The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  He left the bedroom carrying his daughter in his arms, and went down the corridor, past the oil portrait of his daughter in her pink debutante gown and then down the wide staircase to the entrance foyer.

  “Police Radio,” Mrs. Leander—Harriet—Polk, a somewhat more than pleasingly plump black lady, said into the microphone of her headset.“We need an ambulance,” Violet said.

  Harriet Polk had worked in the Radio Room in the Police Administration Building for nineteen years. Her long experience had told her from the tone of the caller’s voice that this was a genuine call, not some lunatic with a sick sense of humor.

  “Ma’am, what’s the nature of the problem?”

  “She’s unconscious, not breathing.”

  “Where are you, Ma’am?”

  “928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue,” Violet said. “It’s the Detweiler estate.”

  Harriet threw a switch on her console which connected her with the Fire Department dispatcher. Fire Department Rescue Squads are equipped with oxygen and resuscitation equipment, and manned by firemen with special Emergency Medical Treatment training.

  “Unconscious female at 928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue,” she said.

  Then she spoke to her caller.

  “A rescue squad is on the way, Ma’am,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Violet said politely.

  Nineteen years on the job had also embedded in Harriet Polk’s memory a map of the City of Philadelphia, overlaid by Police District boundaries. She knew, without thinking about it, that 928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue was in the Fourteenth Police District. Her board showed her that Radio Patrol Car Twenty-three of the Fourteenth District was in service.

  Harriet moved another switch.

  “Fourteen Twenty-three,” she said. “928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue. A hospital case. Rescue en route.”

  Police Officer John D. Wells, who also had nineteen years on the job, was sitting in his three-year-old Chevrolet, whose odometer was halfway through its second hundred thousand miles, outside a delicatessen on Germantown Avenue.He had just failed to have the moral courage to refuse stuffing his face before going off shift and home. He had a wax-paper-wrapped Taylor-ham-and-egg sandwich in his hand, and a large bite from same in his mouth.

  He picked up his microphone and, with some difficulty, answered his call: “Fourteen Twenty-three, OK.”

  He took off the emergency brake and dropped the gearshift into drive.

  He had spent most of his police career in North Philadelphia, and had been transferred to “The Hill” only six months before. He thought of it as being “retired before retiring.” There was far less activity in affluent Chestnut Hill than in North Philly.

  He didn’t, in other words, know his district well, but he knew it well enough to instantly recall that West Chestnut Hill Avenue was lined with large houses, mansions, on large plots of ground, very few of which had numbers to identify them.

  Where the hell is 928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue?

  Officer Wells did not turn on either his flashing lights or siren. There was not much traffic in this area at this time of the morning, and he didn’t think it was necessary. But he pressed heavily on the accelerator pedal.

  H. Richard Detweiler, now staggering under the hundred-and-nine-pound weight of his daughter, reached the massive oak door of the foyer. He stopped and looked angrily over his shoulder and found his wife.“Grace, open the goddamned door!”

  She did so, and he walked through it, onto the slate-paved area before the door.

  Penny was really getting heavy. He looked around, and walked to a wrought-iron couch and sat down in it.

  Violet appeared.

  “Mr. D,” she said, “the police, the ambulance, is coming,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He looked down at his daughter’s face. Penny was looking at him, but she wasn’t seeing him.

  Oh, my God!

  “Violet, please call Mr. Payne and tell him what’s happened, and that I’m probably going to need him.”

  Violet nodded and went back in the house.

  Brewster Cortland Payne II, Esq., a tall, well-built—he had played tackle at Princeton in that memorable year when Princeton had lost sixteen of seventeen games played—man in his early fifties, was having breakfast with his wife, Patricia, on the patio outside the breakfast room of his rambling house on a four-acre plot on Providence Road in Wallingford when Mrs. Elizabeth Newman, the Payne housekeeper, appeared carrying a telephone on a long cord.“It’s the Detweilers’s Violet,” she said.

