Night and Fear

Jenny hadn’t come home by the time we were through our meal. I couldn’t wait because I had to get back to the precinct-house. As I left the table, I growled. “Wonder where she is?”

My sister said, “Oh, she’s probably having a soda with her girl friends. She only went out a minute or two before you got back.” Her school books were there on the radiator, so I didn’t have to be told that.

I looked at the books fondly on my way past. “Duncan’s Elements of Trigonometry” was the title of the top one. I shook my head and snorted. Now, what earthly good was it filling a pretty eighteen-year-old girl’s head with junk like that? In one ear, out the other. Bad enough to ladle it out to boys... There was a tiny light-blue handkerchief, so thin you could see through it, caught between the pages. I pulled it out, held it between my thumb and forefinger, and chuckled. Now, that was more like it. That was what a girl should be interested in, not trigo-what-ever-it-was. There was a little colored design of a kitten stitched on one corner, and there was an intermingled odor of honeysuckle and chocolate. She probably took candy to school, wrapped in it, I thought as I laid it back again between the pages of the book. I walked on into my bedroom.

I buttoned up my collar, put on my vest, fixed the rope that I call a tie, and slipped into my coat. I opened the bureau-drawer and felt blindly for my gun. Then I had to open the drawer wider and look, because I couldn’t find it. I didn’t always carry it around with me, being a captain, since it pulled my suit out of shape.

I disarranged all the shirts my sister had neatly piled up in the drawer, and still I couldn’t find it. “What’d you do with my gun?” I called in to her. “I can’t find it.”

“It’s wherever you put it last,” she answered. “Don’t ask me where that is. You ought to know by now I wouldn’t put a hand on it for love nor money.”

That was true, for she was afraid of guns. She used to even ask me to pick it up and move it, when she wanted to clean out the drawer.

“Did you take it with you this morning?” she asked. “Maybe you left it down at the precinct-house.”

“No,” I said short-temperedly, “what do you think I do, go around cannoned-up like an armored-truckman? I simply wanted to turn it over to one of the guys in the lab, have it cleaned and oiled. It’s getting a little rusty.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what I’d want with it. Or Jenny either, for that matter. And we’re the only other two people living in the house with you.”

“There you go,” I said. Her bringing Jenny into it was pure whimsy, as far as I was concerned. “I didn’t say anything about yon wanting it. Can’t a man ask a question in his own house? I can’t find it, that’s all.”

I was getting sick of this.

“Well, look in the right place and you will!” And that was all the help I could get out of her.

The front door opened and the kid came in just then. I was in the hall closet by that time, and by the time I could shift around to look, she’d gone by me.

I heard my sister say, “I kept your supper warm, dear. What are you walking like that for?”

“Oh, my heel came off just now, crossing the trolley tracks. I’ll have to go around to the shoemaker right after supper.”

“Tsk tsk, you could have been run over.”

I came back into the room and put on my hat. “Well, I’ll have to go without it,” I said. “Look for it for me, will you, Maggie? I want to turn it over to Kelcey.”

But she didn’t have any time for me now that the kid was back. She was too busy putting food on the table.

The kid was in my room, but that was understandable, since the mirror in there was the handiest and you know how kids are with mirrors. I happened to glance past the door and she was gazing at herself in it as though for the first time.

She must have heard me for she whirled and said: “I thought you’d gone already! I didn’t see you! Where were you?”

“Why, you brushed right by me,” I said, laughing. “Where are your eyes?”

She came toward me and first I thought she was going to fall, but I guess it was her shoe. I said, “Got a kiss for your old man?” There was no answer.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

She shook her head quickly.

“Nothing,” she said.

My sister called her just then to come in and sit down, and she left me like she couldn’t get away fast enough. Just hungry, I guess.

The bureau-drawer was still open so, just for luck, I went over and took another look. And there was the gun, between two of my shirts.

I scratched my head and said to myself, “Well, I’m a great one!” You wouldn’t think you could miss anything that size and weight, in such a small drawer.

I hadn’t quite finished slinging it away as I came though the doorway, and they both got a glimpse of it. The kid must have been hungry and tired all right for her face was white and drawn.

My sister couldn’t let a chance like that go by. “Oh,” she said, nodding severely, “so you did find it! What did I tell you?” She continued to prattle on about my carelessness.

In the middle of it, without either of one of us seeing her go, the kid suddenly wasn’t there at the table any more. But we heard the bedroom door close and then there was a sound of something heavy dropping on the bed.

I just looked blank. I hadn’t been yelling or anything. In fact, I hadn’t said a word. But my sister took it out on me anyway. “Oh, anyone but a man would understand,” she said, and looked wise. What about, I don’t know. She picked up the kid’s dinner-plate and carried it toward the room, calling, “Jenny dear, finish your supper for Aunt Margaret.” Then to me over her shoulder: “Go on to your job!”

Riding down to the precinct-house on the bus, I said to myself: “I’m going to see she eases up a little on her schoolwork, she’s been working too hard at it. That damn trigger-whatever-it-is would make anyone nervous.”

The desk-sergeant put Holmes through to me at about ten that night. He said. “Cap, we’ve just turned up a homicide out here at Starrett Avenue. Number twenty-five. Guy shot dead in a bungalow. Want to come out and take a look?” The last was just rhetoric, of course.

“Yep,” I said briefly, and hung up.

I got in touch with Prints, Pix, and the examiner, told them where to go, and then I picked up Jordan and we rode out...

It was a cheap little house, the kind that are put up a whole dozen at a time. Each one about ten or twelve yards away from the next. It was the only one in the whole row that was lit up, except one way down at the corner. The whole community must have been out to the movies in a body.

We braked, got out, and went up on the porch. The light over it was lit, and Holmes had the door swung back out of the way, with just a screen-door veiling the lighted room. We went right into the room itself from the porch. The man was there, lying on his face, with an arm thrown up around his head, as though he had tried to ward off the shot.

