Murder for a Good Cause

by Mark Murphy

I was working a rare day shift at the paper, filling in on the features desk, when half a side of beef landed on my left shoulder.

The beef had four fingers, a thumb and a lot of hair on its back. It was attached to an arm that could have supported half of a Greek temple. At the end of the arm I saw a uniformed cop whose smile did not seem particularly intended to brighten my day.

"Chuckie Charles," he said in a voice that would have reached the upper balcony of any theater, "you're under arrest!"

With his left hand he showed me a badge that said "Wenderlich."

Then he winked.

Oh, a joke -- I hoped.

"Um, what's the charge?"

"Assault and battery on a reporter's copy!" That got everyone's attention. Then he whispered: "Play along, pal. It's all for a good cause."

Then I got it. The local public TV station was holding a "jail and bail" fund-raiser. For a donation, you could arrange to have someone "arrested" at work by a real cop on a silly charge. Then that someone would be brought to the enclosed skydeck of the Great Merchant Mall to be "tried" and "convicted" by a real judge, then "jailed." The perp would then call friends, relatives and co-workers, soliciting "bail" in the form of pledges.

I'd edited a story about the event a couple of days ago. Apparently someone else had seen the story.

It didn't take me long to guess who. Jon Heckart, who until recently had worked the late cop shift, was always accusing me of mangling his stuff. As Wenderlich escorted me out of the newsroom while various colleagues vowed to "spring" me, I looked toward Heckart's desk and deduced that I was correct. Maybe it was his self-satisfied grin as he watched me leave, or the way he wiggled his eyebrows at me, Groucho style.

Then again, his elaborate "Bon Voyage" sign, undoubtedly designed by his girlfriend in the art department, might have been a major clue.

The woman behind the registration table put away her knitting and smiled as Laura Harrigan and I approached.

"Meet Tillie Cott," Laura said. "She's one of the most unsung of all our volunteers. Tillie, meet Chuckie Charles, an old friend."

"Old friend, eh?" Tillie said as we shook hands. She looked to be in her sixties, with short, curly gray hair that overlooked a forehead that wasn't furrowed and eyes that seemed to twinkle -- or was that just the reflection of the overhead lights on her glasses?

"What Laura means," I said, "is that she and I used to work together at the Dispatch."

I hadn't seen Laura much since she'd left the paper a few years ago for the PR job at the TV station. Her perfectly flowing brown hair, warm blue eyes and tall, near-perfect figure had always turned men's heads in the newsroom, at least until they spotted her wedding ring. And she looked even better -- or at least more serene -- now that she'd been away from the hurlyburly of daily deadlines for a while.

"Glad to meet you," Tillie said. "Do you know Judge Salvaterra? He should be coming soon. He's such a dear."

"Sorry, Tillie," Laura said. "There's been a change of plans. The judge has some kind of stomach virus and won't be here this year. Judge Tarrow -- he's the one who's in charge of all the local judges -- said he was sending a replacement."

Laura looked at the elevator, then back at me. "This guy should be coming soon, too, so I'd better move along. Hope we can catch up later, Chuckie -- I'm way behind on the latest gossip. Meanwhile, have a good time!"

"Sure thing," I said as enthusiastically as I could.

Tillie watched her leave. "Such a nice person. So is Judge Salvaterra. I was so looking forward to seeing him. But it's always nice to meet new people."

She moved her knitting bag to one side so I would have enough room to lean down and write my name on the sign-in sheet.

"Too bad we're all indoors on a nice day like this," she said.

"Amen to that." We were five floors up, at the top of the mall, encircled by huge windows that offered a breathtaking view of the city on a cloudless August day.

"And now that you're officially registered," she said, "you can suit up!"

Oh, great.

A few feet away a stack of striped, coverall-like aprons lay on an adjoining table. Next to them, a stack of round, striped caps.

"You mean I'm going to look like I just stepped out of a comic strip jail?"

