An Officer and a Gentle Woman Read online

  Lafferty made a show of taking it all m since he didn’t want the lady to know the effect she was having on him. A trail of delicious scent wafted behind her and the silk negligee she was wearing whispered about her legs like a caress. Her hair shone with golden highlights. He could see the outline of her slim shoulders and the faint shadow of her nipples against the thin material when she turned to him.

  He looked away.

  “You can wait there, detective, it’s three floors down from any of these windows. I am not planning to jump, and my high-wire act is somewhat rusty.” She seemed to be using sarcasm as a weapon, trying to distance herself from what must be, to her, a surreal experience. She stepped into the dressing room and pulled the door closed, leaving it slightly ajar.

  “I’ll keep talking anyway so you’ll know I’m here,” she called. He could hear her opening drawers and rustling fabrics. “Will I be allowed to call my lawyer, like in the movies?” she asked dryly.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know any criminal attorneys, not personally anyway. I’ve never been arrested on a murder charge before tonight. May I call Judge Reynolds? Perhaps he can recommend someone.”

  “You can call anyone you like.” He waited, studying the framed photographs of a boy and a girl on the bedside table. The boy was about nine and the girl about twelve, obviously a future beauty like her mother. He was reading the titles on a shelf of books next to the bed when she emerged, dressed in a tan skirt and ivory blouse, an overnight bag in her hand.

  “I’m ready,” she said flatly.

  They descended the stairs together, Lafferty acutely conscious of her feminine presence just in front of him. Chandler was waiting for them, a folded sheaf of papers in his hand.

  “We have a warrant to search your house for evidence, Mrs. Walker,” he said to her, proffering the document. It was several pages of computer generated typeset with SEARCH WARRANT stamped across the lead page in large red capitals.

  “Not losing any time, are you, Lieutenant?” Alicia said witheringly.

  “In murder cases it’s best not to lose any time, Mrs. Walker.” Chandler whipped a pen out of his breast pocket and handed it to her. “Please read it and sign on the last page.”

  Alicia glanced through the pages, slipping them methodically, then took the pen from him and signed her name neatly on the last sheet.

  “Thank you. While we’re taking you down to the station my men will be going over the house and grounds.”

  “You’re welcome to the task, Lieutenant.”

  Chandler extended his hand for her bag, and she gave it to him.

  “May I make my call now?” she asked, eyeing him narrowly.

  Both men stood back as she called Justice Hector Reynolds of the New York State Supreme Court. They listened as she accepted his condolences and then stood silently as tones of outrage poured from the other end of the line after she had explained her situation.

  “Thank you, Hector, I’m sure it’s all a mistake, too,” Alicia said. “But in the meantime I am being arrested and I need someone to come to the Precinct House in Manhattan and see about bail. Can you help me?”

  There was a short discussion, during which Reynolds seemingly promised to come straight to the jail to meet her. When she hung up the phone she squared her shoulders and waited silently.

  Chandler opened the front door and signaled to one of the waiting cars. Alicia watched as a female police officer came up onto the porch and into the hall.

  “This is Sergeant Garcia, she’s going to search you now.”

  Alicia flushed faintly, whether with embarrassment or anger it was difficult to say.

  “Here?” she said shortly.

  “Bring her into the parlor, Garcia,” Chandler said gruffly.

  The policewoman took Alicia by the arm and led her into the adjoining room, closing the French doors.

  Chandler went through Alicia’s bag quickly, shoving aside toiletries and a change of underwear, looking for a weapon. When he found nothing the two men waited in tense silence until the women returned.

  Garcia nodded. “She’s clean.”

  Alicia, looking grim but calm, glanced at Chandler as if to determine what fresh indignity he was about to inflict. She didn’t have to wait long. He stepped forward with the handcuffs.

  “Is that necessary, Charlie?” Lafferty asked quietly. “She’s not armed, and it’s unlikely she could overpower both of us on the way to the station.”

