Chapter One

 

It wasn’t the end of Emmet Rafferty’s story that was important. It was the reason back of it; the big and little reasons which led, inch by inch, step by step, to the ending. In the course of the events of my regular life, I might never have devoted the time to finding out the facts of the story; and it was only through a series of circumstances—of no particular importance—that I found the time.

I had not been in New York since the years just preceding World War II. At that time I had gone abroad as a correspondent, remained during the war. In the years following, I settled for a while in England, then moved to Italy, joining the American colony there, writing a few articles to meet expenses, and working on a book which I had started while in England. A sense of longing to see the States again had been growing within me. This homesickness urged me to accept an opportunity to return, under the heading of business. I arranged to stop off in New York to visit friends of many years, and was invited to stay with them in their apartment. Two days before arriving in New York, I received a radiogram from them informing me they were unavoidably called to Washington and would be gone for a week or ten days. However, I was to take over the apartment and await their return.

Inasmuch as I was not expected on the West Coast for another two weeks, and I did not want to miss the opportunity of seeing my friends for the first time in more years than I cared to count, I decided to remain in New York and await their return. It took me a day or two to get settled, after landing, and then I found myself with a great amount of time on my hands, and very little to do except attend shows. While I was delighted to have an opportunity to catch up on my theater-going activities in the evening, I had very little to do with my days. Time and fortune had scattered many of my former friends and acquaintances... and I was both lonesome and restless.

At one time in my writing career, I had worked on a series of crime articles for a well-known national magazine. While engaged in gathering material for the stories, I had met a detective sergeant attached to the Homicide Bureau named Emmet Rafferty. Rafferty was a charming Irishman, with a delightful collection of stories and a vast and unlimited knowledge of the sins of man. I made a sincere effort to cultivate his friendship. As a result, we had become good friends. Although I usually had met him during his off-duty hours I had on occasion been permitted to ride with Rafferty and his partner, a detective named Swanson. In their green-and-white squad car, I had spent a number of spectacular evenings. There had been a natural sincerity—combined with a refreshing sense of adventure—in Rafferty’s manner which had helped our friendship to develop spontaneously. This natural fellowship was strengthened by our common interest in crime. However, like all things, my series of articles came to an end, and eventually my association with Rafferty was broken when I went abroad.

Now, in the midst of my inactivity in waiting, I remembered Rafferty and wondered if it was possible to pick up the threads of our former friendship. I hesitated because of the years which had passed and the fact that we had been completely out of touch with each other. Although, actually, we had never become confidential in our friendship, and I knew little about his personal life, I felt that Rafferty would be happy to see me again. And after recalling his engaging personality, I decided to get in touch with him and invite him out to dinner.

Consequently, I called the precinct station where he had been assigned when I had known him. A rough voice answered the phone and I asked for Emmet Rafferty. The phone was silent for a moment before the voice exploded in my ear, ‘Are you kiddin’?’ and the connection was broken as the police receiver was jammed down on the hook. I stood looking at my phone in astonishment, holding the long cord in my hands and feeling a fool. The abrupt rudeness of the answer made me angry and, although the police force has never been famous for its diplomacy, my innocent inquiry had received a reply far beyond the bounds of civility.

I resolved to try again, but I wanted no further conversation with the desk man who had answered my previous call. Once again I made a call, but this time to the Homicide East Bureau, and repeated my question. Again there was a pause on the phone and my question went unanswered. Instead, the voice on the other end of the line asked who was calling. I told him. ‘I used to be a friend of Sergeant Rafferty before the war,’ I said. ‘I knew him... and his partner Swanson, too.’

‘Just a minute,’ the voice told me. ‘Hold the line.’ I waited for several minutes until another voice spoke.

‘This is Swanson. What do you want?’

Again I introduced myself. ‘I met you before the war,’ I explained. ‘As a matter of fact, I rode with you and Emmet Rafferty in your squad car...’ I could sense Swanson, on the other end, rolling the years back in his memory, trying to recall our slender connection.

Finally he said, ‘Yeah, I remember you. What’d you want to see Rafferty about?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘I just wanted to buy him a drink. I’ve been out of the country since I last saw you both. It’s been a long time and I’m only going to be here for a short stay.’

‘Didn’t you read the papers where you were?’ he asked. I could feel him selecting his words carefully.

‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘But I didn’t read anything about Emmet in the foreign papers.’

