Leopold's Way (25 page)

“Was there some trouble on the highway? Something that angered you?”

Fleming merely stared at him in silence. “All right,” Leopold sighed at last. “I'll leave you two alone. Mrs. Fleming, try and talk some sense into your husband.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

As Leopold reached the door, Roger Fleming motioned toward the picture on the wall. “Is the bug on?” he asked.

“No,” Leopold answered. “I owe you that much.”

Sergeant Fletcher was down in the police garage, going over the victim's car. He glanced up as Leopold approached, turning off the small portable vacuum cleaner he'd been using on the seats.

“Find anything?” Leopold asked, frowning at the car as if somehow it was the cause of the day's woes.

“It's hot, Captain. It was stolen last night from a salesman staying at the Charles Motel.”

“Damn!” Leopold kicked a tire in anger. “So why in hell didn't he just say he shot a car thief?”

“Beats me, Captain.”

“You know him better than I do, Fletcher. What makes him tick? What's behind that bland face of his?”

“I don't really know him. I'd have a beer with him once or twice a month, but lately we haven't even done that.”

“Did he get along with his wife?”

“As far as I know. They've got a couple of kids, in grammar school.”

“What about the dead man? Any make on him yet?”

“His wallet was gone, but we found a tailor's tag inside his sleeve. Name is Norman Rossiter, a C.P.A. Got an office in the Grant Building.”

“A C.P.A. and he stole a car?”

Fletcher shrugged. “They're human like anyone else. Why not?”

“The usual motives for car theft are joy riding or simple financial gain. Rossiter wouldn't seem to fit either one.”

“But at least he's a local guy, so maybe Roger knew him after all.”

“Let's go up and ask his wife,” Leopold suggested.

“I'll be along in a few minutes—soon as I finish vacuuming. The lab boys are short-handed today.”

Leopold found Iris Fleming sitting in his office, nervously smoking a cigarette. “Did he tell you anything, Mrs. Fleming?”

“No, and frankly I've never seen him quite like this. He just kept telling me not to worry, reassuring me that everything would be all right. I asked him who the man from Ohio was, and he just wouldn't answer.”

“The man wasn't from Ohio,” Leopold told her. “The car was stolen. As near as we can tell, the dead man was a local accountant named Norman Rossiter.”

That was when Iris Fleming fainted.

Sergeant Fletcher looked depressed, but not half so depressed as Leopold felt. By noon the temperature outside had climbed back into the eighties, where it had been all week, and the humid warmth of the city seemed to hang like a mist over Leopold's office.

“A simple triangle,” Fletcher snorted. “She was having an affair with Rossiter and Roger found out. We have 'em every week of the year, and this one is no different.”

“That seems to be it,” Leopold agreed. “She admitted as much. The Ohio plates threw her off, so she never gave a thought to Roger having possibly killed Rossiter. She didn't even realize that Roger knew about it—their affair, I mean.”

“He knew, all right.”

Leopold patted the moisture on his brow. “When are they supposed to air condition this place?”

Fletcher shrugged. “It got cut out of the budget again this year.” He started to take out a cigarette, then changed his mind. “But why didn't Roger just tell us the whole story?”

“Who knows?” The Captain looked at the list of duty assignments. “He would have been on duty till midnight, and we know he killed Rossiter just before two this morning. That gave him two hours, almost, to track the man down. Where was Roger just before he went off duty?”

Fletcher checked through the morning reports. “Investigating a knifing on Alamanda Street. Family trouble.”

“He had family trouble himself.”

“He sure did, Captain.”

The phone on Leopold's desk buzzed and he answered. “Leopold here.”

“Captain, this is Doc Hayes over at the Medical Examiner's office. We've finished with the man killed over on the Expressway.”

“Rossiter. Yes?”

“That his name? Well, anyway, I wish you'd drop over. A couple of things of interest.”

