Herb Clarke was gathering everyone around the piano for songs, but Leopold noticed that Tommy Gibson had suddenly disappeared. The Captain threaded his way through the crowd, searching the familiar faces for the man he wanted. “Great talk, Captain,” Fletcher said, coming up by his side.
“Thanks. We have to find Gibson.”
“Did he tell you any more?”
“Only that he had to hide the tape near the Christmas tree. He said the other guy was here.”
“Who do you make it, Captain?”
Leopold bit his lower lip. “I make it that Tommy Gibson is one smart cookie. I think he’s playing for time, maybe waiting for Freese to get him off the hook somehow.”
“You don’t think there’s another crooked cop in the Detective Bureau?”
“I don’t know, Fletcher. I guess I don’t want to think so.”
The door to the Men’s Room sprang open with a suddenness that surprised them both. Sergeant Riker, his usually placid face full of alarm, stood motioning to them. Leopold quickly covered the ground to his side. “What is it, Riker?”
“In there! My God, Captain—in there! It’s Gibson!”
“What?”
“Tommy Gibson. He’s been stabbed. I think he’s dead.”
Leopold pushed past him, into the tiled Men’s Room with its scrubbed look and disinfectant odor. Tommy Gibson was there, all right, crumpled between two of the wash basins, his eyes glazed and open. A long pair of scissors protruded from his chest.
“Lock all the outside doors, Fletcher,” Leopold barked. “Don’t let anyone leave.”
“Is he dead, Captain?”
“As dead as he’ll ever be. What a mess!”
“You think one of our men did it?”
“Who else? Call in and report it, and get the squad on duty over here. Everyone else is a suspect.” He stood up from examining the body and turned to Riker. “Now tell me everything you know, Sergeant.”
Riker was a Vice Squad detective, a middle-aged man with a placid disposition and friendly manner. There were those who said he could even make a streetwalker like him while he was arresting her. Just now he looked sick and pale. “I walked in and there he was, Captain. My God! I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. I thought he was faking, playing some sort of a trick.”
“Notice anyone leaving before you went in?”
“No, nobody.”
“But he’s only been dead a few minutes. That makes you a suspect, Sergeant.”
Riker’s pale complexion seemed to shade into green at Leopold’s words. “You can’t think I killed him! He was a friend of mine! Why in hell would I kill Tommy Gibson?”
“We’ll see,” Leopold said, motioning him out of the Men’s Room. The other detectives and officers were clustered around, trying to see. There was a low somber hum of conversation. “All right, everyone!” the Captain ordered. “Keep down at the other end of the room, away from the tree! That’s right, move away from it.”
“Captain!” It was little Herb Clarke, pushing his way through. “Captain, what’s happened?”
“Someone killed Tommy Gibson.”
“Tommy!”
“One of us. That’s why nobody leaves here.”
“You can’t be serious, Captain. Murder at the police Christmas party—the newspapers will crucify us.”
“Probably.” Leopold pushed past him. “Nobody enters the Men’s Room,” he bellowed. “Fletcher, Williams—come with me.” They were the only two lieutenants present, and he had to trust them. Fletcher he’d trust with his life. He only hoped he could rely on Williams too.
“I can’t believe it,” the bony young Narcotics lieutenant said. “Why would anyone kill Tommy?”
Leopold cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you why, though you may not want to believe it. Gibson was implicated in the District Attorney’s investigation of Carl Freese’s gambling empire. He had a tape recording of a conversation between Freese, himself, and another detective, apparently concerning bribery. The other detective had a dandy motive for killing him.”
“Did he say who it was?” Williams asked.
“No. Only that it was someone who got here fairly early today. Who was here before Fletcher and I arrived?”
Williams creased his brow in thought. “Riker was here, and Jim Turner. And a few uniformed men.”
“No, just detectives.”
“Well, I guess Riker and Turner were the only ones. And Herb Clarke, of course. He was here all day with the ladies, arranging for the food and the beer.”
