The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  Chief Lowenstein granted the point, somewhat unwillingly, with a shrug.

  “What’s that got to do with Payne, sending him in to spy on Homicide?”

  “Same principle. His picture has been all over the papers. Payne is the kind of cop the public wants. It’s like TV and the movies. A good-looking young cop kills the bad guys and doesn’t steal money.”

  There was a faint suggestion of a smile on Lowenstein’s lips.

  “So I figured if I send Payne to spend some time at Homicide (a) he can’t really do any harm over there and (b) if it turns out your man who can’t keep his dick in his pocket and/or the widow—and get pissed if you want, Matt, but that wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that’s the way it turns out—had something to do with Kellog getting himself shot, then what the papers have is another example of one of Mr. Clean’s hotshots cleaning up the Police Department.”

  “I talked to Wally Milham, Jerry. I’ve seen enough killers and been around enough cops to know a killer and/or a lying cop when I see one. He didn’t do it.”

  “Maybe he didn’t, but if she had something to do with it, and he’s been fucking her, which is now common knowledge, it’s the same thing. You talk to her?”

  “No,” Lowenstein said.

  “Maybe you should,” the Mayor said.

  “You’re not listening to me. I’m going out. I’m going to move to some goddamned place at the shore and walk up and down the beach.”

  “We haven’t even got around to talking about that.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “You haven’t even heard my offer.”

  “I don’t want to hear your goddamned offer.”

  “How do you know until you hear it?”

  “Jesus Christ, can’t you take no for an answer?”

  “No. Not with you. Not when the Department needs you.”

  The kitchen door swung open.

  “I thought maybe you’d need some more coffee,” Sarah Lowenstein said a little nervously.

  “You still got that stuff you bought to get rid of the rats?” Chief Lowenstein said. “Put two heaping tablespoons, three, in Jerry’s cup.”

  “You two have been friends so long,” Sarah said. “It’s not right that you should fight.”

  “Tell him, Sarah,” the Mayor said. “I am the spirit of reasonableness and conciliation.”

  “Four tablespoons, honey,” Chief Lowenstein said.

  TWELVE

  Brewster Cortland Payne II had stopped in a service station on City Line Avenue and called his home. Mrs. Newman had told him there had been no call from Violet, the Detweiler maid, telling him to which hospital Penny had been taken.

  If she hadn’t been taken to a hospital, he reasoned, there was a chance that the situation wasn’t as bad as initially reported; that Penny might have been unconscious—that sometimes happened when drugs were involved—rather than, as Violet had reported, “gone,” and had regained consciousness.If that had happened, Dick Detweiler would have been reluctant to have her taken to a hospital; she could be cared for at home by Dr. Dotson, the family physician, or Amy Payne, M.D., and the incident could be kept quiet.

  He got back behind the wheel of the Buick station wagon and drove to West Chestnut Hill Avenue.

  He realized the moment he drove through the open gates of the estate that the hope that things weren’t as bad as reported had been wishful thinking. There was an ambulance and two police cars parked in front of the house, and a third car, unmarked, but from its black-walled tires and battered appearance almost certainly a police car, pulled in behind him as he was getting out of the station wagon.

  The driver got out. Payne saw that he was a police captain.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the Captain called to him as Payne started up the stairs to the patio.

  Payne stopped and turned.

  “I’m Captain O’Connor. Northwest Detectives. May I ask who you are, sir?”

  “My name is Payne. I am Mr. Detweiler’s attorney.”

  “We’ve got a pretty unpleasant situation here, Mr. Payne,” O’Connor said, offering Payne his hand.

  “Just how bad is it?”

  “About as bad as it can get, I’m afraid,” O’Connor said, and tilted his head toward the patio.

  Payne looked and for the first time saw the blanket-covered body on the stretcher.

  “Oh, God!”

  “Mr. Payne, Chief Inspector Coughlin is on his way here. Do you happen to know…?”

  “I know the Chief,” Payne said softly.

  “I don’t have any of the details myself,” O’Connor said. “But I’d like to suggest that you…”

  “I’m going to see my client, Captain,” Payne said, softly but firmly. “Unless there is some reason…?”

  “I’d guess he’s in the house, sir,” O’Connor said.

  “Thank you,” Payne said, and turned and walked onto the patio. The door was closed but unlocked. Payne walked through it and started to cross the foyer. Then he stopped and picked up a telephone mounted in a small alcove beside the door.

  He dialed a number from memory.

  “Nesfoods International. Good morning.”

  “Let me have the Chief of Security, please,” he said.

  “Mr. Schraeder’s office.”

  “My name is Brewster C. Payne. I’m calling for Mr. Richard Detweiler. Mr. Schraeder, please.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Payne. How can I help you?”

  “Mr. Schraeder, just as soon as you can, will you please send some security officers to Mr. Detweiler’s home? Six, or eight. I think their services will be required, day and night, for the next four or five days, so I suggest you plan for that.”

  “I’ll have someone there in half an hour, Mr. Payne,” Schraeder said. “Would you care to tell me the nature of the problem? Or should I come out there myself?”

  “I think it would be helpful if you came here, Mr. Schraeder,” Payne said.

