Suspects

by Thomas Berger

  Moody returned to the car. Decades of experiences with other city agencies, and even sometimes with other divisions of the Police Department, had made him stoical.

  “Let’s find a phone.”

  LeBeau was staring at the reaches of the dump. “Look at those gulls. What are they, a hundred miles from salt water?”

  Moody would no longer engage in small talk with his partner, else he would have noted that there were probably even more rats.

  They stopped at a phone booth outside a gas station, and LeBeau got out and made the call. “Captain can’t spare the men,” he said when he returned to the car. “Due to the time lost for the funeral, and there’s a new homicide.”

  “He knew about that when he told us,” Moody said.

  “He claims he never promised.”

  “Well, it’s too much for two men only.” Moody turned to address Glotty, now awake and scowling. “You’re in luck, Mr. Glotty. We can’t do it today. Run you home now.”

  The super’s expression changed to the positive, and his accent was lighter. “I gonna get paid, though?”

  Moody did not want to discourage him with the truth and therefore answered by murmuring the word “tomorrow.” He was pleased to see that it worked, Glotty moueing amiably. Moody directed LeBeau to take a right on Markham, up ahead. “It intersects with Mulberry in about a mile. That’s right around the corner from Laurel. Let me off there while you run the citizen home.”

  “But didn’t you want—”

  “No,” said Moody. “Let me off there.”

  His partner took the hint and said nothing more till they reached the appropriate place, a street away from the eleven hundred block of Laurel, and Moody pistoled a finger at where he wanted to de-board. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “Walk the territory,” Moody said. “Maybe I’ll learn something.” He had no ideas at the moment, but he wanted to be alone.

  He left the car and started along Mulberry, past a series of single-family houses of more or less the same size and age though with slight variations in design, unlike the Howland block, where newer structures were distributed among the older.

  “Hey you, sir!” someone shouted behind him. He turned and, after a moment during which time the tall figure trotted nearer, recognized the Howland neighbor Gordon Keller, who wore a snappy outfit for a man of his age and place, a multicolored nylon jacket, a brilliant green baseball-style cap atop his gray hair. He was shod in sports shoes, blue and red lightning-bolt stripes over basic white. “Hi, Mooney,” said he. “You still on the same case?” He thrust his hand out.

  Moody shook with him and forced himself to be affable, though he did not want the man’s company.

  “I sure am, Mr. Keller. In fact, I was just on my way to see if you or the missus have been able to remember anything else from last Tuesday. You know, you’re so close by, and things come back sometimes, after all the excitement settles down.”

  “Oh,” Keller said ebulliently, “it sure hasn’t settled down. It’s getting bigger. We’re on TV tonight again, our own segment on the Ten O’Clock Five Star Report.”

  “Bill Arbogast and Natalie Featherstone,” Moody noted. “I thought you were Binnie Baines’ people. You went over to the competition?”

  “Don’t you know it.” They turned the corner at Mulberry, into Laurel. Keller was half a head taller than Moody and had a much longer step, but the latter refused to quicken his pace. This caused the older man to temporize impatiently now and again, dancing in the jazzy sneakers. “I just been down the village, buying some new clothes.”

  “They paying you?”

  “I’m a retired man, Mooney,” Keller said testily. “We’re living on a pension, me and her.” He blew his cheeks out after a gulp of air.

  “Name’s Moody, Mr. Keller. I don’t care if you make a little money, unless you’re selling something you ought to be giving us, good citizen like you.”

  “Beg pardon for getting the name wrong, sir,” Keller said, staring ahead, “and I deserve to be called on it. But I got responsibility maybe you don’t understand. Wife of mine, she don’t have anybody else in the world.”

  “I got a responsibility to the people of this city, including yourself and your wife. We can’t afford to have murderers running around free.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Keller, with artificial vehemence. “But I got to look out for that poor wife of mine, on account of nobody else will. She can’t look out for herself.”

