The Black Door

by Collin Wilcox

  “Just to verify it,” a TV reporter said, “is it true that this girl was the daughter of Robert Grinnel?”

  Impassively, Larsen nodded. “That’s my understanding, yes. We’ve been in touch with the college authorities. Her father is listed as Robert Grinnel, an industrialist, and her home as Beverly Hills, California.”

  “Has her father been notified?”

  “That’s up to the college authorities. We’ve notified them.”

  “Have you recovered the weapon?”

  “I’ll comment on that later, too.”

  “What about her brother?” Campion asked.

  “Whose brother?”

  “Roberta Grinnel’s brother. He goes to Bransten, too.”

  Larsen stared at him for a long, reflective moment. “I’m glad to know that.” He thought about it another moment, and then looked at Carruthers. Larsen moved his head in a small gesture of command and dismissal. Immediately the detective slipped through the door to the hall.

  Dan Kanter asked the next question, in his bored, gritty voice. “Are there any suspects, Captain?”

  Larsen smiled ironically. “Not yet, I’m afraid. Of course, I wouldn’t tell you if there were, as you know. Not this early in the game.” His manner indicated that Kanter, an experienced campaigner, might have done a little better.

  “Anyone taken into custody for questioning?” Kanter persisted.

  “No.”

  “Is this cleaning lady going to be questioned at headquarters?”

  “No. I’ll send a man over to her house as soon as we’ve finished here.”

  “How does it look to you, Captain?” someone asked. “Is it a crime of passion?”

  “How about robbery?” someone else put in.

  Larsen grunted irritably, as if regretting the questions. “It doesn’t look like anything at all to me at the moment. But I’ll give you a word of advice. This girl’s father, as you know, is a wealthy, influential man. Not only is he a leading California industrialist, but he’s also a considerable power in politics. Now—” Larsen paused. “Now, while I’m not going to give you any information that’s not completely verified, I’m not going to hold out on you, either. I’ve already told you that you’re welcome to look at the bodies, which is customary. When you see them—” Larsen’s pale blue eyes became chilled, his manner impersonally official—“you’ll discover that both bodies are only partially clothed. That’s the way they were found, and that’s the way you’ll see them. But if I were you, I’m not real sure I’d report it that way, much less draw any conclusions from the condition of the bodies. As you know, it’s not the police department’s function to defend the papers and radio from libel actions.” Wryly he smiled. “We have enough trouble with our own legal problems.”

  “Are you going to allow pictures, Captain?” I asked.

  He shook his head, waited for the ritual buzz of protest to quiet, and then said, “I thought about it, and I don’t think I will. As I’ve said, the girl was the daughter of a prominent man, and she’s been found under circumstances that’re going to have to be explained, to say the least. We’ll be glad to supply you with ordinary pictures of the victims from their family albums, or whatever. But I don’t think we’ll have any pictures here. They’d be unprintable. So there’s no point.”

  And now, briskly, the Captain looked at his watch. At the gesture, a dozen questions simultaneously erupted, but the Captain held up a hand. The interview was over.

  “We’ll have a briefing this afternoon at four P.M. in the lineup room,” he said firmly. “I’ll have more facts for you then. In the meantime, I’ve got lots to do. And I’m sure you do, too.” He gestured to the bedroom. “You can go in two at a time, if you want to. But don’t walk more than a foot or two into the room.” He and Ramsey stepped together to the bedroom door, standing on either side. Larsen gently pushed the door wide open.

  Even from where I stood, I could clearly see the grisly tableau. The bedroom was small, barely large enough to accommodate the queen-size bed. On the room’s single chair hung the girl’s clothing: a heavy wool skirt, dark brown, a sweater, persimmon, and underclothing, white and unruffled. A table lay overturned on the floor, one of its legs splintered. Near the table lay a lamp, shattered. Near the lamp lay the man, face down. His arms were spread wide, his fingers terribly crooked, clutching nothing. His legs were drawn up in death’s last agony. He’d been a tall, slim man, with thick brown hair.