  Chandler thought about it, then shrugged. Alicia shot Lafferty a grateful look as Chandler clapped a large hand on her shoulder and steered her out the door. Alicia stopped short as Lafferty opened the back door of the cruiser and held it for her.

  “Get in, Mrs. Walker,” he said.

  She looked at him. A current flowed between them as if a switch had been turned on, and Lafferty had the irrational desire to take her in his arms. She gazed up at him a moment longer, then pressed her lips together and obeyed.

  Alicia Walker was booked, fingerprinted and photographed as Chandler and Lafferty sipped coffee in the squad room and completed the arrest report. Reporters screamed questions from the hallway and flashbulbs went off like fireworks when she was led to the holding room. The station sergeant shut the connecting doors after she had moved on, cutting off the cacophony generated by the press.

  Alicia looked over her shoulder at Lafferty as she passed.

  “Why, Mike, I think she likes you,” Chandler said, chuckling and digging his elbow into Lafferty’s ribs.

  “She’s going to be right at home in the tank with all the hookers and crackheads,” Lafferty said dryly, putting down his cup.

  “Mike, she’s been accused of murder, not cheating at bingo. Where do you think she belongs? Should we put her up at the Ritz, maybe get her an appointment at Elizabeth Arden while we’re at it? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I’m just saying she’ll be a target for the other prisoners, that’s all,” Lafferty replied uncomfortably.

  Chandler snorted. “She won’t be in there five minutes before her high-priced mouthpiece bails her out.”

  “Not if she isn’t arraigned until the morning. She’ll have to spend the night here.”

  “Don’t count on it. Anybody who can get the Honorable Hector Reynolds on his home phone will be in and out like a roll of film at the Photomart.”

  “The DA will keep her overnight,” Lafferty said flatly. “You’ll see.”

  “So what? She’ll live. Come on, we should get back out to the Walker house.”

  They got up together and left the squad room.

  “Some classy dame, huh?” Chandler ventured, once they were in the car. “She sure brought out the Sir Galahad in you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Lafferty said.

  “You don’t? ‘Let her take her time to get dressed.’ ‘Don’t handcuff her.’ I thought you were about to roll out the red carpet all the way back to the city.”

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea to arrest her in her nightgown, Charlie, what with all the photographers sure to be waiting for us when we brought her into the station. And since each of us outweighs her at about two to one, I didn’t feel that she was very likely to escape, did you?”

  Chandler snorted, and Lafferty restrained himself from saying anything further. It was obvious that Chandler could not see Alicia Walker in a sympathetic light, while he himself had no trouble doing so. She was a fragile, beautiful woman whose world had suddenly jumped out of orbit and gone flying off into space. Chandler wanted her convicted yesterday because she had money and had been married to a powerful man. Lafferty saw just the woman—frightened, vulnerable and achingly lovely.

  He already knew that he could not be impartial about her.

  “What did you think of that perfume?” Chandler said, ignoring the logic of Lafferiy’s earlier reply. “Three hundred bucks an ounce if it’s a nickel, my boy. She’ll have some trouble getting hold of that fancy
stuff in the clink. No fresh flowers, either. What an inconvenience that will be for her ladyship.”

  Lafferty stared out the window. The older man had an irritating habit of talking like a flatfoot in a Mickey Spillane potboiler. Lafferty found it best to ignore his tirades.

  “Well, she won’t be the first broad I’ve come across with the face of an angel and a heart of stone,” Chandler added.

  Lafferty said nothing.

  “You didn’t see her crying her eyes out when we told her that her husband was dead. She was more concerned about breaking that pretty vase and making a mess on her expensive floor.” Chandler had the working-class cop’s disdain for the concerns of the wealthy, and the finely tuned resentment to go along with it.

  “She was in shock, Charlie. You don’t need me to tell you about the strange things people do when they’re in shock. Not everyone washes away on a river of tears like a B-movie actress.”

