Free The Girls of Murder City by Douglas Perry

closed car these days, especially cheating husbands. The morals court had recently called the closed car “a house of prostitution on wheels,” and that meant this was a situation for Vice. The officers quick-stepped to the corner to use a police call box. That was when they heard the shot.
    Hustling back to the car, they discovered a man—shot through the head—and no sign of the woman they’d seen. The man’s body lay crumpled against the steering wheel, his arm dangling, a trickling bottle of gin just out of reach. There was an automatic pistol on the floor next to it.
    Bert “Curley” Brown, manager of the Gingham Inn, at Sixty-eighth and Cottage Grove, stepped up to the stand. He was a big man with an easy, knowing smile. He acknowledged that Walter Law and Belva Gaertner had been in his establishment. “They didn’t have any gin,” he said. “Just ginger ale. We don’t allow gin. They didn’t display any gun in the café—though they may have talked about one—for I’ve always got my eyes peeled for guns. They were such a nice couple—I’m certainly shocked.”
    Maurine didn’t think much of Brown, dismissing his testimony as “satire.” She wrote down the key questions the inquest brought up: Did Belva Gaertner murder Walter Law? Did she shoot him in self-defense? Did she accidentally shoot him? Did he kill himself? Did a third person do the slaying?
    This much was clear: The officers, patrolmen David Fitzgerald and Morris Quinn, had no idea what they were dealing with when they called their station with the car’s license-plate number. It could have been a suicide or a robbery gone awry. It could have been a gang shooting—it was certainly gruesome enough to be an underworld hit. When the deputy coroner, Joseph Springer, arrived at the scene that morning, he checked the man slumped over the steering wheel. A bullet had punched through the man’s right cheek and exited through his left ear. Blood had flowed down the deceased’s chest and out the open car door, pooling on the cold ground. Springer picked up the automatic pistol on the car’s floor and opened the chamber. One shot had been fired. He retrieved the dead man’s wallet from his coat: Walter Law, automobile salesman.
    The sedan, however, wasn’t Law’s. It belonged to one Belva E. Gaertner. Detective Sergeant William Corcoran testified that officers Fitzgerald and Quinn found Belva in her apartment, pacing the floor. There was a large bruise on her cheek, and it was clear that she had recently backed off from a state of hysteria. “We got drunk and he got killed—I don’t know how,” she told the officers. That was pretty much all she had to say.
    While Maurine focused on the testimony, Forbes, more experienced than her younger colleague, found another angle. She made sure to sit near the widow, who was surrounded by family and friends. Much of what Mrs. Law was hearing surprised her, and she periodically sent forth small, quivering moans of distress. She squeezed her fists together at her sides and glared at Belva. She murmured something to her father-in-law that Forbes didn’t quite catch.
    “No, daughter,” said Harry J. Law, patting Freda Law’s back while trying to maintain a stoic expression. “It’s not that woman’s fault entirely. Walter ought not to have gone out with anyone. He had a lovely wife and a fine baby. No, he did wrong, and we know it.”
    Mrs. Law muttered again, and tried to stifle a sob.
    “No, daughter,” Mr. Law whispered again, calm but forceful. “No, the times aren’t getting worse. Things were this way when I was a boy back in the Carolinas. But it was more quiet. A man has to stand up and fight against it. That’s all.”
    The rundown of events took two hours, and Freda Law squirmed and muttered through all of it. Belva’s attention flagged early. Others, too, quickly lost interest: Yawns popped up here and there as the police testimony became redundant. Finally, a detective