Full Frontal Murder Read online

  “And kidnapping Bobby—that was just one more way to fan the flames? Could be. Okay, we’ll get on it.” Marian checked her watch. “Would you take Rita in and book her? I want to get to Walter Galloway before the news breaks. Oh yeah, that’s another thing … what do we tell the news people downstairs?”

  “You tell them there’ll be no statement until the next of kin is notified. Then say there’ll be a media announcement at … make it six-thirty.”

  “Oh gawd.”

  “Part of the job. Go ahead—I’ll take care of Rita.”

  At Sutton Place, Marian was told Mr. Walter Galloway was taking a nap and was not to be disturbed. She had to threaten the manservant with arrest before he’d go wake the old man up.

  Galloway was out of sorts at having his sleep interrupted. Marian had been left waiting in the entrance hallway; the old man came up to her smoothing down his hair with one hand and leaning on a cane with the other. “What is it, Lieutenant? I already told Detective Dowd everything I know about that ridiculous list of suspects.” He made the last word into a joke.

  “It’s not about that, Mr. Galloway. Is there someplace we could sit down?”

  “If we sit down, you’ll stay longer. What do you want?”

  All right, then. “It’s bad news, I’m afraid,” she said.

  The old man paled. “Bobby. Something’s happened to Bobby.”

  “No, Bobby’s fine. It’s Hugh. I’m sorry to have to tell you—but your son is dead.”

  He stared at her wordlessly, his mouth open. Then he began to sway; the cane slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. Marian stepped over quickly and caught him before he could fall. She half carried him into the first room that opened off the hallway and got him seated on a small divan. “Can I get you something? A drink?”

  He shook his head. “How did he die?”

  Marian braced herself. “Rita shot him.”

  Walter Galloway’s shock instantly turned into rage. “That evil woman! That vampire! She sucks Hugh’s blood until she can get no more out of him and then she kills him! And you let it happen!”

  “Mr. Galloway—”

  “You were told what she was! You sat in that room across the hall and listened to Hugh telling you how dangerous she was. And you did nothing! Nothing! That’s what comes of putting a woman in charge—you sided with Rita all along, I know you did.”

  “I didn’t side with either of them, Mr.—”

  “I should have made some phone calls the minute you walked into this house! You’re in over your head, girlie, and now my son is dead because you waffled and dillydallied and didn’t take action when there was still time to stop her. Well, you’re going to pay for this … Lieutenant.” He sneered the word. “You can count on that!”

  Don’t shoot the messenger. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “You’re sorry? Get out of my house. Get out!”

  Marian knew there was no reaching him before his rage had spent itself. She went looking for the manservant who’d let her in and sent him to the room where she’d left Galloway.

  She was on her way to the front door when the old man’s voice called out, “Wait!”

  Marian went back to see what he wanted.

  “Where’s Bobby now?”

  “He’s with his uncle.”

  Galloway growled. “Him! That picture taker’s not going to raise my grandson! Go on—get out.”

  She left.

  Whew. Galloway’s accusation that she’d waffled and dillydallied until it was too late—Marian knew it wasn’t true; the law did require evidence before she could make an arrest. But it still hurt.

  She wondered if Alex Fairchild had finished taking his pictures in Central Park; the light was still good. Marian checked her notebook and dialed first his home number and then his business number; the same answering service took both calls. Mr. Fairchild is on a shoot.

  Marian turned the car uptown and entered the park at East Seventy-second. The first thing she saw at the boathouse was Bobby playing on the dock with two little girls, all three of them watched over by Bobby’s bodyguard and the girls’ mother. But the shoot was more than just Fairchild and a camera looking for interesting faces; he’d brought a couple of assistants and heavy batteries and extra lights to get rid of shadows where he didn’t want them. It looked like some sort of commercial job; a small group of onlookers had gathered, willing to be entertained by whatever they came across.

