“Good to see you again, Connie,” he greeted her, extending his hand. It wasn’t his practice to shake hands with women, but he felt somehow that a policewoman was different — especially when she was as attractive and feminine as Connie Trent.
“You’ve heard about the armored-car robbery?” she asked, getting right to business.
“Fletcher just told me.”
“It’s the same as last week’s supermarket job, and I may have a lead for you. I didn’t want to say anything till I was certain, but with this second robbery I can’t take a chance any longer. Next time this guy might kill a child.”
“It’s someone you know?” Leopold asked.
“Not exactly.” Connie Trent sat down, crossing her long legs. “When I was doing undercover work I met a girl named Kathy Franklin. She was on heroin, and she led me to a lot of the others who were arrested later. I helped Kathy get a suspended sentence, and signed her onto a methadone maintenance program. I’ve seen her about once a week over the past two months, and she’s really straightening herself out. She has a job as a waitress in a bowling alley, down near the Sound.
“Anyway, she has a boy friend named Pete Selby who’s still on heroin. I think he’s the one who got her hooked originally, though she’d never admit it. I’ve never seen Pete, so I figure he’s been avoiding me. But one night last week when I stopped by to check on Kathy it was obvious Pete had just left.”
“How obvious?”
“You know — she was sort of tensed up, and there were cigar butts in the ashtray. I asked her and she admitted he’d been there. In the kitchen there was a shopping bag from the Wright-Way Supermarket. It’s way the other side of the city from Kathy’s apartment, but there was this bag on the table next to a bottle of rye and two glasses. So when I heard about the robbery the next day I was suspicious. The robber carried the money away in a shopping bag just like that one.”
“You didn’t report it then?”
Connie Trent shrugged. “You can’t convict anyone with just a shopping bag. But he’s still on heroin, and that means he needs money. I figure someone would have to need money a great deal to pull anything like these two jobs, with the children.”
“She’s worth talking to,” Leopold agreed. “Want to go there with me?”
“Of course!” Connie said quickly. She seemed honored by the invitation, which surprised Leopold.
“Let’s go, then. Fletcher, you talk to the guards and the little girl, see if you get anywhere with the pictures on file.”
Kathy Franklin lived in a fourth-floor walkup apartment near downtown.
The area was part of a much-delayed urban renewal program that had left the blocks around her building barren and scarred as if by war.
Here and there a single sickly tree grew, revealed after years of hibernation by the demolition work around it; but for the most part the setting was depressing even on a sunny July afternoon.
Leopold stepped over a shallow puddle of water that had accumulated from the recent rains and followed Connie up the steps of the building. As they climbed to the fourth floor he wondered for the first time if Kathy Franklin was black or white, and he found out when a pretty white girl opened the door to Connie’s knock.
“Oh! Come in,” she said, her voice a bit reluctant as she stepped aside.
Connie introduced Leopold and explained why they had come. “Today an armored car was robbed, Kathy. By the same person who robbed the supermarket last week.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Kathy Franklin said, a little too quickly.
Leopold cleared his throat. “We want to ask you about Pete Selby.”
“Miss Franklin, the man who committed these crimes is a particularly vicious person. He endangered the lives of two children. Now you say you haven’t seen Pete Selby in months, but you admitted to Miss Trent that you’d seen him just last week.”
She shot Connie a deadly glance. “I forgot about that time. He was only here a few minutes.”
“He brought a shopping bag with him, from a supermarket that was robbed.”
“I asked him on the phone to bring me a loaf of bread and some milk. Are you going to arrest him for that?”
“What about today?” Leopold asked, ignoring her question. “Where was he this morning, just before noon?”
“I told you I haven’t seen him, and I meant it.” She was suddenly nervous, grabbing for an open pack of cigarettes that slid from her grasp; the cigarettes spilled across the carpet. She cursed and bent to retrieve them.
Connie was on the floor helping her, and Leopold drew back. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Perhaps a woman had a better chance with her.
“Look here, Kathy,” Connie began, reaching for the last of the cigarettes. “If Pete is involved in these crimes you have to tell us. Can you imagine how you’d feel if one of those child hostages was killed?”
“I don’t know anything,” Kathy insisted. “Not a thing.”
“Where’s Pete living these days, Kathy? Is he shacked up with another woman?”
“No!” she screeched from the floor, still on her knees. “He’s with Tommy Razenwood!”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. They have an apartment somewhere.”
Then, as if suddenly remembering Leopold’s presence, Kathy got to her feet and lit a cigarette. “I don’t know anything about it,” she told him. “I don’t see Pete anymore.”
“If he’s still on drugs he needs money. Is Razenwood on the stuff, too?”
“I don’t know. I know nothing about Razenwood.”
Her face was frozen into an expression that told Leopold they had pressed it to the limit. If there was more information to be had, they weren’t going to get it from her this afternoon. “All right,” he said with a sigh. “Come on, Connie. We’d better be getting back.”
The policewoman nodded, then reached out to touch Kathy on the arm. “If you hear anything, Kathy, you have my number. Please call me.”
Downstairs Leopold asked, “What do you think?”
“Oh, she’s still seeing him. There’s no doubt about that. But she may just be covering up his usual drug activities. Until we get an identification from that armored-car driver or the supermarket manager, it’s all guesswork.”
He had to agree. “Let’s get back downtown. Maybe Fletcher had some luck with the witnesses.”
Fletcher came into the office almost at once, holding a group of files and mug shots. “We got it, Captain! The driver picked him out, and the manager and the little girl confirmed it.”
“Let me guess,” Leopold said. “Pete Selby.”
Fletcher shook his head. “I struck out on Selby. He was the right age and build, but the wrong face. I was running through some of the people arrested with him in drug raids, though, and I hit a bull’s-eye. A guy named Tommy Razenwood.”
“Razenwood.” Leopold took the picture and studied it. “He and Selby are rooming together somewhere. If we find one we’ll find the other.” The young man in the photo was grim-faced and sleepy-eyed. His age was twenty-three, the same as Selby’s, but he had only one drug arrest, for LSD. There was no evidence that like Selby he was on heroin.
“No known address,” Fletcher pointed out.
“Kathy Franklin knows where they’re holed up. I’m sure of it.” He pressed a buzzer on his desk. “And if anyone can get through to her, Connie can.”
“You sorta like her, don’t you, Captain?”
“Connie? She’s an intelligent young woman.”
Fletcher winked. “I wasn’t talking about her brains.”
Connie Trent appeared at the door and smiled at them both. “Something else, Captain?”