Mute Witness, page 12
“That’s what I assumed. And then someone called the maintenance man to fix a faucet on an upper floor, just to leave the boiler-room empty for an apparent escape. It indicated just too much knowledge of the hospital and the routine for someone who was supposed to be there by pure accident.” He sighed. “Do you want to tell us about it, Doctor?”
“What’s there to tell?” The young intern shrugged bitterly.
“He died. I knew he was going to die when I was working on him in surgery.”
“You didn’t sound like it when you met us downstairs in the lobby.”
The young intern smiled harshly, humorlessly. “It’s the bedside manner they teach us in school…”
“But even so…”
“Johnny Rossi,” the young doctor went on dully, staring at his hands. “A big wheel in the Syndicate, and his brother Pete, a murderous hood… I knew they’d blame me for his dying…”
“An autopsy would have proved you did everything possible,” Doc Freeman said gently.
“Proved? To whom? To Pete Rossi? To a gangster who only knows that his brother was alive when he went into the hospital, and dead when he came out? Anyway, that’s what I thought at the time. I know now I was wrong. But at the time… especially with that Mr. Chalmers…”
He looked up broodingly. “I’m holding you responsible, Doctor… I couldn’t take a chance…”
“It strikes me you took more of a chance this way,” Clancy said.
“You don’t understand,” the young intern said hopelessly.
“You don’t know the story. I can’t stand any investigation.” His eyes glazed, staring into the past.
“Why do you think I’m here, at this broken-down nursing home? Changing bedpans like an orderly? I was at Children’s Hospital in Cleveland; I lost a patient, a young boy, through no fault of my own. But you couldn’t convince the parents. And they were on the Board. I was kicked out…” He stared at Clancy bitterly. “Do you know what it is for an intern to be kicked out of a hospital? Can you imagine? I was lucky to get this post, and only because Cathy stands in with the Director.” He shrugged. “I’m telling you this because you’d find out anyway…”
A sour grimace crossed his face. “All I need was for Mr. Chalmers to dig that up when he found his precious witness dead… I’m sorry. I had to take the chance. Otherwise I was finished anyway.” His eyes came up bitterly. “Why did you have to send him here in the first place? Why didn’t you send him to Bellevue where he belonged?”
Kaproski looked away in embarrassment; the young intern cut off the pointless thought and pushed himself dispiritedly to his feet.
“All right,” he said evenly. “I’ll come along. Let me just change my clothes and I’ll be ready. One of your men can come with me to see that I don’t run…”
“I don’t want you,” Clancy said quietly. “Sit down.” He pushed the young man back into his chair. “There’s a law against what you did, but frankly I’d hate to try and make it stick, especially against a doctor. You’d be ruined professionally, but I doubt that the law would hurt you much. The thing I ought to charge you with is obstructing justice. You made me lose a lot of time and thought. But jailing you wouldn’t help me right now; and frankly I can see how you must have felt.”
“You mean you don’t want me?”
“That’s what I mean.” Clancy nodded evenly. “I just wanted to get one puzzle out of the way, to bring it back to just one attack on Rossi and not two. And in return, I want you to keep the body in the storeroom for the time being.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. Except I want you to continue to keep this quiet.”
The newly-born hope in the young doctor’s eyes faded. “But they already know…”
“Nobody knows—” Clancy began and then stopped, understanding beginning to dawn on him. “Who did you tell? Who?” He pushed to his feet and bent over the young doctor, glowering. “Well, who?”
“Mr. Rossi—Pete Rossi, his brother,” the doctor said haltingly. “That’s how I knew they wouldn’t really… He came here and wanted to know where his brother was. I… I couldn’t lie.” His eyes fell. “I was afraid.”
There was a stunned silence, broken at last by Doc Freeman.
“Great!” he said softly. “That’s broken it. All right, Clancy; now are you going to call in Homicide?”
“Wait!” Clancy said. He straightened up, thinking furiously, and then leaned over the doctor again, urgently. “What time was he here? This Pete Rossi?”
