The Copper Frame (2 page)

When the state-police dispatcher signed off, Saxon said heavily, “I guess it was a setup, all right. He must have had a getaway car planted in that side road.”

“Or an accomplice waiting for him in one,” Burns suggested.

Belatedly Saxon remembered that Vic Burns had been wounded, too. Glancing at him, he saw a singed area on the upper right sleeve of his overcoat. There was a tiny hole in the center of the area and another a couple of inches behind it where the bullet had come out. The exit hole was ringed with dried blood.

In a tone of apology Saxon said, “I haven't even asked how you are, Vic.”

“Don't worry about me,” Burns said. “It's only a nick about an eighth of an inch deep.”

“How do you know it wasn't you the gunman was after?” Saxon asked. “You got shot, too.”

Burns said, “We thought of that. But the item in the paper didn't mention me. I decided to go at the last minute.”

Sam Lennox said diffidently, “Want me to take over the rest of your trick, Ted? You probably don't feel much like sitting here all alone.”

Saxon shook his head. “Thanks, but I'd hang around anyway to hear what reports come in. I'll be all right. What about Dad's body?”

Burns said, “We phoned the coroner. He's having the autopsy performed at Rigby Memorial instead of shipping the body back here. You'll have to contact whatever funeral director you want to pick it up when the coroner's through with it.”

“Okay. I'll call Alstrom in the morning,” Saxon said. “Thanks for stopping in, fellows.”

chapter 2

After Burns and Lennox left, police headquarters became oppressively silent. At 11
P
.
M
. a radio call came from the state-police barracks reporting that the killer's car had been towed in and dusted for prints. There had been none because the interior of the car had been wiped clean.

At eleven-fifteen Saxon was standing with his arms resting on the counter, simply waiting for time to pass, when Emily Vane came in, her cheeks bright from the cold and her face smiling. In his preoccupation over the death of his father, Saxon had forgotten that she was coming by. When Emily worked the three-to-eleven trick at the Iroquois General Hospital on the same nights he worked the desk from four to midnight, she always stopped by to while away the last forty-five minutes of his duty with him, after which he drove her home.

Kicking the snow from her boots, Emily slipped off her coat. Under it was her white nurse's uniform. She untied her headscarf and hung both on a wall hook near the door. She was a slim, attractive girl of twenty-five with dark, wavy hair worn to her shoulders, big pale-blue eyes, and a milky Irish complexion.

“Coffee ready?” she asked brightly, moving toward the counter. Then she saw his expression and her smile faded. “What's the matter?”

“Dad was killed tonight,” he said quietly.

Her eyes widened and her face lost color. “Oh, no! I'm so sorry, Ted.”

“One of the hazards of police work,” he said bitterly. “He was shot on his way to the county law-enforcement officers' meeting at Rigby. We don't yet know by whom, but it may have been some ex-con with a grudge.”

He told her what he knew of the affair. When he finished, she reached across the counter to lay her hand on his. “I know how much he meant to you, Ted. I was pretty fond of him myself. I wish there were something I could do.”

“You can make the coffee I forgot to make.”

They had finished their coffee and Emily had washed the cups by the time Saxon's relief came on. Then there was the delay of repeating what had happened to Jack Dow, the relief desk man, and listening to his words of sympathy. It was twelve-fifteen before they got away from headquarters.

They made little conversation as Ted drove Emily home. He was conscious of her silent tenderness as she sat snuggled up against him. The three-room apartment Emily shared with Julie Fox, another nurse, was at the northeast edge of town. Julie was already in bed asleep when they got there. Sitting on the sofa in the tiny front room, they conversed in whispers so as not to disturb her.

Lying in the crook of his arm with her head on his shoulder, Emily said, “We'll have to postpone our plans, of course, but I don't want you to have to worry about it. I'll take care of contacting everyone.”

They had planned to be married December twenty-first; the reception hall was already reserved and the invitations had gone out. Emily's parents had made reservations to fly from Seattle on the nineteenth, only four days away.

