Leopold's Way (40 page)

The trouble was on the 15th floor and a uniformed cop was waiting when they came off the elevator. “Cleaning woman here in the building, Captain. Martha Aspeth. Her husband shot her.”

Fletcher was already bending over the body of a middle-aged woman, sprawled in the doorway of an insurance office. There was blood beneath and around her, soiling the freshly polished floor. “Any witnesses?” Leopold asked.

“Five women who work with her,” the officer said. “They all saw it happen. I've got an APB out on the husband.”

More technicians were arriving, to photograph the scene and dust for prints. Fletcher straightened up from the body and said, “At least three wounds, Captain. Maybe four.”

Leopold nodded. “Let's talk to some of these women.”

A stout white-haired woman with rolled stockings and a dumpy-looking print dress stepped forward. “I was right next to her! I saw the whole thing!”

Two white-coated morgue attendants had arrived with a stretcher, but they stood aside while the medical examiner checked the body. “I was on my way home,” the M.E. told Leopold. “Doc Hayes takes over at nine. Hell of a thing, grabbing a man on his way home. Going to take that telephone out of my car.”

“I was on my way home, too,” Leopold said. “Cheer up.” Then he led the woman to a sofa in the open office. “What's your name?”

“Hilda Youst. Martha and I started together over at the bank building. She was like a sister to me.”

“What about her husband?”

“They didn't live together. He wanted younger ones. Can you imagine that? Martha was only forty-two and he wanted younger ones!”

“Had they quarreled before?”

“All the time!”

“Up here?”

“Sure! He came up regularly, usually on paydays. Wanted money for drink and women.”

“Was tonight a payday?”

“No.”

“Exactly what happened?”

“It was”—she glanced at the wall clock—“about twenty-five minutes ago, just after nine o'clock. He got off the elevator and asked one of the girls where Martha was. She was in here with me and she heard his voice. She said, ‘God, not him again,' and she went to the door to see what he wanted. He just pulled out his gun and started shooting.”

“He didn't say anything first?”

“I think he called her a filthy name.”

“How many shots did you hear?”

“Four, I think.”

“Then what happened?”

“He ran out the fire door and down the stairs. I phoned the police. The other girls were in terrible shape. They never saw anything like this before.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“See anything like this before?”

“No, of course not! But I'm older. I been around more.”

“Would you recognize the killer if you saw him again?”

“Kurt Aspeth? Of course I'd recognize him!”

Leopold found Lieutenant Fletcher talking to the other four witnesses. Three of them were Puerto Rican girls, barely out of their teens. One was close to hysteria, her body shaking with sobs. Leopold noticed that the photographer and the medical examiner had finished their jobs. The body was covered now and the white-coated men were lifting it onto their stretcher.

“They all tell the same story, Captain,” Fletcher reported. “He got off the elevator, asked Miss Sanchez here where Martha Aspeth was, then pulled out the gun and fired the moment he saw her.”

“It seems clear enough,” Leopold decided. “I guess we can leave the details to the rest of the men. We'll want statements from all five witnesses, of course, and from relatives. Find out where Kurt Aspeth lives and put someone on the address, in case he goes back there.”

“I'll take care of it, Captain,” Fletcher assured him. “You go on home now.”

Leopold grinned. “I keep forgetting it's your case. See you in the morning.”

The morning was in May, with golden sunshine and a spring warmth that robbed him of energy. Leopold simply sat in his office, wondering as he gazed out the window if this bout of spring fever was a sign of increasing age or merely a return to youth. He was still thinking about it when Fletcher came in a few minutes after nine.

“You know that killing last night, Captain?” Fletcher asked, settling into his favorite chair. “I've got some good news and some bad news.”

Leopold grunted. “What's the good news?”

“We found Kurt Aspeth. His car hit a bridge abutment on the Expressway, about a mile from the Grant Tower building. He was killed instantly.”

“What's the bad news?”

