletcher lit a cigarette. “I had a couple of the boys check the roof this morning like you suggested, but they didn’t come up with anything. Not even an old butt.”

Leopold felt a sudden surge of excitement. They’d crossed a graveled path which led from the direction of the pool to a narrow stone bridge over the creek. “This is it, Fletcher. I’m sure!”

He remembered it now as if the events had happened only yesterday. There was the bridge, with its engraved metal plaque in tribute to the W.P.A., its carefully placed stones now showing the wear of some thirty years’ travel by foot and cycle. Leopold stood in the very center and looked down once more into the dark waters below.

Fletcher climbed down the grassy bank to the water’s edge and took out a twelve-foot tape measure. He tossed one end to Leopold and watched the point where the other end, weighted by its round metal case, cut the water. “O.K., Captain. Nine feet from the top of the bridge to the water.”

“How far from the bottom? How much clearance is there?”

Fletcher stretched his long body out over the water, clinging to a jutting stone with one precarious handhold. “I make it just under six feet. Maybe about five-ten.”

Leopold nodded. “So if he’d been standing in the canoe he might have hit his head going under.”

“Who stands in canoes?”

“People who get drowned. Did you check on the detective who wrote that original report?”

Fletcher nodded. “He retired seven years ago and moved to Florida. Died a couple years back.”

“He probably wouldn’t have remembered it anyway,” Leopold decided. “Just a drowning. Toss your measure into the water and see how deep we are at this point, Fletcher.”

The detective joined Leopold on the bridge and they played out the full twelve feet. By leaning far over the edge Fletcher was able to touch bottom. “It’s around six feet,” he said finally, after some quick mathematics. “Deep enough to drown in.”

“Fisher was tall. Just about that tall. Why didn’t he just walk to shore? It’s only a few feet.”

“He panicked in the dark. People do, you know. Maybe it was deeper then.”

Leopold shook his head. “These creeks rise in the spring, but by June it would be lower than it is now.”

“Maybe he hit his head, like you suggested. Knocked himself out.”

“But the autopsy showed no marks on his head. And Chuck Quain’s story had him struggling in the water, obviously conscious.”

“Well, what then?”

Leopold was running his hand over the smooth dry stone of the bridge, remembering something from long ago. “Fletcher, what do we have back in the car that’s big enough to make a splash?”

“Huh?”

“Something…the spare tire! Get the spare tire, will you?”

Moments later, Fletcher returned with a puzzled frown, rolling the tire before him. “You’re sure this is what you want, Captain?”

“It’ll have to do,” Leopold answered with a smile, “unless you’d like to jump in.”

“No thanks, Captain. Say, what are you up to, anyway?”

Leopold was lifting the tire to the stone ledge. “Just trying something, Fletcher.” He let the tire fall, then watched as the water splashed up in return. “See if you can fish it out for me and we’ll try once more.”

Fletcher broke a thin branch off a nearby tree and used it to coax the floating tire in to shore. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Leopold tapped his pipe against the stone while he waited. “I suppose it will be good to see them all again at the reunion,” he mused. “Funny how the years separate us so much, by occupation and economics. Back in those days I don’t think we were so different. But now I’m a detective, and Harry Tolliver is a salesman, and Marge Alguard is a clerk. Shirley married Chuck Quain, and he’s a successful engineer. Groves is a factory worker.”

“And Fisher’s dead.”

“Yes, and Fisher’s dead. I guess that’s life. Some of us get happy and some of us get dead.” He let the tire fall again, but the splash was no greater than the first time.

“Satisfied, Captain?”

“Satisfied. I wanted to see if the water could splash up to the top of this railing. It can’t.”

“What does that prove?”

Leopold shrugged and said nothing. It was too soon for answers, even after twenty-five years.

Later in the day, he had still another phone call from the increasingly distraught Mr. Harry Tolliver. “Look, Leopold,” he began without preamble. “Some of us are having a meeting tonight about the reunion. We’d like you to come.”

“Where?”

“Chuck Quain’s place. We want to get things out in the open, find out just what you’re up to.”

Leopold sighed into the mouthpiece. “All right, I’ll be there. What time?”

“A little after eight.”

At eight-thirty that evening, Leopold turned his car into the Quain driveway once more, and was surprised to see only one other vehicle ahead of him. The meeting, he soon discovered, had so petered out that only the Quains and Tolliver and Marge Alguard were present, all looking quite unhappy.

Shirley Quain, wearing the same orange slacks, served him a martini that he didn’t really need, and he settled down into an uncomfortable purple chair opposite Marge. He wondered if it was a sign of the new sophistication to serve martinis this late in the evening. “This all that’s coming?” he asked.

“I asked Jim Groves, but he’s working,” Tolliver mumbled.

Reminded of Groves’ night job, Leopold wondered if he had been there the previous evening. He didn’t really need to check, though. He thought he knew who’d tried to kill him. “Well, what seems to be the problem?”

“You, I guess,” Chuck Quain answered, not quite managing a laugh. “Marge here says she won’t come to the reunion because of the questions you’ve been asking, and some of the others feel the same way.”

“Oh?”

“I told you to lay off,” Tolliver said.

“I was going to, but something changed my mind.”

“You really think George Fisher was…killed?” This question came from Shirley Quain, who’d just returned from the kitchen with another tray full of cocktails.

“I think he was killed, yes. I think the police were suspicious at the time, but they were unable to prove anything.”

“You can prove something?” Tolliver asked.

“I don’t know.”

“But you intend to continue this foolish investigation?” Quain had left his chair to begin pacing the floor. He reminded Leopold of a caged tiger waiting to be fed.

“I intend to continue,” he said. “In fact, I’m going out to Venice Park when I leave here, just to refresh my memory of things.”

“At night?” Shirley Quain questioned, somewhat startled.

“It happened at night,” he answered. The thing had occurred to him on the spur of the moment, then the words were out almost before he realized it. All right, he was saying to one of them, come and get me.

If he was wrong, if it was Jim Groves after all, then there was no harm done. He downed his drink and made motions towards leaving.

“Wait a minute!” Harry Tolliver insisted. “We haven’t settled anything. What about the reunion?”

“Count me out,” Marge said. “I’ve had enough questions and prying about the past.”

“See what I’m up against?” Tolliver pleaded. “Nobody’ll come, the way things are.”

“I’m sorry,” Leopold told him. And he was sorry. Not for the reunion, but for Harry Tolliver.

Leopold waited for an hour at the edge of the creek, lounging up against the stone coldness of the bridge as he smoked his pipe and waited for death to visit him, to brush up against his flesh. He had no doubt that the man would try again, but somehow as the hour grew into two his supreme confidence began to fade. Perhaps he couldn’t get away from the meeting, or perhaps Leopold had been wrong. What if it had been Jim Groves after all, or someone else?

As the second hour neared its end, he knocked the glowing embers of his pipe into the muddy creek and started to leave. It was then that he became aware of the dark figure standing near a tree some twenty feet away. A chill of anticipation ran down his spine. “Hello, there,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Chuck Quain stepped out of the shadows, letting the pale lights of night fall full across his face. “You knew I’d come?”

“I knew.”

“I’ve got a gun this time,” Quain said, and Leopold saw the weapon flash in the moonlight.

“It’s better than a brick, but I don’t think you’ll use it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not a murderer. Because killing me won’t keep your wife’s secret. It was Shirley who killed George Fisher, all those years ago. Wasn’t it?”

Chuck Quain never even noticed when Leopold signaled Fletcher to come out of his hiding place. He was suddenly like a man with the life crushed from his body, and he offered no resistance when they took the gun from his hand.

“Let’s go back to the car,” Leopold suggested. “We can talk there.”

“How did you know about Shirley? How?”

When they reached the car, Leopold signaled Fletcher to switch on the tape recorder. They could get Quain’s signature on a statement later. “Memories, I think. Memories and a lot of guessing. It was fantastic that Fisher could have drowned so quickly in that shallow creek, unless he was unconscious. And yet there was no bump on his head and we had your own statement that he’d been struggling in the water. Was there another possibility? Yes. Someone could have held him under the water.”

Chuck Quain shivered with a sudden chill, or perhaps a memory. “After all these years,” he said simply.

“Now, was there any confirming evidence of this theory?” Leopold went on. “There was. Fisher’s hair—some of it had been pulled out. He’d spent the whole evening with Marge Alguard and she hadn’t done it, so who had? It might have happened when they pulled him from the water, but I doubted if they’d use that violence in the act of rescuing a man. It seemed more likely to me that a murderer had held Fisher under the water by the hair, until he drowned. The next question was who? And I remembered that Shirley Fazen had been Fisher’s girl, although he spent the day of the picnic with Marge. It could have been a motive.”

Fletcher stirred in the back seat and lit a cigarette. Outside, the night was very quiet.

“When I began piecing together Shirley’s movements for that evening in my own mind, I came up with something a bit odd. She’d been swimming with Jim Groves, and he’d left her in the pool. Apparently no one saw her leave it, but next thing we know she’s in the creek with Fisher’s body. And you, Chuck, were the only one who claimed to have seen her dive in after him. If someone did hold Fisher underwater by the hair until he drowned, it almost had to be one of his would-be rescuers. Either Shirley Fazen or Jim Groves.”

“Why?” That was all. Just why.

“Because the murderer must have gotten soaked through to the skin, and nobody else would have been wet. They’d all gotten dressed except Shirley. And then somewhere along the line I remembered something from that evening, something buried in my own memory. When I stood on that stone bridge and watched them pulling Fisher from the water, the railing of the bridge was wet—not damp but actually wet. It hadn’t rained, there was a moon that night and only a few clouds. And Fisher’s struggles couldn’t have splashed water up that far. No, it was wet because the killer had perched there before leaping down onto George Fisher’s unsuspecting head as he passed under the bridge in his canoe. But Jim Groves had just put on dry clothes. Everyone else had on dry clothes. Only Shirley was still in her bathing suit, and just out of the pool. Only Shirley could have left wet stones behind on the bridge when she dropped onto Fisher’s canoe.”

“It wasn’t really like that,” Chuck Quain said, and his words were almost a moan. “She didn’t plan it. She saw him taking the canoe back and ran to the bridge in the darkness. She was sitting there, with her feet dangling over the edge, when he paddled along. They said a few words. She asked about Marge Alguard and he made a statement that infuriated her—something about Marge being better at necking. Shirley just…just jumped on him. I don’t think she ever meant to kill him.”

Leopold sighed into the darkness. It might have been twenty-five years ago. This, right now, was their reunion. “And you came along and saw it. And kept her secret all these years. Is that why she married you, Chuck? Did you blackmail her into marriage?”

But that question would never be answered. His mind and memory were still back there by the creek. “She didn’t know her own strength,” he said, almost to himself now. “She was so at home in the water, on the swimming team, that she didn’t realize Fisher was almost helpless in her hands. She was a strong girl. She still is.”

“We’ll have to go see her,” Leopold said quietly.

“Yes.” Then, “What do you intend to do?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

He knew too well that it would be an impossible case to prove. How many could remember Shirley in the water that night? How many could have said even then, in the confusion of darkened events, whether she was rescuer or murderer? All Leopold had was Chuck Quain’s statement, and the fact that their guilty secret had nearly turned Chuck into a killer himself.

In a book, they would have found her a suicide when they returned to the house on the hill. But instead there was only a haggard woman of forty-three coming down the stairs, looking suddenly old—as if the mere sight of Leopold had told her all she needed to know.

“One of the children was crying,” she said simply to them both. “He was having a nightmare.”

(1964)

The House by the Ferris

BY THE TIME CAPTAIN Leopold arrived on the scene, the tow truck was already in position, poised in the glare of a half-dozen fire department spotlights. He peered over the edge of the dock, toward the silver ripples where skindivers worked in murky black waters.

“Have they located the car?” he asked Sergeant Fletcher, seeing him standing to one side while the first of the divers clambered out of the water.

“They’ve got a cable on the rear bumper, if it holds,” Fletcher said.

When the last of the rubber-skinned divers stood on the dock, black and wet and glistening, the signal was given and the tow truck’s winch began to hum. Leopold watched the cable tighten and strain almost to the breaking point, and then finally begin to move. After another moment the gray underside of the car broke through the water. It might have been some giant beetle surfacing after a storm, or the flotsam of a forgotten war. The newspapers would call it the death car, and perhaps that was all it was, now.

His body was still behind the wheel, hunched in death, spewing water from a dozen cavities of clothing and flesh. “Otto Held,” Fletcher said as Leopold bent to examine the dead man. “Thirty-eight, married, two children. Looks like his brakes failed as he got to the pier, but it might have been suicide.”

“Why call me in either case?” Leopold asked. He dealt only in murder.

“Well, it’s a funny one. Captain. The beat patrolman rang me as soon as he talked to the wife.”

“Mrs. Held?”

Fletcher nodded. “She says her husband was killed by a witch. She says there’ll be other murders, too.”

“A witch?”

“A witch.”

Leopold sighed. The night was shot anyway. “We’d better speak to Mrs. Held.”

She was a tearful blonde in her early thirties, worth a second look but not a third one. The tears were real enough, though Leopold thought perhaps they were a trifle overdone. She stopped crying long enough to face them across a plain-looking living room that reflected nothing of the people who lived there.

“You’re detectives,” she said, making it some sort of accusation.

“Captain Leopold, and this is Sergeant Fletcher. We’re sorry to bother you at a time like this, Mrs. Held.”

“It’s as good a time as any.”

“You expressed the opinion that your husband was murdered.”

“He was killed by that damned witch! They’ll all be dead before she’s through!” The woman was clearly alarmed, but the flash of her eyes was not quite as rational as Leopold might have wished.

“Suppose you tell me about it,” he said quietly.

“They bought the amusement park—my husband and three other men. They expanded it and tried to force her to move out of her house. She put a curse on them—all four of them. She said they’d die by earth, air, fire and water.”

“Your husband was the first to die?”

She nodded and a tear rolled down her cheek. “By water, just as she said.”

“How long ago was this curse put on them?”

“It would have been almost a month. Of course they laughed it off, but maybe they’ve stopped laughing now.”

“What’s her name? This witch.”

“Stella Gaze. She lives in an old house by the ferris wheel.”

“They built a ferris wheel next to her house? She might have reason to be disturbed by that,” Leopold observed. “Give us the names of the other men, please.”

“They were all equal partners with my husband. There was George Quenton, and Walter Smith, and Felix O’Brian.”

“And I suppose they now share equally in your husband’s share of the business?”

“No, it comes to me.”

“Oh?”

“What there is of it! The park has been losing money all summer. People don’t seem to want that sort of amusement any more. Otto could never figure out what they wanted.”

“It’s a world of overrated pleasures at best, Mrs. Held. Thank you for your help. We’ll talk to Stella Gaze and the others.”

Leopold and Fletcher left the house and drove back toward downtown. There was a chill in the air and summer was almost ended. “Should we go see this witch?” Fletcher asked.

“She’ll keep till morning. It’s not really a case for Homicide.”

“Think she’s real, Captain?”

“A real witch? I’ll tell you after I see her.”

In the morning, Leopold was tempted to forget all about it. There was, after all, no suspicion of foul play in the death of Otto Held, and no reason for questioning Stella Gaze. He was glancing over the morning report, his mind far away, when the call came in from Walter Smith.

“The man who was killed last night—Otto Held—was my partner. I have reason to believe he was murdered, and I’m requesting a police investigation.” The voice was harsh and rasping and Leopold didn’t like it.

“We’ve already spoken to Mrs. Held. Do you have any concrete suspicions, sir?”

“A woman named Stella Gaze. She has a house near our amusement park.”

Leopold covered his sigh. “Yes. We’re going to speak to Stella Gaze. And I may want to talk to you and your other partners.”

“We’ll be at the park. Labor Day weekend coming up, you know.”

“Thank you for calling, Mr. Smith.”

Leopold hung up and sat staring at the telephone for some time. Well, it was a quiet morning anyway, and there seemed no way out of a visit to Stella Gaze’s house. He flipped the intercom switch and told Sergeant Fletcher the news.

They drove out to the Four Kings Sportland, a rambling sort of place which seemed to stretch in all directions under the fluffy white clouds of an early September sky. It had started life, a generation earlier, as a miniature golf course and a scattering of kiddy rides, frequented by neighborhood children during the day and teen-agers by night. Gradually it had built upon itself, adding the constant trappings of an amusement park—the fun house and ghost train and roller coaster and ferris wheel. Now in the Sixties, the place had acquired four partners and a certain sporting air evidenced by a bowling alley and billiard parlor.

They sought out Walter Smith first, and found him to be as harsh in appearance as his voice had indicated. He wore a pale blue sport shirt open at the neck, revealing hairy arms and a chest that might have belonged to a gorilla.

“Yeah, you’re the detectives, huh?”

“We’re the detectives, Mr. Smith.”

“Felix! Come here and meet the detectives!” He was calling to a slight, well-dressed man with a very British look about him. “This is Felix O’Brian, another of my partners. George is off somewhere right now.”

O’Brian eyed them with interest. “You’re here about this witch? And her threats?”

“We’ll talk to her, sir. That’s all we can do at this point.”

“All?”

Leopold was watching a mother pulling her small child away from the roller coaster. “Our reports show the car had defective brakes. Otto Held’s death was accidental.”

“His wife doesn’t think so,” Smith said. “I don’t think so.”

Leopold shrugged. “We’ll talk to Stella Gaze. Where’s her house?”

“I’ll take you,” O’Brian offered. He led them over toward the far end of the place, where only the ferris wheel seemed to rise.

“You English?” Leopold asked, making conversation.

“Irish, educated in London, sent over here twenty-five years ago to escape the bombings. I just never went back.”

“The four of you were equal partners in this place?”

“Equal partners in nothing. Don’t let the crowds fool you. The money isn’t in this nickel and dime stuff any more. It’s in the bowling and big-ticket items. Look over there—next season we’ll have indoor fishing in that new building. It’s very popular in Japan right now.”

“Indoor fishing?” Leopold puckered his lips and decided he had nothing more to say on the subject. “And Stella Gaze?”

“She’s lived in that old house all her life. Mother died, you know the sort. Never married. Maybe a man could have done something for her. Anyway, she wouldn’t sell us her land so we built around her.”

And they had certainly built around her. The ferris wheel, as tall as a five-story building, seemed to tower over the little cottage with its weathered shingles and crooked chimney. The park itself was fenced with chain-link steel, but it skirted dangerously near the little house of Stella Gaze.

“Why wouldn’t she move?” Fletcher wanted to know.

“Ask her. You’ll see the kind of answer you get.”

Felix O’Brian left them then, hurrying back the way he had come as if pursued by some noonday demon. They mounted the shabby, sagging steps of the house and pushed the bell. After a moment the door was opened by a pale woman who must have been in her mid-forties.

“I am Stella Gaze,” she said simply. “Do you wish to enter?”

Leopold introduced them and followed her into a sort of sitting room that was almost a relic of another century. A cut-glass lamp burned in one corner of the room, casting a yellowish glow that partly relieved—or perhaps added to—the forbidding gloom of the place.

“We’ve come about the death of Otto Held,” he said quietly, because it was the sort of place where everything was said quietly.

“Oh?” Her eyes held them, big brown eyes that were the remains of some past beauty now submerged beneath thin hands and a lined, aging face. She pushed back a strand of coal-black hair and then returned the hand to her lap. “I read about it in the newspapers.”

“Several people have stated that you made threats against Otto Held’s life.”

“Oh, no! Heavens, no! I wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

“What did you say, then?”

“I merely told them how they would die—all four of them.”

“I see,” Leopold said, staring at her wrists. “Just how was that?”

“Four of them—earth, air, fire and water.”

“Did you say Held would die in the water?”

“It was not clear which death would claim each of them. I only saw that they would die.”

Leopold blinked. “You resented the amusement park, didn’t you?”

“I did, and I still do. I look out my window at night and I see that ferris wheel turning, turning. Even with my shade down the lights still come through. And sometimes the ticket seller shouts See the witch’s house! Ride over the witch’s house!, and that’s when it’s the worst.”

“Do you consider yourself a witch, Miss Gaze?” Leopold asked.

She stared off at the cut-glass lamp for a moment before replying. Then she said, “There are no such things as witches, are there, Captain Leopold? Is there a witch law on your books, still?”

“Hardly.”

“Then why do you question me like this?”

“Yes, why?”

“Come on, Fletcher,” Leopold said. “We’d better be going.” But at the door he turned and asked, “Have you ever considered moving from here, Miss Gaze?”

“No, never. I will be in this house long after that ferris wheel has ceased its turning.”

She stood at the door for a long time, watching them walk away. It was Friday afternoon, and already the crowds were beginning to gather for the Labor Day weekend.

“Now what?” Fletcher asked.

“Nothing. There’s nothing here for us. I’m going fishing, Fletcher. It’s the last weekend of the summer.”

“Do you think she’s a witch?”

“No,” Leopold said.

“Why not?”

“Did you notice the old scars on both wrists, Fletcher? Ever hear of a witch trying to commit suicide?”

Leopold had no family, and his friends were usually occupied with theirs on long weekends. He fished alone, renting a little boat at one of the large island lakes north of the city. But this weekend his mind was not geared to the relaxation of fishing, and he came in after only two hours on the silvery surface of the water.

He phoned headquarters and talked to the detective on duty, but all was quiet. Perhaps he’d almost been wishing for a murder, something to call him back from the holiday boredom. But there was nothing.

It was cloudy on Sunday, and all day long the weatherman was predicting rain for Labor Day. Toward evening, Leopold went out for a ride, driving through the muggy streets in the general direction of the Four Kings Sportland. He could see the lights from far off, dotting the sky as they competed with the cloud-strewn sunset.

He stopped in a bar not far from the place and drank a beer, thinking about Stella Gaze and tempted almost to visit her again. Then he met a man he knew, a small-time political leader who’d done him a favor once. They chatted over another beer, and evening passed unnoticed into night.

At a little after one, while the bartender was cashing up and eyeing the clock, somebody shouted, “Look! The amusement park’s on fire!”

Leopold was on his feet, the logy effects of the beer shaken off in an instant. “Call the police,” he shouted at the bartender. “Sergeant Fletcher at Homicide.” Then he was out the door, running toward his car.

The flames had started somewhere near the back of the fun house, and spread with lightning like speed through the dry timbers of the old buildings. Driven by a slight breeze, the tongues of fire had only to lick at the next building in line before it too was a crackling mass of spark and cinder.

The park had been closed already for the night, and Leopold had no idea if anyone still remained inside. He pinned his badge to his coat and ran aimlessly among struggling firemen, searching for the thing he feared to find. He located the park office, safely removed from the flames, but it was empty. The bowling alley likewise was deserted. Heading back toward the fire, he came upon a sweating and soot-streaked Walter Smith.

“Captain Leopold! What are you…?”

“Quickly, man! Are the others safe?”

“Others?”

“Your partners—Quenton and O’Brian.”

“Why…I don’t know.”

Leopold left him and ran on, now in the direction of the great ferris wheel standing silent in the night, bathed in the flickering glow from the flames behind him. Beyond the ferris, the house of Stella Gaze slept dark and peaceful in the night.

He paused and turned, hearing someone shouting his name. It was Fletcher, looking as if he’d been dragged out of bed. “They found him, Captain.”

“Which one?” Leopold asked.

“O’Brian, the one we met out here the other day. Looks like a beam fell on him and trapped him in there.”

Leopold watched the firemen gradually advancing with high pressure hoses against the dying fury of the flames. “Dead?”

“He didn’t have a chance. What do we do now, Captain?”

Leopold gazed back toward the ferris wheel, and the shabby little house. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I just don’t know.”

George Quenton was quite obviously the brains of the Four Kings Sportland. He spoke and acted like a businessman who knew how the game was played. Now, in the early morning hours of a dawning Labor Day, he paced his little office with a long cigar unlit in one hand, glancing now and then at Leopold from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

“What are you going to do, Captain?” he demanded. “Wait until that woman kills Walter and me too?”

“There’s no basis for an investigation,” Leopold told him quietly. “Both deaths have been apparent accidents.”

Walter Smith grunted. “Hell, yes! And we’ll be accidents too.”

“Very well,” Leopold sighed. “Tell me everything you know. When was the last time you two saw Felix O’Brian alive?”

“I was in town,” George Quenton said. “At the funeral parlor with Mrs. Held. Walter saw him about midnight, didn’t you?”

Smith nodded his squat head. “He told me to go home and he’d close up. I didn’t see him any more after that.”

It was daylight outside, and George Quenton was gazing through the blinds at the smoking shambles. “Nothing left but the ferris wheel and the bowling alley! And this is one of the biggest crowd days of the whole summer!”

“Did O’Brian have a wife?”

“No. His share goes to some sister out west.”

Sergeant Fletcher had been sent for Mrs. Held, and now he returned, ushering her into the office. “Are you satisfied now?” she asked Leopold, her eyes puffed from either sleep or sadness.

“I’m doing what I can, Mrs. Held. It’s an unusual case.”

“What’s unusual about it?” Walter Smith rasped. “We’re even telling you who killed them.”

“Yes,” Leopold said, walking over to stand beside Quenton at the window. “It all gets back to Stella Gaze, doesn’t it?”

“That damned witch!” Mrs. Held sat down and took out a cigarette.

“We still need evidence,” Leopold said. “All we have are two accidental deaths.”

“Earth, air, fire and water,” George Quenton mumbled, half to himself. “That leaves earth and air for the two of us, Walter.”

They were scared; Leopold could see that much. He asked them some more questions and then at last turned to Fletcher. “How about checking with the arson squad? See if they’ve come up with anything.”

Off in the distance, over near Stella Gaze’s cottage, someone had started the ferris wheel. After a time they left the little office and drifted over under the cloudy morning sky to watch its turnings toward heaven. From somewhere inside it, music was playing, like on a merry-go-round. Leopold felt somehow saddened.

“It’s the end of summer,” Mrs. Held said.

Sergeant Fletcher came back from his mission. His face was grim, but it was an expression Leopold knew and respected. “We’ve got it, Captain. Arson. Found a can that had held kerosene. And some fuses. The fire was set.”

Leopold nodded. Suddenly the country was familiar, the scenery was remembered. “And that makes it murder,” he said.

This time Leopold went alone to see Stella Gaze. He sat on a straight-backed chair facing her across the dimly cluttered living room, drinking green tea from a china cup.

“You are a strange man,” she told him. “Not like the other detectives.”

“You’ve known many?”

“Many. Sometimes I think I do not even belong in this century. In another century…”

“In another century you might have been burned at the stake, or hanged from a tree in Salem.”

“You think I’m a witch?”

“There are three possible solutions to the deaths of Otto Held and Felix O’Brian—assuming that we’ve passed the point of mere coincidence. One—you’re a witch; two—you murdered them, plain and simple; three—someone else murdered them and is trying to frame you for the crimes. Do you have any choice among those theories?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, and he noticed again those scarred wrists that rested on her lap. “My choice is the truth, of course. I know nothing of their deaths.”

“And yet you knew how they would die.”

Her eyes studied his, seeming almost to bore their way through his skull. “Did you ever gaze out of a window, Captain Leopold, on a day when the air was clear and sparkling in the early morning, from a hilltop when the whole world was laid out before you? Did you ever see something far, far off in the distance, something naked and very real, like the truth? You see it, not as in a dream at all, but as perhaps in a motion picture unfolding at a distance.”

“And that’s how you saw those four dying?”

“Yes. I would never have told them if I hadn’t been angry about the land. But that is how I saw them. Call it witchcraft if you want, or extrasensory perception, or any of the other names they have for it.”

“Has this ever happened to you before, Miss Gaze?”

“It’s been happening all my life.” She tried to laugh, but it came out a sob. “I saw my mother lying dead before me. I saw a battlefield with my lover’s body.” And then she held up her wrists. “You see this? You see these scars? Sometimes you get so you can’t stand it any longer. You lock yourself in this old house and never see anybody any more, but that doesn’t help—they only call you a witch then. And sometimes when it gets really bad you take a razor and slit your wrists and try to change the life that you’ve seen before you. Try to say, Look, I cheated you after all! I’m dead ahead of my time!”

“Say it to whom?”

“To God, to Satan. Does it matter? Can you tell me if this thing is a gift or a curse? Can you?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Gaze,” he said quietly, because there was nothing else to say.

“Be sorry,” she told him, turning tearfully away. “Be sorry! Maybe that’s a beginning! Nobody’s ever been sorry before.”

“Goodbye, Miss Gaze,” he said, rising from his chair. “I’ll come to see you again.”

Outside, it was beginning to rain. The ferris wheel was still turning, but there was no one on it.

“Funny thing,” Fletcher said the following morning. “I’ve been talking to the firemen, and I’ve found one who thinks he caught a glimpse of O’Brian just before the roof fell in on him.”

Leopold put down the paper he was reading. “What?”

“This fireman, Captain. He says O’Brian was just standing there, not trying to escape at all. He looked as if he was waiting for a bus, the fireman said. And then the flimsy roof started to give, and he never had a chance.”

“As if he were waiting for a bus….”

“Or under a spell, huh, Captain?”

“Yes,” Leopold said. “Or under a spell.”

He sat for a long time alone in his office, gazing out the window and trying to fit the pieces together. Two men were dead, two others were threatened.

Did it have to be Stella Gaze? Was there no other answer?

“I’m going back out there, Fletcher,” he called into the intercom.

“What for, Captain?”

“Maybe I’ll take a ride on the ferris wheel. Who knows?”

The place was deserted when he reached it, and he stepped carefully over the blackened pieces of wood that littered the area. Here and there puddles remained, from yesterday’s rain or the firemen’s hoses. It might have been a battlefield, after the army had moved on.

“Captain Leopold!”

He turned at the sound of his name and saw George Quenton strolling toward him with another unlit cigar between his fingers. “You don’t even have any customers for your ferris wheel,” Leopold observed.

“In this county the schools reopen the day after Labor Day. Down in New York they get another week of business. But what the hell—how much money could I make with a rusty ferris wheel?”

“Could you take me up in it?”

“What?”

“The wheel,” Leopold said. “Could you take me up in it?”

“Someone has to stay on the ground to operate it. But we could sit in one of the cars on the ground.”

They did that, and Leopold felt the metal armrests under his hands, with their layers of paint chipped and worn. “It’s pleasant here today,” he said.

“What about her?” Quenton asked, gesturing toward the little cottage with his unlit cigar. “Will you arrest her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Until that moment, Leopold couldn’t have put it into words. It was more of a feeling than anything else. He was almost surprised when he heard his voice say, “Because it rained yesterday.”

“Rained?” The seat was rocking gently in the breeze. “What does the rain have to do with it?”

“Everything,” Leopold said. “You see, this was never a case for me. There was never any murder. The deaths of Held and O’Brian were both accidents.”

“That would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

“Not as much so as it might seem. I didn’t say no crime had been committed.”

“But what crime was there, other than the deaths?”

Leopold watched a cloud pass hesitantly over the sun. “Arson,” he replied. “I think you three plotted to burn this place for the insurance.”

“You couldn’t prove that.”

“Otto Held’s death was an accident. But it fit the pattern of Stella Gaze’s prediction. Business had been bad all summer, so you three decided to make another prediction come true. Felix O’Brian set fire to the place after closing on Sunday night. The scheme was that he’d remain in the burning building, to be rescued or dash to freedom at the very last moment. That way, it would look as if the witch’s second prediction had almost come true. If arson was suspected, people would think of Stella Gaze, not of an insurance fraud. Only O’Brian waited a moment too long, and the roof fell in.”

“Your visions are almost as vivid as that woman’s, Captain.”

“A fireman saw O’Brian a moment before he died, just standing in there. And we have plenty of proof of arson. As well as proof that your business was bad.”

“Would we burn down the place before our biggest day?” Quenton asked.

“You might if the weatherman was predicting rain. Which he was. You figured you had nothing to lose but a thin rainy day crowd. And you had all that insurance money to gain.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“Not at all,” Leopold said. “I’ll turn over my ideas to the Arson Squad and let them take it from there. We can build up a pretty good case against O’Brian, but it might be tougher to prove that you and Smith had knowledge of it. I hardly think he’d have been acting on his own, though. Maybe you two were even supposed to rescue him and decided to let him burn, to fulfill the prophecy. When I met Smith at the fire, he claimed he didn’t know where O’Brian was. Later, he told us O’Brian had sent him home and was closing up the place. I just think Smith might tell us something if we confront him with that bit.”

“All right,” Quenton said. He got to his feet and hopped to the ground.

“Don’t go running off after Smith,” Leopold advised with a slight smile. “They’re already questioning him.”

“Whatever you say, whatever theories you have, the fact remains that they died the way she predicted.”

“Yes,” Leopold admitted. “Yes.”

“Doesn’t that prove she’s a witch?”

“We will need more evidence. But I will be interested in you and Smith. In how you die.”

He left Quenton standing by the ferris wheel and walked away, down toward the house of Stella Gaze.

He found her in bed, wrapped with blankets despite the warmth of the day. There was an empty bottle of sleeping pills by her side, and he knew he had come too late to help Stella Gaze.

There was a letter by the empty bottle, addressed to him. He opened it and read it through twice. Then he crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it into his pocket. It would do nobody any good, least of all Stella Gaze. Later he would burn it, and perhaps that was what she had expected, anyway.

There was a noise from outside the window, and Leopold saw that Quenton had started the ferris wheel turning. The man lit his cigar and stood for a time watching it turn.

And from the window of Stella Gaze’s house, Leopold watched him watching it.

(1966)

The Oblong Room

IT WAS FLETCHER’S CASE from the beginning, but Captain Leopold rode along with him when the original call came in. The thing seemed open and shut, with the only suspect found literally standing over his victim, and on a dull day Leopold thought that a ride out to the University might be pleasant.

Here, along the river, the October color was already in the trees, and through the park a slight haze of burning leaves clouded the road in spots. It was a warm day for autumn, a sunny day. Not really a day for murder.

“The University hasn’t changed much,” Leopold commented, as they turned into the narrow street that led past the fraternity houses to the library tower. “A few new dorms, and a new stadium. That’s about all.”

“We haven’t had a case here since that bombing four or five years back,” Fletcher said. “This one looks to be a lot easier, though. They’ve got the guy already. Stabbed his roommate and then stayed right there with the body.”

Leopold was silent. They’d pulled up before one of the big new dormitories that towered toward the sky like some middle-income housing project, all brick and concrete and right now surrounded by milling students. Leopold pinned on his badge and led the way.

The room was on the fourth floor, facing the river. It seemed to be identical to all the others, a depressing oblong with bunk beds, twin study desks, wardrobes, and a large picture window opposite the door. The Medical Examiner was already there, and he looked up as Leopold and Fletcher entered. “We’re ready to move him. All right with you, Captain?”

“The boys get their pictures? Then it’s fine with me. Fletcher, find out what you can.” Then, to the Medical Examiner, “What killed him?”

“A couple of stab wounds. I’ll do an autopsy, but there’s not much doubt.”

“How long dead?”

“A day or so.”

“A day!”

Fletcher had been making notes as he questioned the others. “The precinct men have it pretty well wrapped up for us, Captain. The dead boy is Ralph Rollings, a sophomore. His roommate admits to being here with the body for maybe twenty hours before they were discovered. Roommate’s name is Tom McBern. They’ve got him in the next room.”

Leopold nodded and went through the connecting door. Tom McBern was tall and slender, and handsome in a dark, collegiate sort of way. “Have you warned him of his rights?” Leopold asked a patrolman.

“Yes sir.”

“All right.” Leopold sat down on the bed opposite McBern. “What have you got to say, son?”

The deep brown eyes came up to meet Leopold’s. “Nothing, sir. I think I want a lawyer.”

“That’s your privilege, of course. You don’t wish to make any statement about how your roommate met his death, or why you remained in the room with him for several hours without reporting it?”

“No, sir.” He turned away and stared out the window.

“You understand we’ll have to book you on suspicion of homicide.”

The boy said nothing more, and after a few moments Leopold left him alone with the officer. He went back to Fletcher and watched while the body was covered and carried away. “He’s not talking. Wants a lawyer. Where are we?”

Sergeant Fletcher shrugged. “All we need is motive. They probably had the same girl or something.”

“Find out.”

They went to talk with the boy who occupied the adjoining room, the one who’d found the body. He was sandy-haired and handsome, with the look of an athlete, and his name was Bill Smith.

“Tell us how it was, Bill,” Leopold said.

“There’s not much to tell. I knew Ralph and Tom slightly during my freshman year, but never really well. They stuck pretty much together. This year I got the room next to them, but the connecting door was always locked. Anyway, yesterday neither one of them showed up at class. When I came back yesterday afternoon I knocked at the door and asked if anything was wrong. Tom called out that they were sick. He wouldn’t open the door. I went into my own room and didn’t think much about it. Then, this morning, I knocked to see how they were. Tom’s voice sounded so…strange.”

“Where was your own roommate all this time?”

“He’s away. His father died and he went home for the funeral.” Smith’s hands were nervous, busy with a shredded piece of paper. Leopold offered him a cigarette and he took it. “Anyway, when he wouldn’t open the door I became quite concerned and told him I was going for help. He opened it then—and I saw Ralph stretched out on the bed, all bloody and…dead.”

Leopold nodded and went to stand by the window. From here he could see the trees down along the river, blazing gold and amber and scarlet as the October sun passed across them. “Had you heard any sounds the previous day? Any argument?”

“No. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Had they disagreed in the past about anything?”

“Not that I knew of. If they didn’t get along, they hardly would have asked to room together again this year.”

“How about girls?” Leopold asked.

“They both dated occasionally, I think.”

“No special one? One they both liked?”

Bill Smith was silent for a fraction too long. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I told you I didn’t know them very well.”

“This is murder, Bill. It’s not a sophomore dance or class day games.”

“Tom killed him. What more do you need?”

“What’s her name, Bill?”

He stubbed out the cigarette and looked away. Then finally he answered. “Stella Banting. She’s a junior.”

“Which one did she go with?”

“I don’t know. She was friendly with both of them. I think she went out with Ralph a few times around last Christmas, but I’d seen her with Tom lately.”

“She’s older than them?”

“No. They’re all twenty. She’s just a year ahead.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “Sergeant Fletcher will want to question you further.”

He left Smith’s room and went out in the hall with Fletcher. “It’s your case, Sergeant. About time I gave it to you.”

“Thanks for the help, Captain.”

“Let him talk to a lawyer and then see if he has a story. If he still won’t make a statement, book him on suspicion. I don’t think there’s any doubt we can get an indictment.”

“You going to talk to that girl?”

Leopold smiled. “I just might. Smith seemed a bit shy about her. Might be a motive there. Let me know as soon as the medical examiner has something more definite about the time of death.”

“Right, Captain.”

Leopold went downstairs, pushing his way through the students and faculty members still crowding the halls and stairways. Outside he unpinned the badge and put it away. The air was fresh and crisp as he strolled across the campus to the administration building.

Stella Banting lived in the largest sorority house on campus, a great columned building of ivy and red brick. But when Captain Leopold found her she was on her way back from the drug store, carrying a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of shampoo. Stella was a tall girl with firm angular lines and a face that might have been beautiful if she ever smiled.

“Stella Banting?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Captain Leopold. I wanted to talk to you about the tragedy over at the men’s dorm. I trust you’ve heard about it?”

She blinked her eyes and said, “Yes. I’ve heard.”

“Could we go somewhere and talk?”

“I’ll drop these at the house and we can walk if you’d like. I don’t want to talk there.”

She was wearing faded bermuda shorts and a bulky sweatshirt, and walking with her made Leopold feel young again. If only she smiled occasionally—but perhaps this was not a day for smiling. They headed away from the main campus, out toward the silent oval of the athletic field and sports stadium. “You didn’t come over to the dorm,” he said to her finally, breaking the silence of their walk.

“Should I have?”

“I understood you were friendly with them—that you dated the dead boy last Christmas and Tom McBern more recently.”

“A few times. Ralph wasn’t the sort anyone ever got to know very well.”

“And what about Tom?”

“He was a nice fellow.”

“Was?”

“It’s hard to explain. Ralph did things to people, to everyone around him. When I felt it happening to me, I broke away.”

“What sort of things?”

“He had a power—a power you wouldn’t believe any twenty-year-old capable of.”

“You sound as if you’ve known a lot of them.”

“I have. This is my third year at the University. I’ve grown up a lot in that time. I think I have anyway.”

“And what about Tom McBern?”

“I dated him a few times recently just to confirm for myself how bad things were. He was completely under Ralph’s thumb. He lived for no one but Ralph.”

“Homosexual?” Leopold asked.

“No, I don’t think it was anything as blatant as that. It was more the relationship of teacher and pupil, leader and follower.”

“Master and slave?”

She turned to smile at him. “You do seem intent on midnight orgies, don’t you?”

“The boy is dead, after all.”

“Yes. Yes, he is.” She stared down at the ground, kicking randomly at the little clusters of fallen leaves. “But you see what I mean? Ralph was always the leader, the teacher—for Tom, almost the messiah.”

“Then why would he have killed him?” Leopold asked.

“That’s just it—he wouldn’t! Whatever happened in that room, I can’t imagine Tom McBern ever bringing himself to kill Ralph.”

“There is one possibility, Miss Banting. Could Ralph Rollings have made a disparaging remark about you? Something about when he was dating you?”

“I never slept with Ralph, if that’s what you’re trying to ask me. With either of them, for that matter.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“It happened just the way I’ve told you. If anything, I was afraid of Ralph. I didn’t want him getting that sort of hold over me.”

Somehow he knew they’d reached the end of their stroll, even though they were still in the middle of the campus quadrangle, some distance from the sports arena. “Thank you for your help, Miss Banting. I may want to call on you again.”

He left her there and headed back toward the men’s dorm, knowing that she would watch him until he was out of sight.

Sergeant Fletcher found Leopold in his office early the following morning, reading the daily reports of the night’s activities. “Don’t you ever sleep, Captain?” he asked, pulling up the faded leather chair that served for infrequent visitors.

“I’ll have enough time for sleeping when I’m dead. What have you got on McBern?”

“His lawyer says he refuses to make a statement, but I gather they’d like to plead him not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“What’s the medical examiner say?”

Fletcher read from a typed sheet. “Two stab wounds, both in the area of the heart. He apparently was stretched out on the bed when he got it.”

“How long before they found him?”

“He’d eaten breakfast maybe an hour or so before he died, and from our questioning that places the time of death at about ten o’clock. Bill Smith went to the door and got McBern to open it at about eight the following morning. Since we know McBern was in the room the previous evening when Smith spoke to him through the door, we can assume he was alone with the body for approximately twenty-two hours.”

Leopold was staring out the window, mentally comparing the city’s autumn gloom with the colors of the countryside that he’d witnessed the previous day. Everything dies, only it dies a little sooner, a bit more drably in the city. “What else?” he asked Fletcher, because there obviously was something else.

“In one of the desk drawers,” Fletcher said, producing a little evidence envelope. “Six sugar cubes, saturated with LSD.”

“All right.” Leopold stared down at them. “I guess that’s not too unusual on campuses these days. Has there ever been a murder committed by anyone under the influence of LSD?”

“A case out west somewhere. And I think another one over in England.”

“Can we get a conviction, or is this the basis of the insanity plea?”

“I’ll check on it, Captain.”

“And one more thing—get that fellow Smith in here. I want to talk with him again.”

Later, alone, Leopold felt profoundly depressed. The case bothered him. McBern had stayed with Rollings’ body for twenty-two hours. Anybody that could last that long would have to be crazy. He was crazy and he was a killer and that was all there was to it.

When Fletcher ushered Bill Smith into the office an hour later, Leopold was staring out the window. He turned and motioned the young man to a chair. “I have some further questions, Bill.”

“Yes?”

“Tell me about the LSD.”

“What?”

Leopold walked over and sat on the edge of the desk. “Don’t pretend you never heard of it. Rollings and McBern had some in their room.”

Bill Smith looked away. “I didn’t know. There were rumors.”

“Nothing else? No noise through that connecting door?”

“Noise, yes. Sometimes it was….”

Leopold waited for him to continue, and when he did not, said, “This is a murder investigation, Bill.”

“Rollings…he deserved to die, that’s all. He was the most completely evil person I ever knew. The things he did to poor Tom…”

“Stella Banting says Tom almost worshipped him.”

“He did, and that’s what made it all the more terrible.”

Leopold leaned back and lit a cigarette. “If they were both high on LSD, almost anyone could have entered that room and stabbed Ralph.”

But Bill Smith shook his head. “I doubt it. They wouldn’t have dared unlock the door while they were turned on. Besides, Tom would have protected him with his own life.”

“And yet we’re to believe that Tom killed him? That he stabbed him to death and then spent a day and a night alone with the body? Doing what, Bill? Doing what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think Tom McBern is insane?”

“No, not really. Not legally.” He glanced away. “But on the subject of Rollings, he was pretty far gone. Once, when we were still friendly, he told me he’d do anything for Rollings—even trust him with his life. And he did, one time. It was during the spring weekend and everybody had been drinking a lot. Tom hung upside down out of the dorm window with Rollings holding his ankles. That’s how much he trusted him.”

“I think I’ll have to talk with Tom McBern again,” Leopold said. “At the scene of the crime.”

Fletcher brought Tom McBern out to the campus in handcuffs, and Captain Leopold was waiting for them in the oblong room on the fourth floor. “All right, Fletcher,” Leopold said. “You can leave us alone. Wait outside.”

McBern had lost a good deal of his previous composure, and now he faced Leopold with red-ringed eyes and a lip that trembled when he spoke. “What…what did you want to ask me?”

“A great many things, son. All the questions in the world.” Leopold sighed and offered the boy a cigarette. “You and Rollings were taking LSD, weren’t you?”

“We took it, yes.”

“Why? For kicks?”

“Not for kicks. You don’t understand about Ralph.”

“I understand that you killed him. What more is there to understand? You stabbed him to death right over there on that bed.”

Tom McBern took a deep breath. “We didn’t take LSD for kicks,” he repeated. “It was more to heighten the sense of religious experience—a sort of mystical involvement that is the whole meaning of life.”

Leopold frowned down at the boy. “I’m only a detective, son. You and Rollings were strangers to me until yesterday, and I guess now he’ll always be a stranger to me. That’s one of the troubles with my job. I don’t get to meet people until it’s too late, until the damage,” he gestured toward the empty bed, “is already done. But I want to know what happened in this room, between you two. I don’t want to hear about mysticism or religious experience. I want to hear what happened—why you killed him and why you sat here with the body for twenty-two hours.”

Tom McBern looked up at the walls, seeing them perhaps for the first and thousandth time. “Did you ever think about this room? About the shape of it? Ralph used to say it reminded him of a story by Poe, The Oblong Box. Remember that story? The box was aboard a ship, and of course it contained a body. Like Queequeg’s coffin which rose from the sea to rescue Ishmael.”

“And this room was Ralph’s coffin?” Leopold asked quietly.

“Yes.” McBern stared down at his handcuffed wrists. “His tomb.”

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Leopold looked away. “Do you want your lawyer?”

“No. Nothing.”

“My God! Twenty-two hours!”

“I was…”

“I know what you were doing. But I don’t think you’ll ever tell it to a judge and jury.”

“I’ll tell you, because maybe you can understand.” And he began to talk in a slow, quiet voice, and Leopold listened because that was his job.

Toward evening, when Tom McBern had been returned to his cell and Fletcher sat alone with Leopold, he said, “I’ve called the District Attorney, Captain. What are you going to tell him?”

“The facts, I suppose. McBern will sign a confession of just how it happened. The rest is out of our hands.”

“Do you want to tell me about it, Captain?”

“I don’t think I want to tell anyone about it. But I suppose I have to. I guess it was all that talk of religious experience and coffins rising from the ocean that tipped me off. You know, that Rollings pictured their room as a sort of tomb.”

“For him it was.”

“I wish I’d known him, Fletcher. I only wish I’d known him in time.”

“What would you have done?”

“Perhaps only listened and tried to understand him.”

“McBern admitted killing him?”

Leopold nodded. “It seems that Rollings asked him to, and Tom McBern trusted him more than life itself.”

“Rollings asked to be stabbed through the heart?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did McBern stay with the body so long? For a whole day and night?”

“He was waiting,” Leopold said quietly, looking at nothing at all. “He was waiting for Rollings to rise from the dead.”

(1967)

The Vanishing of Velma

“REMEMBER STELLA GAZE?” SERGEANT Fletcher asked, coming into Captain Leopold’s office with the morning coffee. “Stella Gaze? How could I forget her?” It had been one of Leopold’s oddest cases, some three years back, involving a middle-aged woman who’d committed suicide after having been accused of practicing witchcraft. He thought of Stella Gaze often, wondering what he could have done to handle things differently. “What about her?” he asked Fletcher.

The sergeant slipped into his favorite chair opposite Leopold’s desk and carefully worked the plastic top off his cup of coffee. “Well, you remember that her house was directly adjacent to Sportland Amusement Park—in fact, when they couldn’t buy her land they built the ferris wheel right next to the house, with only a wire fence separating them.”

“I remember,” Leopold said. Stella Gaze—no witch, certainly—but only a neurotic woman whom no one understood. She’d tried suicide before, and in the end had been successful.

“Well, listen to this! Last night about ten o’clock, a girl vanished from the top of that same ferris wheel! What do you think the newspapers will do with that when they get it?”

“Vanished?” Leopold scratched his head. “How could she vanish from the top of a ferris wheel?”

“She couldn’t, but she did. It wasn’t reported to the police till later—too late for the morning editions, but the papers will be on to it any minute.”

As if in answer to Fletcher’s prediction, the telephone buzzed, but it was not a curious newsman. It was Leopold’s direct superior, the chief of detectives. “Captain, I hate to ask you this, because it doesn’t involve a homicide—not yet, anyway. But you worked on the Stella Gaze case out at Sportland three years back, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” Leopold answered with a sigh, already sure of what was coming.

“We’ve got a disappearance out there. A girl missing from the ferris wheel. I know you’re not working on anything right now, and I thought you might help us out by handling the case with Sergeant Fletcher. The papers are already trying to tie it in with the Gaze thing, and you’ll know what to tell them.”

“I always know what to tell them,” Leopold said. “What’s the girl’s name?”

“Velma Kelty. She was there with a boyfriend, and he’s pretty shook about it.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Leopold said. “Any special reason for your interest?” He’d known the chief of detectives long enough to ask.

“Not really. The boy is Tom Williams, the councilman’s son.”

“And?”

A long sigh over the phone. “It might turn out to be sort of messy, Captain, if anything’s happened to her. She’s only fifteen years old.”

So Leopold drove out to visit Tom Williams at his home. He’d never met the boy, and knew his father only slightly, in the vague manner that detectives knew councilmen. The house was large and expensive, with a gently curving driveway and a swimming pool barely visible in the back area.

“You must be the police,” the boy said, answering the door himself. “Come in.”

“Captain Leopold. You’re Tom Williams?”

“That’s right, sir.” He was about twenty, with sandy hair cropped short and a lanky look that was typical of college boys these days. “Have they found her yet?”

“No, I guess not. Suppose you tell me about it.” Leopold had followed him onto a rear terrace that overlooked the pool. It was empty now, with only a rubber animal of some sort floating near the far corner.

“She went up in the ferris wheel and she didn’t come down,” the young man said simply. “That’s all there is to it.”

“Not quite all,” Leopold corrected. “Why don’t you start at the beginning. How old are you, Tom?”

The young man hesitated, running a nervous hand through his sandy close-cropped hair. “I’ll be twenty-one in two weeks. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I understand Velma Kelty is only fifteen. I was just wondering how you two happened to get together, that’s all.”

“I met her through my kid sister,” he mumbled. “The thing wasn’t really a date. I just took her to Sportland, that’s all.”

“How many times had you been out with her this summer?”

He shrugged. “Two or three. I took her to a movie, a ball game. Anything wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Leopold said. “Now suppose you tell it like it was, in detail this time.”

He sighed and settled a bit deeper into the canvas deck chair. “I took her out for a pizza earlier, and she suggested we play some miniature golf. Sportland was the closest place, so we went there. I parked my car in the lot by the golf course and driving range, but when we’d finished she suggested going on some of the rides. We went on a couple, but the rides right after the pizza upset my stomach a bit. When she suggested the ferris wheel I told her I’d watch.”

“And you did watch?”

“Sure. I paid for her ticket and watched her get into one of those little wire cages they have. It was dark by that time, around ten o’clock. You know how they light the wheel at night?”

“I haven’t seen it in a few years,” Leopold admitted.

“Well, they have colored neon running out on the spokes of the wheel. It looks great from a distance, but close up it’s a little overwhelming. Anyway, I didn’t remember exactly which of the colored cages she was in, and by the time it had reached the top of the wheel, I’d lost it in the lights.”

