The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  Amy looked at Bernie.

  “There’s no need for a postmortem,” she said. “Everybody in this room knows how this girl killed herself.”

  “It’s the law, Doctor,” Bernie said sympathetically.

  Amy turned to Dennis Coughlin.

  “What about Matt? Does he know?”

  “Peter Wohl’s waiting for him on North Broad Street. He’ll tell him. Unless…”

  “No,” Amy said. “I think Peter’s the best one. They have a sibling relationship. And Peter obviously has more experience than my father. You think Matt will come here?”

  “I would suppose so.”

  She turned to Bernie Potter.

  “OK, Mr. Potter,” she said. “She is pronounced at nine twenty-five A.M.” She turned back to Chief Coughlin. “Thank you, Uncle Denny.”

  She walked out of the dining room.

  Chief Coughlin turned to the EMT.

  “The wagon’s on the way. Wait in here until it gets here.”

  The EMT nodded.

  “I’m going to have to see the bedroom, Chief,” Bernie Potter said.

  “I’ll show you where it is,” Chief Coughlin said. “You through here?”

  “I haven’t seen the body,” Potter said.

  He squatted beside the stretcher and pulled the blanket off. He looked closely at the eyes and then closed them. He examined the nostrils.

  “Yeah,” he said, as if to himself. Then, “Give me a hand rolling her over.”

  The EMT helped him turn the body on its stomach. Bernie Potter tugged and pulled at Penelope Alice Detweiler’s nightdress until it was up around her neck.

  There was evidence of livor. The lower back and buttocks and the back of her legs were a dark purple color. Gravity drains blood in a corpse to the body’s lowest point.

  “OK,” he said. “No signs of trauma on the back. Now let’s turn her the other way.”

  There was more evidence of livor when the body was again on its back. The abdominal area and groin were a deep purple color.

  “No trauma here, either,” Bernie Potter said. He picked up the left arm.

  “It looks like a needle could have been in here,” he said. “It’s discolored.”

  “The maid said there was a syringe in her arm,” Captain O’Connor said. “And the district sergeant saw one, and some rubber tubing, on the floor in the corridor upstairs. He put chairs over them.”

  Bernie Potter nodded. Then he put Penelope’s arm back beside her body, tugged at the nightgown so that it covered the body again, replaced the blanket, and stood up.

  “OK,” he said. “Now let’s go see the bedroom. And the needle.”

  Chief Coughlin led the procession upstairs.

  “There it is,” Tom O’Connor said when they came to the chairs in the middle of the upstairs corridor. He carefully picked up the chairs Officer Wells had placed over the plastic hypodermic syringe and the surgical rubber tubing and put them against the wall.

  Bernie Potter went into his bag and took two plastic bags from it. Then, using a forceps, he picked up the syringe and the tubing from the carpet and carefully placed them into the plastic bags.

  Coughlin then led him to Penelope’s bedroom. Potter first took several photographs of the bed and the bedside tables, then took another, larger plastic bag from his bag and, using the forceps, moved the spoon, the candle, the cotton ball, and the glassine bag containing a white crystalline substance from Penelope’s bedside table into it.

  “OK,” he said. “I’ve got everything I need. Let me use a telephone and I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll show you, Bernie,” Chief Coughlin said. “There’s one by the door downstairs.”

  As they went down the stairs, the door to the dining room opened and two uniformed police officers came through it, carrying Penelope’s body on a stretcher. It was covered with a blanket, but her arm hung down from the side.

  “The arm!” Chief Coughlin said.

  One of the Fire Department EMTs, who was holding the door open, went quickly and put the arm onto the stretcher.

  The policemen carried the stretcher outside and down the stairs from the patio and slid it through the already open doors of a Police Department wagon.

  Chief Coughlin pointed to the telephone, then walked out onto the patio.

  “Just don’t give it to anybody,” he called. “It’s for Dr. Greene. He expects it.”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the police officers said.

  Coughlin went back into the foyer.

  Bernie Potter was just hanging up the telephone.