“It was three o’clock, about…”
“Did you show him the body?”
“Yes…”
Clancy nodded. His eyes were sharp. “What did he say when he saw the knife?”
“He didn’t say anything. And I didn’t say anything…” The young intern raised his head. “But he was the only one. I didn’t say anything to Mr. Chalmers when he was here this morning… I told him what you said I should…”
Clancy straightened up again, his dark eyes icy. The others were watching quietly.
“Now you listen to me, Doctor,” he said, his voice low but deadly. “You had my sympathy but you’re losing it rapidly. This time I’m telling you not to say anything, and this time I mean it. If you breathe a hint of this I’ll have you up on a mutilation charge so fast you won’t know what happened. And you can figure out for yourself what that will mean to your career.” He swung to the others. “Let’s get out of here.”
He turned in the doorway. “One more thing. You’ll probably get a call from the maintenance man, or you’ll hear about it from whoever he does call. He’ll say we came in the back way and were snooping around. You might mention we were here to check the plumbing, or the sanitary conditions, or anything you can think up…”
He didn’t wait for an answer but led the way quickly to the elevator. They dropped silently to street level and walked out of the lobby under the surprised gaze of a nurse who couldn’t recall their entering. On the sidewalk they regrouped.
“Clancy,” Doc Freeman said desperately, “how long are you going to keep up this idiocy? Call Homicide and let them take over. Now that Pete Rossi knows…”
“He won’t say anything,” Clancy said positively.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, but he won’t. If he were, he would have done it already.”
“You’re tired, Clancy,” Doc Freeman said. “You need a good meal and a good night’s sleep.”
“I need all that,” Clancy said, “plus a good swift kick in the pants. I ought to listen when somebody talks, even somebody as stupid as Barnett. I wasted half a day on something I should have seen at once. Maybe if I hadn’t we’d have been someplace now.”
Kaproski finally seemed to have gathered the ends of the conversation together.
“So if the doctor didn’t kill him,” he said with a puzzled frown, “then we’re right back where we were before. The character that blasted him in the hotel is the killer.”
“Right,” Clancy said.
“And we don’t know who that is.”
“That’s right,” Clancy said. “But I’ll bet I know somebody who does. That Renick woman. I was too damned polite to her this morning, but the time for chivalry is long gone. We’re going over there and get a simple answer to a simple question: who shot our pal Johnny Rossi? And why?” He turned to Doc Freeman.
“Doc, thanks a million. You’ll get your cadaver for slicing in another day at the most. Right now I’d appreciate it if you forgot how you spent the evening.”
Doc Freeman smiled. “Are you trying to get rid of me, Clancy? I’m sticking with you. The evening’s ruined anyway.”
Clancy shrugged. “If you want. Well, let’s go.”
He walked to the curb, holding his arm up to attract the attention of any passing cab. In the light of the bright headlights that an occasional motorist thought necessary to use, his slender figure looked worn and haggard. Doc Freeman swore under his breath and made one last attempt to impose reason.
“Clancy, you’re nuts. Turn this over to Homicide and go home and get some rest. You’re bushed.”
“You’re the one that’s nuts, Doc. If I went to sleep right now I’d wake up in Greenpoint with a blue uniform and silver buttons.” A cab swooped in to the curb; Clancy reached for the door-handle. “Or on suspension, and you know it. Come on.”
Saturday—8:05 P.M.
Mary Kelly was not in sight when their cab drew up before No. 1210 West 86th Street; nor was Quinleven. As the four men emerged from the taxi, Clancy glanced about; the sound of high-heels tapping regularly on the sidewalk came to them. A woman came up the street from the direction of Columbus Avenue, passed them without speaking, and entered the lobby of a small apartment a bit further down the street. Clancy nodded to the others and followed. Mary Kelly was waiting for him inside the apartment foyer.
“Well?”
