Yesterday's News - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "About last night, you were up late?"

  "Planning."

  "Planning. Did you see or hear anything unusual?"

  "See? Not rightly. I've got bad eyesight, need the two different kind of glasses to see straight, but never could stand having them on those neck strings, you know? So I'm forever putting the distance ones down when I put the close-up ones on, then forgetting where they are. "

  "Well then, was there something you didn't see but heard?"

  "Heard a lot of things. Nothing wrong with the hearing, leastways not yet. Heard Jane coming in all the time. That's the reason I gave the tenant the downstairs floor to start with. I didn't have any use for the backyard myself, and I figured with me on the second floor, I wouldn't be disturbed so much by the coming and going. But this time of year, I keep the windows open, which means I can hear the car doors or the damned, pardon my French, motorcycles or feel the downstairs door close. 'Course, that's more vibration than sound, I guess."

  This was going to take a while. "Did you hear somebody arrive last night?"

  "Well, yes, of course I did. Heard Jane first. She usually got home from work by six. Ofttimes she'd go out later. Jane was renting from me for nigh unto two years, her car door made a certain noise account of she had something loose there in the door panel or something, rattled every time after the sound of the door closing itself. Think she'd have that fixed, drive you crazy after a while, but she never did."

  "You heard somebody else, too?"

  "Sure did. Jane seemed to be home to stay last night. Heard her drive in, car door, and downstairs. She'd been in the dumps lately, don't know why, just real troubled, like I said. Well, I hear her come in, put on her victrola. Didn't play it loud or anything, real considerate girl that way. Then I heard another car come up. Somebody got out, come up to the door and knocked, then Jane let them in."

  "Them?"

  "Him or her. Couldn't tell. They must've cut across the lawn or was wearing sneakers or something, cause I didn't hear any clicks like from the women's shoes or taps like from the men's. Jane knew whoever it was, though."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Jane knows somebody, she tells them. . . sorry, told them not to ring the bell. Needs fixing and can wake me out of a sound sleep, so she'd warn them not to use it. Considerate that way, like I said."

  "No idea otherwise who the person was?"

  "No. There were a lot of them, though."

  "A lot of them?"

  "That didn't use the doorbell. Jane got more than her share."

  "Her share of what?"

  Mrs. O'Day's eyes seemed to move independently behind the lenses as she leaned forward in the rocker. "Of what? Of sex, what the hell do you think, pardon my French again."

  "Did you. . . were you under the impression that it was more than one man?"

  "Was I. . . sonny, all I know is I heard a lot of different doors slam out in that driveway, if you get my drift. The Church says we're not supposed to sit in judgment of each other, but even without the suicide, I doubt she got to spend much time before Saint Peter last night."

  "How long did this person stay?"

  "Hours. Didn't really pay attention to when, I was focusing on my planning here. But they must have been going at it pretty good, because her phone rang four or five times for five rings without her answering it. "

  "Was that typical?"

  "Typical of her going at it, you mean?"

  "Typical for her not to answer her phone when she had a man, not a woman visiting."

  "Sonny, I don't for one moment believe Jane was that way. "

  I didn't mean to imply anything, Mrs. O'Day. I just. . . look, was Jane's failure to answer her phone something she'd do only if she had a male visitor?"

  "What I don't know. Like I said, I didn't try to spy on the woman."

  "Right. So you don't know when her visitor left."

  "No, I don't. Wasn't too long before another one came by, though."

  "Another?"

  "Right. After the first one left. Another car door, different sound to the motor and the door both."

  "Different how?"

  "Motor sounded bigger, door more solid. Don't know much more about cars than how they sound. Never got my driver's license. The husband was always after me about that, said I'd regret it some day. But I ask you, how can I regret never learning to drive when I'd be a menace out on the roads with this eyesight? I mean, if I can't keep track of my distance specs in this house, how would I ever remember them each time before I cranked up a car?"

  "You've got a point there. Did you hear anything about this second person?"

  "No. Except Jane must have been expecting this one."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because this one didn't even knock. Door downstairs just opened and closed."

  "How long did this one stay?"

  "Minute, maybe. Then out, banging the door shut and off into the car and tearing up the street to beat the band."

  "And no idea whether this second one was a man or woman?"

  "Nope."

  I thought about it.

  Mrs. O'Day said, "I found her, you know."

  "You did?"

  "Yes. It was the victrola. Like I said, usually she was real good about playing it low, but I was finished with my planning, and I wanted to get four hours of sleep before Store Day. You know, so I'd have plenty of energy. Funny, four hours is enough now, even when I let the planning slide till the night before and I have to stay up most of the night to plan when I had all the week before to do it. Of course, you never know for sure what you really need till just before you go out to buy, and it'd be crazy for me to just stock up at the prices they're getting these days, although when did you ever know the prices on anything to go down?"

  "Never. You mean her stereo was still on when you tried to go to bed?"

