Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense

by Linda Landrigan

  But that wasn’t Erie’s way. He was determined to make every day of his time on the force count. Even his last.

  8:07 A.M.

  ERIE WAS REACHING out to open his car door when he heard the cat. She was hurrying up the driveway toward him, meowing loudly. He knelt and stretched out his right arm. As always, the cat rubbed her face on his hand several times before flopping over on her back and stretching out her legs. He rubbed her stomach. Her fur was long and matted.

  “How do you like that, buddy? How do you like that?” Erie asked the cat.

  The cat purred.

  Erie had never owned a cat, never really known a cat, never been interested in them. He had no idea how old the little black cat was. She’d been hanging around the neighborhood about a month. She had grown noticeably bigger since he’d first seen her. She had also become friendlier. She wore no collar or tags.

  Occasionally Erie had found himself worrying about the cat. Where was she sleeping? What was she eating? He’d seen her once over by Green River Road, and the thought of her trying to cross busy streets had haunted him for hours.

  But Erie always reminded himself that he wasn’t a cat person. And he had bigger things to worry about than dumb animals.

  “That’s enough for today,” he told the cat as he stood up. She rolled over on her stomach and looked up at him expectantly. “Nope. No more. So long.”

  He climbed into his car and started the engine. He backed out of the driveway slowly, keeping an eye on the cat lest she jump up and dart under the tires. But she stayed where she was, watching him, seemingly puzzled by his desire to leave this perfectly wonderful driveway and this perfectly wonderful cat.

  8:33 A.M.

  ON HIS WAY into police headquarters from the parking lot, Erie was stopped by three cops. They were all men he hadn’t seen or spoken to in the last week. Each one stopped him separately and said the same thing.

  “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  Erie said the only thing he could: “Thanks.”

  On his way past the human resources office a female coworker called out, “Look who’s early! Hey, Larry, don’t you know you’re not supposed to come in before noon on your last day!”

  “The early bird catches the worm,” Erie said.

  A uniformed officer stopped as she passed. “You don’t have to worry about catching worms anymore, Detective Erie. You just head down to Arizona and catch some sun. Leave the worms to us.”

  8:45 A.M.

  ERIE HAD ALREADY cleaned out his office, for the most part. The walls were bare, his desktop was free of clutter, the drawers were practically empty aside from a few stray pens and paper clips and leftover forms. So it was impossible to miss the yellow Post-it note stuck to the exact center of his desktop. It was from Hal Allen, director of Detective Services/Homicide—his boss. The note read, “See me in my office ASAP.” Erie hoped it was a special assignment, a favor he could do for Allen or the department, something that would draw on his decades of experience, something that would make his last eight hours as a police officer count.

  8:48 A.M.

  ERIE KNEW he was in trouble the second he stepped into the office of May Davis, Allen’s administrative assistant and official gatekeeper. He’d walked into a trap, and there was no way out.

  Twenty people were crammed behind Davis’s desk. Behind them was a banner reading WE’LL MISS YOU, BIG GUY! On it were dozens of signatures surrounded by drawings of handcuffs and police badges and men in striped prison uniforms. The people waiting for him, the entire Homicide Division reinforced by a couple of evidence technicians and some of his old buddies from other departments, began singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

  Erie stood there, smiling dutifully, and took it like a man.

  9:09 A.M.

  ERIE ENDURED THE song and the hugs and the slaps on the back and the vanilla cake with the outline of Arizona in orange frosting. He endured Allen’s speech about thirty-three years of service and one hundred twelve murderers behind bars. He endured it all without ever saying, “What about those twenty-nine unsolved murders?” or “Why would I move to Arizona without Nancy?”

  And after the ordeal was over and the revelers had all drifted away, it became clear that he was supposed to drift away, too. There were forms to fill out and drawers to empty, right? Instead, he asked Hal Allen if they could step into his office.

  “What’s on your mind, Larry?”

