Lieutenant of Detectives Joseph Fenton of Homicide West was remembering
some of the others. The tragic and unusual cases, the sensational
ones, the kind that stayed in the headlines for weeks and months and
increased the circulation of newspapers from coast to coast by hundreds
of millions of copies.
He sat staring down at his best lead so far, the only lead he could
really sink his teeth into, wishing to hell he didn't have to remember.
He drummed with his fingers on the desktop and hunched his shoulders
a little. He was making a big mistake and he knew it. It was always a
mistake to think back across the years when he had a job to do that
called for a maximum of effort and concentration. It made him feel
guilty and took the edge off his keenness. It was the worst kind of
mistake but he kept on making it, because murder was always a shock to
him.
Every time he saw a beautiful white body stretched out cold on a
mortuary slab he remembered how he'd fainted at the sight of the first
one, twenty-five years in the past when he'd been a young rookie.
Just fallen to the floor and passed out, the way medical students
sometimes do when they first have to dissect a cadaver--the organs
are put in separate trays, each neatly labeled--and even experienced,
case-hardened surgeons when an operation is especially sanguinary ...
like on the human eye, for instance. He'd read that somewhere, and he
didn't doubt it, not for a moment.
Well ... there was no danger of that happening to him now. He'd seen
too many of the really gruesome ones, and the badly marked up ones, and
the "floaters" with no fingerprints left to identify them by, every
vestige of flesh dissolved away by weeks in the water, and ... the
beautiful unmarked ones who were in some respects the most tragic of
all.
He had watched many of them carried away in baskets, feeling angry
and resentful but forcing himself to remain calm, refusing to let the
photographers and print men suspect that he was dying himself a little
inwardly, and had kept right on dying, inch by slow inch, across the
years. His hair was white now and his face a little more heavily lined
than it should have been, but otherwise it didn't show on the surface.
In some of them he had sensed a strange kind of peace--like a hand
reaching out to touch him from beyond the grave; cool, steady, no
longer feverish. But over most of them there still seemed to hover a
penumbra of violence, a crying out for vengeance and retribution, a
protest that even death could not wholly silence.
There was no need for him to remind himself that the Lathrup case
was one of the explosively violent ones, with that strange residual
violence remaining, making itself felt, every time his thoughts
returned to it. Not only in the magazine office itself, with her
loveliness only slightly marred by the small, dark hole in her
temple--the wound had bled profusely, but the blood had not spread over
her features--but later, when the body had been lifted into a sheet,
and removed from the office, and the last flash-bulb had gone off
and he'd been left alone with the medical examiner. He had been just
the same as being completely alone, because Hunter had completed his
preliminary examination, and his thoughts were back in a smoke-filled
room where a poker game was in progress. To Hunter it had been no more
than a routine interruption, breaking in on a winning hand and making
him so morose and ill-tempered that Fenton, who had always found him a
hard man to deal with, had shut up after asking him only two questions.
The residual violence was there, all right, a something in the room
that seemed to point an accusing finger, to demand that justice be not
too long delayed, to threaten reprisals if the vanished killer were
not relentlessly tracked down and made to answer for his crime. It was
a feeling Fenton had--nothing more. The threat of reprisal was not
directed at him, but at the nebulous entity known as society. But it
was always there, always present, a demand for retribution from beyond
the grave, a screaming and a pleading, an insistence that justice be
done or all hell would yawn for someone.
All right, it was only something he imagined, peculiar to him alone.
But he knew from experience that it was unwise to take even imagined
horrors lightly. They were part of a man's thinking, his inner life,
his individuality. It was a mistake to take them _too_ seriously, but
just as bad to brush them aside as of no importance.
All right, the violence had been there, but in another way the office
had seemed the opposite of crepe-somber. It had seemed still filled
with her living presence, as if she were still striding back and forth
from her desk to the window, or sitting at her desk impatiently talking
into the intercom.
That she had been a strong-willed, very determined woman despite
her aspect of pulse-stirring femininity he'd strongly suspected
the instant he'd entered the office with its costly but severely
functional furnishings. The choice of furnishings had quite obviously
not been influenced in any way by feminine whims and extravagances.