‘Maybe you better go back and read the New York papers a couple years ago,’ he said.

‘Wait!’ I exclaimed, but he had hung up and I could hear the empty tone signal.

At this point I was both exasperated and curious, I still did not know where Emmet Rafferty was, and all three of the police to whom I had talked had refused to answer me. But, at least, Swanson had given me an indirect answer. If I wanted to know, it was up to me to find out. My curiosity urged me on, and as I had nothing to do, I decided to see what the papers had to say about my friend.

That afternoon I stopped in the library of one of the daily papers and asked to see the file on Emmet Rafferty. I took the bulging Manila envelope to a table and spread the clippings before me. Sick at heart, I read them. Slowly I stuffed the stories back in the folder and returned it to the gray librarian. I felt cold and chilled and, although it was a magnificent spring afternoon in New York, the skies suddenly seemed overcast and threatening. I had a temporary guest card at the Lambs, and I made my way to the club where I had planned to have dinner. Standing at the bar, the usual carefree chatter and conversation seemed far away.

As far away as Emmet Rafferty.

I sat through a show that night without recognizing the actors or hearing a song. The newspaper clipping, with the last date line, kept appearing before my eyes and I read it over and over again, each time putting it back in the envelope but never putting it out of my mind. Suddenly it would be back before my eyes again, and a feeling of horror would grip me. I carried the feeling of unreality home with me and to bed. All night long I dreamed, seeing Rafferty as I knew him.

And then in the slow, exaggerated motions he would act out the stories in the paper.

Awakening in the morning, tired, dull, and unrefreshed, my mind had been made up. The decision had not been made consciously but I accepted it without question. I knew the end of Emmet’s story, which had played on a nightmare reel during the night. Every instinct of my mind rejected it. Although I knew the whole story as reported by the papers, I didn’t know the true story—the motives which set in action the events which culminated inevitably in the terrible clippings. It was that story, behind the clippings, which I must find out.

The fact that Rafferty’s story was now old and would never be printed meant nothing to me. But for my own sake—I hesitate to say for my own curiosity—I had to know. It was more than curiosity. It was a real and personal urge to know why such things could happen to my friend. This urge to know the true facts, the true interpretation and the reasons behind events and persons, had been sharpened by my years of writing. But more than this, the urge was propounded and propelled by my very real feeling of affection toward Rafferty. And every sense of my mind rebelled at what I had read. I could not accept it as the ultimate and final truth of the story. The fact that something terrible had happened to Emmet Rafferty was not enough. I must know why it happened. Or I would never forget the newspaper clippings.

I had nearly a week to devote to my task; the facts were here at my fingers; the persons concerned—with one or two exceptions—were in New York. I had nothing else to do except to find out what really happened to Emmet Rafferty.

On that day, I started my search back through the years.

What I found I believe I have presented truly and accurately. It is impossible to verify the conversations word for word, because, in many instances, only the two principals were involved, and there was no third witness. And after the lapse of years the other personalities and witnesses in the story can recall only specific scenes with accuracy, or the general trends of certain conversations. Many times, facts and conversations were relayed through the principals to second parties, and again the second parties can only recall them in generalities. However, I have taken the information that I gathered and put it together—from the facts I have and the memories of Emmet Rafferty as I knew him—and I sincerely believe that I have his story.

Chapter Two

 

I called Swanson at the Homicide Bureau, and when I had him on the line, I told him that I had read the stories and what I intended to do. ‘I want you to help me,’ I added.

Swanson thought a moment before replying. ‘I can’t talk so good now,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you meet me after work? I’m through at four.’ I agreed and we made plans to meet in a small bar near Times Square at four-thirty.

I was waiting for him when he came in, a big, half-bald, deliberate-moving man. He recognized me immediately and came to the booth where I was seated. We shook hands and he ordered a whisky. After the drink was served, I again brought up the reason for our meeting. He shook his head slowly.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I been thinking about it since you called. Maybe you’ll be walking on a lot of people’s toes, and maybe you’ll be hurting a lot of feelings that shouldn’t be hurt. Maybe it’s better just to leave it alone...’

‘Have you been able to leave it alone?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not entirely. At first I did an awful lot of thinking. But I kept it to myself. I wondered... sure! Who wouldn’t?’

‘Are you satisfied just to keep on wondering?’

