Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out (27 page)

“I see. Now what do you want me to do?”

“Well, I thought where you and Chief Lanigan are supposed to be so friendly. I thought maybe you could explain it to him, just how it happened.” He looked eagerly at the rabbi.

“No, Mr. Mandell. You must see that it wouldn’t do. Chief Lanigan would still have to question your wife, that’s his job, and the net effect of my trying to smooth the ground first would only make him suspicious.”

“So what should we do?”

“My advice, Mr. Mandell, is that you and your wife go and see Chief Lanigan as soon as possible, this afternoon, or right now, if you can, and tell him the whole story just as you’ve told it to me, he may be annoyed with you for waiting this long, but the longer you wait, the worse it will be, and if he finds out on his own, it could be very serious for you.”

Later when Miriam noticed that the rabbi appeared to be unusually abstracted, she asked. “Are you bothered about the Mandells. David? Do you think Lanigan will give them a rough time?”

“Oh, I’m sure he will, if only to impress on them the seriousness of withholding evidence from the police in a capital case. But a lot of it will be put on, because he knows that people do it all the time, he’s told me on more than one occasion that it’s one of the facts of life as far as the police are concerned. What bothers me is that Mrs. Mandell’s story tends to show that Stanley was near the Jordon house at the crucial time, and Lanigan might decide to follow that line and pull him in.”

“But he’s innocent –”

“Then he’ll get off eventually. I suppose. But in the meantime they’d give him a hard time, they might reason that if she was able to identify his car, he should have been able to identify hers, and that in not telling them he was concealing information.”

“But Mr. Mandell didn’t find out from Stanley. It was his mother who told him that Molly had gone out.”

“True. But Mr. Mandell won’t dare say so, because his wife will be there and he doesn’t want her to know. It seems terribly unfair to Stanley somehow.”

A couple of hours later, however, the rabbi received a telephone call that proved his fears were groundless, or at least misplaced. It was from Herb Mandell, he was angry, perhaps a little frightened. It showed in the sarcasm of his tone. “I want to thank you for your advice, Rabbi, we did exactly as you suggested. Lanigan questioned Molly for over an hour, he had the poor girl crying before he was through. But that’s not all, he told her he didn’t want her leaving town. Thanks to your advice, she’s now a suspect and will be followed everywhere she goes by cops.”

“Oh, surely not –”

“No? Well a few minutes ago I looked out the window, and there’s a car parked in our street, diagonally across from our house, and there are a couple of cops sitting in it, and I’ll bet you everything you like there’s one parked on Francis Street, too, so they can see if anyone comes out the back door.”

“I’m sure you must be mistaken. Mr. Mandell. Chief Lanigan may want her to be available to give evidence. If you like. I’ll get in touch with him and find out, if I can, just what the situation is.”

“I’d like.”

After releasing Maltzman, Lanigan had suggested to Jennings that he go on home and relax a little.

“Good idea, Hugh, the missus has been complaining about eating alone the last couple weeks. How about you? Why don’t you go home, too?”

“I will a little later. I want to get everything organized for my meeting with Clegg first. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Not many hours later, however, while he was dozing on the divan in the midst of the litter of the Sunday paper. Jennings was awakened by a call from Lanigan, there were new developments. Could he come down?

He could tell that his chief was excited. “I’ll be right over. Hugh.”

Although he arrived in less than ten minutes. Lanigan growled at him. “What kept you?” And as Jennings, his Adam’s apple bobbling, was on the point of being indignant. “Never mind. For the first time, we’ve got a break, we can place someone at the scene just about the time the murder happened, we don’t have to prove it, she admits it.”

“She?”

“Right.” He told of the Mandells coming to see him. “From the beginning. I’ve felt the pattern of the shooting was the basic clue in this case. Doc Mokely put his finger on it when he said it was like a woman shutting her eyes and firing away until the gun was empty, and that’s exactly the way it looked to me, that’s why I was so anxious to trace Martha’s movements. When we had to cross her off, I thought the boy might fill the bill, but I wasn’t happy with the idea. So along comes another woman –”

“But she said the place was dark, and Stanley said it was dark.”

