by Con Lehane
“I don’t know.”
“Any other witnesses?”
“Not so far. This is New York City, where someone can put a bullet in someone else in a hotel room and no one sees anything.”
“They must have heard the shot.”
“That’s not the same as seeing the shooter.”
“Was it her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was McNulty in the hotel room? Is he a suspect?”
“I told you what I’m going to tell you, Ray. I want to talk to him.”
* * *
“Oh my God, Raymond! I’m sure the woman was Shannon,” Adele said when he called to tell her about his call from Cosgrove. “Did he describe the woman?”
“I was afraid to ask.”
“So you think it’s Shannon, too.”
Ambler didn’t answer.
“Are you going to try to find McNulty?”
“If he wants to see me, he’ll let me know.”
“And Shannon?”
“We don’t know who the woman in the hotel is.”
“You think it’s Shannon and you think she’s with McNulty.” It wasn’t a question. “I’m worried, Raymond.” She didn’t have to tell him; the worry was in her voice. “Shannon scared me.… Not that I was afraid of her; I was afraid for her. I felt like she was doomed, that something terrible might happen to her, like you feel when someone is ill and you’re afraid they’ll die.”
Chapter 4
The next afternoon, Mike Cosgrove showed up at Ambler’s crime fiction reading room with a still photo of the woman who’d been with the murder victim. The photo was copied from the hotel security video so it was blurry.
“What happened to your hand?” Mike nodded toward the raw, angry scratches on the top of Ambler’s left hand.
“McNulty’s cat. I had a rough time rounding him up this morning to take to him to McNulty’s father’s apartment. He’s an alley cat who crashes at McNulty’s place. The cat comes in and out the window whenever he wants, so I had to wait for him to get home, and then it was hell to catch him, and worse when I did and tried to get him into the carrier.”
Mike nodded somewhat uncertainly. “Sounds like quite a cat.”
Ambler looked at the photo the detective handed to him. Despite it being grainy and blurred, it was clear enough. “It’s Shannon,” he said.
Mike waited.
“How’d you know to ask me?”
“You know the bartender she was with.”
“She was doing research in the crime fiction reading room.”
Mike’s jaw dropped. “Again?… That’s it. One more murder connected to your crime fiction collection, I’m going to have the city close it down as a public nuisance.”
Ambler hesitated; Mike might be serious. “She’d only been in the library a couple of times.”
“I wouldn’t think she’d be back anytime soon.” Mike followed his own line of thinking. “Did she sign any forms? She might have used her real name.” He looked into Ambler’s questioning expression and caught himself. “You’re not going to tell me, right?… Privacy. Confidentiality. I’ll need a warrant to find out what she was doing?”
“I’m afraid so, Mike.” Ambler and the library took privacy rights and confidentiality seriously. This created a conflict with Mike who didn’t want anything obstructing him when he was on the trail of a murderer. If you murdered someone, to Mike’s way of thinking, you gave up your rights. He and Mike didn’t always agree, yet they got along because they argued without rancor. Mike talked tough—he was tough—but he treated people, including criminals he hounded and brought in, with respect.
“She’s been in the Library Tavern a couple of times,” Ambler said, hoping to send Mike off on another scent.
“A couple of times?”
“Maybe a few times. I’m not sure.” He watched Mike put the photo back in an envelope and the envelope in his inside jacket pocket. “Do you have an extra copy of the photo?”
Mike opened his eyes wider, silently asking why Ambler wanted the photo. Ambler ignored him. Mike let it go and handed him the envelope he’d put in his pocket. “She there to see the bartender?”
“They talked to each other. I don’t know that she came to see him.” He remembered the expression on McNulty’s face when he looked at her and wasn’t so sure.
“Did she leave the bar with him?”
“He took her to her hotel in a cab one night when she’d had a lot to drink but he was back a few minutes later. McNulty does things like that. He’s a tarnished knight.” Ambler hesitated. “She mentioned a husband, if that helps.”
