Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006

By this time Casteven had appeared to see what the commotion was all about. He took over behind the bar while Auburn and Rakovy adjourned to a stuffy back room where full and empty beer kegs were stacked beside a walk-in freezer.

Auburn first verified that he was talking to Gregory J. Rakovy and recorded his address and phone number. Rakovy worked full-time for the telephone company and (for the past eight months) part-time at The Green Fish. He had left immediately after locking up at eleven P.M. the night before and had gone straight home to his apartment and to bed, since he had to get up at five thirty to go to his other job. He lived alone. He hadn’t heard or seen anything unusual across the street at Ida Blanford’s house, and he denied being acquainted with her.

“Have you ever been inside her house? Ever talked to her? Out on the street, on the phone? Ever have any contact with her by mail?” Rakovy gave unqualified negative answers to all these questions. Auburn avoided saying anything that might tip him off to the fact that the gun and other articles had been recovered from the river bottom.

Had Ida Blanford ever been inside The Green Fish? Did Rakovy know Ida’s nephew Dale? Had anybody at The Green Fish had any association with either of the Blanfords? No, no, no. By now Rakovy’s face was set in a disdainful smirk. The oppressive heat from the freezer condenser and the sour fumes from the empty kegs were making Auburn sick.

On his way to his car he took a long look at Rakovy’s truck. Because he didn’t yet have probable cause for search and seizure, he confined his attention to inspecting it from the sidewalk. Then he climbed the levee for another view of the spot where Ida Blanford’s body had been found. Although it was still broad daylight, the shadows were gathering under the sycamores and lights were coming on in the apartment buildings across the river. A cool evening breeze rippled the water and carried a vague threat of rain.

Auburn didn’t sleep very well that night, probably because of all the coffee he’d put down at The Green Fish. But he was at his desk before eight thirty the next morning, shuffling through background probes on Ida Blanford and the people he’d talked to yesterday. The deceased had a distinguished history as an elementary school teacher and later, when her vision began to fail, as a volunteer tutor in a literacy program. And she had indeed been a woman of vast wealth. But her moneylending activities had never come to the attention either of law enforcement authorities or of the other agencies and services that participated in the surveillance system.

Her nephew Dale’s construction company was operating in the black and had a favorable rating with the Better Business Bureau. Fred Shannoy, the playboy fisherman, and Darlece Fontaine, the waitress at The Green Fish, had so far kept on the right side of the law. Melvin J. Casteven was deeply in debt to two credit card companies and a local savings and loan. Gregory J. Rakovy had a long history of frequent job changes and had incurred several fines for minor infractions of traffic laws.

Stamaty had sent Auburn a preliminary autopsy report from the coroner’s office across the street in the courthouse. A single .38-caliber slug, fired almost at point-blank range, had penetrated Ida Blanford’s right ventricle and vena cava, producing a massive and rapidly lethal internal hemorrhage. Routine tests had shown powder burns on both her hands, probably sustained as she struggled with the killer. Anyway she hadn’t shot herself through the heart and then tucked the gun in a plastic bag and tossed it into the river. The bullet and the gun had already been delivered by police courier to the regional ballistics lab.

No member of the public had come forth to report any unusual activity around Ida Blanford’s house on Wednesday night.

Auburn went up to Kestrel’s lab under the skylights to view the rest of the evidence for himself. Kestrel took a red plastic box marked “Biological Hazard” out of a locked cabinet, and after donning a pair of rubber gloves, he laid out its contents in a neat row on a sheet of clean paper. The resealable plastic food bag in which the other articles had been found was made of heavy-duty opaque polyethylene with a metallic sheen; it was jumbo-sized, big enough to hold a ham or a whole turkey.

The strip of white adhesive tape with “Johnston” lettered on one surface and the negative of “Rakovy” on the sticky side had been stretched out flat and mounted on a sheet of clear plastic. The blood on the leather work gloves had turned the color of chocolate syrup. The gloves were generic, worn, and untraceable. According to Kestrel, intensive examinations for trace evidence had turned up only the usual nonspecific particulate and microscopic garbage.

“I hear you found bloodstains in the basement.”

“Back near the furnace. Nothing much to see except a spot where the dust had been wiped up, but it gave chemical traces of blood, same type as the victim. So did this.” He opened a folder and showed Auburn a sheet of paper that had been tightly wadded and then partly smoothed out again. Besides bloodstains, it bore traces of grit and dust. “Found this in the crawl space under the back porch. He must have used it to wipe the blood off the floor.”