"How do you mean?"
"Well, you come in with a prescription for some pills, say. So one guy will fill the bottle and another guy maybe stuffs in a lot of cotton batting."
Timilty shook his head vigorously. "The doctor indicates on the prescription how many he wants, and that's what we give him, there are a lot of medicines where he wants you to take just so many pills and no more. Or he wants you to take the full dosage, no matter how good you feel after you've taken half of them. So we give exactly what the doctor calls for, no more and no less. Besides, with some pills costing seventy or eighty cents a piece, nobody is going to give any extra."
"How about the pharmacists who work for you?"
"They wouldn't be any different when it comes to filling a prescription."
"I suppose each one initials or signs the prescriptions he fills."
"What for? What would be the point?"
"Well, say something went wrong?"
Timilty looked at him in astonishment. "What could go wTong?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Chief Lanigan pushed the Physician's Desk Reference over to his lieutenant and said. "Now here is what Doc Cohen prescribed, and this is what Old Man Kestler received and took."
Lt. Eban Jennings focused watery blue eyes on the small colored plate, then turned to the pill lying on the desk. His prominent Adam's apple wobbled and he said, "Not the same at all, the druggist must have made a mistake."
Lanigan shook his head. "According to Dr. Cohen, that's most unlikely. I checked with Timilty, who took over Brundage's store at the foot of my street, and he says druggists just don't make mistakes on prescriptions. Now, he's one of those eager-beaver business types and if he could give the competition the leg, I'm thinking he'd do it. But he agreed with the doctor— a druggist just doesn't make that type of mistake."
"Then what's it mean?"
Lanigan leaned back in his chair. "Well, I'd say, if it wasn't a mistake, and yet it happened, that it must have been dona on purpose."
"But that's murder." Jennings objected.
"Or manslaughter, and why not? Murders are not all committed with guns or daggers, you know. Most folks don't have guns, or daggers either. Except for the professionals, it's usually done by what's at hand, the sharp instrument usually turns out to be something familiar, like a steak knife. How about Millicent Hanbury, who used a knitting needle? And how about Ronald Sykes who killed Isaac Hirsh by just closing the ventilator of his car while the motor was running? Think about it. What's handy would be the natural thing to use, here's a druggist with a store full of chemicals. If he wanted to kill someone, he might try to get hold of a gun. But more likely, the first thought that would come to mind would be the things he has right on his shelves."
"Yeah, but— aw, that's crazy. Look, Hugh, since we sold the house and took the apartment on Salem Road, I've traded with Town-Line Drugs. I stop in there almost every evening for the paper and some cigars, and a nicer guy than Marcus Aptaker you wouldn't want to meet. Not that he's one of these glad-hand boys. Kind of conservative, as a matter of fact, you know, with a sense of responsibility.
A man like that wouldn't go around dispensing stuff that would kill people."
"I’ve known Marcus Aptaker longer than you have," Lanigan said. "When I first came on the force. I had the night beat in the Salem Road area. Drugstores used to keep open till midnight those days, and Aptaker's was where I'd stop in to warm up, he had a hot plate, and many a cup of coffee I had courtesy of Marcus Aptaker, while we chewed the fat. I like Aptaker, but he's one of those rigid, straitlaced types, that kind sees everything as black or white, nothing in between, and when he thinks someone has wronged him, I can imagine him feeling he's judge and jury— and maybe even executioner. You remember his son, Arnold?"
"Yeah, seems to me he used to work for him."
Lanigan lay back in his swivel chair and brought his heels to rest on the open bottom drawer, with his head cradled in his interlaced fingers, he stared up at the ceiling and said. "That same boy, Arnold, he kicked him out two, three years ago, for pilfering the till."
"Oh no!"
"Oh yes, the boy was playing around in the nightclubs and gambling joints in Revere, and he'd run up a bill that he gave an IOU for, they were pressing him for payment and threatening him, I suppose, with those boys you don't pay up, and you get your arms and legs broken. So I guess Arnold dipped into the till, and his old man caught him at it and kicked him out."
"How come I never heard of it?"
"Because you were in Washington taking that FBI refresher course that I euchred the town into putting up the money for."
"Oh, And what happened? Did Aptaker come to you?"
"Not then. Marcus Aptaker paid the IOU and told the collector he didn't want him to set foot in his store again." The chief lowered his feet to the floor and sat bolt upright. "But that kind, they never let well enough alone; they can't stop pushing, the collector laughed at him and said the store was a public place and he'd come in any time he felt like it, that's when Aptaker came to see me, he wanted me to warn him off. Said he'd kill this guy if he didn't stop bothering him."
"What could you do if this guy was from Revere?" "He'd just moved into town. It was Joe Kestler."
"Joe Kestler?" the lieutenant said. "I didn't know he was in the rackets. I thought he was in business with his old man, mortgages and such."
"I don't know that he is in the rackets." Lanigan said mildly. "He told Aptaker he'd bought that IOU, or discounted it."
"So what did you do?" "Oh, I went to see Kestler." "And what did you tell Kestler?"
Lanigan grinned. "It wasn't so much what I told him as what he thought I told him, all I said was that I didn't want any trouble in the town, that he was new here and if he wanted to live nice and peaceful, he wouldn't go starting fights. I suppose in other places that kind of warning by the chief of police meant that if he didn't keep his nose clean, he'd have all kinds of trouble with the authorities, that his property was likely to be reassessed, or that tha building inspectors would be down to condemn his wiring or his plumbing, as far as I know, he stayed away, at least, Aptaker never complained to me again. Too bad Kestler didn't continue to keep his distance, but I suppose with his father sick—"
"Hey, just a minute, Hugh, are you saying— why, that was all of three years ago."
"Yeah, but some things get worse with time." the chief said. "Aptaker's boy never came back, the longer it lasted, the more it would hurt. Besides, if Kestler did stay away, this was the first chance Aptaker had to get back at him."
"But the medicine wasn't for Joe, the one he'd had trouble with. It was for his father," Jennings objected.
"Yeah, I thought of that," said Lanigan. "But all that appears on the medicine label is the initial J, and that applies to both the father and the son, because the father's name was Jacob. Now if the father was sick, wouldn't the son have come in for the medicine? So if the son didn't, maybe he was the one who was sick and didn't pick it up because he couldn't."
Eban Jennings shook his head slowly. "I can't believe it.
not Marcus Aptaker."
"You can't tell what people are going to do, Eban, not by what they seem."
"But it doesn't add up," Jennings protested. "Aptaker has a fight with Joe Kestler three years ago, so he kills his father three years later?"
"His son left home because of that fight. Eban, and Marcus had plans for him, the store isn't just a business with Marcus. It's a tradition that he meant Arnold to carry on, that makes a difference."
"Well, look here. How would he know that the new pills would do him any harm? Answer me that."