“And the guys?”
“Tony Forrest, Randy Norden, and me.”
“Any trouble?”
“No. Look, we were kids. We were all in separate rooms, necking.”
“And then what, Mr. Cohen?”
“Then we all went home.”
“All right, what’d you do after you got out of college? Were you in the service?”
“Yes.”
“What branch?”
“The Army. The infantry.”
“What was your rank?”
“I was a corporal.”
“And your job?”
Cohen hesitated. “I…” He shrugged. “I told you. I was in the infantry.”
“What’d you do in the infantry?”
“I was a sniper,” Cohen said.
The room went silent.
“I know how that sounds.”
“How does it sound, Mr. Cohen?”
“Well, I’m not exactly an idiot, and I know the man who’s been doing these killings is a…a sniper.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I haven’t seen a rifle since I was discharged in 1946,” Cohen said. “I never want to see another rifle as long as I live.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t like killing people from ambush.”
“But you were an expert marksman, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you shoot at all now?”
“I told you…”
“Hunting, I mean. For sport.”
“No.”
“Do you own a rifle, Mr. Cohen?”
“No.”
“A pistol?”
“No.”
“Any kind of a weapon?”
“No.”
“Have you ever used a telescopic sight?”
“Yes, in the Army.” Cohen paused. “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said. “Nowadays, when I talk about killing somebody, I mean I’ve written a gag that’ll knock him dead.”
“And that’s all you mean?”
“That’s all.”
“Mr. Cohen,” Meyer said, “where do you live?”
“Uptown. Near the Coliseum.”
“We’d like to take a look at your apartment, Mr. Cohen, if that’s all right with you.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“We’ll be forced to swear out a search warrant.”
Cohen reached into his pocket and threw a ring of keys on the desk. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said. “The key with the round head opens the vestibule door. The brass key opens the apartment door.”
“The address?”
“127 North Garrod.”
“And the apartment number?”
“4-C.”
“We’ll give you a receipt for the keys, Mr. Cohen,” Carella said.
“Will you be out of there by six?” Cohen asked. “I’ve got a date.”
“I imagine so. We appreciate your cooperation.”
“I just have one question,” Cohen said. “If this guy is out to get us, how do I know I’m not next?”
“Would you like police protection?” Carella asked. “We can provide it, if you like.”
“What kind of protection?”
“A patrolman.”
Cohen considered this for a moment. Then he said, “Forget it. There’s no protection against a sniper. I used to be one.”
In the street outside, Carella asked, “What do you think?”
“I think he’s clean,” Meyer said.
“Why?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve been watching television, and going to the movies, and reading books, and I discovered something about homicide.”
“What’s that?”
“If there’s a Jew, or an Italian, or a Negro, or a Puerto Rican, or a guy with any foreign-sounding name, he’s never the one who did it.”
“Why not?”
“It ain’t permitted, that’s why. The killer has to be a hunnerd-percent white American Protestant. I’ll bet you ten bucks we don’t find anything bigger than a slingshot in Cohen’s apartment.”
14
The big black bomb with the furiously burning fuse was an unknown sniper somewhere out there in a city of ten million people. The two detectives sitting in a shoddy detective squadroom were drinking coffee from cardboard containers and looking out at the May sunshine streaming through the grilled window. They had searched David Arthur Cohen’s apartment from transom to trellis—the apartment boasted a small outdoor terrace overlooking a beautiful view of the River Harb—and found nothing at all incriminating. This did not mean that Cohen wasn’t a very clever murderer who had hidden his rifle in an old garage somewhere. It simply meant that, for the time being, the detectives had found nothing in his apartment.
At 3:30 that afternoon, long after they had returned Cohen’s keys to him, the telephone on Carella’s desk rang, and he picked the receiver from its cradle and said, “87th Squad, Carella.”
“Mr. Carella, this is Agnes Moriarty.”
“Hello, Miss Moriarty. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you. Suffering a bit of eyestrain, but all right otherwise.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Mr. Carella, I’ve been searching through our files since you called this morning. I am a very weary woman.”
“We certainly appreciate your help,” Carella said.
“Well, don’t get too appreciative until I tell you what I’ve found.”
“What’s that, Miss Moriarty?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh.” Carella paused. “Nothing at all?”
“Well, next to nothing, anyway. I couldn’t find the slightest bit of information on the two girls. I had home addresses for both of them here in the city, but that was twenty-three years ago, Mr. Carella, and when I called the numbers, the people who answered had never heard of Margaret Buff or Helen Struthers.”
“That’s understandable,” Carella said.
“Yes,” Miss Moriarty answered. “Then I called Mrs. Finch, who heads our alumni association, and asked her if she had any information on them. Apparently they had both come back to the college for the five-year reunion, but neither was married at the time, and they dropped out of the association shortly thereafter.” Miss Moriarty paused. “Reunions can be very frightening things, you know.”
“Did she know whether or not they’re married now?”
“She had not heard from either of them since that reunion.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” Carella said.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“What about the man? Peter Kelby.”
“Again, I went over his records with a fine-tooth comb, and I called the phone number he had listed, and I spoke to a very irate man who told me he worked nights and didn’t like being awakened by a maiden lady in the middle of the day. I asked him if he was Peter Kelby, and he said he was Irving Dreyfus, if that means anything to you.”
“Nothing at all.”
“He said he had never heard of Peter Kelby, which didn’t surprise me in the least.”
“What did you do then?”
“I called Mrs. Finch. Mrs. Finch went through the records, and called back to tell me that apparently Peter Kelby had never graduated from Ramsey and therefore she could find nothing on him as an alumnus. I thanked her very much, and hung up, and then went back to my own records again. Mrs. Finch was right, and I chastised myself for having missed the fact that Peter Kelby dropped out of school in his junior year.”
“So you got nothing on him either, is that it?”
“Well, I’m a very persevering woman, Mr. Carella. For a maiden lady, that is. I discovered that Peter Kelby had been a member of a fraternity called Kappa Kappa Delta, and I called the local chapter and asked them whether or not they knew anything about his current whereabouts, and they referred me to the national chapter, and I called them, and the last known address they had for Peter Kelby was one he registered with them in 1957.”