Murder on Location (27 page)

“So, Furlong hits upon the idea of getting rid of both headaches at once. Supposing, he figures, that Hayes is shot. Supposing Miranda is seen leaving the scene of the crime, and then commits suicide. Murder and suicide, the tidiest package that ever comes through your mail slot.

“As soon as he was convinced that Hayes was not going to back down on his demands for credit, Furlong put his plan into operation. Through Billie he knew Miranda was meeting Hayes in his room at the Tudor Wednesday night. A few hours after Harvey Osborne clipped him, Furlong put on a white busboy's jacket that he'd picked
up on one of his many trips through the two hotel kitchens. From outside a door he picked up a room-service trolley, and from there on he was invisible.”

“Hold your horses. You're going too fast. Where'd you dream up the room-service angle, and what about Raxlin? He swears he saw Furlong take some sleeping pills he gave him. These are powerful prescription pills. How do you account for that?”

“Furlong was clever there. He simply palmed the pills, just pretending to take them. As for the jacket and trolley, you told me.”

“I told you! I've never seen a room-service jacket.”

“Exactly. Adela Sayre told me that she'd seen Miranda do a little act with a jacket from one of the hotels. It should have been in Furlong's suite when you searched it. Since you didn't find it, one explanation is that it was used in committing the Hayes murder. With trolley and jacket the murderer was part of the hotel decor. Who notices the comings and goings of room-service help in big hotels? He knocked on Hayes' door, and, when he was admitted, shot David Hayes. He left the way he'd come, losing the trolley and jacket before going back to the Colonel John. Then he took the pills and had a long and undisturbed sleep. It went like clockwork, just the way he'd planned it: the first half of the perfect crime.

“Miranda was the second half. He watched her go to bed on Thursday night. He made sure she took her pills. She was on coke; we both found the straws she used. Maybe Furlong went to sleep too. Maybe he could sleep.
In the morning, though, he was up early. He took a cord from the curtain track and fixed a running noose in the middle of it. He wrapped two scarves around the sleeping Miranda's throat, and placed the noose high up over them. He tied off the non-slipping end of the rope to the bedframe. Then he strangled her by suddenly, with all his weight, and using the bed as a fulcrum, pulling at the sliding end. He did it so violently and quickly that there was no struggle. It was about as efficient as a bad hanging, but it probably brought about sudden unconsciousness if she wakened at all. When he could be sure she was dead, he carried the body to the curtains where he carefully lifted her to the windowsill, left a set of bare footprints, tied off the rope and then dropped her over the edge. The noose didn't change position, or if it did slightly, the scarves masked any new impressions on her neck. There were no friction marks on the rope except those that should have been there. He retired behind his side of the door and waited until the body was discovered. The second half of the perfect crime, and end of another reel.

“Now we come to the part that ties all of these pieces together. Someone was watching Furlong. Someone who may not have seen what he did to Hayes or his wife, but who had a good idea about the sort of fellow he was.”

“Harvey Osborne. I told you that …” said Savas.

“No, not Harvey. Harvey shot his bolt when he slugged Furlong. When I saw him he looked like he'd just done fifteen rounds with him.”

“Who then?”

“What do we know about Furlong? We know that under his charm he wasn't very nice, and we know that he used people to climb on. He used Miranda that way, but his beloved Pye had slowly dissolved in the pills and drugs she became addicted to. We know that Miranda had a tight hold on him, and wouldn't willingly let him leave her. The fact that he chose to get rid of Miranda strongly suggests that he wanted to move on to a new woman.”

“You don't kill somebody just for that,” Pete said.

“Right, and why would he kill Miranda just to climb into bed with Billie Mason?”

“You're both right. Furlong wanted his freedom from Miranda. He also wanted her silence. And he couldn't get both. But you're right, Chris: he wasn't after Billie Mason. He'd been there before and he had her telephone number. No, he was after bigger game.”

“Who?” they said together.

I let them run through the cast for a moment.

“Peggy O'Toole.”

“But she's engaged to Fisher. Anybody who reads knows that.”

“That's right. But Furlong as we have seen, plays dirty. For instance, he knows more about Peggy O'Toole than she knows herself.”

