Full Frontal Murder (2 page)

So when a new Sergeants Exam was announced for October, Marian had called Buchanan and Campos in and
ordered
them to find volunteers to take the test. “Well? Got any names for me?”

“Perlmutter,” said Buchanan. “And he'll ace it.”

“Good.” Marian was pleased. “Who else?”

Campos grinned. “O'Toole volunteered.” Buchanan grunted while Marian shook her head. O'Toole was still too green.

Buchanan scratched the side of his nose. “Dowd says he'll take the test but he won't study for it.”

“Then forget Dowd.” No way anyone could pass that test without studying. “Any others?”

They had three others—all three of whom had taken the test before and failed. “Perlmutter's our best bet,” Campos said.

“Which still leaves us one sergeant short.”

“What about your buddy down in the Ninth, Lieutenant?” Buchanan asked. “Gloria Sanchez? Is she still dead set on
not
taking the test?”

Marian sighed. “Don't know—I haven't bugged her about it for a while. I'll give her a call. Okay, then. Keep trying.” She shooed them out.

She was at a loss to understand the reluctance of so many detectives to take the Sergeants Exam. The exam wasn't given all that often, and it was a detective's only chance for advancement. Captain Murtaugh once suggested that police detectives didn't need another failure to carry around with them; and if they didn't take the test, they couldn't fail.

And it was true, the exam
did
have a high failure rate. But still. Marian herself had jumped at the chance, taking the test the first time it was offered after she made detective. And passing it. She was concerned that the seeming lack of ambition in the Midtown South detectives might be a sign of early burnout.

She pulled the Galloway case file toward her and started reading, grateful for all these distractions that kept her from brooding over the fact that her closest friend was on an airplane headed away from New York.

2

Rita Fairchild Galloway had taken her four-year-old son Bobby to a puppet show for preschoolers at the Little Church around the Corner on Twenty-ninth. They came out around three o'clock, planning to stop somewhere for ice cream and then take a cab home. Outside the church, Mrs. Galloway had let go of Bobby's hand long enough to bend down and tie one of her shoelaces that had come undone. At that moment a man appeared “out of nowhere,” snatched Bobby up under one arm, and ran.

The combined screams of mother and son had attracted the attention of a patrol car cruising the street. The cops chased the kidnapper down to Madison Square Park, where one officer jumped out of the patrol car and tackled the perp. The two men were struggling for possession of the screaming boy when the second police officer came running up. The kidnapper relinquished his hold on Bobby and fled. The second officer took off in pursuit but lost him in the crowd. Young Bobby Galloway suffered nothing worse than a scraped elbow.

But his mother was in hysterics. Rita Galloway immediately accused her estranged husband of staging the kidnap attempt and demanded that he be arrested. She said he was a ruthless man who'd stop at nothing to get what he wanted, and what he wanted was Bobby.

Mother and son had been driven to the Midtown South stationhouse, where Bobby's scraped elbow was disinfected and adorned with a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid. Rita Galloway had looked through mug shots but recognized no one. Detective O'Toole called the number Mrs. Galloway had given him and spoke to her estranged husband.

Hugh Galloway had come to the stationhouse immediately, demanding to see for himself that Bobby was all right. His wife accused him to his face of engineering the kidnapping, and the two almost came to blows. A police officer drove Rita and Bobby home.

Even though he'd looked as if he wanted to punch someone out, Hugh Galloway had stayed to answer O'Toole's questions. He denied all knowledge of the kidnapping. O'Toole had added the comment that Mr. Galloway appeared sincerely outraged by what had happened.

And that's where it rested until Hugh's father, Walter Galloway, had called Captain Murtaugh that morning. If Hugh hadn't tried to kidnap Bobby, then someone else had.

Of course Walter Galloway would not think his son capable of kidnapping, Marian mused. And of course a bitter, estranged wife would. Poor Bobby, caught in such an ugly tug-of-war; all too common a picture, unfortunately. If Hugh Galloway was indeed innocent, and if O'Toole's APB didn't bring in the wannabe kidnapper—then this one was headed straight for the dead file.
Can't let that happen
.

