Wrongful Murder

Wrongful Murder

James Ward

Copyright 2020 by James Ward

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: The Murder

Chapter 2: Another Corpse

Chapter 3: Land, More Land

Chapter 4: Robert E. Lee

Chapter 5: Landry and Luke

Chapter 6: Shard's Date

Chapter 7: Money

Chapter 8: Brodir of Man

Chapter 9: The Scheme

Chapter 10: Another Corpse

Chapter 11: The Solution?

Chapter 12: The Arab and Witry

About the Author

Acknowledgements

I would like to give credit to my late wife, Roberta Shannon Ward, an inveterate mystery reader, for the books’ plots and characters. When she became too ill to teach high school, we decided to write a mystery. We outlined the books as we cooked dinner. When we had a stack of paper filled with scribbling topped off with dried sauces, vegetable parts, and much unidentifiable dinner matter, we agreed she would write and I would proofread. She found that she hadn’t the voice to write and we switched roles. We enjoyed it so much that we finished a second and were into a third when Roberta died. I finished that one alone.

My sister, Sharon Caher, who lives in what she calls the Miami of the North, Olcott, New York, is my Vice President for Production. She spent years in the Buffalo public schools’ IT department and knows how to make these infernal machines operate. She set up our whole system, created the book covers, and figured out how to take out many of my reading gaffes. She is working to put the printed copies of the volumes on line.

Keeping the team in the family, my grandson Henry Ward Chambers, my Vice President for Public Relations, has splashed mention of the Shard Chronicles across the etherscape. He came up with our name and the word is, he has even listened to our podcasts. My daughter, Anne Ward, encouraged me to take this on and has done a heroic job of riding herd on my PRVP. She has also lured her husband and older son, Ted, to listen to Shard’s travails

Diana Barrow, an accomplished soul, whom I’ve never seen without a book, often a mystery, was my ace editor. She recommended gobs of changes, many of them structural, all of which made for better reading. She is one of the best editors I have ever had. My friend, Juliana Ratliff, donated her closet to the Shard project. She allowed me to set up my broadcasting studio in it, somewhere between the navy blue and black garments, to drown out sirens, lawn lawn equipment, robo callers, traffic noises, and the like. Best of all, she feeds me!

These congenial folks made this project fun and I heartily thank all of them for their efforts. If you enjoyed Shard’s adventures, thank the folks mentioned above. If you did not, blame me!

CHAPTER 1: THE MURDER

I see now that no man can trust his own strength,

for his courage will fai

On his dying day

As his life is ebbing out.

(Grettir’s Saga, Chpt. 62)

Sunday Night

"Oh shit! What the hell is that?" the driver exclaimed as he hit the brakes and spun the big car hard to the left and felt its rear end begin to slide on the snow-covered street before he brought it to a stop.

A tinny voice from the back seat whined, What the hell are you doing? I'll get seasick.

Shut up, the huge man behind the steering wheel said, as he fumbled with his seat belt and door handle to get out.

When the nearby mongrel snarled at him, he retreated a half a step and almost fell back into the car.

Whaaaaat? he said, as he stared at a body lying flat on its back in a crucifixion pose

The corpse blinked.

You nitwit. I coulda killed you. What's wrong with you?

Making snow angels.

Are you nuts? It's the middle of the night.

They’re pretty in the dark. Do you like this one?

The boy swung his arms and legs back and forth across the angel's wings and gown.

Ain't it pretty? Dizzy likes it.

I ought to rip your damned head off.

Dizzy likes it.

I shoulda run over you, you little dipshit, the man said, as he got back in his car and turned to the back seat. Is he alive?

I don't know. He ain't breathed in a while.

God, what a mess. The boss will kill us. We gotta get rid of him. If somebody comes, we're both dead. I'll stop up there, and you dump him. Take everything out of his pockets.

Can I have his watch?

You can have everything. Just get him out of the car so we can get the hell outta here.

Hold on ‘til I clean him out.

The driver inched the car forward, avoiding the boy who was forming a new snow angel, and stopped near a sign that read Steubens Alley.

The man in the back flung his door open and dragged the body up alongside a wall, then jumped back into the car. The driver fishtailed the big car down the slick street

Lieutenant Thomas Shard of the Mohawk County Sheriff’s Department stood next to the 1950 Morgan Plus Four with its shiny forest green paint. It was the only Morgan at Saratoga Springs' final car show of the year, and Shard had to restrain himself from running his hand down its sexy fender and feel the leather straps that fastened its bonnet. He had slipped away for a rare day off and had driven his red1954 Morgan several hours just to see this beauty. This one was in better shape than his, but it wasn’t a daily driver. Of course, he considered, his wasn’t really a daily driver either, given all the days it refused to start.

