Grange Street was one-way below Main and the Green, and Ellen sighed and turned into Freight Street and past the dark brown unappetizing railroad station. She had to stop for the light at the corner near the R.R. crossing. Malone was squinting to their right, across the bridge and the Tonekeneke and the cloverleaf to The Pike. Two state police cruisers were balling south on The Pike, sirens all out. Ellen deliberately jumped the light and turned left.
She made another left turn east of the Green, drove the one block up to Grange again, and swung right. The Colonial redbrick town hall stood at the southeast corner of the Green and Grange Street, extending into Grange; the New Bradford Police Department was near the rear of the building, with a separate entrance. The entrance was a little windbreak vestibule. There were two green globes outside.
Ellen stopped the car. He was on the sidewalk before she could put on her emergency.
“Remember, Loney, you promised. I’ll be hopping mad if you doublecross me.”
“I’ll be right home.”
He hurried inside and Ellen peeled off, taking her worry out on the Saab.
To Malone’s surprise no one was in the station but Sam Buchard, the night desk man, and Chief Secco and a middle-aged woman. The chief was over in the corner at the steel desk normally used by the Resident State Trooper, and he was talking to the woman seated beside the desk. Her makeup was smeared and her eyes looked worse than Malone’s. She was smoking a cigaret rapidly. Buchard was making an entry in the case log. The LETS-the Law Enforcement Teletype System out of the state capital-was clacking away as usual in its cubicle behind the desk.
Malone walked around the glassed partition to the working area. Chief Secco looked up with a disapproving glance and went back to his interrogation. The woman did not turn around. The desk man said, “What are you doing here, Wes?”
“Sam, what’s up?”
“Didn’t you hear?”
“I was at the movies with Ellen.”
“Murder and robbery over at Aztec.”
“Murder?” The last homicide in New Bradford had been four years ago when two men and a woman from downstate had decided to try some illegal night fishing off the railroad trestle over the Tonekeneke. They had been tanked up and the men had got into a fight over the woman. One of the men had fallen off the trestle into thirty feet of water and drowned. Malone and Mert Peck and Trooper Miller had fished his body out the next morning fifty yards downstream. Malone could not recall a bona-fide Murder One in all his years on the New Bradford force. “Who was murdered, Sam?”
“Howland, the bookkeeper. Shot three times in the chest. The payroll was stolen.”
Malone recognized her now. Sherrie-Ann Howland, the one the women called “the bloodsucker.” She had never even given Tom Howland the excuse of being unfaithful to him. Townspeople rarely saw her, she was said to be a secret drinker. She was sober enough now. Malone knew nearly everyone in town, its population was only 16,000.
“Any leads, Sam?”
“Not a one. The state boys have set up roadblocks throughout the area. Curtis Pickney found him by a fluke, and they say Howland wasn’t dead long. So maybe the killers didn’t have a chance to get away. Anyway, that’s the theory we’re working on.”
Malone knuckled his eyes. “Where was Ed Taylor?”
“We just found him.”
“For God’s sake, did Ed get it, too?”
“No, they slugged him, tied him up, and threw him in some bushes. Ed says there were two of them. No I.D., it was too dark. They took Ed to the hospital. He’ll be all right. He’s a lucky guy, Wes. They could have shot him, too.”
Malone hung around. Secco was still questioning Mrs. Howland. He took the log and pretended to read it. The familiar form-B. & E. and Larceny, One-Car Accident, Etc., Obscene or Harassing Telephone Calls, Non-support, Driving under Influence, Stolen and Recovered Motor Vehicles, Resisting Arrest, Destruction of Private Property, Attempted Suicide-had ghosts in it like the TV sometimes. He dropped the log and wandered over to the cabinets. Each officer had a drawer for his personal property. He opened his and fingered its contents-summons book, warning book, his copy of the motor vehicle laws, tape measure, a torn-off brass button Ellen had replaced and then found in the lining of his leather duty-jacket, a crayon self-portrait of Barbara signed bibby to my loving father in multicolor curlicue capitals, a copy of a five-year-old income tax return. He shut his drawer and took a Hershey bar from the department commissary drawer, depositing a dime in the cashbox. He stripped off the paper, dropped it into the waste basket, and chewed the chocolate slowly. Chief Secco was still talking to the widow.
Ellen will have my hide…
Malone took inventory. The E & J Emergikit on the counter-resuscitator, inhalator, aspirator. The two-watt, two-channel walkie-talkie. The case with the camera and flashbulbs. Nothing changes. Only for Sherrie-Ann Howland. I hope he left some insurance. It’s a dead cinch Pickney didn’t pay him enough to sock anything away. The whole town knew Pick-ney’s and Aztec’s way with a buck. And there was all that talk about Howland and Marie Briggs at Elwood’s. How do you kill in cold blood? A man had a right to live out his life, even a life as sorry as Tom Howland’s. A woman had a right to a husband, even a woman like Sherrie-Ann.
Secco rose. Mrs. Howland got up in a different way. As if her back ached. “You sure you don’t want me to have one of the boys run you home, Mrs. Howland?”
“I parked my car in the town hall lot.” There was nothing in the widow’s voice.
“I could have it delivered to you in the morning.”
“No.” She walked out, past Sam Buchard, past Malone, past the partition, through the vestibule. She walked stooped over like a soldier holding his guts in.
“Goddam,” Sam Buchard said.
“Oh, Wes,” Chief Secco said. “One thing. When you met Howland at the bank today and took him back to the plant with the payroll, how did he seem to you?”
Malone was puzzled. “I didn’t notice specially.”
“Did he act nervous?”
“Well, I don’t know. He talked his head off.”
“About what?”
“A lot of nothing. Now that I think of it, maybe he was nervous. Why?”
“All right, Wes,” Chief Secco said. “Out.”
“Chief,” Malone began.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“John, you’ll need all the help you can get.”
“When you went off duty, Wes, what did I tell you?”
“You said take a couple days off-”
“Then do it. We’re under control here. I’m not about to have you come down with exhaustion. I’ve told you-more than once-this isn’t a one-man department. Believe it or not, I’ve got ten other men most as good as you.”
“Four of them trainees.”
“That’s my problem. You leaving under your own steam, Wes, or do I have to run you out?” Secco looked as if he could do it. He was almost sixty but he had a steer’s build and a tough face under the gray crewcut. He was home-grown New Bradford like most of the force. His father had been a dairy farmer and he had grown up tossing hay bales and stripping teats. He still had a knee-buckling grip.
“All right, John, but just one thing. How does it look to you?”
“An outside job, I make it. I didn’t tell Mrs. Howland, but I think Howland was in on it and got crossed. That’s why I asked you if he seemed nervous this afternoon. Now get out, will you?”
“You can’t leave me hanging, John! What’s the indication of that?”
“Ed Taylor says Howland all of a sudden sent him into town for coffee. Ed thought nothing of it at the time, but after he got slugged and came to it struck him funny. Howland never did that before. Looks to me like a setup: Howland got Ed out of the way so he could let the robbers into the plant. He’d probably dickered for a cut of the loot, and after making the deal they shot him down. Go home.”