  “Shock, no way. She wasn’t in shock if she plugged him, and my money says she did. The kids were conveniently gone, she sent the servant home so she wouldn’t be around. She had plenty of time to get into the city and back home and pretend she was in Scarsdale all along.”

  Lafferty shook his head. “She doesn’t seem stupid. Why would she shoot him in front of witnesses? And if you were planning a murder wouldn’t you prepare a better alibi than ‘I was sleeping at my house by myself? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  Chandler shrugged. “Maybe she’s crazy, one of them whatchamacallits—schizos, multiple personalities. I don’t know, I’m no shrink. The inside word on her old man is that he was a great hand with the ladies. Maybe she finally got fed up with it. Maybe knowing that she would have to put on a big show of the happy family for his political campaign finally drove her around the bend. All I know is that the DA’s got about five witnesses, including Walker’s press secretary and one of Walker’s private security guards from FlarmTree Publishing, who are going to stand up in court and swear on an FTGold edition of the Good Book that the lady did it.”

  Lafferty pursed his lips thoughtfully but didn’t answer.

  “You think those people were having a shared hallucination?” Chandler asked, grinning as he popped a stick of gum in his mouth. He was trying to quit smoking and chewed gum constantly. “The press aide, some guy named Smithson, is a direct eyewitness. He was Walker’s friend of twenty years, his college roommate and an usher at the wedding, for heaven’s sake. Do you think he could be wrong?”

  Lafferty shook his head, unable to answer.

  Chandler hit the turn signal just as a radio call came in saying that the search of the Walker house had turned up some relevant evidence. Chandler reached for the radio handset.

  “What have you got, Red?” Chandler asked his patrolman at the Walker mansion.

  “Found a woman’s two-piece dress, a suit I guess, stuffed behind the water heater in the basement,” Red Jenkins replied.

  Chandler glanced at Lafferty, who was leaning forward, listening intently.

  “Is it Alicia Walker’s?” Chandler asked.

  Jenkins’s reply was lost in a burst of static.

  “Say again?” Chandler directed curtly.

  “Must be hers, it’s got some kind of label sewn into the collar, looks like a signature,” Jenkins replied.

  “Bag it and tape it, we’ll be there in half an hour,” Chandler said crisply then dropped the handset onto the seat beside him. He cast a sidelong glance in Lafferty’s direction. “Now why, do you suppose, has the lady of the house been hiding her little duds in her cellar? Want to bet it matches the description of the suit she was wearing when she nailed her beloved with a .32? If Santa is good to us it might even have some gunpowder residue on it.”

  Lafferty was looking unconvinced.

  “What?” Chandler said.

  “She has to know that her house is the first place we’d look for anything like that. Would she stash the stuff right on the property? It wasn’t even hidden that well, it couldn’t have been if Red Jenkins found it. You know Red, Charlie. He’s a stand-up guy, but not exactly Sherlock Holmes.”

  “So what? I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, and neither will the DA. I know the lady has nice legs, kid, but she did her husband. Get used to it.”

  Lafferty mentally shook his head. It didn’t feel right, it was too easy. It felt to him like Alicia Walker had been framed, like somebody had set her up and planted the evidence in her house to implicate her.

  Or maybe he just wanted to think that, because his whole body had responded to the Walker woman in a gutwrenching visceral way the instant he saw her.

  Lafferty glanced at his partner as Chandler changed lanes.

  Then he trained his gaze out the window again.

  Alicia sat on the edge of the cot in the holding cell, her hands folded in her lap, studiously avoiding the eyes of the prostitute who was staring her down from across the room. A drunk was throwing up in a corner, the sound of her retching permeating the narrow space, and the smell of urine and vomit and stale cigarette smoke was overwhelming.

  Alicia shifted her weight and sighed, finally looking directly at the prostitute and holding her gaze levelly. To Alicia’s surprise the woman shrugged slightly in response and looked away.

