A Father's Law

by Richard Wright

  “I get you, Mr. Mayor,” Ruddy said. “I’d heard about it. I’m calm.”

  “That’s it,” the mayor approved. “People have to let off steam some way. Now, tonight they may pass a lot of hair-brained resolutions over there—resolutions that can’t naturally be carried out. Don’t let it bother you. They too will be playing to the public. I’m a politician, and I understand such things.”

  “I get you, Mr. Mayor,” Ruddy murmured. “In fact, I’ll help the meeting along with a special detail to guard it, honor it, and protect it.”

  “Fine! You’ve got the spirit,” the mayor said.

  “I’m used to these things,” Ruddy said.

  “Chief, are there any developments on the Janet Wilder case that you care to mention?” the mayor asked. “Is it linked with the Byrnes and Hindricks cases? Is there any way for you to tell if they were Brentwood Park jobs or did they come from the outside?”

  Ruddy lowered his head. As an honest officer, he did not like to overrate what he had found, for he was sure so far that he had touched the heart of the crimes.

  “Well, let’s say that the crimes were a bit of both,” Ruddy said.

  “We’re fairly sure that the criminal came from outside . . . but it seems that he may have had some kind of contact here. At least, we’re now fairly sure that the gun came from here. In fact, I’m willing to stake my reputation that the gun used in all four crimes came out of Detective Heard’s own home,” Ruddy stated.

  “No? Now, Branden’s death had nothing—”

  “It was completely separate from these killings,” Ruddy assured the mayor.

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  “And Heard?”

  “He was in no way criminally involved,” Ruddy said. “Yet the .38 that we think was used in all four jobs was taken from his home by somebody. We’re checking intensively on that.”

  “That is progress,” the mayor stated. “Didn’t think you’d gone that far.”

  Ruddy related that his theory was that the gun had been buried in the forest east of Brentwood by the murderer, that the murderer had gotten into a panic and had dug it up, and had been surprised by Janet Wilder, who was slain by him.

  “We think that the murderer took that gun, broke it up, maybe with a sledgehammer, and then threw the pieces into piles of sand and cement at a building site on the far South Side. That is how we came across it. A bit of that gun got stuck in a concrete mixing machine and was dug out. That made us feel that the rest of that gun was poured into cement, which is now drying on the twelfth floor of a new building. That cement is being knocked out and will be brought here tonight. While that mass meeting is in progress, we’ll be pounding up that cement to find the various bits of that gun, and we will assemble it. Of course, Mr. Mayor, this is confidential. We don’t want the murderer to know that we’ve made this much progress or he’ll fl ee.”

  “Fantastic!” the mayor exclaimed. “The commissioner’s judgment in you is confirmed. What work! For the first time in more than a year, we have a real lead.”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  The mayor smiled and stood. “Well, if there’s anything my office can do, don’t hesitate to call on me, Chief.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Ruddy also stood.

  “And depend on my keeping a stiff upper lip about your findings,” the mayor said.

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  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And if you have any problems, personal or otherwise, don’t hesitate to come to me,” the mayor said.

  “You’re very kind, sir.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Mayor.”

  They shook hands. After the mayor had gone, Ruddy sat and sighed. Well, that had not been too bad. He had nothing to fear from that direction. He took the wad of paper contain-ing the bit of cement from his coat pocket and opened it and stared at it. Ought he to hand this in for examination now? No, wait until that gun had been assembled, that is, if the other parts of the gun were found. Then, as usual, his mind fl ew back to its preoccupation with Tommy. Each move he made seemed to be drawing or pushing him nearer to an obligatory showdown with that boy. He had to sit that boy down and fi re some straight questions at him. Now, he knew that Tommy had long been a close friend of Charlie’s and that he no doubt had had access to the Heard home. Had Tommy swiped that .38 out of the Heard home shortly after Marie’s tragedy had occurred? He sighed. How logical it all seemed. Tommy had a motive. Tommy had a gun. Tommy had grown secretive. Tommy had had cement on his tennis shoes. Tommy was obsessed with the idea of crime. And a bit of a .38 gun handle, Captain Snell had said, was found in a cement mixer. When he had been made the chief of police, had Tommy gotten into a wild panic, rushed to those woods and unearthed that gun, and had he been surprised by that Janet Wilder girl, shot her, and then taken the gun on a long and crazy night walk, then found that building site, broken up the gun and pushed the pieces into sand, cement, and the concrete mixer? Could be? Could be.

