Back at the tourist court, they had one more job. Calhoun set Helena to work scrubbing out the tub that had been her husband’s bier for five days.
Then he informed her there wasn’t any reason, now that her cabin was corpseless, that she couldn’t sleep in her own bed that night. She gave him a mildly surprised look, but she made no objection.
He didn’t think it necessary to explain that musing on her homicidal tendencies had given him the feeling that it might not be too safe to go to sleep in the same room with her.
Calhoun locked his cabin door that night.
His last thoughts before going to sleep concerned what Helena’s feelings would be when she stepped into the tub for a shower the next morning. He stopped speculating because he knew it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest.
17
At twenty-eight Vance Kriegler suffered the frustrating experience of realizing he had chosen the wrong career. For five years he had worked in the Crime Lab of the Cleveland Police Department. Although he enjoyed his work, what he really wanted to be was a detective. His type of crime investigation involved peering through a microscope at bits of thread, ash, or dirt, weighing bullets taken from corpses, and other such purely laboratory routines. He never personally saw or talked to a victim or suspect of a crime, never questioned a witness, and in some cases never even knew the details surrounding the bits of evidence he was asked to work on.
He would have loved to go out in the field—as a Homicide officer, for instance—and try his hand at deduction at the scene of a crime. He was too good a lab technician, however. Also, you don’t start out as a detective on a major-city police force. You first attend a Police Academy, if you can pass entrance requirements, then work in uniform at such humdrum jobs as walking a beat or directing traffic for a considerable time—possibly years—before you can expect to move into a glamorous job such as homicide investigation. And Vance Kriegler was a civilian employee of the Crime Lab. He would have to start from scratch.
As this would involve not only the scrapping of a scientific education but a considerable drop in income, he settled for dreaming about what a brilliant criminal investigator he could have made if he hadn’t decided to major in physics and chemistry in college. He even had the physical appearance of a detective, he often told himself. Tall and lanky, with a narrow face, long nose, and bulging forehead, he bore a remarkable resemblance to the illustrations of Sherlock Holmes in the early Sir Arthur Conan Doyle books.
There was one advantage to Kriegler’s job that he was thankful for and that he wouldn’t have as a detective. He worked regular hours instead of sometimes being on the day shift, sometimes the night trick, and always being on call. Some people in the Crime Lab—those who went to the scenes of crimes to gather and preserve evidence—worked odd hours. But Vance Kriegler was strictly a lab worker, and there is rarely any rush to get a decision on a piece of evidence, once the police have the evidence in hand. If the police pick up a suspect at three in the morning and want a bit of cloth found clutched in the murder victim’s hand matched to a tear in the suspect’s clothing, they don’t rout a lab worker out of bed. They simply jail the suspect and wait till the lab opens in the morning.
Kriegler always had Sunday off. It was the only day he didn’t envy the detectives on the force. Because his second love was fishing. He spent every Sunday that weather permitted out in a boat on Lake Erie.
The morning after Calhoun dumped the body of Lawrence Powers into Lake Erie, Vance Kriegler arrived at the boat livery at seven A.M. He backed as close to the dock as he could get, lifted his five horsepower motor from the car trunk and laid it on the dock.
The old man who ran the boat livery came from his cottage and walked down to the dock.
“Morning, Sherlock,” the old man greeted him with a grin.
“Morning, Jonas,” Kriegler said.
He didn’t resent the nickname the old man had given him. He was rather proud of it, as a matter of fact. On one or two occasions when the fishing was particularly good, old Jonas had hired a boy to tend the livery and had gone out fishing with Kriegler. He had exhibited keen interest in the crime-lab technician’s work, and flattered by the interest, Kriegler had exaggerated his role as criminologist. The old man was under the impression that Kriegler went out on criminal cases, examined evidence at the scenes of crimes and deduced the meaning of the evidence on the spot. He always asked Kriegler’s opinion on any criminal case in the news, and if the lab technician had any inside dope, he usually spoke of the case as though he were personally in charge. If he knew nothing about it except what he had read in the papers, he simply said someone else had the case.