No woman, surely, would have really liked such severity in the décor
surrounding her. But a woman determined to keep her professional and
private lives in separate compartments might well have made such a
choice deliberately and taken pride in her ability to impose a severe
discipline upon herself.
The conclusion he'd drawn, the kind of woman he'd pictured her as
being, hadn't been based on anything very solid. It had been a
mere hunch at first, a gathering together of intangibles. But the
few questions he'd had an opportunity to ask the editorial staff
immediately on his arrival had completely confirmed it. She'd been a
considerable woman, and had ruffled a great deal of fur the wrong way,
apparently, and there had probably been some baring of claws.
Well ... all right. The Lathrup slaying was one of the sensational
ones. It would arouse widespread indignation if it were not solved
quickly and even more indignation if it remained unsolved for the next
fifty years, as well it might. If the murderer was caught and stood
trial--the newspapers would have no reason to complain and it would
enrich a great many other people in a dozen or more ways, perhaps even
the murderer himself if he wrote the story of his life for a major news
syndicate the week before he went to the chair.
He couldn't take it with him--but what the hell. There'd be the thrill
of making all that money overnight. Or was the stipulation that a
murderer couldn't profit from his crime a bugaboo in that department
too? Thirty years on the Force, and he still didn't know for sure.
Well ... there was nothing to be gained by shaking his head and
dwelling with anger and pity on the tragic circumstances of a crime he
could have done nothing to prevent. Her beauty, so cruelly hidden now
from all but the eyes of a mortician--there would be a brief moment
when it would be again on view--every aspect of her personal life;
the way she'd walked and talked and held herself, her wardrobe, her
personal likes and dislikes, the friends she'd made, the enemies who
did not think too highly of her, her jewels, her rumored affairs, her
choice of restaurants, had all become the emotional property of the
public.
Not too short a life perhaps. But to die at thirty-six always
meant ... many of the great moments, the moments of complete
fulfillment and happiness, however brief, which every human being
born into the world had a right to look forward to, would never be
experienced at all. A cruel and tragic outrage had been perpetrated
upon her, cutting off her life in mid-stream.
That the outrage could be attributed to the inscrutable workings of
Fate or Destiny or whatever you cared to call the big, continuously
revolving wheel ... that it struck down thousands of women just as
beautiful every day all over the world ... that illness and accidents
took a far more grievous toll ... did not diminish by one whit the
tragedy of it. And when it was brought about by a deliberate act of
willful criminal violence it had a special quality which made it seem a
hundred times more cruel and unjust.
Fenton looked down at the three letters, spread fanwise on the desk
before him. Each was neatly typewritten, neatly creased and just as
neatly signed in a firm, precise hand. _Michael Willard._
An article writer, and a good one, if the staff at Eaton-Lathrup were
right about him and there was no reason to doubt their competence.
A free-lance article writer who had quarreled violently with Helen
Lathrup three weeks before her death. Fenton had found the letters in
the slain woman's desk.
Each was a hot-tempered letter and one was extremely violent, not quite
threatening Lathrup with bodily harm but strongly hinting that such
harm might be visited upon her if she did not correct what the writer
claimed was a _very serious_ mistake.
It seemed incredible to Fenton that anyone, no matter how enraged,
would send a prominent editor such threats and sign the letters with
his own name.
The man had practically started himself on a walk to the chair. And
that particularly irritated Fenton, because Willard would have to be
captured before he could complete the walk, and a three-state alert had
proved as ineffective in locating him as a fast-moving city dragnet and
three Westchester roadblocks in the vicinity of his suburban home....
Fenton was still frowning down at the letters, the only strong lead he
had, when someone said from the doorway: "He's given himself up."
Fenton looked up quickly, annoyed, the statement not registering
immediately, as First Grade Detective John Gallison had apparently
assumed it would.