“Was she alone in her cage?”

“Yeah. The guy tried to get me in at the last minute, but my stomach wasn’t up to it. The wheel was almost empty by that time.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, I waited for her to come down, and she didn’t.”

“Didn’t?”

“That’s right. I watched each cage being unloaded. She wasn’t in any of them. After a while I got sorta frantic and had the operator empty them all out. But she wasn’t in any of them.”

“Who did get out while you were standing there?”

“Let’s see—the ones I remember were a father and two little kids, a fellow and girl who’d been necking—they were right ahead of us in line—and a couple of college girls who seemed to be alone. I suppose there were others, but I don’t remember them.”

“Could she have gotten off on the other side of the wheel?”

“No. I was watching each car when it was unloaded. I was interested in the way the guy was doing it, giving the good-looking girls a quick feel as he helped them to the ground.”

“Why did you wait a couple hours before calling the police?”

“I didn’t believe my eyes, that’s why! She couldn’t have just vanished like that, not while I was watching. The guy operating it told me I was nuts.”

“Didn’t he remember her?”

“No.”

“Even though he wanted you to join her?”

“He said he was busy. He couldn’t remember everybody.”

Leopold glanced at the official report of the patrolman who’d been summoned. “That would be Rudy Magee?”

“I guess that’s his name. Anyway, he dismissed the whole thing and I guess for a minute I just thought I was cracking up. I walked around for a half hour, just looking for her, and then went back to the car and waited. When she didn’t come, I walked over to the ferris wheel again and told the guy—Magee—I was going to call the police.”

“I see,” Leopold said, but he didn’t really see very much.

“So I called them. That’s it.”

Leopold lit a cigarette. “Was she pregnant, Tom?”

“What?”

“You understand it’s my job to ask all the questions, and that’s one of them. You wouldn’t be the first boy who wanted a fifteen-year-old pregnant girlfriend to disappear.”

“I never touched her. I told you she was a friend of my sister’s.”

“All right.” He stood up. “Is your sister around now?” he persisted.

“She’s out.”

“For how long?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? She’s sorta loose.”

“I’ll be back,” Leopold told him. “What’s your sister’s name?”

“Cindy. They call her Cin.”

“Who does?”

“Her crowd.”

“Is she fifteen, too?”

“Sixteen.”

Leopold nodded. As he walked around the side of the house, he looked a bit longingly at the swimming pool. The day was warming up, and a dip in the clear blue water would have felt good.

He got back in the car and drove out to Sportland.

Sportland was still big, but it had perhaps retreated a little into itself since Leopold’s last visit. The lower portion, once given over to kiddies’ rides, had been sold off to a drive-in movie, and the rides in the upper part now seemed a little closer together. The ferris wheel was still in the same place, of course, but Stella Gaze’s house had been torn down for parking.

“You Rudy Magee?” Leopold asked a kid at the ferris wheel.

“He’s on his break. Over there at the hot-dog stand.”

Magee was a type—the sport-shirted racetrack tout, the smalltime gambler, the part-time pimp. Leopold had known them through all of his professional life. “I want to talk about last night,” he told the thin pale man, showing his identification.

“You mean that kid—the one who lost his girl?”

“That’s right.”

“Hell, I don’t know a thing about it. I think he dreamed the whole bit.”

Leopold grunted. “You worked here long? I don’t remember you.”

“Just since the place opened for the season in May. Why? I gotta be an old-time employee to know people don’t disappear from ferris wheels?”

Leopold was about to answer, but a third man had joined them—a stocky thirsty-looking fellow who looked vaguely familiar. “Well, Captain Leopold, isn’t it? You working on this Velma Kelty case?”

Leopold looked him up and down. “I don’t believe I caught the name.”

“Fane. Walter Fane from the Globe. You’ve seen me around headquarters.” He pulled an afternoon paper from under his arm. “See? We’ve got it on page one.”

They had indeed. GIRL VANISHES AT AMUSEMENT PARK: COUNCILMAN’S SON QUIZZED.

“Is that the way it is, Captain? Or have you found the body?”

“What body?” Leopold asked.

“You’re a homicide captain, right? If you’re on the case, there’s a body.”

“Not this time. I’m just helping out.”

“Give me a break, Captain. I can still phone in a new lead for the late sports edition.”

Leopold gazed over at the ferris wheel, and at the new parking lot beyond. “Are you superstitious, Fane?”

“Huh?”

“Three years ago, a woman named Stella Gaze was accused of witchcraft.”

“Yeah.” His eyes brightened a bit. “She lived out here somewhere.”

“Right next to the ferris wheel. The house was torn down after she killed herself. But if a girl really did vanish from that ferris wheel, who’s to say Stella Gaze’s spirit isn’t still around?”

“You believe that bunk, Captain?”

“You wanted a new lead. I’m giving you one.”

The reporter thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Thanks,” he said, heading off toward a telephone.

“We can go back to your wheel,” Leopold told Rudy Magee. “I want you to tell me how it happened.”

“Nothing happened. Nothing at all,” Rudy insisted vehemently.

“Well then, tell me what didn’t happen.”

They reached the wheel and Rudy took over from the kid, standing on a raised platform where the cars came to a stop, helping people in and out over the foot-high metal sill. “Watch your step,” he told two teen-age girls as he accepted their tickets and shut the wire cage on them. Though Leopold could see only their knees and upper bodies from the ground, he knew Magee was getting a good view from his position.

Rudy let a few cars go by with empty seats before he stopped the wheel again to load the next passengers. “When there aren’t many customers, I balance the load,” he explained to Leopold.

A young hippie type with sideburns and beads came by. “Is Hazel here?” he asked Magee.

“Not now,” the pale man answered. “Maybe later.”

Leopold watched the wheel turning against the sky, noting a tree too far away, a lamppost just out of reach. He tried to imagine a fifteen-year-old girl swinging like a monkey against the night sky, trying to reach one of them, and then decided it was impossible. If Velma had gone up—and that was the big if—then she’d surely come down as well.

“Satisfied?” Rudy asked curtly.

“Not quite. I understand you’ve got an easy hand with the girls when you’re helping them in and out. You must have seen Velma.”

“I told you, and I’m telling you. It was busy. I didn’t notice anybody.”

But his eyes shifted as he spoke. He was a poor liar. “All right,” Leopold said. “Let’s try it another way. Lying to me is one thing, lying before a grand jury is something else. The girl is missing and we want to find her. If she turns up dead and you’ve been lying, that’s big trouble for you.” He took a chance and added, “They know about your record here, Rudy?”

“What record? A couple of gambling arrests?”

Leopold shrugged. “Why make more trouble for yourself?”

The thin man seemed to sag a little. “All right. I was just trying to stay outa trouble. Understand?”

“Everybody wants to stay outa trouble, Rudy. Now suppose you tell me about it.”

“Well, the guy shows up just before ten o’clock with his broad. She’s got long black hair and looks about eighteen. They argue for a couple of minutes, because she wants him to go up with her and he doesn’t want to. Finally he buys her a ticket and she goes up alone. All alone—nobody sharing the seat with her—just the girl alone.”

“And?”

“And she never comes down. Just like he said. Damnedest thing I ever seen.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I was sorta watching for her. You know.”

“I know, Rudy. What did you think happened?”

“Hell, I was scared. I thought she opened the cage and jumped. I figured we’d find her body over in the parking lot somewhere.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. Besides, somebody would have seen her, you know. But I just couldn’t figure anything else. Say, do you believe that stuff about the witch and all? Do you think she put a curse on this place before she died?”

Leopold shrugged. “It’ll make a good story for a few days, keep them off the kid’s back. Maybe by that time we’ll find out what really happened to Velma Kelty.”

The missing girl had lived with an aunt and uncle in the East Bay region of town, ever since her parents had died in the crash of a private plane some eight years earlier. Captain Leopold drove over to the house, knowing that he was only retracing the steps covered earlier by the missing persons people.

The uncle was a lawyer named Frank Prosper. He was a bulging, balding man whom Leopold had seen occasionally around City Hall. “You mean you’ve only come to ask more questions?” he challenged, “and not to give us any word of her?”

“There is no word,” Leopold said. “I wanted to ask you a few things about her. And about Tom Williams. He seems a little mature to have been dating her.”

“We’ve always had trouble with that girl,” Prosper said, biting off the tip of a cigar. “My wife’s brother was a wild sort and she takes right after him.”

“What do you think about Williams? Do you think he might have harmed her?”

“I don’t know. He’s not a bad kid. Only thing wrong with him is that he thinks his father’s God’s gift to politics. Old man Williams is the last of the old cigar chompers.” Leopold thought this last was a somewhat odd comment from a man who himself was smoking a cigar at the moment.

“You mean he’s crooked?”

“Nothing of the sort! He’s just a man who believes in political power at the ward level, the way it was practiced a couple of generations ago. The country has passed men like Williams by, but he doesn’t seem to realize it.”

“I’d like to know more about your niece. Do you have a picture of her? A snapshot would be fine.”

“I gave one to the missing persons people. Here’s another.” He held out a framed photograph of a shyly smiling girl in a short red dress. She wore her black hair long, half covering a pretty, if unexceptional, face. She seemed several years older than fifteen. Leopold would have taken her for a college girl.

“She doesn’t look like the wild sort. What was the trouble?”

“She hung around with a fast crowd. Hippies. That type.”

“Tom Williams, a hippie?” Somehow the scene didn’t ring true to Leopold.

“Not Williams. His sister. Talk to his sister.”

Leopold nodded. “I was thinking of doing just that.”

She was in the pool when he returned to the Williams house, splashing around in a brief two-piece suit that stopped just short of being a true bikini. When Leopold called to her from the water’s edge, she left the rubber animal to float by itself and kicked out with energy toward where he stood.

“You’re Cindy Williams?” Leopold asked, stretching out a hand to help her from the water.

“Just call me Cin,” she replied.

He shook the dampness from his cuffs and took a good look at her. Yes, he supposed even in the bathing suit she could have been called a hippie—especially by a paunchy lawyer like Frank Prosper. Her hair was long and stringy, not unlike the missing girl’s except that it was blond. She had the same sort of pretty but unremarkable face. He’d seen her type many times before, downtown, wearing tight jeans and laughing a bit too loudly on a street corner. He wondered what her father, the councilman, thought about it all.

“Velma Kelty,” Leopold said. “She was your friend.”

Cin Williams nodded. “A year younger than me, but we’re in the same class at school.”

“I’m investigating her disappearance. Any idea what might have happened to her?”

Cin shrugged her loose, bony shoulders. “Maybe it was the witch.” She gestured toward the final edition of the newspaper, where the headline now read: GIRL VANISHES AT AMUSEMENT PARK: WITCHCRAFT HINTED. Walter Fane had phoned in his story on time, and Leopold supposed it was a slight improvement over the earlier headline.

“Were there any other boys besides your brother?” he asked the girl in the bathing suit. “Someone else she might have dated?”

“Gee, I don’t know.” She was starting to dry off her long suntanned legs with a towel.

“I hear she hung around some with hippies.”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll find out,” Leopold said.

A voice called from the terrace at the back of the house. “Cindy, who’s that you’re talking to?”

“A detective, Daddy. About Velma.”

Councilman Williams, whose first name was also Tom, came down the flagstone walk. His son looked a great deal like him, as did the daughter to a lesser extent. There was not a cigar in sight, and despite what Prosper had said, Leopold doubted that he smoked them. “You’re Leopold? The chief said he’d put his best man on this thing.”

“Captain Leopold, yes.”

“Any clues yet, Captain?”

“No clues. It’s not the sort of case where you look for clues.”

“But the girl disappeared from the ferris wheel.”

“Perhaps.”

“If there’s any way I can help out, down at City Hall…”

“Do you know the girl’s uncle? Frank Prosper?”

“Yes. He’s a lawyer, active in politics. I know him.”

The tone was one of prompt dismissal. Perhaps they only belonged to different parties. Leopold looked back to where Cin had finished drying herself. “I was asking your daughter about hippies. I understand Velma traveled with a pretty wild crowd.”

“What gave you that idea?” Williams asked. “She was with my daughter a great deal. And with my son recently, of course.”

Young Tom Williams came out then, to join them and stand beside his father. He seemed very young, still a boy. “Is there any news about Velma?”

“No news.”

“She’ll turn up,” the father decided. “It’s probably just some gag.”

Leopold didn’t have an answer for that. Standing there with the three of them beside the pool, he didn’t have an answer for anything.

Fletcher came in with coffee the next morning. “Anything on the girl, Captain?” he asked, settling into his usual chair.

“Nothing.”

“You going to turn it back to missing persons?”

Leopold sighed. “The chief wants me to stay on it another day. He promised Councilman Williams we’d do our best.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

Leopold leaned back in his chair. “What do I think happened? I think somebody’s trying to pull a neat trick. I think the ferris wheel was chosen because of Stella Gaze and all that talk of witchcraft. But I don’t know who’s behind it, or what they’re trying to accomplish.”

“Young Williams?”

“Yes. He has to be in on it. You see, whatever the plan was, it called for witnesses at the wheel to verify the boy’s story. Unfortunately for him, Rudy Magee wasn’t about to verify anything. That threw him into such confusion that he walked around for an hour or two before even calling the police. That tells us something very interesting, if just a little bit sinister.”

“Sinister?”

“Look at it this way. Young Williams and the girl are going to fake a disappearance for some reason—publicity, a joke, anything. She goes up in the ferris wheel, after a big scene with him to draw attention—and then does her vanishing act. Big witchcraft thing, Stella Gaze and all that. Except that it doesn’t work because Magee gets scared and denies everything. So what happens? Williams goes away for a while, but then he comes back and calls the police. Why? There were two other courses open to him. He could have forgotten the whole thing, or the two of them could have tried it again some other night. Why did he call the police with the weak story he had?”

“You said it was something sinister.”

“It is.” Leopold swiveled in his chair to stare out the window. The headquarters parking lot was damp and misty, its asphalt surface dark with water from a morning shower. The view wasn’t much.

“Sinister how? Like witchcraft?”

“Like murder,” Leopold said.

There were other crimes that day, the usual assortment of a city’s troubles, and it was not until late in the day that Leopold’s mind went back to the vanishing of the fifteen-year-old girl. It was yanked back suddenly by a telephone call.

“Captain Leopold?” A girl’s voice, soft.

“Yes.”

“This is Velma Kelty.”

“Who? You’ll have to speak louder.” Already he was signaling Fletcher to trace it.

“Velma Kelty. The girl on the ferris wheel.”

“Oh yes. I’m glad to hear from you, Velma. Are you all right?”

“I’m all right.”

“Where are you, Velma?”

“At Sportland. I’d like to meet you here, later, after dark.”

“Couldn’t I come out now?”

“No…Not yet. After dark.”

“All right, Velma. Where should I meet you?”

“Ten o’clock. By the ferris wheel.”

“Yes. Of course. I’ll be there, Velma.”

He hung up and called to Fletcher, but there’d been no time to trace it. There was nothing to do but wait till ten o’clock.

The rain came again about eight, but it lasted only a few minutes. It left behind a summer dampness, though, and a light mist that clung to the road as Leopold drove. Approaching the Sound, he might have been driving toward the end of the earth, were it not for the bright neon of Sportland that told him some sort of civilization still existed out there at the water’s edge.

It was five minutes to ten when he reached the ferris wheel. Rudy Magee was on duty again. “You must work all the time,” Leopold observed. “You’re always here.”

“Every other night, alternating with the afternoons,” Magee said. “What’s up?”

“I thought I might ask you. Seen anybody familiar tonight?”

“Yeah. Now that you mention it, that reporter Fane was nosing around.”

“Oh?” Leopold lit a cigarette. “Anybody else?”

“Like who?”

Leopold glanced at his watch. It was just ten o’clock. “Like Velma Kelty, the missing girl.”

“Never laid eyes on her. I’d know her from the picture the papers published.”

“She’s not on the wheel now?”

“I told you I’d know her. There’s nobody but a middle-aged couple and a few strays.”

He slowed the wheel to a stop and released a young man from his cage. Then he slowed it a few cages on and opened it for a young lady. Leopold saw the hair first, and knew. Rudy Magee saw her too, and let out a muffled gasp.

Velma Kelty had come back.

Leopold beckoned to her and they walked away from the shaken Magee.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me you were riding around on that ferris wheel for the last forty-eight hours,” Leopold said.

“Sure. Why not?”

He peered at her in the uncertain light. “All right, young lady. You nearly scared that ferris wheel operator to death. I’m taking you home to your uncle.”

“I can find my way,” she told him. “I just wanted to see you, to show you I wasn’t really missing.”

“Sure.” They were in better light now, crossing to the parking lot. He glanced sideways at her and reached out to touch her long black hair. Then he twisted and gave a sudden tug. It came away in his hand.

“You creep!” Cindy Williams shouted at him, clutching for the wig.

“Now, now. You’re playing the big girls’ game, Cindy. You have to expect these little setbacks.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“I guess because it looked like you. That’s a pretty old trick, to start out a blonde and then change to a brunette. You fooled Rudy Magee, anyway. Of course you had the wig hidden in your purse when you got on the wheel a while ago.”

“I just wanted to show you it could be done,” she said. “Velma could have worked it just the opposite—gotten on the ferris wheel as a brunette and gotten off as a blonde.”

“But you didn’t show me anything of the sort, because it didn’t work, did it? I recognized you as soon as I got you in the good light, and Tom would have recognized Velma a lot sooner than that, wig or no wig, because he was watching for her.” He sighed with exasperation. “All right, get in the car. I’m still taking you home.”

She slid into the front seat, pouting for several minutes as he turned the car out of the Sportland parking lot. Presently the garish neon of the amusement park subsided into the background as they drove toward town.

“You think I’m involved, don’t you?” she asked.

“I didn’t, until tonight. That was a pretty foolish trick.”

“Why was it?”

“I might have told Prosper she was alive, gotten his hopes up.”

“You think she’s dead?”

Leopold kept his eyes on the road. “I think Tom was playing a stunt of some sort and it didn’t come off. He waited two hours before calling the police. Why? Because he was trying to decide what he should do. But then he called them after all, even though Magee didn’t back up his story. Why again? Because he couldn’t come back and try his stunt the next night. Because Velma Kelty really had vanished, only not in the way he made it appear.”

“How, then?”

“I wish I knew.” He pushed in the cigarette lighter that rarely worked and reached for his crumpled pack. In the light from passing cars her face was tense and drawn. She looked older than her age.

“You must have some idea.”

“Sure I do, lots of them. Want to hear one? Velma Kelty died somehow at your house, maybe in the swimming pool, and your father the councilman is implicated. To protect him, you and Tom cook up this disappearance, with you using that black wig. How does that sound to you?”

“Fantastic!”

“Maybe.”

They drove the rest of the way in near silence, until they were almost to her house. “By the way,” he asked, “how’d you get out to Sportland tonight?”

“Tom drove me,” she mumbled. “He dropped me off.”

He pulled up in front of her house. “Want me to come in with you, have a few words with your father?”

“N-no.”

“All right. This time.”

He watched till she reached the door and then drove on. He was thinking that if his own marriage had worked out he might have had a daughter just about her age—fifteen or sixteen—but that was a heck of a thing for a cop to have on his mind. Velma Kelty might have been his daughter too, and now she was gone.

He went home to his apartment and turned on the air-conditioner. He fell asleep to its humming, and when the telephone awakened him he wondered for an instant what the sound was.

“Leopold here,” he managed to mumble into the instrument.

“It’s Fletcher, Captain. Sorry to disturb you, but I thought you’d want to know. We found her.”

“Who?” he asked through bleary cobwebs.

“The missing girl. Velma Kelty.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s dead, Captain. They just fished her body out of the Sound near Sportland.”

He cursed silently and turned on the bedside lamp. Why did they always have to end like this?

“Any chance of suicide?”

Fletcher cleared his throat. “Pretty doubtful, Captain. Somebody weighted down the body with fifty pounds of scrap iron.”

Leopold went back to the house with the swimming pool, rousing Tom Williams from his bed just as dawn was breaking over the city. “You’ll wake my father,” young Williams said. “What do you want?”

“The truth. No more stories about ferris wheels, just the truth.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“They just fished Velma’s body from the Sound. Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Oh no!” He seemed truly staggered by the news, as if he refused to comprehend the truth of it.

“That trick with your sister was a bit of foolishness. Is that the way you worked it the other night, with a wig?”

“I swear, Captain, Velma Kelty got on that ferris wheel. She got on and she never got off. I can’t imagine what happened to her, or how she ended up in the Sound. What killed her?”

“They’re doing the autopsy now. Her body was weighted to keep it at the bottom, but not heavily enough apparently. It wasn’t any accident.”

“I…I can’t imagine what happened to her.”

“You’d better start imagining, because you’re in big trouble. You and your sister both. Someone killed the girl and threw her body in the Sound. Maybe she was raped first.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I don’t know much of anything at this point, but I can speculate. Did you do it, Tom? Or maybe your father? Or maybe some of the hippie crowd she hung around with? Anyway, the body had to be disposed of, and Velma’s disappearance had to take place somewhere else. The ferris wheel seemed logical to you, because of the witch stories, so Cindy put on her wig and you pulled it off. Except that the wheel operator was ready to deny everything. That threw you for a loss, and you spent a couple of hours wondering what to do next.”

“No!”

“Then why did you wait all that time before reporting her disappearance? Why, Tom?”

“I…I…”

Leopold turned away. “You’d better think up a good story. You’ll need it in court.”

Fletcher looked up from his desk as Leopold entered the squad room and crossed to his private office. “Did you bring the Williams kid in, Captain?”

“Not yet, soon.” His lips were drawn into a tight line.

“Crazy story for him to make up, about that damned ferris wheel.”

“Yeah.” Leopold shuffled the papers on his desk, seeing nothing. “How’s the autopsy report?”

“Nothing yet.”

“I’m going down there,” he decided suddenly.

The medical examiner was a tall red-faced man whom Leopold had known for years. He had just finished the autopsy and was sitting at his desk writing the report. “How are you, Captain?” he mumbled.

“Finish with the Kelty girl?”

“Just about. I have to submit the report. Her things are over there.”

Leopold glanced at the clothes, still soggy with water. Dark blue slacks and sweater, sneakers, bra and panties. A heavy piece of cast iron, entwined with damp cord, rested nearby. He looked back at the doctor. “Was she raped, Gus?”

“No. I wish it were that easy. Something like that I could understand.” His face was suddenly old.

“What was it, Gus?”

“Fifteen. Only fifteen years old…”

“Gus…”

The doctor stood up and handed over his report. “There it is, Captain. She died of a massive overdose of heroin, mainlined into a vein near her elbow…”

It was late afternoon when Leopold returned to Sportland. He could see the ferris wheel from a long way off, outlined against the blue of a cloudless sky. For the first time he wondered if Stella Gaze really had been a witch, if she really had put a curse on the place. Maybe that was some sort of an explanation.

“You’re back!” Rudy Magee said, strolling over to meet him. “I hear they found the girl.”

“They found her.”

“Not far from here, huh?”

“Close, Rudy. Very close.”

“The kid was lying, then?”

“Let’s go for a ride, Rudy, on your ferris wheel. I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Huh? All right, if you really want to. I don’t usually go on the thing myself.” The kid took over the controls, and he preceded Leopold into one of the wire cages. As the wheel turned and they started their climb, he added, “Great view from up here, huh?”

“I imagine with all this neon lit up at night it’s quite a ride.”

Rudy chuckled. “Yeah, the kids like it.”

“I know how Velma disappeared,” Leopold said suddenly.

“You do? Boy, I’d like to know myself. It was a weird thing. The kid played some trick on me, huh?”

“No trick, Rudy. You were the one with the tricks.”

The pale man stiffened in the seat beside him. “What do you mean?” The caged seat swayed gently as it reached the peak of its ascent and started slowly down.

“I mean that you’ve been selling drugs to these kids—hippies, college kids, fifteen-year-old girls. I suppose it was a big kick to go up on this wheel at night with all the colored neon and stuff while you were high on LSD.”

“You’d have a tough time proving that,” Rudy said.

“Maybe not. Maybe Tom Williams has decided it’s time to talk. That was the key question, after all—why he waited so long to report Velma’s disappearance to the police. The reason, of course, was that he was high on drugs at the time, probably on an LSD trip. He had to wait till it wore off a little. Maybe you even had him convinced that Velma never did get on your ferris wheel.”

“I told you she got on,” Magee mumbled. “But she never got off.”

“She never got off alive.” Leopold watched the scene shifting beneath them as they reached bottom and started up once more. “LSD had become too tame for Velma and her hippie friends. So you maybe sold her some marijuana. Anyway, before long you had her on heroin.”

“No.”

“I say yes.”

He rubbed his palms together. “Maybe I sold the kids a little LSD, but never anything stronger. Never horse.”

“Some people call it horse, Rudy. Others call it Hazel. I heard the kid ask you for Hazel the other day, but it didn’t register with me then. Velma Kelty bought the heroin from you, and mainlined it into her vein as she was going up in the ferris wheel. It’s a pretty safe place, when you consider it. Only she was fairly new at it, or the stuff was a bad batch, or she just took too much. She crumpled off the seat, into this space at our feet—and she rode around on your ferris wheel for the rest of the night, until the park closed and you could weight the body and toss it in the Sound.”

“Somebody would have seen her there.”

“No, not from ground level. This metal sill is a foot high, and I noticed that from the ground you couldn’t see below girls’ knees. A small fifteen-year-old girl could easily crumple into that space, seen by you on that platform every time the wheel turned, but invisible from the ground. The seat just looked empty and of course you were careful to skip it when loading passengers.”

“The people in the seat above would have seen her there,” Magee argued.

“So you kept that seat empty too. Williams said you weren’t busy that night. There were only a few others on the wheel. Besides, Velma was wearing dark blue slacks and sweater, and she had black hair. In the dark no one would have seen her there, especially with all this neon blinding them.”

“So you’re going to arrest me for disposing of a body?”

“For more than that, Rudy. The narcotics charge alone will keep you behind bars a good long time. But you know the effects of an overdose as well as I do. Velma Kelty was still alive after she collapsed—physically incapacitated, stuporous, with slow respiration, but still alive. She could probably have been saved with quick treatment, but you were too afraid for your own skin. So you let her slowly die here, crumpled into this little space, until the park closed and you could get rid of the body.”

“The policeman came, he looked.”

“Sure. He came and looked two hours later. Naturally he didn’t check each individual seat, because no one would believe she could still be there unseen. Perhaps by that time you had stopped the wheel anyway, with her body near the top. Or maybe you’d even managed to remove it, if business was bad enough to give you a few minutes’ break.”

Rudy Magee’s hand came out of his pocket. It was holding a hypodermic syringe. “You’re a smart cop, but not smart enough. I’m not going back inside on any murder rap, or even manslaughter.”

Leopold sighed. The wire cage was nearing the ground again. “Do you see that man watching us from the ground? His name is Sergeant Fletcher, and he’s awfully good with a gun. I wouldn’t try to jab me with that, or yourself either.”

As he spoke, Leopold’s hand closed around the syringe, taking it from Rudy’s uncertain fingers.

“How did you know it all?” he asked quietly, staring into Leopold’s eyes.

“I didn’t, until I saw the autopsy report. Velma died of an overdose of heroin, and she was last seen alive getting onto your ferris wheel. I put those two facts together and tried to determine if she could have died on your wheel, and just kept going around, without being seen. I decided she could have, and that she did.”

The wheel stopped finally, and they got off. There was a bit of a breeze blowing in off the Sound, and it reminded Leopold somehow of Velma Kelty—the living girl, not the body in the morgue. He wished that he had known her. Maybe, just maybe, he could have saved her from Rudy Magee—and from herself.

(1969)

The Rainy-Day Bandit

SAM THE CLEAN-UP MAN took Captain Leopold’s car and anchored it firmly to the endless chain that would carry it through the steaming, splashing suds of the car wash. “How are you today, Captain?” Sam shouted above the roar of machinery.

“Good as could be expected on a Monday morning,” Leopold shouted back. “Don’t know why I’m getting it washed. Looks like it’s going to rain any minute.”

Sam squinted at the leaden sky and walked over to Leopold’s side. “Sure hope not. I need a full week’s work to pay my taxes.”

Leopold nodded sympathetically. The 15th of April was only a week away, and with the extra surtax this year it was hurting everybody. He found himself reluctant even to pay out the cost of the car wash, wondering why he didn’t sometimes chisel a bit like everyone else and have it cleaned at the city garage along with the official detective cars.

It was that sort of day, and it lasted even after he’d waved goodbye to Sam and the other workmen and wheeled out onto the street, heading downtown. In the other lane he noticed an unmarked police car with a detective from Robbery at the wheel. Tommy Gibson. A nice guy, someone everybody liked, but who was not above taking a little graft on the side. There were a few others like him in the department, but they were not really Leopold’s concern as head of Homicide. Tommy Gibson could take his petty graft. As for Leopold, he’d still pay for his own car wash.

Sergeant Fletcher was already in the office with Leopold’s coffee, and that made him feel a bit better. “You’re late, Captain.”

“Stopped to get my car washed. Saw Tommy Gibson on the way in. What’s he up to these days?”

Fletcher sipped his own coffee from the paper cup. “Robbery, same as always. He’s in charge of this holdup investigation right now. Probably hoping it won’t rain today.”

“The rainy-day bandit?” Although robbery was not directly in Leopold’s province, he was aware of the crimes, as was everyone else in the city. Perhaps that was why Tommy Gibson was out cruising on a threatening Monday morning in April.

The first robbery had been a small-time affair—the stickup of a parking-meter collector during a chilling rainstorm back in January. It was followed three weeks later by one a little more daring—a gas-station holdup. Then came an insurance office, and the branch of a bank, and most recently a wealthy gambler on his way to the bank with a deposit. The crimes were identical in their execution. The day—for they were always daylight crimes—was dark and overcast, with a heavy rain falling. The bandit wore a cloth mask that covered his entire face, and he carried a shiny nickel-plated revolver. Not one of the five victims doubted he would have shot any one of them dead at the first indication of resistance. In the case of the bank robbery—the bandit’s most profitable venture to date—he’d actually knocked two people to the floor as he dashed for the street.

“The Commissioner’s pushing Tommy for an arrest,” Fletcher said. “This is the sort of thing the newspapers love. Since he robbed that gambler last week, they’re almost beginning to treat him like a modern Robin Hood.”

“He’s getting more active with the spring rains,” Leopold observed. “Two holdups so far this month, and it’s only the eighth.”

There’d been an early Easter this year, and an early spring. Somehow the whole year seemed hurried, as if racing toward summer. Fletcher put down his coffee. “Well, at least it’s no concern of ours.”

“No,” Leopold agreed. “Not unless he kills someone.”

The rain started in mid-afternoon, driving hard out of the west. It sent pedestrians scattering and slowed traffic to a crawl. Captain Leopold looked up once from the autopsy report on his desk to watch it beating on his windows, but then he went back to work and paid no more attention to the downpour. After five o’clock it settled into a steady drizzle that promised to last the night.

It was nearly six when Sergeant Fletcher poked his head around the corner of the door. “You still here, Captain?”

“Going home soon.”

“Tommy Gibson’s rainy-day bandit hit again.”

“Oh? Where?”

“A shopping center on Milrose. Around an hour ago. Cleaned out six cash registers in a supermarket while fifty people watched. The guy’s got guts, you have to say that!”

“He takes too many chances,” Leopold said sourly. “Some day an eager citizen’s going to jump him, and then we’ll either have a captured bandit or a dead hero.”

The rain lasted through the night as expected. It was still coming down in the morning, although it had tapered off to a damp drizzle that was more annoying than anything else. Leopold was at his desk early, before eight, and he was just beginning to think about his morning coffee when the call came in to Fletcher’s desk.

“We’ve got a killing, Captain,” Fletcher said, already reaching for his raincoat. “Want to come along? The cop who called in thinks it might have been the rainy-day bandit.”

Leopold nodded. “Let’s go.”

The dead man was sprawled in an alley on Carter Street, his body wet from rain, his eyes staring unseeing at the leaden sky. He’d been shot once in the left temple, and there was no sign of the gun. Leopold glanced at the body and then looked around at the little group of men. He saw Tommy Gibson at once.

“This a rainy-day bandit caper, Tommy?”

“Looks like it, Captain. Victim’s name is James Mercer. He was an insurance agent making collections in the neighborhood. The money’s gone, though.”

“Anybody see it happen?”

Gibson glanced up at the empty windows. “Not in this neighborhood. They’re mostly first-generation Americans, a lot of them on welfare. They never see a thing.”

Leopold nodded. “It could be your bandit. But it could be anybody. Does he have a list of his collection stops?”

Sergeant Fletcher had been going quickly through the pockets of the dead man’s soggy topcoat. “This might be what you want, Captain.”

There were twenty-one names and addresses in the little notebook, each with an amount and a series of dates written after it. Eleven of them had been checked off. “He didn’t collect much,” Leopold observed, adding quickly, “About fifty bucks.”

“Where do we start?” Fletcher wanted to know.

“At the last name he checked off. Rose Sweeney. It’s just down the street.”

They left the body in the care of the technical men with their cameras and plastic bags and went in search of Rose Sweeney. She proved to be a buxom woman of forty or so, with graying hair and thick, round glasses that gave her the look of a startled owl. Her apartment was cluttered with the flotsam of a lifetime, piled here and there on tables as if she’d just moved in. Through it all, she seemed to feel her way as she directed them to dusty chairs.

“Yes,” she said in answer to their first question, “that nice Mr. Mercer was here for his money just about an hour ago.”

“Did he seem upset, nervous?”

“No, just quiet. More quiet than usual, I’d say. I gave him the money—four dollars—and he left right away.”

“Did he always come at the same time?”

She blinked her eyes and nodded. “Every other Tuesday morning, first thing. Right after he calls on Mr. Tydings down the street. What’s the matter? Is something wrong?” She looked from one to the other, seeming to smell the odor of panic they’d brought with them to her cluttered apartment.

When they left Rose Sweeney, Leopold sent Fletcher to check on the apartment houses across the street while he continued down the block to the little clapboard cottage owned by Mr. Tydings. In its day, when the area had prided itself on horse-drawn carriages and a good view of the river a few miles below, the cottage had probably been a little gem set among the larger homes. Now, with the area racially mixed, with Polish and Irish and Negro and Puerto Rican workers living in what had originally been the Italian section of town, the cottage had taken on a shabby appearance.

And George Tydings himself was no less shabby. He needed a shave, and his pale thin hands shook with the effects of some early-morning drinking. The bottle, cheap vodka, was still visible on the kitchen table. “What is it?” he asked tiredly. “What’s all the trouble?”

“There’s been a shooting,” Leopold told him, getting directly to it. “The insurance man—James Mercer. I understand he called on you earlier this morning.”

“Sure. He was here. I paid him my money and he left.”

“Nothing unusual?”

“He seemed the same as always.”

“And you saw nothing through your windows?”

“Not a thing.” He wandered back out to the kitchen, seeking his bottle. Leopold watched him weave carefully around a low bookcase that partially blocked the kitchen door. While Tydings poured himself a drink from the bottle, Leopold glanced at the ragged paper-bound books that filled the case. But there was nothing unusual—mysteries, science fiction, a few modern novels by Roth and Bellow and Updike, a book on ventriloquism, and another on bricklaying. In a mystery novel that would have been a clue, and Leopold found his mind concocting strange combinations—a voice from inside a walled-up tomb, with some sort of Poe-esque twist at the end. A ventriloquist kills his wife, then—

“Want a drink?” George Tydings called from the kitchen table.

“Too early in the day,” Leopold said. “You a bricklayer?”

“Huh? Oh, the book. I was going to put a barbecue pit in the back yard. Never got around to it. Neighborhood’s going to pot. So why bother?” He came back in, moving again around the awkwardly placed bookcase.

“Live here alone?”

A nod. “Since my wife left me. She fooled around with the milkman—would you believe it, the milkman?—and I finally tossed her out. Lost my job last week, too.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Tydings seemed suddenly sad and sober. “Had a good job, too. I went to college for two years. Wouldn’t believe it now, would you?”

Leopold let himself out the front door and walked around the back of the cottage, through weeds and grass coming alive with the rains of spring. There was no barbecue pit. He walked farther, to a rear alley, and followed it behind an apartment building to the alley where Mercer’s body had been found. Sergeant Fletcher was there waiting for him, but by now the body had been taken away.

“Find anything, Captain?”

“Probably nothing. Check on a man named Tydings, especially on a wife who’s supposed to have left him recently. And while you’re at it, do a check on Rose Sweeney.” He glanced down at the alley pavement where the body had been lying. “How about you? Anything?”

“Maybe,” Fletcher answered. “You should talk to him.”

“Him? Who?”

“Name’s Kansas Johnson—lives across the street. He was next on the collection list, but Mercer never got there.”

Johnson was standing tall and silent in the street with one of the uniformed patrolmen. “You Kansas Johnson?” Leopold asked.

“That’s me.”

“What did you see?”

“Nothin’.”

Leopold turned to Fletcher. “Well?”

“He had a fight with Mercer last month when he came to collect. Punched him in the jaw.”

Johnson shifted his feet. “Not hard. I just tapped him. He came up behind me in the street and grabbed my shoulder. I didn’t know who it was at first. Hell, I paid him the money and said I was sorry.”

“And you didn’t see him today?”

“No, sir.”

Leopold sighed, then turned to Fletcher. “You’d better get a full statement from him about the incident last month. Then see what else you can find around here. I’m going back downtown.”

It was mid-afternoon when James Mercer’s widow arrived with her brother to identify the body. She was a handsome woman with faded blonde hair and what was still a good figure. Leopold questioned her briefly. It was a part of the job he never liked.

“Mrs. Mercer, did your husband have any enemies?”

“None. Everyone liked him.”

“Did he say anything about a fight he had with a man named Kansas Johnson a few weeks back?”

“No. He didn’t tell me much.”

“Do you have any children?”

“A son away at college.”

The brother cleared his throat. “Mrs. Mercer is highly distraught, Captain. Is all this questioning necessary?”

“I’m sorry,” Leopold agreed. “That will be all. If you will just identify the body—”

Later, when Leopold was alone again, Tommy Gibson strolled into the office. “I guess you’re in on the big bandit hunt too, Captain.”

“If the bandit did it.”

“It sure looks like him from where I stand. Fits him like a glove.”

“Except how did he know Mercer was collecting?”

Tommy Gibson dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. “What the hell! He knew Mercer, or he followed him. I don’t know! I just know I’d bet my badge it’s the rainy-day bandit.”

“Look,” Leopold tried to reason, “would Mercer be the type to jump a man with a gun?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Last month a fellow named Johnson punched him and apparently Mercer didn’t hit back. He doesn’t sound like the sort to go after a man with a gun.”

Sergeant Fletcher came in then, his coat dripping from the renewed rain. “I think we’ll need an ark to get home tonight,” he grumbled. “Hi, Tommy.”

Leopold leaned back in his chair. “What’s the report?”

“I’ve got lots of info, but none of it’s much good. The fight between Mercer and Kansas was strictly a one-punch affair, a misunderstanding. Nothing to it. And Tydings’ wife really left him. She’s living in Boston.”

Leopold nodded. “Anything else?”

“The woman, Rose Sweeney—she’s legally blind.”

“What?”

“Oh, she can see a little with those thick glasses—shapes and things—but the neighbors claim it’s bad enough to get her a pension for being blind.”

“Then she might not have seen the killer if he was right behind Mercer.”

“Probably not,” Fletcher agreed.

Leopold didn’t like it. “What about the bullet?” he asked.

“A .38. It could have come from the type of gun the rainy-day bandit always carries.”

Leopold knew the type of gun. He kept one locked in the glove compartment of his car, though he’d never had to use it. “Anything else?”

“Nothing much. Except that he wasn’t killed where we found the body.”

Leopold wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “What?”

“He wasn’t killed there. Not enough blood. And the soles of his shoes were dry. He was shot somewhere else and dropped there.”

“Oh.”

“What do you think, Captain?”

Leopold reached for a cigarette. He rarely smoked these days, but he needed one just then. “I think that pretty much rules out the rainy-day bandit.”

Tommy Gibson grunted agreement. “It might rule out robbery as a motive, too.”

“He’s right,” Leopold told Fletcher. “A robber wouldn’t bother moving the body.”

“So where are we?”

“Nowhere,” Leopold admitted. “Start checking the usual angles—wife, brother-in-law. And go talk to that Rose Sweeney again. Whatever happened, it was after he left her apartment.”

It was raining harder when Leopold headed home, a little after nine.

At eight o’clock the following morning it was still raining although the weather forecast was optimistic for the afternoon. Leopold had left his lonely apartment early, as was his habit when working on a difficult case. Fletcher had a wife and children to occupy him at home, and Leopold didn’t mind doing a bit of the legwork at times like this. He was well aware that only a political expediency had brought him the rank of captain in the first place. In another time, another city, he would have ranked no higher than Tommy Gibson’s lieutenancy.

But there were certain privileges that came with the rank of captain. If they didn’t extend to a free car wash at the headquarters garage, they did include a police radio installed under the dashboard of his own car. Now, flipping it on through habit, he heard a routine report of a robbery in progress. “All cars, all cars! Masked man observed entering all-night diner at Fifth and Lakefront. Proceed with caution. May be rainy-day bandit.”

Leopold glanced at the street sign and realized he was only four blocks from the scene. He gunned the motor and raced down a side street.

The pavement on Lakefront was slick from the rain as he turned into it on two wheels, almost overturning. He slowed his speed as the diner came into view, then saw the masked figure dart from the doorway. The man saw and recognized him, and now he broke into a run, heading across a field.

Leopold skidded the car to a stop and jumped out, tugging at his service revolver. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted into the morning air.

The masked bandit turned and brought up the familiar nickel-plated revolver. But then suddenly he slipped on the wet grass and the gun roared harmlessly into the air. Leopold knelt and fired once and thought he’d hit the mark, but the bandit scrambled to his feet and was off and running again. Leopold fired once more and missed, then saw a police car pull up on the side street and two officers joined in the chase. It seemed for a moment that the masked man was trapped. They had backed him against a rain-flooded creek that was surely too wide to jump.

But again he fooled them. He launched himself across the water with a flying leap as Leopold and the officers all fired. The three bullets might have been made of putty. The bandit glanced back once, then vanished into the woods beyond the creek.

Leopold shouted at the nearest officer. “Captain Leopold, Homicide! Get back to your car and call for help. Try to head him off on the other side of the woods. We might have a chance of catching him.”

“The guy’s a damned phantom!”

“That’s the reputation he’s got,” Leopold said, brushing off his trousers under the raincoat. “You were just shooting at the rainy-day bandit.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“But I think he dropped something when he fell.” Leopold headed back for the spot in the grass and after a moment’s searching found it. “His gun!” He picked up the revolver carefully, hoping for prints but knowing it was probably useless.

“Think that’ll help identify him, Captain?” one of the officers asked.

“I don’t know. But at least it’ll tell me whether or not he killed a man named James Mercer.”

Fletcher phoned in just after lunch. “Hey, Captain, the sun’s shining out here!”

Leopold grunted. “Where are you—Florida?”

“Would you believe Centerville?”

“I’d believe anything. But why Centerville?”

“Checking on Mercer’s brother-in-law. He lives over here. He’s clear, though. He was in his office all morning till his sister called him about the murder.”

“It was worth checking anyway. When you come in I’ll tell you about my shoot-out with the rainy-day bandit.”

“You got him?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“But I’ll tell you about it.” He hung up and went to look out the window, seeking some break in the clouds to the west. After all, Centerville wasn’t that far away.

“Captain?”

“Yes, Tommy.”

Lieutenant Gibson placed a typed report carefully on Leopold’s desk. “It’s the ballistics check on the bandit’s revolver.”

“Same gun that killed James Mercer?”

“No. Nothing like it.”

When Gibson didn’t move away from the desk, Leopold turned from the window. “Then what’s the trouble, man? Why are you standing there like that?”

“It’s just that—well, I think you must have gotten the weapons confused, Captain.”

“Confused?”

“We checked the ownership on the gun—and it’s registered to you.”

“To me!” Leopold snorted. “That’s impossible! I fired at him with my service revolver. It doesn’t look anything like this weapon.”

But Gibson stood firm. “Nevertheless, Captain, the serial number shows the gun’s been registered to you for three years.”

“Let me see that!” Leopold snatched both report and weapon. The gun did look familiar. Too familiar. He wondered why he hadn’t realized it when he picked it up from the grass. “It was stolen from me,” he said quietly.

Tommy Gibson frowned. “By someone in the department, Captain? I hope you don’t mean—”

The telephone rang and Leopold answered it. “Yes? Leopold here.”

“Captain, we just got a trouble call from a Miss Rose Sweeney on Carter Street. She asked for you.”

“I’m on my way,” Leopold almost shouted. Outside, the sun had finally broken through the clouds.

He parked in a puddle outside her apartment, thankful that a patrol car was already on the scene. Rose Sweeney was inside with the officer, tears rolling from behind the thick glasses that covered her eyes. “He tried to kill me,” she sobbed. “I opened the door and he grabbed at my throat!”

“Who was it, Miss Sweeney?”

“I couldn’t see. Just a shape in the doorway. When I started screaming he ran away.”

“Come on,” Leopold told the officer. “I’ve got a hunch.”

He led the way down the street, aware of the sunlight reflecting on the puddles of water, more aware of the curtains moving in windows as the people of Carter Street watched this latest incident. He recognized Kansas Johnson across the way, ducking into an alley between two apartment buildings.

They reached the little cottage of George Tydings just as he was closing the front door. Leopold hit the door with his shoulder and pushed it open. “Hello again, Mr. Tydings.”

“What do you want now? What is all this?”

“A little conversation, that’s all.” Leopold saw the suitcase half packed on the floor. “You weren’t thinking of taking a trip, were you?”

Then Leopold said to the officer, “Move that bookcase aside and see if there’s a bloodstain on the rug under it.”

George Tydings took a step backward, and then seemed about to spring on them. But all at once he collapsed into sobs. “All right, I did it! I killed him!”

Leopold cleared his throat. “I must warn you of your rights under the law. You need make no statement until your lawyer is present.”

“What difference does it make? I killed him. I dropped the gun down the sewer in the back alley.” He sat down at the table, looking up at Leopold. “How’d you know about the bloodstain?”

“The bookcase was half blocking the kitchen door. It just seemed out of place on my earlier visit. When I learned that Mercer had been killed elsewhere, a hidden bloodstain seemed at least a possibility. You killed him here, then carried his body out the back door and through the alleys to where it was found. I took the route myself the other morning. Once you’d killed him, you hit on a clever gimmick that almost worked. You knew he collected from Rose Sweeney next, and you knew she was almost blind—could distinguish only shapes. So you went there, pretending to be Mercer, and collected her money. You wanted it to appear that the killing took place after he left your cottage. You’re interested in ventriloquism, so I assume you could change your voice enough to approximate Mercer’s. Besides, she said he was quiet that day. Only you began to worry that she’d recognized you after all, and so you tried to kill her just now.”

Tydings had buried his head in his hands. “You don’t know how it was,” he sobbed.

“I think I can guess,” Leopold said. “You stole the collection money to make it look like the work of the rainy-day bandit, but in reality your motive was quite different. You told us your wife was fooling around with the milkman. It’s not too far-fetched to suppose she was fooling around with the insurance man too when he dropped by. Perhaps he admitted it when you accused him, or perhaps you didn’t need an admission to believe the worst and kill him.”

“Yes,” Tydings mumbled. “Yes.” Leopold wasn’t sure which question he was answering, which guilt he was admitting. But it really didn’t matter any more.

Tommy Gibson came in the following morning while Leopold and Fletcher were having their morning coffee. “You did mighty nice work on that Mercer killing, Captain.”

“That type’s never difficult. He was almost anxious to confess. I’m surprised he didn’t admit it the first time I questioned him.”

Gibson nodded. “I’m sort of sorry he didn’t turn out to be my bandit, though. We’re as much at a dead end as ever on that.”

Leopold smiled. “Pray for sunshine, and that he doesn’t find another gun. Maybe he’ll know when his luck has run out.”

“What do you think he does on days when the sun shines?” Fletcher asked.

“If we knew that—” Leopold began.

And then suddenly he knew.

Sam the clean-up man was waiting to take the car from Leopold when the Captain wheeled it into line at the car wash. “Twice in one week, Captain! The rain really gets ’em dirty.”

“Sure does,” Leopold agreed, sliding out of the seat.

Sam was halfway in when he saw the nickel-plated revolver lying on the passenger’s seat. He hesitated, then looked up at Leopold. “What’s this?”

“I think you dropped that, Sam, after you tried to shoot me with it.”

Sam cursed and lunged for the gun, but Leopold landed on top of him. They tumbled out of the car together, but Sam broke free and started for the rear entrance, then saw Fletcher and Gibson coming in that way. He turned and ran down the track that carried the cars through the mammoth washing cycle.

Leopold felt the sudsy water hit his face as he pounded after the fleeing man. He caught him with a flying tackle just by the big soft rollers that enveloped the cars. They skidded together in the soapy water, then banged against the hot-air drying vents. Sam made one last effort to break free, but a gush of rinse water threw him off balance. He skidded, went down hard, and then Fletcher and Gibson and Leopold were all on top of him.

“Too much water,” Fletcher grinned as he snapped on the handcuffs. “And I thought you liked the rain so much.”

Sam glared at Leopold and spat. “How’d you get me, copper?”

“You were using my gun all the time. I had it locked in my glove compartment and hadn’t even looked at it in months. I was wondering who could have stolen it without leaving traces of a break-in, and then I remembered you, Sam. Every week you took the car from me and started it through the wash. It was a simple job often seconds for you to remove the bunch of keys from the ignition, unlock the glove compartment, take what you wanted, and lock it again. You could have done it without even shifting your position much behind the wheel. I suppose you did it to hundreds of cars while you emptied their ashtrays and cleaned their inside windows. When you stole the gun from me, that must have given you the idea to go on to bigger things.”

“I should have killed you yesterday.”

“You tried hard enough. But you also helped give yourself away. You recognized my car and broke into a run. Very few people would have recognized my private car, Sam. But of course you knew it well.”

“So that’s what the rainy-day bandit did on sunny days,” Fletcher said as they nudged Sam into the car for the trip downtown. “The car wash was closed when it rained, but you always had to be here working when the weather was good.”

Leopold tossed his coat into the back seat. “I’m soaked to the skin, and I still didn’t get my car washed. Robbery detail is too wet a business, Tommy. From now on I stick to homicides.”

(1970)

The Athanasia League

IN THE BEGINNING IT seemed like only another murder case. Captain Leopold slid into the front seat next to Fletcher and asked, “You know where the Athanasia League is?” Sergeant Fletcher scratched his head. “The old Seaview Rest Home down by the Sound?”

Leopold nodded. “That’s the place. Let’s get out there fast. It sounds like a homicide.”

Once under motion, he relaxed a little, allowing himself the luxury of one of the cigarettes he’d been trying to give up. “The talk is you’re up for promotion, Fletcher.”

“I took the civil service exam for lieutenant last week. I guess it’s between me and Tommy Gibson. We’re the only ones who took the test.”

Leopold could see that Fletcher was both proud and hopeful. He hoped for his sake, and the department’s, that he made it. Fletcher was a good detective—a bit plodding at times, and unimaginative—but good. Tommy Gibson, on the other hand, was a tough cop of the old school, not above taking a bit of graft or pushing a suspect down a flight of stairs. He didn’t deserve to make lieutenant.

The whole thing had started with a decision higher up that Homicide and Armed Robbery Divisions were to be combined under the general heading of Violent Crimes. Captain Leopold was to be in charge of the entire show, with a newly-appointed lieutenant to assist him. Fletcher of Homicide and Gibson of Armed Robbery were the logical contenders for the promotion, since both had held the rank of sergeant for something like eight years.

“Well, good luck anyway,” Leopold said. “I wish I could put in a word for you.”

“Thanks, Captain.” Fletcher turned the car onto the North Shore Road and slowed a bit. “That’s it up ahead, isn’t it?”

Leopold nodded. “That’s it, yes.”

The last time he’d visited the stark, rambling mansion among the trees had been when the aunt of a close friend had been dying there. It was still a rest home in those days, a bit grim but with a certain sterile efficiency about the operation. A little more than a year ago, Seaview had bowed to rising costs and increased state regulation by closing its doors. The place and much of its equipment had been purchased by a group called the Athanasia League.

