First Come, First Kill Read online

  Nope, he didn’t know where Callahan had gone to. Callahan had been just one of a lot of guys who had worked on the case. Walenski himself had just been one of a lot of guys. Nope, he hadn’t got anything out of the Curtiss broad. She’d denied she had been Mitchell’s girl friend, and Forniss knew what he could do with that denial. Nope, he’d never heard that Mitchell was mixed up with the rackets. Come to that, he’d never heard the rackets were in Tonaganda. Nope. Nice, clean, law-abiding town, Tonaganda was. Silvo? Seemed to have heard the name. In the importing business, wasn’t he?

  Forniss thanked Walenski, and went out of the place of overpowering sweetness. He thought it was a good thing Walenski wasn’t on the cops any more. He wondered how big a slice the syndicate owned of Walenski’s place of flowers. The syndicates did cut in on the damnedest things.

  Time never runs out on murder. If T. Lyman Mitchell knew, could prove, that so-and-so had murdered one Pirancello, for good reasons or bad reasons—if Pirancello had been like most of his breed he had probably had it coming—then Mitchell remained a menace to so-and-so until he, too, was dead. As now, of course, he was. But a single shot with a rifle? And Van Brunt was not a happy hunting ground for racketeers. They would stand out a bit there, Forniss thought. But, on the other hand, Silvo did not particularly stand out in the Hillsdale section of Tonaganda—which was upstate country club.

  Heimrich suggested that Forniss might drop by the offices of a firm which made paper boxes and was, rather curiously under those circumstances, called Ironclad Products, Inc. He might enquire as to Wade Thompson, reputedly sales manager, and determine what manner of sales manager he was, and where at the moment he might be, and when expected back. ‘Whatever you can get, Charlie,’ Heimrich said. ‘You know as well as I do.’

  Heimrich replaced the telephone and sighed. Things did not converge, as it was desirable things should. Things dissipated, went off in all directions. He corrected himself. It was not quite that bad. Things went off in three directions only. Not that that was not bad enough.

  Racketeers had hunted down T. Lyman Mitchell because he knew too much about the murder—no, ‘gangland slaying’—of a man named Pirancello. With him hunted down they had killed him with, uncharacteristically, a rifle. Not ‘riddled with machine-gun bullets.’ The first murder had been covered up by the Tonaganda police, which had led two Tonaganda policemen to early, and no doubt profitable, retirement. This thought saddened Captain M. L. Heimrich, who is depressed when policemen turn rascals. He was further saddened by the realization that now they would have to try to find one Pirancello in Mexico, where, if hiding, he would be hiding under another name; where he was not, so far as Heimrich knew, a fugitive from anything. The Mexican police would take, understandably, a dim view.

  Racketeers had nothing to do with it, and Pirancello might well be still alive, whether deservedly or not. A man named Wade Thompson, alias William Peters, had done the hunting down in order that his wife, who was not legally his wife, might profit to the extent of her dower rights. How extensive the profit? Forniss could be trusted to look into that, so far as it could be seen into. Banks, and probably lawyers, would be forthcoming enough now that Mitchell was demonstrably dead.

  Thompson—aided and abetted by his ‘wife’?—had steamed open a letter addressed to Enid Mitchell and read it and sealed it up again and sent it along. Thompson—with the concurrence or even at the suggestion of his ‘wife?—had gone efficiently to work, in the guise of a man who might buy a house and wanted to find out in advance about the availability of estate labor.

  And had waited, hiding in trees, on the far side of a stone fence, rifle at the ready, on the chance that Old Tom might walk up the Heimrich drive, which Tom had never done before? When he had a secluded cabin deep in uncleared land to do his killing in? Heimrich closed his eyes, as if the light hurt them. But it was darkness that hurt them.

  Enid Mitchell, learning—being told in a second letter from her father, now destroyed?—that she was to inherit, had done the hunting down, with a rifle in the trunk of her car. She had persuaded papa to go to Heimrich and turn himself in. But why? She could provide money for his return; she could drive him home in the car. She had waited, in the trees, beyond the stone fence, rifle at the ready, until papa appeared and thereupon done him in.

  And, seeing her stepfather in the vicinity, and not knowing that he was in no safe position to tattle, fled before he saw her? But, if she had escaped being seen, why not merely drive herself back to Tonaganda? As, clearly, she had not.

