Flowers From Berlin

TWENTY-EIGHT

"A Mrs. Laura Fowler found the body," said Chief of Police Bob Higgins of Liberty Circle. "Horrible thing. Just horrible. The poor woman went out for a walk behind her husband's church. About an hour before the Reverend returned from a trip. There's a cemetery behind St. Paul's, then a couple of acres of woods. Well, sir, she's walking and her foot hits something."

Bill Cochrane followed Chief Higgins closely, listening to each word. They walked from the police station only about two blocks to the church. Higgins was not used to having F.B.I. visitors. It was still a nice afternoon.

"She sees what hit her foot and she looks down. Well, sir," said the red-haired, lean Higgins, "sure enough. It's the arm of a dead woman reaching up from a makeshift grave."

Cochrane nodded. They walked quickly. "Thank you for telephoning," he said. He hadn't been off the train from Washington for ten minutes.

"Well, sir," answered Higgins. "I got that F.B.I. circular about that sailor who was murdered. Wasn't that a horrible thing? Well, it stuck with me. Couldn't get the case out of my mind. The boy's body lying out there in the woods. Well, sir. Then we get this one right here in Liberty Circle. Almost the exact same thing. So, well, sir, I made up my mind to call."

The local police officer was correct. It was like Billy Pritchard all over again. Higgins led Cochrane fifty yards through the woods and they came to a black blanket that covered a corpse. The rest of the Liberty Circle Police Department, two deputies, sprung to attention when they saw that Chief Higgins had a visitor.

"This killer you're looking for…" Higgins said. "Must be important."

"Why's that?"

"Murder don't bring the F.B.I. in unless it's real important. Well, sir, I'm just a country cop, but I know that much."

"Fact is, Chief," Cochrane said, "there's both kidnapping and bank robbery involved. That's what brings us in."

"Holy heck," he said. "Is that a fact?"

The deputies uncovered the corpse. Cochrane grimaced and looked down. The odor of the corpse was building.

"Strangled," said Higgins helpfully. "Just like the boy in New Jersey."

Cochrane stooped down and looked at the neck. "Looks like a pair of hands did this," he said. He did not volunteer that a chain had been used in Red Bank.

"She's been dead for two days at the most," said Higgins. "I went to a forensics science course in Trenton last year. And, well, I'll tell you something else, Mr. Cochrane, sir, she was here on Wednesday."

Cochrane had already noted the clothing. The undergarments were still wet. "Why's that?" Cochrane asked.

"It hasn't rained since Wednesday," he said, looking to his deputies, who were suitably impressed. "But she was here in the rain. That means she was killed Wednesday afternoon."

Cochrane was looking carefully at the neck now. A pair of very strong hands, he noted. The throat was crushed.

"Very observant," he said, glancing up. "But I thought you didn't touch the body."

"Didn't move anything," the chief said with sudden defensiveness. "But we checked the body."

"No one recognizes her?"

"It's a town of four thousand," Higgins said. "I know everyone. I don't know her."

"What about the neighboring towns?"

Higgins suppressed a chuckle. "Well, sir, I had the other police chiefs over here this morning. Wanted to give you as much as I could. None of them could identify her, either, Mr. Cochrane. She's from out of the area."

"No identification?" Cochrane asked.

"No, sir."

"No purse? No wallet?"

"Well, sir, no."

Cochrane wondered if the chief had checked the dead woman for sexual contact, too. But he did not ask.

"Out of the area," the chief repeated. "I'm sure."

"So am I."

"You are?"

Cochrane stood. He nodded to the deputies, who placed the blanket back over the corpse. "Yes."

"How so sure?" Higgins asked.

"Expensive high heels. Black lame dress. Three gold bracelets, a ruby ring, and silk stockings. How many women dress like that around here on a rainy afternoon, Chief?'"

"Well, sir. Not very many, I got to admit."

Cochrane noted that the woman also wore a raincoat. Clear days since Wednesday gave further credence to that day as the time of the murder. Cochrane glanced over his shoulder. If the body had been dragged to this spot and dumped, the trail had been beaten away by eager footsteps. But more likely, the woman had been lured here by someone she knew, someone she liked, or someone who coerced her. But there had been no robbery or, apparently, sexual assault. Her clothes were neat, which argued against coercion.

Cochrane looked back to the police chief and pondered: murder was the crime least frequently committed by professional criminals. Rather, it was the province of jittery amateurs seeking to cover their mistakes. Why was Siegfried jittery? What mistake had he sought to cover?

Then again, in the twilight world of espionage, such statistics could be tossed to the wind. But such questions couldn't be.

"Okay. So what else?" Chief Higgins asked.

"She came from the city," Cochrane said. "She came out here to visit, perhaps. Must have known someone. Maybe the killer."

"You think the killer lives here?"

"I didn't say that. But it happened on Wednesday, Chief, give or take a day. Now maybe you can get a couple of volunteers and go door to door. Find out who saw any strangers on Wednesday of this past week. J. Edgar Hoover would be thankful if you'd help."

"Well, sir, gosh. I'd be happy to help a great policeman like J. Edgar Hoover."

"I'll tell him we can count on you. He’ll probably send you an autographed picture.”

“Really?”

“Count on it. He likes to do things like that.”

Chief Higgins was beaming.

"Now, the state police will be by for photographs," Cochrane said. "They'll also handle the removal of the body. Where do I find this Mrs..?”

"Fowler? The one who discovered the body?"

"Right," Cochrane said.

"Well, sir, just follow me. It'll just take a minute."

*

Chief Higgins led Bill Cochrane to the home of Reverend and Mrs. Fowler. Cochrane and Chief Higgins waited in the Fowlers' living room as Reverend Fowler appeared first.

