The Case of the Petticoat Murder

Chapter Sixteen

WHEN I into the squad room at five the air was still hot and muggy with the stored heat of the day and the oscillating fan atop the file cabinet did little more than stir the papers on the desks and move the stale tobacco smoke from one part of the room to another.

Stan Rayder was sitting at his desk, sipping from a quart container of coffee and gazing thoughtfully out the window at the dense, dark-gray haze that passes for the first light of morning in New York City.

“Lovely city, New York,” he said as I sat down. “I wish I could see it.”

“Maybe you will someday,” I said. “Then you'll be ahead of all of us.”

“Is that what they call being enigmatic?” he said, extending the container toward me. “I wouldn't exactly say it's coffee, but it's hot.”

I got my mug from the bottom drawer of my desk, filled it from the container, and handed the container back to Stan.

“Talk a lot, don't you?” Stan said. “Regular chatterbox.”

“If I hadn't spent so much time talking to you on that phone…”

“That's what they're for, Pete. Talking. The guy wasn't a suspect when you were talking to me. He didn't start being a suspect until he took his swan dive. In other words—”

“In other words, I let him get away,” I said. “That's what it amounts to, any way you slice it.”

“Balls. So what've you done about it? I mean, aside from asking Communications to get out an alarm.”

“Well, the first thing I did was hit for that alley out back. There's only one way he could have got away from there, Stan, and that's through the alley and across a couple of courts to Riverside.”

“Any bloodstains?”

“Not a one.”

He nodded. “The damage must all be on the inside.”

“Communications has put all the hospitals on the watch-and-wait,” I said. “I think he must have made it as far as Riverside under his own power, and then taken a cab.”

“They checking the trip-sheets?”

“Yes. There's a cop at every cab garage. They'll check every sheet the minute the driver turns it in.”

“You think he might have holed in somewhere around there?”

“It wouldn't be easy. But if he did, the uniform men will flush him out.” I finished the last of my coffee and put the mug back in the drawer. “You said Barney came up with some pictures of Maurice Thibault,” I said. “Where are they?”

“He sent them over to Centre Street for copies,” he said. “You want to read the translation of that newspaper story?”

“I remember it,” I said.

“Which reminds me,” he said. “Barney Fells is still here, Pete.”

“At this hour? How come?”

“Hell, he spends half his life here, Pete. All he uses his home for is to store his clothes.” He paused. “He… uh… said he wanted to see you.”

“About Albert Miller?”

“Damned if I know, Pete.”

“If this is going to be a chew-out, I want to know.”

“He's a little bit steamed, Pete. Whether it's about Miller or not, I don't know.”

“Which way would you call it?” I said.

“Well…

“Well?”

“Miller,” he said.

I got up and walked out to the squad commander's six-by-six office and sat down on the straight chair beside his desk.

“You wanted to see me, Barney?” I said,

He scowled at me a moment, nodded almost imperceptibly, and then looked away from me and sat drumming a pencil eraser against the top of his desk. “I can think of a lot of people I'd rather see,” he said.

I didn't say anything. Barney had his own ways of backing into a chew-out, and squad-room protocol required his detectives to say nothing until asked for comment. I watched him, feeling a lot more sorry for Barney Fells than I felt concerned for myself.

Acting-Lieutenant Barney Fells is a Department tragedy, a tough, wiry, graying, dedicated cop who had become so good at his job that he lost it. He had wanted to remain a working detective for the rest of his career; instead, he had, against his protests and threats of resignation, been promoted to acting-lieutenant, a rank he had never wanted, and elevated to squad commander, a desk job he hated.

And so now he sat in his cubbyhole, prevented by his rank and command from doing the work that had been his entire life, forced to watch other men trying to do his old job only half as well as he had.

“Quarter past five,” Barney said, glancing at his watch. “The Ellison girl was killed about twenty-four hours ago.”

I nodded.

“A long time, twenty-four hours,” he said. “Hard grind. Takes the starch out of a man.” He sighed. “Another thing,” he added quickly. “You and Stan are always splitting up. Why do you think we set up detective teams in the first place? So you two heroes can…” He broke off. “Oh, screw it. You're hopeless, Pete. Give you another five years and you'll end up in the same damn fix I'm in. And you know something, smart-ass? It'll serve you right.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So smart. So brave.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Stan, too,”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long's it been since you ate?”

“I'm never hungry when there's time, and there's never time when I'm hungry.”

He stared at me pityingly for a moment, then sighed again and sank back in his chair. “God, I'd liked to have caught this one,” he said. “In the old days, it'd have been my special meat.”

“These girl-murders are tough,” I said.