"Yep! That's part of the fun!"

She got up and leaned in closer to me.

"And later this morning, someone from our monthly magazine is going to come and take pictures of everyone!"

Oh, double great.

There weren't any mirrors, so I didn't get to see what I looked like, but I felt like one of those bad guys in the Donald Duck comic books. What was their name? Oh yeah, the Beagle Boys.

Just to distract myself, I studied my surroundings as I donned my prison stripes. The "jail" was about ten feet in front of me, behind Tillie's table. Someone had surrounded the area with tall plastic prison bars. My fellow inmates and I were apparently supposed to sit at one of three long tables inside the bars and use the phones there to beg for money. A coffee pot and trays of bagels and doughnuts were nearby, and if I needed entertainment, a big TV in one corner was showing the latest adventures of Big Bird.

Several volunteers scurried around, placing pens and paper next to each phone, while a couple of cops, including Wenderlich, stood around and kidded them. But despite his outwardly joking demeanor, Wenderlich was keeping at least one vigilant eye on the doughnuts.

A few feet to the left of the jail, three men stood at one of three other long tables. A sign in front of the table said "HOLDING CELL." A large desk stood to the left and slightly in front of the table, forming a right angle with it. A banner reading "JUDGE SALVATERRA" was taped to the front of the desk.

I recognized two of the men right off. The first was Jerry "Red" Strathmore. If you lived in Central New York, Red Strathmore, big and burly, was as unavoidable as a heavy dose of lake-effect snow. Except Red was around all year -- that is, unless you were superhumanly adept with a remote control and could avoid his ear-splitting car commercials. Right now he seemed anxious as he looked around at the jail, then at Tillie's table, then at the elevator, which was disgorging new prisoners. As he surveyed the new arrivals -- potential customers! -- he smiled and began to relax, like an addict settling down with his latest fix.

"You're good to go!" Tillie told me, pointing to the holding cell.

I walked over and introduced myself to Strathmore, Ricardo Suarez and Neal Teall.

"Yeah, how you doin'," Strathmore said, making the four words sound like one. As we shook hands he looked past me instead of at me. Apparently I was a lousy credit risk.

Neal Teall was a tall, thin guy in his thirties, with short black hair and a pencil-thin mustache. He said he was an insurance agent and that two other guys in the office had turned him in. Although he was smiling and was pleasant enough, he was also blushing. Somehow I suspected he'd never qualify for Red Strathmore's high-pressure sales force.

Teall didn't seem to have much more to say, so I introduced myself -- or, rather, re-introduced myself -- to the short man who was standing next to him. Ricardo Suarez was from the New York City area and had moved up here some years ago to become an assistant curator of the city's museum and also teach. He was also one of the region's premier painters and sculptors. We'd met some years ago, at an exhibit of his works, when I was dating a woman who'd taken classes from him.

Although he probably didn't remember meeting me, he was polite enough not to say so. Unlike Strathmore, he did make eye contact with me, though his soft brown eyes were a bit restless, sometimes looking to my left and to my right, as if trying to remember what everything looked like so he could sketch it later.

Finally I said, "Do you still have 'Sunset in San Juan'?"

His eyes got so wide that I almost jumped back.

"You remember that?"

"Sure do. It was my favorite part of the exhibit. Are you ever going to show it again?"

He shook his head. "Too personal." His voice was as soft as his eyes. "I now keep it at my house because it reminds me of my home."

I'd heard times were tough at the museum and that he might get caught in the next round of job cuts. I'd also heard he was thinking of going back to Puerto Rico. Perhaps he was thinking that even now, as he looked past me again, and I was sorry I'd brought the subject up.

"Let's get this show on the road!" Strathmore roared. I instinctively reached for my remote control, then remembered that, unfortunately, this was real life. "I got a commercial to shoot this afternoon!"

Neal Teall's eyes darted from left to right like Ping-Pong balls. "When's this judge supposed to get here?"