Very little was known about the Athanasia League, and for a time neighbors speculated about what went on behind the high picket fence that surrounded the place. Finally a reporter had gained admittance and written a story about the League and its half-charlatan leader, Dr. Raymond Libby. Looking in news photographs like a cross between a hippie and a hypnotist, the bearded, sharp-eyed Dr. Libby explained it all quite simply. The Athanasia League was a group of people striving for deathlessness, for immortality. With the help of some secret medical treatment by Dr. Libby, they proposed to live forever.

“Live forever!” Fletcher snorted as he turned in the gate.

“Apparently one of them didn’t,” Leopold said.

The one who didn’t was an elderly woman named Mrs. Peachtree, whose wrinkled face and gnarled hands seemed peacefully ignorant of the violence which had taken her life. She was sprawled across her narrow, unmade bed, a wide-bladed carving knife plunged deep into her heart. There seemed to be blood everywhere, on her nightgown, on the walls, on the dirty white rug that covered the floor. It was a messy killing, and Leopold had never liked messy ones.

“Tell me about it,” he said to Dr. Libby. The doctor looked exactly like his pictures. Leopold was aware of the beard and the eyes and little else. He could imagine this man on a speaker’s platform somewhere, molding audiences with the force of his words. That was why the doctor’s first words startled him so much. The voice was cracked and rasping, like an old and worn record, and it carried a hint of accent that Leopold couldn’t identify.

“What is there to tell?” he replied to the question. “She went to bed at her usual hour last evening. This morning, when she didn’t come down to breakfast, Nurse Morgan checked her room and found her like this.”

“Nurse Morgan?” Leopold turned to a slim young girl with pink cheeks. Her uniform was starched and spotless, and she was the first person under forty he’d seen since entering the place. “Can you add anything?”

“No. I…I found her like that and I screamed. Then I called Dr. Libby on the phone.”

Others were arriving with cameras and equipment, beginning the familiar routines of homicide investigation. Leopold stepped aside to give them room, and asked, “Did she have any enemies here?”

Dr. Libby spread his palms. “Does a sweet old lady of seventy-eight have any enemies?”

“Perhaps she does if she’s going to live forever.”

The doctor smiled behind his beard. “Ah, you know about us, then?”

“Not as much as I want to.” He glanced sideways at the body on the bed. “Where can we talk?”

“My office. This way.”

“Fletcher, take charge of things here.”

“Right, Captain.”

Leopold followed the bearded doctor down a long white hallway, past a sunlit recreation room where some two dozen elderly people huddled together in whispered confusion. One of them called to Dr. Libby as he passed, and he paused long enough to say a few words of consolation.

“It’s a terrible thing,” he told Leopold, once they’d gained the privacy of his office. “These people came here to escape death, and it pursues them as surely as Poe’s masked specter of the plague.”

Leopold glanced around, taking in the framed hunting prints and the filing cabinet and the multicolored wall charts. There was something missing, and it took him only a moment to realize what it was. “Dr. Libby, I don’t see your medical degree hanging on the wall.”

“No, I am not a medical doctor. I am a doctor of metaphysics, with a degree obtained in Austria just prior to the war. However, I have a great knowledge of the body’s ills. My studies led me long ago to conclude that immortality on earth is the body’s natural condition, that death in all its guises is an obscenity which can no longer be tolerated.”

“How many people do you have here, Doctor?”

“The League has twenty-seven members at present, counting the late Mrs. Peachtree.”

“By members you mean patients.”

“Here they are members.”

“Meaning they pay dues?”

Dr. Libby sighed, showing a bit of Germanic impatience. “When a person enters the Athanasia League, he signs over all his worldly possessions to the League, for the period of his stay here. It’s not an uncommon practice in this country, you know. A number of rest homes—especially those operated by the county or by various charities—do the same thing. Of course if a person chooses to leave us, his possessions are returned, with only a nominal fee withheld to cover the period of the stay.”

“How many have left you?”

“Three, always because of family pressures. Most of our members are quite happy here. The amount of money that they give is a small price to pay for everlasting life.”

“You’ve had no deaths?”

“None.” He glanced at the door, remembering. “Until today. My treatment does not insure against the violent death.”

“Let’s get back to Mrs. Peachtree, shall we? Were there any enemies?”

“Certainly not! In a community where life is everlasting, one cannot afford the luxury of enemies.”

“Then you think someone broke in and killed her?”

“I…” He hesitated, stroking his beard. “Frankly, Captain, the crime baffles me. No one here would have done it, and yet I cannot believe the killer was an outsider, unknown to Mrs. Peachtree.”

“Why is that?”

“The telephone by her bed has a special button that rings in my room. Something to give the members confidence, really. They like to know I’m on call, day or night. Mrs. Peachtree did not press that button.”

“At least,” Leopold said, “it would seem that she knew her assailant. Her face shows no signs of fright.” He thought about it. “Did she have a family?”

“No. Her husband is dead, and I understand there were no children.”

“Who was her closest friend here? Among the other patients?”

“Members,” Dr. Libby corrected.

“Members, then.”

“She was friendly with a Mr. Riley. They sometimes sat together in the garden.”

“No one else?”

“Not really. We are all a family here, and so we know everyone.”

“All right. I want to see Riley. And the nurse who found her, Nurse Morgan.”

Dr. Libby rose from behind his desk. “There won’t be any trouble about this, will there?”

“Just the usual amount of trouble in a murder case.”

Leopold went back down the hall to the room where he’d left Fletcher. The body was gone now, but the blood remained, so much of it.

“Anything, Fletcher?”

“I was looking for you, Captain.”

“What about?”

“This Mrs. Peachtree. Know who she was?”

“Who?”

“The widow of Augustus M. Peachtree, former mayor of this fine city.”

Leopold grunted. “That was a long time ago.”

“Twenty years, but still I think it might be an angle.”

“Check it out. Old political rivals, things like that. Seems to me I remember a bit of scandal about old Peachtree.”

“Right, Captain.”

Leopold stared down at the bed, at the blood. It took a lot of hatred to kill an old woman like that; a lot of hatred—or fear.

David Riley was a slim, white-haired man who carried himself with a youthful vigor that didn’t fit the lined face and cloudy eyes. He was not the sort to be sitting down, not now, and so Leopold walked with him in the garden.

“You knew her well, Mr. Riley?”

“Yes, I suppose you could say I did.”

“Could I ask your age?”

“I’m seventy-one. Younger than Helen, but then we weren’t planning marriage.”

“That was her name—Helen?”

The old man stared at him. “Is death so impersonal these days that we even lose our identities?”

“I just hadn’t heard her name,” Leopold said, feeling like a fool to be put suddenly on the defensive by this man. “If death were impersonal I wouldn’t be here, trying to find out who killed her.”

“I’m sorry. Go ahead with your questions.”

“Dr. Libby says you were her closest friend here. What sort of woman was she?”

“She was a charming woman, with not an enemy in the world. No one would want to kill her.”

“Did she keep money in her room?”

“A little change for candy and an occasional treat when we went into town. The League takes care of our other needs.”

“Is the hope for immortality worth it?”

David Riley smiled. “I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t believe that quack Libby for one minute.”

“Then why do you stay?”

“I came on a visit and liked the place. Maybe now I don’t like it so much anymore. Maybe now I’ll leave.”

“What sort of treatment does Dr. Libby give?”

“A shot of vitamins every afternoon, and a little exercise. Spiritual readings at night. He’s got them all conned.”

“The people here are wealthy?”

“The poor don’t usually want to live forever, Captain. It’s an upper-class idea, sort of like making yourself into a god.”

“He’s been here a year and no one has died.”

David Riley shrugged. “Libby’s been lucky. Oh, I’m not saying there’s nothing to his treatment, but he plays the odds. He only accepts people who seem in reasonably good health. He gets control of their money, and lives off the interest.”

“How much money?”

Another shrug. “Twenty thousand dollars each would be better than half a million, and some bring much more than that. Immortality is expensive these days.”

“The ones who leave get it back?”

“Yes.”

“What about the ones who die?”

“Nobody dies.”

“Of course. I forgot.” Leopold stared bleakly at the drooping roses as they rounded a bend in the path. He didn’t like this case. He didn’t like it at all. “Where’d he get the name, Athanasia?”

“Out of the dictionary. It’s not for St. Athanasius.”

“Who killed Helen Peachtree, Mr. Riley?”

“Do you think I know?”

“I think you might have an idea.”

He bent to pluck a dead leaf from a low bush by the path. “No, no, I don’t. I understand she was stabbed with a kitchen knife. If it’s from our kitchen, it would seem to indicate that a member of the League killed her.”

“Did she have any regular visitors?”

“One man, a friend of her late husband. He came sometimes on Sundays.”

“You don’t recall his name?”

Riley hesitated. “No, I don’t.”

“Did she go out much, into town?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you find that odd?”

Riley thought about it. “Not really. You have to understand what it means to be the widow of a mayor, or a governor, or a president. I imagine even a walk along Main Street reminded her of her late husband. I think that’s why she joined the League—not so much for immortality as for escape.”

They’d circled the gardens twice, and Leopold saw no point in taking the route again. “Thank you, Mr. Riley. I’m sure I’ll have more questions later, but that should do it for now.”

“I’ll be happy to assist in any way. She was a fine woman.”

Leopold left him and went searching for Sergeant Fletcher, but they told him only that Fletcher had gone downtown, following a hot lead. Leopold went in search of Nurse Morgan, but for the moment she, too, was among the missing. He caught a ride back downtown with the precinct cops.

Fletcher didn’t turn up for the rest of the day, and when Leopold finally got some news of him, it wasn’t good. The call came from someone in the mayor’s office at City Hall, creating apprehension.

“Captain Leopold?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Mayor Carter’s executive assistant, Jim Bingham. There seems to be some trouble with one of your men, a Sergeant Fletcher.”

“Fletcher’s one of my best men! What’s up?”

“He’s making a nuisance of himself, Captain. Asking questions. He’s trying to question the mayor about a murder investigation, of all things.”

“Is he there now?”

“He was. Mayor Carter refused to talk to him and he left, but he said he’d be back. Really, Captain, if you don’t have better control of your men…”

“I’ll see about it,” Leopold said, and hung up.

A moment later, Fletcher walked through the door. He was red-faced and obviously angry. “Captain, I have to talk to you!”

“Let me do the talking for a minute. Where’ve you been?”

“Following a lead. Do you know that old Mrs. Peachtree had a male visitor out there almost every Sunday? And do you know who that male visitor was?”

Leopold couldn’t resist a smile. “Mayor Carter?”

Fletcher was thunderstruck. “How in hell did you know that?”

“The phone’s been ringing.”

“You mean that fag, Bingham? Has he been calling here?”

“I think he’s after your scalp, Fletcher. Sit down and cool off. Now, who told you about Mayor Carter?”

“The nurse who found the body, Naomi Morgan.”

“First names already? What will Mrs. Fletcher say?”

“Nuts, Captain! Be serious for a minute. I’m burned about this. Nurse Morgan identified the weekly visitor as Mayor Carter, and that certainly seemed like reason enough to ask him a few questions.”

Leopold scowled and said nothing for a moment. He wanted to back Fletcher, but he had to admit that the sergeant might be overstepping his authority. Finally, reluctantly, he asked, “You can’t really think Carter’s involved, can you? Do you imagine he sneaked out there in the dead of night, got into the building without being seen, found the knife in the kitchen, and went up to her room and killed her like that?”

Fletcher shifted his feet. “If he’s so innocent, why won’t he answer a few questions?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Leopold said with a sigh. “You just cool off.”

He hadn’t liked the case from the beginning, and he was liking it less all the time.

It was the following morning before Leopold managed to get an appointment with Mayor Carter. During the night, a number of routine events had taken place. The murder weapon had been definitely traced to the kitchen of the Athanasia League building, which seemed to indicate that the killing was an inside job. Balancing this, however, was evidence that a door in the rear of the building had a broken pane of glass near the knob. Someone could have entered from outside—or a clever murderer within the building might have wanted it to look that way.

Also on Leopold’s desk that morning was the autopsy report, the pages of technically-worded jargon that marked the end of a life in the most impersonal terms. A single wound, straight to the heart, had killed Helen Peachtree, and the knife had been left in the wound. She’d died somewhere around four in the morning, as nearly as could be determined, and there were no signs of a struggle, none of the scratches or bruises one often found on the skin of murder victims. He’d simply entered the room (if indeed it was a “he”) and killed her. Perhaps she’d awakened in the final moments, since her body was on top of the covers, but she’d offered no resistance.

Leopold took it all with him to Mayor Carter’s office, mulling the facts in his mind, but before he could see the mayor he had to confront Jim Bingham, executive assistant and general hatchet man.

Bingham was tall and smirking, just enough of a dandy in his way to bring forth the epithet “fag” from the usually easygoing Fletcher. He’d been Carter’s assistant for two years, and made few friends around City Hall in that period. Leopold hardly knew the man, but couldn’t really say he liked him. “You’re Leopold,” Bingham said now by way of greeting, glancing up from his desk with only moderate interest.

“That’s right. I called for an appointment with Mayor Carter.”

Bingham put on his favorite smirk. “I’m glad to see the Homicide Squad has acquired some manners since yesterday.”

“Sergeant Fletcher was doing his job.”

Bingham blinked and took his time about answering, searching out just the right words. “I was on the phone to the police commissioner this morning, Captain. Fletcher is one of two men in line for that lieutenancy.”

“I know.”

“He’s not going to get it like this.”

Leopold, angered, tried to keep his voice under control. “You’d penalize a man for doing his job and promote someone like Gibson?”

“It’s the commissioner’s decision,” Bingham answered with a shrug. “We occasionally give him suggestions, though.”

“I want to see Carter,” Leopold said. He could feel the angry flush on his face.

“And so you will. This way.”

Jim Bingham led the way into Mayor Carter’s office, an ornate but businesslike room that looked down on the city’s Civic Center Plaza. The mayor was in his chair, a man of sixty-odd years who seemed extremely vulnerable at that moment. He was a good speaker and probably an honest man, but Leopold had never voted for him.

“Have a seat, Captain,” he said. “I’m sorry about yesterday’s misunderstanding with Sergeant Fletcher.”

Leopold sat down, and noticed that Bingham did likewise. The mayor was not to be left alone with his inquisitor. “I understand, sir, that you were acquainted with Mrs. Peachtree, the murdered woman.”

Mayor Carter leaned back in his swivel chair. “Oh my, yes! I knew her late husband, of course, and I advised her on some financial matters following his death.”

“Did you advise her about joining the Athanasia League?”

The mayor sighed. “I frankly believe that Raymond Libby is nothing but a con man, prying money out of aging people afraid to face the prospect of death. We’ve investigated him, and we’ll continue to investigate him. However, his literature on the League is worded in such a way that it’s difficult to prove fraud. He doesn’t actually promise eternal life, only—as he puts it—the pursuit of a deathless condition.” The mayor sighed. “Unfortunately, for women like Helen, that is enough.”

“There must be some way for the law to close him down.”

“His treatment is only part of the League’s function. At times it takes on many of the aspects of a religious cult, and that’s where we’re on dangerous ground trying to close him. Besides, it’s difficult to shut him down when two dozen League members sing his praises. I think our best bet is to catch him practicing medicine without a license. He gives treatments, therapy, occasional blood transfusions. That may be his weak point.”

Leopold nodded. The interview was going smoother than he’d expected, but now he reached the crucial part. “What about the dead woman? I understand you visited her there every Sunday.”

Mayor Carter smiled. “I may have missed a few. But I was the only one she had in the world. I felt I owed it to her, and to her late husband.”

“If it’s as simple as all that, why did you refuse to see Fletcher yesterday?”

“Because he approached Jim as if I were a suspect of some sort, as if I might have killed her. Good heavens, man, you can’t believe that! Only some sort of monster would want to kill a woman as kind and gentle as Helen!”

“Is there anything in the past, Mayor, that might have produced a motive for her murder? Some long-forgotten political scandal?”

“Certainly not!”

“And she never indicated to you any fear for her life?”

“Captain, she joined the Athanasia League because she feared for her life. But it wasn’t violence she feared, only old age.”

“All right,” Leopold said, rising from his chair. “I may want to talk with you again.”

“Any time, Captain.”

Jim Bingham showed him out, all smiles and handshakes. Leopold couldn’t help feeling that he’d been conned by a smooth-talking politician.

He drove back to the Athanasia League to talk with Nurse Morgan, who’d found the body. She was still as slim and pink-cheeked as when Leopold had first seen her, but now, knowing she answered to the somewhat exotic name of Naomi, he viewed her in a new light.

“You have a nice first name,” he said, trying to ease her obvious nervousness.

“Naomi was the mother-in-law of Ruth, in the Bible. My mother gave us all biblical names.”

“I hadn’t thought of it in the biblical sense.”

“No one ever does,” she said, brushing the wisps of blonde hair from her eyes.

“You found the body. Tell me about it.”

“I told it all yesterday. She didn’t come to breakfast and I went to check on her. I found her like that. I called Dr. Libby at once.”

“Does Dr. Libby give medical treatment here?”

“Not really. Nothing that’s against the law. The prospectus for the League explains that he’s not a medical doctor.”

“He thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”

She shot him a look of mild contempt. “Dr. Libby is performing a great work here. He’s giving these people hope.”

“An empty hope.”

“But it is hope, nevertheless.”

“What about Mrs. Peachtree? Was she happy here? Or, perhaps, did she threaten to leave?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Did Libby kill her to keep her from leaving?”

“Dr. Libby wouldn’t hurt a fly! He’s keeping these people alive, not killing them! Mrs. Peachtree was happy here, just like everyone else. There was no thought of leaving.”

“What about David Riley? She was friendly with him. Might he have killed her?”

“Your friends don’t kill you,” Nurse Morgan answered firmly.

“Unfortunately, they often do.”

“That’s a cynical view of the world.”

“Cops are often cynics,” he admitted. “She had a visitor every Sunday. You know about that?”

“Yes. It was the mayor. I told Sergeant Fletcher.”

“David Riley told me he didn’t know the visitor.”

“Maybe he didn’t. I knew him. I saw his picture enough at election time.”

“Did you ever see them fight or argue about anything?”

“Certainly not! Mrs. Peachtree was a gentle old lady. She never raised her voice.”

“Who would have killed someone like that?”

Naomi Morgan raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Nobody. Mrs. Peachtree didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

Dr. Libby entered the room where they were talking. His beard was neatly trimmed and his eyes were as sharp as ever, but there was a certain unsteadiness about him. Leopold wondered if he’d been drinking. “Captain, there’s a phone call for you. They said it was urgent.”

“All right,” Leopold said with a sigh. “Thank you, Miss Morgan. I may want to continue this later.” He rose and followed Libby down the hall to his office. “How are the other patients taking it?” he asked the bearded man.

“As well as I could expect. We’re all convinced it was an outsider, a burglar.”

“But nothing was taken.”

“Perhaps the act of killing frightened him away.”

They turned into Libby’s office. “What will you do with Mrs. Peach-tree’s money? I understand she left no relatives.”

“It will be given to charity, as she suggested. I believe she has a will to that effect. You must realize, Captain, that I want no personal financial gain from the League.”

“Sure. It’s like a religion to you,” Leopold said sarcastically.

“Exactly. And I wish you wouldn’t use that cynical tone of voice.”

Leopold grunted and picked up the phone. Fletcher’s voice came to him, bleak and agitated. “I’m afraid there’s trouble, Captain. I thought you’d want to hear it first from me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I dug out some old information on a scandal back in Mayor Peachtree’s day, something which might have implicated his wife and Carter. I went to Carter’s office about it and had a little scuffle with Bingham.”

“How bad a scuffle?”

“He pushed me and I pushed back. He fell down.”

“Stay in my office. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

When Leopold arrived, Tommy Gibson was lounging near the door to Leopold’s office, casually smoking a cigarette while he glanced over some reports. “I hear your boy’s in big trouble this time, Captain. Guess I’ll be moving over here when the promotions come through.”

“Don’t count on it,” Leopold growled.

He slammed his office door and faced Sergeant Fletcher. “Now tell me what in hell you did.”

Fletcher shifted uneasily in his chair. “It happened about eighteen years ago, when Peachtree was mayor. You said yesterday you thought you remembered some old scandal.”

“What was it?”

“Helen Peachtree had a brother in the trucking business. His partner was the present Mayor Carter. They were one of the first truck-leasing firms in the east, and they leased trucks to the city for garbage pickup, extra ones for when the city trucks needed repairs.”

“Go on.”

“Well, there was some scandal about it. The city was paying more than they should have, and they were paying for trucks they never even saw. Just about that time, Helen Peachtree’s brother died of cancer, and the blame got put on him. Carter stayed in the clear.”

“You think the old lady decided to tell the truth now, and Carter killed her? We’re back to him sneaking around at night with a knife, and somehow I don’t buy that.”

“How about Bingham, then?” Fletcher suggested. “He does all the mayor’s other dirty work.”

Leopold shook his head. “I’d like it for your sake, Fletcher. It would get you off the hook. But I still don’t buy it. Why would she decide to talk now, after all these years?”

“She was getting old, thinking about dying.”

“Not in a place like the Athanasia League, she wasn’t.”

The telephone rang, and Leopold knew before he answered that it would be trouble. “Yes?”

“This is Mayor Carter, Captain.”

“Oh, yes, Mayor.”

“In the event you haven’t heard the news, your Sergeant Fletcher assaulted Jim Bingham in my office this afternoon, only a few hours after you offered me your assurances that—”

“I offered you no assurances, Mayor, except perhaps that I’d solve this case.”

“Are you going to bring departmental charges against Fletcher?”

“I understand it was only a shoving match, and that Bingham shoved first. You have my personal apologies, Mayor, but there will be no charges against Fletcher.”

The line was silent for the space of several heartbeats. Then Carter said, “He’s up for promotion, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“You can tell him to forget about that.”

“A civil service test, Mayor? If his score is higher than Tommy Gibson’s—”

“Personal conduct affects the choice, as you well know, Captain.”

Leopold stared bleakly across the desk at Fletcher. Somehow he couldn’t imagine feeling the same close companionship toward Gibson and his two-bit chiseling. “What about the trucking scandal, Mayor?”

“That’s old hat. Helen’s brother was fully responsible. I was only a silent partner and had no management responsibilities. Someone tried to bring it up when I ran for mayor the first time, and he was laughed out of the newspapers. My hands are clean, Captain.”

“Still, you wouldn’t want the talk revived.”

“Why should it be revived?”

“Look,” Leopold said, dropping his voice a notch, “keep Bingham under control and give me another twenty-four hours on the case. If I crack it, and everyone’s happy, then we’ll talk about Fletcher’s promotion.”

Carter hesitated, then answered, “Fair enough—but keep him the hell away from here or I’ll have him back pounding a beat!”

Leopold hung up and faced Fletcher. “I’ve got you off the hook for the moment at any rate.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“Now, all I have to do is find Helen Peachtree’s killer by tomorrow.”

Leopold went back to the Athanasia League in the morning, strolling along the sunlit walks among the residents and the nurses. He had to admit there was a hopefulness here, a sense of joy he’d never seen in a rest home or the county hospital. Perhaps they really did think they’d live forever. If so, Dr. Libby had accomplished something after all.

Leopold paused beside the bench where David Riley sat reading the morning newspaper. “May I join you?”

The old eyes came up to meet his. “Certainly, Captain. Good to see you again. How’s the investigation progressing?”

“I’m wrapping it up today.”

“You know who killed Helen?”

Leopold didn’t answer at once. He let the gentle morning breeze play across his face. It was almost enough to make any man feel young again, feel the terrible longings of immortality. “It was the motive that had me stumped, and it still has me stumped to some extent. But I got to thinking about a story I read once, along time ago. It was called The Suicide Club, and it was written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Have you ever read it?”

David Riley smiled, brushing back his thin white hair. “You think we came here to commit suicide? You think we meet by midnight and draw straws, or have a lottery like in that Shirley Jackson story? Helen Peachtree lost, so she was the first to die?”

Stated in the cold light of morning, the idea was foolish, and Leopold looked away. “We have to consider everything,” he said.

“There is no suicide club, Captain, nor any midnight lottery of old people. The Athanasia League was founded for life, not death. I told you the other day that I thought Libby was a quack, but he’s a sincere quack. He lives off the interest from the money people bring, and in return we get a little joy, a little hope. I like it here. I hope you won’t try to change it.”

“Mr. Riley, I asked you a question the other day. I’ll ask it again. Who killed Helen Peachtree?”

A shadow crossed the old man’s face. Some of the vigor seemed to drain from his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he answered finally. “But I miss her.”

Leopold walked along a bit further, until he found Nurse Morgan playing chess with an elderly man. She saw him coming and excused herself to join him. “I thought you might have more questions,” she said.

“Only one, really.”

She eyed him shyly. “What’s that?”

“When we arrived the other day, your uniform was spotless, yet the room was covered with blood. There was blood everywhere. Why wasn’t there any on your uniform?”

“I didn’t touch anything. I saw her and screamed, and called Dr. Libby. Being a nurse makes you careful.”

“I suppose so,” he admitted.

“Have you found the killer?”

He was staring down at the red of the roses along the path, remembering the blood. So much blood. “What?”

“I asked if you’d found the killer.”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “Yes, I think we have.”

Dr. Raymond Libby was staring out the window when Leopold entered his office. He turned, startled, and then relaxed. “Have you completed your investigation, Captain?”

“Yes, I think I have.”

“I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill that old lady.”

“I had the same trouble, Doctor. I couldn’t imagine it. There was no motive, no real motive. Just a woman dead, in a blood-splattered room.”

Libby’s eyes flickered. “Yes.”

“There was all that blood, Doctor. Too much blood, really.”

“What are you trying to say, Captain?”

“That no one killed Helen Peachtree. That there is no murderer.”

The bearded man frowned. “With a knife in her chest, you say there is no murderer?”

“You plunged that knife into her chest, doctor, moments after Helen Peachtree died of a quite natural heart attack.”

“That would be difficult to prove.”

“Not so difficult, once I started thinking about all that blood. There was only one wound in the body, and the knife was still in that wound. Under those circumstances, there should have been next to no external bleeding, not till the knife was removed. Admittedly, the shape of the blade is important here, but in any event there could never have been blood splattered around the room as we found it. It hardly seemed likely that it was the killer’s blood, since it would have been a difficult wound to conceal. Then I remembered hearing from Mayor Carter that you gave blood transfusions out here. Whole blood, splattered about the room, would give just the effect we found.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because you’re not a medical doctor. Helen Peachtree managed to phone you when she was having her attack. You hurried down and arrived seconds too late. You saw her dead there, the first member of the League ever to die, and in a mad moment you thought you had to hide her death. You hurried to the kitchen and returned with a carving knife, because you needed a wide blade that would do the most damage to the heart and hide the telltale signs of a coronary. You reasoned that a knife in the heart just minutes after death would fool even the medical examiner as to the true cause of death. And you were right, to a point. But when the wound bled very little you panicked. You probably remembered that dead bodies don’t bleed, and you never thought that it was your knife in the wound that was holding back the blood. You got a pint of whole blood and splattered it around, overdoing it. A true doctor would surely have known better.”

“But the medical examiner did miss it, didn’t he?”

“He must have been tired that day. A knife in the heart, and no question of anything else. He breezed through it. I’m sure a more careful examination would have revealed the closure of the coronary artery, or its branches. The knife wound couldn’t have destroyed all that. Still, in an elderly person, it wouldn’t have been conclusive. Who could really say, if the knife wound came only minutes later?”

“Granted this might have happened, why must it be me who did it?”

“Who else had a motive, or opportunity? Her phone had a direct line to you. The whole blood might be locked up, but you had a key. You, Doctor, you. And later, you would have broken the window in the rear door, to point toward an outside job, because even the horror of a knife murder in the building was a lesser evil than the horror of a natural death. You didn’t want to lose all that money you were living on. Though it does make me wonder what you would have done when the second one died.”

“It wasn’t the money,” he said, very softly. “Not the money.”

“What, then?”

“You’ve seen them, Captain. You’ve talked to the ones like Riley. Can you doubt that I was doing them some good?”

“With a promise of eternal life?” Leopold asked. “I don’t know. That’s a question for the philosophers. I’m only a cop. What would you have done when the second one died?”

“The first was the hardest, Captain. Maybe I was starting to believe they’d live forever. Maybe I was starting to believe my own sales talk. I only know that when I found her dead I seemed to go crazy.”

Leopold sighed and stretched out his hand. “Come along. Dr. Libby. I’ll have to take you downtown and see what we can charge you with.”

At least, he mused, maybe Fletcher could still have his promotion. For David Riley and the other members of the Athanasia League, he had not even that much hope to offer.

(1970)

End of the Day

SERGEANT FLETCHER POKED HIS head around the corner of Leopold’s office doorway. “Captain, I have Mrs. Fleming here, if you can see her now.”

“Send her in,” Captain Leopold said. He turned to stare out the window at the warm June rain so that he would not have to see her face as she entered. There were moments when he hated his job, and this was one of them.

“Captain Leopold—”

He swiveled in his chair, seeing a blonde young woman of moderate good looks. He’d known Iris Fleming slightly, meeting her at department parties and civic functions. This morning she looked tired, and her finely chiseled face showed the lines of age that usually were hidden. “Yes, Mrs. Fleming, sit right down! Sorry to see you under such tragic circumstances.”

“Is it true, what they say?”

“I’m afraid it is, Mrs. Fleming. Your husband shot and killed a man over on the Cross-County Expressway.”

“Can I see him?”

Leopold shuffled the papers on his desk. “Certainly. But I wish you’d give me a few minutes first. Roger is a detective sergeant under my command. He has killed a person, apparently without any justification. That’s bad for my department, bad for the entire police force.”

“I’m sure Roger had a good reason for what he did.”

“If he did, he hasn’t told us yet. The dead man’s car was parked off the road for some reason we haven’t yet established. Your husband, who was off duty at the time, pulled off the road behind him. He walked over to the driver’s side of the victim’s car and fired two shots from his service revolver, apparently without even speaking to the other man. Several passing motorists saw the whole thing, and turned off the expressway to call the police. A patrol car reached the scene within five minutes and found your husband’s car just pulling away. He offered no resistance, but he refused to talk about the killing.”

“Are you so sure he did it?”

“In this case his silence is almost proof enough. His gun had been fired twice, and they’re checking it in ballistics now. Several passing motorists identified him, and his car.”

“Who’s the man he’s supposed to have killed?”

Leopold glanced at the report before him. “We don’t have an identification yet. The car had Ohio license plates. Do you know anyone from Ohio?”

She shook her head. “No one. Perhaps Roger had seen this man committing a crime, and had chased him. Isn’t that possible?”

“I’d like to think so, although it would hardly excuse his killing the man in cold blood. But there’s been no report of a crime, and the dead man had no weapon on him.”

“And Roger has said nothing about it?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Fleming. I’m hoping he’ll talk to you. I’ll go in with you, and then I’ll leave you two alone.”

He escorted her down the back hall to the little Interrogation Room where Detective Sergeant Roger Fleming, smoking a cigarette, sat at the scarred wooden table. Leopold, Fletcher, and Fleming had conducted a hundred or more interrogations in this room over the past few years, and now for the first time, facing Fleming across the table, Leopold realized the utter loneliness of the place. The walls were bare except for a framed photograph of the President which concealed a tiny microphone. The table and four chairs were the room’s only furnishings.

“Hello, Roger,” Leopold said. It was the first time he’d seen the man since his arrest.

“Hello, Captain. Sorry about all this.” He turned to his wife then, hugging her in silence and sighing softly as he finally released her.

“Do you want to make a statement, Roger?”

“No, sir.”

“Why did you do it? Why in hell did you do it?”

“I have nothing to say, Captain. I’m sorry.”

“Was there some trouble on the highway? Something that angered you?”

Fleming merely stared at him in silence. “All right,” Leopold sighed at last. “I’ll leave you two alone. Mrs. Fleming, try and talk some sense into your husband.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

As Leopold reached the door, Roger Fleming motioned toward the picture on the wall. “Is the bug on?” he asked.

“No,” Leopold answered. “I owe you that much.”

Sergeant Fletcher was down in the police garage, going over the victim’s car. He glanced up as Leopold approached, turning off the small portable vacuum cleaner he’d been using on the seats.

“Find anything?” Leopold asked, frowning at the car as if somehow it was the cause of the day’s woes.

“It’s hot, Captain. It was stolen last night from a salesman staying at the Charles Motel.”

“Damn!” Leopold kicked a tire in anger. “So why in hell didn’t he just say he shot a car thief?”

“Beats me, Captain.”

“You know him better than I do, Fletcher. What makes him tick? What’s behind that bland face of his?”

“I don’t really know him. I’d have a beer with him once or twice a month, but lately we haven’t even done that.”

“Did he get along with his wife?”

“As far as I know. They’ve got a couple of kids, in grammar school.”

“What about the dead man? Any make on him yet?”

“His wallet was gone, but we found a tailor’s tag inside his sleeve. Name is Norman Rossiter, a C.P.A. Got an office in the Grant Building.”

“A C.P.A. and he stole a car?”

Fletcher shrugged. “They’re human like anyone else. Why not?”

“The usual motives for car theft are joy riding or simple financial gain. Rossiter wouldn’t seem to fit either one.”

“But at least he’s a local guy, so maybe Roger knew him after all.”

“Let’s go up and ask his wife,” Leopold suggested.

“I’ll be along in a few minutes—soon as I finish vacuuming. The lab boys are short-handed today.”

Leopold found Iris Fleming sitting in his office, nervously smoking a cigarette. “Did he tell you anything, Mrs. Fleming?”

“No, and frankly I’ve never seen him quite like this. He just kept telling me not to worry, reassuring me that everything would be all right. I asked him who the man from Ohio was, and he just wouldn’t answer.”

“The man wasn’t from Ohio,” Leopold told her. “The car was stolen. As near as we can tell, the dead man was a local accountant named Norman Rossiter.”

That was when Iris Fleming fainted.

Sergeant Fletcher looked depressed, but not half so depressed as Leopold felt. By noon the temperature outside had climbed back into the eighties, where it had been all week, and the humid warmth of the city seemed to hang like a mist over Leopold’s office.

“A simple triangle,” Fletcher snorted. “She was having an affair with Rossiter and Roger found out. We have ’em every week of the year, and this one is no different.”

“That seems to be it,” Leopold agreed. “She admitted as much. The Ohio plates threw her off, so she never gave a thought to Roger having possibly killed Rossiter. She didn’t even realize that Roger knew about it—their affair, I mean.”

“He knew, all right.”

Leopold patted the moisture on his brow. “When are they supposed to air condition this place?”

Fletcher shrugged. “It got cut out of the budget again this year.” He started to take out a cigarette, then changed his mind. “But why didn’t Roger just tell us the whole story?”

“Who knows?” The Captain looked at the list of duty assignments. “He would have been on duty till midnight, and we know he killed Rossiter just before two this morning. That gave him two hours, almost, to track the man down. Where was Roger just before he went off duty?”

Fletcher checked through the morning reports. “Investigating a knifing on Alamanda Street. Family trouble.”

“He had family trouble himself.”

“He sure did, Captain.”

The phone on Leopold’s desk buzzed and he answered. “Leopold here.”

“Captain, this is Doc Hayes over at the Medical Examiner’s office. We’ve finished with the man killed over on the Expressway.”

“Rossiter. Yes?”

“That his name? Well, anyway, I wish you’d drop over. A couple of things of interest.”

Doc Hayes was the acting medical examiner while the regular man was on a well-earned vacation. He was a grim little doctor who did his job well and never joked. Leopold admired his efficiency even while thinking he might have been better off teaching at some medical school.

He rose from his desk, all business, as Leopold entered. “Do you want to see the deceased, Captain?”

“Is it necessary?”

“No. I can summarize my findings.” He cleared his throat. “The deceased was shot twice by Sergeant Fleming’s revolver—ballistics has verified this. One of the bullets entered the left temple, lodging in the brain, while the other shattered the jawbone and passed through the body, lodging in the padded window frame on the right side of the car. I understand that slug was mashed up a bit, but they managed an identification.”

“What about your findings, Doc?” Leopold asked, growing impatient. He could read the ballistics report later.

“Well, it’s funny the people on the scene didn’t notice, but of course it was a warm night.”

“Notice what?”

Doc Hayes sighed and glanced around the little office—as if he were looking for a blackboard to continue his lecture. “When a person dies, the force of gravity causes the blood to seep to the body’s lowest points. The wounds in Rossiter’s head and jaw bled hardly at all, because there was very little blood left in the upper portion of his body by that time. As I say, if it hadn’t been such a warm night, rigor mortis would have set in faster and the condition would have been more obvious from the outset.”

“Look, Doc, are you trying to tell me that—”

“That the man was already dead for at least two hours when Sergeant Fleming shot him. He’d been killed by a wound from a thin-bladed knife that went between his ribs and straight into the heart.”

Leopold went back to his office and told Sergeant Fletcher what he’d learned. Fletcher simply stared at him with widened eyes. “You mean the guy was murdered twice?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Leopold said. “I don’t know if I should feel elated or depressed. It gets Fleming off the hook, but it gives us an unsolved case.”

“What now?”

“Get Fleming up here. Maybe he’ll be willing to talk now.”

A few minutes later Roger Fleming sat in the chair opposite Leopold’s desk. “Could I have a cigarette?” he asked.

“Bad for your health,” Leopold said, tossing over a pack. “You ready to talk yet?”

“No.”

“Suppose I told you Rossiter was already dead when you pumped two bullets into his head.”

There was a flicker of something—fear?—across Fleming’s otherwise impassive face. He drew slowly on the cigarette and said finally, “I appreciate your seeing me here in your office rather than in the Interrogation Room, Captain.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“That’s all.”

“Look, Roger, you may be off the hook on the murder charge, but you’re finished with the police force unless you change your attitude pretty damn quick. The dead man was having an affair with Iris—that much we already know. If you didn’t kill him, who did? Who beat you to it, Roger?”

“What time was he killed?”

“A little before midnight, according to Doc Hayes.”

“I was still on duty then, investigating a knifing.”

“We know that, Roger. But we want you to tell us what you did after midnight.”

Roger Fleming sighed and looked at his hands. “I drove out along the expressway until I saw his car parked. Then I went over and shot him twice through the open window.”

“How’d you know he was there? How’d you know which car? The car was stolen.”

“God, Captain!” Fleming buried his face in his hands. That was his only answer.

“All right,” Leopold sighed. “We’ll see how long we can hold you for questioning before your lawyer springs you. When you decide to cooperate and tell a straight story you know how to reach me.”

After Fleming had been taken back to his cell, Leopold buzzed for Fletcher. “I want you to check out Rossiter’s movements for all of last night. Then I want you to do the same on Iris Fleming.”

“You think she killed him and Roger’s shielding her?”

“At this point I don’t know what to think.”

Fletcher watched him slip into his rumpled suitcoat. “Where can I reach you if I need to, Captain?”

“I’ll be down on Alamanda Street, investigating Roger Fleming’s last case.”

“His last case?”

“Just before midnight he was working on a stabbing. And just before midnight Norman Rossiter was stabbed to death. Funny coincidence—if you believe in coincidences.”

Alamanda Street wandered across the backside of the downtown area. It was a section of floppy gray houses and tiny yards crisscrossed by well-worn paths. Now, in the early afternoon of a late June day, an assortment of noisy children were playing in the yard of the house that Leopold sought.

The woman who answered the door was a big-boned Puerto Rican with a light skin. He showed her his badge. “Leopold of Homicide. I’m here about last night’s trouble.”

“Wasn’t no homicide here,” the woman protested. “Just a little knifing, that’s all.”

“You’re the landlady here?”

“That’s me. Mrs. Sanchez. But there was no homicide.”

“Who got knifed?”

She gestured upstairs. “Mrs. Croft stuck a knife in her husband. Hurt him bad, but didn’t kill him.”

“The detective came and investigated?”

“Sure.”

“Do you remember his name?”

She thought for a moment. “Like that mystery writer—Fleming, that was it. Sergeant Fleming. Good-looking, fairly young.”

“How long was he here?”

“Oh, gosh, a couple of hours. He turned Mrs. Croft over to the patrol car and then he went around questioning all the neighbors. It was after midnight when I saw him get in his car and drive away.”

Leopold nodded. Fleming was always a conscientious worker, willing to put in overtime without grumbling. He sighed and wished he had a cigarette with him. There was nothing to connect the knifing of Mr. Croft with the knifing of Norman Rossiter. “Thank you, Mrs. Sanchez,” he said, and went out to his car.

He drove around in the afternoon sunshine, trying to get his bearings. It was only a few blocks to the Charles Motel, and the expressway was only a few blocks farther on. He drove to the motel and looked over the parking area, but there was nothing to see. Anyone could have stolen the Ohio salesman’s car. Rossiter himself could have stolen it.

But why? It was a nagging point.

He drove out to the little ranch house where the Flemings lived, and found Iris Fleming playing with the children in the back yard. When she saw Leopold, her face clouded over and she sent the children off to their swings and climbing poles.

“Sorry to bother you again,” he said.

“Not at all. Roger just called. He says he expects to be released by tonight. Is that true?”

“Quite possibly. The medical report says that Rossiter was already dead when your husband shot him.”

“Oh. Then Roger is innocent!”

“Innocent of murder. But still guilty of enough to get him kicked off the force. Tell me, did Rossiter have any enemies you know of?”

“You’re asking me?” Her eyes were all innocence.

“Come off it, Mrs. Fleming,” he said with deliberate roughness. “You and Rossiter were having an affair. You admitted that much to us after you fainted this morning.”

“But I knew nothing of Norman’s business affairs. Perhaps he was an accountant for a gambling syndicate, or for some tax evader who had to silence him.”

“Perhaps. Fletcher is checking those angles now.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked with a sweet smile that didn’t quite make it.

“If Roger didn’t kill Rossiter, you become suspect number two.”

“So it’s like that.”

He nodded. “Like that. Where were you just before midnight?”

“Home with the children.”

“They were awake?”

“At midnight? Of course not.”

“Then you could have left them for a while.”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“But you could have. At this stage I’m only interested in the possibilities, Mrs. Fleming.”

She got to her feet and started for the house. “When you have a warrant you can come back and question me some more, Captain. Until that time I’ll be indisposed.”

He sighed and went back to the car. There was no sense arguing with her. He could take her downtown for questioning, but there was not a shred of evidence against her. He drove back downtown, avoiding the front entrance to headquarters where reporters would be waiting.

The whole case was beginning to pull apart—like a flimsy kite in a windstorm—and he had the distinct feeling that soon he would be left with only the ruins of his department.

Sergeant Fletcher came back just before dinnertime. He was hot and unhappy, and he wanted to go home. “There’s nothing in Rossiter’s business or personal life,” he assured Leopold. “He was clean—except for Mrs. Fleming.”

“That the best you could do after an afternoon’s digging? What about his clients?”

“The United Fund, the Red Cross, the Music Association—stuff like that. Not a shady character in the lot.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “What about the weapon? Anyone find the knife?”

Fletcher shook his head. “I had men out searching where the car was parked, and of course we went over the car itself.”

“I suppose he wasn’t killed on the expressway. The killer drove him there and pushed him behind the wheel and left him. The knife could be anywhere.”

“That could be it, Captain.” He started to leave and then remembered something. “I’ve got David Thorn outside. Want to see him?”

“Who?”

“Thorn. The salesman whose car was stolen.”

Leopold nodded. “Send him in.” There was always an angle to be checked. Thorn and Rossiter might have met in a bar, got into a violent quarrel, and Thorn might have stabbed him and then lied about the car having been stolen. There had been a case like that a few years earlier.

“Sit down, Mr. Thorn. This won’t take long.”

David Thorn was tall and almost handsome. But he was just about over the hill—hair thin to the point of baldness, pouch beginning to show up front. The easy life at middle age.

“Just who are you a salesman for, Mr. Thorn?”

“Ritto Products. School supplies, teaching machines. We’re coming out with a low-priced copying machine in the fall.”

“Isn’t this the wrong time of year for it?”

“On the contrary, this is when they buy for the fall semester.”

“Ever call on accountants?”

“No.”

Leopold grunted. It had been a passing idea, no more. “What about your car that was stolen, Mr. Thorn? When did you notice it missing?”

“I didn’t. Not until the police phoned and woke me up this morning to ask about it. They’d traced the license number through Ohio and found out from my wife where I was staying here.”

“It was taken from the motel parking lot?”

“That’s right. Last night I drove around town and went to an early movie. I was back in my motel room by ten thirty.”

“So it was taken some time after that.”

The salesman nodded his balding head. He seemed eager enough to cooperate, and Fletcher said, “Show the Captain your mileage record, Mr. Thorn.”

“Oh, yes! I almost forgot. I keep this for tax purposes.” He pulled out a little notebook and flipped through the ruled pages. “The odometer reading was 11,362 when I parked it last night.”

Sergeant Fletcher flipped open his own book. “And when it was found on the expressway the odometer read 11,369. The car was driven seven miles after it was stolen.”

Leopold nodded. “I see what you mean. The distance from the motel to the expressway is only a little over one mile. So the car was driven somewhere else first.”

Fletcher nodded. “Now if only we knew where.”

“How about Rossiter’s apartment?”

“I’ll check it.”

Leopold rose and shook hands with Thorn. “Thank you for your cooperation, sir. We’ll need your car just a little longer to complete some tests, and then it will be released to you.”

He saw the man to the door and went back to his desk. After a while Fletcher returned. “The newspapers want a statement, Captain. They want to know if it’s true we’re releasing Fleming.”

“Sergeant Fleming will be released from custody this evening, but he still faces departmental charges.”

“If we announce that, we have to tell the papers that Rossiter was already dead.”

“Go ahead. The real killer knows it anyway.”

Fletcher nodded. Then, after a moment, he asked, “Captain, why do you think the killer left the car on the expressway? It’s a wonder somebody didn’t pull up and find the body right away. Whoever left the car had to run through the grass and hop a five-foot fence to get away.”

“Unless there was another car.”

“Two people?”

“It’s happened before.”

Fletcher thought about that. “Maybe Rossiter didn’t realize how badly he was hurt. Maybe he drove that far alone, on his own, and then suddenly pulled over on the shoulder and died. You said the wound was a narrow one.”

“Narrow, but straight into the heart. He didn’t drive anywhere after that.”

Fletcher looked unhappy, reflecting Leopold’s mood. It was a black eye for the department, no matter how you looked at it, and with each hour they seemed to be drawing further away from a solution. “I never saw a case like it,” Leopold grumbled. “At the start it was solved, and now it’s unsolved and we’re nowhere.”

“Do you want to see Fleming again before he’s released?”

Leopold considered for a few moments. “Yes. And get his wife back here. I want some answers from both of them.”

“Right, Captain. Oh, by the way, I checked a city map. Rossiter’s apartment is just under three miles from the Charles Motel.”

“Good. Get over there and search the place. Look for signs of a struggle, a bloody knife, anything.”

“Why would somebody kill him there and then cart him off to the expressway?”

“I don’t know. But I want to find out if that’s what really happened.”

Leopold had been alone for another ten minutes when a uniformed patrolman poked his head into the office. “Ah, Captain?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Officer Abbot. I patrol the expressway nights—the expressway and that end of the city.”

Leopold came alert. “Yes?” The man obviously had something to say, but still he hesitated. “What’s it about—the Rossiter murder?”

“Well, it might be, Captain.”

“Get to the point.”

“We had a call about one o’clock—somebody reported a body on the expressway.”

“At one this morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Man or woman?”

“The officer who took the call couldn’t be sure. Husky voice. Anyway, they dispatched my car to have a look. I only went to the city line, of course, and I didn’t see any body. So I reported that it must have been a crank call and forgot about it. Gosh, Captain, we get crank calls all the time! One night they told me there was a flying saucer landed out there, with men from outer space!”

Leopold leaned across the desk. “Are you telling me that the car with Rossiter’s body wasn’t there at one o’clock?”

Officer Abbot seemed to shrivel. “No, Captain. It was there, all right, because I remember seeing it. But I was looking for a body on the road—I thought that’s what the caller had meant! I saw the car, and the guy sitting behind the steering wheel, and I remembered thinking that I’d go back and check him out if I didn’t find anything. It wasn’t too unusual, though, because that time of night drivers are always pulling over to doze for a few minutes. He was off the road, not harming anybody. Anyway, I got another call and didn’t go back.”

“You’re sure it was the murder car?”

“I remember the Ohio plates.” He quickly added, “It hadn’t been reported stolen then.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “Thanks for telling me now anyway.”

“Does it help any, Captain?”

“Maybe.”

Alone once more, Leopold stared out at the city and thought about the case. Here and there, lights were beginning to come on in office buildings, although darkness was still two hours away. He picked up Fleming’s personnel file and stared hard at the photo of the man he’d worked with for so many years.

Roger Fleming, detective sergeant.

Then, after a time, he knew what he had to do.

The lights were on in his office when Roger Fleming appeared at the door. He cleared his throat and waited until Leopold looked up, then said, “They’re letting me go, but I understood you wanted to see me first.”

“Yes, Roger. Sit down, will you?” Leopold motioned to a chair. “Iris is on her way here too. I just wanted to ask a few final questions.”

“Iris?” He frowned nervously. “Why drag her into it again?”

“She’s into it already, Roger. We know about her relationship with the murdered man.”

Sergeant Fletcher came in then, looking tired. It had been a long day for them all. He dropped into the other chair with a sigh. “Still hot out there. Isn’t cooling off a bit.”

“Did you examine the apartment?”

Fletcher nodded. “Nothing there. No sign of a weapon.”

The phone buzzed, announcing Iris Fleming, and Leopold ordered her sent in. She too looked tired, and hadn’t bothered to renew her eye makeup. It was the end of the day for all of them.

“Are you ready to go home?” she asked her husband.

“I’m ready.”

Leopold cleared his throat, hating what he had to do. “One moment, please. As you know, Roger, you still face departmental charges. You attempted murder, and the fact that your victim was already dead does not greatly alter the situation from the department’s point of view. I think I can safely say that you’re finished as a detective.”

“I suppose so,” Fleming mumbled.

“And there’s more, because we still have a case to close. There’s still the real murderer of Norman Rossiter to be brought to justice.”

“Have you found him?” Roger Fleming asked.

“I think so.” Leopold leaned back in his chair, trying to keep his eyes off Iris Fleming. “You wouldn’t tell us how you knew the car was parked there on the expressway, but of course there’s only one way you could have known—only one way, Roger, you could know just where to find Rossiter at two in the morning. And that’s if the real murderer told you. But if the murderer told you that Rossiter was in the car on the expressway, not going anywhere, you must also have known he was dead—or at least dying. It doesn’t make any sense any other way.”

“What are you driving at?” Iris asked.

“Only that Roger must have known Rossiter was dead or dying when he fired those shots. Which means he didn’t fire them to kill Rossiter. He fired them to protect the real murderer. What person would have told him about the killing, told him where to find the car? Who was he trying to protect by taking the blame on himself? No one but his wife. You, Iris. You killed your lover.”

“No!” Her hand had flown to her mouth.

Leopold turned back to Roger. “The deception is over, Roger. You can’t shield her any longer.”

Roger Fleming, his face white as chalk, slowly nodded. “You’re right, of course. I thought I could take the blame on myself. You’re right. Yes, she killed him.”

It was then that Iris moved, springing like a tigress. She screamed and leaped at her husband, clawing at his face.

Fletcher was closest. He grabbed her around the waist and hung on.

Leopold gazed out over the city, seeing only the night lights now. It had been a long hard day, and his vision tended to blur a bit when he was overtired.

“We’ve got her calmed down at last,” Fletcher said from the door. “God, she was like a madwoman!”

Leopold nodded. “She had reason to be.”

Roger Fleming was still in his chair. He hadn’t moved since her outburst. Now he started to rise. “I’d better be getting home. The children—”

Leopold said nothing. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out one of the familiar manila envelopes they all used to store evidence. He unclasped it and tipped it upside down. There was a clatter as a narrow-bladed kitchen knife fell out and hit the desk.

Roger Fleming turned his eyes on it, as if seeing it for the first time. “What’s that?” he asked.

“The weapon that killed Norman Rossiter. Also the weapon that Mrs. Croft used to stab her husband. I thought you’d have the decency to confess when I accused Iris, but you played it to the bitter end, didn’t you?”

“You’re accusing me again?”

“Roger, Roger, why in hell did you do it? A smart cop like you, and you let yourself get into a mess like this! Was it worth it, just to kill your wife’s lover?”

“I was on duty when Rossiter was killed,” he said, but his voice was beginning to crack. “I’ve got an alibi!”

“Your alibi isn’t worth beans, Roger. The lab tests will show two different blood types on this knife blade, and when we start pinning down your exact movements before midnight, we’ll find some pretty big gaps. You were called to the investigation of the Croft stabbing, and you found yourself suddenly in a perfect situation for yourself. You had a murder weapon which had already been used for one stabbing, and an hour’s time or more for establishing another alibi. After all, what better place to hide a murder weapon than with the evidence of a totally different crime?”