  "That's what I said. It was, oh, two-thirty maybe? I tossed and turned for a while, but it was no good, I could still make out the words the radio announcer was saying. If it was just music, I might have been able to ignore it, but you know how it is when somebody's talking, you sort of strain to make sense of the sentences even if you're hearing only a few words from each."

  "What did you do then?"

  "I went to the telephone to call her. It'd happened before, she'd fall asleep with the radio on and then let it play. So I called her, but I could hear the phone ringing, like I said before, and she wasn't answering. So I went down the back stairs to the kitchen and knocked and called out her name, but she didn't answer that either, so I walked through the kitchen and —"

  "Wait a minute. The lights were all on?"

  "Well, not all on. I mean, Jane did have some respect for the electric, and it never seemed to me to make sense to have the company come in and do separate meters. That's always a waste so long as you don't have some sloth down there, doesn't know how to turn off a lamp."

  "But some lights were on?"

  "Yes, and then I moved through into the living room and she was on the couch. Lying on it, dead."

  "You were sure she was gone?"

  "You grew up when I did, sonny, you learned what to look for. And smell for, more's the pity. I remember clearly my mother herding my brother and me in to see Gramp on his deathbed. That's where the expression comes from, you know. In the old days, people actually died in their beds, even when they knew it was coming. They didn't go to some hospital, lying on some stranger's sheets and being felt all over by some stranger's hands. No sir, you sent for the doctor once, and if he said, 'That's it,' you didn't waste anybody's money or the dying person's dignity on some hospital. You let them stay right where they were, in their own house, in the bosom of their family. They could die where they lived, not behind some canvas screen in a cold room. The husband passed on in the hospital, then got dumped into a green bag and wheeled onto an elevator, God rest his soul."

  "So you knew Jane was dead?"

  "Aren't you listening to me anymore? Yo
u watch enough people die, you know what dead is."

  "What did you do then?"

  "Well, I looked around. But all I saw was some cocoa in a mug long gone cold. So I said a prayer for her right there, though I knew she was damned for taking her own life. I thought I ought to, being I knew her and I didn't see any family of hers likely to arrive before they took the body away. "

  "There was no note?"

  "Note? Well, none that I saw, but I couldn't have read it of course, even if there was one. Had on the distance specs, not the close-ups. I try to go downstairs wearing the reading glasses, and it's me what they'd be finding stiff at the bottom of the steps."

  "Mrs. O'Day, did you tell the police all this?"

  "As much as they'd hear. They didn't seem to have quite the patience you do."

  "Well," I said, "I appreciate all the time you've given me."

  "My pleasure. Good to talk with a sensible young man for a change. Don't you want to see her place before you go?"

  "The police didn't seal it off?"

  "My goodness, no. It was just a suicide."

  "In that case, I will, thank you."

  "Just don't break anything. I'm not worried about a man like you stealing, but I'd be embarrassed if you broke something."

  "A woman at the newspaper is arranging Jane's funeral. I'll call you when I know the details."

  "Don't trouble yourself. Funerals depress me. Besides, she was a suicide, remember? The Church wouldn't like for me to be going to one of them."

  * * *

  Except for the narrower sitting room to accommodate the first-floor expanse of staircase outside her door, Rust's apartment was the twin of Mrs. O'Day's. The bedroom contained a pine four-poster with a bedspread that looked like an heirloom. The dressers matched the bed. On top of the lower dresser was a nearly empty jewelry box, some change in a large seashell, and framed, stand-up photos. The first shot was a shorter-haired Jane with a longer-haired Liz Rendall, both in swimsuits. Each had an arm draped around the other's shoulder, Jane looking sheepish and Liz brash.

  The second showed an older woman and a much younger Jane, probably in her early teens. They stood at the corner of a house with a flat meadow background that disappeared only at the horizon.

  The third photo caught a current Jane handing a drink to a a skinny, hippie-like guy sitting on what appeared to be her living room couch. Coyne, maybe?

  I plodded around the apartment enough to tell that no forensic team had been there. Nothing apparently was missing except Rust's body. If my client had been killed as part of a "police conspiracy," someone should have tossed the rooms, searching for whatever evidence Jane might have had on the conspiracy. A forensic investigation of a suspicious death would have provided the perfect cover for that kind of search. It didn't seem anyone had bothered, though it's hard to spot a slow, careful search if the place isn't your own to start with.

  I skimmed through what files I could find in a box in her closet. They all seemed to be just copies of stories from her previous jobs. Nothing about Coyne or Dykestra.

  I closed Rust's door to the front hallway and the outside door to the house, both locks snicking securely behind me. Walking to the Prelude, I looked back at the two-family. An unremarkable place to die.

  As I approached the motel, Sal's Sub Shoppe still had its lights on. I got an Italian with everything on it and directions to the nearest package store, Sal warning me that only the bars in town stayed open past ten.

  At Nasharbor Liquors, I bought a cold six-pack of Molson Golden ale just as the clerk was cashing out. I tried Nancy from the pay phone outside. No answer.

