“It pays to be Jewish. I’ll see you tomorrow. At nine o’clock. Reluctantly.”
“Right.”
I hung up the phone, then slowly turned toward Maureen Phillips. She hadn’t stirred. Her robe, deeply parted, revealed the full, exciting swell of her breasts. The German shepherd, stretched on the hearth rug, was watching me with blinking yellow eyes.
As I returned the dog’s sleepy stare, the phrase “rank has its privilege” flicked through my thoughts. A few years ago, I might now be on my way to the San Mateo coroner’s office, possibly even to the gravesite at Pacifica, dressed in warm clothing, carrying blankets and a thermos of hot soup.
Now rank had its privilege.
I walked to the couch and stood looking down at her. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, I lightly gripped her shoulder. She stirred, murmured and moved her cheek to touch my hand. As I sat on the edge of the couch, she subtly shifted, making room. In front of the hearth, the German shepherd’s eyes were closing.
11
SLOWLY I RAISED MY arm, looking at my watch. Quarter to eight. Just as slowly, I turned to look at her. In the morning light, with her make-up smeared and her face in slack repose, she seemed a stranger, as so many had seemed for so many years.
Quarter to eight—
My clothing lay on the floor surrounding the bed, tangled among the bedclothing, tumbled in a heap. Her white terry-cloth robe lay just inside the open doorway. From the hallway I heard a rhythmic clicking—the German shepherd, pacing. Had she forgotten to let him out?
I looked at her again, and only then remembered the moment, straining with her, when I’d soundlessly whispered, “Carolyn.” Had it ever happened before? I couldn’t remember.
I drew a deep, tired breath, then slid my legs out of the bed, twisting to sit up. When she didn’t stir, I reached for my underclothing. First I’d dress, then I’d wake her to say goodbye. Later in the day—reluctantly, perhaps—I’d call her.
As I reached under the bed, where I’d slipped my revolver, I glanced around the unfamiliar bedroom. I was a stranger in a strange room, guilty of fraud—perpetrating on myself and the woman still sleeping a made-in-America vision of love: a gaudy, oversold, outrageous hoax, urgent in the night, meaningless in the morning.
I wiped the last of the lather from my face, ran a comb through my hair and then walked down the corridor to my office. I’d left the door open, and Friedman was sitting in my visitor’s armchair. He was wearing a sport shirt with no tie. On Sunday duty, despite Kreiger’s grumbling, Friedman refused to wear a tie. He would break the vow, he’d once said, only if he were assigned as a Jewish undercover man, shadowing a suspect into mass.
“It’s ten after nine,” he said. “In ten minutes, I could’ve had a third cup of coffee.”
“Sorry. I’ll spring for the coffee.”
“It’s not the coffee I resent missing. It’s the sure knowledge that you’ve obviously come to work from a direction other than your bachelor apartment.”
“Sorry again. How’s your tooth, by the way?” I sat down heavily behind my desk, opening the Connoly file.
“You’re probably referring to my extraction, which was routine. However, a routine extraction produces as much trauma as a flesh wound from a .22, according to my dentist. So—”
“Your dentist is probably wrong.”
“It shows a sadistic streak,” he retorted, “when people knock other people’s doctors and dentists. By the way, my number two son wants you to teach him how to throw a football. So you can come to dinner a week from today, about three P.M. Bring your cleats.”
“The last time we went through this, I can distinctly remember running my ass off for two hours while you drank beer in the shade.”
“That was Clayton, my number one son. He’s now a jazz guitarist.”
“Three o’clock?”
“Correct.”
“All right. Thanks. What about the body?”
“Connoly’s over at the morgue right now, but it’s just a formality. It’s Mrs. Connoly all right. She had her purse—everything. Her money, too.”
“How’d she die?”
“Gunshot at close range, according to the preliminary report. Medium-velocity pistol, probably. Through the heart and out the other side. Very little bleeding, probably, and obviously no bullet for Ballistics. She’s been dead for several days. Obviously.”
“Anything from the cab companies?”
“No.”
“Who’s down at the gravesite?”