My instinctive impression of the man, even before I’d even seen the face, was that he had been a no-good.

Holmes and the patrolman from the beat were both there with us. The cop was just waiting to be told what next to do, and Holmes was taking stabs at looking around — which I guessed he had only started after he heard us drive up. There’s really nothing to be done until after the experts have had their innings, but the average second-grader hasn’t the moral courage to sit there with his hands folded when his captain walks in on him. I was a second-grader once myself. And before that, a harness-cop.

“Who is he?” I asked.

The cop said, “Their name is Trinker. His wife is over at her sister’s in Mapledale, who’s been down with the flu or something.”

He had the details all right.

I said, “How do you know?”

“It’s my beat, sir,” he said. “She stopped on the sidewalk and told me about it when she was leaving Wednesday. I saw the door open and the room lit up, like it is now, when I first came on duty. Kind of cold for the door to be open these nights. But I went on past the first time, thinking he might have gone out for something and didn’t have a key. It was still that way the second time I made my rounds, so I went up the walk and called out to him, and then I stuck my head through the door, and there he was. I happened to run into Holmes down at the call-box—”

“You been relieved on your beat?”

“Yes sir, of course.”

“You come on at six, don’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“About what time was it when you walked past here the first time?”

“Ten-after at the most, sir.”

“That places it for us then,” I told Holmes and Jordan. “It wasn’t dark enough for lights much before six. And they were turned on, of course, before it happened, while he was still alive. Between six and six-ten.”

This needed confirmation, of course. Nothing’s ever certain. The lights could have been lit long after he was killed, by a sneak-thief stealing in, or the murderer himself, but it was a very slim possibility. The examiner confirmed it as soon as he got there. “About four hours.” he said, which carried it back to six — and then the office where this Trinker worked reconfirmed it, if you want to call it that. I had Jordan call the office-manager at his home; Trinker had left there about ten to five. He couldn’t have gotten out here in much under thirty minutes, even by bus.

He hadn’t been killed right away after he got in. There were four cigarette butts discarded around the living-room — another twenty minutes even if he’d smoked one after another. The soap upstairs in the bathroom was still moist and the ironed folding-lines in a Turkish towel had been erased by recent use. He’d evidently taken a bath and changed after he came home. So the time was figured about right.

I sent Holmes out to Mapledale to bring back Trinker’s wife. “You don’t know what about, until I talk to her,” I warned him through the screen door. I like fresh material to work on.

I asked the cop whether there’d been lights in any of the other houses when he went by the first time, or just this one.

“Most of them were lit up. I guess they were all home having their suppers,” he said. “The next one beyond is vacant, though.”

I said, “Well then I wonder how it is nobody seems to have heard the shot?”

He said, “Well they were getting coal in down one of these long chutes further down the street, and you know what a racket that makes tumbling down.”

“What company?” I asked him. “If the murderer left by the front door while they were delivering it there’s a chance that truckdriver and his helper got a look at him.”

“I didn’t notice, Captain Endicott,” he said.

“You want to watch those things,” I rebuked mildly. “You want to be a detective some day, don’t you?” But it was easy enough to find out, there were only three companies in town.

“That’s you,” I said to Jordan. “Find out which of them delivered a load to this street late today. Get hold of the men that made the delivery, and if they noticed anybody at all come out of here, or even go by on the street, bring them down.”

The cameramen took all the pictures worth taking, and then went down to Headquarters to develop. The body was taken out, and I asked for as quick a report on the bullet as Ballistics could give me. Then I was left alone in the house, with the cop cooling his heels by the door while I worked.

The front room, where he had been dropped, was entirely undisturbed. The struggle had taken place in the kitchen behind it. The rear door of that was locked on the inside, so the murderer had left by the front and those coalheavers might just come in very handy. It had been no slight struggle either, by the looks of it. The chairs and the table were over on their sides, and dishes and things were smashed wholesale all over the floor. Scattered remnants of food showed he’d been sitting down to a meal by himself when his caller arrive. There were also two highball glasses, one drained, one almost untouched. They hadn’t been destroyed because both had been set down out of the way on a low shelf.

The signs of struggle in one room, the lack of them in the other, told me it had been a woman right away, even a rookie could have figured that out.

Instead of trying to run away from the assailant, he had gone after her, from one room into the next. The bullet hole had been in the front, not the back of his head.

There’d been a complete absence of any bruises or welts on his face. If it had been a man there would have been at least a mark or two showing on him.

Confirmation quickly followed. Even my unaided eye could make out a smudge of red on the rim of the undrained glass.

I went upstairs and looked the rooms over more thoroughly than we had the first time. There was plenty of stuff such as letters, memoranda, and belongings, to fill in his background.

He and his wife had been married four years the previous June. Her picture gave me the impression of an honest, straightforward woman who wouldn’t try to hide anything. It was smiling a little sadly, like she was making the best of a bad bargain. A bank book showed that they hadn’t put away much money. I jotted a reminder down in my notebook to find out what salary he’d been paid.

I went downstairs again. The cop had been sitting down resting his legs but straightened up again when he heard me coming. I was sure of that because I used to do the same thing myself when I was a beat-pounder.

“Spooky after they’re gone, isn’t it?” I muttered. “Still gets me, and I’ve been on about a hundred of them by now.”

He said, “Yes sir, Captain Endicott.” But he didn’t sound very definite about it.

The phone rang just as I got down to the bottom step, and I went to it alertly, but it wasn’t a private call. It was for me. Jordan, to tell me he had the two coal-heavers down at Headquarters.

“All right, keep them there,” I said, “I’ll be down shortly, I’m just winding up here.”

I went back into the kitchen again and scuffed the china-fragments around aimlessly. And then I kicked aside some dishes and uncovered a heel.

Looking at it reminded me of how Jenny’s had come off too; it only showed how insecure the average feminine heel was. It was a wonder they didn’t hurt themselves more often than they did.

The screen-door opened and Holmes came in with Mrs. Trinker just then, so I put it into my pocket for the time being and went out to talk to her.

