“I screamed.”
“Then what?”
“I ran downstairs.”
“And then?”
“I found the local fuzz and told him there was a dead bird up here. Margie. I told him she was dead.” Coe paused. “You want the señorita’s name?” he asked.
“What for?”
“Check out my story,” Coe said, and shrugged. “Make sure I really was with her tonight, instead of up here doing poor Margie.”
“From the looks of poor Margie,” Meyer said, “I’d be more interested in knowing where you were a week ago.”
5
Well, his estimate was a bit off.
He wasn’t a medical examiner, he was just a flatfoot, and the look he’d had of Margie Ryder on the kitchen floor seemed to indicate she’d been dead and gone for at least a week.
Not so, the man who did the autopsy reported. The apartment had been very warm, the man said, a condition rare for a slum dwelling in the month of October, most slum landlords preferring to save their thermal output for the dog days of January and February, and being very chary with the heat before the turn of the year. But of course all the windows were closed tight and there had been no traffic in or out of the apartment since the time of the murder, which meant that whatever heat did come up in the radiators had been contained and had therefore speeded up the putrefaction and decomposition of poor Margie Ryder.
Friday night was what the medical examiner reported.
Friday night was when the poor bird had been done in, give or take several hours in consideration of human error in trying to deal with variables like heat in slum apartments. Meyer wondered how the city ever hoped to handle the population explosion when all a slum dweller could do after 11:00 on any winter’s night was crawl into bed to seek a little body warmth? He then wondered whether or not Margie Ryder had sought a little body warmth last Friday night, and put the question to the medical examiner, who promptly reported that they’d found no trace of semen in the vaginal vault. Besides, the poor bird had been found fully dressed, her clothing neither torn nor disarrayed; somebody had just stuck a knife in her, that’s all, a routine stabbing.
Meyer said good-bye to the medical examiner. He had come on duty at 4:00 P.M. that Tuesday afternoon, and it was now 4:30, and he figured he’d better get cracking on the case. So he buzzed the lieutenant’s office and asked Byrnes who’d be working it with him, and Byrnes said Cotton Hawes. They were about to leave the squadroom to head for the Ryder apartment, when a man appeared at the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside.
“I want to talk to whoever’s handling the Margie Ryder case,” he said.
“I’m handling it,” Meyer answered.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure,” Meyer said, and rose to open the gate for him. The man was carrying a topcoat over his arm, and he held a gray fedora in his hand. He looked ill at ease in a blue business suit, as though he had dressed especially for his visit to the police station and would have been more comfortable in a sports jacket or a sweater. He took the chair Meyer offered him, and then watched Hawes as he pulled another chair over to the desk.
“I’m Detective Meyer,” Meyer said. “This is Detective Hawes. We’re working the case together.”
“I’m Jim Martin,” the man said. He was a big man, with broad shoulders and a square, craggy face, brown hair worn in a severe military cut, eyes so dark they seemed black, huge-knuckled hands, the hands of a street brawler. He was sitting beside Hawes, who was six feet two inches tall and weighed 200 pounds, and yet he seemed to dwarf him, seemed ready to bulge free of his tightly restraining blue confirmation suit, explode muscularly into the squadroom or perhaps the entire building. There was a nervous undercurrent to this man, the way he clenched and unclenched his enormous hands, the way he kept wetting his lips, his dark eyes darting from Hawes to Meyer, as though uncertain to whom he would tell his story. The detectives waited patiently. At last, Meyer said, “Yes, Mr. Martin?”
“I knew her,” Martin said.
“You knew Mrs. Ryder?”
“I didn’t know she was married,” Martin said.
“A widow. Her husband died shortly after the war.”
“I didn’t know that.”
He fell silent again. He clenched his right hand and then his left. His fedora dropped to the floor, and he picked it up and then looked apologetically at Hawes, who was watching him intently.
“You knew her,” Meyer prompted.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’m a bartender.”
Meyer nodded. “Where do you work, Mr. Martin?”
“Over at Perry’s. Do you know it? It’s on DeBeck.”
“Yes, we’re familiar with it,” Hawes said.
“I read in the paper this morning that somebody stabbed her,” Martin said, and again dropped his hat. Hawes retrieved it for him, and he mumbled a “Thank you,” and then turned to Meyer again. “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” he said.
The detectives waited.
“But she was a nice lady, Margie, and I can’t see how anyone who knew her could have done a thing like this.”
“Yes?” Meyer said.
“I know you guys don’t need any help from me, I’m just a bartender. I never even read a mystery in my entire life.”
“Go on,” Meyer said.
“But... well, look, the newspaper this morning said nothing was touched in the apartment, so that lets out a burglar. And whoever stabbed her, he didn’t... well, somebody on the scene said it didn’t look like rape had been the motive, I forget who said it, somebody from the District Attorney’s office. So what I mean is this wasn’t somebody who broke into her apartment, you know what I mean? If it wasn’t burglary, and it wasn’t rape, then—”
“Yes, we’re following you, Mr. Martin.”
“Well, if it wasn’t a criminal, if it wasn’t somebody who broke in to do some criminal thing, then it had to be somebody she knew, right?”
“Go on.”
“Well, anybody who really knew Margie would never do a thing like this. She was a sweet, decent person that if you knew her you couldn’t think of ever harming her. She was a lady,” Martin said.
“So what do you think?”
“I think it had to be somebody who didn’t know her.”
“But you said—”
“I mean didn’t know her good. A stranger.”
“I see.”
“A stranger,” Martin repeated, and fell silent again. “Jesus, I hate to get anybody in trouble, I mean it. I may be all wet about this.”
“What’s your idea?”
“Well... a guy came in the bar Friday night, this must’ve been about midnight, I don’t know, around then sometime.”
“Yes, go on.”
“He was pretty wound up, you know, his hands shaking and all that. He had maybe two or three drinks, I don’t remember, sitting at the bar, just putting them away and looking as if... I don’t know... as if somebody was after him or something. You know, he’d look up at the clock, and then he’d turn to look at the door, nervous, you know? Very nervous.” Martin took a deep breath. “So Margie, being the type of person she was, being a really decent human being, she got him talking, and pretty soon he seemed more relaxed. I mean, he wasn’t exactly calm, but he was more relaxed than when he came in. They talked together a long time. He didn’t leave until we closed.”
“What time was that?”
“Two o’clock.”
“He left alone?”