And they followed after Skovich and Hacker in single file.
The deal was arranged with Hacker’s dentist cousin and everyone but Sid looked relieved. The gathering turned festive. The partners learned that all four men were in their late seventies. P.T. had worked the docks, Sid trained boxers, Marsh labored for the railroad, and John had been a nurseryman. John also didn’t talk.
“Well, he does sometimes,” P.T. explained. “But mostly he’s already said everything he has to say in this life.” John, munching donuts, nodded seriously.
They spent most of their time on the park bench to keep up on what was going on in the world. “Betcha we know more what’s doing in the neighborhood than you boys do,” P.T. boasted, and the partners had to agree he was probably right.
They were clearly delighted to be in such close proximity to the excitement of police work.
“You working on that lady who got killed in her apartment on Towne Place?” P.T. inquired, chin quivering. Skovich said they were.
“We heard it was like a burglary gone bad,” P.T. offered. The detectives were evasive and P.T.’s eyes began to spark. “We saw that lady walking her dog every day. Marsh had a kind of crush on her. She seemed nice. Ugly dog, though.” His chest expanded visibly. “Anything we can do to help you boys out, anytime, just say the word. I figure we owe you now.”
“Okay,” Skovich said without enthusiasm. “That would be great.”
Sid, depressed because the bank job had fallen through, suddenly brightened. “We could keep an eye out, feed you stuff. Like — what do they call them, P.T.? We’ve seen them on TV.”
“Snitches!” P.T. crowed. “Hey, we can be your snitches. How’d that be?”
The detectives exchanged helpless looks. “We can always use information,” Skovich said lamely.
When the men departed, single file, the partners watched them go. “The Hard Times Boys,” Skovich mused with real affection. “A real over-the-hill gang if I ever saw one.”
“And you know,” Hacker responded cheerfully, “that could be you one of these days.”
Skovich’s mood continued downward towards glum as he and Hacker ventured out for lunch. He kept seeing himself with a sharp grizzled jaw and bare gums.
“Don’t forget your medicine,” Hacker reminded while they waited for their burritos and refried beans to arrive.
“I don’t want to take the damned medicine.”
“Then don’t take it.” Hacker smiled cheerfully. “Walk around with an infected tooth, I don’t care.”
After a respectably defiant moment, Skovich took his medicine. “You ever worry about getting old, Terry?”
“Naw,” Hacker said.
Skovich glanced at his partner’s smooth young face, his plentiful blond hair, and snapped, “No, I guess you wouldn’t, would you, punk? You’re barely out of diapers. Think you’ll live forever. Well, trust me, kid, senility will be on you before you know it. It’s breathing down my neck right now.”
Hacker grinned on, unruffled. “Hank, you’re forty years old and all you’ve got is a toothache. You’ll probably last another year or two, so get off my case, okay?”
The jalapeños arrived, hot enough to paralyze everything in him, pounding tooth included. Skovich brightened. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted sheepishly. “Every male ancestor I know of lived past ninety and kept most of the sense he was born with. I won’t give up yet.”
The conversation soon turned towards Hacker’s love life. Skovich had grown resigned to the parade of women. Each was trumpeted to be The One, and each eventually drifted off into memory. Sometimes it puzzled Hacker.
“I really want to settle down and have a family,” he had confessed during one long dark night on stakeout. “I had a good one growing up, so I have no hangups. But it’s a big thing, you know? What if I make a mistake? Get hooked up and The One is just around the corner?”
The current applicant was Pam, a travel agent, and over lunch they agreed that her occupation was a definite plus.
“All those cut-rate vacations,” Hacker enthused through nachos. “The Alps, the Far East. Egypt. Always wanted to ride a camel through Egypt. She might even swing something for you. Where’s the one place you’d like to go?”
“Omaha,” Skovich grinned after a moment’s thought. “Jet me off to Omaha.”
Hacker had to laugh. “Sorry, can’t do that. Hank Skovich let loose in his Bermuda shorts and long black socks. That would offend Omaha.”
And with that vision shimmering in their minds, the partners went back to work.
Lorena Miner had lived on the second floor of an ageing four-story building. She was a widow with no children and no close family. Her income had been adequate but not plentiful. Everyone who knew her liked her, a quiet elderly lady with simple tastes. She had been friendly but not careless; all her acquaintances assured the authorities that she would never permit a stranger to enter her apartment. Yet there had been no signs of forced entry when her body was found. The front door, however, was unlocked.
The detectives were sure it was a case of interrupted burglary. Jewelry and small items were missing from the apartment. Also cash from her purse, although her two credit cards were left untouched. Mrs. Miner was wearing a coat and had been strangled with her muffler.
“Came back from walking the dog,” Skovich speculated, “and surprised the guy inside.”
Hacker agreed. “Why else would the dog still be trailing his leash?”
“A lot of lowlifes around preying on older women living alone.”
“Yeah, but how did he manage to get inside?”
Rich and Tina Caputo had been Mrs. Miner’s next-door neighbors. They were graduate students at the local university and were absent when the first round of police interviews were done. Rich Caputo buzzed the detectives into the small barren lobby and opened the door to 2C when they knocked. He was a tall, earnest-looking young man with shaggy hair and glasses. His wife was in class, he said.
“Just checking the neighbors again to see if we can come up with something,” Skovich told him. “I understand you were gone when the police came around before.”
Caputo wore the frazzled expression of a stressed student, but he looked Skovich directly in the eye. “We were out of town all that week. My wife’s father died, and we went home for the funeral. You can check that out.” He shrugged at Skovich’s quizzical look. “I assume everyone’s a suspect until the guy is caught.” He and his wife had lived in the building just under a year and knew Mrs. Miner only slightly. “We’re on campus most of the time so we didn’t see her that much. She seemed nice, very quiet, hardly knew she was there.” He had been inside her apartment twice, both times to carry groceries for her when they met coming into the building.
“She have many visitors?”
“Like I said, we’re gone most of the time. Have you talked to Mrs. Halloran? She’s on the first floor somewhere and they were pretty good friends, I think, so she could probably tell you more than I can.”
The detectives asked about the security in the building. Caputo said it was okay for its age. “You need a key to get into the lobby. There are two back doors in the basement, but the management’s pretty good about keeping them locked. You can get outside if you need to but no one can get in.”
“Unless they’ve been buzzed in from the lobby,” Hacker reminded him.
“Yeah, that’s true. Once you’re inside you’ve got the run of the place.”
“That happen often? You get people going door to door?” Skovich was thinking of Mickey Wise, whose specialty was foisting nonexistent insurance policies on the elderly and gullible. Every time they put him away he popped back out again and took up where he left off. Mickey was out now, he recalled.