Marian put O'Toole to work finding out as much about Hugh Galloway as he could and took Detective Perlmutter with her on her interviews. Rita Galloway and Bobby lived in a four-story town house on East Seventy-fifth, until recently also the home of Hugh Galloway. A lifelong apartment dweller, Marian always felt a twinge of envy when calling on people who had an entire house to themselves. But her nesting instinct had never been strong enough to make her do anything about it.

“Money,” Perlmutter said as Marian parked by a fire hydrant, the only space left on the street. “I'm going to feel like a bum again.”

“Hazard of the profession.” They got out of the car and started toward the building. “What do you want to bet they have a place on Long Island as well?”

“Tuxedo Park. Snootier.”

“Not that we prejudge people.”

“Naw, we never do that.”

“Well, well—look over there.” Directly across the street from the Galloway house was a parked car with a man inside busily taking pictures of them. Marian and Perlmutter strolled over to him.

She held up her badge. “Lieutenant Larch. Will you identify yourself, please?”

“Oh, you're police.” He fished out some ID. “Name's Jarvik. I'm with Heron Security.”

His ID checked out. “Who hired you?”

“Mr. Galloway.”

“Which Mr. Galloway?”

“Mr. Walter Galloway.”

Marian returned his ID. “Okay, Jarvik. Anyone watching the back?”

“No rear access. They got a patio out back, with a high wall marking off their property limits. Another patio on the other side—the back of the property on the next street.”

“Walls can be climbed.”

“Yeah, I know, Lieutenant. But the lady, she won't let us inside. There's no way we can watch that wall from the street.”

Marian nodded. “They had any callers since you've been here?”

“Just one. Cop answered the door, made the guy wait while he checked with the lady. Guy's inside now. I got him on film.”

She frowned; the cop shouldn't have let
anyone
in. Marian and Perlmutter left the security man to his watch and crossed over to ring the doorbell.

The officer who opened the door was unknown to Marian, but he knew her. “Hello, Lieutenant.” He stepped back to let them in. When asked, he said his name was Bartolomew.

“Bartolomew, weren't your orders not to let anyone in?”

“You mean Mr. Fairchild? He's Mrs. Galloway's brother, Lieutenant. I didn't think I was supposed to keep family out.”

No, he wasn't. “That's all right, then. Where are they?”

Officer Bartolomew led them through a sitting room so full of light and color that it made Marian pause. A south wall fronting on East Seventy-fifth contained a floor-to-ceiling stained-glass window; the summer sun cast a pattern on the opposing wall—bold, vivid colors in the shape of a dragon. Wonderful combination of color and form, and an attention-catching one.

“Pretty, ain't it?” Bartolomew said with a grin. “It changes as the sun moves.”

“Ptolemy would love it,” Perlmutter said.

“They're in the studio,” the officer told them, heading down a hallway and up a flight of stairs.

“What kind of studio?”

“Mrs. Galloway paints. Just watercolors, though.”

“Way I hear it,” Perlmutter said, “watercolor is one of the most difficult mediums for an artist to work in.”

“Yeah?” Bartolomew knocked and opened a door; they stepped into another bright and cheerful room with a number of worktables and easels displaying sketches and unfinished watercolors. Under one window sat a little boy at a child's table covered with crayons, construction paper, blunt-end scissors, a jar of paste—busily working away on a project of his own. The two adults in the room broke off their conversation when Bartolomew said, “Here's Lieutenant Larch to see you.”

O'Toole must have said
she
or
her
when he made the appointment, because Mrs. Galloway and her brother did not assume Perlmutter was the lieutenant, as often happened. “Lieutenant?” the woman said, approaching Marian. “Have you arrested Hugh?”

It was obvious these two were brother and sister just from looking at them. Both tall, with broad foreheads over wide-set, moist-looking eyes. Narrow shoulders, curly reddish brown hair, thin lips. Long thin fingers. Very intense looking people, but that could be a reflection of their concern over Bobby.

“Alex Fairchild,” the man said, sticking out a hand.