Gallison was a big man, almost as big as Fenton, and he had much the
same look about him--the look of a man aged in some ways beyond his
years, but with a curiously unlined face, and the almost boyish aspect
that seems to hover until late in life about big, ruggedly built men
with beat-up features who never take the trouble to comb their hair.
"What is it, Gallison?" Fenton asked, and then the words themselves
penetrated, and he rose from his desk, a look of stunned disbelief in
his eyes.
"Is it Willard you're talking about?"
"Who else?" Gallison said, coming into the office and sitting down
opposite Fenton in a chair that was two sizes too small for him.
"He came in and gave himself up. He said he knew we'd found the
letters, and it would only be prolonging the agony for him to hide out
in a furnished room somewhere and live in fear until we closed in on
him. He thought of heading north into Canada, or south into Mexico,
and even of hopping a freighter to South America. That's what he said,
believe it or not. I'm practically quoting his exact words."
"Well, what made him change his mind? We've had such a tough job
tracing him he could have gotten all the way to Brazil by this time.
If you're going to tell me he was afraid the Brazilian non-extradition
policy doesn't cover murder ... skip it. I'm not in a very humorous
mood right now."
Gallison smiled slightly. "He said he just wasn't capable of it. Too
sensitive, too imaginative, too afraid of life in the buff to take it
by the horns that way. I'm still quoting him. He said he was never cut
out to be a fugitive. Anything connected with the police terrifies him.
If a Government agent should call on him about some trivial, completely
innocent matter he'd have a heart attack. He just can't take that sort
of thing. He has made a full confession. He says he killed her because
she pulled an outrageous gyp on him."
"Yes, I know," Fenton said. "It's what he claims in these letters.
He claims he wrote a series of articles for her about juvenile
delinquency, and I guess you saw the major, six-million-dollar movie
that was based on his material. The Clark Gable-Monroe sort of thing.
And now it's on TV, a two-year contract for a weekly series and I think
the sponsor is General Motors, but I'm not sure. In case you don't
know, all of that is about as big-time as you can get. It would make
practically any writer feel entitled to walk down Fifth Avenue shoulder
to shoulder with the biggest names in TV and stop for a moment to shake
the paw of the MGM lion. The lions in front of the library would look
that way to him."
"He says he didn't get a cent out of it," Gallison said. "Not one
single penny."
"That's hard to believe," Fenton said. "It seems he sold the
Eaton-Lathrup Publications all rights to the material. I haven't looked
too deeply into the technicalities involved in such transactions
but I'm pretty sure that 'all rights' means exactly what it says.
If a magazine buys material on that basis it is entitled to all of
the profits accruing from subsequent re-sales, to TV, the movies or
whatever."
"Willard practically admits that," Gallison said. "In fact--"
"Wait a minute," Fenton said, a little impatiently. "Let me finish.
It's my understanding that not many of the really big magazine groups
buy all rights. There's usually a contract involved, with a stipulation
in it concerning the rights. And even when they do buy all rights
they're seldom one hundred percent legalistic about it. They'll often
lean backwards to see that the author gets a break, gets at least a
slice of the pie if the work passes into the so-called big-time. I
don't know how Lathrup felt about that or just what her policy was, of
course. But if he claims he's been gyped out of money he's entitled
to in a strictly _legal_ sense, I don't believe he has a legal leg to
stand on. Not if he sold the group all rights, with no reservations
whatever."
"That's just it," Gallison said. "That's where he claims she took
advantage of him. He says that, like plenty of other writers, he's
no businessman. You'd laugh to hear the way he's been going on about
that, if he wasn't a self-confessed murderer. Nothing a murderer says
or does is ever funny. But the way he put it would have gone over big
on a TV comic program. He claims he has no more business sense than a
two-year-old; would sign any contract that was pushed under his nose
without looking at even the large print, let alone the fine. He claims
he's--well, the term he used was 'a commercial imbecile.' He takes a
sort of pride in it. And he thought she understood that some writers
were like that--some of the biggest names, in fact, in the writing
business.
"They can't even bring themselves to glance twice at a contract.
It's not important to them, they're way off in the clouds somewhere,
figuring what their characters are going to say and do in the next
chapter."