  Mrs. Payne, an attractive forty-four-year-old blonde, who was wearing a pleated skirt and a sweater, put her coffee cup down as she watched her husband take the telephone.

  “For you?” she asked, not really expecting a reply.

  “Good morning, Violet,” Brewster C. Payne said. “How are you?”

  “Mr. Detweiler asked me to call,” Violet said. “He said he will probably need you.”

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  Payne, who was a founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, arguably Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firm, was both Mr. H. Richard Detweiler’s personal attorney and his most intimate friend. They had been classmates at both Episcopal Academy and Princeton.

  Violet told him what the problem was, ending her recitation of what had transpired by almost sobbing, “I think Penny is gone, Mr. Payne. He’s sitting outside holding her in his lap, waiting for the ambulance, but I think she’s gone.”

  “Violet, when the ambulance gets there, find out where they’re taking Penny. Call here and tell Elizabeth. I’m leaving right away. When I get into Philadelphia, I’ll call here and Elizabeth can tell me where to go. Tell Mr. Detweiler I’m on my way.”

  He broke the connection with his finger, lifted it and waited for a dial tone, and then started dialing again.

  “Well, what is it?” Patricia Payne asked.

  “Violet went into Penny’s room and found her sitting up in bed with a needle hanging out of her arm,” Payne replied, evenly. “They’re waiting for an ambulance. Violet thinks it’s too late.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  A metallic female voice came on the telephone: “Dr. Payne is not available at this time. If you will leave your name and number, she will return your call as soon as possible. Please wait for the tone. Thank you.”

  He waited for the tone and then said, “Amy, if you’re there, please pick up.”

  “Dad?”

  “Penny was found by the maid ten minutes ago with a needle in her arm. Violet thinks she’s gone.”

  “Damn!”

  “I think you had better go out there and deal with Grace,” Brewster Payne said.

  “Goddamn!” Dr. Amelia Payne said.

  “Tell her I’m coming,” Patricia said.

  “Your mother said she’s coming to Chestnut Hill,” Payne said.

  “All right,” Amy said, and the connection went dead.

  Payne waited for another dial tone and dialed again.

  “More than likely by mistake,” Matt’s voice said metallically, “you have dialed my number. If you’re trying to sell me something, you will self-destruct in ten seconds. Otherwise, you may leave a message when the machine goes bleep.”

  Bleep.

  “Matt, pick up.”

  There was no human voice.

  He’s probably at work, Payne decided, and replaced the handset in its cradle.

  “Elizabeth, please call Mrs. Craig—you’d better try her at home first—and tell her that something has come up and I don’t know when I’ll be able to come to the office. And ask her to ask Colonel Mawson to let her know where he’ll be this morning.”

  Mrs. Newman nodded.

  “Poor Matt,” Mrs. Newman said.

  “Good God!” Brewster Payne said, and then stood up. His old-fashioned, well-worn briefcase was sitting on the low fieldstone wall surrounding the patio. He picked it up and then jumped over the wal
l and headed toward the garage. His wife started to follow him, then stopped and called after him: “I’ve got to get my purse. And I’ll try to get Matt at work.”

  She waited until she saw his head nod, then turned and went into the house.

  Officer John D. Wells, in RPC Fourteen Twenty-three, slowed down when he reached the 900 block of West Chestnut Hill Avenue, a little angry that his memory had been correct.There are no goddamned numbers. Just tall fences that look like rows of spears and fancy gates, all closed. You can’t even see the houses from the street.

  Then, as he moved past one set of gates, it began to open, slowly and majestically. He slammed on the brakes and backed up, and drove through the gates, up a curving drive lined with hundred-year-old oak trees.

  If this isn’t the place, I can ask.

  It was the place.

  There was a man on a patio outside an enormous house sitting on an iron couch holding a girl in her nightgown in his arms.

  Wells got quickly out of the car.

  “Thank God!” the man said, and then, quickly, angrily: “Where the hell is the ambulance? We called for an ambulance!”

  “A rescue squad’s on the way, sir,” Wells said.

