Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

Once Burned — Twice Shy by John Dobbyn

© 1995 by John Dobbyn

John Dobbyn’s sleuthing team, lawyers Devlin an d Knight, are back in a new adventure that has more to do with pre-trial maneuvers than courtroom skirmishes. Mr. Dobbyn, who teaches law at Villanova University, has recently completed a Devlin/Knight novel. The series promises to be a success, for the interaction between the two characters, especially Knight’s veneration for the old war-horse Devlin, is catching.

“Why do you need a criminal lawyer in the first place?”

The words boomed out of the voice box of the toughest old war-horse that ever bestrode the pit of the Suffolk Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Alexis Devlin could do laser surgery on the slightest prevarication of a witness from twenty paces across a courtroom, and turn around and plead a jury into tears at the plight of a man who had axed both parents, on the grounds that he was an orphan.

That’s an old lawyer’s line, but I’ve seen him do substantially that. As a third-year associate with the redoubtable firm of Bilson, Dawes, Lethbridge & Sykes, fortune had paired me as trial assistant to the old badger on several previous criminal trials, in the course of which I had progressed from abject fear of the man, through awe, to my current stage of unabashed hero-worship.

When I walked into his comer office, Mr. Devlin’s 6'1", 250-pound frame, impeccably draped in a blue serge Hart, Schaffner, and Marx, was leaning forward against the back of his desk chair. His eyes never broke lock with those of the thirtyish Brooks Brothers specimen in the chair in front of him. The younger man exuded the image of self-conscious perfection, as if someone had just taken him out of cellophane.

Mr. Devlin shot a quick nod at the chair beside him, which I chose to interpret as signifying, “Good morning, Michael. Thank you for honoring us with your presence. Please make yourself comfortable.”

I did.

“I didn’t hear you, Mr. O’Connor. Why do you think you need a criminal lawyer?”

“Because I’m about to be indicted for murder.”

“Whose?”

“Ellen Kennedy Chase.”

Mr. Devlin swung the chair around and dropped into it.

“You’re a little late. That position’s been filled.”

Mr. Devlin took it quietly, but the name Ellen Kennedy Chase brought me up ten degrees straighter. For three months, the Globe had reserved four to five inches on the front page for every new detail in the prosecution of an insurance salesman, Matthew Reingold, for murder one — to wit, the slicing of the throat of a twenty-six-year-old distant member of the clan from which she took her middle name. The mere mention of the victim called back news accounts of gore spread through her Beacon Hill apartment.

“I know, Mr. Devlin. The Reingold trial’s been on for three days.”

“What makes you think the D.A.’s going to change horses?”

“Because I did it.”

As an attention-getter, it worked. Mr. Devlin was now straddling his desk pad with both elbows.

“Are you saying you want to turn yourself in, plead guilty?”

“Half right, Mr. Devlin. I’m willing to turn myself in, with your help, but I’ll plead not guilty. I want a trial. I know your reputation. You can get me out of this.”

Mr. Devlin pushed back. I could sense the bristle.

“Two things I’m not, Mr. O’Connor. I’m not a magician, and I’m not a shyster. Does that interfere with your plans?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Devlin. I’m not looking for anything unethical from you. I just want a full trial and the best defense I can get.”

“I’ll give you every inch of that and not an inch more.”

“Agreed.”

While the ground rules were being set, I was spinning through the accounts I’d followed since the case began six months before. Ellen Kennedy Chase had gone through upper-level schools, the last of which was Radcliffe. She had an unfortunate short-lived marriage to someone abusive and went to work at Massachusetts General Hospital in some administrative capacity.

She was found one Tuesday morning by the cleaning woman in her apartment in the safe, smart section that backs up the State House, called Beacon Hill. The cause of death was the severing of her carotid artery and jugular veins with a sharp instrument, with the concomitant splaying of blood about the scene.

