Marty was in his bath. I’ve got a call in to him now. I saw on TV that you caught the guy you’ve been looking for. He’s your suspect for the Susan Bean murder, isn’t he? That should go a long way toward stopping Marty in his tracks.”
“Bad news there, Bill; the guy, whose name was Hausman, confessed to six killings, but he denied all knowledge of the Bean murder. I’m not sure what to think about it.”
“Well, you need to work on him some more. If he’s in a confessing mood, he can clear you completely.”
“I’m afraid he’s not in any kind of mood; he’s dead. He made a grab for an officer’s gun at the precinct, and another officer shot him.”
“Oops.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, Stone, I’ve got an idea. Are you still determined to testify if he subpoenas you?”
“Yes, I am. I’m not going to do anything to make myself look guilty.”
“Then let’s go down to the courthouse tomorrow morning; just show up outside the grand-jury room and demand for you to be allowed to testify.”
Stone thought about this. “I like it; it might rattle him.”
“There’ll be some press there, too, and we can make a point of your showing up. That’ll make the evening news.”
“I’ll tell Marty about what we know of the Dante business, too; he can worry about that while he’s questioning you, and if he makes us mad, we can mention it to the press after you’ve testified.”
“All right,” Stone said.
“Meet me down there at nine sharp tomorrow morning, and don’t tell me where you plan to be in the meantime. If they try to subpoena you, I can deny knowledge of your whereabouts.”
“See you at nine in the morning,” Stone said. He hung up.
“What’s up?” Dino asked.
Stone explained the situation to him.
“I wish we could wrap this up before you have to testify,” Dino said.
“So do I.”
There was a knock on the door, and Andy Anderson came in.
“Sit down, Andy, and tell me what’s happening,” Dino said.
Anderson took a seat and got out his notebook. “Okay,” he said, “first, the apartment. We took it apart, but there wasn’t much there, except one more rent receipt in Erwin Hausman’s name – no IDs, no notes of any kind, only two sets of fingerprints, Erwin’s and one more.”
“Nothing at all that would help us find Mitteldorfer?”
“Nothing. If there had been a phone, we could have checked the records for numbers called.”
“That’s why there was no phone,” Stone said. “Mitteldorfer is very smart.”
“Now, on fingerprints,” Andy said. “Interpol got a match for Erwin. He had been arrested half a dozen times, all over Europe, for participation in violence at international soccer matches. He’s one of a lot of repeat offenders. The Hamburg police confirm this, and, more important, they confirm that he has a younger brother who has also been arrested a number of times for the same thing, name of Peter Hausman. I’m running the other set of prints with Interpol now, on the supposition that they belong to Peter. The only other sibling is Ernst, who works at the cigarette factory and who is, apparently, a solid citizen. The boys’ mother is named Helga, and she refused to speak more than a few words with the police. She wouldn’t answer any questions about the boys’ father, who, apparently, doesn’t live in the house with them.”
“Bingo,” Dino said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Where are we getting?” Stone asked. “What have we learned that will help us find Mitteldorfer, or Hausman, or whatever his name is?”
“I checked the Hausman name against utility records,” Andy said. “There are only two Hausmans in New York City: one is an elderly, retired machinist who lives in Queens, and the other has been a cab driver for the past sixteen years.”
“Then we’re back to the pictures in the paper,” Stone said, “and we’ve had only the one report.”
“And it was on Hausman, not Mitteldorfer,” Dino said. “Andy, talk to the local TV stations and get both the photograph of Mitteldorfer and the sketch of Hausman on the air tonight, but have the Hausman sketch altered to show very short hair.”
“Right,” Andy said. “Anything else?”
“Concentrate on getting that done; we’re short of time.”
“Actually, Lieutenant, there’s something else I want to tell you.”
“Shoot.”
“It’s about the Bean murder; it didn’t seem important until now, and, well, Mick Kelly asked me not to bring it up. There didn’t seem to be any reason to, so I didn’t.”
“What is it?” Dino asked.
“When the three killings – Bean, Stone’s secretary and the Hirsch woman – happened so close together, I thought they were all connected.”
“We all did,” Dino said.
“Well, now I don’t think Bean is connected to the other two. First of all, Hausman denied any knowledge of her, and he seems credible, in the light of his confessing to six other murders.”
“Good point,” Dino said. “You got another suspect?”
Stone spoke up. “Not me, I hope.”
“Not you, Stone,” Andy said. “Tell me, is there any reason why someone in the DA’s office might want Susan Bean to be shut up?”
Stone sat up straight in his chair. “Very possibly,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, you remember that Mick and I got to Bean’s apartment pretty fast after you called it in?”
“Yes,” Stone replied.
“That’s because we were right around the corner when we got the call.”
“Why?” Dino asked.
“Mick had wanted to meet somebody at a little bar on Lexington. I drove him there, and he got out and went in. He was in there, maybe, three minutes; I had a cramp in my leg, and I got out to walk it off. You know, there’s a little window that’s required for every bar; it was mandated a long time ago so that women looking for their husbands could see inside.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dino said.
“Well, I looked inside to see if Mick was about done, and I saw him talking to somebody.”
“And who might that have been?” Stone asked, thinking he might know the answer to his own question.
“It was Tom Deacon, from the DA’s Office,” Andy said.
“And that’s what, a thirty-second walk from the Bean apartment building?” Stone asked.
“Yeah,” Andy said. “I’m really sorry I didn’t bring this up before, Lieutenant, but it didn’t seem pertinent at the time. I asked Mick what he was seeing Deacon about, and he said he was angling for a job in the DA’s investigative division. He asked me not to mention it to anybody, because he didn’t want you to know that, after a pretty short time in the precinct, he was looking to get out.”
“Dino,” Stone said, “When Susan and I were walking to her place that night, she told me she wasn’t happy about how they had won the Dante case, and she was thinking of getting out.”
“I remember your saying that,” Dino said.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but I’ve learned from a source that Deacon may have fabricated or altered the surveillance-tape evidence that Marty Brougham used to get the Dante conviction.”
“You think Brougham knew about it?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Stone said, “but I think I’ll find out tomorrow morning.”
Dino turned to Andy. “See if you can get a search warrant for Deacon’s residence.”
“What am I going to tell a judge we’re looking for?”
“The murder weapon, or anything else you can think of. I know it’s thin; try Judge Haverman; she’s always been cooperative.”
“I’m on it,” Andy said.