“That's two mysteries you're holding in the air,” said Chris, while Pete turned to see what the commotion was at the door of the coffee shop. “Stop looking so smug,
Benny. What doesn't she know?” Three police officers came toward our table. Chris turned on the leader:

“What is it, Russ?”

“It's Furlong and Sayre, sir. Agnew went to tell Mr. Furlong that you wanted to see him. He'd said he was going back to his suite, but there was no answer. Agnew looked and he was nowhere. Culp and I then checked to see if anybody else was missing. That's how we found out that Mr. Sayre was gone too.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Furlong has been out of sight for about twenty minutes. And we've no way of knowing when Mr. Sayre left his suite at the Tudor. His wife's still there.”

“I'll want to talk to her. Meanwhile, close the international bridges to both of them. Get to taxis, buses and the airports. They won't get far, and they won't cross the border.” Chris glanced at Pete and me, caught his breath, then told Pete to call his New York State opposite number.

We all got up at once, Chris still talking like a teletype machine at Pete and the three men in uniform. Pete and Chris separated and went off from the coffee shop in opposite directions leaving me without a backward glance and with the tab to pay.

TWENTY-THREE

Outside it was dark once you got out from under the bright marquee of the hotel entrance. Melt-waters were running from crevasses in the frozen snow near the fire hydrant; the gutter was moving water and silt to the sewer grating. It spoke of glaciers and drumlins and eskers, and I kicked a dam of slush across the flow, a peevish gesture because I was in a hurry without knowing where I was going. I crossed Falls Avenue to the entrance of the Rainbow Bridge. It was business as usual, with the guards asking the same familiar questions. I turned right and walked along the damp sidewalk towards the falls. The park, twinkling with a filigree of coloured lights caught in the trees, smacked of left-over Christmas pudding. By now I could hear far-off police sirens moving away from the hotel in different directions. The only quiet place seemed to be right where I was standing. That's the way I liked it. I looked over the parapet and down into the gorge below. The ice was grey except where the illumination from the falls painted it. I noticed that the spray from the falls was reaching further downstream than it had all week. And it wasn't freezing. There was a thaw in the air. It had been there all day.

Traffic was thin along the Niagara Parkway. What there was of it came out of or disappeared into the sticky mist. I watched a taxi slow down and stop at the curb near a shuttered souvenir kiosk. Before it was properly halted, a figure came out of the shadows by the
Maid of the Mist
ticket booth. It ran up the slight rise to the cab and was opening the back door when I caught up to Ed Noonan and piled in after him.

“Cooperman! Get the hell out of here! I got no time.” He was flushed with running and he shouted in short bursts.

“Not before you tell me where you've been,” I said, cocking my head toward the river, as though I already knew some of it.

“I want no part of this, Cooperman. I'm getting as far away from here as possible. They can kill each other as far as I'm concerned. It's none of my business. Now, clear out. I'm not joking.”

“You mean Furlong and Sayre? Where are they? The whole town is looking for them. You'd better fess up, or it'll bite you where it hurts. Furlong's wanted by the police for murder and you don't want to aid and abet a fugitive, do you?” Noonan's mouth dropped and I got a look at some surprised tonsils along with a whiff of stale rye.

“Oh, so that's what it is. Furlong asked me to get the gate unlocked, and no sooner had I done that when Mr. Sayre came after him. He had a gun in his hand. Furlong took off down the hill toward the
Maid of the Mist
landing.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Five minutes, maybe ten. Did I tell you? Sayre had a gun.”

“Who called the taxi?”

“I did. I called from the hotel twenty minutes ago. I didn't know how bad I was going to need it. Close the door or get the hell out, Cooperman. I don't want any part of this.”

The driver had been watching us in his rear-view mirror. He wasn't in a hurry and the meter flag had been engaged. To him this was just another rear-view melodrama. I climbed out of the car and Noonan nearly slammed the door on my coat-tail.

The
Maid of the Mist
ticket booth was stone like the kiosk, built to harmonize with the rest of the uncommercial look that had been decreed for the view leading up to the falls. Stone baffles and steel pipes were arranged to handle the heavy summer crowds past the ticket window and forward to the incline railway that slanted steeply down to the boarding dock. The red and yellow cars looked hung up to dry. The crowd-control devices made the place all the more desolate tonight. Not quite parallel to the funicular, and upstream slightly, a narrow road pointed down toward the power plant at the foot of the Canadian falls. It clung closely to the wall of the gorge and sometimes was overhung by it. I started down that unilluminated black line.