“The accident happened at 8:27—a good half hour or more before Kurt Aspeth is supposed to have killed his wife…”

The city morgue was located across the street from police headquarters, in a faded brick building soon to be demolished for urban renewal. Doc Hayes was still there, on duty from the night before, following some rotating schedule which had always baffled Leopold. He'd known Doc for some years, through numerous homicides on which Hayes had functioned as acting medical examiner. He was a grim, efficient little man somewhere past 40, who sometimes looked as if he'd be more at home teaching at a medical college.

“What is it?” Hayes asked when he saw Leopold and Fletcher coming in. “That Aspeth thing?”

“Right. We're trying to establish a time sequence. The police officer's report lists the time of the accident as 8:27. We're wondering if that could be a mistake.”

Doc Hayes shook his head. “That's the time, all right. He was killed instantly, so the officer didn't bother with an ambulance. As I understand it, a doctor pronounced him dead and they called for the morgue wagon. His body was already here when I came to work at nine.” He consulted the book in front of him. “Checked in at exactly nine. Made the notation myself. Damn busy night—Aspeth and a hit-and-run and then Aspeth's wife. Damn busy.”

“There's no possibility of error?”

“Error? The man is certainly dead, if that's what you mean.”

“But what about the time? Could it have been an hour later?”

Doc Hayes snorted. “Daylight-saving time started three weeks ago. Our clocks are all correct. Besides, the officer's records couldn't be wrong, too.”

“All right,” Leopold said, moving to another possibility. “Are you sure it's really Kurt Aspeth?”

“I'm
not sure,” Hayes said. “I never met the man. But he was driving Kurt Aspeth's car, carrying Kurt Aspeth's driver's license, and Kurt Aspeth's brother identified the body early this morning.”

“Brother?”

Doc Hayes nodded. “Felix Aspeth.”

Leopold had a wild thought.

“Twin
brother?”

“Hardly. Felix is ten years older.”

“Still, they might resemble each other. What's his address?”

Hayes looked it up in his records and gave it to him. “Now, get outa here, will you? I have to take my car into the garage and then get home for some sleep. This is supposed to be my day off!”

“Thanks, Doc.” Outside, Leopold said to Fletcher, “I'm going to check on this brother. You get Hilda Youst and the rest of the cleaning crew down here to identify the body before it's moved.”

“You think they will?”

“Who knows? Maybe the brother is pulling some sort of trick.”

Felix Aspeth's address was an apartment building in a rundown section of the city. The neighborhood was racially mixed, sprawling through six blocks of what had once been a downtown college campus. The college, sensing change, had moved to the suburbs, from the city streets. The old buildings had become apartment houses.

Felix Aspeth answered the door with a suddenness that startled Leopold, as if he'd been waiting on the other side. “What is it?”

“Captain Leopold of the Violent Crimes Squad. It's about your brother.”

Felix Aspeth grunted and motioned him inside. He was a tall man with stringy black hair and a black mustache flecked with gray. There was something a little seedy about him that matched the sparsely furnished apartment in which he lived. “I'm making funeral arrangements now,” he said. “I can only spare a few minutes.”

Leopold sat down gingerly on a straight-backed chair. “You know, of course, that your brother's estranged wife was shot to death last night, at just about the time of the fatal accident.”

“Yes.”

“Witnesses say Kurt was the one who shot her.”

“I have no doubt of it. He was always a bit crazy on the subject of Martha. He was crazy to have married her anyway.”

“I understand he was your younger brother?”

Felix Aspeth nodded. “Ten years younger. He was just thirty-one. They got married about ten years ago, when he was just out of the army. He picked her up in a bar one night. I told him that wasn't the sort of girl you married, but he wouldn't listen.”

“How long had they been separated?”

“The whole ten years, off and on. One of them would walk out and then after a while they'd get back together again. There were no children, and he was never much of a worker. Martha was on welfare for a year before she got that job cleaning up at Grant Tower.”

“You said he was thirty-one. She seemed older than that.”

“She was. Over forty, I'd say. That's one of the reasons I was against the marriage in the first place. But you just couldn't talk to Kurt.”

