“Where’s Captain Grossman?” Carella said. “I want to talk to him.”
“Going over my head isn’t going to—”
“Where is he?”
“In court. He’ll be in court the rest of the week, Carella. Testifying on a homicide. Which takes precedence over a suicide. Priorities, Carella.”
“When do you think I can have your report?”
“In a day or so.”
“Make it tomorrow morning.”
“I said in a day or so. We’re working on what we vacuumed up, we’re running our tests on that capsule—”
“The M.E.’s already identified the drug—”
“We have to do it here, too. As soon as we get the package together—”
“Shoot for tomorrow, okay?”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Owenby said, and hung up.
The manila envelope from the telephone company was hand-delivered not ten minutes later. The patrolman who brought it up to the squadroom waited while Carella signed for receipt, and then tossed it onto the desk, where it landed on a pile of junk that included a mimeographed sheet announcing the PBA’s annual Labor Day picnic and dance, a flyer from the Three-One asking for information regarding any shooting involving a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, a bolo from the cops in Sarasota, Florida, and a stack of eight-by-ten glossies the Photo Unit had enlarged from the ones they’d taken in the Newman apartment last Friday.
Carella opened the envelope.
There were four photocopied pages in it, listing all the calls made from the Newman apartment since the last billing in July. In this city, as in most American cities, a telephone-company bill was broken down into columns that recorded the date of any long-distance call, the city to which that call had been made, the number called in that city, the time the call was made, the duration of the call in minutes, and finally the charge for the call.
Carella started with the last page first.
Anne Newman had left the Silvermine Oval apartment at a quarter to nine on the morning of August first, and had not returned home till the eighth. Presumably, then, any calls made from the 765-3811 number during that time span had been made by Jerry Newman himself, while he was still alive.
The last listing read:
On the seventh of August, then, Jerry Newman had placed a call to Beverly Hills at 6:21 p.m., local time, which would have made it 3:21 p.m. on the Coast. He had spoken for three minutes and the call had cost him eighty-five cents. Carella didn’t know what the “B” following the “3” in the minute column meant, but the number Newman had called seemed familiar to him. He dialed California Information, and asked for the number of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The operator read it off to him: 213-275-4282. He thanked her, and then dialed the Business Office, hoping he would not get either Miss Corning or Miss Shulz. He spoke to a nameless operator, instead, who told him that the “B” following the “3” simply meant the call had been placed either in the evening or on the weekend, when the rates were lower. He thanked her and hung up.
Jerry Newman had presumably been alive at 6:21 p.m. on the night before his body was discovered. He had called the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and had presumably spoken to his wife at 3:21 p.m. Pacific Daylight Saving Time. Carella took out his notebook. At 5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Saving Time, that same day, Anne Newman had called her mother-in-law to tell her she was contemplating divorce. She had then presumably packed and had later gone to the airport to catch a ten-thirty plane scheduled to arrive here the next morning at six-thirty. But if she’d spoken to her husband on Thursday, why had she told Carella she’d spoken to him for the last time on Tuesday, when she’d called to give him her travel plans?
He lifted the receiver again, and dialed Susan Newman’s number. He let the phone ring a dozen times, and was about to hang up when a breathless voice he recognized as Anne’s said, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Newman?”
“Yes, just a moment, please.”
He waited.
When she came back onto the line, she said, “I’m sorry, I was in the shower. Who’s this, please?”
“Detective Carella.”
“Oh, hello, how are you?”
“If this is an inconvenient time for you...”
“No, that’s all right,” she said. “What is it?”
“Mrs. Newman, I have a phone bill here that indicates your husband placed a call to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on August seventh — that would have been Thursday evening at six-twenty-one our time, three-twenty-one on the Coast.”
“Yes?” she said.
“When I talked to you last Friday, you told me the last time you’d spoken to your husband was on Tuesday, August fifth, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, that’s exactly when I did speak to him.”
“But apparently he called the Beverly Wilshire on Thursday, the seventh.”
“At what time, did you say?”
“Three-twenty-one in California.”
“I was out,” she said.
“You were out.”
“Yes, I was out walking.”
“I see. What time did you get back to the room?”
“It must have been a little before five.”
“Just before you called your mother-in-law, is that right?”
“Yes. I’d been doing a lot of thinking that afternoon, I wanted to talk to her about what I’d decided.”
“I see. Was there a message that your husband had called?”
“If there was, I didn’t get it.”
“Then you didn’t know he’d tried to reach you.”
“Not until just now. Are you sure he...?”
“Well, I have the telephone bill right here,” Carella said.
“Then he was still alive on Thursday,” Anne said.
“It would seem so, yes.”
“God,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “thank you, I just wanted to check this, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“Not at all,” she said, and hung up.
Carella debated whether or not the city would start screaming about the number of long-distance calls he was making, decided the hell with the city, and dialed the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles. The desk clerk he spoke to informed him that one copy of any telephone message was placed in a guest’s box within minutes of its receipt, and another copy was slipped under the guest’s door shortly thereafter. He could see no reason why a guest coming back to the hotel at a little before five would not have seen at least one copy of a message received at three twenty-one.
Carella thanked him and hung up.
The call from Probate came a half hour later. The clerk with Probate Division was a woman named Hester Attinger, who at Carella’s request yesterday had checked to see whether any attorney had filed a will following Jeremiah Newman’s death. In this state, the law required that a will be filed within ten days after knowledge of a death. Most attorneys kept a daily watch on the newspaper obituary columns to see if any of their clients had kicked the bucket overnight. And whereas most laymen did not know about the law’s requirements, chances were that if they were in possession of a will, or even if they had been witnesses to the signing of a will, they would call their own attorney to ask what they were supposed to do. Most wills — except for those hidden at the bottom of a well or under the floorboards of a house — found their way to Probate. Jeremiah Newman’s will had been filed there yesterday.