St. Patrick's Day Murder (6 page)

“Did you ever lend Scotty money?”

“Nothing bigger than a five or a ten, and after the first time, I never expected to get it back. He paid me back sometimes. He probably thought he paid me back all the time. That’s the way Scotty was.”

It didn’t make me feel any better about Ray.

I didn’t sleep well. Little about last night’s visit with Ray had made me feel better about launching this investigation. The little was that he was so casual about the charge, so certain that it wouldn’t hold up in court. Did that mean he was confident of his innocence—or sure that no other evidence against him would turn up? And while I hadn’t expected him to welcome my entry into the case with open arms, I had not been reassured by his response.

I slept till Jack’s alarm woke me, although I usually wake up earlier on my own accord. Jack put breakfast together, using coffee his sister, the caterer, had given him to try. The smell got me going more than the alarm had, and by the time I sat at the little table, most of me was there.

“Feel OK?” Jack asked.

“A little tired.”

“You didn’t sleep well, did you?”

“I’m fine.” I leaned over and kissed his freshly shaved cheek. “You smell good.”

“So do you.”

“Fiancé,” I said.

“Yeah.” He kissed my lips. “I didn’t give you anything to seal it.”

“Yes, you did.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“We should talk about this morning, about seeing Ray.” I was inordinately nervous about it. Everything he had told us was very likely already known by the District Attorney. If Ray had written to Scotty at the precinct house to ask for the money back, and Scotty had left the letter in his locker, it was now part of the case against Ray. The witnesses to the
locker room fight had probably all made statements by now. If there were any other little secrets, it was unlikely Ray would disclose them to me or in my presence. I felt I would have to work around him, rather than with him.

“Let me tell you a couple of things about Ray,” Jack said. “He and Betsy haven’t had the smoothest ride together. This isn’t the first time they’ve lived apart and it may not be the last. Whatever goes on between them, he keeps quiet about it, and I respect him for that. I think he was nuts to lend Scotty money—anyone would be nuts to lend him money—but whatever you think of Ray, he’s got a heart.”

“That’s a lot of money to have lying around,” I said.

“He’s a careful guy. Betsy does some part-time work. I think her folks may have given them the down payment on the house, or at least some of it. I have money put away,” he said, looking at me. “OK?”

“You’re single.”

“And I don’t drive an expensive car. Ray doesn’t, either.”

“You think Scotty really used that money to buy the BMW?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

Boys and their toys, Jean had said on St. Patrick’s Day. How could Scotty have thought he could return the money in two months if he’d sunk it into a car?

“There are three things we have to look into,” I said, drawing together the fruits of my several sleepless hours. “Scotty’s beat. Jean said that was his life and I still think the answer to all this is likely to be there. The second is unsolved murders of cops. I know there are some, and I know they’ve been investigated to death, but there could be a connection. And the third is these crazy things about Scotty himself, the lies he told his friends and his wife about his military service, and where he was born, and who knows what else.”

Jack had taken a sheet of plain white paper from under the saltshaker and folded it in half once, then once again, in his familiar pattern of note-taking. As I spoke, he wrote 1, 2, and 3 along a folded edge and made brief notes.

“Because the homicide occurred on his beat, it’s been canvassed, I can tell you that. And since it’s about ten blocks
long, with a lot of stores and apartment houses, it’s much too big for you to go over by yourself. I’ll get hold of the D.D.5s from the interviews and the unusuals and anything else that’s been put in the file and either we’ll go over them together or I’ll pull out what I think should be looked into again.”

“Fine.”

He glanced at his note sheet. “I’ll get the files on the unsolved cop killings. There aren’t many. The guys break their backs on those cases and even if they can’t bag the killer, they often have a good idea who he is and they’re waiting to find him or waiting for him to make a false step so he can be picked up. The third thing, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it fits in or what it means. We’ll just have to keep digging.” He looked at his watch. “We should get going.”

We took care of the dishes quickly and left the apartment. We were a little later than we’d planned. Jack works the ten-to-six shift and then goes off to law school four nights a week. We took two cars, so we could go our separate ways. I followed till we turned into Ray’s street. After we parked, we met at Ray’s driveway and walked to his apartment together.