“What’s happened?” she said in a sort of helpless, pleading voice. The harness-bull by the door loomed bigger than either Holmes or myself to her, the way a uniform usually does to a layman. “What’s this officer doing here? Has Paul done something?”

She was a nice wholesome-looking blonde, of the housewife type. Her voice was the nicest thing about her. Soft and soothing, the kind that, is seldom raised in anger. She was well-dressed and quite nice looking.

“I had to leave my sister sick in bed,” she said.

I hated this part of it that was coming next. “Sit down, won’t you?” I flicked my eyes at the staircase, and Holmes ran up it unnoticed to the bathroom to try to find a sedative in case she needed it. He knew what I meant by past experience.

“But where is he? This other man wouldn’t tell me anything coming down.”

I said, “Your husband’s been shot.”

“Bad?” She got white, not all in one flash, but slowly.

“He’s gone,” I said.

I don’t need to go into it after that. I could tell in about five minutes that I wouldn’t be able to question her any that night. A matron came up to take charge of her as soon as she was able to walk, and took her to a hotel in her custody. There was no need to lock the poor woman up in a cell for the night.

A new cop came up on special duty to keep an eye on the premises from outside, and I started to put the lights out and lock up, to go down to the house and work on what we had. We were about through up here for all present purposes. I was the last one in the place. Holmes had gone out to the car and was chewing the rag with the cop, while he waited for me.

The living-room switch was just inside the front door, and as I crossed toward it, my current cigar butt, which had grown too small to handle adequately, slipped out of my lips and dropped to the floor. I stooped down to get it, naturally, not wanting a fire to start after we’d left the place, and with my line of vision way down low like that, parallel to the floor, I saw this object under the sofa.

People had sat on that sofa all night long. Holmes, the cop. Mrs. Trinker, and their feet must have been just an inch or two away from it, but nobody had seen it. I thought it was just a crumpled piece of paper, or maybe even a ball of gray waste from a vacuum or carpet-sweeper, but I reached in and pulled it out.

It was a handkerchief; a woman’s handkerchief, pale-blue and so thin you could almost look through it. It had a little colored design of a kitten stitched on one corner. A faint hint of honeysuckle reached my nose, and when I raised it higher, it got stronger, and there was a whiff of something else; like it had been wrapped around a chocolate bar.

I had a tickling sensation in my memory of smelling, or looking at, or picking up, something just like this, somewhere before. But the rest of my mind was on the job and told me: “She dropped it, all right. It’s never Mrs. Trinker’s, I know that already.”

I started to stuff it into my pocket — until I could go out and show it to Holmes — and my knuckles brushed the heel that was already in there, and the lining of my throat suddenly contracted.

Did you ever get dizzy on your knees? I was on my knees there, upright in front of the sofa, and the four walls of the room suddenly shifted around me. The one opposite me went off to the side, then in back of me, then around to the other side, then they were all back where they started again. But meanwhile I had to reach out and steady myself against the edge of the sofa.

A clock was ticking somewhere in the house. Upstairs in the bedroom, I guess. I could hear it clearly in the stillness.

It had ticked hundreds and hundreds of times, when finally Holmes’ voice came in to me from the curb outside: “Coming, Cap? What’s holding you up?”

I was still there on my knees, supporting myself with one hand out against the edge of the sofa. I was afraid he’d come in and find me there. I took my hand out of my pocket where it had stayed all this time, and left the handkerchief in there with the heel.

It was a slow business, getting up. I am still only forty, but I knew what it felt like to be sixty. I planted one foot flat and hoisted myself on that, then I dragged the other one up after it, and I groaned with the effort. Or maybe it was a broken mainspring, inside me.

I said something. I heard a sound come out of me that said, “My little girl,” and I zig-zagged in the middle and almost went down again.

I dragged myself over to the light-switch and punched it out, and the kindly darkness came around me and hid me. I put the back of my hand against my eyes and held it there. Outside, from the quiet sidewalk, Holmes’ voice carried in to me clearly, though he was talking low now. “The guy’s as good as fried. Endicott never fumbled one of these things yet. He never misses,” he was saying to the new cop.

“What I like about him is, he’s so human with it, just like one of us,” the cop was saying.

Human was right, if human meant to hurt all over, to be scared all over, to be going under for the third time without a helping hand in sight.

It didn’t last very long. It couldn’t. I would have gone batty. But it had driven an awful dent in me, left me wide open. I said to myself: “Be a man. You’re nuts. It couldn’t be. It just looks that way now, but it’ll straighten itself out. You’ll see.” I fought it off that way.

Finally I moved out of the dark room into the pale wash of the street light filtering through the screen door. Holmes was coming toward me up the walk, to see what was taking me so long. He had the makings of a good dick. He could tell even by the pale street light. He said, “What’s the matter, Cap? You look funny.”

I said, “I had a dizzy spell in there just now. That ever happen to you? I bent down too far to pick up my cigar.”

He said, “You want to take it easy, Cap. We can always get you a new cigar, we can’t always get a new Cap.”

I gave the cop his instructions, and we got in the car and drove down to the house. The death-watch tried to gang up on me in the ante-room, but I brushed through them. “Not now, boys. May have something for you in the morning. Query me then.”

One of them called after me, “Our papers can’t wait till the morning, give us a hand-out at least—”

Holmes showed his teeth, said: “You heard the captain, didn’t you?”

I sat down behind my desk and called Ballistics. Kelcey came on, and I said: “Did you get the pill out of him yet? What sweat-band does it take?”

“We’re giving it the screen-test now. Thirty-eight around the waist,” he said.

The same caliber as our police positives.

There was a strained pause. But why should there be a hitch in a call like this, when we both ought to know what we wanted to say? He was waiting for me to give him further instructions, I guess. I didn’t. Then he said, “Oh, by the way, Ed, I’m still waiting for that gun of yours you asked me to have cleaned and oiled for you.”