“Not unless he comes looking for her.”
“What do you know about the victim?”
“He wasn’t registered in the hotel. His name was Ted Doyle; he worked for a security agency in Long Island. He’d been married forty years. His widow, not surprising, was shocked he was murdered and shocked he’d been with another woman. She said he wasn’t that kind of guy.” Mike raised his eyebrows. “Nothing like this happened before. She meant the other woman thing.”
“Could someone have followed him? Someone from a case he was working on? Something that had nothing to do with Shannon or McNulty?”
“Lots of things are possible. Nothing points to that. His agency said he didn’t have a case that would bring him to the city. You’d have to wonder why someone from a case he’s working on kills him in this woman’s hotel room.”
“Fingerprints?”
“They got some. Too soon to tell whose they are.”
“You’ve had Jane Does before.”
Mike squared his shoulders. “Some of them we still don’t know who they are years later.”
“Nothing on the surveillance camera in the lobby?”
“That’s where the photo I gave you comes from. The victim got on the elevator around ten by himself.”
“Someone might have followed him.”
Cosgrove shrugged. “No forced entry into her hotel room. But she might have let someone in to help her.”
“Help her do what?”
“Kill him.”
“Not McNulty.”
Cosgrove didn’t say anything.
Ambler sat for some time after Mike left, disturbed more than he’d let on by Mike’s suggestion that the 42nd Street Library’s crime fiction collection somehow begat murders, not only on the pages of its mystery novels but off the page as well. Ambler’s sensibility was such that he wanted murder confined to the realm of entertainment, more so since the arrival of his grandson in his life.
Ambler became a sleuth, a solver of crimes, a pursuer of killers, almost on a whim years before when he’d discovered an incongruity between a news story about an apparent accidental death, an accompanying news photo, and the existence of a double-indemnity life insurance policy. He’d met homicide detective Mike Cosgrove during this time; they were both intrigued by inferences they drew from what they saw that no one else drew. Since then, they’d been friends despite the differences in the worlds they worked in and their consequent worldviews.
Ambler had since made use of his talent for observation and deduction because he realized he had such talent and in using it might prevent a murder, keep someone alive who might otherwise be dead. In more than one of those cases, as Mike had just pointed out, there had been a connection to his crime fiction collection.
A good deal of time had passed since he’d allowed himself to think his crime fiction collection might have anything to do with a murder. A year ago, two years, perhaps longer ago now, someone was murdered in the library. Ambler joined that investigation because he saw connections that no one else saw or made. Hundreds of poor souls had died at the hands of others in the city since then, none of them connected to the 42nd Street Library or its crime fiction collection, none of the murders such that he felt he could help solve the crime. At the moment, he was troubled that this state of affairs might have changed.
He didn’t buy the idea t
hat Shannon and McNulty killed the man in Shannon’s hotel room, although he did suspect McNulty was with Shannon and they were in hiding, possibly hiding from the killer. For one of the few times he could remember, Ambler didn’t know what to do next. He wasn’t sure he should do anything. McNulty had asked him to take care of the cat; he hadn’t asked for help beyond that. Why not wait until McNulty asked him to do something else?
Of course Ambler wouldn’t do that. McNulty was in trouble; he needed help so Ambler wasn’t going to let it go. Yet McNulty had called in to work, had left a note for Ambler, so most likely he did what he did of his own volition. This might be okay if the bartender hadn’t dropped everything and disappeared with this woman he was smitten by on the heels of a murder.
The more Ambler thought about it, the more skeptical he became that Shannon Darling was a scholar writing on women mystery writers or that Shannon Darling was her real name. Yet why would she pretend to be someone she wasn’t in order to do research on an obscure mystery writer? Too many questions hung in the air that he didn’t have answers for. At least with this one, he knew where to start looking for an answer.
