Jane in on the case, but he had had the unhappy hunch that Garrity might sell out, if the offer was high enough. And so he had enlisted Jane, depending on her intuition. He had taken the two of them to lunch, and had invented an excuse to duck out and leave them alone.
Afterward, Jane had said. “I guess I don’t really like her, Dan. She was suspicious of me, of course, and she’s a terribly vital sort of person. But I would say that she’ll be willing to testify. And I don’t think she’ll sell out.”
Now as he told her about the girl, he saw the sudden tears of sympathy in her gray eyes. “Oh. Dan! How dreadful! You’d better tell the boss right away. That Vince Servius must have hired somebody to do it.”
“Easy, lady.” he said softly.
He touched her dark hair with his fingertips, smiled at her, and crossed to the door of the inner office, opened it and went in.
Jim Heglon, the District Attorney, was a narrow-faced man with glasses that had heavy frames. He had a professional look, a dry wit, and a driving energy.
“Every time I see you, Dan, I have to conceal my annoyance,” Heglon said. “You’re going to cart away the best secretary I ever had.”
“Maybe I’ll keep her working for a while. Keep her out of trouble.”
“Excellent! And speaking of trouble—”
“Does it show, Jim?” Dan sat on the arm of a heavy leather chair which faced Heglon’s desk. “I do have some. Remember the Sheridan City Loan case?”
“Vaguely. Give me an outline.”
“October. Five o’clock one afternoon, just as the loan office was closing. Three punks tried to knock it over. Two of them, Castrella and Kelly, are eighteen. The leader, Johnny Servius, is nineteen. Johnny is Vince Servius’s kid brother.
“They went into the loan company wearing masks and waving guns. The manager had more guts than sense. He was loading the safe. He saw them and slammed the door and spun the knob. They beat on him. but he convinced them it was a time lock, which it wasn’t. They took fifteen dollars out of his pants, and four dollars from the girl behind the counter and took off.
“Right across the hall is the office of an accountant named Thomas Kistner. He’d already left. His secretary, Loreen Garrity, was closing up the office. She had the door open a crack. She saw the three kids come out of the loan company, taking their masks off. Fortunately, they didn’t see her.
“She went to headquarters and looked at the gallery, and picked out Servius and Castrella. They were picked up. Kelly was with them, so they took him in, too. In the lineup the Garrity girl made a positive identification of Servius and Castrella again. The manager thought he could recognize Kelly’s voice.
“Bail was set high, because we expected Vince Servius would get them out. Much to everybody’s surprise, he’s left them in there. The only thing he did was line up George Terrafierro to defend them, which makes it tough from our point of view, but not too tough—if we could put the Garrity girl on the stand. She was the type to make a good witness. Very positive sort of girl.”
“Was? Past tense?”
“This afternoon she was pushed out the window of the office where she works. Seventeen stories above the sidewalk. Gil Shinn tells me that Connie Wyant has it definitely tagged as homicide.”
“If Connie says it is, then it is. What would conviction have meant to the three lads?”
“Servius had one previous conviction—car theft; Castrella had one conviction for assault with a deadly weapon. Kelly is clean, Jim.”
Heglon frowned. “Odd, isn’t it? In this state, armed robbery has a mandatory sentence of seven to fifteen years for a first offense in that category. With the weight Vince can swing, his kid brother would do about five years. Murder seems a little extreme as a way of avoiding a five-year sentence.”
“Perhaps, Jim, the answer is in the relationship between Vince and the kid. There’s quite a difference in ages. Vince must be nearly forty. He was in the big time early enough to give Johnny all the breaks. The kid has been thrown out of three good schools I know of. According to Vince, Johnny can do no wrong. Maybe that’s why he left those three in jail awaiting trial—to keep them in the clear on this killing.”
“It could be, Dan,” Heglon said. “Go ahead with your investigation. And let me know.”
Dan Fowler found out at the desk that Lieutenant Connie Wyant and Sergeant Levandowski were in the Interrogation Room. Dan sat down and waited.
After a few moments Connie waddled through the doorway and came over to him. He had bulging blue eyes and a dull expression.
Dan stood up. towering over the squat lieutenant. “Well, what’s the picture. Connie?”
“No case against the kids, Gil says. Me, I wish it was just somebody thought it would be nice to jump out a window. But she grabbed the casing so hard, she broke her fingernails down to the quick.
“Marks you can see, in oak as hard as iron. Banged her head on the sill and left black hair on the rough edge of the casing. Lab matched it up. And one shoe up there, under the radiator. The radiator sits right in front of the window. Come listen to Kistner.”
Dan followed him back to the Interrogation Room. Thomas Kistner sat at one side of the long table. A cigar lay dead on the glass ashtray near his elbow. As they opened the door, he glanced up quickly. He was a big, bloated man with an unhealthy grayish complexion and an important manner.
He said, “I was just telling the sergeant the tribulations of an accountant.”
“We all got troubles,” Connie said. “This is Mr. Fowler from the D. A. ‘s office, Kistner.”
Mr. Kistner got up laboriously. ‘ Happy to meet you, sir,” he said. “Sorry that it has to be such an unpleasant occasion, however.”
Connie sat down heavily. “Kistner. I want you to go through your story again. If it makes it easier, tell it to Mr. Fowler instead of me. He hasn’t heard it before.”
“I’ll do anything in my power to help, Lieutenant,” Kistner said firmly. He turned toward Dan. “I am out of my office a great deal. I do accounting on a contract basis for thirty-three small retail establishments. I visit them frequently.
“When Loreen came in this morning, she seemed nervous. I asked her what the trouble was. and she said that she felt quite sure somebody had been following her for the past week.
“She described him to me. Slim, middle height, pearl-gray felt hat, tan raglan topcoat, swarthy complexion. I told her that because she was the witness in a trial coming up, she should maybe report it to the police and ask for protection. She said she didn’t like the idea of yelling for help. She was a very—ah—independent sort of girl.”
“I got that impression,” Dan said.
“I went out then and didn’t think anything more about what she’d said. I spent most of the morning at Finch Pharmacy, on the north side. I had a sandwich there and then drove back to the office, later than usual. Nearly two.”
“I came up to the seventeenth floor. Going down the corridor, I pass the Men’s Room before I get to my office. I unlocked the door with my key and went in. I was in there maybe three minutes.”
“I came out and a man brushes by me in the corridor. He had his collar up, and was pulling down on his hatbrim and walking fast. At the moment, you understand, it meant nothing to me.”
“I went into the office. The window was wide open, and the snow was blowing in. No Loreen. I couldn’t figure it. I thought she’d gone to the Ladies’ Room and had left the window open for some crazy reason. I started to shut it, and then I heard all the screaming down in the street.”
“I leaned out. I saw her, right under me, sprawled on the sidewalk. I recognized the cocoa-colored suit. A new suit, I think. I stood in a state of shock, I guess, and then suddenly I remembered about the man following her, and I remembered the man in the hall—he had a gray hat and a tan topcoat, and I had the impression he was swarthy-faced.”
“The first thing I did was call the police, naturally. While they were on the way, I called my wife. It just about broke her up. We were both fond of Loreen.”
The big man smiled sadly. “And it seems to me I’ve been telling the story over and over again ever since. Oh, I don’t mind, you understand. But it’s a dreadful thing. The way I see it, when a person witnesses a crime, they ought to be given police protection until the trial is all over.”
“We don’t have that many cops,” Connie said glumly. “How big was the man you saw in the corridor?”
“Medium size. A little on the thin side.”
