Blow Hot, Blow Cold

7

He left an hour later, with the coroner already gone and the pair of policemen winding up their work and securing the house. Evening of the long summer’s day was drawing to a close, and Masters drove the short distance downtown with his headlights turned on. He made for the business block that housed Larry Connor’s accounting office, turned into the alley behind it, and parked in the small area where Larry Connor’s Buick still stood.

He got out of his car and went over to the Buick. The windows were rolled up and the four doors locked. He peered through the front window on the driver’s side, but everything seemed normal. On the shelf formed by the top of the dash lay an open box of Kleenex, one of the tissues protruding from the slot. On the front seat beside the wheel was a crumpled cigaret pack. Nothing else.

Masters straightened, wincing at the stab of one of the minor back pains he had developed with the years, and walked over to the rear door of the building. It was locked, as reported. He trudged around, via the alley and the side streets, to the street door and tried it. Locked, all right. The lock looked capable. It would not open to any of the keys he carried, and breaking down the door seemed an arbitrary exercise of the police power. The landlord of the building would have a key, and Masters happened to know who he was. He went across the street to the hotel and used one of the public phones in the lobby.

The owner, whose name was Beyer, sounded unhappy on hearing Masters’s request. But he agreed to come right over.

“Come to the alley door,” Masters said.

He bought a ten-cent cigar before returning to his post. He did not light the cigar. He chewed it ruminatively, like a cow, as he leaned against a front fender of his car and waited. Beyer arrived with his keys in twenty minutes.

“Exactly what’s the reason for this, Lieutenant?”

“Mr. Connor came here last night,” Masters said. “His car is still parked here, as you can see. But he hasn’t been seen since. We thought it might be a good idea to look into it.”

“I don’t like to trespass on the business premises of my tenants.”

“I won’t disturb anything without cause.”

Beyer unlocked the door and stepped aside to let Masters go in first. Standing quietly in heat and stuffy darkness for a moment, Masters could hear nothing but Beyer’s breathing, and see nothing but a vaguely bulky object ahead of him.

“There’s a light switch on the wall beside the door,” Beyers said. “To your left.”

Masters groped for it. A pair of fluorescent tubes flickered and came alive near the ceiling. He was standing in a small cluttered room containing several large cartons and, lined against a wall, three metal filing cabinets. Obviously a storeroom for old records on their way to retirement. Ahead of him, in the wall he was facing, was a door with a pane of frosted glass.

“What’s the layout here?” Masters said.

“Three rooms in a row, back to front,” Beyer said. “The one past that glass door, the middle one, is Mr. Connor’s private office. Beyond that, just off the street, is a reception room where his secretary has her desk.”

“I see.”

Masters was now aware of a reluctance that savored almost of dread. He did not want to open the frosted glass door, which clearly he must. He found himself delaying the act, looking deliberately around the storeroom, into the cartons and filing cabinets. Finally he took himself in hand and opened the door. It swung inward, propelling a trail of light from the storeroom that picked out of the darkness the corner of a desk and the back of a chair beyond it. Masters reached in and found a switch, and a brilliant fluorescent ceiling fixture fluttered on, and in its light Masters saw what he had expected and dreaded.

“You don’t have to stay any longer,” he said to Beyer. “Just leave me your master key. We’ll take over here.”

“Why? What do you mean?” the man asked nervously.

Beyer peered over Masters’s shoulder. He fell back with a gasp.

“Mr. Connor appears to be dead,” Masters said. “That is Connor, isn’t it?”

“My God, yes! But how did it happen, Lieutenant?”

“Looks like a suicide.”

“This is terrible! Such a fine young fellow! Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes, Mr. Beyer. You can clear out and let me get to work.”

He gently shut the communicating door to the storeroom in Beyer’s face. After a moment he heard the man leave by the alley door.

Masters moved over to the desk and around it. At first glance, suicide was certainly indicated. Especially in view of last night’s violence in the house in Shady Acres.

Against the wall he was facing stood a sofa upholstered in brown plastic. On the sofa, right arm trailing over the side, was the body of Larry Connor. He had made himself comfortable for death, Masters noted. His light cord jacket and tie were hung neatly over the back of a straight chair. His white shirt was open at the collar. He had not removed his shoes, which was the first thing Masters would have done in making himself comfortable, but his feet were resting side by side on the sofa in a position of repose. There was no weapon in evidence, no wound, no blood. Certain physiological signs suggested to Masters an overdose of some drug. Under the circumstances, suicide was strongly indicated.

He stood back and studied the office. It was almost square, about twenty feet in each direction. A frosted-glass door in line with the similar door to the storeroom obviously went to the reception room on the street side. Along the storeroom wall, near the foot of the sofa, stood a third door, half open, giving access to what was obviously a lavatory.

Masters went into the lavatory, fumbled around for a switch, found none, and finally located a chain hanging from the ceiling. He pulled this chain, and a single bulb flashed on. It shed rather weak light. There was a toilet and a washstand. Above the washstand hung a medicine cabinet with a smoky hinged mirror. On the washstand were the two halves of a small white drawer-type box, and a glass with a little water in it. On top of the water closet of the toilet stood a pint bottle of cheap brandy, capped, about three-quarters full. Masters picked up the drawer part of the little box and sniffed it. It gave off a familiar aromatic odor, now faint and almost gone. Masters had no difficulty in identifying it, for his knowledge of the shenanigans of the cheaper bars of the area was far wider than his experience with homicide. Chloral hydrate, the basic ingredient of Mickey Finns. In small doses it induced sleep. In large doses it brought collapse, coma, and coronary or respiratory failure.

