The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack

by Richard Deming

  “Oh, honey!” she said, kissing her. “You’re going to get to stay with Mommie forever and ever!”

  I thought it was a good time to excuse myself. I told both Craig and Mrs. Benjamin it was nice to have met them, traded a final smile with Cindy, and left.

  By now it was noon. I stopped for lunch, then afterward, instead of checking in at headquarters, I went to the courthouse and looked up the divorce case of Benjamin vs Benjamin.

  Andrew Benjamin’s complaint was on file, but as yet an answer hadn’t been filed by Paula Benjamin. The disagreement between the two was more than the “little squabble” Fred Bruer had mentioned, and Andrew Benjamin’s reaction had been characteristically vindictive.

  The dead man’s affidavit was in the usual legal jargon, but what it boiled down to was that he and a private detective had surprised his wife and Robert Craig together in a motel room and had gotten camera evidence. Divorce was asked on the ground of adultery, with no alimony to be paid the defendant, and with a request for sole custody of little Cindy to be granted the father. Benjamin’s vindictiveness showed in his further request that the mother be barred from even having visitation rights on the ground that she was of unfit moral character to be trusted in her daughter’s presence. As evidence, he alleged previous adulteries with a whole series of unnamed men and charged that Paula was an incurable nymphomaniac.

  When I left the courthouse, I sat in my car and brooded for some time. Fred Bruer’s remarkable powers of observation took on a different significance in the light of what I had just learned. Maybe his detailed description of the bandit hadn’t been from observation after all, but merely from imagination.

  I drove back to the ten hundred block of Franklin Avenue. The jewelry store was locked and there was a Closed sign on the front door.

  I went into the pawnshop. A pale, fat boy of about twenty who looked as though he were suffering from a hangover was waiting on a customer. The elderly Mr. Jacobs glanced out from the back room as I entered, then moved forward to meet me. I waited for him just inside the front door, so that we would be far enough from the other two to avoid being overheard.

  I said, “Mr. Jacobs, do you happen to know if the partners next door ever kept a gun around the place?”

  He first looked surprised by the question, then his expression became merely thoughtful. “Hmm,” he said after ruminating. “Mr. Benjamin it was. Yes, it was a long time ago, but I’m sure it was Mr. Benjamin, not Fred. Right after they opened for business Mr. Benjamin bought a gun from me. To keep in the store in case of robbery, he said. Yes, it was Mr. Benjamin, I’m sure.”

  “Wouldn’t you still have a record?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said in a tone of mild exasperation at himself. “It won’t even be very far back in the gun book. We don’t sell more than a dozen guns a year.”

  He went behind the counter and took a ledger from beneath it. I moved over to the other side of the counter as he leafed through it. The fat young man, whom I took to be nephew Herman, was examining a diamond ring through a jeweler’s loupe for the customer.

  Max Jacobs kept running his index finger down a column of names on each page, flipping to the next page and repeating the process. Finally the finger came to a halt.

  “Here it is,” he said. “September 10, ten years ago. Andrew J. Benjamin, 1726 Eichelberger Street. A 38 caliber Colt revolver, serial number 231840.”

  I took out my notebook and copied this information down.

  “Why did you want to know?” the old man asked curiously.

  I gave my standard vague answer. “Just routine.”

  I thanked him and left before he could ask any more questions. The customer was counting bills as I walked out, and nephew Herman was sealing the ring in a small envelope.

  Amateur murderers usually don’t know enough to dispose of murder weapons, but just in case, when I got back to headquarters I arranged for a detail to go sift all the trash in the cans in the alley behind the jewelry store. They didn’t find anything.

  There was nothing more I could do until I got the report on what caliber bullet had killed Andrew Benjamin. I tabled the case until the next day.

