Worst Fears Realized

by Stuart Woods

  “No,” he said aloud. He dialed 911.

  “What is your emergency?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Is the tape rolling?” he asked.

  “You’re being recorded, sir; what is your emergency?”

  “My name is Stone Barrington; I’m a retired police officer. I’ve got a homicide in the top-floor apartment at…” He looked around for something, found a gas bill, and gave her the address. “White female, age thirty-two, name of Susan Bean. I need homicide detectives and the coroner.”

  “I’ve got it, Mr. Barrington.”

  “Oh…tell the squad car that the perpetrator is probably a lone male, on foot, and that he’s probably still in the neighborhood.”

  “Got it. They’re on their way.”

  Stone hung up and dialed Dino’s cell phone.

  “Bacchetti,” Dino’s voice said. There was party noise in the background.

  “It’s Stone; I’m sitting on a homicide about three blocks from the party.” He read the address off the gas bill again.

  “Have you called nine-one-one?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “I think the perp was in the building when I got here, and I’ll bet he’s still in the neighborhood.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out. Don’t start working the scene, Stone; let my people do that.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Stone hung up, sat on a chair at the dining table, and tried not to think about what was in the next room. He was badly shaken. He’d seen a lot of dead bodies in his years as a homicide detective, but never one that had just kissed him.

  3

  T WO DETECTIVES ARRIVED FIRST. STONE let them in and pointed at the kitchen. “She’s in there,” he said, then sat down at the dining table again. They went into the kitchen, then came right out again. One was a big guy, six-three or -four; the other was much shorter, stocky, florid-faced.

  “Stand up,” the shorter one said to Stone.

  “What?”

  “Stand up!”

  Stone stood up.

  The shorter cop swung a right and caught Stone under the ear.

  Stone spun to his right and fell onto the tabletop. Before he could move both cops were on him, handcuffing him. “What the hell are you doing?” Stone demanded.

  They sat him back in the chair, and the short cop hit him again. “Murdering bastard!” the cop said, and then his larger partner restrained him.

  “Easy, Mick,” the bigger man said. “You’ll mark him, and we don’t want that.”

  Stone sat still, saying nothing.

  “Why’d you kill her?” the short one demanded.

  “I didn’t kill her; I found her as she is,” Stone said.

  “Then why is her blood all over you?” he said, raising his fist again.

  The bigger detective caught his wrist. “Mick,” he said quietly, “don’t make me cuff you.”

  The smaller cop shot him a murderous glance. “Just try it,” he said.

  “Stand away from him,” the bigger man said.

  Reluctantly, the short cop backed away.

  “Sorry about that, sir,” the large cop said. “I’m Detective Anderson, and this is Detective Kelly.” He took out a notebook. “What is your name?”

  “Stone Barrington.”

  Anderson looked up from his notebook and paused for a moment. “You want to tell me what happened here, Mr. Barrington?”

  “I went out for Chinese food; I came back and found her as she is. I slipped on the kitchen floor and fell, that’s why I’m bloody. I called nine-one-one.”

  “Lying fuck!” Kelly said, and started toward Stone again.

  Anderson put a hand on his chest and pushed him against the wall. “I’m not going to tell you again, Mick.”

  There was a loud hammering on the door.

  “Get that,” Anderson said to his partner, shoving him toward the door.

  Kelly yanked open the door and Dino Bacchetti walked in. He looked around. “Where’s the corpse?” he asked.

  “In there, Lieutenant,” Kelly said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Stone, are you okay?” Dino asked.

  “I’m cuffed,” Stone replied.

  “Kelly, get the cuffs off that man,” Dino said.

  “But Lieutenant…”

  “Do it.”

  Kelly dug out his keys and took the handcuffs off.

  Stone stood up, rubbing his wrists; then he hit Kelly squarely in the nose, sending him sprawling.

