“The cut carotid artery was the only wound that produced much blood. From the amount of the blood, and its location, it’s pretty apparent that he took the final blow pretty close to where he fell, at the foot of the stairs. I don’t have to tell you that as soon as the carotid artery is cut the victim, in effect, has a stroke. An instant stroke. Which means that he’d drop in his tracks.” Friedman tipped cigar ash into the wastebasket, then said, “It’s pretty obvious, from the pattern of the wounds, that the attacker was right-handed, but beyond that the lab wasn’t inclined to speculate. Unfortunately, there weren’t any puncture wounds, which might’ve given us a fix on the cross section of the knife blade, and its length. However—and this is one of the interesting little puzzles—both the guys in the lab and the coroner’s guys agree that the fatal wound had to’ve been made by a very sharp knife. I mean, the carotid artery is surrounded by tendons, as you know. However—” Building the suspense, he sent a ragged smoke ring across the desk. “However, the Moroccan dagger wasn’t all that sharp. It wasn’t dull. But it wasn’t very sharp, either.”
Hastings sat up straighter, saying, “The five slashes, were they made by a sharp knife?”
“That’s what the lab thinks. Uniformly, the tissue was cut pretty cleanly. They think all the wounds were inflicted by the same knife, in other words. And—” A second smoke ring followed the first. “And they don’t think it was the Moroccan dagger. They might not be prepared to say so in court. But that’s what they think.”
Silently, thoughtfully, Hastings was nodding somberly to himself.
“There’s more.” Friedman waited until he had Hastings’ full attention, then said, “Out of the six wounds, at least two of them, and probably a third one, cut through the pajamas Haney was wearing. However, there’s no trace of pajama fibers on the dagger. None.”
“There was blood on the dagger, though. Lots of blood. I saw it myself.”
“Blood, sure. And Haney’s blood, too, probably. But no silk pajama fibers. And no hair, either. Despite the fact that Haney had a lot of body hair. Especially on his chest.”
“So what’re you thinking?”
Shrugging, Friedman waved the cigar in an amiable arc. “I’m not thinking anything. I’m just passing on the facts. And there’s more, too—one more little surprise, from the lab.”
“Well?” Hastings glanced pointedly at his watch. “Are you going to tell me?”
“It’s the bloodstains,” Friedman said.
“What’d you mean, the bloodstains? What about them?”
“For one thing, there wasn’t any blood found in the study. None. There was a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs, where he died. But nothing in the study. And nothing between the study door and the foot of the stairs, either.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that—”
Friedman raised the cigar, holding it like a conductor’s baton, bringing the orchestra to attention. “There’s more.”
“Well?” Hastings asked irritably.
“There’s blood on the central staircase, leading up to the second floor.”
“I don’t remember seeing blood on the staircase. And I looked. Carefully.”
“Ah—” Once more, Friedman raised the cigar. “But that could be the point, the precise point. Because, you see, most of it was washed up. Thoroughly. Very thoroughly. With detergent. Tide, the lab says.” He let another beat pass. Then: “We’ve already established that Mrs. Haney shopped at Petrini’s. What’ll you bet that she also uses Tide?”
“Jesus …”
Nodding complacently, Friedman rose to his feet, in the process dropping a length of cigar ash on the floor. He glanced indifferently at the ash, then said, “Like we were saying yesterday, you should think of some very tough questions to ask Mrs. Haney. You should also talk to the girl. Maxine. I’d like to predict that, if you harden your heart sufficiently, you’ll find the pieces fitting together. Snugly.”
Muttering a heartfelt obscenity, Canelli braked the cruiser to a stop behind a stainless-steel tanker truck. “Honest to God,” he said, “it’s getting harder and harder to drive in this city all the time. It really is. If somebody isn’t having an accident, they’re repairing the street.” He bounced the car to an aggrieved stop. “I should hit the siren.” Hope kindling in his eyes, he looked at Hastings. “Should I do it? Hit the siren?”
“Come on, Canelli—” Hastings waved a soothing hand. “It’s a beautiful morning. Relax.”
Canelli shrugged, grudgingly settled himself deeper in the driver’s seat. Overhead, a police helicopter appeared, moved ahead of them, hovered over the next intersection. From somewhere to their right came the sound of an approaching ambulance siren.
“I haven’t seen you since Saturday,” Hastings said. “Did you get anything new on the Haney case?”
“Not really.” Apologetically, Canelli glanced at Hastings. “I didn’t work yesterday—Sunday. I offered. But Lieutenant Friedman said there wasn’t a hell of a lot we could do until the final lab reports came in, and the coroner’s reports, and everything.”
“That’s right. I agree.”
“What about Wade?” Canelli asked. “Did he get square?”
“He looks square to me. He confirms exactly what your witness, Kelley, said. Mrs. Haney didn’t leave Wade’s place until about two o’clock.”
“So there’s no way she could’ve done it,” Canelli mused, frowning as he pondered the problem. “Not unless, somehow, the body was kept warm.”
“What’d you mean by that?”
“Nothing. I was just—you know—”
“Do you have any reason to suspect that the body was kept warm?”
