Secret of the White Rose (16 page)

He stopped short. “What the hell!”

I immediately moved to the left of his large frame, which had blocked my view of everything save the cigar-smoking officers guarding the entrance.

I drew a sharp breath the moment I saw the judge. He lay in front of me—his short frame stretched out on top of the bed at the center of the room, its luxuriant white sheets now saturated with red blood. He was naked, with his hands tied together on top of his bulging gut.

This crime scene looked nothing like the first. Except that there—on the mahogany nightstand next to the bed—I saw a black leather Bible and white rose.

I drew closer, struck anew by the fact that I had spoken with Judge Porter merely hours before. My mind filled with questions for which I had no answers. Had he confronted a suspect and suffered these disastrous consequences? Or had he himself been a target? But my mind also filled with questions for Alistair the moment we had finished our examination of this crime scene. There was much that Alistair Sinclair needed to explain, and I did not intend to waste any time in obtaining the answers only he could provide.

Death had rendered the judge almost unrecognizable. He had been shot at close range, and the left side of his head was split open, leaving a gaping wound ringed by telltale traces of gunpowder.

I focused on breathing through my mouth, for the odor from the blood-soaked bedclothes was almost unbearable.

On the chair beside the desk, the clothes that the judge had been wearing were carefully folded. “Black evening dress,” I observed. “He must have gone out after meeting with Alistair.”

“The question is, was he undressed already when his killer surprised him? Or was he forced to disrobe?” Mulvaney pointed to the judge’s tied hands. “Looks like the killer restrained the judge with his own cravat—or ascot—or whatever those fancy things are.”

“You’re right.” I inspected the dead man’s fleshy wrists. “There is no chafing or bruising; no sign that he struggled against his restraints. This would lead me to suspect that the killer tied his hands after the judge was shot. But that makes no sense, unless he was trying to stage the murder scene, somehow sending a message to us.”

“I’d be careful not to read too much into it,” Mulvaney said, sounding a note of warning.

“Let me guess: you want to know when he was killed.” The door leading to the hotel room’s bathroom opened, and Jennings, the coroner with whom I’d worked many cases in the past, ambled into the room, wiping his hands upon a thick, plush white towel. He placed his black leather supply bag at the foot of the bed and turned to greet Mulvaney and me.

“Of course. How have you been, Jennings?” Mulvaney clapped the short, rotund doctor on the back.

“The same. But I’m getting old. Aches and pains are worse than ever.” Jennings rubbed his lower back. He had agile hands and a keen mind, but his body itself was almost as oversized as the bloated form on the bed. I was not surprised it gave him trouble.

He turned to me. “Glad you’re back in the city, Ziele.”

I nodded. “The message we received said the victim was killed sometime last night.”

Jennings grunted. “The muscles are stiff; rigor mortis has taken hold. So he’s been dead more than three hours but less than twelve. Officially, that would put it between approximately midnight and eight o’clock this morning. I incline to say closer to midnight, however. His body has cooled significantly. He was a large man, and let’s be frank: an obese corpse typically takes longer to cool. But in this case, with his body exposed to the air, lacking clothing or covers, the process has gone faster than I’d normally expect.” He coughed. “With your permission, I’d like to move him now.”

Mulvaney turned toward the cigar-smoking officers, still standing at the rear of the room. “Lads, have you gotten the necessary photographs?”

“We have, Captain,” the taller one answered.

“And you’ve dusted the room for prints?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Let’s move him,” Mulvaney said.

Jennings whistled, and two of his assistants materialized. It took them only moments to place Judge Porter’s massive corpse onto a stretcher, cover it with a clean white sheet, and remove it from the room.

“You’ll have my autopsy report tonight,” Jennings said as he made his way slowly to the door. “But this one seems pretty straightforward, medically speaking. A gunshot at close range means he was killed almost instantly. He never had a chance.”

No, he didn’t—at least not once he found himself in tight quarters with this killer. But why had he been here? And had the killer followed him—or met him here by arrangement?

“Let’s gather the evidence to take back to the station house—and with luck, we’ll find something I can tell the commissioner about,” Mulvaney said.

I put on my cotton gloves and went over to the nightstand. I examined the rose and Bible but found nothing out of the ordinary. In every respect, they were exactly like those found at Judge Jackson’s home early this week.

I again regarded the bed where the judge had breathed his last breath. “His killer had nerves of steel,” I remarked. “Looks like he was shot while lying on his back, facing up. It takes a steady hand to look your victim in the eye before killing him.”

Mulvaney nodded in agreement.

I bent down, leaning over the swath of red, mixed with a gray substance I knew to be brain. It formed a giant balloon shape on the bed, at the center of which a small brass item glinted in the morning sun.

The bullet.

“Do you have the tool kit?” I asked Mulvaney. Wordlessly, he brought it over and I chose a pair of long metal pincers.

Gingerly I grabbed the bullet with the metal pincers, then held it up to the light. “It’s a standard thirty-two caliber. It could have come from any number of automatic pistols on the market…”

“Let’s bag it and I will take it by Funke’s after I meet with the commissioner,” Mulvaney said. A. H. Funke was a gunseller on Chambers Street who often helped us make sense of cartridges and pistols, not to mention the criminals who used them. “I’ve seen enough here. We’d best get downtown.”

But I stood at the bed, shaking my head. “Why was he shot? The Bible, the white rose—” I broke off, nodding toward the items now in my satchel as evidence. “It’s just like Judge Jackson’s murder. Except most killers don’t change their methods so radically. Why kill one victim with a knife, the next with a gun?”

