“In Texas.”
“Doing what?”
“The usual. I was with an infantry company.”
“Ever get overseas?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I was in the Normandy invasion.”
“No kidding?”
Redfield nodded. “D-Day plus one.”
“That musta been a picnic, huh?”
“I survived,” Redfield said.
“Thank God, huh? Lotsa guys didn’t.”
“I know.”
“I’ll tell you the truth, I’m a little sorry I missed out on it. I mean it. When I was in the Navy, nobody even dreamed there was gonna be a war. And then, when it did come, I was too old. I’d have been proud to fight for my country.”
“Why?” Redfield asked.
“Why?” For a moment, Miscolo was stunned. Then he said, “Well…for…for the future.”
“To make the world safe for democracy?” Redfield asked.
“Yeah. That, and…”
“And to preserve freedom for future generations?” There was a curiously sardonic note in Redfield’s voice. Miscolo stared at him.
“I think it’s important my kids live in freedom,” Miscolo said at last.
“I think so, too,” Redfield answered. “Your kids and my kids.”
“That’s right. When you have them.”
“Yes, when I have them.”
The room went silent.
Redfield lit a cigarette and shook out the match. “What’s taking them so long?” he asked.
The policewoman who spoke privately to Margaret Redfield was twenty-four-years old. Her name was Alice Bannion, and she sat across the desk from Mrs. Redfield in the empty squadroom and listened to every word she said, her eyes saucer-wide, her heart pounding in her chest. It took Margaret only fifteen minutes to give the details of that party in 1940, and during that time Alice Bannion alternately blushed, turned pale, was shocked, curiously excited, repulsed, interested, and sympathetic. At 1:00, Margaret and Lewis Redfield left the squadroom, and Detective 3rd/Grade Alice Bannion sat down to type her report. She tried to do so unemotionally, with a minimum of involvement. But her spelling became more and more uncontrolled as she typed her way deeper into the report and the past. When she pulled the report out of the typewriter, she was sweating. She wished she hadn’t worn a girdle that day. She carried the typewritten pages into the lieutenant’s office, where Carella was waiting. She stood by the desk while Carella read what she had written.
“That’s it, huh?” he asked.
“That’s it,” she said. “Do me a favor next time, will you?”
“What’s that?”
“Ask your own questions,” Alice Bannion said, and she left the office.
“Let me see it,” Lieutenant Byrnes said, and Carella handed him the report:
DETAILS
Mrs. Redfield highly disturbed, did not wish to discuss matter at all. Claimed she had only told this to one other person in her life, her family doctor, and that because of urgency of matter, and need to do something about it. Has retained doctor over the years, general practitioner, Dr. Andrew Fidio, 106 Ainsley Avenue, Isola.
Mrs. Redfield claims drinks were forced upon her against will night of party Randolph Norden’s home, circa April 1940. Claims she was intoxicated when other students left at one or two in morning. Knew party was getting wild, but was too dizzy to leave. She refused to take part in what she knew was happening in other rooms, staying in living room near piano. Other two girls, Blanche Lettiger and Helen Struthers, forced Mrs. Redfield into bedroom, held her with assistance of boys while Randy Norden “abused” her. She tried to get out of room, but they tied her hands and one by one attacked her until she lost consciousness. She says all the boys participated in attack, and she can remember girls laughing. She seems to recall something about a fire, one of drapes burning, but memry is hazy. Someone took her home at about five a.m., she does not remember who. She did not report incident to sole living parent, mother, out of fear.
In circa October 1940, she went to Dr. Fidio with what seemed routine irritation of cervix. Blood test showed she was venereally infects, and that gonorrhea had entered chronic stage with internal scarring of female organs. She told Dr. Fidio about party in April, he suggested prosecution. She refused, not wanting mother to know about incident. But severity of symptoms indicated hysterectomy to Fidio, and she was admitted hospital in November, when he performed operation. Mother was told operation was appendectomy.