“No, Lieutenant. Honest. I was just trying to—you know—figure out something that would make sense out of all this, that’s all. I mean, it looks like Mrs. Haney’s lying from two directions.” Earnestly, brow furrowed, Canelli looked at the other man. “You know what I mean?”
“No.” As he said it, Hastings unconsciously settled himself, resigned to the inevitability of inching through traffic as he struggled to comprehend Canelli’s scrambled syntax. “What d’you mean?”
“Well, the way it seems to me, we’ve got her lying about a so-called black burglar, apparently. Which would mean that she’s trying to throw suspicion on someone else besides her. But then we’ve got her lying about the time she got home. Or, at least, being so indefinite about when she got home that it makes her look guilty. Which, according to the coroner’s time frame, she couldn’t be. But the question is, why’d she lie, both times?”
“Are you asking? Or do you have a theory?”
“Jeez, no. Lieutenant, I don’t have a theory. Except that I always remember what Lieutenant Friedman said, once. He said that if you find someone’s lying, then you’re on your way to solving the case. Am I right?”
“I hope so, Canelli. I certainly hope so.”
David Fisher gestured to the central stairway. “Katherine’s upstairs. She’s dressing. She and her mother are going to see the funeral director.”
Hastings looked at the other man, automatically making a policeman’s on-the-job assessment: about forty, well built, well-spoken, polite, good-looking. But Fisher wasn’t entirely at ease with himself, Hastings decided. He probably wasn’t self-confident enough to take on the world around him head to head. Like Jeffrey Wade, David Fisher was trying to make it through on looks, not substance.
“Will you stay here while they see the funeral director?” Hastings asked.
“Yes,” Fisher answered. “I’ll stay with Maxine. Why?”
Ignoring the question, Hastings asked, “How’s Maxine doing? Any better?”
“I’m not sure.” Fisher frowned, shook his modishly barbered head. He was dressed in a Madras shirt and tight-fitting flared beige cotton slacks that were meant to look deliberately unpressed. The deep V of the colorful shirt revealed a muscular torso covered with tawny hair. “She doesn’t seem to be able to—” He shook hi
s head again. “She can’t seem to snap out of it. I’m going to take her out today, go down to Fisherman’s Wharf, or the zoo, or someplace.”
“I understand you were married to Mrs. Haney. Are you Maxine’s father?”
“No. Katherine had Maxine by Richard Brett. Her first husband. He lives in Europe now. England.”
“So you were—” Apologetically, Hastings hesitated before asking, “You were, the husband between Mr. Brett and Mr. Haney. Is that right?”
Ruefully, Fisher nodded. “I guess you could put it like that.”
“The reason I asked whether you were her father,” Hastings said, “is I want to talk to Maxine.”
“See,” Canelli offered, explaining, “we can’t interrogate a kid—a minor—without their parents present. Or else they give permission.”
“I wonder whether—” Hastings gestured up the stairway to the second floor. “—whether you’d mind telling Mrs. Haney that we’d like to talk to her before she leaves. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Certainly.” Fisher nodded and turned to the stairway.
Watching the other man climb the stairs, Hastings wondered whether Fisher realized that they’d been standing within a few feet of the spot where Haney had died. Hastings looked closely at the parquet oak floor. There were no signs of blood. The cleanup crew had done a good job, probably saved the city considerable expense.
Two
STANDING IN THE CENTRAL hallway, Katherine Haney turned toward the door of the study. Tentatively, she pointed to the closed door. “We can talk in there—” She hesitated. “If you like.”
“Fine—” Hastings gestured for her to go ahead, then signaled for Canelli to remain behind, in the hallway. Walking woodenly, she opened the door, entered the room, went to the desk, sat stiffly in the brass-studded leather desk chair. Following, Hastings closed the door, sat in the room’s single lounge chair. Neither of them looked at the couch.
“With my mother and David here,” she said, explaining, “and Maxine, too, there isn’t any other place, except the living room. The house isn’t as large as it looks.”
“I don’t want to keep you from—” He hesitated, then said, “—from the funeral parlor. If you and your mother have an appointment, I’ll wait for you here.” He let a beat pass, then said, “I’ll talk to Maxine.”
Quickly, emphatically, she shook her head. “No. I—I’d rather talk to you first.” Dressed in a severely cut dark-blue suit, wearing a pale-blue blouse and a single strand of pearls at her neck, she looked incongruous, sitting so decorously behind the desk that was obviously designed especially for this aggressively masculine leather-and-oak room with its warlike mementos decorating the wood-paneled walls. On the Oriental carpet beside the desk Hastings saw smudges of black fingerprint powder. In this room, the cleanup crew had failed.
Suddenly, artlessly, she spoke: “I don’t want you to talk to Maxine. Not now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she’s so upset You saw her yesterday. She hardly eats. She hardly leaves her room. I’m concerned about her. Very concerned. Until she’s acting more like herself, I don’t want her reliving the whole thing again. Not now. Not so soon.”
