Suspects

by Thomas Berger

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Give me your number.”

  Bissonette did so and named a hotel Moody had never heard of, but neither had he ever been to Florida, which deficiency he knew he should do something to correct, because sometimes he talked of retiring there, far from the winters he could hardly bear nowadays.

  Daisy O’Connor had stopped to read the notices and orders on the bulletin board outside the captain’s office. She came to Moody now that he had hung up.

  She was one of the few officers, male or female, who looked like the attractive figures on the recruiting poster the department had circulated through the public-school system in recent years, which had in fact been the work of an ad agency, using professional models: two whites, male and female, and a black man and a black woman.

  “Listen, Nick,” Daisy said and paused while Phil Meader, another detective, passed nearby, leering at her. “I just stopped by to say I was out of line last night. I apologize.”

  “Did I run into you someplace last night? I thought I went straight home from work?”

  “Sure,” Daisy said, reaching out as if to pat his shoulder but instead hesitandy plucked at her own regulation gold tie clasp that held the uniform navy-blue tie against the shirt of the same hue. “Well, anyway, Mom wants to have you over for dinner, sometime soon. She’ll be in touch. Okay?”

  Moody was moved. “That will be nice, real nice.”

  “Okay,” Daisy said, with a radiant smile. “Okay, Nick.” She turned and walked out in the spit-and-polish way the uniform brought with it for the right person, her navy-blue cap foursquare atop the short blond hair.

  “You took your own sweet time,” LeBeau chided when Moody finally reached the car and climbed in on the right.

  “You found them? What’d you do, leave them here?” He meant Dennis’ proper, full-sized, gold-rimmed glasses, which his partner was wearing while consulting his notebook.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Daisy O’Connor showed up. Didn’t you pass her?” He then told LeBeau about Bissonette’s phone call.

  When they reached the eleven hundred block on Laurel, Dennis was careful to park the car in a place where old Mary Jane Jones would not see it unless she came out to the curb and scanned the length of the street, but the effort would be futile if she looked out the window while the two of them were striding along the pavement. Moody wondered whether the extra walk was worth it.

  Everybody living on both sides of the street all the way to the corners had already been questioned by either of them or, in the case of the more remote neighbors, by some of the several additional detectives assigned by the captain for this purpose. The Kellers, the old couple who lived to the immediate west of the Howland residence, had in interviews with the detectives denied seeing or hearing anything untoward next door during the probable time of the murders, but could not resist the blandishments of the media since letting the latter onto their property when Lawrence Howland was taken downtown.

  “Crys says they were saying all kinds of stuff to Binnie Baines.”

  “Channel Five?”

  “That tall one with the hair and big lips. I slept through it. I was out when I hit the pillow.”

  “What kinda stuff?”

  “Crys says they claimed they heard funny sounds and looked out and saw a car leaving.”

  Moody groaned. “This is the crap I won’t miss when I retire. So we’ll ask them about it now, and it won’t turn out to be anything at all: you can make book on it.”

  He looked over at the Howland place as they went up the walk to the Kellers’. The patrolman on duty inside was probably sitting before the TV set.

  LeBeau’s finger was steering toward the doorbell button when the door opened as if by itself and the large blob of Mr. Keller appeared behind the screen.

  “I’m way ahead of you,” he said heartily. “Knew it was only a matter of time you’d be back.” He swung the screen door open. “Your name begins with a B. I recall that, and you”—he meant Moody—“you’re Detective, uh, uh…”

  “Mr. Keller,” Moody asked, “have you still got that card I gave you first time we talked?”

  By way of answer, Keller lumbered to the mantelpiece over a hearth on which stood a tall vase filled with multicolored paper flowers. He brought back the little white rectangle.

  “That looks like it,” said Moody.

  “This is it, sir,” Keller said smugly.

  “Then how come you never called me when you remembered some new information, like I asked?”

  Keller was staring at the card as if its legend were written in a foreign language. He had a thick head of coarse gray hair for a man in his early sixties. He said, “Your name’s Moody.”

  “Yes, sir. Why didn’t you give me a call?”

  Keller included LeBeau as, looking from one to the other, he said, “I swear I told you every single thing I know, if you mean what happened next door.”

  LeBeau was flipping through his notebook. He looked up. “Why didn’t you tell us what you told Binnie Baines on Channel Five last night?”

  “What did I say to her?”

  “Now, Mr. Keller,” Moody said, not unkindly, “don’t ask me to put words in your mouth.”

  Keller lowered his heavy head in deliberation. “I’m trying to recall. You know, they put that on tape yesterday morning. It wasn’t anywhere near the time of the broadcast. And in fact, I never talked to Binnie herself. I don’t know if you noticed, we’re never shown in the same picture. The questions were asked by some little guy. But when they put it on the air, they show Binnie asking, and then me or my wife doing the answering. I guess they can do that on TV.”

  All three men were still standing just inside the door, which here meant at the edge of the living room. The Keller house was a gabled two-story, older than the Howlands’.

  “Okay,” LeBeau said impatiently. “It doesn’t have to be word for word, but didn’t you tell her you noticed something about three P.M. the day of the murders?”