Any case like this, with that magic “K” name involved, is always tried in two courts — the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the Supreme Court of the Press. The rules of admissibility of evidence in the former are based on relevance, materiality, and fairness. The rules of admissibility in the latter are based on violence, sex, and circulation.

According to that standard, it had become common knowledge that Matt Reingold had been dating Ms. Chase for several months before the murder — apparently exclusively on both sides. There were a number of witnesses to the fact that in the late afternoon of the day of the murder, the couple had been seen and heard in the piano bar of the Vendome Hotel on Commonwealth Avenue, embroiled in a verbal set-to that called to mind the second Sonny Liston-Muhammad Ali encounter. No one could recall the subject of the brouhaha, but no one could forget the heat and passion of the exchanges, punctuated with threats.

Mr. Reingold apparently went to her apartment that evening and was seen leaving a tad past midnight. The Globe had it “on good authority” that only he and she and a cleaning lady had keys to the apartment. He was apparently the last to see her alive.

The cleaning lady had the misfortune to discover the body the following morning about nine A.M. The coroner placed the time of death at between midnight and one A.M.

“What evidence have they got on you, Mr. O’Connor?”

“I went to her apartment at twelve-thirty, after Reingold left. I left about fifteen minutes later. Some dog-walking neighbor across the street saw me in the street lamp. He went to the D.A. first thing this morning.”

“Did he know you?”

“Yes. We’d met at dinner parties at Miss Chase’s apartment a couple of times.”

“Why’d he wait until now to come forward?”

“I strung him along with a promise of a big payoff if he’d lay low. Last night I finally admitted to him that I couldn’t come up with the money. Now he’s a model citizen. Better late than never.”

“Any other evidence?”

I looked for the physical twisting, shifting, sweating — anything the body can use to release guilt, or at least fear of punishment. None of the above. You’d swear he’d just dropped in for tea and a pleasant chat.

“They have a full set of prints of my right hand on a glass. I had surgical gloves. They got ripped off in the... scuffle. The last thing I did was to stupidly take a drink.”

“I’m sure they’ve had those prints for three months.”

“They have, but they couldn’t match them. Now that I’ve been identified, I’m sure they’ve made the match.”

“Is that it?”

“They might have found my blood in the apartment. She pulled the knife out of my hand. Before I could get it back...” He held up his right hand. There was still scarring from a slice across the tips of the first two fingers.

I threw in a thought. “There was nothing about any blood but hers in the press.”

“It didn’t square with the D.A.’s theory of Reingold’s guilt. They had the case solved to the satisfaction of the press. Since it wasn’t his blood, no need to bring it up. Why confuse the case with facts?”

“How well do you know Reingold?”

“I don’t.”

“What about the murder weapon?”

“It’ll never be found.”

Mr. Devlin slid back in the chair in a position that makes him a double for Spencer Tracy.

“Why did you do it, Mr. O’Connor?”

“I’d rather not say. What’s the difference?”

“If I’m going to fight the war, I need to know all the enemy’s positions.”

“You don’t need this one. I’ll guarantee you the D.A. won’t know it either.”

“How well did you know her?”

“We both worked at Mass. General Hospital. I’ve known her there a few years. I’ve been to parties at her house a few times.”

“Were you involved... other than as friends?”

“Out of bounds.” He stood up. “I’ll leave the retainer check with your secretary.”

“You’re not making this particularly easy.”

“If it were easy, I’d go to a lawyer who’d charge half your fee.”

It sounded smart-alecky, but the implication sat well with Mr. D.

When the door closed, Mr. Devlin pushed back the chair and paced to the window.

“Damn. I’ve defended professional killers, insane killers, stone killers. That one sets a new standard of refrigeration.”

“He’s comfortable with his guilt.”

“Don’t bet on it, sonny. Rule one is never believing the client on guilt or innocence. Get on it. Check out everything. I want the motive. If we’re defending Jack the Ripper, I want to know it before the press.”