Roger Fleming stirred and glanced at Fletcher, whose face was impassive. They’d both gone through these final moments with Leopold so many times that now it seemed unreal with Fleming as the accused. Finding him at the car with a gun was one thing, but revealing him as a carefully calculating killer was something much more sinister.

“Supposedly you spent nearly two hours questioning neighbors of the Crofts,” Leopold continued, “which was a long time for a simple family-trouble call. That made me suspicious from the start, and then I discovered that the Charles Motel was within walking distance of the Croft place. You talked to a few neighbors, then left your car parked where it was and walked to the motel. You stole the salesman’s car, drove to Rossiter’s apartment, killed him with the same knife that Mrs. Croft had used, and then drove the dead body to the expressway. You left it there, hopped the fence, and walked back to the Croft place—a distance of only a mile. The neighbors thought you’d been there all the time, questioning people.”

“Why did he leave the body on the expressway?” Fletcher asked. “I don’t understand that part. And why did he go back to it two hours later?”

“That was the key to the whole case. The body was left on the expressway simply so that it would be quickly found—soon enough to make Roger’s alibi still valid. As a detective himself, he was well aware of autopsy results, and of the fact that the longer a body goes undiscovered the harder it is to fix the precise time of death.

“He figured someone would stop and find the body right away, but nobody did. Cars kept passing and nobody stopped. You must have sweated out that hour, Roger, back at headquarters waiting for the report that never came in. You had to establish Rossiter’s death as before midnight, in order to be in the clear. You couldn’t hang around headquarters all night being seen by people.”

“Why didn’t he report the body himself?” Fletcher asked.

“He finally did, around one this morning. I just learned that a short time ago. A call came in about a body on the expressway, but no car was mentioned and the investigating officer didn’t find Rossiter. By two o’clock you must have been really desperate, Roger. There was nobody around to alibi you at that time of the morning, and even the bars were closing. You had no place to go for an alibi. In fact, there was a good chance now that the body wouldn’t be discovered till morning, and your original alibi would be useless.

“You couldn’t pretend to stumble on it yourself, since you were the chief suspect. So you decided on a bizarre and bold plan. You drove out to the stolen car on the expressway, waited till some cars were passing, and fired two shots into Rossiter’s dead body. From your police experience you knew it could be shown later that Rossiter was already dead. Rather than place yourself in danger, you actually made sure that the real time of death could be established to clear you.”

“Couldn’t he just break the guy’s wrist watch?” Fletcher asked.

“Would something like that have convinced you? Or the Medical Examiner?”

“No,” Fletcher admitted, “but this way he ruined his whole police career.”

“At two o’clock this morning the choice was between his career and his life. It wasn’t a difficult choice to make, was it, Roger? It wasn’t even difficult to shift the blame onto Iris. After all, she’d betrayed you with Rossiter.”

Fleming’s lips were dry. “How’d you get onto it?”

“You knew where the car was. Rossiter didn’t tell you—he was already dead for two hours. If Iris told you, you’d have tried to hide the body, not take the blame on yourself. And if she didn’t tell you, the only way you could have known was if you drove it there, if you killed him.”

“You’ll have a tough time proving it,” Fleming said.

“Not with this bloody knife.”

“Maybe Rossiter and Mr. Croft both had the same blood type.”

Leopold smiled. “Feel like gambling your life on it, Roger?”

He didn’t feel like gambling. On the way back to his cell he grabbed the gun from the holster of a friendly guard and shot himself in the head.

(1970)

Christmas Is for Cops

“GOING TO THE CHRISTMAS party, Captain?” Fletcher asked from the doorway. Captain Leopold glanced up from his eternally cluttered desk. Fletcher was now a lieutenant in the newly reorganized Violent Crimes Division, and they did not work together as closely as they once had. “I’ll be there,” Leopold said. “In fact, I’ve been invited to speak.”

This news brought a grin to Fletcher’s face. “Nobody speaks at the Christmas party, Captain. They just drink.”

“Well, this year you’re going to hear a speech, and I’m going to give it.”

“Lots of luck.”

“Is your wife helping with the decorations again this year?”

“I suppose she’ll be around,” Fletcher chuckled. “She doesn’t trust me at any Christmas party without her.”

The annual Detective Bureau party was, by tradition, a stag affair. But in recent years Carol Fletcher and some of the other wives had come down to Eagles Hall in the afternoon to trim the tree and hang the holly. Somehow these members of the unofficial Decorations Committee usually managed to stay on for the evening’s festivities.

The party was the following evening, and Captain Leopold was looking forward to it. But he had one unpleasant task to perform first. That afternoon, feeling he could delay it no longer, he summoned Sergeant Tommy Gibson to his office and closed the door.

Gibson was a tough cop of the old school, a bleak and burly man who’d campaigned actively for the lieutenancy which had finally been given to Fletcher. Leopold had never liked Gibson, but until now he’d managed to overlook the petty graft with which Gibson’s name was occasionally linked.

“What seems to be the trouble, Captain?” Gibson asked, taking a seat. “You look unhappy.”

“I am unhappy, Gibson. Damned unhappy! While you were working the assault and robbery detail I had no direct command over your activities. But now that I’m in charge of a combined Violent Crimes Division, I feel I should take a greater interest in them.” He reached across his desk to pick up a folder. “I have a report here from the District Attorney’s office. The report mentions you, Gibson, and makes some very grave charges.”

“What kind of charges?” The sergeant’s tongue forked out to lick his dry lips.

“That you’ve been accepting regular payments from a man named Freese.”

Gibson went pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Carl Freese, the man who runs the numbers racket in every factory in this city. You know who he is, and you know what he’s done. Men who’ve opposed him, or tried to report his operations to the police, have been beaten and nearly killed. I have a report here of a foreman at Lecko Industries. When some of his men started losing a whole week’s pay in the numbers and other gambling controlled by Freese, he went to his supervisor and reported it. That night on the way home his car was forced off the road and he was badly beaten, so badly that he spent three weeks in the hospital. You should be familiar with that case, Gibson, because you investigated it just last summer.”

“I guess I remember it.”

“Remember your report, too? You wrote it off as a routine robbery attempt, despite the fact that no money was taken from the victim. The victim reported it to the District Attorney’s office, and they’ve been investigating the whole matter of gambling in local industrial plants. I have their report here.”

“I investigate a lot of cases, Captain. I try to do the best job I can.”

“Nuts!” Leopold was on his feet, angry now. There was nothing that angered him more than a crooked cop. “Look, Gibson, the D.A.’s office has all of Freese’s records. They show payments of $100 a week to you. What in hell were you doing for $100 a week, unless you were covering up for them when they beat some poor guy senseless?”

“Those records are wrong,” Gibson said. “I didn’t get any hundred bucks a week.”

“Then how much did you get?”

Leopold towered over him in the chair, and Gibson’s burly frame seemed to shrivel. “I think I want a lawyer,” he mumbled.

“I’m suspending you from the force without pay, effective at once. Thank God you don’t have a wife and family to suffer through this.”

Tommy Gibson sat silently for a moment, staring at the floor. Then at last he looked up, seeking Leopold’s eyes. “Give me a chance, Captain. I wasn’t in this alone.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t get the whole hundred myself. I had to split it with one of the other men—and he’s the one who introduced me to Freese in the first place.”

“There’s someone else involved in this? One of the detectives?”

“Yes.”

“Give me his name.”

“Not yet,” Gibson hesitated. “Because you wouldn’t believe it. Let me give you evidence.”

“What sort of evidence?”

“He and Freese came to me at my apartment and told me the type of protection they needed. That was the night we agreed on the amount of money to be paid each week. I wasn’t taking any chances, Captain, so I dug out an old recording machine I’d bought after the war, and rigged up a hidden microphone behind my sofa. I got down every word they said.”

“When was this?” Leopold asked.

“More than a year ago, and I’ve kept the recording of the conversation ever since. What’s it worth to me if I bring it in?”

“I’m not in a position to make deals, Gibson.”

“Would the D.A. make one?”

“I could talk to him,” Leopold replied cautiously. “Let’s hear what you’ve got first.”

Gibson nodded. “I’ll take the reel off my machine and bring it in to you tomorrow.”

“If you’re kidding me, Gibson, or stalling—”

“I’m not, Captain! I swear! I just don’t want to take the whole rap myself.”

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours. Then the suspension goes into effect regardless.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Get the hell out of here now.”

“Thank you, Captain,” he said again. “And Merry Christmas.”

On the day of the Christmas party, activities around the Detective Bureau slacked off very little. It was always pretty much business as usual until around four o’clock, when some of the men started drifting out, exchanging friendly seasonal comments. The party would really commence around five, when the men on the day shift arrived at Eagles Hall, and it continued until well past midnight, enabling the evening men to join in after their tours of duty.

Then there would be a buffet supper, and lots of beer, and even some group singing around the big Christmas tree. Without the family attachments of Fletcher and the other men, Leopold tended to look forward to the party. In many years it was the main event of his otherwise lonely holiday season.

By four o’clock he had heard nothing from Sergeant Tommy Gibson. With growing irritation he called Fletcher into his office. “Gibson’s under your command now, isn’t he, Fletcher?”

“That’s right, Captain.”

“What’s he working on today?”

Fletcher’s face flushed unexpectedly. “Well, Captain, it seems—”

“Where is he?”

“Things were a bit slower than usual, so I told him he could go over to Eagles Hall and help put up the tree for the party.”

“What!”

Fletcher shifted his feet uneasily. “I know, Captain. But usually I help Carol and the other wives get it up. Now that I’m a lieutenant I didn’t feel I could take the time off, so I sent Gibson in my place.”

Leopold sighed and stood up. “All right, Fletcher. Let’s get over there right away.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

Eagles Hall was a large reasonably modern building that was rented out for wedding receptions and private parties by a local fraternal group. The Detective Bureau, through its Benevolent Association, had held a Christmas party there for the past five seasons, and its central location had helped make it a popular choice. It was close enough to attract some of the uniformed force as well as the detective squad. All were invited, and most came at some time during the long evening.

Now, before five o’clock, a handful of plainclothesmen from various divisions had already arrived. Leopold waved to Sergeant Riker of the Vice Squad, who was helping Carol Fletcher light her cigarette with a balky lighter. Then he stopped to exchange a few words with Lieutenant Williams, a bony young man who headed up the Narcotics Squad. Williams had made his reputation during a single year on the force, masquerading as a hippie musician to penetrate a group selling drugs to high school students. Leopold liked him, liked his honesty and friendliness.

“I hear you’re giving a little speech tonight,” Williams said, pouring him a glass of beer.

“Herb Clarke roped me into it,” Leopold answered with a chuckle. “I’d better do it early, before you guys get too beered up to listen.” He glanced around the big hall, taking in the twenty-foot Christmas tree with its lights and tinsel. Three guy wires held it firmly in place next to an old upright piano. “See Tommy Gibson around?”

Williams stood on tiptoe to see over the heads of some newly arrived uniformed men. “I think he’s helping Carol finish up the decorations.”

“Thanks.” Leopold took his beer and drifted over to the far end of the room. Carol had put down her cigarette long enough to tug at one of the wires holding the tree in place. Leopold helped her tighten it and then stepped back. She was a charming, intelligent woman, and this was not the first time he’d envied Fletcher. As wife and mother she’d given him a fine home life.

“I’m surprised to see you here so early, Captain.”

He helped her secure another of the wires and said, “I’m always on time to help charming wives with Christmas trees.”

“And thank you for Sergeant Gibson too! He was a great help with the tree.”

“I’ll bet. Where is he now?”

“He took the hammer and things into the kitchen. I think he’s pouring beer now.” She produced another cigarette and searched her purse. Finally she asked, “Do you have a light?”

He lit it for her. “You smoke too much.”

“Nervous energy. Do you like our tree?”

“Fine. Just like Christmas.”

“Do you know, somewhere in Chesterton there’s mention of a tree that devours birds nesting in its branches, and when spring comes the tree grows feathers instead of leaves!”

“You read too much, Carol.”

She smiled up at him. “The nights are lonely being a detective’s wife.” The smile was just a bit forced. She didn’t always approve of her husband’s work.

He left her by the tree and went in search of Gibson. The burly sergeant was in the kitchen, filling pitchers of beer. He looked up, surprised, as Leopold entered. “Hello, Captain.”

“I thought we had an appointment for today.”

“I didn’t forget. Fletcher wanted me over here.”

“Where’s the evidence you mentioned?”

“What?”

Leopold was growing impatient. “Come on, damn it!”

Tommy Gibson glanced out at the growing crowd. “I’ve got it, but I had to hide it. He’s here.”

“Who? The man who’s in this with you?”

“Yes. I’m afraid Freese might have tipped him off about the D.A.’s investigation.”

Leopold had never seen this side of Gibson—a lonely, trapped man who was actually afraid. Or else was an awfully good actor. “I’ve given you your twenty-four hours, Gibson. Either produce this recording you’ve got or—”

“Captain!” a voice interrupted. “We’re ready for your speech.”

Leopold turned to see Sergeant Turner of Missing Persons standing in the doorway. “I’ll be right there, Jim.” Turner seemed to linger just a bit too long before he turned and walked away. Leopold looked back at Gibson. “That him?”

“I can’t talk now, Captain.”

“Where’d you hide it?”

“Over by the tree. It’s safe.”

“Stick around till after my talk. Then we’ll get to the bottom of this thing.”

Leopold left him pouring another pitcher of beer and walked out through the crowd. With the end of the afternoon shifts the place had filled rapidly. There were perhaps sixty members of the force present already, about evenly divided between detectives and uniformed patrolmen. Several shook his hand or patted him on the back as he made his way to the dais next to the tree.

Herb Clarke, president of the Detective Bureau Benevolent Association, was already on the platform, holding up his hands for silence. He shook Leopold’s hand and then turned to his audience. “Gather around now, men. The beer’ll still be there in five minutes. You all know we’re not much for speeches at these Christmas parties, but I thought it might be well this year to hear a few words from a man we all know and admire. Leopold has been in the Detective Bureau for as long as most of us can remember—” The laughter caused him to add quickly, “Though of course he’s still a young man. But this year, in addition to his duties as Captain of Homicide, he’s taken on a whole new set of responsibilities. He’s now head of the entire Violent Crimes Division of the Bureau, a position that places him in more direct contact with us all. I’m going to ask him to say just a few words, and then we’ll have some caroling around the piano.”

Leopold stepped over to the microphone, adjusting it upward from the position Herb Clarke had used. Then he looked out at the sea of familiar faces. Carol Fletcher and the other wives hovered in the rear, out of the way, while their husbands and the others crowded around. Fletcher himself stood with Sergeant Riker, an old friend, and Leopold noticed that Lieutenant Williams had moved over near Tommy Gibson. He couldn’t see Jim Turner at the moment.

“Men, I’m going to make this worth listening to for all that. You hear a lot at this time of the year about Christmas being the season for kids, but I want to add something to that. Christmas is for kids, sure—but Christmas is for cops, too. Know what I mean by that? I’ll tell you. Christmas is perhaps the one time of the year when the cop on the beat, or the detective on assignment, has a chance to undo some of the ill will generated during the other eleven months. This has been a bad year for cops around the country—most years are bad ones, it seems. We take a hell of a lot of abuse, some deserved, but most of it not. And this is the season to maybe right some of those wrongs. Don’t be afraid to get out on a corner with the Salvation Army to ring a few bells, or help some lady through a puddle of slush. Most of all, don’t be afraid to smile and talk to young people.”

He paused and glanced down at Tommy Gibson. “There have always been some bad cops, and I guess there always will be. That just means the rest of us have to work a lot harder. Maybe we can just pretend the whole year is Christmas, and go about righting those wrongs. Anyway, I’ve talked so long already I’ve grown a bit thirsty. Let’s get back to the beer and the singing, and make it good and loud!”

Leopold jumped off the platform and shook more hands. He’d meant to speak longer, to give them something a bit meatier to chew on, but far at the back of the crowd some of the younger cops were already growing restless. And, after all, they’d come here to enjoy themselves, not to listen to a lecture. He couldn’t really blame them.

Herb Clarke was gathering everyone around the piano for songs, but Leopold noticed that Tommy Gibson had suddenly disappeared. The Captain threaded his way through the crowd, searching the familiar faces for the man he wanted. “Great talk, Captain,” Fletcher said, coming up by his side.

“Thanks. We have to find Gibson.”

“Did he tell you any more?”

“Only that he had to hide the tape near the Christmas tree. He said the other guy was here.”

“Who do you make it, Captain?”

Leopold bit his lower lip. “I make it that Tommy Gibson is one smart cookie. I think he’s playing for time, maybe waiting for Freese to get him off the hook somehow.”

“You don’t think there’s another crooked cop in the Detective Bureau?”

“I don’t know, Fletcher. I guess I don’t want to think so.”

The door to the Men’s Room sprang open with a suddenness that surprised them both. Sergeant Riker, his usually placid face full of alarm, stood motioning to them. Leopold quickly covered the ground to his side. “What is it, Riker?”

“In there! My God, Captain—in there! It’s Gibson!”

“What?”

“Tommy Gibson. He’s been stabbed. I think he’s dead.”

Leopold pushed past him, into the tiled Men’s Room with its scrubbed look and disinfectant odor. Tommy Gibson was there, all right, crumpled between two of the wash basins, his eyes glazed and open. A long pair of scissors protruded from his chest.

“Lock all the outside doors, Fletcher,” Leopold barked. “Don’t let anyone leave.”

“Is he dead, Captain?”

“As dead as he’ll ever be. What a mess!”

“You think one of our men did it?”

“Who else? Call in and report it, and get the squad on duty over here. Everyone else is a suspect.” He stood up from examining the body and turned to Riker. “Now tell me everything you know, Sergeant.”

Riker was a Vice Squad detective, a middle-aged man with a placid disposition and friendly manner. There were those who said he could even make a streetwalker like him while he was arresting her. Just now he looked sick and pale. “I walked in and there he was, Captain. My God! I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. I thought he was faking, playing some sort of a trick.”

“Notice anyone leaving before you went in?”

“No, nobody.”

“But he’s only been dead a few minutes. That makes you a suspect, Sergeant.”

Riker’s pale complexion seemed to shade into green at Leopold’s words. “You can’t think I killed him! He was a friend of mine! Why in hell would I kill Tommy Gibson?”

“We’ll see,” Leopold said, motioning him out of the Men’s Room. The other detectives and officers were clustered around, trying to see. There was a low somber hum of conversation. “All right, everyone!” the Captain ordered. “Keep down at the other end of the room, away from the tree! That’s right, move away from it.”

“Captain!” It was little Herb Clarke, pushing his way through. “Captain, what’s happened?”

“Someone killed Tommy Gibson.”

“Tommy!”

“One of us. That’s why nobody leaves here.”

“You can’t be serious, Captain. Murder at the police Christmas party—the newspapers will crucify us.”

“Probably.” Leopold pushed past him. “Nobody enters the Men’s Room,” he bellowed. “Fletcher, Williams—come with me.” They were the only two lieutenants present, and he had to trust them. Fletcher he’d trust with his life. He only hoped he could rely on Williams too.

“I can’t believe it,” the bony young Narcotics lieutenant said. “Why would anyone kill Tommy?”

Leopold cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you why, though you may not want to believe it. Gibson was implicated in the District Attorney’s investigation of Carl Freese’s gambling empire. He had a tape recording of a conversation between Freese, himself, and another detective, apparently concerning bribery. The other detective had a dandy motive for killing him.”

“Did he say who it was?” Williams asked.

“No. Only that it was someone who got here fairly early today. Who was here before Fletcher and I arrived?”

Williams creased his brow in thought. “Riker was here, and Jim Turner. And a few uniformed men.”

“No, just detectives.”

“Well, I guess Riker and Turner were the only ones. And Herb Clarke, of course. He was here all day with the ladies, arranging for the food and the beer.”

“Those three,” Leopold mused. “And you, of course.”

Lieutenant Williams grinned. “Yeah, and me.”

Leopold turned toward the big Christmas tree. “Gibson told me he hid the tape recording near the tree. Start looking, and don’t miss anything. It might even be in the branches.”

The investigating officers were arriving now, and Leopold turned his attention to them. There was something decidedly bizarre in the entire situation, a fact which was emphasized as the doctor and morgue attendants and police photographers exchanged muted greetings with the milling party guests. One of the young investigating detectives who’d known Tommy Gibson turned pale at the sight of the body and had to go outside.

When the photographers had finished, one of the morgue men started to lift the body. He paused and called to Leopold. “Captain, here’s something. A cigarette lighter on the floor under him.”

Leopold bent close to examine it without disturbing possible prints. “Initials. C.F.”

Lieutenant Williams had come in behind him, standing at the door of the Men’s Room. “Carl Freese?” he suggested.

Leopold used a handkerchief to pick it up carefully by the corners. “Are we supposed to believe that Freese entered this place in the midst of sixty cops and killed Gibson without anybody seeing him?”

“There’s a window in the wall over there.”

Leopold walked to the frosted-glass pane and examined it. “Locked from the inside. Gibson might have been stabbed from outside, but he couldn’t have locked the window and gotten across this room without leaving a trail of blood.”

Fletcher had come in while they were talking. “No dice on that, Captain. My wife just identified the scissors as a pair she was using earlier with the decorations. It’s an inside job, all right.”

Leopold showed him the lighter. “C.F. Could be Carl Freese.”

Fletcher frowned and licked his lips. “Yeah.” He turned away.

“Find any sign of the tape?”

“Nothing,” Williams reported. “I think Gibson was kidding you.”

“Nothing in the tree? It could be a fairly small reel.”

Leopold sighed and motioned Fletcher and Williams to one side. He didn’t want the others to hear. “Look, I think Gibson was probably lying, too. But he’s dead, and that very fact indicates he might have been telling the truth. I have to figure all the angles. Now that you two have searched the tree I want you to go into the kitchen, close the door, and search each other. Carefully.”

“Bu—” Williams began, and then fell silent. “All right, Captain.”

“Then line everybody up and do a search of them. You know what you’re looking for—a reel of recording tape.”

“What about the wives, Captain?”

“Get a matron down for them. I’m sorry to have to do it, but if that tape is here we have to find it.”

He walked to the center of the hall and stood looking at the tree. Lights and tinsel, holiday wreaths and sprigs of mistletoe. All the trappings. He tried to imagine Tommy Gibson helping to decorate the place, helping with the tree. Where would he have hidden the tape?

Herb Clarke came over, nervous and upset. “They’re searching everybody.”

“Yes. I’m sorry to spoil the party this way, but I guess it was spoiled for Gibson already.”

“Captain, do you have to go on with this? Isn’t one dishonest man in the Bureau enough?”

“One is too many, Herb. But the man we’re looking for is more than a dishonest cop now. He’s a murderer.”

Fletcher came over to them. “We’ve searched all the detectives, Captain. They’re clean. We’re working on the uniformed men now.”

Leopold grunted unhappily. He was sure they’d find nothing. “Suppose,” he said slowly. “Suppose Gibson unreeled the tape. Suppose he strung it on the tree like tinsel.”

“You see any brown tinsel hanging anywhere, Captain? See any tinsel of any color long enough to be a taped message?”

“No, I don’t,” Leopold said.

Two of the sergeants, Riker and Turner, came over to join them. “Could he have done it himself?” Turner wanted to know. “The word is you were going to link him with the Freese investigation.”

“Stabbing yourself in the chest with a pair of scissors isn’t exactly common as a suicide method,” Leopold pointed out. “Besides, it would be out of character for a man like Gibson.”

One of the investigating officers came over with the lighter. “Only smudges on it, Captain. Nothing we could identify.”

“Thanks.” Leopold took it, turning it over between his fingers.

C.F.

Carl Freese.

He flicked the lever a couple of times but it didn’t light. Finally, on the fourth try, a flame appeared. “All right,” he said quietly. Now he knew.

“Captain—” Fletcher began.

“Damn it, Fletcher, it’s your wife’s lighter and you know it! C.F. Not Carl Freese but Carol Fletcher!”

“Captain, I—” Fletcher stopped.

Leopold felt suddenly very tired. The colored lights of the tree seemed to blur, and he wished he were far away from here, far away in a land where all cops were honest and everyone died of old age.

Sergeant Riker moved in. “Captain, are you trying to say that Fletcher’s wife stabbed Tommy Gibson?”

“Of course not, Riker. That would have been quite a trick for her to follow him into the Men’s Room unnoticed. Besides, I had to give her a match at one point this evening, because she didn’t have this lighter.”

“Then who?”

“When I first arrived, you were helping Carol Fletcher with a balky lighter. Yes, you, Riker! You dropped it into your pocket, unthinking, and that’s why she didn’t have it later. It fell out while you were struggling with Gibson. While you were killing him, Riker.”

Riker uttered a single obscenity and his hand went for the service revolver on his belt. Leopold had expected it. He moved in fast and threw two quick punches, one to the stomach and one to the jaw. Riker went down and it was over.

Carol Fletcher heard what had happened and she came over to Leopold. “Thanks for recovering my lighter,” she said. “I hope you didn’t suspect me.”

He shook his head, eyeing Fletcher. “Of course not. But I sure as hell wish your husband had told me it was yours.”

“I had to find out what it was doing there,” Fletcher mumbled. “God, it’s not every day your wife’s lighter, that you gave her two Christmases ago, turns up as a clue in a murder.”

Leopold handed it back to her. “Maybe this’ll teach you to stop smoking.”

“You knew it was Riker anyway?”

“I was pretty sure. With sixty men drinking beer all around here, no murderer could take a chance of walking out of that Men’s Room unseen. His best bet was to pretend finding the body, which is just what he did. Besides that, of the four detectives on the scene early, Riker’s Vice Squad position was the most logical for Freese’s bribery.”

“Was there a tape recording?” Fletcher asked.

Leopold was staring at the Christmas tree. “I think Gibson was telling the truth on that one. Except that he never called it a tape. I did that. I jumped to a conclusion. He simply told me it was an old machine, purchased after the war. In those early days tape recorders weren’t the only kind. For a while wire recorders were almost as popular.”

“Wire!”

Leopold nodded and started toward the Christmas tree. “We know that Gibson helped you put up the tree, Carol. I’m betting that one of those wires holding it in place is none other than the recorded conversation of Carl Freese, Tommy Gibson, and Sergeant Riker.”

(1970)

The Jersey Devil

IT DIDN’T START OUT as a murder case, and Captain Leopold wouldn’t have been so deeply involved in it if he hadn’t offered Fletcher a ride home that night. They’d been working late at headquarters on a barroom knifing, and when the case was finally wrapped up Fletcher remembered that his car was at the garage for repairs.

“I’ll drop you off,” Leopold said. “It’s not out of my way.” He knew Fletcher’s wife was always nervous when he worked late, and he did what he could to ease the situation. Since his promotion to lieutenant, Fletcher was working more nights, and Leopold sensed that all was not well at home.

“Thanks, Captain,” Fletcher said, climbing into the car. “I appreciate it. But it sure as hell is out of your way!”

The rain that had pelted the city all through the chill March afternoon had settled now into a misty drizzle that hardly showed in the car’s headlights. They had gone only a few blocks when a sudden harsh message came over the police radio.

“All cars! Attention all cars in vicinity of Park and Chestnut! Investigate house alarm at 332 Park!”

“We’d better have a look,” Fletcher suggested. “It’s only a block away.”

Leopold grunted agreement, already wheeling the car down a side street. “How many homes in this area have burglar alarms, anyway?” he wondered aloud. Though close to downtown, it was an area of middle-class houses and well-kept yards, with a reasonably low crime rate.

“That’s the house.” Fletcher pointed, and Leopold slammed on the brakes. “Look! Around the side!”

Two figures had broken from the shadows and were running toward the back yard. Leopold was out of the car after them, shouting, “Stop! We’re police officers!” They kept running, lost in the darkness between houses, and he started after them. He brought his gun out, but he wouldn’t use it unless he had to. For all he knew, they were only a couple of punk kids.

“Careful, Captain,” Fletcher cautioned, coming up behind him. The yard was muddy from the rain, and slippery.

Leopold couldn’t see the two who had run, but he sensed they were hiding nearby. “Got a flashlight, Fletcher?”

At his words, a girl’s voice shouted, “Run, Jimmy!” A dark figure broke from cover not five feet ahead of Leopold and sprinted toward the voice.

Leopold made a long grab and ripped at the man’s coat pocket, but he was off balance and falling. He tried to right himself, but his feet slipped in the mud and he went down hard, throwing out his left arm in an effort to catch himself.

Fletcher had come up fast, shining his light. “You all right, Captain?” he asked, reaching out a hand.

“Never mind me. Get after them!”

Leopold knew he wasn’t all right. His left wrist had taken the full weight of his fall, and although the pain was not great, he couldn’t move it. He sat in the mud for a moment feeling sorry for himself, then got carefully to his feet.

After a few minutes Fletcher returned. “A patrol car caught the man on the next street, but the girl got away. How are you?”

“I think I broke my wrist.”

“Damn! I’ll have to get you to a hospital.”

“All right,” Leopold agreed. He didn’t feel much like arguing.

Fletcher snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute! There’s a good bone man right in the next block. I took one of the kids there. Come on.”

“It’s a little late for doctor’s hours,” Leopold protested. He knew it must be nearly eleven.

“Never mind that.” Fletcher got him into the car and drove to the next block, searching for the doctor’s sign. Finally he stopped before an older house with a remodeled front. “This is it.”

“Not too plush for a doctor’s place,” Leopold commented.

“He’s paying alimony to two ex-wives. Come on.”

The sign by the door read: Arnold Ranger, MD., Orthopedic Surgeon. Dr. Ranger proved to be a youngish man with a ready smile and quick wit. “Always glad to help the police,” he said when they’d identified themselves. “We’ll have to X-ray that arm, but judging by the angle of the wrist, I’d call it a fracture.”

Leopold followed him into the X-ray room. “It’s been a bad arm for me. Last year a bullet nicked it.”

The doctor washed the dried mud away and carefully laid the injured wrist on the X-ray table. “Were you chasing a murderer?”

“Only a burglar. Down in the next block.”

“That must have been at Bailey’s. He’s had other robberies.” After a few moments he returned with the X-rays. “It’s a fracture, all right. Both bones—the distal end of the radius and the ulna. It’s quite a common thing, really, but you’ll need a cast for perhaps four to six weeks, and full recovery will take two or three months.”

“That long?”

Dr. Ranger nodded and motioned Leopold onto a narrow padded table. “I’m going to give you a shot now. It won’t completely knock you out, but it’ll relax you while I set the bones. Perhaps your friend could come in and hold the wrist in place while I apply the cast.”

Fletcher came in then and stood by as the doctor worked. Leopold was aware that the entire operation seemed to be happening with remarkable speed. Almost before he knew it, the doctor was helping him off the table and back to the X-ray room for a final look. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll fix you up here with a sling, and you come back and see me in four weeks. Keep the arm elevated for a day or two, in case there’s any swelling.”

The plaster cast was strange and heavy on Leopold’s left arm. It reached from just below his elbow to his knuckles, with a slight crook at the wrist. Though it probably weighed only a few pounds, it felt much heavier. “Thanks, Doctor,” he grumbled.

“Oh, one thing,” Dr. Ranger said. “Could I have your health insurance number, for my secretary? She’s always after me for treating people in the middle of the night and forgetting the paper work.”

Dr. Ranger saw them to the door, and Fletcher tried to help Leopold down the steps. “Careful here, Captain.”

“Damn it, Fletcher, I’m not a cripple.”

“Well, cripple or not, I’m not leaving you alone in that apartment tonight. You come home and stay in our spare room.”

Leopold started to protest, but Fletcher was firm. “Just tonight. Tomorrow you can go back to your place.”

“All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “And in the morning I want to see the guy they arrested. I want to know what he was stealing that cost me a broken arm.”

The morning was something of an ordeal for Leopold. The combination of a strange bed and the cast on his arm had made sleeping impossible, and he arrived at headquarters tired and not a little grouchy. After explaining what had happened, to the first dozen people he encountered, he retreated to his office and shut the door.

It was an hour later before Fletcher ventured inside with the morning coffee. “How’s it feel?” he asked.

“The wrist’s not bad, but this damned cast is getting me down already. A month of it and I’ll really be ready for a rest home somewhere.” He’d investigated the cast already, tapping its hard outer shell, and fingering the thin layer of cotton that seemed to line it.

Fletcher sipped his coffee. “Want to hear about the guy you were chasing?”

“I suppose so. Who was he?”

“Fellow named Jimmy Duke. Three previous burglary convictions, all in New Jersey. Nothing too startling otherwise. He’s thirty years old, and he’s spent seven of them behind bars.”

“What about the victim, Bailey? That Dr. Ranger last night said there’d been a number of robberies there.”

Fletcher nodded. “Bailey is a stamp collector, of all things! He works out of his home, and does quite a business in selling stamps to other collectors, which explains the burglar alarm.”

“Did this Duke get much from him?”

“Quite a lot. All the most valuable items, unfortunately. But you saved some of them.”

“I did? How?”

“When you grabbed the man and ripped his pocket. That’s where he was carrying some of the loot. The boys were checking the yard with their flashlights and they found stamps all over in the mud. Luckily they’re protected in individual little glassine envelopes, so none of them were damaged. We figure the girl must have gotten away with the missing stuff.”

Leopold sighed and tried working the fingers of his bad arm. “I guess I should leave this chasing burglars to younger men and stick to murder cases.”

Fletcher opened an evidence envelope and showed him a collection of multicolored stamps. “These are the ones you rescued. Quite a collection.”

Leopold, who knew very little about stamp collecting, studied them with a mixture of interest and scorn. “You mean these things are worth money?”

“I guess collectors think they’re a good hedge against inflation, just like art.” He pointed to one reddish-brown stamp. “They tell me this U.S. five-cent one is worth $55. And here’s an airmail stamp worth around $500.”

“There’s enough of a market for stolen stamps?”

“Apparently, among dealers and collectors. Unfortunately, one of the most valuable stamps in Bailey’s collection is still missing.” Fletcher consulted the notes attached to the evidence envelope. “It’s a rare Hawaiian Islands stamp, two cents, issued in 1851.”

“What’s it worth? A thousand?”

“Bailey bought it 30 years ago for $20,000. It could be worth twice that today.”

Leopold whistled softly and gazed at the stamps with new respect. “No wonder he needed a burglar alarm. A bank vault would have been an even better idea.”

“Collectors don’t like bank vaults, Captain. They like to take out their collections at odd times and look them over.”

“What’s this stamp here?” Leopold asked, pointing to a large brown one that had been partially hidden by the others. It seemed poorly printed, and showed a crude drawing of a winged demon flying over a row of houses. Across the top were the words: Jersey Devil—Ten Cents.

Fletcher bent over to study it and shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t imagine. Never saw anything like it before. It certainly can’t be very valuable, unless it’s something left over from Colonial times.”

“No, those houses are modern. It’s no Colonial stamp.”

“Well, anyway, we got them back for Bailey. He’s coming down this morning to look them over.”

When Fletcher had gone, Leopold tried to busy himself with the morning reports and a batch of paper work left from the previous day, but he was not yet used to the heavy plaster cast and its intrusive presence was both annoying and frustrating. Finally he gave up the attempt and went out to the squad room to alleviate his uneasiness.

As soon as Fletcher saw him he motioned him over to the desk where he stood with a tall, elderly gentleman. “Captain Leopold, this is Oscar Bailey. He’s the man who broke his arm saving part of your collection, Mr. Bailey.”

They shook hands and the elderly collector said, “I thank you for your efforts, Captain. I only wish you’d rescued the two-cent Hawaiian.”

“Any lead on the girl yet?” Leopold asked Fletcher.

“None, but Duke will probably break down soon and tell us who she is. We’ll get your stamp back for you, Mr. Bailey.”

“I certainly hope so. The insurance wouldn’t begin to cover its current market value.” He waved the evidence envelope full of his stamps. “And now I understand I won’t be allowed to take these until after this man Duke has been tried.”

“I’m afraid that’s correct,” Leopold said. “They’re evidence that a theft was committed. We’ll guard them carefully, however.”

“I hope so!”

“While you’re here, I wanted to ask you about this item in your collection, this Jersey Devil.” Leopold pointed to the poorly-printed stamp. “What is it?”

“Nothing. A joke. It has no value.” Oscar Bailey was suddenly ill at ease, his eyes shifting.

“Is it from New Jersey? This Jimmy Duke has a criminal record in New Jersey.”

“No. Forget about it.” He turned to one of the detectives and started reading the inventory of missing stamps. Leopold stood there for a moment, then shrugged and walked away. It wasn’t his case anyway; he’d just happened along in time to break his arm.

Yet the case did bother him, because he had broken his arm. The following day he called the public library and asked if they could give him the name of some leading stamp collector in the area. They had two names for him: Oscar Bailey, and an assistant professor at the university, a fellow named Dexter Jones.

That afternoon, driving as well as he could manage with one arm in a sling, Leopold went out to the university campus. It had been some years since he’d been called there to investigate the killing of a student by his roommate, and the place had changed considerably. New buildings were under construction everywhere, and the old ivy walls were almost obscured by workmen and steel scaffolding.

His last visit had been on a glorious autumn day, but this one was quite different. The off-and-on drizzle of the past few days had started again, dampening sidewalks and spirits, and the sight of a muddy puddle at one construction site only served to remind him of his fall two nights earlier. He entered the Fine Arts Building grimly and sought out the office of Dexter Jones.

Jones proved to be a graying, middle-aged man with glasses and what appeared to be a large mole on his nose. Eyeing Leopold over his glasses, he asked, “What happened to your arm?”

“Broke it chasing a burglar.”

There was a grunt of sympathy. “I had an accident myself this morning. Tip of a match flew off and burned my nose here.” He pointed to the mole-like mark. “Looks terrible!”

“I understand you’re an expert on postage stamps, Professor.”

“It’s only a hobby, but ever since the newspaper ran an article on me two years ago, the local library recommends me as some sort of expert. What can I do for you?”

“I want to ask you about a stamp called the Jersey Devil.”

Dexter Jones lifted his fingers from a scratch-pad he’d been toying with. “The Jersey Devil?”

“It was recovered after a robbery at Oscar Bailey’s house.”

“Did you ask Bailey about it?”

“He was quite vague. I was hoping you’d be more direct.”

“Is it an official police matter?”

“The robber was from New Jersey. If the stamp was from there too, it might be a connection.”

“I see.” He thought about it some more before replying. “Very well, I have nothing to hide. The Jersey Devil is the name of a semisecret, privately-owned postal system operated in competition with the government.”

Leopold wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly. “A private postal system? Isn’t that against the law?”

“Yes. Which is why it’s secret.”

“But who would use such a thing?”

“Various groups who need to conduct their business without fear of mail checks and interceptions by the government. Some quite respectable banks have even been known to use it.”

“The whole thing is a bit hard to believe.”

“Not at all. The government today exercises an amazing amount of control over the mails. Second and third-class mail can be opened under certain circumstances, and first-class mail can be delayed and recorded. It’s only logical that criminal elements, dealers in pornography, sellers of sweepstakes tickets, drug peddlers and the like, will use some other method of communication.”

“But who’s behind the Jersey Devil system?” Leopold insisted.

Dexter Jones paused to light his pipe. “A man named Corflu, who runs a trucking company in New Jersey. I’ve never met him, but I understand he’s quite a colorful character.”

Leopold stood up. There seemed nothing more to be learned about the Jersey Devil. “Thank you for your time, Professor. It’s been most interesting.”

Jones gave him a final grin. “Always glad to help the law.”

On the way back to his car, walking through the puddles that remained from the March drizzle, Leopold wondered about one thing. He wondered about the name Oscar Bailey which had been scrawled on the scratch-pad with which Jones had toyed.

Nothing happened for two days, and Leopold pretty much forgot about the Jersey Devil, and tried to busy himself with as much of the office routine as possible.

It was Friday morning when Fletcher walked into his office and dropped the bombshell. “How’s the arm, Captain?”

“Heavy.”

“Didn’t you say you talked to a Professor Dexter Jones about that odd stamp the other day?”

“Sure. What about him?”

“Nothing, except he was murdered last night. Apparently Jones was working late on campus. He left some test papers on his desk and started home around eleven. His car was in the faculty parking lot, and someone was waiting there for him. Shot him twice in the chest.”

“Robbery?”

“Not unless the guy got scared off.”

“Did Jones live long enough to say anything?”

“Not a word. Killed instantly.”

“What about his personal life?”

“Divorced years ago. Wife and children out on the West Coast somewhere. Apparently he was popular with the faculty and students. No sign of trouble there.”

“Girls?”

“Nothing there. He wasn’t one to fool around with his students, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Leopold remembered his conversation with the cheerful, pipe-smoking man, and he felt somehow as if he were partly responsible for what had happened. Was there something he could have done? Had he asked the wrong questions, or failed to ask the right ones?

“I’ll be working with you on this one,” he announced to Fletcher. “I feel I’m part of it already.”

“I don’t think you should, Captain, with your arm.”

“Nonsense! I’m not going to sit here rotting away for the next month. Besides, I may have a lead that could help us.” He told Fletcher about the name on the scratch-pad. “I think it’s time I had a talk with Oscar Bailey.”

Leopold was becoming quite skilled at one-handed driving, though he wouldn’t have liked going any distance that way. Returning to the scene of his misadventure gave him a brief moment of apprehension, and he was especially careful going up the front steps to Bailey’s house.

The tall, elderly gentleman met him at the door, and seemed surprised. “Leopold, isn’t it? Captain Leopold? What brings you here, sir?”

“A few questions, if you have the time. You may not have heard yet, but one of your fellow philatelists was murdered last night—Dexter Jones, out at the university.”

“Jones! Murdered, you say?” He took a step backward and sank into a chair. Leopold stepped in and shut the door behind him.

“Were you a friend of his, Mr. Bailey?”

“Not especially, but at my age the death of anyone is something of a shock, a reminder of one’s own mortality. Who killed him?”

“We don’t know. I thought you might have some ideas.”

Bailey waved a gnarled hand. “I hardly knew the man. We met a few times at stamp shows some years back, and he phoned me once or twice to discuss special stamp issues, but really we saw very little of each other. In a sense we were rivals, and in this business it’s usually best for rivals to keep away from one another.”

“Then you wouldn’t know if he had any enemies?”

“No.”

“He didn’t happen to phone you during the last few days?”

“I don’t….” Oscar Bailey hesitated, through uncertainty or design. “Yes, now that you mention it. He called to inquire about the theft, to find out what was missing.”

“Wasn’t that unusual, if you were not close friends?”

“Oh, he was just curious, that’s all. Wanted to gloat, I suppose.”

“Is there any possibility the thieves might have tried to sell him your stamps? I understand the girl got away with a valuable Hawaiian one.”

“Anything’s possible, but I doubt if they’d try to sell it this close to home. New York would be better.”

Leopold nodded. It confirmed his own conclusion. “Then there’s the matter of the Jersey Devil. I know all about it, so there’s no need to be coy, Mr. Bailey.”

“I know nothing about the Jersey Devil.”

“That’s odd, since Jones told me before he was killed that it was a private postal service used for extra-legal purposes.”

Oscar Bailey’s face reddened a bit. “That may be so. My interest is in stamps and postmarks and covers only. The stamp you mention came my way and I added it to my collection.”

“Do you know a man named Corflu, a New Jersey trucker?”

“I may have heard the name. I don’t remember.”

Leopold could see he was getting nowhere. Bailey wasn’t about to discuss the Jersey Devil with any detective. “All right,” he said. “Thank you for your help.”

“Are you going to get back my two-cent Hawaiian?”

Leopold merely looked at him. “First, I’m going to find out who killed Dexter Jones.”

Jimmy Duke, the stamp burglar, was out on bail, and it wasn’t until the following day that Leopold located him at his apartment in a rundown section of town. The day was sunny for a change, with the first hint of spring in the air, and Leopold felt good. Even the weight of the cast on his left arm was becoming bearable.

Duke, a stoop-shouldered young man with straight black hair and a pencil-thin mustache, didn’t recognize him. “You another cop come to check on me? I ain’t skipped town. You can see that, copper.”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

Then, seeing the cast on his arm, Duke’s forehead twisted into a frown. “Are you the guy that broke his arm trying to grab me?”

“I’m the guy.”

Duke thought about this, twisting his face into another unlikely shape. He reminded Leopold of nothing so much as a great rubber-faced rat. “Well, what do you want now?”

“The girl that was with you. Where can I find her?”

“Hell, man, they kept me up all night asking me about the girl! I don’t know no girl!”

Leopold stepped closer to Duke. “Look, buster, I was there, remember? I heard a girl’s voice call your name. She made off with some quite valuable stamps, in case you don’t read the papers.”

Jimmy Duke lowered his head and sulked. “I don’t know her. I met her in a bar and she came along with me.”

“What’s her name?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Who put up your bail?”

“My brother in St. Louis.”

Leopold sighed. “Look, Jimmy, I’m trying to get some information.”

Duke’s face twisted into something approaching a smile. “First names now, huh? The friendly copper! That’s a real gas, that is!”

“I’m on a murder case, Duke. A stamp collector was murdered two nights ago, and it could tie in with your robbery. You were already out on bail then. How’d you like to face a murder charge?”

“You know I didn’t kill anybody!” The words had gotten through. He was scared.

“If you didn’t, maybe the girl did. Who is she, Duke?”

“I don’t know.”

“If she’s such a good friend, why hasn’t she split the rest of the loot with you?” It was a shot in the dark, but Leopold had a hunch it was true.

Jimmy Duke thought about that. He rummaged around for a cigarette and finally said, “All right, copper. Her name is Bonnie Irish. At least that’s the name she uses. She’s done some go-go dancing at clubs around town.”

“Where does she live?”

“Rooms with a couple of other girls, but don’t waste your time. She skipped town after the other night. Probably in New York trying to peddle that stamp for 30 or 40 grand, like the papers said.”

Leopold nodded. He had the feeling the rat-faced man was telling the truth. “Don’t leave town. We may want you again.”

“Don’t worry, copper. I’ll be here till the trial.”

During the next three days police and detectives searched the area for the dancer named Bonnie Irish, but she truly seemed to have dropped from sight. The two-cent Hawaiian had not yet turned up in any of the normal New York channels, and Oscar Bailey was growing increasingly restive.

“He calls twice a day,” Fletcher told Leopold the following Tuesday morning. “But I suppose we can’t blame him.”

“I do have an odd feeling of frustration on this case, Fletcher. Any leads on the Jones killing yet?”

“Nothing. I know you don’t buy it, Captain, but I’m leaning toward the theory that the killer was a holdup man who panicked and ran. Nothing else fits. The guy had no enemies.”

“Maybe you’re right, Fletcher. Damned if I know.”

On Wednesday, Leopold’s arm began to itch beneath the cast. He was restless and irritable, and anxious to do something. Finally he called Fletcher in and announced, “I’m driving over to Jersey to talk to this Mr. Corflu about his private postal system.” Something in a phone company report had brought Corflu to mind.

“Like hell you are, if you’ll excuse me, Captain. You’ve been driving around with one arm far too much already.” Fletcher unrolled his shirt sleeves and buttoned the cuffs. “I’ve got no other leads to follow. I might as well drive you over myself. You’re sure we won’t upset the Jersey authorities?”

Leopold, giving reluctant agreement to Fletcher’s accompanying him, answered, “We’re not going to arrest anybody. If this Corflu is violating federal laws, it would be up to the Post Office Department to get after him. I’m just interested in the murder of Dexter Jones, and that’s what I want to talk about.”

“You really think Corflu had Jones killed because he told you about the Jersey Devil?”

“It’s farfetched, I’ll admit. But Bailey certainly seems afraid to talk about it.”

Traffic was light on this cloudy weekday morning, and they made good time. The offices of Corflu Trucking Company were on the outskirts of Paterson, in a low, rambling warehouse that had been converted to house a fleet of modern diesel trucks. Leopold and Fletcher were impressed by it, but they were even more impressed by Benedict Corflu himself.

He greeted them wearing a grease-stained shirt and pants, poking his head up from beneath a pickup truck that was belching smoke as the motor coughed. “Be with you in a minute,” he shouted over the motor’s uncertain roar. If they had come expecting a crime king in a padded office, this was surely the wrong place.

When at last he emerged, passing a wrench to one of the other men, he proved to be a balding, middle-aged man with a turf of sandy-red hair over either ear. The hair, sticking out like twin horns, gave Leopold the fleeting impression that here indeed, in the flesh, was the Jersey Devil.

“What can I do for you men?” he asked, wiping the grease from his hands with a soiled cloth. It was hard to pinpoint his age or much else about him, but Leopold guessed him still to be under fifty. When he walked he threw his body to one side slightly, perhaps as a result of some old injury.

“Is there somewhere we could talk in private, Mr. Corflu?”

“My office. Up this way.” He led them up a worn wooden staircase to a floor of offices above the garage. Here a dozen or so girls were engaged in general office routine, and they hardly looked up as Benedict Corflu passed through.

His office, overlooking the truck service area, was small and functional, with open shelves holding stacks of papers and printed bulletins. Against one wall, behind his desk, was a large map of the metropolitan New York area, showing everything from Newburgh south to Trenton, and from the Pennsylvania state line east to New Haven.

“This is your operating area?” Leopold asked, motioning toward the map.

Benedict Corflu nodded. “Everything within 50 miles of Manhattan, and a bit farther than that in spots.” His face relaxed into a smile. “But you men don’t want to talk about trucking.”

“That’s quite right,” Leopold said. “How did you know?”

“The car you came in has Connecticut plates. It’s also got a police radio in it.”

“I’m Captain Leopold, and this is Lieutenant Fletcher. We’re investigating a murder and a robbery that might be connected with it. There’s a possibility you could help our investigation.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

Leopold just smiled and reached out, placing the Jersey Devil stamp, in its little glassine envelope, on the desk before him. “We want to talk about this.”

Benedict Corflu raised his eyes slowly, and the twin tufts of hair stood out more sharply than ever. “So?”

“We understand you operate a private postal service, in illegal competition with the United States Government.”

Leopold had expected almost any reaction to his words, ranging from outright denial to flustered confusion. He did not expect the reaction he got. Corflu leaned back in his chair and said, “Of course! That fact is known to a good many people in the government. During the great mail strike, restrictions were even lifted briefly to allow me to operate legally. The Post Office Department actually leased some of my trucks to haul mail out of New York City.”

“That may be, but I can hardly believe they could condone the issuance of private postage stamps like this one.”

Corflu waved a greasy hand in dismissal. “Rubbish! Stamps are only external symbols. I furnish a service, a needed service. Are you aware that mail—even first-class mail—can be seized and opened in this country of America? Are you aware that a sealed first-class letter can be held by authorities for more than a day, while a search warrant is obtained to open it? The Supreme Court has even ruled the practice to be constitutional! What protection is there anymore for the average citizen? What protection is there for pure and simple privacy?”

“Who needs it? The criminal element? Isn’t that whom you serve with your mail system?”

“I serve anyone who still believes in the right to privacy. The government allows me to operate in violation of the law for the same reason it winks at numbered Swiss bank accounts and illegal distilleries. Our operations are a tiny percentage of the total volume, and putting us out of business might be more difficult than it appears. The specific operations I conduct are carefully planned and executed in a manner designed to challenge existing laws rather than openly break them. My arrest would open up a maze of legal problems, which I am prepared to exploit to the fullest.”

Leopold felt himself in a sort of wonderland, listening to a man who bragged of breaking the law and almost dared the law to arrest him. “I didn’t come about your postal system,” he replied. “I came about a murder.”

“You said that. Who was murdered?”

“A stamp collector named Dexter Jones, last week in Connecticut. Another collector named Oscar Bailey had been robbed a few nights earlier. I think the crimes are somehow connected. One of the stamps stolen from Bailey was a Jersey Devil.”

Corflu nodded. “I read about it. I remember, now that you mention it. The papers didn’t mention the Jersey Devil, but they did say a valuable two-cent Hawaiian was still missing.”

“That’s correct.”

“Worth how much?” he asked.

“Perhaps thirty or forty thousand dollars.”

“I fear my poor Jersey Devils will never bring a price like that, Captain.”

“We want the stamp back and we want the murderer of Dexter Jones, Mr. Corflu.”

“Why do you come to me?”

“Because the phone company records show that Jones placed a long-distance telephone call to you the day before he was murdered and the day after he told me about the Jersey Devil.”

Benedict Corflu was silent for a time, perhaps considering the possibilities as he formed his reply. Finally, he said, “Yes, that’s correct. I’d never met Dexter Jones, but we did talk occasionally on the phone. I was sorry to learn of his death.”

