He examined the four flagstones more carefully, inch by inch. The captain’s right foot rested on the corner of a tan one. In the middle of the tan one he saw two small grayish marks, one larger than the other. He leaned far to one side and the grayish marks took on a faint metallic gleam.
The captain was saying, “When did you notice any change in her habits and when …” He broke off and stared down at Ben who was on one knee picking with his thumb nail at the larger of the two gray marks. “What in God’s name are you doing, Wixler?”
“Take a look,” Ben said. “Looks like this area was hosed down. And these marks are lead. Lean down and look at this little sort of gold speckle here. Copper jacket.” He sat back on one heel and looked up at Donovan. “Were there any holes in the lady?”
“No!” Donovan jumped to his feet, turned toward the house. “Baker!” he bawled. A man came out of the house at almost a dead run. “Get your stuff for a blood check.” Baker darted away. Donovan moved everybody to the far end of the terrace and, after a speculative glance at Wixler, continued his questioning. Baker came back and worked with his bottles and filter paper, making his way to the edge of the terrace. He came and stood by Donovan.
When Donovan looked up he held out his filter paper and said, “Positive, sir. Not enough to type, but human blood. I got the best trace where it was washed off into the grass.”
“Recent?”
“I guess it would have to be. It would have to be since the last heavy rain and that was Tuesday.”
“May I make a suggestion?” Ben said.
“Of course.”
“Have your man check that boat down there at the dock.”
Donovan stared at Ben, then his face showed comprehension and he told Baker to do so. Ben strolled down to where Baker had begun to work. Baker, kneeling in the bottom of the boat, looked up at him and grinned and said, “Jackpot. Enough to type. A big beautiful clot.”
Ben looked out at the small lake, at the small chop piled up by the crisp west breeze. He turned on his heel and went back to the terrace and told Donovan what Baker was picking up.
Donovan said, “I’m sorry to have to tire you with these questions, Mr. Catton. I can have you driven back to the city immediately.”
“If it’s permitted, I’d like to go in the house and rest for a little while.”
“It’s all right now. My men are through in the house.”
As Catton started toward the door, Ben said, “Excuse me, Mr. Catton. Would it be all right if we cut that dam and let the water out?”
Catton turned and looked at his lake. He said carefully, “You have my permission to blow it to hell.” He continued on toward the door and turned and said with a death’s-head grin, “I know one thing you will find.”
“What sir?”
“A great many empty bottles.” He shut the door behind him.
Donovan looked at the earth dam at the end of the small lake. “Easier to blow it. I’ll make arrangements.” He hurried off.
Ben turned to Wendy Matthews. “Any bets?”
Matthews shook his head. “I’ll take the other side, though. Fifty to one it’s our Danny. And remind me never to sneer again when you get one of your strange feelings, Ben.”
“I like the way the pattern is showing more clearly all the time. Danny takes up with Drusilla Catton. She is in on his scheme. It’s even logical to assume she provided him with the angle to work on. But the intended victim didn’t lie still and let them pick all his feathers. He got a line on where Danny had left the statement that he thought provided him with immunity. So he recovered the statement and killed Lucille Bronson and got out here early the next morning and got neatly rid of this unholy pair. There was a certain amount of cunning in hiding one body and leaving the other so we would all go running off in all directions looking for Danny. With or without that streak of luck I had, Wendy, I was going to make sure Danny’s body wasn’t in the lake or buried on the premises.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“We find out who Drusilla Catton was chummy with during the past couple of years, so chummy she could have found out something Danny could sell back to the man.”
At twelve-thirty a state trooper pushed the plunger on a small black box and four sticks of dynamite inserted deep into the earthen base of the dam made a muffled thump Ben could feel in the soles of his feet. Dirt flew high, and before it fell to earth the water of the lake had started to move out through a ragged gap in the dam. As it moved it widened the gap, and a muddy torrent galloped down the bed of the small stream. Ben watched the pilings of the dock and saw the water move slowly down, exposing the darker area of the part that had been under water. The gleaming mud flats began to appear around the shore line. As the gap widened it moved faster. In twenty minutes the lake had drained.