He checked the form Shannon had filled out for access to the collection. She’d used the name Shannon Darling and an address in Somerset, New Jersey, the same address she gave at the hotel, that Mike told him didn’t exist. The file boxes she used were on the shelf behind his desk. When there were only two or three readers, Ambler often stored their materials in the reading room overnight so they didn’t have to wait to call up the files when they arrived each morning.
Shannon had separated a stash of letters a man named Dillard Wainwright had written to Jayne Galloway. Wainwright, he learned from the letters, was a scholar, as well as a “literary” writer, Wainwright’s term for himself, published by a small “literary” press, The Black and White Wheelbarrow. Ambler had to look it up, but sure enough it existed, based at a small liberal arts college in New England. Ambler had never heard of the press, and couldn’t remember ever seeing a black and white wheelbarrow either.
There were maybe a dozen letters from Wainwright, mostly a correspondence about books and literature and the failings of contemporary American writers and critics, the latter who, Ambler gathered, didn’t think much of Wainwright’s writing. There was a subtext to the letters, too, hints they were faintly disguised love letters. Jayne Galloway was locked into an unsatisfying marriage. Wainwright was separated from his wife, aloof, and despairing of finding happiness in love or in life, a tragic Romantic hero. Appropriate enough because Wainwright’s field of study was early American dark romanticism, a school of literature Ambler knew something about because of his own interest in Edgar Allan Poe. Poe, besides being one of the progenitors of crime fiction, was the darkest of the dark romantics.
Shannon had pulled letters from various files and stacked them separately, though she left markers in the files she’d taken the letters from. You could guess she was trying to follow a story told through the letters. There were gaps, some letters undoubtedly had been lost or damaged or even purged from the files by Galloway. Shannon’s frustration with this was clear from her notes.
It struck Ambler as peculiar that the correspondence she concentrated on wasn’t about Jayne Galloway’s work. If he were to describe Shannon’s research interest based on what he’d seen so far, he’d say she was researching the relationship between Jayne Galloway and Dillard Wainwright, whom—according to the letters—Galloway later left her husband for. What ultimately piqued Ambler’s interest was an address Shannon had written and underlined—an address for Jayne Galloway in Great Neck, New York. After some thought and a brief conversation with Adele, he decided he’d rent a car and take a quick trip to Great Neck the following day.
Chapter 5
Ambler arrived at the small house on the edge of Long Island Sound in the waning afternoon of a crisp autumn day. He’d driven across a narrow stone bridge onto a lightly traveled road that cut between marsh grass and a lagoon on one side and stately weathered, wood-framed houses set back from the road on the other side. The sky was blue and practically cloudless, the sun low in the sky behind the houses, which appeared to have been in place a good long time and to plan to stay a good while longer no matter what the elements pitted against them.
He’d decided to visit Jayne Galloway because Shannon’s interest in her was so intense and personal he thought it likely they knew one another, and if so Ms. Galloway might tell him something about the mysterious Shannon Darling. He’d told Mrs. Galloway on the phone that he had questions about correspondence between her and a British literary organization about a prize he couldn’t find any record of in her papers, which he hoped would give him an official reason for the visit.
He’d missed the house the first time he went by; it sat back from the road with a large front yard and a large maple tree in full autumn splendor, with no house number. When he did pull in the driveway, he was struck by the number and size of the windows in the front of the house facing the lagoon, more of them than you’d expect and larger than the house’s original windows would have been. He climbed worn wooden steps to a weathered porch and pushed the doorbell, which chimed gently into the peacefulness of the afternoon.
Peace was short lived, interrupted when the woman opened the door and a screeching squawk pierced the air, like the grating of metal-on-metal of freight cars at an earsplitting level. Trying to talk above the incessant squawking was like talking over a blaring horn.
“That’s Buster,” the smiling woman who stood back from the doorway said. “He’ll quiet down in a moment.”
“Is he being tortured?”
