Meanwhile, the Communications Bureau had sent an ambulance from the nearest hospital and notified the Medical Examiner’s office. As soon as Walt and I had discovered we had a homicide, Walt had called the squad commander at the station house. He, in turn, would notify other interested parties and offices.
My first job was to determine the dead girl’s identity. I’d sent a patrolman to round up the super, but the patrolman had come back to report the super gone and his wife unable to tell us where we could find him. The super’s wife had told the patrolman she knew none of the tenants, and had never seen any of them, except for one or two men who had come to the super’s basement apartment at one time or another to make complaints or request repairs. She’d said she was an invalid, spent most of her time in bed, and had not been out of the apartment in nearly two years.
The switchboard was not in operation between midnight and eight A.M. The super’s wife had told the patrolman that the operator who came on duty then, a man, was often late. Apparently such had been the case this morning, because there had been no one at the board when we arrived. Usually, when we have an unidentified DOA in an apartment house, we can get a tentative identification from either the super or the switchboard operator, but in this case we hadn’t been able to contact either one.
The patrolman we’d posted in the elevator took me down to the ground floor. The switchboard operator was still missing, and a check with the patrolman posted at the rear entrance showed that the super had not returned to his apartment.
I rode back up to the top floor, glanced at the Complaint Report again to make sure of the apartment number, and walked along the corridor to 908.
2
The man who opened the door to my knock was, I guessed, no more than thirty, but his hair was as white as it would ever be. It looked even whiter because of his deep tan and dark eyes, and when you noticed that his eyelashes were white too, the effect was a little startling. He was about an inch taller than I, and about four inches wider through the shoulders.
“You Mr. Henderson?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I showed him my badge. “My name’s Manning. I’ll be in charge of the investigation.”
“You don’t believe in taking any chances, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Making everyone stay in his apartment this way. You certainly can’t suspect all of us.” He glanced both ways along the corridor and raised his voice as he said this, wanting, I supposed, to be a self-appointed spokesman for the others on the floor.
“We can talk better inside, Mr. Henderson,” I said.
He hesitated a moment, then stood back to let me step past him. He kept his hand on the doorknob, frowning at me.
“Would you mind closing the door, please?” I asked.
He shrugged, closed the door and motioned to a studio couch. “Might as well sit down,” he said.
I sat down and waited a moment for him to look me over before he sat down in an easy chair across from me and crossed his legs.
“You found the body, I believe,” I said.
He nodded.
“How’d that come about?”
“Why, just the way I told the man on the phone. I went up to the roof this morning, and she was there. I saw her as soon as I stepped out.”
“Did you touch the body?”
He smiled at me, a little pityingly. “Of course I didn’t. Anyone knows better than to touch somebody who’s been murdered.”
“But you did get close enough to know she was dead?”
“Naturally. I said she was dead when I phoned the police.” He shook a cigarette from a package and took his time lighting it. “I held the back of my pocket watch close to her nose and mouth. When I took it away again it was still bright. No breath had condensed on it. I knew then she was dead.”
“I see.”
“I hope what I did doesn’t upset you.”
I didn’t let him nettle me. You run into all kinds, and Henderson’s form of cop-baiting was comparatively mild. We treat citizens with as much respect and politeness as we can; and sometimes, with types like Henderson, that can be the toughest part of an assignment.
“Can you identify the girl for me, Mr. Henderson?” I asked.
“Her name is — was Barbara Lawson.”
I got out my notebook and pencil. “Did she live here in the building?”
“Yes, she did. In 601.” I got the pitying smile again. “That’s really surprising, isn’t it? I mean, that she’d live right here in this very building.”
I wrote down the girl’s name and apartment number. “There’s nothing so surprising about it,” I said. “And then again, it wouldn’t be too surprising if she’d been a guest here, either.”
His eyes narrowed a little. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”
I closed my notebook over my finger and settled myself a little more comfortably on the couch. “It’s not supposed to mean anything, Mr. Henderson,” I said, keeping my voice a lot more friendly than I wanted to. “I was just pointing out the reason for my question. We have to follow routine, you know. All this is just part of it.”
“It didn’t sound that way.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you know the girl well?”
He studied me for a moment, as if debating with himself whether he should let me off so easily or give me a bad time. Finally he shook his head. “No, I didn’t know her too well. I got her an apartment here about — well, I guess it was about six months ago. I’d gone out with her a few times, and she was looking for a place. When I found out there was going to be a vacancy here, I told her about it.”
“She live there alone?”
“Yeah — alone. She wasn’t married, if that’s what you’re getting at. Fooling around with married women is one thing I don’t do, and never have.”
I opened my notebook again. “What can you tell me about her?”
He leaned forward and, without his eyes once leaving mine, began slowly and carefully to mash out his cigarette in a tray on the cocktail table. “I want to know one thing,” he said. “I want an honest answer... Do you suspect me of this?”
“It’s a little early for us to suspect anyone yet, Mr. Henderson,” I said. “And on the other hand, cops have to work on the premise that anyone could be guilty. It’s as I told you. These are simply routine questions that have to be asked, and it’s up to me to ask them. It’s my job, just like driving a truck or keeping books.”
He straightened slowly and now his face showed a slight flush beneath its heavy tan. “That’s just about the kind of answer I expected,” he said. “I didn’t have to call the police, you know. I could have just left her there and saved myself all this annoyance.”
I let him glare at me a while, and then I said, “About Miss Lawson. What can you tell me about her?”
“Not a hell of a lot, Manning. I met her in a bar. I had the stool next to hers... Well, you know how those things go. We went out a few times after that. And like I said before, I told her about the vacancy here in the apartment house. Frankly, I thought that by doing her a favor like that, and having her in the same building, might facilitate things.” He paused. “It didn’t, though. I saw her only a few times after that. After she moved in, I mean. She was a beautiful girl, but she was just a little too hard on my billfold.”
“You know any of her friends or acquaintances?”
“No. I always tried to keep her by herself as much as I could. I guess I worked up a pretty good-sized yen for her, but nothing came of it. It cost me around a hundred dollars every time I took her out. A man can’t take too much of that. Not me, anyhow.” He lit another cigarette. I noticed he did it naturally, without making a production of it, and it seemed that some of his hostility might be leaving him. “She mentioned a lot of people, off and on, but I don’t remember any of them.”