The Copper Frame (16 page)

“Yeah. From the desk clerk's description, I think he was also the man who spirited Alton Zek away from the Fenimore.”

Ben Foley rose and began to pace up and down, as if addressing his remarks to a jury. “So we have a picture here of indecision. It looks as if when he first heard from Morrison, Larry Cutter couldn't decide what action to take. As an expedient, he sent his minions to get the girls out of sight and latch onto you until he could make up his mind. The long delay before the decision to dispose of you permanently suggests he may have been discussing strategy with someone—probably Sergeant Morrison. But why did they finally decide you had to be killed?”

“You've got me,” Saxon said. “I suppose a man like this Cutter automatically thinks in terms of murder as the solution to problems.”

Ben Foley looked doubtful. “Cutter's no dummy. He's proved that by the beautiful way he planned your frame, and also by the way he managed to cover up for his hired hands' bungling of your attempted murder. I don't think he'd order an unnecessary murder. And just what danger were you to him? If he wanted to prevent your pumping Morrison's girl friend for information, all he had to do was to have her drop out of sight.”

After considering this, Saxon said, “He knew I had linked Morrison to him, because I asked Alton Zek if he knew of any tie between Morrison and Cutter. That sort of gave it away that I knew Cutter was behind my frame. Maybe he was afraid that since I knew why I had been framed, and by whom, I would be able to find evidence to prove it.”

“What evidence was there to find? The supposed rape victim is dead. The only way you could possibly prove that it was a frame would be to get Morrison or Coombs to reverse their stories. But you weren't attempting to see either of them. You were merely visiting a call girl to whom Morrison was in the habit of steering business.”

Saxon stared up at the lawyer for a long time before carefully setting down his still half-filled glass. He said slowly, “It does seem that they got awfully excited about my seeing that girl. Maybe that's the answer.”

“You mean she may know the details of the frame? Perhaps Morrison confided in her?”

“I just dredged up an even hotter idea than that,” Saxon said, rising. “I have to run along, Ben. I want to check something.”

The lawyer looked surprised. “What?”

“It's such a far-out idea, you'd think I was crazy if I told you. I want to check it out first. I'll either drop back or give you a ring this evening.”

The plump lawyer followed him to the entry hall. “All right, if you want to be mysterious. Here, let me help you with your coat.”

Saxon took the Thruway to Erie, Pennsylvania, making the seventy-some miles in an hour and fifteen minutes. He got off at the State Street exit and drove straight to police headquarters.

A middle-aged sergeant was on the desk. Saxon asked if Detective Everett Cass was on duty.

“Try the Detective Bureau squad room,” the man said.

Saxon walked down the hall to the Detective Bureau. The door opened just before he reached it and a thin, stooped man with a narrow, long-chinned face stepped out into the hall.

“Detective Cass in there?” Saxon asked.

The man said, “I'm Cass.”

Saxon held out his hand. “My name's Ted Saxon. I talked to you on the phone from Iroquois on New Year's Day.”

The look of polite inquiry on Everett Cass's face faded. Examining the outthrust hand with contempt, he made no move to grip it. “Yeah, we read about you in yesterday's paper,” he said coldly.

Flushing, Saxon let his hand drop to his side. In an equally cold voice he said, “You a cop or a judge, Cass?”

The man stared at him.

“You've declared me guilty on the basis of what you read in the paper, have you? Who took you off the force and put you on the bench?”

The detective frowned. “What's eating you, Saxon?”

“Your attitude. That rape charge was a frame, and the reason I'm here is to get evidence to prove the frame. What right have you to look at me as if I were some kind of dirt when you don't know one damned thing about the case?”

After gazing at him for a while, Cass said, “Okay, you've made your point. What do you want?”

Saxon let himself simmer down. In a more normal tone he said, “I assume that when you picked up Grace Emmet here, she got the usual felony-suspect treatment, didn't she? Prints and mug shots?”

The detective nodded. “Both. After she was killed in that auto accident, Buffalo called us for her prints to identify the body, and we sent them a set.”

“I know. I'd like to see her mugs.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Is there any rule against it?”

Everett Cass shrugged. “I guess not. Come along to Records.”