Ray took my coat, but Jack kept his on. Ray was dressed in a a tweed jacket, white shirt, and tie. “They’ve got my two .38s and they took my ID so I can’t run out and buy another one, and they put me on modified assignment,” he said in answer to Jack’s question. “They’ll find some papers for me to shove around or have me sign in at the borough office for appearances.”

“At least you’ll draw a paycheck.” Jack outlined our three avenues of investigation, and Ray listened and nodded.

“I don’t know what to make of Scotty’s military service and the birth certificate,” Ray said. “I talked to a lot of guys last week and they were as surprised as I was. It doesn’t make sense.”

“How did he plan to pay you back?”

“He just said he’d have the money.”

“He give you any paper on the loan?”

“I didn’t ask, he didn’t offer.”

“Jean know about it?”

He wavered before answering. “Yeah, she probably knows.”

The phone rang, and he went to answer it. “Yeah,” he said. Then he listened, his face changing. He glanced over at us. Then he said, “Hey, hold on a minute.” But the caller had apparently hung up. He looked at the phone before replacing it. “This is crazy. Some guy, I don’t know who, said the troops were on their way over with a warrant. No name, no nothing.”

“You have something to hide?” Jack asked.

“No, I don’t have anything to hide,” Ray said irritably, but he looked worried. “And I think you should get your butt outa here before they come. You, too,” he said to me.

“I’ll see you later,” Jack said.

I watched him go. When the door closed, I said, “Maybe we can talk, Ray.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. You know as much about this as I do.” His whole face was screwed up with tension.

“Is it a mistake that they’ve charged you or is it a set-up?”

“I didn’t think about much else last night. I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone on God’s earth would want Scotty dead, and I don’t know why anyone would want to frame me for his murder.”

I didn’t like the way he was looking nervously around. Something was bothering him, and it wasn’t my presence. There were voices outside and I looked toward the door.

“Sounds like they’re here,” I said. When I turned back, Ray was closing the closet door.

The doorbell rang and he went over and opened the door.

Three men walked into the apartment. The oldest of them introduced himself as Captain Browning and handed Ray a search warrant.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“The weapon used in the murder of Scott McVeigh.”

“I don’t have it. Go ahead and look.”

The captain turned to me. “Who are you, miss?”

“Christine Bennett.”

“Your address?”

I gave him my address in Oakwood, and he wrote it in a notebook.

“Mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“Don’t answer that, Chris,” Ray said. “It’s none of their business.”

“I’m a friend of the family,” I said.

They got to work. I was sure they wouldn’t find a gun, but the warrant gave them the right to look almost anywhere a gun might be, so they could well turn up something else quite legally. I kept my bag on my shoulder. I was glad I had hung up my coat. Heat was hissing out of the radiators and the temperature must have been near eighty.

The men worked quickly, looking in all the obvious places a gun might be hidden. Ray didn’t look at them, but I did. I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have someone on hand who wasn’t the accused and wasn’t part of the search party.

The man going methodically through the dresser drawers opened one and tapped his fingernail on something metallic. Then he pulled out a gray metal box, put it on top of the dresser, and opened it.

“Want to tell me what some of these things are?” he said, turning to Ray.

“That’s an extra car key,” Ray said, walking over to the dresser.

“Extra key for your cuffs?”

“Yeah.”

“This one?”

“Locker key.”

“What’s this?” He held up something that looked like a metal stick from where I was standing.

“That’s an aluminum cleaning rod. I like to keep my weapons clean. There should be a silicon rag in there, too.”

“There is.” The man laid it on top of the dresser. “Two dump pouches.” He put two small black leather pouches on the dresser. They looked like Jack’s. Each one could hold six extra rounds. Jack had told me that only young cops or guys who thought they were immortal walked around without them.

The man opened each pouch and poured the contents into his hand. Then he put the bullets back in the pouches. The last thing he took out of the metal box was a cardboard box. I was too far away to see it clearly, but I assumed it was a
box of bullets to replace any that were used. The man whistled as he opened it.