“Culligan. I sent a radio car down last night, for security. Culligan and Sobel went down this morning with the lab crew. I told Culligan to look things over, then leave Sobel and the crew there and get back here as soon as he can. I told Canelli to come in about nine-thirty with his report on the Interlude. Maybe before noon we can make a little sense out of this. I told Sigler to bring Connoly over, too, when they’ve finished at the morgue.”
“What else did the M.E. have to say?”
“Nothing. They’ll probably start the autopsy in an hour, though. However, San Mateo’s crime lab came up with something interesting.”
“What’d they find?”
“The body was wrapped in a blanket,” he replied, “and San Mateo’s preliminary lab report indicates that among other more prosaic items there were particles of horse manure embedded in the wool. How’s that grab you?”
“She did a lot of riding. It was probably her blanket.”
“But how’d she get together with it? I mean, she sure as hell didn’t go to play rehearsal carrying a blanket that smelled of horse shit. So the obvious conclusion is that she went home, was murdered there, wrapped in her own blanket and then hauled down to Pacifica.”
“What kind of a blanket was it?”
“A surplus Army blanket.” He pawed through some of the papers he’d strewn haphazardly across my desk. “It was manufactured by Coddington Mills, circa 1942.”
I sighed, shaking my head. “There’s something very odd about this, Pete.” My phone rang.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Lieutenant.” It was Cunningham, in Communications. “But we’re getting a lot of pressure from the press, on the Connoly woman.”
“I’ll meet them in the press room between eleven-thirty and noon. See that the word gets around, because I won’t hold another briefing until this evening, probably.”
“Right. Anything else?”
“No, thanks.” I hung up, then drew my notebook from my pocket. I should have dictated a preliminary report on the Connoly case yesterday. At the least, now, I had a full hour’s dictation ahead of me, plus the probability that fast-breaking developments would make my report obsolete before it was typed.
“I think,” I said, “that I’ll have Keller and his girlfriend picked up. Phillips, too. If we get the three of them down here, plus Connoly, maybe we’ll get a little action.”
Friedman agreed, and I gave the necessary orders. I sent out for coffee, and both of us relaxed in our chairs, discussing how many men would be required to identify ownership of the Army blanket and track down the cabdriver who might have picked up Mrs. Connoly at the Interlude.
“It seems to me,” Friedman was saying, “that we’ve got to operate on the theory that she went to the rehearsal, got picked up by Phillips, stayed at Phillips’ house for a while, went to the Interlude, had a drink, hailed a cab and then went home. Whereupon, possibly before entering her house, she was shot. Or maybe she was apprehended at her house and shot later somewhere else. Either way, the murderer took a blanket—possibly from the Connoly family car, possibly from the garage. He took the victim down the coast and buried her in a shallow grave.”
“That’s fine, but you’re making the assumption that the blanket was hers.”
He airily waved. “It’s all assumption at this point, anyhow. I’m just talking. Besides—”
A knock sounded, followed by Canelli. Wearing an incredibly wrinkled suit and a not-quite-clean shirt with a badly wilted
collar, he sat down with a deep sigh, gratefully exhaling.
Friedman—Canelli’s sartorial counterpart—elaborately surveyed the younger inspector. “If I were you,” he said finally, “I’d buy myself a pair of pajamas. You’ll find they’re cut fuller in the crotch, so that you sleep better. As a result, your work will probably improve, and your brother officers will quit snickering behind your back.”
Canelli frowned, perplexed, then looked down at his suit. “That’s my brother’s fault. I live at home, see. And my brother, he came back late last night from hunting. It must’ve been two, three in the morning. So then, without turning on any lights or anything, he piles all his—”
“Never mind.” Friedman raised a weary hand. “Tell us instead about your adventures last night at the Interlude.”
“You know, Lieutenant, it was pretty lucky how that happened.”
“I’m sure of it, Canelli. You have the reputation, you know, of being the luckiest inspector in the history of the Bureau. Not the bravest, or the fleetest, or even the smartest. But certainly the luckiest. Did you know that?”