  It seemed an eternity before Hector arrived. When the guard came to take her out to the visitors’ room she ignored the catcalls that followed her into the hall and smiled at Hector with a confidence she didn’t feel.

  “You have ten minutes,” the guard said, and then left, taking a position outside, which allowed them to see his head through the glass at the top of the door.

  “My dear, I’m so sorry to find you in such a dreadful situation,” Reynolds said, taking a chair across from Alicia once she sat. An old golfing buddy of her father’s, he was a dignified gray-haired man in his sixties about to complete his current term on the bench. Alicia noticed that his manner was entirely different from the bluster he had exhibited on the telephone: he now seemed subdued, worried.

  “I’ve talked to your grandmother on the phone. She is attempting to engage Harry Landau for your defense,” he announced.

  Alicia was too stunned to speak. Harry Landau was a flamboyant media figure, a ruinously expensive lawyer who was usually brought in to perform his magic in support of wealthy—and clearly guilty—clients. Like Saint Jude, he was the patron of hopeless cases.

  “Hector, is it really that bad?” Alicia asked quietly.

  He sighed, his expression grim. “Alicia, I have spoken to the police and read the arresting officers’ statement. Your defense attorney will have to convince the jury that the several witnesses District Attorney Woods intends to call are all mistaken about what they saw. One person, yes. But four? Or five?” He shook his head. “And the search of your home revealed a dress like the one the assailant was wearing, hidden in your cellar.”

  Alicia stared at him. “In my cellar?”

  “Yes.”

  “What dress?”

  He passed a hand over his brow. “Beige, I think A top and bottom, silk. Adolfo.”

  “That suit is in my closet!” Alicia said decisively.

  “Are you sure? Have you checked?”

  “Why would I check, I haven’t worn it in months!” she retorted in exasperation.

  “Maybe it isn’t there any longer.”

  “You mean someone took the suit?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” she said thoughtfully. “Or copied it.”

  “I’m afraid there’s more. Woods is attempting to have your assets frozen if you are released on bail. He’s claiming that you’re a flight risk.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hector, where would I go? My children are here.”

  “It’s more or less standard procedure with defendants of great wealth.”

  Alicia couldn’t reply. How could this nightmare be happening so fast? A few hours ago she was asleep in her bed, and now this disaster,
in a twinkling, had overtaken her life.

  “And you’ll have to spend the night here. You’re being arraigned in the morning. I think Woods is determined to make an example of you. He might even try to hold you without bail.”

  “I see.”

  “In all likelihood Landau will be here by tomorrow, but if he can’t come himself he will probably send a member of his staff to handle the bail hearing.”

  “So I’m stuck here.”

  “I guarantee you’ll be out after the arraignment. We’ll meet whatever bail is set, or I’ll get it reduced. The district attorney is powerful, but I’m not without friends myself.”

  He stopped, and Alicia waited.

  He folded his hands on the scarred table before him. “Alicia, I was your father’s friend for thirty years, and as far as bail is concerned I will do what I can to help you. But after that I will not be able to involve myself in this matter any longer. I’m coming up for re-election in the fall and this sort of thing, the scandal...”

  “I understand,” Alicia said shortly. She was sure he wouldn’t be the only old friend to abandon her when apprised of her plight.

  He looked relieved. He stood up and offered his hand.

  “Good luck, my dear. I wish I might do more, but...”

  “Thank you, Hector,” she said expressionlessly.

  He looked at her for a long moment, then said, “Alicia, I know that Joe wasn’t easy to live with. If you did—”

  “I didn’t,” she replied distantly. “Thank you for coming, Hector. Good night.”

  Back at the precinct at eight-thirty the next morning, after working a double shift supervising the search of the Walker mansion, Charlie Chandler sent a parting glance toward Lafferty as he paused at the door on his way home to his wife of thirty-two years.