The Right Jack

by Margaret Maron

  "I've been calling all weekend," he said bluntly. "Anne doesn't answer the phone."

  "No, she's on assignment in Peru."

  " Peru?"

  "An interview with El Diego, the poet."

  "Oh."

  McKinnon had picked up a pencil from the desk top and he turned it in his big hands while the silence grew.

  "She should be home this weekend," Sigrid said at last. "I'll tell her you were-"

  The pencil snapped. I

  "What did she say about me Friday night?" he asked, not meeting her eyes.

  "That you and my father were once partners."

  "That's all?"

  "And that you were with him when he was killed. She blames you for Dad's death, doesn't she?"

  "Is that what she said?" Suddenly he looked more tired than she had ever seen him, and sad.

  "No, but why else would she-?" Sigrid took a deep breath and began again. "She's heard me speak your name, yet she never once asked if you were Dad's partner. And you! You've known all along who I was, haven't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Then why, Captain? Is Mother right? I always thought he was killed in the line of duty."

  "He was." McKinnon looked up from the broken pencil ends he'd been fitting back together and his brown eyes met hers squarely. "Pull the report and read it yourself."

  "Who wrote it?"

  He gave a short bitter laugh. "Right." Sigrid flushed. "If I'm wrong-"

  "No, don't apologize for your instinct. Anyhow, you're right. I wrote most of it. But not all. And every word's the truth. Leif got careless. The guy that did it-a penny-ante small-timer messed up in something bigger than he could handle-he was holed up in a hotel room off Times Square and scared out of his skull. Your dad knew him. From the days when he was walking the beat.

  He figured he could just walk in the guy's room and waltz him down to the station. He laughed at me because I had my gun out."

  His voice trailed off as he remembered.; Sigrid waited quietly.

  "He was a Viking. Do you remember him? Big and blond and so sure of himself." There was pain in his voice.

  Sigrid shook her head. "Not very clearly. There are pictures, of course. And I remember standing at a high window once and waving good-bye to him down in the street. A few things like that. Not much more."

  "You were so young." He looked at her and his smile was almost wistful. "I don't suppose you remember the trot-a-horse rides you took on my knee?"

  "No. What happened to the man who shot him, your penny-ante small-timer?"

  "I saved the state the cost of a trial," McKinnon answered flatly. "It's all in the report."

  "If that's the way it happened, why did Mother react the way she did?"

  "You'll have to ask her." He'd gone back to twisting the pencil ends. "Maybes he thought I should have shot sooner or maybe she thought I should have been the one to go into that room first. She wouldn't talk to me or see me after the funeral. I tried. God knows I tried. She called me a murderer and said she hoped to heaven she'd never see me again. I don't know. Maybe she was right. Maybe there was something I could have done. I couldn't bring Leif back, but I could get out of her life and I did."

  "Why didn't you tell me when I was first assigned to work here?"

  He shrugged and threw the broken pencil aside. "What was the point? At first I thought you knew and chose not to speak of it. Later I realized you probably didn't know and then it seemed best not to rake up the past. You're a good officer. I didn't want you to transfer out."

  "I wouldn't do that! I fought for this job. It's all I ever wanted to do."

  "So maybe I should let you get out of here and do it," McKinnon growled, reverting to the gruff superior she'd always known.

  She rose and crossed to the door. "Keep me posted on these Maintenonk illings," he said as she stepped throught he doorway. "And, Harald?"

  "Sir?"

  "Would you let me know when Annec omes back?"

  ***

  Returning to her office, Sigrid passed Peters and Eberstadt in the hallway, Peters knotting his tie as he hurried on short legs to keep up with his partner.

  "We thought we'd catch the Wolferman funeral," said Eberstadt. "It's at eleven up at St. John's."

  That explained the somber suits, Sigrid realized. Usually the two men wore casual sports jackets and went tieless as much as possible.

  She turned the corner and almost bumped into Elaine Albee.

  They did those ridiculous mirror movements of two people trying to dodge each other until Sigrid grasped what was happening and stood still, a good strategy except that the other officer adopted it at the same moment and now they stood motionless, face to face.