  “All right,” Dino said, “everybody calm down.” Kelly was scrambling to his feet, blood streaming from his nose, heading for Stone. Dino hit him in the forehead with his open palm, knocking him down again. “I said calm down.” Kelly got up more slowly this time. Dino turned to Anderson. “Did you see any of that, Andy?”

  “See what?” Anderson asked.

  Dino walked over to Stone and examined his jaw. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay now,” Stone said.

  “You’re covered in blood; any of it yours?”

  “No.”

  “All right, everybody take a seat, and let’s find out what happened.”

  The four men sat down at the table.

  Kelly dabbed a handkerchief at the blood on his face. “I think he broke my fucking nose,” he said to nobody in particular.

  “Good,” Stone said.

  “Andy,” Dino said.

  Anderson placed his notebook on the table. “Let’s start again,” he said. “Can I have your address, Mr. Barrington?”

  Stone gave him his address, then began at the beginning, at Martin Brougham’s party, and brought everybody up-to-date. While he was talking, two uniformed cops arrived, along with two EMTs and somebody from the medical examiner’s office.

  Anderson reached over to the bag of Chinese food, ripped off the check stapled to the bag, and handed it to a uniform. “Go over to this restaurant, find out who ordered this food and when, who picked it up and when, and get a description,” he said.

  The cop left with the check.

  Stone resumed his story.

  Anderson waited for Stone to finish. “Is that it?” he asked.

  “One other thing: I think the perp was still in the building when I got back with the food.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “When I rang for the elevator, it was on the top floor, and this is the only apartment on twelve. The elevator moved down to six, stopped, then continued to the ground floor. Where was it when you got here?”

  “On the ground floor,” Anderson said.

  “Then, unless another tenant or a visitor used the elevator between the time I got to this floor and the time you arrived, the perp waited on six until the car stopped up here and I got out, then he rang for it again and rode it down to the ground floor.”

  “Pretty cool,” Dino said.

  “Yes, pretty cool,” Stone agreed.

  The uniformed cop returned. “A Miss Bean ordered the food by phone; the time is written on the check, right here,” he said, placing the check on the table. “A man arrived to pick up the food half an hour later, waited five minutes, paid for it, and left. He was over six feet, blond hair, medium to heavy build, dressed in a raincoat.”

  Anderson looked at the check and did some mental calculating. “That checks with your story, Mr. Barrington,” he said.

  “Measure the water in the kettle,” Stone said.

  “What?”

  “When I left, Susan said she was going to make some tea. Let’s find out how long it takes for the same amount of water to boil. That might help with the time frame.”

  “Do it, Mick,” Anderson said. Kelly got up and went into the kitchen.

  They continued talking until the kettle started to whistle. Anderson looked at his watch. “I make it three and a half minutes.”

  “How much water was in the kettle?” Stone asked Kelly.

&
nbsp; “A little under three cups,” Kelly replied sullenly.

  “Here’s one scenario, then,” Stone said. “The killer arrives shortly after I leave. Within three and a half minutes. He kills her, then the kettle starts whistling. He turns off the kettle.”

  “Why?” Kelly asked.

  “Because nobody can stand around and listen to a kettle screaming like that,” Stone said. “Let’s see, five minutes for me to walk to the restaurant, I wait five minutes, and five minutes to come back, say fifteen to eighteen minutes. And when I get back, the killer is still in the apartment, maybe. So if he is, what does he do for fifteen minutes?”

  “Searches the place,” Anderson said. “A robbery, maybe.”

  The second uniform spoke up. “I had a look in the bedroom,” he said. “Neat as a pin. There’s a jewelry box on the dresser with some nice-looking stuff in it.”

  “So it wasn’t a robbery,” Anderson said. “What was he looking for?”

  “Something of value only to him,” Dino replied, standing up and walking to a desk in the living room. He opened the drawers one at a time, including a file drawer, then came back. “Everything is neat. No way to tell if the killer found something.”

  Kelly spoke up. “And the killer turned on the kettle again before he left? What for?”