They stood on the shore line and watched three husky troopers, minus shoes, socks, and uniform trousers, wade out through the black mud to the body about eighty feet from shore. It lay with the head toward the break in the dam, lay face down and naked in the mud except for a soaked blue robe that covered the shoulders and the head and trailed out in the direction of the flow.
The troopers bent over the body. One worked on the ankles. Soon they headed back toward shore, two of them carrying the body by ankles and armpits, one of them carrying two cinder blocks wired together. They put the body on the dock and went up to hose the mud off their legs and dress again.
“Bronson?” Donovan asked.
“Can we get some of the mud off?” Ben asked.
A trooper brought the hose as far as it would reach. The water sprayed in a high arc and fell on the body and soon washed the face clean.
“It’s Danny Bronson,” Matthews said.
Donovan bent closer. “Six shots in the head. Look at these. I’ve never seen anything just like this before. Small stuff. Thirty-two caliber, I’d guess. Close range for these five in the forehead. Inches away.” He gingerly parted the robe. “And one under the heart. Seven shots. Good guess it’s an automatic.”
Donovan straightened up and looked out at the black expanse of mud. “If it’s out there we can get it. Two men with metal detectors could cover it in a day. They won’t enjoy it, but they can do it.”
Ben looked up toward the house and saw three men walking swiftly toward them. The one in the lead was Billy Sullivan, wearing a wide, wise and handsome smile. The one in the rear was slipping a plate holder into his Speed Graphic.
“Private party?” Billy asked. “Or can anybody come?”
Donovan moved forward with the ponderous inevitability of a tank and brought the three of them to a stop. “I will give you an interview containing all pertinent facts in due time, gentlemen,” he roared politely at them. “If you will be so kind as to return to the parking area, I will be with you shortly.”
“How shortly?” Billy asked.
“In ten minutes.”
“Would that be Danny Bronson, Captain?”
“It was, at one time,” he said, herding them back.
“Killed in desperate gun battle with brave officers?”
“Unfortunately no. How did you people find out about this?”
“A cab driver thought the information might be worth five bucks. After I paid him, Captain, I checked with Sergeant Wixler’s office. We’ll co-operate, but in all fairness this ought to be a Ledger exclusive.”
“Ten minutes,” Donovan said.
When the reporters were out of earshot, Ben said, “You aren’t going to turn them loose on Catton, are you?”
“He left twenty minutes ago. Her father is going to make the formal identification.” Donovan directed his men to make the necessary examination of the body and recall the county coroner. He turned back to Wixler and Matthews. “It looks like this is all tied in together, gentlemen, your little affair and mine. I have given you access to all information available to me. I suggest you inform me of your conclusions. I suspect the killer will be eventually apprehe
nded in your city.”
“Brief the Captain, Ben,” Matthews said.
Ben quickly summarized his thinking, and concluded by saying, “So it’s either a partner who waited until the take and then decided to keep it all himself, or it’s the man they were trying to fleece. I like the second possibility. Now we can start hunting for Mr. X. We can triangulate him. Somebody who had previous contact with Danny Bronson. We know one thing. It’s a big deal. It isn’t a gouge for a thousand or two. And whoever they had on the hook, it wasn’t information that would just maybe bust up a marriage, or get the guy thrown off the Board of Education. It was something that would hurt worse. He was so vulnerable, he could rationalize some risky killing.”
Donovan nodded. “Sound enough. How much, if any, of what you’ve said can be told to our journalistic friends?”
“Let’s just let them have the facts. No guesses. Bronson’s residence here, with the woman. Her death and his.”
Donovan squared himself and looked challengingly at Wixler. “And why did we look in the lake?”