Mr. Devlin’s office window looks out on the Globe building. I was down the elevator, across six blocks, and into the Globe archives by the tenth gong of the Arch Street Church bell. A selective spin through six months’ back issues confirmed what I’d remembered and taught me that Ms. Chase had majored in computer science at Radcliffe. She worked in the records section of Mass. General Hospital for the three years before her death. For her last six months, she had been head of computer security.

Next on the menu was a quick jog to the offices of the District Attorney in the Suffolk County courthouse building. Bill Coyne, the Deputy District Attorney, was quarterbacking the prosecution of Reingold, which was in recess for the morning while the judge handled sentencing in other cases.

Bill was a career prosecutor, with a solid sense of what the job was about. I knew him from my days with the U.S. Attorney’s office. I got in to see him without any of the power games of appointments and put-offs that go with the more political types.

“Mike. What’re you up to? I thought you usually worked the federal playpen.”

“Lex Devlin had a visitor this morning. What’s up, Bill? You got another indictment pending in the Chase murder?”

Bill was pushing sixty. His tousled salt-and-pepper hair had never seen better than a five-dollar haircut. He wore suspenders to hold up the shiny pants of his eighty-dollar suit. He hadn’t bought a new one since his wife died.

He grinned while he poured two cups of coffee without asking.

“Mikey, Mikey. You know I can’t tip the hand of the grand jury.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to, Bill. Let’s just say in a professional capacity I need to get into Ms. Chase’s apartment. You have to ask why?”

There must have been a Turk in Bill’s Irish background. You could walk on the coffee.

“No, I don’t need to ask. No reason defense counsel shouldn’t see the murder scene.”

The smiles that passed between us through the plumes of coffee steam said that he knew who our client was, and that, yes, he was close enough to indictment to consider me defense counsel for a defendant. No time wasted, no embarrassing disclosures made.

Ellen Chase’s apartment was in the cobblestone-and-warped-brick section of Beacon Hill that realtors pitch as “quaint.” The interior was done in crystal and recognizable antiques in a style that could be described as neo-trust fund. To her credit, Ms. Chase worked but if she’d collected butterflies, she’d still have eaten — well.

I knew the police and lab crew had given it a professional scan. I could also tell by the dust that no one had been there in months. Burgundy stains in a spray pattern made it clear that the kitchen was the hot spot, with some spillover into the living room. I went through every room carefully, but nothing jumped up and grabbed me.

She had an IBM desktop computer in the bedroom that caught my eye. I brought it to life and checked through the list of files on the hard disk. She kept records of everything from laundry to taxes. It took a couple of hours to bring up each one and scan through it.

The only file that was not self-explanatory was a list of seven names and addresses, most in the city, all male, and none familiar.

I punched up Bill Coyne’s numbers on the phone beside the bed.

“Bill, what’s this file...?”

“I don’t know, Mike. Seven names, right? I knew you’d find it.”

“And I knew you’d check it out. What is it?”

“I have no idea. None of the people on that list even knew her. Or each other for that matter. Three of them are lawyers with some of the big banking and trust firms. Two of them are doctors on the staffs of hospitals, not hers. One’s in the top office of an accounting firm, and one’s dead.”

“When?”

“Two months ago. Jason Starkwell. Died of some kind of raging infection at Saint Elizabeth’s. You want a coincidence? We found that same list of names and numbers in Reingold’s wallet. Needless to say, he’s exercising his constitutional rights and clamming up.”

I fixated on the list primarily because I had no other thread to unravel. It was play-a-hunch time. I caught a cab to Mass. General Hospital and asked my way back through the labyrinth to the office previously occupied by Ellen Chase. I was directed to a small office to the rear of a room with a platoon of computers.

Shiny new lettering on the door told me that Margaret Dolan was Ellen Chase’s replacement.

I knocked and accepted the “Come in.” I closed the door behind me.

