Detective by Arthur Hailey

requests from
other jurisdictions, BOLOs . . . the
list seemed endless.
    Out of necessity, priorities
emerged. Urgent local matters came
first, and other paper was
supposedly handled in order of
importance; sometimes it wasn't.
Some reports or requests were
glanced at, then put aside, becoming
an evergrowing pile for later
reading. At times it could be three,
six, or even nine months before
certain papers were dealt with, if
at all.
    Bernard Quinn had once dubbed those
papers the Tomorrow Pile, and the
name stuck. Typically, he'd quoted
Macbeth:
    "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . . "
    All of which was why a Teletype
from the police department of
Clearwater, Florida, dated March 15
and addressed to all police agencies
in the state, received only cursory
attention at Miami Homicide, then
remained in the Tomorrow Pile until
five months after its arrival.
    The Teletype was from a Detective
Nelson Abreu, who, stunned by the
brutality of a recent Clearwater
double murder, asked for information
about any similar murders that might
have occurred elsewhere. Included in
the Teletype
    92 Arthur Halley
    was a note that ''unusual items"
were left at the murder scene, the
victims' home. These were not
described because Clearwater
Homicide was limiting knowledge of
that evidence for the same reason
Miami Homicide had withheld
information about the Frosts' murder
scene.
    Clearwater had a large population
of elderly people, and the murder
victims were a husband and wife, Hal
and Mabel Larsen, both in their
seventies. They had been bound and
gagged, then, while facing each
other, had been tortured, finally
dying from loss of blood. The
torture included a savage beating
and mutilation by severe knife
wounds. Inquiries revealed that the
Larsens had cashed a thousand-dollar
check a few days earlier, but no
money was found at the crime scene.
There were no witnesses, no
unaccounted-for fingerprints, no
murder weapon, no suspects.
    While Detective Abreu received
several replies to his Teletype,
none proved helpful, and the case
remained unsolved.
    Two and a half months later,
another scene:
    Fort Lauderdale, May 23.
    Again, a married couple, the
Hennenfelds, in their midsixties and
living in an apartment on Ocean
Boulevard near 21 st Street. Again
the victims were found bound and
gagged, and in seated positions,
facing each other. Both had been
beaten and stabbed to death, though
their bodies were not discovered for
an estimated four days.
    On the fourth day a neighbor,
aware of a foul odor coming from the
adjoining apartment, called police,
who made a forced entry. Broward
Sheriff-Detective Benito Montes was
sickened at the sight and stench.
    At this crime scene no "unusual
items" were left. How
    DETECTIVE 93
    ever, a two-burner electric space
heater had been lashed by wire to
the feet of Irving Hennenfeld, then
plugged into an electric outlet. The
space heater's red-hot bars had
burned out before the bodies were
found, though not until the man's
feet and lower legs were reduced to
cinders. In this crime, too, any
money the victims may have had was
apparently taken.
    Once more, no fingerprints, no
witnesses, no weapon.
    But this time Sheriff-Detective
Montes remembered reading about the
Coconut Grove murders of an elderly
couple some three months earlier,
which seemed similar. Following a
phone call to Miami Homicide, Montes
drove to Miami the next day, where
he met with Bernard Quinn.
    In contrast to the veteran Quinn,
Montes was young, in his
mid-twenties, with neatly trimmed
hair. Like most Homicide detectives
he dressed well that day in a navy
blue suit with a striped silk tie.
During a two-hour discussion the
detectives compared notes of the
Frosts' and Hennenfelds' murders and
viewed photos of both crime scenes.
They agreed that the manner of the
victims' deaths seemed identical. So
did other factors, including
placement of the bodies, and the
killer's barbaric cruelty.
    One small detail: When