St. Patrick's Day Murder (7 page)

“Did you know Ray lent Scotty some money?”

“I knew.” She looked down at the table. “I didn’t know till after Scotty got it or I wouldn’t’ve let him take it. Anyway, that’s not a motive. Scotty was going to pay it back.”

“Do you know why he borrowed it?”

“Oh, gee.” She sighed. “I suppose it was for the car. He was a real sucker when it came to cars. Someone was selling the BMW real cheap and he just had to have it. But for all I know, it was for something else. Scotty was a man of surprises.”

“I really hate to ask this,” I said, feeling very uncomfortable, “but how did he plan to pay it back?”

“We had some money coming in, a bond that was coming due. He would have had it.” She seemed so down talking about it, her eyes misty, her voice low and occasionally choking up.

I really didn’t want to go on. Every question would be painful, and she had suffered enough. “You make a good sandwich,” I said.

Jean began to laugh and cry at the same time. She pulled a tissue out of a pocket and used it on her eyes, but she was smiling. “Oh, Chris, I know how hard this is for you. And wouldn’t I rather talk about tunafish sandwiches myself. It’s OK. Ask whatever you have to. I don’t think Ray killed Scotty and my God, I want to know who did. If you don’t do it, I don’t know who will.”

“Tell me about those papers of Scotty’s, the birth certificate and the military one. Have you found out anything?”

“Only that Scotty never served and that he wasn’t born in Brooklyn under the name Scott McVeigh.”

“Did you know his parents?”

“He told me they were dead.”

“My parents died when I was young. Maybe he got moved around and lost track of where he was born.”

“Maybe that’s it.” But she didn’t sound as though she believed it any more than I did.

“Do you know his parents’ names?”

“Edward and Mary Margaret.”

“My father’s name was Edward,” I said. “When I was a Franciscan nun, I was Sister Edward Frances, after both my parents.”

“I see you and Jack together and I can’t believe you were ever a nun. You must have repressed a lot of feelings for a long time.”

“It wasn’t like that. I loved what I was doing. I got a fine education and I taught wonderful students. It was a very fulfilling life. I still feel close to the people at the convent.”

Jean smiled, the tears gone. She got up and brought the coffeepot to the table. There was a burst of giggly laughter from upstairs, and she walked to the stairs and stood and listened for a minute before returning to the table.

“Ray is a tough person to get to know,” I said, admitting my own limitation. “There seems to be a shell around him, a barrier that I just can’t negotiate.”

“He’s been under a lot of stress. Petra’s really very good for him. Betsy’s a nice woman, but she wasn’t a partner. She lived in his shadow. Ray’s tough and he needs a little—I don’t know—someone who can stand up to him. Petra does that. She’s pretty tough herself. Listen to me.” She laughed. “I’ve got everyone in the world figured out except myself and Scotty. If anyone lived in her husband’s shadow, it was me, and he’s gone. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so cold this last week. There’s nothing to wrap around me anymore. I feel so exposed, so out in the open.”

“We’ll help, Jean,” I said.

“I know you will, Chris.” She had tears on her face again. “And I thank you for it.”

I didn’t know what else to do before I heard from Jack on the unsolved homicides of police officers and the interviews with people along Scotty’s beat. I didn’t want to call him from Jean’s house, or from a pay phone, because I might have to take notes. So after another cup of coffee and some more conversation, I drove home.

Unless Ray had murdered Scotty, I wasn’t any closer to finding out who did. None of the neighbors had seen anyone try to enter Ray’s apartment yesterday, and those two copper-clad, .44-caliber bullets were going to be powerful evidence
against him. Even if they never found the murder weapon, the bullets looked very bad.

But for me the bullets came close to tipping my feelings in favor of Ray’s innocence. He was such a neat, fastidious person. If he had gone to all the trouble of stealing a car, acquiring a murder weapon, lying in wait, and executing his friend, how could he have been so lax as to leave two damning bullets in his drawer? He’d been a detective—a detective sergeant—long enough to know that a search warrant would turn them up. On the other hand, if they’d been planted, I was absolutely certain it had happened yesterday. If they’d been there earlier in the week, Ray would have seen them when he went to clean his guns, which I was sure he did regularly, probably on the weekend. I turned into my driveway and stopped in front of the closed garage. The garage was detached and set way back, a style of building no longer used. Aunt Margaret had liked it that way, and except that I had somewhat more snow to shovel in the winter, I didn’t mind it much myself. When the car was put away, I went to the mailbox at the curb and took out a pile of catalogs and a few bills.