  There are days, Heimrich thought, when it isn’t worth while being a policeman. He considered. Forniss busy in Tonaganda, or as busy as one may be on a Saturday afternoon in June. Ask, through channels, for the cooperation of the Mexican police. Hope that, somewhere, a law officer would identify a pretty girl—a pretty, frightened girl, whatever the cause of her fright—and pick her up.

  Saturday is a busy day for the State Police as a whole, since on Saturday road lunacy sets in. But at the barracks, business dwindled. Heimrich’s ‘in’ basket, emptied, remained empty. He could not—after he had opened the channel toward Mexico—think of anything of moment to put into his ‘out’ basket.

  It suddenly occurred to Merton Heimrich that, although it was not yet four o’clock, he might as well go home.

  He left word he would be at home. He drove toward home, turned off Van Brunt Avenue into High Road and, half a mile from his own drive, thought of something. He turned up the driveway to the house owned by Oliver Perrin. There was, he noted, no For Sale’ sign showing.

  When he was halfway up the drive, he heard Perrin at his target shooting.

  He parked in front of the house and walked around it, toward the sound of the shooting. Perrin’s range was so laid out that he shot away from the house, which was in the highest degree sensible. Nevertheless, when he was still some distance from the man with the target pistol, Heimrich called, ‘Hi!’ making it loud. His first call coincided with the pistol’s discharge. He called again, and went a bit farther down the path. After a second or two, Perrin came in sight up the path, his pistol dangling. Perrin waved, with the other hand. He said, ‘Hi, neighbor,’ and came on up the path. He shifted the pistol to his left hand and held his right out and said, ‘Jeez, I’m sorry, old man.’

  Which was entirely unexpected. Heimrich said, ‘Sorry?’

  ‘About the pooch,’ Perrin said. ‘Good old Colonel. But Susan said he was all right and—’ He stopped. ‘I hope to God,’ he said, and stopped again.

  ‘I don’t know anything about the dog,’ Heimrich said. ‘If Susan said he was all right—what about the dog?’

  ‘Wandered in this morning,’ Perrin said. ‘Back of the target just as I pulled the trigger. He yelped, but he went off all right—like a shot. But I was afraid maybe I’d winged him. So I called your wife and—’

  ‘She’d know if he was hurt,’ Heimrich said. ‘In fact, she’d probably have called me. Forget it, Mr Perrin. It’s his own fool fault, anyway. He’s always wandered freely, of course.’

  ‘Can’t chain up a dog that size,’ Perrin said. ‘I’ll keep my eyes peeled after this. Never forgive myself if I winged him. Or anything, for that matter. Never have yet but—how’s about a drink?’

  Heimrich thought not. He had stopped by because there was a point he thought Perrin might help him on. ‘In connection with?’ Perrin said, and gestured toward Heimrich’s own house, toward the trees which shielded it from view.

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘I understand you had a man looking at your place the other day. I didn’t know you planned to sell.’

  ‘Not a plan, exactly,’ Perrin said. ‘We’ve talked about it. Get it off our hands and spend a year or two abroad, instead of maybe two-three months. Thought, why not list it and see what happens? Doesn’t commit us to anything. Yes, this Mrs Seeley brought a man around. Thursday, I think it was. Why?’

  ‘Stranger in the neighborhood,’ Heimrich said. ‘Checking up on such. C
an you describe him?’

  Perrin looked thoughtful. Then he nodded his head. The man—whose name was Peters or something like that—was a medium-size man, maybe forty. He had black hair and wore glasses—glasses with thick lenses. Had on a blue city suit; looked like a city man.

  ‘Hipped on the amount of land,’ Perrin said. ‘Scared him, sort of—at least that’s the way it seemed to me. Flower boxes had been about his speed, I imagine. But what the hell, they were mine too, few years ago. Wanted to know how one kept so much grass cut—things like that. Told him, get a power mower and do it himself. Get Jim Presley and a gang, if he didn’t mind twenty smackers a week. I said it looked worse than it was, lying in my teeth. As you know, captain. Didn’t tell him about snow plowing in the winter, or about keeping the trees pruned. No use scaring away a prospect.’

  He grinned at Heimrich, who politely grinned back, his thoughts elsewhere. Perrin’s ‘Mr Peters’ was very like Heimrich’s ‘Mr Thompson.’

  ‘He asked about men to do gardening?’ Heimrich said. ‘Odd jobs around the place?’