The elevator bell answered him. The doors parted, and a man stepped out. He was short, squat, bald and encircled in a rumpled black robe.

"All right, who the hell's in charge here?"

At first I couldn't place him. He wasn't one of the regular local judges.

Then I recognized him from a photo I'd seen.

And I knew we were in for a rough time.

Judge Matthew Collingwood was from the Bronx. A lot of judges in the state had retired in the past year, leaving a shortage, and the top state judge had set up a complicated system for rotating the rest of them around the state as needed. Collingwood had been sent up here to Central New York for a five-month stint, and I'd heard that from the way he acted on the bench, you'd have thought he himself had been sentenced to life with hard labor. He was nasty to just about everybody and at any given moment was inches away from attracting the notice of the state's judicial conduct commission.

On top of that, his nose this morning would have made Rudolph the Reindeer jealous. Unless he had been lying out in the sun all night, he was apparently having the mother of all hangovers.

He walked to the desk, Laura trailing behind him, and stopped when he saw the "JUDGE SALVATERRA" banner.

He nodded at it a few times.

Then he tore it off with one sweep of his arm.

Laura gasped and almost dropped a set of 3-by-5 cards she was carrying. Others gasped too, but Collingwood ignored them all. He turned around and tried to focus his bloodshot eyes. Then he pointed somewhere past the table where the two other guys and I were now sitting. I noticed a flash of gold on his partially exposed shirt cuff.

"You there!" he said, squinting into the distance. "The woman at the table!"

"Yes, sir?" Tillie said, like Dorothy speaking to the Wizard.

"Yeah, you!" He pointed at the banner, which was now on the floor.

"Take this thing away!"

"Yes, sir."

Laura, her hands trembling, followed him to the desk, and as he sat and put his glasses on

she handed him the cards and explained what he was supposed to do, while Tillie quietly folded the banner and took it away.

Of course, the judge didn't thank Tillie, and half a minute later he impatiently waved Laura away and read the first card.

"Jerry Strathmore!"

The car salesman shot up as if a spotlight had been thrown on him. Then he flashed his most ingratiating smile and strutted to the front of the desk.

"Says here," the judge said, "that you were turned in for selling cars at criminally low prices."

Strathmore threw up his hands. "I throw myself on the mercy of the court! I'm guilty of every count at every one of my fifteen dealerships in New York State and parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey!"

"Oh, spare me," Collingwood said. "I have a relative in Trenton who bought one of your cars. A real lemon. He could have squirted it on a piece of fish and had a nice dinner for himself."

Strathmore looked around, confused, apparently wondering why someone wasn't yelling "Cut!"

Then he said, "Well, your honor, you have to understand, with the volume of cars we sell, there's unfortunately bound to be a few bad apples. Law of averages, y'know."

"You weren't listening, Mr. Strathmore. I did not say 'apple.' I said 'lemon.'"

"But your honor -- "

"Bail set at $1,000! And that's only because that what's on this card. Otherwise, I'd -- "

"But your honor, you got the wrong idea about my cars. I -- "

"Enough!" Collingwood slammed his fist on the desk. It was louder than any gavel. "To your cell! Or whatever that is!"

Strathmore shrugged, held up his hands and looked around, grinning, hoping for some sympathy laughs as Wenderlich escorted him away.

"Now I want to say something," Collingwood said. "I've been on the bench for some thirty years now, almost all of them downstate. I've sent mob figures to jail. And a couple of big corporate criminals. And, even once, some years ago, a triple murderer. Course, it's not my fault that someone got careless and the psycho got away. But I must say that when I got sent to this godforsaken place I thought things couldn't get worse. Now, this morning, they have. What a bunch of crap. Charley Tarrow owes me big time."

Laura, off to the side, rubbed her forehead.

"And now," the judge growled, "let's have some more fun."

He looked at the next card. "Ricardo Suarez."

