Last seen wearing, p.11
Last Seen Wearing, page 11
The newspaper articles had switched their locale and now headlined their stories, SEARCH FOR MISSING GIRL CENTERS IN MIDWEST. In bolder type over longer articles were headlines concerning the developments in the case of the unidentified, headless corpse of Boston who had not been the Parker freshman.
Chief Ford, growing desperate, was going over the Mitchell girl’s diary again, word by word, rereading her letters, trying to find something that he might have overlooked before.
Lowell Mitchell had been missing two weeks that day.
FRIDAY NOON
At twelve-fifty that Friday noon a senior at Parker named Jane Reardon was crossing Higgins Bridge from her gym class when her attention was attracted to an object lying at the bottom of the river, gleaming bright gold in the warm sunshine. She paused for a moment and leaned over the wide railing on the downstream side of the bridge and tried to make out what it was. Two of her friends joined her and she pointed it out to them. One of them said she had noticed it several days ago but had paid it no attention. Now, however, she too tried to guess its identity. Several other girls joined the group and they all speculated on the object. A lipstick? Compact? It had too golden a light, it seemed.
Charles T. Corvath, a campus policeman in the company of Private Detective John Monroe, happened along at that point and the two were attracted by the group on the bridge. The girls, tiring of the guessing after a minute or so and anxious to get to lunch, indicated the gleaming object below in deprecating fashion as though it were unseemly for young ladies to gather on bridges and try to identify objects lying under the water beneath. Corvath and Monroe looked, saw the gleam, and went on. The girls forgot about it, Corvath forgot about it, and Monroe almost forgot about it. He retained it just long enough to twit Ford with it. Ford was sitting at his desk eating his lunch out of a paper bag when Monroe dropped in to rest his weary feet a half hour later. Ford looked out of his office and came forth with his standard query: “How’re things on campus?”
“Fine,” replied Monroe. “Nothing from Michigan City, of course?”
“Everything’s normal, huh?”
“Do you think I’d be hanging around here if it wasn’t? Of course everything’s normal.” Then it came to him. “Except that a lot of the girls will probably cut classes and go wading this afternoon.”
Ford looked at him suspiciously. “What for?”
“A lipstick or compact somebody lost in the river.”
“Why would they go wading for it?”
Monroe looked exhausted. “Hell, they wouldn’t. I’m only kidding you.”
“You mean nothing was lost?”
“I mean nobody would go wading for it.” He saw the chief didn’t understand, so he said, “Look. There’s nothing wrong on campus. A few girls happened to see something shining down in the river by the bridge and they were wondering what it was. That’s all. They’ve forgotten all about it. Nobody’s going wading, nobody’s paying any attention to it.”
Ford wasn’t mollified in the least. “What was it?” he said.
“Hell, I don’t know. A lipstick or compact somebody dropped or threw off the bridge, that’s all. It’s nothing to get excited about.”
“I’ll get damn good and excited,” said Ford, his voice coming up. “What do you mean a compact or lipstick somebody threw over the bridge? Do you think girls go around throwing stuff like that away?”
“All right, they lost it then. They dropped it over the side accidentally.”
“They did, huh? Maybe you can tell me how a girl can manage to drop something accidentally over a four-and-a-half-foot railing that’s a foot wide! You’re as bad as my own men. You’ll pass up any clue unless it jumps up and bites your nose.”
Monroe said, “Now don’t tell me you think that’s a clue!”
“No, I don’t think it’s a clue, but I don’t know that it’s not a clue either. What you people can’t get through your heads is that under normal conditions you wouldn’t pay any attention to something like that, but normal conditions don’t exist on that campus. A girl disappeared from there, which means something is wrong about that campus. Therefore anything that goes on there the least bit different from the ordinary, I want to know about it. If a girl breathes different from usual even, I want to know why.”
“All right,” said Monroe. “Fine. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary about this.”
“There isn’t, huh? Listen, Monroe, that object, whatever it is, doesn’t belong there. That means it got put there. On a normal campus there’d be a normal reason for it. Parker is not a normal campus and the reason may not be a normal one. It probably is, but I don’t buy probablys.”
“Ten bucks to your one says it has nothing to do with the Mitchell case.”
“Make it a thousand to one and I’ll take it. The odds aren’t any better than that.”
Cameron came in then and said, “What’s it going to be, swords or pistols?”
Monroe said, “He’s going hog-wild because somebody lost something down at the bottom of the river at the campus bridge.”
Ford said to Cameron, “He’s as stupid as you are.”
Cameron said, “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Do? We’re going to find out what it is and whose it is. We’re going wading.”
“You’re kidding, Chief,” said Monroe.
“No, he’s not,” said Cameron. “He’s just frustrated from sitting around waiting for reports from Michigan City.”
“I’m just picayune,” said the chief.
Cameron said, “If you’re so hot for action, why don’t you go out and direct traffic this afternoon?”
Ford winked at Monroe and said, “He’s scared I’m going to make him go swim for it. Cheer up, Burt. Lassiter’s going to take the swim. You need the bath more than he does but you’re too old. Your heart wouldn’t stand it.”