  But not one professional model was in sight; Marian remembered Fairchild’s mentioning his aversion to working with models. As she watched, he drew a pair of teenagers out from the small crowd watching and put them in the picture. He ran off a series of shots of the girl laughing good-naturedly at the boy’s awkwardness as he climbed into a rowboat. The final picture would be natural and charming, a far cry from the photographer’s usual street scenes.

  “Marian!” He’d spotted her, and motioned her to come over.

  She went up to where he was changing cameras on a tripod. “What’s all this?”

  “All this is paying the bills, that’s what all this is. The Parks Commission wants some ‘people-oriented’ shots of fun things to do, for next year’s tourism brochures. They got special funding from somewhere, so the money’s good. And this kind of thing is a nice change of pace once in a while.”

  “Mr. Fairchild, I need to speak to you privately.”

  An exaggerated sigh. “What do I have to do to get you to call me Alex?”

  “All right, Alex. I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay, I’m almost finished with this setup and—”

  “Now. It’s urgent.”

  This time he heard her. He called out some instructions to one of his assistants and led her around the boathouse out of earshot. “What’s wrong?”

  As gently as she could, she told him what his sister had done.

  Fairchild turned into a zombie, plodding a few steps one way, a few steps back, stunned with disbelief. Marian turned away, to give him a little privacy.

  Eventually he regained enough control to croak out a question. “Where is she now?”

  Marian turned back to face him. “Right now she’s at Midtown South, being charged. We’re bringing her lawyer in. Then she’ll go to Riker’s Island to wait for trial.”

  “But why? Why’d she go after Hugh now? I thought they’d reached a kind of temporary truce.” His head snapped up. “Bobby. Oh my god, how am I going to tell Bobby? Both his parents gone—oh god.”

  “Does he understand about death?”

  “He knows things die. I’m not sure he understands that also happens to people he loves. Maybe he does.”

  “Then tell him the truth. Tell him his father is dead and his mother has to go away for a while. Don’t tell him the why of it yet.”

  He was nodding. “Yes, I’d better not lie to him. Oh, he’s so very young! It looks as if I’m going to be mother and father both.”

  Marian hesitated. “Walter Galloway is going to claim Bobby. He doesn’t want you to have him.”

  Fairchild’s jaw set. “Well, we’ll just see about that. I’ll not let Bobby be brought up by servants—that’s what would happen in that old buzzard’s house.”

  She followed when Fairchild went back to where his assistants were waiting with his equipment. He told them to pack everything up; they were finished for the day. Then he rented a rowboat and called to Bobby to come for a ride.

  Marian stood on the dock and watched as they rowed out onto the lake. When they were a little way out, Fairchild shipped the oars and started speaking to his nephew. After a moment, Bobby’s thin wail carried across the water, and the boy started flailing at his uncle with his small fists. Fairchild gathered him into his arms and held him.

  From where she was standing Marian couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if they both were crying.

  18

  “So the two duelists took each other out of the game,” Captain Murtaugh said, “and now the seconds a
re taking up the fight?”

  “Looks like it,” Marian replied. “Neither Walter Galloway nor Alex Fairchild wants the other to raise Bobby. They’re Bobby’s only remaining relatives—the courts are going to have to settle this one. Rita will get out of prison eventually, but Bobby will be grown by then.”

  They were in the cubicle adjoining an interrogation room, watching through the one-way glass as Perlmutter and O’Toole questioned Rita Galloway. “The wisdom of Solomon,” Murtaugh murmured.

  “What?”

  “The story of the two women who came to Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of the same baby? Solomon suggested cutting the baby in two and giving half to each woman. The false mother agreed, but the real mother gave up her claim rather than let the baby be harmed. Didn’t Rita Galloway just do something like that? Give up her baby to protect him?”

  “Hmm, I always thought that Solomon story sounded a bit phony myself, but I see what you’re getting at. But I don’t know whether Rita was making a noble sacrifice or just acting on impulse. If she’d stopped to think, she’d have hired a hit man to get Hugh instead of letting a roomful of people watch her pull the trigger.”