I said, “I forgot to bring it down with me.”

He said, “Hello? Hello? Oh, I thought I heard us being cut off.”

The click that he heard had been me cracking my positive open. Did you ever get nauseated from smelling gunpowder? I hadn’t fired it in months, ages, that’s why it needed cleaning so bad. The smell came up like a breath of hell into my nostrils. One chamber was empty. I always kept it fully loaded.

“All right, Kelcey,” I said, “All right, Kelcey.” The receiver landed back in its forked support like a hundred-pound weight, dragging down my hand with it.

I got up and went over to the water-filter and drank a cupful of water. I needed it bad.

I opened the door and said, “Tell Jordan I’m ready for those truckmen now.” I went back and sat down behind my desk and picked up a report upside-down, as the men were brought in.

One of them was a big stocky guy, the other, his helper, was a little bit of a squirt. They were both half-scared, half-pleased at being the center of interest like this. Jordan came in with them, of course. The thought in my mind was: “I’ve got to get him out of here. If this is — what I’m afraid it’s going to be, I can’t take it in front of him.”

Jordan saw the reversed report, but he must have thought I was just using it as a screen to overawe them. He looked surprised, like he wondered why I should bother, with small potatoes like these guys.

The first couple of questions brought out that the shrimp had been down in the cellar of the house the whole time, it was the other guy who had been up by the control-lever of the truck. That gave me my out. I said, “Take this other guy out, I don’t need him,” and motioned Jordan to the door. Then, “Wait’ll I send for you.” He went out.

I said, “Did you hear anything like a shot?”

“No, boss.”

“What house was this you were unloading in front of?”

“Fifteen.”

Same side of the street, five houses down. “While you were there, did you see anyone come out of any of the houses to your left, toward Roanoke Boulevard? You know — in a hurry, running, excited, anything like that?”

“No sir, I was too busy tipping and adjusting my truck.”

I had no business being so glad. I loved that dirty mug standing there before me, for saying that. Fine captain of detectives. But they must have had some information for us, otherwise Jordan wouldn’t have brought them in. “Well, what did you see?”

“A girl comes hustling along the sidewalk. I didn’t see her come out of no house, but she did come from that direction...”

A girl. I thought: don’t let him say he got a good look at her.

“A cripple, like. You know, game-legged. Went down lower on one side than the other, every step she took...”

The heel. He didn’t know what caused the unevenness, attributed it to deformity.

“She was in a hurry, came hustling along, hobbling like that, and looking back behind her every minute...”

“Would you know her again if you saw her?” I asked, afraid to hear his answer. “Now answer me truthfully. Here, have a cigarette.” Stalling, fighting for a minute more of grace for myself. I passed him a package I kept on the desk for visitors. My hand shook so, in offering it, that I had to pivot my elbow on the desktop to steady it. My other hand was gripping the cloth of my trouser-leg tight, in a bunched-up knot.

“I couldn’t see her face,” he said. “It was dark, y’know, under them trees along there.”

The papers in front of me rippled a little, so I must have blown out my breath without knowing it.

“It was the way she was hustling along on that game leg attracted me attention, and the way she kep’ looking behind her. She didn’t see the truck until she nearly run into it; we were blocking the sidewalk, y’know. But imagine anyone not seeing a truck in front of ’em! I said, ‘Watch it, lady,’ so she cut across to the other side of the street.”

“Was she young or old?”

“Just a chicken. Not more than eighteen. I couldn’t see her face, but her shape was young, if y’know what I mean.”

I pulled the knife out of my heart, to make room for him to stick in a few more. “Could you gimme an idea of what she was wearing?”

“On her head one of them round skating-caps, like boys wear.” I could see it so well, back there on our hall-table, carelessly thrown down. “And then a leather coat, like a — whaddye-call them things, lumber-jacket, only fancier, for a girl.” I could feel the cool crispness of it against me again, like when she bent over me to kiss me...

“Damn,” I said, deep inside of me.

“Then a minute later” — his voice went on, somewhere outside my private hell — “a guy in a car came cruising along, slow and easy. I guess he was trying to pick her up or follow her home or something. He just stayed back behind her, though, about half a block behind her. Funny to be out on the make after a girl with a game leg. I guess that’s why she was in such a hurry and kep’ looking back...”

He was dead wrong about that, but I grabbed at it like a drowning man does a straw. It didn’t do me any good, but it eased him and his damnable testimony out of the picture — for the present anyway.

I said slowly, “I guess that lets her out. I guess that’s not what we’re after. She the only one you saw?”

“Only one.”

“Okay, that’ll be all.” But then as he moved toward the door, “Did you tell the guy that brought you in about this girl? What she was wearing, and all like that?” I felt lower than the boards on the floor.

“Not about what she was wearing, no, they didn’t ask me. I just told them about seeing her go by.”

“Well, keep what you just told me to yourself, you understand? Don’t talk about it to anyone, you understand?”

“Yes sir,” he said, feeling he’d gotten in wrong in some way.

“Now, see that you don’t forget that,” I added belligerently. “Gimme your name and address. All right, you can go now. And don’t forget what I told you.”

“Anything?” Jordan wanted to know when I sent for him again.

“No, false alarm. He saw some flapper trying to dodge a pick-up artist, that’s all it was.” I passed a hand limply across my brow. “I’m going home now. I feel rotten.”

“You look kind of worn out,” he admitted.

“Not so young as the rest of you guys. Check up on the neighbors first thing in the morning, find out what kind of a reputation he had, who his callers were. We can’t really get under way until I have a chance to question Mrs. Trinker, and hear what she can tell us. Holmes, give her movements a going-over, find out if she really was at Mapledale all day yesterday and today. G’night. Call me if anything pops between now and morning.”

I trudged wearily out into the street, calling myself a liar, a hypocrite, and a traitor.

I was shivering standing there in the pool of light waiting by the bus-stop. Just a man with his life and hopes all smashed. I let the one for my own street go by, I took the one behind it, that went past Starrett Avenue.