  “Thanks, Bernie,” Coughlin said, and put out his hand.

  “Christ, what a way to begin a day,” Bernie said.

  “Yeah,” Coughlin said.

  It would have been reasonable for anyone seeing Inspector Peter Wohl leaning on the trunk of his car, its right wheels off the pavement on the sidewalk, his arms folded on his chest, a look of annoyance on his face, to assume that he was an up-and-coming stockbroker, or lawyer, about to be late for an early-morning appointment because his new car had broken down and the Keystone Automobile Club was taking their own damned sweet time coming to his rescue.The look of displeasure on his face was in fact not even because he was going to have to tell Matt Payne, of whom he was extraordinarily fond—his mother had once said that Matt was like the little brother she had never been able to give him, and she was, he had realized, right—that the love of his life was dead, but rather because it had just occurred to him that he was really a cold-blooded sonofabitch.

  He would, he had realized, be as sympathetic as he could possibly be when Matt showed up, expressing his own personal sense of loss. But the truth of the matter was, he had just been honest enough with himself to admit that he felt Matt was going to be a hell of a lot better off with Penelope Detweiler dead.

  It had been his experience, and as a cop, there had been a lot of experience, that a junkie is a junkie is a junkie. And in the case of Penelope Detweiler, if after the best medical and psychiatric treatment that money could, quite literally, buy, she was still sticking needles in herself, for whatever reason, that seemed to be absolutely true.

  There would have been no decent future for them. If she hadn’t OD’d this morning, she would have OD’d next week, or next month, or next year, or two years from now. There would have been other incidents, sordid beyond the comprehension of people who didn’t know the horrors of narcotics addiction firsthand, and each of them would have killed Matt a little.

  It was better for Matt that this had happened now, rather than after they had married, after they had children.

  The fact that he felt sorry for Penelope Detweiler did not alter the fact that he was glad she had died before she could cause Matt more pain.

  But by definition, Peter Wohl thought, anyone who is glad a twenty-three-year-old woman is dead is a cold-blooded sonofabitch.

  He looked up as a car nearly identical to his flashed its headlights at him and then bounced up on the curb. Detective Jesus Martinez was driving. Detective Matt Payne, smiling, opened the passenger door and got out.

  Martinez, annoyance on his face, hurried to follow him.

  Why do those two hate each other?

  The answer, obviously, is that opposites do not attract.

  What do I say to Matt?

  When all else fails, try the unvarnished truth.

  “Don’t tell me, you’re broken down again?” Matt Payne said.

  Gremlins—or the effects of John Barleycorn over the weekend affecting Monday-morning Ford assembly lines—had been at work on Inspector Wohl’s automobiles. His generators failed, the radiators leaked their coolant, the transmissions ground themselves into pieces, usually leaving him stranded in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Most of his subordinates were highly amused. He was now on his third brand-new car in six months.

  “Let’s get in the car,” Wohl said. “Jesus, give us a minute, please?”

  Matt looked curious
but obeyed the order wordlessly. He closed the door after him and looked at Wohl.

  Wohl met Matt’s eyes.

  “Matt, Penny OD’d,” he said.

  Matt’s face tightened. His eyebrows rose in question, as if seeking a denial of what he had just heard.

  Wohl shrugged, and threw his hands up in a gesture of helplessness.

  “Matt…”

  “Oh, shit!” Matt said.

  “The maid found her in her bed with a needle in her arm. Death was apparently instantaneous.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  “Tom O’Connor—he commands Northwest Detectives—called Denny Coughlin when they called it in. I happened to be in Denny’s office when he got the call. He went out to the house to see how he could help. By now the M.E. has the body.”

  “Instantaneous?”

  Wohl nodded. “So I’m told.”

  “Oh, shit, Peter!”

  “I’m sorry, Matt,” Wohl said, and put his arm around Matt’s shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”

  “We had a goddamned fight last night.”

  “This is not your fault, Matt. Don’t start thinking that.”

