Hotline to Murder by Alan Cook Page B

protests.
    ***
    Detective Croyden sat down hard on the
swivel chair in his small cubicle and said, “Okay, Tony Schmidt,
what have you got for me?”
    Tony seated himself just outside the
cubicle—there wasn’t room inside—on the folding chair that Croyden
had carried over and wondered how strong Croyden’s chair was.
Croyden was no lightweight. In fact, he had probably played
football at sometime in his life—perhaps linebacker.
    Tony realized that despite the fact that he
had had most of the day—or at least snippets here and there between
talking to clients on the phone—to think about what he was going to
say, he still hadn’t come up with anything good. But he had to get
out of this mess before he got himself in any deeper.
    He gave a head-fake and dove in. “One of the
callers to the Hotline has been talking about Joy in such a way
that we think it’s possible he might be Joy’s killer.”
    Croyden picked up a spiral notebook and
started writing with what Tony thought was a Mont Blanc pen. He
said, “Who’s we?”
    “Shahla Lawton, one of the other listeners,
and me.” He wondered how Croyden could afford a Mont Blanc pen.
    When Tony hesitated, in order to let Croyden
ask more questions, the detective said, “Go on. Tell me the story.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed one ankle over his knee. A
thick and hairy leg showed above a white sock. The chair creaked.
He had his jacket off, and Tony could see the gun in a holster on
his left side. Tony pictured Croyden drawing the gun. He must be
right-handed.
    And Tony did tell him the story. In fact, he
told Croyden more than he intended to. Croyden didn’t need a class
in active listening. He was so good at using silence and occasional
probing questions that Tony knew he was talking himself into
trouble. About the only thing he didn’t tell about was the gun he
had borrowed from Josh. And he made it sound as if going to meet
the Chameleon was his idea, not Shahla’s.
    When Croyden was apparently satisfied that
Tony had nothing more to tell, he planted both feet firmly on the
ground. He leaned forward and looked Tony in the eye, the way a
linebacker looks at a quarterback he is about to sack. The broken
nose in the middle of his tanned face enhanced the image. He spoke,
his words coming slowly. “Have you been trained as a police
officer, Tony?”
    “No…sir.” The ‘sir” came out
involuntarily.
    “Were you in the Marine Corps, by any
chance?”
    “No.”
    Croyden spoke faster. “How about the Green
Berets?”
    “No.”
    “The Navy Seals?”
    “No.”
    “Then what the hell were you doing risking
your life trying to impersonate somebody who knows what they’re
doing?”
    “It was a stupid thing to do.”
    “Actually, I wouldn’t care so much if you
lost your life through your own stupidity. But in this case, you
spooked a possible suspect. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t
slap the cuffs on you for trying to play the hero?”
    Tony couldn’t think of any.
    Croyden took his eyes off Tony’s and lowered
his voice. “I’m going to tell you something that I don’t want to go
beyond this room. We subpoenaed the records of the Hotline’s
incoming calls from the phone company for the last month. We found
the numbers for all the obscene callers by comparing the times of
the calls to the times listed on the call reports. We are in the
process of checking out each of these perverts. I’m telling you
this so that you know we’re actually doing something and not just
sitting on our butts.”
    “What about confidentiality?”
    “That’s why I don’t want you to say
anything. Your boss, Nancy, is afraid that if this leaks out, the
Hotline will lose its status as a confidential service. Mind you,
we’re only checking on the callers you call masturbators, and I
don’t believe they deserve confidentiality.”
    “So you’ve already got a line on the
Chameleon.” Tony felt redundant.
    Croyden still wasn’t looking at Tony.