Jogging along on it, on the top deck in the dark. I kept thinking: I’ve got to shield her, got to cover her. It’s not the murder-rap, the trial. It’s the implication of her being mixed-up with him. Acquitted or guilty, either way she’s finished, she’ll never live it down. I m not going to let her be dragged through the sewer. I’d rather put a bullet through her with my own hand. I’ve got to protect. got to cover her.

And it wasn’t as easy to decide as it sounds. Do you think duty, loyalty to the men over you, the trust of the men under you, don’t mean anything after twenty years?

I staggered off the bus at Starrett Avenue and went back to the Trinker house. The cop was lurking there in the shadows under the trees, keeping an eye on it.

“It’s me,” I said. “I forgot something,” when he flashed his torch at my face.

“Yes sir, Captain Endicott,” he said, and quickly cut it off again.

I went up the walk to the porch, took out the key, unlocked and put the lights on. He stayed out on the sidewalk, since I hadn’t told him to come in with me. I went through into the kitchen, lit that, eased the door shut after me.

I picked up the glass, the one with the rouge-smear on its rim, and looked at it. They’d missed it. They hadn’t dusted it. It was one of those flukes. If it stayed here they’d be bound to discover the oversight. Nothing could be done about the prints they had already, and they had plenty, but something could be done about this. I tilted it slowly, hypnotizedly, emptied the stale contents down the sink. Then I stuffed it in my pocket, not caring whether it bulged or not. Then I put out the lights, locked up, and came out again.

“Did you get it, Cap?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I got it.”

He called after me, “G’night, Cap,” as I moved down the street.

“Good night, officer,” I said.

I took out the glass and smashed it against the curb, on a quiet corner near my own place. Shoveled the fragments down into the mouth of a sewer with the edge of my foot.

They’d both gone to bed long ago. I spent a long time in the kitchen with a piece of rag, scouring my gun. The ashes still glowed red underneath the white linen when I lifted the stove-lid. The handkerchief went right away, with a flare of yellow; the heel, leather-covered wood, more slowly, burning down to a char. A heel, a handkerchief, a highball glass.

Maggie had left a bottle of beer and two slices of rye on the table for me, like other nights. But I couldn’t touch it.

I eased open the door of their room, peered in. There was no light behind me but enough in there coming through the window to see them by. Maggie was asleep with her mouth open. She wasn’t. She was lying perfectly still, but I could tell she was awake. She had her face turned toward the wall, and her two hands were up hiding it, and she was crying into them without making a sound. I could tell by the way her shoulders kept shaking a little. It had been going on so long, it was mostly reflex by now.

When daylight came I was still sitting on the edge of my bed holding onto the back of my neck with both hands, staring... staring at nothing that anyone else could have seen.

You’d think hope would have been all gone, but it wouldn’t die. It flickered up weaker each time, but somehow it still was there.

She sneezed at the breakfast table and blew her nose on one of those handkerchiefs, a pink one with a rabbit’s head on the corner. I said, “Where do you get those handkerchiefs?”

“Kringle’s. They come by the set, a half-dozen for a dollar.”

“You can’t buy them separate?”

“Yes, but you’ve got to buy them six at a time to get that price. All the girls are going in for them.”

All the girls — anyone at all could buy them. But honeysuckle, chocolate—

I said, “Did you take your shoe over to have it repaired?”

“Yes, last night, after you left.”

It flickered up again. Maybe she had the heel. Maybe... “How much is he going to charge you?”

“A dollar,” she said. She looked down at her plate and closed her eyes. “I lost the heel. He’s got to make me a new one. It fell down in that conduit where the trolley transmission-cable is laid.”

I said, “Where — what were you doing at six yesterday, what kept you out that long?” Trying to make my voice sound kindly, casual.

“I was having a soda at Gruntley’s...” She suddenly threw her hands over her ears. “Don’t! Don’t ask me, any more questions! I can’t stand it!” She got up and ran out, with a stricken look.

Maggie started to lace it into me. “What are you trying to do, practice up for your duties on her? The poor child didn’t sleep a wink all night!”

She pulled herself together in about five minutes, came out again, picked up her books, went past me into the hall. I said “Jenny,” got up and went out there after her. She was standing by the clothes-tree, getting her jacket. I said, “Don’t — wear that leather jacket any more, leave it here where it was.”

She didn’t ask me why not. I noticed that; as though she didn’t have to be told. I reached out and took the knitted cap off her head too. I let them both drop on the floor behind me. “Don’t go out in these things any more,” I said helplessly.

I half-stretched my arms out toward her, dropping them again. I said huskily, “Isn’t there... is there anything you want to tell me? You can tell me anything. Is there — any way you want me to help you?”

She just gave me a stricken look, turned and ran out with a sort of choked sob.

I went over to the window and stood there looking out after her. I watched her go down the street. A minute later a car came drifting along — very slowly, at a snail’s pace. It was going the same way she was. There was just a young guy in it, a sleek-looking young guy with a mustache. It was hard to tell exactly how old he was. He was inching along so slowly, you had an impression he was stalking somebody. If I’d seen him try to close in on her, I would have rushed out. But he didn’t, just kept his distance, creeping along so slow the spokes of his wheels didn’t even blur. I grabbed out my notebook and jotted down his license number.

I opened the bureau drawer where she kept her things and looked into the box of handkerchiefs. There were three left in it, two whites and a pink. The lid said they came two to each color. She’d taken one pink with her just now. The blue I’d seen between her books yesterday was in the laundry-bag. It was the only one in it. One blue was missing entirely.

I stopped in at Gruntley’s on my way to the precinct-house. I said to the soda-jerker, “Do you know my daughter, son?” When he nodded, I went on. “What, was that sweet stuff you gave her last night just before supper-time? It came near ruining her appetite.”

He looked surprised. “She didn’t come in here last night, sir. First time in weeks, too. I had her special kind of a sundae all made up waiting for her, but she didn’t show up. Had to finish it off myself.”

