“Well, we didn’t do it,” Lockhart said.
“That’s right,” Barnes said.
“Then who did it?” Carella asked. “Who else could have done it? You were alone in the warehouse, it had to be one or both of you. I can’t see any other explanation, can you?”
“Well, no, unless...”
“Yes?”
“Well, it might’ve been something else. Besides the coffee.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Lockhart said, and shrugged.
“He means, like something else we didn’t realize,” Barnes said.
“Something you drank, do you mean?”
“Well, maybe.”
“But you just told me you didn’t drink anything but the coffee.”
“We’re not allowed to drink on the job,” Barnes said.
“No one’s suggesting you ever get drunk on the job,” Carella said.
“No, we never get drunk,” Lockhart said.
“But you do have a little nip every now and then, is that it?”
“Well, it gets chilly in the night sometimes.”
“Just to take the chill off,” Barnes said.
“You really didn’t have a second cup of coffee, did you?”
“Well, no,” Lockhart said.
“No,” Barnes said.
“What did you have? A shot of whiskey?”
“Look, we don’t want to get in trouble,” Lockhart said.
“Did you have a shot of whiskey? Yes or no?”
“Yes,” Lockhart said.
“Yes,” Barnes said.
“Where’d you get the whiskey?”
“We keep a bottle in the cabinet over the hot plate. In the little room near the wall phone.”
“Keep it in the same place all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Who else knows about that bottle?”
Lockhart looked at Barnes.
“Who else?” Carella said. “Does Frank Reardon know where you keep that bottle?”
“Yes,” Lockhart said. “Frank knows where we keep it.”
“Yes,” Barnes said.
There’s nothing simpler to solve than an inside job, and this was shaping up as just that. Frank Reardon knew that the two nighttime shleppers hit the bottle, and he knew just where they stashed it. All he had to do was dose the booze, and then let nature take its course. Since one of the watchmen worked outside, any observer would know the minute the Mickey took effect.
Carella drove back over the Calm’s Point Bridge, eager now to confront Reardon with the facts, accuse him of doctoring the sauce, and find out why he’d done it and whether or not he was working with anyone else. He parked the Chevy at the curb outside the warehouse and walked swiftly to the gate in the cyclone fence. The gate was unlocked, and so was the side entrance door to the building.
Frank Reardon lay just inside that door, two bullet holes in his face.
4
Carella eased the door shut behind him and drew his pistol. He did not know if Reardon’s killer was still in the warehouse. He had been shot twice in his lifetime as a cop, both times unexpectedly, once by a punk pusher in Grover Park and again by a person known only as the Deaf Man. He had not particularly enjoyed either experience, since getting shot in reality is hardly ever like getting shot on television. He had no desire now to emulate Reardon’s present condition; he stood stock-still, and listened.
A water tap was dripping someplace.
A fly buzzed around one of the sticky open holes in Reardon’s face.
On the street outside, a truck ground into lower gear and labored up the hill from the river.
Carella listened and waited.
Three minutes passed. Five.
Cautiously, he stepped over Reardon’s body, flattened himself against the wall, and edged his way past the telephone. The door to the adjacent small room was partially open. He could see a hot plate on a counter and above that a hanging wall cabinet. He shoved the door wide and allowed his gun hand to precede him into the room. It was empty. He came back up the corridor, stepped over Reardon’s body again, and looked into the main storage area. Sodden ashes and charcoal, scorched metal tables, broken hanging light fixtures, nothing else. He kept the gun in his hand, went to the entrance door, and threw the slip bolt with his elbow. Ignoring Reardon for the moment, he went back to the small room in which Lockhart and Barnes had brewed their coffee and tippled their sauce. In the cabinet, he found a fifth of cheap whiskey. He put the gun down momentarily, wrapped part of his handkerchief around the neck of the bottle, a corner of it around the screw top, and twisted off the cap. Chloral hydrate has a slightly aromatic odor and a bitter taste, but all he could smell was alcohol fumes, and he wasn’t about to take a swig of whatever was in that bottle. He screwed the cap back onto the bottle, put the handkerchief back into his pocket, and the .38 back into its holster. He tagged the bottle for later transmittal to the lab, and debated whether or not he should call Andy Parker and suggest that not only had he missed the probable cause of the fire, but he had also overlooked a bottle that most likely contained a sizable quantity of CC13CH0.H20. He went out into the hallway again.
Reardon was still lying on the floor, and Reardon was still dead.
The first bullet had taken him in the right cheek, the second one just below his nose, in the upper lip. The hole in the cheek was neat and small, the one below the nose somewhat messier because the bullet had torn away part of the lip, shattering teeth and gum ridge with the force of its entry. Carella didn’t know any medical examiner who would risk his reputation by estimating the size of the bullet from the diameter of the hole left in the skin; bullets of different calibers often left entrance wounds of only slightly varying sizes. Nor did the size of the entrance wound always indicate from what distance the gun was fired; some small-caliber contact wounds, in fact, looked exactly like long-range shots. But there were powder grains embedded in Reardon’s cheek and around his mouth, whereas there were no flame burns anywhere on his face. Carella guessed he’d been shot from fairly close up, but beyond the range of flame.
His initial supposition was that Reardon had opened the door on his killer and been surprised by a quick and deadly fusillade. But that didn’t explain the unlocked gate in the cyclone fence. That gate had been padlocked when Carella visited the warehouse earlier today, and Reardon had opened it from the inside with a key from his belt ring. He had locked the gate again before leading Carella to the warehouse, and when the visit was over, he had walked back to the gate, unlocked it, let Carella out, and immediately locked it behind him again. So how had the killer got inside the fence? He would not have risked climbing it in broad daylight. The only answer was that Reardon had let him in. Which meant one of two things: either Reardon had known him and trusted him, or else the killer had presented himself as someone with good and valid reasons for being let inside.
Just inside the entrance door, Carella found two spent 9-mm cartridge cases, and left them right where they were for the moment. He went to the wall phone and dialed the precinct. He told Lieutenant Byrnes that he’d left Frank Reardon at approximately 1:30 that afternoon, and had returned to the warehouse not ten minutes ago to find him dead. The lieutenant advised Carella to stay there until the Homicide boys, the man from the ME’s office, the lab technicians, and the police photographer arrived, which Carella would have done anyway. He asked if Hawes was back from Logan yet, and the lieutenant switched him over to the squadroom outside.
“Get anything up at Grimm’s house?” Carella asked.
“Just one thing that may or may not be important,” Hawes said. “There were no lights on until just before the fire.”