At the Records desk he asked for the mug shots of Grace Emmet. After a search, the clerk brought over a double photograph showing both front and profile views of the woman.

Saxon looked at it for a long time The blonde poodle cut was the same and there was a similar roundness to the face and a fullness of lips. But aside from that, the pictures bore no resemblance to the woman Sergeant Harry Morrison had left at the Iroquois jail for an hour.

Saxon had never before in his life seen the woman who was pictured.

“Can I get a copy of this?” he asked.

Detective Cass looked at him. “What for?”

“Because this isn't the woman I'm accused of raping,” Saxon said. “The Buffalo sergeant who picked up Grace Emmet here rang in a substitute when he got to Iroquois. I told you it was a frame.”

Cass stared at the picture, then back at Saxon. “You mean the Buffalo cop passed off somebody else as Grace Emmet at your jail?”

“You're beginning to get the picture. How about a copy of the mugs?”

“Sure,” Cass said, his attitude suddenly changing to one of puzzled friendliness. “Why'd he pull a thing like that?”

“To frame me out of my job,” Saxon said. “It's too long a story to go into. If you'll get me my copy of the mugs, I'll get going back to Iroquois.”

They had to wait twenty minutes for a print to be run off from the negative. Saxon got started back toward Iroquois at 4
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chapter 20

At five-fifteen Saxon pulled into Ben Foley's driveway. He rang the bell.

“Hello, Ted,” Foley said. “Come on in.”

Stepping into the entry hall, Saxon removed his hat but made no move to take off his coat. “What time do you eat on Sunday?” he asked.

Foley looked surprised. “Usually not until about seven. Why? You hungry?”

“I just didn't want to disturb your dinner. Get your coat on and we'll take a run over to Arn Kettle's.”

Foley's eyebrows shot up. “You must have found whatever it was you rushed off after.”

“I certainly did.”

They took Saxon's car.

Joanne Kettle answered the door and told them her husband was in his study.

“That's the only quiet place in the house on Sunday afternoons,” she said as she took their coats and hats.

Saxon could see what she meant. The Kettles had two teen-age girls, and apparently both had invited over all their friends. A hi-fi was playing in the front room and a dozen teen-agers were doing some kind of tribal dance in which the partners stood apart from each other, in some cases back to back, and shuffled their feet. It wasn't the twist, with which Saxon was familiar. This seemed to be some new craze.

He followed Ben Foley down the hall to the study. Arnold Kettle opened the door at Foley's knock. The noise from the front room followed them inside but abruptly ceased when Kettle closed the door.

“I had this soundproofed,” the district attorney explained. “It was either that or get rid of the kids, and nobody will take the monsters. Cocktail?”

Saxon was too impatient to announce his discovery to be interested in a drink. Foley, as curious as Saxon was impatient, declined too.

“All right,” Kettle said, settling back in his chair. “What's the big news?”

Saxon laid the front and profile views of Grace Emmet on the desk. Picking it up, the D.A. first read the printing beneath the pictures, then studied the photographs.

He looked up with a puzzled frown. “This says Grace Emmet.”

“I know,” Saxon said. “I just got it from the Erie police. They mugged and printed her when they picked her up.”

“But it isn't Grace Emmet.”

“Sure it is, Arn. The woman you questioned in jail wasn't Grace Emmet.”

Kettle stared at him. “Well, I'll be damned,” he said slowly. “Who in the devil was she?” He handed the double photograph to Foley. “Look at this.”

After examining it, Foley laid it back on the desk. “It doesn't mean anything to me. I never saw the woman in jail.”

“That's right,” Kettle remembered. “But a number of other people did. Jenny Waite, Doc Harmon, Verne Dowling, who was on the desk. We can blow this frame wide apart. Who was she, Ted?”

“I suspect it was Morrison's friend, Ann Lowry,” Saxon said. “That must be why they got so excited when I got on her trail. If I had ever seen her, the whole plot would founder. Not only would the frame be uncovered, but Sergeant Harry Morrison would be arrested for murder.”

“Of course,” Kettle breathed. “The accident that killed Grace Emmet was rigged. It had to be.”