Suarez walked slowly around the table to face the judge, his head bowed, his hands in the pockets of his rumpled brown suitcoat. You'd have thought he was about to have some gum surgery with a root canal chaser.

"Says here," Collingwood said, "that you're -- hey, Suarez, look at me!"

The artist lifted his head.

"That's a good boy. Now it says here that you're charged with. ... Hah! Coloring outside the lines! That's a cute one. Don't you think so, Suarez?"

One end of Suarez's mouth tilted up about a millimeter.

"Just nod your head, Suarez."

The artist obeyed.

"And just what kind of art do you do, Suarez? Oh, don't tell me, let me guess. Junk, right?"

Suarez straightened up and dug his hands deeper into his pockets.

Laura, her back to us, shook her head.

"Jeez," Neal Teall whispered.

"Yeah, I thought so," Collingwood said. "Kind of stuff my ex used to spend my money on. Can't make heads or tails of it."

The artist blinked a few times. The hands in the pockets seemed to clench.

Collingwood tilted his head to the right. "You ever been up before me, Suarez?"

"No, your honor," Suarez said, a little too quickly.

"Strange. You look familiar." He tilted his head to the left. "Oh well, my mistake. Then again, a lot of you guys do look alike."

Suarez stiffened even more.

"I wish you guys would just paint what you know -- you know, maybe a still life with hubcaps. Yeah," he snorted. "Hubcaps. Maybe filled with guacamole. Bet you've stolen a lot of hubcaps in your time, eh, Suarez?"

The artist mumbled something in Spanish.

"Jeez!" Neal Teall said.

Collingwood looked at him. "What'd he just say?"

Teall looked at him, then at Suarez.

The artist looked at him and nodded.

Teall cleared his throat. "He said ... um ... 'It's a wonder a man such as you has lived so long.' "

Collingwood burst out laughing. "Watch it, Suarez, you're scarin' the pants off me! And just for that, I don't care what it says on this card -- your cockamamie bail is $2,000. I'm sure you'll make it easy. Just call Julio and Luis and whoever else you're pals with in the local coke ring."

Suarez's fists stayed in his pockets, but his feet moved six inches toward the judge before Wenderlich, in a dead heat with the speed of light, ran up and grabbed him.

"Chill, buddy," the cop said. "Remember -- a good cause."

"That's right, Ricky!" the judge said. "Chill! Or should I say chili?" He laughed again, finally enjoying himself.

I got up, placed my cap on the table and started to take the apron off.

"Hey!" Collingwood said. "Whaddya think you're doing?"

"What I think I'm doing is objecting," I said. "I'm outta here." The apron was halfway off. "I'm not going to stay here and see this man treated like this, good cause or not."

He slammed a palm against the table. "Overruled! Take your seat!"

"Yeah, right."

The apron was almost off when I saw Laura, shaking her head, eyes pleading.

Then I saw Suarez looking at me too, his eyes stern yet somehow kind. He shook his head. He seemed to be saying thanks, but no thanks. This is my affair.

I nodded to him. Then I put the apron and cap back on and took my seat.

Suarez shook himself free of the cop and stomped toward the "jail."

"And now that that little sideshow is over," Collingwood said, looking at the next card, "where's Neal Teall?"

"Tough act to follow," Teall muttered as he got up.

"Insurance agent, it says here. You stand before me -- "

Then the judge stared at Teall. Then he looked at him from head to foot, but I wondered whether he really was paying attention; his eyes were suddenly glassy. It looked as if the hangover was really catching up with him.

"Excuse me," Collingwood said, shaking his head. He looked at his watch, a Rolex with a gleaming gold band.

"I've had about enough of this for a while," the judge announced. "Besides, I gotta go to the can -- and make a very important phone call. Court -- or whatever this is -- is adjourned for twenty minutes."

Then he waddled off to the men's room.

"Whew," Teall said, returning to the table. "What's that guy's problem?"

I stood and stretched. "Must have gotten up on the wrong side of the slab."

