Leopold's Way (33 page)

“It's Captain Leopold, isn't it?” someone asked. A face from his past loomed up, a tired man with a gold tooth in the front of his smile. “I'm Immy Fontaine, Monica's stepbrother.”

“Sure,” Leopold said, as if he'd remembered the man all along. Monica had rarely mentioned Immy, and Leopold recalled meeting him once or twice at family gatherings. But the sight of him now, gold tooth and all, reminded Leopold that Monica was somewhere nearby, that he might confront her at any moment.

“We're so glad you could come,” someone else said, and he turned to greet the bride and groom as they came off the dance floor. Up close, Vicki was a truly beautiful girl, clinging to her new husband's arm like a proper bride.

“I wouldn't have missed it for anything,” he said.

“This is Ted,” she said, making the introductions. Leopold shook his hand, silently approving the firm grip and friendly eyes.

“I understand you're a lawyer,” Leopold said, making conversation.

“That's right, sir. Mostly civil cases, though. I don't tangle much with criminals.”

They chatted for a few more seconds before the pressure of guests broke them apart. The luncheon was about to be served, and the more hungry ones were already lining up at the buffet tables. Vicki and Ted went over to start the line, and Leopold took another glass of champagne punch.

“I see the car waiting outside,” Immy Fontaine said, moving in again. “You got to go on duty?”

Leopold nodded. “Just this glass and I have to leave.”

“Monica's in from the west coast.”

“So I heard.”

A slim man with a mustache jostled against him in the crush of the crowd and hastily apologized. Fontaine seized the man by the arm and introduced him to Leopold. “This here's Dr. Felix Thursby. He came east with Monica. Doc, I want you to meet Captain Leopold, her ex-husband.”

Leopold shook hands awkwardly, embarrassed for the man and for himself. “A fine wedding,” he mumbled. “Your first trip east?”

Thursby shook his head. “I'm from New York. Long ago.”

“I was on the police force there once,” Leopold remarked.

They chatted for a few more minutes before Leopold managed to edge away through the crowd.

“Leaving so soon?” a harsh unforgettable voice asked.

“Hello, Monica. It's been a long time.”

He stared down at the handsome, middle-aged woman who now blocked his path to the door. She had gained a little weight, especially in the bosom, and her hair was graying. Only the eyes startled him, and frightened him just a bit. They had the intense wild look he'd seen before on the faces of deranged criminals.

“I didn't think you'd come. I thought you'd be afraid of me,” she said.

“That's foolish. Why should I be afraid of you?”

The music had started again, and the line from the buffet tables was beginning to snake lazily about the room. But for Leopold and Monica they might have been alone in the middle of a desert.

“Come in here,” she said, “where we can talk.” She motioned toward the end of the room that had been cut off by the accordion doors. Leopold followed her, helpless to do anything else. She unlocked the doors and pulled them apart, just wide enough for them to enter the unused quarter of the large room. Then she closed and locked the doors behind them, and stood facing him. They were two people, alone in a bare unfurnished room.

They were in an area about thirty feet square, with the windows at the far end and the locked accordion doors at Leopold's back. He could see the afternoon sun cutting through the trees outside, and the gentle hum of the air conditioner came through above the subdued murmur of the wedding guests.

“Remember the day we got married?” she asked.

“Yes. Of course.”

She walked to the middle window, running her fingers along the frame, perhaps looking for the latch to open it. But it stayed closed as she faced him again. “Our marriage was as drab and barren as this room. Lifeless, unused!”

“Heaven knows I always wanted children, Monica.”

“You wanted nothing but your damned police work!” she shot back, eyes flashing as her anger built.

“Look, I have to go. I have a man waiting in the car.”

“Go! That's what you did before, wasn't it?
Go, go!
Go out to your damned job and leave me to struggle for myself. Leave me to—”

“You walked out on me, Monica. Remember?” he reminded her softly. She was so defenseless, without even a purse to swing at him.