‘Maybe. And maybe not. Emmet and me was closer than brothers... for a while. He saved my life a couple of times... just like I took him off the hook once or twice. But the department is funny. The book is shut as far as they’re concerned. They want to forget about it. It’s all over. The newspapers, too. They were pretty decent about it. Just covered it enough to protect themselves. They coulda made a big thing out of it.’

‘I’m not trying to dig it up again,’ I explained. ‘I’m only interested in one little word—why. Why did Emmet have to do what he did?’

Swanson studied his glass carefully, swirling it gently between his big fingers, watching the ice cubes circle around and around. ‘I wonder, too,’ he finally admitted softly. ‘Why couldn’t it happen to you... or to me?’ He took a breath and let it out slowly.

‘If you won’t help me, what chance do I have of ever finding out?’

He moved his shoulders uneasily. ‘It ain’t that,’ he said. ‘I’d like to help you. But I don’t know about the department. There’s too damned much politics to watch out for. I got to keep on working for the force. Maybe they don’t want me to talk...’ He finished his drink and began edging from the seat. Standing by the booth, he jammed his battered felt hat securely on his head.

‘What do you suggest?’

‘I don’t know exactly. But maybe I got an idea. First of all, talk to Emmet’s wife. If she don’t care and can give you any dope, I’ll take you in and introduce you to Captain Feinberg. He made the original assignment to Emmet of covering Rose Pauli. Maybe he can tell you something about it, if he wants to. If Feinberg goes along with you, I’ll take a chance of telling you what I know about it.’ He scribbled on a small sheet of paper, in his notebook, tore-it out and tossed it on the table. ‘That’s Katherine Rafferty’s number,’ he said and walked out.

I called the number from a booth at the back of the bar. A girl’s thin voice answered the phone and told me that her mother wasn’t home. She was working and would be back around eight that night. I secured the address and left a message that I wanted to see her mother and would be out around eight o’clock.

It was nearer to eight-thirty, though, when I walked up to the address in the Flatbush section in Brooklyn. It was a single, square, smallish building of yellow bricks, three stories high, standing on a corner and separated from a long row of blowzy brownstone houses by a vacant lot. On the main floor was a grocery store darkened and closed for the night. Above the store were two floors of small apartments which were approached by a stairway running up from the side of the grocery. I climbed the stairs, with the aid of a weak light which was hanging from the landing of the second floor. Four doors met face to face, each door bearing a scrawled name card. Unable to find the name Rafferty, I climbed an identical flight to the third floor and found the apartment.

At my knock, the door was opened immediately by a sweet-faced Irish woman. I judged her to be somewhere in her middle forties. I introduced myself and told her I had talked to her daughter that afternoon.

‘Won’t you come in?’ she invited me pleasantly, and held the door open. ‘That was Mary you talked with,’ she said.

I entered a small, perfectly square living room with two narrow windows overlooking the street. The frames around the windows and the doors were varnished oak. A round table, with a heavy velvet cloth, stood in the exact center of the room bearing a table lamp with a handpainted glass shade. An old-fashioned, massive radio console stood against the wall; it was tuned low, playing music softly. By the windows a young girl, of perhaps fifteen, was curled up on a well-worn, overstuffed davenport. She was reading a paper. There was no sign of dust, no trace of disorder. The white curtains fell plainly, and straight, away from the windows; the inexpensive pictures on the walls had been recently wiped and cleaned.

‘This is Mary...’ Katherine Rafferty waved her hand at the reading girl. A fresh, young face looked up and smiled engagingly, then went back to her reading. ‘My oldest daughter, Maureen, has a date tonight. She’s still dressing.’

As if on cue, a door opened and a tall, slender girl walked into the living room tugging at a pair of gloves. Under her arm was tucked a purse. Glistening black hair fell to her shoulders, and in the soft light of the room her eyes were cool and green. She acknowledged her mother’s introduction with the poise and assurance of true beauty. Then turning, she swiftly kissed Katherine’s cheek. T won’t be too late,’ she said softly, ‘but don’t wait up for me. Tom and I are going into Manhattan.’ She nodded again, and closed the outer door behind her. For a moment I could hear the sound of her heels tapping down the stairs.

‘She’s going to be married this summer,’ said Katherine.

‘Gosh, it’s about time,’ said Mary looking up from her paper. ‘She’s twenty-one. I’ll bet I get married when I’m eighteen.’