Mary Kelly was a woman in her late thirties, with a rather plain but pleasant face, and a very decent figure. Her outstanding feature was her eyes, but she didn’t know it. She also didn’t know why nobody had ever called her just plain ‘Mary’ instead of her full name of ‘Mary Kelly,’ but they hadn’t. Mary Kelly also thought that a nice man like Lieutenant Clancy shouldn’t live without a wife to warm his bed; Clancy was not entirely unaware of her feelings. He recognized the compassion that his tired figure evoked in her warm brown eyes, and he repeated his question a bit more brusquely than was quite necessary.
“Well? Is she still inside?”
“She’s still there,” Mary Kelly said. She looked up to the drawn shades of the second-floor apartment across the street. “The lights are still on.”
“Where’s Quinleven?”
“He’s around in the back, pretending to do something with the telephone wires.”
Clancy nodded. “We’re going in to talk to her. I’ll leave Kaproski outside with you.” A woman came through the locked door leading from the interior of the apartment; she glanced curiously at the two standing in the foyer. Her eyes passed over Mary Kelly’s face and she muffled a smile of sympathy. Clancy swallowed and lifted his hat to Mary Kelly.
“Thank you for the information, ma’am,” he said, and quickly followed the smiling woman into the street. Mary Kelly’s rich voice came softly from behind.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
The others were waiting where he had left them. He walked over quickly.
“Kap, you stay down here with Mary Kelly. We don’t want to look like a battalion going in there. Stanton, come on.” He looked at Doc Freeman. “You too, if you want, Doc.”
The three crossed the street and entered the remodeled brownstone. They paused at the downstairs door while Clancy fiddled with the lock a moment. The door opened; they climbed the steps to the second floor, and Clancy stopped outside of the door sporting the fancy pair of dice. A band of light shone from beneath the ill-fitting door-frame. He lifted his hand for silence and then bent over, listening carefully. There was no sound within the apartment; he nodded and tapped peremptorily on the door. There was no answer. He frowned and then rapped louder; still there was no answer. He swung about, staring at the others with growing concern.
“Maybe she’s taking a shower,” Stanton offered. Clancy shook his head. Stanton shrugged. “Or just in the john…”
Clancy’s hand came up to rap again; then with a muttered curse he plunged his hand into his pocket for his keys instead. The second one opened the flimsy lock; Clancy dragged his keys back with a jerk and the three crowded in. One look at the torn room and Clancy pulled Stanton from the doorway and swiftly shut the door.
The eyes of all three swung about the room; the place was a shambles. Someone had ripped the pillows from the chairs and the sofa; they lay strewn about the floor. The books from the bookcase had been torn from the shelves and were scattered about; the drawers of a small desk in one corner had been pulled out and hung there drunkenly, their bare interiors exposed. Papers from the desk were lying in disarray on the carpet. Even the carpet had been pulled loose from its tacks at one edge and ripped back. The three men stared at each other. Without a word they deployed, going into the other rooms of the apartment.
The kitchen was empty. Clancy had just started to leave it when a low cry came from Stanton. He swung away, hurrying down the darkened hallway past the bathroom to the bedroom. He and Doc Freeman bumped in the doorway and then paused, staring with frozen faces at the body on the bed.
The long blond hair was tangled, as if a huge hand had grabbed it and twisted, brutishly trying to pull it out by the roots. The body was nude, the full breasts marked with a series of cigarette burns that trailed down the flat stomach, across the thighs to the groin. The mouth was taped with adhesive tape, the hands and feet drawn tautly apart in a spread-eagle and taped tightly to the corner-posts of the bed. A knife handle stood stark between the lush breasts. A trail of blood, already drying, led across the stomach and the curved side to a dark puddle where the wide hips depressed the mattress. The violet eyes stared at the ceiling fixedly, no expression marking them.
Doc Freeman hurried forward. Stanton was already struggling fiercely with the bonds that held the body to the bed; Doc’s hand detained him even as his eyes took in the condition of the body.
“Leave her alone. Don’t touch anything. She’s dead.”