The tall, slender woman behind the desk looked all business, until she spun around from the sidesaddle computer counter with an easy smile that looked warmer than anything I could expect over a severe business suit. She was one side or the other of thirty, and with the pulling of three or four bobby pins, could have been attractive.

“Miss Dolan, I’m Michael Knight. I’m a lawyer. I’d like to talk to you about Ellen Chase.”

The lawyer part tightened her eyes a bit, but Ellen Chase’s name brought her back.

“Which side do you represent, Mr. Knight?”

“That’s a good question. I guess I represent the side that wants to find out what really happened to Miss Chase and why. Did you know her?”

Her color drained a bit when she explained that they had been college classmates and close friends. They had both come to Mass. General at about the same time, but Ellen had been promoted to chief of computer security before her.

“When Ellen... was killed, they moved me up here.”

She said it with clearly mixed emotions.

“I’ll tell you why I’m here, Miss Dolan. There’s this funny habit the police have. Sometimes they find a viable suspect and they lose their objectivity. They focus on nailing the suspect rather than finding out what really happened.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Actually, they know very little. There’s a lead that might tell us more than anything they know. Ellen Chase had a list of seven names and addresses in her computer. It’s the only thing there that can’t be explained. There could be a connection between the seven that might give us a lead.”

She was afraid to ask the next question.

“What do you want me to do?”

I knew it was touch-and-go, but as the golfers say, “Never up, never in.”

“I think that computer on your desk could tell us two things. Are the seven all in Mass. General’s records? Number two, do they have anything in common?”

Those slender fingers made quick little gestures that told me she was strung tighter than Heifitz’s fiddle. She looked down at the desk.

“I can’t do that. Those are confidential files.”

“I know that. And I know what I’m asking. Now you’ve got to weigh two things. If you tell me what I need to know, I’ll do everything in my power to keep the information confidential. That’s not a perfect answer. On the other hand, if you don’t, there could be a man out there free who has no qualms about slicing women’s throats. There could be more victims.”

The pressure was squeezing moisture out of the corners of her eyes. She shook her head.

“I can’t. They trust me.”

“I know. On the other hand, I think if Ellen could be standing here, she’d be trusting you to take her murderer off the streets before he does it to someone else. I’m standing in her place.”

She stood up, but her eyes never left her desk. I could see her hands shaking in the pockets of her suit. She just shook her head.

“Please leave.”

A strike-out in the bottom of the ninth when you’re the last batter drains the sap out of you. I had no idea where to go from there.

When I opened the door to leave I could hear the muffled sobs behind me. I felt as sorry for her as I did for myself.

“I understand, Miss Dolan. I don’t know what I’d do in your place. Someday maybe we’ll both have to explain it to Ellen.”

I nearly closed the door on a muffled, “Wait.”

With what Margaret Dolan told me, the pieces were beginning to meld. I still needed that final bit of confirmation that required one of those slightly irregular moves that wouldn’t get Mr. Devlin’s before-the-fact clearance.

I looked up the business number of Alexander Lovett, one of the three lawyers on the list of seven. I preferred to have him on the frying pan of an office phone rather than behind a martini in his home and castle. Time was of the essence.

His dispassionate secretary said he was with a client. So much the better.

“Buzz him anyway, please. Mention the name Reingold, and tell him I haven’t time to call twice. I’ll wait a full ten seconds.”

The male, fiftyish voice that came on in eight seconds was suppressing shock, anger, and fear under a coating of professional insouciance.

“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty...”

“Neither is Mr. Reingold. You probably know that if you read the papers. You also probably thought it was over. It’s not. I’m the next contact. The arrangements stay the same.”

He almost gagged.

“How do I know... whom you represent?”

“One easy way. Suppose I mention over this phone the fact that cements you to Mr. Reingold.”

“Just a minute.”

I could hear him making excuses that shuffled the client out of the office. When the door clicked, the anger was less restrained.

“What do you want?”

“I’m acting for Reingold. The beat goes on. You’re late, right?”

“I know. There was obviously no way to reach him. How do you propose we do this?”

