The Copper Frame

Chapter 11

Despite Ben Foley’s suggestion, Saxon did not attend the council meeting. There were a couple of reasons for his decision. One was that since he had already argued his innocence of rape before the proper authority, he had no intention of publicly repeating the performance and, in effect, pleading for his job. Another more practical reason was that he was sure his presence would do no good. Undoubtedly it would inhibit open criticism of him, since he knew all the councilmen personally, but it probably would also prevent any action at all. He suspected that the council would simply table the matter until it could be discussed without his embarrassing presence.

An indication of what was to come was that he wasn’t disturbed in his office all day. Ordinarily there would have been a dozen phone calls, and members of the force would have been in and out constantly to make verbal reports, discuss the handling of cases, or ask questions on procedures. Usually there were also a few influential citizens who felt they were above dealing with a mere desk man and came directly to the chief to ask favors or to register complaints. But today there wasn’t a single phone call for him, no visitors appeared, and apparently members of the force were resolving their problems without his advice; not even a patrolman entered his office. After Ben Foley left, his only conversation was over the phone with Emily when he called to give her the news that the rape charge had been dropped.

He spent the day getting his records in order so that the new chief, whoever he was, could take over with a minimum of difficulty. He didn’t even leave his office for lunch; instead, he phoned Hardy’s Restaurant across the street and had a sandwich and coffee delivered.

Apparently it had been a long council meeting, for it was just breaking up when Saxon left at five. If he had left by the front entrance, he would have run into the entire council as it filed down the front stairs, but he always parked his car in the police parking area next to the alley entrance to headquarters. Consequently, none of the councilmen was embarrassed by having to speak to him. He was in his car when he rounded the front corner of the city hall and saw them exiting from the building.

Ben Foley forced the confrontation on the new mayor, however. He and Adam Bennock had just reached the bottom of the city-hall steps when Saxon’s car came around the corner. Spotting it, Foley signaled Saxon over to the curb.

Leaning across to crank down the car window on the curb side, Saxon looked out inquiringly. The former mayor took the new mayor’s elbow and propelled him over to the car.

“Good thing we caught you,” Foley said. “His Honor has something to tell you.”

“Hello, Saxon,” Bennock said with a peculiar inflection of reluctance in his high, reedy voice. Then he glanced at Foley. “I see no point in making an official announcement in the middle of the street, Mr. Foley.”

“You just plan to write him a letter?” Foley asked, retaining his grip on the elbow. “He has a right to be informed face to face.”

Saxon said, “I think I know what you have to say anyway, Mr. Bennock. You may as well get it over with.”

Bennock cleared his throat and his face took on color, though that might have been due solely to the cold, to which he was inordinately sensitive. There was a muffler wrapped around his neck to the chin. completely hiding his Adam’s apple, but Saxon got the odd impression that the throat-clearing caused the knobby organ to bob up and down beneath the muffler.

“Very well, then,” the new mayor said. “The Common Council has voted to suspend you from duty pending a thorough investigation of this charge against you.”

“I expected it,” Saxon said with no indication of surprise or resentment. “The new chief will find all my records in order and a memorandum of all pending matters requiring his attention lying on my desk. I won’t even have to come in to brief him. By the way, who is he?”

“Lieutenant Arthur Marks has been appointed acting chief pending the outcome of the investigation.”

So they hadn’t yet gone all the way and made it a permanent appointment, Saxon thought. They were at least intending to go through the motions of a formal inquiry.

“Art’s a good cop,” Saxon said, refraining from adding that Marks would make a lousy chief. He had hoped the council would be smart enough to appoint Vic Burns, but he might have known it was a forlorn hope. Burns wasn’t a native of Iroquois and Marks was.

Foley released the new mayor’s elbow and the man moved on with a jerky nod of good-by. Foley opened the car door, stepped in, and cranked up the open window.

“I couldn’t help that,” he said. “I suspected the coward was merely going to inform you by letter and I wanted him to have to tell you personally.”

“Why’d you get into the car?” Saxon asked curiously.

“Alice took mine this afternoon. I need a ride home.”

“Nothing like inviting yourself.” Saxon managed a grin.

“You should be grateful that I’m willing to ride with you,” Foley told him. “I’m probably the only person in town aside from Emily who’s willing to be seen with you today.”

His expression became serious. “Actually I wanted to talk to you, Ted. I had a kind of wild thought while I was in council meeting.”

“It was in good company.”

“Remember the conversation we had the day I appointed you acting chief?”

“Uh-huh. You mean about wanting to leave an effective chief in office?”

