Plum Island

CHAPTER 14

I drove west on Main Road, my engine humming, my radio tuned to easy listening, rural scenes sliding by, blue skies, gulls, the whole nine yards, the best that the third planet from the sun has to offer.

The car phone rang, and I answered, "Dial-a-stud. May I help you?"

"Meet me at the Murphy residence," said Detective Penrose.

"I don't think so," I replied.

"Why not?"

"I think I'm fired. If not, I quit."

"You were hired by the week. You have to finish out the week."

"Says who?"

"Murphy house." She hung up.

I hate bossy women. Nevertheless, I drove the twenty minutes to the Murphy house and spotted Detective Penrose parked out front, sitting in her unmarked black Ford LTD.

I parked my Jeep a few houses away, killed the engine, and got out. To the right of the Murphys' house, the crime scene was still taped off, and there was one Southold PD out front. The county mobile headquarters van was still on the lawn.

Beth was on the cell phone as I approached, and she hung up and got out. She said, "I just finished a long verbal to my boss. Everyone seems happy with the Ebola vaccine angle."

I asked, "Did you indicate to your boss that you think it's a crock of crap?"

"No… let's leave that thought alone. Let's solve a double murder."

We went to the Murphys' front door and rang the bell. The house was a 1960s ranch, original condition, as they say, pretty ugly, but decently maintained.

A woman of about seventy answered the door, and we introduced ourselves. She stared at my shorts, probably remarking to herself about how freshly laundered they looked and smelled. She smiled at Beth and showed us inside. She disappeared toward the back of the house and called out, "Ed! Police again.'"

She came back into the living room and indicated a love seat. I found myself cheek to cheek with Beth.

Mrs. Agnes Murphy asked us, "Would you like some Kool-Aid?"

I replied, "No, thank you, ma'am. I'm on duty."

Beth, too, declined.

Mrs. Murphy sat in a rocker facing us.

I looked around. The decorating style was what I call classical old fart: dark, musty, overstuffed furniture, six hundred ugly knickknacks, incredibly tacky souvenirs, photos of grandchildren, and so on. The walls were chalky green, like an after-dinner mint, and the carpet was… well, who cares?

Mrs. Murphy was dressed in a pink pants suit made of a synthetic material that would last three thousand years.

I asked Mrs. Murphy, "Did you like the Gordons?"

The question threw her, as it was supposed to. She got her thoughts together and replied, "We didn't know them very well, but they were mostly quiet."

"Why do you think they were murdered?"

"Well… how would I know?" We looked at one another awhile, then she said, "Maybe it had something to do with their work."

Edgar Murphy entered, wiping his hands on a rag. He had been in the garage, he explained, working on his power mower. He looked closer to eighty, and if I were Beth Penrose preparing a future trial in my mind, I wouldn't give odds that Edgar would make it to the stand.

He wore green overalls and work shoes and looked as pale as his wife. Anyway, I stood and shook hands with Mr. Murphy. I sat again, and Edgar sat in a recliner which he actually reclined so he was looking up at the ceiling. I tried to make eye contact with him, but it was hard to do given our relative positions. Now I remember why I don't visit my parents.

Edgar Murphy said, "I already spoke to Chief Maxwell."

Beth replied, "Yes, sir. I'm with homicide."

"Who's he with?"

I replied, "I'm with Chief Maxwell."

"No, you ain't. I know every cop on the force."

This was about to become a triple homicide. I looked up at the ceiling to about where his eyes were focused, and spoke, sort of like beaming up to a satellite and bouncing the signal down to the receiver. I said, "I'm a consultant. Look, Mr. Murphy — "

Mrs. Murphy interrupted, "Ed, can't you sit up? That's very rude to sit like that."

"The hell it is. It's my house. He can hear me okay. You can hear me okay, can't you?"

"Yes, sir."

Beth did some prelim, but related some of the details and times wrong, on purpose, and Mr. Murphy corrected her, demonstrating that he had good short-term memory. Mrs. Murphy also did some fine-tuning of the events of the prior day. They seemed like reliable witnesses, and I was ashamed of myself for showing impatience with the elderly — I felt awful about wanting to squash Edgar in his recliner.