  Keller shook his head, while displaying a long-lipped moue.

  “Something about a vehicle?”

  Keller nodded but answered in the negative form. “No, nothing except what I told you fellows.”

  “You told us you didn’t see or hear anything,” Moody said sharply.

  “Well, I mentioned that, uh, truck, didn’t I?”

  “Truck?” Moody raised his voice. “There was a truck there?”

  Keller groped for the word. “Not a truck, but a—you know, one of those closed things, kinda high and so on.”

  “Van?” asked LeBeau. “A van?”

  Keller threw out an index finger. “I guess.”

  “Where was the van?” Moody asked. “Parked there?”

  “In the street.” Keller was not being cute. He was simply one of the many people from whom it took a strenuous effort to elicit any information at all, and when you got it, it was usually inconsequential.

  “Driving by? Did you see the driver?”

  “See,” Keller said, “my trouble’s I don’t really know what you mean by a van. It wasn’t a car. It was what I would call a panel truck, I guess.”

  “Was it special in any way? Anything about it you can recall? Sign or anything?”

  “I didn’t think you would care about the traffic that went by.”

  “Why’d you mention the panel truck?” asked LeBeau.

  Keller sighed as if in relief. “Because it was backing out of the driveway next door.”

  Concealing his exasperation, Moody asked, “The driveway of eleven forty-three? The Howlands’ driveway?”

  “That’s correct.” Keller frowned. “It could have been just turning around, though, you know?”

  “Did you recognize the driver?”

  “I didn’t see much of him. When I looked was just when he was almost finished swinging around to drive that way.” Keller thrust a pointed hand eastward.

  “How’d you happen to be loo
king out at that moment?” LeBeau asked. “You heard something next door?”

  Keller grinned sheepishly. “This little TV guy—not Binnie—kept after us about didn’t we hear anything and finally I said, well, maybe, and he said, better make it definite one way or the other, so I—”

  “You didn’t hear anything suspicious, did you, Mr. Keller?” asked Moody.

  “No. I was just looking out because I do that now and again for no reason. I’m not nosy: I just like to see what’s going on if any. You know, I worked five days a week for forty years. It’s not easy to fill the time nowadays, so I’ll look out on occasion and see what’s going on outside.”

  A stocky little white-haired, eyeglassed woman entered the room from the archway centrally located in the west wall and minced to her husband’s side. She vaguely resembled a relative of Moody’s when he was a boy, except Aunt Patsy would not have been caught dead in pea-green pants.

  “I am Mrs. Keller.”

  “Yes, Miz Keller. We talked the other day, if you recall.”

  But she did not seem to, and she said, “How do you do?”

  “Miz Keller, did you see this panel truck Mr. Keller is telling us about? The one that maybe was backing out of the Howlands’ driveway?”

  She smiled sweetly. “Not really.”

  Moody said, “Well—”

  Mrs. Keller was not finished. “I only saw it when it was heading away, toward the village.”

  “Village?” asked LeBeau.

  Keller smiled down benignly on his wife. “She uses the old word. When her mom and dad first moved here, West View was an independent village. She means where the shops are.”

  “The few that are left,” the woman said.

  Moody asked if she had seen enough of the truck to describe it. He had a hunch the woman would display more precision of mind than her husband, and he was right.

  “It was a van, not a panel truck. It was dark blue.”

  “Black,” Keller corrected, shifting from one foot to the other like a kid who has to pee.

  “He’s color-blind,” scoffed his little wife. “It was navy blue.”

  “What lettering was on it, if any?” asked LeBeau.

  “If there’d been any,” said Mrs. Keller in a saucy way, “I’d have told you without you asking.” Dennis was not having his usual success with a female. Moody was more on Mrs. K’s wavelength. Perhaps age came into play.

  “If you saw the van from the back,” Moody said, “you couldn’t have seen the driver.”

  The little woman nodded briskly. “That’s true. But he did.”

  Moody turned to Keller. “I thought you said you didn’t see much of him.”

  “That’s right. Not much.”

  “But some?” Moody asked him to describe what he saw of the person driving the van.

  Keller winced in apparent despair, slowly shaking his head. “See,” he said at length, “I…”

  “Just take your time, Mr. Keller. You’ll remember a lot more than you might think if you’re patient and let the scene return to your mind’s eye, like they say.”

  Keller raised his eyebrows. “That’s not my problem,” he said brightly. “I don’t know what name to call them. You’re both writing this down, and it might come out sometime in court or in the media that I used the wrong name, and we might be picketed or worse.”

  LeBeau was annoyed. “Just what do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on, Gordie,” Mrs. Keller said to her husband. “Cut it out.” She addressed Moody. “What he means is the changing of the name, you know, from ‘colored’ to ‘Negro’ to ‘black’ to ‘African-American.’”

  Moody squinted at her husband. “This van was driven by a black guy?”

  “You got it.”

  LeBeau asked, “Real black or lighter-skinned?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You can’t say what kind of color?”

  “The window was up, and there was reflections on it.” The man suddenly glowered at Dennis. “I’m just lucky I seen anything at all.”

  “What time we talking about?” asked LeBeau.

