The Copper Frame

Chapter 20

At five-fifteen Saxon pulled into Ben Foley’s driveway. He rang the bell.

“Hello, Ted,” Foley said. “Come on in.”

Stepping into the entry hall, Saxon removed his hat but made no move to take off his coat. “What time do you eat on Sunday?” he asked.

Foley looked surprised. “Usually not until about seven. Why? You hungry?”

“I just didn’t want to disturb your dinner. Get your coat on and we’ll take a run over to Arn Kettle’s.”

Foley’s eyebrows shot up. “You must have found whatever it was you rushed off after.”

“I certainly did.”

They took Saxon’s car.

Joanne Kettle answered the door and told them her husband was in his study.

“That’s the only quiet place in the house on Sunday afternoons,” she said as she took their coats and hats.

Saxon could see what she meant. The Kettles had two teen-age girls, and apparently both had invited over all their friends. A hi-fi was playing in the front room and a dozen teen-agers were doing some kind of tribal dance in which the partners stood apart from each other, in some cases back to back, and shuffled their feet. It wasn’t the twist, with which Saxon was familiar. This seemed to be some new craze.

He followed Ben Foley down the hall to the study. Arnold Kettle opened the door at Foley’s knock. The noise from the front room followed them inside but abruptly ceased when Kettle closed the door.

“I had this soundproofed,” the district attorney explained. “It was either that or get rid of the kids, and nobody will take the monsters. Cocktail?”

Saxon was too impatient to announce his discovery to be interested in a drink. Foley, as curious as Saxon was impatient, declined too.

“All right,” Kettle said, settling back in his chair. “What’s the big news?”

Saxon laid the front and profile views of Grace Emmet on the desk. Picking it up, the D.A. first read the printing beneath the pictures, then studied the photographs.

He looked up with a puzzled frown. “This says Grace Emmet.”

“I know,” Saxon said. “I just got it from the Erie police. They mugged and printed her when they picked her up.”

“But it isn’t Grace Emmet.”

“Sure it is, Arn. The woman you questioned in jail wasn’t Grace Emmet.”

Kettle stared at him. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said slowly. “Who in the devil was she?” He handed the double photograph to Foley. “Look at this.”

After examining it, Foley laid it back on the desk. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. I never saw the woman in jail.”

“That’s right,” Kettle remembered. “But a number of other people did. Jenny Waite, Doc Harmon, Verne Dowling, who was on the desk. We can blow this frame wide apart. Who was she, Ted?”

“I suspect it was Morrison’s friend, Ann Lowry,” Saxon said. “That must be why they got so excited when I got on her trail. If I had ever seen her, the whole plot would founder. Not only would the frame be uncovered, but Sergeant Harry Morrison would be arrested for murder.”

“Of course,” Kettle breathed. “The accident that killed Grace Emmet was rigged. It had to be.”

Saxon said, “One thing I couldn’t understand about the frame from the beginning was how they set it up so quickly. Morrison didn’t know until the previous night that Grace Emmet had been captured in Erie, and didn’t know until that day that she had waived extradition and he was supposed to go after her. They only had a matter of hours to make plans and line Coombs up as a witness. Yet it was the sort of thing that would require careful advance planning and detailed rehearsal by the actors for it to work.”

“I felt that way, too,” Kettle agreed. “That’s why at first I couldn’t see it as a frame.”

“I think it was planned days in advance. Ten days beforehand it was generally known around town that I’d be on duty New Year’s Day. How the news got from Iroquois to Larry Cutter, I don’t know. Possibly from Adam Bennock, if our new mayor is in cahoots with Cutter. At any rate, I think plans were all made and the actors had been thoroughly rehearsed before the Emmet woman was ever captured. I don’t believe she was included in the original plan.”

Ben Foley said frowningly, “I don’t think I follow that.”

“It’s simple enough, Ben. I think the original plan was for Ann Lowry to come to Iroquois and get herself arrested on some charge. Possibly soliciting in one of the local taverns, since that was her normal trade and a check with Buffalo would probably show a previous record of such offenses. They would want an offense that was plausible, yet would not get her into too much trouble. After she was jailed, Sergeant Morrison would drop in on some pretext just in time to be a witness when she yelled rape. Coombs, of course, would already be in a cell as a second witness. But when Morrison learned he had to go to Erie after Grace Emmet that night, he had a brilliant idea. There weren’t any photographs of the Emmet woman, and her features in the composite drawing vaguely resembled Ann Lowry’s. Their hair color and styles were totally different, but that was easily remedied. He had Ann cut her long red hair in the same style Grace Emmet wore hers and dye it blonde. I imagine Ann followed Morrison to Erie in a second car. After picking up his prisoner in Erie, Morrison forced her to change clothes with Ann. You know, I wondered about that at one point New Year’s Eve.”