  “To screw up our timeline,” Stone said. “He wanted us to think that he killed her, then left immediately. I think he followed us from Brougham’s place, or at least, picked us up on the street en route.”

  “Did you see anybody?” Dino asked.

  “No, but it seems to me that he followed us, waited for me to leave, then went upstairs.”

  “How’d he get in?” Kelly asked.

  “Rang the bell; maybe she thought it was me, even though she had given me the key.”

  “And she let him in?”

  “Maybe he forced his way in, or maybe she knew him,” Stone said.

  “How’d he know when you were coming back?” Kelly asked.

  “He didn’t; he thought I’d left to go home. He got lucky. I’ll bet he was getting on the elevator when I rang for it. Must have scared him.”

  “Maybe,” Dino said. “Andy, send your patrolmen to talk to everybody in the building. Find out who came and went, and what time.”

  “Right, Lieutenant,” Anderson said.

  Dino looked at his watch. “I think it’s time to wake up Martin Brougham,” he said.

  “The DA guy?” Kelly asked. “What for?”

  “I want to take a look at her office,” Dino said. “Come on, Stone; I’ll drive you home; we can’t have you out on the streets with blood all over you. You’d just get arrested.” He turned to Kelly. “Apologize to Mr. Barrington for your behavior.”

  Kelly turned beet red. “I apologize,” he said. “I thought you were the perp.”

  “Something you should know, Mick,” Anderson said. “Mr. Barrington used to be a detective in the Nineteenth; he was Lieutenant Bacchetti’s partner.”

  Kelly’s face fell. “I really am sorry,” he said, looking at the floor.

  “Sorry about your nose,” Stone said. He took care not to sound as if he meant it.

  4

  S TONE WAS AWAKENED BY A RINGING telephone. He rolled over, opened an eye, and looked at the bedside clock. Just past ten. He sat up on one elbow. He had been wide-awake until at least four, unable to sleep with the picture of Susan Bean’s body stuck in his mind. Finally, he had drifted off and overslept. He picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Dino.”

  “Morning.”

  “You get any sleep?”

  “Some. You find anything in Susan’s office?”

  “Everything was neat as a pin, just like the apartment; nothing missing that anybody could figure. Brougham was pretty upset. Apparently, he depended on her a lot.”

  “Anything on the murder?”

  “Nothing yet, but whoever used the elevator when you came back was the perp. Nobody else in the building had budged from their apartments.”

  “Not that it does us any good.”

  “No. There were no prints, no evidence of any kind.”

  “He had to have a lot of blood on him,” Stone said.

  “You’re right, but the patrol cars didn’t come across anybody. Listen, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “Where’s Alma?”

  Alma was Stone’s secretary, who had worked for him almost since the moment he had begun to practice law, after leaving the NYPD. “She should be in her office,” Stone replied.

  “Put me on hold and call down there,” Dino said.

  Stone pressed the HOLD button, then dialed Alma’s extension. There was no answer. He pressed line one again. “She’s not answering. She worked late last night, typing up a brief for me, so she could have overslept, I guess.”

  “A woman matching her description was attacked on the sidewalk in your block last night sometime after midnight, when we were at the Bean apartment. She took something like a claw hammer in the head.”

  Stone sat up and put his feet on the floor. “Where is she and how bad?”

  “Lenox Hill, and it doesn’t look good. Does she have any family?”

  “A sister in Westchester, and that’s it,” Stone said.

  “She wasn’t carrying any ID, but she was wearing a Cartier watch that sounds like the one you gave her.”

  “I’ll get up to Lenox Hill right now,” Stone said.

  “Let me know if it’s Alma,” Dino replied, then hung up.

  Stone got dressed in a hurry, gave his bloody clothes from the night before to his housekeeper to take to the cleaner’s, took a cab up to Lenox Hill Hospital, and presented himself at the main desk.

