The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  At two o'clock the next morning, Dell was in his car, parked at the alley entrance to the rear parking lot of the Memphis City Limits club. He was wearing dark trousers and a black windbreaker, and had black Nikes on his feet. Both hands were gloved, and he wore a wool navy watch cap low on his forehead, and a dark scarf around his neck. The fuse for the interior lights on his car had been removed.

  He had been there for half an hour, watching as the last patrons of the night exited the club, got into their vehicles, and left. By ten past two, there were only a few cars left, belonging to club employees who were straggling out to go home. The lot was not particularly well lit, but the rear door to the club was, so it was easy for Dell to distinguish people as they left.

  It was a quarter past two when Bob Pilcher came out and swaggered across the parking lot toward a Dodge Ram pickup. Dell got out of his car without the light going on and, in his Nikes, walked briskly, silently toward him from the left rear, tying the scarf over his lower face as he went. When he was within arm's length of Pilcher, he said, "Hey, stud."

  Pilcher turned, a half-smile starting, and Dell cracked him across the face with a leather-covered lead sap. He heard part of Pilcher's face crack. Catching him before he dropped to the ground, Dell dragged the unconscious man around the truck, out of sight of the club's back door. Dropping him, he rolled him over, facedown. Pulling both arms above his head, he pressed each of Pilcher's palms, in turn, against the asphalt, held each down at the wrist, and with the sap used short, snapping blows to systematically break the top four finger knuckles and top thumb knuckle of each hand. Then he walked quickly back to the alley, got into his car, and drove away. The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.

  Be a long time before you slap another woman around, he thought grimly as he left. Or even hold a toothbrush.

  Then he thought: That was for you, Edie.

  * * *

  The next day, Dell went to be with Dan Malone when he came to the funeral parlor to see Edie in her casket for the first time. The undertaker had picked up her body when the coroner was through with it, and one of Edie's aunts and two cousins had gone to Marshall Field's and bought her a simple mauve dress to be laid out in.

  There were a number of aunts, uncles, cousins, and other collateral family members in attendance when the slumber room was opened, and groups of neighbors gathered outside, easily outnumbered by groups of police officers, in uniform and out, who had known Dan Malone for all or part of his thirty-two years on the force and had come from half the police districts in the city to offer their condolences.

  Dell was shocked by the sight of Dan when the grieving man arrived. He looked as if he had aged ten years in the three days since Dell had seen him. A couple of male relatives helped him out of the car and were assisting him in an unsteady walk toward the entrance when Dan's eyes fell on Dell and he pulled away, insisting on a moment with his partner. Dell hurried to him, the two men embraced, then stepped up close to the building where people cleared a space for them to speak privately.

  "Did you find those two bastards Keenan gave you the names of?" Dan asked hoarsely.

  "Yeah, Dan, but they're clean," Dell told him. "They're not even around anymore."

  "Are you sure? I never liked either one of 'em."

  "They're clean, Dan. I promise you. Listen," Dell said to placate him, speaking close to his ear, "I did find one guy. He's clean for the killing, but he'd slapped Edie around a couple of times."

  "The son of a bitch. Who is he?" The older man's teary eyes became fiery with rage.

  "It's okay, Dan. I already took care of it."

  "You did? What'd you do?"

  "Fixed his hands. With a sap."

  "Good, good." Malone wet his dry, whiskey-puffed lips. "I knew I could count on you, Frankie. Listen, come on inside and see my little girl."

  "You go in with your family, Dan. I've already seen her," Dell lied. He had no intention of looking at Edie Malone's body again.

  Dell gestured and several relatives hurried over to get Dan. Then Dell returned to a group of policemen that included Mike Larne, a couple of lieutenants, Keenan and other cronies of Dan's, and a deputy commissioner. Larne put an arm around Dell's shoulders.

  "Whatever you said to him, Frank, it seemed to help."

  "I hope so," Dell said. "Listen, Captain, I'm going to get back down to Homicide."

  "By all means," said Larne. "Back to work, lad. Find the bastard who caused this heartache."

  * * *

  In the days immediately following the funeral and burial of Edie Malone, the three detectives on the case worked and reworked the old leads, as well as a few new ones. A deputy state's attorney, Ray Millard, was assigned to analyze and evaluate the evidence as they progressed. Disappointingly, there was little of a positive nature to analyze.

  "It's too soft," Millard told them in their first meeting. He was a precise, intense young lawyer. "First, you've got the guy she worked for: older man, married, concealed the relationship when first questioned. Solid alibi for the hours just before, during, and after his son's basketball game which he attended on the night of the murder. Decent alibi for the rest of the night: a statement by his wife that he was at home. He could have slipped out of his suburban home when everyone was asleep, driven into the city, and committed the crime— but why would he have done that, and who's going to believe it?

