McBain, Ed - Killer's Wedge

"But only to buy pretty clothes. I dress pretty, no?"

"Yes. Oh, yes."

"Listen, you come see me, hab? We make it."

"Honey," he said, "where you're going, they don't make anything but license plates."

"What?" she said, and the telephone rang.

The sound startled Hawes. He almost turned automatically to reach for the wall, and then he remembered that he had to wait until Virginia picked up the phone. He saw Byrnes start across toward the instrument on the desk nearest him. He saw Byrnes waiting for Virginia's nod before he picked up the receiver.

The phone kept shrilling into the squad room

Virginia shifted the gun to her left hand.

With her right hand, she picked up the receiver and nodded toward Byrnes. Byrnes lifted his phone.

"Eighty-seventh Squad, Lieutenant Byrnes."

"Well, well, how come they've got the big cheese answering telephones?" the voice said.

Hawes edged toward the wall, backing toward it. Virginia Dodge was still partially facing him, so that he could not raise his hand. Then, slowly, she swiveled in the chair so that her back was to him. Swiftly, Hawes lifted his hand.

"Who is this?" Byrnes asked into the mouthpiece.

"This is Sam Grossman at the lab. Who the hell did you think it was?"

The thermostat was secured tightly to the wall. Hawes grasped it in one hand, and with a quick snap of his wrist raised the setting to its outermost reading.

On one of the mildest days in October, the temperature in the squad room was now set for ninety-eight degrees.

CHAPTER 9

Sam Grossman was a detective, and a lieutenant, and a very thorough man." A less thorough man in charge of a police laboratory might have allowed his call to wait until the morning. It was, after all, three minutes to six, and Grossman did have a family waiting home to begin dinner. But Sam Grossman believed in laboratory work, and he believed in crime detection, and he believed that one went hand in hand with the other. Sam would never miss the opportunity to prove to his colleagues who did the actual legwork that the laboratory was a vital part of detection, and that they should use the lab as often as possible.

"The M.E. gave us a look at the corpse, Pete," he said into the phone now.

"What corpse?"

"The old man. Jefferson Scott."

"Oh, yes."

"Carella working on that one?" Grossman said.

"Yes."

Byrnes glanced across to Virginia Dodge.

She had sat up straighter in her chair at mention of Carella's name, and now she was listening intently to the conversation.

"He's a good man," Grossman said.

"Is he out there at the Scott house now?"

"I don't know where he is," Byrnes said.

"He might be. Why?"

"Well, if he is, it might be a good idea to get in touch with him."

"Why, Sam?"

"The M.E. set the cause of death as strangulation. You familiar with the case, Pete?"

"I've read Carella~s report."

"Yeah, well, the old guy was found hanging. No broken neck or anything like that. Strangulation. Looked like suicide.

Remember that Hemandez case a while back-where it looked like the kid had hanged himself, but it was really an overdose of heroin? Remember that one?"

"Yes."

"Well, we haven't got exactly the same thing here. This guy died of strangulation, all right" "Yes?"

"But he wasn't strangled by the rope. He didn't hang himself" "What happened then?"

"We've discussed this thoroughly with the MR, Pete, and we're pretty sure we're right. The bruises on the victim's throat indicate that he was strangled manually before that rope was placed around his throat.

There are rope bruises and burns, too, but the majority of the bruises were left by human hands. We tried to get prints from the skin, but it didn't work. We're not always successful in getting prints from the skin of ..

"Then you think Scott was murdered?"

"Yeah," Grossman said flatly.

"We also did some tests on that rope he was hanged with. Same as that Hernandez kid. The direction of the fibers on the rope show that he didn't jump down from that stool, the way it looked. He was hauled up. It's a homicide, Pete. No question about it."

"Mmm. Well, thanks a lot, Sam."

"The thing is," Grossman said, "if you think Carella's over at that Scott house, I'd contact him right away."

"I don't know if he's there," Byrnes said.

"Well, if he is. Because if he is, one of the people in that house is a murderer with pretty big hands. And I like Steve Carella."

David Scott sat with his hands clenched in his lap. His hands were square and flat and covered with light bronze fuzz that curled along their backs. The same blondish bronze hair decorated the top of David's crewcut head.

Behind him, far out on the river, the tugboats pushed their mournful night sound onto the air.

It was 6:10 P.M.

Before him sat Detective Steve Carella.

"Ever argue with the old man?" Carella asked.

"Why?" David said.

"I'd like to know."

"Christine has already told me a little about you and your ideas, Mr. Carella."

"Has she?"

"Yes. My wife and I keep no secrets from each other. She told me your mind is working along certain channels which I, for one, find pretty damn objectionable."

"Well, I'm awfully sorry you find them objectionable, Mr. Scott. Do you find homicide objectionable, too?"

"That's exactly what I meant, Mr.

Carella. And I'd like to tell you this. We're the Scott family. We're not some slum foreigners living in a crawly tenement on Culver Avenue. We're the Scotts. And I don't have to sit here and listen to idle accusations from you because the Scotts have lawyers to take care of tin-horn detectives. So if you don't mind, I'd like to call one of those lawyers right now and "Sit down, Mr. Scott!" Carella barked.

"Sit down, and get off that goddamn high horse! Because if you feel like calling one of those Scott lawyers you mentioned, you can damn well do it from the crawly squad room of the 87th Precinct, which is where I'll take you and your wife and your brothers and anybody else who was in this house when the old man allegedly hanged himself."

"You can't ..

"I can, and I will! Now sit down."

"I

"Sit down!"

David Scott sat.

"That's better. I'm not saying your father didn't hang himself, Mr. Scott. Maybe he did. Suicides don't always leave notes, so maybe your father is a legitimate suicide.

But from what I've been able to gather from Roger-"

"Roger is a servant who-" "Roger told me that your father was a very jolly man who was interested in life and living. He had not seemed depressed over the past few weeks, and in fact he's very rarely known him to be depressed.

Your father was a wealthy man with a giant corporation going for him, and holdings in sixteen of the forty-eight states. He's been a widower for twelve years, so we can't assume his suicide was caused through remorse for his dead wife. In short, he seemed to be a happy man with everything in the world to live for. Now suppose you tell me why a man like that would want to take his own life."

"I'm sure I don't know. Father wasn't much in the habit of confiding in me."

"No? You never talked to him?"

"Yes, of course I talked to him. But never intimately. Father was a cold person. Very difficult to know."

"Did you like him?"

"I loved him! He's my father, for God's sake."

"Which might, in modern psychiatric terms, be a good reason for hating him."

"I've been seeing a lay analyst for three years, Mr. Car eLla Pm well-acquainted with psychology. But I did not hate my father. And I certainly had nothing to do with his death."

"Getting back ... Did you ever quarrel with him?"

"Yes. Of course. Fathers and sons always have little squabbles, don't they?"