Leopold's Way (38 page)

As soon as the meeting broke up he motioned Connie aside. “Try to find out what happened with Fletcher's son, will you? Let me know as soon as you hear anything.”

“Right, Captain.” Connie was tall and dark-haired, the brightest addition to Leopold's squad since Fletcher had joined it eleven years earlier. She had beauty and brains, along with a superior arrest record that she had achieved while acting as an undercover narcotics agent. Leopold enjoyed talking to her, enjoyed looking at her deep green eyes and easy smile.

Within fifteen minutes Connie was back in his office. “It's not good, Captain. A man named Chester Vogel, a high-school teacher, was found shot to death in his living room. He was killed by a single .22 bullet that came through a back window of his house. The window faces a vacant lot where Fletcher's son was firing a .22 rifle at just about the time Vogel was killed.”

“Damn!” Leopold frowned at his desk. “All right,” he said finally. “I'd better get out there.”

“Want me to come along?”

“No, Connie. I'm going as a friend, not as a detective.” But he smiled and added, “Thanks for offering.”

“I'll be here if you need me.”

A police car was parked in front of Fletcher's white ranch home on Maple Street. Captain Leopold had been there a few times before—once for a summer cookout in the backyard when he'd felt oddly out of place as the only outsider in a close-knit family group. But he'd always liked Fletcher's wife Carol, a charming intelligent woman whose only fault was her heavy smoking.

Carol saw him coming up the walk now and opened the screen door to greet him. She was short and small-boned, looking far younger than her 37 years. At that moment she might have been someone's kid sister rather than the mother of a 14-year-old boy. “Thank you for coming, Captain,” she said simply.

“How are you, Carol? Is it young Mike?” He knew it was, because their other child was eight-year-old Lisa.

She nodded and pointed to the family room. Leopold went in, edging by the patrolman who stood in the doorway. Young Mike Fletcher was slumped in an armchair, staring at the floor. He did not look up as Leopold entered.

“Hello, Captain,” Lieutenant Fletcher said quietly.

“What's the story?”

“I got Mike a .22 rifle last Christmas. I think I told you about it. He wasn't supposed to use it around here. This afternoon Carol caught him out in back with some other kids, shooting at beer cans. She made him come in, and then a while later she heard this screaming. Woman over on Oak Street came home to find her husband shot dead. Some of the neighbors remembered hearing the kids shooting, and the patrolman came over to find out about it.”

Leopold looked questioningly at the officer in charge. “What do you think?”

“We'll run a check on the rifle, Captain, but there's not much doubt. Discharging a firearm out here is a violation. We'll have to book him for something or the guy's widow will be on our necks.”

Leopold grunted. The man was a deputy sheriff, independent of the city police. He knew Leopold, of course, but there outside the city limits he wasn't impressed by detective captains. Leopold wished Fletcher had kept his family in the city, where he'd been obliged to live until the regulations for municipal employees were relaxed a few years back.

“It was an accident,” Leopold pointed out. “And there were other boys involved.”

“I did all the shooting,” Mike said without looking up. “They were just watching. Don't bring them into it.”

Leopold glanced at Lieutenant Fletcher's face and saw the torment in it. “Come on,” he said to the boy. “Let's go for a walk out back. You can show me where it happened.”

Mike nodded reluctantly and stood up. He was a good-looking boy with fashionably long hair and sideburns, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Leopold knew him only casually, but had always liked him. They went out through the kitchen, walking across the wide back yard like casual strollers on a summer afternoon. Leopold admired the close-cropped lawn and blooming rosebushes as only an apartment dweller could. He'd never owned a home of his own, even during his brief years of marriage. Now, passing uncomfortably through middle age, he often contemplated the simple joys of life that he had missed.

“Where were you standing when you shot at the cans, Mike?”

“Beyond those trees, Captain Leopold. Our yard ends at the trees, but we all go into the empty lots to shoot and stuff.”

“Didn't you know discharging a firearm out here is against the law?”

“Yeah, I guess I knew it.”

