First Come, First Kill Read online

  ‘Where we used to live,’ she said. ‘Mother rented the house after—’ She paused. ‘After she decided father wasn’t coming back,’ she said. ‘Before she—’ Again she broke off. ‘I’ve my own place now,’ she said. ‘This went to where mother’s living now and she—’

  Enid Mitchell lifted her shoulders slightly.

  ‘I don’t know why I go on about that,’ she said, impatient with herself.

  Heimrich opened the letter. It was written in pencil on lined paper which might have come from a child’s tablet. It was brief:

  ‘Dear Enid: I’m not dead. I may even come back some time, now that things are different. So tell them not to bother the courts.’

  It was signed, without subscription, ‘T. Lyman Mitchell.’

  Heimrich looked up from the letter to the girl.

  ‘That’s all I know,’ she said. ‘It’s father’s signature. His handwriting, I think. It’s a strange letter, isn’t it?’

  It was.

  ‘He’s a strange man,’ she said. ‘When I was—oh, quite a little girl—he was different. I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Or,’ Heimrich said, ‘why he went away?’

  She shook her head. She did not, Heimrich thought, shake her head decisively. She was, he thought, somewhat tentative.

  ‘The first address,’ Heimrich said. ‘That’s where you—you and your mother and father—used to live? And the second?’

  ‘Where mother lives now,’ she said. She looked at him for several seconds. ‘Mother got a divorce,’ she said. ‘In another state. On grounds of desertion.’ She paused once more. ‘She’s married again,’ she said. ‘A man named Thompson. Wade Thompson.’

  ‘Did your mother get a letter too?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She—I think she’d have told me.’

  ‘You told her about this?’

  The answer was some seconds in coming. A negatively shaken head preceded the words.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I—Mr Thompson and I don’t—get along particularly well. I—Captain Heimrich, can you help me find my father? On your door it says—“Criminal Investigation.” Isn’t that it? I thought it would be—something different. “Missing Persons”—something like that.’

  She half knew already, Heimrich thought.

  ‘Your father is dead, Miss Mitchell,’ he said. There is no good way; the simplest way is the quickest way.

  She closed her eyes. The slender tanned hands clenched into fists. There is no good way to go on with it. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you,’ he said. ‘You’ve come a long way to hear.’

  Her improbable eyes opened. They were dry; they were for an instant fixed. Then focus came back into them, and the clenched hands relaxed.

  ‘I was afraid,’ she said. ‘When I saw what was on the door, I was afraid. Was he—was he killed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘He was shot, Miss Mitchell. This morning.’

  She looked at him and waited.

  ‘Apparently,’ Heimrich said, ‘he was on his way to see me. Not here. Where I live. Perhaps to—’ It was his turn to hesitate momentarily. The words ‘turn himself in,’ offered themselves. But it would not have been that. ‘To tell us who he was,’ Heimrich said. ‘Perhaps to have us help him get home.’

  ‘Help him?’

  ‘He had no money, apparently,’ Heimrich said. ‘He—he had changed a great deal, Miss Mitchell. Lived rather strangely.’

  ‘How—’ she began, but then said, ‘that doesn’t matter, does it? You say he went to your house? Not here or—or to a police station?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘As if he knew you,’ she said. ‘Did you know him, captain?’

  ‘No,’ Heimrich said. ‘I’ve no idea why he would come to me if he had decided to go back. Wanted help.’

  Again she was silent, seemed to be making up her mind. This time the silence lasted for more than a minute, which can be a long time of silence.

  ‘Captain Heimrich,’ she said, and spoke very slowly, in her soft voice, as if she were counting the words she used. ‘I think his letter had been opened before it came to me. Opened and sealed up again. Mother—mother and Wade Thompson—were going to apply to the courts to have father presumed dead. She does what—what he wants her to do. It’s—’

  Her voice faltered. Suddenly, she seemed vulnerable, as she had not before.

  ‘Mr Thompson’s younger than mother,’ Enid Mitchell said. ‘Years younger. While—while father was merely missing, the estate was tied up, of course. There’s a good deal of money, I think. Mother couldn’t touch it. And—Mr Thompson couldn’t touch it. Now—’

  She did not finish what did not need finishing.