Anyway, as Beth and I spoke to Edgar and Agnes, it was obvious that there was little new to be learned regarding the bare facts: the Murphys were both in their sun room at 5:30 p.m., having finished dinner — the elderly eat dinner about 4 p.m. Anyway, they were watching TV when they heard the Gordons' boat — they recognized the big engines, and Mrs. Murphy editorialized, "My, they're loud engines. Why would people need such big, loud engines?"

To annoy their neighbors, Mrs. Murphy. I asked both of them, "Did you see the boat?"

"No," Mrs. Murphy replied. "We didn't bother to look."

"But you could see the boat from your sun room?"

"We can see the water, yes. But we were watching TV."

"Better than watching the silly bay."

Beth said, "John."

Truly, I am a man of many prejudices, and I hate myself for all of them, but I'm a product of my age, my sex, my era, my culture. I smiled at Mrs. Murphy. "You have a beautiful house."

"Thank you."

Beth took over the questioning awhile. She asked Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, "And you're sure you didn't hear any noise that could be a gunshot?"

"Nope," Edgar Murphy replied. "My hearing's pretty good. Heard Agnes calling me, didn't I?"

Beth said, "Sometimes gunshots don't sound like what we think they sound like. You know, on TV, they sound one way, but in real life sometimes they sound like firecrackers or a sharp crack, or a car backfiring. Did you hear any sound after the engines stopped?"

"Nope."

My turn. I said, "Okay, you heard the engines stop. Were you still watching TV?"

"Yup. But we don't play it loud. We sit real close to it."

"Backs to the windows?"

"Yup."

"Okay, you watched TV for ten more minutes — what made you get up?"

"It was one of Agnes' shows. Some damn stupid talk show. Montel Williams."

"So you headed next door to chat with Tom Gordon."

"I needed to borrow an extension cord." Edgar explained that he went through a gap in the hedges, stepped onto the Gordons' wooden deck, and lo and behold, there were Tom and Judy, dead as doornails.

Beth asked, "How far were you from the bodies?"

"Not twenty feet."

"Are you sure?"

"Yup. I was at the edge of the deck, and they was like opposite their sliding glass door. Twenty feet."

"Okay. How did you know it was the Gordons?"

"Didn't, at first. I just sort of froze and stared, then it hit me."

"How did you know they were dead?"

"Didn't really know at first. But I could see the… well, what looked like a third eye on his forehead. You know? They didn't move an inch. And their eyes was open, but no breathing, no moaning. Nothing."

Beth nodded. "Then what did you do?"

"I got the hell out of there."

My turn. I asked Edgar, "How long do you think you actually stood there on the deck?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Half an hour?"

"Hell, no. About fifteen seconds."

Probably closer to five, I suspected. I walked Edgar through these few seconds a couple of times, trying to make him remember if he heard or saw anything unusual at that moment, anything he'd forgotten to mention, but to no avail. I even asked if he recalled smelling gunpowder, but he was adamant; his first report to Chief Maxwell was all of it, and that was that. Mrs. Murphy agreed.

I wondered what would have happened if Edgar had gone through the hedges about ten minutes earlier. Probably he wouldn't have been sitting here now. I wondered if that had crossed his mind. I asked him, "How do you think the murderer got away if you didn't hear or see a car or boat?"

"Well, I thought about that."

"And?"

"Well, there's a lot of people around here that walk, bicycle, jog and all. You know? I don't think anybody would take notice of anybody doin' any of that."

"Right." But a jogger with an ice chest on his head might attract attention. There was a good chance the murderer was still somewhere in the area when Edgar came upon the bodies.

I left the time and scene of the murder and began another line of questions. I asked Mrs. Murphy, "Did the Gordons have much company?"

She replied, "A fair amount. They did a lot of cooking outside. Always had a few people over."

Beth asked Edgar, "Did they take the boat out late?"

"Sometimes. Hard to miss them engines. Sometimes they'd come in real late."

"How late is late?"

"Oh, like two, three in the morning." He added, "Night fishing, I guess."

One can fish from a Formula 303, as I'd done a few times with the Gordons, but a Formula 303 is not a fishing boat, as I'm sure Edgar knew. But Edgar was from the old school and believed that no one should speak badly of the dead — unless pressed.