“There seems to be a time discrepancy of about an hour in our records. Though Kurt was positively identified as the murderer by five witnesses who knew him, the records of the accident bureau show the smashup occurred about thirty minutes earlier.”

“I see,” Felix Aspeth said.

“You see? Well, I
don't.”
Leopold was growing irritated with the man. “Suppose you explain to me how that could be possible.”

“Kurt couldn't leave this earth without settling the score with Martha. Call it love or hate or whatever you will, he had to take her with him. Martha was murdered by my brother's ghost.”

When Leopold returned to headquarters he found Fletcher in his office with policewoman Connie Trent. “You look tired, Captain,” Connie said. “Want some coffee?”

“I could use something. How about it, Fletcher? Did those women view the body?”

“It was quite a struggle, Captain. A couple of them just didn't want to look at him. But they all made positive identification. His face wasn't damaged in the accident, and they say there's no doubt about it. That's Kurt Aspeth, all right—the same man who killed Martha Aspeth last night.”

Connie returned with coffee. “Fletcher said you had a hunch it was Aspeth's brother. Did you see him?”

“I saw him,” Leopold said sadly. “He thinks his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident.”

“Spirit? You mean, a ghost?” Fletcher snorted. “I don't buy that, Captain. Ghosts don't run down stairs.”

“And they don't fire pistols, either,” Leopold agreed. “Whoever shot her, it wasn't Kurt Aspeth's ghost.”

“How about the brother? Do they look alike?”

Leopold thought about that. “Not really, though Felix without the mustache might pass for an older version of Kurt. It's hard to say, never having seen Kurt alive. They look like brothers, I guess. No more than that.”

“But in the excitement of the shooting, couldn't the witnesses have been mistaken?” Connie asked.

“Five of them? Not likely. Especially the older one, Hilda Youst. Nothing would shake her.”

“Then the thing is impossible,” Fletcher said.

“It happened,” Leopold reminded him. “Which officer was first on the accident scene?”

Fletcher consulted his file. “Pete Franklin, a motorcycle cop. Good man.”

Leopold glanced at his watch. It was just after three o'clock. “Connie, hop down to the police garage and see if you can catch Franklin. He must be on the four-to-midnight shift, and he should be coming in soon. Find out everything he knows about the accident.”

“I'll even ask him if he saw any ectoplasm leave the body and head downtown,” she said.

Officer Pete Franklin was tall and handsome, and Connie Trent did not in the least mind interviewing him. She found him in the garage adjusting his leather puttees and awaiting the arrival of the duty sergeant with the orders of the day. When she'd introduced herself, Franklin said, “I've seen you around headquarters. The prettiest policewoman in the department.”

She ignored the compliment. “Captain Leopold's a swell man to work for. He took me on last year after I blew my cover on the Narcotics Squad.”

Pete Franklin nodded. “I see Lieutenant Fletcher occasionally.”

“Do you like riding a motorcycle?”

“It's great in the summer. Come winter I'm back in a patrol car.”

“Captain Leopold was wondering about that fatal accident last night—Kurt Aspeth, the man who hit the bridge abutment?”

“I know. The car was a mess. I was only a few blocks away when I heard the crash.”

“You were first on the scene?”

“The first officer. The only one, really. Some motorists stopped, and a doctor. He was dead, so I called for the morgue wagon on my radio.”

“What do you think caused the crash?”

“Somebody told me today he'd killed his wife. I suppose he smashed the car deliberately. A lot of one-car accidents are really suicides.”

“There were no bad road conditions?”

“No, except that it was dark, and that section of the Expressway isn't too well lighted.”

“What time was it?”

“Around 8:30. That's in my report.”

“You know Aspeth's wife wasn't shot till after nine?”

He frowned and scratched his head. “I heard there was some confusion about the times. It doesn't make sense. The witnesses must have been wrong.”

The duty sergeant had arrived and Connie could see her time was running out. “One more thing. Which way was the car going on the Expressway—toward downtown or away from it?”