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  Wearily, Ruddy issued orders for a detail of offi cers to guard the mass meeting scheduled for that evening, then he told Mary Jane that he was headed home for lunch.

  “Don’t give out any information to anybody,” he told her.

  “You know me, Chief,” Mary Jane sang. “I’m as silent as a boneyard.”

  C H A P T E R 1 6

  Even while en route home for his lunch, Ruddy could not entirely shake off the cares and preoccupation of his offi ce.

  Before quitting the premises of the police headquarters, he saw the first city truck enter the huge courtyard, piled high with huge slabs of white concrete, from the ends of which were sticking the rusted tips of iron bars of reinforcements. Those slabs of concrete had to be crushed to see if they contained the missing bits of the

  .38, whose piece of handle butt had been found by accident in the concrete mixer. “Either I’m a blind fool acting in panic, or the other pieces of that .38 are in those chunks,” Ruddy told himself.

  At the last moment, when behind his steering wheel, instead of driving directly to his home, Ruddy slowly circled the city, reading the freshly pasted billboards advertising the mass meeting slated for nine P.M. that evening. COME ONE AND ALL, read one poster, AND DEBATE YOUR SAFETY. Well, he’d be there, keeping in the background, trying to weigh and judge the temper of the populace. And he would have the stenographic department take down every word that was said. You could never tell. . . .

  “Hell, the murderer might even speak tonight,” he muttered with a grim smile. “Stranger things have happened.”

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  As he was leaving the city limits of Brentwood Park, he slowed his car to glance at the recently constructed roadblocks and to give a few stiff waves of his hand to his men, who seemed smartly clad and alert. Now and again his ears caught snatches of distantly wailing sirens. Yeah, the force was on its toes. He felt pleased. He would go and eat now, feeling that the investigation he had launched was well under way. He slowed at a newsstand and bought the late morning papers and glanced at the headlines:

  MAYOR TO SPEAK AT TONIGHT’S MASS MEETING

  SECRET DEVELOPMENTS HINTED IN WILDER CASE

  POSSES COMB BRENTWOOD PARK FOREST AREA

  POLICE HEADS WORK AROUND THE CLOCK

  NEW CHIEF CRACKS DOWN ON LAWLESSNESS

  POLICE DRAGNET SURROUNDS BRENTWOOD PARK AREA

  NATION SHOCKED BY JANET WILDER MURDER

  CONGRESSIONAL PROBE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT HINTED

  CRIME SPECIALISTS CALLED IN JANET WILDER INQUIRY

  NEW LEAD ON MURDER GUN IS WHISPERED

  That last newspaper headline made anger surge in Ruddy.

  “Now, who in goddamn hell let that leak out?” he asked himself aloud. “Somebody’s gonna get kicked or I’ll have somebody’s head today!” But as he read the article, he found
that no real harm had been done; yet he felt that his strict orders for se-crecy had surely been violated, implicitly disobeyed. “I’ll check on that now,” he muttered, lifting the receiver of the phone in his car. When the light had glowed green, he asked for Mary Jane and growled to her, “Mary Jane, ask Ed to find out how the Globe has gotten hold of that information on the gun! I got to know!”

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  “Yes sir. It wasn’t from me!” Mary Jane protested.

  “Didn’t say it was,” Ruddy snapped. “Now, get busy!”

  “Yes sir, Chief.”

  “I want discipline among my men or I’m going to know why,” he said, hanging up.

  Agnes met Ruddy at the front door; she had been waiting for him.

  “Hi, stranger.”

  “Hi, Agnes,” he greeted her. “Forgot me?”