‘If you’re as pretty as your sister, you won’t have any trouble,’ I said. ‘I’ll bet you can do it when you’re seventeen.’

‘Now don’t be putting ideas in the child’s head,’ Katherine Rafferty smiled proudly.

‘Aw, I was just kidding anyway,’ said Mary.

I seated myself in a heavy chair covered with a slip cover, while Katherine sat down next to her daughter on the davenport. Both of them looked at me expectantly. Suddenly I was both confused and embarrassed. I didn’t know how to bring up the subject of Emmet, or even whether I should with the child sitting in the room. ‘I’m a friend of Swanson’s,’ I began slowly.’ He suggested that I talk with you.’

Katherine Rafferty immediately grasped the reason for my visit. The warmth of her smile faded, although the smile remained fixed on her face. She glanced swiftly, from the corner of her eyes, at her daughter. ‘Mary,’ she said, ‘darling, why don’t you run downstairs and visit Clara for a while?’

‘It’s getting late,’ said Mary.

‘But you wanted to, earlier this evening. We have... some business... to talk about. It’s just downstairs—go ahead.’

The girl carefully folded the paper and placed it on the table in the center of the room. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Call me when you want me.’ She left the room and started down the stairs. Katherine closed the door behind her and turned to me.

‘Why did Swanson send you to see me?’ she asked.

‘Because years ago... I was a good friend of Emmet’s. And at that time I knew Swanson, too.’

‘But what do you want?’

‘To talk about Emmet.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve been away a long time. I can’t believe what I read about Emmet. There’s too much of a difference... between the Emmet I knew and what happened to him. There must be a reason for that difference. ‘She nodded.’ There are probably a hundred reasons: otherwise it doesn’t make sense.’ I paused and looked at the woman seated on the davenport. She lowered her head and looked at her clasped hands. ‘I know it must hurt to talk about it, and if you feel that I am intruding. I apologize. I will go away...’

She sat motionless for a few moments. Finally she raised her head and looked at me. ‘Parts of it still hurt,’ she said. ‘But other parts are like a dream. I don’t know... I can’t feel it really happened. Sometimes I just sit here and wait for Emmet to walk through that door.’

I lit a cigarette and then, remembering, hastily offered her one. She refused it. ‘It must have started a long time ago,’ I said.

‘Yes. It had been happening a long time and I didn’t know about it. After a while Em told me a little but I didn’t believe it. If I had—if I had really believed it—then things might have been different. I don’t know. It wasn’t until the very end that I knew about it—in my own heart, I mean.’

I glanced around the little living room. ‘I think you’ve done a wonderful job... this home... two lovely daughters. How do you do it?’

She smiled faintly. ‘There was nothing else to do. Once, before I was married, I had worked for the telephone company. So I... just went back to work. Maureen got a job, too... and we just kept on as best we could. And—since that last night—when we all went to the Church and prayed, we’ve never mentioned it. Not once...’ her voice trailed away.

‘Tell me, what was Emmet like when you first met him... and when you were married. What did he ever tell you about himself when he was a boy?’

‘I have some pictures—I couldn’t throw them away.’ She disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a paper-wrapped bundle tied securely with string. Opening it, she displayed several old-fashioned photograph albums. ‘Perhaps these pictures will help,’ she said.

She began to talk, sometimes gesturing to a photograph. The story she was attempting to tell me concerned years that she had never known. It was the story of Emmet’s family, told broadly and indistinctly through the hearsay that she herself had heard.

Emmet Quentin Rafferty’s birthplace was a small town in the Middle West, Tomas, with a population of approximately eight thousand persons. The town was located in the fertile Raccoon River Valley region, and was the county seat of a flourishing farming section. It was a town almost entirely dependent on its agricultural economy. He was born in a small, white frame house on the edge of Tomas. The house was perfectly square, with a parlor and kitchen on the first floor and a single large bedroom on the second, which was reached by a narrow stairway, nearly as steep as a ladder, from the kitchen. A small, sagging porch ran across the front of the house. Behind the house, an outdoor privy strived to maintain its balance, and in the far corner of the back yard was a tiny chicken house with a lath-enclosed run for the fowls.