“Why did he call you that day?”

“As a collector, he’s been interested in the Jersey Devil stamp issue. He’d called me a couple of times before. This time he had two things on his mind. First, he wanted to warn me that a detective had been asking questions about the Devil stamps. I assume that was you.”

Leopold nodded. “What else did he say?”

“That he’d been approached by someone regarding the missing two-cent Hawaiian. There was no picture of it in the papers, and this person wanted to know exactly what it looked like.”

“Do you know if the person was a girl?”

“He didn’t say. He only told me that he felt himself in the middle of things. Apparently he’d told this person he’d have to see the stamp to be certain, and he was undecided whether he should tip off Bailey. They were bitter rivals, you know, and I think he was almost pleased at the robbery. Still, he didn’t want to get in too deep.”

“He asked you your advice?”

“In a sense, yes.” Corflu smiled slightly at the memory. “Jones was an honest man, but even honest men can be tempted at times. I really believe he was sounding me out on the availability of a market for the stolen stamp. I suppose it follows logically—a man who prints illegal stamps would be interested in buying stolen ones.”

“He put it to you like that?”

“No, no. But the implication was clear. He could get his hands on the stolen stamp if there was a buyer for it.”

“And you told him what?”

Benedict Corflu smiled once more. “I advised him to call Bailey or the police. I advised him not to get involved.”

“Spoken like a law-abiding citizen.”

“Which I am.”

“You heard nothing more from Jones?”

“Nothing. But you know that. You have a list of his calls.”

Leopold got to his feet. The arm beneath his cast was itching again, annoying him with the persistence of its presence. “We may have more questions, Mr. Corflu.”

“My door is always open.”

On the way back, along the Garden State Parkway, one of Corflu’s trucks seemed to follow them for some distance. It made Fletcher nervous, and he rode with his .38 service revolver in his lap until the truck turned off at the state line. It was that sort of a day.

Nothing happened for a week.

Leopold had never had a case like it, and the feeling of absolute frustration grew with every passing day. There was no sign of the girl, no sign of the missing stamp, no further news of the Jersey Devil. Oscar Bailey continued to phone every day, and Jimmy Duke continued living alone in his apartment, awaiting trial.

It seemed obvious to Leopold that Dexter Jones had been killed—by either Bonnie Irish or Jimmy Duke—when he took Corflu’s advice and told them he was going to call the police; but the obvious was not always the case, and at least one other possibility had inserted itself into Leopold’s reasoning. They had only Corflu’s word for the contents of that telephone conversation. Perhaps Jones had, indeed, obtained the two-cent Hawaiian from Bonnie Irish, and in turn delivered it to Corflu. A man like Corflu might well have killed him rather than pay him the stamp’s value.

So Leopold continued to puzzle over the facts, or lack of them, and wait for the sort of break that always came sooner or later.

The break, when it did come, was from a most unexpected source: Benedict Corflu himself, on the phone from his Paterson office. “Leopold, this is Corflu. Remember me?”

“I remember.”

“Some news has reached me which might be of interest to you.”

“Oh?”

“Regarding a young lady named Bonnie Irish. Are you still looking for her?”

Leopold signaled Fletcher to pick up the extension phone. “We certainly are! Where is she?”

“A friend of mine in New York has been contacted by her. She has some stamps for sale.”

“I’ll bet! The two-cent Hawaiian, for instance?”

“That one was not specifically mentioned, but others from the Bailey robbery were. There’s no doubt this is the girl you want.”

“Where is she now?”

Corflu sighed into the telephone. “That I cannot tell you. But the day after tomorrow she is to be in New York City, meeting with my friend.”

“He’s willing to cooperate with the police?”

“When I told him there was murder involved, he thought it would be best. He wants me to be there, too, when he meets the girl.”

“Tell us where and when,” Leopold said. For the first time in weeks he actually forgot his broken arm.

The mid-Manhattan offices of Royal Stamp Sales were located on a dim side street off Sixth Avenue, behind shop windows cluttered with faded and probably worthless stamps from all parts of the world. It was not a place any passerby would be likely even to notice, but on this particular morning there was a great deal of activity. Corflu’s friend, pleading a bad heart, had allowed himself to be replaced behind the counter by Corflu himself, free of grease and dressed surprisingly in a conservative shirt and tie. Two New York City detectives were also on the scene, working as clerks behind the counter with Corflu. They would make the actual arrest if one were to be made.

Leopold had been relegated to the sidelines, given an observation post in a hotel lobby across the street, but Fletcher was to play a key role in the stake-out. Dressed as a mailman, with peaked cap and leather mailbag, he would enter the stamp shop immediately after the girl, blocking her escape route.

“I feel foolish in this outfit,” Fletcher complained, standing with Leopold in the lobby of the shabby hotel.

“But you can follow her in without alarming her. Remember what Chesterton wrote in one of his Father Brown detective stories? ‘Nobody ever notices postmen somehow.’ It’s just as true now, except when they’re out on strike.” He reached out with his good hand to grip Fletcher’s arm. “Could that be her?”

A girl in her early twenties, who certainly had a dancer’s body, was walking down the opposite side of the street, studying the numbers on the shop doors. Fletcher adjusted his cap and moved out of the lobby door. When she reached the entrance of Royal Stamp Sales, the girl paused a moment, seemed to brace her shoulders, and then entered. Fletcher was only a few steps behind her.

Leopold waited impatiently, running his right hand over the hard plaster of his cast. It must have been less than a minute, but to him it seemed like five. He cursed softly to himself, then moved out. Traffic was heavy on the side street, and it took him a moment to get across. He couldn’t see through the dusty windows of the stamp store, but just as he reached the front of it the door was flung open and the girl came running out, holding a small pistol in one hand.

She saw Leopold and started to raise the gun, but he swung his cast and knocked it out of her hand, feeling the arrows of pain shoot up his arm at the force of the impact. Her face twisted in alarm and she turned to run, but now Fletcher was out of the door behind her, mailbag and all, grabbing her in a bear hug that knocked the remaining fight from her.

“She got the drop on us, Captain,” Fletcher explained. “I didn’t figure her having a gun that handy.”

Leopold grunted as he stooped to recover the gun. “Miss Bonnie Irish, I presume?”

She twisted in Fletcher’s grip and spat, “Go to hell!”

Inside, Benedict Corflu and the two New York detectives were sorting through the little pile of glassine envelopes she’d left on the counter. “Is that everything?” Leopold asked.

“Everything but the two-cent Hawaiian,” Corflu replied. “It’s not here.”

Leopold swore and looked down at the gun in his hand. “Well, we’ve got Bonnie Irish, but that’s about all. This gun is a .22 caliber, and Dexter Jones was killed with a .32.”

The case went into another of its periodic slumbers, only this time it seemed that nothing would awaken it. Bonnie Irish denied any knowledge of the Jones killing, and they could hold her only for her part in the Bailey robbery. The two-cent Hawaiian was still missing, and Oscar Bailey was still demanding its recovery. Benedict Corflu went back to his trucking business, and apparently to the Jersey Devil postal system as well.

Finally, one sunny day in April, Fletcher asked, “You think we’re going to have to give up on that Jones killing, Captain?”

“It hasn’t been even a month yet, Fletcher. Something will turn up. If only the girl would break down and tell us what she did with that damned stamp…”

“Maybe it was never stolen. Maybe Bailey just added it to the loot for insurance purposes.”

“You think I haven’t considered that?” Leopold grumbled.

“Or maybe the girl gave it back to Jimmy Duke and he’s got it.”

“No, we’ve been watching him. She didn’t go near him before her arrest, and she hasn’t been able to raise bail yet to get out of jail.”

“So where does that leave us, Captain?” Fletcher said wearily.

“Nowhere. Back with our stickup-man theory, I guess.”

Leopold shuffled papers and looked unhappy. After a time Fletcher asked, “How’s the arm coming? Isn’t it about time for the cast to come off?”

“Tomorrow, I hope. I go back to Doctor Ranger tomorrow.”

Leopold arrived at the doctor’s office fifteen minutes early the following morning. He was anxious to know about the arm, anxious to get the heavy cast off, and to feel himself a whole man again.

“How’ve you been?” Dr. Ranger asked, coming in smiling. He wore a white jacket this time and seemed much more the doctor than he had on Leopold’s first, nighttime visit.

“I’ll be better when this thing comes off.”

“We’ll see.” Ranger picked up a small electric saw and went quickly to work on the cast. He made a line of small cuts, tracing the route of the saw, and then cut in deeper. Leopold felt the tickle of the saw against his skin as it broke through the cast. “Had any interesting murders lately?”

“One that’s had me stumped. It grew out of the night I broke this thing.”

“Oh?” Dr. Ranger made his cut on the other side of the case and started to pry it apart. “Not that university professor I read about? Jones?”

“That’s the one.”

“Any leads on who killed him?” The cast came off and Leopold stared down at his thick, scaly wrist. “Don’t move it,” Ranger cautioned. “This is only an inspection. We have to X-ray it.”

“No leads,” Leopold said, flexing his fingers.

Ranger carried the two parts of the discarded cast to the next room. “I’ll just take you in for X rays now.” He positioned Leopold under the machine, cautioning him again not to move his wrist. “You know, I knew Jones slightly. Hadn’t seen him for years, though.”

“Oh?”

“Gray-haired fellow with glasses and a wart on his nose?”

“That’s the fellow,” Leopold agreed.

“I thought so. Met him once at a convention. That’s why I was interested in your progress on the case.” The machine hummed as the X rays were taken.

“Couldn’t you just look at it through a fluoroscope?”

“The pictures are a good record, and besides, you’re exposed to less radiation this way.” Ranger came out in a moment with the X rays. “You think it was a bandit that killed Jones?”

“Probably. How does the arm look? Is the break healing OK?”

The doctor clipped the film sheets to a lighted cabinet. “The fracture is still very much in evidence, but all this is new bone growth. I think we can put you in a plaster splint for a few weeks. It’ll be a lot easier on you than the cast.”

Leopold followed him back to the examining room. “You mean it’s still not healed?”

“Not yet, but I don’t think you can lose position. A splint to keep the wrist in place should be enough.” He produced a flat piece of fabric-covered plaster material and soaked it in hot water until it was malleable. “We’ll shape this against the bottom of the wrist for support. It’ll harden as it cools.” He began to wrap it with an elastic bandage.

When he’d finished, Leopold got to his feet and stepped into the next room before Dr. Ranger could speak. “I’ll be wanting this cast you took off,” he said, reaching for the two pieces. “Just for a souvenir.”

Dr. Ranger kept smiling. “Oh, I’m afraid that will be impossible,” he said, and stepped around Leopold and quickly yanked open a drawer of the supply cabinet.

Leopold caught the glint of the pistol from the corner of his eye, and he swung the heavy cast as he turned, bringing it down hard on Ranger’s hand. The doctor gasped in pain and dropped the gun.

“Hope I didn’t break it, Doctor,” he said, putting down the cast and drawing his own pistol. “Now, let’s talk about the murder of Dexter Jones.”

Lieutenant Fletcher brought coffee, and placed it carefully on Leopold’s desk. “Do you want to explain it to me, Captain? Just how in hell did you know Doctor Ranger killed Jones?”

“I suppose I didn’t know for sure until he tried to pull that gun. Murderers don’t seem to throw weapons in the river like they once did, Fletcher. But then I suppose he felt he was safe enough.”

“But why did he kill Jones?”

“You told me yourself that Ranger was paying alimony to two wives. The prospect of thirty or forty thousand looked awfully good to him, and when Jones threatened to blow the whistle about the stamp, Ranger had to kill him.”

“The stamp? You mean the two-cent Hawaiian?” Leopold nodded. “But where was it?”

Leopold held up half of his heavy plaster cast and pulled back the cotton lining a bit. “Right here, Fletcher. I’ve been carrying it around with me for four weeks without even knowing it.”

“Inside the cast!” He stared at the old, crudely-printed stamp.

“Remember how muddy my wrist was the night I fell and broke it? And remember how they found the loose stamps from Duke’s torn pocket on the ground? When I fell, this stamp in its little protective envelope just stuck to the mud on the underside of my broken wrist. I couldn’t feel it there through the pain and tightness, and I couldn’t turn my wrist to see it there. In the darkness, you never noticed it either. Dr. Ranger found it when he was wiping the mud away before setting the bones. As luck would have it, that one stamp was the most valuable of them all, but of course Ranger couldn’t know that then. I remember at the time he was sure the robbery was at Bailey’s, though I only said it was in the next block. He was so sure because he saw the postage stamp clinging to my arm.”

“But why did he put it inside your cast?”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, of course. He saw that the stamp was a two-cent Hawaiian, and saw its design and color, but he couldn’t know it was so valuable. It might have been worth no more than five dollars. He didn’t want to keep it himself, to commit himself to the act of stealing it, until he knew more. But in case it was valuable, he certainly didn’t want just to give it to me. So he tucked it under the cotton lining for protection and poured the plaster cast over it. He knew I’d have to come back to him to get the cast removed, and by that time he’d know more. He could either keep the stamp then or destroy it or even pretend to ‘find’ it when he removed the cast.”

“What about Jones?”

“He called Jones to learn the stamp’s value, either because he remembered meeting him once or because the library referred him there. He could hardly call Bailey, after all. But Jones saw in the newspaper about the missing stamp, and he guessed the good doctor wasn’t asking a hypothetical question. At first he planned to help Ranger sell the stamp, but two things changed his mind. I came calling about the Jersey Devil stamp, which worried him, and then Corflu advised him to tell the police everything. When he told Ranger he was going to do that, the doctor saw his forty grand going out the window. Once we knew Ranger was involved, we’d suspect that I somehow brought the stamp to him with my broken wrist. So he went out to the university and killed Dexter Jones.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that. I didn’t really start suspecting him, though, until this morning in his office. He said he’d known Jones years ago and he described him. He said Jones had a wart on his nose. It probably looked that way in the darkness of the parking lot, but it was really a burn he’d gotten the day I visited him. So I knew Ranger had seen him just before his death, and that he was lying about it for some reason. Then I remembered how he’d guessed the robbery was at Bailey’s that first night, and how he’d been quick to get the cast out of my sight after he removed it. I took a chance and asked to keep it. That’s when he really lost his cool and went for the gun.”

“All that for a postage stamp,” Fletcher mused. “Well, at least the case is wrapped up, and you’ve got the cast off your arm, Captain.”

Leopold reached out to touch it on the desk. “You know, I think I’ll miss it. There were times when it came in handy.”

(1971)

The Leopold Locked Room

CAPTAIN LEOPOLD HAD NEVER spoken to anyone about his divorce, and it was a distinct surprise to Lieutenant Fletcher when he suddenly said, “Did I ever tell you about my wife, Fletcher?”

They were just coming up from the police pistol range in the basement of headquarters after their monthly target practice, and it hardly seemed a likely time to be discussing past marital troubles. Fletcher glanced at him sideways and answered, “No, I guess you never did, Captain.”

They had reached the top of the stairs and Leopold turned in to the little room where the coffee, sandwich, and soft-drink machines were kept. They called it the lunchroom, but only by the boldest stretch of the imagination could the little collection of tables and chairs qualify as such. Rather it was a place where off-duty cops could sit and chat, which was what Leopold and Fletcher were doing now.

Fletcher bought the coffee and put the steaming paper cups on the table between them. He had never seen Leopold quite this open and personal before, anxious to talk about a life that had existed far beyond the limits of Fletcher’s friendship. “She’s coming back,” Leopold said simply, and it took Fletcher an instant to grasp the meaning of his words.

“Your wife is coming back?”

“My ex-wife.”

“Here? What for?”

Leopold sighed and played with the little bag of sugar that Fletcher had given him with his coffee. “Her niece is getting married. Our niece.”

“I never knew you had one.”

“She’s been away at college. Her name is Vicki Nelson, and she’s marrying a young lawyer named Moore. And Monica is coming back east for the wedding.”

“I never even knew her name,” Fletcher observed, taking a sip of his coffee. “Haven’t you seen her since the divorce?”

Leopold shook his head. “Not for fifteen years. It was a funny thing. She wanted to be a movie star, and I guess fifteen years ago lots of girls still thought about being movie stars. Monica was intelligent and very pretty—but probably no prettier than hundreds of other girls who used to turn up in Hollywood every year back in those days. I was just starting on the police force then, and the future looked pretty bright for me here. It would have been foolish of me to toss up everything just to chase her wild dream out to California. Well, pretty soon it got to be an obsession with her, really bad. She’d spend her afternoons in movie theaters and her evenings watching old films on television. Finally, when I still refused to go west with her, she just left me.”

“Just walked out?”

Leopold nodded. “It was a blessing, really, that we didn’t have children. I heard she got a few minor jobs out there—as an extra, and some technical stuff behind the scenes. Then apparently she had a nervous breakdown. About a year later I received the official word that she’d divorced me. I heard that she recovered and was back working, and I think she had another marriage that didn’t work out.”

“Why would she come back for the wedding?”

“Vicki is her niece and also her godchild. We were just married when Vicki was born, and I suppose Monica might consider her the child we never had. In any event, I know she still hates me, and blames me for everything that’s gone wrong with her life. She told a friend once a few years ago she wished I were dead.”

“Do you have to go to this wedding, too, Captain?”

“Of course. If I stayed away it would be only because of her. At least I have to drop by the reception for a few minutes.” Leopold smiled ruefully. “I guess that’s why I’m telling you all this, Fletcher. I want a favor from you.”

“Anything, Captain. You know that.”

“I know it seems like a childish thing to do, but I’d like you to come out there with me. I’ll tell them I’m working, and that I can only stay for a few minutes. You can wait outside in the car if you want. At least they’ll see you there and believe my excuse.”

Fletcher could see the importance of it to Leopold, and the effort that had gone into the asking. “Sure,” he said. “Be glad to. When is it?”

“This Saturday. The reception’s in the afternoon, at Sunset Farms.”

Leopold had been to Sunset Farms only once before, at the wedding of a patrolman whom he’d especially liked. It was a low rambling place at the end of a paved driveway, overlooking a wooded valley and a gently flowing creek. If it had ever been a farm, that day was long past; but for wedding receptions and retirement parties it was the ideal place. The interior of the main building was, in reality, one huge square room, divided by accordion doors to make up to four smaller square rooms.

For the wedding of Vicki Nelson and Ted Moore three-quarters of the large room was in use, with only the last set of accordion doors pulled shut its entire width and locked. The wedding party occupied a head table along one wall, with smaller tables scattered around the room for the families and friends. When Leopold entered the place at five minutes of two on Saturday afternoon, the hired combo was just beginning to play music for dancing.

He watched for a moment while Vicki stood, radiant, and allowed her new husband to escort her to the center of the floor. Ted Moore was a bit older than Leopold had expected, but as the pair glided slowly across the floor, he could find no visible fault with the match. He helped himself to a glass of champagne punch and stood ready to intercept them as they left the dance floor.

“It’s Captain Leopold, isn’t it?” someone asked. A face from his past loomed up, a tired man with a gold tooth in the front of his smile. “I’m Immy Fontaine, Monica’s stepbrother.”

“Sure,” Leopold said, as if he’d remembered the man all along. Monica had rarely mentioned Immy, and Leopold recalled meeting him once or twice at family gatherings. But the sight of him now, gold tooth and all, reminded Leopold that Monica was somewhere nearby, that he might confront her at any moment.

“We’re so glad you could come,” someone else said, and he turned to greet the bride and groom as they came off the dance floor. Up close, Vicki was a truly beautiful girl, clinging to her new husband’s arm like a proper bride.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” he said.

“This is Ted,” she said, making the introductions. Leopold shook his hand, silently approving the firm grip and friendly eyes.

“I understand you’re a lawyer,” Leopold said, making conversation.

“That’s right, sir. Mostly civil cases, though. I don’t tangle much with criminals.”

They chatted for a few more seconds before the pressure of guests broke them apart. The luncheon was about to be served, and the more hungry ones were already lining up at the buffet tables. Vicki and Ted went over to start the line, and Leopold took another glass of champagne punch.

“I see the car waiting outside,” Immy Fontaine said, moving in again. “You got to go on duty?”

Leopold nodded. “Just this glass and I have to leave.”

“Monica’s in from the west coast.”

“So I heard.”

A slim man with a mustache jostled against him in the crush of the crowd and hastily apologized. Fontaine seized the man by the arm and introduced him to Leopold. “This here’s Dr. Felix Thursby. He came east with Monica. Doc, I want you to meet Captain Leopold, her ex-husband.”

Leopold shook hands awkwardly, embarrassed for the man and for himself. “A fine wedding,” he mumbled. “Your first trip east?”

Thursby shook his head. “I’m from New York. Long ago.”

“I was on the police force there once,” Leopold remarked.

They chatted for a few more minutes before Leopold managed to edge away through the crowd.

“Leaving so soon?” a harsh unforgettable voice asked.

“Hello, Monica. It’s been a long time.”

He stared down at the handsome, middle-aged woman who now blocked his path to the door. She had gained a little weight, especially in the bosom, and her hair was graying. Only the eyes startled him, and frightened him just a bit. They had the intense wild look he’d seen before on the faces of deranged criminals.

“I didn’t think you’d come. I thought you’d be afraid of me,” she said.

“That’s foolish. Why should I be afraid of you?”

The music had started again, and the line from the buffet tables was beginning to snake lazily about the room. But for Leopold and Monica they might have been alone in the middle of a desert.

“Come in here,” she said, “where we can talk.” She motioned toward the end of the room that had been cut off by the accordion doors. Leopold followed her, helpless to do anything else. She unlocked the doors and pulled them apart, just wide enough for them to enter the unused quarter of the large room. Then she closed and locked the doors behind them, and stood facing him. They were two people, alone in a bare unfurnished room.

They were in an area about thirty feet square, with the windows at the far end and the locked accordion doors at Leopold’s back. He could see the afternoon sun cutting through the trees outside, and the gentle hum of the air conditioner came through above the subdued murmur of the wedding guests.

“Remember the day we got married?” she asked.

“Yes. Of course.”

She walked to the middle window, running her fingers along the frame, perhaps looking for the latch to open it. But it stayed closed as she faced him again. “Our marriage was as drab and barren as this room. Lifeless, unused!”

“Heaven knows I always wanted children, Monica.”

“You wanted nothing but your damned police work!” she shot back, eyes flashing as her anger built.

“Look, I have to go. I have a man waiting in the car.”

“Go! That’s what you did before, wasn’t it? Go, go! Go out to your damned job and leave me to struggle for myself. Leave me to—”

“You walked out on me, Monica. Remember?” he reminded her softly. She was so defenseless, without even a purse to swing at him.

“Sure I did! Because I had a career waiting for me! I had all the world waiting for me! And you know what happened because you wouldn’t come along? You know what happened to me out there? They took my money and my self-respect and what virtue I had left. They made me into a tramp, and when they were done they locked me up in a mental hospital for three years. Three years!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Every day while I was there I thought about you. I thought about how it would be when I got out. Oh, I thought. And planned. And schemed. You’re a big detective now. Sometimes your cases even get reported in the California papers.” She was pacing back and forth, caged, dangerous. “Big detective. But I can still destroy you just as you destroyed me!”

He glanced over his shoulder at the locked accordion doors, seeking a way out. It was a thousand times worse than he’d imagined it would be. She was mad—mad and vengeful and terribly dangerous. “You should see a doctor, Monica.”

Her eyes closed to mere slits. “I’ve seen doctors.” Now she paused before the middle window, facing him. “I came all the way east for this day, because I thought you’d be here. It’s so much better than your apartment, or your office, or a city street. There are one hundred and fifty witnesses on the other side of those doors.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

Her mouth twisted in a horrible grin. “You’re going to know what I knew. Bars and cells and disgrace. You’re going to know the despair I felt all those years.”

“Monica—”

At that instant perhaps twenty feet separated them. She lifted one arm, as if to shield herself, then screamed in terror. “No! Oh, God, no!”

Leopold stood frozen, unable to move, as a sudden gunshot echoed through the room. He saw the bullet strike her in the chest, toppling her backward like the blow from a giant fist. Then somehow he had his own gun out of its belt holster and he swung around toward the doors.

They were still closed and locked. He was alone in the room with Monica.

He looked back to see her crumple on the floor, blood spreading in a widening circle around the torn black hole in her dress. His eyes went to the windows, but all three were still closed and unbroken. He shook his head, trying to focus his mind on what had happened.

There was noise from outside, and a pounding on the accordion doors. Someone opened the lock from the other side, and the gap between the doors widened as they were pulled open. “What happened?” someone asked. A woman guest screamed as she saw the body. Another toppled in a faint.

Leopold stepped back, aware of the gun still in his hand, and saw Lieutenant Fletcher fighting his way through the mob of guests. “Captain, what is it?”

“She…Someone shot her.”

Fletcher reached out and took the gun from Leopold’s hand—carefully, as one might take a broken toy from a child. He put it to his nose and sniffed, then opened the cylinder to inspect the bullets. “It’s been fired recently, Captain. One shot.” Then his eyes seemed to cloud over, almost to the point of tears. “Why the hell did you do it?” he asked. “Why?”

Leopold saw nothing of what happened then. He only had vague and splintered memories of someone examining her and saying she was still alive, of an ambulance and much confusion. Fletcher drove him down to headquarters, to the Commissioner’s office, and he sat there and waited, running his moist palms up and down his trousers. He was not surprised when they told him she had died on the way to Southside Hospital. Monica had never been one to do things by halves.

The men—detectives who worked under him—came to and left the Commissioner’s office, speaking in low tones with their heads together, occasionally offering him some embarrassed gesture of condolence. There was an aura of sadness over the place, and Leopold knew it was for him.

“You have nothing more to tell us, Captain?” the Commissioner asked. “I’m making it as easy for you as I can.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Leopold insisted again. “It was someone else.”

“Who? How?”

He could only shake his head. “I wish I knew. I think in some mad way she killed herself, to get revenge on me.”

“She shot herself with your gun, while it was in your holster, and while you were standing twenty feet away?”

Leopold ran a hand over his forehead. “It couldn’t have been my gun. Ballistics will prove that.”

“But your gun had been fired recently, and there was an empty cartridge in the chamber.”

“I can’t explain that. I haven’t fired it since the other day at target practise, and I reloaded it afterwards.”

“Could she have hated you that much, Captain?” Fletcher asked. “To frame you for her murder?”

“She could have. I think she was a very sick woman. If I did that to her—if I was the one who made her sick—I suppose I deserve what’s happening to me now.”

“The hell you do,” Fletcher growled. “If you say you’re innocent, Captain, I’m sticking by you.” He began pacing again, and finally turned to the Commissioner. “How about giving him a paraffin test, to see if he’s fired a gun recently?”

The Commissioner shook his head. “We haven’t used that in years. You know how unreliable it is, Fletcher. Many people have nitrates or nitrites on their hands. They can pick them up from dirt, or fertilizers, or fireworks, or urine, or even from simply handling peas or beans. Anyone who smokes tobacco can have deposits on his hands. There are some newer tests for the presence of barium or lead, but we don’t have the necessary chemicals for those.”

Leopold nodded. The Commissioner had risen through the ranks. He wasn’t simply a political appointee, and the men had always respected him. Leopold respected him. “Wait for the ballistics report,” he said. “That’ll clear me.”

So they waited. It was another 45 minutes before the phone rang and the Commissioner spoke to the ballistics man. He listened, and grunted, and asked one or two questions. Then he hung up and faced Leopold across the desk.

“The bullet was fired from your gun,” he said simply. “There’s no possibility of error. I’m afraid we’ll have to charge you with homicide.”

The routines he knew so well went on into Saturday evening, and when they were finished Leopold was escorted from the courtroom to find young Ted Moore waiting for him. “You should be on your honeymoon,” Leopold told him.

“Vicki couldn’t leave till I’d seen you and tried to help. I don’t know much about criminal law, but perhaps I could arrange bail.”

“That’s already been taken care of,” Leopold said. “The grand jury will get the case next week.”

“I—I don’t know what to say. Vicki and I are both terribly sorry.”

“So am I.” He started to walk away, then turned back. “Enjoy your honeymoon.”

“We’ll be in town overnight, at the Towers, if there’s anything I can do.”

Leopold nodded and kept on walking. He could see the reflection of his guilt in young Moore’s eyes. As he got to his car, one of the patrolmen he knew glanced his way and then quickly in the other direction. On a Saturday night no one talked to wife murderers. Even Fletcher had disappeared.

Leopold decided he couldn’t face the drab walls of his office, not with people avoiding him. Besides, the Commissioner had been forced to suspend him from active duty pending grand jury action and the possible trial. The office didn’t even belong to him any more. He cursed silently and drove home to his little apartment, weaving through the dark streets with one eye out for a patrol car. He wondered if they’d be watching him, to prevent his jumping bail. He wondered what he’d have done in the Commissioner’s shoes.

The eleven o’clock news on television had it as the lead item, illustrated with a black-and-white photo of him taken during a case last year. He shut off the television without listening to their comments and went back outside, walking down to the corner for an early edition of the Sunday paper. The front-page headline was as bad as he’d expected: Detective Captain Held in Slaying of Ex-Wife.

On the way back to his apartment, walking slowly, he tried to remember what she’d been like—not that afternoon, but before the divorce. He tried to remember her face on their wedding day, her soft laughter on their honeymoon. But all he could remember were those mad vengeful eyes. And the bullet ripping into her chest.

Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps the gun had come into his hand so easily he never realized it was there.

“Hello, Captain.”

“I—Fletcher! What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Can I come in?”

“Well…”

“I’ve got a six-pack of beer. I thought you might want to talk about it.”

Leopold unlocked his apartment door. “What’s there to talk about?”

“If you say you didn’t kill her, Captain, I’m willing to listen to you.”

Fletcher followed him into the tiny kitchen and popped open two of the beer cans. Leopold accepted one of them and dropped into the nearest chair. He felt utterly exhausted, drained of even the strength to fight back.

“She framed me, Fletcher,” he said quietly. “She framed me as neatly as anything I’ve ever seen. The thing’s impossible, but she did it.”

“Let’s go over it step by step, Captain. Look, the way I see it there are only three possibilities: either you shot her, she shot herself, or someone else shot her. I think we can rule out the last one. The three windows were locked on the outside and unbroken, the room was bare of any hiding place, and the only entrance was through the accordion doors. These were closed and locked, and although they could have been opened from the other side you certainly would have seen or heard it happen. Besides, there were one hundred and fifty wedding guests on the other side of those doors. No one could have unlocked and opened them and then fired the shot, all without being seen.”

Leopold shook his head. “But it’s just as impossible that she could have shot herself. I was watching her every minute. I never looked away once. There was nothing in her hands, not even a purse. And the gun that shot her was in my holster, on my belt. I never drew it till after the shot was fired.”

Fletcher finished his beer and reached for another can. “I didn’t look at her close, Captain, but the size of the hole in her dress and the powder burns point to a contact wound. The Medical Examiner agrees, too. She was shot from no more than an inch or two away. There were grains of powder in the wound itself, though the bleeding had washed most of them away.”

“But she had nothing in her hand,” Leopold repeated. “And there was nobody standing in front of her with a gun. Even I was twenty feet away.”

“The thing’s impossible, Captain.”

Leopold grunted. “Impossible—unless I killed her.”

Fletcher stared at his beer. “How much time do we have?”

“If the grand jury indicts me for first-degree murder, I’ll be in a cell by next week.”

Fletcher frowned at him. “What’s with you, Captain? You almost act resigned to it! Hell, I’ve seen more fight in you on a routine holdup!”

“I guess that’s it, Fletcher. The fight is gone out of me. She’s drained every drop of it. She’s had her revenge.”

Fletcher sighed and stood up. “Then I guess there’s really nothing I can do for you, Captain. Good night.”

Leopold didn’t see him to the door. He simply sat there, hunched over the table. For the first time in his life he felt like an old man.

Leopold slept late Sunday morning, and awakened with the odd sensation that it had all been a dream. He remembered feeling the same way when he’d broken his wrist chasing a burglar. In the morning, on just awakening, the memory of the heavy cast had always been a dream, until he moved his arm. Now, rolling over in his narrow bed, he saw the Sunday paper where he’d tossed it the night before. The headline was still the same. The dream was a reality.

He got up and showered and dressed, reaching for his holster out of habit before he remembered he no longer had a gun. Then he sat at the kitchen table staring at the empty beer cans, wondering what he would do with his day. With his life.

The doorbell rang and it was Fletcher. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again,” Leopold mumbled, letting him in.

Fletcher was excited, and the words tumbled out of him almost before he was through the door. “I think I’ve got something, Captain! It’s not much, but it’s a start. I was down at headquarters first thing this morning, and I got hold of the dress Monica was wearing when she was shot.”

Leopold looked blank. “The dress?”

Fletcher was busy unwrapping the package he’d brought. “The Commissioner would have my neck if he knew I brought this to you, but look at this hole!”

Leopold studied the jagged, blood-caked rent in the fabric. “It’s large,” he observed, “but with a near-contact wound the powder burns would cause that.”

“Captain, I’ve seen plenty of entrance wounds made by a .38 slug. I’ve even caused a few of them. But I never saw one that looked like this. Hell, it’s not even round!”

“What are you trying to tell me, Fletcher?” Suddenly something stirred inside him. The juices were beginning to flow again.

“The hole in her dress is much larger and more jagged than the corresponding wound in her chest, Captain. That’s what I’m telling you. The bullet that killed her couldn’t have made this hole. No way! And that means maybe she wasn’t killed when we thought she was.”

Leopold grabbed the phone and dialed the familiar number of the Towers Hotel. “I hope they slept late this morning.”

“Who?”

“The honeymooners.” He spoke sharply into the phone, giving the switchboard operator the name he wanted, and then waited. It was a full minute before he heard Ted Moore’s sleepy voice answering on the other end. “Ted, this is Leopold. Sorry to bother you.”

The voice came alert at once. “That’s all right, Captain. I told you to call if there was anything—”

“I think there is. You and Vicki between you must have a pretty good idea of who was invited to the wedding. Check with her and tell me how many doctors were on the invitation list.”

Ted Moore was gone for a few moments and then he returned. “Vicki says you’re the second person who asked her that.”

“Oh? Who was the first?”

“Monica. The night before the wedding, when she arrived in town with Dr. Thursby. She casually asked if he’d get to meet any other doctors at the reception. But Vicki told her he was the only one. Of course we hadn’t invited him, but as a courtesy to Monica we urged him to come.”

“Then after the shooting, it was Thursby who examined her? No one else?”

“He was the only doctor. He told us to call an ambulance and rode to the hospital with her.”

“Thank you, Ted. You’ve been a big help.”

“I hope so, Captain.”

Leopold hung up and faced Fletcher. “That’s it. She worked it with this guy Thursby. Can you put out an alarm for him?”

“Sure can,” Fletcher said. He took the telephone and dialed the unlisted squadroom number. “Dr. Felix Thursby? Is that his name?”

“That’s it. The only doctor there, the only one who could help Monica with her crazy plan of revenge.”

Fletcher completed issuing orders and hung up the phone. “They’ll check his hotel and call me back.”

“Get the Commissioner on the phone, too. Tell him what we’ve got.”

Fletcher started to dial and then stopped, his finger in mid-air. “What have we got, Captain?”

The Commissioner sat behind his desk, openly unhappy at being called to headquarters on a Sunday afternoon, and listened bleakly to what Leopold and Fletcher had to tell him. Finally he spread his fingers on the desktop and said, “The mere fact that this Dr. Thursby seems to have left town is hardly proof of his guilt, Captain. What you’re saying is that the woman wasn’t killed until later—that Thursby killed her in the ambulance. But how could he have done that with a pistol that was already in Lieutenant Fletcher’s possession, tagged as evidence? And how could he have fired the fatal shot without the ambulance attendants hearing it?”

“I don’t know,” Leopold admitted.

“Heaven knows, Captain, I’m willing to give you every reasonable chance to prove your innocence. But you have to bring me more than a dress with a hole in it.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “I’ll bring you more.”

“The grand jury gets the case this week, Captain.”

“I know,” Leopold said. He turned and left the office, with Fletcher tailing behind.

“What now?” Fletcher asked.

“We go to talk to Immy Fontaine, my ex-wife’s stepbrother.”

Though he’d never been friendly with Fontaine, Leopold knew where to find him. The tired man with the gold tooth lived in a big old house overlooking the Sound, where on this summer Sunday they found him in the back yard, cooking hot dogs over a charcoal fire.

He squinted into the sun and said, “I thought you’d be in jail, after what happened.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Leopold said quietly.

“Sure you didn’t.”

“For a stepbrother you seem to be taking her death right in stride,” Leopold observed, motioning toward the fire.

“I stopped worrying about Monica fifteen years ago.”

“What about this man she was with? Dr. Thursby?”

Immy Fontaine chuckled. “If he’s a doctor I’m a plumber! He has the fingers of a surgeon, I’ll admit, but when I asked him about my son’s radius that he broke skiing, Thursby thought it was a leg bone. What the hell, though, I was never one to judge Monica’s love life. Remember, I didn’t even object when she married you.”

“Nice of you. Where’s Thursby staying while he’s in town?”

“He was at the Towers with Monica.”

“He’s not there any more.”

“Then I don’t know where he’s at. Maybe he’s not even staying for her funeral.”

“What if I told you Thursby killed Monica?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t believe you, but then I wouldn’t particularly care. If you were smart you’d have killed her fifteen years ago when she walked out on you. That’s what I’d have done.”

Leopold drove slowly back downtown, with Fletcher grumbling beside him. “Where are we, Captain? It seems we’re just going in circles.”

“Perhaps we are, Fletcher, but right now there are still too many questions to be answered. If we can’t find Thursby I’ll have to tackle it from another direction. The bullet, for instance.”

“What about the bullet?”

“We’re agreed it could not have been fired by my gun, either while it was in my holster or later, while Thursby was in the ambulance with Monica. Therefore, it must have been fired earlier. The last time I fired it was at target practice. Is there any possibility—any chance at all—that Thursby or Monica could have gotten one of the slugs I fired into that target?”

Fletcher put a damper on it. “Captain, we were both firing at the same target. No one could sort out those bullets and say which came from your pistol and which from mine. Besides, how would either of them gain access to the basement target range at police headquarters?”

“I could have an enemy in the department,” Leopold said.

“Nuts! We’ve all got enemies, but the thing is still impossible. If you believe people in the department are plotting against you, you might as well believe that the entire ballistics evidence was faked.”

“It was, somehow. Do you have the comparison photos?”

“They’re back at the office. But with the narrow depth of field you can probably tell more from looking through the microscope yourself.”

Fletcher drove him to the lab, where they persuaded the Sunday-duty officer to let them have a look at the bullets. While Fletcher and the officer stood by in the interests of propriety, Leopold squinted through the microscope at the twin chunks of lead.

“The death bullet is pretty battered,” he observed, but he had to admit that the rifling marks were the same. He glanced at the identification tag attached to the test bullet: Test slug fired from Smith & Wesson .38 Revolver, serial number 2420547.

Leopold turned away with a sigh, then turned back.

2420547.

He fished into his wallet and found his pistol permit. Smith & Wesson 2421622.

“I remembered those two’s on the end,” he told Fletcher. “That’s not my gun.”

“It’s the one I took from you, Captain. I’ll swear to it!”

“And I believe you, Fletcher. But it’s the one fact I needed. It tells me how Dr. Thursby managed to kill Monica in a locked room before my very eyes, with a gun that was in my holster at the time. And it just might tell us where to find the elusive Dr. Thursby.”

By Monday morning Leopold had made six long-distance calls to California, working from his desk telephone while Fletcher used the squadroom phone. Then, a little before noon, Leopold, Fletcher, the Commissioner, and a man from the District Attorney’s office took a car and drove up to Boston.

“You’re sure you’ve got it figured?” the Commissioner asked Leopold for the third time. “You know we shouldn’t allow you to cross the state line while awaiting grand jury action.”

“Look, either you trust me or you don’t,” Leopold snapped. Behind the wheel Fletcher allowed himself a slight smile, but the man from the D.A.’s office was deadly serious.

“The whole thing is so damned complicated,” the Commissioner grumbled.

“My ex-wife was a complicated woman. And remember, she had fifteen years to plan it.”

“Run over it for us again,” the D.A.’s man said.

Leopold sighed and started talking. “The murder gun wasn’t mine. The gun I pulled after the shot was fired, the one Fletcher took from me, had been planted on me some time before.”

“How?”

“I’ll get to that. Monica was the key to it all, of course. She hated me so much that her twisted brain planned her own murder in order to get revenge on me. She planned it in such a way that it would have been impossible for anyone but me to have killed her.”

“Only a crazy woman would do such a thing.”

“I’m afraid she was crazy—crazy for vengeance. She set up the entire plan for the afternoon of the wedding reception, but I’m sure they had an alternate in case I hadn’t gone to it. She wanted some place where there’d be lots of witnesses.”

“Tell them how she worked the bullet hitting her,” Fletcher urged.

“Well, that was the toughest part for me. I actually saw her shot before my eyes. I saw the bullet hit her and I saw the blood. Yet I was alone in a locked room with her. There was no hiding place, no opening from which a person or even a mechanical device could have fired the bullet at her. To you people it seemed I must be guilty, especially when the bullet came from the gun I was carrying.

“But I looked at it from a different angle—once Fletcher forced me to look at it at all! I knew I hadn’t shot her, and since no one else physically could have, I knew no one did! If Monica was killed by a .38 slug, it must have been fired after she was taken from that locked room. Since she was dead on arrival at the hospital, the most likely time for her murder—to me, at least—became the time of the ambulance ride, when Dr. Thursby must have hunched over her with careful solicitousness.”

“But you saw her shot!”

“That’s one of the two reasons Fletcher and I were on the phones to Hollywood this morning. My ex-wife worked in pictures, at times in the technical end of movie-making. On the screen there are a number of ways to simulate a person being shot. An early method was a sort of compressed-air gun fired at the actor from just off-camera. These days, especially in the bloodiest of the Western and war films, they use a tiny explosive charge fitted under the actor’s clothes. Of course the body is protected from burns, and the force of it is directed outward. A pouch of fake blood is released by the explosion, adding to the realism of it.”

“And this is what Monica did?”

Leopold nodded. “A call to her Hollywood studio confirmed the fact that she worked on a film using this device. I noticed when I met her that she’d gained weight around the bosom, but I never thought to attribute it to the padding and the explosive device. She triggered it when she raised her arm as she screamed at me.”

“Any proof?”

“The hole in her dress was just too big to be an entrance hole from a .38, even fired at close range—too big and too ragged. I can thank Fletcher for spotting that. This morning the lab technicians ran a test on the bloodstains. Some of it was her blood, the rest was chicken blood.”

“She was a good actress to fool all those people.”

“She knew Dr. Thursby would be the first to examine her. All she had to do was fall over when the explosive charge ripped out the front of her dress.”

“What if there had been another doctor at the wedding?”

Leopold shrugged. “Then they would have postponed it. They couldn’t take that chance.”

“And the gun?”

“I remembered Thursby bumping against me when I first met him. He took my gun and substituted an identical weapon—identical, that is, except for the serial number. He’d fired it just a short time earlier, to complete the illusion. When I drew it I simply played into their hands. There I was, the only person in the room with an apparently dying woman, and a gun that had just been fired.”

“But what about the bullet that killed her?”

“Rifling marks on the slugs are made by the lands in the rifled barrel of a gun causing grooves in the lead of a bullet. A bullet fired through a smooth tube has no rifling marks.”

“What in hell kind of gun has a smooth tube for a barrel?” the Commissioner asked.

“A home-made one, like a zip gun. Highly inaccurate, but quite effective when the gun is almost touching the skin of the victim. Thursby fired a shot from the pistol he was to plant on me, probably into a pillow or some other place where he could retrieve the undamaged slug. Then he reused the rifled slug on another cartridge and fired it with his home-made zip gun, right into Monica’s heart. The original rifling marks were still visible and no new ones were added.”

“The ambulance driver and attendant didn’t hear the shot?”

“They would have stayed up front, since he was a doctor riding with a patient. It gave him a chance to get the padded explosive mechanism off her chest, too. Once that was away, I imagine he leaned over her, muffling the zip gun as best he could, and fired the single shot that killed her. Remember, an ambulance on its way to a hospital is a pretty noisy place—it has a siren going all the time.”

They were entering downtown Boston now, and Leopold directed Fletcher to a hotel near the Common. “I still don’t believe the part about switching the guns,” the D.A.’s man objected. “You mean to tell me he undid the strap over your gun, got out the gun, and substituted another one—all without your knowing it?”

Leopold smiled. “I mean to tell you only one type of person could have managed it—an expert, professional pickpocket. The type you see occasionally doing an act in night clubs and on television. That’s how I knew where to find him. We called all over Southern California till we came up with someone who knew Monica and knew she’d dated a man named Thompson who had a pickpocket act. We called Thompson’s agent and discovered he’s playing a split week at a Boston lounge, and is staying at this hotel.”

“What if he couldn’t have managed it without your catching on? Or what if you hadn’t been wearing your gun?”

“Most detectives wear their guns off-duty. If I hadn’t been, or if he couldn’t get it, they’d simply have changed their plan. He must have signaled her when he’d safely made the switch.”

“Here we are,” Fletcher said. “Let’s go up.”

The Boston police had two men waiting to meet them, and they went up in the elevator to the room registered in the name of Max Thompson. Fletcher knocked on the door, and when it opened the familiar face of Felix Thursby appeared. He no longer wore the mustache, but he had the same slim surgeon-like fingers that Immy Fontaine had noticed. Not a doctor’s fingers, but a pickpocket’s.

“We’re taking you in for questioning,” Fletcher said, and the Boston detectives issued the standard warnings of his legal rights.

Thursby blinked his tired eyes at them, and grinned a bit when he recognized Leopold. “She said you were smart. She said you were a smart cop.”

“Did you have to kill her?” Leopold asked.

“I didn’t. I just held the gun there and she pulled the trigger herself. She did it all herself, except for switching the guns. She hated you that much.”

“I know,” Leopold said quietly, staring at something far away. “But I guess she must have hated herself just as much.”

(1971)

A Melee Of Diamonds

THE MAN WITH THE silver-headed cane turned into Union Street just after nine o’clock, walking briskly through the scattering of evening shoppers and salesclerks hurrying home after a long day. It was a clear April evening, cool enough for the topcoat the man wore, but still a relief at the end of a long winter. He glanced into occasional shop windows as he walked, but did not pause until he’d reached the corner of Union and Madison. There, he seemed to hesitate for a moment at the windows of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. He glanced quickly to each side, as if making certain there was no one near, and then smashed the nearest window with his silver-headed cane.

The high-pitched ringing of the alarm mingled with the sound of breaking glass, as the man reached quickly into the window. A few pedestrians froze in their places, but as the man turned to make his escape a uniformed policeman suddenly appeared around the corner. “Hold it right there!” he barked, reaching for his holstered revolver.

The man turned, startled at the voice so close, and swung his cane at the officer. Then, as the policeman moved in, he swung again, catching the side of the head just beneath the cap. The officer staggered and went down, and the man with the cane rounded the corner running.

“Stop him!” a shirt-sleeved man shouted from the doorway of the Diamond Exchange. “We’ve been robbed!”

The police officer, dazed and bleeding, tried to get to his knees and then fell back to the sidewalk, but a young man in paint-stained slacks and a zippered jacket detached himself from the frozen onlookers and started after the fleeing robber. He was a fast runner, and he overtook the man with the cane halfway down the block. They tumbled together into a pile of discarded boxes, rolling on the pavement, as the man tried to bring his cane up for another blow.

He shook free somehow, losing the cane but regaining his feet, and headed for an alleyway. A police car, attracted by the alarm, screeched to a halt in the street, and two officers jumped out with drawn guns. “Stop or we’ll shoot!” the nearest officer commanded, and fired his pistol into the air in warning.

The sound of the shot echoed along the street, and the running man skidded to a halt at the entrance to the alleyway. He turned and raised his hands above his head. “All right,” he said. “I’m not armed. Don’t shoot.”

The officer kept his pistol out until the second cop had snapped on the handcuffs.

“Damn it!” Captain Leopold exploded, staring at the paper cup full of light brown coffee that Lieutenant Fletcher had just set before him. “Is that the best you can get out of the machine?”

“Something’s wrong with it, Captain. We’ve sent for a serviceman.”

Leopold grumbled and tried to drink the stuff. One swallow was all he could stomach. The men in the department had given him a coffee percolator of his very own when he’d assumed command of the combined Homicide and Violent Crimes squad, but on this particular morning, with his coffee can empty, he’d been forced to return to the temperamental vending machine in the hall.

“Get me a cola instead, will you, Fletcher?” he said at last, pouring the coffee down the sink in one corner of his office. When the lieutenant came back, he asked, “What’s this about Phil Begler being in the hospital?”

Fletcher nodded in confirmation. “There’s a report on your desk. Phil came upon a guy stealing a handful of diamonds from the window of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. The guy whacked him on the head with a cane and started running. They caught him, but Phil’s in the hospital with a concussion.”

“I should go see him,” Leopold decided. “Phil’s a good guy.”

“They identified the fellow that stole the diamonds and hit him as Rudy Hoffman, from New York. He’s got a long record of smash-and-grab jobs.”

Leopold nodded. “Maybe Phil Begler’s concussion will be enough to put him away for good.”

Fletcher nodded. “Hope so, Captain, but there is one little problem with the case.”

“What’s that?” Leopold asked.

“Well, they caught Hoffman only a half-block from the scene, after a young fellow chased and tackled him, and fought with him till a patrol car arrived. Hoffman got $58,000 worth of diamonds out of that window, and he was in sight of at least one person every instant until they arrested him.”

“So?”

“The diamonds weren’t on him, Captain. No trace of them.”

“He dropped them in the street.”

“They searched. They searched the street, they searched him, they even searched the patrol car he was in after his arrest. No diamonds.”

Leopold was vaguely irritated that such a simple matter should disrupt the morning’s routine. “Haven’t they questioned him about it?”

“He’s not talking, Captain.”

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Bring him down. I’ll have to show you guys how it’s done.”

Rudy Hoffman was a gray-haired man in his early forties. The years in prison, Leopold noted, had left him with pale complexion and shifty, uncertain eyes. He licked his lips often as he spoke, nervously glancing from Leopold to Fletcher and then back again.

“I don’t know anything,” he said. “I’m not talking without a lawyer. You can’t even question me without a lawyer. I know my rights!”

Leopold sat down opposite him. “It’s not just a little smash-and-grab this time, Rudy. That cop you hit might die. You could go up for the rest of your life.”

“He’s just got a concussion. I heard the guards talkin’.”

“Still, we’ve got you on assault with a deadly weapon. With your record, that’s enough. We don’t even need the felony charge. So you see, you’re not really protecting yourself by clamming up about the diamonds. Even if we don’t find them, we’ve still got you nailed.”

Rudy Hoffman merely smiled and looked sleepy. “Those diamonds are where you’ll never find them, cop. That much I promise you.”

Leopold glared at him for a moment, thinking of Phil Begler in a hospital bed. “We’ll see about that,” he said, and stood up. “Come on, Fletcher, we’re keeping him from his beauty sleep.”

Back in Leopold’s office, Fletcher said, “See what I mean, Captain? He’s a hard one.”

Leopold was grim. “I’ll find those damned diamonds and stuff them down his throat. Tell me everything that happened from the instant he broke the window.”

“I can do better than that, Captain. The kid who chased him is outside now, waiting to make a statement. Want to see him now?”

Neil Quart was not exactly a kid, though he was still on the light side of twenty-five. Leopold had seen the type many times before, on the streets usually, with shaggy hair and dirty clothes, taunting the rest of the world.

“You’re quite a hero,” Leopold told him. “Suppose you tell us how it happened.”

Quart rubbed at his nose, trying to look cool. “I work over at Bambaum’s nights, in the shipping department. I’d just finished there at nine o’clock and was heading home. Down by the Diamond Exchange I saw this guy with the cane smash a window. I wasn’t close enough to grab him, but as he started to run away this cop rounds the corner. The guy hit him with the cane, hard, and knocked him down. Now, I don’t have any love for cops, but I decided to take out after this guy. I ran him down halfway up the block, and we tussled a little. He tried to conk me with the cane too, but I got it away from him. Then he was up and running, but the other cops got there. One cop fired a shot in the air and it was all over.”

Leopold nodded. “How long was the robber—Rudy Hoffman—out of your sight?”

“He wasn’t out of my sight. Not for a second! I went right after him when he knocked the cop down. Hell, I thought he might have killed him.”

“You didn’t see him throw anything away, into the street?”

“Not a thing.”

“Could he have thrown anything away as he raised his hands?”