Doc Hayes was the acting medical examiner while the regular man was on a well-earned vacation. He was a grim little doctor who did his job well and never joked. Leopold admired his efficiency even while thinking he might have been better off teaching at some medical school.

He rose from his desk, all business, as Leopold entered. “Do you want to see the deceased, Captain?”

“Is it necessary?”

“No. I can summarize my findings.” He cleared his throat. “The deceased was shot twice by Sergeant Fleming's revolver—ballistics has verified this. One of the bullets entered the left temple, lodging in the brain, while the other shattered the jawbone and passed through the body, lodging in the padded window frame on the right side of the car. I understand that slug was mashed up a bit, but they managed an identification.”

“What about your findings, Doc?” Leopold asked, growing impatient. He could read the ballistics report later.

“Well, it's funny the people on the scene didn't notice, but of course it was a warm night.”

“Notice what?”

Doc Hayes sighed and glanced around the little office—as if he were looking for a blackboard to continue his lecture. “When a person dies, the force of gravity causes the blood to seep to the body's lowest points. The wounds in Rossiter's head and jaw bled hardly at all, because there was very little blood left in the upper portion of his body by that time. As I say, if it hadn't been such a warm night, rigor mortis would have set in faster and the condition would have been more obvious from the outset.”

“Look, Doc, are you trying to tell me that—”

“That the man was already dead for at least two hours when Sergeant Fleming shot him. He'd been killed by a wound from a thin-bladed knife that went between his ribs and straight into the heart.”

Leopold went back to his office and told Sergeant Fletcher what he'd learned. Fletcher simply stared at him with widened eyes. “You mean the guy was murdered
twice?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Leopold said. “I don't know if I should feel elated or depressed. It gets Fleming off the hook, but it gives us an unsolved case.”

“What now?”

“Get Fleming up here. Maybe he'll be willing to talk now.”

A few minutes later Roger Fleming sat in the chair opposite Leopold's desk. “Could I have a cigarette?” he asked.

“Bad for your health,” Leopold said, tossing over a pack. “You ready to talk yet?”

“No.”

“Suppose I told you Rossiter was already dead when you pumped two bullets into his head.”

There was a flicker of something—fear?—across Fleming's otherwise impassive face. He drew slowly on the cigarette and said finally, “I appreciate your seeing me here in your office rather than in the Interrogation Room, Captain.”

“That's all you've got to say?”

“That's all.”

“Look, Roger, you may be off the hook on the murder charge, but you're finished with the police force unless you change your attitude pretty damn quick. The dead man was having an affair with Iris—that much we already know. If you didn't kill him, who did? Who beat you to it, Roger?”

“What time was he killed?”

“A little before midnight, according to Doc Hayes.”

“I was still on duty then, investigating a knifing.”

“We know that, Roger. But we want you to tell us what you did after midnight.”

Roger Fleming sighed and looked at his hands. “I drove out along the expressway until I saw his car parked. Then I went over and shot him twice through the open window.”

“How'd you know he was there? How'd you know which car? The car was stolen.”

“God, Captain!” Fleming buried his face in his hands. That was his only answer.

“All right,” Leopold sighed. “We'll see how long we can hold you for questioning before your lawyer springs you. When you decide to cooperate and tell a straight story you know how to reach me.”

After Fleming had been taken back to his cell, Leopold buzzed for Fletcher. “I want you to check out Rossiter's movements for all of last night. Then I want you to do the same on Iris Fleming.”

“You think she killed him and Roger's shielding her?”

“At this point I don't know what to think.”

Fletcher watched him slip into his rumpled suitcoat. “Where can I reach you if I need to, Captain?”

“I'll be down on Alamanda Street, investigating Roger Fleming's last case.”

“His last case?”

“Just before midnight he was working on a stabbing. And just before midnight Norman Rossiter was stabbed to death. Funny coincidence—if you believe in coincidences.”

Alamanda Street wandered across the backside of the downtown area. It was a section of floppy gray houses and tiny yards crisscrossed by well-worn paths. Now, in the early afternoon of a late June day, an assortment of noisy children were playing in the yard of the house that Leopold sought.