In 1905, when Rafferty was born, he was the fourth living child in the family. He had also been preceded by a stillborn brother and sister. His father Patrick—a bartender at the local hotel—was desperate for lack of space to accommodate his rapidly expanding family. He had constructed a series of attached single-story rooms to the back of the house. Doing his own carpentering and construction work, the elder Rafferty had managed to erect two additional bedrooms where the children were allocated according to sex—boys in one room, girls in the other, a laundry room, and a canning room where his wife spent the hot summers trying to hoard and store food for the winter. As the years passed, foundations sank and walls warped out of line and the patchwork collection of rooms with flat roofs, built around the original two-story house, gave the impression of a hen surrounded by small chicks.

After Emmet’s birth, two more children were added to the family, but no additional rooms. The children took their places in the community dormitories, and although his father often discussed the possibility of adding a dining room to the house, no action was ever taken. The family ate in two shifts in the linoleum-covered kitchen, the father and the boys eating first, while the mother continued cooking for the girls and babies who would follow them.

Both Patrick and Maureen Rafferty, his wife, were stern disciplinarians. Patrick’s salary offered no leeway for the luxuries of life, and the children inherited each other’s neatly patched clothes, kept them clean, and passed them on, in good condition, to the next in line. On Sundays they attended Mass, without complaint and with a knowledge there was no escape. The Catholic Church at that time, and in that section of the country, was passively tolerated by the Protestant community, although viewed with some suspicion concerning possible papist activities, and in Tomas the social line was carefully drawn between Catholics and Episcopalians.

The Rafferty family life quickly became organized into strata of authority, with each child immediately supervising the activity of his next younger brother or sister, and also in turn responsible to the next oldest sibling. The rank of authority stretched to Maureen Rafferty who was outranked only by Patrick. Patrick administered justice with a fast and flashing hand, and little dispute was ever held concerning his decisions. Right was right; wrong was wrong. In this life, right was white, wrong was black. Consequently, there was only white or black. It was as simple as that.

The older Rafferty was not illiterate, having had several years’ schooling in the old country, and he could read with ease, although writing was difficult. Like many of his class and station, he had a great respect for education and was determined that his children should attend school and pursue their educations as far as they were financially able. Consequently, when Emmet was five years old, he was entered in the Tomas public grade school. At this age the boy was sturdy, and had light-colored brown hair (which later was to become sandy) and direct, level, brown eyes. He possessed a quick and agile mind and did well in his grades.

In time, Emmet was joined in school by his brother Sean, three years his junior. Sean, the last of the children born alive to Maureen and Patrick, was a fragile, delicate child with a cast in one eye. Although he was the darling of the Rafferty family, he quickly became the butt of his classmates. Taunted and ridiculed, nicknamed ‘Cat-Eye,’ his life in the school playground was a miserable one. Emmet unhesitatingly became his guardian and protector, fighting Sean’s tormentors.

Time after time the victor in these fights, Emmet would rise to his feet and dust the dirt from his clothes, take Sean’s small hand in his own and lead him to a corner of the playground. ‘We showed the old bully, Sean, we showed ’em.’ He would wipe the red nose and grimy face of his little brother. Gently he would pat the scrawny shoulder. ‘Now you gotta stop crying, Sean...’ Sean would look up at his older brother in adoration.

By the time Emmet was ten, he was an expert warrior and an experienced wager of battles. Leaving no insult unchallenged, Emmet fought Sean’s oppressors as he found them—large and small—until at twelve he was the unchallenged champion of the school, and Sean was permitted to walk in the peace provided by the shadow of his brother.

In 1918 Emmet entered high school and immediately became one of the stars on the school’s baseball team. Amateur rules scarcely existed, and after two years with the high-school team, Emmet began playing second base for the local Tomas semipro nine which met the teams of neighboring small towns at the fairgrounds each Sunday during the summer. Furnishing his own equipment, Emmet was paid two dollars and fifty cents for his professional services.

As prohibition had now closed the bar at the old Hough House, Patrick Rafferty had difficulty finding employment. He occasionally worked as a part-time policeman in Tomas during county fair week, filled out as an extra postman during illnesses and vacations, and from Thanksgiving to Christmas clerked in one of the local dry-goods stores selling hardware. With all the children now working, with the exception of Sean who he hoped would enter the priesthood, the elder Rafferty still managed to keep his home together, proudly and fiercely, with his children’s contributions and his own efforts.