The high wire gate was standing open. A padlock hanging unfastened on a plastic-covered chain didn't stop
me. A few yards more and there was a sign that warned pedestrians like me to proceed no further. The ice underfoot was still frozen in irregular lumps. I skidded a few times and came down with a crash that took the skin from the heel of my hand. As I worked my way down, I could feel the temperature moving down beside me. I realized that on the Parkway it had been almost balmy. Very strange weather for January. Once under the lee of the cliff it was easier to see the way ahead. The lights from the town above and behind me lit up the edge of the gorge, but didn't help much down here, except for reflections from the surface of the ice below.

There was no snow on the roadway, only frozen slush that had hardened in the shape of bootprints and tire treads. It was slippery going and I was beginning to feel a little silly, when I thought I heard something almost directly below me. I tried to see where the sound was coming from, but I saw shapes all over the place. Under me I could make out the form of four
Maids of the Mist
, mounted on frames. I kept moving down as fast as I could, leaving the shapes behind me. By now I was feeling pain in the front of each shin. Downhill does that to me. A few hundred feet beyond the ships, the road divided: one fork continued straight ahead under the cliff toward the power plant, the other made a sharp descending hairpin aimed back toward the dark shapes of the ferries. I cleared the
Maid of the Mist
office and came out toward the ice between that and the dry-docked ships.

Then I saw it. A black shape moving out away from the ice-jammed boarding area. It was climbing up on the ice bridge.

“Sayre!” I shouted. I heard the echo play around with the sound, and thought I heard the ice begin to growl where it touched the shoreline. I thought that the silence was going to settle back in place when I heard another voice out on the ice. It was far away and sounded like the parting shot from a dead battery. About a hundred yards ahead I could see another figure making its way across the ice. It looked like all the other shadows on the ice, except that it was moving diagonally across from me toward the far abutment of the Rainbow Bridge. If there was any place where a man might be able to climb out of the river gorge, it was here. I watched the shape move, Sayre moving quickly after it. I called to Sayre again.

“Cooperman! Go back. Don't come any closer! I've got a gun!”

“To hell with your gun. Are you crazy? This thing isn't safe. You can't go out there!”

“Get back, Ben. This is between me and him. He's out there and I'm going to get him. I've been studyin' this ice for a week now.”

“I can see him from here. Let him go. Come on back.” I hadn't stopped moving. By now I was able to see Sayre more clearly, moving steadily out across the river on the packed ice. At the shoreline the snow and ice were firm like in the Christmas carol: deep and crisp and even. But from there the bridge slowly mounted, like a vault over a
gigantic sports palace, running from the up-river side of the American falls to beyond the Rainbow Bridge. It had the shopworn reflection of a grey and threatening sky, with darker shadows like coal sacks marking gaps and crevasses. Attached at the up-river and down-river ends, cleaner ice was visible. These sections looked newer than the band that ran from shore to shore in front of me and were formed of ice more recently swept over the falls. Downstream, this less dense flotilla had been forced under the ice bridge by water power difficult to imagine.

I could see a gap where Sayre had jumped from the boarding dock to the bridge. He was moving forward ahead of me, steadily and without looking back. I called again, but he didn't turn. I thought a moment then jumped after him. By now Furlong was about half-way across. He'd reached the high point of the bridge and from then on I could only see him as he rounded some high eminence. His path took him to the edge of the older ice, dangerously close to the smaller, less compact floes that stretched down toward the international bridge. My eyes were becoming cleverer in the dark, and my feet, though both freezing and soaked, helped me move safely over the unreliable surface. Twice a solid-enough path gave way under my weight, which taught me to look closer before investing all one hundred and sixty pounds of me in one place. Ahead, and to the right, I could see the pale ghost of one of the wonders of the world looming straight as a wall and going up two hundred feet in the air. I knew the American falls were less than that, but you try being
precise from where I was. From time to time I could see movement in the newer ice to my left. One floe jumped eight feet in the air and came crashing down in a shower of fragments on the floes that had already moved to fill its place. I felt like I was walking on an eggshell with hobnail boots. Over my shoulder I could see how far I'd come from the ice reaching up to touch the sterns of the four
Maids of the Mist
.