  Murtaugh looked at his watch. “It’s six twenty-five.”

  “Shit.” Marian hurried to the ladies’ room where she gave her face a good dusting with powder to take away the shine but didn’t bother with anything else. Then she went to face the cameras and the reporters.

  She told them that artist Rita Galloway had been arrested for the fatal shooting of her estranged husband, Hugh Galloway, president and CEO of Galloway Industries. There was no question as to her guilt, as the shooting was done in full view of seven witnesses. The charge was murder one, as Mrs. Galloway had demonstrated intent by bringing a loaded weapon with her.

  As for motive, Mrs. Galloway was acting on false information that made her think Mr. Galloway was a threat to the safety of their son. But the case was not closed. The police were currently seeking the person who provided her with the false information—the same person who was responsible for the deaths of Nick Atlay and Julia Ortega.

  That last statement triggered an explosion of questions, all of the reporters yelling at once. Marian ducked the question of whether they had a suspect or not and said instead that they were pursuing several lines of inquiry. She gave no more details than those in her original statement; and when the reporters started repeating themselves, she ended it and left.

  Captain Murtaugh was gone from the cubicle adjoining the interrogation room by the time Marian got back. Once Rita Galloway fully understood that someone had been pulling her strings and that she had made a dreadful mistake in shooting Hugh, she’d gone into a blue funk that she still hadn’t pulled out of. But she was cooperating, waiving her right to have an attorney present during questioning and trying to answer every query put to her.

  Yes, she’d had a lover, last year, a man who’d moved to Seattle seven or eight months ago and whom she hadn’t seen since. No, there’d been no one else since him … or before him, as a matter of fact. And yes, Hugh had found out about it. As to Hugh’s charge that she slept with everything that wore trousers, she said tiredly that was just Hugh’s bruised ego talking. If he could turn her into a tramp, then he wouldn’t feel personally betrayed.

  The door to the cubicle opened and Dowd stepped inside. “This Dorian Yates don’t know nothing, Lieutenant,” he said without preamble. “Me and Walker think he was set up.” The two detectives had been questioning Rita’s attorney, the one the police were now supposed to think had hired Julia Ortega.

  “You’re sure he’s not just a good actor?” Marian asked.

  “Naw, this guy’s scared shitless. He says he never heard of Nick Atlay or Julia Ortega before he read their names in the paper, and he didn’t know who Hector Vargas was. We believe him, Lieutenant. The guy’s a rabbit. He’d never have the nerve to plan a homicide, much less carry it through. Besides, Yates just came back from Boston today, got in around noon. Didn’t Rita Galloway say the envelope was delivered shortly after lunch? That’s cuttin’ it pretty close.”

  Marian nodded; she and Captain Murtaugh both had already more or less discounted Dorian Yates as a viable suspect. He had been set up to take the fall for the real killer, a new scapegoat brought in at the eleventh hour to divert the police into a false line of investigation. But the setup itself had too many holes in it; the plan smacked of haste, of desperation. Maybe the police were closer to the truth than they realized?

  “What about Bradford Ushton’s letterhead stationery? Did O’Toole get a sample?”

  “Oh … yeah, he did. And it’s not the same as the letterhead on that letter Rita Galloway got about Hugh promising the kid to Ushton. The killer just went to a printer and had something official looking made up. After all that news coverage, Ushton made a good boogeyman.”

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s waste no more time on Dorian Yates. Take him into Rita’s interrogation room and let him be a defense attorney instead of a suspect.”

  Dowd grinned. “He don’t wanna. He’s a divorce lawyer, Lieutenant, he don’t know beans about defending a homicide. He says the best thing he can do for Rita Galloway is find her a good criminal attorney.”

  “Then tell him to find her one fast. We can’t get her to sign a statement until she has legal counsel. And I want you to check the messenger service that delivered those envelopes to Rita. It’s probably another dead end, but check it out anyway. Where’s Walker?”

  “In the can.”