“Sure I did! Because I had a career waiting for me! I had all the world waiting for me! And you know what happened because you wouldn't come along? You know what happened to me out there? They took my money and my self-respect and what virtue I had left. They made me into a tramp, and when they were done they locked me up in a mental hospital for three years. Three years!”

“I'm sorry.”

“Every day while I was there I thought about you. I thought about how it would be when I got out. Oh, I thought. And planned. And schemed. You're a big detective now. Sometimes your cases even get reported in the California papers.” She was pacing back and forth, caged, dangerous. “Big detective. But I can still destroy you just as you destroyed me!”

He glanced over his shoulder at the locked accordion doors, seeking a way out. It was a thousand times worse than he'd imagined it would be. She was mad—mad and vengeful and terribly dangerous. “You should see a doctor, Monica.”

Her eyes closed to mere slits. “I've seen doctors.” Now she paused before the middle window, facing him. “I came all the way east for this day, because I thought you'd be here. It's so much better than your apartment, or your office, or a city street. There are one hundred and fifty witnesses on the other side of those doors.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

Her mouth twisted in a horrible grin. “You're going to know what I knew. Bars and cells and disgrace. You're going to know the despair I felt all those years.”

“Monica—”

At that instant perhaps twenty feet separated them. She lifted one arm, as if to shield herself, then screamed in terror. “No! Oh, God, no!”

Leopold stood frozen, unable to move, as a sudden gunshot echoed through the room. He saw the bullet strike her in the chest, toppling her backward like the blow from a giant fist. Then somehow he had his own gun out of its belt holster and he swung around toward the doors.

They were still closed and locked. He was alone in the room with Monica.

He looked back to see her crumple on the floor, blood spreading in a widening circle around the torn black hole in her dress. His eyes went to the windows, but all three were still closed and unbroken. He shook his head, trying to focus his mind on what had happened.

There was noise from outside, and a pounding on the accordion doors. Someone opened the lock from the other side, and the gap between the doors widened as they were pulled open. “What happened?” someone asked. A woman guest screamed as she saw the body. Another toppled in a faint.

Leopold stepped back, aware of the gun still in his hand, and saw Lieutenant Fletcher fighting his way through the mob of guests. “Captain, what is it?”

“She…Someone shot her.”

Fletcher reached out and took the gun from Leopold's hand—carefully, as one might take a broken toy from a child. He put it to his nose and sniffed, then opened the cylinder to inspect the bullets. “It's been fired recently, Captain. One shot.” Then his eyes seemed to cloud over, almost to the point of tears. “Why the hell did you do it?” he asked. “Why?”

Leopold saw nothing of what happened then. He only had vague and splintered memories of someone examining her and saying she was still alive, of an ambulance and much confusion. Fletcher drove him down to headquarters, to the Commissioner's office, and he sat there and waited, running his moist palms up and down his trousers. He was not surprised when they told him she had died on the way to Southside Hospital. Monica had never been one to do things by halves.

The men—detectives who worked under him—came to and left the Commissioner's office, speaking in low tones with their heads together, occasionally offering him some embarrassed gesture of condolence. There was an aura of sadness over the place, and Leopold knew it was for him.

“You have nothing more to tell us, Captain?” the Commissioner asked. “I'm making it as easy for you as I can.”

“I didn't kill her,” Leopold insisted again. “It was someone else.”

“Who? How?”

He could only shake his head. “I wish I knew. I think in some mad way she killed herself, to get revenge on me.”

“She shot herself with
your
gun, while it was in
your
holster, and while
you
were standing twenty feet away?”

Leopold ran a hand over his forehead. “It couldn't have been my gun. Ballistics will prove that.”

“But your gun had been fired recently, and there was an empty cartridge in the chamber.”

“I can't explain that. I haven't fired it since the other day at target practise, and I reloaded it afterwards.”

“Could she have hated you that much, Captain?” Fletcher asked. “To frame you for her murder?”

“She could have. I think she was a very sick woman. If I did that to her—if I was the one who made her sick—I suppose I deserve what's happening to me now.”

“The hell you do,” Fletcher growled. “If you say you're innocent, Captain, I'm sticking by you.” He began pacing again, and finally turned to the Commissioner. “How about giving him a paraffin test, to see if he's fired a gun recently?”