  “I’m on my way, sir,” Schraeder said.

  Payne put the telephone back in its cradle and turned from the alcove in the wall.

  Captain O’Connor was standing there.

  “Dr. Amelia Payne is on her way here,” Payne said. “As is my wife. They will wish to be with the Detweilers.”

  “I understand, sir. No problem.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Payne said.

  “Mr. Detweiler is in there,” O’Connor said, pointing toward the downstairs sitting room. “I believe Mrs. Detweiler is upstairs.”

  “Thank you,” Payne said, and walked to the downstairs sitting room and pushed the door open.

  H. Richard Detweiler was sitting in a red leather chair—his chair—with his hands folded in his lap, looking at the floor. He raised his eyes.

  “Brew,” he said, and smiled.

  “Dick.”

  “Everything was going just fine, Brew. The night before last, Penny and Matt had dinner with Chad and Daffy to celebrate Chad’s promotion. And last night, they were at Martha Peebles’s. And one day, three, four days ago, Matt came out and the two of them made cheese dogs for us. You know, you slit the hot dog and put cheese inside and then wrap it in bacon. They made them for us on the charcoal thing. And then they went to the movies. She seemed so happy, Brew. And now this.”

  “I’m very sorry, Dick.”

  “Oh, goddamn it all to hell, Brew,” H. Richard Detweiler said. He started to sob. “When I went in there, her eyes were open, but I knew.”

  He started to weep.

  Brewster Cortland Payne went to him and put his arms around him.

  “Steady, lad,” he said, somewhat brokenly as tears ran down his own cheeks. “Steady.”

  The Buick station wagon in which Amelia Payne, M.D., drove through the gates of the Detweiler estate was identical in model, color, and even the Rose Tree Hunt and Merion Cricket Club parking decalcomanias on the rear window to the one her father had driven through the gates five minutes before, except that it was two ye
ars older, had a large number of dings and dents on the body, a badly damaged right front fender, and was sorely in need of a passage through a car wash.The car had, in fact, been Dr. Payne’s father’s car. He had made it available to his daughter at a very good price because, he said, the trade-in allowance on his new car had been grossly inadequate. That was not the whole truth. While Brewster Payne had been quietly incensed at the trade-in price offered for a two-year-old car with less that 15,000 miles on the odometer and in showroom condition, the real reason was that the skillful chauffeuring of an automobile was not among his daughter’s many skills and accomplishments.

  “She needs something substantial, like the Buick, something that will survive a crash,” he confided to his wife. “If I could, I’d get her a tank or an armored car. When Amy gets behind the wheel, she reminds me of that comic-strip character with the black cloud of inevitable disaster floating over his head.”

  It was not that she was reckless, or had a heavy foot on the accelerator, but rather that she simply didn’t seem to care. Her father had decided that this was because Amy had—always had had—things on her mind far more important than the possibility of a dented fender, hers or someone else’s.

  In the third grade when Amy had been sent to see a psychiatrist for her behavior in class (when she wasn’t causing all sorts of trouble, she was in the habit of taking a nap) the psychiatrist quickly determined the cause. She was, according to the three different tests to which he subjected her, a genius. She was bored with the third grade.

  At ten, she was admitted to a high school for the intellectually gifted operated by the University of Pennsylvania, and matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of thirteen, because of her extraordinary mathematical ability.

  “Theoretical mathematics, of course,” her father joked to intimate friends. “Double Doctor Payne is absolutely unable to balance a checkbook.”

  That was a reference to her two doctoral degrees, the first a Ph.D. earned at twenty with a dissertation on probability, the second an M.D. earned at twenty-three after she had gone through what her father thought of as a dangerous dalliance with a handsome Jesuit priest nearly twice her age. She emerged from this (so far as he knew platonic) relationship with a need to serve God by serving mankind. Her original intention was to become a surgeon, specializing in trauma injuries, but during her internship at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, she decided to become a psychiatrist. She trained at the Menninger Clinic, then returned to Philadelphia, where she had a private practice and taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

  She was now twenty-nine and had never married, although a steady stream of young men had passed through her life. Her father privately thought she scared them off with her brainpower. He could think of no other reason she was still single. She was attractive, he thought, and charming, and had a sense of humor much like his own.

  Amelia Payne, Ph.D., M.D., stopped the Buick in front of the Detweiler mansion, effectively denying the use of the drive to anyone else who wished to use it, and got out. She was wearing a pleated tweed skirt and a sweater, and looked like a typical Main Line Young Matron.

  The EMT firemen standing near the blanket-covered body were therefore surprised when she knelt beside the stretcher and started to remove the blanket.

  “Hey, lady!”

  “I’m Dr. Payne,” Amy said, and examined the body very quickly. Then she pulled the blanket back in place and stood up.

  “Let’s get this into the house,” she said. “Out of sight.”

  “We’re waiting for the M.E.”

  “And while we’re waiting, we’re going to move the body into the house,” Dr. Payne said. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”

  The EMT firemen picked up the stretcher and followed her into the house.

  She crossed the foyer and opened the door to the sitting room and saw her father and H. Richard Detweiler talking softly.