“I don’t think so.”

Fletcher interrupted at this point. “They caught him at the entrance to an alleyway, Captain. Every inch of it was searched.”

Leopold turned back to Neil Quart. “As you’ve probably guessed, we’re looking for the diamonds he stole. Any idea what he might have done with them?”

The young man shrugged. “Not a glimmer. Unless…We were wrestling around some boxes.”

“They were all checked,” Fletcher said. “Everything was checked. The police were there all night, looking.”

“You still did a good job,” Leopold told the young man. “You weren’t afraid to get involved, and that’s what counts.”

“Thanks. I just didn’t like to see him hit that cop.”

Outside, Fletcher asked, “Satisfied, Captain?”

“Not by a long shot. What about Hoffman’s clothes?”

“We went over every stitch, including his topcoat. Nothing there.”

“All right,” Leopold decided, grim-faced. “Let’s go see where it happened.”

The Midtown Diamond Exchange still showed the scars of the previous night’s robbery, with a boarded-up window and a little pile of broken glass. The assistant manager, who’d been on duty the previous evening, was a sandy-haired man named Peter Arnold who looked pained by the whole affair.

“Just tell us how it was,” Leopold told him. “Everything you can remember.”

“It was just closing time, a few minutes after nine. The other clerk had gone home, and I’d locked the front door. That was when I heard the window smash and saw him scooping up the diamonds.”

“Let’s go back a bit, Mr. Arnold. How many diamonds were in the window?”

“Dozens! We had a few large rings mounted on cards giving the prices, and then we had perhaps twenty-five or thirty smaller stones, unmounted. A melee of diamonds, to use the trade term—although that usually refers to stones of less than a quarter carat. Most of these were larger.”

“They were valued at $58,000?”

Peter Arnold nodded sadly. “I’ve already heard from our New York office about it.”

“Do you always leave that many diamonds in your store window?”

“Not at all. They’re in the window only while the store is open. My first duty after locking the door would have been to remove them from that and the other display windows and lock them in the vault for the night. I had just locked the door and was starting for the window on the other side when I heard the smashing of glass. I looked over and saw this man scooping the diamonds out of their trays. The window alarm was ringing, of course, and as he started away Officer Begler appeared around the corner.”

“You know Phil Begler?”

The jeweler nodded. “He’s been on this beat maybe four or five years. Usually he’s right around this corner, but at nine he goes up to direct traffic out of the parking ramp in the next block. It was only a fluke he happened to get back just when that man broke the window.”

“Any idea what he did with the diamonds during his escape?”

“I’m baffled. If he’d dropped them, I should think at least a few would have been found.”

Leopold walked to the boarded-up window, and pulled aside the black velvet drape so he could peer into it. The diamond trays were still there, speckled with broken glass, but there were no gems. “He got everything?”

“No, there were four rings on cards and six unmounted stones that he missed, but he made a good haul. We estimate $58,000, or even a bit more.”

Leopold let the drape drop back into place. He took out a picture of Rudy Hoffman. “Ever see him in the store before the robbery, casing the place?”

“I don’t remember him, but of course someone else may have been on duty.”

“I’ll leave this picture with you. Show it to your manager and the clerks. See if anyone remembers him.”

“You think it was well-planned?”

“He got rid of the diamonds somewhere, and that took planning.”

On the way out, Leopold paused at the little pile of broken glass and bent to examine it.

“Find something, Captain?” Fletcher asked.

“Ever think about how much broken glass and diamonds look alike, Fletcher?”

“Are there any diamonds in that pile?”

“No, just broken glass.”

On the way back downtown, Fletcher said, “They did an X-ray on Hoffman too, incase you’re thinking he might have swallowed them.”

“Never considered it for a moment.” He stared through the car’s dirty windshield at the passing scene. Police headquarters was separated from the main Union Street shopping area by some ten blocks of abandoned, run-down buildings—many of them doomed by a much-postponed urban renewal project. Those that still had tenants housed record shops and adult bookstores on their lower levels, renting the rooms above to bearded young people and transient types. It was a shabby section of the inner city, but the crime rate was not as high as might be expected.

“They should tear it all down,” Fletcher commented.

“I suppose they will, one of these days.” Leopold had another thought. “What about the men who searched the street? Could one of them have pocketed the diamonds?”

Fletcher thought about it. “We’ve got some bad eggs in the department, Captain—like any other city—but I’d trust any of the men who were out there last night. I know them all, from Begler on down. They’re honest cops.”

Leopold said no more until they reached his office. Then he asked Fletcher to bring him Rudy Hoffman’s clothing. They went over each piece together, though the clothes had been searched earlier, and they found nothing.

Leopold frowned and went to stare out the window at the crowded parking lot that was his only view. “How about a wig, false teeth, something like that?”

Fletcher shook his head. “Nothing, Captain.”

Leopold turned suddenly. “Damn it, Fletcher, why didn’t I think of it before? There’s one thing we’ve completely overlooked, one thing that’s missing from Hoffman’s possessions!”

Fletcher looked blank. “What’s that, Captain?”

“The cane, of course! The silver-headed cane he used to break the window and crack Phil Begler’s skull! Where is it?”

“I suppose they’ve got it tagged as the weapon. It would be in the evidence drawer, or else already at the D.A.’s office, for presentation before the grand jury.”

“Find it, Fletcher, and let’s take a look at it.”

Lieutenant Fletcher was back in five minutes, carrying a long black walking stick with a silver head in the shape of a ball held by a bird’s claw. Leopold snorted and turned it over in his hands.

“Doesn’t really go with Hoffman somehow,” Fletcher commented. “Not his style.”

“No.” Leopold turned it over in his hands, and tried to twist off the top. It seemed solid, as was the shaft of the cane. “He probably stole it from somewhere. There’s certainly nothing hidden in it.”

“Let’s think about it,” Fletcher suggested. “Maybe something will come to us by morning.”

Leopold glanced at his watch and nodded. It was after three, and he wanted to stop by the hospital and see Officer Begler on his way home. “Good idea,” he agreed. “See you in the morning.”

“Say, how about coming over for dinner tonight, Captain? Carol was just mentioning the other day that she hasn’t seen you since the Christmas party.”

“Thanks, Fletcher. I could use some of your wife’s cooking, but let’s make it another time. Give her my best, though.”

He drove over to Memorial Hospital and spent a half hour with Begler, who grinned from beneath his bandages and seemed in good enough spirits. Leopold paused in the lobby to chat with a couple of nurses, and then headed home to his apartment, encountering the rush-hour traffic he usually tried to avoid. Driving along Union Street, he remembered the empty coffee can in his office and pulled over at a neighborhood grocery.

The place was cluttered and crowded. He picked up a can of coffee and found a clerk to take his money. “Anything else, sir?”

Leopold shook his head. “That’s it.” Then he noticed the dark-haired girl who’d entered behind him. She pretended to be choosing a loaf of bread, but she was really watching him. No one takes that long to choose bread, he knew, and when she finally moved up to the clerk with her selection her eyes were still on Leopold.

The clerk slipped the coffee can into a paper bag, and Leopold left the store. Before he could cross the sidewalk to his car he heard the girl’s voice behind him. “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

He turned to her with a smile he hoped was friendly. She was a good-looking girl, in her early twenties, but her face seemed drawn and tired at the moment. “You might say that.”

“Do you want the loot from the Midtown Diamond robbery?”

In all his years of police work, nothing like it had ever happened to him before. He’d spent a full day trying to locate the diamonds that had disappeared by some sort of magic, and now this girl walked up to him outside a grocery store and offered them, just like that.

“Do you know where it is?”

She nodded. “I can take you there, if you’ll promise not to arrest me or my boyfriend.”

“Who is your boyfriend?”

“Names aren’t important. He didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. Have I your promise?”

“Then how’d he get the diamonds?”

“He’s supposed to take them to New York and sell them—you know, like a fence. I don’t want any part of it. I want you to take them.”

“How’d you know I was a detective?”

“I followed you from the hospital. You were visiting that policeman who was injured. I went there to find out how he was, and a nurse pointed you out as a detective.”

“You’re concerned about Officer Begler?”

“Certainly. I never knew it would be anything like this when Freddy agreed to handle the stuff. I want out of it, before we all end up behind bars.”

“Can you take me to the diamonds?”

She glanced quickly down the street and nodded. “Leave your car here. We’ll go in mine.”

He followed her to the corner and slid into the front seat of a little foreign sedan, still clutching his pound of coffee. She drove like a demon, weaving in and out of the rush-hour lines of traffic. In five minutes they’d reached the rundown section of Union, where the buildings waited for demolition, and he knew this was her destination. She parked the car and led him up a narrow flight of dimly lit stairs to an apartment above a vacant barber shop. In view of the long-haired residents, Leopold could easily understand why it had been forced to close.

“Is Freddy here?” he asked the girl, shifting the coffee to his left hand so his right would be near his gun.

“Who told you his name?” she asked, startled.

“You did.”

“All right. No, he’s not here. If he knew what I was doing, he’d probably kill me!” she prophesied.

She unlocked the door and led Leopold into a drab, dim livingroom. A large white cat came running to meet her, and she knelt to stroke its fur. “Where are the diamonds?” he asked her.

“This way. In the kitchen.”

He followed her out, expecting a trap, expecting a seduction, expecting almost anything but the little leather pouch she took from the breadbox and opened before his eyes. She poured them out on the counter—big diamonds, little diamonds, some in rings but most unset. Leopold simply stared, almost at a loss for words. “These are all of them?” he asked finally.

“Yes.”

“How did Hoffman get them to you? He’s in jail.”

“He has an accomplice who brought them to Freddy. Now take them and go, before he comes back!”

But as Leopold’s hand closed over the little pouch of diamonds, they heard a sound at the apartment door. It was a key in a lock, and a moment later they heard the door open. “Is that him?” Leopold whispered.

“Yes, yes! He’ll kill us both!”

“Go out and try to stall him.”

She hurried through the swinging kitchen door, her face white, and Leopold looked around for a way out. There was only a door to a dead-end pantry, and a window that looked out onto a back alley. He tried the window and found it painted shut, unbudging. He turned back toward the door to the livingroom, listening to the muffled voices on the other side, and slipped the revolver from his holster. He stared down at the jewels for a moment and an idea came to him.

Two minutes later, he stepped through the swinging door with his gun drawn. “Hold it right there, Freddy.”

There was a gasp from the girl and Freddy turned, startled at the voice, but it took him only an instant to realize what was happening. “You damned little double-crossing tramp!” he shouted at the girl. “Glenda, I’ll kill you for this!” He started for her, but Leopold waved him back with the gun.

“You’ll kill no one. I’m Captain Leopold of Violent Crimes, and if anything happens to her I’ll have you behind bars.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She brought me here to give me the diamonds, to try and save your skin, but somebody beat us to them. They’re gone.”

Freddy was on his feet. He was a little man with mouselike features, and he moved now like a rodent who discovered the trap does not even contain a piece of cheese. “What do you mean, they’re gone? They can’t be gone!”

Glenda’s eyes had widened in wonder, as she tried to decide what Leopold was up to. “Look for yourself,” he told Freddy, and lowered his gun.

The little man lost no time in getting to the kitchen. He tore through the breadbox, the wastebasket, the cupboards, while Leopold stood in the doorway. Finally, after ten minutes of searching, he asked, “Where are they, Glenda? Get them now!”

“It’s like he said, Freddy! Honest!”

“You hid them somewhere,” he accused.

“No! Honest!”

“Would she have brought me here if she’d hidden the diamonds somewhere else?” Leopold argued.

Freddy eyed him with open distrust. “How do I know they’re not in your pocket?”

Leopold put away his gun and raised his arms. “You can search me if you want.” Now that he’d seen Freddy in action, he knew he didn’t need the gun to take him, if it came to that.

The little man stepped close, eyeing Leopold, and ran his hands carefully over his body, checking his topcoat and pants cuffs and sleeves. It was a good search, but he found nothing. Leopold removed his gun to show the inside of the holster, then opened the revolver itself to show that the chambers held nothing but bullets.

“What’s in the bag?” Freddy asked.

Leopold smiled. “A pound of coffee. I was on my way home when Glenda contacted me.”

Freddy took out the coffee can and looked into the bag. Then he replaced it in disgust. “All right, I believe you—but if the diamonds aren’t here, where are they?”

“I’m as anxious to get them as you are,” Leopold assured him. “It seems to me there’s only one other person who could have them.”

“Who’s that?”

“The guy who brought them to you in the first place—Rudy Hoffman’s accomplice.”

Freddy thought about that. “Why would he take them?”

Leopold shrugged. “With Hoffman in jail, maybe he figured he could keep the loot for himself. By delivering the diamonds to you, and then stealing them back, he’d be in the clear.”

“Yeah,” Freddy said, beginning to go along with it. “That damned double-crosser would pull something like this!”

“Want to tell me who he is?”

Freddy’s eyes narrowed in distrust. “I’ll handle it, cop.”

“Look, you’re on very thin ice. If I catch you with those diamonds, I could arrest you for receiving stolen property.”

Freddy thought about it. “No,” he decided, “I’m not telling you. Maybe the guy didn’t take them.”

Leopold sighed and turned to the girl. “Glenda, who is Hoffman’s accomplice?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

“She’s telling the truth, cop. I’m the only one who knows, besides Hoffman—and he’s not about to talk. Even if he gets sent up, it wouldn’t be for too long, and when he gets out he can still work his sweet little scheme in other cities.”

“Are you part of his scheme?”

“I was going to fence the gems, that’s all. Don’t bother taking notes, though, because I’ll deny everything.”

“If you won’t tell me who the accomplice is, call him up. Tell him you know he took the stuff and get him over here.”

That idea seemed to appeal to the little man. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Maybe I could do that.”

“If I get the diamonds and the accomplice, Freddy, you’re off the hook.”

“All right, I’ll call him.”

He walked to the phone and Leopold shot Glenda a look that told her to play along with him. Given a bit of luck, he’d have the accomplice and get her off the hook with Freddy.

“Hello? This is Freddy Doyle. Yeah, yeah…Well, something’s gone wrong. The diamonds are missing…You heard me, missing!…Well, you damned…well better get over here to the apartment…Yeah, right now! And if you’ve got those stones, you better have ’em with you!”

He hung up and Leopold said, “That was good. Did he admit taking them?”

“Hell, no! He thinks I’m pulling a double cross, or that’s what he said anyway. He’ll be here.”

They sat down to wait, and Leopold watched the darkness settle over the city. He felt good, knowing the next hour’s work would probably wrap up the case. “Get me a drink,” Freddy ordered the girl at one point, and she hurried out to the kitchen.

It was just after seven o’clock when the buzzer sounded and they heard someone starting up the stairs. “Expecting anyone else?” Leopold asked.

“No, that’ll be him. Better be careful—he might have a gun.”

“Let him in. I’ll be right behind you at the door.”

While Glenda stood terrified in the kitchen doorway, Freddy Doyle opened the apartment door. He peered into the now-darkened hall and asked, “Is that you…?”

Leopold cursed silently. He tried to step back quickly and pull Freddy with him, but it was too late. Three quick shots came with deafening suddenness from the darkness, and Freddy toppled backward into his arms.

“Stop!” Leopold shouted. “Police!”

He heard the running footsteps on the stairway, and allowed Freddy’s limp body to sag to the floor. Behind him, Glenda was screaming. Leopold made it to the banister and fired a shot down the stairway, but he had no target. The street door was yanked open, and Freddy’s assailant was gone. By the time Leopold reached the street there was no sign of him.

He climbed the stairs and went back into the apartment. Glenda was on the floor, kneeling in a widening pool of blood. “He’s dead!” she shouted, close to hysterics.

“I know,” Leopold said, feeling suddenly old. He walked to the telephone and dialed headquarters.

Fletcher found him in his office, staring glumly at the wall. “I came as soon as I could, Captain. What happened?”

“I bungled, that’s what happened, Fletcher. I was trying to pull off a neat trick, and I got a guy killed.”

Fletcher sat down in his usual chair, opposite the desk. “Tell me about it.”

Leopold ran quickly over the events of the evening, from his visit to the hospital, through the shooting of Freddy Doyle. “I didn’t think our man was desperate enough to commit murder,” he admitted.

“Why would he kill Doyle?”

“Because he saw it was a trap. Maybe the bullets were aimed at me, too, but Doyle was in the way. I suppose he suspected something when Freddy called to say the diamonds were missing, because he knew he hadn’t taken them.”

“But where were they?” Fletcher asked. “You said you saw them.”

Leopold nodded. “They’re right here—my one accomplishment for the night.” He took the can of coffee from its paper bag. “I had only a couple of minutes alone in that kitchen, but I got the idea that Freddy could lead me to Hoffman’s accomplice if he thought the accomplice had returned and stolen the diamonds back again. So I used a can opener to open the bottom of this coffee can part way. I emptied just enough coffee into the sink so there’d be room in the can for this pouch of diamonds. Then I bent the bottom shut the best I could, and capped it with this plastic lid they give you, just so no coffee would run out. When Freddy was searching for the diamonds, he actually lifted the can out of its bag, but the top was still sealed and he never thought to examine the bottom.”

Fletcher opened the pouch and spilled a few of the gems onto the desk top. “A clever trick, Captain.”

“Clever—except that now Freddy is dead and we’ve got a murder on our hands. Our man isn’t one to stand still for games.”

The lieutenant was frowning down at the gems. “If Hoffman used an accomplice, it had to be somebody who came in contact with him during those few minutes after the robbery. He couldn’t have hidden the diamonds anywhere, because the street was searched, and there’s only one person he had physical contact with—only one person he could have slipped the jewels to.”

Leopold nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing, Fletcher. Put out a pickup order on Neil Quart.”

The young man sat uncomfortably in the interrogation room chair, looking from one to the other of them. “What is this, anyway? You drag me down here at midnight like a common criminal? Just this morning I was a hero!”

“That was this morning,” Fletcher said.

Leopold sat on the edge of the desk, close to the man in the chair. “Look, Neil, I think it’s time you told us the whole story. It’s not just robbery now—it’s murder.”

“Murder! I don’t…” He started to rise and Fletcher pushed him back in the chair.

“Hoffman passed those diamonds to someone, who delivered them to a fence and later killed the fence. You’re the only one who had physical contact with Hoffman after the robbery.”

“But I ran after him! I wrestled with him! I held him till the police got there! You know I did!”

“And while you were conveniently holding him, he slipped you the diamonds.”

“No! You’re crazy! I didn’t…”

Leopold began pacing the room. “There’s no other way it could have been. You have to be the accomplice, Quart.”

“Look, it doesn’t make sense! He was getting away! Why should there be this elaborate scheme to pass me the diamonds when he was getting away with them? If I hadn’t grabbed him, he’d have made good his escape.”

Leopold thought about that, trying to sort out the facts in his mind. What Neil Quart said made sense, too much sense. “Where were you tonight around seven o’clock?”

“Working in Bambaum’s shipping department, like every night. You can ask them.”

“All right,” Leopold said with a sigh. “Get out of here. Go on home. We’ll check it in the morning.”

Fletcher looked surprised. “But Captain…”

“It’s all right, Fletcher. I was wrong—again. This is my night for being wrong.”

Fletcher followed him back into his office. “Let me fix you some coffee, Captain.”

Leopold handed over the can. “I’ve lost it, Fletcher. I can’t even think straight anymore. I jump on some poor kid and try to make a murderer out of him. I get some guy killed for nothing.”

“You recovered the diamonds, Captain.”

“Yeah.”

Fletcher was filling the coffee pot. “Well, Hoffman sure did something with those diamonds. He had them when he hit Officer Begler, and he didn’t have them when they grabbed him a few minutes later.”

Leopold sat up straight. “How do we know that, Fletcher?”

“What? Well, hell, he sure didn’t crack Begler’s skull because he wasn’t carrying the diamonds.”

“Fletcher,” Leopold said very slowly, “I think that’s exactly what he did.”

They were waiting for Peter Arnold in the morning, when he unlocked the door of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. He glanced up, surprised, and said, “Captain Leopold! You look as if you’ve been up all night.”

“I have,” Leopold said, following him inside the store. Fletcher came too, but stayed by the door. “I’ve been getting people out of bed, checking on your finances, Arnold. I didn’t want to make another mistake.”

“What?”

“It was a damned clever plan, I have to say that. I suppose Rudy Hoffman thought it up, and then got friendly with some jewelers around town till he found one who needed the money.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do, Arnold. You closed the shop at nine o’clock the other night, and quickly removed the diamonds from the window. Rudy Hoffman came by as scheduled, broke the window and ran. You pocketed the diamonds and called the police. Then you took the diamonds to Freddy Doyle, who was supposed to sell them. The plan had a great advantage—Hoffman didn’t have to spend precious seconds scooping up the loot in the window, and if he were arrested a block or two away, he’d be clean. No diamonds, no evidence. He probably planned to dump the cane and topcoat and keep on going. Only Officer Begler wasn’t where he was supposed to be, directing traffic. Hoffman knew it was too soon to be arrested—right by the window. He didn’t have the diamonds and the whole plot would be obvious, so he hit Begler with the cane and ran. That’s when he had more bad luck—a young fellow named Neil Quart chased after him. You had the diamonds all the time, but unfortunately Hoffman didn’t even have a chance to pretend he’d dumped them. We had an impossible crime on our hands, even though you didn’t plan it that way.”

Peter Arnold continued staring at them. He ran a damp tongue over his lips and said, “I assume you have some proof for all this?”

“Plenty of proof. You’re in bad financial trouble, and aiding in the theft of your company’s diamonds was an easy way out for you. We’ve got the gems back, and with you in jail I’m sure Hoffman can be persuaded to tell it like it was.”

“There were witnesses who saw Hoffman at the window, though.”

“Yes, but they only saw him reach inside. He would hardly have had time to scoop up all those loose diamonds, and only you, Arnold, actually said you saw him do that. You said you saw it while you were locking the door, even though there’s a velvet drape at the rear of the window that keeps you from seeing anything from inside the store. You didn’t see him take the diamonds because he never took them. They were already in your pocket when he broke the window and started running.”

“I don??

“You panicked when Freddy called you, and especially when you saw me in the doorway with him. You recognized me, of course, and started shooting. That alone told me the killer was someone I’d questioned in connection with the case.”

Peter Arnold moved then, as Leopold knew he would. It was only a matter of guessing whether the murder gun was in his coat pocket or behind the counter. His hand went for his pocket, and Fletcher shot him from the doorway. It was a neat shot, in the shoulder—the sort Fletcher was good at.

Arnold toppled against a showcase, crying and clutching his shoulder, as Leopold slipped the gun from his pocket. “You should have dumped this in the river,” he said. “We could never have made the murder charge stick without it.”

Fletcher locked the front door and called for an ambulance. They had to get Arnold patched up, and booked for murder and robbery, and then they could both go home to bed.

(1972)

Captain Leopold Plays a Hunch

THE DAY WAS SUNNY, with an August warmth that hung in the air like an unseen cloud. It was the sort of day when children’s voices carried far in the muggy atmosphere, when the slamming of a screen door or the barking of a dog could be heard throughout the quiet suburban neighborhood surrounding Maple Street.

Out back, beyond the trees that marked the boundary of developed land, a group of boys barely into their teens stood watching while one of them fired a .22 rifle at a row of beer cans they had set up on a log. Presently the mother of the boy with the rifle appeared at the line of trees and shouted for him to stop. He did so, reluctantly, and the other youths drifted away. The boy with the rifle walked slowly back to his mother, his head hanging.

The afternoon settled into a routine of humid stillness, broken only by the rumble of an occasional delivery truck or the crying of a baby. It was nearly an hour later that the screaming started in a house on the next street, beyond the trees and across the open field.

Though the houses were some distance away, the screaming was heard quite clearly on Maple Street.

Lieutenant Fletcher took the call on Captain Leopold’s phone, interrupting a department meeting on a recent wave of midtown muggings. Leopold, watching Fletcher’s face from the corner of one eye, saw the blood drain from it.

“I’ll be right home,” Fletcher said and hung up. He turned to Leopold and explained. “I’ve got to get home, Captain. They think my kid might have killed somebody with his rifle.”

“Go ahead,” Leopold said. “Call me when you find out what happened.”

He went on with the meeting, accepting suggestions from the other detectives and from policewoman Connie Trent, but his mind was on Fletcher. He hoped the news wasn’t quite as bad as it had sounded on the phone. He and Fletcher had worked together for so many years that the troubles of one often became the worries of the other.

As soon as the meeting broke up he motioned Connie aside. “Try to find out what happened with Fletcher’s son, will you? Let me know as soon as you hear anything.”

“Right, Captain.” Connie was tall and dark-haired, the brightest addition to Leopold’s squad since Fletcher had joined it eleven years earlier. She had beauty and brains, along with a superior arrest record that she had achieved while acting as an undercover narcotics agent. Leopold enjoyed talking to her, enjoyed looking at her deep green eyes and easy smile.

Within fifteen minutes Connie was back in his office. “It’s not good, Captain. A man named Chester Vogel, a high-school teacher, was found shot to death in his living room. He was killed by a single .22 bullet that came through a back window of his house. The window faces a vacant lot where Fletcher’s son was firing a .22 rifle at just about the time Vogel was killed.”

“Damn!” Leopold frowned at his desk. “All right,” he said finally. “I’d better get out there.”

“Want me to come along?”

“No, Connie. I’m going as a friend, not as a detective.” But he smiled and added, “Thanks for offering.”

“I’ll be here if you need me.”

A police car was parked in front of Fletcher’s white ranch home on Maple Street. Captain Leopold had been there a few times before—once for a summer cookout in the backyard when he’d felt oddly out of place as the only outsider in a close-knit family group. But he’d always liked Fletcher’s wife Carol, a charming intelligent woman whose only fault was her heavy smoking.

Carol saw him coming up the walk now and opened the screen door to greet him. She was short and small-boned, looking far younger than her 37 years. At that moment she might have been someone’s kid sister rather than the mother of a 14-year-old boy. “Thank you for coming, Captain,” she said simply.

“How are you, Carol? Is it young Mike?” He knew it was, because their other child was eight-year-old Lisa.

She nodded and pointed to the family room. Leopold went in, edging by the patrolman who stood in the doorway. Young Mike Fletcher was slumped in an armchair, staring at the floor. He did not look up as Leopold entered.

“Hello, Captain,” Lieutenant Fletcher said quietly.

“What’s the story?”

“I got Mike a .22 rifle last Christmas. I think I told you about it. He wasn’t supposed to use it around here. This afternoon Carol caught him out in back with some other kids, shooting at beer cans. She made him come in, and then a while later she heard this screaming. Woman over on Oak Street came home to find her husband shot dead. Some of the neighbors remembered hearing the kids shooting, and the patrolman came over to find out about it.”

Leopold looked questioningly at the officer in charge. “What do you think?”

“We’ll run a check on the rifle, Captain, but there’s not much doubt. Discharging a firearm out here is a violation. We’ll have to book him for something or the guy’s widow will be on our necks.”

Leopold grunted. The man was a deputy sheriff, independent of the city police. He knew Leopold, of course, but there outside the city limits he wasn’t impressed by detective captains. Leopold wished Fletcher had kept his family in the city, where he’d been obliged to live until the regulations for municipal employees were relaxed a few years back.

“It was an accident,” Leopold pointed out. “And there were other boys involved.”

“I did all the shooting,” Mike said without looking up. “They were just watching. Don’t bring them into it.”

Leopold glanced at Lieutenant Fletcher’s face and saw the torment in it. “Come on,” he said to the boy. “Let’s go for a walk out back. You can show me where it happened.”

Mike nodded reluctantly and stood up. He was a good-looking boy with fashionably long hair and sideburns, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Leopold knew him only casually, but had always liked him. They went out through the kitchen, walking across the wide back yard like casual strollers on a summer afternoon. Leopold admired the close-cropped lawn and blooming rosebushes as only an apartment dweller could. He’d never owned a home of his own, even during his brief years of marriage. Now, passing uncomfortably through middle age, he often contemplated the simple joys of life that he had missed.

“Where were you standing when you shot at the cans, Mike?”

“Beyond those trees, Captain Leopold. Our yard ends at the trees, but we all go into the empty lots to shoot and stuff.”

“Didn’t you know discharging a firearm out here is against the law?”

“Yeah, I guess I knew it.”

Leopold followed him between trees and found himself in a great open field overgrown with weeds and scrub brush. Had it not been for the line of houses some 300 yards away on the next street, he might have imagined himself suddenly transported to the countryside.

“Some day they’ll build all this up,” Mike said, “put a couple of streets through, build lots of houses. It won’t be the same.”

“Nothing stays the same, Mike.” He stooped to pick up a punctured beer can. “Was this where the cans were?”

Mike nodded. “On the log.”

Leopold turned and saw Fletcher walking out to join them. In that moment he was not a detective lieutenant or even a close friend. He was only a troubled father. “Find anything?” he asked.

“Beer cans. Bullet holes. What sort of rifle was it?”

“A pump-action .22. He wasn’t supposed to fire it around here. I told him, his mother told him.”

Leopold stared at the distant line of houses. “That’s a long way for a .22 to carry and still have the impact to kill a man.” Something was gnawing at him. It was only a hunch, but it was growing. He turned to the boy. “Did you fire toward that house, Mike?”

“No. I didn’t even know which was Mr. Vogel’s house till the policeman pointed it out.”

“You can see the patrol car in the driveway,” Fletcher said, pointing out a white ranch home in the middle of the row of houses.

“Did you fire in that direction, Mike?” Leopold asked again.

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

“If you were standing here, you would have had to fire a good two feet to the left of your row of cans, and above them, to come anywhere near that house.”

“I might have been wide on a few shots. I don’t know.”

“Let’s just walk over there.”

“I don’t want to,” Mike said.

“All of us do things we don’t want to do. Come on.”

Mike looked up at his father who nodded. But Fletcher stood back as the two started across the field. Perhaps he felt that his place was with his wife.

“Nice house,” Leopold commented when they were almost there.

“Yeah. Oak Street is classier than Maple. I guess that’s why they like that big empty lot separating us.”

Leopold nodded to the pair of detectives in the living room of the sprawling home. His eyes went to the single hole where the bullet had passed through the window at the rear of the house. “A thousand-to-one chance,” a detective said. “It was just bad luck, Captain.”

“Seems so. Is Mrs. Vogel home?”

“I’m right here,” a hoarse-voiced woman said from the kitchen. She was pale, a little overweight, and perhaps 50 years old. Once she might have been pretty, but today she was only sad-looking and alone.

“I’m Captain Leopold, Lieutenant Fletcher’s superior in the city police. This is Mike Fletcher.”

Mike stepped forward and tried to speak, but his voice broke when he saw the spots of blood on the white shag carpet at his feet. “No,” he managed. “I didn’t mean to—”

Mrs. Vogel stared at him with hard unyielding eyes. “You killed my husband,” she said quietly. “I hope you rot in prison for it!” Then, turning to Leopold, she added, “Or will being a cop’s son get him off?”

Before Leopold could reply, a much younger woman appeared from the kitchen and took Mrs. Vogel’s arm. “Come on, Katherine. You’ve got to lie down. The doctor will be here soon with something to calm you.”

“I am calm,” Katherine Vogel replied, and indeed she seemed so. Bitter and accusing, but calm. She even glanced down at the watch on her left wrist as if to see what time it was. Nevertheless she allowed the younger woman to lead her off to the bedroom. One of the detectives looked at Leopold and shrugged.

When the young woman returned Leopold thanked her. She acknowledged the words with a nod and said, “I’m Linda Pearson from across the street. Just trying to help.”

“She was the first one here after Mrs. Vogel found her husband,” a detective explained.

Leopold nodded. “You heard her screams?”

“Yes. It was terrible. She’d been down the street talking to a neighbor and when she returned she found him dead.”

“She seems to have calmed down quite a bit now.”

“It’s all inside. I’m afraid she’ll burst with it.” Linda Pearson was an attractive young woman, not more than 30, who wore her long blonde hair in twin pigtails that made her seem even younger.

“You knew Mrs. Vogel and her husband well?”

She looked away. “Just as neighbors. I didn’t see much of her.” She seemed reluctant to say more.

Leopold walked to the rear window and examined the bullet hole. The shot had come from outside, all right, but somehow the whole thing still bothered him. His nagging hunch was back again. “Was Mr. Vogel seated in that chair?”

“I think so,” she answered. “He’d fallen onto the rug by the time I got here.”

Leopold bent to examine some indentations in the shag rug. The chair seemed to have been moved several inches from its usual position. “Come on, Mike,” he said, straightening up. “We’d better be getting back.”

In the morning Leopold was restless and irritable. He missed Fletcher, who’d taken the day off to be with Carol and the boy. More than that, he wanted to help, but he didn’t really know how. When Connie Trent, filling in for Fletcher, brought his coffee, he looked at her and said, “Damn it, Connie, I want to help Mike!”

She sat down, crossing her legs with a whisper of nylon. “What can you do?”

“That’s the trouble. I keep looking for something that isn’t there, trying to find proof that he didn’t do it. I was awake half the night dreaming up nice neat theories. Vogel having an affair with the girl across the street, his wife finding out, seeing Mike out shooting, and doing a little shooting herself.”

“It’s an idea,” she admitted.

“But there’s not a trace of evidence to back it up.”

“What about the bullet?”

“Too mashed for a ballistics check. But it was a .22 Long Rifle, the same type Mike was using.”

“What will they do to him?”

“He’s a juvenile, never in trouble before, and it surely was an accident. He’ll probably get off with a lecture from the judge unless Mrs. Vogel raises a stink about his being a detective’s son. He did break the law by just firing the rifle. But the thing that bothers me most is the effect on the boy, and on Fletcher and Carol. The bad publicity, the civil suit for damages that Mrs. Vogel is bound to file.”

“You can’t do anything about that, Captain. You can’t invent a murder where none exists.”

“I know that, Connie.”

“Not even for Fletcher.”

He sighed and turned toward the window. “And yet, I have a hunch about Vogel’s death—a feeling that the whole thing is just too pat. The chair he was sitting in looked as if it had been moved. Katherine Vogel glanced at her watch once while I was there. Why would a woman whose husband has just been killed be so interested in what time it was?” He paused a moment. “More important, is there substance to any of this or am I merely concerned about Fletcher and his son?”

Connie had no answer, and she gave none.

Leopold parked his car at the corner of Oak Street and walked across to a yard where a man was mowing his lawn. It was late afternoon, almost dinnertime, and in some yards families were preparing to eat outdoors. The odor of charcoal cooking hung heavy in the air.

“You’re Bob Aarons?” Leopold asked the man with the power mower.

“That’s right.” He switched off the mower and frowned.

“I wonder if you could answer a few questions. I’m Captain Leopold, investigating the death of Chester Vogel down the street.”

“Terrible thing,” the man said, his face relaxing a bit. “I’ve been a friend of theirs for years.” He was tall and middle-aged, with a ready smile when he cared to use it.

“I understand Mrs. Vogel was up here talking with you when it happened.”

“About that time, I guess, though the shooting might have stopped before she arrived. We chatted a few minutes and then she went on home. A few minutes later I heard her screams. I reached the house just after Mrs. Pearson.”

Leopold nodded. “Tell me, how did Vogel get along with his wife? Any trouble there?”

“Not that I know of.” The smile vanished. “It was the kid on Maple Street that shot him, you know. It wasn’t Katherine Vogel.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Just because the kid’s father is a cop is no reason to let him off the hook.”

“Certainly not.” Leopold could see he’d get nowhere here. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Aarons. I’ll be going now.”

He turned to leave, but Aarons called him back. “Look, you might talk to Linda Pearson about it.”

“What could she tell me?”

The man’s face was blank. “Ask her.”

“Come on, Mr. Aarons.”

The man stared down at the grass. “In the house, right after I got there, Mrs. Pearson said Katherine had killed him. That was before we knew what really happened, of course.”

“Of course. Thanks, Mr. Aarons. I’ll talk to her.”

Linda Pearson came to the door at his first ring. He identified himself and reminded her of their meeting the previous afternoon, but she still seemed reluctant to let him in. “My husband’s at the funeral parlor with Katherine Vogel. I’m alone with the baby.”

“I’ll only take a few minutes.”

“Oh, very well!” She unlatched the screen door. “A woman can’t be too careful these days.”

Her house was a duplicate of the Vogel place across the street, though the decor carried out a more contemporary theme. “You were the first one over there after Katherine Vogel screamed, I believe.”

“That’s right. Mr. Aarons was right behind me.”

“I was just talking to him. He said when you first saw the body you thought Mrs. Vogel had killed him.”

“I—that was in the heat of the moment. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Sometimes the truth comes out in the heat of the moment.”

“That wasn’t the truth. The boy on the next street killed him.”

“Why did you think it might have been Katherine Vogel?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced away, searching for the right words.

“Mrs. Pearson, forgive me, but were you having an affair with Chester Vogel?”

“Certainly not!” Her eyes blazed with fury. “You’re sounding just like her!”

“Yes?” He smiled slightly. “More words in the heat of the moment?”

She started to turn away, then faced him again. “All right, I’ll tell you. Katherine Vogel thought we were having an affair. She accused him of it and warned me to stay away from him. But I swear to you, there wasn’t a word of truth in it! She’s a suspicious old bitch who minds everybody else’s business. He told me once that she threatened to kill him if she caught him fooling around.”

The fury of her attack surprised Leopold. “Do you know if Vogel owned a gun of any kind?” he asked.

She nodded. “A target pistol. I saw it once. He kept it in the basement.”

“A .22?”

“I don’t know that much about guns.”

Maybe, Leopold thought. Just maybe his hunch was beginning to pay off. “Thank you, Mrs. Pearson. You’ve been a big help.”

Upstairs the baby started to cry.

Leopold stopped for a sandwich and then drove over to the funeral parlor in the early evening. It was an imposing colonial structure in keeping with middle-class suburban architecture. Leopold was surprised to find Fletcher lingering near the doorway as if awaiting some call.

“I thought I should come over,” he explained. “I tried to get Mike to come, too, but he wouldn’t.”

“It’s a terrible thing for him,” Leopold said. His eyes were scanning the assembled mourners. “Is Linda Pearson’s husband still around?”

“Dark blue suit. Straight ahead.”

Harry Pearson was tall and virile, if somewhat older than his youthful wife. When Leopold motioned him aside to ask about Katherine Vogel, he drew in his breath and answered with some anger, “This is hardly the place for it, Captain.”

Leopold glanced at the flower-draped coffin and agreed. “All right, let’s go outside.”

It was still daylight as they strolled across the blacktopped parking area behind the building. Harry Pearson swatted at a mosquito and asked, “Now, what was it you wanted?”

“What were Mrs. Vogel’s relations with her husband?”

“Good, as far as I know.”

“I’ve heard differently. I’ve heard she was suspicious of him, jealous of other women, and that she even threatened to kill him.”

He squinted at Leopold. “Have you been talking to my wife?”

“Among others.”

“Well, there’s no truth in it. Katherine Vogel is a fine woman. A detective’s son killed Chester, and there’s nothing else you can make out of it.”

Lieutenant Fletcher came out the back door at that moment, and Leopold knew he’d heard Pearson’s last sentence. Fletcher merely nodded and kept going to his car. Leopold watched him in silence and then said, “All right, Mr. Pearson. Sorry to have taken your time.”

He turned and followed Fletcher, catching him at the car. “Want to stop for a beer?”

Fletcher turned to him, his eyes pained. “Captain, I know what you’re trying to do, believe me. But it’s no good. We can’t make a murder case out of this. Mike killed him, that’s all there is to it.”

“Mike says he didn’t fire any shots in that direction. I believe him, Fletcher.”

“Then what happened?”

“She heard the shooting, got her husband’s target pistol out of the basement, and shot him through the window herself.”

“Without any neighbors seeing her?”

Leopold knew he was being unreasonable. “All right,” he agreed finally. “Let me talk to ballistics again in the morning.”

Fletcher managed a weak smile. “Sure, Captain. I appreciate everything you’re trying to do. So does Carol.”

Leopold nodded. They shook hands like two old friends who had just encountered each other briefly. Then Fletcher got into his car and drove away.

In the morning Leopold went down to ballistics and talked to Sergeant Wolfer, a grumpy little man who was an expert at what he did. “No chance for identification, Captain,” he said immediately. “The slug was too badly mashed.”

“But it was a .22, the same as Mike Fletcher was firing?”

“That’s right—a .22 Long Rifle.”

“A rifle bullet?”

The little man sighed. “Come on, Captain! Do I need to lecture you on ballistics this morning? Most .22 rifles and target pistols use the same ammunition. The majority of target pistols made today can fire .22 Long Rifle slugs.”

Leopold persisted. “What about penetration? Mike’s bullet would have traveled nearly three hundred yards.”

“The bullet in Vogel’s head penetrated only about an inch—just far enough to get mashed and drive some bone splinters into his brain. I’m reading from the autopsy report now.”

“Is that consistent with a shot from Mike’s gun?”

“Within reasonable limits. Maybe there was a little extra powder in the cartridge.”

“A .22 target pistol fired at close range would have penetrated deeper?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Damn it, Wolfer, I’m trying to conduct an investigation!”

“And I’m trying to help you. Many things can cause a bullet to lose penetrating power. The cartridges might have been old and damp, for one thing. Or the bullet could have been fired through something.”

“Like a pillow, to deaden the sound of the shot?”

Wolfer nodded. “Like that.”

“If somebody had a target pistol down in the basement for a long time, with old ammunition, and brought it up and fired it through a pillow, would it penetrate about the same distance as a bullet from a .22 rifle fired nearly three hundred yards away?”

Sergeant Wolfer thought about it. “Maybe, maybe not.”

Leopold sighed and went back upstairs to his office. It was going to be that sort of day. Perhaps Fletcher was right. Perhaps he should forget the whole thing.

Young Mike Fletcher was waiting with his father in Leopold’s office. “Captain, my dad wanted me to come see you,” he said with hesitation.

“Sure, Mike. What is it?”

“He told me what you’re trying to do for me and all that, and I sure appreciate it, but—”

“But what?”

“Well, I told you I didn’t remember shooting in that direction.”

“Yes?”

“It wasn’t true, Captain. I do remember. I remember the exact shot that did it. One of the kids accidentally hit my arm, and my aim went way off. I remember praying that it wouldn’t hit anyone. It was high and to the left, right toward Vogel’s house.”

“I see,” Leopold said.

Fletcher cleared his throat. “I thought you should know, Captain.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Thanks again for what you tried to do for me,” Mike said.

Leopold nodded. He waited until the boy left and then he said, “Get me some coffee, will you, Fletcher? I missed you yesterday. Connie had to do my running for me.”

“Sure, Captain.”

When they were settled over coffee Leopold asked, “When’s Vogel’s funeral?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

Leopold sipped his coffee. It should have been over, but it wasn’t. “Why did Mrs. Vogel glance at her wrist watch when I was there?”

“You’re still on it, aren’t you? Even after talking to Mike?”

“I just want to know why the time interested her so much at that moment, with her husband dead.”

“Maybe the time didn’t interest her.”

“Why else does someone look at their watch?”

Fletcher thought about that. “To see if it’s going?”

Leopold sat up straight. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? I forgot to take my watch off on the pistol range one day, and when I was firing left-handed the shock of the recoil stopped it.”

“But why would a right-handed person fire a gun left-handed?”

“If she was holding something else in her right hand, Fletcher—something like a pillow to muffle the shot!”

“Captain—” Leopold got to his feet. “I’d better talk to Mrs. Vogel once more.”

She answered the door dressed in black and looking as grim and defensive as he remembered her. “Captain Leopold, isn’t it? I understand you’ve been questioning my neighbors.”

“Only routine,” he said. “May I come in?”

“Routine when a detective’s son shoots somebody?”

“May I come in?” he repeated.

“For a moment. I have to be leaving for the funeral parlor.”

He followed her into the living room, carefully avoiding the stains on the white rug. He noticed that the window had been repaired, with the fresh pane of glass still bearing the window company’s sticker. He walked close enough to see the name: Empire Glass Company.

“They fixed it this morning, if that’s what you’re looking at.”

“Fast work.” His eyes had gone to the wall opposite the window, to a spot that had been hidden behind the chair on his previous visit. He could see a mark as if something had chipped the paint.

“Since when are city police concerned with a suburban crime, Captain Leopold?”

He ignored her question as he examined the wall. “Mrs. Vogel, I’ll admit this started out only as a hunch, but it’s getting to be more than that now. Mike Fletcher’s bullet could have broken your window and hit the wall right here, leaving this mark before it fell, spent of all power, to the rug.”

“That mark was caused a month ago when I tipped over a table while cleaning.”

“I think you saw your opportunity, Mrs. Vogel, and you took it. Perhaps your husband even kidded about how the bullet could have killed him if he’d been sitting in his favorite chair. Somehow you kept him from phoning the police right away, maybe saying you’d call the boy’s parents first. Then you went down to the basement and got out his old .22 target pistol.”

“Chester got rid of that long ago.”

He ignored the interruption and went on. “You shot him through the head with it, muffling the sound with a pillow held in your right hand. Later, while I was here, you glanced at the wrist watch on your left hand to make sure the pistol’s recoil hadn’t stopped it.”

“Captain, if you repeat those charges I’ll sue you for every cent you own!”

“That isn’t much,” Leopold said with a grim smile. “I’m only concerned about the boy, Mrs. Vogel. I don’t want him going through life thinking he killed a man.”

“Get out of my house. I’ve listened to you long enough.”

Leopold felt a wave of helplessness wash over him. There was no way to prove it, no way even to prove to himself that his hunch was the truth. “What about the chair? You moved it to line up with the bullet hole in the wall, and now you’ve moved the chair back.”

“Is it a crime to move one’s furniture around?”

“Where’s the broken window?”

“The glass company took it. There’s no plot, Captain. It’s all in your mind—every bit of it!”

And perhaps it was. That was the damnable part of it—perhaps she was right. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll be going.”

She followed him to the door and slammed it behind him. He stood on the stoop for a moment, feeling old, and then started down the walk to his car. At least he could check on the glass. If he was going to do anything about Katherine Vogel, he’d need the windowpane to line up the bullet hole with the mark on the wall.

He drove over to the Empire Glass Company, a low cinder-block building in a nearby shopping plaza. The man at the counter remembered the Vogel job. “Sure, I replaced it just this morning.”

“She said you took the old window,” Leopold told the man. “Did you?”

“Yeah, it’s in the back. Heck, the bullet hole was just in one corner. We can cut it up for small panes.”

“I think I’ll want that window,” Leopold said. Then another thought struck him. “When did Mrs. Vogel call you to fix it? She didn’t waste any time, did she?”

“No, the call came in day before yesterday, just after it happened, I guess. Only it was the guy that called, not her.”

Something churned in Leopold’s stomach. “Guy? What guy?”

“The husband, Mr. Vogel. The one that died. I talked to him myself.”

“You’re telling me it was Chester Vogel who called to report the broken window?”

“Sure.”

Leopold spoke very quietly. “But how could he have done that if he was killed by the same bullet that broke the window?”

The man shrugged. “I didn’t read the details. I just knew he was dead.”

“I think you’d better come with me,” Leopold said. “Right now.”

When Katherine Vogel opened the door Leopold said simply, “I just found out what your husband was doing while you were in the basement looking for his target pistol.”

Her eyes went from Leopold to the repairman. Leopold could see from her sagging face that it was all over.

(1973)

Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer

IT STARTED AS A simple case, without a hint of ghosts or impossibilities—Lieutenant Fletcher’s case, really, with Captain Leopold along only because he’d been working late that night and Grant Tower was on his way home. The time was 9:25 and downtown was deserted except for the usual street people. Some of them were standing around outside the 20-story building—which qualified as a Tower in Leopold’s city—when their car pulled up, and for a wild moment Leopold feared the one closest to him might ask for his autograph.

The trouble was on the 15th floor and a uniformed cop was waiting when they came off the elevator. “Cleaning woman here in the building, Captain. Martha Aspeth. Her husband shot her.”

Fletcher was already bending over the body of a middle-aged woman, sprawled in the doorway of an insurance office. There was blood beneath and around her, soiling the freshly polished floor. “Any witnesses?” Leopold asked.

“Five women who work with her,” the officer said. “They all saw it happen. I’ve got an APB out on the husband.”

More technicians were arriving, to photograph the scene and dust for prints. Fletcher straightened up from the body and said, “At least three wounds, Captain. Maybe four.”

Leopold nodded. “Let’s talk to some of these women.”

A stout white-haired woman with rolled stockings and a dumpy-looking print dress stepped forward. “I was right next to her! I saw the whole thing!”

Two white-coated morgue attendants had arrived with a stretcher, but they stood aside while the medical examiner checked the body. “I was on my way home,” the M.E. told Leopold. “Doc Hayes takes over at nine. Hell of a thing, grabbing a man on his way home. Going to take that telephone out of my car.”

“I was on my way home, too,” Leopold said. “Cheer up.” Then he led the woman to a sofa in the open office. “What’s your name?”

“Hilda Youst. Martha and I started together over at the bank building. She was like a sister to me.”

“What about her husband?”

“They didn’t live together. He wanted younger ones. Can you imagine that? Martha was only forty-two and he wanted younger ones!”

“Had they quarreled before?”

“All the time!”

“Up here?”

“Sure! He came up regularly, usually on paydays. Wanted money for drink and women.”

“Was tonight a payday?”

“No.”

“Exactly what happened?”

“It was”—she glanced at the wall clock—“about twenty-five minutes ago, just after nine o’clock. He got off the elevator and asked one of the girls where Martha was. She was in here with me and she heard his voice. She said, ‘God, not him again,’ and she went to the door to see what he wanted. He just pulled out his gun and started shooting.”

“He didn’t say anything first?”

“I think he called her a filthy name.”

“How many shots did you hear?”

“Four, I think.”

“Then what happened?”

“He ran out the fire door and down the stairs. I phoned the police. The other girls were in terrible shape. They never saw anything like this before.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“See anything like this before?”

“No, of course not! But I’m older. I been around more.”

“Would you recognize the killer if you saw him again?”

“Kurt Aspeth? Of course I’d recognize him!”

Leopold found Lieutenant Fletcher talking to the other four witnesses. Three of them were Puerto Rican girls, barely out of their teens. One was close to hysteria, her body shaking with sobs. Leopold noticed that the photographer and the medical examiner had finished their jobs. The body was covered now and the white-coated men were lifting it onto their stretcher.

“They all tell the same story, Captain,” Fletcher reported. “He got off the elevator, asked Miss Sanchez here where Martha Aspeth was, then pulled out the gun and fired the moment he saw her.”

“It seems clear enough,” Leopold decided. “I guess we can leave the details to the rest of the men. We’ll want statements from all five witnesses, of course, and from relatives. Find out where Kurt Aspeth lives and put someone on the address, in case he goes back there.”

“I’ll take care of it, Captain,” Fletcher assured him. “You go on home now.”

Leopold grinned. “I keep forgetting it’s your case. See you in the morning.”

The morning was in May, with golden sunshine and a spring warmth that robbed him of energy. Leopold simply sat in his office, wondering as he gazed out the window if this bout of spring fever was a sign of increasing age or merely a return to youth. He was still thinking about it when Fletcher came in a few minutes after nine.

“You know that killing last night, Captain?” Fletcher asked, settling into his favorite chair. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

Leopold grunted. “What’s the good news?”

“We found Kurt Aspeth. His car hit a bridge abutment on the Expressway, about a mile from the Grant Tower building. He was killed instantly.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“The accident happened at 8:27—a good half hour or more before Kurt Aspeth is supposed to have killed his wife…”

The city morgue was located across the street from police headquarters, in a faded brick building soon to be demolished for urban renewal. Doc Hayes was still there, on duty from the night before, following some rotating schedule which had always baffled Leopold. He’d known Doc for some years, through numerous homicides on which Hayes had functioned as acting medical examiner. He was a grim, efficient little man somewhere past 40, who sometimes looked as if he’d be more at home teaching at a medical college.

“What is it?” Hayes asked when he saw Leopold and Fletcher coming in. “That Aspeth thing?”

“Right. We’re trying to establish a time sequence. The police officer’s report lists the time of the accident as 8:27. We’re wondering if that could be a mistake.”

Doc Hayes shook his head. “That’s the time, all right. He was killed instantly, so the officer didn’t bother with an ambulance. As I understand it, a doctor pronounced him dead and they called for the morgue wagon. His body was already here when I came to work at nine.” He consulted the book in front of him. “Checked in at exactly nine. Made the notation myself. Damn busy night—Aspeth and a hit-and-run and then Aspeth’s wife. Damn busy.”

“There’s no possibility of error?”

“Error? The man is certainly dead, if that’s what you mean.”