Clancy stood in the doorway, shocked. He came slowly forward, standing alongside the bed, staring down, studying the tortured body, his mind churning. He clasped his hands tightly before him. Doc Freeman heaved a sigh.
“Who is she, Clancy?”
“Her name is Renick. She was… connected with Rossi, somehow…”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Clancy said dully. “I don’t know
“Well,” Doc Freeman said, “you’d better call Homicide.”
Clancy didn’t answer. Slowly he turned, staring about the room as if the very repressed fury in his bitter eyes could force the silent furniture to reveal the gruesome details of what it had witnessed. One dresser stood along the wall intact; a highboy on the other wall demonstrated drawers that had been torn open. Clothing was strewn about the floor; a woman’s purse had been upended, its contents scattered, and the purse itself discarded in one corner of the room. Clancy nodded fiercely to himself.
“Well?” Impatience had made Doc Freeman raise his voice.
He dropped it at once. “What are you waiting for? There’s a telephone in the other room. Let’s get Homicide in on this.”
“No!” Stubbornness etched Clancy’s voice. His glance came back to the bed. “Not yet!”
“Wait a second, Clancy,” Doc Freeman said, his voice hardening. Stanton stood watching the two, his face expressionless.
“I’m a doctor, but I’m a police officer, too. I was a damned fool to listen to you at the hospital. I’m calling this in.”
Clancy brought his eyes up from the bloody sight on the bed. His mind seemed to be far away. “No, Doc. Not yet…”
“That’s what you think, Clancy! You’re so tired you don’t know what you’re doing anymore. You’re getting punchy. I’m calling this in.” Doc Freeman started towards the living room but Clancy stepped in front of him, clamping a rigid hand on his arm.
“There’s no time, Doc! Don’t you see that? If Homicide comes into this right now, we’ll all be tied up here for hours. And the killer will get away once and for all!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you!” Clancy dropped the other’s arm and swept his hand about the room. “Look at this! Go out there and look at the living room again! You say you’re a police officer? Well, what do you make of this mess, then?”
“The killer was looking for something, of course.” Doc Freeman’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “Are you trying to say you know what he was looking for?”
“Of course,” Clancy said, almost contemptuously.
“Steamship tickets. To Europe. And he found them.”
“Steamship tickets?”
“It would take too long to explain, Doc, but take my word for it.”
“And how do you know he found them?”
“Look around you,” Clancy said, almost fiercely. “He tore the whole living room apart. And half of this room. And then he stopped before he got to that dresser. Why? He certainly wasn’t disturbed; Mary Kelly and Quinleven are still outside spotting the place. He stopped because he found what he was looking for. Or because she finally talked and told him where they were. And that’s when he stabbed her.”
He shoved his battered hat back on his head, jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, and started to stride about the restricted space. His mind was racing. “That’s why there’s no time to lose. He may be catching that boat tonight.” He stopped in mid-stride. “Of course it’s tonight!”
“Why?”
Clancy stared down at the floor, his brain gnawing at the tangle of facts he had, trying to unravel them, to make sense out of them.
“Because of an airplane reservation,” he said at last, simply, convincingly. “And a room that didn’t have a razor, or a clean shirt, or even a spare pair of socks…”
Doc Freeman stared at him. “What’s the tie-up?”
“I don’t know,” Clancy said quietly. “But I’m sure.”
Doc Freeman shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Clancy. Maybe you’re right—you often are. But maybe you’re not. I’m a police officer, and so are you. And so is Stanton. Failure to report a homicide is more than serious for us. You know that.”
“Six hours,” Clancy said tightly. “Six hours at the most. After that it will probably be too late, anyway. If this isn’t cleaned up in six hours, I promise I’ll report the two killings to Homicide and turn in my badge at the same time.”
“You won’t have to turn in your badge.” Doc Freeman looked at him. “If you report this now, the worst you’re liable to get is a stiff reprimand. But if you wait six hours, or even six minutes, you won’t have to turn in your badge.”