Leopold followed him between trees and found himself in a great open field overgrown with weeds and scrub brush. Had it not been for the line of houses some 300 yards away on the next street, he might have imagined himself suddenly transported to the countryside.

“Some day they'll build all this up,” Mike said, “put a couple of streets through, build lots of houses. It won't be the same.”

“Nothing stays the same, Mike.” He stooped to pick up a punctured beer can. “Was this where the cans were?”

Mike nodded. “On the log.”

Leopold turned and saw Fletcher walking out to join them. In that moment he was not a detective lieutenant or even a close friend. He was only a troubled father. “Find anything?” he asked.

“Beer cans. Bullet holes. What sort of rifle was it?”

“A pump-action .22. He wasn't supposed to fire it around here. I told him, his mother told him.”

Leopold stared at the distant line of houses. “That's a long way for a .22 to carry and still have the impact to kill a man.” Something was gnawing at him. It was only a hunch, but it was growing. He turned to the boy. “Did you fire toward that house, Mike?”

“No. I didn't even know which was Mr. Vogel's house till the policeman pointed it out.”

“You can see the patrol car in the driveway,” Fletcher said, pointing out a white ranch home in the middle of the row of houses.

“Did you fire in that direction, Mike?” Leopold asked again.

“No. At least, I don't think so.”

“If you were standing here, you would have had to fire a good two feet to the left of your row of cans, and above them, to come anywhere near that house.”

“I might have been wide on a few shots. I don't know.”

“Let's just walk over there.”

“I don't want to,” Mike said.

“All of us do things we don't want to do. Come on.”

Mike looked up at his father who nodded. But Fletcher stood back as the two started across the field. Perhaps he felt that his place was with his wife.

“Nice house,” Leopold commented when they were almost there.

“Yeah. Oak Street is classier than Maple. I guess that's why they like that big empty lot separating us.”

Leopold nodded to the pair of detectives in the living room of the sprawling home. His eyes went to the single hole where the bullet had passed through the window at the rear of the house. “A thousand-to-one chance,” a detective said. “It was just bad luck, Captain.”

“Seems so. Is Mrs. Vogel home?”

“I'm right here,” a hoarse-voiced woman said from the kitchen. She was pale, a little overweight, and perhaps 50 years old. Once she might have been pretty, but today she was only sad-looking and alone.

“I'm Captain Leopold, Lieutenant Fletcher's superior in the city police. This is Mike Fletcher.”

Mike stepped forward and tried to speak, but his voice broke when he saw the spots of blood on the white shag carpet at his feet. “No,” he managed. “I didn't mean to—”

Mrs. Vogel stared at him with hard unyielding eyes. “You killed my husband,” she said quietly. “I hope you rot in prison for it!” Then, turning to Leopold, she added, “Or will being a cop's son get him off?”

Before Leopold could reply, a much younger woman appeared from the kitchen and took Mrs. Vogel's arm. “Come on, Katherine. You've got to lie down. The doctor will be here soon with something to calm you.”

“I am calm,” Katherine Vogel replied, and indeed she seemed so. Bitter and accusing, but calm. She even glanced down at the watch on her left wrist as if to see what time it was. Nevertheless she allowed the younger woman to lead her off to the bedroom. One of the detectives looked at Leopold and shrugged.

When the young woman returned Leopold thanked her. She acknowledged the words with a nod and said, “I'm Linda Pearson from across the street. Just trying to help.”

“She was the first one here after Mrs. Vogel found her husband,” a detective explained.

Leopold nodded. “You heard her screams?”

“Yes. It was terrible. She'd been down the street talking to a neighbor and when she returned she found him dead.”

“She seems to have calmed down quite a bit now.”

“It's all inside. I'm afraid she'll burst with it.” Linda Pearson was an attractive young woman, not more than 30, who wore her long blonde hair in twin pigtails that made her seem even younger.

“You knew Mrs. Vogel and her husband well?”

She looked away. “Just as neighbors. I didn't see much of her.” She seemed reluctant to say more.

Leopold walked to the rear window and examined the bullet hole. The shot had come from outside, all right, but somehow the whole thing still bothered him. His nagging hunch was back again. “Was Mr. Vogel seated in that chair?”