  As they turned the corner into Laurel, Moody frowned at him. “Somebody staying with her now? You’ve been away from the house for a while, and she’s back there alone?”

  “I don’t have that kind of money,” Keller said, performing another of his little dance steps so as to slow down for his companion. “Anyway, people talk. I don’t want nobody going around saying she’s a loony, and they do that, you know. You pay a nurse all that money, and then they talk about you with their other patients.”

  “So what do you do about her when you go out of the house?”

  “I keep her safe,” Keller said. “You can count on that.”

  “You say it’s Alzheimer’s?”

  “Pretty much.” Keller licked his lips.

  “Go to a doctor?”

  Keller shook his head. “Nothing they can do.”

  Having arrived at the ribbon of yellow crime-scene tape that still denied access to the length of pavement in front of 1143, they had to leave the sidewalk for the gutter.

  “Mind if I come in with you and talk a little with yourself and your wife?”

  Keller was surprised. “Now?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “We was going to get ready for Five Star Report.”

  “You got lots of time for that,” Moody pointed out. “I won’t take long.” He wanted to find out just what information the Kellers were selling to the TV program: it was sure to be new. Arbogast and Featherstone, whose show specialized in the provocative, would not pay for a mere rehash of what Binnie Baines and the others had gotten for free.

  Moody followed the older man up the steps onto the porch, where he expected Keller would pause to use a key, but such was not the case, the door yielding with the simple brisk turn of the knob. So much for locking the wife in.… But he was immediately enlightened by what he saw on entering the living room.

  The house was equipped with old-fashioned high-standing radiators of cast iron. To the one adjacent to the far arm of the living-room sofa Mrs. Keller was attached by a heavy-link chain that encircled her ankle and was secured at either end by a padlock.

  Spousal abuse was not among the infractions of the law handled by Homicide. Moody would call the precinct to send somebody, but since the woman suffered no visible pain, he could spare a few moments for a more important matter.

  “Hi there, Mr. Moody,” brightly cried Mrs. Keller, getting up from the couch, chain clinking. Whatever her condition, she had a better memory than her husband, at least for names, and proceeded to do even better. “Where’s Detective LeBeau?”

  “He’ll be along shortly,” Moody told her. “Are you okay, Mrs. Keller? Chain doesn’t hurt?”

  She sounded a pealing, girlish laugh. “Oh, no!”

  Moody turned to Keller. “Unlock her.”

  The tall old man had removed his cap and jacket and hung them on a hall tree beside the front door. “Naw,” he said coolly.

  “You heard me: I said take that lock off her.”

  Mrs. Keller sat down on the couch, pulled off her right shoe, a beige loafer with a run-over heel, and stepped out of the chain. Today her slacks were purple.

  Moody felt like a fool, but you could not be a policeman and admit anything of the sort, or apologize unless there was some legal reason to do so. Therefore he asked sternly, “What’s the idea?”

  Keller raised an eyebrow that was still darker than his hair. “Sir?”

  “If it’s not locked—?”

  “It is locked,” Kel
ler explained. “On both ends.” He smiled at his wife. “That means a lot to her. Feels secure, but it don’t stop her from getting up if she needs to go to the toilet and so on, you know. It’s an ideal solution, keeps her safe and snug, yet don’t restrict her, see.”

  Having had enough of the matter, Moody went immediately to more pressing issues. “Last time I asked about the day of the murders next door. What I want you to do now, if you would, is think back to the time before that, back when Mrs. Howland and the little girl were alive. Normal times.” He included Mrs. Keller in the question, glancing at her from time to time, but she was taking elaborate pains in returning the shoe to her foot. “Tell me,” he said to Keller, “what you would see the Howlands doing. You’re just across the driveway.”

  “Yeah,” Keller said indignantly, “but last time you rushed out the door soon as I started to talk.”

  “You told us about seeing the van,” said Moody. “Did you want to say anything else?” He smiled. “Can I sit down?” Without waiting for permission he perched on the thick arm of an overstuffed chair that was probably, judging from the almost new condition of its upholstery, for guests; whereas the adjustable lounger under the floor lamp was likely to be Keller’s own favorite.

