Robert Knightly - Bodies in Winter

‘All by himself?’

‘In the company of persons still to be named.’

‘But not by Ellen Lodge?’

‘Apparently not.’

We still had a couple of choices open to us. Adele might have taken another shot at playing the bad cop or I might have again appealed to Ellen’s survival instincts by pointing out that the game was growing ever more dangerous. But it was nearly three o’clock and time was running short.

‘You wanna hook her up?’ Adele asked.

‘Fine, but I’m leaving the frisk to you.’

‘What’s going on here?’ Ellen demanded.

‘We’re placing you under arrest for conspiracy in the first degree.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that you conspired to commit an A-One felony: the murder of your husband.’

‘But I didn’t. I didn’t know what was going to happen.’ When I failed to respond, she half-shouted, ‘Yesterday, you said you were gonna protect me.’

Ellen’s gaze dropped to the tape recorder and its unmoving spools. There was a record now and she would have to live with it. I watched her reactions carefully, hoping against hope that she’d revise her strategy. Instead, her eyes narrowed as she rose to her feet and placed her hands behind her back. ‘Would it be alright,’ she asked, ‘if I brought along a little make-up? I wanna look my best when we do the perp walk.’

Despite the snow, I came up the block on foot, the closest parking space I could find two blocks away. It was much colder now and the wind was on the rise, pushing the heavy flakes in my direction, coating my head and shoulders before I covered fifteen feet. The snow screened me from view, so that I was almost on top of the One-Sixteen before the half-dozen cops huddled on the small porch fronting the entrance were aware of my presence. It was 3:45 p.m., a busy time in every precinct. The eight-to-four shift was coming in from the field, the four-to-midnight preparing to go out.

I was walking with Ellen Lodge to my left, holding onto her elbow. Though Ellen’s coat was draped over her shoulders, hiding her cuffed wrists from view, I doubt that anybody was fooled into thinking she was a casual visitor. The chatter stopped dead when I was finally recognized, leaving only the soft wet sound of our footsteps in the slush and the steady moan of the wind.

Inside, the reception area was crowded with cops, male and female, waiting to be mustered out. They were beginning their night’s toil and relatively energized, making small talk, joking, laughing. I’d worked hard to establish a good working relationship with these folks, knew most of them by sight and four or five by name. In their collective eyes I now found the sort of forlorn shock I associated with news footage of ordinary citizens informed that the guy down the block is a serial killer.

And he seemed like such a nice man.

The desk officer, a lieutenant named Draper, found his voice as we approached the stairs leading to the squad room.

‘Whatta ya got there, Harry?’

I led Ellen up a few steps before replying. All eyes were turned to me, which was what I’d hoped for and why I’d sought an elevated position in the first place.

‘I’ve got Ellen Lodge,’ I said evenly, ‘under arrest for conspiring to murder her husband. His name is David Lodge, in case you haven’t heard.’

‘Hey, I don’t need the sarcasm.’ Draper turned to a patrol sergeant standing at his elbow. ‘What a jerk,’ he declared with a nod in my direction. ‘He don’t know who his friends are.’

But we were already moving up the stairs and into the squad room where we found Jack Petro and Bill Sarney, along with a trio of four-to-midnight tour detectives gathered around a bag of donuts. Petro was sitting behind his desk with his mouth open. Sarney was on the other side of the desk, his coat draped over his arm, his customary fedora already jammed over his naked scalp.

I watched Sarney’s face redden, his hands tighten into fists, his neck swell, his eyes bulge. Far from intimidated, it was all I could do to maintain a neutral expression as I repeated the message I’d offered to the desk officer: Ellen Lodge, wife of David Lodge, was under arrest for conspiring to murder her husband. Then I led Ellen Lodge to an interrogation room, removed her handcuffs, and told her to make herself comfortable. As I made my exit, she favored me with a string of curses, concluding her tirade with a demand that she be allowed to call her lawyer.

‘You betrayed me.’ Sarney’s small dark eyes were glittery with rage, his forehead a mass of wrinkles all the way to the center of his scalp. We were alone now, in his office. ‘You were on your way from nowhere to nowhere, running out the string on a nothing career, a step away from being a hairbag. I gave you homicide, Harry, and I got you promoted. Me, and nobody else. You hear what I’m sayin’? In your whole career, I’m the only one who recognized you for what you were. How is it that you can turn on me, now, when I really need you? For Christ’s sake, you were at my kid’s christening.’

I started to speak, but Sarney waved me off. ‘And the worst part,’ he told me, ‘is that I personally vouched for you. I told Borough Command that you’d do the right thing. I took fucking responsibility. What am I supposed to say now?’

‘Tell them what you just told me,’ I suggested before he could go on. ‘Tell them you gave it a hundred per cent, but I played you anyway. I’m sure our conversations were recorded, just like Adele’s phones were tapped, so you should come off believable.’

That brought him to a halt and he dropped down in his chair. ‘You fucked me,’ he warned, ‘and I’m not gonna forget it. Sooner or later, I’ll pay you back.’

I might have responded directly, but my mind was on other things. The case against Ellen Lodge, which I was going to have to justify, was flimsy. There was Ellen’s recorded statement, complete with Miranda warning, and there was a documented call that might have been placed to anyone. Beyond that… nothing.

‘Do you think,’ I asked, ‘that we can get down to business? Because it’s gonna be a long night, even without the lecture.’

Sarney’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘by all means. And this better be good.’

But it wasn’t good enough, that was obvious, and by the time I wound it up, Sarney’s relief was apparent. ‘This is garbage,’ he finally declared. ‘Lemme see that tape.’

‘We’re talking about tapes, boss, as in more than one. But I don’t have them anyway. My partner has them.’

‘You’re sayin’ you can’t trust me with evidence, that maybe I’d flush those tapes down the toilet?’ He might have come after me at that point, if he was just a little bigger, a little younger. As it was, he settled for pounding the side of his fist into the blotter on top of his desk. Then he did it again.

‘If that’s your only comment, Boss, I’ve got paperwork to do.’

‘You got nothin’. I’m cutting her loose.’

‘Why?’

‘Show me one piece of physical evidence tying Dante Russo to the murder of David Lodge. Bring me an eyewitness. Better yet, prove that Ellen Lodge isn’t telling the truth when she says she didn’t know what was gonna happen to her husband.’

I countered with my best argument. ‘Lodge admits she called Russo and she claims that Russo copped to the murder. Plus, she has a dual motive for wanting her husband dead. First, there was the money from Greenpoint Carton, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you see how she was living. Second, there was the simple fact that she absolutely hated her husband. Ya know, Ellen was pretty much in control for the whole six hours. She only flipped out when she spoke about Davy. Believe me when I tell you, lieutenant, that the widow did not hold anything back.’