Murder in the Manuscript Room

by Con Lehane

  “How does what’s in the files help you?”

  Higgins ignored the question and began taking files out of an accordion folder.

  “Maybe it’s what’s not in the files but—”

  Higgins looked up, met Ambler’s gaze. “You were going to be somewhere else while I was doing this.”

  Before Ambler got to the door, Higgins stopped him with a question. “I asked you before. How do you know the Arab guy didn’t kill her?”

  “I don’t. She might have found something he didn’t want her to know about. But there’s no evidence he killed her. No witness, no physical evidence.”

  “So?”

  “Why did you hide your connection to Leila … Susan? Why deny knowing Devon Thomas? Why did you disappear after Leila was murdered?”

  Higgins shuffled a couple of files and put them down on the desk. “The first, it was none of your business; the second, I didn’t remember the name. The third,” he shifted his gaze slightly. “I had my reasons.”

  * * *

  Ambler went to the third floor, to the maze of work modules behind the main information desk in the catalog room, where he found Adele at her desk.

  “Johnny got off to school okay this morning?”

  Adele’s expression was dreamy. “He was so sweet. He told me it would be fine for him to walk if I was going to be late for work, which I was.”

  Ambler froze. “You didn’t let him walk by himself?”

  “Of course not!”

  “He’s a devious little devil when he wants something.”

  “I took him in a cab.”

  Still uncertain about kissing the night before, they were shy with each other.

  “So what happened with Paul Higgins?”

  “He’s in the crime fiction room looking through his files.”

  Adele looked thunderstruck. After a moment of practically hyperventilating, she said, “I’m going to go talk to him.”

  “Wait—” Ambler said, but realized she wasn’t going to. He nodded.

  Chapter 33

  Higgins glanced up when she entered the room. His face craggy, florid, a thatch of rust-colored hair, he had that Irish look she grew up around; you’d expect him to be a priest or a cop. His eyes were a nice color blue, clear and striking. He’d have been handsome when he was young, and he had a cockiness now that he would have had then. She wouldn’t have liked him because of it.

  “I’m Adele.”

  “I’m Paul.” Something like a twinkle in his eyes, almost flirtatious.

  “I know who you are. I was a friend of Leila … Susan … your ex-wife. I wanted to say I was sorry for your loss.”

  His expression changed, a sudden look of sorrow. He nodded, longer than you might expect, as if he were remembering. After a moment, his eyes met hers again. “You were her friend?” She heard the question he didn’t ask. ‘Did she talk about me?’ ‘Did she mention my name?’ It was sad, the longing in his expression.

  She sat down across from him.

  “Sometimes you care about someone you should have left alone. I brought Susan into the kind of work I did. I shouldn’t have. She thought she was tough. She wasn’t. She was too sensitive. That made it easy to love her. Easy to hurt her, too; hurt her because you were thick and hard and too rough for her.”

  Adele was sure he felt sympathy from her because, in spite of herself, she did sympathize. She didn’t know why she felt sorry for him; she hadn’t expected to. “You were doing undercover work. Is that what you shouldn’t have gotten her involved in?”

  She should have kept quiet. He’d been in a kind of reverie. He had to focus on her face for a moment before he answered.

  “Nothing wrong with it. Someone has to do it. But it kills off something inside. After a while you’re not good with other people.… I’d made a connection with her stepfather, a dirty cop in Dallas. Fortunately for me, she hated him.” He paused. Another memory caught up with him. He must have a lot of them. “The cop, the stepfather, was married to her mother and she hated her, too. She’d left Susan when she was a child—deserted her.”

  The cockiness was back; he was laughing as if there were a joke she didn’t get. “There’s no crime here, so this won’t help you guys. She entrapped him. I set it up. She did what I told her. This was Texas. She didn’t think about him getting the death penalty.

  “By the time that came about, we were together, married. She’d gotten the bug, the adrenaline rush from the setup and the bust. She liked undercover work. She became a CI working for the outfit I was on loan to.

  “Near the time of her stepfather’s execution, something went off in her head. She wanted to recant. Her mother had been on her.” He paused, drifting away into another memory, and then shook his head as if to drive it away. “We couldn’t let her do that. I mean she could have done it but she would have lost me and lost her job with the agency. So she didn’t, and he got the injection.

  “Her mother told her she murdered him. So she turned on me. I tricked her into killing her stepfather, she said. She went into a shell. She did her work, was good at it. She took everything out on me.” He stopped and stared at the file folders in front of him. He sat for a long time. Adele didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. When she thought for sure he was finished talking, he looked up at her again.

  “You’re easy to talk to. I’m not used to someone like you.” He might have smiled. “I knew from when my old man died, people can grieve for someone who wronged them as much as for those who were good to them. Susan’s mother cut her off again. That hurt her bad, even though her mother was a rat.

  “When she left me, I wanted to make her come back—I shouldn’t tell you this. Maybe you’re wired.”

  The way he looked at her, his mouth twisted, his eyes squinting, was scary. “I’m not wired,” she said, quietly.