  He looked down at the girl. Her eyes were open. Wells had seen enough open lifeless eyes to know this girl was dead. But he leaned over and touched the carotid artery at the rear of her ear, feeling for a pulse, to make sure.

  “Can you tell me what happened, sir?” he asked.

  “We found her this way, Violet found her this way.”

  There came the faint wailing of a siren.

  “There was a needle in her arm,” a large black woman said softly, earning a look of pained betrayal from the man holding the body.

  Wells looked. There was no needle, but there was a purple puncture wound in the girl’s arm.

  “Where did you find her?” Wells asked the black woman.

  “Sitting up in her bed,” Violet said.

  The sound of the ambulance siren had grown much louder. Then it shut off. A moment later the ambulance appeared in the driveway.

  Two firemen got quickly out, pulled a stretcher from the back of the van, and, carrying an oxygen bottle and an equipment bag, ran up to the patio.

  The taller of them, a very thin man, did exactly what Officer Wells had done, took a quick look at Miss Penelope Detweiler’s lifeless eyes and concluded she was dead, and then checked her carotid artery to make sure.

  He met Wells’s eyes and, just perceptibly, shook his head.

  “Sir,” he said, very kindly, to H. Richard Detweiler, “I think we’d better get her onto the stretcher.”

  “There was, the lady said, a needle in her arm,” Wells said.

  H. Richard Detweiler now gave Officer Wells a very dirty look.

  The very thin fireman nodded. The announcement did not surprise him. The Fire Department Rescue Squads of the City of Philadelphia see a good many deaths caused by narcotics overdose.

  Officer Wells went to his car and picked up the microphone.

  “Fourteen Twenty-three,” he said.

  “Fourteen Twenty-three,” Harriet Polk’s voice came back immediately.

  “Give me a supervisor at this location. This is a Five Two Nine Two.”

  Five Two Nine Two was a code that went back to the time before shortwave radio and telephones, when police communications were by telegraph key in police boxes on street corners. It meant “dead body.”

  “Fourteen B,” Harriet called.

  Fourteen B was the call sign of one of two sergeants assigned to patrol the Fourteenth Police District.

  “Fourteen B,” Sergeant John Aloysius Monahan said into his microphone. “I have it. En route.”

  Officer Wells picked up a clipboard from the floor of the passenger side of his car and then went back onto the patio. The firemen were just finishing lowering Miss Detweiler onto the stretcher.

  The tall thin fireman picked up a worn and spotted gray blanket, held it up so that it unfolded of its own weight, and then very gently laid it over the body of Miss Detweiler.

  “What are you doing that for?” H. Richard Detweiler demanded angrily.

  “Sir,” the thin fireman said, “I’m sorry. She’s gone.”

  “She’s not!”

  “I’m really sorry, sir.”

  “Oh, Jesus H. fucking Christ!” H. Richard Detweiler wailed.

  Mrs. H. Richard Detweiler, who had been standing just inside the door, now began to scream.

  Violet went to her and, tears running down her face, wrapped her arms around her.

  “What happens now?” H. Richard Detweiler asked.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you some questions,” Officer Wells said. “You’re Mr. Detweiler? The girl’s father?”

  “I mean what happens to…my daughter? I suppose I’ll have to call the funeral home—”

  “Mr. Detweiler,” Wells said, “what happens now is that someone from the Medical Examiner’s Office will come here and officially pronounce her dead and remove her body to the morgue. Under the circumstances, the detectives will have to conduct an investigation. There will have to be an examination of the remains.”

  “An autopsy, you mean? Like hell there will be.”

  “Mr. Detweiler, that’s the way it is,” Wells said. “It’s the law.”

  “We’ll see about that!” Detweiler said. “That’s my daughter!”

  “Yes, sir. And, sir, a sergeant is on the way here. And there will be a detective. There are some questions we have to ask. And we’ll have to see where you found her.”

  “The hell you will!” Detweiler fumed. “Have you got a search warrant?”