  Allen was a different breed of cop. He was younger than Erie. He worked out every day. His walls weren’t covered with pictures of his kids or newspaper articles about his big busts. He had his degrees—a BA in criminal justice, a master’s in psychology—and inspirational posters about Leadership and Goals. For him, being a cop wasn’t a calling, it was a career choice. But Erie liked him and hoped he would understand.

  “I was wondering if I could take back one of my cases.”

  “Come on, Larry,” Allen said. “You’re going to have to let go.”

  “Just for today, Hal. I just want to make some inquiries, see if I can get the ball rolling again. At the end of the day I’ll turn it back over to Dave Rogers with a full briefing.”

  Allen shook his head, grinning. “I’ve heard of this condition. It’s called dedication to duty. We’re going to have to cure you of it. I prescribe a day playing computer solitaire followed by a much-deserved early retirement in beautiful, sunny Arizona.”

  “Nancy liked Arizona, Hal. We were moving there for her.”

  “Oh.” The smile melted off Allen’s face. “So you’re not—”

  “I don’t know. We hadn’t signed anything yet when Nancy took that last turn for the worse. I’m not sure I want to leave Indiana. I’ve lived here all my life.” Erie shifted nervously in his seat. “But that’s neither here nor there. I’m just asking for one more day to protect and serve.”

  Allen leaned forward in his swivel chair and gave Erie a long, thoughtful look as if really seeing him for the first time. “You’re not going to solve your one hundred thirteenth homicide today, Larry. You’re just going to end up chasing around stone-cold leads and getting nowhere.”

  “I love days like that.”

  Allen nodded. “Okay. Do what you have to do. But drop by my office before you go home tonight. I want to talk to you again.”

  Erie practically jumped up from his chair. For the first time that day he actually felt awake.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Anything you say.”

  9:31 A.M.

  DETECTIVE DAVID ROGERS was on the phone when Erie appeared in the doorway to his office. Rogers waved him in, said, “No problem,” and hung up. “The boss says you want to catch a bad guy today,” he said.

  “I just want to borrow back one of my cases. Is that okay with you?”

  Rogers smiled and pointed at a stack of bound folders on one corner of his desk. “Pick your poison,” he said. “If you insist on working your last day, I’m not going to stop you.”

  Erie shuffled through the case files. Did he want the fifteen-year-old crack dealer, four months dead? The unidentified, twenty-something woman found in the woods of Lloyd Park, six months dead? Or the middle-aged insurance salesman, ten months dead?

  Lifeless eyes stared up at him from Polaroids paper-clipped to Xeroxed autopsy reports. They looked inside him, told him, “Do something. Avenge me. Avenge me.”

  But justice isn’t for the dead. That was one of the things he had learned in his years working homicide. It’s no use fighting a crusade for a corpse. It will still be a corpse even if somebody turns its killer into a corpse, too. But the family, the loved ones, the living—they can be helped.

  He chose a file and left.

  10:07 A.M.

  UNLIKE MOST OF the older, lower-middle-class neighborhoods around town, Pine Hills actually lived up to its name. It had both pines and hills, though not many of either. It also had a reputation among Erie’s fellow cops for producing wild kids. On Halloween night, patrol cars cruis
ed through the neighborhood as if it were Compton or Watts, and EMT crews waited on standby for the inevitable wounds from bottle rockets, M-80s, broken glass, and exploding mailboxes.

  O’Hara Drive was a short, crooked, sloping street in the heart of the neighborhood. It was all of one block long, bracketed on each side by longer streets that curved up to the neighborhood’s highest hills. From the top of one you could see the airport just a mile away. From the other you could see the county dump.

  The house at 1701 O’Hara Drive wasn’t just where Joel Korfmann, insurance salesman, had lived. It was where he had died, too. There were two vehicles in the driveway when Erie arrived—a silver, mid-’90s model Ford Taurus and a newer Ford pickup, red. The Taurus he remembered.

  He parked at the curb and walked toward the house. All the curtains had been drawn shut. A big plastic trash can lay on its side near the foot of the driveway.