  “I’m a hard guy, and it came out when she wouldn’t do what I wanted her to do, when she didn’t believe being with me was best for her. And it was. No one would love her like I did. It killed me she wouldn’t understand. So I ended up driving her away.”

  “She never said she hated you,” Adele said. “I think she was afraid of you.”

  “She didn’t hate me. She loved me.”

  “Is that what you thought when you saw her in the library, that she loved you?”

  He shook his head. “I knew she was on a job. She wouldn’t act like she did if she wasn’t. I wouldn’t do anything to blow her cover. It could get her killed.”

  Adele was confused, not sure why he’d told her what he did, not sure what it meant. “What will you do now?”

  “That’s the best question of the day. Like everyone, I’ll be trying to keep body and soul together, trying to stay alive.” He smiled, a kind of knowing sad smile.

  * * *

  She found Raymond sitting at her desk. He looked at her questioningly. “Are you okay?”

  “It was the strangest conversation.… Not a conversation. I listened. It must be what Harry felt like when he heard confession. Mr. Higgins told me about Leila or as he called her, Susan. He loved her.”

  “People kill people they love.”

  “I don’t know. Everything he said, everything about him, was unexpected.” She sat down and tried to absorb Raymond’s placidness; she took comfort from the way he seemed to wrap her in some kind of warmth when he looked into her eyes. “He’s a terrible man, isn’t he? He as much as told me he killed people. He tricked Leila into having her stepfather executed.… He killed people, didn’t he?”

  Raymond nodded and then he stood.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to the crime fiction room … now that you’ve gotten him warmed up.”

  * * *

  Higgins seemed less on edge than when he’d arrived.

  “Find what you’re looking for?”

  Higgins didn’t respond.

  “If you’re finished, I’d like to get back to work.” He waited a moment. “I r
ead one of your books.”

  “Oh?”

  It was amazing, the spark of interest. “Which one?”

  Ambler told him the title.

  His expression changed. He knew what was up.

  “What was it based on?”

  “It’s fiction. I made it up.” A flicker of amusement in his eyes.

  “On what happened to Richard Wright?”

  Higgins’s eyebrows went up. “Oh? What happened with him?”

  Ambler told him. “The police said he was killed in a turf war with rival drug dealers.”

  “Lots of drugs around in those days.” Higgins shuffled the files in front of him and began returning them to the folder they came out of. Finished, he met Ambler’s gaze. “You think something different happened? Someday the truth will out. That’s why this stuff is in the archives. Right? So in the future someone can put together what really happened in the past?”

  “The truth is pretty slippery, even when you’re looking at the past.”

  Higgins waved his hands over the files in front of him. “I’m not saying it’s your fault.… That’s what I was trying to do with donating my papers. Look at the mess we’re in. You told me they’d be safe.” He held up his hands to stop Ambler’s protestations. “I said I don’t blame you. You didn’t know how dangerous this stuff was.”

  “The night we brought your collection to the library you thought someone was following you.”

  A shroud fell across Higgins eyes that had been alert and probing. “Yeah.”

  “You knew who it was.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is that who killed Leila?”

  Higgins took his time, his expression hard to read. You had to wonder if he needed the time to form a persuasive lie. “I thought you said I killed her.”

  Ambler shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Maybe not. Let’s say I’m your suspect.”

  “You might be if I knew why you’d kill her in the library. The only reason I can think of is you needed something from the files you donated, so you cajoled or forced her to help you get them, and killed her when she didn’t do what you wanted her to do.”

  Higgins eyes were open and alert again. “You can think anything you want.”

  “Who followed us that night?”

  Higgins’s startlingly blue eyes were lively again. “Remember what I said, ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you.’”

  Ambler didn’t smile. “I think I know. I need to put a few pieces together to be sure.” He spoke more confidently than he felt. He was missing more than a few pieces and had no idea how they went together.

  “So, I’m in the clear?”

  “No. If you didn’t kill her, you know who did. And two other murders aren’t accounted for.”

  The curtains closed over Higgins’s eyes. He stood. “You’re good with ideas that don’t have the facts they need to fly. I asked you before. What tells you the Arab didn’t kill her?”

  “You’re supposed to prove someone guilty, not prove someone innocent.”

  “Why’s he hiding?”

  “Why were you hiding?”

  “Who says I was hiding?”

  “Mike Cosgrove.”

  This stopped him for a moment. “Is he looking for me?”

  “He’s looking for Gobi Tabrizi.” In response to Higgins’s uncertain look, he said, “The Arab.”

  Higgins considered this. “He must have a reason.” His gaze locked on Ambler again. “I need to know if the Arab killed her.”

  Ambler couldn’t get a handle on Higgins. In a strange way, he liked him. He did a good job, without saying so, of making you believe he was tracking down his ex-wife’s murderer rather than trying to cover his tracks.

  Chapter 34

  Mike Cosgrove had a practice of going over the notes on the interviews he did multiple times. He didn’t always take notes during an interview though often he did. Whether he took notes or not, soon after the interview, he wrote a recap. This way, he recorded things that impressed him more than other things that were said. Sometimes, it wasn’t until the second or third time reading over his notes that he found what was important.