“But what about the time? Could it have been an hour later?”

Doc Hayes snorted. “Daylight-saving time started three weeks ago. Our clocks are all correct. Besides, the officer’s records couldn’t be wrong, too.”

“All right,” Leopold said, moving to another possibility. “Are you sure it’s really Kurt Aspeth?”

“I’m not sure,” Hayes said. “I never met the man. But he was driving Kurt Aspeth’s car, carrying Kurt Aspeth’s driver’s license, and Kurt Aspeth’s brother identified the body early this morning.”

“Brother?”

Doc Hayes nodded. “Felix Aspeth.”

Leopold had a wild thought.

“Twin brother?”

“Hardly. Felix is ten years older.”

“Still, they might resemble each other. What’s his address?”

Hayes looked it up in his records and gave it to him. “Now, get outa here, will you? I have to take my car into the garage and then get home for some sleep. This is supposed to be my day off!”

“Thanks, Doc.” Outside, Leopold said to Fletcher, “I’m going to check on this brother. You get Hilda Youst and the rest of the cleaning crew down here to identify the body before it’s moved.”

“You think they will?”

“Who knows? Maybe the brother is pulling some sort of trick.”

Felix Aspeth’s address was an apartment building in a rundown section of the city. The neighborhood was racially mixed, sprawling through six blocks of what had once been a downtown college campus. The college, sensing change, had moved to the suburbs, from the city streets. The old buildings had become apartment houses.

Felix Aspeth answered the door with a suddenness that startled Leopold, as if he’d been waiting on the other side. “What is it?”

“Captain Leopold of the Violent Crimes Squad. It’s about your brother.”

Felix Aspeth grunted and motioned him inside. He was a tall man with stringy black hair and a black mustache flecked with gray. There was something a little seedy about him that matched the sparsely furnished apartment in which he lived. “I’m making funeral arrangements now,” he said. “I can only spare a few minutes.”

Leopold sat down gingerly on a straight-backed chair. “You know, of course, that your brother’s estranged wife was shot to death last night, at just about the time of the fatal accident.”

“Yes.”

“Witnesses say Kurt was the one who shot her.”

“I have no doubt of it. He was always a bit crazy on the subject of Martha. He was crazy to have married her anyway.”

“I understand he was your younger brother?”

Felix Aspeth nodded. “Ten years younger. He was just thirty-one. They got married about ten years ago, when he was just out of the army. He picked her up in a bar one night. I told him that wasn’t the sort of girl you married, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“How long had they been separated?”

“The whole ten years, off and on. One of them would walk out and then after a while they’d get back together again. There were no children, and he was never much of a worker. Martha was on welfare for a year before she got that job cleaning up at Grant Tower.”

“You said he was thirty-one. She seemed older than that.”

“She was. Over forty, I’d say. That’s one of the reasons I was against the marriage in the first place. But you just couldn’t talk to Kurt.”

“There seems to be a time discrepancy of about an hour in our records. Though Kurt was positively identified as the murderer by five witnesses who knew him, the records of the accident bureau show the smashup occurred about thirty minutes earlier.”

“I see,” Felix Aspeth said.

“You see? Well, I don’t.” Leopold was growing irritated with the man. “Suppose you explain to me how that could be possible.”

“Kurt couldn’t leave this earth without settling the score with Martha. Call it love or hate or whatever you will, he had to take her with him. Martha was murdered by my brother’s ghost.”

When Leopold returned to headquarters he found Fletcher in his office with policewoman Connie Trent. “You look tired, Captain,” Connie said. “Want some coffee?”

“I could use something. How about it, Fletcher? Did those women view the body?”

“It was quite a struggle, Captain. A couple of them just didn’t want to look at him. But they all made positive identification. His face wasn’t damaged in the accident, and they say there’s no doubt about it. That’s Kurt Aspeth, all right—the same man who killed Martha Aspeth last night.”

Connie returned with coffee. “Fletcher said you had a hunch it was Aspeth’s brother. Did you see him?”

“I saw him,” Leopold said sadly. “He thinks his brother’s spirit killed Martha, after the accident.”

“Spirit? You mean, a ghost?” Fletcher snorted. “I don’t buy that, Captain. Ghosts don’t run down stairs.”

“And they don’t fire pistols, either,” Leopold agreed. “Whoever shot her, it wasn’t Kurt Aspeth’s ghost.”

“How about the brother? Do they look alike?”

Leopold thought about that. “Not really, though Felix without the mustache might pass for an older version of Kurt. It’s hard to say, never having seen Kurt alive. They look like brothers, I guess. No more than that.”

“But in the excitement of the shooting, couldn’t the witnesses have been mistaken?” Connie asked.

“Five of them? Not likely. Especially the older one, Hilda Youst. Nothing would shake her.”

“Then the thing is impossible,” Fletcher said.

“It happened,” Leopold reminded him. “Which officer was first on the accident scene?”

Fletcher consulted his file. “Pete Franklin, a motorcycle cop. Good man.”

Leopold glanced at his watch. It was just after three o’clock. “Connie, hop down to the police garage and see if you can catch Franklin. He must be on the four-to-midnight shift, and he should be coming in soon. Find out everything he knows about the accident.”

“I’ll even ask him if he saw any ectoplasm leave the body and head downtown,” she said.

Officer Pete Franklin was tall and handsome, and Connie Trent did not in the least mind interviewing him. She found him in the garage adjusting his leather puttees and awaiting the arrival of the duty sergeant with the orders of the day. When she’d introduced herself, Franklin said, “I’ve seen you around headquarters. The prettiest policewoman in the department.”

She ignored the compliment. “Captain Leopold’s a swell man to work for. He took me on last year after I blew my cover on the Narcotics Squad.”

Pete Franklin nodded. “I see Lieutenant Fletcher occasionally.”

“Do you like riding a motorcycle?”

“It’s great in the summer. Come winter I’m back in a patrol car.”

“Captain Leopold was wondering about that fatal accident last night—Kurt Aspeth, the man who hit the bridge abutment?”

“I know. The car was a mess. I was only a few blocks away when I heard the crash.”

“You were first on the scene?”

“The first officer. The only one, really. Some motorists stopped, and a doctor. He was dead, so I called for the morgue wagon on my radio.”

“What do you think caused the crash?”

“Somebody told me today he’d killed his wife. I suppose he smashed the car deliberately. A lot of one-car accidents are really suicides.”

“There were no bad road conditions?”

“No, except that it was dark, and that section of the Expressway isn’t too well lighted.”

“What time was it?”

“Around 8:30. That’s in my report.”

“You know Aspeth’s wife wasn’t shot till after nine?”

He frowned and scratched his head. “I heard there was some confusion about the times. It doesn’t make sense. The witnesses must have been wrong.”

The duty sergeant had arrived and Connie could see her time was running out. “One more thing. Which way was the car going on the Expressway—toward downtown or away from it?”

“Away from it. The guy’d just shot his wife, hadn’t he? I figure he was trying to escape and just decided, the hell with it, and smashed up the car.”

“Maybe,” Connie conceded. “If we can just account for that time difference we’ll be all set.”

“I gotta go now,” he said. He started to turn away, then had another thought. “How about dinner some night? I’m off tomorrow.”

She was about to decline automatically, then said instead, “Sure, I’m free tomorrow night.”

“Give me your address and I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Hilda Youst opened the door and stared at Leopold without recognition. “What do you want?” she asked.

“We met last night at Grant Tower, Mrs. Youst. I’m investigating the killing of Martha Aspeth.”

“Oh, yes—Captain Leopold. I remember you now. Come in.”

Like Felix Aspeth’s, her apartment was in a poorer section of the city. But there the resemblance ceased. Where his had been sparsely furnished, hers was jammed with trinkets and trophies. One small corner table was covered with religious statues of all sizes and shapes, while a table in the opposite corner held a single large trophy with a golden figure on the top representing a woman in a long gown. She saw Leopold looking at it and explained, “I won a weight-watching contest two years ago. I lost the most weight of any member in the whole state.”

“That’s fine,” Leopold said.

“I got a crown and a dozen roses. Then I came home and put the weight all back on.”

“That’s life, I guess. I wanted to ask you more about last night.”

“What about last night?” She didn’t ask him to sit down, so he stood.

“You see, all five of you positively identified Kurt Aspeth as the murderer of his wife. And you identified the body at the morgue as being his.”

“That’s right.”

“But he died around 8:30, and you didn’t report the shooting till about 9:05.”

“That’s when it happened,” she insisted.

Leopold sighed. “The thing’s an impossibility, Mrs. Youst. Two things seem certain—Aspeth was dead at 8:30, and Aspeth shot his wife a half hour later. One element must be wrong. The killing must have taken place a full hour earlier than you said. Why did you wait an hour before summoning the police, Mrs. Youst?”

“But I didn’t!”

He couldn’t doubt her words. The idea of five cleaning women dancing around the body in some obscene rite for an hour before calling the police was just too preposterous. And yet, if he accepted her story, he was left with no one but Aspeth’s ghost as the murderer.

“Maybe the shock was so great you lost all sense of time. An hour might have gone by without your realizing it.”

“Impossible! For one thing, we have our schedule. I never reach the fifteenth floor till nine o’clock. That’s where I was, so it had to be after nine.”

“All right,” he said. There was no attacking her logic. But as he started to leave, a new thought struck him. “If you just reached the fifteenth floor at nine, how was it that the floor was already freshly polished?”

She sighed, as if at his stupidity. “I said I got there at nine. The girls who do the floors work about twenty minutes ahead of me.”

He left her standing in the doorway and went home to meditate on the ghost of Kurt Aspeth.

In the morning Fletcher had more bad news. “We checked out the fingerprints, Captain. The dead man really is Kurt Aspeth. He’s got a minor record for drunkenness and assault.”

“Is the body still at the morgue?”

“The brother claimed it. There’s a funeral service this morning.”

Leopold stared out the window, wondering what had happened to the bright May sunshine of the previous day. It was a good day for a funeral, but not much else. “We’ve hit a blank wall so far, Fletcher. Let’s see what happened around 9:27 that night, at the time the accident should have occurred. Communications keeps a tape on incoming accident and trouble calls. Get it over here and let’s play it. There has to be something we’re missing, and I want to find it before the press gets onto this story.”

But the tape that Fletcher produced an hour later seemed merely a jumble of radio calls and phone conversations. It took them some time to sort out the accidents from the crime reports, and this was what they heard, in part:

“…8:05—truck-bicycle collision at Maple and York. Car 124 responding…8:27—car accident near the Wilson Avenue exit on the Expressway. Cycle 404 radioed in from scene…”

“That must be Pete Franklin,” Fletcher said.

“Let’s hear what happened later.”

“…8:54—two-car collision at West and Saratoga. Injuries. Car 212 responding with ambulance…9:02—Cycle 404 investigating possible hit-and-run fatality on Small Street…9:06—Police? A woman’s been shot! She’s been murdered! I’m on the 15th floor of Grant Tower! Come quick!…”

“That was Hilda Youst,” Leopold said.

Fletcher nodded. “The patrolman got there first and verified it was a murder. That’s when I was called along with the medical examiner, the technicians, and the morgue wagon.”

“Let’s see what else there is.”

But there was no other accident recorded until “…9:59—two-car collision on Park Place. Car 23 responded. Drivers will see own doctors…”

“Nothing around the right time,” Leopold grumbled. “What was that hit-and-run?”

“The boys are working on it. Terrible thing—a high school girl on her way home from the store, cutting across a narrow alley behind some apartment houses. Nobody even saw it happen. Some damn fool swung out of the parking area too fast, I suppose.”

Leopold puzzled over the tape, rewinding it to play it again. Finally he gave it up. It was nearly time to start believing in ghosts…

Connie Trent was ready when Officer Pete Franklin rang her bell at seven. He looked different out of uniform—less handsome, somehow—and she felt a bit cheated.

“All set?” he asked. “Where do you want to eat?”

“Your choice.” She knew his salary as a motorcycle cop would exclude the sort of places she really liked.

“I know a great place down on the Sound, if you like fish.”

“Love it! Let’s go.”

Over an expensive dinner of lobster and white wine she began to change her opinion of Pete Franklin. His easy-going manner with women was something of an act, and he used money to compensate for some lack he felt in himself. “That cost you a lot,” she said as they left.

“I’m celebrating. I may be coming into some money soon. Besides, it’s a long time since I’ve been out with a girl as pretty as you.”

As he pulled out of the parking lot, Connie asked, “Where to?”

“It’s a great night for a drive. Look, the moon’s even come out from behind the clouds. Let’s ride around a bit, then go back to my place and listen to records. How’s that grab you?”

“Fine.” She was already plotting excuses for an early escape, but it was only nine o’clock, just barely dark, and she could hardly ask to be taken home that early.

His apartment was on the north side of the city and they reached it a half hour later. He drove around back and pulled into an assigned space in the parking area. “This place must cost you something,” she commented.

“It’s not cheap.”

He helped her out of the car and they headed across the dark asphalt toward the lighted rear entrance. Connie saw the figure in the shadows first and she tugged at Franklin’s sleeve. “Pete, someone’s there!”

“Who is it?” Franklin called out.

The answer was a blinding blast from a shotgun that toppled Pete Franklin backward like a giant fist. Connie felt the edge of the shot pattern rip into her left arm and side even as she tried to pull her own gun free from her purse. Then she went down too, seeing nothing, hearing only the running footsteps that gradually faded into silence.

Lieutenant Fletcher had phoned Leopold at home as soon as the word reached headquarters. They caught up with Connie Trent in the emergency room at General Hospital, where a doctor was bandaging her wounds with professional ease.

“She’s all right,” he told them. “I removed eleven shotgun pellets, but none of them were deep.”

Connie was trying to sit up. “Fletcher! Captain! What about Pete Franklin? They won’t tell me a thing around here!”

“Pete caught the full blast in his chest,” Leopold said quietly. “They couldn’t save him.”

“Oh, God…”

“Did you see who did it?”

“Nothing but someone standing in the shadows, waiting for him. I tried to use my gun—”

“Don’t blame yourself, Connie.”

She lay back and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them. “He told me he might come into some money.”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. But I think it was tied into the Aspeth killing.”

Leopold frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“He said something odd when I talked to him yesterday. That’s why I went out with him tonight—to find out more about it.”

“What did he say that was odd?”

“That it was dark at the time Kurt Aspeth smashed up his car. But it doesn’t get dark these nights till a little before nine. At 8:27, when the accident was supposed to have happened, there’d still be daylight.”

“Thanks, Connie,” Leopold said. “I think you’ve solved the case for us.”

“But not soon enough to save Pete Franklin’s life.”

When they left the hospital, Leopold and Fletcher drove over to Small Street, a narrow alley that ran behind some old apartment buildings near the Expressway.

“A hell of a place to end your life,” Fletcher said.

“Any place is,” Leopold said. “What was her name?”

“Rose Sullivan. She was only seventeen.”

“Pete Franklin again?”

“Yeah,” Fletcher said. “We should have caught that on the tape. Cycle 404 responded to both accidents even before a call came in.”

“We had no reason to catch it. When he radioed in that he was investigating a ‘car accident near the Wilson Avenue exit on the Expressway,’ it naturally sounded as if the accident was on the Expressway. Actually it was here on Small Street, a half block from the Wilson Avenue exit. He must have been coming off the exit ramp on his cycle when he saw it happen. And see that fence down the end of the alley? I’ll bet that overlooks the Expressway. He was still here on Small Street when Aspeth cracked up nearly an hour later on the Expressway.”

“What do we do now, Captain?”

Leopold shrugged. “I guess we go back to the morgue.”

Doc Hayes was on duty again, because it was after nine. He let them in himself and led the way to his office in the rear. “Quiet night,” he said, “except for poor Pete Franklin, of course.”

“What time did they bring him in?”

“Around ten. I was late getting here myself. Had a flat tire.”

“Damn lot of car trouble lately, Doc. You were taking it into the garage yesterday, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. These things happen.”

“Doc…”

“What is it?”

“Killing the girl was only manslaughter at worst. With Pete Franklin it’s first-degree murder.”

There was a sudden flash of wildness in Hayes’s eyes and he started to move, but Fletcher was on him, handcuffing his wrists.

Connie Trent was released from the hospital the following morning and was in Leopold’s office an hour later. “What’s all this about arresting Doc Hayes? I can’t believe it!”

“He killed two people, Connie,” Leopold said.

“He shot Pete? And Martha Aspeth?”

“Pete, yes—but not Mrs. Aspeth. She was killed by her husband, just as the witnesses said. We spent our time investigating that case when we should have been investigating the hit-and-run killing of a high school girl named Rose Sullivan. You see, the answer to the problem of Aspeth’s ghost was a very simple one—the times of the two accidents were switched.”

“But how was that possible? And why?”

“Doc Hayes made a full statement last night, after his arrest. You see, he goes on duty at the morgue at nine o’clock each night. He’d been visiting the apartment of a lady friend earlier in the evening and was pulling into Small Street in a hurry to get downtown when his car hit and killed the Sullivan girl. On that back street, at dusk, no one saw the accident. But Pete Franklin, cruising the area on his motorcycle, came along just after.”

“What time was this?”

“Probably very close to 8:27, the time that was later ascribed to Aspeth’s fatal accident. Franklin’s first reaction was to radio in a report that he was investigating an accident. Once that report was on the record, as of 8:27, Doc Hayes’s troubles began. He knew Pete, of course, and maybe he even knew that Pete wasn’t above taking a little graft to keep up a nice apartment. Doc was in big trouble at this point. He’d killed a girl with his car, and if he admitted it he’d also have to explain what he was doing there. I guess he saw his marriage and his career both threatened in that moment, and he made a fatal mistake. He offered Pete Franklin money to let him go.”

“And Franklin took the money.”

Leopold nodded. “It was dark by this time, and the street is little more than an alley anyway. No one came along. Doc Hayes drove away and Franklin must have spent the next several minutes tidying up the scene—picking up bits of chrome or headlight glass that might have served as clues. Then he was ready to call headquarters on the radio and report a hit-and-run, which he finally did at 9:02. The only trouble was, there was still his 8:27 report on the record. He’d called in an accident, nothing more, identifying it simply as being by the Expressway—which Small Street is. The detectives who came to examine the scene didn’t know about the earlier call, or about the missing thirty-five minutes, but it was still on the record. That was when fate brought Kurt Aspeth onto the scene.”

“He’d already killed his wife and was escaping on the Expressway. And he probably did hit that abutment deliberately.”

“Could be,” Leopold said. “Small Street dead-ends at the Expressway. Franklin could have seen—or at least heard—the crash from where he was. He got there on his motorcycle almost at once, saw that Aspeth was dead, and called for the morgue wagon. Only this accident he didn’t report. This accident became the 8:27 accident he’d already radioed in to headquarters.”

“But…” Connie still wasn’t convinced. “What about the detectives investigating the hit-and-run? They must have heard Aspeth’s crash, too. What about the other motorists who stopped? What about the morgue records?”

“The detectives already had their hands full. The motorists would never see the time on Franklin’s report. The morgue records were easily changed by Doc Hayes. It was a one-car accident, remember, so there wasn’t likely to be any court case where witnesses would be testifying. Franklin saw a lucky chance to switch the order of the two accidents and thereby explain his earlier radio report. Fortunately for him, he hadn’t mentioned Small Street in the earlier report, only the Expressway. And luckily no other patrol car happened along while he was at Aspeth’s wreck. Luck was all on his side till he asked Hayes for more money.”

“But how did you know all this?” Connie wondered. “How did you know enough to arrest Doc Hayes in the first place?”

“When you repeated Franklin’s remark about it being dark at the time Aspeth smashed up, we knew he hadn’t died in the 8:27 accident. That had to be something else Cycle 404 investigated. But Franklin had only two accidents in the crucial period—Aspeth and the hit-and-run on Small Street. If it wasn’t Aspeth at 8:27, it had to be the hit-and-run. Fletcher and I went over to Small Street last night and saw how close it was to the Wilson Avenue exit. So Franklin lied about the hit-and-run. Why? Only one answer went with his expectation of money—he was blackmailing the driver.”

“All right—but why Doc?”

“Three things pointed to him. First, he lied when he said Aspeth’s body came into the morgue before nine. Second, he told us he had to take his car into the garage, implying some necessary repair work. And third, at the time of the hit-and-run he would have been in his car, driving to the morgue. Circumstantial, sure, but it was circumstantial too when he said he had a flat tire that made him late for work while Franklin was being killed.”

“You took a gamble accusing him on that evidence.”

“I take gambles every day in this job, Connie. Just the way Pete Franklin did. After he thought of switching the accident times he had to phone Doc at the morgue and tell him to switch his records, too. The records were the important thing. The morgue drivers would never be asked, any more than those passing motorists. The time of Kurt Aspeth’s death would be an unimportant fact buried forever in police files. It would have happened that way too, except for one crazy thing—Kurt Aspeth had just come from murdering his wife. When that fact became known, Franklin asked Doc for more money to keep quiet. And Doc got out a shotgun to pay him off.”

“It kept building up, didn’t it?” Connie said. “From an auto accident to bribery to murder. But at least it wasn’t Aspeth’s ghost on the prowl. I was almost beginning to believe that.”

“So was I,” Leopold said.

(1974)

Captain Leopold Goes Home

FLETCHER AND CONNIE WERE at the office to see him off, their faces grim. “There’s no need for tears,” Captain Leopold told them both. “I haven’t seen my uncle in something like twenty years. He was seventy-eight years old and he had a good life. I’ll fly out for the funeral and be back in the office on Monday.”

Fletcher walked him down to the street. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Captain. Connie and I have everything under control. Stay as long as you want. It’s been a slow month anyway.”

That wasn’t quite true because August was never slow for the Violent Crimes Division, but Leopold thanked him anyway. He waved goodbye as the taxi pulled away from the curb, taking him to the airport, and from there on to home.

Captain Leopold had always thought of Riger Falls as home even though he’d been born in Chicago and moved from Riger Falls to New York as soon as he was old enough to be on his own. The reason was Uncle Joe Leopold, who’d raised him like a son after the Captain’s parents died. He’d gone to live with Uncle Joe when he was eight, and taken the town of Riger Falls as his own.

Its shaded streets and quiet country atmosphere were a world away from the noisy crowded avenues of Chicago, and the young Leopold welcomed the change. Now, flying back after all these years, he looked forward to the quiet as something close to a vacation. He tried to remember Uncle Joe’s face the last time he’d seen him, back in the mid-fifties when Uncle Joe’s wife died. She’d been almost like a mother to Leopold and her death had saddened Joe terribly. One of the greatest surprises of Captain Leopold’s young life had come when he learned a year later that Uncle Joe had remarried.

He’d never met the second wife, though she was the one who’d signed the telegram informing him of his uncle’s death. Her name was Margaret, and Leopold knew only that she was a good deal younger than Joe. When the plane landed and he saw from the bus schedule that he would not reach Riger Falls before dinner he phoned her from a booth at the airport.

“We’re so glad you could come,” her voice assured him. “Joe was always talking about you and what a success you’ve become in the east.”

“He was like a father to me,” Leopold said. “Look, I’ll be there as soon as I can, but it’ll probably be after seven. I’ll take the next bus.”

“Henry will meet you at the station. That’s my son.”

“Fine.” He hung up and went out to wait for the next bus to Riger Falls.

In the long evening sunshine his first view of the town was a reassuring one. The trees, the streets, the houses were all as he remembered them. Progress had not yet polluted the place where he grew up. Farther on, near the center of town, he came upon one concession to change—a sprawling shopping center with a supermarket and a drive-in movie. But even here the design of the place was muted, in keeping with its quiet surroundings. Riger Falls had always been a quiet town, if nothing else.

A thin well-dressed man was waiting at the bus station and he introduced himself as Henry Cole. He was a few years younger than Leopold, perhaps still under 40, but he carried himself with a round-shouldered stoop that made him seem older. “I’m Margaret’s son by her first marriage,” he explained. “I live down the old Creek Road.”

Leopold remembered the area—a dirt road lined with older houses that were little more than shacks. But that was a long time ago. Perhaps things were different now. “I haven’t been back in twenty years,” he told the man. “Haven’t seen Uncle Joe in all that time.”

“He was a fine old guy,” Henry Cole said. “Too bad he had to die like that.”

“How did he die?” Leopold asked. The telegram had given no details.

“Hit by a car on Tuesday, right in front of his house. They didn’t think he was too bad at first, but at that age it was a terrible shock to his system. Died in the hospital yesterday morning.”

“Who hit him?”

“Don’t know. One of them wild kids from the next county, I suppose. That’s what the sheriff says, anyway.”

“You mean it was a hit-and-run?”

“That’s what they say. My mother was in the house when it happened. She says he just went across the street to mail a letter and then she heard this car racing down the street. And then a thump. She says the car never even slowed down.”

“Was he conscious? Could he say anything?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask my mother.” He turned the car into a gravel driveway. “Here we are. Raznell’s Funeral Home.”

Leopold looked out the car window at the familiar white Colonial structure. “Is Jerry Raznell still around?” Jerry had been his boyhood friend all through school, until Leopold moved away to New York.

“It’s his place. The father died.”

Inside, in a coffin surrounded by flowers, Uncle Joe Leopold lay at rest. Leopold said a brief silent prayer and then went over to the white-haired woman who stood with the other mourners. Though they’d never met, he recognized Margaret Leopold at once from the pictures Uncle Joe had sent him.

“So glad you could come,” she said, extending her hand. “Joe would be so happy to know you’re back home.”

“I’m only sorry it took this to bring me back.”

“He often spoke of you, and how successful you are.” When she spoke, the lines of her mouth gave her a certain graceful air. Twenty years ago, about the time Uncle Joe married her, she would have been a beautiful woman. Even now, Leopold thought, she bore herself with a handsome dignity.

“Had he been retired for long?” Leopold asked, remembering Uncle Joe’s fondness for the little woodworking shop on the highway.

“Only about a year. And even then he could have kept going in. His health was near perfect and he still loved furniture.”

“Your son told me about the accident. A terrible thing. Do the police have any idea who was driving the car?”

“None. Maybe you should talk to the sheriff about it. He might like some help from a New York detective.”

Leopold cleared his throat. “I started out in New York, but I’ve been up in Connecticut for a good many years now. Not nearly as large as New York. But maybe I will speak to him.” Some others drifted in to pay their respects, and for a time Leopold was caught up in a flow of memories, hearing the old names, seeing the half-remembered faces. It was not until after nine that he could get away. Margaret Leopold asked him to stay at the house but he declined, preferring the freedom of a motel room.

“You can use my car overnight,” Henry Cole volunteered. “Here are the keys.”

Leopold hesitated. “I don’t know—”

“Go ahead. It’ll save me taking you to the motel and picking you up for the funeral.”

Leopold accepted the keys with thanks. As he turned to leave, the familiar face of Jerry Raznell appeared in the doorway. “Leopold! Good to see you! I heard you’d flown out for the funeral.”

“You haven’t changed, Jerry,” he said, and he meant it. Always a bit on the stocky side, Raznell’s added weight had helped maintain the jolly boyishness of his face. He was hardly anyone’s idea of the town undertaker.

“Nor have you. A little gray at the temples, but you still look pretty fit. How’s the wife?”

Had it been that long since they’d seen or talked to each other? “It was a short marriage. We got a divorce and she’s dead now.”

“Oh. Sorry.” The grin disappeared, but only for an instant. “Say, I’m just closing up here. How about stopping for a drink? Get caught up on all these years. I’d invite you upstairs but one of the kids is sick.”

“I have to check in at a motel.”

“No problem. I’ll show you the way. It’s new since you lived here.”

The motel was on the other side of town, part of a nationwide chain that had somehow discovered the rural pleasures of Riger Falls. Leopold checked in, deposited his small overnight bag on the bed, and joined Jerry Raznell in the dimly lit cocktail lounge for a drink.

“It was a shock about your uncle, huh?”

“It should have been more of a shock,” Leopold confessed. “In recent years I’d almost forgotten the old man’s existence. And once he was a father to me.”

“We all grow up and get old. My own father died seven years ago and left me the business.”

“You seem to be doing well. I noticed a new wing on the house.”

“People never stop dying.”

“I hear Uncle Joe got it from a hit-and-run driver.”

“Yeah. Awful thing.”

“Are the police investigating?”

A shrug. “You know Sheriff Potter. No, on second thought, I guess you don’t. He’d have been after your time. Well, he’s a good enough man, but he has his own ideas. Wild kids from the next county, he says, and a lot of people believe him.”

“I gather you don’t.”

“I’d rather not say.”

“You think it was somebody here in Riger Falls?”

Jerry Raznell looked down at his hands. “You’d better ask the sheriff about that.”

“I came here to attend a funeral, Jerry, not to investigate a killing.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You didn’t,” Leopold told him. “Maybe you should say something.”

“You’d better ask the sheriff,” he repeated.

Leopold downed the rest of his Scotch. “I’ll do that. Thanks for the drink, Jerry.”

Sheriff Potter was not in his office, but the night deputy furnished his home address. Leopold phoned first and identified himself. Shortly after ten o’clock, when he parked Henry Cole’s car in front of the sheriff’s neat little ranch home, the man was waiting for him.

“The wife’s having her bridge club,” he explained. “Come on out in the garage.”

It was a double garage with one side given over to a workbench and power tools. Sheriff Potter left the overhead door open while they talked, and large moths began to circle above their heads, risking their powdery wings against the attractive glow of the ceiling light.

With his curly black hair and dimpled chin, Potter did not look like a sheriff. He was too young for one thing, and when he spoke there was something like deference in his voice. “I’ve heard about you, Captain. Weren’t you written up in Law and Order recently?”

“They ran an article on our department,” Leopold admitted, “about how we converted the old homicide squad into a violent crimes unit.”

“I read everything I can find about police work. Not that I have much call to use it in Riger Falls.”

“I was wondering about my uncle’s hit-and-run death. I understand it’s still unsolved.”

Sheriff Potter ran his hand over the smooth wood of the work table. “Well, not exactly unsolved. For one thing, the car didn’t kill him right off, you know. He died a couple days later in the hospital. Case like that, in order to get an indictment we’d have to bring doctors before the grand jury to testify that the accident was the prime cause of death.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Well, the man was seventy-eight years old. Doesn’t take much to kill somebody at that age, you know. A broken hip, a sudden shock—”

“Do you know who was driving the car that hit him?”

“We get a lot of kids from the next county along that road, especially on these warm summer nights. My road patrol does the best it can, but you know how it is sometimes.”

Leopold sighed. “Look, Sheriff, I’ve been back in town only three hours and a good friend tells me to ask you about my uncle’s death. Well, I’m asking you.”

Sheriff Potter scratched his head. “You gotta look at these things on balance sometimes. Your uncle was a good man, but he was seventy-eight years old. He’d lived a full life. Now if some young kids out joyriding hit him and caused his death, through no real fault of their own, should their lives be ruined by it?”

“That’s an odd theory of law,” Leopold said. “Is that what happened?”

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Didn’t my uncle make a statement before he died?”

“Nothing we could use. He never saw the car that hit him.”

Leopold could sense he was getting nowhere with the man. If there was something strange and hidden about his uncle’s death, this was not the place to learn about it. “All right,” he said, starting for the door. “Nice meeting you.”

The sheriff walked him out to the borrowed car. “How long you expect to be in town?”

“I’ll be leaving after the funeral,” Leopold said. “Sometime tomorrow.”

The following morning Leopold’s cousin Sara arrived in town for the funeral. She was a handsome woman in her mid-forties, a wealthy widow who had been involved in one of Leopold’s cases a few years earlier. “You’re looking good, Sara,” he said, greeting her with a cousinly kiss.

“And so are you. It’s good to see you again.”

They entered the funeral parlor and he nodded to Jerry Raznell, attired in a black coat and gray striped pants, looking a bit more like a smiling best man at a marriage ceremony than a funeral director. Margaret Leopold was already seated, but she rose to greet Sara and a few other arrivals. Her son, Henry Cole, was not yet present.

“I’ll want you to ride with me in the first car,” Margaret said to Leopold. “You were very close to Joe.”

He nodded and sat down next to her. Jerry Raznell came in after a few moments and said a brief prayer. Then he began reading off the list of cars and occupants. Henry Cole was behind the wheel of the first car when they reached it. He nodded to Leopold, came out, and held the door open for his mother. As Leopold climbed in he saw a blue and white sheriff’s car at the end of the line. He wondered if Potter was inside it.

The service at the graveside was brief and nonsectarian. Leopold found himself standing next to cousin Sara and when it was over she said, “Will you buy me lunch? I’d feel uneasy going back to the house.”

“Of course. There used to be a nice restaurant out by the falls.” He drove back with Cole and Margaret to the house, then borrowed Cole’s car again with the promise to return it shortly. Sara was waiting for him back at the funeral parlor.

“I’d forgotten how weird this town was,” she said as she settled into the seat next to him.

“It never seemed weird to me.”

“Well, that’s because you lived here. I was only a summer visitor. One of the outsiders.”

He drove her to the Fall View Inn, a rambling old place that had been the town’s best restaurant in his youth. The prices were high, but a certain seediness had begun to set in. The antique furniture that greeted them at the entrance was covered with dust just a little too thick for mere atmosphere. The falls were still there, of course, dropping the slim trickle of water that gave the town its name.

“It was a nice service,” she said. “Short and simple.”

“Did you hear anything about how he died?”

“A car accident, someone said.”

“Hit-and-run. He was crossing the street outside his house.”

“How terrible! Even a small town like this isn’t safe from it.”

“I think there was something odd about his death, Sara.”

“In what way?”

“I think the sheriff knows who was driving that car. But for some reason he’s not doing anything about it.”

She smiled at his words. “Perhaps you’re just too much of a detective.”

“Maybe.”

“You see things where there’s nothing to be seen.”

He ate his lunch in glum silence after that, wondering if she could be right.

The others had gathered back at the Leopold home, in the post-funeral tradition, and Leopold and Sara joined them shortly after lunch. Sheriff Potter was there, all boyish charm, chatting with an older woman on the front porch as he sipped beer from a glass.

“Good to see you again, Leopold. Thought you might have started back before I could say goodbye.”

“No, I’m still here.”

The older woman took Sara in tow and they disappeared into the house. Leopold and Sheriff Potter were left alone on the porch. “I think Margaret’s taking it quite good,” the sheriff remarked. “At least she has her son to take care of her.”

“Tell me about Henry Cole. He said he lives out on Creek Road.”

“That’s right. Got a nice place out there. Henry’s a druggist in town. Owns his own store and works hard at it every day.”

“I’ve been driving his car around.” He glanced out at the car and for the first time he noticed a dent in the front bumper where the sunlight was hitting it. He made a mental note to examine it more closely later.

“It’s been sort of the family vehicle since your uncle lost his license. Margaret never did drive.”

“How did he lose his license?”

“It happened last year. He went off the road at a curve and hit a fruit stand. No one was hurt and it was sort of funny, really. But he’d had some other minor accidents before that and his age was against him. The state revoked his license. So since then Henry’s been driving them around.”

But Leopold was only half listening to the words. He was staring across the street. Suddenly he said, “Sheriff, tell me what you see over there.”

“See? What do you mean? Can’t you see for yourself?”

“I want to know what you see.”

“A house. A couple of vacant lots.”

“What else? Tell me everything.”

“Two lamp posts. A fire hydrant. A Rotary Club sign.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else. What are you talking about?”

“Maybe nothing,” Leopold said. He left the porch and went down the front walk to the street. Finally he came back onto the porch. “You mentioned the kids in the next county. What made you suspect them?”

Sheriff Potter shifted uneasily. “Are you back on that again?”

“If I can’t get the answer from you, I’ll get it from the sheriff over there.”

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “There was a hit-and-run death over in Sedgeville the same day Joe Leopold got it. Probably just coincidence, but I guess I figured the same wild driver did them both.”

“Who was killed in Sedgeville?”

“A kid. I don’t know any more about it.”

Sara reappeared on the porch with Margaret Leopold. “Margaret’s going to show me the garden. Want to come?”

“Sure,” he agreed, glancing at the sheriff.

“You people go ahead,” Potter said. “I have to get back to the office anyway. These summer weekends really bring out the drivers.”

Leopold sensed that Potter was anxious to escape his questions. He followed the two women into the back yard, watching while the white-haired Margaret pulled a carrot from the earth and offered it for his inspection. “This garden was always Joe’s pride,” she said, a sadness in her voice. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep it up without him.”

Leopold looked down the rows of flowers, past the leafy vegetables and the cornstalks that reached to his head. He remembered the garden from the days of his youth. It had always been here, always the same yet always changing. Reborn each spring.

“I must be going,” Sara told the white-haired woman. “I only drove down for the funeral.”

Margaret cut a few flowers and handed them to her. “I’m a widow now, like you. I hope I can be as brave as you’ve been.”

Sara took the flowers and looked away. “I must be going,” she said again.

Leopold fell into step beside her. “I’ll walk you to the car.”

“I was never any good at funerals,” she said when they were out of Margaret’s hearing. “That’s why I wouldn’t come back for lunch. I never know the right thing to say.”

“Do any of us?” Leopold asked. “I spend my life on the other side. I’m usually concerned with who did it, but not who it happened to.”

“That sounds like you think he was murdered.”

“The word hasn’t been mentioned.”

“Are you flying back today?”

Leopold stared at the sky, debating. “First I’m going to visit another bereaved family,” he decided. “Over in Sedgeville.”

The Flynn house was quiet when he reached it, still driving the borrowed car. It sat subdued in the sunshine of a Saturday afternoon, an island of tranquillity unbothered by the shouting children at a ball game just down the street.

Leopold mounted the porch and knocked gently on the screen door, seeing that the front door stood open to the warmth of the day. After a moment a gaunt middle-aged woman appeared and spoke to him through the screen. “Yes?”

“I read in the papers about the accident to your son.”

“The funeral was yesterday. Who are you?”

“My name is Leopold. I was visiting over in Riger Falls. Could I come in for a moment?”

“No. My husband isn’t here. I’m alone.”

“Certainly,” he said. “I just wanted to ask a few questions about the accident. It happened on Tuesday, I believe.”

“Yes.”

“Here, near the house?”

She nodded. “Right in front. He was running across the street to mail a letter for me, and of course he didn’t look where he was going. He never looked.” Her eyes were staring past him, seeing it again. “Who are you?”

“Did the driver stop?”

“He slammed on his brakes, but it was too late. When he saw he’d hit him, he kept on going.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Flynn.”

Her eyes refocused on his face. “It was you, wasn’t it? You killed him and now you’ve come back!”

“No, it wasn’t me. Goodbye. I’m sorry.”

As he retreated from the porch she opened the screen door and started after him. “It was you! I remember that car!”

He opened his wallet and showed her the badge. “I’m investigating the case.” That stopped her and she stood looking at him uncertainly, squinting with the afternoon sun in her eyes. “Now what about the car?” he asked.

“It was like yours. I saw it going away down the street. It was the same color.”

“I see.”

“Is it the same car?”

Leopold looked out at the little beige sedan by the curb. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.

On the way back to Riger Falls he pulled off the road under a stand of leafy maple trees and parked. He got out of the car and went around to the front of it, kneeling in the dirt to examine the dented bumper. He could see now that the dent extended into the chrome grillwork as well, and that it was recent. The exposed metal had not yet begun to rust.

While he was still on his knees studying it, another vehicle went by and slowed down, coming to a stop about 50 feet ahead. It was a hearse, and Jerry Raznell got out from the driver’s side. “What’s the matter?” he called. “Have a breakdown?”

Leopold got to his feet, brushing the dirt from his knees. “No, it’s okay. I was just looking at the front of the car.”

Raznell walked up to him and glanced down at the dented front end. “Did you have an accident?”

“No. It was like that.”

“Henry Cole’s car, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The undertaker grunted. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

Leopold met his eyes and something passed between them, something from the old days when they had been friends. “What do you think I should do?”

“Did you talk to the sheriff?”

“He told me nothing.”

“He must have told you something. You were on your way back from Sedgeville.”

“Yes,” Leopold admitted. “He told me that much.”

“Where you heading now?”

“I guess I’ll take the car back to Henry Cole.” He was staring down at the dented front end. “What do you think he ran into?”

Jerry Raznell shrugged. “A tree. A small tree.”

“Or a small boy? Or an old man?”

“You really think that?”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Flynn recognized the car.”

“Who’s Mrs. Flynn?”

“I found her name in the paper. Her son was killed by a hit-and-run driver on Tuesday.”

“The same day Joe Leopold was hit.”

“That’s right. Jerry, why are we talking in circles? We were friends once. Good friends.”

“You should be heading back home soon.”

“I am home, Jerry. This is my home. I came back.”

“But only for the day, only for the funeral. The rest of us have to stay here after you’re gone.”

Leopold turned and walked around to the car door. “I’m going to see Henry Cole,” he said.

As he pulled away, Jerry Raznell was still standing by the side of the road. In his rearview mirror Leopold saw him start slowly back toward his hearse.

Henry Cole, the stoop-shouldered druggist, was still at the Leopold house when he pulled up. “I brought your car back in one piece,” he said, greeting the man in the front yard.

“Sure did. But I wasn’t worried.”

“I don’t want you to think I put that dent in the front end of your car.”

“No, I wouldn’t think that. Did it myself last week.”

“How’d it happen?”

The man glanced away, obviously nervous. “I—I bumped into another car.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No,” Leopold said. “That’s not the way it happened. Do you want to tell me the truth now?”

“I gotta be going,” he said quickly. He snatched the keys from Leopold’s hand and hurried to the car.

Margaret Leopold came out to the porch. “Why’d he leave in such a hurry?”

“I asked him a question he wouldn’t answer,” Leopold said.

The others had all departed and the house was empty now, except for the two of them. “What question was that?”

“How the front of his car got dented.”

“Come up here on the porch, where we can talk. It’s been a long day for me.”

“A long day for all of us,” Leopold conceded. He chose a wicker chair opposite her and sat down. “My cousin Sara says I’m too much of a detective, that I see things where there’s nothing to be seen.”

“And do you?”

Leopold shook his head. “Quite the opposite, really. I don’t see things where there is something to be seen.”

“What don’t you see?”

“The mailbox across the street.”

“What?” Her forehead creased with wrinkles. “What do you mean?”

“I stood out here this afternoon and asked Sheriff Potter everything he saw across the street and he told me. There’s no mailbox. I went out to the street and looked both ways, and there was still no mailbox. And yet you told your son Henry that Uncle Joe was crossing the street to mail a letter.”

“It’s a very odd lie, really, because anyone around here looking across the street would see there’s no mailbox over there. I thought about that a long time, and then this afternoon Sheriff Potter mentioned another hit-and-run accident in Sedgeville the same day. I drove over there and saw the mother of the boy who was killed—Mrs. Flynn.”

Her face had gone white as chalk. Her hands gripped the wicker arms of the chair. “You saw her?”

Leopold nodded. “She told me her son was running across the street to mail a letter, and then of course I was pretty sure what happened. The driver of the car slammed on the brakes, but too late. There must have been an image there in the driver’s eyes of a boy darting off the curb, clutching an envelope in his hand. And he told that to you, didn’t he? His image became your image, and when it came time to tell about Uncle Joe’s accident, you used those same words. Letter in hand, crossing the street.”

“You know it all, don’t you?”

“I know it all. The recent dent in the bumper, Mrs. Flynn’s description of the car. And both accidents the same day. It couldn’t be coincidence. I only had to ask myself who was driving that day. Your son Henry would have been working at the drug store, and even if he hadn’t been—could we imagine him lending me his car knowing what had caused that dent? No, not Henry. And not you, of course, because you never drove. And that only left one person, didn’t it?” She stared out at the trees, and at the evening sun caught in their branches. “Yes,” she answered after a while. “It was your Uncle Joe who killed the boy.”

“Tell me about it, Margaret,” he said quietly.

“There’s not much to tell, not really. He wanted to go over to Sedgeville to look at some antiques he’d seen advertised. You know how he was about woodworking and fine old furniture. Well, Henry was busy at the drug store and couldn’t take him. But the car was here as it often was, and Joe decided to drive over there himself. He’d driven a few times since losing his license, but never as far as that. I was sick about it, but he went anyway. When he came back—” Her voice broke and Leopold put out a hand to steady her.

“Go on,” he urged.

“When he came back he looked horrible. He was bleeding from the mouth and his clothes were covered with spots of blood. He said he’d hit a boy who was crossing the street to mail a letter. He’d slammed on the brakes at the last moment, and injured his own chin and mouth on the steering wheel. But then he’d panicked and kept on going, because he was driving without a license. I guess it was all that blood gave me the idea for another hit-and-run accident in front of our house. I had to protect him somehow.”

“So you called for an ambulance and they took him to the hospital.”

She nodded. “They said he wasn’t hurt bad, but the shock of what he’d done had set in. I had to get him away. I told Henry some lie about the bumper and he never questioned it, never connected it with the accident in the next county.”

“Sheriff Potter knew,” Leopold said.

“Oh, yes. He’s a smart young man. He knew. The Sedgeville police contacted him, of course, and he had a description of the car. He talked to the doctors at the hospital about the nature of Joe’s injuries, and he guessed what had happened. He told me he would have to arrest Joe.”

“And he would have, if Uncle Joe hadn’t died first.”

“Yes.” She looked away, perhaps toward the garden in the back yard, and her firm hands tightened on the wicker chair. “I got to the hospital ahead of the sheriff to warn Joe. But they’d given him a sedative and he was sleeping. He just—never woke up.”

It was almost dark, and Leopold had to be getting back. Perhaps he could still catch the bus to the airport and a night flight home.

He stood up and said, “I must be going. There’s nothing more for me here.”

“No. It was good of you to come.”

He paused at the steps. “Potter isn’t the only one who knows. Jerry Raznell knows, too.”

She nodded. “Jerry uses the hearse as an ambulance. He took Joe to the hospital after—after I said the car hit him. He was suspicious then. I think he talked to the sheriff.”

She seemed suddenly old to his eyes, older than yesterday when he’d come to Riger Falls. “I suppose it’s a blessing this way,” Leopold said. “At his age the trial would have killed him. Or just the publicity, even if it never got to trial.”

“I know,” she said. “I thought of that, too.”

He kissed her lightly on the cheek and went down the steps without looking back. He did not ask the meaning of her last words, because he knew. Now, remembering Jerry Raznell’s suspicions, remembering his uncle’s sudden death from those minor mouth injuries, remembering most of all her firm hands and the way they tightened on the chair, he knew there was one question he could never ask Margaret Leopold.

He could never ask her if, alone with Uncle Joe in that hospital room, she’d held a pillow over his sleeping face until the life drained from his old body, just minutes before Sheriff Potter arrived to arrest him.

(1975)

No Crime For Captain Leopold

EVER SINCE BROWN-EYED CONNIE Trent joined the department, she and Fletcher had engaged in some good-natured kidding of Captain Leopold whenever the occasion warranted. He enjoyed the kidding, as he enjoyed Connie’s presence, and the afternoon coffee breaks on slow days were relaxing for all three of them.

Usually it would start with Fletcher getting the coffee from the cranky old machine in the hallway and bringing three cups into Leopold’s office. If Connie wasn’t busy she joined them. Officially it was a time for discussion of pending cases, but on those rare afternoons when violent crime was at a minimum the conversation generally turned to light-hearted banter.

“I’m off to the convention tomorrow,” Leopold was telling them both this day. “You’ll be in charge, Fletcher.”

“What convention?” Connie asked.

“International Conference of Chiefs of Police,” Fletcher replied. “The Captain’s one of the featured speakers.”

Leopold nodded. “At the New York Hilton. I’ll drive down tomorrow morning and come back the next day.”

Connie put down her coffee cup and sat there grinning. “Well, we can expect to read about a murder at the Hilton!”

Fletcher joined in, smiling. “That’s right. You never go anywhere, Captain, that you don’t bump into a murder—a Christmas party, class reunion, vacation, even a family funeral!”

“Come on, now!” Leopold pleaded. “You make me sound like one of those detectives on TV.”

“But it’s true,” Connie insisted. “I’ll make you a bet right now that somewhere at that convention tomorrow you run smack into a murder or other violent crime. The speaker ahead of you will be poisoned, or some visiting police chief will be thrown from a window. Something will happen!”

Leopold chuckled and took out his wallet. “Come on now, it’s not quite that bad. Here’s a dollar says I don’t get involved with any crime or violence on this trip.”

“I’ll hold the money,” Fletcher volunteered, taking their dollar bills.

“Have a good trip,” Connie said. “But that’s one bet I’m going to win.”

“Get out of here, you two,” Leopold grumbled. “Let me finish working on my speech.”

The autumn drive to New York was a pleasant one for Leopold. There were times when he liked just being alone, away from the constant turmoil of the office. Perhaps he was getting too old for violent crimes, and the additional violence that so often went with their solution. Something like this—a speech to other law enforcement officers—could still be enjoyed, because it was crime in the abstract.

At the hotel someone stuck an adhesive-backed name tag on his jacket and handed him a folder of press releases. He wandered through the crowded lobby until he spotted a familiar face.

“Cartwright! How’ve you been?” he greeted a tall handsome man in cowboy boots.

“My God, it’s Leopold! I heard you were speakin’ tonight.” Eagle Cartwright was the police chief of Blue Hills, Ohio—a Cleveland suburb near Shaker Heights. Leopold had worked with him 20 years ago on the New York City police force, before they both went their separate ways.

“How’s crime in Blue Hills these days?”

Cartwright shrugged. “Caught some kids smokin’ pot and stealin’ cars. Biggest excitement we’ve had all year.”

“And the family?”

“Sarah’s fine. The boy’s away at college, so we’re alone now.”

He was a few years younger than Leopold, and he still had the appearance of a vigorous, athletic man. Perhaps it was only laziness that took him away from big-city law enforcement and dropped him into an affluent Ohio suburb.

Leopold had met his wife at a convention some years back. Now, as Cartwright opened his wallet to show a color snapshot of the family posed beside a camping trailer, he said honestly, “Sarah’s still a beautiful woman. And your boy has really grown up.”

“Time passes,” Cartwright agreed. “Sarah came with me this year. You’ll see her at dinner tonight.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

The program chairman appeared to grip Leopold’s hand and whisk him away. “Let’s have a drink later,” he suggested to Cartwright. “We’ve got a lot of years to catch up on.”

The tall man nodded and then they were separated by a milling throng of new arrivals.

The speech was well received, and Leopold found himself the center of attention when the dinner session ended. Men he’d barely known over the years insisted on buying him a drink, and his mind was growing a bit fuzzy by the time he encountered Eagle Cartwright and his wife.

Sarah was as charming and gracious as he remembered her, and he was tempted to accept their invitation for a drink, but at that moment he felt like nothing more than a cup of coffee. “I’m getting too old for these conventions, Sarah. I’d better pass up another drink.”

“I hope we see you tomorrow before we leave,” she said.

“Maybe for breakfast,” he suggested.

As they separated, he caught a troubled look on Cartwright’s face. Something was bothering the man, but Leopold had no idea what.

After a shower in his room Leopold felt better. It was not yet eleven o’clock, and he decided to go back downstairs for his coffee. He took the elevator directly to the lower-level coffee shop, avoiding the partying delegates in the lobby. Seated at a table in the nearly deserted place, he was not especially surprised a few minutes later when Eagle Cartwright entered to join him.

“You mentioned wanting coffee,” Cartwright explained. “I took a chance you might be here.”

“Glad you did. Is Sarah coming down, too?”

Cartwright shook his head. “She’s gone to bed.” He sat opposite Leopold and ordered coffee. After a moment’s silence he said, “Actually, I wanted to talk to you. I’ve got a problem.”

“If it’s anything I can help you with, Eagle, I’ll be glad to. You did me a few favors back in the 29th Precinct.”

“Hell, I don’t really know if you can help me or not. To tell the truth, I don’t know that it’s so much a problem as it is a puzzle. And we lawmen these days aren’t much on puzzles. I drive around Blue Hills in my Chief’s car and occasionally I help question a car thief or a kid with a few joints—but if I ever got hit with a real murder mystery like on TV I don’t know what in hell I’d do!”

“You haven’t had one, have you?”

“No, no.” Cartwright gave a forced laugh. “This is something personal. I guess you’d hardly call it a crime at all. But it’s botherin’ me, and maybe if I talk about it I can get set straight. I may be too close to the thing to judge it rightly.”

Leopold sipped his coffee. “Tell me about it.”

“Well, first I gotta tell you about Ron Springer. He’s a bit younger than me—about thirty-five, I’d guess—and he and his wife Gert have been our closest friends for the past few years. Ron’s a detail man for a pharmaceutical manufacturer, callin’ on doctors in the Cleveland area. He and Gert have a small one-bedroom apartment near us in Blue Hills. They never had children and they don’t really need a bigger place.”