Marian shook it, and then explained that they had no evidence linking Hugh to the kidnapping. “That's why we're here. To see if you can tell us something more.”

“What more is there to tell?” Rita Galloway exclaimed. “Hugh knew we were going to that puppet show. How else did the kidnapper know where to find us?”

“He could have followed you there.”

Mrs. Galloway glanced over at the boy at the little table. “Let's go outside.” Then, to the child: “Bobby, we're going out on the balcony for a few minutes.”

“I'll stay here,” Officer Bartolomew said before anyone could ask him to.

The balcony was a long one, running along the back side of the house with another door opening on to it; her bedroom, Mrs. Galloway said when Perlmutter asked. They were overlooking the patio; the furniture below was wrought iron with padded cushions on the seats and backs. The stone wall marking the property boundary was about ten feet high. “Is that wall wired?” Perlmutter asked.

It was; alarms would go off both there and at the security firm's monitoring center. But Rita Galloway had already made arrangements for a new security system to be installed. “They're coming tomorrow,” she said. “Hugh had the present system put in, and it's not beyond him to cancel the contract without telling me. He could slip in any time he wanted to.”

“The locks have all been changed,” Alex Fairchild added. “But that wall could pose a danger. Anyone determined to get in could scale the wall and hurl one of those iron chairs through the glass patio doors. The alarms would all be going off, but the system was designed to deter burglars, not kidnappers. And the police officer can't watch the front door and that wall at the same time.” He looked at his sister. “We're going to have to hire some protection.”

She sighed. “I know.”

Marian remarked, “There's a security-agency guard sitting outside your house right now.”

Fairchild laughed shortly. “Hugh's man. Or his father's man. Same thing.”

“He's from a reputable agency. Why won't you let him in?”

Brother and sister exchanged a look. She said, “He's not there to protect us, Lieutenant. He's there to spy on us, on Bobby and me. To look for evidence that I'm an unfit mother. And no, I'm not being paranoid. Hugh's done it before. He replaced one of the cleaning service's regular crew with someone he hired to snoop through my things.”

Fairchild confirmed her story. “I caught her at Rita's desk, going through her checkbook. Credit card statements were out, so she'd probably gone through those as well.” He looked Marian straight in the eye, his own moist eyes gleaming. “Do you know how Hugh was able to replace one of the cleaning crew? He bought the business. He bought the whole goddam cleaning service. Just to put a spy in this house.”

No one spoke for a moment. Then Marian said, “Mr. Fairchild, could you take Detective Perlmutter around the house and show him the complete security system here?”

He looked amused. “The security system that's being replaced tomorrow? Certainly. And how long should it take me to show Detective Perlmutter everything?”

“At least twenty minutes, I'd say.”

“I think that can be arranged. Detective?” The two men went back into the house.

Marian stepped closer to Rita Galloway. “Mrs. Galloway, did your husband ever strike you? Or threaten you?”

The other woman shook her head. “I've not been physically abused. Or threatened. Oh, no … Hugh is too civilized for that.” The sarcasm made her voice ugly. “Hugh is a master of emotional torture—the put-down, the belittling, the sneer that's not quite a sneer, if you know what I mean. No, the abuse has all been psychological.”

“That's a little harder to prove,” Marian said reluctantly. “But not impossible. If you want to—”

“In all the time we've been married,” Rita Galloway interrupted, caught up in her own thoughts, “I've been made to feel inadequate. I don't quite measure up to the high standards a Galloway is expected to meet. Hugh's just like his father—they're never satisfied. Not to mention the fact that Hugh's been cheating on me consistently from the day were married.”

“From the
day
you were married?”

The other woman's mouth was grim. “That's right, Lieutenant. He got up from our wedding bed and went to a prostitute.”

Marian was appalled and dubious at the same time. “How could you know that?”

“He told me. He took great pleasure in telling me. Laying down the ground rules, you see. He could do whatever he wanted, and I had to take it.”

Whew
. “Why did you stay with him?”

“I was pregnant. When Bobby was born, Hugh did settle down pretty well. But it didn't last. He's back to his old habits now.”