  Elaine Albee stared at her, embarrassed, and then began to giggle. "Sorry."

  As Sigrid stepped around her, Albee said, "Lieutenant?"

  "Yes?"

  "I was wondering. About Lieutenant Knight."

  "Yes?"

  "He's married, isn't he? I mean, I'm sort of getting mixed signals. You know? And I don't waste time on married men."

  Sigrid looked at the younger officer. There was a gun strapped under her arm and she was a good cop, but at the same time her blonde curls were stylishly clipped, a bright blue cotton sweater echoed her eyes, and there were pretty gold studs in her ears. Albee was feminine, forthright, and unafraid of emotional entanglements; and for a moment Sigrid felt a pang of sympathy for Jim Lowry.

  "There hasn't been a legal divorce," she said carefully, "but I don't think they're living together."

  "Thanks, Lieutenant," said Albee and darted on.

  Alan Knight was just typing a final paragraph as Sigrid entered her office. She took one of the side chairs and began to read through the notes, trying to make an orderly pattern in her mind. This was where she missed Tillie the most. Careful and methodical, he was excellent at spotting minute details that slipped past her. There were times when she could skim across mountain tops, but not without Tillie building careful bridges beneath her, shoring up intuition with concrete specifics.

  But if the killer's identity were anywhere revealed in this sheaf of notes, Sigrid couldn't see it. She sighed and set the pages aside. "Who do you like for it?" she asked Knight.

  "Seems to me that it's a toss-up between Baldwin and Flythe, with Baldwin winning on points."

  "How?"

  "Well, they both had opportunity, I think; but Baldwin 's got the motive. She probably goofed and put the board at the wrong place. She's not the most efficient

  ***

  person I've ever met."

  "No, but is she the most coldblooded?"

  "Why not?" Look how she's more worried about losing her job than about her cousin losing her arm. Or so she'd have us believe. I think she's ashamed to look Dixon in the eye myself," he said indignantly, frowning down at the typewriter.

  "That's just immaturity," Sigrid argued. "Think about it, Alan. Whoever booby-trapped that cribbage board had to know he would be killing at least two people. He knew there would be even more wounded, seriously wounded-eyes, limbs-and he didn't care. To kill one person, he was willing to kill or maim a dozen others. We're not talking about schoolgirl self-centeredness. This is a compete disregard for human life."

  "Like Red Snow when they bombed that draft board in Chicago?"

  "And didn't notice-or care-that there were children on the other side of that partition." Sigrid nodded. "There has to be a link. Flythe has to be connected somehow."

  She handed back the sheaf of notes. "There's a Xerox machine at the end of the hall. Would you copy these? And where's that sketch you made of the Maintenon's floor plan? We'll need a duplicate of that, too."

  "What are you going to do?" Knight asked, smoothing out his crumpled drawing.

  "When I called the hospital this morning, they said Tillie was conscious and able to talk and watch television. If he can watch television, he can read. Maybe he'll see something we've missed. After all, he was there Friday night."
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  25

  TILLIE'S hospital room was painted a cheerful melon, several vases of flowers sat on the dresser, get-well cards were taped to the wall beside his bed, and a cluster of silvery helium balloons bobbled near the ceiling with colorful ribbons streaming down.

  There were bruises on his round face and he was extensively taped and bandaged, but he was able to press the control that lowered and raised his bed, to manipulate the channel selector for the television on the opposite wall, and, with slightly more difficulty, to answer the telephone on his bed table.

  Eyes are the windows of the soul, someone once said, but Sigrid had never recognized the truth of that remark until she saw the friendly intelligence shining in Tillie's gaze and remembered the blank stare she'd seen there Saturday.

  "Marian told me you'd been hurt, too," he said when greetings were over and Alan Knight had been introduced.

  "It's healing properly," Sigrid said. She'd stopped by the doctor's on their way over and he'd put on fresh dressings. "What about you?"

  "You know what they say-it only hurts when I laugh. As long as I'm still, it's okay. Everything feels tight. And I keep falling asleep. That's the concussion, I guess."

  "Do you remember much about Friday night?"

