“Looks like it up there in the next block on the right,” Ben said. There were four vehicles parked in front of the house, two of them prowls. The porch lights were on. Curious neighbors had gathered, some of them in bath robes. A uniformed officer was moving them back, clearing the sidewalk in front of the house. Just as Ben got out, the lab truck, a converted panel delivery, pulled up. He waited to check the crew, and Catelli came up to him and he saw Roamer opening the back door of the truck. “Who else you got, Catelli?”
“Frenchie’s coming in his own car. He ought to be here.”
“Get your stuff up on the porch and hold it while I take a look.”
More than half the front porch was screened. Ben recognized the short, wide officer standing beside a tall, fit, good-looking young man who wore a topcoat and carried a hat in his hand.
“Hello, Tormey.”
“Hi, Ben. This here is Bronson. It’s his wife. She’s in the kitchen.” Ben looked at Bronson. He looked sober and shocked.
“My name is Wixler,” he said. “I’m in charge. You reported this?”
“Yes, sir. I came home and came through the back way, and...”
“Drive home?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long ago?”
Bronson looked at his watch. “I must have got here pretty close to eleven-thirty.”
Ben nodded at Al Spence and Spence went around the side of the house. There was no need for a specific order. Spence would check the automobile, feel the heat of block, radiator, and tail pipe and make a very accurate estimate of the time of Bronson’s arrival.
“Where were you?”
“With the head of the English Department at Brookton Junior College. I’m an instructor there. I was with Dr. Haughton at his home.”
“What time did you leave here?”
“At about seven-thirty, maybe a couple of minutes earlier or later. It takes about a half hour to drive over there. I left him at just about eleven, maybe a couple of minutes before eleven.”
“Your wife was alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did she expect anybody?”
“She didn’t say anything about anybody coming here.”
Wixler had managed, imperceptibly, to move close enough to Bronson to be assured the man had not been drinking. There was something about Bronson that puzzled him — something he could not quite put his finger on. The man seemed authentically dazed by what had happened. It was a reaction almost impossible to fake. Wixler, in all his investigations, placed considerable credence on his own hunches. He respected the acuity of the workings of the subconscious mind, and his own reactions had been refined by long experience. Until other factors could be added to the mixture, he was content to proceed on the basis that this was a decent man, troubled and hurt.
A man came part way up the steps and said, “How’s chance of a shot of the body, Benjamin?”
Wixler turned and looked at Billy Sullivan, at the young-old handsomeness and innocence of the choirboy face, at the unlikely dapperness of this enormously capable crime reporter for the Hancock Ledger, the largest of the city’s three morning papers.
“You know better than that, Billy,” Ben said sadly.
Al came back up the steps and said in an undertone to Ben, “Okay.” And Ben knew the car had backed up Bronson’s statement. The lab men brought their equipment up onto the porch. Ben looked warily at Sullivan and said to Tormey, “You and Mr. Bronson wait in the hall.”
Wixler, Spence, and Means walked into the house. Wixler moved slowly, hands in the slash pockets of his tweed topcoat. Spence and Means stayed a half step behind. Wixler judged the flavor of the living room. A rental, with rented furniture supplemented by Bronson belongings. Many more books than customary. Two good framed reproductions. Indifferent housekeeping, with dust coils under the couch, litter in the small fireplace. They walked on out into the kitchen. He looked at the spilled staples for a long time. He could see the shadow pattern of footprints where someone had stood as the items had spilled.
“Make that, Dan?” he asked.
“A man stood there, wouldn’t you say? Looking for something. Those were dumped on purpose.”
“No sign of any search in the living room,” Al said.
“So,” Ben said, “he either found it where he was looking, or he got scared and took off.”
“He’ll have flour and stuff on his shoes and his clothes,” Dan said.
They started to move toward the body. Ben pointed at the flour on the floor and they stayed back. Ben sat on his heels, bent low to see as much as he could of her face. He grunted with distaste and stood up.
“She was a dish,” Al said reverently.
“Go get Catelli and his people. I want pictures, and I want to see if they can get any kind of molds of those footprints before the doctor gets near her.”
Wixler, Spence, and Means stood aside while Catelli, Roamer, and Duchesne worked. No mold could be taken. Detailed pictures of the footprints were taken, with a ruler laid beside them. The doctor from the Coroner’s Office arrived, a sallow young man who looked bored and overworked. After the position of the body had been chalked out, it was lifted gently at Ben’s direction to see if there was any flour under it. There was enough to help him in his reconstruction. The doctor studied the woman’s face, tested the armpit temperature, gently flexed the joints of elbow and wrist. Squatting, he looked up at Ben and said, “Roughly about four hours. Quarter after twelve now. So I’ll say between quarter of eight and quarter of nine. I don’t think we’ll pin it down much closer when we take a better look unless you can give me the exact time of the last intake of food. Cause of death I would say so far is due to repeated heavy blows in the facial area resulting in multiple skull fractures. I can see at least three that would have killed her.” He stood up.
“Could she have been slammed against the edge of the sink?”
The doctor looked at the sink. “Yes. The shape of the wounds would fit. There would be enough... inertia, so that it would have to be a pretty powerful man. After the first blow she would have been unconscious. Her weight would have had to be supported.”
“Can you work on her tonight?”
The doctor nodded. “It can be arranged.”
The body was strapped into the wire basket and taken away. Ben had given up any hope of being home by one. Dan Means was covering the house with Catelli’s people. Ben said to Spence, “For a start, how about this. She lets him in. He’s looking for something.”
“How about she comes back and finds him. She goes out and comes back and finds him?”
“Dressed that way?”
“Oh! Sure. Okay. She lets him in.”
“He only looks in one place, in those cans. After that he kills her. Maybe she tried to get a knife out of that open drawer. The flour under her means he killed her after he looked. It was on his clothes and his shoes. It came off while he was banging her against the sink.”
They found Catelli in the bedroom taking prints. It was a requirement Catelli despised. In his fifteen years of lab work he had yet to lift a print that had anything to do with the solution of a crime.
“You get to Bronson?” Ben asked.
“Yeah. Frenchie vaccumed his clothes and his shoes. We got him another pair out of his closet and took his.”
Ben turned to Dan Means. “You stay on here and see what you can dig up. Al and I’ll take Bronson down. Seal it when you’re through.”
Lee Bronson was put in a small interview room on the second floor and left there. Wixler had made certain long ago that it was a very barren room. A bare room. No view from the window. Nothing on the walls. The only objects in the room were a small gilt radiator under the single window, a square oak table, three chairs and an ash tray made from a peanut can.