  "Second, you've got the good-guy ex-boyfriend. He's well set up with a new girlfriend, and the two of them are practically joined at the hip: live together, work together, play together. Again, he could have slipped out of their apartment around midnight when his fiancée was asleep, gone to the Malone woman's apartment, a relatively short distance away, and killed her. But again, why? Let's remember that he dumped her, not the other way around. Soft, very soft.

  "Third, bad-guy ex-boyfriend. The hillbilly bouncer." Millard paused. "Incidentally, I understand that the night after you guys interviewed him, somebody jumped him outside the club and broke his nose, one cheekbone, and both hands. You guys heard anything about that?"

  The detectives shrugged in unison, as if choreographed. "Doesn't surprise me," Kenmare said.

  "Me either," Dell agreed. "Scumbags like that always have people who don't like them."

  "Well, anyway," the young lawyer continued, "bad-guy boyfriend would be a beaut to get in court. I could try him in front of a jury of his relatives and probably get a death sentence— except for one thing: He's got a home-free alibi on his job. No way he could have been away from the club long enough to go do it without his absence being noticed. He's the bouncer; he's got to be visible all the time." Millard sat back and drummed his fingers. "Anything else cooking?"

  Kenmare shook his head. "We're back canvassing the neighbors again, but nothing so far. We had one little piece of excitement day before yesterday when a little old retired lady in the victim's building said she'd heard that the building super had been fired from his last job for making lewd suggestions to female tenants. We checked it out and there was nothing to it. Turned out she was just ticked off at him for reporting her dog making a mess in the hallway a couple times."

  "Too bad," Millard said. "The super would've made a good defendant. Had a key to her apartment, found the body, whole ball of wax. He alibied tight?"

  "Very. Lives with his wife on two. They went to a movie, got home around eleven, went right to bed. He's got a good rep— except for the little old lady with the dog."

  "Had to be somebody she knew," Millard said. "No forced entry, no lock picked. No rape, no robbery. This was a personal crime. She let the guy in." He tossed the file across the desk to Kenmare. "Find me that guy and we'll stick the needle in his arm."

  * * *

  The three detectives took off early and went to a small Loop bar where they settled in a back booth. Dell could sense some tension but did not broach the subject. He knew Kenmare would get around to whatever it was.

  "We've enjoyed having you work with us, F
rank," the senior detective finally said. "We had our doubts about your assignment, but it's turned out okay."

  "Yeah, we had our doubts," Garvan confirmed, "but it worked out fine."

  "I tried not to get in the way," Dell said.

  "Hey, you've been a lot of help," Garvan assured him. "Got me away from this nag for a while," he bobbed his chin at Kenmare.

  "Listen to him," the older man said. "Wasn't for me, he'd be directing traffic at some school crossing."

  "What's on your mind, boys?" Dell asked, deciding not to wait.

  Kenmare sighed. "It's a bit delicate, Frank."

  "I'm a big boy. Shoot."

  They both leaned toward him to emphasize confidentiality. "That first night in the apartment, you commented that Dan Malone and his daughter hadn't been close for a while," Kenmare recalled.

  Garvan nodded. "You said he didn't approve of her lifestyle."

  "You said he didn't talk much about her after she quit college and went out on her own."

  Dell's expression tightened and locked. "You're getting very close to stepping over the wrong line," he said evenly.

  "I'm sorry you feel that way, Frank," said Kenmare. "It's a step that has to be taken." He sat back. "You know as well as I do that if he wasn't one of our own, he'd have been on the spot from day one. As soon as we decided there was no forced entry, no rape, no robbery, we would have included an estranged father in our investigation. But Garvan and me, we kept hoping that evidence would lead us to somebody else. Unfortunately, it hasn't."

  "Look, Frank," Garvan said in a placating tone, "it doesn't have to be a complicated thing. It can be, like, informal."

  "Of course," Kenmare agreed, his own voice also becoming appeasing. "Drop in on him. Have a drink. Engage him in casual conversation. And find out where he was during the critical hours, that's all."

  "Sure," said Garvan, "that's all."

  Dell grunted quietly. Like it would be a walk in the park to handle a thirty-two-year veteran cop like that. He took a long swallow of his drink. His eyes shifted from Kenmare to Garvan and back again, then looked down at the table, where the fingers of one hand drummed silently. He did not speak for what seemed like a very long time. Finally Kenmare broke the silence.

  "It's either that way or it'll have to be us, Frank. But it's got to be done."

  With a sigh that came from deep inside of him, Dell nodded. "All right."

  The tension that permeated the booth should have dissipated with that, but it did not. Dell once again became, as he had been at the very beginning of the investigation, an outsider.

  * * *

  Dan Malone smiled when he opened the door and saw Dell.

  "Ah, Frank. Come in, come in. Good to see you, partner. I've missed you."

  "Missed you too, Dan."

  They embraced briefly, and, Dell sensed, a little stiffly.