“Jordon used only the first floor, and that’s practically hidden by the trees. From the street he wouldn’t be able to tell if there was a light on in the living room or not, as for Mrs. Mandell, what else is she going to say?”

“Yeah, Hugh, but what’s her motive? Why would she want to kill Jordon?”

“I don’t know. Why would she want to volunteer to deliver this report when it involved leaving her mother –”

“Mother-in-law.”

“All right, so it was her husband’s mother, she wouldn’t go and watch her husband be a big shot over at the temple, because the old lady was not supposed to be left alone at night. Yet she volunteers to sneak out and deliver this report to Jordon, well, I don’t know what there was between her and Jordon, but I got just the suspicion of a hint in going over the folder. When we questioned Gore, he said that Jordon had made a pass at his secretary. Now, that’s what Mrs. Mandell is – his secretary, and what’s it mean that he made a pass? It could be just a dirty old man giving a nice-looking young woman a pat on the behind. Or it could be that Gore spotted some hanky-panky between the two, and Mrs. Mandell covered it by saying Jordon made a pass at her.”

Jennings screwed up his mouth and shook his head.

“I know it isn’t much. I said it was just a hint. So what I want you to do is check around with the folks at the bank, every single one of them. Subtle like, you understand, and see what you can come up with. Rumors, gossip, anything I can use as a starting point for a real interrogation of the lady.”

“Sure, Hugh, but a lady who works in a bank, it’s hard to see her as a killer.”

“If it isn’t a professional killing, Eban, then it’s always somebody like Mrs. Mandell, an ordinary person like the corner grocer, or a schoolteacher, or even a cop. Sure, sometimes they turn themselves in right afterward. But it isn’t remorse, usually. It’s because they’re sure they’re going to be discovered. But sometimes they’re smart, and the crime goes unsolved. Right?”

“Guess so.”

“And another thing I want you to do. Eban. I want the Mandell house watched.”

“You think she might make a run for it?”

“I doubt it. But when I go to see Clegg tomorrow and he says he’d like to talk to her, I don’t want to find that she decided to visit an aunt in Canada. Just post someone near the house. It doesn’t make any difference if she spots him. It would be even better if she does, there’s nothing like knowing you’re being watched to get you nerved up and edgy. So arrange for it now, and then go on home. You can’t start on the bank assignment until tomorrow anyway.”

“You going home, too?”

“No. I think I’ll go up to the Jordon place for another look around.”

When the rabbi called the stationhouse, he was told that the chief was not there.

“Can you tell me where he is?”

The desk sergeant was evasive. “Gosh, Rabbi. I don’t rightly know.”

He called Lanigan’s house and Mrs. Lanigan said. “No. Rabbi, he’s not here. Is it important?”

“It’s terribly important.”

“Then I’ll tell you where I think you can find him, he called to say he was going to have another look around at the Jordon house.”

Lanigan was not too pleased when he opened the door and saw who his visitor was. “Oh, it’s you.” was the way he greeted him. But then he added. “Well, come on in. I owe you something for your help with Maltzman. I suppose.”

The rabbi looked about curiously as he entered the living room, he pointed to the recliner. “That’s where the body was found?”

“Uh-huh.”

He pointed to the clock on the floor. “And the clock?”

“That’s where we found it. Nothing has been moved except the body; of course. Originally; the clock was on the mantelpiece there. When it was hit by a bullet, naturally it skidded off onto the floor.” He pointed about the room. “Another bullet hit that painting right in the mouth, and one hit the light, and another the finial on the lamp, and one hit the pill bottle over there on the floor, that was on the table there originally, according to Martha Peterson, the housekeeper. But if you want to talk, come in the dining room. I’ve been using it as my office.”

Lanigan sat down at the table and, gathering the papers he had spread out before him, put them back into their folder, the rabbi sat down on the other side. Elbows on the table, his chin resting on his hands. Lanigan faced his visitor and said. “I suppose you’re here about Mrs. Mandell.”

“That’s right. Is she suspect?”

Lanigan pursed his lips and then said. “No comment.”

“Because if she is.” the rabbi went on. “it puts me in a most awkward position. You see, she came to you on my advice. On my urging, in fact.”