Suarez, in the pretend jail, was on the phone, hitting someone up over money, but from the look in his eyes I could tell he was still upset. Behind him Strathmore sat with his feet up at another table behind Suarez, talking on the phone and roaring with laughter, probably at his own joke.

"Hey, guys," said Laura, walking up to Teall and me, "I'm sorry things worked out this way."

"Oh, that's OK," he and I mumbled, though not simultaneously and probably not convincingly.

"I'll have to have a long talk with Judge Tarrow." She frowned, and I saw wrinkles on her forehead. Perhaps PR wasn't such a cushy way to make a living after all.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment," Teall said as he reached into a pocket and pulled out a cell phone. "Sorry about this, but I didn't know I was going to be here this long -- didn't know I was going to be here at all, actually -- and I need to do a little schedule juggling."

He walked off to the other side of the room and talked into the phone with his back to us.

Laura and I spent the next five minutes or so chatting about other things. Among them, she mentioned that her husband had left the DA's office for a private practice, and their twin sons, whom I remembered seeing in the newsroom when they were toddlers, were now in junior high.

"Fancy that," I said, trying not to think of my ever-ebbing, graying hair.

We were interrupted by a tall guy with a mustache who was carrying an expensive camera and other equipment. His name was Harry DeFlavio, and he looked around at everything but Laura and me as she introduced us.

"Interesting locale," he said. "What say we get a shot of the judge at the table, with one of the, um, prisoners standing before him, y'know, being sentenced?"

"Sounds like a plan," Laura said.

"Except," he said, squinting, "I don't like the way the sun's coming through that window. Maybe if we tried the reverse angle ... we could move this 'holding cell' table off to the side, and I could shoot it from where the table is now."

Tillie ran up to us. "I can help with that!"

"Thanks," Laura said. "But we could use a little more help." She looked at the holding cell. Strathmore was eating a doughnut. Suarez didn't seem to be around.

"Maybe Mr. Teall can help, too," Tillie said, beckoning to him.

A moment later, Tillie, Teall, Strathmore, Wenderlich and I were gathered around the table.

She spread her feet and bent her legs. "OK, everybody ... one ... two ... "

We lifted the table. Nobody had said "three," but even if we'd had, Strathmore's yelp of pain would have drowned it out.

"Mr. Strathmore!" Laura said. "You all right?"

He rubbed his back. "Old football injury. Hasn't acted up in years."

Wenderlich called the other cop over, and we finished the job.

"All we need now is the judge," Laura said. She looked toward the men's room. "He's been in there quite a while now."

"I got another picture to take across town in half an hour," DeFlavio said.

Laura gave me the imploring eyes again. "Chuckie ... would you mind?"

Oh, great. But I put on my best smile. "Into the valley of death," I said with a salute.

The restrooms were at the end of a small hallway to the right of the pretend jail. As I approached the men's room, on the right, the door swung open and Suarez came out. He was still wearing the prisoner cap, but he had taken the apron off and was carrying it, rolled up, under his right arm. He barely looked at me as he walked past. His eyes were still angry.

I walked in. The room had four stalls on the right, opposite five sinks. The third stall was the only one in use.

I walked up to it. "Your honor?'

No answer.

The door was shut but hadn't been locked.

I knocked.

Still no answer.

I knocked again and the door slid open, and I saw Judge Matthew Collingwood sitting on the toilet, his head back, eyes staring up at nothing. The sides of his necktie formed an upside-down V, and between them I could see the wound, which was somewhere to the right of the middle of his chest. His robe hung on a hook on the back of the door, its hem touching the floor -- and the blood on the floor.

A cell phone lay beneath the judge's left hand, where he had apparently dropped it. It seemed to be on, though I wasn't about to touch it.

Into the valley of death indeed ....

The homicide lieutenant shut the closet door behind us.

"OK, Chuckie, what'd you want to tell me?"

