The Copper Frame (4 page)

During Christmas week Emily was still working the three-to-eleven trick at the hospital, her change-over to the swing trick not coming until Monday, December 29. On Christmas Eve Saxon picked her up when she got off at eleven o'clock, and they had their tree together at her apartment at midnight.

Since Julie Fox had received a few days off to spend Christmas with her parents in Rochester, they were all alone. Saxon brought up the question of their marriage.

“We ought to wait at least until six weeks after the funeral,” Emily said. “That's considered proper.”

“Who makes these rules?” Saxon inquired. “Old dried-up spinsters who grab at any excuse to delay weddings?”

Emily smiled at him. “Six weeks isn't forever, Ted. How about the first week in February?”

“The original date we picked was the first day of winter,” he said. “We ought to pick another special day. It makes anniversaries easier to remember. Let's make it February second.”

“Groundhog Day?” she said. “We will not!”

They finally settled on Saturday, February 7.

On Tuesday, December 30, Saxon entered police headquarters at his usual hour of 9
A.M
. to find Vic Burns working the desk. The daytime shift consisted of three beat cops and a single one-man car, and Bums was supposed to be working the car.

“What are you doing here?” Saxon asked. “Where's Lennox?”

“He's sick,” Burns said a little uneasily. “I pulled one of the beat cops and stuck him in the car so I could take over the desk.”

“Sick with what?”

“I don't know. Just sick.”

“Did he call in?”

Burns looked embarrassed. “I guess Hanson phoned his house when Sam didn't show up to relieve him. His wife said he was sick.”

“He's drunk again, huh?”

Burns made a helpless gesture. “Aw, give him a break, Chief. Your dad's death shook him up pretty bad.”

“It shook up the whole force,” Saxon said grimly. “But nobody else stays out drunk. I'll be back in thirty minutes.”

Going back out to his car, he drove southeast to the small frame house where Sam Lennox lived. Lennox had two sons and a daughter, but they were grown and married, and he and his wife now lived in the house alone.

Nora Lennox was a thin, sad-faced woman of about her husband's age. When she opened the door and saw Saxon, she began to cry. It was a silent, hopeless sort of crying.

“Cut it out, Nora,” Saxon said gruffly. “I'm not here to eat anybody. May I come in?”

Silently she stepped aside to let him enter. Carefully wiping his feet, he moved into a small entry hall, took off his galoshes, and laid his hat on a little table against the wall.

“Where is he?”

“In the kitchen,” she said in a barely audible voice.

Saxon moved on into a tiny front room, through it into a central hall, and into the kitchen. Sam Lennox sat at the table in his police uniform, except for the jacket, an empty quart bottle and another just opened before him. He badly needed a shave. He made an attempt to rise when he saw Saxon but couldn't quite make it and sank back into his chair again. He was as drunk as Saxon had ever seen anyone.

“'Lo, Chief,” he muttered.

There was no point in attempting to talk to Lennox. Saxon turned to face Nora, who had paused in the doorway. Tears were no longer running down her face, but her expression was one of hopelessness.

“How'd he manage this so early in the day?”

Nora Lennox worked her hands together. “He got up at four in the morning. Said he couldn't sleep. He hasn't been sleeping at all well since your father died. I thought he was just getting a glass of warm milk, like he does sometimes, so I went back to sleep. I didn't know he had any whisky. I know there wasn't any in the house, so it must have been hidden in the garage. When the alarm went off at seven, he wasn't in bed. I came out and found him like this. He'd dressed himself, as you can see, but I couldn't let him go to work. It's grief over your father, Ted. You've got to consider that.”

“How do you mean, consider it?”

“It's been months since it happened. I know your father warned him if it happened once more he'd have to board him off the force. But please give him one more chance. If he loses a third of his pension, what would we do? We're going to be barely able to live on a full pension.”

“I'm not going to have him boarded,” Saxon said gruffly. “At least not this time. But he's a police officer with definite duties, and it louses up the whole schedule when he pulls things like this. I may as well tell you bluntly that I won't put up with it again.”

“It won't happen again,” she said eagerly. “I promise. Next time I'll get up with him.”