  “Almost,” she said, kissing him. “You do look a bit tired and strained.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “When did you leave this morning?”

  “Oh, around three, I guess.”

  “Good God,” she sighed, then with sudden anxiety asked,

  “Say, where’s Tommy?”

  Ruddy stiffened; they were walking arm and arm toward the dining room. He ripped off his gun and cartridge belt and flung it onto a chair. He turned and stared at Agnes.

  “Isn’t he here?”

  “No.”

  “He left my office a little while ago,” Ruddy told her with baffl ed eyes.

  “He didn’t come here . . . and he didn’t sleep here last night, either,” Agnes said, her eyes wide.

  “Yeah. I know.” Ruddy tried to speak calmly. “He got in late. But I don’t know why he wouldn’t have come straight on here.” He recalled with shame how he had hustled Tommy out of his offi ce.

  “And, Ruddy, he must have come into the house last night because—”

  “I saw ’im coming in as I left,” Ruddy interrupted her.

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  “Oh. Then look—he unpacked a box in his room,” Agnes said. “It was a car radio. The kind that the police use. I suppose he’s fitted it in his car.”

  Ruddy stared again. Now, what in hell was this? Tommy had put a shortwave police radio in his car! That was the limit.

  “You know, police radios in private cars is against regulations,” he said.

  “What do you suppose he wanted it for?”

  “To listen to police news, of course,” Ruddy said, and possibilities leaped in his mind. Why in the world would Tommy want to hear police broadcasts?

  “And the Globe called here this morning,” Agnes told him.

  “The Globe?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they want?”

  “I don’t know. I asked them and they hung up.”

  Ruddy’s lips parted. Had Tommy told the Globe about that gun? Jesus . . . had he told of the hole in the forest or about the gun missing in the Heard home? But Tommy wouldn’t do that . . . and Tommy had heard him this morning stress the secret nature of that gun business. And Tommy had never before meddled in his police work. I should’ve known better than to talk like that before him. Then Ruddy was thunderstruck. Aw, maybe Tommy had told the papers about the gun missing in the Heard home before he had come to the office? If so, why had he not mentioned it? No. Tommy had done nothing like that. Somebody else had done that.

  “How are things going?” Agnes asked. “You are all over the papers.”

  “Yeah. I don’t like that. When things are going right in police work, there oughtn’t to be any noise in the press.”

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  “That mass meeting—”

  “It’s nothing, really. I talked to the mayor, and he said—”

  “How is he?” Agnes asked eagerly.

  “Okay. He wants us over one evening.”

  “Oh, great.”

  Even when they had sat down to eat, Tommy had not arrived.

  “I wonder what that boy’s up to?” Ruddy asked as he out into his steak.

  “At school maybe,” Agnes said. “But he generally sleeps here, and he didn’t last night.”

  Ruddy hated the idea of talking “crime” at home, and especially with Agnes. But since Tommy seemed involved in all this, he felt he ought to say something.

  “You know, Tommy gave us a valuable clue in that Janet Wilder case.”

  “Really? How? I told you—”

  “He found out that the gun used might have come from the Heard home.”

  “The gun in the Janet Wilder killing?”

  “Yes. And we think that that gun was used in the other killings too.”

  “Oh! Then maybe Tommy might get part of the reward?”

  Agnes asked, her eyes shining.

  Ruddy started! Gosh, he had not thought of that part of it.

  Was that what was egging poor Tommy on? If so, what a fool he had been not to suspect it sooner!

  “Don’t know. A .38 was used on the Wilder girl, and a .38 is missing from the Heard home.”

  “You know that Charlie was one of Tommy’s best friends, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe Tommy’s at the Heards’ now?”

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  “Hadn’t thought of that. I’ll try calling there after lunch.”

  “Oh, if Tommy has helped a bit . . .” Agnes mused, toying with her fork.

  Ruddy was irked, but he could not afford to tell her why.

  Goddamnit, why didn’t Tommy keep out of his business? And why in all hell had he put a shortwave radio into his car? He’s going too damned far, he shouted to himself. He’s not to meddle.