“‘Incorruptible’ is the word I used, I think. We also discussed a possible attempt by Larry Cutter to move in and take over the town. I mentioned that in order to accomplish that, he’d have to control both the mayor and the police chief. I suggested that if Adam Bennock was co-operating with Cutter, his probable choice for chief would be Art Marks. And, lo, the day Bennock takes office Art Marks becomes acting chief.”

Saxon gave him a sharp sidewise glance. “You think Larry Cutter may have been behind my frame?”

“I’ve projected my thought even farther than that. Your father’s death had all the earmarks of a professional kill.”

Saxon’s eyes narrowed and his mind began to work so furiously that he nearly missed the turn toward Foley’s home. At the last minute he braked and skidded around the corner on the hard-packed snow. He didn’t say anything until he reached the big house and swung into the driveway. He leaned back in the seat.

“My frame was part of a deliberate campaign to get the right man in office, you think? First they killed Dad, but you can’t go on bumping one police chief after another until you finally get the one you want appointed. It would be so obvious, it would probably bring on a state investigation. So they had to use an entirely different method to get rid of me.”

“That’s the theory I’ve been developing. Doesn’t it make sense?”

“It fits all down the line,” Saxon said slowly. “It even explains how they got Coombs to co-operate. I doubt very much that an investigation of Coombs’s background would turn up anything disreputable about him, because they wouldn’t use a witness who couldn’t stand investigation. I’ll bet no one could link him to Larry Cutter. But you know what he does for a living?”

Foley shook his head. “You never mentioned it.”

“He’s an accountant for the Upstate Harness Racing Association.

A gleam appeared in the plump ex-mayor’s eyes. “And Larry Cutter’s money is behind that,” he said softly.

“Now that we know where to look, maybe we can beat them after all,” Saxon said, beginning to feel a surge of excitement. “At least we now have an idea who the enemy is. Up to now I couldn’t even begin to imagine why I was framed.”

“Don’t get too enthusiastic,” Foley cautioned. “With the rape charge dropped, you’ll have a devil of a time reopening that investigation. You can’t put Morrison or Coombs on the stand, because there’s no court action pending. How do you plan to start?”

“By heading for Buffalo in the morning,” Saxon said. “I have some contacts there who should be able to brief me on Larry Cutter’s organization.”

“I don’t think I can help you there, because I’m a little too old for undercover work. But any other way I can help, don’t hesitate to call on me.”

“I won’t,” Saxon assured him.

Climbing out of the car, Foley stood for a moment with the door open. “One thing, Ted. You’re not police chief any more. While you’re under suspension, you’re not even a cop.”

“So?”

“You don’t have the protection of your police force behind you. And I don’t think these people would hesitate for an instant to kill you if you get too close.”

“I’ll try to keep them from learning it until I’m right in their laps,” Saxon said dryly.

Backing out of the driveway, he headed for Emily’s to tell her the news.

Emily had news for him, too, but she was sidetracked from immediately announcing it by his story of the day’s events. She was indignant over his suspension from the force, elated when he told her of Ben Foley’s theory, which finally gave them something definite to get their teeth into; then she became fearful for Saxon’s safety when he told her of his plan to go to Buffalo the next day and attempt to uncover evidence that he had been framed. Only after she had run the scale of these emotions and they had discussed every phase of the day’s happenings did she get around to making her announcement.

Going into the kitchen, she returned with a copy of the Iroquois Evening Bulletin.

“Look at this,” she said. “There isn’t a word in it about the rape charge.”

There wasn’t, he discovered on leafing through the paper. This was the first issue in which the news could have been reported, as there had been no paper on New Year’s Day, but the Bulletin hadn’t mentioned it.

Since by now everyone in town had heard of the alleged rape, it could hardly be because the editor was unaware of the story. Saxon could only conclude that he was following the discreet self-censorship policy of so many small town papers, which maintain dead silence concerning scandals involving prominent local citizens.

On his way home from Emily’s, Saxon stopped to pick up a Buffalo paper. The story was mentioned here, but only on an inner page, and it was cautiously worded. There had been a similarly cautious item in the Buffalo morning paper that day.

With both Buffalo newspapers having local correspondents in Iroquois, they could hardly have avoided hearing of the rape charge, even though no news release had been issued. Both papers must have checked with some official source, most likely with the Iroquois County district attorney’s office. And the printed stories indicated that the response had been “No comment.”

The story that a chief of police was accused of raping a female prisoner was too newsworthy an item to be passed up altogether, but without official confirmation it had to be handled carefully. In both papers it was merely reported that acting Police Chief Theodore Saxon of Iroquois was “under investigation” for an alleged mistreatment of a prisoner. Not only was the prisoner unmentioned by name; the sex wasn’t even disclosed.

Saxon wondered if he were going to make it all the was through the scandal with no more adverse publicity than that.

He found out the next day that he wasn’t.