Lanigan considered, the rabbi was his friend, and as a fair-minded man, he could see some justice in his request for information, and what harm would it do? He could be relied on to keep confidential matters confidential.

“All right,” he said. “She’s suspect.”

“Just because she was here that night?”

“That, and because she’s a she.” He smiled. “Come on back in the other room, and let me show you.” He led the way and stopped about fifteen feet from the recliner. “Jordon was lying back in that armchair, dozing or asleep. Ballistics figures the person with the gun was standing right about here where I’m standing. Now, suppose he fires and misses, a twenty-two doesn’t make much noise, but in a room like this, it would be enough to wake anyone, no matter how sound asleep he was. So Jordon wakes up. Is he going to just lie there with someone pointing a gun at him and shooting? Of course not, he’d try to get up, make a run for it, hide, anything but just lie there waiting for the next shot. Right?”

“Go on.”

“So we figure it was the first shot that got him. But it was right in the head, in plain sight, the killer knew immediately that he’d hit him and that he was almost certainly dead. If he had any doubts and wanted to make sure, he would have come closer and fired another shot into him. But no, he stands right here and goes on shooting until the cylinder is empty. Why would he do that? One shot might go unnoticed, but half a dozen might very well be heard and noticed. It doesn’t make sense. So we come up with a scenario, as they call it these days, of a woman grabbing up the gun, and shutting her eyes and firing away until there’s a click and no more bullets, then she opens her eyes and sees that she has killed him. Of course, there’s a possibility that the first shot didn’t hit him: but that it gave him a heart attack and he either died of that or was unable to move. But it doesn’t change anything, and the medical examiner said it was most unlikely, well, the only woman in the case, the only one we knew about, was Martha Peterson, the housekeeper, and we concentrated on her. But we backtracked her and came up with clear evidence that she couldn’t have been here at the time. So then we thought of Billy Green –”

“As someone who might shut his eyes tight while firing a gun?”

“Something like that. Or he might shoot the old man and then figure he might as well fire off the remaining bullets, we even considered Stanley Doble on the grounds that he might have been so drunk that night that he didn’t really know what he was doing. But we weren’t comfortable with either of those.”

“And then I sent you Mrs. Mandell.”

“Right.”

“But couldn’t it be that after Jordon was killed with the first shot, the murderer went on firing for a good reason?” said the rabbi doggedly. “He might have shot out the lamp, for instance, because he didn’t want to be seen.”

Lanigan grinned. “It would have been a lot easier to just snap the switch, wouldn’t it? Of course, you could dream up reasons for shooting all the items he hit, he shot the portrait because he hated the original, he shot the pill bottle because he’s one of these nature food nuts and is opposed to medicines, he –”

“He could have shot the clock to establish an alibi.” the rabbi observed. “He could have set it ahead and then shot it to stop it.”

Lanigan’s grin broadened. “Sure, except that no one connected with the case offered an alibi, not Stanley: not Billy: not Martha Peterson, not Gore –”

“He had an alibi.” the rabbi pointed out.

“Not one that he offered, all he said when we questioned him was that he stopped on the road to Boston to make a phone call and that it was sometime after eight. Now, he could have, because in the office of the gas station where he made his call, there was a big clock on the wall advertising some kind of motor oil, the easiest thing in the world would be to say to the station attendant. ‘Hey, is that clock right?’ But he didn’t, the point is he didn’t offer any kind of alibi, we had to dig it out.”

“Maybe that’s the best kind.”

“What kind is that?”

“The kind where the police dig it out for you.”

The phone rang, and with a muttered damn. Lanigan went to answer it, he picked up the receiver and, after listening for a moment, said. “Yes, he is. Just a minute.” He called out. “For you. David. It’s Miriam.”

The rabbi took the phone and Miriam said. “Oh, David, do you know how long you’ll be? Because the Reuben Levys called, they’re in town, in Cambridge, for a wedding, they didn’t want to call yesterday because of the Sabbath. But they’d like to see us if we can make it. I said I’d call them back.”

“The Reuben Levys?”

“You know, from the seminary.”

“Oh, of course, the Voice.”

“That’s right.”

“The Voice is in town? Well, what do you know. Yeah, I’d like to see him, but – Look, why don’t you call him back and ask if you can call him a little later.”