  ‘Do you know who killed him?’ she said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Heimrich said. ‘He was shot once. There was nobody else in sight.’

  ‘A—a bullet out of nowhere,’ she said.

  ‘Now Miss Mitchell,’ Heimrich said. ‘Not that, of course. A bullet out of a rifle.’

  Not, he thought, that her phrasing was bad phrasing. The hardness of facts is best; the obvious is best, for the most part. The obvious can be tonic. He thought that, although it did not much show, the girl might need the tonic of the obvious.

  ‘There is a formality,’ Heimrich said, and the girl said, ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘You’ll find him very changed,’ Heimrich said. ‘He—he looks much older than he was.’

  But there was really no way to prepare her. At the mortuary she looked at the old man, and trembled and said, ‘I suppose so. I—no. No.!’ The nurse who had gone with them thought the girl swayed, and reached toward her, but Enid Mitchell shook her head, almost angrily, and stood steadily and looked once more and then said, ‘Yes. This is my father’s body,’ and then turned and walked, still quite steadily, out of the place.

  In the car, she did not, for some time, say anything. Heimrich drove back toward the barracks. She looked through the windshield, and he did not think she saw anything. They were on the long driveway up to the barracks from the Bronx River Parkway Extension when she finally spoke, and then it was only to ask if he could tell her some place to stay.

  ‘I didn’t have any plans,’ she said. ‘I—I just drove down and found out where to go—how to get here. And came here. My bag’s in the car.’

  ‘It’s a longish drive,’ Heimrich said. ‘This afternoon?’

  She said yes. She said, ‘I’m tired, captain. A motel? Something like that?’

  Heimrich said there were several motels. There was also a place—a place he liked himself—called the Old Stone Inn. ‘Wherever you say,’ the girl said. ‘If it isn’t too far.’

  It was not far. She followed Heimrich’s car in a not very new Chevrolet to Van Brunt Center and the inn.

  An interesting coincidence, Heimrich thought, leaving the pretty girl at the inn. A shocking one for the girl, of course. She must have been still in Tonaganda when her father died; might have been packing her bag to go in search of him. If—

  Heimrich switched on his radio and, over considerable static, talked to the barracks. He made certain arrangements.

  Barracks reported some dope on T. Lyman Mitchell, in his guise of Old Tom, handyman at large. Nothing too hot; just dope. Like where—

  Static rattled Heimrich’s car. ‘I’m going home,’ Heimrich said. ‘I’ll call in for it.’

  The speaker said, ‘Ggrah,’ and a number of other things, which presumably represented acquiescence.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The day had certainly simmered down, Susan Heimrich thought, as she neared the end of it. As, she added to herself, any day may which begins with a visit paid by murder. Anti-climax was inevitable, but it had seemed a little extreme. Which was, of course, entirely subjective, Susan told herself, and put a casserole into a slow oven.

  Zinnias weeded, and fresh gravel covering blood. The men who put the gravel there had been entirely matter-of-fact about it. When young Mi
chael had come home, helped up the drive by Colonel, he had seen nothing. (Colonel had, however, stopped to sniff the drive and had gone rigid for a moment. ‘Crazy dog,’ Michael said, fondly, in his quiet voice.) But, since he would learn anyway; since he was part of the family and there were no secrets in the family, Susan had told him that there had been an accident that morning and a man badly hurt. Very badly hurt. Killed.

  ‘That’s too bad,’ Michael said. ‘Who was he, mother?’

  She told him what she then knew.

  ‘That’s too bad,’ Michael said. ‘He was a nice old man. He went around helping people. He knew all sorts of places.’

  This was not especially clear.

  ‘Oh,’ Michael said, ‘places in the woods and things.’

  This was not especially reassuring. Old Tom himself could, certainly, now do no harm to any boy, and probably had never meant harm to any boy, but as a general policy of precaution—Susan shrugged, inwardly. This was not the time to go into that. Perhaps there was no need at any time to go into that. She would talk to Merton first.

  ‘He showed you these places?’ she said and Michael looked at her through gray eyes so like her own—looked at her thoughtfully, gravely.