  “Are you all right, Uncle Dick?” she asked.

  “Ginger-peachy, honey,” Detweiler replied.

  “Grace is upstairs, Amy,” her father said.

  “I’ll look in on her,” Amy said, and pulled the door closed. She turned to the firemen. “Over there,” she said. “In the dining room.”

  She crossed the foyer, opened the door to the dining room, and waited inside until the firemen had carried the stretcher inside. Then she issued other orders:

  “One of you stay here, the other wait outside for the M.E. When he gets here, send for me. I’ll be upstairs with Mrs. Detweiler, the mother.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” the larger of the two EMTs—whose body weight was approximately twice that of Amy’s—said docilely.

  Amy went quickly up the stairs to the second floor.

  A black Ford Falcon with the seal of the City of Philadelphia and those words in small white letters on its doors passed through the gates of the Detweiler estate and drove to the door of the mansion.Bernard C. Potter, a middle-aged, balding black man, tie-less, wearing a sports coat and carrying a 35mm camera and a small black bag, got out and walked toward the door. Bernie Potter was an investigator for the Office of the Medical Examiner, City of Philadelphia.

  This job, Potter thought, judging from the number of police cars—and especially the Fire Department rescue vehicle that normally would have been long gone from the scene—parked in front of the house, is going to be a little unusual.

  And then Captain O’Connor, who Bernie Potter knew was Commanding Officer of Northwest Detectives, came out the door. This was another indication that something special was going on. Captains of Detectives did not normally go out on routine Five Two Nine Two jobs.

  “What do you say, Bernie?”

  “What have we got?” Bernie asked as they shook hands.

  “Looks like a simple OD, Bernie. Caucasian female, early twenties, whose father happens to own Nesfoods.”

  “Nice house,” Bernie said. “I didn’t think these people were on public assistance. Where the body?”

  “In the dining room.”

  “What are you guys still doing here?” Bernie asked the Fire Department EMT on the patio. It was simple curiosity, not a reprimand.

  The EMT looked uncomfortable.

  “Like I told you,” Captain O’Connor answered for him, “the father owns Nesfoods International.” And then he looked down the drive at a new Ford coming up. “And here comes, I think, Chief Coughlin.”

  “Equal justice under the law, right?” Bernie asked.

  “There’s a doctor, a lady doctor, in there,” the EMT said, “said she wanted to be called when you came.”

  “What does she want?” Bernie asked.

  The EMT shrugged.

  Chief Coughlin got out of his car and walked up.

  “Good morning, Chief,” Tom O’Connor said.

  Coughlin shook his hand and then Bernie Potter’s.

  “Long time no see, Bernie,” he said. “You pronounce yet?”

  “Haven’t seen the body.”

  “The quicker we can get this over, the better. You call for a wagon, Tom?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t like to get in the way of my people.”

  “Check and see. If he hasn’t called for one, get one here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  “In the dining room,” the EMT said.

  “I heard it was on the patio here.”

  “The lady doctor made us move it,” the EMT said.

  “Let’s go have a look at it,” Coughlin said. “I know where the dining room is. Tom, you make sure about the wagon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Coughlin led the way to the dining room.

  “How did it get on the stretcher?” Bernie asked.

  “What I hear is that the father carried it downstairs,” the EMT said. “When we got here, he was sitting outside on one of them metal chairs, couches, holding it in his arms. We took it from him.”

  A look of
pain, or compassion, flashed briefly over Chief Coughlin’s face.

  “Where did they find it?” Bernie asked.

  Dr. Amelia Payne entered the dining room.

  “In her bedroom,” she answered the question. “In an erect position, with a syringe in her left arm.”

  “Dr. Payne, this is Mr. Potter, an investigator of the Medical Examiner’s Office.”

  “How do you do?” Amy said. “Death was apparently instantaneous, or nearly so,” she went on. “There is a frothy liquid in the nostrils, often encountered in cases of heroin poisoning. The decedent was a known narcotic-substance abuser. In my opinion—”

  “Doctor,” Bernie interrupted her uncomfortably, “I don’t mean to sound hard-nosed, but you don’t have any status here. This is the M.E.’s business.”

  “I am a licensed physician, Mr. Potter,” Amy said. “The decedent was my patient, and she died in her home in not-unexpected circumstances. Under those circumstances, I am authorized to pronounce, and to conduct, if in my judgment it is necessary, any postmortem examination.”

  “Amy, honey,” Chief Coughlin said gently.

  “Yes?” She turned to him.

  “I know where you’re coming from, Amy. But let me tell you how it is. You may be right. You probably are. But while you’re fighting the M.E. taking Penny’s body, think what’s going to happen: It’s going to take time, maybe a couple of days, before even your father can get an injunction. Until he gets a judge to issue an order to release it to you, the M.E.’ll hold the body. Let’s get it over with, as quickly and painlessly as possible. I already talked to the M.E. He’s going to do the autopsy himself, as soon as the body gets there. It can be in the hands of the funeral home in two, three hours.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Grace Detweiler’s going to need you,” Coughlin went on. “And Matt. That’s what’s important.”