“I found it,” said Papkin, returning to Ewing and Harison.
Ewing looked at the other detective inquiringly.
“The other letter Harison says Groendal was reading just before he keeled over. It’s all crumpled into a ball.” Papkin was carefully unfolding and smoothing a piece of paper.
“Where’d you find it?”
“Over there . . . on the floor.” Papkin indicated a spot under a desk several yards from the desk at which Groendal and Harison had sat. “He must have been pretty goddam mad to have slammed it down hard enough to bounce it all the way over there. And it’s crushed so tight it’s tough straightening it out without tearing it.”
“Oh, he was mad, all right,” Harison said. “I’ve never seen him so angry.”
“I found something else,” Papkin said. He held up an object he had enclosed in a plastic bag, protecting possible latent fingerprints.
“Oh?” Ewing studied it without reaching for it. It appeared to be an empty syringe. “Where was it?”
“On the floor under the desk—next to that letter.”
Ewing turned to Harison. “Do you know anything about this?”
Harison seemed startled. “It’s a syringe.”
“We know that. Do you know of any reason we should find it close to Groendal’s desk and near a letter he had discarded?”
Harison appeared to have recovered from his initial shock. He shrugged. “It’s probably Rid’s. He is—was—a diabetic. He had to take regular insulin injections. It’s the same size and type that Ridley used.”
“Then we should find traces of insulin—and nothing else—in the syringe.”
“I . . . I suppose so. Of course.”
“One more thing: Do you have any idea how the syringe got on the floor?”
Harison shook his head. “Not really. I guess he must have missed the wastebasket. Or, maybe the cleaning lady was careless when she emptied the basket.”
Wordlessly, Papkin placed the plastic bag with the four letters, apparently the last ones Groendal had read. These letters by themselves constituted more than enough to initiate a homicide investigation. But it was always nice to have a possible weapon as evidence—the proverbial smoking gun. In this case, a syringe that had been used by somebody—Groendal, or, perhaps, his killer.
“We’ll have it checked out,” Papkin said. “Are you done with Harison?”
“For the moment, yes.” Ewing turned back to Harison. “We’ll undoubtedly have more questions. We’d appreciate your keeping yourself available.”
Harison left the detectives with some reluctance, though he had no singularly attractive option. A few reporters were still waiting to ask more questions, most of which would undoubtedly be impertinent. Eventually he would have to make funeral arrangements. He was not looking forward to that. And, inevitably, he would have to go home—by himself. He knew that would be wrenchingly lonely.
All in all, he minded least talking to the detectives, especially Ewing. He, for one, did not ask some of the more embarrassing questions. But now the detectives had sent him away. So there was nothing to do but face the unpleasant tasks that lay ahead.
In wordless agreement, Ewing and Papkin moved to an otherwise empty section of the newsroom so they could compare notes uninterrupted.
So far, all had gone by the book. The EMS had been first to respond to Harison’s emergency call. That emergency medical squad had been followed by uniformed police and then by the medical technicians. Then Homicide had been summoned, and the routine investigation into an unexplained death had begun.
It was routine procedure. In the wake of a sudden, unexplained death, when there was any question whatsoever, the homicide department was summoned. Homicide detectives spent much of their time in the fruitless investigation of what often turned out to be very natural deaths. The theory was: Take every precaution; don’t let a big one get away just because, on the surface, it appeared to be a natural death.
In answer to Papkin’s question as to what might have directly precipitated this apparent heart failure, Harison had mentioned the letters Groendal had been both reading and reacting to just before he had collapsed.
Both plainclothes officers and the uniforms had then begun a search of the desk and wastebasket. They found all the third and fourth class mail in the basket; as well as three letters and four first class envelopes (together with some unopened first class) on the desk. It was not until Sergeant Papkin found the fourth letter crumpled into a wad on the floor—and picked up the syringe next to it—that they felt they had everything. Now, each read the letter that Papkin had done his best to smooth out.
“Well, what d’ya think?” Papkin asked.
“I’m not sure. These letters are dynamite. They’d be enough to get a rise out of just about anybody.”
“I agree. So, suppose these people knew that Groendal had a history of high blood pressure and a bad heart . . .”
“Yeah, suppose.”
“Seems to me they’d be creating a degree of risk so high they could figure that Groendal would get so worked up about them that he’d croak.”
“Uh-huh.” Ewing nodded. “And I get the impression almost everybody knew about Groendal’s condition—his heart condition.”
“Not everybody.” Papkin smiled crookedly. We didn’t know.”
Ewing’s answering grin evidenced a more genuine amusement. “Charlie, I’ve been telling you for years you ought to be reading the fine arts section of the paper. Ain’t no use both of us knowing just the box scores and the major league standings.”
“So why should I have to sacrifice myself just so’s we can be a well-rounded team?”
“Now that you mention it, no reason. Not as long as there’s other people we can ask. And I did. And it turns out that, at least among the crowd that pays attention to the stage and books and the like, Groendal is very well known and so is his delicate condition.”
“So,” Papkin concluded, “what you’re saying is that we’ve got a collection of four people, each presumably aware that Groendal had a bad ticker—and each of them sends the guy a letter so threatening and so filled with hate that any one of them could drive him up a wall.” Papkin looked sharply at his partner. “Are you implying something like murder by remote control?”
“On top of that,” Ewing continued to pursue his own line of thought, “we’ve got all four letters landing on him at the same time. So we could have not only the possibility of remote control murder, but a nice case of conspiracy on top of it all.”
“You’ve got a suspicious mind, Ray. Have you considered that with all his health problems, maybe it was just time for this guy to go-period?” He reached for the letters and riffled through them. “See—” he looked triumphantly at his partner, “these letters aren’t even all dated the same day. One is dated Sunday, one Wednesday, and two Thursday.”
Ewing waved a hand as if chasing a mosquito from in front of his face. “There’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“These four letters Groendal read before he keeled over: Each of them was geared to drive him up a wall, but one of them stands out above the others. Did you notice? It would have put the fear of God into a normal healthy person, let alone a guy with a bad heart.”
“Yeah, I know the one you mean. But even assuming you’re right—and that’s a pretty far-fetched assumption—how could we prove that one particular letter did the trick?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the internal evidence. The content of the letter itself. We’ve got either the amazing coincidence of four letters just happening to get here about the same time. Or, it was no coincidence; it was a conspiracy. Or, one of the four really knew how to reach Groendal. And that one letter deliberately written did it . . . and the other three letters just happened to arrive at the same time . . . what do you think?”