She threw back her head and laughed heartily. “He’s a parrot.” Her voice had a pleasant Midwest twang. “He doesn’t like company.” Her smile faded and she coughed quietly, covering her mouth with her arm. When the coughing stopped, the screeching did, too. The woman held out her hand. Her blue eyes sparkled, her face had a kind of friendly beaming you might expect on your favorite kindergarten teacher’s face. “I’m glad you came, Mr. Ambler. I was afraid because I didn’t understand your phone message you’d think I was a crazy old lady.”
Ambler hesitated. When they spoke on the phone, she’d had trouble grasping why he wanted to come to Long Island to speak with her. This was more because he didn’t tell her the real reason, telling her instead about a literary prize she didn’t remember. She wasn’t an old lady and she wasn’t crazy. She was about his age. “Ray,” said Ambler. “Call me Ray. I’ve been a fan of yours for years.”
“I bet that’s what you say to all the authors.” She chuckled when he blushed, an easy comfortable sound. “Would you like some tea?”
He followed her to the kitchen, a mostly wooden and brown place, plain, almost austere but pleasantly so; the cabinets and the appliances were new, the room, like the front of the house, recently remodeled. She turned on a kettle and pulled a teapot and cups from the cupboard. Doing this, she moved gracefully, while a knee-length sweater she wore over a flowered blouse and a pair of jeans flowed with her as she moved. She stopped for a moment, leaning on her hand against the large dark wood table, and coughed quietly.
“I’ve been ill,” she said.
He nodded.
She placed the teapot, cups, and a package of what she called biscuits on a tray. He offered to carry it. She hesitated and then nodded before leading him to a table at the front of the house that sat against the wall under a window that looked out over the lagoon. They sat at opposite ends of the table and gazed out the window.
“It’s a beautiful view,” Ambler said, “a nice place to sit.”
She told him she’d had the house renovated when she bought it after her divorce some years before. “I spent more on the renovation than I meant to. The architect, a young woman, was enthusiastic about the possibilities. I caught her enthusiasm. My desk is in front of a window like this one upstairs. I thought the house, with the view, was going to be a wonderful place to live and
write.” She turned from the window and he saw in her face a kind of wistful beauty. “It turns out to be a beautiful place to…” she turned to gaze out the window again, “… to be ill.”
They drank tea while she told him how much she liked her neighbors. “I can’t walk down the street without stopping every few steps to talk to someone in their yard or someone driving by who stops to chat.” She paused. “I don’t walk much anymore, so now folks stop by here with flowers or a cake.” She spoke with energy and enthusiasm, but the energy faded as they continued to talk, and her spells of coughing became more frequent. Visibly tiring, she reminded him of a child past her bedtime.
“I tire easily.” Her gaze was clear and steady. “We’d better get to your questions while I’m coherent.”
Ambler told her about Shannon Darling and her research, her most likely fake name, and the murder in her hotel room. “She had your address in her notes. I wondered if she might have come to talk to you or corresponded with you.”
Jayne Galloway leaned back for a moment as if to gather herself. Some change in her bearing or her expression told him he’d hit a nerve. “I’m flattered a young scholar is interested in my work and horrified she might have been witness to a murder. This is the first I’ve heard of the project, and I’ve never heard of or from Shannon Darling.”
For the first time, she didn’t look at him as she spoke. An ominous feeling drifted over them like a shroud. Her uneasiness made him uncomfortable. Despite the plausibility of what she said, he suspected she wasn’t telling the truth, or not the whole truth. More unsettling was the sense he got from her reaction that she knew she hadn’t gotten away with her evasion.
“I’m not sure I understand,” he said to cover the awkward silence. She wasn’t accustomed to lying. He didn’t want to embarrass her further by acknowledging what they both knew.
She recovered. “I was pleased that the library accepted my papers. Actually, I was intrigued by you, Mr. Ambler.” She paused, waiting for him say something.