  "Everything. The doctor says some people don't with a concussion, but I do."

  Methodically, Tillie reconstructed the whole evening, beginning with the lamb chops he'd had for dinner after Sigrid dropped him off at the Maintenon Friday night and ending with groping under the table to find the peg Commander Dixon had dropped.

  "How is she?" he asked. "The paper said she was in critical condition, too."

  "We'll probably go over when we leave here," Alan Knight said. "She wasn't quite as lucky as you, Detective Tildon. They had to amputate her right arm."

  "Oh, Jesus!" Tillie said, shocked. "She was so nice. Beautiful, too. That red dress. When I read her name on the seating chart, I thought she'd be a man, of course. Commander T. J. Dixon. And she laughed and asked did I expect someone with tattoos up and down his arms."

  His voice wavered and his eyes became watery. "Her arms were so white and smooth."

  Sigrid knew how close to the surface lay the emotions of someone seriously ill or wounded. "Tillie-" she said helplessly.

  "We've brought you all the notes of our interviews," Knight interposed smoothly. "Lieutenant Harald said you'll spot whatever we might be missing."

  Tillie was diverted. "Did she?"

  He listened quietly while they went through the notes, explained to him the diagrams and photographs, and discussed who had alibis and who didn't. He agreed with Sigrid that a Red Snow connection seemed more likely than a KGB plot or a girlish attempt to speed up an inheritance, and discounted the possibility that the bomb had been meant for him or Commander Dixon, "After going to that much trouble, they wouldn't put the rigged board at the wrong place."

  A nurse came in as he spoke and asked if they would mind waiting outside in the hall.

  "We've finished," Sigrid said, thinking that Tillie looked too tired to continue anyhow. She got to her feet. "Don't try to do too much, Tillie. Just get better."

  "Don't worry, Lieutenant," he said, leaning back into the pillows. "I'll be out of here soon."

  They went down a modern hallway painted turquoise and white, but the smells were old-fashioned regulation hospital, a blend of disinfectants, antiseptics, and floor wax.

  "I hate these places," said Knight.

  "Morgues are worse," Sigrid told him.

  ***

  Commander Dixon's hospital lay across town and while Petty Officer Schmitt made child's play out of mid-day traffic,

  Alan Knight fretted about arriving empty-handed.

  "We ought to take her something," he said for the third time. "What about magazines?"

  "Hospital volunteers provide them. What about flowers?"

  "Flowers are a cliché."

  "Clichés don't become clichés unless a lot of people like them," Sigrid observed calmly.

  "You were just in the hospital. What did you miss most?"

  "I wasn't in long enough to miss anything, but I was laid up at school once with a broken leg and someone brought me a back scratcher. You know, one of those little hands carved out of a long piece of rattan or bamboo? It was the most practical thing they gave me. I could even slide it down inside the cast."

  Knight leaned forward. "There's a Japanese place off Fifth Avenue," he told Schmitt. "Two more blocks and hang a left."

  "Yes, sir."

  ***

  While Alan Knight rattled around at the rear of the store for a back scratcher, Sigrid discovered a shelf of snow domes, those crystal balls usually filled with flecks of white that children love to shake, then watch as the flecks settle over a wintry scene like falling snow. These were like none she'd ever seen. Instead of a fir tree or a snowman, the glass ball held a miniature cherry tree in full bloom; and when she shook it, tiny flecks of pink swirled like drifting blossoms.

  Charmed, Sigrid bought one, thinking it might amuse Commander Dixon. As she paid. Knight emerged triumphantly from the rear of the store with a small plastic hand fastened to quite a long bamboo stick and a kaleidoscope.

  "I always liked these," he confessed, looking more like five than twenty-five and making Sigrid smile.

  As it was now nearly two o'clock, Schmitt was encouraged to double-park at the

  ***

  corner of Eighth and West Fiftieth and hop out for a round of frankfurters from a pushcart.

  "Sauerkraut or onions, ma'am?" he asked.

  "Sauerkraut, please."

  "Onions for me, Schmitty," said Knight, "and get yourself a couple, too."