Shard twisted his six-foot plus frame into his leather seat to drive back to Leyden before the threatening clouds dumped their snowy loads all over upstate New York. But he was starved and decided to stop at the Iroquois, one of his favorite bars. He hadn’t seen Ruth Scarpelli in a year and had a yen to eat one of her mouth-watering meatball tunnel sandwiches and enjoy a cold, Utica Club beer.

What the hell are you doing in these precincts? she asked.

Drove over just to rest my weary eyes on your sparkling visage

Yeah, right.

And while I'm leering, I'll have my usual and some good conversation.

He counted only four people in the bar; a couple of them looked like rough types, woodsmen perhaps, guys out of the forest for a weekend in Albany.

If things had been different, he might have gotten serious about Ruth, and if he were lucky enjoy a warm winter snuggled down with her. She might be amenable, he thought, as he watched her approach his table. Her eyes sparkled and her body language was soft, silky, and suggestive.

They made small talk until Ruth, without any transition, said, You look lonely detective. Have you seen Hope lately?

Not since she walked out almost four years ago. Have you? He really didn’t want to have this conversation.

She and that guy she married have been in a couple of times, but she didn’t have much to say.

Shard turned the discussion to less emotional topics.

They chatted until almost midnight. For some perverse reason his car was more dependable in cold weather. He suspected it was because it relished the chance to suck freezing air in through the gaps in the side curtains. Its heater, a miracle of design, absorbed all the body warmth he gave off in the car.

Shard drove the back way home worried about the snow that had started spitting earlier than predicted. The raucous ring of his hated cell phone interrupted his spaghetti sauce reverie, but at least he now knew where he’d lost it.

Damn, he said as he pulled over to the side of the road.

Lieutenant Shard.

Lieutenant, we've got a dead man in Steubens Alley, and I figured you'd want to know, his Detective Sergeant, Knut Johnsen, said.

No, I don't. It's the last thing I want to hear. I want to go home, sip four fingers of Highland Park single malt, tuck in for a good night's rest, and dream of the forest green Morgan I just fondled. So, tell me the guy dropped dead in midstep from a coronary and all you have to do is drag him to the morgue and send flowers.

No, Sir. He's covered with blood and lying in the snow. And it's colder than a monsignor's heart out here.

And you want me to be miserable too?

Yes, Sir. Shard could imagine his crooked smile.

Okay, call Periwinkle and get the lab boys on it before all the evidence blows away. I'm on 28 and will be there in about forty-five minutes.

Are you driving your Morgan?

Of course. Running like a dream. Oh yeah, could you scramble up some coffee?

Your heater on the blink again, Lieutenant?

Shard hung up.

Steubens Alley was little more than a wide footpath between Conkling Street and Tilden Avenue, Leyden’s main street. Shard parked on Tilden and slithered out into a snowy, cold wind. Maybe three inches of snow were on the ground, but little of it had blown into the alley.

Johnsen boomed out, Great to see you, Sir. Donuts on you after.

Shut up, he said as he caught the drip at the end of his nose with his glove.

Hello, Sergeant Periwinkle, Shard said. I hope I didn't interrupt your festive evening.

She glared at him.

Shard saw the body lay on its left side with its back against the wall. It looked as if the man had simply lain down, curled up, and gone to sleep. Shard crouched to examine it.

Who found him? Shard asked.

Joe Duffy, Periwinkle said.

Oh God, Shard thought. Joe was the department’s courtesy hire. His family had lived in Leyden since its patent was issued after the Revolutionary War, and his family tree was laden with mental deficients, the result of generations of inbreeding. Joe's younger brother, who was retarded, roamed the streets at all hours with his dog, Dizzy. He was harmless enough, but after his parents died, his care fell to Joe, who, Shard thought, wasn't all that bright either. But the town took care of its own, and a succession of sheriffs had kept Joe on the payroll.

Duffy, Johnsen, and Periwinkle stood back because they knew that Shard wanted uninterrupted time to take it in, as he put it. He scooted around to the front side of the body and noted that its loafers were old but well-polished. Quality shoes, he thought. Still have their leather soles. The corpse’s charcoal gray pants of a good twill material had sharp creases and were held up with an expensive leather belt. The red and white button-down tattersall shirt likewise was a credit to its owner’s taste. No tie, but then at this hour, who would wear one, he asked himself. The biting wind that whistled down the alley made Shard wonder why anyone would be outside without a coat or gloves. The victim looked dressed for an early autumn, perhaps an Indian summer stroll somewhere.