  He did this more with suspects or persons of interest, but often with witnesses. He did this the morning after his interview with Martin Wright after he’d finished shoveling the walk in front of his house. Deep in thought, he’d shoveled nearly half the block as he went over everything he knew about the Leila Stone murder.

  He’d been dismissive of Ray’s idea that her murder was connected to other murders. But he never totally dismissed anything that was plausible, and Ray’s theories usually were somewhere near plausible. That Martin Wright questioned the findings in the investigation of his father’s death gave him more reason to rethink what Ray had laid out.

  After finishing his notes on the interview, he called Wright and asked if he’d get him the name of the CI on the form he’d mentioned, and, if he could, find out if Brad Campbell was Paul’s supervisor at the time of his father’s murder. Before he hung up, he gave Wright Ed Ostrowski’s name to see if it came up anywhere.

  When he finished the call, he sat for a while thinking about Denise, about his career, and about his deal with Campbell. When he agreed to cooperate with Campbell’s investigation in exchange for suppressing evidence against Denise, he’d assumed what seemed to be happening was what actually was happening, that everyone said what he meant and meant what he said. This wasn’t how he usually looked at things.

  The guys in juvenile told him Denise would most likely get probation, and the family court wouldn’t reopen her case unless she screwed up, no matter what new information came out. If his cover-up came to light, the worst thing—and it was a worst thing—was he’d be disciplined for what he’d done. He’d be embarrassed—some of his former supervisors and a few of his fellow officers would like that—probably demoted, and possibly fired.

  What happened that changed his mind about cooperating with Campbell was he’d gotten a scent in the Leila Stone case and—like the bloodhounds he must be descended from—was straining at the leash to get on it. Now that he knew Denise wouldn’t get time, he’d asked that the family court fact-finding hearing be moved up to early next week. There wasn’t an argument about the facts. She wasn’t an uncontrollable child. Everyone wanted the best for her and more or less knew what that was. So the sooner things were solidified and agreed to, the sooner she could start her probation and he could get this foot off his neck. If things went well, in another week he’d be a cop again.

  Chapter 35

  The call from Lisa Young was along the lines of a summons. She invited Ambler to a cocktail party at her apartment Sunday evening. She was sorry for the short notice, but had to call him because, along with a few people from the library Board of Trustees and Ambler’s boss Harry Larkin, Brad Campbell would be there. She was dying to have them meet under her auspices.

  “You said you’d go?” Adele asked. “Of course, I’ll watch Johnny. Why would you go?”

  “I want to talk to Brad Campbell,” said Ambler.

  “Oh God, you’re going to ask him about the Richard Wright murder in the middle of Johnny’s grandmother’s party.” She laughed. “I wish I could be there.”

  Because he wore a suit, he took a cab. If you wore a suit and were going to an address on Central Park West, it seemed fitting you should take a cab. Snow covered the grassy areas in the park, so in the twilight, with the last streaks of the sun setting behind the Museum of Natural History, the scene was bucolic. The doorman announced him and told him the floor. The maid, Juanita, he’d met on his previous visit, opened the door and seemed neither glad nor sorry to see him. She took his coat.

  The cocktail party was to begin at 5:30 p.m. and end at 7:30 p.m. according to the embossed note card that followed Lisa Young’s phone call. Ambler arrived closer to 6:00. A scattering of people, the men wearing suits, drifted through the hallway and the library where he’d sat and talked wi
th Lisa Young the last time he was there.

  A young man and a young woman in tuxedos passed trays of canapés and glasses of wine. It wasn’t really a cocktail party, McNulty would say; there were no cocktails. He saw Harry, a glass of wine in one hand and a canapé in the other, talking to a man and woman, both of whom were slim, expensively dressed, and enthusiastically interested in the conversation. If Harry saw him, he didn’t let on.

  Brad Campbell held a glass of what looked like sparkling water with a lemon wedge in it, and lounged against a wall, letting the game come to him. When one person or couple finished whatever small talk they’d engaged in with him, another person or couple took their place. Campbell seemed relaxed and amiable, accustomed to being a celebrity of sorts.

  Ambler stood by the entrance, taking a glass of red wine when the wine tray came by and a canapé each time a different variety came by. He waited until Lisa Young noticed him. When she did, she approached him smiling and kissed his cheek, which surprised him.

  “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  He’d stuffed a bacon-wrapped scallop into his mouth as she approached, so he had difficulty mumbling a reply.

  “Come with me, I want to introduce you to Brad.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Harry’s eyebrows go up, as she steered him by the arm toward Campbell.

  The introduction went smoothly enough. Campbell acknowledging Ambler with the same easy grace he acknowledged everyone else he spoke with. When the hostess headed off to greet someone in the entryway, Ambler stayed put.

  “Nice gathering,” he said.

  Campbell met his gaze, drilling into it like a light that was too bright. His manner relaxed, his bearing languid, he nonetheless dominated the room by his haughtiness, the aura he gave of being above rather than part of what went on around him. He dismissed Ambler’s pleasantry without saying anything. Ambler sipped his wine. Campbell didn’t seem to care whether they talked or not.

  “I understand you’re watching over my grandson.”