  “No, sir,” Wells said. There was no requirement for a search warrant. But he did not want to argue with this grief-stricken man. The Sergeant was on the way. Let the Sergeant deal with it.

  He searched his memory. John Aloysius Monahan was on the job. Nice guy. Good cop. The sort of a man who could reason with somebody like this girl’s father.

  Sergeant John Aloysius Monahan got out of his car and started to walk up the wide flight of stairs to the patio. Officer Wells walked down to him. Monahan saw a tall man in a dressing robe sitting on a wrought-iron couch, staring at a blanket-covered body on a stretcher.“Looks like an overdose,” Wells said softly. “The maid found her, the daughter, in her bed with a needle in her arm.”

  “In her bed? How did she get down here?”

  “The father carried her,” Wells said. “He was sitting on that couch holding her in his arms when I got here. He’s pretty upset. I told him about the M.E., the autopsy, and he said ‘no way.’”

  “You know who this guy is?” Monahan asked.

  Wells shook his head, then gestured toward the mansion. “Somebody important.”

  “He runs Nesfoods,” Monahan said.

  “Jesus!”

  Monahan walked up the shallow stairs to the patio.

  “Mr. Detweiler,” he said.

  It took a long moment before Detweiler raised his eyes to him.

  “I’m Sergeant Monahan from the Fourteenth District, Mr. Detweiler,” he said. “I’m very sorry about this.”

  Detweiler shrugged.

  “I’m here to help in any way I can, Mr. Detweiler.”

  “It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it?”

  “It looks that way, Mr. Detweiler,” Monahan agreed. “I’m really sorry.” He paused. “Mr. Detweiler, I have to see the room where she was found. Maybe we’ll find something there that will help us. Could you bring yourself to take me there?”

  “Why not?” H. Richard Detweiler replied. “I’m not doing anybody any good here, am I?”

  “That’s very good of you, Mr. Detweiler,” Sergeant Monahan said. “I appreciate it very much.”

  He waited until Detweiler had stood up and started into the house, then motioned for Wells to follow them.

  “What’s your daughter’s name, Mr. Detweiler?” Monahan asked gently. “We
have to have that for the report.”

  “Penelope,” Mr. Detweiler said. “Penelope Alice.”

  Behind them, as they crossed the foyer to the stairs, Officer Wells began to write the information down on Police Department Form 75–48.

  They walked up the stairs and turned left.

  “And who besides yourself and Mrs. Detweiler,” Sergeant Monahan asked, “was in the house, sir?”

  “Well, Violet, of course,” Detweiler replied. “I don’t know if the cook is here yet.”

  “Wells,” Sergeant Monahan interrupted.

  “I got it, Sergeant,” Officer Wells said.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Detweiler,” Sergeant Monahan said.

  Officer Wells let them get a little ahead of them, then, one at a time, he picked two of the half-dozen Louis XIV chairs that were neatly arranged against the walls of the corridor. He placed one over the plastic hypodermic syringe that both he and Sergeant Monahan had spotted, and the second over a length of rubber surgical tubing, to protect them.

  Then he walked quickly after Sergeant Monahan and Mr. Detweiler.

  Sergeant John Aloysius Monahan was impressed with the size of Miss Penelope Alice Detweiler’s apartment. It was as large as the entire upstairs of his row house off Roosevelt Boulevard. The bathroom was as large as his bedroom. He was a little surprised to find that the faucets were stainless steel. He would not have been surprised if they had been gold.And he was not at all surprised to find, on one of Miss Detweiler’s bedside tables, an empty glassine packet, a spoon, a candle, and a small cotton ball.

  He touched nothing.

  “Is there a telephone I can use, Mr. Detweiler?” he asked.

  Detweiler pointed to the telephone on the other bedside table.

  “The detectives like it better if we don’t touch anything,” Monahan said. “Until they’ve had a look.”

  “There’s one downstairs,” Detweiler said. “Sergeant, may I now call my funeral director? I want to get…her off the patio. For her mother’s sake.”