“That's what I mean,” he said. “Gives a man something to really tear into.”

“And the newspapers, too.”

“You seen them?”

“I don't have to.”

“They're calling this one the 'Petticoat Murder,' Pete. Of course, she actually died some other way, but 'Petticoat Murder' sounds sexier.” He shook his head. “First time I ever saw them fail to come up with a picture for the first page.”

“The snapshot Stan snagged off her dresser was the only one around.”

“Stan filled me in pretty well, all in all. That Nadine must have been a natural-born little liar.”

“Either that, or having the kind of baby she did, and having it the way she had it could've triggered something in her mind.”

“What are you, now? A psychologist?”

“Well, look at what happened to her. She had the kind of baby that would tear any mother's heart out. And she not only had it, Barney, she had it beside the road out in the middle of nowhere, with not a soul around to lift a finger to help her. And then her husband goes insane right before her eyes, and runs, and she lies there all night with this baby dying beside her and maybe she goes a little crazy herself.”

Barney shook his head. “The wonder is that she didn't go all the way.”

“And when she gets out of the hospital, up jumps her husband and tries to kill her with his fists. He was stupid enough to think she was to blame for it. God knows what he thought. He must have figured she'd been sleeping around with a grown-up mongolian idiot or something.”

“A guy like that's the most dangerous kind of man there is,” Barney said. “As for myself, I'll take an honest gunman, every time.”

“He beat her up twice,” I said. “He came pretty close to killing her both times; and even after Nadine left St. Louis, he kept swearing that he'd get her if it was the last thing he ever did.”

“And he may have done it, too,” Barney said. “That phone call he made about getting whoever killed her — that could be just so much manure.”

“It's pretty hard to make a guess about anybody as crazy as Burt Ellison.”

“He didn't come to New York for the World's Fair, because we don't have any,” Barney said, ignoring me. “Ellison's a psycho. He's a standout suspect all the way; and with me, he's number one. How about you?”

“I'm trying not to play any favorites,” I said.

“You mean you don't want to put down any bets until the horses pass the finish line?”

“I just don't like to look so hard at Jack I can't see John”

“Or Jill,” Barney said. “Never rule out the ladies, Pete. It's the one sure way to end up sad, sick and sorry,” He picked up his pencil again, wrote Burt Ellison's name at the top of a scratch pad, and then sat staring at it broodingly for a moment. “Funny how these psycho cases can be so shrewd, isn't it? They've got some very hotshot detectives in St. Louis, and yet Ellison gives them the slip.”

“Just like he's doing us,” I said.

“Don't remind me. All right; so much for Ellison. Next we've got this character with the lousy manners.”

“Meaning Albert Miller?” I said.

“Yes. Men with the right kind of upbringing don't jump out bathroom windows and leave their company standing in the middle of the floor with his mouth hanging open. Now, do they?”

“Not often,” I said.

“Okay. Albert Miller. No police record, and BCI is checking him in all departments. I know they are, because I made damn sure of it right after Stan told me how he left you standing around to admire his furniture. That telegram you got said Miller had evidence in a drawer of his desk. There was no evidence in the desk, or anywhere else, and now there's no Miller either. We don't know whether he has motive, but we can assume opportunity; and if ever flight was an indication of guilt, Miller is guilty of everything since Cain. He was so anxious to get away from a cop that he dived twenty feet into six inches of concrete. That, Pete, is what I call flight.”

“Almost literal, in fact,”

He wrote down Miller's name. “You put a stakeout in his place?”

“Yes.”

“Probably a waste of manpower. A guy that anxious to leave somewhere sure doesn't figure to come back.” He thought for a while. “We got anything else in his favor?”

“No.”

“Okay; so much for Albert Miller. Now we've got this Dr. Clifford Campbell and his wife, Susan. We know Nadine threatened him with something, but we don't know what. He admits the threat, but says he's never seen her, doesn't know what she was talking about. What have we got on him beside the threat from Nadine?”

“Nothing,” I said. “BCI is still running an all-out check on him.”

“Nothing negative on him so far?”

“No. So far, he's a model citizen.”

“All right. Now we've got Mrs. Campbell. Susan.”

“Mrs. Campbell, Barney?”

“Stan says she's an eighteen-year-old beauty with a pretty fair temper and a shape that'd charge up a truck battery. Right?”

I shrugged. “Right.”

“And her husband's a man twenty-five years or so older than she is.” He paused. “From what Stan says, this Nadine Ellison was one of the most beautiful women he ever laid eyes on. If she and Campbell were up to any hanky-panky, and Susan tumbled to it, she might've decided to kill her. After all, how could she be sure Nadine wouldn't do her out of her meal ticket?”