  I let the others go ahead; Jim Campion and I loitered behind the reluctant group. Kanter was just ahead, paired with a radio reporter. Over Kanter’s shoulder I saw the girl. She lay at the foot of the bed, on the floor. One of her hands was twisted in the bedclothing, as if she’d tried to pull herself up, and then died. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her throat was discolored and distended, a pulpy mass of red and purplish bruises.

  “She’s been strangled,” Campion whispered.

  I nodded. I was trying to decide what she’d looked like. Her figure was good—slim and smooth, with long, flawless legs, a supple torso and rich, full breasts. Her hair was thick and brown. Her brows arched gracefully above a small, straight nose. But her face was so distorted as to make assessment of her features impossible. And, ultimately, there is a sameness to death, a terrible anonymity. Those who were beautiful in life lose their special stance of limb, or graceful arch of the neck, or the intriguing balance of the head upon the shoulders. The moments and the hours following death, like the time before birth, are somehow anonymous—insoluble mysteries. Everyone begins at the same point and ends together, too, neither really beautiful nor really very ugly.

  But even more anonymous, even more uncompromisingly the same, is the stench of death. Because, in death, the body loses its wastes, as the muscles relax. The coroner disinfects, but the odor inevitably remains.

  And, therefore, there is no dignity at the scene of the crime. Only later are the illusions of life recaptured, thanks to the mortician’s well-paid skills.

  Now Campion and I were standing together at the bedroom door; the others had already gone. Biting my tongue, I made myself once more examine the bodies. On the man’s body a scar ran diagonally from the small of his back down toward his right thigh. It might have been a battle wound, and I wondered how I could find out. Then I saw the large, purplish bruise at the base of his neck and the peculiar angle of the neck as it joined the shoulders.

  Had the man’s neck been broken?

  I nudged Campion.

  “Look at his neck.”

  “I know.” He nodded, but said no more.

  I turned my attention to the girl’s body. I avoided looking at her face, but managed to bring my eyes up to her throat. I could see the separate, bluish-black marks of the murderer’s fingers.

  I left the room, aware that Campion was following me. I heard him mumbling thanks to the detectives. I did not add my own, since it would mean facing back toward the bedroom.

  Outside, sunlight was breaking through, and I blinked at the brightness. Kanter was ahead of me, attempting to walk faster than his usual slow shuffle. Over my shoulder I heard Campion’s voice.

  “My God, Dan’s putting on full sail. Something’s up.”

  We both began trotting, passing Kanter as he cleared the corner of the house. Ahead we saw a blue Buick just pulling to the curb. Emerging from the back seat were a pale, slight young man and a sixtyish gentleman wearing a handsome tweed topcoat and soft brown hat. Our colleagues were surrounding the pair, backing them against the Buick, shouting a jumble of questions. It was the press in full cry, I thought distastefully, joining the pack. The older man’s expression was at first surprised and then indignant. The young man, a teenager, really—looked at us with wild, trapped eyes. He seemed almost to shudder, and to shrink within himself.

  Now the older man stepped forward protectively. “No, no,” he said. “Nothing now. I’ve got to talk with the police. No, no. I’m sorry. No.”

  “Who are they?�
� I asked a TV newsman.

  “Someone said it’s the father and the brother.”

  I looked closely at the older man. I’d seen Grinnel speak on TV, and this wasn’t the same man. He was …

  I suddenly exhaled as something sharply prodded my ribs. Turning irritably, I saw three uniformed policemen elbowing a path through the newsmen. Carruthers, following them, was saying loudly, “All right, now. We haven’t had a chance to talk with these people. You’ll just have to wait your turn.” The detective shoved a shoulder into Kanter’s unyielding bulk. I wondered how Kanter had got closer to the prey than myself, since only moments before I’d passed him on the walkway.

  “All right, now,” Carruthers almost shouted. “All right, that’s enough. Break it up, now.” He reached for the older man, gripping his elbow. A uniformed officer took the other elbow, and the two remaining officers took the younger man’s arms, almost supporting him as he seemed to sag between them.

