The first thing Durango saw was the picture of Karen Jorgenson stapled to the corner of the folder. He reached inside, pulled out the dossier card and read aloud from it. “Karen Engstrom, alias Karen Lund, alias Karen Jorgenson. Born Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 3, 1939. Three arrests on suspicion of robbery, one conviction.”
“How do you like them apples?" Connors asked happily.
“Relax. They could be sour. There’s nothing paranoid about being a thief.”
“You’re going bugs on that word.”
“Maybe you’re right. What did she steal?”
“Jewelry. All three arrests were for second story jobs.”
“Interesting,” Durango admitted. “Have some of the boys go around to her apartment and give it a going over.”
“Should I get a search warrant?”
“Takes too long. Just tell the boys to be neat. I’ll see she doesn’t get home in time to interrupt them.”
“Okay. Will do.”
“By the way,” Durango added, “is there any word on that check we sent out with Reggie Ivers yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, tell them to let me know as soon as they hear anything one way or the other, will you?”
“Check.”
“Then come on back and join the party,” Durango told him as he went back into his office.
The five suspects were still sitting silently, just as they were when he’d left them. Durango went back to the chair behind his desk and decided to start with something simple.
“Dr. Golden,” he said.
Dr. Zachary Golden straightened with a start and looked at him. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I know this is painful for you, but there are some questions I have to ask you. If you’d prefer, I can ask them privately.”
“I have nothing to hide. I don't mind answering in front of these ladies.”
“Good. First, can you think of anyone who might have had reason to murder your wife?”
“No. Mavis had no enemies that I know of.”
“How about among her patients?”
The three women stared at Durango resentfully.
“That’s hard to say. By the nature of my wife’s work, the people she treated couldn’t be called stable personalities. There is always a certain amount of risk in dealing with neurotics—sometimes even psychotics.”
“Did she ever mention any one patient in particular as being dangerous?”
“No. Mavis didn’t discuss her cases with me.”
There was an almost audible sigh of relief from the female trio.
“Why was that?” Durango wanted to know.
“Firstly, she felt it was unethical. She felt very strongly that her patients’ confidence should be respected—even where I was concerned. And secondly, we decided early in our marriage that our careers should be kept separate from our personal life together.”
“I see. And how was your personal life together? Did you get along well? Were you happy?”
“I suppose we had the usual number of marital disagreements, but on the whole we got along very well.”
“Would you say your wife was a jealous woman?" Durango asked casually.
“Certainly not. Quite the opposite.”
“And you?” Durango asked more pointedly. “Were you jealous about her?”
“I had no cause to be.”
“And if you’d had cause? Would you have been jealous then?”
“That’s too iffy to answer. Mavis was always a loyal and faithful wife.”
Durango shot Debbie a quick sidewise glance. She was maintaining a careful poker face. He switched tactics. “You left your medical convention at about six o’clock at night; is that right?” he asked Dr. Zachary Golden.
“That’s right.”
And ordinarily it would have been a nine-hour drive to your home?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you didn’t arrive there until the next afternoon.”
“I told you. I pulled the car off the road because of the severity of the storm. I fell asleep until after noon the next day.”
“But we have only your word for that. Actually, you could have been home in time for the murder.”
“Yes. But I wasn’t.”
“But you can’t prove it,” Durango insisted.
“No, I—Wait! Maybe I can,” Dr. Golden said slowly. “I just might be able to establish the time I passed the Tappan Zee toll booth this afternoon. That’s almost exactly an hour from my home.”
“How can you establish that?”
“Well, I had a conversation with the attendant. You see, I found when I reached the booth that I had stupidly left myself with a fifty-dollar bill to change. I expected the attendant to be annoyed, but he was actually very polite about it. He must have noticed the MD on my license plates, because he addressed me as ‘Doctor’ when he handed me my change.”
“What time was that?”
“About two p. m. this afternoon. The attendant might remember it, too, because it was announced over my car radio as he was making change and he remarked to me that he only had another two hours to go before he’d be relieved.”
Durango thought a moment. “Even if he bears you out, I don’t know that it proves anything,” he pointed out. “You could have been home at three a. m. the morning before and made it back to the toll booth in plenty of time to pass through at two the next afternoon. And you wouldn’t have had to use the parkway, either. You could have gone home and come back on the side roads.”
“Yes, I suppose—” Dr. Zachary Golden started to agree. Then — “No!” he interrupted himself. “I think I can prove I couldn’t have done that.”
“How?”
“I had the car greased upstate just before I left for home. They put one of those stickers with the mileage on it just inside the front doorpost. If you check that against my mileage indicator, it should prove I couldn’t have driven home and back.”
“Have you used the car to drive anywhere else today?”
“Just down here. My car is in the lot across the street from here.”
“Okay. Wait a minute.” Durango went outside again and made arrangements to have Dr. Zachary Golden’s mileage checked and to try to locate the toll-booth attendant who might have changed his fifty-dollar bill. As he was about to go back inside, he saw Connors in conversation with some uniformed policemen across the room. Reginald Ivers was standing with them.
“Connors,” Durango called. “What’s Ivers doing back here?” he asked when the sergeant came over to him. “And how come you didn’t come back in for the circus?”
“Because I was busy getting the story on what happened with Ivers,” Connors explained. “They had to bring him back. The way things turned out, they couldn’t substantiate his alibi.”
“What happened?”
“It seems the doctor Ivers claims to have gone to last night turned out to be an abortionist.”
“That figures,” Durango siad. “Considering what we know about Ivers. I wondered how he happened to know of a doctor in that neighborhood.
“Well, now you know. Anyway, when our boys went up to check on the doctor, they caught him right in the act. But the quack was too fast for them. His office is on the ground floor and he was out the window and down the block before they could catch him. In his hurry, needless to say, he didn’t stop to confirm Ivers’ story.”
“So Ivers has no alibi,” Durango mused.
“Not until we catch up with the butcher. And that may take a while. Also, even when we do, he probably won’t be looking too kindly on Ivers for bringing the fuzz down on him. He might refuse to back him up out of pure vindictiveness.”
“Yeah.” Durango sighed. “Well, then he’s still a suspect. You might as well bring him in to join the party.”
Back in Durango’s office, lvers sat down next to the couch. Connors resumed his perch on the windowsill. Behind his desk again, Durango was thinking over his line of interrogation.