by R.J. Ellory
“No, we just got back twenty minutes ago from Galena. Evie hasn’t even gotten the kids in bed yet.”
“Well I’m sorry, buddy, but you know what they say. Death waits for no man, an’ all that.”
“Give me the address.” I scribbled it down on the notepad next to the phone. It was an apartment building a half-dozen streets east, no question that it was the 9th’s jurisdiction.
I went upstairs, explained the whole deal to Evie.
“Be as quick as you can,” she said, which is all she ever said at such times. She never complained, she never argued, she never questioned it. She knew what I did, she took it all on board, and the only thing she ever asked of me was that I didn’t bring my frustrations and anger home for the kids to see. If I was mad because some damn fool messed up, or some crook walked because of a technical problem with a warrant or something, then I just stayed away. Call her, sure, but just go walk it off before I got home. I’d done that a few times, was sure I’d do it a few times more.
So I kissed and hugged her good, then I kissed the kids and told them good night, sleep tight, and off I went. I left the house just before midnight, Monday the 21st of May, 1956, and I drove the handful of blocks to the apartment building where this girl had been strangled.
Had I known then how this case would trouble me, well maybe I would have done things differently. But hindsight is like that. Looking back, it’s always so easy to make the right decision, but they ain’t figured out time travel yet, have they? They’re angling to get a guy on the moon I’ve heard, though what good that’ll do I can’t fathom. Seems to me they’d serve mankind a good deal better if they figured out how we could all go back and fix the things we didn’t get right the first time.
To this day I do not know what it was about Carole Shaw that got to me so much. I mean, it really crawled under my skin and stayed there.
Maybe because she wasn’t a gangster’s moll. Maybe because she wasn’t working in a bank when some hoodlum came up with a pistol and let it loose all over the place. Perhaps because she wasn’t a hooker, she wasn’t a junkie, she didn’t spend her time with lowlifes and scumbags and shitheels. She wasn’t pulling scams, or fleecing folks for their hard-earned dollars; she wasn’t cheating on her jealous husband with some guy she met in the Laundromat. Carole Shaw was a pretty girl who taught kindergarten, and she was lying down on the kitchen floor of her apartment with the whole of her life choked out of her. Take away the bruising around her neck, and she could have been asleep. First impressions told me that she’d been drinking. There was a bottle and a couple of glasses on the table, her clothes were mussed like she’d been fooling around some, and her lipstick was a little smudged like she’d been kissing some feller. So what happened? He wanted to, she didn’t, he got mad, she fought back, he choked her? That would be the simplicity of it, more than likely, and once again an example of the utter banality and pointlessness of so many such deaths. Of course, I didn’t know she was a kindergarten teacher right then and there, not until I checked with a couple of the neighbors who were haunting the hallways in the hope of seeing something real dreadful to tell their friends about in the morning. And I didn’t know about the sister until I started checking through some of Carole Shaw’s things, and there I found snapshots and letters and whatnot, but no address. Wouldn’t find the sister until the following day, and there is something just awful about sending a uniform over to deliver that kind of news. Seems to me that the worst aspect of it would be discovering that a whole bunch of strangers knew someone close to you was dead before you did. Having said that, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve delivered bad news, and folks have said, “I Just knew it . . . I knew something was wrong . . .” and I’ve wanted to say, “Well, if you knew something was wrong, why the hell didn’t you call us and we might have been able to stop it happening?” But I never have said that. Last thing you want to hear when someone special has died is that you could have done something about it. I don’t know what Carole Shaw’s sister said when the news was delivered. I had to send someone, as by that time I was in the thick of it all and I couldn’t let up. Only news I wanted to deliver to Carole’s sister was that we’d got the feller who did it.
So, we’re back to the kitchen. I’m standing there looking down at Carole Shaw’s body while some snapper takes shots. Every time the bulb fires I kind of jump, not because I’m startled easy, but because there’s just something brutally unflattering about that light, and it always catches me off-guard somehow. It’s like when you fire a gun. You’re pulling the trigger, you know it’s going to go off, and yet it always surprises you. Strange, but true.
Once the snapper’s gone, I’m down close to the body. I can still smell the alcohol she was drinking, or maybe that’s because the bottle is still open on the table. I’m taking a good look at the glasses, and before I even pick them up I know that the prints are nothing but smears and smudges. Dry glasses are just fine, but drop a couple of ice cubes in there and you get condensation on the outside. Looking for prints on wet glasses is like looking for a natural blonde in Hollywood.
So, then I’m looking at her face. I still don’t know her name, or I’ve been told it and it hasn’t registered.
Pete Quinn is back of me and over my right shoulder, and he’s saying something about the super coming up to talk to us. I tell Pete I need him and the super to go wake up the whole building. I want to hear anything and everything that all of them have to say. Even if they have been asleep for the last three hours, I want to know what they were dreaming while this poor kid was getting the life throttled out of her. I want to know if there’s a cabstand or a bus stop nearby. Find the drivers who were waiting on the stand tonight, and find all of them. Find the folks waiting for buses. Ask them if they saw anyone hurrying away from—
“What is this building called?” I ask him.