  He rang the doorbell. And waited. He knocked on the rickety metal of the screen door. The curtains in the front window fluttered, and a woman’s face hovered in the shadows beyond. Erie tried to smile reassuringly. He pulled out his badge.

  “It’s Detective Erie, Mrs. Korfmann.”

  The face disappeared. Erie waited again. Finally the front door opened. The screen door in front of it remained closed.

  All the lights of the house were off. Candace Korfmann stood back from the door, away from the sunlight. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Korfmann. I’m just dropping by this morning to ask a few followup questions. Is now a good time to talk?”

  “Sure,” she replied lifelessly. She was dressed in a bathrobe. Erie recalled that she was what people used to call a housewife or homemaker. She didn’t have a job to give her life focus again after her husband died. And she didn’t have any children to keep her busy, keep her mind from dwelling on the past, on what had happened in her own kitchen. He pictured her brooding in the darkness of the little white house all day every day, alone.

  “Good,” Erie said. “First off, I’m afraid I have to tell you that we haven’t uncovered any new leads. But we’re putting a new investigator on the case next week, Detective David Rogers. So don’t lose hope, Mrs. Korfmann. He’s a good man.”

  After a moment’s pause she nodded. “Okay, I won’t.”

  “Good. Now, second, I was wondering if there was anything new you could tell me—any new memories or thoughts you’ve had that might help our investigation.”

  Mrs. Korfmann stared at him impassively. Standing in the shadows, perfectly still, she looked flat, one-dimensional, like the mere outline of a woman. Her shape—the slumped shoulders and tousled hair and slightly tilted head—reminded him of Nancy toward the end, when she was so weak she could barely stand.

  “It could be anything, even just a rumor going around the neighborhood,” he prompted. “Every little bit helps, Mrs. Korfmann.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t heard a thing.”

  “That’s okay. No reason you should do our job for us. I have just one more thing to talk to you about.” He pulled a card from his jacket pocket. “I’d like to give you this. It’s the number of a woman I know. She runs a group for … those who’ve been left behind. A survivor support group. You might want to give her a call.”

  Mrs. Korfmann didn’t move for a long moment. Then she opened the door and reached out to take the card. As she leaned into the light, Erie could see that her skin was pale, her eyes hollow. He noticed a slight swelling in her lower lip and a dark, bluish smudge of bruised flesh under her left eye.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Sure. You take care now, Mrs. Korfmann.”

  She nodded, then closed the door.

  10:24 A.M.

  ERIE STARTED his car. The digital clock on the dashboard came to life. Not even an hour back on the Korfmann case, and already he was done. He had driven across town just to stir up painful memories for a sad and lonely woman. There was nothing to do now but head back to the office and shoot the breeze with whoever he could find lounging around. Reminisce about the good old days, trot out old stories and legends, do nothing. Then go home.

  He shut off the ignition and got out of the car. He walked to the house across from 1701 O’Hara Drive and rang the doorbell. An old man opened the door. He was wearing glasses so thick Erie couldn’t see his eyes, just big, shimmering ovals of pale blue.

  “Yes?”

  Erie took out his badge. “Good morning, Mr. Wallender. I’m Detective Erie. You and I spoke about ten months ago.”

  The old man bent forward to peer at the badge. “Of course I remember you, detective. Come on in.” He shuffled ahead of Erie into the next room. “You have a seat there and I’ll get some coffee.” He disappeared around a corner. “I’ve got some on the stove. Every day I make a pot of coffee and drink two cups. I don’t know why I keep doing that. I pour more coffee down the drain in a morning than most people drink in a week.” Erie could hear cabinet doors and drawers opening and closing, porcelain sliding over countertops, the hum of an open refrigerator.

  “I’ll just take mine black, Mr. Wallender,” he called.

  “Have you arrested Joel Korfmann’s killer yet?”

  “Not yet. That’s why I’m here. I’m making a few followup inquiries.”

  Wallender shuffled into the living room with a mug in each hand. He gave one to Erie. The liquid in it had the telltale hue of coffee with skim milk. Erie didn’t take a sip.

  “I was wondering if you’d heard or seen anything else that might have a bearing on the case.”