Mrs. Redfield feels to this day Randy Norden was boy who “diseased” her, but does not kniw for sure because each boy was attacker in turn. She stronly implies unnatural rlations with girls as well, but will not bring self to discuss it. She saed she was glad the boys were dead. When told that Blanche Lettiger had later became a prostitute, she said, “I’m not surprised.” She ended interview by saying, “I wish Helen was dead, too. She started it all.”
They worked on David Arthur Cohen for four hours, putting him through a sort of crash therapy his analyst would never have dreamed of. They had him tell and retell the details of that party long ago, read him sections of the report on Margaret Redfield, reread it, asked him to tell what had happened in his own words, asked him to explain the drapes being on fire, asked him what the girls had done, went over it and over it until, weeping, he could bear it no longer and simply repeated again and again, “I’m not a murderer, I’m not a murderer.”
The assistant district attorney, who had been sent up from downtown, had a small conference with the detectives when they were finished with Cohen.
“I don’t think we can hold him,” the assistant DA said. “We’ve got nothing that’ll stick.”
Carella and Meyer nodded.
“We’ll put a tail on him,” Carella said. “Thanks for coming up.”
They released David Arthur Cohen at 4:00 that afternoon. The detective assigned to his surveillance was Bert Kling. He never got to do any work, because Cohen was shot dead as he came down the precinct steps into the afternoon sunshine.
17
There were no buildings across the street from the station house: there was only a park. And there were no trees behind the low stone wall that bordered the sidewalk. They found a discharged shell behind the wall, and they assumed that the killer had fired from there, at a much closer range than usual, blowing away half of Cohen’s head. Kling had immediately run out of the muster room, and down the precinct steps, and across the street into the park, chasing aimlessly along paths and into bushes, but the killer was gone. There was only the sound of the whirling carousel in the distance.
The precinct patrolmen were beginning to think this was all very funny. A guy getting killed on the steps of the station house was a pretty macabre piece of humor, but they enjoyed the fun of it nonetheless. They were all aware that the detectives upstairs had called in the DA that afternoon, and they were also aware that Cohen had been held in the squadroom for a damn long time, and they joked now about the fact that he could no longer bring charges of false arrest since someone had very conveniently murdered him. One of the patrolmen jokingly said that all the detectives had to do was wait long enough and then everybody who’d been in that play would be dead, and the killings would automatically stop, and they could all go home to sleep. Another of the patrolmen had a better idea. He figured it was simply a process of elimination. As soon as the killer had murdered everybody but one, why then the remaining person was obviously the murderer of all the others.
Carella didn’t think it was so funny. He knew that neither Thomas Di Pasquale nor Helen Vale had put that bullet in Cohen’s head because they both were being escorted around the city by patrolmen who never let them out of sight. On the other hand, Lewis and Margaret Redfield had left the squadroom at 1:00, some three hours before Cohen walked down those steps and into a Remington .308 slug. Detective Meyer Meyer was sent promptly to the Redfield apartment on the corner of Grover and Forty-first in Isola, where he was told that Margaret Redfield had gone directly to the beauty parlor after leaving the squadroom, apparently feeling in need of treatment after her cathartic experience. Lewis Redfield told Meyer he had gone to his office on Curwin Street after leaving the squadroom, and stayed there until 5:00 P.M., at which time he had come home. He could remember, in fact, dictating some letters to his secretary, and then attending a meeting at 3:00 P.M. A call to the office verified the fact that Redfield had come to work at about 1:30 and had not left until 5:00. They could not say where he was specifically at 4:00 when Cohen was murdered, but there seemed little doubt he was somewhere in the office. Nonetheless, because that narrow margin of doubt did exist, Meyer phoned Carella at the squadroom to tell him he was going to stick to the Redfields for a while. Carella agreed that the tail was a good idea, and then he went home to dinner. Neither he nor Meyer thought the case was very funny. In fact, they were sick to death of it.