The Commissioner shook his head. “We haven't used that in years. You know how unreliable it is, Fletcher. Many people have nitrates or nitrites on their hands. They can pick them up from dirt, or fertilizers, or fireworks, or urine, or even from simply handling peas or beans. Anyone who smokes tobacco can have deposits on his hands. There are some newer tests for the presence of barium or lead, but we don't have the necessary chemicals for those.”

Leopold nodded. The Commissioner had risen through the ranks. He wasn't simply a political appointee, and the men had always respected him. Leopold respected him. “Wait for the ballistics report,” he said. “That'll clear me.”

So they waited. It was another 45 minutes before the phone rang and the Commissioner spoke to the ballistics man. He listened, and grunted, and asked one or two questions. Then he hung up and faced Leopold across the desk.

“The bullet was fired from your gun,” he said simply. “There's no possibility of error. I'm afraid we'll have to charge you with homicide.”

The routines he knew so well went on into Saturday evening, and when they were finished Leopold was escorted from the courtroom to find young Ted Moore waiting for him. “You should be on your honeymoon,” Leopold told him.

“Vicki couldn't leave till I'd seen you and tried to help. I don't know much about criminal law, but perhaps I could arrange bail.”

“That's already been taken care of,” Leopold said. “The grand jury will get the case next week.”

“I—I don't know what to say. Vicki and I are both terribly sorry.”

“So am I.” He started to walk away, then turned back. “Enjoy your honeymoon.”

“We'll be in town overnight, at the Towers, if there's anything I can do.”

Leopold nodded and kept on walking. He could see the reflection of his guilt in young Moore's eyes. As he got to his car, one of the patrolmen he knew glanced his way and then quickly in the other direction. On a Saturday night no one talked to wife murderers. Even Fletcher had disappeared.

Leopold decided he couldn't face the drab walls of his office, not with people avoiding him. Besides, the Commissioner had been forced to suspend him from active duty pending grand jury action and the possible trial. The office didn't even belong to him any more. He cursed silently and drove home to his little apartment, weaving through the dark streets with one eye out for a patrol car. He wondered if they'd be watching him, to prevent his jumping bail. He wondered what he'd have done in the Commissioner's shoes.

The eleven o'clock news on television had it as the lead item, illustrated with a black-and-white photo of him taken during a case last year. He shut off the television without listening to their comments and went back outside, walking down to the corner for an early edition of the Sunday paper. The front-page headline was as bad as he'd expected:
Detective Captain Held in Slaying of Ex-Wife.

On the way back to his apartment, walking slowly, he tried to remember what she'd been like—not that afternoon, but before the divorce. He tried to remember her face on their wedding day, her soft laughter on their honeymoon. But all he could remember were those mad vengeful eyes. And the bullet ripping into her chest.

Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps the gun had come into his hand so easily he never realized it was there.

“Hello, Captain.”

“I—Fletcher! What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Can I come in?”

“Well…”

“I've got a six-pack of beer. I thought you might want to talk about it.”

Leopold unlocked his apartment door. “What's there to talk about?”

“If you say you didn't kill her, Captain, I'm willing to listen to you.”

Fletcher followed him into the tiny kitchen and popped open two of the beer cans. Leopold accepted one of them and dropped into the nearest chair. He felt utterly exhausted, drained of even the strength to fight back.

“She framed me, Fletcher,” he said quietly. “She framed me as neatly as anything I've ever seen. The thing's impossible, but she did it.”

“Let's go over it step by step, Captain. Look, the way I see it there are only three possibilities: either you shot her, she shot herself, or someone else shot her. I think we can rule out the last one. The three windows were locked on the outside and unbroken, the room was bare of any hiding place, and the only entrance was through the accordion doors. These were closed and locked, and although they could have been opened from the other side you certainly would have seen or heard it happen. Besides, there were one hundred and fifty wedding guests on the other side of those doors. No one could have unlocked and opened them and then fired the shot, all without being seen.”