“Two copper-jacketed .44s,” he said. “You own a .44-caliber weapon, Sergeant?”

Ray’s face had gotten very pale. “No, I don’t, and I’ve never seen those before.”

The captain had walked over to see the bullets. “We’ll have to take these with us. Better take the whole box.”

The box went into a plastic bag, the searcher made a couple of notes on the outside of it, and the men continued their search. They took the bed apart, went through the stove and refrigerator, including the ice cube trays, and spent some time in the bathroom. The furniture was disassembled, squeezed and poked, then put back together. There wasn’t much. It was a bachelor apartment with only four walls and a bathroom. Even the closet yielded little. Ray owned a few pairs of shoes and an assortment of pants and jackets hanging neatly.

As the man going through the closet came to my coat, Ray said, “That’s Miss Bennett’s.” He walked over to the closet, took it out, and held it over his arm.

It seemed as good a time to leave as any, so I took it from him, put it on, and said good-bye. To my surprise, Ray said, “Why don’t you stay awhile?”

But I didn’t want to, and the search was practically over. I said good-bye again and left.

If someone had broken into Ray’s apartment, it almost had to be yesterday. Had the bullets been planted earlier, there was a strong chance Ray would have found them. Assuming they were a plant and that they were planted yesterday, perhaps someone had seen the perpetrator. After everyone had left Ray’s place, I rang the doorbell of the apartment on the main level.

A young woman carrying a two-year-old opened the door. “Yes?”

“I’m a friend of one of your tenants and I—”

“Which one?”

“Ray Hansen.”

“Tell me he isn’t the one I’ve been seeing on the news.”

“He probably is.”

“Oh, my God, in our house. He’s gonna have to go, that’s all there is to it. I have children. I can’t have a killer running around downstairs.”

I sympathized with her fears, but I felt Ray deserved that presumption of innocence we’re always told the law grants us. “There hasn’t been a trial yet and he’s working at his job, just the way he did last week.”

“They take his gun away?”

“Yes.”

She gave me a quick smile. “So what can I do for you?”

“I wonder if you noticed anyone around his apartment yesterday.”

“Why? Did somebody break in? In this house?”

“I’m not sure. Did you see anyone?”

“My God. My husband’ll have a fit. I don’t think I saw anyone, no. Is something missing?”

“Not exactly. Did you hear anyone down there during the day?”

“We never hear anything. The construction in this house is really good. And he’s quiet and he isn’t home much.”

“If you saw or heard anything when he wasn’t home—”

“I really couldn’t tell you. Not that I noticed. I have to go. The baby needs changing. Who did you say you were?”

“Chris Bennett.”

“OK. Thanks.”

I tried a few more houses with no more luck. Most of Ray’s neighbors had never seen him, didn’t know how long he had lived there, and had been surprised to find out he had been arrested. One old woman had seen a police car before noon but had left her window soon after. Several people had spent the afternoon visiting. For all most of the block knew, Ray had never lived there. New York can be like that.

I had only tried six houses, three on each side of the street, and several doorbells had not been answered. It was a few minutes after eleven, and I went back and rescued my car from the mechanical broom that was lumbering down the street.

A few blocks away I found a pay phone and called Jean McVeigh. She was home and said she’d be happy to have company. Since I don’t know my way around New York very well, especially Brooklyn and Queens, she gave me directions, which turned out to be very good. When I got to her house, she had coffee ready and some sandwiches for lunch. The children were playing upstairs and the police wives had left. It was her first day on her own since Scotty’s death, a tough day to get through.

“Jack called when he got to the station house,” she said. “He told me you’re looking into … what happened.”

“I’m giving it a try. You know the principals a lot better than I do. Do you think Ray could have done it?”

Jean smiled and shook her red head. “It’s all wrong. The guys were friends, I mean real friends. They loved each other. There was no reason, no motive. He didn’t do it, Chris. There was nothing bad between Scotty and Ray. They had different jobs, they didn’t compete with each other. I don’t
know what’s going on, but I don’t believe Ray ever even had a bad thought about Scotty.”