If Vance Kriegler had studied psychology instead of physics and chemistry, he would have recognized that he was addicted to what psychologists call “ego-building lies.”
Jonas said, “Just take your regular boat.” He looked out over the water. “Don’t look like much of a day. Still too calm for walleyes to start hitting.” The old man never lied about fishing conditions to his favored customers.
Kriegler dropped down into a twelve-foot Lyman tied to the dock, one of the livery’s better boats, which were reserved for regular patrons. Jonas handed down the motor, and Kriegler started to clamp it onto the transom.
“Had a regular mystery here last night,” the old man said. “Right down your alley. Tried the kind of deductin’ you do, but never could work it out. Guess I don’t have the same knack.”
“What was that?” Kriegler asked.
“Well, it really started Friday night,” Jonas said. “Feller and his wife drove up in a Buick convertible with New York plates. Feller wanted a boat for last night. Asked if I thought the yellows would be biting.”
“Yellows?”
“Yellow pike, he meant. What they call walleyes up around Buffalo. I’ve had fishermen from there before. I said, ‘You must be from up Buffalo way,’ and right quick he denied it. Said he was from Detroit. But I’ve had Detroit fishermen, and they call walleyes walleyes. Then next night when he come, some fellers was just bringing in a string of crappies. He called ‘em calicoes. That’s what the fishermen I’ve had from up around Buffalo always called ‘em. Calico bass.”
“Hmm,” Kriegler said, interested. “Think he actually was from Buffalo?”
“Somewhere near there, I’ll bet. I’ve had fishermen from all over, and never heard no one but fellers from that section call a walleye a yellow. Then too, he had New York plates on his car. But that ain’t all. When he showed up last night, he was dressed like no fisherman you ever saw. Had on a fishing jacket, a brand-new one, but otherwise he was dressed to kill. Wore a dress shirt without a tie, pants to some suit with a crease like a knifeblade, and shoes shined so bright you could see yourself in ‘em. All his gear was brand spanking new, too. And cheap, like he’d just bought it for the occasion. Besides that, he didn’t do no fishing. What he was doing out on that lake for near two hours, I don’t know. But it weren’t fishing.”
“How do you know that?” Kriegler asked.
“Bought some night crawlers from me. Give him two dozen. When he come in, he said I could have the rest in the can. I counted ‘em. Two dozen exactly. He hadn’t used a single one.”
Kriegler finished tightening the motor clamps and sat back in the rear seat. He was beginning to be intrigued by the mystery.
“Maybe he dipped minnows,” he suggested. “You know how they swim around a boat light at night.”
“No dip net,” Jonas said promptly. “Besides, he didn’t bring in no fish. Only boat out last night that didn’t catch something. ‘Course he claimed he threw back some small perch. And joked about throwing back a five-pound northern. But how do you figure him using no bait?”
Kriegler thought it over. “You say he was all dressed up?”
“Neat as a whistle.”
“Maybe he was meeting some woman in another boat,” Kriegler hazarded.
“With his wife dropping him off and picking h
im up again?” the old man snorted. “Least I guess she was his wife. Beautiful woman. Got a good look at her Friday night. Feller wouldn’t be likely to go romancing some other gal with her available.”
“Hmm,” Kriegler said. “It’s certainly a provocative situation.”
“Thought you might be interested. Threw a tarp over the boat he used. To preserve fingerprints, in case it rained.”
“Fingerprints?” Kriegler asked with raised brows.
“This feller was up to no good. Smuggling, maybe. Taking dope or something out to a confederate in a boat from Canada. Or maybe picking it up.”
Kriegler smiled. “Dope smugglers don’t operate like that, Jonas. They use their own boats.”
“Well, what could he of been doing then?” the old man demanded.