“In checking the area, Captain, you and your people came across evidence that there could have been a second killing.”
Matthews said quietly, “Ben here hasn’t all the rank he ought to have yet, Captain. There are wolves in the shrubbery.”
Donovan nodded. “It won’t hurt me to give away a little credit. I just wanted to know the attitude, Matthews.”
“We’re in the same business,” Ben said.
“Sometimes Roeber forgot that.” He studied Wixler. “We’ll get along.”
“Thanks for letting us know so quickly, Captain,” Ben said. “We have to be getting back now.”
As Wixler, Spence, and Matthews went to the car where the driver was still waiting, Billy Sullivan drifted over and said, “Are we going to get the brush, Ben?”
“No. He’ll be fair.”
“Can I come get another statement from you after I get this story in?”
“I won’t be able to give you any more than he’ll give you, Billy.”
“You know,” Billy said thoughtfully, “if I could get a rewrite man to hang out a window, he could take it direct from Donovan.”
Matthews pulled the door of the sedan shut and said through the window, “The captain used to command troops.”
“On windy days,” Sullivan said.
They drove out and headed back toward the city. Matthews told the driver to make time. He put the sedan up to ninety, with red blinker light flashing. He touched the siren only when traffic was clotted in front of them, and the low warning growl quickly opened up a lane.
Al Spence turned around in the front seat, cigarette in the corner of his mouth hobbling as he spoke. “You act like you know where we go from here,” he said.
“You’ve been pretty quiet, Al,” Ben said. “Got any ideas?”
“I’d like to know more about this Burton Catton. She was cheating on him. He took it pretty casual. If Betty ever did that to me, I’d go off like a rocket.”
“I know the man,” Matthews said. “You wouldn’t believe the way he’s changed. He used to be the jolly boy type. He had a dreadful harridan of a wife named Ethel. At the time he married her, he was selling insurance and real estate. She was pretty well loaded. She backed him in his first deal. That was a hell of a long time ago. He bought the city dump.”
“That sounds just dandy,” Spence said.
“It was. The city was abandoning it. It needed a hell of a lot of fill. He was high bidder for it. He’d made arrangements with a contractor who was making that big cut where they rerouted Eastern Avenue. So he got the fill for the cost of hauling it. He got it hauled free by giving a trucker a piece of the pie. They filled it, landscaped it, renamed it, cut it up into approved plots, and just when they were about to start unloading it, the new Vulcan plant was announced. So Burt incorporated, took in a builder, and started putting up houses. They were sold as fast as they could get them up. They were pretty damn shoddy little houses. You know the area. Lakewood Estates it’s called. From then on he rolled like a big ball. Belonged to everything. He built that camp as a hideaway, to get away from Ethel. He lived hard and drank hard and chased the women. I was out there twice, at stag picnics he used to have. Free liquor and some pretty gaudy entertainment. Then, last year, when he was riding high, things started to go sour for him. Right when he was at the top. He’d married Drusilla after Ethel died. Big money, a handsome young wife, and a lot of laughs. And he got careless. The Director of Internal Revenue turned that laugh into a sickly smile.”
“Fraud?” Ben asked.
“They didn’t try to make that stick. They just handed him a fat deficiency judgment. As I understand it, Burt had taken capital gains on a lot of big land deals. So they reclassified him as a land merchant, and made it retroactive several years, so what he had taken as capital gains had to be considered as income. He fought it, but they made it stick. He got hurt badly and so did the people in with him. Most of them could stand it because they’d only had a small piece of his syndicate operations. As I heard it, a lawyer named Verney took a big clouting.”
Ben turned and stared at Matthews. For a moment the siren made conversation impossible. When the sound died, Ben said, “Paul Verney?”
“Do you know him?”
“I know him,” Spence said. “He came into this thing through Johnny Keefler. That’s how we found out Danny was trying to plant an envelope somewhere.”