  "I was just having a beer after supper," said Dan. "You want one?"

  "Sure."

  "Sit down there on the couch. I'll get you one." He turned off a network hockey game, picked up a plastic tray on which were the remains of a TV dinner, and went into the kitchen with it. In a moment, he returned with an open bottle of Budweiser. "So," he said, handing Dell the beer and sitting in his recliner, "how's it going?"

  "It's not going, Dan. Not going anywhere," Dell replied quietly, almost dejectedly.

  "Well, I figured as much. Else you'd have been in closer touch. Not getting anywhere on the case?"

  "No. I've been meaning to drop by and talk to you about it, but I thought you probably still had family staying with you."

  "My two sisters were here for a week," Dan said. "And there've been nieces and nephews running in and out like mice. Finally I had enough and ran them all off. Then my phone started ringing off the hook all day, so I finally unplugged that just to get some peace and quiet. I guess they all think I'm suicidal or something."

  "Are you?" Dell asked.

  Dan gave him a long look. "No. Any reason I should be?"

  Dell shrugged. "Sometimes things like this are hard to get over. Some people want to do it quickly."

  "That's not the case with me," the older man assured him. "I lost Edie a long time ago, Frank. I think I probably started losing her when she slept with her first man. Then every man after that, I lost her a little more. Until finally she was gone completely."

  "Were there that many men?"

  "You're working the case; you ought to know."

  "We've only found three."

  Malone grunted cynically. "You must not have gone back very far." He stared into space. "I used to follow her sometimes. She'd go into a bar and come out an hour later with a man. Night after night. Different bars, different men. It was like some kind of sickness with her."

  They both fell silent and sat drinking for several minutes. Dell, who had always been so comfortable with his partner, felt peculiarly ill at ease, as if he had now become an outsider with Dan Malone as he had with the two homicide detectives. Finally he decided not to prolong the visit any more than necessary.

  "How long have we known each other, Dan?" he asked.

  "What's on your mind, Frank?" the older policeman asked knowingly.

  It had been he who taught Dell that reminiscing frequently led to other things.

  "The night of Edie's murder."

  "What about it?"

  "I need to know where you were."

  Malone nodded understandingly. "I wondered when they'd get around to it." He smiled a slight, cold smile. "Suppose I tell you I was right here at home, alone, all night. What then?"

  "Tell me what you did all night."

  "Watched the fights on television. Drank too much. Passed out here in my chair."

  "Who was fighting in the main event?"

  Malone shrugged. "Some Puerto Rican against some black guy, I think. I was sleepy by the time the main go came on; I don't remember their names."

  "Neither do I," said Dell.

  "What?" Dan Malone frowned.

  "I don't remember their names either. But you weren't alone that night. That was the night I dropped over. We both drank too much. I fell asleep on the couch. Didn't wake up until after one o'clock. Then I put you to bed and went home. That was the night, wasn't it, Dan?"

  The older man's frown faded and his face seemed to go slack. "Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, I do believe that was the night."

  There was silence between them again. Neither of them seemed to know what to say next, and they could not look at each other. Malone stared into space, as he had done earlier; Dell stared at the television, as if it had not been turned off. Only after several minutes did Dell drink the rest of his beer and put the bottle down. He rose.

  "I'll be going now. You won't be coming back to work, will you, Dan?"

  Malone looked thoughtfully at him. "No," he replied. "I'm thinking of putting in for retirement. My sisters in Florida want me to move down there."

  "Good idea. You'd probably enjoy yourself. Lots of retired cops in Florida." Dell walked to the door. "Goodnight, Dan."

  "Goodnight, Frank."

  Only when he got out into the night air did Dell realize how much he was sweating.

  * * *

  The next morning, Dell typed up a summary of Dan Malone's statement, along with his own corroboration of the alibi. After signing it, he handed the report to Kenmare. The lead homicide detective read it, then passed it to Garvan to read.

  "You've thought this through, I guess," Kenmare said.

  "Backwards and forward," Dell told him.

  Garvan raised his eyebrows but said nothing as he handed the report back to Kenmare.

  "I don't think the brass will buy this," Kenmare offered.

  "What are they going to do?" Dell asked. "Suspend Dan and me? Open an internal investigation? On what evidence? And how would it look on the evening news?"

  "The higher-ups might feel it was worth it," said Garvan.

  "Worth it why?" pressed Dell. "What's the ga
in? The department's getting rid of Dan anyway; he'll be retiring."

  "But you won't," Garvan pointed out.

  "So? What have I done that the department would want to get rid of me?"

  "Helped him get away with it, that's what," said Kenmare.

  "If he did it," Dell challenged. "And we don't know that he did. All we know is that we can't find anybody else right now who did do it." He decided to throw down the gauntlet right then. "You guys going to let this report pass, or are you going to make an issue of it?"