“This Springer is in some sort of trouble?”

Cartwright hesitated. “I don’t rightly know. About a year ago somebody broke into our house. I had a suspicion it was a wild bunch of kids my son was hanging around with at the time. Not much was stolen—a piggy bank with some half dollars in it, a camera, a tape recorder. Kids or drug addicts, I figured.”

“That’s likely,” Leopold agreed.

“Well, just last week we were over to the Springers for dinner. It’s always a treat for Sarah when we go out because I have to work so many nights. You know how it is in our line of work.” Leopold nodded. “It had been raining earlier—one of those annoying October showers that cover your car with wet leaves—and we’d both worn raincoats. Ron hung them in the front closet.

“As I’ve said, the apartment is small—living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bath—and we ate in the living room, buffet style. Sarah and I were together on the sofa, I remember. Anyway, it was when we were leaving that I found it. Ron, always the gentleman, got out Sarah’s raincoat and was helping her on with it. I went into the closet after my own, and that’s when I heard it.”

“Heard what?”

“The ticking. Naturally I was curious, so I moved a hatbox on the closet shelf and there it was—an alarm clock showing the correct time. In the closet!”

“Strange.”

“Damn right it’s strange! I was all set to make a joke about it when all of a sudden I recognized the clock. It was an old one we’d used some years back until I dropped it and cracked the glass. Last time I’d seen it was in our basement.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I couldn’t say anything. Ronnie and Gert are our best friends. But I told Sarah about it on the way home and the first thing we did was to search our basement for that old clock. It wasn’t there.”

“A coincidence,” Leopold suggested. “Alarm clocks look pretty much alike.”

Cartwright shook his head. “It was the same clock. I remember that crack in the glass because it had an odd angle to it.”

“Springer has certainly been at your house in the past. Perhaps he saw it in your basement and simply picked it up.”

“Impossible. Sarah’s always after me to clean the place out. It’s been such a mess this past year we haven’t allowed anyone down there.”

“Your son might have—”

“He was away at college all year and traveling in Europe this past summer. The only two weeks he was home, we went off on our camping trip.”

“Well then?”

“I’m left with only one possibility—that Ron Springer, our best friend, broke into our house last year and stole those things, including the alarm clock.”

“Why would he steal a clock? Especially one with a broken face?”

“I was hoping you could tell me, Leopold. That’s the puzzle.”

“And if he did steal it, why did he have it hidden away in his front closet, still running and keeping perfect time?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Leopold signaled the waitress for more coffee.

He had Eagle Cartwright go over the whole story again, from beginning to end, but nothing was added to the spare simple facts. Leopold thought about it, saying little. Finally he concluded, “He may be some sort of kleptomaniac, I suppose. Either that or you’re mistaken about it being the same clock.”

Eagle Cartwright looked glum. He’d probably expected a slick and satisfying solution from Leopold and there was none. “I guess I’ve been worrying needlessly. I shouldn’t have bothered you with my troubles.”

“No bother at all. I only wish I could help.”

It was now after midnight. Leopold rose to leave, but Cartwright said, “I’ll stay a bit.”

“Perhaps I’ll see you in the morning.”

Leopold strode reluctantly toward the elevators. He knew there would still be parties in some of the rooms, but he had no desire to join them. His mind was on Eagle Cartwright and the puzzle of the clock in the closet. The solution to the puzzle was obviously very important to Eagle, for some reason Leopold couldn’t quite grasp.

He awakened with a start, and it took him a moment to remember where he was. New York, the convention, Eagle Cartwright, the alarm clock.

The alarm clock in the closet.

And all at once he knew, just like that.

He sat up in bed and thought about it.

Most of all, he thought about what to do with the solution to the puzzle. He was sorry he’d come to New York, sorry he’d listened to his friend’s story. But he had listened, and that gave him certain responsibilities he couldn’t shrug off.

He knew there was a nine o’clock session scheduled in the ballroom. He waited till ten after nine and then rang Cartwright’s room. Sarah answered the phone.

“Good morning, this is Leopold. I was wondering about having breakfast together.”

“Oh!” Her voice sounded pleasant but cautious. “Well, Eagle went down to the session. Don’t you have to go?”

“I’m only a guest speaker, not a delegate. Perhaps just the two of us?”

“Well…I’m not dressed yet.”

“I really would like to speak with you, Sarah.”

She hesitated only another moment. “Very well. The coffee shop? Twenty minutes?”

“Fine.”

He was sitting at a table when she arrived. He stood up and held her chair. “I’m glad you could join me. We hardly had time to speak yesterday.”

“These conventions are always that way,” she replied with a smile. “You never get to see the people you really care about.” She ordered juice, toast and coffee, and lit a cigarette.

“Eagle joined me last night for coffee.”

She nodded. “He told me he did.”

“He wanted some help, but I couldn’t give him any last night.”

“Help?”

“About that clock in your friend’s closet.”

“Oh, that! Honestly, it’s been an obsession with him this past week.”

“I finally figured it out, Sarah. It came to me this morning just as I was waking up.”

“You figured…?”

“I thought I should tell you rather than Eagle.”

She smiled slightly. “Tell me what?”

“I’d better start at the beginning. Of course the key to everything is that clock in the closet. Last night I asked myself why it was there, and I came up with several possible answers. It could have been serving some obscure decorative purpose—but Eagle told me it was hidden behind a hatbox so I ruled that one out. It could have been stored there, unused—but Eagle said it was not only running but told the correct time. He never specified if the clock was electric or wind-up, but I ruled out electric for two reasons—there’s generally no outlet in a closet, and electric clocks usually hum instead of tick.”

“It was a wind-up clock,” Sarah confirmed.

“Generally they won’t run more than two days without rewinding. Since the one in Springer’s closet was ticking and showing the correct time, it was obviously being rewound. Either Springer or his wife—the only occupants of the apartment—wound the clock and set it regularly.”

“Of course.”

“But why? Again, not as a decoration because no one could see it. And if it was merely in storage there’d be no reason to keep it running. No, the evidence points to one inescapable conclusion—the clock was rewound because it was in daily use as a timepiece.”

“I can see that,” Sarah agreed. The breakfast arrived and she began to sip her orange juice.

“Let me continue. Is it logical to believe anyone would keep a clock running in the closet, hidden behind a hatbox, and consult it there regularly to learn the time? Of course not. If the clock was in use, it had to be removed from the closet for this use. But when? At what time of the day, and for what special purpose? Well, we know the clock is an alarm clock. What is the principal function of an alarm clock?”

“To wake people up.”

“Exactly. The clock was serving its normal function to awaken someone. It was removed from the front closet each night and returned there in the morning. Well then, where was it used? In the bedroom? No, because in the bedroom it could certainly have remained there, on view all day. Or even if a fastidious housekeeper wanted to hide it because of the cracked glass, every bedroom has its own closet. There’d be no need to carry it twice each day through the living room, to and from the front closet.

“The inescapable conclusion is that the alarm clock was used daily to awaken someone in a room other than the bedroom. Since the kitchen and bathroom are out of the question, only the living room remains. Someone sleeping in the living room, probably on that sofa or sofa bed, uses the alarm clock to be awakened.”

“Of course,” she agreed, avoiding Leopold’s eyes.

“Next question: who uses the alarm clock? A third party unknown to you? Highly unlikely. If someone was staying with them, even on a temporary basis, they’d hardly have failed to mention it to you and Eagle, their closest friends. Besides, a vacationing relative or the like wouldn’t need a clock to awaken him. He’d be awakened each morning by Ron as he got up for work.

“No, it must be Ron himself who sleeps in the living room, because he’s the one who must get up at a certain hour. If Ron were in the bedroom, he could awaken Gert when he came out, just as he could awaken a relative. Again, the conclusion is inescapable—Ron has been banished from his wife’s bed. He now sleeps in the living room.”

“I can see that,” Sarah agreed. “It explains the clock, but it doesn’t explain what most puzzles Eagle—that it was our clock.”

“In a way it does,” Leopold said sadly. “The clock couldn’t have been stolen at the time of your robbery a year ago. No burglar, entering a house that’s empty for a short time, would risk searching a cluttered basement. He could be trapped there by the owner returning unexpectedly, with a tiny basement window as his only means of escape. And the alarm clock doesn’t fit the pattern of the other stolen things. No, Sarah, the clock was not stolen. It must have been given to Ron Springer,”

“Eagle didn’t give it to him.”

“Of course not. So you must have, Sarah.”

“I—” Her right hand jerked out, nearly upsetting the coffee cup.

“Yes, Sarah. You. And if you gave him the clock, you must have known why he needed it. You must have known he was no longer sharing a bed with his wife. It was a fact he didn’t tell Eagle, his closest friend, but he did tell you.”

“Go on,” she said quietly.

“The very fact that he kept the alarm clock and continues to use it, cracked glass and all, shows that it has some special sentimental value for him. After all, he could have bought a new clock for just a few dollars. So here’s what we have: he told you a highly intimate secret about himself and his wife, and he accepted from you a gift that he uses despite its defect. The conclusion is obvious, Sarah. You and Ron Springer have a very close, very secret relationship. In fact, you are lovers.”

“I can explain the clock. It was an innocent thing.”

“If the explanation was innocent, you would have told your husband when he first mentioned it, Sarah.” Leopold’s voice was low. He didn’t want it to carry to the other tables. “All those nights when Eagle was working late…”

The spirit seemed to go out of her then. “I was foolish to give him the clock. But I told him it would help him think of me every morning when he woke up. I should have thought of some excuse for Eagle, but I never imagined he’d see it there.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Do?”

“I think Eagle might kill Ron if he knew. Ron or me or both of us. He has all those guns around the house…”

“I won’t tell him,” Leopold said. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Thank you.”

She seemed about to say something else, but instead she got to her feet and left the table, walking quickly to the exit.

Leopold stayed where he was.

He didn’t see them again before he checked out. He tried phoning their room from the lobby around noon, but there was no answer. Perhaps, he thought, it was better this way. If he confronted Cartwright, something in his face might have revealed that he had found the solution.

It was starting to rain as he left the hotel and started to drive north. An annoying rain that would make for a slow trip home.

Why had the clock bothered Cartwright so much in the first place? Was it possible he was already suspicious of Ron and his wife? Leopold thought of the guns Sarah had mentioned, then put it out of his mind. Even if Cartwright followed Leopold’s own chain of deductions and arrived at the truth, surely he would do nothing violent.

Back home, back in the office, Fletcher and Connie were waiting for him. “How’d the speech go, Captain?”

“Fine. The speech went fine.”

“And our bet?” Connie Trent asked. “How many murders did you get to solve?”

“No murders.”

“No crime?”

“No crime. Just an evening with old friends.”

Fletcher slipped the two dollar bills out of his wallet. “I guess he wins the bet, Connie.”

“I guess so. No murders.”

For a moment Leopold sat staring at the two dollar bills on his desk. He was remembering Eagle Cartwright’s guns again, and the fear on Sarah’s face.

No murders, no crime.

He hoped to God it would remain true.

(1975)

The Most Dangerous Man Alive

ABBY TENYON WAS HAVING a nightmare. She was struggling against the softness of the sheets, fighting to come awake, while a masked man was beating her about the face with a huge padded fist. She could feel the blows, feel the jarring pain as they landed, and she tried to cry out. She wondered what had happened to Ron who had always rescued her in the past.

Then a final blow landed and she stopped caring, drifting back into the sleep that was deeper than sleep, the land that was almost beyond recall. She remembered wondering if she was dying, if this was what that final mystery was all about.

Presently she came awake, aware without opening her eyes that it was daylight. She stirred in the bed and felt a great throbbing pain centered about her face and head. She touched her cheek, winced, and immediately withdrew her hand. She tried to open her left eye and found that she couldn’t.

What was wrong with her?

Opening her right eye with difficulty she could make out her husband still asleep in the other bed. “Ron,” she called out. “Ron!”

He stirred but didn’t wake up. The digital clock between the beds showed 8:14. He’d never slept this late since the campaign began.

“Ron!” she called louder, trying to move, trying to reach him across the gulf between the beds. Something was terribly wrong with her.

He came awake slowly, his eyes opening and then widening as he saw her. He sat up suddenly in the bed. “My God, Abby! Your face!”

“I…I’ve been hurt, Ron. Something hurt me terribly.”

“Abby!” He was out of the bed, holding her.

“I dreamed a man was beating me.” Ron Tenyon reached for the telephone.

Ordinarily the case would have been handled by one of Captain Leopold’s staff—Fletcher, perhaps, or more likely Connie Trent. But Ron Tenyon was three days away from the special election for Congress, and that added an important aspect to whatever misadventure had befallen his wife Abby.

Leopold arrived at the hotel room shortly after nine o’clock, having been summoned a half hour earlier by a call from Connie, who’d taken the original report. He found the house physician just finishing his ministrations to Ron Tenyon’s wife, who nestled like an ill child in one of the wide twin beds of the room.

“Whatever happened to her has been very upsetting,” the doctor said as he headed for the door. “I’ve given her a tranquilizer. She’ll be relaxed and she may doze off.”

“What was it, doctor?” Leopold asked.

“She’s been beaten about the face. She has two black eyes and some bruises and swelling. But nothing that won’t go away in a few weeks’ time.” He spoke in a calm, low voice as if he’d seen it all before.

“Did she say who did it?”

Ron Tenyon interrupted with the answer. “A masked man with a big padded fist. She thought it was a dream.”

“She didn’t cry out? You heard nothing?”

“Not a thing,” Tenyon admitted. “And I don’t usually sleep that heavily.”

Leopold nodded to the doctor, indicating he had no further need of him at the moment. Then he sat down on the bed opposite Mrs. Tenyon. The room was large and tastefully furnished, with a view overlooking the river. It was the city’s best hotel, the sort a man like Tenyon would choose for his campaign stop. Leopold knew little about him, except what the papers had printed. He was a thirty-nine-year-old financial expert who’d parlayed a successful business career and an attractive wife into a try at the United States Congress in a special election called because of the incumbent’s death.

But right now Abby Tenyon wasn’t looking very attractive. She sat propped up in bed, swaddled in blankets, her battered face only just beginning to show the swelling and discoloration that the bruises had caused. “Can you tell me what happened?” Leopold asked.

“N—no, I’m afraid I can’t.” She had to speak out of the side of her mouth, and it added to her bizarre, trampled-upon look.

“She thought it was a dream,” her husband explained. “A nightmare. She wasn’t fully conscious.”

“Not even while you were being beaten?” Leopold found that difficult to understand.

“I think we were both drugged,” Ron Tenyon said. “I didn’t hear a thing, and I slept later than usual this morning. After last night’s speech we came back here and ordered room service. I think the food was drugged.”

Leopold made some notes. “Was anything stolen from the room?”

“No.”

“Was Mrs. Tenyon sexually molested?”

“No.”

“You’re claiming that the two of you were drugged simply to allow your wife to be beaten up like this?”

“That appears to be the case.”

“Do you have any enemies who might have done such a thing?”

“In politics everyone makes enemies. But I can’t think of anyone perverse enough to attack me through Abby.”

“And you, Mrs. Tenyon?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. This whole thing is a nightmare.” The swelling had almost closed both her eyes, and she searched in her purse for some dark glasses to cover them.

“This is the last weekend before the special election,” Tenyon pointed out. “Abby was scheduled to make several public appearances with me. Do you think the beating could be linked to that in some manner?”

“I don’t know,” Leopold said, “Mrs. Tenyon, suppose you tell me everything you can about this dream of the man beating you.”

He listened as she spoke, making notes, nodding from time to time. “The huge padded fist would have been a boxing glove. They wanted to mark you but not seriously injure you.”

“But why?”

“And why go to the trouble of drugging us and sneaking into our hotel room?” Tenyon wondered. “They could have assaulted her on the street a lot easier.”

Leopold considered that. “They may have chosen this method because no one would believe it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you aware of the house physician’s blasé attitude? It was nothing new or strange to him. He viewed it as a simple wife-beating.”

“You mean—”

“A large segment of the public is going to think you beat your wife, Mr. Tenyon, and that the two of you made up this story of a masked intruder and drugged food because the election is so close.”

Ron Tenyon began to pace the floor, his indignation growing. “My opponent would never do a thing like that. Crystal is an honorable man.”

“It wouldn’t have to be Crystal. Some of his supporters could be acting without his knowledge.”

“Then at all costs we must keep this story out of the papers.”

“That may be difficult.”

“We’ll say she has the flu.”

But even as he spoke the phone between the beds rang. He answered it and spoke quickly with growing indignation. When he finally hung up his face was tense. “That was my campaign manager. The reporters are already onto it. They’ve been calling him for the story.”

“Someone tipped them off,” Leopold suggested.

“It seems so,” Tenyon agreed. “The man who beat her up.”

“Or perhaps a hotel employee. Maybe even the doctor.”

“Well, there’s no keeping it secret now.”

And there wasn’t. It was front-page news on Sunday morning.

Two days later Ron Tenyon lost the special Congressional election by about 1100 votes.

On the morning after the election Leopold called Lieutenant Fletcher into his office. “Get us a couple cups of coffee from the machine,” he suggested. “I want to talk.”

“About that Tenyon thing, Captain?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“He lost the election.”

Leopold nodded. “Eleven hundred votes. If five hundred and fifty or so people changed their minds he would have won.”

“You think the bad publicity influenced the election?”

“Yes, I do. And since when is it bad publicity when a man’s wife gets beaten up in a hotel room? Why is the press and public so quick to disbelieve his story, and his wife’s story?”

“The room was locked, Captain. The idea of somebody drugging them both and getting past those locks, and then not even stealing anything, is just too far-fetched.”

“Of course it’s far-fetched! The person who did it deliberately made it seem far-fetched so the public would think Tenyon was a wife beater.”

“You think George Crystal was involved?” Fletcher asked, stirring some sugar into his coffee.

“He seems decent enough. But there were other interests at work. It was well known that Tenyon opposed casino gambling in the state while Crystal supports it. The gambling interests are working hard to pass that bill, and they wanted Tenyon defeated. Of course, a Congressman doesn’t vote directly on state measures, but his influence carries a lot of weight. That’s especially true of Tenyon, who’d promised to stump the state in opposition to the casino bill if he was elected to Congress.”

“So the casino people hired someone to do the job? They could get a hit man from organized crime easily enough.”

“Yes,” Leopold agreed, sipping his coffee. “But this whole thing is a bit too subtle for organized crime. They’d be more likely to run Tenyon’s car off the road and make a sure thing of it. The idea of drugging them both, breaking into the hotel room, and beating his wife, then leaking the story to the papers, is an almost baroque scheme. Mobsters don’t think in those terms.”

“Are you giving me the case, Captain?” Fletcher asked.

“Nose around and see what you can find out.”

“Any suggestions?” He knew Leopold always had suggestions.

“The hotel. If they were drugged, it was in the food that room service delivered. And if the room was entered in the night it had to be by someone who had a key and knew how to get past the night bolt. Run a check on any ex-convicts who might be employed there.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Fletcher said.

Sometimes in an investigation the police get lucky. Fletcher got lucky on the Tenyon case. By the end of the week he’d discovered that a man named Carl Forsyth, employed in the hotel kitchen, had a record of two convictions—for breaking and entering and simple assault.

Then Fletcher got lucky a second time. As he approached Forsyth in the hallway of his apartment building on a cool May evening, identifying himself as a police officer, the burly man reacted instinctively. He drew a small automatic pistol from an inside pocket and pointed it at Fletcher’s chest, squeezing the trigger as Fletcher went for his own weapon. The pistol jammed, and Fletcher smashed the barrel of his revolver down on the man’s gun hand before he could try again.

Later, in the interrogation room at headquarters, Leopold faced the man. “You’re a two-time loser, Carl. Assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, resisting arrest—any way you look at it, you’re going back to prison for a good long stay.”

“I thought he was a mugger,” Forsyth insisted. He held up his bandaged hand. “Hell, I try to defend myself and I get a broken hand!”

“Who paid you to drug the Tenyons’ food and beat her up?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Come on, Carl. You work in the kitchen. Someone tampered with their food and we think it was you. After they were drugged you picked the lock, or used a passkey. Once inside the room you put on a mask and a boxing glove and punched Abby Tenyon about the face. Then you or someone else phoned the papers, trying to make it look as if Tenyon beat his wife and the story she gave was a coverup.”

“You know a lot, don’t you?”

“Who hired you, Carl? All we want is the name.”

“I’m not saying a word till my lawyer gets here.”

And so they waited.

Carl Forsyth’s lawyer proved to be Samuel Judge. He was well known in local legal circles, and every time his name was mentioned as a possibility for a judgeship the newsmen had a field day speculating about “Judge Judge.” But so far he’d been passed over by the governor—possibly because of his eagerness to defend even the most disreputable criminals, or possibly because he so often got them off. His specialty was plea bargaining, that oddity of the modern legal system, and he was not a welcome figure around headquarters. Too many of the men felt the way Leopold did—that weeks of work in building a case should not be bargained away so easily by the District Attorney’s office.

But Samuel Judge it was, and he emerged from a meeting with his client to confront a testy Captain Leopold. “When are you going to release him, Captain? You don’t have a case.”

“Don’t I?” Leopold stormed. “He fired a pistol point-blank at Fletcher!”

“The pistol didn’t fire,” the lawyer replied quietly.

“It would have!”

“That’s a matter of conjecture. My client drew a pistol when he was suddenly accosted in a hallway. He immediately surrendered it when Fletcher identified himself.”

“Cut out the bull! The gun’s not licensed and Forsyth is on parole. That alone is enough to put him back behind bars.”

The lawyer thought about it, weighing the possibilities. “What do you want?” he asked at last.

“You plea bargain with the District Attorney’s office, not with me.”

“Look, your man Fletcher is the one pressing the gun charge.”

“The attempted murder charge,” Leopold corrected.

“You’re onto this Tenyon thing, aren’t you?”

“We want him for that. And we want the name of the person who hired him.”

Samuel Judge shook his head. “Impossible. My client is too frightened to talk. That’s why he drew on Fletcher so fast. He’s been afraid of being silenced ever since the Tenyon thing.”

“That’s his problem.”

“He could never testify in court. All the witness-protection programs in the world wouldn’t protect him.”

“Suppose,” Leopold said, speaking slowly, “he didn’t have to testify. Suppose he just wrote the name on a piece of paper and we took it from there. It would all be off the record.”

Judge considered that. He stood up and began to pace. “I don’t think he’d go for that. What would he get in return?”

“Fletcher might forget what happened in that hallway.”

“And the Tenyon thing?”

Leopold shook his head. “No, he’d have to be charged with that.”

“No deal.”

“Why not ask him? The gun charge is more serious. That could put him away for life, with his record.”

Judge shrugged and went back to speak with his client. Leopold had gone through this sort of thing before and he knew it would be a long session. It was.

Two hours later Samuel Judge took a folded piece of paper from his vest pocket and slid it across the table to Leopold. “That’s all you get,” he said. “I didn’t even look at it myself. If you bring it into court I’ll deny my client ever wrote it.”

Leopold unfolded the paper and read the name that was neatly written on it.

Jules Dermain, with a New York City address.

“All right.” Leopold turned to Fletcher. “Is this deal agreeable with you?”

“Sure. What the hell, the gun didn’t fire.”

“Good. Book Forsyth for the Tenyon thing and we’ll forget the other.” He turned back to the lawyer. “You’ll plead him guilty to our charges?”

“I’ll plead him guilty to something. That’s for me to work out with the D.A.”

“Still the plea bargainer! You amaze me, Judge.”

“Just looking after my client’s interests. Whose interests do you look after, Captain?”

“The victim’s.”

It took Leopold and Fletcher the better part of two weeks to assemble a file on Mr. Jules Dermain of New York City. When they’d completed their task, Leopold looked over the typewritten sheets and wondered just what it was they had.

Jules Dermain was 63 years old, a native of France who’d come to America after World War II and achieved a somewhat surprising success as a creator and manufacturer of games and puzzles. One of them, Melrose, had captured the public fancy in the mid-1960s and made Dermain a millionaire. As far as could be determined the man had no link with organized crime, and he certainly didn’t need the money.

Had Forsyth lied to them?

That was what Leopold intended to find out.

New York was familiar territory to him. He’d spent his first years as a police officer and detective there, before returning home. He knew Manhattan especially well, and the little East Side neighborhoods like Gramercy Park brought back fond memories of younger days. Stuyvesant Park was one of these, a few blocks south of Gramercy. It was surrounded by brownstone townhouses dating back to the mid-19th century, and it was in one of these that Jules Dermain resided.

Dermain saw Leopold in an upstairs office lined with books and samples of the games he’d manufactured. There were a dozen different versions of Melrose alone, including foreign language and Braille editions and even a magnetized game to play while traveling. Dermain was slender and white-haired, with the appearance of a professor. A tiny smile played about his lips as he spoke, but his eyes seemed always alert and serious.

“What can I do for you, Captain Leopold? As I understand it, you’re not connected with the New York Police Department?”

“That’s correct. I spent some years in New York, but at present I’m up in Connecticut. I’m head of our Violent Crimes Squad, and I’m down here investigating a recent crime.” Briefly he outlined the circumstances of Abby Tenyon’s mysterious beating, omitting the fact that Carl Forsyth was in custody and had supplied Jules Dermain’s name.

The Frenchman listened to all this with the slight smile still on his lips, as if awaiting the punch line of a lengthy shaggy-dog story. When Leopold finished he asked, “But how could this possibly concern me? I have never heard of Mr. Ron Tenyon or his wife Abby.”

“You must understand that I’m here unofficially, Mr. Dermain. But your name has been mentioned in the course of the investigation. I felt a personal interview with you might be the best way to clear the air.”

“So? My name has been mentioned. By whom, may I ask?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

Dermain leaned back in his chair, unconcerned. “Oh, I suppose it was that fool who was hired to do the job.”

Leopold sat as if stunned by an ax. He would have been less startled if the Frenchman had drawn a pistol from his desk drawer and started shooting. “You’re admitting it?”

“Why not? You’re here unofficially, out of your jurisdiction. You have not advised me of my rights or given me a chance to call a lawyer. Nothing I tell you could be used against me.”

Leopold began to think it had been a mistake to visit this man. But now that he was here he had to make the best of it. “You admit you hired Carl Forsyth to drug Abby Tenyon and her husband, enter their hotel room and beat her up?”

“Of course! You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that much already. You must realize that I offer a service, Captain Leopold. Just as you are employed to solve crimes, I am sometimes employed to invent them. We are two sides of the same coin—the puzzle maker and the puzzle solver. As a matter of fact I take some pleasure in meeting you like this. Just as an author sometimes enjoys meeting his readers, I enjoy meeting one of those who is called upon to solve my little plots. You are the first, I must tell you, who has ever come this far.”

“Who hired you to construct this particular puzzle?”

He shrugged. “The casino interests in your state. Their names are unimportant. I was presented with a challenge—to be certain that Ron Tenyon lost the election. Anything short of murder was allowed. Of course I considered the usual blind items planted in the newspapers, but the voting public becomes more sophisticated each year. The little game I devised was designed for indirection. The press would report the facts, and I would leave it to the public to draw a conclusion. I learned their schedule in advance and found that there was a man available who was employed at one of the hotels. In the kitchen, no less! And he was also an expert on locks.

“The pieces almost came together by themselves. He drugged their food, obtained a passkey, tampered with the night bolt in advance, and entered while they slept. Tenyon’s wife was beaten enough to mark her face, but not to do permanent injury. I assumed, correctly I think, that a certain number of people reading that story on the weekend before the special election would be skeptical enough to believe the man beat his wife. It was a close election. I didn’t need to change many minds.”

Leopold had sat in the company of thieves and murderers on many occasions, but nothing had prepared him for this. The man across the desk was bragging of his crime, spreading the details for Leopold’s admiration. “I’m speechless at your audacity,” he admitted. “We’ll see what you have to say in court when Carl Forsyth testifies against you.”

The amused smile remained. “Oh, he wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I have a certain reputation in underworld circles. Even in prison Mr. Forsyth would not feel entirely safe. The reputation is unearned, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Still, the plotting of a perfect murder is even more of a challenge than a game like the Tenyon affair. Many years ago, when I first came to this country, I was offered an assignment which might amuse you. There was a certain wealthy man, hunted by many nations, who took refuge in Ireland, buying a large country manor house and surrounding it with an exasperating maze made of brick walls overgrown with dense hedges.” As he spoke he took down a maze game from the bookshelf behind him and opened it on the desk. “The incident inspired me to create this puzzle.”

“You were hired to kill the man?” Leopold asked.

“I was hired to remove him, by one means or another. The house had been reinforced to make it virtually bombproof, you see, and the maze itself was guarded with electric-eye beams to warn if anyone entered it. He kept a staff of armed servants to guard against siege, and he never left the place except to walk the grounds each day safely inside the maze. A service road at the back of the house was kept sealed by iron gates. How, Captain Leopold, would you have gone about killing such a man?”

“I solve murder cases, I don’t plan them.”

“Still, as an exercise in tactics you might consider this one.”

“Land a helicopter inside the grounds.”

“There was no room for one, since the maze came up almost to the walls of the house.”

“Bribe a servant.”

“They were loyal to him unto death. They had served together during the war.”

“Shoot him from a plane while he’s out for his daily walk.”

“He quickly retreated at the sound of approaching aircraft. And the house, as I have said, was quite resistant to most bombs.”

“Poison his food supply before it reaches the house.”

“The servants would eat it first, as tasters did for kings of old.”

Leopold walked to the window and looked out at the park across the street. Seeing the children playing there, watching them run along the paths to the center fountain, brought him back to the reality of the world. He had not come here to play games with Jules Dermain, and this book-lined study with its boxed puzzles was a long way from the hotel room where Abby Tenyon had suffered her torment.

“Tell me,” he said at last. “Tell me your secret of the maze.”

“Ah, you are giving up so easily?”

“Tell me this one, so I might be better prepared to outwit you on the next.”

“Spoken like a true puzzle fan! You delight me, Captain Leopold! The Irish matter is simply told. I happened to read that snakes can be trained to negotiate mazes. I photographed this maze from the air and built a duplicate out of boards. I trained three deadly black mambas to travel through the maze and strike at the first person they saw. The mamba was chosen because it is both fast and deadly. Of course the serpents could slither in beneath the electric-eye alarms, and since there are no snakes in Ireland as a rule, the victim had prepared no defense against such an attack. They were loosed at the hour of his daily walk. They sought him out within the maze and he died ten minutes later.”

Leopold thought about that. “I don’t believe a word of it,” he said finally. “If I did, I’d consider you the most dangerous man alive.”

Jules Dermain laughed heartily, shaking his small body. “You shouldn’t believe it—of course not! Any more than you should believe I employed that man to beat Mrs. Tenyon! They’re all games, played out in my mind. Go away now, Captain Leopold. It has been a pleasant hour, but I have other business.”

Leopold nodded. There was nothing more for him here. But at the door he paused to ask, “How would someone go about killing you, Mr. Dermain?”

Another laugh. There was a television set at one side of the room, and Dermain stood against it as he answered. “You’re not the first to ask that question, Captain. Of course I guard against it. My telephone and this office are constantly checked for listening devices. And I’m careful where I go. Still, it could be done. This video tape recorder on my television can be set to turn on up to a week in advance. If the tape cartridge contained a bomb instead of tape, it could destroy this entire building.”

“Ever use that idea somewhere else?”

“Perhaps.”

“We’ll talk again,” Leopold said.

“Come any time. I will tell you of an elderly corporate executive whose salary was such a drain on the company that we hastened his departure from this earth. And a United States Senator whose assassination was not quite what it seemed.”

All the way back home Leopold was uneasy. The day had been a waste of time. Even if Dermain had conspired with Forsyth in the Tenyon affair, surely the rest of it was a myth. The man was a puzzle maker, not a master criminal who plotted assassinations halfway around the world. He’d spun a good yarn for Leopold and that was all.

But the memory of Jules Dermain still made him uneasy, and he wondered what he would do if he discovered it was all true.

As casually as possible he asked Connie Trent to run a check with the Dublin police. Had there ever been a case of murder by snakebite in Ireland, especially involving a man on a large country estate during the postwar years?

“There aren’t supposed to be any snakes in Ireland,” Connie protested. “St. Patrick drove them out.”

“It was more likely due to the Ice Age and the fact that Ireland is surrounded by water. I’m sure you won’t find anything, but check on it anyway.”

“Is this connected with the Tenyon case?” She knew he’d gone to New York about that.

“In a way, yes.”

He plunged into the other cases that called for his attention and he’d managed to put Jules Dermain almost out of his mind when Connie reported back two days later. “Here’s that report from the Dublin police, Captain. You asked me to check with them.”

“They didn’t have anything, right?”

“On the contrary. A German named Von Buff, suspected of being a former Nazi, was killed by black mamba snakes at his country estate in Cork in 1958. No one ever explained how the snakes got there. The house was surrounded by a maze of hedges.”

“Yes, I know,” Leopold said, feeling suddenly light-headed. It couldn’t be, but it was.

“The guards killed the snakes.”

“I’m sure they did.”

“Are you all right, Captain?”

“Fine. I’m fine.”

When he was alone Leopold thought about a course of action. He considered phoning the New York police, but he really didn’t know what he could tell them. Jules Dermain had committed no crime in New York that Leopold was aware of—unless perhaps it was conspiracy.

In the end he did nothing.

It was about a week later when Ron Tenyon came to see him. He sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair opposite Leopold’s desk and said, “I want to know about the investigation into Abby’s beating.”

“You know what there is to know. The grand jury has indicted Carl Forsyth and we have every reason to believe he’ll plead guilty. His lawyer, Samuel Judge, has been plea bargaining with the D.A.’s office.”

“So what will he get? Two years? Three?”

“It’s a third offense. He could go away for a long time.”

“And what about the man who hired him?”

“He was hired by pro-casino money out to defeat you. But I guess that’s no surprise.”

“It’s a surprise to hear it like that. Do you have their names?”

Leopold pondered how much to tell him. “I have the name of one man, but nothing we can use in court.”

“Why not?”

“Because the man is clever. He might be the most clever criminal I’ve ever encountered.”

“A master criminal like Professor Moriarty?” Tenyon smiled as he said it. Leopold had not seen him smile since the attack on his wife.

“Something like that,” Leopold replied in all seriousness. “We don’t like to admit they exist, because they rarely get caught. Today’s master criminal isn’t usually concerned with planning bank heists or mob killings. He’s far more interested in pulling off a commodities swindle or falsifying the ownership of a tanker full of crude oil. The man I speak of is especially dangerous because he puts his talent at the disposal of anyone who can pay his price. The men who wanted to defeat you could pay.”

“Losing the election was one thing. What they did to Abby was something else. I can never forgive that.”

“How is she?”

“Her face is pretty well healed, but that’s only part of it. Even our friends look at us a bit oddly now. Every time Abby gets a bruise someone will remember the stories that went around, and they’ll forget that Forsyth was arrested for beating her.”

Leopold was silent for a time. Then he reached a decision and said, “After what you’ve been through I guess I owe you some information.” He told Tenyon about Jules Dermain. “That’s the sort of man we’re up against. I checked the Irish story and it’s true.”

Ron Tenyon thought about that, his face lined with concern. “As long as you can’t touch him, he’s free to do this sort of thing again, to continue plotting the maiming and killing.”

“Oh, yes,” Leopold admitted. “But what can we do about it?”

“Do? We can stop him!”

“How? By killing him ourselves?”

Tenyon’s face was very serious. “Why not?”

Never in his life had Leopold seriously considered killing a person, except in the line of duty and then always in self-defense. There was a brief scandal once when he’d been accused of killing his former wife, but even in the depths of it, knowing how much the woman had hated him, he never entertained the idea that he could have taken her life. The law was an important institution to him, and he was sworn to uphold it. Even a man like Jules Dermain must be protected.

“I want to meet Dermain,” Ron Tenyon told him the following day. “I’ve thought it all out and I want to meet him.”

“Do you now? So you can pull out a little pistol and avenge your wife?”

“If it’s the only way to stop a man like that.”

“You’re not meeting him. It would accomplish nothing.”

“If you won’t go with me, I’ll go alone.”

“That’s out of the question. I’m sorry I told you as much as I did.”

“I have to confront him,” Tenyon said. “If I don’t do it, Abby will.”

“You told her about it?”

He nodded. “Last night. With me it’s the fact that he had her beaten. With Abby it’s what he did to me and to my chances in the election. She wants revenge for that, and I can’t say I blame her. If the police are helpless I have to do something myself.”

Leopold could see the man was serious. “I can’t stand by while you do violence to him. I can’t even condone a punch in the nose, though I might look the other way.”

“Arrange a meeting. Tell him I have to see him.”

“Do I have your promise there’ll be no violence?”

Ron Tenyon hesitated, running a damp hand through his thinning hair.

“All right, if that’s what it takes. You have my promise.”

“What are you going to say to him?”

“Even if Dermain planned it, I want the men who paid him to do it. They may be unimportant names, but I want those names. I’m prepared to pay for them.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Leopold promised.

He telephoned Jules Dermain later that afternoon. The Frenchman was friendly but guarded on the phone. There was no talk of mambas in Ireland or beatings in hotel rooms—not when he could assume his conversation was being recorded. “What can I do for you today, Captain?” he asked after some preliminary remarks about the weather.

“Ron Tenyon wants to meet you. He asked me to arrange it.”

“Oh? I don’t really see that any good could be served by such a meeting.”

“He has a business proposition to offer you.”

A dry chuckle came over the line. “Really, now, you can’t expect me to agree to such a thing.”

“If you’re concerned about recording devices, the meeting could be held outdoors,” Leopold suggested. “That fountain in the park across the street could effectively muffle conversation.”

“What’s your interest in all this?” the Frenchman asked.

It was a good question, and one that Leopold couldn’t answer with complete satisfaction. “Maybe I’m trying to prevent a murder,” he replied.

There was another laugh. “I trust you, Captain. If you accompany Tenyon I’ll meet the two of you tomorrow noon, at the fountain across from my house.”

Leopold met Tenyon at the railroad station shortly before nine o’clock. The express into New York took 90 minutes, and they wanted to be on time. “I told Abby about it,” Tenyon said. “She wanted to come along.”

“It’s better to keep her away. I don’t know what we’ll be getting into.”

“I promise to behave myself,” Tenyon said.

“But I wonder about Jules Dermain. He didn’t make any promises.”

They talked little during the train trip to New York, though Tenyon did speak of his future plans a bit. “George Crystal is a lightweight. Two years of him and the public will be ready for a change. I just might run again.”

“You’re sounding more optimistic than you did the other day.”

“I’ve had time to think.”

“Do you really believe George Crystal is the name Dermain will give you?”

Tenyon’s head came up. “Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to. Crystal is the man to beat and you’re going to New York today to start your campaign. It’s not even two years—he’ll have to run again in the next regular election, in eighteen months. But tell me—what changed you? When this thing first happened to you and Abby it was the casino interests behind it—not George Crystal.”

“He profited from it. He can take some of the blame for it.”

“There’s enough blame to spread around,” Leopold agreed. “Just make sure he deserves the part he gets.”

When the train finally arrived at Grand Central, it was a bright May morning with the temperature well into the sixties. “It’s not too far,” Leopold said. “Want to walk?”

“Why not?”

They were still early when they reached Stuyvesant Park. Leopold pointed out Jules Dermain’s house and considered presenting himself at the door. But if the Frenchman was nervous about their visit that would only increase his suspicions. Better to wait for his arrival at the fountain.

There were a few children at play, watched over by mothers or nursemaids, and an illegally unleashed dog made the rounds of the litter barrels situated at each of the two park entrances. “Looking down on this from Dermain’s second-floor office, it seems a little like one of his game boards,” Leopold observed. “An entrance on the east and west sides, the fountain in the middle. I could almost imagine wooden chessmen moving along the paths.”

“He probably sits in there and plots his assassinations on it.”

“I’d like to—”

Leopold stopped speaking. Though it was only twenty to twelve, the door of Dermain’s brownstone had opened and he was emerging.

“Is that him?”

“That’s him,” Leopold confirmed.

Jules Dermain paused at his door to unlock the mailbox and extract a single slim envelope. He seemed puzzled by it but placed it in his inside pocket unopened. Then he came down the steps and crossed the street to the park. His brownstone was in midblock, facing south, so he had to walk around to one or the other park entrance. He hesitated an instant before choosing the one on the east side. “Shall we go meet him?” Tenyon suggested.

“No. I told him we’d speak by the fountain, so the sound of the water would help protect him against listening devices.”

They watched Dermain strolling along the edge of the park toward the entrance. He did not look at them, and anyone watching would have thought he was only out for a casual walk.

He’d almost reached the entrance when Leopold gripped Tenyon’s arm. “Isn’t that your wife over there?”

“My God—Abby!”

It was indeed Abby Tenyon. She’d materialized from somewhere, striding purposefully across the grass to intercept the path the Frenchman would be taking once he entered the park. Leopold could see her right hand go into her purse just as Tenyon shouted. “Abby! Don’t!”

Leopold waited no longer. He sprang forward, trying to get to her in time. She’d reached the path and was standing in the center of it, facing the open gate where Jules Dermain was just entering. Her purse had dropped to the ground and she held a small automatic pistol firmly in both hands, pointing it at arm’s length directly at Dermain.

The Frenchman saw the pistol too, as he started into the park. Then everything seemed frozen in Leopold’s vision as he tried to reach her.

Behind him Tenyon was shouting. Ahead, Abby Tenyon took aim.

Then Leopold hit her, lunging into her back just as the pistol went off. He saw its flash aimed at the sky and knew he’d reached her in time.

Knew, and yet froze again watching Jules Dermain as he vanished in a flash of fire.

Leopold hit the ground on top of Abby as a clap of thunder shook the park, echoing off the brownstones around the park. Then there was smoke and flying bits of wood and metal and flesh.

Finally, after a moment that lasted an eternity, Leopold lifted himself to his knees and stared toward the gate.

The litter barrel had exploded as Jules Dermain passed by. Where he and it had stood there was now only a hole in the earth.

The New York police blocked off the area as they searched for clues and the scattered remains of Jules Dermain’s body. Even though he’d seen it happen, Leopold couldn’t avoid the suspicion that the whole thing was some final trick of the puzzle master. Perhaps he’d been so frank in his meeting with Leopold because he planned exactly this sort of grand exit—a double to die in his place while he flew off to the easy life in South America.

New York City’s bomb squad was represented by a calm, laconic man named Sergeant Phillips who went about his job with an assurance that brought admiration from a fellow professional like Leopold. “You say the lady fired the gun at the same time the bomb went off?” he asked.

“That’s right. See any connection?”

Phillips was stooping over the twisted remains of the metal litter barrel. He seemed to be sniffing the air near the ground. “Plastic explosives in the barrel. Could have been set off by a sound-activated device but that’s pretty doubtful. Too dangerous—a backfire might do it. Besides, if she was out there with the gun anyway, she could just as easily have shot him.”

Leopold suggested the other possibilities to the man. “It might have been a double.”

“We’ve got the fingers on one hand. We can check it soon enough.”

“Any chance it could be suicide?”

The bomb squad man shrugged. “Hell of a way to kill yourself, but we’ve seen it happen.”

“He had admitted some criminal activities to me during a prior meeting. He might have feared arrest.”

Sergeant Phillips grunted. He was working a portion of scorched clothing from the remains of the deadman. Finally he abandoned the gruesome task and stood up to survey the scene. “Couldn’t have been set off by a trip-wire,” he decided. “Too many kids playing in the area. Probably a radio signal, which means the killer had to be nearby.”

Leopold’s thoughts went back again to Ron Tenyon and his wife. He could see them across the street, being questioned by detectives. Leopold himself had undergone questioning too, but they’d accepted his credentials and allowed him to remain on the scene. “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly. “There’s something wrong here. Dermain’s house is across the street, in mid-block. When he started over here to meet us, he had a choice of either entrance. How could the killer possibly know which one he’d use?”

Phillips shrugged again. “Habit.”

“No, I saw Dermain hesitate before coming the way he did. Would a killer this clever risk spoiling his plot because his victim turned right instead of left?”

The sergeant was suddenly interested. “You’re saying—?”

“I’m saying let’s take a look at the trash barrel at the west entrance.”

Leopold reached it first and gingerly removed a crumpled newspaper and assorted litter. Underneath, resting in the bottom of the barrel, was a large package wrapped in plain brown paper. “Good hunch,” Phillips said. “That’s it.”

The bomb experts carefully transported it to a truck with a covered-wagon look, made of woven steel cables that had the appearance of wicker from a distance. Later, when the package had been opened and the detonator removed from the mound of plastic explosives inside, Phillips came back to Leopold holding it in his hand.

“What do you make of it, Sergeant?”

“Radio-activated, as I suspected, but very short range.” He turned the metal part over in his hand.

“A hundred feet?”

“No, no—more like ten feet.”

“But the killer couldn’t have been that close!” Leopold protested. “Even Abby Tenyon wasn’t that close!”

One of Phillips’s men came up to them. “We found it, Sergeant,” he said, holding out a little plastic evidence bag containing a round metal disc about the size of a dime.

“Good.” Phillips took the bag and showed it to Leopold. “The latest thing in electronic detonating devices. One of these was used in a recent Middle East assassination. It was attached magnetically to the victim’s car fender, and when the car passed a second vehicle loaded with plastic explosives both of them were blown up.”

“Where did you find it?” Leopold asked the man.

“Breast pocket of the victim’s coat, inside a badly scorched envelope.”

“Of course! The letter!” Leopold remembered Dermain’s puzzlement at the letter in the mailbox. “Can you read any of it?”

“Seems to be an order for games.”

“From a fictitious address, no doubt.”

Sergeant Phillips nodded. “Have the lab work on it.”

“That’s why Dermain seemed puzzled—because he wasn’t expecting a mail delivery at that time. No doubt the postman had been there earlier. But the bomber couldn’t risk the uncertainties of the mail service. The letter must have been put in the box by the killer himself, who knew Dermain would see it and remove it as he left the house to meet me in the park.”

“A clever man to anticipate Dermain’s movements like that.”

Leopold nodded. “A puzzle master—as good as Jules Dermain himself.”

“Are we back to the suicide theory?”

“No, no. If Dermain had committed suicide we wouldn’t have found explosives in that second barrel. He’d have known which way to walk.”

It was later in the day, after the fingerprints had finally confirmed Dermain’s death, that Leopold found a chance to speak with Abby Tenyon on the train back to Connecticut. “Why did you try to kill Jules Dermain this morning, Abby? Your face is healed now. Your husband is talking of running in the next election. What could you hope to accomplish? Was revenge that important to you?”

“Revenge? No, not revenge.” She was staring out the window. “I had to do it for Ron. I had to kill that man before Ron did it and ruined his life forever.”

“A self-sacrificing motive for murder! A noble intent, though I can hardly approve of it. In any event, someone else did the job for you.”

She took a deep breath and said, “God, I hope so,” and in that instant Leopold knew she suspected her husband of the murder.

The killing of Jules Dermain was a three-day wonder in the New York press before it was supplanted by a brutal subway slaying. Since the investigation was not the responsibility of Captain Leopold he lost track of it within a week. Of more local concern was the indictment of Carl Forsyth by the county grand jury on charges of felonious assault. The arraignment was held at ten o’clock on the first Monday morning in June, and Leopold was there with Lieutenant Fletcher. They sat in the back of the courtroom watching while Forsyth stood next to his lawyer, Samuel Judge, and pleaded guilty to the charge. The judge ordered sentencing for June 24th and court was adjourned.

“That was fast,” Fletcher said.

Leopold, whose mind had wandered during the court session, was surprised it was over. “What happened?”

“He pleaded guilty. Were you taking a little nap, Captain?”

“No, I was thinking of the most amazing thing.”

“What was that?”

“Remember how this all began, Fletcher? Remember that day you arrested Forsyth and he tried to take a shot at you?”

“How could I forget?”

“You knocked the gun from his hand and broke a bone doing it.”

“Sure. It was all bandaged up while we were questioning him.”

Leopold was on his feet. “There might be a few people in this world who are ambidextrous, but most of us are either right or left-handed, aren’t we?”

Fletcher looked puzzled. “Is this some sort of quiz show, Captain?”

But Leopold was hurrying on, speaking quickly as he moved down the row of seats to the aisle. “It’s one of the oddities of our modern civilization, Fletcher, that a person generally uses the same hand to fire a gun and hold a pencil. If you broke Forsyth’s gun hand you also broke his writing hand.”

“So?”

“So he couldn’t have written Jules Dermain’s name and address so neatly on that piece of paper Samuel Judge gave me.”

He’d reached the aisle now, just in time to intercept the portly lawyer.

“Well, Captain Leopold! Good to see you again!”

“Good to see you too, Mr. Judge. I think the New York police might be even more pleased to see you—and to arrest you for the murder of Jules Dermain.”

Samuel Judge stood quietly while Leopold informed him of his rights. Then he walked between Leopold and Fletcher along the covered passageway that connected the county courthouse with police headquarters.

“He’s not saying a word,” Fletcher said when he came back from booking the lawyer.

“He’s a smart attorney. If the people we pick up on the streets ever learn to keep their mouths shut we’ll be in big trouble.”

“You really think he arranged that bombing?”

“I know it, Fletcher. Look at it this way. The bomber had to possess an important piece of information—the fact that Dermain had agreed to meet us at the fountain at noon on the day in question. Otherwise the twin bombs in the trash baskets and the ideally timed letter in the mailbox would make no sense. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“The only ones who knew of that meeting were myself and Ron Tenyon—who unfortunately also told his wife about it. Three people. You and Connie knew about the meeting, but not the details of time and place. I could certainly eliminate myself, and I could also eliminate Abby Tenyon. There was no need for the scene with the gun if she’d already arranged to kill him. Ron Tenyon was another matter, but I quickly eliminated him. He might have slipped down to the city the previous night to plant those bombs, but the letter had to have been left in the mailbox that morning—shortly before our arrival.”

“Why’s that?”

“If the letter was there at, say, nine o’clock, Dermain might have found it earlier and brought it inside. Once opened, it was no good. He certainly wouldn’t carry the miniature radio transmitter with him to the park, even if he thought it was only a metal disc. No, we must assume a clever and thoughtful murderer. Thus we must assume the letter was left in the box late that morning. And Ron Tenyon was never out of my sight.”

“So who does that leave?”

“No one. I asked myself next if Dermain’s phone could have been tapped, but here again the answer was no. He told me on the day of our meeting that his phone and office were constantly checked against listening devices.”

“Then the thing’s impossible!”

“No, it isn’t. One possibility remains—that Jules Dermain himself informed his killer of the time and place of the meeting.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It would be the most natural thing in the world, if the killer was the person who engaged Dermain’s services originally—the nameless casino interests who were behind this whole thing. And that brings us back up here. The note that gave me Dermain’s name and address was written here—not by Carl Forsyth, as I’ve shown, but by the person who was alone with Forsyth at the time. His lawyer, Samuel Judge. It was Judge who wrote the note, and I suspect it was Judge who hired Forsyth in the first place. Who’d have a better knowledge of ex-convicts working in local hotels—a puzzle maker in Manhattan or a criminal lawyer here in town?”

“Then what did Dermain have to do with the scheme?”

“Judge came to him for the idea, but it was Judge who hired Forsyth to carry it out. When we arrested Forsyth, he must have been close to breaking and implicating Judge. We had to be given a name, any name, so he gave us Jules Dermain. He figured Dermain was beyond reach and beyond arrest. He didn’t realize the Frenchman was at a stage of life where he’d begin to brag about past triumphs to the first person who’d listen. When he phoned Judge to say I was coming down again, this time with Ron Tenyon, and that Tenyon had a deal for him, Judge decided Jules Dermain had to die. And he put his mind to it as cleverly as Dermain might have. Who knows—maybe one day when they were together Dermain looked out the window and suggested to Judge the very method of his own murder. He did something of the sort with me regarding a bomb attached to a videotape machine.”

“Judge did it himself?”

“Or else found another ex-convict willing to carry out his plan. Start checking local people with records for bombings. Meanwhile I’m going to talk with Forsyth. He hasn’t been sentenced yet and now that we know about Judge he might be willing to talk in return for a lighter jail term. We want to hit Samuel Judge with enough evidence so he’ll be crying to the New York District Attorney for plea bargaining.”

In the end they had more than they needed, including Dermain’s carefully coded records of payments made to him by Samuel Judge and others. And Leopold, remembering his sole meeting with the little Frenchman, could feel in a special way that he’d solved the puzzle master’s final challenge.

(1980)

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“Introduction” and “A Captain Leopold Checklist” copyright © 1985 by Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Copyright © 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1980 by Edward D. Hoch.

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

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