In the house I took my coat off, seeing the bloodstain on the lining once again. I had seen it this morning when I’d given my coat to Ray and again when I put it on. I really wanted to get rid of it, but this was the only winter coat I owned, and it was still too cold to do without it. Maybe, I thought, my friend and neighbor, Melanie Gross, would have something to lend me for the few days it would take to have the coat cleaned.

“Got a lot of stuff for you,” Jack said in my ear. “Got a pencil handy?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“Nothing in any of the interviews really stands out. A lot of people said they loved him. A lot said he was very honest. A couple told nice stories about him. One place wouldn’t talk.”

“Oh?”

“Remember he told us about a Korean grocery? They all claimed not to know a word of English when they were interviewed. The canvassing detective was persistent and went back with a translator, but the Koreans said they didn’t know Scotty well and didn’t know anything about him. A little fishy after what he told us.”

“They probably don’t want to get involved. Police can be very threatening.”

“My guess, too. The interviewer is a hundred percent sure one guy speaks perfect English, but he just couldn’t get through.”

“I’ll give it a try. I need to do some grocery shopping anyway.”

He gave me the address and the name of the owner of the store, Mr. Ma. “Now about the other thing,” he said. “There are three open homicides of police officers. None of them were shot with a .44, which doesn’t rule out a connection. But there’s almost nothing that could tie them to Scotty, even using a lot of imagination.”

“Tell me about them anyway.”

“One was a black cop walking home at night in Harlem about two years ago when he got off duty. His name was
Roscoe Boyd, he was twenty-seven years old, wearing street clothes, and the theory is it was a mugging that went bad. The perps probably didn’t know he was a cop till they’d shot him. They took his wallet and gun and haven’t been seen since. There are several possible suspects, but not enough evidence to bring them in.”

“Was the gun they stole a .38?”

“Yup. Smith and Wesson. They shot him with a .22.”

“OK.”

“I’ve gone through what I could of his record and Scotty’s and there’s nothing to tie them together. They were a couple of years apart at the Academy and their careers never overlapped.”

“What’s the next one?”

“The next one is someone Scotty may have known. His name was Gavin Moore and he was part of a buy-and-bust drug team in Queens. About two and a half years ago, he was on his way to a buy and ended up dead. He wasn’t where he should have been, and the guy he’d gone to meet has the perfect alibi. He’d been picked up for some traffic violation about the time of the homicide. There have been a lot of leads in this case—you wouldn’t believe the size of the file—but nothing has panned out.”

“You said he might have known Scotty.”

“It looks as if they were at the same precinct for about a year a couple of years before Moore was killed.”

“What was the murder weapon?” I asked.

“Nine millimeter.”

“Ouch.”

“Right. And here’s the third. This one is really different. Harry Donner, an older guy, about fifty-five, probably putting in his last years before retirement. Described in different ways by different people. Some said he was a sweet old guy who never ruffled any feathers, donated a lot of time to good causes. Other people said he was a tough, savvy detective, ice water in his veins, that you couldn’t put anything over on him.”

“Sounds like an interesting guy,” I said. “How did he die?”

“You’ll like this. It was in a parking lot.”

I felt a chill. “Go on.”

“Not a bar. He was widowed and lived alone. He’d gone to a shopping center on Long Island one night about three years ago and got hit coming back to his car.”

“So he may have been stalked the way Scotty was.”

“Could be. Unless it was random. A lot of people have been shot or mugged in parking lots. There’s something else. I knew him.”

“You,” I said. “How?”

“He was at the Six-Five when I first got there.” The Sixty-fifth is Jack’s precinct in Brooklyn.

“Which description do you think fits?”

“Probably both. I didn’t know much about his charitable activities, but he was one hell of a detective. And a nice guy. He’d talk to you, show you, a natural teacher for new gold shields. But he didn’t tolerate stupidity.”

