When he reached the end of the room as the smoke cleared, he saw three crumpled bodies around the overturned chair. One, a man he didn’t know, was bleeding badly. “Get an ambulance!” Leopold shouted over his shoulder.
The second one was Fletcher’s wife, Carol. She was dazed but seemed to have only minor cuts. He saw that Fletcher was at her side, helping her up.
The blast had hurled Pete Garraty over the back of the chair. The ambulance would do him no good. He was dead.
For the next several hours, the house and the street outside were a mass of churning confusion. The district attorney, the police commissioner, and the mayor all arrived on the scene within an hour, expressing shock and horror. With them came a small army of reporters and television cameramen, lighting up the outside night as they recorded each new arrival and departure.
Connie was with Fletcher’s wife, trying to induce her to go to the hospital, while a number of the other women were comforting Millie Garraty. The injured man, a neighbor, had been taken to the hospital with a shattered left arm, but it appeared he would live.
“What is it?” the commissioner asked Leopold. “You were here. Who could have done such a thing?”
“He had a lot of friends. I guess he had some enemies too.”
“Any prosecutor has enemies, but this must have been a madman.”
“Maybe,” Leopold agreed. “Right now I’m mostly interested in how that bomb got in among the gifts.”
“Do whatever is necessary to crack this case, Captain. Use as many men as you need.”
Leopold found Fletcher in the bedroom, examining the window screen. “Anything?”
“It’s been cut, Captain. At the bottom and the side, where it wouldn’t show right away.”
“The window was open?”
Fletcher nodded. “Because of the warm weather. Someone slit the screen, lifted up the comer, and reached in to leave the bomb on the bed with the other gifts.”
“Or else,” Leopold considered, “a guest brought the bomb and slit the screen to make it appear that’s what happened.”
Fletcher bent closer. “The light’s no good in here, but our lab boys with a microscope should be able to tell us if it was cut from inside or out.”
“Take the whole screen off and give it to them.” Leopold glanced down at the big double bed, suddenly feeling sorry for Pete Garraty’s widow. Then he remembered. “How’s Carol?”
“She’s all right, Captain. Just a few cuts on the arm. Connie’s getting her fixed up.”
“Shouldn’t she go to a hospital?”
“You don’t know my wife! Getting her into a hospital for anything but having a baby is next to impossible!”
“I’d better go see Millie Garraty.”
He passed the technical experts doing their jobs in the livingroom, and sent a couple of men out to check the ground beneath the master bedroom window. Then he went into the spare bedroom where Millie Garraty was stretched out on her son’s bed.
“Millie, I don’t know what to say.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. They were heavy with sleep and Barbara Garraty whispered, “The doctor gave her a pill.”
Millie roused herself enough to say, “Captain, get the person who did this. Just get the man who killed Pete!”
“I will,” Leopold promised. Then he left the room.
In the morning Leopold’s office was crowded. Some of the men, investigators from the district attorney’s office, were people he barely knew.
“Any luck on the bomb?” someone asked.
“We’re working on it,” Leopold replied. “It wasn’t too strong — a three-inch pipe bomb full of gunpowder, rigged to explode when the cigar box was opened. The detonator was battery-operated.”
“It was strong enough to kill Pete.”
“Yes,” Leopold agreed, “it was strong enough for that.”
“What about the window screen?” The man who spoke was young and sharp, and Leopold disliked him.
“Lab examination shows it was cut from outside the house. The wires were turned in just a bit. Also, we found part of a shoe print in the dirt. Not enough for identification, though. Not even enough to call it male or female.”
“So where are we, Captain?”
Leopold leaned back and looked at the wise men from the D.A.’s office. “I thought you could tell me.”
“He was working on some Mafia things. It looks like a gang killing.”
“Could be.” Leopold considered the possibility. “But wouldn’t his death do them more harm than good? Look what it’s stirred up already!”
“If anybody knows about it, Gonzo does,” Fletcher said. “Should I go see him, Captain?”
“No. I’ll talk to Gonzo myself. I want you to check out every single guest, Fletcher.”
One of the D.A.’s men objected. “I thought you just said the killer was outside the house.”
“I’d like to cover all the angles,” Leopold answered cryptically.
There was more discussion before the meeting finally broke up close to noon. When they were alone, Fletcher said, “You’ve got an angle on this, haven’t you, Captain?”
“Maybe, maybe not. How’s your wife?”
“Fine. I finally persuaded her to stop at the hospital on the way home and have a couple of stitches taken in one of those cuts. But otherwise she’s good.”
“What about that neighbor, Morris?”
“He’ll live, but he might lose the arm. They’re trying to save it.”
Leopold shook his head. “That bomb could have killed everybody in the room. It could have collapsed the house, or started a fire.”
“The guy musta been a real nut, Captain.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and saw Millie Garraty on the bed again, pleading with him to find her husband’s killer. “Maybe.”
“You wanted me to check the guests.”
“Yes. And Millie Garraty.”
“Millie?”
“She spilled a glass of punch on those gifts, Fletcher, and rewrapped two of them. One was the cigar box — I saw it. She could have put the bomb in it then.”
“Captain, Millie wouldn’t do that! She wouldn’t kill Pete!”
“I don’t think so either, Fletcher, but she handled that box. She rewrapped it and no one watched her do it.”
“None of the guests admit bringing cigars, Captain. Doesn’t that prove the package had to come through the window?”
“Even an innocent person might be terrified at this point. They wouldn’t want to admit bringing a gift that blew up.”
“All right. I’ll start checking them out.”
Leopold stood up. “And I’ll go see George Gonzo.”
If there was a Mafia organization in the city — a question still open to debate at Headquarters — George Gonzo would have been its logical head. He’d spent most of his adult life cultivating an image of himself as a tough guy who liked to order people around. Now, in his mid-forties, he’d softened the image to a godfatherlike despotism that he seemed to imagine was in style. There was no doubt that George Gonzo controlled a good deal of the city’s gambling and vice, but Leopold personally doubted he had any strong ties with organized crime on a national level. Even the Mafia must demand more class than George Gonzo could muster.
“Leopold!” Gonzo said, standing up from behind a steel desk in his dusty office at the rear of the Star Vending warehouse. “Is this a pinch?”
“Have you done anything to be pinched for, George?”
“I’m just getting out my vending machines, like always.”
Leopold tapped the front of a mirrored candy machine that filled one corner of the little office. “Still taking nickels from schoolkids, George?”
“It’s dimes these days. The nickel machines are long gone.”