One of the patrolmen stuck his head into the kitchen and yelled, “Police officers. Anybody home?”
There was no answer.
He looked at the other patrolman. The other patrolman shrugged. Tentatively they entered the apartment, somewhat uncertain of their rights, knowing only that they were responding to a call and supposing it was their duty to investigate thoroughly, especially in view of the unlocked back door—which they guessed they could say indicated forced entry, if push came to shove.
In the wood-paneled library they found a dead man wearing a red smoking jacket with a black velvet collar.
The detective/2nd from the Twelfth Squad was a man named Kurt Heidiger, who responded to the homicide alone because his partner was home sick with the flu and because the squadroom was a madhouse today and nobody could be spared to accompany him. He established at a glance that the probable cause of death was multiple stab wounds, and he learned from the neighbor across the mews—the woman who’d placed the Emergency 911 call—that the dead man’s name was Daniel Corbett, and that he worked for a publishing firm called Harlow House.
Heidiger was a smart cop and a prodigious reader. When the city’s papers weren’t on strike, and that was rarely, he read all three of them from first page to last every day of the week. He recalled reading on Friday about the death of a writer named Gregory Craig—whose book Deadly Shades he had also read—and he remembered seeing a black-edged in memoriam notice on the book page of this morning’s edition of the city’s more literary newspaper; the notice had been placed by a publisher called Harlow House. Primarily he remembered that Craig had been the victim of a brutal stabbing. There probably was no connection, but Heidiger was too smart and too experienced to allow even the smallest of possibilities to go unexplored. When he was through with all the Medical Examiner-lab technician-Homicide Division bullshit at the scene, he went back to the office and checked with Headquarters for the name of the detective investigating the Craig murder. He called the 87th Precinct, was connected with the squadroom upstairs, and was told by a detective named Bert Kling that Carella had gone home at a little after four. He reached Carella in the Riverhead house at a quarter past 8:00. Carella listened attentively and then told Heidiger he’d meet him at the scene in an hour.
It looked as if they had another companion case.
Jennifer Groat was a tall bony blonde in her late forties, her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, the front of her long blue robe stained with what looked like either mayonnaise or custard. She explained that she was just getting ready for bed. The holidays had simply exhausted her, and now this had to happen. She made it plain from the moment she admitted the detectives to her apartment that she was sorry she’d called the police at all. In this city, it was best to mind your own business and go your own way.
“When you called 911,” Heidiger said, “you mentioned that you heard screaming and hollering in the Corbett apartment…”
“Yes,” Jennifer said, and nodded.
“We have the call clocked in at five-fifty-three, is that about right?”
“Yes, it was a little before six.”
“What kind of hollering and screaming did you hear?”
“What kinds of hollering and screaming are there?” Jennifer said. “Hollering and screaming is hollering and screaming.”
“By screaming…”
“Somebody screaming at the top of his lungs.”
“And by hollering?”
“I don’t know what the person was hollering.”
“Was he hollering for help?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it the same person doing both the hollering and the screaming?”
“I don’t know. I heard the noise over there, and I called the police. There’s always noise over there, but this was worse than usual.”
“What do you mean?” Carella asked at once. “What kind of noise?”
“Parties all the time. People drinking and laughing at all hours of the night. Well, you know. With the kind of friends Mr. Corbett had…” She let the sentence trail.
“What kind of friends were they?” Heidiger asked.
“You know.”
“No, I’m sorry, we don’t.”
“Pansies,” she said. “Fruits. Faggots. Gay people,” she said, stressing the word “gay” and pulling a face.
“Homosexuals,” Carella said.
“Queers,” Jennifer said.
“And they were partying all the time, is that it?”
“Well, not all the time. But enough of the time. I’m a telephone operator, I work the midnight shift, I try to catch a little nap before I leave the house each night. With all the noise over there, it’s impossible. I was about to take my nap now, in fact. If it isn’t one thing, it’s always another,” she said, and again grimaced.
“These friends of Mr. Corbett’s,” Carella said, “how do you know they were homosexuals?” He was remembering that Corbett’s alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the Craig murder was a married woman named Priscilla Lambeth who had entertained him on her office couch.
“One of them came here just the other night,” she said, “looking for the big party.” She lisped the word “party” and accompanied it with a mincing limp-wristed gesture. “He didn’t realize Mr. Corbett lived on the other side of the mews.”
“Did he give you his name?” Heidiger asked.
“Who?”
“The man who came here looking for Corbett.”
“Man? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Did he give you his name?”
“Why would he? He asked for Danny”—and again she lisped the word and hung her limp wrist on the air—“and I told him this was 1136, and what he wanted was 1134. He thanked me kindly and went flitting across the courtyard.”
“This was when, did you say?”
“Christmas Eve. Mr. Corbett had a big Christmas Eve party. I had to work on Christmas Eve, I was trying to get some sleep. Instead, I got a fruit knocking on the door asking for Danny.”
“Did you see anyone entering the courtyard tonight?” Carella asked.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I mean, before you heard the screaming.”
“Nobody. I was in the tub, in fact, when I heard all the fuss. What I like to do is take a bath before dinner. Then I eat a little something, take my nap, which I should be doing now,” she said, and glanced at the clock, “and then get dressed and go to work.”
“Did you see anybody in the courtyard after you heard the screams?”
“I stayed in the tub.”
“You mean you didn’t immediately call the police?”
“No, I called them when I got out of the tub. There’s always noise over there. If I called every time I heard noise, it’d be a full-time job.”