First Come, First Kill Read online

  ‘The poor kid,’ Wade Thompson said. ‘Reason to think he was around here somewhere?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘You didn’t, Mr Thompson? Your wife didn’t?’

  Thompson shook his head slowly. He said he didn’t get it.

  ‘She got a letter,’ Heimrich told him. ‘From her father. Written several days ago, apparently. There was a suggestion in it that he might be planning to go back to Tonaganda. You knew nothing of this, Mr Thompson? Your wife didn’t?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Thompson said. ‘If Ruth had heard anything she’d have told me. Funny Enid would keep a thing like that to herself. Sure the letter was from poor old Lyman?’

  ‘It was signed by him,’ Heimrich said. ‘Signed with his name, that is. In it he said to tell them not to bother the courts. Have you any idea what he meant by that?’

  ‘How would I—’ Wade Thompson said, and did not finish, but looked at Heimrich for some seconds. ‘What he could have meant,’ he said. ‘Next spring, he would have been missing seven years. That could have been in his mind.’

  ‘Action to have him presumed dead,’ Heimrich said. ‘Your wife would be the logical one to bring it. Had she planned to?’

  Wade Thompson appeared to consider that. He said he couldn’t see what bearing that would have now. Heimrich merely waited.

  ‘We’d thought about it,’ he said. ‘Time things were straightened out, we both thought. There’s a bit of property tied up, the way things are. That is, the way they were. But it would have been months away—almost a year. We—it was up to Ruth, of course—hadn’t decided anything definitely.’

  Somebody had decided something definitely, Heimrich thought. Very definitely. Presumed death had been forestalled. The bit of property was no longer tied up, as it would still have been if T. Lyman Mitchell had lived to go back home. Which was interesting. Mitchell’s letter showed evidence of having been opened and resealed. Which was interesting.

  ‘This property,’ Heimrich said. ‘Much of it?’

  ‘A bit,’ Wade Thompson said, and Heimrich thought a certain wariness appeared in Thompson’s eyes. ‘All right, quite a bit.’

  ‘Goes to the widow?’ Heimrich said. ‘Mrs Thompson now?’

  ‘That’s what the will says. Are you getting at something, captain?’

  ‘Now Mr Thompson,’ Heimrich said. ‘Just getting the background, as a matter of routine. You’ve seen the will, I take it. No change in provisions if Mrs Mitchell remarried? As, of course, she has.’

  ‘No,’ Thompson said. ‘We went—’ He stopped. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Went into that,’ he had been about to say, Heimrich thought.—Understandable foresightedness. But the circumstances had changed. If Mitchell had left his estate to ‘my wife, Ruth,’ it would probably make a considerable difference if, at the actual time of his death,, Ruth was no longer his wife. A point for lawyers. Would have been a point for lawyers, Heimrich thought, in self-correction, and decided he might as well break the news.

  ‘Apparently,’ Heimrich said, ‘there’s a new will. A much more recent will. Mitchell sent—’

  He broke it to Thompson, and watched Thompson with care.

  If Wade Thompson was shocked, shockingly disappointed, it did not show in his face. Heimrich was himself mildly disappointed, but not really surprised. One can always hope for self-revelation—for the startled gasp, the irrepressible ejaculation. One is seldom so rewarded.

  ‘Holograph,’ Thompson said. ‘They’re legal, aren’t they?’

  So Heimrich understood.

  ‘Nice for Enid,’ Thompson said, as if he did think it was nice for Enid. ‘She know about it?’

  The question could not have been more innocent. It was a question to which Captain Heimrich wished he knew the answer. He would ask Miss Enid Mitchell, when he found her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘From us, no. Her father may have told her about it. In another letter. You didn’t know? And your wife didn’t?’

  ‘No. How could we?’

  Which was another question for which Heimrich had no answer. If there had been another letter, and it, also, steamed open—there was little use in guessing at the moment.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Heimrich said. ‘About the formalities you mentioned. They may come up. But there’s nothing tonight. You’ll be?’

  Thompson would be at the Statler in New York for a day or so. Probably, his wife would come down and join him. He hoped she would.

  ‘By the way,’ Heimrich said, as Thompson, accepting dismissal, stood up, ‘when did you and the former Mrs Mitchell marry?’

  ‘I don’t—’ Thompson said, and let a shrug complete the sentence. ‘Three years ago this month. In Nevada. When her decree was final.’ He waited a moment, but Heimrich merely nodded his head. Thompson stood up and said, ‘Well, in that case—’ and still hesitated. It had been an anticlimax for Wade Thompson, Heimrich thought. He had dropped everything and rushed forward, ready to take matters in hand. He left with hands empty.