“About what?” Kettle asked.

“Her clothes. The woman was wearing a mink coat worth several thousand dollars. Her dress was obviously expensive too, yet it didn’t fit. At that time I passed it off by guessing she had lost weight, either as an attempt at disguise or from worry over being a fugitive from justice.”

Foley said, “They had to switch clothes, I suppose, in case someone just happened to check with Erie to ask what Grace Emmet was wearing when the transfer took place. They wouldn’t want their careful plans to fizzle on a small point like that.” Then he rubbed his chin. “But how’d they manage to fool Doc Harmon by getting a positive lab test?”

Both Saxon and Kettle looked at him. Saxon said patiently, “Aren’t you being a little naïve, Ben? Ann Lowry was a call girl and Morrison was her procurer. They pulled off on a side road somewhere on the way back from Erie.”

The plump lawyer turned red. He changed the subject. “Where was Grace Emmet all the time her substitute was in the local jail and Morrison was at the hospital having coffee and cake?”

Saxon said, “Probably bound and gagged in the trunk of either Morrison’s or Ann’s car. When they started on again, Morrison must have had the two women switch back to their own clothing so that Grace would be properly dressed when her body was found in his wrecked car. He took the precaution of making her face unrecognizable before pushing the car over the bank.”

“A hell of a fine representative of law and order he is!” Foley said with disgust.

The district attorney said, “You should be back in office tomorrow, Ted.”

“I’d rather not break it just yet,” Saxon said quickly.

Kettle looked at him as if searching for a hole in his head. “Why not?”

“What will it get us? Harry Morrison on a murder charge, providing we can find Ann Lowry to help prove our case. Ann Lowry for conspiracy — again providing we ever find her, which is doubtful. While the guy who planned the frame-up goes free.”

Kettle said doubtfully, “Morrison might implicate him, once he realized he was in for the rap.”

Saxon shook his head. “His best bet would be to deny the whole thing and make us prove it. Which might be tough if we can’t turn up Ann. Even in the face of four disinterested witnesses who saw the prisoner in her cell and are willing to testify that she wasn’t the woman in this picture, a smart lawyer might be able to establish reasonable doubt if we can’t produce the woman who actually was in the cell. You’ve both seen what a good lawyer can do in the way of discrediting identification in court. In fact, both of you have probably been guilty of it.”

“I know what you mean,” Kettle said glumly. “All he’d have to do is get one witness to admit the mug shots resembled the woman in the cell, then stress to the jury that police photography is notoriously poor. We’ll have to get hold of Ann Lowry in order to build an unbreakable case.”

Saxon said, “Cutter already has her under wraps. She’ll probably end up at the bottom of the lake if we have Morrison arrested.”

“Hmm,” Kettle said. “What do you suggest?”

“Let’s quietly ask the Buffalo police to hunt down Ann Lowry. And just sit on what we have until she’s safely in custody.”

“That sounds sensible,” Ben Foley said.

“All right,” Kettle agreed. “I’ll give the Buffalo police a ring. Temporarily we won’t take any other action.”

Saxon said, “Even if the Buffalo cops manage to pick her up, I wish you’d discuss it with me before you move against Morrison, Arn.”

The district attorney raised his eyebrows. “All right. But why?”

“Even if Morrison breaks and tries to implicate Cutter, I doubt that we could get Cutter on conspiracy to murder in Grace Emmet’s case. He could admit the whole plot to frame me and still deny knowing anything of Morrison’s plan to kill his prisoner after she had served her purpose. I suspect we’d end up, at most, with my getting a civil judgment against him for defamation of character. And I want him in the electric chair for conspiracy to murder.”

“How are you going to get him there? You just argued down your own case.”

“Just so far as Grace Emmet is concerned. You forget that Cutter’s guilty of arranging another murder.”

When Kettle looked at him blankly, Ben Foley said, “Andy, Arn. It’s obvious that Ted’s father was murdered on Cutter’s order.”

Saxon said, “Let’s not settle for the small fry. I’d rather hold off until we can build ironclad cases against everybody who had a part in both crimes. And that means not only Larry Cutter, but the gunman who actually killed my dad.”