Seduction of the Innocent (13 page)

Okay. So this was where he saw patients.

Because it was handy, I checked the kitchen. Nobody in there, either.

Apparently the doctor had no cook, no secretary, no receptionist. The choice of the Waldorf seemed to have more to do with meeting and attracting upper-class clients than living in comfort. This was, after all, a small tower suite, designed for bachelor living—Frederick was a widower with no children—and he had given up the largest room for his office. His work was his life.

That left only the bedroom, always the most awkward room to enter in a situation like this. I damn near skipped it. I mean, he probably wasn’t here, right? Maybe he went downstairs to get his hair cut in the fancy barbershop, or his breakfast in the coffee shop had run late, and like Sylvia said, he just left the door open for us.

Maybe.

The bedroom was Spartan as well. You faced the foot of the double bed upon entering; the bed was modern with a brown spread. Glass doors led onto a balcony—these stood slightly open, and as this was another cool day, it was damn near cold in there. More bland modern furnishing ran to a couple of night stands and a dresser, and another bookcase. Also a smaller work area, a little desk. The only other item of note was Dr. Frederick himself.

He was right in front of me—hanging from a ceiling light fixture by a heavy rope. Eyes rolled back, tongue lolling, dried spittle on his chin, in a lab coat and tie and well-pressed trousers. A chair had been kicked over.

“Oh,
Jack
!”

She was just behind me in the doorway. She had a clawed hand to her mouth, as if about to stifle a scream—and would have been right at home on the cover of
Tales from the Vault.

So would Dr. Frederick.

I held up a stop palm. “Sylvia, maybe you should wait out in the hall. Whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

“We have to get him down!”

She was moving past me and I stopped her, held her by the arm.

“No,” I said. “He’s dead. No helping him. That makes this a crime scene.”

“Well, it’s...suicide, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, and that’s a crime.” Which it was, but I doubted Frederick would do any time.

“So what does it mean?” She was doing her best not to come unglued.

“It means the doctor’s a piece of evidence now, that shouldn’t be tampered with.”

“Oh, Jack.” She fell into my arms and buried her face in my suit coat. These intelligent women did have a use for a man now and then.

She was shivering, not crying, but upset. I patted her back as my eyes traveled the bedroom. The chair that had been kicked away—either by the doctor to kill himself or a murderer to do it for him—was on the small side. I figured it went with the little writing desk.

She gripped my arm, frightened. “Jack...the
floor...
what
is
that? It can’t be
blood
....”

The carpet, more of the white fluffy stuff, was so wet it was squishy, but there was no discoloration.

“Back away, honey,” I said. “Just stand in the doorway, if you don’t want to wait in the hall.”

I knelt. Gingerly I touched two fingers to the dampness and brought them back and sniffed.

“What are you
doing
?”

“Checking to see if it’s urine. His bladder might have evacuated when he died.”

“...Is it?”

I stood. “No. It’s water. And it’s cool. Almost cold.”

She stepped just inside, tentatively, her intellect taking precedence over her emotions. “Why would the floor be wet?”

I thought I knew. It was crazy, but I thought I might know.

“I need to check something,” I told her.

I got a handkerchief out and used it carefully on a rung of the chair.

“You said this was a crime scene! Why are you touching that?”

The chair was upright now.

“Notice anything?” I asked.

“No.”

“The doctor is hanging a good three inches above where his feet would have been, standing on that chair.”

She came tentatively over, edged beside me, held onto my arm. We have our uses. “Could he have been...on his toes, tying the rope above him, and then stepped off, knocking the chair over as he did?”

“Very damn doubtful.”

“Then what
did
happen here...?”

I touched the doctor’s hand. “He’s cool, but rigor hasn’t set in yet. Usually takes three to four hours, unless the conditions are really warm, which speeds it up.”

She was hugging her arms to herself. “Or cold and slows it down? It’s freezing in here.”

“I wouldn’t call it freezing. And not cold enough to drastically affect rigor.” I added archly, “I mean, we
might
want to check with the
coroner
on this. Still...I wonder...”

“What?”

“There’s this old wheeze they use in those ‘minute mysteries’—ever read those?”

“Yes, they’re sort of puzzles, right?”

“Right. Well, there’s one where the hanged man is just dangling in a room with no furniture, and the solution is, he stood on a block of ice. And it melted, and...”

I gestured to Dr. Frederick, who had no opinion.

“Oh, Jack, you can’t be
serious.
Why would anyone commit suicide
that
way?”

“They wouldn’t. It would be a murder. A particularly sadistic one.” I gestured to the corpse, which made a handy visual aid. “You stun or drug your victim, sling him up by that rope so tight around his neck that he can’t speak or cry out. Even with his arms free, he can’t do anything, the knot’s too tight, his every motion hastening his demise. Gradually the ice melts, and your victim is hanged.”

“And
that’s
why the carpet is wet?”

I pawed the air. “Yeah, but that’s just a story. A puzzle. I don’t know that it would really work. How does a murderer get a great big block of ice into the Waldorf and up a tower elevator, exactly? Or maybe he comes up the fire escape, carrying the damn thing with tongs. Naw, it’s stupid.”

“But the carpet
is
wet.”

“It is. But maybe...”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe this
is
a murder, meant to look like a suicide. Maybe Frederick was killed and
then
strung up. The police should be able to tell. Hell, I could probably tell, but I’d have to get cozier with that corpse than would be wise.”

“I don’t understand.”

She was looking at me. She’d been mostly looking at me through this exchange, only occasionally glancing the dead man’s way.

“If the doctor was killed,” I said, “and the body set down anywhere, even on that bed, while the murderer rigged up the rope and a fake suicide, there will be lividity...a kind of bruising...where the body lay. It’s the lowest point where blood collects after the heart stops pumping.”