Masters replaced the box and stood looking at the brandy. He had not known Larry Connor, but he was nevertheless disappointed in him. Having executed his wife with violence, he had subsequently executed himself with a far tenderer concern for his own comfort. Taking the stuff in brandy!

Going back to the office, Masters helped himself to the use of the phone on the desk. He dialed the home number of the coroner, who had only just returned home in the hope of a late dinner. The coroner, an irascible man, did not respond kindly to this second summons within hours of the first, but he said he would come down at once. Masters hung up, then dialed police headquarters. He asked the man doing Sunday duty at the desk if the pair of officers he had left at the Connor residence had returned, and he was told that they had not. He asked if the chief was still there — highly unlikely; he was right, answer negative. He told the desk man where to send the two officers when they got back, and then hung up.

Masters sat down in Larry Connor’s swivel chair, elevated his feet, closed his eyes, and chewed on his cigar.

Why, he wondered, had Larry Connor come down to his office to kill himself? After killing his wife, why hadn’t he simply killed himself at home? Murderer-suicides usually acted against themselves in the same hot flush of rage and self-loathing that incited their murders. True, no pattern could be counted on. Suicides were always at least temporarily psychotic, each in his own way, and they often went off on unlikely tangents. Jumping out of windows and off ledges. Taking poison in public rest rooms. Slicing the wrists in hotels, where they had just registered for the express purpose. The variety of aberrant behavior could be as diversified as their particular lunacies. Larry Connor, fleeing his home without design, might well have not decided on suicide until after he had come to his office.

In that case, though, how had he come by the means? Easily enough. Chloral hydrate was obtainable in any dive of sufficiently low character. Besides, wasn’t the implication clear that Larry Connor had contemplated suicide before? Maybe he had already decided on chloral hydrate as a relatively pleasant means of dying and had laid in a stock, ready with a brandy mix. The questions were all academic now, anyhow. Larry was dead, for there he was. He had swallowed a massive dose of chloral hydrate, and that was that.

Masters heard the coroner at the alley door and went back through the storeroom to admit him. The coroner, small and sour and gray, hustled in and went sullenly to work; there was still a dot of gravy on his chin. Masters lingered in the vicinity of the alley door. There was a window, he noted, beside the door, separated from it by about eighteen inches of wall. Set in the bottom half of the window was an air-conditioner, a two-ton unit. The window was opposite the door to the office. The cooled air would be fanned directly through the office door if it was left open, thus cooling both rooms effectively. Masters was conscious again of the oppressive heat. He turned a couple of dials, the fan begin to spin, and he felt the cooled air rushing in. He left the unit running and went into the office. The coroner was on his knees beside the sofa.

“What the devil have you stumbled onto,” the coroner grumbled, “a vendetta?”

“Just a little family misunderstanding. You might have more trouble with this one. Anyone can diagnose a stabbing, even an undertaker, but this one is for the medics.”

“It looks like a coronary, but under the circumstances I’d guess poison.”

“My guess is that it was both. The former induced by the latter. The container is in the toilet there, along with the brandy he used as a mix. There’s a faint odor in the box. You know what was in it?”

“What?”

“Chloral hydrate.”

“An oversized Mickey Finn? Well, that would have done it.” The coroner tore at his collar and tugged at his limp tie. “It’s hot as hell in here. Can’t we have some air?”

“There’s an air-conditioner in the back. I just turned it on.”

“I’m going to finish up here and get out, Lieutenant. Anyone else in this family?”

“No, just the husband and wife. Why?”

“I’d like to go home and finish my dinner!”

Masters went out into the reception room and located the light switch. The room was small, containing no more than the secretary’s desk and a few chairs and a low table littered with magazines. In the transom space above the street door was another air-conditioning unit, smaller than the unit in the rear. One ton, Masters judged. How the devil did you get up there to turn it on? Then he realized that you didn’t. The unit was left on all the time, being controlled by a switch lower down.

Turning off the light, Masters returned to the office to find the coroner telephoning. “Ordering ambulance,” he said sourly, and nodded toward the collection of articles, from the dead man’s person, on top of the desk.

Masters gave them his attention briefly. Coins, handkerchief, wallet, pocket comb, leather key-case, the watch from Connor’s right wrist. In the wallet were twenty-two dollars, two tens and two ones, plus a driver’s license, a few credit cards and some miscellaneous stuff, not significant. In the key-case were five keys. Masters frowned at them, then folded the case and dropped it into his pocket. The coroner, who had been barking into the phone, hung up.

“On their way,” he said. “So am I. Here’s the removal order. Let me alone for a while, will you?”

Masters said it would be a pleasure and listened for the sound of the night lock snapping into place as the coroner left by the back door. Alone, he sat down again in the swivel chair.

He had hardly settled his feet on the desk when he was startled by the kind of pounding that only a cop makes when he’s outside wanting in. With a sigh, Masters got up and went to the alley door.