  Sabrett frankfurters are the smell of New York and their redolence filled the car as Alan Knight waxed nostalgic about Southern hot dogs, the buns stuffed with chili, cole slaw, and finely chopped raw onions. "Took me a long time to get used to pickled cabbage on my franks."

  "I've eaten what the South calls a frankfurter," Sigrid said. "Fire-engine red, limp and mushy, no snap to the casing. Give me these any day."

  An amiable argument about the merits of regional foods lasted almost to the hospital. It served as well as anything else to distract them from the interview that lay ahead, but both had fallen silent by the time Petty Officer Schmitt pulled up to the entrance of a grim, soot-stained building erected in the twenties.

  Alan Knight lagged behind as Sigrida pproached the main desk to ask directions.

  "I'll be back in a minute," he said.

  It was more than a minute and Sigrid was becoming impatient when he returned from the gift shop with a small, prettily wrapped box.

  "Perfume," he said as they rode up in the elevator. "Just in case she needs to be reminded that she's still a beautiful woman."

  * * *

  And she was. Even with the cuts and bruises and the deep black circles under her eyes, the slender woman who lay sleeping on the steel-framed hospital bed possessed a more than average beauty. There was strength in the small pointed chin, intelligence in the sweep of her brow. She was said to have had short white hair that curled all over her head-'A nest of stork feathers,' was the way Vassily Ivanovich had put it-but smooth bandages now encased her head, reminding Sigrid of the white line band that nuns used to wear under their black veils to hide their hair.

  She wore a bleached and faded hospital gown and the sight of it made a slow anger against Molly Baldwin begin to burn. Somehow Sigrid sensed how much Commander Dixon would hate that gown. Lacy lingerie and pretty negligees were Sigrid's secret self-indulgence, so surely a woman as feminine as Ivanovich and Tillie had described would have dozens of frilly gowns and bed jackets. Someone should have brought her her own things instead of sentencing her to this ugly cotton shift.

  Damn that girl!

  The gown had wide short sleeves and the bandaged stub could be clearly seen. Commander Dixon's arm ended halfway between her elbow and shoulder.

  No elbow
joint, Sigrid thought numbly. She had hoped the surgeons had saved it. Without the elbow, any prosthetic device would probably be clumsier and bulkier.

  She glanced at Alan. He was white-faced. "Maybe we ought not to wake her," he whispered.

  Sigrid would have liked to run away,t oo, but she steeled herself and approached the bed. "Commander Dixon?"

  A frown furrowed the woman's smooth features. Her eyes opened, blankly at first, then awareness filled them as if she were coming back from a long distance. She looked at Sigrid without curiosity.

  "Doctor?" she murmured.

  "No, Commander. I'm Lieutenant Harald, New York City Police."

  "Police?" Her gaze fell on Alan Knight's blue uniform with its two gold stripes on the sleeve. "Lieutenant?"

  "Alan Knight, ma'am. ONI."

  "Yes… of course." She tried to push herself more erect on the pillows and grimaced with the pain of the effort.

  "Shall I crank you up?" Knight asked anxiously, bending for the handle at the foot of the narrow bed.

  "Just a little, please," she whispered. Her eyes went to her bandaged arm and a low moan escaped her lips.

  "Every time I wake up, I keep hoping it's been a bad dream."

  Anguish hung in the room like an almost palpable miasma and Sigrid could feel herself stiffening. "If you'd rather,

  Commander, we can come back another time."

  "No. I'm all right."

  "Can you talk about Friday night?"

  "Friday." The frown reappeared. "What's today?";

  "Monday."

  "That's right. The nurse told me that at-breakfast? Lunch? I'm sorry. Everything keeps getting muddled."

  She spoke with some effort and her voice was low, but there was a musical undertone that was very appealing and it reminded Sigrid that Haines Froelick said that he and Zachary Wolferman had been equally enchanted by the commander's voice.

  "Commander, do you remember the cribbage tournament?" Sigrid asked.

  "Yes… Vassily and I… the Hotel Maintenon. We had drinks and there was a nice old gentleman and his cousin. We talked and then-"