blond and much too fresh-faced for a Chicago cop.
“Nate Heller,” he said, with a grin. “I’ve heard about you.”
We shook hands.
“Don’t believe everything Captain Stege tells you,” I said.
He took the stool next to me, took off his cap. “I know Stege thinks you’re poison. But that’s ‘cause he’s an old-timer. Me, I’m glad you helped expose those two crooked bastards.”
“Let’s not get carried away, Officer March. What’s the point of being a cop in this town if you can’t take home a little graft now and then?”
“Sure,” March said. “But those guys were killers. West Side bootleggers.”
“I’m a West Side boy myself,” I said.
“So I understand. So what’s your interest in the Wynekoop case?”
“The family hired me to help clear the old gal. Do you think she did it?”
He made a clicking sound in his cheek. “Hard one to call. She seemed pretty shook up, at the scene.”
“Shook up like a grieved family member, or a murderer?”
“I couldn’t read it.”
“Order yourself a sandwich and then tell me about it.”
He did. The call had come in at nine-fifty-nine over the police radio, about five blocks away from where he and his partner were patrolling.
“The girl’s body was lying on that table,” March said. “She was resting on her left front side with her left arm under her, with the right forearm extending upward so that her hand was about on a level with her chin, with her head on a white pillow. Her face was almost out of sight, but I could see that her mouth and nose were resting on a wet, crumpled towel. She’d been bleeding from the mouth.”
“She was covered up, I understand,” I said.
“Yes. I drew the covers down carefully, and saw that she’d been shot through the left side of the back. Body was cold. Dead about six hours, I’d guess.”
“But that’s just a guess.”
“Yeah. The coroner can’t nail it all that exact. It can be a few hours either direction, you know.”
“No signs of a struggle.”
“None. That girl laid down on that table herself-maybe at gun point, but whatever the case, she did it herself. Her clothes were lying about the floor at the foot of the examination table, dropped, not thrown, just as though she’d undressed in a leisurely fashion.”
“What about the acid burns on the girl’s face?”
“She was apparently chloroformed before she was shot. You know, that confession Stege got out of Dr. Wynekoop, that’s how she said she did it.”
The counterman brought us coffee.
“I’ll be frank, officer,” I said, sipping the steaming java. “I just came on this job. I haven’t had a chance to go down to a newspaper morgue and read the text of that confession.”
He shrugged. “Well, it’s easily enough summed up. She said her daughter-in-law was always wanting physical examinations. That afternoon, she went downstairs with the doctor for an exam, and first off, stripped, to weigh herself. She had a sudden pain in her side and Dr. Wynekoop suggested a whiff of chloroform as an anesthetic. The doc said she massaged the girl’s side for about fifteen minutes, and…”
“I’m remembering this from the papers,” I said, nodding. “She claimed the girl ‘passed away’ on the examining table, and she panicked. Figured her career would be ruined, if it came out she’d accidentally killed her own daughter-in-law with an overdose of chloroform.”
“Right. And then she remembered the old revolver in the desk, and fired a shot into the girl and tried to make it look like a robbery.”
The counterman came and refilled our coffee cups.
“So,” I said, “what do you make of the confession?”
“I think it’s bullshit any way you look at it. Hell, she was grilled for almost three days, Heller-you know how valid
I sipped my coffee. “She may have thought her son was guilty, and was covering up for him.”
“Well, her confession was certainly a self-serving one. After all, if she was telling the truth-or even if her confession was made up outa whole cloth, but got taken at face value-it’d make her guilty of nothing more than involuntary manslaughter.”
I nodded. “Shooting a corpse isn’t a felony.”
“But she
“Why?”
March smirked. “He sent her a telegram; he was in Peoria, a hundred and ninety miles away.”
“Telegram? When did she receive this telegram?”
“Late afternoon. Funny thing, though.”
“Oh?”
“Initially, Dr. Wynekoop said she’d seen Earle last on November twelfth, when he left on a trip to the Grand Canyon, to take some photographs. But Earle came back to Chicago on the nineteenth, two days before the murder.”
I damn near spilled my coffee.
March nodded emphatically. “He and his mother met at a restaurant, miles from home. They were seen sitting in a back booth, having an intense, animated, but hushed, conversation.”
“But you said Earle was in Peoria when his wife was killed…”
“He was. He left Chicago, quietly, the next day-drove to Peoria. And from Peoria he went to Kansas City.”
“Do his alibis hold up? Peoria isn’t Mars; he could’ve established an alibi and made a round trip…”
“I thought you were working for the family?”
“I am. But if I proved Earle did it, they’d spring his mother.”
March laughed hollowly. “She’d be pissed off at you, partner.”
“I know. But I already got their retainer. So. Tell me. What did you hold back from the papers?”
It was standard practice to keep back a few details in a murder case; that helped clear up confessions from crazy people.
“I shouldn’t,” he said.
I handed him a folded fin.
He slipped it in the breast poket of his uniform blouse.
“Hope for you yet,” I said.
“Two items of interest,” March said softly. “There were three bullets fired from that gun.”
“Three? But Rheta was shot only once…”
“Right.”
“Were the other bullets found?”
“No. We took that examining room apart. Then we took the house apart. Nothing.”
“What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Stege…if you got nerve enough.”
“You said two things.”
March swallowed slowly. “This may not even come out at the trial. It’s not necessarily good for the prosecution.”
“Spill.”
“The coroner’s physician picked up on something of interest, even before the autopsy.”
“What?”
“Rheta had syphilis.”
“Jesus. You’re kidding!”
“A very bad dose.”
I sat and pondered that.
“We asked Earle to submit to a physical,” March said, “and he consented.”