  “Same goddamned subject. Our future. Me being a cop.”

  “If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. They find an excuse.”

  “Addicts, you mean?”

  Wohl nodded.

  “Has Amy been notified?” Matt asked. “This is going to wipe out Mrs. Detweiler.”

  His reaction is not what I expected. But what did I expect?

  “I don’t know,” Wohl said, and then had a thought. He reached under the dash for a microphone.

  “Isaac Three, William One.”

  “Isaac Three.” It was the voice of Sergeant Francis Holloran, Chief Inspector Coughlin’s driver.

  “Tom, check with the Chief and see if Dr. Payne has been notified.”

  “She’s here, Inspector.”

  “Thank you,” Wohl said, and replaced the microphone. He looked over at Matt.

  “I guess I’d better go out there,” Matt said.

  “Take the car and as much time as you need,” Wohl said. “I’ll take Martinez with me. Or why don’t you give me the keys to your car, and I’ll have Martinez or somebody bring it out there and swap.”

  “I’ll go to the schoolhouse and get my car,” Matt said. “I’m a coward, Peter. I don’t want to go out there at all. With a little bit of luck, maybe I can get myself run over by a bus on my way.”

  “Matt, this isn’t your fault.”

  Matt shrugged.

  “I think I will take the car out there,” he said. “Get it over with. I’ll have it back at the schoolhouse in an hour or so.”

  “Take what time you need,” Wohl said. “Is there anything else I can do, Matt?”

  “No. But thank you.”

  “See me when you come to the schoolhouse.”

  Matt nodded.

  “I’m really sorry, Matt.”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  They got out of the car and walked to Martinez.

  “Are the keys in that?” Matt asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  Without replying, Matt walked to the car, got behind the wheel, and started the engine.

  Martinez looked at Wohl.

  Matt bounced off the curb and, tires chirping, entered the stream of traffic.

  “I should have sent you with him,” Wohl thought aloud.

  “Sir?”

  “Penelope Detweiler overdosed about an hour ago.”

  “Madre de Dios!” Martinez said, and crossed himself.

  “Yeah,” Wohl said bitterly, then walked back to his car.

  Martinez walked to the car but didn’t get in.

  “Get in, for Christ’s sake,” Wohl snapped, and was immediately sorry. “Sorry, Jesus. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  Martinez shrugged, signaling that he understood.

  “That poor sonofabitch,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Wohl agreed.

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Inspector Peter Wohl said to Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach as he walked in his office. “Something came up.”“The Detweiler girl?” Weisbach asked, and when Wohl nodded, added: “Sabara told me. Awful. For her—what was she, twenty-three, her whole life ahead of her—and for Payne. He was really up when you put out the call for him.”

  “Up? What for, for having put the cuffs on a crooked cop? He liked that?”

  “No. I think he felt sorry for Captain Cazerra. I think he felt vindicated. He told me that you, and Washington and Denny Coughlin, had really eaten his ass out for going out on that ledge.”

  “I wasn’t going to let it drop, either—it was damned stupid—until this…this goddamned overdose came along.”

  “I imagine he’s pretty broken up?”

  “I don’t know. No outward emotion, which may mean he really has one of those well-bred stiff upper lips we hear about, or that he’s in shock.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Out at the estate. He’s coming here. I’m going to see that he’s not alone.”

  “There was a kid in here, McFadden, from Northwest Detectives, looking for him.”

  “Good. I was going to put the arm out for him. They’re pals. You think he knows what happened?”

  “I’m sure he does. When O’Mara told him Payne wasn’t here, he said something about him probably being in Chestnut Hill, and that he would go there.”

  Wohl picked up his telephone and was eventually connected with O’Connor.

  “Captain O’Connor. Inspector Wohl calling,” he said, and then: “Peter Wohl, Tom. Need a favor.”

  Weisbach faintly heard O’Connor say, “Name it.”

  “If you could see your way clear to give your Detective McFadden a little time off, I’d appreciate it. He and my Detective Payne are friends, and for the next couple of days, Payne, I’m sure you know why, is going to need all the friends he has.”