Canelli looked puzzled, then slightly pained. “No fooling?”
Friedman nodded deeply, eyes closed. “No fooling.”
“Well, anyhow,” Canelli said, “the whole thing was, I’d already covered the Interlude—and about fifty other bars, too, the way it seemed. I was pooped—really pooped. So I was having a carrot and papaya drink at one of those sidewalk health-food bars, and I happened to start talking to this fellow next to me, who’d just got back from some kind of a glider clinic, whatever that is. And damned if it didn’t turn out that he was bartender at the Interlude, and he remembered serving Mrs. Connoly Tuesday night. But then, first thing Wednesday, the guy leaves for this glider clinic, so—” Canelli paused to catch his breath. “So that’s why he didn’t know about her disappearing, or he’d’ve come forward. At least, he said he would’ve, and I think he probably would’ve, too. These health-food types, you know, they’re usually—”
“Spare us the analysis, Canelli,” Friedman interrupted. “I have a blender myself. I know all about health-food types.”
Canelli again looked slightly pained. “All I’m doing, Lieutenant, is qualifying the witness. I’ve heard you say a hundred times that a witness is only as good as—”
“Did he actually see her leave the Interlude?” I interrupted.
“Well,” Canelli answered, turning earnestly to me, “I’d have to say yes and no.”
Friedman rolled his eyes to the ceiling as Canelli said, “What happened was, the bartender saw her leave the bar, and he saw her standing on the sidewalk just outside, looking up and down, like she was looking for a cab. It was about twelve-thirty, and not a weekend, so—”
“Does he know whether she made a phone call before she left the bar?”
He shook his head. “Definitely. I mean, definitely not. He saw her come in and saw her leave. She didn’t even go to the ladies’ room.”
“All right, so now she’s out on the sidewalk. What now?”
“Well, that’s the last he saw of her. I mean, he said he was watching her through the window because she was good-looking, and alone, and all that. But then he had to wait on a customer, which took him, he figures, about three minutes. So when he gets back to the window, she’s gone.”
“No cabs in sight, leaving the scene?”
He shrugged.
“Had this bartender ever seen Carol Connoly before?”
“Nope.”
A moment of moody silence followed. Finally Friedman said, “I’ll put another two men out looking for the cabbie. That’ll make six altogether. It’s beginning to look, though, like she hailed a cab instead of phoning for one. And maybe the cabbie put the fare in his pocket. So he isn’t talking about it.”
“That’s assuming,” I said, “that she took a cab. She could’ve—” Another knock sounded. Culligan stuck his head in the office, then took a chair. He wore khaki slacks and a windbreaker. A dark stubble of beard made his pale, gaunt face seem even more morose than usual. He wore a Giants’ baseball cap. Culligan would never willingly uncover his balding head.
He mumbled something about morning fog driving back to town, then tossed three Polaroid pictures on my desk. The first was a shot of a shallow grave, deeper than most. The second showed the grave in the foreground, a small dirt road leading away and the bleak, deserted coastal hills beyond. The third picture was similar to the second, but showed the two-lane highway more clearly, perhaps three hundred yards distant.
I passed the pictures to Friedman, then asked Culligan, “How’s it look down there?”
Culligan shrugged, frowning sourly as he propped his chair back against the wall. “There’s not much, except for that blanket. The ground’s fine gravel, hard as a rock. There wouldn’t’ve been any chance of tire treads or footprints an hour afterward, let alone four days. The area’s deserted, especially at night. Bleak. There isn’t a house within a quarter of a mile. So assuming she was brought there dead, there wouldn’t’ve been much problem disposing of the body: just turn off Route One, drive down the dirt road and start digging. The only thing—” He pointed to the first picture. “The grave was pretty deep, about two and a half, three feet. And the soil was hard gravel, like I said—hard to dig. As a matter of fact, I tried digging in it, and it was tough going. So—” Culligan hesitated, as he always did before cautiously giving an opinion. “So I was thinking that maybe the murderer might’ve had the grave dug beforehand. Otherwise, it’d’ve taken him an hour, I bet, to dig a hole that big. Maybe more than an hour.”
