River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1914-06-18
CHAPTER II.
Detective Michael Kearney.

Imagination, ana the psyche
logical theories of Munsterberg and
Lombroso did not interest him. His
life was given to dealing with the raw
Subtitle actual criminal and the &C
tual crime. He never shaped a theory.
The district attorney and his assistants
could indulge In that after he had
turned in the evidence.
Kearney went on the cops" as the
department slang has it, when he was
t~wenty-three years old. He had done
two years work at the polls in his cleo
ton precinct, and his father before
him had been a politician. He was
among the humble but nevertheless eff
fcient and necessary toilers in the
great political machine which for so
many years controlled the government
of New York.
In the police school Kearney was
taught how to heel a crook, how to
strangle an assailant, how to suddenly
shoot upward the heavy base of his
big right hand to the chin of a foe
from the underworld and shock his
brain with the jolt and other essen
LldtS WulCu uG WOIhC0 u Win 0O56NO
application and terrific sweat on the
wrestling mats in the training room.
After this kindergarten training
Kearney went to the Identification
school, where he was taught the art OF
keeping a fellow human branded with
his guilt until the day of his death.
At a little desk of the same style OF
oO~.ku,1ok;On that {c I1,0d in tho nnhlj0
schools ne sat for days, listening keen
ly to lectures and watching his instruc-
tor draw on the blackboard human
prOiles and sketches of ears and noses.
Here he developed the power of Obser-
walton and also strengthened his mem
DRY.
AS Kearney advanced in his profess
sion he became known as a detective
who neve stopped on a trail until he
had caught up with the quarry. After
five years he was made a first grade
lieutenant at headquarters. He had
become a silent, almost Sullen, man,
looked up to by those under him and
feared by those over him, who drew
larger salaries. but who had less capac-
ity as man hunters.
If any of the sense of humor had
come to him with his Irish blood Kear-
ney lost it in early youth with other
boyish pleasures.
But Kearney had one pleasure in life.
This pleasure was his home. 1t was
not the home Of the average man of
thirty years, with a contented wife and
growing children, but it was good
enough for Kearney, for his old mother
kept it spotlessly clean and snug for
him. and therein she w~orshiped her
only son. In a comfortable little fiat
in the lower east side mother and son
lived. She was all the world to him,
and he was the apple of her eye.
The day before the trial of James
Montgomery for murder Kearney start
ed home after a long conference with
a young assistant district attorney who
had been given the case for proSecu-
ton. They had gone over the evil
dence together carefully. and both had
agreed, with considerable satisfaction,
that the jury would surely bring in a
verdict of murder in the second degree
If it failed to bring in a first degree
verdict entailing death in the chair.
Counsel had beer appointed by a
justice in the criminal division OF the
supreme court, as Montgomery was
f~riendleSs and pennileSS. An effort had
been made to have this lawyer plead
guilty to manslaughter for the de-
PENDANT. The docket was heavy. and
time and expense would be saved. For
thus helping out the county. Montgom-
cry would be repaid with a sentence 90
fifteen or twenty years. But the boys
counsel reported that his client insist
ed on his innocence and refused to
plead guilty TO any degree Of crime.
Mike Kearney was satisfied. His evi-
dence was all in shape. He left the
cracked, dirty, criminal courts build
ing on Center street and threaded his
way into the lower east side. On Oh
iver street, close to the old Cherry hill
section, he came to a three story brick
building that had been a fine residence
In the days when Canal street was the
city's northern boundary. 1t had been
made over into fats, and his home was
on the top floor.
At the head of the top flight of stairs
his mother stood waiting for him. She
kissed him and, with a hand on his
arm, escorted him into the kitchen of
the fiat. She pulled a chair up to the
kitchen table and hung up his hat and
coat.
The room was spotless and had a
wholesome, homely aspect. The only
picture on the kitchen walls-and the
kitchen was also the dining room for
mother and NV that of the Say
four.
At the two open windows a gentle