  Weisbach heard O’Connor say, “I already told him to take whatever time he needed, Inspector.”

  “I owe you one, Tom.”

  “I owe you a lot more than one, Inspector. Glad to help. Christ, what a terrible waste!”

  “Isn’t it?” Wohl said, added, “Thanks, Tom,” and hung up.

  He had a second thought, and pushed a button on the telephone that connected him with Officer O’Mara, his administrative assistant.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Two things, Paul. Inspector Weisbach and I need some coffee, and while that’s brewing, I want you to call Special Agent Jack Matthews at the FBI. Tell him I asked you to tell him what happened in Chestnut Hill this morning, and politely suggest that Detective Payne would probably be grateful for some company. That latter applies to you, too. Why don’t you stop by Payne’s apartment on your way home?”

  Weisbach heard O’Mara say, “Yes, sir.”

  Wohl looked at Weisbach as he hung up.

  “Busy morning. I feel like it’s two in the afternoon, and it’s only ten to eleven.”

  “Busier even than I think you know. Did you hear about Lowenstein turning in his papers?”

  “Jesus, no! Are you sure?”

  The door opened and Paul O’Mara walked in with a tray holding two somewhat battered mugs of coffee, a can of condensed milk, and a saucer holding a dozen paper packets of sugar bearing advertisements suggesting they were souvenirs from McDonald’s and Roy Rogers and other fast-food emporiums.

  “That was quick,” Wohl said. “Thank you, Paul.” He waited until O’Mara had left, and then said, “Tell me about Lowenstein.”

  “The first thing this morning, Harry McElroy delivered Lowenstein’s badge and a memorandum announcing his intention to retire to the Commissioner. I got that from McElroy, so that much I know for sure.”

  “God knows I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m not surprised that he’s going out—”

  Weisbach held up his hand, interrupting him.

  “Just befor
e I came out here,” he said, “Lowenstein put out the arm for me. I met him at the Philadelphia Athletic Club on Broad Street. And not only did he not mention going out, but he didn’t act like it, either.”

  “Interesting,” Wohl said. “What did he want?”

  “I got sort of a pep talk. He told me this Ethical Affairs Unit was a good thing for me, could help my career, and that all I had to do to get anything I wanted from the Detective Division was to ask.”

  “Lowenstein and the Mayor got into it at David Pekach’s engagement party. Got into it bad. Did you hear about that?”

  “The Mayor had just seen that Charley Whaley story in the Ledger. The ‘more unsolved murders, no arrests, no comment’ story. You see that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For some reason, it displeased our mayor,” Wohl said, dryly. “The Mayor then announced he wouldn’t be surprised if Wally Milham was involved in the Kellog murder, primarily because he thinks that Milham’s morals are questionable. You’ve heard that gossip, I suppose?”

  “Milham and Kellog’s wife? Yeah, sure.”

  “The Mayor asked Lowenstein why he hadn’t spoken to him about his love life. Lowenstein told the Mayor he didn’t think it was any of his business. Then, warming to the subject, defended Milham. And then, really getting sore, Lowenstein made impolitic remarks about, quote, the Mayor’s own private detective squad, unquote.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Whereupon the Mayor told him if he didn’t like the way things were being run, he should talk it over with the Commissioner. And then—he was really in a lousy mood—to make the point to the Chief who was running the Department, he told him ‘the Commissioner’ was going to send Matt Payne, who knows zilch about Homicide, over to Homicide to (a) help with the double murder at that gin mill on Market Street—”

  “The Inferno?”

  “Right. And (b) to see what he could learn about other Homicide investigations, meaning, of course, how Homicide is handling the Kellog job.”

  “My God!”

  “I thought Lowenstein was going to have a heart attack. Or punch out the Mayor. It was that bad. I’m not surprised, now that I hear it, that he turned in his papers.”

  “I got it from Harry McElroy that he did. But then he didn’t act like it when he sent for me.”