Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 1, January, 1955

“Nope. She never did.”

I nodded. “Can you think of anything that might help?”

“No, sir, I can’t. Not a thing.”

We went back to the squad room. I arranged for an unmarked car to take Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter home, and then I typed up the results of the interview and added them to the file on Lucille Taylor.

“That guy Carpenter bugs me a little,” Paul said. “Being in the same house all the time with a girl like Lucille could give a man a lot of ideas. Maybe he got charged up, and she nixed him, and he got mad about it.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Or maybe she didn’t nix him, and his wife found out about it, and she got mad.”

“Could be,” I said. “You feel like some coffee?”

“Always.”

“Let’s grab a cup, and then go see her boss.” I found the address in the directory, and then Paul and I signed out and left the squad room.

The Schuyler Studios, Inc. was on the fourth floor, with windows opening on Fifty-seventh Street. It was apparently a good-sized outfit, judging from the number of lettered doorways we passed on our way to the reception room. The reception room itself, however, was quite small. We told the male receptionist who we were, and after he’d talked a moment on an intercom, he led us back to Schuyler’s private office.

“That’ll be all, Mr. Stacy,” he said, rising. “Won’t you gentlemen sit down?”

We sat, and I told him our business. He was a big man, about forty, with hair grown gray at the temples and a face that would have been rugged except for the eyes. The eyes were strangely soft, with that moist sheen that women’s eves sometimes have. When I had finished, he picked up a letter opener from his desk and turned it over and over in his fingers, shaking his head slowly.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “She was such a young girl, and a very pretty one — and to die like that...”

“We’re trying to get a line on her friends,” I told him. “Can you help us?”

He thought a moment. “You know, that’s very strange. She was a very quiet, unassuming girl, but quite personable. And yet, now that you ask, I can’t remember her ever mentioning anyone.”

“How about other employees here? She must at least have gone to lunch with someone.”

“She was the only girl. All the rest are men. And I’m almost certain she never went to lunch with any of them. She wasn’t exactly a cold person, but she did tend to keep aloof from the men here. I’ve heard them talking about her, now and then — as men will. I gathered that none of them had ever dated her, or in fact even talked to her very much, except as pertaining to business.”

“How did you get along with her, Mr. Schuyler?”

“Quite well. I was very fond of her. She did her job, and my clients seemed to like her. Especially the women. And in this business, that’s important. We deal with a great number of account executives and art directors, and many of them are women. Lucille was quite a favorite with them.”

“You ever see her outside the office?”

His mouth tightened a little, but his eyes retained that almost feminine softness. “Just what do you mean?”

“I mean, did you ever see her socially? Did you ever take her out?”

“That’s a rather unusual question.”

“There’s nothing personal,” I said. “We have to follow a certain routine, Mr. Schuyler.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I suppose you do. The answer to your question is no. I have had a number of young women working for me, during the fifteen years I have owned this studio. I have made it a strict personal rule never to become involved, in even the most innocent way. Sometimes girls — especially ones as young as Miss Taylor — misinterpret a friendly interest. And even so, I am quite happily married. I have a daughter fifteen and another seventeen.” He smiled, and the friendliness came back into his voice. “Does that answer your question?”

I nodded. “How long had she worked here, Mr. Schuyler?”

“Let’s see... Oh, about three months. I can check and be exact, if you wish.”

“That’s close enough,” I said.

“Wait!” He leaned forward. “Maybe I can help you after all. You asked about her friends. Well, up until about six weeks or two months ago Lucille used to receive calls from some man. Someone named Vince. He called quite often. I’d hear her mention his name when she said hello, of course.”

“But he hadn’t called her recently?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Were their conversations friendly, would you say?”

“Yes. Judging from Lucille’s tone of voice, I’d say they were a bit more than friendly — if you know what I mean.”

“You ever hear her mention his last name?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I couldn’t help but overhear, of course, but I didn’t make a point of tuning in. I’d just hear her say ‘Hello, Vince,’ or ‘Good-by, Vince,’ — you know.”

“Uh-huh. Can you think of anything else that might help us, Mr. Schuyler? You remember anything else from these telephone conversations — anything to indicate that she and this Vince might be planning to get married?”

“Married? Why, no. I’m sure she would have mentioned such plans to me, though. That is, if she planned to take some time off, rather than just quit outright. She’d almost have to, you know.”

“Yeah. Well, is there anything you can tell us, Mr. Schuyler?”

“I only wish I could. As I said, I was very fond of Lucille. I’d be only too anxious to help, if I could.”

On our way down in the elevator, Paul turned to me and grimaced. “A real cold fish,” he said. “As long as something doesn’t scratch him or his own family, he doesn’t give a goddamn. But I’ll bet if one of his daughters got looked at cross-eyed by some guy, he’d be after us to put the guy in the electric chair.”

We drove back to the station house, checked the message spike for calls, read the flimsies in the alarm book to see if there had been any new arrests or detentions that concerned us, and then I called the morgue at Bellevue to see how Lucille Taylor’s autopsy was coming along.

The assistant M.E. to whom I talked said it had just been completed. The cause of death had been a severed spinal cord, resulting from a blow or blows to the back of the neck and head. The lacerations appeared to have been made with a blunt instrument, such as a length of two-by-four. One or more of the blows had dislocated the vertebrae enough to sever the cord, after which the vertebrae had slipped back into place. The assistant M.E. seemed quite pleased that he had discovered this so quickly.

I told Paul the result of the autopsy, changed the official designation of Lucille Taylor’s file from “Suspected Homicide” to just plain “Homicide,” and added the autopsy finding to the original Complaint Report form.

Then Paul and I got down to routine. We collected all the arrest records for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, divided them equally, and began going through them for pickups made near the Hudson River. It was our hope that Lucille’s killer might have been pulled in on some other charge after he had put Lucille in the water. There had been several pickups, but most of them had been too far downriver to look right for us.

Next, we checked the list of men pulled in for morning lineups, starting with the one held Tuesday morning. There was nothing for us there, either.

The phone on my desk rang and Paul, who was closer, answered it. He nodded to me, and I picked up an extension. It was Schuyler, the photographer for whom Lucille Taylor had worked.

“I’m afraid the shock of Lucille’s death affected my memory,” he said. “I’ve just recalled that I did hear her mention that man’s name. That ‘Vince’ I told you about. I remember now that she called him once, while I happened to be passing near her desk. She asked someone to call him to the phone, and she used his full name. I don’t know why, but for some odd reason the name seems to have stayed with me.”