Saxon said, “Dad wouldn't want us to delay our wedding on account of him. He was pushing me to set the date six months ago. I think he was afraid I'd let you escape.”

“I know, Ted. I'm proud of the way he approved of me. But we just can't go ahead now. The whole town would be shocked. We'll have to leave plans indefinite until some time after the first of the year.”

“I suppose,” he said gloomily. “But the old man wouldn't agree with you. He'd tell the town to go soak its collective head.”

Raising her lips, she kissed the edge of his chin. “Maybe, but he wouldn't want the townspeople thinking badly of you, either. You'd better go home now. We'll talk again tomorrow.”

At the door she didn't press against him and tighten her arms about his neck as she usually did when they said good-night. She merely cupped his face in her hands and stood on tiptoe to give him a gentle kiss on the lips. It struck him that Emily was remarkably gifted in adjusting her moods to his. She knew instinctively that at this moment he neither needed nor wanted any demonstration of the passion of which she was extremely capable.

The next morning Saxon awoke to an oppressive sense of loneliness. Without the presence of his father at breakfast, the big old house was entirely too quiet and empty. He had a sudden urge to get out of it. After breakfast, instead of merely phoning the Alstrom Funeral Parlor, he drove over there to make arrangements. Afterward, about 10
A.M
., he stopped by police headquarters to see if there had been any developments. There had not been.

Lieutenant Art Marks, big, cumbersome, and plodding, was on the desk. At forty-five Marks wasn't the oldest man on the force by several, but he was second highest in seniority, his twenty-four years of service being exceeded only by Sam Lennox's twenty-eight. He had been a lieutenant, the highest grade on the Iroquois force aside from chief, for nearly fifteen years.

After expressing his sympathy, Marks said, “The mayor's looking for you, Ted. He phoned your home, but there was no answer.”

“I'll run upstairs to see him,” Saxon said. “Know what he wants?”

“Probably just to say he's sorry about your dad.”

The police station was on the ground floor of the city hall, with its outside entrance facing the alley. A second door, used only in the daytime when the city hall was open, led into an inner corridor. Saxon took the corridor to the front stairs and started to climb.

It took him fifteen minutes to reach the top because the big, open stairway was the main artery of traffic in the city hall and people were always moving up and down it. He was stopped a dozen times by city-hall employees, councilmen, and citizens with business in the building, all of whom wanted to express their condolences.

Eventually he managed to work his way to the second floor and the mayor's office.

Benjamin Foley, after twenty-four years as mayor of Iroquois, was now in the unenviable position of being a lame-duck mayor. In the previous November elections he had finally met political defeat at the hands of a younger man, and the new mayor was scheduled to take office January second.

A plump, affable man of sixty-five, Foley had shown no bitterness at being turned out to pasture after nearly a quarter of a century in harness, but Saxon suspected he was deeply hurt. The loss of income meant nothing to him, Saxon knew, since the position of mayor was only a parttime job paying fifteen hundred dollars a year, and Foley was a shrewd lawyer with a thriving practice. But Ben Foley sincerely loved his small city, and he had been under the impression that it returned the love. It had been a blow to his pride to have a whopping 70 per cent of the electorate turn against him after his many years of service.

When Saxon entered the always-open door of the mayor's office, Ben Foley glanced up from the letter he was reading, then got to his feet and stretched his right hand across the desk.

“I was utterly shocked to hear about your dad, Ted. The town's going to miss him.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Saxon said, dropping into a chair. “Dad always regarded you as his closest friend.”

Foley lit a pipe. When he had it going, he said, “The chief and I were a team, Ted. I don't think I'm bragging when I say the two of us are responsible for Iroquois's being the clean town it is today.”

“I've heard Dad say the same thing,” Saxon agreed.

Foley reflectively puffed on his pipe. “You'd be surprised at the pressures public officials such as your dad and I are subject to, Ted. Particularly in a tourist town like ours. There are always some businessmen eager to attract more tourists by letting things open up a bit. You know what I mean. They want the police to wink at a little illegal gambling, or maybe a red-light district.”