Lt. Bill Lloyd and I had gone to high school together. He'd arrived at the mall moments after the cops decided I could tie Suarez to the murder. Now the two of us were in a closet one floor below the skydeck. Lloyd sniffed as he looked around at the brooms, pails and bottles that were almost crowding us out.

"Always hated the smell of Lestoil," he said in that slow, lazy-sounding Texas voice that he'd held on to when his family moved north.

I shook my head. "It's Mr. Clean."

"Whatever. Just tell me you're not going to tell me Suarez didn't do it."

"He didn't."

He held up his hands. "Should have known. Look, you yourself saw him come out of there holding that bloody apron."

"It wasn't bloody."

"Swear to that?"

"Well ... let's just say I don't remember seeing any blood on it -- or on him. And I heard him tell Wenderlich he'd taken it off to use one of the stalls and was about to put it back on again."

He scratched his forehead. "We know somebody had a bloody apron because we found it in one of the wastebaskets. You'll at least concede that, right?" He sniffed again. "And it is Lestoil."

"Mr. Clean. And I guess you don't buy the story about the guy in the second stall."

Suarez had told the cops that he'd gone into the first stall, then noticed a guy in the second stall, and that while Suarez was in his stall the other guy had stepped out, run some water in the sink and left.

"The unidentified guy in the second stall, you mean. Very convenient. And of course there's the knife in Suarez's shirt pocket. Complete with blood."

"Dried blood, and when he says it's his and he had a little accident this morning, I believe him. He just happened to still have the knife on him when he was 'arrested.'"

"Then he'd better pray he doesn't have the same blood type as the judge."

"But he's not the type of person who'd kill someone!"

Lloyd rubbed his eyes, which were getting watery. Maybe he was allergic to Mr. Clean.

"You know he's an ex-con, right? Convicted of murder?"

"Oh, come on! Can't be! He's way too gentle a guy!"

"As if that really means anything," Lloyd said. "Nope, he was convicted all right. He was a member of a gang in the Bronx, and they killed a guy."

"Maybe he was framed."

Instead of responding, he looked behind me and smiled.

"Eureka!"

He edged past me to a corner of the closet, picked up a big bottle and showed me the label.

Lestoil.

"Who is that guy?" Strathmore said. "Really nice suit he has."

And Brad Berman was sweating really nice as the cops brought him into the skydeck. Lloyd had told me that Berman, a stockbroker, was on the other end of the judge's phone call. Now perspiration was sliding off Berman's bald head to his neck. The perfect suit would probably have a hot date at the dry cleaners.

"Of course," Strathmore said, "the judge was no slouch himself. Didja see those cufflinks he had?"

"Not to mention that gold watchband," Neal Teall said.

Tillie shook her head. "You gentlemen don't understand. Gold watchband, gold cufflinks, gold tie clip, gold whatever -- what good did they do him in the end?" She shook her head some more. "Doesn't matter what you have on the outside. It's what's you are inside what counts!" Then she stopped shaking her head and started nodding it.

Laura, still in shock, stared at the floor. I waved a hand in front of her face. "You OK?"

She looked up, her face pale, and tried to smile. "I guess I should be grateful this didn't happen during one of our live pledge drives."

Lloyd brought Berman over and told him to repeat his story. Suarez and a uniformed cop stood off to the left, within earshot.

"Well, like I say," Berman said, "it was business as usual, though actually there was really no such thing as business as usual with that guy, and I'll be really glad when he moves back --" He closed his eyes for a moment. "Sorry."

"Go on," Lloyd said.

"Anyway, we're talking as usual, when suddenly he says, 'Hey. What're you doing in here?' I don't know who he's talking to, so I wait a second, and then, well, it's like he starts to yell but someone puts a hand over his mouth."

Everyone except Berman looked at Suarez, who was looking at the carpeting, his eyes calm.

"And that's all I heard," the stockbroker said.