In 1922, when Emmet was graduated from the high school, time and events had started to make many changes in Tomas. Physically it was much the same, except that autos were now common, and the roads leading to Tomas were being paved. The men returning from the First World War brought back with them a restlessness and a sense of changed values. The business life of Tomas still centered around ‘the square’—a plot of ground, a small city block square, in the middle of the town. The square, in the summer, was shaded by great, old trees and the grass was cut, each week, by the fire department. In the exact, mathematical center of the ground was a round, white wooden bandstand—roofless and open to the skies. On alternating Saturday nights, when the Elk’s band gave a public concert, the open stand was covered with a tarpaulin as a protection against possible rain. Young couples strolled the streets surrounding the square, stopping in the candy stores and the soda fountains, shifting into changing street-corner groups, talking, chatting, laughing—and staying away from the square where (most likely) they would run into their parents or younger brothers and sisters.

But this old pattern was slowly being changed. Now each concert night, groups of the young people would leave the square and drive to the Hollow, a dance hall situated some five miles outside Tomas in a bend of the Raccoon River. A lightly constructed wooden building, squatting on posts projecting over the water, the Hollow featured a five-piece dance band. Rolls of tickets were sold at the door, and inside—at tables—’setups ‘of ginger ale could be ordered. The summer he was graduated from high school, Emmet was hired as a ticket taker on Saturday nights at the Hollow, but his real job was that of a private policeman and enforcer of peace, a ‘bouncer’ maintaining discipline in the hall of music. For his services, he was paid five dollars the night.

On Sundays, that summer, he continued to play baseball. Returning to town from the Hollow in the early Sunday hours, he would attend Mass and then continue home to sleep until theafternoon. Around 2:00 P.M. he would report to the ball park. That summer, the Tomas Tomahawks won the pennant in their rural league and earned some attention in the larger daily papers in the state. Emmet Rafferty received personal publicity as the star second baseman of the pennant-winning Tomahawks, which culminated in an offer of a scholarship to play ball for the State Teachers College at Amesville.

Both the older Raffertys, as well as young Sean, urged him to accept the scholarship which included tuition, books, and room in the men’s dormitory. Also the assistant athletic coach, who made the offer to Emmet, assured him that he could earn his meals by waiting on tables in the college dining room. After a series of family conferences, Emmet accepted the offer, and that fall he was enrolled at Amesville.

Although the young Rafferty, as an athlete, majored in physical education, the college made a deep impression on him. Possessing a quick, native intelligence, he did well in his classes and, while not an honor student, he stood well in the listing of his class. He easily made the ball team, and forfour years played his old position of second base. Between his studies and athletic activities, and the summer jobs from which he turned his complete earnings over to his family, Emmet had little time for girls. Although the college was coeducational, the men at that time outnumbered the women students some four to one. No girl pushed herself into his attention, and he in turn sought no one out.

His entire college career was pleasant and uneventful, and might pass without additional comment except for one incident. This incident might conceivably be interpreted as indicative of the course of his future life. It might also have been nothing but outright coincidence. But on the other hand, it must have had some bearing on Emmet’s selection of a career.

During the winter of his third year at the college, a rash of petty burglaries broke out among the small shops of Amesville. Stores would be broken into at night by a prowler, or prowlers, and ransacked for small sums of cash or merchandise. The police force of the small town was unable to cope with the situation, and the funds allotted for the three-man force did not permit the hiring of a fourth man to patrol at night. Consequently, the merchants banded together to raise a small fund to hire a merchant patrolman to check their shops at night. Emmet Rafferty, hearing of the job, applied for the position and was accepted. The businessmen left the details of his patrolling to him, and he covered the small downtown area three times each night at irregular intervals between the hours of 10 P.M. and 5 A.M.

Rafferty, now twenty years of age, was a well-conditioned athlete, quick of foot, and of tremendous strength. Carrying a weighted night stick and flashlight, he might easily have been a terrible man to meet. Whether the prowler was discouraged with the prospect or whether he left town or channeled his abilities in another direction is not known. He was never apprehended, but the burglaries stopped at the time Emmet began his patrolling, and that was what his employers wanted. He held the job throughout that winter. The following year the burglaries were not resumed, and Rafferty was not re-employed by the association.

Thus, and here I interpolate, from the very beginning years of Rafferty’s life, he seemed to associate himself with the preservation of law and order. As a youngster in grade school, he fought to protect his brother; as a high-school youth, he worked at the Hollow preventing fights and maintaining order; in college he became a merchant policeman.

