Эд Макбейн - Jigsaw

“You know who the stiffs are?” Monoghan asked Brown.

“Not yet.”

“You figure it for an interrupted burglary?”

“Right.”

“How’d he get in?”

“Through the fire escape window. Tool marks on the frame.”

“Other guy came home unexpectedly, and bingo!”

“Think he got what he came after?”

“Haven’t checked him out,” Brown said.

“What’re you waiting for?”

“Lou’s still taking pictures. And the ME isn’t here yet.”

“Who reported the crime?” Monroe asked.

“The landlady. She heard shots, stopped Kiely on the beat.”

“Get her up here,” Monoghan said.

“Right,” Brown answered. He went to the door, told the patrolman there to go get the landlady, and then saw Marshall Davies hurrying down the hallway toward the apartment.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Artie,” he said. “I had a goddamn flat.”

“There was a call for you,” Brown said.

“Who from?”

“Lieutenant Grossman.”

“What’d he want?”

“Said you should go right back to the lab.”

“The lab? What for? Who’s going to handle this if I go back to the lab?”

“Don’t know,” Brown said.

“You know what he’s probably got waiting for me downtown? Some nice little surprise, that’s what. Some nice hit-and-run victim. Some guy who got run over by a trailer truck. I’ll be down there picking headlight splinters out of his ass all night. Boy oh boy, what a day.”

“It’s hardly started,” Brown said.

“It started for me at seven o’clock this morning,” Davies said. He sighed heavily. “Okay, I’m heading back. If he should call again, tell him I’m on my way. I don’t know who’s going to handle this for you, Artie. The ME been here yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Situation normal,” Davies said, and walked out.

The patrolman came upstairs with the landlady not five minutes later. By that time, the Assistant Medical Examiner had arrived and was checking out the corpses. Brown and the two Homicide detectives took the landlady into the kitchen, where they could talk to her without the fascinating distraction of two bodies lying on the floor. She was a woman in her late forties, not unattractive, her blond hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head. She had wide Irish eyes, as green as County Cork, and she spoke with the faintest hint of a brogue. Her name was Mrs. Walter Byrnes.

“No kidding?” Monoghan said. “You any relation to the lieutenant?”

“What lieutenant?”

“Runs the Eight-Seven,” Monroe said.

“The 87th squad,” Monoghan said.

“He’s a cop,” Monroe said.

“I’m not related to any cops,” Mrs. Byrnes said.

“He’s a very good cop,” Monoghan said.

“I’m not related to him,” Mrs. Byrnes said, firmly.

“You want to tell us what happened, Mrs. Byrnes?” Monroe said.

“I heard shots. I went right outside and yelled for the police.”

“Did you come up here?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Would you? ”

“Mrs. Byrnes,” Brown said, “when you came in just now, did you happen to notice the bodies in the other room?”

“I’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to, wouldn’t I?” she said.

“Do you know either of those two men?”

“One of them, yes.”

“Which one?”

“The one wearing the sports jacket,” she said. Unflinchingly, she added, “The one with the knife blade sticking out of his throat.”

“And who is he, Mrs. Byrnes?”

“His name is Donald Renninger. He’s been living here in the building for more than two years.”

“And the other man? The one wearing the Jewish star?”

“Never saw him before in my life.”

“He’s the one who broke in, I guess,” Monroe said.

“We’ve had a lot of burglaries around here,” Mrs. Byrnes said, and looked at the detectives reproachfully.

“Well, we try to do our best,” Monoghan said dryly.

“Sure you do,” Mrs. Byrnes said, even more dryly.

“Any idea what Mr. Renninger did for a living?” Brown asked.

“He worked at a filling station.”

“Would you know where?”

“In Riverhead someplace. I don’t know exactly where.”

“Is he married?”

“No.”

“He was a bachelor, right?” Monroe asked.

“If he wasn’t married, why yes, I guess he was a bachelor,” Mrs. Byrnes said sarcastically, and then looked at Monroe’s mustache.

Monroe took out his handkerchief. Apologetically, he blew his nose and said, “He could have been divorced.”

“That’s true,” Monoghan said.

Monroe smiled at him, and put away his handkerchief.

“But you never saw the other man?” Brown said.

“Never.”

“Not here in the building...”

“No.”

“...or in the neighborhood either?”

“No place,” she said.

“Thank you, Mrs. Byrnes.”

The landlady went to the door. She turned before she went out, and said, “What’s his first name?”

“Whose?”

“The lieutenant’s?”

“Peter.”

“We don’t have a Peter Byrnes in our family,” she said, and went out, satisfied.

The ME was finished with the bodies. As he passed the detectives, he said, “We’ll give you written reports soon as the autopsies are made. You want some guesses for now?”

“Sure,” Brown said.

“Looks like the first bullet hit the guy in the poplin jacket a little low, probably got deflected off a rib. Anyway, it didn’t stop him right away. Left fist is clenched, he probably threw a punch and still had time to stick his knife in the other guy’s throat, probably just as the gun went off a second time. That shot went clear through the heart, I’d guess. The guy in the poplin jacket started to drop, and the knife blade broke off as he fell. The other guy went down, too, probably died within minutes. Looks to me as if the knife caught his jugular, awful lot of blood in there. Okay?”

“Okay, thanks,” Brown said.

“You handling this, Artie?”

“Looks like I’m stuck with it.”

“Well, it’s open and shut. I’ll get the reports up to you tomorrow morning, that soon enough?”

“Nobody’s going anyplace,” Brown said.

“Toodle-oo,” the ME said, and waggled his fingers and went out.

“So what’d the burglar want here?” Monoghan asked.

“Maybe this,” Monroe said. He was crouched near the corpse in the poplin jacket. He pried open the dead man’s clenched left hand to reveal what appeared to be a portion of a glossy photograph clutched into the palm. He lifted the photo scrap and handed it to Brown. “Take a look at it,” he said.

“What is it?” Detective Steve Carella asked.

“Piece of a snapshot,” Brown said.

They were in a corner of the squadroom, Brown sitting behind his desk, Carella perched on one end of it. Early morning June sunshine streamed into the office. A mild breeze filtered through the wire grilles covering the open windows. Carella, sitting on the edge of the desk, sniffed of the late spring air, and wished he were sleeping in the park someplace. A tall, wiry man with wide shoulders and narrow hips, he gave the impression of being an athlete in training, even though the last time he’d engaged in any sportlike activity was the snorkeling he’d done in Puerto Rico on his last vacation. Unless one wished to count the various footraces he had run with criminals of every stripe and persuasion. Carella did not like to count those. A man could get winded just counting those. He brushed a strand of longish brown hair off his forehead now, squinted his brown eyes at the photo scrap, and wondered if he needed glasses.