"Sounds like enough to me," Wenderlich said as he took a few steps toward the artist. "I hear you've killed before, Suarez. What'd it feel like the second time? Any easier?"

Suarez looked at him.

"You ask," he said, "how it feels to murder a second time. What you should be asking, sir, is how it feels to be murdered a second time."

I said, "Mr. Suarez, maybe you shouldn't -- "

He waved me away, his eyes still on Wenderlich. "Was I part of a gang once? Yes. Did this gang murder someone? Again, yes. But did I commit the murder? No. I was there. But I had no idea anyone was going to be killed. There was a fight. It all happened so fast, and when I saw what was happening I ran. But I didn't get away in time, and I and a few others were blamed."

He looked at me and smiled. "How do you journalists always put it? 'In the wrong place at the wrong time.'"

He looked at the floor again, his face grim, as if he could see through the floor and all the way down to several circles of hell.

"I spend five years in prison. Outwardly I am alive. Inwardly I might as well be dead."

He looked up. "While I am there I discover art classes, and the instructor discovers me, believes in me." Suarez smiled at the memory. "He gets my case reopened, and I am released and move up here where nobody knows me."

He held his hands out, palms up, and shook his head.

"So now I am being murdered again. Do you expect that it feels that much different the second time?"

No one said anything, unless you counted Mister Rogers; the TV was still on, and he was telling how when he was a kid and got mad he used to play the piano.

"We'd better go, Mr. Suarez," Lloyd said. "Mr. Berman, Mr. Charles, we'll need your statements."

No, I thought, I can't let this happen, I can't let my testimony help them murder him again.

I thought of Collingwood, the way he looked when I found him.

Then I thought back to a couple of things people had said. And something I'd seen someone do.

And then I remembered a story I'd handled a long time ago ...

Whoa.

"Mr. Berman!" I said. He turned toward me. The cop who'd been taking his statement scowled at me.

I said, "When the judge said 'What are you doing in here,' did he sound scared?"

He scratched his head, then said, "No. Actually he sounded puzzled. And even annoyed. Like he'd seen something that wasn't supposed to be there, like -- like a giraffe in his living room." He giggled at the thought.

I ran up to Lloyd at the elevator and asked for a moment of his time.

"OK," he said, not eagerly.

I kept talking to him, keeping my voice low. At first his face was its usual calm and patient self, but after about thirty seconds he pursed his lips and his face began to redden, and after about a minute of listening to me he could have been arrested for impersonating a tomato.

Finally he exploded.

"I've had about enough of this! This is my investigation, and I'm not going to let some amateur try to tell me how to run it!"

Then the elevator rang, and he, Suarez and Wenderlich were gone.

"Nice try," Teall said, looking at his watch as I walked back.

"You really believe he's innocent?" Strathmore said, smiling and shaking his head.

Maybe he was going to try to sell me a car after all.

"He seemed like such a nice man," Tillie said.

"He is a nice man," I said, "and he didn't kill Collingwood. And I think I might know a way to prove it."

The skydeck men's room was still closed, but there was one just like it one floor below, and Strathmore, Teall, a few other guys and I took advantage of it.

"Don't suppose there's a way I can work this murder into one of my commercials," Strathmore said as he washed his hands.

Teall and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Then he looked at his watch again. "Running late. Been nice meeting you. Sort of."

After the door closed, Strathmore said, "He'll never make much of a salesman. Too quiet." Soon he and the last couple of guys were gone, leaving me by myself.

I opened the third stall, walked in, and closed the door without locking it, as Collingwood had apparently done. Then I put the toilet lid down and sat.

Ten long minutes went by. I spent one of them trying to figure out what they'd used to clean the floor. Didn't smell like Lestoil or Mr. Clean. Did they still make Janitor in a Drum?

Then the men's room door opened. Soft footsteps, headed in my direction.

A pair of sneakers visible below the door to the stall.

Facing me.

Then the door opened and I saw the figure in the apron and cap. Eyes filled with hate.

