Spare Change (31 page)

After all the boy’s been through,
it’s logical to think he might be looking to get even—pay Sam back for the way
he treated his Grandma.

It was dark and the kid
had to be seventy or eighty yards away; how probable was it that he could actually
see the face of the attacker? And then, how likely was it that he’d stay hidden
in the bushes and watch his daddy being murdered? 

That bit about Scooter
Cobb taking them to New York…I gotta question that. Scooter might be a man to
chase around a bit; but the women have come and gone and he’s always stayed
married. Running off to New York? What about Emma? What about the diner? 

If I start thinking Scooter
Cobb might have done this thing, then I have to ask myself—does Sam know? Is
that his reason for acting so belligerent toward the boy? Is that the real
reason he felt a runaway kid wasn’t worth chasing after? 

Let me tell you, the last
thing any detective wants to do is suspect a fellow officer of covering up a
crime—especially one as heinous as this.  Much as I hate the thought of what I could
be walking into, I can’t get rid of the feeling that the kid is telling the
truth.

We’ll see.

Evidentiary Fact

O
n Wednesday morning Mahoney walked into the criminal
records office and asked to take another look at the file for the Doyle
murders.   Line by line he read through every detail of the findings. He
studied the photographs of the shoe prints alongside Benjamin’s body—a man’s
shoe, size thirteen, a heavy tread on the bottom, the sort of shoe a man
standing on his feet all day might wear. The window broken from inside; it
matched up with Ethan’s story. Then there was the partial thumbprint on the
bedroom doorknob—not enough for identification, but sure evidence of a large
hand. Susanna Doyle killed by a single blow to the back of the head, her blood
found on a large rock alongside the driveway, her body found lying in
bed—everything was just as the boy told it. “Shit!” Mahoney said and closed the
folder. He left the station house and headed for the diner.

He knew Scooter Cobb would
be there; standing behind the counter nursing a cold cup of coffee, or standing
at the griddle and frying up some hamburgers. Scooter was a man who stood
twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He more than likely wore shoes with a
heavy tread on the sole, a tread that could absorb the pressure of his weight.
Of course, Mahoney reasoned, there was any number of people about whom you
could say the same thing; but the boy had specifically named Scooter. There
were days when Mahoney wished that he’d chosen another profession, anything but
this—teacher maybe, or a Southern Electric Company meter reader with little to
do but stroll from house to house recording the amount of electricity each family
used.   

Mahoney arrived at the diner
shortly before eleven; the noonday rush had not yet started. Scooter was
standing at the counter with a half-empty coffee cup and gave a nod when
Mahoney walked in. “How’s the investigation going?” he asked. He set a cup and
saucer in front of Jack then filled the cup with coffee.

“Slow,” Mahoney answered, “A
lot of standing around; my feet are killing me.”

Scooter topped off his own
cup. “Standing’s tough duty,” he said.

Mahoney nodded, “You ought
to know, you’re on your feet all day.”

Scooter rolled his eyes; “That’s
for sure.”

“What I should do,” Mahoney
said, “is get myself a pair of more cushiony shoes. Shoes meant for standing; something
like you’ve got.”

“These, is a lifesaver. Cost
thirty-nine dollars, but worth every cent.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Be my guest.” Scooter bent
over, untied his right shoe, and handed it to Mahoney. “Stick your foot in,” he
said, “these are probably too big for you, but you’ll get the feel.”

Mahoney pulled off his own
shoe and slid his foot into Scooter’s. “You’re right,” he said casually, “these
are way too big for me, what size foot you got?”

“Thirteen, extra wide.”

Mahoney pulled the shoe off
and turned it over in his hand. The tread was a narrow-wide, narrow-wide,
zigzag pattern—exactly the same as the footprint found alongside Benjamin’s
body. Same size, same tread pattern; not what he’d been hoping to find. “Long
as I’m here,” Mahoney said, handing the shoe back to its owner, “mind if I ask
you a few questions about Susanna Doyle?”