“Shangri La Towers,” he says, and I say something to the effect that I could have guessed.
“Ask her neighbors if they saw anyone tonight, if they saw anyone with her in the last week,” and then I ask her name.
“Shaw,” Pete says. “I told you already. Carole Shaw.”
“Right,” I say. “Carole Shaw.”
Pete goes to get the super. I’m just scanning then, looking for anything at all. There’s a broken glass in the sink. An accident? Sign of a struggle? Maybe she was getting a drink of water, or he was, and it broke and they figured to leave it there rather than try and clean it up while drunk.
The phone’s off the table in the front. Maybe he started to strangle her in there. She snatched the phone, a desperate attempt to dial for help before she died. Maybe it came off the table as he wrestled her to the kitchen to finish the job. And if that’s what happened, why didn’t he set the phone right before he left? The need to get away as fast as possible indicated a further possibility: that there might be other factors he overlooked, that there might be other details he missed that would indicate his identity.
It was all guesswork and hypothesis. Right now, the only incontrovertible piece of evidence was the dead body on the linoleum.
It’s a while before the super comes up, and he’s a cartoon version of himself. He has on the string vest and he’s got a gut out ahead of him that tells you he’s entering the room an hour before he does. He’s unshaven, real short in stature, and his hair’s all over the place.
He’s all too eager to help, but at the same time you know he wants to get in the kitchen and look at the dead girl again. I keep him in the front. I’ve got a couple of uniforms down from the 9th, and they’re outside the apartment door. The neighbors have gone back to their own apartments. They’re not going to sleep, not for a while, and even if they do then Pete Quinn is going to come around and wake them up anyhow.
“So tell me what you got,” I say to the super. His name is Marty, Marty Franks, and he’s smoking one cigarette after the other.
“She’s a good kid. Never a problem. Pays her rent, keeps
herself to herself. She asked me if she could have a cat here, and I had to tell her no, it wasn’t allowed, building regulations an’ all that, but she didn’t seem to have a beef about it. Like I say, she was a good kid.”
“And she taught school, right?”
“Right. Kindergarten, as far as I know.”
“Visitors?”
“Sure, a few friends. Couple of girls, teachers, too, I think, and her sister comes over every once in a while.”
“Her sister’s name?”
Marty shakes his head. “Not a clue.”
“Regular boyfriend?”
“For a while, I think. Seen her with a feller. Dark hair, taller than me . . .” Marty paused, smiled. “Which ain’t so helpful, as most people are taller than me, right?”
“His name?”
“Nope.”
“How long since you last saw him?”
“Couple of months now, come to think of it. He was over here quite a few times. Maybe they broke up or something.”
“You ever hear anyone arguing in here?”
“I live in the basement, mister. You want to know about folks’ personal business then you’d best ask the neighbors. Walls are pretty damned thin. Maybe they heard something.”
“Okay. Anything else now? Anything else that you think might have any bearing on why Carole Shaw was murdered, however dumb it might sound?”
Marty was quiet for a time, and then he turned his mouth down at the corners and shrugged. “Seems to me she’d be the last person in the world anyone would want to kill.”
Which said it all for me, and was probably the reason it got to me so much. Carole Shaw was probably the last person in the world anyone would want to kill.
So we’re there two hours, maybe more. I know I’m tired, and Pete Quinn looks like someone dragged him through a washing machine backwards and hung him out to dry in a hurricane.
The neighbors didn’t hear anything, save one. An old woman, must’ve been eighty at the very least, and she said she saw Carole coming into the building with a man at around eight or eight-fifteen.
“How did he look, Mrs. Gerrity?”
“Drunk,” she said. “The pair of them did. Fooling and laughing and messing with each other, the way young folks do.”
She evidently disapproved of public displays of affection.
“Did you see his face?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And how would you describe him?”
“Montgomery Clift.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Like I said, Montgomery Clift. He looked a little like Montgomery Clift, but not how he looked in From Here to Eternity. More how he looked in A Place in the Sun. A clean-cut boy, nice-looking.”
“Right,” I said, wondering how best to get a photo of Montgomery Clift.
“How old would you have said he was?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe thirty or thirty-five.”
“And did you see him again?” I asked.
“Who, Montgomery Clift? Sure, I seen him in everything,” Mrs. Gerrity said. “I go down to The Empire Picture House.”
“No, Mrs. Gerrity, not Montgomery Clift. The man who came into the building with Miss Shaw. Did you see him again?”
“No, I didn’t see him again. Did he kill her? That nice-looking boy?”
“We believe so,” I said, “but nothing’s been proven yet.”
“Such a shame,” Mrs. Gerrity said. “She should have stayed with that teacher friend of hers, Mr. Kramer.”
“Mr. Kramer?”
“Yes, the boyfriend she had. Lovely man. So polite. He taught math, I believe. At least, I think that’s what he told me. I don’t think he would have killed Carole, not a math teacher.”
“And do you know where he lives by any chance?”
“Yes I do, actually. He told me he lived on Prospect Street.”