  “Get him and tell him to look in Rita’s room at her brother’s place for those other envelopes she received. He won’t need a warrant—Fairchild will cooperate.”

  “Right.” He hesitated a moment and then asked, “Are we getting close, Lieutenant?”

  “I think we may be.” Dowd gave a grunt of satisfaction and left.

  Marian turned her attention back to the interrogation room. Perlmutter and O’Toole had finished with the accusatory part of their questioning and were now trying to elicit from Rita every detail of the matter she could think of, whether it proved relevant or not. Rita herself looked on the point of exhaustion, but she was still making an effort to give her questioners what they wanted. Marian didn’t like feeling sorry for murderers, but she was beginning to feel sorry for Rita Galloway.

  “Much better this time,” Holland said later as he clicked off the eleven o’clock news. “You looked preoccupied with your case and not worried about the impression you were making on the reporters, as if giving them their news was only a small courtesy you were observing. Which is the only way to treat those people. You spoke with authority and to the point. You’re getting the hang of it.”

  Marian groaned. She’d stretched out on her stomach across Holland’s lap to watch the news. “I resented the time it took to tell them even that little bit. I wanted to get back to Rita’s interrogation.”

  “But you did your duty like a good little cop.”

  “‘A good little cop’?” She bit his knee. “Don’t you call me a good little cop.”

  “I will if it makes you nibble on my knees. Hey! Ouch!”

  Detective Walker had found three envelopes in Rita’s room at Alec Fairchild’s apartment. One was a “report” alleging Hugh dallied with prostitutes. Another claimed he was free-basing cocaine. The third purported to be some kind of bank report showing Hugh was diverting money from Bobby’s educational trust fund to the account of a woman Hugh was supposedly setting up in a luxury apartment. But even that failed to stir Rita to action.

  It was only when the papers broke the story of Bradford Ushton’s arrest on a charge of child molestation that the killer had hit on the one thing that would send Rita off on her murderous mission.

  Detective Dowd had had to track down the day manager of the messenger service, but he came back with some answers. The first three envelopes had been brought in by Julia Ortega, using her own name. The fourth and fatal one had arrived by ordinary U.S. M
ail, with a twenty enclosed to pay for the messenger’s delivery. The manager said it wasn’t his place to wonder why the sender hadn’t just mailed the envelope straight to the addressee.

  Marian said, “Murtaugh thinks the killer is a disgruntled lover who set out to destroy the Galloways’ marriage and then got in over his head and had to kill to protect himself. But the only lover Rita admits to has been living in Seattle since last year.”

  “I imagine he’s heard of airplanes,” Holland remarked.

  “Yeah, I’ll have to check that tomorrow. I suppose it’s possible to engineer a kidnapping and a firebombing and two murders—three, counting Hugh’s—all the way from the other side of the country. But I don’t believe it. No, our killer’s right here in New York.”

  “So it isn’t Rita’s lover.”

  “Or else she has another lover she hasn’t told us about.” Marian reached over and turned out the light. “Frankly, I’d just like to forget about all of them for a while, all the Galloways and Julia Ortega and poor dumb Nickie Atlay. I don’t want to do anything but sleep.”

  “Aw,” said Holland.

  The next day she phoned the Seattle police and asked their help in tracking down Rita Galloway’s former lover. The return call came less than half an hour later. The man she was asking about had been hit by some collapsing scaffolding at a construction site and had been in a coma for the past two weeks.

  “Well, you can’t beat that for an alibi,” Captain Murtaugh commented when she told him. “But maybe Rita Galloway tossed us a past lover to keep us from looking for a present one.”

  “I’ll put Perlmutter and O’Toole on it,” Marian said, “but I think she was telling us the truth, that the man in Seattle was the only lover she had. She’s trying to atone, Jim. I don’t think she really regrets Hugh’s death, but she does regret killing him.”

  “A fine distinction. I wonder if the jury will be impressed.” He cocked an eye at her. “You don’t think it’s a lover, do you?”