  The odor of oils from the sandwich filled the car on the way back to the Crestview. Loading up on carbohydrates, I watched TV for an hour before surfing to sleep in the Honeymoon Suite.

  7

  The Nasharbor police headquarters was on Main Street next to city hall. The department occupied a massive Gothic building with miniature gargoyles on the corners and a modern, masonry block annex. I went through the double doors atop the old steps and walked up to the desk sergeant's Plexiglas enclosure. The sergeant was olive-skinned with black wavy hair. "What can I do for you?"

  "I'd like to speak with Captain Hagan."

  "Captain's a busy man. What about?"

  "The death of lane Rust. My name's John Cuddy." I opened my ID under the small slit on the counter.

  "Private, huh? Insurance?"

  "I'd like to talk with him about it."

  "Probably be a while before I can call him."

  A bench was pushed against the wall. "I'll time you from over there."

  The sergeant shuffled a few forms to save face, then dialed an internal extension.

  * * *

  Hagan folded my ID and leaned back across his desk, careful not to knock over the triptych portraits of wife and assorted kids on the corner. Mounted commendations crawled up the wall behind him. He'd stood and shook hands when I'd come in the room. A little shorter and a little huskier than I am, maybe forty-two or forty-three, with auburn hair in a Madison Avenue cut and a herringbone jacket with elbow patches. Clean-shaven, he looked like the sort who slapped Aqua Velva onto his cheeks in the morning mirror.

  Hagan said, "Anybody on Boston I can call about you?"

  "Try Robert Murphy, lieutenant in Homicide."

  "Don't know him. Anybody else?"

  "Yeah, but they'd hang up on you."

  Hagan sat back, tenting his hands at belt level. "So what's your interest in Jane Rust?"

  "She came to see me on Monday afternoon. She didn't strike me as close enough to the edge to kill herself Monday night."

  "She goes to a private investigator, she must have had something bothering her. "

  "Look, Captain, we can dance around a while longer if you'd like, but we both know why she came to see me. She thought your department was involved in the death of Charlie Coyne."

  "You ever meet Coyne?"

  "No."

  "If he graduated high school, they would've captioned his photo 'Most Likely to Die in an Alley.' Which is exactly what happened to him."

  "Suspects?"

  Hagan snorted a laugh. "No more than a hundred. When Coyne got drunk, he got sentimental, wanted to share things with his brothers on the street. As in homeless and on the street."

  "And you figure one of them did him?"

  "One of them saw it. Or at least the end of it. Or at least he thinks he saw the end of it."

  "What did he see?"

  "Biggish bum, hobbling away after stabbing Coyne. The witness says Coyne managed to knife the killer in the leg."

  "The big guy show up at a hospital?"

  "Not that we can tell. If he tried to patch himself up, he'll lose the leg within a month. If he crawled off somewhere to die, a pair of uniforms will get a call to investigate a godawful smell coming from some abandoned building."

  "You seem pretty casual about all this. You have that many homicides down here?"

  "You mean murders, no. You mean deaths by unnatural causes, hell yes. The leading killer of the homeless is frostbite. Right behind is guys beaten to death or stabbed in the heat of passion over cigarettes or a couple of returnable empties, net the guy a quarter maybe."

  "I wasn't aware that Coyne was homeless."

  "Next thing to. He was shacked up with a girl and a kid she claims is his. You saw the place, you wouldn't let your dog run loose in it."

  "Mind giving me her name and address?"

  Hagan came forward again, all business. "Look, Cuddy, I can see the position you're in. This girl Rust comes to sec you, ends up dead that night. You maybe feel a little responsible, or that you owe her something. Fine. I'd feel that way myself if I were in your shoes. That's why l've been so open talking with you about things. But everybody—me, the medical examiner, the statie attached to the DA—everybody has Coyne down as a simple death by stabbing."

  "And Jane Rust?"

  "Autopsy and lab report came in by hand an h
our ago. She swallowed enough sleeping pills to drop an elephant. "

  "Except she couldn't."

  "Swallow them you mean."

  "Yes."

  "We found a mug and a tablespoon on her kitchen table. One of the latents on each matched her index finger. The girl ground up a handful of the pills like an old-fashioned pharmacist with the mortar and pestle things."

  I thought about it. "Seems a hell of a complicated way to take your own life."

  "Rust was a complicated girl under a lot of stress, most of it self-inflicted. Besides, maybe she didn't have a razor handy."

  "Any note?"

  "No."

  "Strike you as odd a reporter didn't leave one?"

  "No."

  "Aside from the paper, was she under any stress you know of?"

  Hagan shook his head. "She's dead now. Whether it was intentional or accidental, it was by her own hand. Whatever problems she had won't get helped by me airing them to a guy I met ten minutes ago."

  "I talked to her landlady. She says Rust had two visitors the night she died."

  "I spoke to Mrs. O'Day. Personally, face to face. Even with her 'distance specs,' she couldn't tell me how many arms I had."

  "She told me she heard car doors slam. Two different cars, two different times. "