  In a moment the two new arrivals, the three officers and Carruthers were progressing down the walkway. As they passed me, I had a clear look into the face of the pale young man. In his eyes flickered a tortured, hunted look, more than merely grief, or fear, or shock. It was as if he were seeing the same terrible vision the girl had seen in the moment she died.

  Shaken, I watched the two figures as they disappeared behind the black door. Then, slowly, I started back toward the blue Buick. Kanter was leaning down, chatting affably with the driver. I wandered over to the car, aimlessly and almost unconsciously, still seeing the young man’s haunted eyes. Dimly, I heard the driver say to Kanter, “That’s Mr. Johnson, the older one. He’s the dean of students, you know.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Oh, that’s Bobby Grinnel,” the driver answered self-importantly. “Didn’t you know that?”

  Kanter shook his head, nodded his polite thanks, and laboriously straightened up. We walked off together toward the center of the street.

  “So—” said Kanter softly. “The characters are appearing in the order of their importance.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. It just seems that we’re starting to get a little action.” He looked up and down the street. “I wonder if there’s a restaurant around here? I could use a cup of coffee.”

  “But what about those two? Her brother might give us—”

  “Forget it,” he interrupted. “We’ll be lucky to get a crack at them before tomorrow.” Speculatively, he gazed down the walkway. And, as if on cue, the black door opened. Carruthers came out, striding heavily toward us as we converged on him.

  “I’ve got a message from the Captain,” he said loudly.

  We quieted down, a ritual response.

  “The Captain says,” Carruthers announced officiously, “that there’ll be no more interviews now, and he wants the area cleared. He says to tell you that the men who just arrived are”—he glanced at his notebook—“Mr. Henry Johnson, dean of students of Bransten College, and Mr. Robert Grinnel, Junior, the girl’s brother. And he also says that—”

  The questions erupted in a sudden babble. Carruthers’ face became red. His voice rose sharply.

  “All right, now. Quiet.” He waited for a long, baleful moment, breathing hard. “Now, do you want to hear the rest of it, or don’t you?”

  Dutifully, we subsided.

  “All right, then.” He surveyed us for another long moment, savoring his clear control.

  “The Captain says there’ll be no more information from the department until four P.M. But,” he added hastily, “Mr. Johnson will hold a briefing for the press at two P.M. this afternoon at Bransten College. So that’s all now, no more interviews.” Carruthers waved his beefy hands, as if to shoo us away.

  “But what about those two men?” Campion asked, exaggerating indignation. “They’re in the public domain, you know.”

  Carruthers’ face again was reddening. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said heavily. “All I know’s what the Captain said. And if I was you, I’d—I’d—” He frowned, moving his mouth and clenching his fists.

  “Come on,” Kanter said, pulling at Campion and myself. “It’s like I said, we can accomplish more over a cup of coffee.” I followed docily. Campion came, too, but only after casting a dark look at Carruthers, who still stood his ground against us, his jaw outthrust and his fists upon his hips.

  “He should find himself a balcony somewhere,” Campion muttered.

  4

  KANTER POURED THREE HEAPING teaspoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. He stirred the coffee, took a large bite of his Danish roll, and then leaned back in his chair, contented.

  “Have you hit two hundred fifty pounds yet?” Campion inquired.

  Kanter paid no attention, wasting neither words nor energy. Neither was he wasting the opportunity for self-indulgence.

  “Reporters have to be lean and wiry, you know,” Campion continued. He waved at me across the table. “Look at Steve—the new breed. A hundred sixty, I’d say. A lean, eager thirty years old.”

  “Thirty-one,” I corrected. “And a hundred sixty-five.”

  “My ambition,” Kanter finally announced, “is to sit in the office and pound the typewriter. Chasing news with the feet is outdated, silly, and inefficient. There should be the newsgatherers and the newswriters, and they should communicate with walkie-talkies.” He waved a resentful hand in the general direction of Pastor’s apartment, a block and a half away. “Take this situation. It’s ten forty-five now. I’ve got a twelve-thirty deadline. So all I’ve done, really, is to waste my time coming out here. I could’ve got everything I wanted on the phone, plus sending a leg man to the scene, plus digging out some biographical stuff on Grinnel. That’s the real meat in this—old man Grinnel.”