  The following morning I found on my desk the photographs Art Ward had taken, a preliminary postmortem report and a memo from the lab that the bullet recovered from the victim’s body was a 38 caliber lead slug and was in good enough shape for comparison purposes if I could turn up the gun from which it was fired. There was also a leather bag with a drawstring and an attached note from the local postmaster explaining that it had turned up in a mailbox two blocks from the jewelry store. The bag contained the original of the deposit slip of which I already had the duplicate, two hundred and thirty-three dollars in checks, and no cash.

  I had a conference with the lieutenant, then together we went across the street to the third floor of the Municipal Courts Building and had another conference with the circuit attorney. As a result of this conference, all three of us went to see the judge of the Circuit Court for Criminal Causes. When we left there, I had three search warrants in my pocket.

  Back in the squad room I tried to phone the Bruer and Benjamin jewelry store, but got no answer. I tried Fred Bruer’s apartment number and caught him there. He said he didn’t plan to open for business again until after his partner’s funeral.

  “I want to take another look at your store,” I told him. “Can you meet me there?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Right now?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He said he would leave at once. As Police Headquarters was closer to the store than his apartment, I arrived first, though. He kept me waiting about five minutes.

  After he had unlocked the door and led me inside, I got right to the point. I said, “I want to see the .38 revolver you keep here.”

  Fred Bruer looked at me with what I suspected was simulated puzzlement. “There’s no gun here, Sergeant.”

  “Your brother-in-law bought one next door right after you opened for business, Mr. Bruer. Fie told Mr. Jacobs it was for protection against robbers.”

  “Oh, that,” Bruer said with an air of enlightenment. “He took that home with him years ago. I objected to it being around. Guns make me nervous.”

  I gave him the fishy eye. “Mind if I look?”

  “I don’t see why it’s necessary,” he said haughtily. “I told you there’s no gun here.”

  Regretfully I produced the search warrant. He didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do about it. I went over the place thoroughly. There was no gun there.

  “I told you he took the gun home,” Bruer said in a miffed voice.

  “We’ll look there if we don’t find it at your apartment,” I assured him. “We’ll try your place first.”

  “Do you have a search warrant for there, too?” he challenged.

  I showed it to him.

  I followed his car back to his place. Paula Benjamin and Cindy were no longer there. Bruer said they had returned home last night. I searched the apartment thoroughly, too. There was no gun there.

  “Let’s take a ride down to your sister’s,” I suggested. “You can leave your car here and we’ll go in mine.”

  “I suppose you have a warrant for there, too,” he said sourly.

  “Uh-huh,” I admitted.

  Paula Benjamin still lived at the same address recorded in the pawnshop gun log, 1726 Eichelberger Street, which is far down in South St. Louis. It was a small frame house of five rooms.

  Mrs. Benjamin claimed she knew nothing of any gun her husband had ever owned, and if he had ever brought a revolver home, she had never seen it.

  I didn’t have to produce my third warrant, because she made no objection to a search. I did just as thorough a job as I had at the other two places. Little Cindy followed me around and helped me look, but neither of us found the gun. It wasn’t
there.

  Paula Benjamin naturally wanted to know what it was all about. Until then, her brother had shown no such curiosity, which led me to believe he already knew. Belatedly, he now added his demand for enlightenment. I suggested that Cindy be excluded from the discussion.

  By now it was pushing noon, so Mrs. Benjamin solved that by taking Cindy to the kitchen and giving the girl her lunch. When she returned to the front room alone, I bluntly explained things to both her and her brother.

  After carefully giving Fred Bruer the standard spiel about his constitutional rights, I said, “I reconstruct it this way, Mr. Bruer. You got down to the store early yesterday morning and made out the weekly bank deposit. Only you didn’t put any cash in that leather bag; just the deposit slip and the checks. And you didn’t put any money in the cash registers. You simply pocketed it. Then you drove two blocks away, dropped the bag into a mailbox, and got back to the store before your brother-in-law arrived for work. I rather suspect you didn’t unlock the front door until after you shot him and had hidden the gun, because you wouldn’t want to risk having a customer walk in on you. Then you unlocked the door and phoned the police.”