“But where does the ice block fit in?”

“Who says it’s an ice block? This is a hotel, isn’t it? Ice machines on every floor? A great big heaping pile of ice cubes under the doctor, plus the cool night, might be enough to screw up time of death and the onslaught of rigor. The ice is evidence that melts. I mean, can you prove water soaking a carpet used to be ice?”

“That seems unlikely.”

“Doesn’t it.” I sighed. “Somebody may have gotten very cute killing Dr. Frederick. This killer knew some of the science, but maybe not the lividity part. If the doc’s back is bruised, baby, this is a set-up.”

Sylvia, quite used to the presence of the dangling doc by now, said, “Couldn’t we...check? Carefully?”

“No,” I said, and took her by the arm. “I have a couple of phone calls to make.”

“The police?”

“Yeah, right after I call Maggie.”

I deposited her in the living room on one of the facing couches. She was shivering and I was tempted to light a fire. But I didn’t live here, did I? Right now, nobody did.

I used the phone on the desk in Frederick’s office, got Bryce as expected, and was put right through to Maggie.

“Frederick’s dead,” I said without preamble. “Suite was unlocked. We went on in and found him hanging by a rope in his bedroom.”

As casual as if I’d just reported picking up theater tickets, she said, “He doesn’t seem the suicide type.”

“With that ego, he’d have needed two ropes.”

“Don’t be ungracious, Jack.”

“It’s almost certainly murder. His feet were three inches higher than the chair. There are some other hinky aspects that I can fill you in on later.”

“Do it now.”

I did, briefly.

“Dr. Winters is with you?”

“Yeah. She did well.”

“I’m not surprised. You know, Jack, you just can’t leave this to the police.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Bob Price is going to be suspect number one, and we’re doing business with him—you accompanied him to the Senate hearing. And Dr. Frederick was negotiating with us for a column, in case you bumped your head and got amnesia. None of that’s well-known, but it will come out.”

“I suppose so.”

“Anyway, if Frederick is a murder victim, this stands likely to tarnish the entire comics community. But if you can bring the murderer in, that might cast the Starr Syndicate in a positive light.”

“Pretty shaken up by the doc’s death, aren’t you, Maggie?”

“Like you are. Call Chandler.”

She hung up.

So I called Captain Chandler of the Homicide Bureau.

Sitting there in the dead doc’s desk chair, I waited for the switchboard at the Tenth Precinct to put me through to the Homicide captain when I noticed the comic book on top of the stack, a
Dick Tracy.
I was thumbing through it idly, waiting for Chandler to come on, when I got to the minute mystery in back.

You know the one.

About a suicide and a block of ice?

Captain Pat Chandler of Homicide had the rugged good looks of a TV cop, which made him all wrong for real life. A broad-shouldered six-feet, Chandler had brownish blond hair and strong features in his narrow face, including piercing sky-blue movie-star eyes and a Kirk Douglas cleft chin.

Hollywood would have done better for him than the rumpled raincoat and formless tan porkpie he sported, which he tossed on the sofa opposite Dr. Winters in Frederick’s living room. The pressed blue suit, however, and the striped shades-of-blue tie against his button-down white shirt, looked sharp. Maybe his good-looking better half was doing her housewifely duties, although when a woman looks like a blonde Maureen O’Hara, a guy might be up for ironing his own shirts and getting his own goddamn suits to the cleaners.

I introduced Sylvia to him, and gave him a quick rundown on how we’d come into the unlocked suite and found the hanged man. Very briefly I explained our business here— that Dr. Winters was being interviewed to assist Frederick on a prospective advice column for the Starr Syndicate.

After asking her a few questions, Chandler directed Sylvia to stay put in the living room. Two uniformed men were posted in the hall, but the Homicide captain seemed otherwise alone, no sign of the lab boys yet. We went into the bedroom.

Patiently I watched while he made most of the same deductions I had—the disparity between the chair seat and where the victim’s feet reached, for instance. I expected him to haul the doc down, but he was waiting for the forensics team. He noticed the damp floor, knelt to check if it was urine, and so on. He did not make the leap to melted ice, but he did wonder if the room—with those balcony doors open—had been cold enough to screw up determination of time of death.

“Rigor’s just starting,” he said.

Then he asked me to steady the corpse, which I did, hugging the dead man around the legs and lower torso, so the captain could lift up the white lab coat and untuck the doctor’s shirt and check for lividity.

“You can let go,” he said.

I did.

“Check this out,” he said. He was still holding up the lab coat and the untucked shirt.

The exposed skin was purple, almost black, with lividity.

“Killed and moved,” I said.

He nodded. “Probably strangled before he was strung up. If it was
right
before, cause of death gets murky, too. The hanging may have broken his neck. That’s supposition, obviously. The coroner will give us a better idea.”

“If he was strangled in here,” I said, pointing to the writing desk, “maybe seated there, the body could have been moved to the bed while the rope was rigged.”

“I’d have to agree. That’s consistent with the lividity. What do you make of the damp carpet?”

We’d been getting along just fine, but I had a hunch that was about to change.

“Why don’t we go sit down in the doctor’s office,” I said, putting an amiable hand on his shoulder, “and talk about it.”

Chandler glanced around the bedroom, realizing nothing much was to be done until the lab boys and photographers showed. So he followed me through the living room into the dining-room turned psychiatrist’s den. Sylvia glanced at us curiously and I raised a hand as if to say, “I’ve got this.”

I took the liberty of sitting behind the doc’s desk and Chandler took the visitor’s chair. I was tempted to stretch out on the couch, or maybe suggest the captain do that. What I had to tell him was screwy enough for any shrink’s office.

I began with the minute mystery notion—he began smirking halfway through—then moved to my own variation, which traded a block of ice for heaping piles of ice-machine cubes.