“Same as with Reingold. Confirm it. How much and where?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I want to be sure we’re on the same wavelength. If I say it, it may be a bit more explicit than you want on this phone.”

There was a pause while he decided not to run the risk.

“Five thousand. Public garden. Usual bench. Six o’clock.”

That was it. Two-thirds of the puzzle was in place. If I had called Lovett or anyone else on that list of seven and asked straight out if he was being blackmailed by Reingold, he’d have denied it. The hunch sprang from the relationship between Reingold and Ellen Chase and her access to the computerized medical files of Mass. General Hospital. The clincher was Margaret Dolan’s pulling up the information that each of those seven vulnerable professionals had AIDS.

But a hunch is a hunch. It took an unpleasant phone call to Lovett to confirm Reingold’s blackmail operation. Before I hung up, I assured Lovett that he was off that particular hook as far as I was concerned. He was shaken, and somewhat confused, but relieved.

It was two in the afternoon when I reached Mr. Devlin’s office. I passed O’Connor in the waiting room. I took the opportunity to give Mr. Devlin the morning’s details before he called O’Connor into the office.

“Sit down, Mr. O’Connor. We’ve got business to do. Let’s start with the assumption that we’re playing on the same team. Fair enough?”

He looked baffled.

“I’ll be more specific. You didn’t kill Ellen Chase, did you?”

His back stiffened. “I’ll stand by my previous...”

“Well I won’t. The D.A. sent over a copy of the prints found on that glass, the one you used for a drink just before you left the apartment after the murder. Take a look. As you said, perfect set of prints, right?”

“Exactly. The point being?”

“Couldn’t happen. Look at the scarring on your first two fingers from a cut you said she gave you in the struggle. No sign of them on the prints. No bloody smudges. This glass was a setup. And you’re just letting it happen. That suggests one question.”

Mr. O’Connor just sat there frozen.

“When did you first learn that you had it?”

I saw his lips part, but there was no sound.

“More to the point, Mr. O’Connor, when did Reingold find out you had AIDS?”

Mr. O’Connor’s fingers squeezed folds in the leather arms of the chair. First the tears came, and then a release of sobs. Mr. Devlin gave him all the time he needed. There was more openness in his voice when he spoke.

“I took a physical when I bought insurance from him about a year ago. That’s when we both found out. I needed the job at the hospital for medical insurance. He promised to cover it up if I’d help him. He had me put him in touch with Ellen Chase. She was chief of computer security.”

“Did he blackmail her?”

He shook his head. “Have you seen him? It was pure romance. He’s an accomplished ladies’ man.”

“Why did he kill her?”

“She thought he was using the computer files she gave him to sell insurance to people who couldn’t get it anywhere else. When she found out what he was doing with the information, she confronted him that afternoon at the Vendome. Threatened to turn him in.”

“How did you get involved?”

“He called me from her apartment after he’d done it. He told me to come over so I’d be seen leaving the apartment by the man who always walks his dog around twelve-thirty. He told me to bring a glass with me to plant. He cut my fingers to leave traces of my blood. I’d have been indicted sooner if that neighbor had gone straight to the police. I stalled him with the promise of a bribe until Reingold’s trial began.”

I had to ask the question. “Do you mean you’re willing to take a conviction for murder one to keep him quiet?”

Mr. Devlin jumped in. “No one goes that far, even for blackmail. It’s the double-jeopardy switch, right, O’Connor? You and Reingold set it up so after the case was pending against him, they’d discover the evidence against you and indict you. Then they’d dismiss the indictment against him. He could never be tried for it again. Then I suppose the plan is that he’s supposed to produce evidence that he actually committed the murder, and you’re off the hook.”

He nodded.

“What’s your insurance? What’s the evidence that he did it?”

“A videotape. He videotaped the actual murder with Ellen’s camera. He played it for me that night. He put it into a safe-deposit box at the Boston Bank on Washington Street. He’ll give it to me as soon as he’s released.”