I started off with the usual, “Do you know of any reason why your husband should have been killed?” Holmes had already established Mrs. Trinker’s alibi, she hadn’t budged from her sister’s house in Mapledale for two whole days.

“No, Captain,” she said dully, “I don’t.”

This was only beating around the bush, and we both knew it. “Were there any other women in his life?” I blurted out.

“Yes,” she said mournfully, “I’m afraid there were.”

“He was killed by a woman, you know.”

“I was afraid of that,” she admitted.

“Can you tell me who they were?”

“I tried — not to find out,” was her answer. “I did my best not to know.”

“You want to see justice done, don’t you? Then you’ve got to help me.”

“Several times there were folders of matches in his pocket, from that road-house out at Beechwood, the Beechwood Inn. I never went with him there. I suppose somebody else may have.” She smiled a little. What a smile! “I tried not to look, I tried not to find things like that. I kept my eyes closed. That’s something to be grateful for: I don’t have to try — not to know — any more.”

She was a fine character. That didn’t make things any easier all around, either...

I had Jordan go out to the Beechwood Inn and lay the groundwork. “Find out just who the interest was out there, who he was seen with. When you’ve got that, call me for further instructions before you tip your hand.”

Prints called, all elated. “We’ve got the finest set of trade-marks you ever saw, clear as a bell. If you don’t go to town on ’em. Ed, you’re losing your grip.”

“Outside of his?”

“Sure outside of his. What’re you trying to do, be funny?”

Holmes reported in, after spending all morning casing the neighbors. “He had a bad rep. They all had a hammer handy when I brought up the name. The one next door told me a blonde dame rung her doorbell by mistake one morning about two months ago, asking if he lived there.”

It was the first good news I’d had all day long. Even if it was two months old, at least it meant another candidate.

I needed another candidate, even if it was only a straw one.

“Let’s have her,” I said eagerly.

He opened his notebook, read hieroglyphics that didn’t mean anything to anyone but him. “Tall, blonde, flashy-dressed, nightlife type. Blue eyes. Mole on chin. There was a man waiting outside for her in a car.”

“Did she give you anything on him?”

“Being a dame, she was only interested in this other dame.”

I said, “We’ve got to get that jane, I don’t care if she was only the Fuller Brush lady making her rounds. That the only time she saw her?”

“Only time.”

When I was alone in the room again I called up the license-registration bureau, read from my book: “060210.” That was the car that had dawdled past our place this morning. There had also been a car escorting the blonde, you see.

They gave me: Charles T. Baron, such-and-such an address, resort operator, height 6–1 (well, the guy following Jenny had been sitting down), weight 190 (well, he’d still been sitting down), age 45 (he’d looked younger than that to me, but maybe he’d just had a shave), and so on...

Jordon called me about five, from the Beechwood Inn. He said, “The party is a hostess here, name of Benita Lane.”

“Got any idea what she looks like?”

“I ought to, I’m sitting out there with her right now.”

“Tall, blonde, blue eyes, mole on chin?”

He gasped, “For pete’s sake, what are you, a wizard?”

“No, I’m a captain. You stay with her, get me?”

“I’ve got her going,” he said cheerfully.

“I want her prints,” I said, “and I want ’em as quick as I can get ’em. I’m going to send Holmes out there for contact-man. You get them across to him. Now here’s what else I want, I don’t care how you manage it, but these’re the things I gotta have: I want to know what perfume she goes in for. I want to know if she owns any colored handkerchiefs with animals’ heads on the corners. I want to know if she’s got a weakness for chocolate bars. I want to know if she’s short a pair of shoes, and why. I’ll hold off until I hear from you. If I’m not here, phone me at my house. If you want me to send out somebody to double up on it with you, say so.”

He whined, almost like a kid, “Aw, don’t make me divvy this up with anyone, Cap; this is too good to split.”

“Well, see that you don’t muff it,” I warned him.

She’d be good for weeks, to wave in front of my men and the commissioner. I could get something to hold her on, even if it was only knowing Trinker, and hold — and hold — maybe until the case curled up and died of old age. It was a dirty trick but — place yourself in my shoes.

Holmes was back in under an hour. He must have just stuck his head in the place, gulped a beer, and beat it out again. He had a burnished metal mirror from her kit, about the most perfect surface for taking prints there is.

It seemed another hour before I got the report from Prints. It must have been much less than that, since all they had to do was compare the two sets under the slide. In the meantime I’d walked five miles around my desk.

The phone rang and I jumped.

“Doesn’t check,” Prints said. “Not at all similar to the ones we got up at Trinker’s place.”

Jordan’s second call came right on top of that, to give me the knockout-blow. “I’m up in her place now, Cap, upstairs over the Inn. She’s down there doing a number for the supper-trade, and she’s bringing up sandwiches and drinks.”

“I’m not interested in your social life,” I snapped.

He went on:

“The kind of gas she uses on her engine is called: gardenia. I promised to buy her a bottle. She can’t eat anything sweet, her teeth are on the blink. All her hanks are white with just her initials on ’em. The only thing I haven’t turned up yet is about the kicks. She admits she knows Trinker, but she doesn’t know he’s dead yet, I can tell that by the way she talks. Furthermore, she was singing downstairs here at six last night, like she is now, I found that out from the waiters. How’m I doing, Cap?”

I felt like saying, “You’re cutting my heart out.” But I managed a hollow, “Great stuff. Stick with it. Maybe we’ll pull her shortly, just on general principle.”

He sounded dubious. “Gee, I hope you pull her soon. I’m a married man, and I’m practically down for the count now.” He hung up abruptly, as though he’d heard her coming back.

I couldn’t stand it around the precinct any more after that. I flung them the usual, “Call me home if there are any new developments,” and got out. That got me home ahead of my usual time, so they weren’t expecting me. Maggie must have been out marketing. The kid was there, standing where the phone was, with her back to me. The front door didn’t make any noise opening. I could see her in there, in the room, from where I was, standing in the door. Her voice reached me; it sounded strained, furry with panic. “What do you want to see me about?”