When Shard leaned far to his left, he looked closely at a man's face lying in a puddle of blood that spread like a halo around his head. It looked as if the blood had gushed from his nose. As he bent closer, he noticed a bruise above the bridge of the nose that appeared as if it had been made by something heavy. The blow had been enough to make his nose hemorrhage, but he didn’t know if it was enough to kill him.

Shard's ruminations were interrupted by the sound of a door closing at the Conkling end of the alley. It didn't take long for the expected guttural grumbling to echo along the alley's walls.

Doctor Walgren Fox was the local coroner, pathologist, veterinarian, sometime internist, and checkers champion, and, like many of his breed, had a personality that was either shaped by his macabre work or had caused him to take it up in the first place. He preferred his patients dead, and the riper the better. Shard was convinced that Doc had lost his sense of smell right after he was born with that very cigar clenched between his teeth.

Shard? Doc said, If you did your job, all murders would take place between dawn and dusk, never between supper and bar closings, never in the snow, and sure as hell never when I'm getting my beauty rest.

They all kept a straight face. Had Doc slept a thousand years, he wouldn't have been beautiful. A short, stubby man, a human reflection of the cigar he always chewed, he habitually wore a brown tweed coat with hair sticking out all over it in little copses.

Disheveled, half-shaven, grey hair shooting up in all directions, he didn’t have to impress his patients. They were his family. He tended them with loving care and a great deal of profanity.

Well, he's damned dead, Doc said, with a professional mien.

Sunday Night

"What do you mean you don’t know if he was dead? Mr. S asked his bodyguards, Tiny and Tony. Can’t you tell a live corpse from a dead one? What are you, stupid?"

We think he was dead, Mr. S. but we couldn’t tell for sure. It was cold out there, Tiny said.

"What does that have to do with it? If he’s dead, he don’t care about cold. Where did you put the body?

In a street.

You can’t be that dumb. Why didn’t you toss him in a river? A town dump? Down somebody’s well? Somewhere. God, the cops will be all over this by morning. Why did you leave him there?

It weren’t really a street, Mr. S. It was more like a small road between buildings. I couldn’t drive the car down it. It was that small.

I don’t give a damn how small it was. Why’d you leave him there?

Tony and me got scared. We didn’t know what to do. You didn’t say nothing about what we should do if he died.

Do you have a brain, Tiny?

I think so, Mr. S.

Do I pay you good money to use it?

I think so, Mr. S.

This woulda been a good time to see if it works. Did anybody see you guys?

I don’t think so, Tiny said.

What about that kid we almost killed? Tony asked.

Tiny shot him a threatening look.

You almost killed a kid? What the hell’s wrong with you guys. I send you out on an easy little job, and you kill half a town. What about the kid?

He was laying in the road, Mr. S. In the snow. I didn’t see the little bastard and almost hit him. But I didn’t.

But he saw you?

Nah, he was too busy playing in the snow. We got the hell out of there fast.

This ain’t good, guys. Murder ain’t nothing to fool around with. It makes cops antsy.

No, Mr. S, they said in unison.

That means you need alibis, right?

Right.

So, where were you guys tonight?

In Leyden, they said.

Idiots! You weren’t in Leyden. You couldn’t be because you were somewhere else. Right?

Right.

Okay, where were you tonight?

Silence. Tony and Tiny looked at each other as if they had just met. We can’t remember, Mr. S.

I want you boys here tomorrow morning first thing to tell me where you were tonight. Got that? And it better be a pretty good story. So good, your mothers would believe it.

Tony, if your mother asks you tonight where you were, what’ll you tell her?

Leyden.

Sunday Night, later

Doc rubbed, pinched, and probed the body. He raised its hand and tried to straighten out its upper leg. Shard thought it resembled a slow-motion ballet.

Doc stood up and proclaimed, He's still damned dead.

We pay premier wages for such professional advice, and we get the best, Shard replied. We would have never guessed.

And you want to know how long he's been dead.

Yup.

I don't know. The cold throws off all the bullshit I usually give you. But he hasn't been here long.

Johnsen, Periwinkle and Duffy shifted from one foot to the other as they listened to Doc and Shard go through their lines.

Would you hazard that he died this year? Shard asked.

Yup.

Would you risk your slim reputation on a guess that he died tonight?

Yup.

This well-rehearsed routine was the only comforting thing about murder, Shard thought.

How many hours ago?

Exactly three hours and six minutes.

Really? Shard opened his eyes wide. What makes you say that?

You wanted a time. I gave you one. I'm a generous old soul.

If I didn’t care what time this fellow died, what would you say?

That's different. Rigor is just settling in, but it's so cold, and since he's lying on icy pavement, it's hard to guess. Within the last three hours.

Sometime around midnight? Shard asked.

That's about right, plus or minus, Doc smiled. I can tell you more after I do him.

What killed him?