“I think so,” she answered. “He'd fallen onto the rug by the time I got here.”

Leopold bent to examine some indentations in the shag rug. The chair seemed to have been moved several inches from its usual position. “Come on, Mike,” he said, straightening up. “We'd better be getting back.”

In the morning Leopold was restless and irritable. He missed Fletcher, who'd taken the day off to be with Carol and the boy. More than that, he wanted to help, but he didn't really know how. When Connie Trent, filling in for Fletcher, brought his coffee, he looked at her and said, “Damn it, Connie, I want to help Mike!”

She sat down, crossing her legs with a whisper of nylon. “What can you do?”

“That's the trouble. I keep looking for something that isn't there, trying to find proof that he didn't do it. I was awake half the night dreaming up nice neat theories. Vogel having an affair with the girl across the street, his wife finding out, seeing Mike out shooting, and doing a little shooting herself.”

“It's an idea,” she admitted.

“But there's not a trace of evidence to back it up.”

“What about the bullet?”

“Too mashed for a ballistics check. But it was a .22 Long Rifle, the same type Mike was using.”

“What will they do to him?”

“He's a juvenile, never in trouble before, and it surely was an accident. He'll probably get off with a lecture from the judge unless Mrs. Vogel raises a stink about his being a detective's son. He did break the law by just firing the rifle. But the thing that bothers me most is the effect on the boy, and on Fletcher and Carol. The bad publicity, the civil suit for damages that Mrs. Vogel is bound to file.”

“You can't do anything about that, Captain. You can't invent a murder where none exists.”

“I know that, Connie.”

“Not even for Fletcher.”

He sighed and turned toward the window. “And yet, I have a hunch about Vogel's death—a feeling that the whole thing is just too pat. The chair he was sitting in looked as if it had been moved. Katherine Vogel glanced at her watch once while I was there. Why would a woman whose husband has just been killed be so interested in what time it was?” He paused a moment. “More important, is there substance to any of this or am I merely concerned about Fletcher and his son?”

Connie had no answer, and she gave none.

Leopold parked his car at the corner of Oak Street and walked across to a yard where a man was mowing his lawn. It was late afternoon, almost dinnertime, and in some yards families were preparing to eat outdoors. The odor of charcoal cooking hung heavy in the air.

“You're Bob Aarons?” Leopold asked the man with the power mower.

“That's right.” He switched off the mower and frowned.

“I wonder if you could answer a few questions. I'm Captain Leopold, investigating the death of Chester Vogel down the street.”

“Terrible thing,” the man said, his face relaxing a bit. “I've been a friend of theirs for years.” He was tall and middle-aged, with a ready smile when he cared to use it.

“I understand Mrs. Vogel was up here talking with you when it happened.”

“About that time, I guess, though the shooting might have stopped before she arrived. We chatted a few minutes and then she went on home. A few minutes later I heard her screams. I reached the house just after Mrs. Pearson.”

Leopold nodded. “Tell me, how did Vogel get along with his wife? Any trouble there?”

“Not that I know of.” The smile vanished. “It was the kid on Maple Street that shot him, you know. It wasn't Katherine Vogel.”

“I didn't say it was.”

“Just because the kid's father is a cop is no reason to let him off the hook.”

“Certainly not.” Leopold could see he'd get nowhere here. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Aarons. I'll be going now.”

He turned to leave, but Aarons called him back. “Look, you might talk to Linda Pearson about it.”

“What could she tell me?”

The man's face was blank. “Ask her.”

“Come on, Mr. Aarons.”

The man stared down at the grass. “In the house, right after I got there, Mrs. Pearson said Katherine had killed him. That was before we knew what really happened, of course.”

“Of course. Thanks, Mr. Aarons. I'll talk to her.”

Linda Pearson came to the door at his first ring. He identified himself and reminded her of their meeting the previous afternoon, but she still seemed reluctant to let him in. “My husband's at the funeral parlor with Katherine Vogel. I'm alone with the baby.”