“Those three,” Leopold mused. “And you, of course.”
Lieutenant Williams grinned. “Yeah, and me.”
Leopold turned toward the big Christmas tree. “Gibson told me he hid the tape recording near the tree. Start looking, and don’t miss anything. It might even be in the branches.”
The investigating officers were arriving now, and Leopold turned his attention to them. There was something decidedly bizarre in the entire situation, a fact which was emphasized as the doctor and morgue attendants and police photographers exchanged muted greetings with the milling party guests. One of the young investigating detectives who’d known Tommy Gibson turned pale at the sight of the body and had to go outside.
When the photographers had finished, one of the morgue men started to lift the body. He paused and called to Leopold. “Captain, here’s something. A cigarette lighter on the floor under him.”
Leopold bent close to examine it without disturbing possible prints. “Initials. C.F.”
Lieutenant Williams had come in behind him, standing at the door of the Men’s Room. “Carl Freese?” he suggested.
Leopold used a handkerchief to pick it up carefully by the corners. “Are we supposed to believe that Freese entered this place in the midst of sixty cops and killed Gibson without anybody seeing him?”
“There’s a window in the wall over there.”
Leopold walked to the frosted-glass pane and examined it. “Locked from the inside. Gibson might have been stabbed from outside, but he couldn’t have locked the window and gotten across this room without leaving a trail of blood.”
Fletcher had come in while they were talking. “No dice on that, Captain. My wife just identified the scissors as a pair she was using earlier with the decorations. It’s an inside job, all right.”
Leopold showed him the lighter. “C.F. Could be Carl Freese.”
Fletcher frowned and licked his lips. “Yeah.” He turned away.
“Find any sign of the tape?”
“Nothing,” Williams reported. “I think Gibson was kidding you.”
“Nothing in the tree? It could be a fairly small reel.”
Leopold sighed and motioned Fletcher and Williams to one side. He didn’t want the others to hear. “Look, I think Gibson was probably lying, too. But he’s dead, and that very fact indicates he might have been telling the truth. I have to figure all the angles. Now that you two have searched the tree I want you to go into the kitchen, close the door, and search each other. Carefully.”
“Bu—” Williams began, and then fell silent. “All right, Captain.”
“Then line everybody up and do a search of them. You know what you’re looking for—a reel of recording tape.”
“What about the wives, Captain?”
“Get a matron down for them. I’m sorry to have to do it, but if that tape is here we have to find it.”
He walked to the center of the hall and stood looking at the tree. Lights and tinsel, holiday wreaths and sprigs of mistletoe. All the trappings. He tried to imagine Tommy Gibson helping to decorate the place, helping with the tree. Where would he have hidden the tape?
Herb Clarke came over, nervous and upset. “They’re searching everybody.”
“Yes. I’m sorry to spoil the party this way, but I guess it was spoiled for Gibson already.”
“Captain, do you have to go on with this? Isn’t one dishonest man in the Bureau enough?”
“One
is too many, Herb. But the man we’re looking for is more than a dishonest cop now. He’s a murderer.”
Fletcher came over to them. “We’ve searched all the detectives, Captain. They’re clean. We’re working on the uniformed men now.”
Leopold grunted unhappily. He was sure they’d find nothing. “Suppose,” he said slowly. “Suppose Gibson unreeled the tape. Suppose he strung it on the tree like tinsel.”
“You see any brown tinsel hanging anywhere, Captain? See any tinsel of any color long enough to be a taped message?”
“No, I don’t,” Leopold said.
Two of the sergeants, Riker and Turner, came over to join them. “Could he have done it himself?” Turner wanted to know. “The word is you were going to link him with the Freese investigation.”
“Stabbing yourself in the chest with a pair of scissors isn’t exactly common as a suicide method,” Leopold pointed out. “Besides, it would be out of character for a man like Gibson.”
One of the investigating officers came over with the lighter. “Only smudges on it, Captain. Nothing we could identify.”