Mulvaney appeared annoyed. “You trust too much in what your professor says. And who’s to say he knows what he’s talking about, any more than the rest of us? Half the time his nonsense sounds no better than witch-doctor mumbo jumbo to me.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But even if we discount his theories of criminal behavior, he was the last person we know to have seen Judge Porter alive last night. I need to talk with him as soon as possible.”

“If it’s an anarchist plot,” Mulvaney mused, “then several of them could be in on it together. Perhaps we’re not looking for just one killer but a team of them.”

I agreed. But thinking of Jonathan Strupp, I hoped Mulvaney was wrong.

As we made our way down the hallway toward the elevator, I stopped by the room that had been transformed into temporary interview space; here, a handful of senior detectives would speak with every employee of the Breslin. Mike Burns, a detective I knew, seemed to be organizing the junior officers.

“Say, Mike,” I called out, poking my head into the room. “Have you found out yet when Judge Porter checked into room 503 last night?”

He looked over with a smirk. “Well, if it was Judge Porter, he didn’t use his real name. He—or somebody else—signed into the room as a Mr. Sanders. Gave his address as 3 Gramercy Park West. I’ve got the register right here.” He held up a thick sheaf of papers.

I caught my breath. “That’s Judge Jackson’s address,” I told Mulvaney as I walked across the room to take a closer look at the register.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He stared in disbelief.

“And it raises the question: Who called in Judge Porter’s murder? The staff here would have known him as Mr. Sanders,” I said.

“The killer may have made the call. Or one of his anarchist conspirators.”

“Exactly. Where did Mr. Sanders sign?” I asked Mike.

“Let’s see.” We waited a few moments as he ran his finger down to a signature near the bottom of the page. “Here it is. He listed his first name as Leroy. Leroy A. Sanders.”

I drew in a sharp breath—but I thought only of the message contained in the musical cipher that Judge Porter himself had decoded just last night.

Leroy avenged.

And my mind was so consumed with this chance discovery that it was not until much later that I realized that the elevator operator who took us back to the lobby was not the same man who had taken us up to the murder scene earlier.

CHAPTER 11

The Lawyers’ Club, 120 Broadway. 1:30
P.M.

“Do you think the Moody pick stands any chance of passing?” A man’s voice, loud and obnoxious, filled the stately marble lobby of the Lawyers’ Club.

A different man, with long silver hair, the kind that just reached his collar, answered in soft, cultured tones. “William Moody’s Supreme Court nomination will spark no end of controversy, but don’t count him out just yet. He’s the President’s choice, and as you know, Teddy Roosevelt never backs down from a fight.”

The first voice emanated from a sturdy fellow with a ruddy complexion and close-cropped brown hair. I followed him into the elevator. “Top floor, please,” I instructed the attendant.

After I left Mulvaney, I’d placed four telephone calls to track down Alistair here at his favorite club, where Mrs. Mellown had assured me I would find him. Presumably, he was unaware of his friend’s brutal murder.

My companions continued to talk.

“The only complaint against Attorney General Moody is that he’s a Massachusetts man. Why should it matter that two men on the court are from the same state?” asked the stocky man.

“I’d say the geographical question only matters if you’re a Southerner or a Westerner. It smacks of favoritism—especially after the President packed his Cabinet with New Yorkers. Still, if anyone can push the nomination through, it’s Roosevelt.” The silver-haired man smiled.

The second man clutched at his brown felt fedora. “I support the President, but even so … I’m not sure I like having a judge on the court so completely in Roosevelt’s pocket.”

“He has the chance to create a legacy that will endure long beyond his term. We should all be so lucky as to have such influence…” Their voices trailed away as the elevator lurched to a stop, the attendant cranked open the doors, and they entered the club room ahead of me.

“Sir?” A maître d’, crisp in both manner and dress, approached me expectantly.

“I’m here to meet with one of your members, Alistair Sinclair,” I said, with more confidence than I actually felt. It was a private club—and while flashing my police credentials might have gained me entry, they would not necessarily inspire his cooperation.

“He’s expecting you, Mr.…?”

“Simon Ziele.”

He ran a pencil down his list of reservations.

“He may have forgotten our plans,” I said, forcing a rueful smile, “but I’m sure if you reminded him?”

“Of course, sir,” the maître d’ said. “Just one moment.”

The man disappeared, leaving me standing at the entrance to the large room that was nonetheless intimate: the warmth of plush red carpets and gold-patterned draperies contrasted with the dark lustrous wood that enveloped the room from beamed ceiling to paneled walls. The centerpiece of the room was a large fireplace decorated with intricate wood carvings. The room itself was infused with the smells of alcohol and cigars—the residue of decades of lawyers’ traffic.

I had never been to the Lawyers’ Club before, despite Alistair’s long tenure as a member. Perhaps he thought it was too exclusive for my taste; he and I had our differences in that respect, for Alistair was at ease in diverse parts of New York society in a way I was not.

“The professor is expecting you. Please follow me, sir.” The maître d’ issued his instructions with a stiff nod.

He ushered me past the large stained-glass window, beyond half a dozen tables of men having hushed conversations, and into a secluded alcove at the back of the room, where Alistair sat with a copy of the
World,
sipping a single-malt scotch.

I took the seat opposite him and ordered a coffee, black, from a waiter who materialized the moment the maître d’ left. “It’s not like you to follow the yellow papers,” I said, observing him carefully. Alistair normally looked to the
New York Times
or the
Tribune
for his news, not the sensationalist
Journal
or
World.
Although none of them would have news of Judge Porter’s murder in this afternoon’s issue, I was sure. Still, I watched Alistair for any sign that he knew.

There was none. He laughed as he flipped the paper to show me. “For news coverage, never. But the Sunday comics are another matter. Someone left a copy from this past weekend, so I decided to check on this week’s yellow kid.”