So Lassiter was summoned and told to get into a bathing suit and join them at Higgins Bridge. He thought, or at least hoped, for a minute that Chief Ford was kidding but it was a faint hope. Ford didn’t kid, at least not with anyone other than Burt Cameron. He started to squeal. “It’s March, Chief. That river will be ice!”
Ford said, “What do you want us to do, drain the lake and run the river dry again so you can walk out? Get on your horse!”
Lassiter departed mumbling something about how much better off he would have been staying in the Army while Ford informed Ed Small and Mrs. Kenyon of their intentions. Then Ford left for the campus with Monroe, who was still inclined to believe the chief couldn’t be serious, and with Cameron, who knew only too well that he was.
Lassiter joined them at the bridge at two o’clock. He had a heavy sweater, pants, and overcoat on over his bathing suit but he was shivering in spite of the moderate temperature, not because of the cold, but because of the anticipated cold. The sun had shifted its position and it had taken five minutes of maneuvering before a gleam had been sighted. It was a faint one at best and one that threatened to fade out entirely at any moment and Ford was muttering curses at Lassiter in a more and more audible tone until the man arrived.
“Hurry it up,” called Ford. “Don’t come out here on the bridge, get in the water fast. We’ll tell you where to look.”
Had Lassiter wanted to complain about the temperature of the water, he held his peace, not through fear of Ford but because stragglers, coming back from gym, were pausing on both banks and on the bridge itself to watch the strange sight of a man stripping off his clothes in preparation for a dip. He braved the waters stoically for the girls’ benefit and waded in with concealed gasps up to his waist.
“A little further,” Ford directed. “More to your left, a little more. That’s too much. Back just a little.” He jockeyed him into position expertly and, when he had him placed to his satisfaction, told him to go straight down for it. Lassiter closed both eyes, held his nose, and ducked. He came up a moment later, gasping. “Well?” said Ford.
“Missed the bottom.”
“Exhale, damn it, don’t inhale, and open your eyes down there.”
Lassiter went down again and his hand was visible through the water patting the bottom, sending up little muddy clouds. He came up with some small stones.
“God damn it,” bellowed Ford. “I said open your eyes! I’m not building a rock garden. Throw those damn things away and do what I tell you. Now you’ve got the bottom all stirred up and I can’t see where it is. Go down right where you are, but move your hand back a couple of inches.”
Lassiter went under again and came up shivering and emptyhanded. The girls tittered.
“I’m freezing,” complained Lassiter. “My hands are numb.”
“The faster you find it,” said Ford, “the faster you can come out of there.”
Lassiter went down again and Ford started growling that he should have known better, that he should have gone in himself. Lassiter came up for a breath and immediately ducked under once more as though he were close to pay dirt. He came up holding his hand aloft. “I’ve got it.”
“Come on out,” said Ford, and hastened off the bridge. Lassiter waded ashore, gave him the object, and started drying himself feverishly with his towel. His lips were blue and his teeth were chattering violently.
When Cameron and Monroe reached him Ford was turning the object over and over in his hands. It was a solid gold hair clip and on the inside were engraved the initials MLM.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
At three o’clock Ford was down by the bridge again but this time with more men and the boat. Cameron and two men were on the east bank of the river on the campus side while Lassiter and two more patrolmen were on the gymnasium side. Ford was standing in the boat giving instructions before he and his oarsman shoved off. Mrs. Kenyon, Mr. Small, and the other campus employees were grouped around and it was a grim-faced gathering that heard Ford’s orders.
Back on the slope, the students had collected a hundred strong, but they weren’t tittering girls any longer. They stood solemn and silent with their numbers swelling by the minute. In less than an hour the news had spread over the campus that the hair clip Lowell Mitchell had been wearing the day she disappeared had been found in the river beside the bridge.
Private Detective John Monroe was there. He was in the boat with Ford and shoved it off into the stream when the chief gave the signal. Patrolman Womrath, at the oars, steadied the craft and tried to hold it against the current. At the same time the men on both banks began moving downstream along the water line. Wheeler River was a tortuously winding stream that flowed in a southwesterly direction over twenty miles before it finally emptied into the Connecticut a few miles south of Springfield. Ford and his men were going to cover only the few miles of it that lay in their jurisdiction. Massachusetts State Police would take it from there to the border and the Connecticut Police would cover the river from there to the Sound.
They moved slowly along both banks and the boat in midstream outdistanced the men on foot. The boat slowed to a halt three hundred yards downstream where a large fallen tree lay out into the middle of the river. Womrath rested the boat against its damming branches while Ford and Monroe spent five minutes poking in and around it with grappling poles until they were convinced nothing was caught in it under the water. By that time the men ashore had drawn even. Cameron and his group forded a small stream that fed into Wheeler River and kept on. Womrath freed his boat and started it drifting again; slowing it and holding it on course with the oars. Ford and Monroe kept a sharp eye over the sides on the river bottom.
A quarter of a mile farther downstream the river bent sharply in a hairpin turn and went under the Queen Street Bridge. Ford had Womrath let the boat drift ashore there and waited again for the men to catch up. Cameron was perspiring. He shook his head when he came by and shoved the boat off again. They kept going.