We went round and round, asking about the Gordons' habits, about strange cars, and so forth. I'd never worked with Beth Penrose, of course, but we were on the same wavelength, we played a good duet.

After a few minutes, Mrs. Murphy opined, "They were a real good-looking couple."

I picked up the hint and asked, "Do you think he had a girlfriend?"

"Oh… I didn't mean — "

"Did she have a boyfriend?"

"Well…"

"When he wasn't home, she would have a gentleman caller. Correct?"

"Well, I'm not saying it was a boyfriend or anything."

"Tell us about it."

And she did, but it wasn't all that juicy. Once, back in June, when Tom was at work and Judy was home, a good-looking, well-dressed, and bearded gentleman came over in a white sports car of indeterminate make and left an hour later. Interesting, but not evidence of a torrid affair that could lead to a crime of passion. Then, a few weeks ago, on a Saturday when Tom was out in his boat, a man pulled into the driveway with a "green Jeep," went into the backyard where Mrs. Gordon was sunning in a teeny weenie bikini, took his shirt off, and sunned next to her for a while. Mrs. Murphy said, "I don't think that's right when the husband's not home. I mean, she was half naked, and this feller pulls off his shirt and lays down right next to her, and they're just chatting away, then he gets up and leaves before the husband comes back. Now what was that all about?"

I replied, "It was perfectly innocent. I stopped by to see Tom about something."

Mrs. Murphy looked at me, and I could feel Beth's eyes on me, too. I said to Mrs. Murphy, "I was a friend of the Gordons."

"Oh…"

Mr. Murphy chuckled up at the ceiling. He informed me, "My wife's got a dirty mind."

"Me, too." I asked Mrs. Murphy, "Did you ever socialize with the Gordons?"

"We had them here to dinner once when they first moved in about two years ago. They had us over for a barbeque right after. Never got together since then."

I couldn't imagine why. I asked Mrs. Murphy, "Did you know any of their friends by name?"

"No. I expect they were mostly Plum Island people. They're a strange bunch of ducks, if you want my opinion."

And so on. They loved to talk. Mrs. Murphy rocked, Mr. Murphy played with the lever on the chair and kept changing inclines. During one of his flat-out positions, he asked me, "What'd they do? Steal a whole bunch of germs to wipe out the world?"

"No, they stole a vaccine that's worth a lot of money. They wanted to be rich."

"Yeah? They was only rentin' next door. You know that?"

"Yes."

"Paym' too damn much for the house."

"How do you know?"

"I know the owner. Young feller named Sanders. He's a builder. Bought the place from the Hoffmanns, who're friends of ours. Sanders paid too much, then fixed it up and rented it to the Gordons. They paid too much rent."

Beth said, "Let me be blunt, Mr. Murphy. Some people think the Gordons were running drugs. What do you think?"

He replied without hesitation, "Could be. They was out in the boat at odd hours. Wouldn't be surprised."

I asked, "Other than the bearded man in the sports car and myself, did you ever see any suspicious types in the yard or out front?"

"Well… can't say as I have, to tell you the truth."

"Mrs. Murphy?"

"No, I don't think so. Most of the people seemed respectable. They drank too much wine… recycling bin was full of wine bottles… sometimes they got loud after they were drinking, but the music was soft — not this crazy stuff you hear."

"Did you have a key to their house?"

I saw Mrs. Murphy shoot a glance at Mr. Murphy, who was staring at the ceiling. There was a silence, then Mr. Murphy said "Yeah, we had the key. We kept an eye on the house for them because we're usually around."

"And?"

"Well… maybe last week, we saw a locksmith truck there, and when the feller left, well, I just went over to try my key and it didn't work no more. I sort of expected Tom to give me a new key, but I never got one. He's got the key to my house. You know? So, I called Gil Sanders and asked him, you know, because the owner is supposed to have the key, but he didn't know nothing about that. It's none of my business, but if the Gordons wanted me to watch over the house, I guess I should have the key." He added, "Now I'm wondering if they was hiding something in there."

"We're going to make you an honorary deputy, Mr. Murphy. Hey, don't repeat anything that was said here to anyone except Chief Maxwell. If anyone comes around claiming to be FBI, or Suffolk County police, or New York State police, or anything like that, they might be lying. Call Chief Maxwell or Detective Penrose. Okay?"