“How about a connection to Scotty?” I asked. “Besides the parking lot.”

“I can’t find anything. Donner had a long career in Brooklyn and Queens, but it doesn’t look like he overlapped with Scotty anywhere along the way. And he was shot with a .38. So all three—all four—are different.”

“But if you think about it,” I said, “there are some similarities between all of them and Scotty. The first one, Boyd, was a uniformed cop.”

“Doesn’t mean much. You gotta be something, and most cops wear uniforms.”

“You said the second one, Moore, was in Scotty’s precinct for a while. And this last one got shot in a parking lot. Jack, I think two and three are possibilities.”

“So do I. But remember, Intelligence has checked this out.”

“I know. Is it OK if I talk to their families?”

“Sure. Gavin Moore had a wife and a couple of kids.” He dictated an address in Brooklyn, and I took it down. “Donner’s a problem. He was widowed, no children.”

“Give me his last address.”

It was in Queens, but not close enough to the McVeighs to be any kind of connection. I was already thinking through what could have happened to Donner’s estate. If his house
was sold, the money had to go somewhere. Maybe one of Arnold Gold’s paralegals could research Donner’s will for me.

“Got it?” Jack asked.

“Yes. This is really good stuff. I’ve got a lot to do now.”

“Tell me about this morning. I haven’t been able to find Ray anywhere.”

I told him about the two copper-clad .44-caliber bullets in Ray’s metal box. He hissed an obscenity as he heard it.

“It looked like a thorough search,” I went on. “Ray was pretty nervous when it started, but he seemed cool as they went along, except when they found the bullets.”

“I can believe it. This really stinks.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, after I’ve made a start. I’ll only have the afternoon so I won’t get much done. Maybe I’ll just buy some produce at the Korean grocery.”

“See if they have Uglifruits. My sister says they’re terrific.”

“I’ll give them a try.”

Tuesday is my teaching day. I teach a course in Poetry and the Contemporary American Woman, and by March, I was on my second semester, an all new class. Over the Christmas break I had revised my lesson plan somewhat, as a result of my first-semester experience. For a while it was touch and go whether I’d teach this course or another; but I persuaded the department to let me keep this one. I always feel I do a better job the second time, and it seemed a shame to have to drop something just as I was about to improve it. Happily, the administration agreed to keep the course.

The college is a small one in Westchester, and I teach the whole week’s worth in one morning, leaving me free the rest of the week to do other things. It’s a very comfortable arrangement, if not lucrative. But I don’t need a lot of money. For one thing, I’ve spent half my life living on practically nothing. When I was at St. Stephen’s I often left the convent with no more than the price of two phone calls in my pocket, a situation that required some conscious alteration when I took up residence in Oakwood.

I had a quick lunch in the college cafeteria after my class and then drove to Brooklyn. In my bag was a list of fruits and vegetables that would provide my reason for visiting the Happy Times Grocery.

I got out of my car and took a leisurely walk along Scotty’s beat. It was like visiting a place you’ve read about and never thought you would see. I kept thinking of Scotty in his uniform, stopping to talk to this one and that one. The Laundromat he had spoken of was there, and inside I could see the woman who owned it taking someone’s clothes out of a washer and dumping them into a large plastic basket, heading
for the dryer. I wondered if she knew how much Scotty had admired her.

Farther along, the parking lot where Scotty had been gunned down looked benignly different in daylight. It was simply the space left by a razed building between two other buildings. The crime scene tape was gone now and a couple of cars were parked near the back end. I crossed the street and went back on the other side.

It looked like any shopping area you might find in the middle of Brooklyn. There was a bank, a stationery store, a coffee shop, a store with about a hundred T-shirts in the window. Just around the corner of the street I was walking on was a small used-car lot and a body shop next to it. I passed a Chinese takeout, a used-clothing store, and found myself in front of Happy Times.

Like other Korean groceries, Happy Times had good-looking produce arranged very attractively, oranges and grapefruits in pyramids, several kinds of apples, also in careful rows, lettuces, cabbages, everything clean and carefully set out. I spied Uglifruits when I came in but kept away from them. They would give me the chance to ask a question and find out if anyone spoke English.