"He could be right about that," Fenton said, sighing. "Up to a point
anyway. I've known two or three big-name mystery writers in my time,
and my wife sort of--well, collects them. Writers in general, I mean,
along with painters and musicians. It's an odd hobby for the wife of an
old police warhorse, but show me just one thing I can really understand
about women and I'll get you a lieutenancy tomorrow, if I have to go
down to Center Street myself and beg for it. You'd be the biggest asset
the Homicide Squad could possibly have."
It was Gallison's turn to sigh. "I guess I'm the way Willard is about
contracts when it comes to understanding women," he said. "You seem to
forget I've been married myself for fifteen years. Every day my wife is
a different kind of woman. But the big difference came between the day
before and the day after I married her."
"It's usually that way," Fenton said. "You wake up and discover your
wife is a human being."
His expression sobered abruptly. "Where is Willard now? In a cell or
still under the lights. If you've got a signed confession--"
"We've got it, all right--signed, sealed and delivered."
"So you just went ahead without even consulting me, is that it? What am
I supposed to be around here--a rookie fresh from the asphalt?"
"It couldn't be helped, Lieutenant.... It all happened so fast."
"John! You're asking for trouble, boy!"
"All right then, Joe. I swear it really couldn't be helped. It all just
poured out of him, so fast we had trouble in taking it down and had to
ask him to read it over three times. We wouldn't have laid a finger on
him, anyway. You know that as well as I do."
"Sometimes I wonder. A cop can get terribly angry at times and once,
about four years ago, I saw something I deliberately shut my eyes
to, and I've never regretted it. They had this ... human animal ...
stripped to the waist in the tank room and were ... well, never mind.
He committed a brutal sex crime and when they were through with him ...
they had a full confession. I just turned on my heels and walked out."
"We still wouldn't have laid a finger on Willard."
"I know, I know. I guess I'd better have a talk with him."
* * * * *
Willard was sitting alone in a cell that dwarfed him a little,
despite its narrowness, because he was both a very small and a very
frail-looking man. Fenton put his age at about forty-five, although he
could have been four of five years older.
He didn't look very much like a writer, but Fenton knew that few
writers conformed to the picture people had of them. In general, they
looked remarkably like everybody else.
Willard was about five-feet-two in his socks, and he was in them now
because both his belt and his shoes had been taken away from him.
He had thoughtful gray eyes, and rather handsome features and there
was nothing in the least aggressive-looking about him. He was hard to
picture with a gun in his hand, taking deliberate aim and shooting a
defenseless woman through the head. It was difficult even, to think of
him as a man with a violent temper who could write threatening letters
or resort to any kind of extreme physical violence, even under the
goadings of rage.
He looked up quickly when Fenton and Gallison entered the cell and then
got slowly to his feet.
Fenton frowned a little and gestured toward the cot upon which he had
been sitting.
"Sit down, please," he said. "No sense in standing. We're just going to
have a brief talk and then you can see your lawyer, if you wish. You
don't have to say a word, if you prefer to wait until he gets here.
It's my duty to tell you that, even though you've signed a confession.
Anything you may decide to tell us can be used as evidence in court,
in addition to the information in the statement you've just signed. Is
that clear to you?"
Willard nodded and sat down again on the edge of the cot. "What does
all that matter now?" he said. "I'm going to plead guilty anyway. I
killed her because--well, you don't know what kind of woman she was,
so you probably won't be able to understand how a man can be driven to
desperation--"
"I've just read the statement you made," Fenton said. "It doesn't tell
me what kind of woman she was, but it tells me a great deal about you.
I've read the letters you wrote to her as well. You seem to feel that
you've been very shabbily treated. I would like to know a little more
about that."
"What more can I say? What more can I possibly say? When a writer who
has lived most of his life on a very modest income loses at least a
hundred thousand dollars--"
"You mean ... your rightful share in what your series of articles
has brought the Eaton-Lathrup publications in cash so far? Or will
bring them within the next few months? Or merely what you _believe_
should be your rightful share, putting aside for the moment all legal
considerations. You signed a contract giving the concern all rights,
didn't you?"