“Susanna? She worked here,
that was about it.”

“Oh? There’s talk of her
having a lover, you know anything of that?”

Scooter shrugged, “News to
me,” he said, “where’d you hear a thing like that?”

“We got it from her boy,” Mahoney
answered. “Ethan Allen claims he and Susanna were supposed to go to New York
City with this man.”

Scooter began nervously
swiping at the countertop which didn’t have a speck of dirt on it. “That kid,”
he said, his voice sounding a register higher than it had earlier, “he’s a born
liar. You can’t believe a thing he says. Poor Susanna had all kinds of problems
with him.”

“Kids!” Mahoney shook his
head but offered neither agreement nor disagreement as to Scooter’s opinion of
Ethan Allen. 

“And Susanna,” Scooter went
on, “she was sure as hell no angel. I wouldn’t doubt for a minute she had a
lover; more than one I’ll wager.  Plenty of times I seen her hanging over the
counter, eyeballing it with some passing-through salesman.”

“Didn’t she work the late
shift?” Mahoney asked.

Scooter nodded, but didn’t
look up; he focused his eyes on the speckled countertop, stretched across and
gave it another swipe. 

“Nights, you and her worked
together, right?”

“Most times,” Scooter turned
away, emptied out a half-pot of coffee and started scrubbing the Brew Master
for all he was worth.

“Did Sam or Emma know that you
were having an affair with Susanna?” Mahoney asked.   

“What the hell kind of
question is that? I wasn’t having no affair with nobody, least of all Susanna
Doyle!”

Mahoney who believed enough
bait thrown into the water, would surface the truth of a person’s guilt or
innocence, said, “Ethan Allen claims he saw you out at the farm on the night of
the murders. He claims you’re the one who beat up Benjamin.”

“He’s a liar! A shit-faced
mealy-mouthed liar; I wasn’t nowhere near their place that night and the kid
knows it!”

“Where were you that night?”
Mahoney asked.

“Right here; I worked ‘til
eleven-thirty, same as every night.”

“Where’d you go after that?”

“Home! That’s where I always
go when I’m done working.”

Mahoney drained the last of his
coffee, then using a napkin he picked up the saucer and slid it into his
pocket. As he stood to leave, he asked, “Did you and Susanna Doyle ever make
love in that big white Cadillac of yours?”

“Screw you,” Scooter
answered.

As soon as Mahoney was out
the door, Scooter Cobb picked up the telephone and called his son, Sam. “What
the fuck are you trying to pull?” he asked.

“Trying to pull?” Buckling
beneath the sound of his father’s anger, Sam stammered, “….about what?”

“You know damn good and well
what I’m talking about—sending Mahoney over here with that shit about me and
Susanna having an affair.”

“Me send Mahoney? He’s a
detective, I’m a street cop!”

“Yeah, but you’re working
the Doyle case with him.”

“No more,” Sam said, “the
Captain needed me for another job.”

“Well, you better find a way
to get back on the Doyle case,” Scooter growled. “’Cause that shit-faced kid of
Susanna’s is saying I was there the night of the murder.”

“You? Why?”

“How the hell should I know?
The kid’s probably just out to get me, he told Mahoney I was having a thing
with Susanna.”

“There’s no truth to that,
is there?”

“Of course not!” Scooter
answered emphatically. “I might of grabbed onto her tit or pinched her ass a
few times, but that’s it. The problem is, I don’t want your Mama getting hold
of this, so you gotta talk to the kid, make him see this is all a big mistake.”

“Yeah, sure Pop,” Sam said. But even as he hung up the
telephone, Sam Cobb knew there was no way the Captain was going to put him back
on the case—whatever he was going to do, would have to be done on his own.

A
fter Mahoney left the diner, he went to see Emma Cobb.
“Hello, Jack,” she said with a broad smile then swung the door wide open and
invited him into the house. She sat him at the kitchen table and before he’d
had time to refuse she set out a tray of lemon cakes and turned the coffee pot
to brew.