"Okay."

Beth asked Mr. Murphy, "Do you own a boat?"

"Not anymore. Too much work and money."

"Did anyone ever visit the Gordons by boat?" Beth asked.

"Now and then I'd see a boat at their dock."

"Did you know who the boats belonged to?"

"Nope. But one time it was a boat like theirs. Speedboat. But it wasn't theirs. It had a different name."

"You were close enough to see that?" I asked him.

"I sometimes watch with binoculars."

"What was the name on the boat?"

"Can't remember. But it wasn't theirs."

"Did you see anyone on board?" Beth asked.

"Nope. Just happened to notice the boat. Never saw anyone get on or off."

"When was this?"

"Let's see… about June… early in the season."

"Were the Gordons home?"

"Don't know." He added, "I watched to see who left the house, but somehow they got by me and next thing I know, I hear the engine, and the boat is heading out."

"How is your distance vision?"

"Not real good, except with the binoculars."

"And yours, Mrs. Murphy?"

"Same."

Assuming there was more binocular watching of the Gordons' property than the Murphys cared to admit, I asked them, "If we showed you photos of people, could you tell me if you've ever seen them on the Gordons' property?"

"Maybe."

I nodded. Nosy neighbors can make good witnesses, but sometimes, like a cheap surveillance video camera, nosy neighbors witness too much that is irrelevant, blurry, boring, and muffled.

We put another half hour into the questioning, but the yield was diminishing by the minute. In fact, Mr. Murphy had accomplished the near impossible by falling asleep during a police interview. His snoring was starting to get on my nerves.

I stood and stretched.

Beth stood and gave Mrs. Murphy her card. "Thank you for your time. Call me if either of you think of anything else."

"I will."

"Remember," Beth said, "I am the investigating detective assigned to this case. This is my partner. Chief Maxwell is assisting us. You should not speak to anyone else about this case."

She nodded, but I didn't know if the Murphys could stand up to somebody like Ted Nash of the Central Intelligence Agency.

I asked Mrs. Murphy, "Do you mind if we walk around your property?"

"I guess not."

We bid Mrs. Murphy farewell, and I said, "I'm sorry if I bored Mr. Murphy."

"It's his nap time."

"I see that."

She walked us to the front door and said, "I'm scared."

"Don't be," Beth said. "There are police watching the neighborhood."

"We could get murdered in our beds."

Beth replied, "We think it was someone the Gordons knew. A grudge. Nothing for you to worry about."

"What if they come back?"

I was getting annoyed again. "Why would the murderer come back?" I asked a bit sharply.

"They always return to the scene of the crime."

"They never return to the scene of the crime."

"They do if they want to kill the witnesses."

"Did you or Mr. Murphy witness the murder?"

"No."

"Then you shouldn't worry about it," I said.

"The killer might think we witnessed it."

I glanced at Beth.

She said, "I'll have a patrol car keep an eye on things. If you feel nervous or hear anything, dial 911." She added, "Don't you worry."

Agnes Murphy nodded.

I opened the door and got out into the sunlight. I said to Beth, "She actually has a point."

"I know. I'll take care of it."

Beth and I went around the side yard where we found the gap in the hedges. From the hedges you could see the rear of the Gordons' house and the deck, and if you stepped through and looked to the left, you could see down to the water. Out in the bay was a blue and white boat, and Beth said, "That's the bay constable's boat. We have four scuba divers looking for two little bullets in the mud and seaweed. Fat chance."

The crime was not yet twenty-four hours old, and the scene was secured until at least the next morning, so we didn't enter the Gordon property, because to do so would have meant another sign-in, and I was trying to sign out and sign off. But we walked along the Murphy side of the hedges toward the bay. The hedges became stunted toward the saltwater and at a point some thirty feet from the water's edge, I could see over them. We kept walking to where the bay lapped against the Murphys' bulkhead. The Murphys had an old floating dock to the left, and to the right was the Gordons' fixed dock. The Spirocbete was missing.

Beth said, "The Marine Bureau took the boat to their docking area. The lab will work on it there." She asked me, "What do you think about the Murphys?" I think they did it."

"Did what?"