It is little wonder then that in 1926, when he was graduated from the State Teachers College, he applied and took examinations for the State Police, which was then being formed. The State Police, or Highway Patrol as it was commonly called, was a new theory of law enforcement at that time in the Middle West, although several such organizations had been in operation in the East for a few years. The requirements for eligibility were high: at least two years of college education, excellent physical condition, and good character references.

Rafferty passed both the examination and rigid requirements, and then underwent a vigorous six-month trooper training course. The course was conducted by state-paid experts and covered the latest of law-enforcement techniques. The first class contained only sixty troopers, but within two years the force was increased to a total of two hundred and sixty men.

At first the men covered the busy highways of the state on motorcycles. This, however, quickly proved unsatisfactory. Not only was it highly exhausting to the men, but the high incidence of accidents rapidly decimated the list of men on active duty. It was also found that in the performance of their duties, two men working as a team were more effective than two working separately. Consequently, the men were removed from the motorcycles and put into automobiles. Two to a car, spread thinly over the ninety-nine counties of the state.

His first partner, a young law school graduate from the state university, was named Vernon Leroy. Rafferty and Leroy, in the close day-to-day intimacy of their cruising car, became close friends. Long hours spent on the endless highways, the desolate nights of winter, and the burning summer days cemented their friendship. Such friendships were not unusual on the force where men were compelled to spend so much of their life together. Close friendships were the rule rather than the exception. If antagonism existed, confined by the close quarters of the car, it was soon necessary to separate the men and transfer them to other districts to prevent head-on collisions of temper.

Rafferty and Leroy shared adjoining bunks in the trooper barracks on the Third Highway Patrol, with headquarters at Gilmore Springs. Many of their off-duty hours they spent together, dressed in civilian clothes, driving to the nearby city of Marshall.

On a bleak fall day, patrolling the busy U.S. highway which originates in Chicago and heads straight west to Denver, the two men were passed by a car driving at an excessive speed. The car, swinging out to pass them, nearly collided with another auto approaching from the opposite direction. The offending driver continued his breakneck speed without a backward glance. Rafferty and Leroy took up pursuit and trailed the car for ten miles, passing through several small towns during the chase, before closing in. The single occupant of the car, the driver, did not arouse undue suspicion in the two troopers, who believed him to be either drunk, reckless, or both. On a straightaway stretch of the highway, the offending machine was overtaken, and the troopers’ car—angling in against the front fender—forced the driver to pull over to the shoulder of the road and come to a halt. Leroy, seated beside Rafferty who was at the wheel, slipped from his seat on the right side of the car and approached the waiting driver. As he reached the back of the troopers’ car, he crossed over to the left side and stepped on the running board of the strange car. Immediately the driver lifted a revolver which he had been holding on his lap and poured two shots into the unsuspecting trooper’s head. Leroy dropped in the road.

Rafferty, in the meantime, had relaxed from his grueling chase, and was lighting a cigarette when the shots rang out. Surprised, and with his back turned to the stopped car, he did not see Leroy fall. Instinctively, he opened the door on his side of the car and a third shot ploughed the length of his left arm from the elbow to the wrist. With his right hand, he released the service revolver from the holster attached to a belt on the outside of his tunic, and plunged through the open door, which Leroy had not closed, on the right side. The suspect, in the meantime, had started the motor of his car, backed away to clear the police machine, and was attempting to pass it and continue down the highway. The car passed Rafferty, who was now pulling himself to his feet, by only a few feet. He fired three shots, one of which punctured the front tire of the escaping machine. It swerved crookedly, held to the road for only a moment, then plunged out of control into the ditch where it turned over. As the driver climbed from the crumped machine, Rafferty shot him in the chest.

It was only then that Rafferty realized Leroy had been hurt. He knelt beside his friend on the concrete highway. He was dead. The murderer was identified as a small-time crook, wanted at that time only for the stolen car he was driving. But the experience taught Rafferty a lesson; one he was never to forget. Never again did he approach a criminal, a crook, or a suspicious person without caution. Alertness in a police officer is better protection than a paid-up life insurance policy. The experience indoctrinated Rafferty with a hatred of killers he continued to carry most of his life.

At this point the story of Emmet Rafferty’s life began to take on warmth. Up to now Katherine Rafferty could tell me only of events which had happened before she knew Emmet. Events during years when she had not known he was alive; a bare recital of facts which she had heard, but which had never touched her. Now, her life met that of Emmet’s.