  “My name is Stone Barrington,” he told the woman behind the desk. “The police called me this morning to say that a woman answering the description of my secretary was admitted last night with a head wound. I’d like to see her right away.”

  “Just a minute, please,” the woman said. She dialed a number and spoke for a moment, then hung up. “Dr. Thompson will be with you in just a minute,” she said. “Please have a seat.”

  Stone paced until the doctor turned up five minutes later. They shook hands. “I’d like to see the Jane Doe brought in last night,” he said. “She may be my secretary, Alma Hodges.”

  “Describe your secretary,” the doctor said.

  “Five-seven, a hundred and forty, early fifties, dark hair going gray, wearing a pin-striped suit.”

  The doctor nodded. “Sounds like her. I’m sorry to tell you she died twenty minutes ago.”

  Stone slumped.

  “Her injuries were massive,” the doctor said. “She was struck at least half a dozen times with a blunt object, perhaps a hammer. The police thought it was a robbery, since she had no handbag or identification.”

  “I’d better see her,” Stone said.

  “I’ll walk you downstairs,” the doctor replied.

  They rode the elevator down to the basement, and the doctor led the way to the morgue. The tray was pulled out of the refrigerator and the sheet pulled back.

  She looked utterly peaceful, Stone thought, and quite beautiful. He was glad he didn’t have to look at the back of her head. He nodded. “That’s Alma Hodges,” he said.

  “Did she have any family?” the doctor asked.

  “A sister. I’ll speak to her; then I’ll make some arrangements.”

  “An autopsy is scheduled for this afternoon; I should think the body will be ready for release first thing in the morning.”

  Stone thanked the doctor and left the hospital. He took a cab home and went down to his office. Alma’s desk was in perfect order, his brief stacked neatly on top, with a note saying, SEE YOU IN THE MORNING.

  Stone sat down heavily at her desk, found her phone book and her sister’s number. He broke the news as gently as he could and said he’d be glad to see to the arrangements. The woman thanked him and
said that her brother-in-law was a mortician and she’d have him take care of it. Stone expressed his condolences and told the woman how loyal and valuable Alma had been to him and how much he would miss her. Finally, he was able to hang up, drained from the experience. The phone rang almost immediately.

  “Stone Barrington,” he said.

  “Morning, Stone, it’s Frank Maddox,” a man’s voice said. Maddox was the attorney for the insurance company Stone was suing.

  “Yes, Frank?”

  “My client has authorized me to offer your client half a million dollars.”

  “Unacceptable,” Stone said. He had already thought out his strategy in responding to an offer. “I’m ready to go to trial.” He was anything but ready, he thought. “I’ll pass your offer on to my client, but with a strong recommendation that it be rejected.”

  Maddox sighed. “What’s it going to take, Stone? Give me a realistic number, and I’ll go back to my client.”

  “It’s going to take a million dollars, plus a three-hundred-thousand-dollar attorney’s fee, and that’s bottom line, Frank. Don’t bother with a counteroffer; just show up in court tomorrow.”

  “Hold on, Stone.” Maddox punched the HOLD button.

  Stone waited. Maddox was obviously with his client.

  Shortly, the lawyer came back on. “Done,” he said.

  “I’ll want your check by close of business today,” Stone said. “I’m not canceling our court date until the money is in the bank.”

  “I think I can arrange that,” Maddox said. “I’ll messenger it over to your office this afternoon.”

  “Send it to Bill Eggers at Woodman and Weld,” Stone said. “I may be out this afternoon, and my secretary isn’t in today.”

  “Fine; I’ll include the usual release.” Maddox hung up.

  Stone called Woodman & Weld and asked for Bill Eggers, the managing partner.

  “Bill Eggers.”

  “Bill, it’s Stone.”

  “Morning, Stone. You going to trial tomorrow?”

  “They’ve just settled for a million, plus my fee. The check is coming to you this afternoon. Will you let the client know? I’d call her myself, but it’s a very bad day.”