Kriegler had no idea. But the mystery intrigued him more and more. It occurred to him that this was the sort of situation he had dreamed of stumbling on. Momentarily he envisioned himself unraveling some deep international plot by brilliant detective work.
He came down to earth. More probably he would make a complete fool of himself if he started investigating the behavior of a total, and probably entirely innocent stranger.
Nevertheless it might make an interesting game for his own amusement. He wouldn’t have to mention it to anyone at headquarters.
“Keep the boat covered,” he suggested. “I’ll drive back again tonight with a fingerprint kit. Happen to get this man’s license number?”
“Sure,” Jonas said. “New York 9I-3836.”
As old Jonas had predicted, the walleyes weren’t running. Kriegler picked up a few good-sized perch by chugging with a worm on the end of his flatfish lure, but perch aren’t much sport. He’d meant to make a day of it, and had brought sandwiches so he could lunch in the boat, but he came in at noon.
Back in Cleveland, after he had cleaned up and had dinner, he dropped past Police Headquarters to borrow a fingerprint kit. The sergeant he got it from accepted his explanation that he suspected his landlady of going through his dresser drawers when he was away, and that he wanted to make the pretense of checking for fingerprints in order to scare her out of the habit.
He was back at the boat livery by four P.M.
The old man watched interestedly as Kriegler used a camel’s hair brush to gently dust the top of the outboard motor with silvery powder. Several overlapping handprints appeared, showing all five fingers, where the last user of the boat had laid his left hand while pulling the starting cord with his right. Kriegler hadn’t tried to borrow a fingerprint camera because he would have had to go higher than a sergeant to get one. Instead, he lifted the prints on a special type of Scotch tape that came with the kit and pasted the tape, print side down, to a large white card. By picking the best print of each finger, he got a complete set of the left hand plus a palm print.
“Now where’ll you check those prints?” the old man asked.
“Try our own files first,” Kriegler told him. “If he’s not in there, we’ll try the FBI files in Washington. They’ve got most everybody who’s been fingerprinted. Not just criminals, but people who’ve been in military service or held civil-service jobs or applied for passports. Practically everybody who’s ever had occasion to be fingerprinted for anything.”
Jonas was suitably impressed. “Guess a criminal ain’t got much chance these days, has he?” he said. “With all this modern scientific stuff you fellers use.”
Monday morning Kriegler had the prints run through the Cleveland fingerprint files by a clerk friend of his. They weren’t on record.
This brought the game to an abrupt halt. He couldn’t ask any of his acquaintances in the Detective Bureau to send them to Washington without explaining why. And he couldn’t bring himself to explain to anyone on the force what he had been doing. To his own ears the true explanation made it sound as though he were either a snoop or given to playing childish games. And he couldn’t devise any false explanation that sounded plausible.
It occurred to him that the next time he went fishing, old Jonas was going to want a progress report. The old man might be put off for a time, but eventually he would realize nothing was going to come of the mystery, and Kriegler would drop a notch in his esteem. His reputation with Jonas as a criminal investigator was at stake.
Kriegler stewed over the matter all day. It wasn’t until late that night in his room that a possible solution hit him. He suddenly remembered that one of his old classmates at Ohio University was now teaching in the Chemistry Department at the University of Buffalo.
He got out his portable typewriter, ran a sheet of bond paper into it, and typed his address and the date in the upper righthand corner. Leaving two spaces, he typed on the lefthand side: “Professor Charles Torrington, Chemistry Department, University of Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y.”
After a few minutes of thought, he wrote:
Dear Charlie:
You’re probably surprised to hear from me after all these years, but I have a minor problem. As you may remember, I’m with the Cleveland Crime Lab. I have a case—an unofficial one, so I can’t go through regular channels—you may be able to help me on.
There may be nothing to this. Certainly there isn’t enough at this point for me to request official action. It’s just a mysterious situation I happened to run into and decided to try to work out for my own satisfaction. You might call it a busman’s holiday. Probably I should have my head examined for worrying about it and bothering you, but I can’t get the matter out of my mind.