  Keller remained on his feet. “I’d like your word you’re going to listen,” he said, scowling down at Moody. “And not run away soon as I start to say something.”

  Though his memory of the last visit to these premises had no resemblance to the version he was now hearing, Moody would not argue with a willing witness. “Sorry about that. We had an emergency call, I guess. I can’t guarantee I won’t ever get another, but I’ll sure give you all my attention right now.”

  Keller seated himself at the opposite end of the couch from his wife. He crossed his legs, which brought one enormous striped athletic shoe into Moody’s line of sight. With his jacket off, Keller’s paunch bulged in the knitted shirt of pale blue. Moody, whose bald spot was larger every time the barber gave him a hand mirror, envied the older man for his dense crown. Keller must have been a handsome guy, years before, on the order of Dennis LeBeau, square-jawed, clear-eyed, thick-haired.

  Mrs. Keller had at last succeeded in shoeing herself. She stood up. “I’ll let you fellas do your man-talk. I got to primp for the TV.”

  Moody rose courteously. “I might want to talk with you a little later, if that’s okay.”

  “Believe me,” said the little old woman, whose head would have reached her husband’s breastbone had he been standing, “I am at your disposal, schedule permitting.” She walked purposefully, with many rapid short paces, to the stairway against the far-right wall, but slowed her pace when mounting the steps, making each an event.

  “How long has she had her condition?” Moody asked when the small feet had finally disappeared from view.

  “Beats me,” Keller said impatiently. “I can’t remember anymore, it’s been so long.”

  Moody resumed his seat on the broad arm of the chair. “You’ve been keeping an eye on what we’re doing next door. I’ve seen you at the window. You waved the other day. That’s your dining-room window, right? It’s straight across from the bedroom where the homicides took place.”

  “I get it,” said Keller. “You wanna know if I could of seen anything over there from our window. But the blinds was closed all the time just like you fellas keep ‘em.”

  “Venetian blinds?”

  “I wouldn’t own a set of the things,” Keller said bitterly. “We lived in a rental years back had ‘em. You can’t keep ‘em clean, I tell you. They sell gadgets to clean ‘em, but they just brush off dust, and hell, what you get after every couple weeks you can’t call just dust. It’s grease, for God sake, and I don’t care how far from the kitchen, all the way through the place the Venetian blinds will collect a layer of it, you need to use solvent on every strip, an old toothbrush or whatever. Guy at work once told me you drop the whole blind in a bathtub and run hot water with dishwashing detergent, but we never had a dishwasher in the days I mean. Lucky we had indoor plumbing. … You a married man, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m not a lieutenant, Mr. Keller.”

  “I been married all my life to the same woman,” Keller said, leaning back against the sofa pillows and thrusting his long legs out so far that the big striped shoes ended up more than halfway across the space between him and Moody. “We had a couple kids. Girl’s married to a man in Arizona. Boy got mad we wouldn’t loan him any more money and don’t speak to us. He went away, we don’t know where.”

  “What are you going to tell them on Five Star Report?”

  “Deal is, they get an exclusive.” Keller arched his dark eyebrows. “You better watch the show.”

  “I’ve gone too easy on you so far, Mr. Keller,” Moody said. “I’m going to tell you only once more: withholding information from the police is a criminal offense.”

  Keller held up his big hands and fluttered them. “All right, all right.” He retracted his lower legs and leaned forward, white-fisting both kneecaps. “Could you just do me this favor. Don’t tell the Five Star folks I told you, till they give me my money? That won’t be long. They’re coming to tape in an hour.”

  “Let’s have it,” Moody said.