Friedman nodded approval. “I bet you’ve got something there.”
“Of course, it’s just a guess,” Culligan said defensively.
“How about any possible witnesses,” I asked, “anyone that might’ve seen a new hole there? How about the kid, the one who found the body?”
“Nothing from him,” Culligan answered. “I talked to him myself. But it’s still early in the game. I left Sobel and Haskell down there, and San Mateo’s helping us with a canvass.”
“I think,” I said slowly, “that you should go back down there. Make sure you talk to all the kids you can. They’re the ones who’d be out in the hills, playing and hiking.”
Culligan frowned. “You know that I’ve got to appear in court tomorrow for the Allingham arraignment, don’t you? And I’ve still got some reports to type.”
I glanced at Friedman, who slightly shrugged, then moved his head toward Canelli. I nodded. “Okay. We’ll give Canelli a shot at it.” I smiled. “We’ve got to spread the Canelli luck around. You’ll have to stay here, though, Culligan. You can interrogate the tipsters and the confessors that’ll be coming in; you can write your reports between interviews.”
Culligan grunted his grudging thanks, got to his feet and left the office. Canelli followed him out, to get directions.
Watching them go, Friedman shook his head. “I get the impression,” he said, “that Culligan is uncomfortable in the company of his superiors.”
“I get the same feeling. I think he’s having trouble at home.”
“Have you ever met his wife?”
“No.”
Friedman sighed. “She’s exactly like Culligan: a tall, stringy type with no sense of humor, always complaining. She reminds me of one of those old crones you see in Greek movies, the movies where all the women dress in black, and just go to the village well and back, and spend the rest of the time shaking their heads and waiting for the news that their husbands’ve drowned or something.”
I was looking at Culligan’s picture of the shallow grave.
“You know,” I said slowly, “I’ll bet he’s right about that grave having been dug beforehand. No one with a corpse in his car is going to spend an hour digging a grave.”
He bobbed his head in thoughtful agreement. “I think you’re right. Also, I—”
My phone buzzed. It was Sigler, asking instructions concerning Conno
ly. After a moment’s thought, I ordered that Connoly be brought to my office.
12
IMMEDIATELY AFTER SIGLER’S CALL came the information that Arch Phillips had arrived for interrogation. I hastily gave Friedman a rundown on Phillips, and Friedman agreed to conduct the second interview in his office. Later, we’d compare notes. As Friedman was leaving, Sigler escorted Connoly into my office, then closed the door behind us.
I stood up, mumbled the required expressions of sympathy, then waited for Connoly to be seated. I watched him shakily take a cigarette from a crumpled pack; I saw his hand tremble as he held the match. He was unshaven; his eyes were bloodshot. As a grief-stricken husband, he looked convincing.
“I’ll try not to keep you long, Mr. Connoly,” I said quietly. “There’s some information I’ve got to have, as I’m sure you realize.”
He nodded jerkily, wearily—deeply inhaling his cigarette, raggedly exhaling. His lean, handsome face was corded with exhaustion and emotion; his blue eyes were dull, staring fixedly at the opposite wall. Occasionally a frown flicked spasmodically across his face. He was repeatedly rubbing the knuckles of his left hand into the palm of his right hand, scrubbing his hands over and over.
“The first thing I have to ask you,” I began, “is whether or not you have any suspicions, any suspicions at all, concerning who might’ve killed your wife.”
For a moment he didn’t respond, as if he hadn’t heard. Then, clearing his throat, he vaguely shook his head.
“Answer me, Mr. Connoly. I know it’s a bad time for you. But I’ve got to have answers to these questions. Do you know anyone who might’ve wanted to harm your wife?”
“N—no. No one.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Now—” I hesitated, regretfully drawing a deep breath. “Now, did you know that your wife saw other men from time to time?”
Briefly he shifted his eyes to mine. He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette, then resumed scrubbing his knuckles. “Yes,” he answered, now dropping his eyes, scowling. “Of course I knew. I—I intimated as much to you Friday night.”
The Disappearance (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 9