  ‘That too,’ Perrin said. ‘The country scares people. Can’t say I blame them.’

  ‘Did you,’ Heimrich said, ‘happen to mention Old Tom?’

  ‘Yes. Told him the way Old Tom went about things and—’ He stopped suddenly. He looked intently at Heimrich; he said, ‘This man Peters?’

  ‘Now Mr Perrin,’ Heimrich said. ‘I don’t know. You told him where Tom lived?’

  ‘As I said,’ Perrin said, ‘I didn’t know at the time. I’d heard he was squatting somewhere on the Waltham place. I told Peters that, for what it was worth.’ He looked again, and again intently, at Heimrich. ‘Sounds to me as if I’m maybe going to lose a prospect,’ Perrin said. ‘Only one I’ve had, too. You think he was looking for the poor old guy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Heimrich said. He considered. ‘After he left here,’ Heimrich told Oliver Perrin, ‘he did have Mrs Seeley take him around to look at the Waltham place, apparently.’

  Perrin said he’d be damned.

  Colonel was fine when Heimrich got home. Colonel was lumbering after the leather loop young Michael threw for him, and bringing it back and insisting on a tug of war. It was warm for all that, Heimrich thought.

  Susan was fine, too. She said nothing had happened, except that Mrs Wentworth, the decorator, had mislaid a client and that she had tried sulphur on the phlox, with no results as yet apparent. She said Mr Perrin had been afraid he had shot Colonel, but that he hadn’t.

  Heimrich knew about that, and told her how. She said, ‘This Mr Thompson’s the one, then?’ and Heimrich said he didn’t know. He made drinks and they sat in the shade on the terrace, and Susan did not press for further news. She said, ‘Poor Mr Perrin, over there alone. You say he offered you a drink. You didn’t suggest he come here for one? I could call him up—’

  ‘Some other time,’ Merton Heimrich said.

  ‘We got a postcard from his wife,’ Susan said. ‘It could be it was her way of suggesting—’

  ‘Some other time,’ Heimrich said. He closed his eyes. It was very pleasant there in the shade. He opened his eyes and looked at Susan, all white shirt and shorts and tanned legs and arms. Very pleasant indeed it was there on the terrace.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Susan inspected her young son and found him fit for Sunday school. In passing, she inspected her husband, who wore walking shorts and a polo shirt and looked very large on the terrace chaise. ‘You’ll be here?’ Susan asked Merton Heimrich and he said he hoped so. For a couple of hours anyway. Unless the office came up with something. ‘It’s high time you were,’ Susan told him, and waited while young Michael—who was certainly getting trained somewhere—opened the car door for her.

  It was her day to take, Marjorie Drew’s to return. The shortest way to St Martin’s (Protestant Episcopal; founded 1791) was not by way of Van Brunt Pass, but the Drews lived on the pass. When Susan drove her little car up the Drew drive, Marjorie and Sandy were on the terrace, and Sandy had just failed inspection. ‘You’ll have to go change it, young man,’ Marjorie told her son and added, as Susan stopped the car, ‘Got his breakfast on his shirt. Won’t take him a minute.’ Sandy, christened Sanford, said, ‘Gee, it doesn’t show,’ and was looked at. He went.

  ‘Mine doesn’t,’ Marjorie Drew said, ‘really run very clean, somehow. Good morning, Michael.’

  Michael said, ‘Good morning, ma’am.’ He was, Susan thought, certainly going through a phase. It must, she thought, be something he’d read.

  ‘Hear you’re going to lose a neighbor,’ Marjorie said, leaving the terrace, coming to stand by the little car. ‘The Perrins have put it on the market, May-Belle said.’

  Susan pointed out that there was many a slip, and was asked if she had heard what happened to the Barclays. Susan nodded to that. The Barclays had been sitting at dinner on an evening in late May and a couple had driven up in a Rolls and said they would like to buy the Barclay house and would seventy-five thousand be all right? Flabbergasted, the Barclays had understandably been.

  ‘So you can’t tell,’ Marjorie Drew said. ‘What’s keeping that boy? Sandy! I’ll hate to see the Perrins go, sort of. Bridge players are hard to come by. Of course, there’s that incessant four-no of Ollie’s. It’s like a new toy to a child.’