Blackmail! That was the thought that exploded in my brain like a ghastly star-shell. Somebody had seen her — last night; somebody was threatening her with exposure.

Her voice dropped in defeated acquiescence. “The bandstand beside the lake, in the park... Yes, I know where it is... All right — I’ll come.”

She must have sensed me standing there out in the hall. Her elbow hitched abruptly and there was a click. I heard her give a frightened intake of breath. She didn’t turn around, just stood there with her head averted.

I walked slowly up behind her. I rested both my hands on her shoulders. I could feel the spasmodic shiver course up her spine.

“Who was that?”

“A boy I know in school.”

I made her turn around and look at me — but not roughly, gently. She didn’t want to, resisted, but I made her. I said, “Let me help you, little Jenny. That’s what I’m for.”

I couldn’t get a word out of her. A greater terror held her mute. Just a haunted look on her face, of one on the edge of an abyss. I dropped my arms finally, turned away. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was better not to talk about it, maybe it was better to finish it out in pantomime. To put it into words between us was to give it an even more ghastly reality than it already had.

Maggie came in, bustled around. The meal was an awful thing. We just sat there like two people in the line-up. I would have given anything for Maggie’s obliviousness, peace of mind. She said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with you two, after I go to all the trouble of cooking....” Afterwards she filled a basket full of jellies and things, said she was going to help out at her church bazaar or something like that.

I heard her go but it was like being in a trance. And then Endicott and his girl were left alone. An old war-horse who had had the tables turned on him, by some dirty trick of fate.

The phone rang again, and she heaved above her chair. Well, I kind of jolted too, why should I lie about it? I went over to it, but it was only Holmes. “Hey, Cap, Jordan hasn’t called back any more from the Beechwood. Don’t you think we should have heard from him again by now? He may be in a jam.”

“He’s probably in bed,” I said crossly.

“Hell, he don’t have to be that realistic. He’s on an assignment.”

“All right, see if you can get in touch with him then. Get word to him to bring the dame in, we’ve kibitzed around enough with her.” I wondered what I was going to hold her on. But I had to have somebody; it was her tough luck she’d once asked the way to Trinker’s house two months ago.

But all this was just a side issue now to the main problem. I kept saying to myself: “The bandstand by the lake — in the park. I’ve got to get him. I’ve got to get him and shut him up.” I only knew of one way to shut him up, to shut him up so that he could never menace her again. I only had to look at her, sitting there gripping her chair, suffering the tortures of the damned, to know that I was going to take that way.

I moved with pretended casualness into my own room. She didn’t seem to be watching, didn’t seem to be aware of what I was doing. I took my gun out and pocketed it. I came out again, still casual, moved past her toward the door. I mumbled something like: “Got to go down to the job again. Stay here until Maggie comes back...”

I don’t know whether I’m not a good actor or whether it was feminine intuition. But suddenly she was up, her arms were around me like barnacles, trying to hold me, trying to keep me back. “No! I know where you’re going! I know what you’re going to do! I can tell by the look in your eyes! You took your gun! Daddy...”

I thrust her aside, but she tried to hang on. I just kept stomping forward, with my face expressionless, dragging her after me down the hall like so much dead-weight. She was going wild now, hysterical. I reached up over my shoulder, pried her hands off me, held the two of them together by the wrists with one hand, pulled her into a little windowless spare-room we had off the hall. I locked the door on her in there, took the key out. She was beating a frantic tattoo on it, almost incoherent, calling for help from someone who wasn’t there. “Aunt Margaret, stop him! He’s going to kill someone!”

The phone started up again, just as I opened the outside door. That wouldn’t be the precinct, so soon again. There was, I remembered, a hot-dog concession at the park entrance, open until midnight every night. It provided refreshment for homeward-bound spooners. It provided a pay-phone, too.

“Coming, damn you, coming,” I growled as I closed the door after me and lurched heavily out into the street. Everyone protects their own, even police-captains.

The lake came into view as I followed the curving driveway, and the deserted bandstand was outlined against the stars. There were no more leaves on the trees, no boats on the water, no cars in motion along the driveway. It was too late in the year for the park to be used for anything — but blackmail and murder.

Two things glowed red ahead of me as I came along; the ruby tail-light of the car standing motionless in front of the bandstand, and the smaller gleam of a cigarette under the black sheltering roof of the structure. The number checked with the one I had in my notebook, the one I had taken from the car that had gone slowly past our place this morning. I didn’t have to refer to it, I knew it by heart. 060210. So his name was Charles T. Baron, was it?

I kept the motionless car between me and the bandstand as I soft-shoed up on him. So he wouldn’t catch on, break and run. Then when I was up to its rear fender, I came out around from behind it, went up the two steps into the bandstand, with my gun out. I said, “Come here, you.”

He was a silhouette against the lake through the open sides of the structure. I saw him jump with shock, and his cigarette fell down in a little gush of red sparks on the floor.

I didn’t wait for him to come to me. I went to him. I said, “Is your name Charles T. Baron?” He didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to. It wasn’t, important. The real answer was behind my curved finger-joint, anyway.

I said, “D’you know me? D’you know who I am?” He was too frightened to answer, could only shake his head.

I did want the answer to what I asked him next. My mind was a policeman’s mind, not a congenital murderer’s; it had to have its confession before it executed justice. “Did you see her last night? Did you see her — with this?” I hitched the gun-muzzle upward to emphasize it. “You know who I mean.”

I was gripping him by the shoulder with my other hand, holding him in place in front of me. He could hardly articulate with terror. He’d seen the glint of the gun by now, if he hadn’t before. “Yes,” he breathed, “I... I saw it go off...”

That was his death-warrant.

I pulled the trigger and it flamed out, lighting up his eyes, dilated with unbelieving horror.

