Killing the Goose (6 page)

“Or,” Pam said, “she got killed twice. Or—or this girl was a friend of hers and she gave her this dress, having it cleaned first. Or—”

She stopped and looked at them.

“They're tied up,” she said. “It isn't two cases. It's only one case. We've got to go and tell Bill. Right away.”

It was a jump, Jerry North thought. It was a frantic jump. Because it did not really follow, because Ann Lawrence had given a dress to Frances McCalley—if she had, which was unproved—that there was a connection between the deaths of the two girls. It meant, possibly, that they had known each other and—Then he had a new thought.

“Savings Shops!” he said. “Or something like that. Well-to-do women give their clothes to charities and charities run Savings Shops and girls like this buy expensive things there for very little and—”

Pam was agreeing.

“That was my other or,” she said. “It's Thrift Shops, dear. And of course it could be. Only I don't believe it for a minute. I don't believe in things like that, because if I did there wouldn't be any sense to anything. And that would be too confusing.” She paused and considered. “Things would be illogical,” she said. “And what would we do then, except go round and round?”

There was obviously an answer to that one. Jerry North tried to think of it all the way to Gramercy Park, while Mullins pushed a police car, its red lights blinking in front, through the soft barrier of snow. They had pulled up among the other cars in front of Ann Lawrence's little house before Jerry realized that there wasn't any answer because, as it happened, Pam was perfectly right.

IV.
Tuesday, 8:50 P.M. to 9:45 P.M.

It meant hitting a policeman, preferably when the policeman wasn't looking. It also meant hitting him hard enough to be sure that, for as many minutes as could be managed, he was silent. John Elliot had taken that aspect of the situation into account. It also meant that, if they got hold of him afterward, as presumably they would, they'd have a small thing on him as well as the big thing. Whatever else they might or might not be able to prove in the end, they would unquestionably be able to prove he had hit a policeman. With a blunt instrument, by preference.

John Elliot thought of this and continued to sit easily in his chair, not seeming to look around. The policeman, who was fortunately only of medium size and seemed to have no club, stood in the middle of the room and part of the time he looked at John Elliot and part of the time he just looked around. Even when Elliot shifted in his chair the policeman looked at him only casually and then looked away again. To test it, Elliot shifted again. This time the policeman hardly looked at all. The policeman, Elliot thought, had merely decided that the suspect was getting restless. Which was true enough.

Elliot was long and thin and his blond hair made him look milder than he was That was worth remembering, Elliot thought—blond hair generally meant a mild person. If his hair had been black, now, the policeman might have been more diligent. That was worth remembering; some time he might use it. If he ever got another chance. He moved again and the policeman did not bother to look at all.

There was a table beside the chair in which Elliot sprawled—or now no longer quite sprawled. There were some objects on the table and, without making a point of it, Elliot looked at them. Most of them were obviously no good. Being struck with a vase of thin glass, for example, would only annoy a policeman and probably, in the end, get everybody cut and scratched. The bookend within reach was glass too, but glass of a different kind; it was a solid brick of glass. It was a polished example of the glass building brick. It would do very nicely. Idly, Elliot reached out his hand and let his fingers touch it. He still wasn't sure he'd try it.

The policeman really brought it on himself; he was a more alert policeman than Elliot had thought. This movement he did not ignore. He looked at Elliot and at his hand and then back into Elliot's face, and the policeman's eyes changed suddenly. He was no longer bland. He was suspicious and wary, and in a second he would move. It was finally by impulse that Elliot moved first; impulse was the end of his planning. He came out of the chair in a violent, almost explosive movement; he had reached the policeman before wariness had been quite replaced by certainty. The glass brick came with him and the policeman's hand was moving toward his side by the time Elliot was on his feet. But the policeman's uniform coat was over his holster and he was just pushing it aside when Elliot chucked the glass brick. He chucked it as if he were putting the shot. It was too heavy to throw easily and too awkward in the hand.