  Susan smiled, she hoped pleasantly. She had known, somewhat vaguely, that the Drews and the Perrins frequently played bridge together. She knew, also somewhat vaguely, that four no trump requires the showing of aces. It is difficult for the wife of a policeman to plan a quiet evening of bridge with neighbors. Such evenings seem to bring on murders. Also, Merton was much too good at it. Susan Heimrich does not like to have allowances made, even most politely.

  ‘I got a postcard from Marian yesterday,’ Susan said, more or less to say something. (Sandy must be having trouble finding a clean shirt.)

  ‘So did I,’ Marjorie Drew said. ‘A communicative chick, all at once. I mean, let’s face it. She’s a bit older than Ollie and—well, not the effusive type, is she? Mine was the Tower. Was yours?’

  ‘Trafalgar Square,’ Susan said. ‘She gets around, doesn’t she?’

  Sandy appeared. He was inspected. Michael, from inside, opened the door for him. I’ll have to check up on what he’s reading, Susan thought, and heard Marjorie saying something, and experienced momentary guilt and said she was sorry.

  ‘Nothing,’ Marjorie said. ‘I’ll pick them up after. Only that, after three years or so, you’d think she’d know how I spell my name. Not “g-e-r-y.” And not that it matters.’

  Heimrich said, ‘Put him through, will you?’ and then, ‘Morning, Charlie. You’re up early.’

  ‘I was up late,’ Charles Forniss said, from Tonaganda. ‘Scraping barrels, you might call it. Including the one they had Mitchell over. Nothing much there. If our friend Pirancello was bumped, it was a nice, quiet job. Could be the old cement treatment’s coming in again. Could be he’s really in Mexico, and Miss Curtiss added things wrong.’

  ‘We’re asking Mexico,’ Heimrich said. ‘Wade Thompson?’

  Thompson was, as he had said, sales manager of Ironclad Products, Inc. He was highly thought of, at any rate for the ears of the police. He had been with the firm a little over ten years; had been sales manager for three. At the moment of asking, he was in New York, on business. New York is a fine market for paper boxes. He was expected back on Monday.

  Ironclad Products did not seem to be a very large concern. It had begun, many years before, with shoe boxes and moderately expanded. At a guess, Thompson was paid around fifteen thousand a year. It was only a guess.

  ‘Been picking up guesses,’ Forniss said. ‘That’s what it comes to. You know how it is on Saturdays, M. L.’

  Heimrich knew how it was on Saturdays.

  All Forniss had on the estate left by T. Lyman Mitchell was a fabric of guesses, added to and subtracted from. Forniss’s final guess was somewhere around half a million. ‘Wh
ich is a lot for a judge.’ Mitchell’s lawyer—who would, on Monday, apply for a court order to open safe-deposit boxes, of which there seemed to be several—said he hadn’t the faintest notion. Then he said he suspected the old boy was pretty well heeled. Then he said that circumstances had been very difficult for the former Mrs Mitchell—

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Heimrich said. ‘Not former. Probably, she still is.’

  He told Forniss about the divorce of which there was no record; the remarriage of which Nevada had never heard.

  ‘Huh,’ Forniss said. ‘Dower rights after all, looks like. Well—difficult for her, whatever her name is now, because none of their property was jointly owned. Not even the house. So it’s just been sitting there. Everything’s just been sitting.’

  He would be back on it tomorrow. Mitchell’s lawyer had an inventory of sorts—of bank accounts, of safe-deposit boxes. But not of the contents of either.

  ‘All I can tell you until I go around asking,’ Forniss said, ‘is that it sort of feels like around half a million. Maybe a bit more.’

  Enid Mitchell had not returned to her apartment. Forniss had telephoned several times and gone twice, and rung the bell long enough both times. Then he had decided he’d better go in and have a look around.

  Heimrich did not ask what means he had used to enter Enid Mitchell’s apartment. It is sometimes wise to let sleeping illegalities lie. It was conceivable Forniss had found the door unlocked.

  The apartment had been empty, and closed up—windows closed, air still and dead. There was no sign that anybody had been in the place for several days. There was an almost full bottle of milk in the refrigerator, and it had soured. ‘Good icebox, too,’ Forniss said. Enid had a little over four hundred dollars in a checking account and a little under two thousand in a savings account. She kept an orderly desk; it did not appear she kept letters. There was no letter from her father in her desk. There was a framed photograph of her mother, clearly taken recently. There was a much older one of her father. ‘Changed one hell of a lot,’ Forniss noted.