“Thanks.” Leopold took it, turning it over between his fingers.
C.F.
Carl Freese.
He flicked the lever a couple of times but it didn’t light. Finally, on the fourth try, a flame appeared. “All right,” he said quietly. Now he knew.
“Captain—” Fletcher began.
“Damn it, Fletcher, it’s your wife’s lighter and you know it! C.F. Not Carl Freese but Carol Fletcher!”
“Captain, I—” Fletcher stopped.
Leopold felt suddenly very tired. The colored lights of the tree seemed to blur, and he wished he were far away from here, far away in a land where all cops were honest and everyone died of old age.
Sergeant Riker moved in. “Captain, are you trying to say that Fletcher’s wife stabbed Tommy Gibson?”
“Of course not, Riker. That would have been quite a trick for her to follow him into the Men’s Room unnoticed. Besides, I had to give her a match at one point this evening, because she didn’t have this lighter.”
“Then who?”
“When I first arrived, you were helping Carol Fletcher with a balky lighter. Yes, you, Riker! You dropped it into your pocket, unthinking, and that’s why she didn’t have it later. It fell out while you were struggling with Gibson. While you were killing him, Riker.”
Riker uttered a single obscenity and his hand went for the service revolver on his belt. Leopold had expected it. He moved in fast and threw two quick punches, one to the stomach and one to the jaw. Riker went down and it was over.
Carol Fletcher heard what had happened and she came over to Leopold. “Thanks for recovering my lighter,” she said. “I hope you didn’t suspect me.”
He shook his head, eyeing Fletcher. “Of course not. But I sure as hell wish your husband had told me it was yours.”
“I had to find out what it was doing there,” Fletcher mumbled. “God, it’s not every day your wife’s lighter, that you gave her two Christmases ago, turns up as a clue in a murder.”
Leopold handed it back to her. “Maybe this’ll teach you to stop smoking.”
“You knew it was Riker anyway?”
“I was pretty sure. With sixty men drinking beer all around here, no murderer could take a chance of walking out of that Men’s Room unseen. His best bet was to pretend finding the body, which is just what he did. Besides that, of the four detectives on the scene early, Riker’s Vice Squad position was the most logical for Freese’s bribery.”
“Was there a tape recording?” Fletcher asked.
Leopold was staring at the Christmas tree. “I think Gibson was telling the truth on that one. Except that he never called it a tape. I did that. I jumped to a conclusion. He simply told me it was an old machine, purchased after the war. In those early days tape recorders weren’t the only kind. For a while wire recorders were almost as popular.”
“Wire!”
Leopold nodded and started toward the Christmas tree. “We know that Gibson helped you put up the tree, Carol. I’m betting that one of those wires holding it in place is none other than the recorded conversation of Carl Freese, Tommy Gibson, and Sergeant Riker.”
(1970)
The Jersey Devil
IT DIDN’T START OUT as a murder case, and Captain Leopold wouldn’t have been so deeply involved in it if he hadn’t offered Fletcher a ride home that night. They’d been working late at headquarters on a barroom knifing, and when the case was finally wrapped up Fletcher remembered that his car was at the garage for repairs.
“I’ll drop you off,” Leopold said. “It’s not out of my way.” He knew Fletcher’s wife was always nervous when he worked late, and he did what he could to ease the situation. Since his promotion to lieutenant, Fletcher was working more nights, and Leopold sensed that all was not well at home.
“Thanks, Captain,” Fletcher said, climbing into the car. “I appreciate it. But it sure as hell is out of your way!”
The rain that had pelted the city all through the chill March afternoon had settled now into a misty drizzle that hardly showed in the car’s headlights. They had gone only a few blocks when a sudden harsh message came over the police radio.
“All cars! Attention all cars in vicinity of Park and Chestnut! Investigate house alarm at 332 Park!”
“We’d better have a look,” Fletcher suggested. “It’s only a block away.”