"Murdered the Gordons. Not directly. But they intercepted Tom and Judy on the deck, spoke to them for thirty minutes about the supermarket sales in the Saturday paper, the Gordons drew their guns, and blew their own brains out."

"Possible," Beth conceded. "But what happened to the guns?"

"Edgar made toilet paper holders out of them."

She laughed. "You're terrible. You'll be old someday."

"No, I won't."

Neither one of us spoke for a few seconds. We stood watching the bay. Water, like fire, is mesmerizing. Finally, Beth asked, "Were you having an affair with Judy Gordon?"

"If I was, I'd have told you and told Max right up front."

"You would have told Max. Not me."

"All right — I was not having an affair with Judy Gordon."

"But you were attracted to her."

"Every guy was. She was beautiful." I remembered to add, "And very bright," like I really gave a rat's ass about that. Well, sometimes I do, but I sometimes forget to list brains as an attribute. I added, "When you have a young, sexually attractive couple, maybe we should consider a sex angle."

She nodded. "We'll think about it."

From where we stood, I could see the flagpole in the Gordons' yard. The Jolly Roger still flew from the mast, and the two signal pennants hung from the crossbeam, aka, the yardarm. I asked Beth, "Can you draw those pennants?"

"Sure." She took her notebook and pen and sketched the two pennants. "You think that's relevant? A signal?"

"Why not? They're signal pennants."

"I think they're just decorative. But we'll find out."

"Right." I said to Beth, "Let's return to the scene of the crime."

We crossed the property line and went down to the Gordons' dock. I said, "Okay, I'm Tom, you're Judy. We left Plum Island at noon, and now it's about 5:30. We're home. I kill the engines. You get off the boat first and tie the rope. I heft the chest up to the dock. Right?"

"Right."

"I climb onto the dock, we lift the chest by the handles and start walking."

We sort of simulated this, walking side by side. I said, "We look up at the house. If anyone were on any of the three deck levels, we could see them. Right?"

"Right," she agreed. "Let's say someone is there, but we know him, or her, or them, and we keep walking."

"Okay. But you'd think that person would come down to the dock to help. Common courtesy. Anyway, we're still walking."

We continued, side by side, up to the second level of the deck. Beth said, "At some point, we would notice if the sliding glass door or screen was open. If it were, we'd be concerned, and might stop or go back. The door shouldn't be open."

"Unless they were expecting someone to be waiting for them in the house."

"Right." She said, "But that would have to be someone with the new key."

We continued toward the house to the top level of the deck and stopped a few feet from the two chalk outlines, Beth opposite Judy's and me opposite Tom's. I said, "The Gordons have a few more feet to go, a minute or less to live. What do they see?"

Beth stared down at the chalk outlines, then looked at the house in front of us, at the glass doors, at the immediate area left and right. Finally, she said, "They're still heading toward the house, which is twenty feet away. There's no indication they were trying to run. They're still side by side, there's no concealment anywhere, except the house, and no one can get off two head shots from that distance. They had to know the killer, or they were not alarmed by the killer."

"Right. I'm thinking the killer could have been lying in a chaise lounge, faking sleep, which is why he or she didn't go down to greet the Gordons at the dock. The Gordons knew this person and maybe Tom called out, 'Hey, joe, get up and help us with this chest of Ebola vaccine. Or anthrax. Or money. So, the guy gets up, yawns, takes a rew steps toward them from any of these chaises, gets within spitting range, pulls a pistol, and drills them through their heads. Right?"

She replied, "Possible." She walked around the chalk outlines and stood where the killer must have stood, not five feet away from the feet of the chalk outlines. I moved up to where Tom had been standing. Beth raised her right hand and held her right wrist with her left hand. She pointed her finger right at my face and said, "Bang."

I said, "They were not carrying the chest when they were shot. It would fly out of Tom's hand when he was shot. Tom and Judy put the chest down first."

"I'm not sure they were carrying any chest. That's your theory, not mine."

"Then where is the chest that was always in the boat?"

"Who knows? Anywhere. Look at those two outlines, John. They're lying so close together, I wonder if they could have been carrying a four-foot-long chest between them."

I looked back at the outlines. She had a point, but I said, "They could have put the chest down a few feet back, then walked toward their killer, who may have been lying on the chaise or standing here or had just walked out of this sliding door."