  Keller moved his hands in that tone-down-the-volume gesture sometimes used by persons in an official capacity to quiet a demonstrating crowd. “Let’s get it over with, then,” he said. “Fact is, you can’t see in her window with the slats of the Venetian tipped up that way, the way you fellas still leave ‘em. That is, you can’t see past ‘em if you look out of the window of the dining room in this house, right across. But you can from the upstairs bathroom. You can look down and at that angle you can see quite a bit through the slats when they’re not closed tight and if a light is on over there, as it usually is, ‘cause it must be dark in there even during the day with the blinds closed like that. What you see is in slices, you know”—he made horizontal motions with an index finger—“segments, between the slats, but at that distance they come together in your eye, and—”

  “What did you see?”

  “She was taking her clothes off,” said Keller, his right eye in a knowing droop.

  “Mrs. Donna Howland?”

  “She did that a lot, right there and not over to the side where you couldn’t see no matter if the blinds been open all the way.”

  “You were in the habit of watching her, is that it?”

  Keller was deaf to any voice but his own. “I always thought it was just by accident—not knowing how it is with Venetian blinds. You can cock them up at an angle that way, and from inside it looks, to you, like you got perfect privacy along with at least some light from outside, but somebody from above—”

  “You said that.” It was not an interruption, for Keller continued to speak throughout.

  “—can see more than you know.” He smiled faintly with the angle of eye and warp of lip that suggested how keen he was. “Because they’re not looking straight on but down through the gaps. At first I thought she never knew that. It took me a while to realize she knew it goddamn well.” Now he did stop and take note of Moody, who defied him and stayed silent. “Well,” Keller resumed after a long moment, “that’s about the size of it.”

  “That’s what Five Star is paying you for?” Moody asked at last, with simulated disdain. “You saw her naked? They’re gonna want their money back.”

  Keller was wounded. “Oh, yeah? You think you know it all because they made you a detective. But you’re way off. I mean, she knew what she was doing, see.”

  “Yeah, she was changing her clothes.”

  Keller put up a finger and moved it like a metronome. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “She was doing it because she knew you were watching?”

  “Now you’re on the money,” Keller said, stamping his shoes on the carpet. “She wasn’t all that fine a person. Oh, I know what they say on TV and all, you’d think she was a saint, but far from it.�
��

  “She was a loose woman, you’re saying?” Moody was letting him run with it. “Who’re we talking about, by the way?”

  “You’re making fun of me,” Keller said. “This is a joke to you.”

  “I’ll tell you what it is to me: I think it’s interesting you can smear this dead lady but never speak of her by name.”

  “I never knew her well enough to use her name,” said Keller. “It would be pretty phony if I started using it now.”

  Moody displayed a smirk. “I guess she was built nice?”

  Keller raised his chin and spoke almost loftily. “It was an indecent display. I think there’s a law against that.”

  Moody abandoned the brief attempt to talk man to man and asked harshly, “Undressing in her own bedroom, with the blinds closed?”

  “I told you they weren’t closed.”

  “Not if you went all over your house looking for an angle you could partially see through them.”

  “I never went ‘all over the house,’” Keller complained, though he was somewhat chastened. “Come on, be fair.”

  “What makes you say she knew you were watching? She wave at you or look up and wink or something?”

  “Body language.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s all over TV: how to tell somebody’s interested in making your acquaintance in a bar or tavern, et cetera, way they hold their head, play with their hair and all.”

  “You go much to pickup joints, Mr. Keller?”

  “At my age? Come on.”

  “Her name was Donna Howland,” Moody stated. “What kind of body language do you say she was using?”

  Keller snorted, glancing at the nearest wall for effect. “She went right to the point. Showed her bare topless.”

  “What?”

  “They call it that nowadays. Topless.”

  “Topless means bare,” Moody said. “Showed you her bare breasts?”

  “I was trying to not use that word. All right, she did that. And then she bent over and showed her backside, stuck it right up in the air.”

  “That was naked too?”

  “Sure was.”

  Moody nodded judiciously. “If she first showed her breasts, then she was facing you. To show her bottom she had to turn and face the other way before bending over. Is that right?”