  Paula Benjamin was staring at me with her mouth open. “You must be crazy,” she whispered. “Fred couldn’t kill anyone. He’s the most softhearted man in the world.”

  “Particularly about you and Cindy,” I agreed. “You would be surprised what tigers softhearted men can turn into when their loved ones are threatened. None of your brother’s fellow merchants on Franklin, and probably none of your neighbors around here knew what your husband was trying to do to you, because both of you believe in keeping your troubles secret. But I’ve read your deceased husband’s divorce affidavit, Mrs. Benjamin.”

  Paula Benjamin blinked. She gazed at her brother for reassurance and he managed a smile.

  “You know I wouldn’t do anything like that, sis,” he said. “The sergeant has simply made a terribly wrong guess.” He looked at me challengingly. “Where’s the gun I used, Sergeant?”

  “Probably in the Mississippi River now,” I said. “Unfortunately I didn’t tumble soon enough to search for it before you had a chance to get rid of it. We can establish by Max Jacob’s gun log that your brother-in-law purchased such a gun, though.”

  “And took it home years ago. Sergeant. Or took it somewhere. Maybe he sold it to another pawn shop.”

  “I doubt that,” I said.

  “Prove he didn’t.”

  That was the rub. I couldn’t. I took him downtown and a team of three of us questioned him for the rest of the day, but we couldn’t shake his story. We had him repeat his detailed description of the imaginary bandit a dozen times, and he never varied it by a single detail.

  Finally we had to release him. I drove him home, but the next morning I picked him up again and we started the inquisition all over. About noon, he decided he wanted to call a lawyer, and under the new rules stemming from recent Supreme Court decisions, we either had to let him or release him again.

  I knew what would happen in the former event. The lawyer would accuse us of harassing his client and would insist we either file a formal charge or leave him alone. We didn’t have sufficient evidence to file a formal charge, and if we refused to leave him alone, his lawyer undoubtedly would get a court injunction to make us.

  With all the current talk about police brutality, we didn’t need any publicity about harassing a sixty-year-old, undersized, widely esteemed small businessman. We let him go.

  I’m in the habit of talking over cases which particularly disturb me with my wife. That evening I unloaded all my frustrations about the Andrew Benjamin case on Maggie.

  After listening to the whole story, she said, “I don’t see why you’re so upset, Sod. Why do you want to see the man convicted of murder anyway?”

  I stared at her. “Because he’s a murderer.”

  “But according to your own testimony, the dead man was a thoroughgoing beast,” Maggie said reasonably. “What he was attempting to do to that innocent little girl just to obtain vengeance on his wife was criminally vindictive. This Fred Bruer, on the other hand, you characterize as a thoroughly nice guy who, in general, devotes his life to helping people, and never before harmed a soul.”

  “You would make a lousy cop,” I said disgustedly. “We don’t happen to have two sets of laws, one for nice guys and the other for beasts. Sure, Fred Bruer’s a nice guy, but do you suggest we give all nice guys a license to kill?”

  After thinking this over, she said reluctantly, “I guess not.” She sat musing for a time, then finally said, “If he’s really as nice a guy as you say, there’s one technique you might try. Why don’t you shame him into a confession?”

  I started to frown at her, then something suddenly clicked in my mind and the frown came out a grin instead. Getting up from my easy chair, I went over and gave her a solid kiss.

  “I take back what I said about you being a lousy cop,” I told her. “You’re a better cop than I am.”

  At ten the next morning I phoned Fred Bruer. “I have an apology to make, Mr. Bruer,” I said. “We’ve caught the bandit who killed your brother-in-law.”

  “You what?”

  “He hasn’t confessed yet, but we’re sure he’s the man. Can you come down here to make an identification?”

  There was a long silence before he said, “I’ll be right there, Sergeant.”