"Maybe. In any case, I think the Gordons were acquainted with their killer or killers."

"Agreed." I said to Beth, "I don't think it was chance that put the killer there and the Gordons there. It would have been easier for the killer to do the shooting inside the house rather than out here. But he chose this spot — he set up his shots right here."

"Why?"

"The only reason I can think of is that he had a registered pistol, and he didn't want the bullets subject to ballistics later, if he became a suspect."

She nodded and looked out toward the bay.

I continued, "Inside the house, the rounds would have lodged somewhere, and maybe he wouldn't have been able to recover them. So, he goes for two close-up head shots with a large-caliber pistol and with nothing between the exit wounds and the deep bay."

She nodded again. "Looks that way, doesn't it?" She added, "That changes the profile of the killer. He's not a hophead, or an assassin with an unregistered piece. It's someone with no access to an untraceable piece — it's a good citizen with a registered pistol. Is that what you're suggesting?"

I said, "It fits what I see here."

"That's why you want the names of locals with registered weapons."

"Right." I added, "Big-caliber, registered as opposed to an illegal or hot weapon, and probably an automatic, pistol as opposed to a revolver because revolvers are nearly impossible to silence. Let's start with that theory."

Beth said, "How does a good citizen with a registered pistol get an illegal silencer?"

"Good question." I pondered the whole profile I'd come up with and said, "Like anything else in this case, there's always one inconsistency that screws up a good theory."

"Right." She added, "And then there are those twenty.45 caliber automatics on Plum Island."

"Indeed there are."

We talked it out awhile, trying to piece this thing together, trying to make it 5:30 p.m. yesterday, instead of 5:30 p.m. today.

I could see a uniformed Southold policeman through the glass doors, but he didn't see us and moved away.

After about five minutes of noodling, I said to Beth Penrose, "When I was a kid, I used to come out here from Manhattan with my All-American-type family — Dad, Mom, brother Jim, and sister Lynne. We usually rented the same cottage near Uncle Harry's big Victorian, and we spent two weeks getting eaten by mosquitoes. We got poison ivy, we got fish hooks in our fingers, and then we got sunburned. We must have enjoyed it, because we looked forward to it every year, the Coreys on their annual S amp;M outing." I She smiled.

I continued, "One year, when I was about ten, I found a musket ball, and it blew my mind. I mean, some guy fired that thing a hundred or maybe two hundred years before. Then Harry's wife, my Aunt June — God rest her soul — took me to a place near the hamlet of Cutchogue that she said was once a Corchaug Indian village, and she showed me how to look for arrowheads and cooking pits and bone needles and all that. Incredible."

Beth said nothing, but she was looking at me as if this was very interesting.

I went on, "I remember that I couldn't sleep nights thinking about musket balls and arrowheads, settlers and Indians, British soldiers and Continental soldiers, and so forth. Before the two weeks of magic end, I knew I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. It didn't work out that way, but I think that was one reason I became a detective."

I explained to her about Uncle Harry's driveway and how they once used cinders and clam shells to keep down the dust and mud. I said, "So, a thousand years from now, an archaeologist is digging around, and he finds these cinders and shells, and he makes the assumption it was a long cooking pit. Actually, he's found a driveway, but he's going to make what he thinks is a cooking pit fit his theory. Follow?"

"Sure."

"Right. Okay, here's my speech to my class. Want to hear it?"

"Shoot."

"Okay, class — what you see at the scene of a homicide is frozen in time, it is no longer a moving, living dynamic. You can create several stories about this still life, but these are only theories. A detective, like an archaeologist, can assemble hard facts and solid scientific evidence, and still draw the wrong conclusions. Add to this, a few lies and red herrings and people who are trying to help but make mistakes. Plus people who tell you what you want to hear consistent with your theory, and people with hidden agendas, and the murderer himself, who may have planted false clues. Through all this mess of contradictions, inconsistencies, and lies is the truth." I said to Beth, "At this point, if my timing is right, the bell rings and I say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, it is your job to know the truth.' "

She said, "Bravo."

"Thank you."

"So, who killed the Gordons?" she asked.

"Beats the hell out of me," I replied.