"She's extremely upset," Reverend Fowler explained in low tones before his wife entered the room. "I hope you won't dwell on too many of the details."

"I'll proceed gently," said Cochrane.

"What are you, by the way?" Fowler asked. "New Jersey State Police?"

"Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Cochrane saw an unwitting flinch in the minister's eyes. He chalked it up to surprise.

"Investigating a homicide?" Reverend Fowler asked, his tone of voice strange.

Cochrane repeated the lie about banking and kidnapping. The minister appeared content with the explanation.

The woman who entered the room a minute late was as beautiful as she was shaken. Laura wore a navy-blue sweater and a gray skirt. Bill Cochrane looked at her and wondered why he always met the truly extraordinary women in the line of duty or after they had married someone else.

Then he reminded himself that a woman in city clothing was dead beyond the churchyard. He exchanged a few pleasantries with the Fowlers, sat down, and turned to business. Chief Higgins remained in the room.

Laura recounted what she had found and how she had found it. She had little more to say. She had, after all, turned and run from the area in horror upon her discovery. And she had not been back to the location since.

Reverend Fowler tried to take some of the attention away from his wife.

"Really, Officer," Fowler said, "I don't know what else my wife can tell you. She only made the discovery."

"Had either of you been up in that area of the woods on previous days?" Cochrane asked.

The Fowlers shook their heads.

"What about suspicious individuals?" Cochrane asked. "Or people you haven't recognized in town recently?"

"I saw the woman's face," Laura said with a shudder. "I can still see her face." She stifled a tremor, and her husband, sitting on a sofa next to her, took her hand.

She raised her eyes back to Bill Cochrane. "I had never seen her before. Ever."

Fowler looked at his wife carefully and shifted his eyes back to Cochrane. It was at that moment that Fowler was unnerved to notice that Cochrane had been watching him as his wife spoke.

"Reverend," Cochrane asked, "do you know anyone in the habit of using that area for any purpose?"

Fowler said he did not.

"But the only access is through the churchyard, isn't it?" Cochrane asked.

Chief Higgins interjected. "Well, sir, no. Not exactly. The woods come out near the train station."

"They do, do they?" asked Cochrane, intrigued.

"They also border upon more than three dozen private homes," Fowler seemed anxious to add. "Really, Officer, there're probably a hundred ways to get to that location. None of them are particularly well watched."

"Of course," said Cochrane. He looked at Laura again. Another man's woman. His attention lagged again and he wondered what such a woman had seen in her husband. Then, of course, he sensed it. Fowler was well-spoken, and handsome. Chief Higgins had already confided that their parish minister was from a moneyed Main Line family.

"I suspect that's all for today,” Cochrane said. “Thank you."

What was it, Cochrane wondered, that he did not like about the minister? Then he realized: Fowler had the type of woman that Cochrane had once upon a time wanted.

"Officer?" Fowler asked, as they all stood and as Cochrane moved toward the door.

"Yes?"

"Tomorrow's Sunday," he said. "If you're here in the morning, St. Paul's would welcome you. We have services at eight and nine-thirty."

Cochrane's response surprised the minister. "That's very kind of you," he answered. "I'll try to be there."

Once again, Bill Cochrane thought he saw something strange in the man's eyes.

"Wonderful," Laura said. "My husband gives an excellent sermon."

"People like it because it's short," laughed Fowler. "They can get home to breakfast at a reasonable hour."

Then Bill Cochrane and Chief Higgins were outside the Fowlers' home again and Chief Higgins was talking as they walked down the lane that passed the church. Higgins was saying how popular the new minister was, how he had just come from seminary at Yale, and how he had eased the transition from the older Reverend Dryer, who was now quite ill.

Cochrane listened with one ear as they walked past the white wooden church. Cochrane looked skyward toward the spire.

Then several thoughts came together. The steeple of St. Paul's was the highest manmade point anywhere in the area. And then he suddenly recalled why the name Liberty Circle had leaped out at him. The town was almost dead center on the radius map drawn by the Bluebirds of radio transmissions. His mind played Satanic games as he thought back to Wilhelm Hunsicker's description of an elusive spy.

Except for one detail: Siegfried was German. Wasn't he?

Cochrane was suddenly in his own universe with the implications.

"What's wrong with you, Mr. Cochrane?" Chief Higgins' voice was urgent. “Hey! Snap out of it! Then Higgins’hand was on Cochrane's shoulder, shaking him, jarring him.

".. wrong with you?" Cochrane heard him say.

Cochrane snapped back to where he was. "Sorry," he said.

"We're strolling along here, sir, and you plain stopped walking. You all right?"

"Yes," Cochrane said, realizing that he had in fact stopped walking when a certain realization was upon him. "I was thinking. That's all."

"Must have been some thought."

"Yes. Frankly, it was. Something personal though. Sorry, I can't share it."

Fact: no one had ever established that Siegfried was a native German. That had been supposition. Dick Wheeler's, seconded by Hoover.

And, fact: there was no such thing as coincidence in this line of work.

Bill Cochrane checked into an inn situated in nearby Moorestown. From there he telephoned Dick Wheeler in Washington. He was staying here for a few days, Cochrane explained. Siegfried had been there four or five days earlier and no one had seen a stranger. So perhaps the spy wasn't a stranger.

"Don't get carried away, Bill," Wheeler warned. "Why would Brother Siegfried kill in his own backyard?"

“Because he could? Because he had to?” Cochrane suggested.

Cochrane could almost smell the white pipe smoke seeping through the line. Dick Wheeler cast his own spells.

"I don't know," Cochrane answered. "But it's as warm a lead as we've seen. So I'm staying."