  “Three or so, take or leave.”

  “Could have been three-thirty?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Two-thirty?”

  The question was near disdain, but Keller deliberated, head down, giving them a look at his scalp. “Couldn’t have been two-thirty. Definitely after three.”

  “Three forty-five?”

  “I doubt it,” said Keller.

  “What time would you say, ma’am?” Moody asked.

  Mrs. Keller’s lips were marked with those vertical lines some women get with age. She wore eye makeup and shadow, Moody recognized. She was late to arrive probably because she was getting fixed up. He found that touching. She might or might not have been pretty in her youth. She said, “Oh, Gordie’s probably right about the time. He’s better than me at that.”

  “Definitely nothing written on the van?” LeBeau asked, and then added, “That you could see?”

  “I coulda seen the writing if any,” Keller replied.

  LeBeau drew the man to the trio of close-set front windows. “Help me out here, sir.” He chose the middle one. There was clear glass between the flouncy curtains. “Was this where you looked out?” He stood at the angle required to see the end of the Howland driveway and its junction with the street, now still banded with yellow police tape. No media vehicles were in evidence at the moment, which meant that the detectives’ pedestrian approach had probably not been observed by any neighbors. Moody stood at the window on the right. When he stepped away, LeBeau took his place and Keller drew nearer to the middle window, bending slightly to bring his head below the place where the flounces flared away from each other.

  Back with Mrs. Keller, Moody asked, “Did you hear any sounds from next door?”

  She nodded decisively, but then said, “I couldn’t really tell exactly where they were from, though.”

  “Is that why you never mentioned them when we talked the first time?”

  “That’s exactly why,” said Mrs. Keller, smiling triumphantly behind her glasses. “I think you have to know what you’re saying when you talk to the police, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You can use a little leeway, though,” Moody told her. “We’re trained to evaluate information. You shouldn’t make up anything, but you really ought to tell every single detail you can remember.” At this, she acquired a spark in her eye, and Moody asked, “Is something coming back?”

  “No,” Mrs. Keller said soberly. She left the room on the same route by which she had arrived.

  Keller waited till she had gone, and then he said, in a lowered tone and a confidential manner, “She’s got a little Alzheimer’s, see. I didn’t see a Negro driving the van. She just made that up. I couldn’t see the driver at all. The truck window was tinted. She got out of the house couple weeks ago while I was in the bathroom. They found her down on Clare Street. She didn’t have any idea where she was.”

  “You’ve helped us,” Moody said. “Anything else comes to mind, you’ve got the number.”

  LeBeau had continued to look out the window. He shouted now at Moody. “Look who it is!”

  Moody lost no time in bursting out the front door and onto the steps. A dark-blue van was moving slowly, crawling, along Laurel Avenue. It stopped briefly, red lights igniting, in front of the Howland residence, then continued in the easterly direction, going toward what Mrs. Keller called the village. It was already too far away for Moody, at his perspective, to read the legend printed on its side in bold white letters, but he could easily identify what was printed on the back: CONWAY on the left-hand door; PLUMBING on the right.

  Dennis had now joined him. “Let’s catch the bastard.” They dashed for their car, which was pointed the wrong way and had to be turned in the nearest driveway.

  9

  “Lloyd? … Okay, stay asleep,” said the female voice. “I’m gonna go get cleaned up.”<
br />
  He kept his eyes closed but had begun to remember where he was, and once that happened the wonderful feeling of well-being began quickly to be conditioned by other memories, not necessarily bad ones but very different in texture from the matter of sleep.

  “All right.”

  “You’re awake? I wouldn’t of bothered you, but it’s been more than eight hours.”

  He opened his eyes at last and saw that the curtain had been drawn back, to do which Molly had had to reach across him. He turned his head politely toward her, but she was not in the sleeping compartment. He had it all to himself, in fact was pressed against the rear wall. He squirmed to the forward edge and looked down.

  Molly sat behind the wheel.

  “Been there long?”

  “I’m a lighter sleeper than yourself. It’s been real noisy around here today. But I got a few hours…I was just thinking,” she said. “Maybe we could go see the movie over there tonight.”

  “If you like.”

  “All right, then. I’m going over the showers. Could you just hand me down that duffel bag? I’ll put on a change of shirt and pants.”

  He fetched the bag from where it was stowed, beyond his feet, and handed it down to her.

  She pointed through the windshield. “Looks like the men’s place is around that side. I never been here before. You never know what a bathroom’s like till you try it.”

  Lloyd swung his legs around and descended to the seat. “I’d better hit the road.”

  Molly stared bleakly at the big steering wheel before her. “Why don’t you hang around till tomorrow? What are you going to do now, anyway? It’s almost six. Start out early tomorrow morning if you want. More likely to get rides then, aren’t you?” She looked at him, her eyes large in reproach. “I thought you were staying.”

  Lloyd was embarrassed by her appeal. “I just think it might be better.”

  “Was it something I did or said?”

  “It’s nothing personal.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with it,” Molly said quickly and began to step out the open door.

  “Hey, don’t be mad,” he said. “I mean, I really have to get started making something of myself.”