Saxon said, “One thing I couldn't understand about the frame from the beginning was how they set it up so quickly. Morrison didn't know until the previous night that Grace Emmet had been captured in Erie, and didn't know until that day that she had waived extradition and he was supposed to go after her. They only had a matter of hours to make plans and line Coombs up as a witness. Yet it was the sort of thing that would require careful advance planning and detailed rehearsal by the actors for it to work.”

“I felt that way, too,” Kettle agreed. “That's why at first I couldn't see it as a frame.”

“I think it was planned days in advance. Ten days beforehand it was generally known around town that I'd be on duty New Year's Day. How the news got from Iroquois to Larry Cutter, I don't know. Possibly from Adam Bennock, if our new mayor is in cahoots with Cutter. At any rate, I think plans were all made and the actors had been thoroughly rehearsed before the Emmet woman was ever captured. I don't believe she was included in the original plan.”

Ben Foley said frowningly, “I don't think I follow that.”

“It's simple enough, Ben. I think the original plan was for Ann Lowry to come to Iroquois and get herself arrested on some charge. Possibly soliciting in one of the local taverns, since that was her normal trade and a check with Buffalo would probably show a previous record of such offenses. They would want an offense that was plausible, yet would not get her into too much trouble. After she was jailed, Sergeant Morrison would drop in on some pretext just in time to be a witness when she yelled rape. Coombs, of course, would already be in a cell as a second witness. But when Morrison learned he had to go to Erie after Grace Emmet that night, he had a brilliant idea. There weren't any photographs of the Emmet woman, and her features in the composite drawing vaguely resembled Ann Lowry's. Their hair color and styles were totally different, but that was easily remedied. He had Ann cut her long red hair in the same style Grace Emmet wore hers and dye it blonde. I imagine Ann followed Morrison to Erie in a second car. After picking up his prisoner in Erie, Morrison forced her to change clothes with Ann. You know, I wondered about that at one point New Year's Eve.”

“About what?” Kettle asked.

“Her clothes. The woman was wearing a mink coat worth several thousand dollars. Her dress was obviously expensive too, yet it didn't fit. At that time I passed it off by guessing she had lost weight, either as an attempt at disguise or from worry over being a fugitive from justice.”

Foley said, “They had to switch clothes, I suppose, in case someone just happened to check with Erie to ask what Grace Emmet was wearing when the transfer took place. They wouldn't want their careful plans to fizzle on a small point like that.” Then he rubbed his chin. “But how'd they manage to fool Doc Harmon by getting a positive lab test?”

Both Saxon and Kettle looked at him. Saxon said patiently, “Aren't you being a little naïve, Ben? Ann Lowry was a call girl and Morrison was her procurer. They pulled off on a side road somewhere on the way back from Erie.”

The plump lawyer turned red. He changed the subject. “Where was Grace Emmet all the time her substitute was in the local jail and Morrison was at the hospital having coffee and cake?”

Saxon said, “Probably bound and gagged in the trunk of either Morrison's or Ann's car. When they started on again, Morrison must have had the two women switch back to their own clothing so that Grace would be properly dressed when her body was found in his wrecked car. He took the precaution of making her face unrecognizable before pushing the car over the bank.”

“A hell of a fine representative of law and order he is!” Foley said with disgust.

The district attorney said, “You should be back in office tomorrow, Ted.”

“I'd rather not break it just yet,” Saxon said quickly.

Kettle looked at him as if searching for a hole in his head. “Why not?”

“What will it get us? Harry Morrison on a murder charge, providing we can find Ann Lowry to help prove our case. Ann Lowry for conspiracy—again providing we ever find her, which is doubtful. While the guy who planned the frame-up goes free.”

Kettle said doubtfully, “Morrison might implicate him, once he realized he was in for the rap.”

Saxon shook his head. “His best bet would be to deny the whole thing and make us prove it. Which might be tough if we can't turn up Ann. Even in the face of four disinterested witnesses who saw the prisoner in her cell and are willing to testify that she wasn't the woman in this picture, a smart lawyer might be able to establish reasonable doubt if we can't produce the woman who actually was in the cell. You've both seen what a good lawyer can do in the way of discrediting identification in court. In fact, both of you have probably been guilty of it.”