Харлан Эллисон - Murder Plus - True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

They had, they admitted, been in the vicinity of the murder house, but they protested they had no knowledge of the crime. And their assertions served also to clear their strop-carrying friend. He had been making a canvass of barbershops with his wares. They had been with him about the time of the killing and could establish an alibi for him. The distributors shook their heads in answer to our query as to whether they had seen a man with a scratched and blood-smeared face.

It was at this juncture that Dr. Danser called with his report. It made us forget our previous failures for it placed an entirely different light on the situation. The girl, said the medical examiner, had died, as he thought from the first, from the bullet wound. Entering her right breast, the bullet hit a rib, veered and pierced her heart.

The medical examiner’s next statement startled us. Pauline Sokolowska was not criminally assaulted. She died a virgin!

That placed an entirely different complexion on the case. At a stroke it ruled out the whole foundation of our original investigation. We were seeking a sex criminal but there had been no sex crime. Dr. Danser said there was no evidence on the body of any attempt at a criminal assault. Obviously it was not a case of death during an attempted rape.

We sat down to consider what the news of the medical examiner meant. Here we were in the midst of an intensive check, trying to form a list of sex criminals who either might know the Sokolowska girl, or who might live in the neighborhood. Now that was out.

We went to interview the dead girl’s grief-stricken mother. She was a widow and, sobbing, told us how happy she had been when Pauline found work. Her wages, though small, meant much to the family. We tried to glean from our conversation whether she knew of anyone who might have wanted to harm the girl. But she did not.

Still we pressed on. What about an incipient romance? Was there a chance a jealous boy friend might have been the killer? After more questions, we at last located the girl who apparently had been Pauline’s closest confidante.

She blushed when we asked if Pauline had ever had any trouble with boys. Had any ever got fresh? Well, she answered, Pauline had slapped a boy’s face a week or two before. That incident had taken place on an automobile ride. The boy had tried to steal a kiss and received a resounding slap on the face. After that he had been ultra penitent and decorous.

Just on a chance we hunted him out. But it was evident from the start that he was not our quarry. A ruddy-faced youth, he seemed genuinely shaken at the girl’s death. Questioned about the face-slapping incident, he shamefacedly admitted it was true.

“Sure, she slapped my face and I guess I deserved it,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head. She was swell.”

Next morning we raced to the hardware company on receiving a call that the driver we wanted had reported for work. He was a lanky, raw-boned fellow.

After telling him we were policemen, we questioned him about the erroneous address. But he was not perturbed.

“Oh, that,” he said. “Well, I used to board with some people there. But when they moved I did, too. Been bunking with a friend and never thought to tell the company.”

That blasted the theory that he might have been a criminal seeking to get by on a phony address. But it did not clear him of suspicion of murder. As to his presence at the house around the time Pauline was killed, he had a ready explanation.

“I had a package for that street number but it was not for Sterling Avenue,” he said, explaining that he had made a wrong turn and got into the wrong street. Not until he visited the house and saw the name on the door did he realize he was on the wrong street, he said.

It took only a few minutes to verify his story. After a bit more questioning we returned empty-handed to headquarters. We were thoroughly irritated. Twenty of us were working on the case and we knew exactly nothing about the killer. It was at this juncture that Police Commissioner James W. Higgins called me into his office.

“Jim,” he said, “this is a tough nut to crack, and it appears to me as though two or three men will get farther than a mob.”

I nodded, waiting for him to go on. He continued:

“I’m assigning you, Detective Sergeant George Maloney and Sergeant Charles Sheehan to the job. You’ve got carte blanche. Get to it, and good luck.”

That put the three of us squarely in the middle. From our past experience with Commissioner Higgins, we knew that he was a good boss. And he expected results!

We went back into a huddle over a cup of coffee. Methodically, Maloney, Sheehan and I went back over every known angle of the case, debating each point in hopes of shedding new light on the mystery.

One, two, three hours sped by. Reluctantly, we came to the conclusion that the entire investigation thus far had been off the correct track.

It was not until then that light began to dawn. If the killer had not been a sadist or a revenge murderer, then he must had some other reason for going to the house. And that reason might very well not have been murder!

In an instant my mind had grasped the significance of the thought. That was it. The murder was not paramount. It was a side issue! Why then had the killer gone to the house?

It was at this point that an incident which had occurred a few weeks previously correlated itself with the problem at hand. The wife of a well known Buffalo attorney had returned to her home in North Buffalo one afternoon and surprised a husky, good-looking young man in the act of ransacking the place. He threatened her with a pearl-handled revolver and fled.

A daylight burglar! It clicked. Maloney, I knew, had been checking on such a criminal. There had been a wave of daylight lootings and all were in the general vicinity of the murder house. How foolish not to have thought of that before! But was it the right answer? The burglar only entered homes where no one was present, and Pauline had not left the place. That seemed a flaw.

Maloney wrinkled his brow when the matter was put up to him.

“I have been trying to get a line on a daylight burglar all right, Jim,” he said, “but he always works in places where everyone’s out.”

I told him that had occurred to me, that I could not shake off the conviction that this was the right trail. Sheehan listened and made notes.

“You may be right,” he agreed, “at least we should check it.”

Maloney brought out his notebook and recounted to us his investigation into the depredations of the daylight marauder. He had visited the home of every victimized householder. The attorney’s wife was the only one who had seen the man. She had described him as rugged and good looking. From her story we knew the thief carried a revolver. And Pauline Sokolowska had been killed by a revolver bullet.

The thief, Maloney continued, stole money exclusively. Valuable gems he disregarded, even if the cash totaled only a few cents. One of his most recent jobs he had been in a Colvin Avenue home not a dozen blocks from the murder house. There the burglar had entered, either by means of a duplicate key, or through an unlocked door. He had extracted $17.50 from an envelope addressed to a missionary society and departed leaving everything else unmolested.

But where was the connection between the daylight burglary and the Sokolowska murder? The thing preyed on my mind. I dragged the other two back to the murder house again. Once again we went over the place. It was then that I noticed a thing that had been mentioned in our description of the place at the time of the killing but which otherwise had gone unheeded.

A book Pauline had been reading had been found beside a couch in the parlor. It lay open, pages facedown on the rug as though someone lying on the sofa might have dropped it there when overcome by drowsiness. Was this part of the answer?