“What makes you think you can trust him?”

He shrugged. “Having absolutely no choice. It’s my only out.”

The indictment against O’Connor came down at 3:00 P.M. Bill Coyne called Mr. Devlin at 3:02.

“Bill, will you trust me? I’ll bring him in myself in two hours. I need that time.”

Whatever conditions Bill put on it, the answer came down to “Yes.”

Mr. Devlin faced O’Connor squarely. “You’ve got to cooperate if I’m going to get you out of this thing.”

“If that means going back on my deal with Reingold, I can’t. I don’t dare.”

Mr. Devlin was on his feet and heading to the door. “Then it’s out of your hands.”

Mr. Devlin called me to the corridor and walked me to the elevator while he rattled off a string of instructions.

An hour later, Mr. Devlin brought Mr. O’Connor into the Washington Street branch of the Boston Bank. I was already there, in the safe-deposit vault with the president.

Mr. O’Connor’s forehead was beaded with perspiration. I could hear Mr. Devlin’s voice as they came in.

“Of course we could get a court order to drill Reingold’s safe-deposit box. You said it contains direct evidence of a murder. I had Michael take care of it. They should be about to drill.”

They came into the room as the president and I were watching the heavy steel bit spin splinters out of the lock of the metal box. In a short while, the president pulled the box free.

O’Connor was practically pacing.

“How did you know which box?”

Mr. Devlin held him in check. “Bank records. It’s the only one in Reingold’s name. Come over here.”

It was like the opening of the vault of the Titanic. Mr. Devlin held out the closed box, but Mr. O’Connor wouldn’t touch it. Mr. Devlin pulled up the lid, and Mr. O’Connor went from pale to ghostly.

His mind seemed to freeze as he stared into the empty box. Then a flush came into his face with a swelling tide of anger that seemed to overwhelm him. The words burst out of him. His impulse to blare out every detail of the murder, the videotape, and the double-jeopardy scheme was more than Mr. Devlin could let pass.

The president allowed us to use his office and a secretary to transcribe the statement. Mr. O’Connor put her shorthand speed to the test, as the story poured out of him. He scanned it before signing it only because Mr. Devlin insisted.

It was a ten-minute cab ride, cut to five by an advance tip, to Bill Coyne’s office. He was in the process of dispatching an assistant D.A. to assent to a motion by Reingold’s attorney to dismiss the indictment against him.

Mr. Devlin held up the assistant until Bill could read Mr. O’Connor’s statement. Bill looked at Mr. Devlin as if he’d snatched him out of the path of a truck.

“Any idea where the videotape is, Lex?”

“Sure. It’s probably in Reingold’s safe-deposit box in the Boston Bank, where he put it that morning after the murder. He didn’t have time to move it before you arrested him. On the other hand, you can bet it wouldn’t have been there ten minutes after you released him. With O’Connor’s statement, you should be able to get a court order to open the box.”

“But I thought you did. What box did you have drilled?”

I cut in. “My own. Mr. Devlin had me run to the bank and rent a box and then make arrangements to have it drilled. It was expensive, but at least I knew it’d be empty. Without O’Connor’s cooperation, we couldn’t have had Reingold’s box drilled.”

Bill looked at the old man with a half-grin. “You mousetrapped your own client?”

“I had to for his own sake. Reingold would have left him with a murder-one conviction as sure as there’s an Irishman in South Boston. If O’Connor’d beaten that one, he’d at least face charges of fraud on the court.”

“Which he may anyway.”

Mr. Devlin put an arm on Bill’s shoulder. “Not if I’m any judge of the Deputy District Attorney. The man was blackmailed into it. He handed you a murder conviction on a platter and broke up a very neat attempted fraud. My guess is you won’t even indict him on the fraud. Could I be right about that, Mr. Coyne?”

I couldn’t hear what Bill said, but they were both laughing when they walked out of the office.