  “Why don’t you join a morning paper?” Campion pointed a finger at me. “His, for instance.”

  Kanter grunted, chewing and swallowing.

  “Why do you say ‘old man Grinnel’?” I asked. “I heard him speak once on TV, and I don’t think he’s more than fifty.”

  Kanter gulped a final mouthful of the Danish before answering. “He’s closer to sixty, I think.”

  “What’s the name of his movement?” Campion asked. “I forget.”

  “It’s the F.F.F.,” I answered. “Forward For Freedom.”

  “There must be an obscene variation on that.”

  “The whole thing is obscene,” Kanter said. “It’d be an obscenity mocking an obscenity. Redundant.”

  “I wonder how those two got themselves killed?” Campion mused. “And especially I wonder about Pastor. It looked like his neck was broken.”

  “I wonder about the noise,” Kanter said.

  “The noise?”

  “Yeah, a double murder in an apartment house. Someone must’ve heard it.”

  “That’s a pretty isolated apartment, though,” I offered. “As my photographer said, it’s really a basement apartment.”

  “Still, there’s someone upstairs,” Campion said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I—”

  “I checked the mailboxes,” Kanter put in. “It looks like the apartment above his is empty. The windows, too. They have that look. But, still, it seems that—”

  “I wonder about the brother,” I said suddenly.

  Kanter regarded me with thoughtful eyes. “The brother?”

  Immediately, I regretted saying it. And, at that moment, Caselli came into the lunchroom, followed by Campion’s photographer.

  “Ah,” said Caselli, attempting to disguise his resentment with banter. “They sit, we sweat.”

  “Right,” Campion answered cheerfully, kicking out a chair. “If you guys could learn to work a typewriter instead of a flash gun you, too, could live the good, simple life.”

  “Yeah,” Kanter muttered, draining the last of his coffee and rising ponderously to his feet. “Yeah, forward for freedom. Well, see you at the news conference at Bransten, with luck.�
� He moved toward the door. “Be sure and buy a copy of the Dispatch this afternoon. Save yourselves some digging.”

  Campion made a derisive noise, and I decided to order a Danish.

  I made the Danish do for lunch, and by eleven-thirty I’d arrived at the Bransten campus, where I planned to stay until the dean’s news conference, at two o’clock. I would then go down to headquarters for Larsen’s news conference, and then to the paper, where I would theoretically be supplied with a biographical sketch of Grinnel for use in my story. With luck, I expected to finish the story by nine in the evening, a twelve-hour day. Really thirteen, I decided, since I’d made the Danish do for lunch.

  I’d lived for most of my life in San Francisco, yet I’d hardly heard of Bransten College, and had never been there. Seen from the outside, Bransten is a complete city block, bordered on all sides by thick-growing trees, and protected by a high iron fence. Seen from the inside, Bransten is typically the staid, conservative college—solid brick buildings, gracefully curving graveled drives, well-clipped shrubs and lawns. As I drove through the tall front gate, I wondered how many of my colleagues had preceded me. I didn’t have long to wonder. Ahead, a TV truck was pulling up, followed by a car from the same station. Reasoning that they would attract a crowd, to my advantage, I pulled in behind to await developments.

  I didn’t have long to wait. It was apparently the lunch hour, and curious knots of students immediately began to gather. Next a campus policeman appeared, and finally I saw what was undoubtedly a faculty member making his fretful way through the gathering crowd. He was, I discovered, assistant to the dean, Mr. Johnson.

  I talked with the TV camera crew, while the reporters were negotiating with the assistant dean. The cameramen told me they intended to take a few hundred feet of film on the general college scene, and, hopefully, the girls’ dormitory and Roberta Grinnel’s room.

  “Do you know where her dormitory is?” I asked.

  The cameraman pointed across the quadrangle. “That building there: Mary Friedman Hall.”