Free The Suicide Murders by Howard Engel Page A

… I can’t sell what I have.” He gave me a grin that should have been shared with a third party; it wasn’t meant for me. We started back, crunching along the path. “I thought Harrow drew this case?”
    “He did. And he wrote ‘Closed’ on the file last week. He’s on something else today.”
    “You one of Chester’s fans?” I asked, trying a line that wouldn’t explode in my face in case he turned out to be his cousin. Although with a name like Staziak he had as much chance of being related to the dear departed as I did.
    “Nope,” he said. “But I was told that I might find you here, Benny. They had you pegged pretty good, I’d say.”
    “Did they send you to see if I would steal the floral tributes, Pete?”
    “Sure are a lot of them. Seems a waste, doesn’t it? I guess somebody makes a buck out of it.”
    “Pete, I never knew your philosophical side. Come on, for crying out loud, as an old friend, what’s eating them downtown? What are they so worried about?”
    “This isn’t official.”
    “Naturally. You’re invisible. Look I can put my hand right through you. What do you take me for, Pete? Who told you to come out here and play tip toe through the tombstones? Come on. Level with me.”
    We stood leaning on my car, which now looked parked foolishly far away from the grave site since the other cars had vanished.
    “Benny, I could get into a lot of trouble telling you anything. But what you’ve been saying around town about Yates’ death being murder and not suicide has got a lot of important people feeling uneasy, like you might take advantage of the funeral to make a speech or point the guilty finger or stuff like that. It don’t worry me, see, because we go back a long way together, but some people worry easy.” He was scratching his head under his hat. I could see it wasn’t easy for him to lean on me. He resented having to do it and he resented the direction from which the pressure came.
    “I get you, Pete. I’ll keep my bib clean. But while I’m doing it why don’t you put a couple of numbers like two and two together. Why are they on my tail? Did anybody ever worry so much about Benny Cooperman before? What are they worried about over at City Hall? Doesn’t their nervousness make you wonder what they’re nervous about?”
    “Ah, they’re worried about Myrna Yates, that’s all. They don’t want anybody upsetting her on top of all her other troubles. You can understand that. So there, that’s official.”
    “You mean unofficial.” I grinned and he caught and returned it.
    “Yeah. Okay, you understand what I’m not saying?”
    “Loud and clear.”
    “Okay. Now. Tell me what you got, Benny. Let’s have it.”
    “I’ve got a suicide who buys himself a going-away present with only two hours to go.”
    Pete squinted into the afternoon sun a little, like he’d seen a western sheriff do it on television. “Well now, it does sound peculiar. What else did he do before he got dead?”
    “He spent an hour with his shrink.”
    “Christ, Benny. There goes your theory up the chimney. A shrink could have got him into a very highly excited state in an hour. He could have stirred up all that muck in his subconscious, and you know, he could have left the shrink’s office in a depressed and suicidal state. Why don’t you let it lie, Ben? No good’ll come of your playing with it.”
    “Pete, look. If it didn’t get so many people worked up I might let it alone, but people don’t get excited without a reason. And that reason could be that there is more in this than yesterday’s lunch. Why wasn’t there a post mortem? Why weren’t the contents of the organs sent to the Forensic Centre in Toronto? Why weren’t there tissue samples taken?”
    “Because there was no need. Look, we had powder burns on his head, right; we had contact marks, right; we had prints on the gun, right; and we have nitrates showing up in the paraffin test. So, where’s the miscarriage of justice?