"Yes, but she gave me to believe--"
"Just what did she give you to believe?"
"That she was prepared to be very generous about the entire matter if
the articles should make a great deal of money for the magazines. She
wouldn't hold me to the strict letter of the contract. She'd waive the
'all rights' clause. A great many magazines do that. It's taken for
granted--"
"I see. But are you sure about that? Don't you think you should have
made sure before signing the contract, if you had any doubts at all?
There's nothing in the least unethical about a magazine group buying
all rights, you know. It's their privilege under the law."
"But she knew how impractical most writers are! She knew how--well,
yes, even infantile they can be about such things. And she made me feel
that she was my friend, that she'd never dream of taking advantage of
me in any way."
"But she didn't, if you signed a contract giving the concern all
rights, unqualifiedly, with no strings attached."
"And I still say she did! She led me on, deceived me. She--"
He was on his feet again now and some of the mildness, the constrained
look, the look that _didn't_ make him look like a man who might be
capable of resorting to violence under stress, was gone from his eyes.
"She led me on, I tell you. There was something about her, something I
mistook for great generosity and warmth--"
Fenton looked at him steadily for a moment, carefully weighing what
he was about to say. He asked the question in a quiet tone, but he
knew that it was emotionally charged, and strategically just the right
question to put to the man at that particular moment.
"Were you her lover, Willard?"
Willard flushed scarlet and lowered his eyes.
"Were you?"
Willard compressed his lips and said nothing, but a look of torment had
come into his eyes.
"You slept with her, didn't you, Willard?"
"Yes, damn you!" There was a look of naked agony in the frail man's
eyes now, and the words came out choked with rage.
Then, quite suddenly, he was trembling violently, clenching his fists
like a man deranged.
"Why don't you ask me if she was good in bed? Or if I was? Haven't
you a spark of decency in you? I've heard of the third degree but a
question like that is worse. Oh, damn you to hell!"
"Why, Willard? I mean--why do you feel it's such an indecent question,
a question I've no right to ask? You've confessed to a very serious
crime. You've confessed to--I'm going to use another police term I hope
won't shock your sensitive spirit too much--you've confessed to what we
call the Big One. You can't stand on the niceties when you've taken a
human life--or question the right of a policeman, sworn to uphold the
law, to ask what, under ordinary circumstances, you might consider a
damned impertinent question, an invasion of privacy. Sensitive women,
wives and mothers, have been asked far franker questions on the witness
stand. There are times when every question must be asked and answered,
no matter how much it may anger you or make you writhe."
Perhaps, deep in Willard's nature, there was a submerged substratum of
logic ... a willingness to give ground before an incontestable fact or
an argument he could not hope to win. Fenton knew that to be true of
the more volatile types ... on some occasions, at any rate.
Most of the anger went out of Willard's eyes and he sat down again on
the edge of the cot, and cradled his head in his arms.
Fenton took a different tack. "The statement you signed wasn't too
clear in a few respects," he said, casting a glance at Gallison that
was generously forgiving, but still a little on the withering side.
"I'd like to go over a few of the details with you. Just what happened
when you entered the office and Miss Lathrup looked up and saw you
standing there with a gun in your hand? Just what did you say to her
before you shot her--and what did she say to you? Was she genuinely
frightened from the start? It would be strange if she wasn't, but I'd
like to have you tell me more about it in your own words. There are a
few other questions I'd like to have answered. Take your time, try to
think clearly. I'm not pressuring you. It's just that we've got to be
convinced that every statement in your confession is true."
Willard looked up quickly, some of the anger sweeping back into his
eyes. "Why should you need to be convinced? Don't you sometimes slap
around poor devils who are completely innocent just to get _any_ kind
of a confession out of them?"
"You've been reading too many paperback novels," Fenton said.
"I'm not a fiction writer," Willard said. "I haven't read a paperback
novel in five years."
"You should," Fenton said, wryly. "Some of the strongest, most
realistic writing in America today is being done in that field. But
cops get slandered in them a helluva lot. Not always, but sometimes.