  “Ruddy?”

  “Yeah, darling?”

  “May I and Tommy go to that mass meeting tonight?”

  “I don’t see why not. If you can fi nd Tommy—”

  “Oh, splendid!”

  Ruddy was eating dessert when the phone rang.

  “Get that, Agnes,” Ruddy begged. “Every time I hear a phone these days I almost start out of my skin.”

  “Yes, darling. I’ll get it.” Agnes rose and went to the phone.

  “Mr. Turner’s residence.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Seigel. Yes, Ruddy’s here. Just a moment.” Agnes cupped the receiver with her palm. “It’s Eddie Seigel, your friend. He says that it’s personal.”

  “Personal?”

  “Yes. He’s waiting.”

  Ruddy went and picked up the receiver.

  “Yeah, Ed?”

  “Ruddy, I think you ought to get to headquarters as quickly as possible.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I can’t tell you over the phone.”

  “Why?”

  “No. It’s best you got here.”

  “But what the hell’s wrong, man? I’m the chief of police in that station?”

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  “No, Ruddy. It’s not that. It’s . . . you see, it’s something personal.”

  “About you?”

  “No.”

  “Then who?”

  There was a long hesitation on Ed’s end of the wire.

  “No, you, Ruddy.”

  Ruddy swallowed, blinked, then asked, “What do you mean? Me . . . ?”

  “It’s your son, Ruddy.”

  “Oh! Where is he?”

  “Here.”

  “Where? ”

  “At the police station.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, Ruddy, do me a favor and get here as quickly as you can, see?”

  Ruddy’s scalp felt tight. Then his face flushed hot. He thought rapidly. Thank God he had not mentioned Tommy’s name over the phone; Agnes would have no notion about what had happened. All that Ruddy could understand was that the police, his men, were holding his son! And what for? His head swam. How ridiculous. But Ed had said it was so,
was true, and Ed was no man to lie or joke.

  “Okay,” Ruddy said soberly, “be right there. Hold everything.”

  “Right!”

  “Do nothing. I’m coming.”

  “Right. You can depend on me, Ruddy.”

  Ruddy hung up, lifted his right palm, and brushed sweat from his brow. Good God, had the police beat him to his own son? He knew now why Ed had not wanted to say more over the phone; Ed had not wanted to talk with Agnes near him. Hell, it must be

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  something serious. What in hell had that goddamn fool of a son of his gone and got himself into? Yeah, he should have cracked down long ago! He ought to have confronted Tommy about that concrete on his tennis shoes. And why had Tommy gone and meddled into that gun business at the Heard home? Oh, maybe the police had learned that Tommy had found out about the gun and had told the Globe? No, had it been only that, Ed would surely have told him about it over the phone. And the boy had had a police radio recently installed in his car. . . . Was it in connection with the Wilder murder and those other murders that Tommy had been picked up? What a sensation that would make: POLICE CHIEF’S SON

  BOOKED FOR MURDER! No, God . . .

  “What is it, Ruddy?” Agnes asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You looked worried and shocked.”

  “Oh, they just want to consult with me.”

  “You’ve got a break in the case?”

  “Something like that,” he mumbled, strapping his gun again about his hip. If that boy’s gone and done something wild and foolish, I’ll break his goddamn neck. And a mass meeting was coming up tonight, a mass meeting about crime. That was a hot one.

  “Don’t you want your coffee, darling?”

  “Haven’t time, Agnes.”

  He kissed her, then squeezed her shoulders with both hands, tightly.

  “See you later, hunh?” he said.

  “Sure. Maybe tonight. If I find Tommy and—”

  “Yeah, if you find him,” Ruddy said and was gone like a shot out of the room, down the hall and toward his car.

  C H A P T E R 1 7

  With screaming siren, with his head tight to the point of feeling that it would burst, Ruddy burned up the asphalt in getting back to headquarters. As he drove, swinging around curves, he felt that all along a premonition had been seething in him that something like this was about to happen.