Dying in the Post-War World

3

The first cop to arrive was Detective Kruger from Summerdale District station; he was a stocky man in a rumpled suit with an equally rumpled face. His was the naturally mournful countenance of a hound. He looked a little more mournful than usual as he glanced around the child’s bedroom.

Keenan was tagging along, pointing things out. “That window,” he said, “I only had it open maybe five inches, last night, to let in the breeze. But now it’s wide open.”

Kruger nodded, taking it all in.

“And the bed-clothes — JoAnn would never fold them back neatly like that.”

Kruger looked at Keenan with eyes that were sharp in the folds of his face. “You heard nothin’ unusual last night?”

Keenan flinched, almost as if embarrassed. “Well... my wife did.”

“Could I speak to her?”

“Not just yet. Not just yet.”

“Bob,” I said, prompting him, trying not to intrude on Kruger but wanting to be of help, “what did Norma hear?”

“She heard the neighbor’s dog barking — sometime after midnight. She sat up in bed, wide awake, thought she heard JoAnn’s voice. Went to JoAnn’s door, listened, didn’t hear anything... and went back to bed.”

Kruger nodded somberly.

“Please don’t ask her about it,” Keenan said. “She’s blaming herself.”

We all knew that was foolish of her; but we all also knew there was nothing to done about it.

The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory team arrived, as did the photographer attached to Homicide, and soon the place was swarming with suits and ties. Kruger, who I knew a little, which was why I’d asked for him specifically when I called the Summerdale station, buttonholed me.

“Look, Heller,” he said pleasantly, brushing something off the shoulder of my suit coat. “I know you’re a good man, but there’s people on the force who think you smell.”

A long time ago, I had testified against a couple of crooked cops — crooked even by Chicago standards. By my standards, even. But cops, like crooks, weren’t supposed to rat each other out; and even fifteen years later that put me on a lot of shit lists.

“I’ll try to stay downwind,” I said.

“Good idea. When the feds show, they’re not going to relish havin’ a private eye on the scene, either.”

“I’m only here because Bob Keenan wants me.”

“I think he needs you here,” Kruger said, nodding, “for his peace of mind. Just stay on the sidelines.”

I nodded back.

Kruger had turned to move on, when as an afterthought he looked back and said, “Hey, uh — sorry about your pal Drury. That’s a goddamn shame.”

I’d worked with Bill Drury on the pickpocket detail back in the early ’30s; he was that rare Chicago animal: an honest cop. He also had an obsessive hatred for the Outfit, which had gotten him in trouble. He was currently on suspension. “Let that be a lesson to you,” I said cheerfully. “That’s what happens to cops who do their jobs.”

Kruger shrugged and shambled off, to oversee the forensic boys.

The day was a long one. The FBI arrived in all their officious glory; but they were efficient, putting a tape recorder on the phone, in case a ransom call should come in. Reporters got wind of the kidnapping, but outside the boys in blue roped off the area and were keeping them out for now — a crime lab team was making plaster impressions of footprints and probable ladder indentations under the bedroom window. A radio station crew was allowed to come in so Bob could record pleas to the kidnappers (“She’s just a little girl... please don’t hurt her... she was only wearing her pajamas, so wrap a blanket around her, please”). Beyond the fingerprinting and photos, the only real police work I witnessed was a brief interrogation of the maid of the family upstairs; a colored girl named Leona, she reported hearing JoAnn say, “I’m sleepy,” around half past midnight. Leona’s room was directly above the girl’s.

Kruger came over and sat on the couch next to me, around lunchtime. “Want to grab a bite somewhere, Heller?”

“Sure.”

He drove me to a corner café four blocks away and we sat at the counter. “We found a ladder,” he said. “In a backyard a few houses to the south of Keenan’s.”

“Yeah? Does it match the indentations in the ground?”

Kruger nodded.

“Any scratches on the bricks near the window?”

Kruger nodded again. “Matches those, too. Ladder was a little short.”

The first-floor window was seven and a half feet off the ground; the basement windows of the building were mostly exposed, in typical Chicago fashion.

“Funny thing,” Kruger said. “Ladder had a broken rung.”

“A broken rung? Jesus. Just like...” I cut myself off.

“Like the Lindbergh case,” Kruger said. “You worked that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“They killed that kid, didn’t they?”

“That’s the story.”

“This one’s dead, too, isn’t she?”

The waitress came and poured us coffee.

“Probably,” I said.

“Keenan thinks maybe the Outfit’s behind this,” Kruger said.

“I know he does.”

“What do you think, Heller?”

I laughed humorlessly. “Not in a million years. This is an amateur, and a stupid one.”

“Oh?”

“Who else would risk the hot seat for twenty grand?”

He considered that briefly. “You know, Heller — Keenan’s made some unpopular decisions on the OPA board.”

“Not unpopular enough to warrant something like this.”

“I suppose.” He was sugaring his coffee — overdoing it, now that sugar wasn’t so scarce. His hound-dog face studied the swirling coffee as his spoon churned it up. “How do you haul a kid out of her room in the middle of the night without causing a stir?”

“I can think of two ways.”

“Yeah?”

“It was somebody who knew her, and she went willingly, trustingly.”

“Yeah.”

“Or,” I said, “they killed her in bed, and carried her out like a sack of sugar.”

Kruger swallowed thickly; then he raised his coffee and sipped. “Yeah,” he said.