Periwinkle thought, the beginning of round two. I could be out here all night.

I'll bet that even a dense copper saddled with an English degree from a public college, can see that someone whacked him on the forehead.

Was that enough to kill him?

It wouldn't have done him much good.

In other words, you don't know.

Oh, I know. I'm just not telling you. Doc chomped on his cigar butt. Bag him and deliver him to my cave. I'll do him tomorrow at one o’clock.

Shard wondered why Doc always scheduled his autopsies right after meals.

Come on, guys. Let's go to the office and start our day.

But it's only quarter after four, Boss, Periwinkle said, just enough time for a good lie-in before work.

Shard mumbled something she couldn’t make out as he walked up the alley.

Monday Morning

Let there be fog

And let there be phantoms,

Weird marvels

To baffle your hunters.

(Njal’s Saga, Chpt. 12)

"That man was bad." Dizzy raised his head from under the radiator in the post office’s foyer and cocked an ear at Luke, whose head rested on the dog’s belly.

He called me bad names. He almost ran over me in his big red car. He didn’t say sorry.

Dizzy licked an itch on his side, just above Luke’s knit hat.

He was big. He used bad words. I bet he don’t go to St. Florians.

Dizzy licked the side of Luke’s face to finish the job.

Someone else was in the car. He yelled bad words too. I was afraid. I heard the church bells. Did you like my angel?

Dizzy nuzzled his cold nose into Luke’s warm ear.

They drug something out of that car. Did you see it Dizzy?

Dizzy nuzzled more.

I hope he don’t come back. He’s bad. Did you like my angel?

Monday Morning

Shard decided to drive home to pick up his department car. This was not a Morgan day. As he approached his trim, white, Greek Revival house, he glanced up at the kneehole windows just under the eaves that marked his childhood bedroom. They gave the house just the right proportions. His rear wheels slipped and then caught as he turned into his driveway, already covered with a half a foot of snow, as he drove into the barn.

All the houses on Post Road had small barns behind them, reminders from a time when everyone in Leyden who could afford it kept a horse, buggy and sleigh. Shard's unpainted barn still smelled of hay. He tucked the Morgan in next to his cutter, which reminded him that someday he was going to borrow a horse and a string of bells and take a moonlit sleigh ride. If Hope had stayed, he would have done it tonight.

He had never expected to live here again, he thought, as he walked to his back door. After graduating from SUNY Albany, he had been very happy in the New York State Police, where he had been the youngest detective sergeant on the force and looked forward to getting married and raising a family. After Hope finished her nurse practitioner training, they moved in together, and he kept hoping that she’d agree to marry him, until that damned drug rep lured her away. After she left, he had to get out of Albany. Luckily Sheriff Reeves K. Stutzenberger had an opening back home, and he grabbed it. Policing Leyden was a good job, although he sometimes missed the bustle of a more metropolitan force.

A couple of hours later, he pulled into his parking spot behind headquarters and walked upstairs where he found Periwinkle settled in his black leather office chair, feet on his desk, sound asleep. She heard him open the door, cocked an eye at him, and said, Good sleeping chair. Shard knew that; he had snatched many a nap in it on company time.

Besides, you ordered me here by seven, and here I am.

Yeah, and what have you decided about our midnight corpse?

Nothing.

Their discourse was interrupted when Johnsen blew into the room, wiping snow off his old-fashioned corduroy coat on to Shard's desk and Periwinkle's still almost-prone form.

It's colder than a Viking's arse on Snaefellsjokull, he said in yet another of his arcane Norse references as he settled into the office's only other chair. Neither Shard nor Periwinkle asked for an explanation.

Thanks, Shard said as he overturned the wastebasket and sat down on it.

Let me call this confab to order. What do we have? An unknown male killed or in some other way dead about midnight in Steubens Alley on about as bleak a night as you could want. No known witnesses, no identification on the victim, lots of blood on the ground, and an impact mark on his face above his nose. Cause of death, unknown. And he wasn’t dressed to be outside in that weather. Anything else?

I wonder why he was in the alley? Periwinkle asked. If he was killed somewhere else, why wasn't he dumped out in the woods where he wouldn't be found until mud season? Or left in an abandoned car trunk? Or weighted down and thrown in the canal basin?

Johnsen pulled a single sheet of paper out of the thin file on John Doe and read off what they knew.

He had exactly nothing: no wallet, no keys, no change, no lighter, no watch, no rings, no necklace, no piercing jewelry, no visible tattoos, not even a handkerchief, he said.

Furthermore, there were no legible labels in his clothes. Everything had been washed or dry cleaned so many times the print had disappeared.

What about his shoes? Shard asked.

Loafers, brown, non-tasseled, size 10EEE.