  As soon as the little jeweler arrived at headquarters, I took him to the show-up room. It was already darkened and the stage lights were on. Lieutenant Wilkins was waiting at the microphone at the rear of the room. I led Bruer close to the stage, where we could see the suspects who would come out at close range. When we were situated, Wilkins called for the lineup to be sent in.

  Five men, all of similar lanky build, walked out on the stage. All were dressed in tan slacks and tan leather jackets. When they lined up in a row, you could see by the height markers behind them that they were all within an inch, one way or the other, of six feet.

  The first one to walk out on stage was exactly six feet tall. He had straight black, greasy-looking hair, a dark complexion and a prominent hooked nose. A thin white scar ran from the left corner of his mouth to his left ear and there was a hairy mole in the center of his right cheek. He stood with hands at his sides, the backs facing us. On the back of the left hand was the tattoo of a blue snake wound around a red heart.

  I glanced at Fred Bruer and saw that his eyes were literally bugging out.

  “Don’t try to pick anyone yet,” I said in a low voice. “Wait until you hear all the voices.” Then I called back to Wilkins, “Okay, Lieutenant, let’s hear them.”

  Lieutenant Wilkins said over the microphone, “Number one step forward.”

  The dark man with the hooked nose stepped to the edge of the stage.

  Wilkins said, “What is your name?”

  “Manuel Flores,” the man said sullenly.

  “Your age?”

  “Forty.”

  There is a standard set of questions asked all suspects at a show-up, designed more to let witnesses hear their voices than for gathering information. But now Lieutenant Wilkins departed from the usual routine.

  He said, “Where do you work, Manuel?”

  “The Frick Construction Company.”

  “As what?”

  “Just a laborer.”

  “Are you married, Manuel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any children?”

  “Five.”

  “Their ages?”’

  “Maria is thirteen, Manuel Jr. is ten, Jose is nine, Miguel is six and Consuelo is two.”

  “Have you ever been arrested before, Manuel?”

  “No.”

  “Ever been in any kind of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” Lieutenant Wilkins
said. “Step back. Number two step forward.”

  He went through the same routine with the other four men, but I don’t think Fred Bruer was even listening. He kept staring at number one.

  When the last of the five had performed, and all of them had been led off the stage, Fred Bruer and I left the show-up room and went down one flight to Homicide. He sank into a chair and stared up at me. I remained standing.

  “Well?” I said.

  The jeweler licked his lips. “I can understand why you picked up that first man, Sergeant. He certainly fits the description of the bandit. But he isn’t the man, I’m sorry to say.”

  After gazing at him expressionlessly for a few moments, I gave my head a disbelieving shake. “Your friends along Franklin Avenue and your sister all warned me you were softhearted, Mr. Bruer, but don’t be softheaded, too. It’s beyond belief that two different men could have such similar appearances, even to that scar, the mole and the tattoo. On top of that, Manuel Flores is left-handed, just like your bandit.”

  “But he’s not the man,” he said with a quaver in his voice. “It’s just an incredible coincidence.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So incredible, I don’t believe it. You’re letting his formerly clean record and his five kids throw you. He has no alibi for the time of the robbery. He told his wife he was going to work that day, but he never showed up. The day after the robbery he paid off a whole flock of bills.” I let my voice become sarcastic. “Claims he hit a long-shot horse.”

  Fred Bruer’s voice raised in pitch.

  “I tell you he really isn’t the man!”

  “Oh, come off it,” I said grumpily. “Are you going to protect a killer just because he has five kids?”

  The little jeweler slowly rose to his feet. Drawing himself to his full five feet six, he said with dignity, “Sergeant, I told you that is not the man who shot Andy. If you insist on bringing him to trial, I will swear on the stand that he is not the man.”

  After studying him moodily, I shrugged. “I think we can make it stick anyway, Mr. Bruer. Once we net the actual culprit in a case like this, we usually manage to get a confession.”