Leopold grunted agreement, already wheeling the car down a side street. “How many homes in this area have burglar alarms, anyway?” he wondered aloud. Though close to downtown, it was an area of middle-class houses and well-kept yards, with a reasonably low crime rate.
“That’s the house.” Fletcher pointed, and Leopold slammed on the brakes. “Look! Around the side!”
Two figures had broken from the shadows and were running toward the back yard. Leopold was out of the car after them, shouting, “Stop! We’re police officers!” They kept running, lost in the darkness between houses, and he started after them. He brought his gun out, but he wouldn’t use it unless he had to. For all he knew, they were only a couple of punk kids.
“Careful, Captain,” Fletcher cautioned, coming up behind him. The yard was muddy from the rain, and slippery.
Leopold couldn’t see the two who had run, but he sensed they were hiding nearby. “Got a flashlight, Fletcher?”
At his words, a girl’s voice shouted, “Run, Jimmy!” A dark figure broke from cover not five feet ahead of Leopold and sprinted toward the voice.
Leopold made a long grab and ripped at the man’s coat pocket, but he was off balance and falling. He tried to right himself, but his feet slipped in the mud and he went down hard, throwing out his left arm in an effort to catch himself.
Fletcher had come up fast, shining his light. “You all right, Captain?” he asked, reaching out a hand.
“Never mind me. Get after them!”
Leopold knew he wasn’t all right. His left wrist had taken the full weight of his fall, and although the pain was not great, he couldn’t move it. He sat in the mud for a moment feeling sorry for himself, then got carefully to his feet.
After a few minutes Fletcher returned. “A patrol car caught the man on the next street, but the girl got away. How are you?”
“I think I broke my wrist.”
“Damn! I’ll have to get you to a hospital.”
“All right,” Leopold agreed. He didn’t feel much like arguing.
Fletcher snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute! There’s a good bone man right in the next block. I took one of the kids there. Come on.”
“It’s a little late for doctor’s hours,” Leopold protested. He knew it must be nearly eleven.
“Never mind that.” Fletcher got him into the car and drove to the next block, searching for the doctor’s sign. Finally he stopped before an older house with a remodeled front. “This is it.”
“Not too plush for a doctor’s place,” L
eopold commented.
“He’s paying alimony to two ex-wives. Come on.”
The sign by the door read: Arnold Ranger, MD., Orthopedic Surgeon. Dr. Ranger proved to be a youngish man with a ready smile and quick wit. “Always glad to help the police,” he said when they’d identified themselves. “We’ll have to X-ray that arm, but judging by the angle of the wrist, I’d call it a fracture.”
Leopold followed him into the X-ray room. “It’s been a bad arm for me. Last year a bullet nicked it.”
The doctor washed the dried mud away and carefully laid the injured wrist on the X-ray table. “Were you chasing a murderer?”
“Only a burglar. Down in the next block.”
“That must have been at Bailey’s. He’s had other robberies.” After a few moments he returned with the X-rays. “It’s a fracture, all right. Both bones—the distal end of the radius and the ulna. It’s quite a common thing, really, but you’ll need a cast for perhaps four to six weeks, and full recovery will take two or three months.”
“That long?”
Dr. Ranger nodded and motioned Leopold onto a narrow padded table. “I’m going to give you a shot now. It won’t completely knock you out, but it’ll relax you while I set the bones. Perhaps your friend could come in and hold the wrist in place while I apply the cast.”
Fletcher came in then and stood by as the doctor worked. Leopold was aware that the entire operation seemed to be happening with remarkable speed. Almost before he knew it, the doctor was helping him off the table and back to the X-ray room for a final look. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll fix you up here with a sling, and you come back and see me in four weeks. Keep the arm elevated for a day or two, in case there’s any swelling.”
The plaster cast was strange and heavy on Leopold’s left arm. It reached from just below his elbow to his knuckles, with a slight crook at the wrist. Though it probably weighed only a few pounds, it felt much heavier. “Thanks, Doctor,” he grumbled.
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