“Good thing we caught you,” Foley said. “His Honor has something to tell you.”
“Hello, Saxon,” Bennock said with a peculiar inflection of reluctance in his high, reedy voice. Then he glanced at Foley. “I see no point in making an official announcement in the middle of the street, Mr. Foley.”
“You just plan to write him a letter?” Foley asked, retaining his grip on the elbow. “He has a right to be informed face to face.”
Saxon said, “I think I know what you have to say anyway, Mr. Bennock. You may as well get it over with.”
Bennock cleared his throat and his face took on color, though that might have been due solely to the cold, to which he was inordinately sensitive. There was a muffler wrapped around his neck to the chin. completely hiding his Adam’s apple, but Saxon got the odd impression that the throat-clearing caused the knobby organ to bob up and down beneath the muffler.
“Very well, then,” the new mayor said. “The Common Council has voted to suspend you from duty pending a thorough investigation of this charge against you.”
“I expected it,” Saxon said with no indication of surprise or resentment. “The new chief will find all my records in order and a memorandum of all pending matters requiring his attention lying on my desk. I won’t even have to come in to brief him. By the way, who is he?”
“Lieutenant Arthur Marks has been appointed acting chief pending the outcome of the investigation.”
So they hadn’t yet gone all the way and made it a permanent appointment, Saxon thought. They were at least intending to go through the motions of a formal inquiry.
“Art’s a good cop,” Saxon said, refraining from adding that Marks would make a lousy chief. He had hoped the council would be smart enough to appoint Vic Burns, but he might have known it was a forlorn hope. Burns wasn’t a native of Iroquois and Marks was.
Foley released the new mayor’s elbow and the man moved on with a jerky nod of good-by. Foley opened the car door, stepped in, and cranked up the open window.
“I couldn’t help that,” he said. “I suspected the coward was merely going to inform you by letter and I wanted him to have to tell you personally.”
“Why’d you get into the car?” Saxon asked curiously.
“Alice took mine this afternoon. I need a ride home.”
“Nothing like inviting yourself.” Saxon managed a grin.
“You should be grateful that I’m willing to ride with you,” Foley told him. “I’m probably the only person in town aside from Emily who’s willing to be seen with you today.”
His expression became serious. “Actually I wanted to talk to you, Ted. I had a kind of wild thought while I was in council meeting.”
“It was in good company.”
“Remember the conversation we had the day I appointed you acting chief?”
“Uh-huh. You mean about wanting to leave an effective chief in office?”
“‘Incorruptible’ is the word I used, I think. We also discussed a possible attempt by Larry Cutter to move in and take over the town. I mentioned that in order to accomplish that, he’d have to control both the mayor and the police chief. I suggested that if Adam Bennock was co-operating with Cutter, his probable choice for chief would be Art Marks. And, lo, the day Bennock takes office Art Marks becomes acting chief.”
Saxon gave him a sharp sidewise glance. “You think Larry Cutter may have been behind my frame?”
“I’ve projected my thought even farther than that. Your father’s death had all the earmarks of a professional kill.”
Saxon’s eyes narrowed and his mind began to work so furiously that he nearly missed the turn toward Foley’s home. At the last minute he braked and skidded around the corner on the hard-packed snow. He didn’t say anything until he reached the big house and swung into the driveway. He leaned back in the seat.
“My frame was part of a deliberate campaign to get the right man in office, you think? First they killed Dad, but you can’t go on bumping one police chief after another until you finally get the one you want appointed. It would be so obvious, it would probably bring on a state investigation. So they had to use an entirely different method to get rid of me.”
“That’s the theory I’ve been developing. Doesn’t it make sense?”
“It fits all down the line,” Saxon said slowly. “It even explains how they got Coombs to co-operate. I doubt very much that an investigation of Coombs’s background would turn up anything disreputable about him, because they wouldn’t use a witness who couldn’t stand investigation. I’ll bet no one could link him to Larry Cutter. But you know what he does for a living?”
Foley shook his head. “You never mentioned it.”
“He’s an accountant for the Upstate Harness Racing Association.
A gleam appeared in the plump ex-mayor’s eyes. “And Larry Cutter’s money is behind that,” he said softly.
“Now that we know where to look, maybe we can beat them after all,” Saxon said, beginning to feel a surge of excitement. “At least we now have an idea who the enemy is. Up to now I couldn’t even begin to imagine why I was framed.”
“Don’t get too enthusiastic,” Foley cautioned. “With the rape charge dropped, you’ll have a devil of a time reopening that investigation. You can’t put Morrison or Coombs on the stand, because there’s no court action pending. How do you plan to start?”
“By heading for Buffalo in the morning,” Saxon said. “I have some contacts there who should be able to brief me on Larry Cutter’s organization.”
“I don’t think I can help you there, because I’m a little too old for undercover work. But any other way I can help, don’t hesitate to call on me.”
“I won’t,” Saxon assured him.
Climbing out of the car, Foley stood for a moment with the door open. “One thing, Ted. You’re not police chief any more. While you’re under suspension, you’re not even a cop.”
“So?”
“You don’t have the protection of your police force behind you. And I don’t think these people would hesitate for an instant to kill you if you get too close.”
“I’ll try to keep them from learning it until I’m right in their laps,” Saxon said dryly.
Backing out of the driveway, he headed for Emily’s to tell her the news.
Emily had news for him, too, but she was sidetracked from immediately announcing it by his story of the day’s events. She was indignant over his suspension from the force, elated when he told her of Ben Foley’s theory, which finally gave them something definite to get their teeth into; then she became fearful for Saxon’s safety when he told her of his plan to go to Buffalo the next day and attempt to uncover evidence that he had been framed. Only after she had run the scale of these emotions and they had discussed every phase of the day’s happenings did she get around to making her announcement.
Going into the kitchen, she returned with a copy of the Iroquois Evening Bulletin.
“Look at this,” she said. “There isn’t a word in it about the rape charge.”
There wasn’t, he discovered on leafing through the paper. This was the first issue in which the news could have been reported, as there had been no paper on New Year’s Day, but the Bulletin hadn’t mentioned it.
Since by now everyone in town had heard of the alleged rape, it could hardly be because the editor was unaware of the story. Saxon could only conclude that he was following the discreet self-censorship policy of so many small town papers, which maintain dead silence concerning scandals involving prominent local citizens.
On his way home from Emily’s, Saxon stopped to pick up a Buffalo paper. The story was mentioned here, but only on an inner page, and it was cautiously worded. There had been a similarly cautious item in the Buffalo morning paper that day.