The woman who answered the door was a big-boned Puerto Rican with a light skin. He showed her his badge. “Leopold of Homicide. I'm here about last night's trouble.”

“Wasn't no homicide here,” the woman protested. “Just a little knifing, that's all.”

“You're the landlady here?”

“That's me. Mrs. Sanchez. But there was no homicide.”

“Who got knifed?”

She gestured upstairs. “Mrs. Croft stuck a knife in her husband. Hurt him bad, but didn't kill him.”

“The detective came and investigated?”

“Sure.”

“Do you remember his name?”

She thought for a moment. “Like that mystery writer—Fleming, that was it. Sergeant Fleming. Good-looking, fairly young.”

“How long was he here?”

“Oh, gosh, a couple of hours. He turned Mrs. Croft over to the patrol car and then he went around questioning all the neighbors. It was after midnight when I saw him get in his car and drive away.”

Leopold nodded. Fleming was always a conscientious worker, willing to put in overtime without grumbling. He sighed and wished he had a cigarette with him. There was nothing to connect the knifing of Mr. Croft with the knifing of Norman Rossiter. “Thank you, Mrs. Sanchez,” he said, and went out to his car.

He drove around in the afternoon sunshine, trying to get his bearings. It was only a few blocks to the Charles Motel, and the expressway was only a few blocks farther on. He drove to the motel and looked over the parking area, but there was nothing to see. Anyone could have stolen the Ohio salesman's car. Rossiter himself could have stolen it.

But why? It was a nagging point.

He drove out to the little ranch house where the Flemings lived, and found Iris Fleming playing with the children in the back yard. When she saw Leopold, her face clouded over and she sent the children off to their swings and climbing poles.

“Sorry to bother you again,” he said.

“Not at all. Roger just called. He says he expects to be released by tonight. Is that true?”

“Quite possibly. The medical report says that Rossiter was already dead when your husband shot him.”

“Oh. Then Roger is innocent!”

“Innocent of murder. But still guilty of enough to get him kicked off the force. Tell me, did Rossiter have any enemies you know of?”

“You're asking me?” Her eyes were all innocence.

“Come off it, Mrs. Fleming,” he said with deliberate roughness. “You and Rossiter were having an affair. You admitted that much to us after you fainted this morning.”

“But I knew nothing of Norman's business affairs. Perhaps he was an accountant for a gambling syndicate, or for some tax evader who had to silence him.”

“Perhaps. Fletcher is checking those angles now.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked with a sweet smile that didn't quite make it.

“If Roger didn't kill Rossiter, you become suspect number two.”

“So it's like that.”

He nodded. “Like that. Where were you just before midnight?”

“Home with the children.”

“They were awake?”

“At midnight? Of course not.”

“Then you could have left them for a while.”

“I wouldn't have done that.”

“But you could have. At this stage I'm only interested in the possibilities, Mrs. Fleming.”

She got to her feet and started for the house. “When you have a warrant you can come back and question me some more, Captain. Until that time I'll be indisposed.”

He sighed and went back to the car. There was no sense arguing with her. He could take her downtown for questioning, but there was not a shred of evidence against her. He drove back downtown, avoiding the front entrance to headquarters where reporters would be waiting.

The whole case was beginning to pull apart—like a flimsy kite in a windstorm—and he had the distinct feeling that soon he would be left with only the ruins of his department.

Sergeant Fletcher came back just before dinnertime. He was hot and unhappy, and he wanted to go home. “There's nothing in Rossiter's business or personal life,” he assured Leopold. “He was clean—except for Mrs. Fleming.”

“That the best you could do after an afternoon's digging? What about his clients?”

“The United Fund, the Red Cross, the Music Association—stuff like that. Not a shady character in the lot.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “What about the weapon? Anyone find the knife?”

Fletcher shook his head. “I had men out searching where the car was parked, and of course we went over the car itself.”