Lennox said in a maudlin voice, “Didn't do no good after all. Might's well let Vic tell the chief last time.”

Saxon glanced over his shoulder. “You might as well have let Vic tell the chief what, Sam?”

“When he caught me drunk. What'sa difference ole Andy boards me or you? Mighta known I'd get caught again.”

Apparently Vic Burns had caught Lennox drunk at some time in the past and had covered for him by not reporting it to the chief, Saxon thought. Suddenly he remembered an incident a few weeks back when both he and his father had been in city court all morning. When they came downstairs at noon, Lennox was gone and Vic Burns, working the desk, had said he'd had him driven home because he was ill. Lennox, free from Andy Saxon's watchful eye all morning, had probably sneaked out several times to hoist a few in taverns. And Burns, realizing he was drunk on duty, had sent him home.

Saxon could hardly bring himself to blame Vic Burns for the cover-up. Everyone knew that Lennox had been warned that he was through if he ever again drank on duty. Saxon realized that he was now doing exactly what Burns had done on that occasion: letting the old alcoholic get away with it again.

Wearily he said, “See if you can get him sober by tomorrow morning, Nora. I'll expect him to be on duty at eight
A.M
.”

chapter 5

On New Year's Eve, Saxon took Emily out for a single cocktail at 4
P.M
., then dropped her at home and reported for desk duty at five.

It had long been the custom in Iroquois for the police to be tolerant of drunks on New Year's Eve. Local drunken drivers were allowed to park their cars and were driven home by police, provided no accident or flagrant violation of the law had occurred. Out-of-town speedsters were usually merely warned and sent on or, if too drunk to drive, were escorted to jail to sleep it off, then were released without charge. Consequently, New Year's Eve was usually a quiet night at police headquarters.

Until nine o'clock there wasn't a single phone call, and the only radio message was from one of the squad cars reporting that it would be out of service for fifteen minutes for a coffee break.

At 9
P.M
. Patrolmen George Chaney and Mark Ross came into headquarters hustling between them a lean, knobby-jointed man in his mid-forties. The man had a narrow, ascetic face, a humorless, thin-lipped mouth, and wore steel-rimmed glasses that began to cloud over the moment he came indoors. His overcoat and hat were obviously expensive.

Getting up from his chair, Ted Saxon approached the counter and gave Chaney an inquiring look.

“Forty-five miles an hour on downtown Main Street,” Chaney said laconically. He tossed a driver's license and a car-registration form on the counter.

According to the operator's license, the man's name was Edward Coombs and he lived on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo. The birth date made him forty-six.

Saxon raised his eyes from the driver's license to give Chaney a puzzled look. Coombs showed no indication of being under the influence of alcohol, and it wasn't customary to pull in sober speeders on New Year's Eve.

“We stopped him twice,” Chaney explained. “About an hour ago he was speeding south on Main. We warned him and let him go. We just stopped him again going north, and he decided to give us a hard time. He wanted to know why we hick cops weren't off catching criminals instead of bugging law-abiding citizens.”

Saxon looked at the motorist. “Well, Mr. Coombs?”

Coombs unbuttoned his overcoat, probed in his hip pocket, and drew out a handkerchief. Removing his glasses, he briskly massaged the lenses and put them back on. Immediately they started to cloud again, though not as badly.

“It's a clear, moonlit night out, Sergeant,” he started to say.

“Not sergeant,” Mark Ross interrupted. “You're speaking to the chief of police.”

“Oh?” Coombs said with a supercilious show of interest, which Saxon and both police officers found irritating. “You always work this late, Chief?”

“Just get on with your alibi,” Saxon said.

“All right,” Coombs said agreeably. “As I started to say, it's a clear, moonlit night out, and besides, the main street of your one-horse town is brightly lighted. Apparently it hasn't snowed here recently, because the road was clear and dry. Furthermore, there wasn't another car on the street. I feel the speed at which I was traveling was entirely safe under the circumstances.”

The man's tone was deliberately provocative, as was his reference to Iroquois as a one-horse town. Nevertheless, because it was New Year's Eve and there was a tradition of tolerance for New Year's Eve celebrants to uphold, Saxon attempted to be patient.