And the weapon, held high, about to strike.

I said "LIEUTENANT!" and kicked the aproned figure in the knee. I felt a little bad doing that to an older lady, but after all, Tillie Cott had killed four people. At least.

I might have been the fifth if Wenderlich hadn't grabbed her wrist so hard that she had to drop the sewing scissors. They fell to the floor with a clang, just missing my knee.

Lloyd appeared, holding Tillie's knitting bag, which was open. "Found this where you hid it," he told her. "And something interesting's inside. You guessed right, Chuckie."

"Someone wanna fill me in?" Wenderlich said as he struggled to cuff her. "What's in there?"

"The judge's gold tie clip," I said. "You made a slip, Tillie. You tried to cover it up, but you mentioned something you couldn't have otherwise known about. The judge had his robe on when he got here, and he didn't take it off until the bathroom break. None of us could have seen the clip before that, and I remembered that when I found the body the two parts of his tie were separated. And I hoped that you might be one of those killers who like to keep souvenirs."

Lloyd, still looking into the bag, said, "Monogrammed, too."

Tillie glared at me, her cheeks reddening. "I thought you were nice, but you're rotten inside, too!" She glared at the cops. "All of you!"

"I still don't get it," Wenderlich said.

Lloyd said, "Let me introduce you to the White Angel of Death."

"What?” He looked at Tillie and his grip on her loosened for a nanosecond. "You mean that nurse downstate who killed all those people?"

"Yep," I said, getting up. "I think we'll find Collingwood was the one who sentenced her.

She escaped, probably changed her appearance, almost certainly her hair, and wound up in our neck of the woods. Collingwood didn't recognize her, but she recognized him, and when he said something about making an important phone call, she didn't know he meant Berman, but she couldn't take any chances."

Her unpleasant grin gave me a pretty good idea that she wasn't going to fill in the details.

I turned to Wenderlich.

"She was a nurse, so she knew exactly where to stab him to kill him as quickly as possible. But she also knew there'd be a lot of blood, so she took two aprons and a cap, went to the ladies' room and put them on. Her hair's short enough for the cap to almost completely cover it. Then she probably bent down, holding the scissors under the apron, and sneaked across the hall to the men's room.

"She got lucky. The judge was alone, talking to Berman, and he hadn't locked his door. He saw her and said 'What are you doing in here?' He wasn't afraid, just puzzled; a woman in a men's room isn't as unusual as a giraffe in a living room, but it's unusual enough, and that's why he said that. But then he realized who she was, and she killed him.

"As she stepped out of the stall she heard someone coming. She dashed into the second stall so Suarez wouldn't see her. While she was in there she took off the bloody apron and rolled it up. Then she left the stall and maybe washed up a little, and hurried back into the ladies' room, still wearing the cap and the other apron. She went to a stall in the ladies' room, removed the cap and apron, carefully covered the bloody apron with the other one and the cap, then walked out with them. As soon as she could she ditched the bloody apron in a wastebasket while no one was looking. Who'd notice? She was just a volunteer who'd be expected to tidy things up. And she was just in time to run up to us and offer to help us move the table. And luckily for her again, Suarez was available to take the blame."

"By the way," Lloyd said, "you didn't tell me what tipped you off that she was a nurse."

"I didn't know for sure. But it helps to have one in the family."

He nodded. "Your sister-in-law."

"Right. That way of lifting something -- bending the way she did, counting one, two, three -- nurses are trained to lift things that way. Not conclusive, of course, but I wondered about it at the time."

Tillie transferred her glare from me to Lloyd.

"And when you yelled at him -- that was an act?"

"Yep." And damned if he didn't look a little smug. "Mr. Charles and I were in high school together. He came over, told me what he suspected, and said that if I thought he might be on to something, I should act real mad. He directed me almost like he used to in the old days. A boffo performance, eh, Chuckie?"

"It got the job done," I said, "but if you don't mind my saying so, you were a little over the top."