It cracked against the policeman's skull just above the ear with a soft, unpleasant sound. The policeman, with very surprised eyes, sagged and then fell. It was surprising how easy it was, but it would be a hell of a note if it had been too easy. If the policeman had a brittle skull, Elliot was in it deeper than ever—much deeper. There wouldn't be any argument about this.

The policeman had made no sound as he fell on the deep carpet and Elliot took a chance. He bent quickly and grabbed the policeman's wrist, feeling for a pulse. At first he could not find it, and he felt coldness coming over him in a wave. This had done it! Then his anxious fingers found a trembling and moved a little. There was a pulse, all right. Elliot sighed in relief. As far as he could tell, not knowing much about such things, the pulse seemed reasonably strong—slow, but strong. So probably the policeman was all right, or would be all right. Elliot looked at his victim an instant longer, and then the policeman's eyes began to open. He was going to be all right; he was going to be too damned all right. Elliot moved.

He had planned this, too. There was no use in trying to make it to the front, because the front door would be guarded. But there was a better way. In the wall under the curving stairs there was a door, and it opened on a flight of stairs leading down. Elliot went for it, moving fast and silently on the carpet. The door opened and Elliot went through it. He was pulling it behind him when he had another idea. The key—it was. His fingers groped on the wall beyond the door. The key ought to be—it was. Dutiful on its nail. It would be something if he needed it. Elliot took it along.

The stairs went down to a hall with doors opening off it. The one to the front was no good; it led to a storeroom and they would roust him out of that. The kitchen was the only way, and he hoped Mrs. Pennock would be somewhere else. He had no desire to meet Mrs. Pennock at any time and less now than at any other time. The kitchen was empty. He crossed it, moving still faster, and reached the door which opened on the paved court in the rear of the house. It was locked but the key was in it. Elliot went through, taking this key, also, with him. He closed the door and locked it from outside and started to throw the key away. Then he decided that it, too, might be useful. You couldn't plan far enough ahead to be sure.

Now it ought to be easy if they gave him a few minutes. The paved court was fenced, but a gate opened on a passageway between the house and the apartment building next door, which led to the street. It provided a service entrance which the house and the apartment building shared. But it meant coming out to the street beside the house, and in plain sight of the guard which would surely be on the sidewalk in front. That meant—Elliot looked around. You had to improvise.

There was an empty wooden box lying against the fence. It looked as if a delivery boy from a grocery had left it there after emptying it of bread and bottles and packages of food. You had to improvise. Elliot picked the box up and swung it to his shoulder. He went up the passageway and, when he neared the front of the house, began to whistle. He whistled “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” not very well, but well enough. He stopped and tried to walk as he thought a delivery boy, perhaps done work for the day, would walk. He came out on the sidewalk whistling, saw a policeman standing in front of Ann's house as he had expected, and did not look at him. He turned and began to walk, not hurrying too much, toward Lexington Avenue. He crossed the street diagonally and began to walk along beside the park fence.

He was not very far along beside the fence when there were sounds behind him and the door of Ann's house was flung open and somebody yelled something angrily, presumably at the policeman on guard outside. Elliot did not hear clearly what was said, but he didn't need to. He hoped he was only a vague figure in the snow—a vague figure of a delivery boy with an empty box on his shoulder. But he was too close to run. There ought to be a gate along here somewhere.

He came to it almost as soon as he hoped. The key was going to be useful after all. But he couldn't carry the box in. Delivery boys didn't get into the only private park left in New York City; the only park owned by the property owners around it, kept sacred under lock to their moments of outdoor relaxation. Elliot put the box down and stood up straight and took his time unlocking the gate. But he took as little time as he could without hurrying. The gate was heavy and reluctant, but he pushed it open. He took the key out of the lock and closed the gate and locked it behind him. For a moment, anyway, they couldn't get to him.