  ‘Me and Bud once,’ he said. ‘Places the deer go. It was all right, mother. He was a nice man.’

  Every now and then, in contact with her son, Susan felt that it was she who lacked experience, who was being reassured. She said, ‘I’m sure he was.’

  ‘He worked for Bud’s folks sometimes,’ Michael said. ‘And Skinny Barclay’s, too. He lived off by himself, somewhere. A hermit, I guess. Where Colonel acted funny. That was where it was?’

  He was making it easy for her. She said, ‘Yes, Michael. That was where it was.’

  He did not press it further, she suspected out of consideration for her immaturity. On the other hand, he had no real reason to know that shot men bleed—how much they bleed. (She had not herself, until that morning.) On television, men die bloodlessly, and at once. It is a formality on television—a ‘Bang. You’re dead’ formality.

  ‘Bud’s maybe coming over,’ Michael said, going on to matters more immediate. ‘Can we have Cokes?’

  They could, of course, have Cokes.

  ‘May I have one now?’

  He might. He went into the house and got a Coke, and Colonel went with him to help. They came out into the sun again and Colonel brought his leather loop, and Michael threw it, and Colonel gallumped happily and barked with pleasure, and refused to let the boy have the loop back without a tussle for it. And Bud came on his bike and the boys played catch, and Colonel watched them and appeared to be, for him, fairly happy.

  The afternoon simmered away. There was a brief thunderstorm, and Susan—with the boys and Colonel helping—closed windows. With all the windows closed, the sun came out. It was not their thunderstorm, not even a drop of it. They opened the windows again.

  Susan finished the zinnias and started on the glads. Only about two-thirds of the glads were up, which might mean that a third of the bulbs had gone bad. It might also mean that a third of the bulbs were biding their time, waiting on the impulse, as glad bulbs do. The peony buds were swelling. Over any night, now, a small, gnarled bud—with ants crawling on it—might be an enormous and fragrant flower. Susan cut off the stark prongs of poppies gone by.

  She looked at the casserole in the oven, and then she filled the ice container and took it to the shady terrace. She showered and changed and waited, and watched the boys playing. A day like any other day—any day she played hooky from her job. If he wasn’t going to be able to make it, he would have called by now. The simmering casserole would wait. Policemen are not nine-to-five men.

  She was stretched on a chaise in white shorts and white shirt—her own, this time; a shirt that fitted, this time. Everything simmered. A man’s voice, coming from some distance, said, ‘Hi! Anybody home?’

  She twisted to sit on the chaise and look. Oliver Perrin was standing on top of the stone fence. She said, ‘Hi.’

  ‘Your phone working?’ Oliver Perrin said, and jumped down from the fence and walked toward her.

  ‘Why,’ Susan said. ‘Yes. Far’s I know, anyway.’

  ‘Mine isn’t,’ Perrin said, and walked up onto the terrace. ‘The storm, I guess. Mind if I use yours? Report it?’

  He was told to help himself. He went into the house and was gone a minute or two and came out nodding his head. ‘Yours is all right,’ he said. ‘Find out anything about the poor old guy, you know?’ He gestured toward the drive.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Damn funny thing,’ Perrin said. ‘He hadn’t called up, or anything? Just walked in and got shot?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Just walked in and got shot.’

  ‘Damn funny thing,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean funny, of course.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not funny.’

  He was an amiable man; there was something of the friendly puppy in the man.

  ‘Bad thing for you to go through,’ he said. ‘Helluva thing to have happen.’

  He wanted to linger, she thought. The house beyond the stone fence, beyond the wooded area, probably was a lonely house, with Marian Perrin in London. A gregarious man, needing only encouragement. But at any moment now, the big, solid man—the man she had once thought stolid too, and for a long time thought very slow indeed—would be coming home. It was better that, when he first came home, they should be alone—they and boy and dog. (Well, then, two boys. But the spare boy did not matter.)

  ‘It was,’ Susan said. She ought to ask him to make himself a drink. She ought to be a neighbor.