The owner of a boat livery where I fish put me next to it. Last Friday night a man he describes as in his early thirties, about six feet two, and over two hundred pounds, came around to engage a boat for the next night. He had a woman of perhaps thirty with him, whom the livery owner describes as a strikingly beautiful brunette. He only saw her seated in the car, so he can’t give any description of her height or weight. The car was a green Buick convertible with New York license 9I-3836.
This man dropped a couple of remarks that convinced the livery owner that he was from the Buffalo area. Specifically, he referred to a walleyed pike as a yellow and to a crappie as a calico bass, which the livery man says are terms unique to that section. But when asked if he was from Buffalo, the man denied it and said he was from Detroit. This aroused the livery man’s suspicion enough to make him observe the man closely when he returned the next night.
Saturday the man showed up dressed in clothing far too good to go fishing in. He spent nearly two hours on the lake but didn’t fish. At least he used none of the bait furnished by the livery owner, and brought in no fish, although everyone else was catching them that night.
That’s all there is to the story. In reading it over, it doesn’t sound like very much. A stranger, apparently from the Buffalo area, denies he’s from there. He hires a boat, pretends to go fishing, but doesn’t fish. I suppose you can see why I haven’t mentioned the matter to the police here. They’d probably tell me to stop eating opium. But the mystery intrigues me.
I thought perhaps you might know someone on the Buffalo Police Force whom you could ask to do some unofficial checking, just to satisfy my curiosity. First, find out who owns the car with the above license plate. Second, see if the enclosed fingerprints are in the local files. I lifted them from the outboard motor the man used. What I’d do with the information—even if you’re able to find out who the man and woman are—is beyond me. It still wouldn’t explain the mysterious actions. But I can’t get the matter out of my mind, so I’d appreciate your help.
If you don’t know anyone on the Buffalo force personally and it would embarrass you to ask a strange policeman about the matter, just forget it. I’ll understand perfectly, because it would embarrass me to pursue such a vague matter within my own police department. Which is the reason I’ve passed the ball to you.
In any event, thanks, and let me hear from you.
Best regards,
VANCE KRIEGLER
18
&
nbsp; Calhoun and Helena’s trip back to Buffalo on Sunday was uneventful. En route he briefed her again on how she must behave on Monday in order to keep suspicion from herself. He elaborated a little on his original instructions and made her repeat them back to him.
“I’m to meet the plane Lawrence intended to come back on just as though I expected him to be on it,” she said tonelessly. “After it lands and everyone is off, I’m to check at the airline desk and pretend to be upset because he wasn’t listed on the flight. Then I’m to wire Lawrence in care of convention headquarters in New York. When word comes back that the telegram isn’t deliverable, I’m to wire an inquiry to convention headquarters itself.” She paused, then asked, “But will anybody be there if the convention is over?”
“Conventions are always headed by local people in the town where the convention’s held,” Calhoun told her. “Usual procedure is for the chairman to rent a temporary post office box under the convention’s name, then inform Western Union that wires addressed to convention headquarters are to be delivered either to his office or home. He’ll have the same office and home after the convention.”
“I see. Well, when the wire comes back from convention headquarters saying Lawrence never reported in, I’m to phone the police and report him missing.”
“You’ve got it pretty well,” he said, satisfied that she could carry it off. “There’s only one more thing. You’ve got to get it across to Harry Cushman that if he mentions his part in this, he’s an accessory to first-degree murder. He’s going to have to know Lawrence is dead. Otherwise he may get rattled enough at Lawrence’s continued disappearance to take his story to the police. Don’t give him any details. Just give it to him cold that Lawrence is dead and he’d better keep his mouth shut if he wants to stay out of jail. Also tell him to stay completely away from you for the present. I don’t want the cops accidentally stumbling over him, because while I’m sure he’ll keep his mouth shut if he’s left alone, I think he’d break pretty easily under questioning. If he keeps away from you, there isn’t any reason for the cops to find out you even know him.”
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