“Okay, Mrs. Gerrity, that’s really appreciated. Is there anything else you think might help us?”
Mrs. Gerrity looked thoughtful for a moment, and then she said, ‘No, I don’t believe there is.”
I told her thank you, and then I had one of the uniforms call into the precinct and get a make on this Kramer guy. They came back within minutes. There was a Martin Kramer who lived on Prospect Street, just eight or so blocks east, and he was a teacher. He was on record for a parking violation only three weeks earlier. Had a month gone by, that ticket would have been archived and we wouldn’t have found him so quick.
I reckoned we should go there right away.
Pete dealt with the super and got the last couple of neighbors back in their apartments. I left the uniforms there to make sure no one interrupted the crime scene people and the ME, found the best picture I could of Carole Shaw among the snapshots she owned, and then we went over to Prospect.
We got Kramer out of bed. He came down all agitated and tousle-haired in his robe, grizzling and complaining about what the hell someone was doing at his door so late. He soon stopped his chatter when he saw us. They always know. I mean, how can they not? Two suits show up after midnight, hats in hands, grim faces. What else could it be?
We told Kramer, and he was a mess right away. He was crying, saying it couldn’t be true, he had only seen her the Friday before at school, that he couldn’t believe this. Then when we told him it wasn’t a car smash but a strangling, he broke up completely. Pete went in the kitchen and found a fifth of scotch, and he was close to pouring the whole thing down the guy’s throat just to settle him. Kramer had a hit or two, and then he was able to keep himself together sufficiently to answer some questions.
“How long did you know Miss Shaw?”
“The whole time she worked at the school.”
“And how long was that?”
“Four years. About four years, yes.”
“And you and she were an item for a while, right?”
“For six months. We dated for six months.”
“Who broke it off?”
“She did.”
“Because?”
“Because I wanted to get married, and she didn’t.”
“It’s usually the other way around, wouldn’t you say?”
“I loved her, Detective Maguire. I loved her completely. I didn’t want to be with anyone else—”
“But she did,” I interjected, which was a bit harsh, but I’d already started to think that maybe Kramer wasn’t our guy, and I just needed to get moving. Twenty-four hours, forty-eight at most and hot leads went cold, people forgot details, faces and recollections became vague and uncertain. You can tell the actors and the genuines, and if this guy killed his ex then he was a better actor than Montgomery Clift ever was. Besides, he looked no more like Clift than I did. So if Kramer wasn’t our boy, I needed to know if he had any clue who was.
“How long ago did you break up, Mr. Kramer?”
“Six weeks ago. It was the sixth of April.”
He knew the precise date. That said it all.
“Were you aware of any regular guys that Miss Shaw might have dated since you and she broke up?” I asked, knowing—of course—that this was the last thing that a guy like Kramer wanted to hear. All he wanted to know was that she had desperately regretted her decision, that she wanted him to take her back, that her very last thought, even as her lights went out, was of the math teacher, Mr. Kramer, and the life she had passed up.
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I just saw her at work every once in a while. She taught kindergarten, I teach eighth grade, and we’re in different blocks.”
“So there’s no one you can think of, no one you can remember, no one you suspect who might have done this thing?”
Kramer shook his head, and then he said it, almost word-for-word. The kicker.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “It’s like a nightmare. Carole was the last person in the world anyone would want to kill.”
We left after another five minutes. Pete filled Kramer’s glass with scotch, lit a c
igarette for him, and we told him thanks for his help. We even asked if he was going to be okay, which is human nature I guess. You want him to be okay. You want him to get through it. You want him to find another sweetheart, settle down, have some kids, leave Carole Shaw back in the mists of time alongside barefoot summers and the first time you got your heart stomped by a girl. Sometimes you heard that they didn’t make it, that they were leapers or whatever, and you wondered why some folks could take it in stride, and some just came to pieces like a twenty-dollar suit.
We headed back to the Shangri La Towers. They were bringing the girl out as we arrived. I took a walk over there, and for some reason I had them pause a moment. I unzipped the bag, took another look at her face. She was a looker, no doubt about it. Hell of a shame.
And that was that for Monday night, which was actually Tuesday morning by then.
I got home around 3:30. Evie woke up when I got into bed, said that if I dared put my cold feet near her she’d suffocate me in my sleep.
I kissed her shoulder, told her to mind her mouth or there’d be more trouble on the way than she knew what to do with.
“Foolish man,” she murmured.
“Dumbass woman,” I whispered back.
I went to sleep with my wife beside me, but with that dead girl right behind my eyelids.
When I woke up, they were both still there.
Breakfast was a freeway pileup. The kids were cranky. Laura was supposed to be at kindergarten, which made me think of the dead teacher even more, but Evie said she would probably keep her back, get her to sleep for a couple more hours. I should have been tireder than I was, having gotten to sleep only four hours earlier, but I had a case going and there was nothing that spiked the adrenaline faster than a homicide.
Dougie, as always, took everything in his stride, and I told Evie I’d drop him off in the car on the way to work.
“Where d’you go last night?” he asked me once we pulled away.
“Had to go see someone.”
“Were they dead?”