It had a terrific kick to it, worse than I’d ever remembered — it was so long since I’d fired it last. Such a kick that it pitched upward, the bullet going off harmlessly over his shoulder instead of into his chest. I tried to right it, bring it down again, so that second shot would take effect, and I’d lost control of my arm. All kinds of hands, that didn’t belong to me and didn’t belong to him either, were grabbing me all over.

Holding my gun-arm stiffly up and away, twisting the gun out of it, pulling me back away from him, holding my other arm fast at my side.

Holmes’ voice was pleading in my ears, like a frightened kid begging off from a licking from his old man: “Don’t, Cap! This is murder! What’s the matter with you, what’re you trying to do? Hang onto him, now, officer, don’t let him get that gun.” He was almost sobbing the words.

He got around in front of me and all I could see was his face, not the other guy’s any more. He didn’t actually have wet eyes, but he had the whole screwed-up expression that went with them, like I was breaking his heart.

I growled, “Get out of my way, Holmes — don’t do this to me. I’m asking you as your captain, don’t do this to me! You don’t understand — my little girl...”

He kept pushing me back in front of him, not like when you fight, but sort of leaning up against me, crowding me. He crowded me back out of the bandstand, and the running-board of the car caught me below the calves of my legs and I sat down on it involuntarily. He leaned over me, talking low into my face. “It’s Holmes, Cap, don’t you know me?” he kept saying. “You’ve nearly killed a man, Cap.” He started to shake me a little, as if to bring me to. “What do you want to do, bust my heart? Don’t you know how we all look up to you? Endicott, Endicott, what do you want to do?”

All I gave him back was, “My little girl, my little girl...”

“But he’s just a kid, Cap,” he said. “Don’t take your gun to him.” There was a motionless form lying on the bandstand-floor in there, with the policeman bending over him trying to bring him around. He’d fainted dead away from fright.

“Just a kid?” I said dazedly. “He’s a resort-operator, he—”

He kept shaking me slightly, like when you try to wake someone up out of a sleep. “Naw, that’s his father,” he said disgustedly. “This is just a kid, a high-school senior. Even the car is his old man’s. If he didn’t go around wearing a misplaced eyebrow on his lip, anyone could see how young he is!”

I ducked my head suddenly, covered my face with both hands. “But you don’t understand,” I said through them.

“I understand,” he assured me, hand on my shaking shoulder. “I’m not a parent, but I guess I know how it is — you just naturally get all burnt up the first time they fall in love. But hell, Cap, suppose they were sweet on each other, suppose she did go around with him after you forbid her to, suppose she did sneak your gun out of the house to show it to him and then it went off accidentally while they were jiggling it around and they nearly got hurt — suppose all that? Don’t take your gun to the brat, Cap! That’s no way. You been working too heard...”

I said, “How do you know all this? Who told you?”

“She did. Luckily I beat, it out to your house when I couldn’t get you on the wire. I was afraid something was wrong. And something came up that couldn’t wait. I hadda bust the door down to get her out. You shouldn’t have locked her up like that, Cap. She told me about it. They had a row when the gun went off, each one blamed the other. You know how it is when you’re that age, they take their love affairs and their rows serious, like we do our cases and our jobs. He’s been following her around ever since in his old man’s car, trying to get her to make up with him.”

I’ve been glad ever since, I didn’t blurt out: “Then she didn’t do it?” like I wanted to. I looked up at him beseechingly, but he interrupted me before I could get the words out: “Come on, Cap, we’ve got a busy night ahead of us. Forget these kids. Feel better now? Are you over it now? Then come on, let’s get going, this can’t wait. The prowl car’s right down the drive a way. You didn’t hear us coming up — luckily.” He turned to the cop. “Send that punk home when he comes around, and have his old man dry him behind the ears and keep him away from Endicott’s girl after this. And O’Toole — if you open your mouth about this, I’ll take it out of your hide.”

He turned back to me. “Come on, Cap. Every minute counts. I’ve got bad news for you...”

I just looked at him as I straightened up beside him.

“Jordan’s been shot to death out at the Beechwood Inn; we found his body in the woman’s apartment when we broke in before. Her and her accomplice, the manager, have lammed out. We’ve got to get those two. They killed Trinker. Her and this guy that runs the Beechwood must have been shaking him down...”

“But Jordan told me himself, just before he was killed, that she had an alibi — and two clues that I was looking for, a heel and a handkerchief, wouldn’t click,” I faltered.

“Well, they did after we got there. We found a heelless shoe and the remains of five partly-burned colored handkerchiefs in the roadhouse incinerator. And as for the alibi, naturally the employees there would go to bat for their employer and his lady friend. It meant their jobs.”

I could see how the rest of it would be; the kid, my kid, must have come limping through that street on her way home, after her spat with her boy friend, and just after losing her own heel in the trolley tracks. But of all the freak coincidences! It nearly made your hair stand up to think of it.

I said, “But doesn’t this punk’s father run the Beechwood? Baron, or whatever his name is?”

“He’s the owner of the whole chain. But he’s a respectable man. It’s this manager we want...”

I said, “Hang back a minute, and get word to the kid in that other car: if he wants to stop off at my place on his way home and say hello to his girl, Endicott’s girl, it’s all right with Endicott.”

Afterword to “Endicott’s Girl”

“Endicott’s Girl” (Detective Fiction Weekly, February 19, 1938) is one of Woolrich’s strongest Noir Cop thrillers and also carries forward the oscillation motif from earlier stories like “The Night Reveals” and “Murder on My Mind.” Captain Endicott destroys the clues that seem to link his daughter to the murder, takes steps to jail another woman innocently involved in the case, sets out to murder the man he believes to be blackmailing his child and is even ready to kill Jenny himself rather than see her reputation (and his?) sullied, but at the fadeout his psychotic malfeasance is covered up by his subordinates, who love him for his compassionate heart. What more perfect specimen of the Woolrich cop? Many years after its publication Woolrich picked this tale as his personal favorite among the hundreds he’d written. So why has it never been collected until now?