Two miles downstream they came to the filled-in area known as the Hats. It had once been a marsh but years of dumping and leveling had turned it into a littered, sparsely grassed, desolate plain stretching out an eighth of a mile behind the row of tenement houses that rimmed Front Street. Necking parties frequently parked on its waste in the spring and fall, and in the summer the tenement children crossed it to swim in the shallow river bed.
It was while following the river’s edge at this point that Cameron suddenly stopped, backed off, and waved at Ford up ahead. He yelled and pointed and Ford nodded and motioned at the bank and Womrath rowed him to shore. He clambered onto the thin covering of snow closely followed by Monroe and went over. Cameron led him to the upwind side of a little nook and pointed. Ford’s eyes were bleak and opaque. He stepped to the edge of the shallow bank and leaned forward.
Half submerged in the water, mud, and dried grass was the body of a young girl. The face had been eaten away, the hair was silty, and the clothes consisted of a grimy, mud-colored coat, a washed-out, colorless wool skirt, grayish blouse, and dirty faded sweater, but there wasn’t any doubt as to who the girl had been.
There was no expression on Ford’s face. After a moment he turned away and crunched back to Cameron. He took a deep breath and said, “I guess we can tell the Michigan City police to stop looking now.”
Monroe, after one last look, scurried back to join them. “I knew she was dead,” he said. “I felt it in my bones.”
Cameron said sarcastically, “That makes this your lucky day.”
“And how. If I hadn’t discovered that hair clip she wouldn’t have been found till next summer.”
Ford ignored him. “Steve,” he called to one of the boot-clad men who had been with Cameron. The man came over.
“Yes, sir,” said Monroe. “That hair clip led us right to the body. It sure is a good thing I found it.”
Ford and Cameron looked at each other, then looked at Monroe piercingly. Then the chief turned. “Steve, get to a phone and call Doc Howe. Then call headquarters and tell MacDonald to send down both radio cars and the trailer. And call up Cal Leslie of the Bugle. Tell him I want him to come down here and take a few pictures.”
Cameron said, “And tell Mac to order some coffee.”
“Yeah, coffee,” said Ford.
Stevenson said, “Right,” and turned. Monroe said, “I’ll go with you,” and started off.
Ford’s voice was a bellow. “Where do you think you’re going?”
It brought Monroe up short. He turned around and said, “Why, I’m going to call the Mitchells.”
“Like hell you are! Come back here!”
Monroe took a step back reluctantly. “Why not, Chief? They’ve got a right to know.”
“You and nobody else is going to tell them their daughter’s dead until we know for sure it’s their daughter.”
“What the hell, Chief? You know as well as I do that that’s Lowell.”
“She hasn’t been identified yet. Until she is, you aren’t calling anybody.”
Monroe balked. “You can’t order me around. I’m not one of your men and I can do what I please.”
“This is a police case and I’m in charge here and you’ll do what I tell you to do or I’ll throw you in the can. If you think you’re going to hold them up for reward money because of that hair clip, I’m telling you right now it’ll be over my dead body.”
“What’s the matter? I found it, didn’t I? What’re you trying to do, hog the reward yourself?”
Ford’s tone was menacing. “You and I have got along okay, so far, Monroe. You better keep on the good side of me or, so help me, you’ll be sorry.”
Monroe fumed, but he stayed put.
Dr. Robert Howe, the medical examiner, came through the alley from Front Street between the tenements, and crossed the flats in an ambulance at ten minutes past five. A group of fifteen to twenty people standing back at a respectful distance in the cooling air broke ground to let him through. McNamara and Lascom in one radio car and Cal Leslie in his 1946 Ford arrived simultaneously a couple of minutes later as Howe and Ford were viewing the body. Howe was saying, “Any valuables on her?”
“Haven’t seen any.”
“Better check the water around her.”
“We will as soon as you give the order to move her.”
“You can move her. I’ll have her taken to the Gardner-Niles Funeral Home and do the autopsy there. We’ll have to notify the D.A. on this, I’m afraid. He’ll probably call an inquest.”
Leslie joined them at this point and said, “Unusual circumstances, huh?”
Ford said, “What do you think?”
Leslie took a look. “Damned unusual. How many pictures do you want?”
“Enough to establish how she’s lying.”
Leslie got to work with his camera and flash equipment in the gathering gloom while the others stood around and shivered. When he was through the ambulance attendants laid out a stretcher on the snow at the edge and Ford ordered two of his booted men into the water. They waded in and gathered up the body, lifting it dripping from its cold bed and laying it onto the stretcher. The other men backed off as the body came up and Monroe said audibly, “Pe-ew.”
The attendants covered it with a sheet and shoved the stretcher into the ambulance. The two men in the water waded around where the body had lain but found nothing belonging to it.
“It’s the Mitchell girl, of course,” said the doctor as he prepared to depart.
“Probably,” replied Ford. “Her identity is one of the things I want established, that and the cause of death and anything else you can find out about her.”
Howe nodded. “I’ll have the information in the morning and I’ll call the D.A. tonight.”