Some of the writers don't seem to like cops too well. They are often
very sensitive, imaginative guys themselves and they don't like what
cops sometimes do, even when they try to be very hard-boiled and call
a spade a spade. And I won't deny that cops sometimes do step a little
over the line. But it isn't as bad as you might think. Not nearly as
bad."
"I've only your word for that."
"You may take my word for it. I've been on the force for thirty years.
You get sadists in any department of life--I'll challenge anyone to
deny that. And if an innocent man happens to get a bad break--comes up
against the wrong kind of cop--it can be very bad. You could justify
a certain degree of cop hatred in almost anyone on other grounds.
The world we live in isn't for children. If cops were mild-mannered
intellectuals, or held completely modern, psychiatric views about
crime--and the causes of crime--society in general might be in for
trouble on a day-to-day realistic basis."
"It might not do any harm at all if we gave it a try," Willard said.
"On a theoretical level there are times when I'm inclined to agree
with you," Fenton said. "But there's another part of my nature that
says there has to be a kind of binding cement to hold society together
meanwhile--I mean, until Utopia's here. Cops have to be picked for
toughness--to a certain extent. But that doesn't mean they can't
be completely fair. A lot of them lean backwards to be fair, will
be a big brother to young hoodlums if they think there's an ounce
of decency left in them and all they need is a little of that 'not
being completely rejected' feeling to give them a different slant on
things. You know what I mean. But some cops can be sadistic, mean, even
downright vicious. I would be the last to deny it."
Fenton smiled, trying his best to bring a little warmth into his words,
to get the man on the cot to trust him. "There are times when I don't
like cops myself, any better than you do. It's a very human feeling.
Could I go any further than that, considering that I'm supposed to be
just about as tough as they come in some respects, being a Lieutenant
of Detectives on the Homicide Squad?"
"What do you want to know?" Willard asked. "What do you want me to tell
you? I walked into her office and shot her dead. Isn't that all down on
the record now? Haven't I confessed to it?"
"It still needs a little filling out," Fenton said. "Suppose we start
at the beginning and just go over it all again, step by step."
A half hour later Fenton sat again at his desk, drumming with his
fingers on the big double-file spread out before him.
Gallison hadn't seated himself this time. He stood awkwardly shifting
his weight from foot to foot, and casting an occasional glance toward
the window and at the large framed photograph of an Inspector in
uniform on the opposite wall--Inspector Henry Millard, who had been
dead for twenty years. He did not seem to want continuously to meet and
hold Fenton's level, almost accusing gaze.
"He didn't do it," Fenton said. "I knew that the instant I started
questioning him, but I had to make sure, beyond the faintest
possibility of a doubt. All of the things he told me--and at least
one-third of the details in his signed confession--are completely wide
of the mark. He wasn't there, didn't shoot her, couldn't even tell me
how she'd looked in falling fifteen seconds after the shot was fired.
How she must have looked, I mean, for her head and shoulders to strike
the desk the way they did, upsetting an ashtray, and to be consistent
with the position she was in when Miss Prentiss found her. And the body
wasn't moved--not a half-inch--until we arrived.
"Other things--a dozen, at least. I had the impression he wasn't even
sure just where the bullet had entered her head. Oh, a murderer can be
mistaken about many things, way off in some respects. But not quite
that far off. Not nearly that far off, in fact, when he's studied
everything published in the papers about the case, and has been in that
office many times. There were details we didn't tell the reporters,
details he couldn't possibly have known and he was completely
wrong about all of them, with one or two exceptions. And that only
strengthens the case against him--the very damaging evidence which
proves that he wasn't the killer and couldn't possibly have been."
Fenton nodded, his fingers still tapping on the file. "You'd naturally
expect him to be right about one or two things, even if they didn't
appear in the papers. He's no dumb-bell. He couldn't have written those
juvenile delinquency articles and foster-fathered a major movie if he
was. He'd naturally be pretty good at guessing games. It's always the
exceptions which strengthen, lend real weight, to that kind of rule."