  Wallender lowered himself slowly into a recliner. “I’ve been keeping my eye on the neighborhood kids. They’re always planning some kind of prank. I called the police a couple of months ago. Thought I saw a boy with some dynamite. A policeman came out. Do you know an Officer Pyke?”

  “Yes, I do.” The old man’s vision and hearing might be shaky, but his memory was fine. “Have you spoken to Mrs. Korfmann at all? Do you know how she’s doing?”

  Wallender brought his mug to his lips, his hands trembling badly.

  “She kind of dropped out of sight for a while there. I figured she went to be with her family or some such,” the old man said. “She was gone maybe two months. When she came back, she seemed to be doing fine. I took it upon myself to drop in and chat with her from time to time.”

  “And her state of mind seemed good?”

  Wallender shrugged. “Far as I could tell. They were always standoffish people, her and her husband both. She seemed a little friendlier for a while there, but then her young man began hanging around and she was the same old Candace again.”

  “Her young man? You mean she has a boyfriend?”

  “I guess you could call him that, seeing as how his truck’s there most nights.”

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  “Maybe two months, maybe a little longer.” Wallender’s thin, trembling lips curled into a sly smile.

  “Now, don’t go thinking evil thoughts, Detective Erie. She needed a man around, so she found one. It’s understandable. People get lonely. I know a little something about that. It’s not easy living alone.”

  Erie tried to smile back but found he couldn’t. His mouth, his whole face, felt stiff, dead. “I’m not thinking evil thoughts, Mr. Wallender. I’m just curious. That’s my job.”

  “Sure, sure. I understand. I guess I’m curious, too. Except when it’s a neighbor being curious, people call it nosy.”

  “Have you ever spoken to Mrs. Korfmann’s young man?”

  “Well, I’ve tried. He’s not a very talkative fella. I’ve been over to chat once or twice when I noticed him out working on his truck. He didn’t have a lot to say. Actually, he reminds me a lot of Joel—Mr. Korfmann.”

  “Did you happen to catch his name?”

  “Ray. He didn’t mention his last name. He works over at DeRogatis Ford as a mechanic.” The old man grinned again. “That’s all I g
ot out of him, chief. If you want me to try again, maybe I could get his Social Security number for you.”

  Erie finally found himself able to smile back. “You’re a real character, Mr. Wallender.”

  “I certainly am,” the old man said with obvious pride. “I just wish more people knew it.”

  10:43 A.M.

  ERIE WAS BACK in his car, faced again with the drive to the station, spending the afternoon killing time, the evening killing time, the weekend killing time, the years killing time until time finally killed him.

  He thought about Candace Korfmann. Her dead-eyed stare, the way she had stayed away from the light, the black eye. He tried not to think evil thoughts about Ray. But he couldn’t stop himself. Good cops and social workers can smell abuse a mile away, and Erie had caught a whiff of something in the air around 1701 O’Hara Drive. Maybe he couldn’t catch a killer in one day, but he sure as hell could sniff out a woman-beater. What he would do about it, he wasn’t sure.

  He started his car and put it in gear. As he pulled away from the curb, he noticed movement in one of the windows of the Korfmann house—a dark shape quickly replaced by the swaying of a blind. Someone had been watching him.

  He drove to the intersection of Oak Hill Road and Highway 41, home of DeRogatis Ford.

  11:10 A.M.

  A SALESMAN SWOOPED down on Erie before he could step out of his car.

  “Good afternoon there! What can I help you with today?”

  Erie flipped out his badge. “I’d like to have a word with whoever runs your mechanics shop.”

  Sweat instantly materialized on the salesman’s forehead.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just making a routine inquiry.”

  The salesman still looked panic-stricken.

  “It has nothing to do with DeRogatis Ford,” Erie added. “I’m trying to locate someone who may be an employee. He’s not in any trouble. Like I said, it’s very routine.”

  The salesman nodded and gave Erie an unconvincing smile. “Sure, officer. We’re always happy to help River City’s finest. Right this way.”