“The arresting officer says you were traveling at forty-five.”

“Possibly,” the man admitted. “I wasn't watching the speedometer.”

“The speed limit on downtown Main happens to be twenty-five.”

“Yeah? You run a speed trap, huh? How much cut do you get from every fine, Chief?”

After gazing at him coldly for a moment, Saxon opened the traffic charge book and entered as much of the pertinent data as was available from the driver's license and registration form.

Then he said, “Occupation?”

“Accountant,” Coombs said.

“Place of employment?”

“The Upstate Harness Racing Association, Incorporated.”

“Oh,” Saxon said. “The outfit that wants to build a race track here.”

“Yeah. Then it won't be a one-horse town any more. You'll have a stableful.”

Saxon silently finished filling out the charge, tore off the original and pushed it, the driver's license, and car-registration form across the counter to Coombs.

“You will appear in City Court on the second floor of this building on Monday, January fifth, at ten
A.M
., Mr. Coombs. Bond is twenty-five dollars.”

“I'm not carrying that much money,” Coombs said.

Saxon indicated the phone sitting on the counter. “You may use that to call your family in Buffalo. You'll have to reverse the charges.”

“I don't have a family. I'm a bachelor.”

“Then I suggest you use it to call either a lawyer or a bondsman.”

“I don't believe I'll bother,” Coombs said with arrogant cheeriness. “Now what are you going to do?”

Saxon finally lost patience. “Throw you in the can, mister. Empty your pockets here on the counter.”

“Sure,” Coombs said with a shrug. He started to draw items from his pockets and lay them in a neat pile.

Aside from a wallet, he was carrying a key ring, penknife, handkerchief, glasses case, package of cigarettes, lighter, and forty cents in change.

“Take the money out of your wallet,” Saxon ordered.

Coombs drew out two one-dollar bills.

Saxon wrote out a receipt listing two dollars and forty cents in cash, one key ring containing six keys, one penknife and one cigarette lighter, and one wallet containing personal papers. Tearing off the top copy, he handed it to Coombs, sealed the enumerated items in a manila envelope, and stapled the second copy to the envelope.

“You may keep the handkerchief, glasses case, and cigarettes,” he said.

“How about my lighter?”

Ordinarily a mere traffic violator would have been allowed to keep all the items, but the man's attitude had irritated Saxon to the point where he was according him the treatment usual for felony prisoners.

“You can call me when you want a light,” Saxon said. “Give your topcoat, scarf, and hat to one of the officers.”

Obediently the man removed the items and handed them to Mark Ross, who carried them into the squad room to put them in one of the lockers.

“Shake him down,” Saxon said to Chaney.

Chaney ran his hands down the man's sides from beneath his armpits to his ankles, patted his hips, and rose from his stooped position. “He's clean, Chief.”

“Take off your belt,” Saxon said to Coombs.

The man raised his eyebrows. “Think I might hang myself?”

“If I thought it probable, I'd let you keep it,” Saxon said dourly. “Get it off.”

Slipping it off, Coombs laid the belt on the counter. Coiling it, Saxon laid it on top of the manila envelope on the shelf beneath the counter.

Saxon lifted the cell key ring from its hook beneath the counter and tossed it to Chaney. “Stick him in cell number one.”

When the prisoner was lodged in the first of the three cells, Chaney and Ross prepared to go back out on cruise. At the door Chaney looked back and said, “Think he's nuts, Chief?”

“He certainly has a defective personality,” Saxon said. “He did everything possible to get himself jailed.”

“Guess we obliged him,” Chaney said with a grin.

He and Ross went out.

It was quiet again for another hour. Twice Coombs called for cigarette lights and Saxon went back to the cell block to hold lighted matches between the bars. Otherwise, nothing at all happened.

At 10
P.M
. the street door opened and a slimly built woman of about thirty preceded a man inside. The woman wore a full-length mink coat and a white headscarf that completely hid her hair but exposed a round, full-lipped, rather attractive face. She was wearing handcuffs.