“Mrs. Haney—” He leaned forward in the big, deep leather chair, trying to shorten the distance between them. He pitched his voice to a note both confidential and firm as he said, “As far as I can determine, with the exception of your husband and the murderer, Maxine might have been the only other person in the house Friday night, when your husband was killed. She’s a witness, in other words. A key witness. There’s no way, no way at all, that the D.A. can go to the grand jury for an indictment without having her testimony. So you’ve simply got to—”
“But you’ve talked to her, once. You’ve got her testimony already.”
“That was just a preliminary interrogation, Mrs. Haney. We’ve got more facts now. We’ve got a lot better idea what happened Friday night, what really happened.” Watching her, he let a beat pass. Then, quietly: “So I’ve got to talk to her, to double-check. And—” Another beat. “And I’ve got to talk to you, too, Mrs. Haney. As soon as possible.”
On the desk’s leather top, her hands were clenching into small, tight fists. He saw her throat move as she slowly, painfully swallowed.
“Me? You want to talk to me? Why?”
“Because,” he answered, “there’s some things that you didn’t tell us. Several things, in fact.”
He watched her struggle to keep her eyes steady, struggle to keep control of her twitching mouth and the convulsing muscles of her throat—watched her lose the struggle. Beneath the artistry of its meticulously drawn makeup, her face had lost its calm, cool assurance. Suddenly her beauty had deserted her, left her defenseless.
“Are you—” She licked her lips. “Are you saying you think I’m lying? Is that what you’re saying?”
Conscious of the risk he was about to take, aware that, legally, she could refuse to answer, could leave the room, leave the house, even order him from the premises, he said, “Yes, Mrs. Haney. That’s what I’m saying. I’m saying that you lied about seeing a burglar—black or white. I’m saying that I don’t think there was ever a burglary. I think you staged the burglary. Or, rather, you planted the clues that made it look like burglary.”
As if she sought to barricade herself behind her murdered husband’s desk, she sat rigidly, arms braced wide, staring at him with blank eyes. Waiting. Helplessly waiting.”
“Cutter was never here, Friday night,” Hastings said. “There was only you, and Maxine, and Amy Miller—and your husband. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Haney?”
Her blank eyes were fixed, staring at nothing. Slowly, she nodded. Her voice could have come from the depths of a hypnotic trance: “Yes. I lied about Cutter, about a black man. I didn’t think he’d be the one that I identified. I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry for him, for the—the trouble I’ve caused him.”
“That’s called obstructing justice. You know that, don’t you?”
Wordlessly, nervelessly, she nodded.
“You lied about Cutter, and you also lied about the time you came home. Isn’t that true? Didn’t you—”
“No, that’s not true. I—”
“You said you weren’t sure when you came home. But that’s not true. You know what time it was, don’t you? It was about two-twenty, wasn’t it?”
“N—no. It was-about—I think it was about one o’clock. But I’m not sure. I—”
“How did you enter the house, Mrs. Haney? By which door?”
“By the—the service door, from the garage. I’ve already told you that I—”
“You drove into the garage, and you entered the house through the service door. Is that correct?”
“Yes, that—that’s correct.”
“Are you aware that every time a locked door in this house is opened, provided the burglar alarm is set properly, there’s a blip that registers on a tape at the alarm company offices?”
“But—” She paused. Her eyes were clearing; she was thinking it through, calculating her response. “But the alarm wasn’t set on the service door. I’ve told you that already, the first time we talked.”
“I’m not talking about the service door, Mrs. Haney. I’m talking about the garage door. I can prove to you that the garage door went up and down at approximately twenty minutes after eleven, presumably when your husband came home, and entered the house through the service door, which he didn’t rearm. I can also prove to you that the garage door didn’t go up and down again until twenty minutes after two. That’s when you came in. You rearmed the alarm on the service door. You’ve already admitted that you reset it, when we talked on Saturday morning. And the tape confirms what you said.”
Vehemently, she shook her head. “You’re trying to—to confuse me. I—”
“Do you remember what time you called us—called the police, to report your husband’s death?”
“No. How could I remember? I—I was
terrified. I—I thought whoever did it, he’d come back. I—”
“The call came in at ten minutes after three, Mrs. Haney. Approximately fifty minutes after you came home, and found your husband’s body. That’s on a tape, too. Our tape. At police headquarters.”
“But that doesn’t prove that—”
“Was your husband in good health, Friday night?”
“As far as I know he was in good health.”
“He didn’t have a fever, did he?”
Puzzled, she frowned. “I don’t understand why you—”
“The first thing the coroner always does when he examines a murder victim is take the victim’s temperature. Then he notes the room temperature, and determines what the room temperature was for the previous two hours. When he has those two figures, and when he knows the body weight, he can determine, plus or minus an hour, what time death occurred. Provided there’s any warmth left in the body, he can calculate the time of death. And the time of your husband’s death was between midnight and two A.M. Which means that—”
“But—” Suddenly she rose to her feet. Her eyes were fierce now, locked with his. “But that’s got nothing to do with—”
Still seated, Hastings raised a restraining hand. “Let’s forget about the burglar-alarm tape. Let’s talk about the police department tape. And let’s talk about the time you say you came home, approximately one o’clock, you say. Which, as it happens, is the time the coroner says death occurred. Okay?”
Night Games (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 20