  Or, Heimrich wondered, had Thompson had a point to make and was he now wondering whether it was made?

  Thompson said, ‘Well,’ once more, and this time added that Heimrich knew where to find him. Then he went.

  Fill in chinks and crevices as you go along. Heimrich had no special reason to feel that, in the last fifteen minutes, any such had appeared. Nevertheless, he directed that enquiry be made of the bureau of vital statistics of the state of Nevada. Subjects of enquiry: Date of final decree in the divorce suit of Mitchell vs. Mitchell, service presumably made by publication. Date of the marriage of Ruth Mitchell, divorcee, to Wade Thompson.

  Merton Heimrich drove home through the warm June night, under a fine June moon—a rather obvious June moon. Colonel was lying on the terrace, looking larger even than usual. The light, Heimrich thought. Susan, in white shorts and shirt, was lying on a chaise. Not the light at all, Heimrich thought.

  ‘I probably smell to high heaven of insect repellent,’ Susan said, bringing things back into proportion—or thereabouts.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Inspector Richard Norson, Tonaganda city police, had gained weight and lost hair. He had also achieved a larger desk. He said, ‘Well if it ain’t old Charlie,’ and came around the desk with a hand out. He had put on a good deal of weight. His hand was not as hard as Charles Forniss remembered it. ‘So his honor finally turned up,’ Inspector Norson said, and Forniss said, ‘Hiya, inspector. Yep.’

  There were further formalities. Forniss was still a sergeant. Slow going on the state side, wasn’t it? ‘They’ didn’t appreciate a good cop. Whatever happened to—? And—? A bit early for a snort, probably?

  It was, Sergeant Forniss agreed. It was a little after ten on Saturday morning, and Forniss had been up and about for some time, but not for that long a time. He had gone at a little after nine to the morgue of the Tonaganda Republican—where he knew an assistant city editor—and back-tracked among clippings. He had read a good deal, and added only details to what he remembered.

  ‘Got the dope for you,’ Inspector Norson told him, and spoke into an intercom. A patrolman came in with a file box, which appeared to be heavy, and put it on Inspector Norson’s desk. ‘So there you are,’ Norson said. ‘From A to Izzard.’

  ‘Yep,’ Forniss said. ‘From A to nowhere, wasn’t it?’

  Inspector Norson chuckled, in expanding waves. He said Forniss could call it that. Only, not to nowhere any more, was it?

  ‘Inspector,’ Forniss said, ‘he’s dead, now. Can’t get in anybody’s hair now, can he?’ He tapped fingers on the file box. ‘Aside from what’s in here?’ he said.

  Norson’s eyes were still shrewd eyes. Norson said, ‘Getting at something, Charlie? It’s all right here. All we got on it.’ He, in turn, tapped fingers on the file box. He said, ‘You think different, Charlie?’

  ‘Inspector,’ Forniss said, ‘I’m not a reform wave. Just a cop. Tonaganda’s lily-white. Always was; always will be. City and co
unty—pure as the driven—’

  ‘Don’t,’ Norson said, ‘be a wise guy, Charlie.’

  ‘Inspector,’ Forniss said, ‘who chased him out of town? What did he have on somebody and who was the somebody?’

  Norson tapped the box again. This time he used only one finger. It was a big finger.

  ‘All here,’ Inspector Norson said. ‘You want a summary? We didn’t find out a damn thing worth finding out. For my money, he went nuts. Why he went nuts I wouldn’t know. Woman trouble, for all I know. Maybe when he was a kid he was jealous of his father. He got in his car and—’

  ‘The car was found,’ Forniss said. ‘Over in Jersey.’

  ‘Yes,’ Norson said. ‘Clean as a whistle. His prints. Nobody else’s prints. Oh, the man’s who’d washed the car the night before. Filling station guy named—’

  Inspector,’ Forniss said. ‘The man’s dead now. Murdered. He can’t talk now. Who put the finger on him?’

  ‘Charlie,’ Inspector Norson said, ‘it won’t get you anywhere. From what the papers say, he’d turned into a tramp. Maybe somebody caught him snooping around down there. Maybe anything. Tell you what, Charlie, Senile dementia. How’s that?’

  ‘He presided the day before he left,’ Forniss said. ‘Seemed entirely normal, from what I read this morning. In the Republican files. It doesn’t come on overnight, inspector.’ It was his turn to pat the file box. ‘Anything in here about senile dementia? Under psychiatric treatment? That sort of thing?’