Ben felt, deep inside him, that familiar and telltale surge of excitement. “I’m a guy who takes long looks at coincidences, Wendy.”
Matthews said, “Let me get this. It was Verney who told Bronson he wouldn’t hold onto his envelope for him.”
“He told Keefler that Bronson acted so strange he didn’t want to get mixed up in it.”
“That’s what he told me,” Spence said.
“How big a man is he?” Ben asked Spence.
“He’s a pretty good-sized bastard. He isn’t heavy, but he’s tall and sort of what you call raw-boned, and he’s got a pair of meat hooks on him like that guy that used to like to bust down doors when they had him on the Vice Section. He’s about forty. A very solemn type guy. Sits there behind his desk like somebody was engraving his picture to put on a thousand-dollar bill.”
“He sold you?” Ben asked.
“No reason why he shouldn’t. He talked just fine. Got a nice office. Gave me a hell of a good cigar.”
Matthews said, “He has the reputation of being almost too shrewd, Ben. He worked pretty closely with Burt Catton for years.”
“Okay,” Ben said, “here’s a question for you. We’ll assume he was hurt bad by the tax decision. We’ll take it another step and we’ll assume he had figured out some fancy way to make up his losses. How the hell would Drusilla Catton know about it, know enough about it to give Danny a lever to use? Were he and Drusilla playmates?”
“I would doubt that. Verney had a wife in an institution somewhere. And a son away at school. He’s never, as far as I know, had much to do with women. I think he would be too heavy-handed for Drusilla.”
“Is he in any position of trust where he could be taking the wrong money? Estate work, maybe?”
“I wouldn’t think so. At least no important estates.”
“The penalty is the same.”
“But he couldn’t get healthy on a small estate. That was a big tax bill, the way I heard it.”
Spence said, “I’ll just throw this in and you can kick it around. If Catton and Verney were so close, maybe they got a deal where they can both get healthy. Then maybe Mrs. Catton would have found out from her husband and told Danny.”
“Then why not squeeze Catton?” Ben asked.
“Because of the likelihood he would drop dead,” Matthews said.
“I don’t know if we’re getting anywhere,” Ben said.
“Maybe we ought to back up a little,” Spence said. “Let’s say it was Verney. Okay, how does he know about Lucille
Bronson?”
Ben thought in silence for a few moments. “From Johnny Keefler? Wait a minute. We’re not doing this logically. We’re going too fast. If we assume it’s Verney, we have to assume that when Bronson went to see him last Thursday, it was part of the squeeze. This stuff about the envelope was fabricated.”
“Maybe he went there for a down payment?” Matthews asked.
Ben hit his fist on his thigh. “Hey! Lucille told her husband Danny had only been there once. Catelli found proof he had been there twice. Lucille told her husband Bronson had left the money there way back on September twenty-eighth. The recent prints could have been made last Thursday. Suppose on Danny’s first visit, he left the statement of what he’d found out about Verney. He spent a long time figuring out just how he’d handle it. Last Thursday he contacted Verney, got a thousand bucks, left it with Lucille the same day, as an emergency escape fund if the rest of it went sour.”
“Why not take it out to the camp?” Matthews asked.
“Maybe Drusilla had the idea she was going to go with him. If he wanted to go alone, it would be wise to stash the money some other place.”
“Too many assumptions,” Matthews said.
“We can check any withdrawal Verney may have made that day,” Ben said.
“He’s got a safe in his office,” Spence said. “It could have come out of there.”
“As soon as we get back, Al,” Ben said, “I want you and Dan Means to concentrate on Paul Verney. Find out what he was doing Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. I’m going to talk to Johnny Keefler.”
“I’ll talk to Burt Catton,” Matthews said.
Keefler had become a hollow man, a little empty-eyed ghost who talked in a listless and barely audible voice. It took Wixler a long time to bring Keefler around to his remembrance of the talk with Verney, and even longer to isolate the key factor in the conversation.
The Price of Murder Page 16