“
Some
businessmen?” Saxon said dryly. “I'd say the majority in this town. Isn't that what won Adam Bennock the election?”

The mayor grinned a little sourly. “Harness racing isn't illegal, Ted. Maybe if Adam can live up to his campaign promise and get the new track put here, it will make the town grow.”

“Then why'd you fight him on the issue?”

“Because I don't think a growing town is necessarily a better town. Take a look at what we already have. No one's starving here. Most of our businesses are small, but they all seem solvent enough for the merchants to buy new cars every year and belong to the country club. We have fine schools, an excellent hospital, and the best beaches between Buffalo and Erie. There's nothing even approaching a slum district. I think it's a pretty nice place to live as it is. But maybe I'm an old fogey.”

“No,” Saxon disagreed. “I'm not too hot about a harness track here, either. It's bound to bring in a different tourist element from the one we're used to.”

“It's not just the track that worries me,” the mayor said, puffing on his pipe and finding that it had gone out. He felt for another match, struck it on the underside of his desk, and got the pipe going again. “There are always racketeers looking for a ripe town to pluck. Particularly a tourist town, where there's a ready-made clientele for gambling and vice. Your dad and I always managed to keep that breed of vulture out of Iroquois, but now he's gone, and I'm leaving office too. Frankly, I'm worried about the town's future.”

“Because you think the new race track might be an opening wedge for racketeers?”

“Uh-huh. You know who's behind that promotion?”

“Sure,” Saxon said. “The Upstate Harness Racing Association.”

“That's just a corporation name.”

“Well, I saw the names of the directors in the paper, but I don't recall any of them. None were familiar.”

“Of course not,” Foley said. “They're all out-of-towners. They're just names, too. The money behind them was put up by Larry Cutter.”

Saxon's eyes widened. “The racketeer who was run out of Saratoga Springs last year for running a wide-open casino?”

“Uh-huh. Know where he is now?”

“Sure. We get the Buffalo intelligence reports on the movements of known racketeers. He's living in Buffalo, but he's not operating there and he's not about to. The Buffalo cops are just waiting for him to make a wrong move so they can pounce.”

“He won't make any wrong moves within the city limits of Buffalo,” Foley said. “If you were a racketeer with a lot of expensive gambling equipment in storage and a cadre of idle hoods on your payroll, what would you do?”

Saxon said slowly, “I guess I'd look for a friendly town where the officials would let me resume operations for a cut of the take.”

“Exactly. And what could be a nicer place than Iroquois? Only twenty-five miles from Buffalo, yet in another county. Cutter would have all greater Buffalo to draw on for casino patrons, and still would be out of the jurisdiction of both the Buffalo police and the Erie County sheriff's office.” The mayor frowned down at his pipe, which had gone out again. He decided to give it up and set it in a ash tray.

Saxon said, “If you knew this, Ben, why didn't you mention it during the campaign?”

“Because I found it out only yesterday. Your dad told me.”

“Dad knew?” Saxon said in surprise.

“Uh-huh. He was tipped off by the Buffalo intelligence squad yesterday morning. I'm surprised he didn't mention it to you.”

“We didn't see much of each other yesterday,” Saxon said. “I came on duty at four and he left at five. The desk was pretty busy for a while, so we didn't have a chance to talk.”

The mayor leaned on his arms on the desk and stared into Saxon's face. “There's a reason other than offering sympathy that I sent for you, Ted. If Larry Cutter is planning to move into Iroquois, he has to get two people on his side first: the mayor and the chief of police. I don't know much about Adam Bennock. Maybe he's as honest as Abe Lincoln. But just in case, I'd like to make sure we still have a chief of police as incorruptible as Andy Saxon.”

Saxon raised his eyebrows. “If you're thinking of me, I appreciate the compliment, but the city council appoints the chief of police.”

“Permanent appointment, sure. But according to the city charter, the mayor is empowered to appoint an acting chief in the event of the permanent chief's disability or death.”

“What good will that do?” Saxon asked. “Bennock swept in a majority of council seats with him. After the first of the year, they'll appoint whoever he wants.”