  ‘Wonder if they’ll ever solve it,’ Oliver Perrin said. ‘Not much to go on, I wouldn’t think. Things like that are the hardest, from what I read. And I’m an addict.’

  ‘Of mysteries?’ she said. She could not merely say nothing. If she threw Colonel’s leather loop, would Oliver Perrin bound after it?

  ‘Not fiction,’ he said. ‘What they call “true crime.” Trials and that sort of thing. Perverted taste, Marian says it is. Some of them they never do solve.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘No reflection on the captain,’ Oliver Perrin said. ‘But the poor old guy was sort of anonymous, wasn’t he? Not anybody you can—put a finger on.’

  ‘Apparently,’ Susan said.

  ‘Not even time enough to say who he was, the poor soul,’ Perrin said, and shook his handsome head. ‘Only, maybe he wasn’t anybody. Know what I mean?’

  If anything, Susan thought. ‘Yes,’ Susan said. This poor man is lonesome, Susan thought. I’m unresponsive and selfish. Merton ought to come any time. He’s good about calling, or having someone call.

  ‘Well,’ Oliver Perrin said, ‘I’d better be getting along. Be there when they show up.’

  Now is the time for cordiality, Susan thought. The moment for good neighborliness has arrived.

  ‘They’re sometimes pretty quick,’ Susan said. ‘If there’s a repair truck somewhere near—’

  ‘Dispatch by radio,’ Perrin told her. ‘Lot more efficient than the electric people. Well.’

  He got going. He went across the lawn to the fence and stepped up on the fence, and waved farewell. Susan waved back. He disappeared. I must be careful, Susan thought. I’m beginning to wrap our little world around me. He’s lonely with his wife away; I should have offered him a drink. Only—

  Colonel suddenly sat up, sat high. He raised his ears and an expression came into his mournful eyes which, Susan Heimrich supposed, indicated the birth of thought. He got to enormous feet and put his head slightly on one side. Then he ambled across the terrace to the drive, and halfway down the drive. There he sat in the middle of it. He had sat there some seconds before Susan herself heard the car coming, and to her ears it was only a car on High Road, coming their way. But Colonel knew best. Susan stood up and heard the car turn into the drive. It slowed for Colonel, circled in the turnaround and backed,
and faced out again. So—he might have to go away; thought he might have to go away.

  He got out of the car and came toward her, bare-headed and very large. It’s silly to feel the way I do, Susan thought. I’m coming apart at the seams …

  She repeated the name when he told her; repeated it uncertainly. She said, ‘T. Lyman—’ and then, ‘oh!’

  Heimrich, jacket discarded, with necktie in its pocket, sat facing her, regarding her with approval. He held a tall glass, half empty. Bud had said that he was sorry, but he had to go now, and had gone. The silence of the evening was broken by the thudding of Colonel’s feet—hooves, surely!—as he pursued his leather loop. All was as it should be, and the casserole still (it was to be supposed) simmered.

  ‘The judge,’ she said. ‘From upstate somewhere. The mysterious disappearance of.’ She paused. ‘A tramp almost,’ she said. ‘“Maybe he wasn’t anybody,’” Ollie Perrin said. ‘Why did he come here?’

  Heimrich told her what he guessed—that he was coming, although why there did not appear, to identify himself, probably to ask for help.

  ‘And,’ she said, ‘somebody didn’t want him to. Merton—’

  She leaned a little forward and put her glass down on a table.

  ‘He was trying to tell me who he was,’ she said. ‘What I thought was “well”—something like “well”—was the last part of his name. His lips—they wouldn’t make the “m” sound. They were—’

  She stopped, remembering the bloody lips.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Heimrich said, and thought what he said was meaningless. She would think about it, off and on, for—for how long? He had been a very young cop, a good many years ago, and had gone up a dingy stairway in a tenement and had been met by blood trickling down the stairs—blood from the bodies of a young man and a girl who had knifed each other to death. He still, sometimes, saw the blood trickling down the stairs.

  ‘Mitch-ell’, Susan said, her voice quite steady. ‘I’m all right, dear. That was it, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Probably,’ Heimrich said.

  ‘He wanted to go home,’ she said. ‘He—he had no money?’