Fenton cleared his throat. "It's like in medicine. You take a very
rare, unusual kind of disease. Say there are twenty symptoms which are
very diagnostic of that particular disease. But one of them only occurs
in one case of the disease out of a hundred. And the patient has that
one symptom, along with the others. Now ... let's say that in the whole
United States, in the course of the year, only about two hundred people
die of that rare disease.
"Don't you see what I'm driving at Gallison--or do you? It would
have to mean that only about two people die from that disease with
that particular symptom attached to it every year out of a nation of
a hundred and seventy-five million people. According to the law of
averages, how likely would the patient be to have the disease? The very
symptom which does sometimes occur in connection with the disease--but
rarely--which you might think would strengthen the diagnosis, actually
helps to weaken it, to make it so unlikely as to practically eliminate
the possibility that the patient could have it."
"So it's medicine he's talking about now," Gallison said, unable to
keep a slight trace of acidity out of his voice, but wishing, almost
instantly, that he hadn't spoken at all.
"I only used that as an example," Fenton said, his voice sharpening
slightly. "But it spells the difference between a crack medical
diagnostician and a bad one. It's always those little, subtle
intangibles you have to take into consideration. And that's really just
another way of saying you have to have imagination to be either a good
cop or a good doctor."
A slightly wistful look came into Fenton's eyes. "I sometimes wish I'd
taken up medicine. Healing people is much better than wallowing in the
kind of ugly--Oh, well, skip it."
"But you can't clear a self-confessed murderer completely on that basis
alone," Gallison protested. "His confession could be off in a hundred
ways, and he could still be guilty. At least ... it would remain a
possibility. You practically just admitted that yourself. If we had
other evidence ... and we do have a little additional evidence ... we
could still take it before a jury."
"You mean the DA could," Fenton said, his voice becoming tinged with
the kind of impatience a grammar-school teacher might have displayed
toward a pupil who had just pulled a boner in geography. "What are you
trying to do--add to our burdens? The DA could take it before a jury,
all right. But he'd get his ears pinned so far back that the next time
he ran for election it would be as a dog-catcher. Did you ever hear of
an alibi, Gallison? Or is that too involved a point of law for you?"
Lieutenant Fenton sighed heavily and his voice softened a little.
"Sorry, Gallison. That was a lousy thing for me to say. But at least
you know that I wasn't pulling rank on you. It's something I've never
done or never will do--unless you come in here and toss your badge on
the desk and I have to hand it back to you and tell you to go through
channels."
"Okay, Joe. I understand. Don't let it worry you."
"A policeman shouldn't have nerves, I guess. But things have been
moving a little too fast for me in this case."
"Just how good is his alibi?" Gallison asked.
"Iron-plated," Fenton said. "And of course it isn't _his_ alibi in a
strict sense, because he didn't even present it to us. It's an alibi
we'll have to force him to accept as absolute proof that he couldn't
have done it, because we want him to walk out of here without
hallucinating when we release him. Otherwise someone might get the idea
that this is a side wing of Bellevue. We've done our best so far to
create that impression anyway."
"You mean--you think he may be ... a psycho?"
"Yes--and no," Fenton said.
"That's sure enlightening. Gets right back to what you just said about
medical diagnosis. Maybe you should have been a psychiatrist, Joe."
"Maybe I'd better explain. He's not only a very brilliant writer of
true-fact crime articles for the better magazines, with the stress
placed on juvenile delinquency--he happens to be pretty much of a
confirmed alcoholic. The wild binge kind--once in every three or four
weeks he loses a week-end. Completely, goes absolutely blotto."
"Like in that Jackson novel that made such a big splash about twelve or
fifteen years ago, you mean? I remember the movie even better than I do
the book, but I read the book--"
"We seem to be very literary today," Fenton said. "Everywhere we turn
in this case we come up against famous novels, or big-name writers or
major movies or guys with a grievance against female editors. I suppose
that's only to be expected--considering what kind of murder it was and
where it took place. But it's hard to understand why so much of it has
to drift our way in a single day. To answer your question--yes, he's
the _Lost Week-End_ kind of heavy drinker."