But except for inadequate evergreens, the park was bare, offering little cover, leaving him visible from outside by anyone who wanted to look through the iron fence. And somebody would, probably, want to look through the iron fence. He moved unhurriedly along the path to the right and tried to look like a very respectable property owner taking a stroll in the open. But it was obviously an unlikely time to be taking a stroll.

He heard, then, the sounds of a heavy man running along the public walk outside the fence and he forced himself not to look around. He sauntered along, but the nerves crept at the back of his neck. Nobody was going to think he was merely walking in the snow for—then he thought of it. You could improvise, all right, when you had to.

An instant before the running feet outside were even with him, John Elliot stopped. He stopped near one of the evergreen bushes and held his right arm out toward it as if he were pointing. He held the right hand curved, as if it were lightly curved around something—a leash, perhaps. The feet stopped opposite him and Elliot turned to face the policeman, as a man in no fear of policemen might have done. The policeman stopped and looked in through the fence at John Elliot, staring through the curtain of falling snow.

“Hey, you!” the policeman said. Then he said, “Oh, sorry, mister.”

“Yes, officer?” John Elliot said. “Did you want something?”

“Didja see a guy running up this way?” the policeman said. “A guy with a box, maybe?”

“No,” said Elliot. “I didn't see anybody. Or hear anybody. Did somebody get away?”

“Well,” the policeman said, “so you didn't see anybody, mister? Any guy running?”

“No,” Elliot said. “I didn't see anybody. Maybe he ran the other way.”

“Yeah,” the policeman said. “Hell of a night, ain't it? But it don't mean nothing to them.”

“Them?” Elliot repeated. Then he caught himself. “Oh,” he said, and looked down in the direction of his pointing right hand. “Them. No, regardless of the weather, they—”

The policeman wasn't listening. He was turning away. He called back, “Thanks, mister,” and went toward Ann's house through the snow. John Elliot figured it was all right, but he acted out the rest of it. He moved his right arm as if he were pulling something; he said, just audibly, “come on, you!” He walked away along the path, continuing to look as much as he could like a man walking a dog. He kept the hand which held the mythical leash a little out from his body, as if a dog were tugging at it.

He abandoned this when he was half around the park, and walked more briskly. He let himself out of the park opposite The Players and crossed the street diagonally, avoiding the club entrance and the entrance next to it. When he got to Irving Place he walked down it a block or two and waited for a bus. When the bus came he got on, shaking his overcoat and knocking snow off his hat and as he dropped his nickel in the coin box he told the driver it was a rotten night. The driver made an agreeing sound. Elliot took a seat on the left side of the bus, which went on around the park. As it went by Ann's house, Elliot stared out the window into the snow, although he wanted to see what was going on. As the bus turned north again he looked across it and out the windows on the right, and got a glimpse of the street in front of the house. A taxicab was stopping and a man was helping a woman out.

Elliot, feeling he had improvised to good purpose, stayed on the bus until it reached Grand Central. Then he got out and, after a little trouble, waved down a taxicab. He gave an address to the taxi-driver and got in. From now on, he would have to have some help.

Bill Weigand was not in a good humor. Once it was evident that Patrolman McKenna, who had stopped John Elliot's glass brick, was dented but basically sound, Bill Weigand gave Patrolman McKenna a description of himself. It was low-voiced, bitter and thorough; if Patrolman McKenna met himself soon, he would recognize himself with embarrassment. And then Weigand set things going. A description of John Elliot went out through the city, and through the adjacent states for good measure. Men of the precinct hurried through the neighborhood, looking unpleasantly at innocent men who happened to be, like Elliot, tall and thin. They found Elliot's box quite soon; the patrolman on guard outside remembered vaguely that somebody, carrying a box, had come out from between the house and the building next door. Weigand described the patrolman on outside guard more briefly, but with vigor. Then, sighing, Weigand telephoned Inspector O'Malley, who when he answered had to leave the stud game with a king in the hole and another showing, and a round—which long afterward O'Malley was still certain would have brought him another king, particularly after he discovered that two pairs had taken the pot—coming up.