  ‘You can read—’

  ‘Sure,’ Forniss said. ‘I’ll read. Inspector, you’re a cop. It won’t be in here. Who chased him out of town? Why?’

  ‘Charlie,’ Inspector Richard Norson said, ‘you’ve turned out to be a stubborn sonofabitch, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yep,’ Forniss said. ‘A real nosy bastard. It’s your town, inspector.’

  ‘Not by a damn sight,’ Norson said. ‘What we got is right here, like I said. There were reporters all over the lot. Albany—the attorney general’s office—had people all over the lot. Before our boys took over in Albany, and their boys were eager beavers. Anything they could have pinned on us—’

  ‘What you got is right here,’ Forniss said. ‘What you knew and didn’t get—He’s dead now, inspector.’

  ‘Nobody from here rubbed him out.’

  ‘O.K. Nobody from here rubbed him out. If anybody’d wanted that—wanted it bad—he wouldn’t have lasted till yesterday. So—?’

  ‘So where’ll it get you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Where do I start?’ Inspector Richard Norson leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. He talked to the ceiling.

  ‘It was a while ago,’ he told the ceiling. ‘There’ve been a lot of changes since then. A lot of people aren’t around any more who were around then. Some new people are around now. So I’ve heard. Louis Silvo, so I’ve heard. Only he couldn’t help you, could he, Charlie? On account of it was before his time.’

  ‘Silvo?’ Sergeant Forniss said, and turned over reference cards in his memory. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Silvo. I didn’t know he’d moved in here.’

  ‘Importer,’ Inspector Norson told the ceiling. ‘Opened his office three-four years ago. Bought out a man named Pirandello, as I remember it.’

  ‘Pirandello?’ Forniss said. It hardly seemed probable.

  ‘Way I remember it,’ Norson said, and Forniss realized that Pirandello, to Richard Norson, was a name like any other name. Which didn’t matter one way or the other.

  ‘He’d have taken over the records of this Pirandello?’

  ‘Well, Charlie,’ Norson said, ‘you do when you buy somebody out, don’t you? Not that I know anything about the importing business.’

  ‘Sure not,’ Forniss said.

  ‘Lives out in Hillsdale,’ Norson said. ‘Quite a place he’s got, I’m told. Very democratic man, though.’

  Louis Silvo, on the telephone, sounded very democratic indeed, and like a man who was always anxious to help the police, although he didn’t have any idea how he might be helpful. Forniss should come right along, and Forniss went right along. It was, as Norson had said, quite a place, but it was by no means a showy place. Large and comfortable the house was, on five acres or so—five acres being manicured by a man with a big power mower. A welcoming place it was, unwalled, open to the world. There was nothing to indicate that the man who was cutting grass had a weapon concealed any place. He was merely a man cutting grass. Anybody could drop in on Louis Silvo any time.

  Louis Silvo was playing badminton on an immaculate stretch of lawn beyond a terrace. He was playing it with a pretty girl of fourteen or so, who squealed like any girl of fourteen or so. A pretty woman, probably in her middle thirties, sat in a deck chair on the terrace and watched the players, and she looked rather like the girl, and as if she were watching her husband and daughter playing on a pleasant Saturday morning in June before she went to a meeting of the garden club.

  Silvo was a trim man, not tall, and wore tennis shorts and shirt. He was, Forniss thought as he walked across grass toward the domestic scene, a quick and decisive badminton player. He and the girl finished a point as Forniss stood and watched them.

  Louis Silvo was in the rackets. He was doing very well in the rackets, evidently. Branch manager, at least; quite possibly a vice-president. Not on the board of directors yet, but he was young yet. Forniss checked his memory cards. Probably a year or so under forty, Louis Silvo was. A coming man in his profession. Where was it he had, not more than five years ago, taken over the private refuse firm? That had been his first big step up the ladder. He had been no more than a senior clerk in the trotting track do—and come as near as he ever had to getting his wrist slapped.

  He told Forniss, now, that he would be Forniss and, with this confirmed, introduced him to Mrs Silvo—‘Laura, this is Sergeant Forniss’—and to ‘this kid of mine, beats the pants off her dad,’ who was Nancy. Silvo had a light, pleasant voice. If Forniss’s memory index had not so firmly assured him Silvo had gone to P. S. something in lower Manhattan, and stopped with that, Forniss would have found it hard to believe. Whatever accent P. S. something might have left had been rubbed off.

