Fred Bruer looked at me with what I suspected was simulated puzzlement. “There’s no gun here, Sergeant.”
“Your brother-in-law bought one next door right after you opened for business, Mr. Bruer. Fie told Mr. Jacobs it was for protection against robbers.”
“Oh, that,” Bruer said with an air of enlightenment. “He took that home with him years ago. I objected to it being around. Guns make me nervous.”
I gave him the fishy eye. “Mind if I look?”
“I don’t see why it’s necessary,” he said haughtily. “I told you there’s no gun here.”
Regretfully I produced the search warrant. He didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do about it. I went over the place thoroughly. There was no gun there.
“I told you he took the gun home,” Bruer said in a miffed voice.
“We’ll look there if we don’t find it at your apartment,” I assured him. “We’ll try your place first.”
“Do you have a search warrant for there, too?” he challenged.
I showed it to him.
I followed his car back to his place. Paula Benjamin and Cindy were no longer there. Bruer said they had returned home last night. I searched the apartment thoroughly, too. There was no gun there.
“Let’s take a ride down to your sister’s,” I suggested. “You can leave your car here and we’ll go in mine.”
“I suppose you have a warrant for there, too,” he said sourly.
“Uh-huh,” I admitted.
Paula Benjamin still lived at the same address recorded in the pawnshop gun log, 1726 Eichelberger Street, which is far down in South St. Louis. It was a small frame house of five rooms.
Mrs. Benjamin claimed she knew nothing of any gun her husband had ever owned, and if he had ever brought a revolver home, she had never seen it.
I didn’t have to produce my third warrant, because she made no objection to a search. I did just as thorough a job as I had at the other two places. Little Cindy followed me around and helped me look, but neither of us found the gun. It wasn’t there.
Paula Benjamin naturally wanted to know what it was all about. Until then, her brother had shown no such curiosity, which led me to believe he already knew. Belatedly, he now added his demand for enlightenment. I suggested that Cindy be excluded from the discussion.
By now it was pushing noon, so Mrs. Benjamin solved that by taking Cindy to the kitchen and giving the girl her lunch. When she returned to the front room alone, I bluntly explained things to both her and her brother.
After carefully giving Fred Bruer the standard spiel about his constitutional rights, I said, “I reconstruct it this way, Mr. Bruer. You got down to the store early yesterday morning and made out the weekly bank deposit. Only you didn’t put any cash in that leather bag; just the deposit slip and the checks. And you didn’t put any money in the cash registers. You simply pocketed it. Then you drove two blocks away, dropped the bag into a mailbox, and got back to the store before your brother-in-law arrived for work. I rather suspect you didn’t unlock the front door until after you shot him and had hidden the gun, because you wouldn’t want to risk having a customer walk in on you. Then you unlocked the door and phoned the police.”
Paula Benjamin was staring at me with her mouth open. “You must be crazy,” she whispered. “Fred couldn’t kill anyone. He’s the most softhearted man in the world.”
“Particularly about you and Cindy,” I agreed. “You would be surprised what tigers softhearted men can turn into when their loved ones are threatened. None of your brother’s fellow merchants on Franklin, and probably none of your neighbors around here knew what your husband was trying to do to you, because both of you believe in keeping your troubles secret. But I’ve read your deceased husband’s divorce affidavit, Mrs. Benjamin.”
Paula Benjamin blinked. She gazed at her brother for reassurance and he managed a smile.
“You know I wouldn’t do anything like that, sis,” he said. “The sergeant has simply made a terribly wrong guess.” He looked at me challengingly. “Where’s the gun I used, Sergeant?”
“Probably in the Mississippi River now,” I said. “Unfortunately I didn’t tumble soon enough to search for it before you had a chance to get rid of it. We can establish by Max Jacob’s gun log that your brother-in-law purchased such a gun, though.”
“And took it home years ago. Sergeant. Or took it somewhere. Maybe he sold it to another pawn shop.”
“I doubt that,” I said.
“Prove he didn’t.”
That was the rub. I couldn’t. I took him downtown and a team of three of us questioned him for the rest of the day, but we couldn’t shake his story. We had him repeat his detailed description of the imaginary bandit a dozen times, and he never varied it by a single detail.
Finally we had to release him. I drove him home, but the next morning I picked him up again and we started the inquisition all over. About noon, he decided he wanted to call a lawyer, and under the new rules stemming from recent Supreme Court decisions, we either had to let him or release him again.
I knew what would happen in the former event. The lawyer would accuse us of harassing his client and would insist we either file a formal charge or leave him alone. We didn’t have sufficient evidence to file a formal charge, and if we refused to leave him alone, his lawyer undoubtedly would get a court injunction to make us.
With all the current talk about police brutality, we didn’t need any publicity about harassing a sixty-year-old, undersized, widely esteemed small businessman. We let him go.
I’m in the habit of talking over cases which particularly disturb me with my wife. That evening I unloaded all my frustrations about the Andrew Benjamin case on Maggie.
After listening to the whole story, she said, “I don’t see why you’re so upset, Sod. Why do you want to see the man convicted of murder anyway?”
I stared at her. “Because he’s a murderer.”
“But according to your own testimony, the dead man was a thoroughgoing beast,” Maggie said reasonably. “What he was attempting to do to that innocent little girl just to obtain vengeance on his wife was criminally vindictive. This Fred Bruer, on the other hand, you characterize as a thoroughly nice guy who, in general, devotes his life to helping people, and never before harmed a soul.”
“You would make a lousy cop,” I said disgustedly. “We don’t happen to have two sets of laws, one for nice guys and the other for beasts. Sure, Fred Bruer’s a nice guy, but do you suggest we give all nice guys a license to kill?”
After thinking this over, she said reluctantly, “I guess not.” She sat musing for a time, then finally said, “If he’s really as nice a guy as you say, there’s one technique you might try. Why don’t you shame him into a confession?”
I started to frown at her, then something suddenly clicked in my mind and the frown came out a grin instead. Getting up from my easy chair, I went over and gave her a solid kiss.
“I take back what I said about you being a lousy cop,” I told her. “You’re a better cop than I am.”
At ten the next morning I phoned Fred Bruer. “I have an apology to make, Mr. Bruer,” I said. “We’ve caught the bandit who killed your brother-in-law.”
“You what?”
“He hasn’t confessed yet, but we’re sure he’s the man. Can you come down here to make an identification?”
There was a long silence before he said, “I’ll be right there, Sergeant.”
As soon as the little jeweler arrived at headquarters, I took him to the show-up room. It was already darkened and the stage lights were on. Lieutenant Wilkins was waiting at the microphone at the rear of the room. I led Bruer close to the stage, where we could see the suspects who would come out at close range. When we were situated, Wilkins called for the lineup to be sent in.