Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

“So you slid it under her door.”

“That’s right.”

“Is it? What if I told you someone saw you knocking on her door?”

“I slid the mail under her door. If I knocked, it was just to let her know I’d brought her mail. I did that sometimes.”

“And walked away without waiting for the door to be opened.”

“Yes.”

“What if I told you someone saw you wait until she opened the door?”

“Nobody saw me.” He colored. “Look, who can tell one day from the next? Maybe she opened the door. She sometimes did, if she was standing right next to it when I knocked. What difference does it make?”

“I’m guessing now,” I said, “but I think my guess is pretty close to the truth. I know you knocked and I’m sure she let you in, and then I think you did something to make sure she’d sleep soundly. Was she drinking a cup of tea? Did you put something in her tea?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It may not have been tea,” I said, “and she may not have been drinking it right there in front of you, whatever it was. But one way or another you slipped her some kind of a mickey.”

“If he did,” Ray said, “there’ll be traces somewhere. In the cup if she didn’t wash it, an’ in her if she drank it.” Marty asked if they’d found anything. “No,” Ray said, “on account of we didn’t look. When a woman’s been hit over the head an’ stabbed to death, you don’t generally order a toxicology scan to find out if she took poison. But I can order it now, an’ if she did we’ll know about it.”

“It wasn’t poison,” Carl said. “My God, I wouldn’t poison anybody.”

“It was just something to help her sleep.”

“She hadn’t been sleeping well,” he said, “and she never left those rooms, and I knew Karen was getting tired of waiting. She’d go in while Miss Landau was asleep, and if she wasn’t sleeping soundly-well, I was afraid of what might happen.”

“With good cause, as it turned out.”

“Oh, God,” Carl said. “I probably shouldn’t say any more. I’ve said too much already.”

“Well, you got the right to remain silent,” Ray said smoothly, and ran the whole Miranda warning past him. “An’ that goes for everybody in this room,” he added. “All of you’s got the right to remain silent, an’ all the rest I just read. But you want my opinion, you’d be crazy to quit talkin’ now.”

“I would?”

“You broke some laws,” he said, “an’ no question you were an accessory, but if you help us clear the case an’ tie the whole thing to Kasimir-”

“Kassenmeier,” I said.

“Whatever. You do that, you’re in good shape. And she’s dead as a doorknob, so what’s the harm in that?”

“She killed Miss Landau,” Carl said. “I mean, you already know that, don’t you?”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

“There’s not much to tell. I gave the drug time to work, and then I called Miss Landau. She didn’t answer her phone, so I assumed she was sleeping soundly. Then I called Karen in her room and told her to come down and pick up a key. She did, and went upstairs with it. The next thing I knew, Miss Landau was dead.”

“What happened?”

“All I know is what Karen told me. She went in and Miss Landau woke up and confronted her. Karen stabbed her and got away without being seen.”

“Aren’t you leaving something out?”

“I don’t think so.”

“When they found Kassenmeier in my apartment,” I said, “she’d been shot in the shoulder, and it didn’t happen on West End Avenue, either, because the wound had been cleaned and dressed and was already starting to heal. Landau shot her, didn’t she?”

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I forgot that part.”

“Well, a minor detail like that could slip a person’s mind easily enough. She called you, didn’t she? From Landau’s apartment, saying she’d just taken a bullet in the shoulder. You told her to stay where she was, and you went upstairs and took her to your own room, the one you’ve had since you moved into the Paddington twenty-odd years ago. It was closer than the room you’d put Kassenmeier in, and you had first-aid supplies there, tape and gauze pads and antiseptic. You bandaged her up and left her there to rest. And you went back to Landau’s apartment.”

“Why would I do that?”

“To see if there was anything you could do for the woman. You wouldn’t just leave her there, would you?”

“No, of course not,” he agreed. “But there wasn’t anything I could do for her, so I-”

“Sure there was.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s funny about the gunshot,” I said. “I smelled gunpowder when I was in Landau’s place. I didn’t recognize it at first, but then I did, and that’s how I found out I was sharing space with a dead woman. I assumed she’d been shot, and I was puzzled when I learned later that she’d been hit over the head and stabbed. But of course it makes sense when you realize that Landau was the one who did the shooting. She surprised a burglar in her room and shot her.”

I paused, feeling the way Carl did when he heard how the Japanese gangster had made a hotel clerk disappear. I don’t like stories where somebody shoots a burglar.

“And Karen stabbed her,” I went on. “That’s interesting, when you stop to think about it. Somebody pulls a gun on you and takes a shot. It hits you in the shoulder. You want to make her stop shooting, so what do you do? You pull a knife and stab her.”

“It sounds like self-defense,” Ray said, “but it ain’t, not when you’re busy committin’ a felony at the time. It’s murder, no question about it.”

“It’s also unlikely. Someone’s shooting you so you go for a knife?”

“Karen carried a knife,” Carl said. “It had gotten her in trouble in the past.”

“I know,” I said, “but she never stabbed anybody while she was working. She saved it for her personal life. So she wouldn’t have been creeping around Landau’s apartment with a switchblade in her hand, would she? It’d be in her purse, which she probably set down the minute she walked into the room, if she even brought it with her in the first place, which seems doubtful. Even if the purse was on her person when Landau started popping caps, do you suppose she’d start rooting around in it, looking for her trusty knife?”

“What’s the difference?” Isis wanted to know. “One way or another this Kassenmeier woman stabbed Anthea, didn’t she?”

I shook my head. “Nope,” I said. “Not a chance.”

“But-”

“She hit her over the head,” I said. “She picked up something with a little heft to it and swatted the old lady. It wouldn’t take much of a blow to knock her out.”

“And then she stabbed her,” Carl said.

“Why?”

“To make sure, I suppose.”

“To make sure she’d wind up facing homicide charges? All she wanted to do was get out of there and get her shoulder fixed. Landau was out cold, and was no danger to Kassenmeier. All she needed to do was scoop up the Fairborn file and go home.”

“Who else would have a reason to kill her?”

“Suppose she opened her eyes again after Kassenmeier got out of there. Maybe she picked up the phone and called the front desk. Or maybe she woke up after you’d already returned to the crime scene, Carl. To tidy up, or to pick up the Fairborn file if Kassenmeier hadn’t already grabbed it. Or maybe just to see what else you could steal.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“If you went through Kassenmeier’s purse and brought the knife along, that’s premeditation. If Kassenmeier left the purse behind, and you went back for it, and then Landau woke up and you pulled the knife purely on impulse, well, you might have better luck with that story.”