  ‘Early for a drink?’ Silvo asked, when Laura and Nancy Silvo had gone into the house. It was early for a drink.

  ‘So Justice Mitchell is no more,’ he said, and lighted a cigarette. ‘A loss to the judiciary.’

  ‘Been that for quite a while now,’ Forniss said. ‘I gather the inspector gave you a ring.’

  ‘Do you, sergeant?’

  ‘To tell you I was nosing around.’

  ‘A bit of the worrying type, Dick Norson,’ Silvo said. ‘Can’t imagine how he thought I could help you.’

  ‘You took over from a man named Pirandello,’ Forniss said.

  ‘Pirancello,’ Silvo said. ‘Not the writing type, Piery isn’t. Bought his importing business is all.’

  ‘Mr Silvo,’ Forniss said, and let some weariness enter his voice, ‘I’m not the State Crime Commission. Not the Kefauver committee. I’m a cop trying to get a line on a kill. Who chased Mitchell out of town? Why? Was somebody from here still after him?’

  ‘Sergeant,’ Silvo said, ‘I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong man. I don’t know what you’re talking about. If it’s anything, it’s something in Piery’s time, not mine. He’s the man you want, if anybody is. Only, I hear he’s in Mexico.’

  ‘Importing?’

  ‘Sergeant, I’ve got a golf date. Got to change for it pretty soon.’

  ‘You took over Pirancello’s—records. Outstanding accounts.’

  ‘I don’t remember—’

  ‘Mitchell’s dead now. The account’s settled. I told the inspector that.’

  Silvo looked away from Forniss, looked out across his lawns—looked like a man seeking crab grass. There wasn’t any crab grass.

  ‘There’s no angle,’ he said, and turned back to Forniss. ‘It was before my time. Nobody around here had anything against
the judge.’

  ‘Nobody in the syndicate?’

  Silvo appeared to consider that for some time.

  ‘Assuming,’ he said finally, ‘that there is what you call a syndicate, nobody I know of. I keep telling you it was before—’

  ‘You keep telling me,’ Forniss said. ‘All right. Pirancello’s your brother, or something?’

  ‘No,’ Silvo said. ‘Poor old Piery’s retired, far’s I know. I—’ He stopped; again he looked at his lawn. A robin found a worm in the grass and Silvo watched the robin.

  ‘Before my time,’ he told the robin, but then turned back to Forniss. ‘From what I heard—only heard, sergeant—Mitchell was in on a business transaction. Rather a big transaction. With Piery. Went wrong, somehow.’

  ‘Yep,’ Forniss said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Made some people a little sore,’ Silvo said. ‘That’s what I heard. Some of them may have said things the judge misunderstood. See what I mean?’

  ‘Or,’ Forniss said, ‘didn’t misunderstand.’

  ‘It’s only what I heard,’ Silvo said. ‘Three-four years before I bought Piery out. Could be the judge thought he would be healthier somewhere else. So, it could be he did the disappearing act because of these things he misunderstood. Left some unfinished business behind, from what I heard. Which had to be squared, maybe. Which could have cost quite a bit, I suppose.’

  ‘And Pirancello went to Mexico? Retired and went to Mexico? On account of he’d slipped up?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Silvo said. ‘I can’t recall I ever heard.’

  ‘The transaction? What was it?’

  ‘I don’t think I ever heard the details, sergeant.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Forniss said, ‘whether Mr Pirancello likes Mexico?’

  That, it turned out, was another thing Silvo hadn’t heard about.

  A good cop knows when he has got what he is going to get. Sergeant Forniss said he mustn’t keep Mr Silvo from his golf game.

  What he had got, Sergeant Forniss thought as he drove the gently winding roads of Hillsdale, was no more than everybody in Tonaganda—everybody whose business it was to know about such matters—had known for upward of six years. Norson had known, and the cops who had worked on it had known; probably the State Police, who had cooperated, had known too. Justice Mitchell had been in with the ‘syndicate.’ (Assuming that there was what Sergeant Forniss wanted to call a syndicate.) Mitchell had somehow got himself in a jam. He had run out of the jam. Almost certainly, a good many people had known about this at the time. Almost as certainly, it would not appear in the records. Those who would have wanted to pin it down—the State Police among them—had not been able to. Those who would know most—the city police quite probably among them—would have put least in the records. The newspapers, judging by the clips he had gone over, had found nothing hard enough to bite on. (Or hadn’t wanted to bite.)