Emma was a genuinely
likeable woman which made what Mahoney had to do all the more difficult. “Emma,
I’m real sorry, but I’m here on official business,” he said in an apologetic
tone of voice.

 “Business?” she replied
laughingly, “what business could the police department have with me?”

 “Not you…” he smiled, “but,
we’re still investigating the Doyle murders and trying to verify the alibi of
anyone who had a relationship with Benjamin or Susanna. Since Scooter worked
with Susanna, I’ve got to ask—did he come home after work the night of the
murders? There are witnesses that prove he was at the diner until almost
midnight, but Benjamin Doyle’s murder occurred later than that; do you recall
what time Scooter actually got home?”

“I can’t say with certainty,
because I usually go to bed about ten. I stir a bit when he comes to bed, and I
don’t recall, him being any later than usual, that night.”

“The next morning, did he
seem stressful?  Nervous, maybe?  Out of sorts?”

“Scooter’s always a bit out
of sorts when he gets up, but I can’t say he was any worse than usual. Of
course, he didn’t find out about what happened to poor Susanna and her husband
until late that afternoon.”

“After he found out about
the murders, what did he have to say?”

“He felt real bad. Said it
was horrible that such a thing could happen.  I knew he was thinking how much
he was gonna miss Susanna; she’d been working at the diner for a couple of
years and was his only late night waitress.” 

“Did your husband know
Benjamin Doyle?”

Emma shrugged, “He might
have come into the diner, I can’t say.”

After Jack Mahoney left,
Emma took the rosary beads from her pocket and fingered them one by one as she
knelt and prayed to the Virgin Mary. “Holy Mother,” she whispered, “Pray for us
sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Protect my husband,” she pleaded,
“and forgive me for the lies I speak on his behalf.”

W
hen he left Emma Cobb, Mahoney went back to the
station house and submitted the saucer he’d taken from the diner for a
fingerprint analysis. “Check if the prints on this match the partial taken from
the Doyle bedroom door,” he told the crime scene laboratory detective; he
walked out with his shoulders hunched over as if he already knew what the
answer was going to be. 

Even if the print was a
match, Mahoney told himself, it simply verified that Sam’s dad has been at the
Doyle farm—it could have been days before the murder; he might have been out
there visiting Susanna one afternoon when her husband was working in the field.
There was no forensic evidence that could say how long the prints had been on
that brass doorknob—it could have been weeks, maybe even months; it was obvious
that the house hadn’t been cleaned for a while. Scooter Cobb was well-known for
his indiscretions and although having an affair might not be too respectable,
it wasn’t against the law. Maybe that’s what this was all about; maybe the boy
knew they were having an affair and that was why he made up such a story. Maybe,
maybe, maybe…  After Jack Mahoney had racked his brain counting up all the
maybes, there was still the size thirteen shoe print, which was no maybe. 

For two hours, he studied
the crime scene investigation reports then he closed the file folder and headed
home. Tomorrow was another day; tomorrow he would tell the Captain of his
findings and question Sam Cobb. “This is some shitty way to earn a living,”
Mahoney grumbled.

Sam Cobb

M
y brother Tommy, he’s the smart one. He left home nine
years ago and hasn’t dropped a postcard since. Who could blame him? With Pop,
nothing’s ever right. You can bust your ass trying to please him, but he won’t
even bother to say thanks. The only thing he’s got to say is how let-down he is
‘cause you didn’t perform to his standards. His standards, that’s a joke. He’s
got no standards; they’re just for other people.

I swear, this is it—I’ll do
this one last thing for him, then I’m gone.

So long, that’s what I’m
gonna say; so long, Pop, and by the way, you can kiss my ass when it comes to
any more favors.

The Confrontation

S
am Cobb left the station house shortly after two o’clock;
he climbed into his car and drove south along Route 13. It wasn’t what he
wanted to do, but he could think of no other way. He figured by leaning heavy
on the gas pedal, he could get to Wyattsville, take care of what he had to do
then return to Norfolk in time for the last ferry, which left at midnight.