“If she married Campbell just for dough, Barney, she wouldn't worry about Nadine one bit. In fact, she'd love her. All she'd have to do is get a little proof, and then she could just sit back and let some lawyer go to work for her. In a very short time she would be dragging in a lot more money in alimony than she ever knocked down as a wife. And even if she took a cash settlement, she'd get a potful.”

“You going to tell me you buy this May-and-December business, Pete?”

“Oh, come off it, Barney. Clifford Campbell is only forty-two or-three years old.”

“All right. Then maybe Susan wanted to keep the money she was getting as an honest wife plus the prestige and position that go with being the wife of a big-wheel medico. Lots of girls go for that other stuff even more than they go for the cash loot. Right?”

“Yes, but—”

“That 'but' of yours keeps rearing up all the time. You know the trouble with you, Pete? You're a natural-born sucker for 'little ladies.'”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Who's next in the line-up?”

“This Frenchman who knocked off his old lady and buried her in the flower bed. What we know about him is that he can speak any number of languages so well that the native-born folks can't tell the difference.”

“Was that in the clipping Nadine had translated?”

“No. It was in the same magazine along with the pictures we sent over to have copied. Anyhow, he's a pretty solid candidate. Stan says you and he think Nadine might have been blackmailing him. It's an easy idea to buy, and I'll buy a big piece of it.” He wrote on his pad for a while. “So here's Maurice Thibault. No novice in the murder game. Could be talking to you right now and you'd never guess he wasn't a native son. We can assume opportunity; and as for motive, a guillotine doesn't need any assuming at all.” He paused. “And now we come to Iris Pedrick who runs the antique store. She's the one with the boy friend and the sick husband. Right?”

“Yes.”

“And she gave you a line of bull about being real worried about her husband finding out about the boy friend.”

“She sold me, Barney,” I said. “Just because people want to have their cake and eat it too doesn't mean they like to hurt other people.”

“That isn't the point. The point is, who was she doing the real sweating about? Her husband, or herself?”

“Who knows?”

“This Nadine might have been shaking her down a little.”

“The same might go for all the other people who used her place.”

“True. And yet we have to stick with Mrs. Pedrick because she's the only one we know about. She and her boy friend, Eddie Dycer. You run Eddie and Iris through BCI?”

“Yes.”

“Well, keep an eye on those two, Pete. You never know.”

I nodded, thinking how tough it must be for Barney. More and more often of late he had been sitting down with the men on his squad for sessions like this one. It was the closest thing to working a squeal that his command and title permitted; but it was still a long, long way from the real thing.

“And this young guy that Nadine had such a big yen for,” Barney went on, really warming up now. “There's the guy to watch, Pete.”

“Marty Hutchins, Barney,” I said. “I checked him out, Remember?”

He frowned. “Yes, I remember now. Stan said he was shacked up all night with some kid in a hotel.”

“That's right.”

“Now where does that leave us, Pete? Who've we over-looked?”

“If you've overlooked anyone, it must be someone who just hit town five minutes ago.”

“Another one of your troubles, Pete, is that you don't use a wide-angle lens. You're always trying to whittle suspects down to just two or three.”

“I always try to whittle them down to just one,” I said.

“You better watch it, boy. A real smart one like you is likely to make lieutenant in less than five years.” He paused. “You just plain forgot that Bowman girl, didn't you?”

I grinned. “Barney, I didn't forget her. I simply—”

“Well, I haven't. Judy Bowman is the one who found the body — and that gives her a good ten-yard lead on everybody else. Half the time, the murderer turns out to be one of two people: the spouse, or the one who finds the body.”

“All right,” I said. “She lived within fifty feet of Nadine. She had opportunity, but no known motive. She checked clean at BCI. She ran out into the street yelling for a cop. This was at least six hours after Nadine died, and it may have been as many as ten. She was hysterical when we got there, and she very nearly got that way again while I was questioning her.”

“How come you're so sure this Judy Bowman wasn't acting?”

I shrugged. “Hysteria isn't acting, Barney.”

“Never sell the ladies short, Pete. So who else is there? It seems to me we're still missing somebody.”

He sat doodling on the scratch pad awhile, as if trying to think of anything we'd overlooked; then he tossed the pencil aside, glanced at his watch, and stood up.

“Well,” he said, “if I want to get home and eat and shave and clean up a little and still get back to work by eight o'clock, I'd better get a move on.”

I walked back out to the squad room with him. He waved to Stan, who was busy on the phone, and then paused in the doorway for a last look around.

“Pete,” he said, “may I give you some words of advice?”

“Sure, Barney. What are they?”

He turned to leave. “Get hot,” he said.