"Then why did you say 'yes--and no,' when I asked you if he was a
psycho?"
"Because it's not a term you can use loosely when you're talking about
alcoholics. What I guess I should say is--it's not a term you should
use _un_ambiguously. It had to be 'Yes--and no,' with a lot of half-way
stages in between. There is such a thing as alcoholic insanity, you
know--a clear-cut psychosis with very definite symptoms. You can get
alcoholic softening of the brain, which is something else again,
because it's physical as well as mental and it's usually fatal. You can
be just a periodic drinker--not a hopeless alcoholic at all, although
you'll be headed that way--and have the D.T.'s occasionally. Or you can
be a very heavy, constant drinker and never have the D.T.'s.
"It all depends on how alcohol affects you. Just a little alcohol, for
instance, could give Edgar Allan Poe the D.T.'s. And when a man has the
D.T.'s, he's a psychotic, if only temporarily. Or behaves like one in
all respects. And just constant, heavy drinking can make a man behave
so erratically at times you could practically call him a psycho. And
when a man is dead drunk, under any circumstances, would you say his
behavior was merely neurotic?
"The thing you've got to remember about heavy drinking--periodic or
otherwise--is that one of the things it most often does is bring about
memory lapses. Very serious memory lapses--prolonged blackout periods.
And that especially applies to the _Lost Week-End_ kind of drinker."
"So Willard had a memory lapse and couldn't remember whether he shot
her or not. Is that what you're trying to say?"
Fenton shook his head. "Nothing of the sort. You're forgetting about
the alibi, apparently."
"Sorry I interrupted."
"Think nothing of it. But I'd be very grateful if you'd listen
carefully. I'm just giving you a few simple facts about alcoholism."
"Not as a warning, I hope. I hardly ever touch the stuff."
"I'll just bet. I might have gone for that idea--that he couldn't
remember if he'd shot or not, if we hadn't got all this new information
about him just in the last hour. He's had memory lapses going back ten
or twelve years. He's been in the Bellevue alcoholic ward seven times.
And he just happened to be there on the morning of the murder. He was
picked up the night before in a bar on West Eighth Street, after a
brawl that was a little on the special side. He was roaring drunk and
he blackened the eye of one of his drinking companions and knocked the
other down, almost giving him a concussion.
"They were good friends of his, so they covered up for him. No police
charge was lodged against him. But he was carted off to Bellevue and
he remained there for two days. I don't believe in murder by thought
control, do you?"
"But why did he confess? It makes no sense at all to me."
"Doesn't it? It makes plenty of sense to me and I'm sure it will to you
if you'll give it a little thought. You know what guilt feelings can
do to an alcoholic, don't you? You must have arrested at least a dozen
drunks in the last ten years who were burning up with impatience to
confess. To homicides they didn't and couldn't have committed."
"Yeah, that's true enough," Gallison said.
"You saw what she meant to him, how he felt about her. When I just
asked him if he'd slept with her it set off a trigger-mechanism in
his brain. It was like a delayed time bomb. He was dead sober when he
turned himself in and confessed, but alcoholics can be dead sober and
still have a kind of emotional hangover--sometimes lasting for days
after a real wild binge on a lost week-end. He was--still is--in a very
abnormal state."
"But why should he feel so guilty about his relations with her?"
Gallison asked. "Why the threatening letters. You mean that he didn't
actually feel she gyped him on that article sale to the movies and TV?
If he didn't, he sure is a great little actor. He should have played a
leading role in the movie himself."
"Oh, he felt she gyped him, all right. And that increased his load
of guilt. He couldn't remember just when he'd last spent two days in
Bellevue--not the exact date. He thought he'd gone to the Eaton-Lathrup
publications on the morning of the murder, had a showdown with her and
shot her dead. He might not have been completely sure about it, but
he couldn't forget his earlier memory lapses. Some alcoholics feel
guilty on just that basis alone. They know they're subject to memory
lapses and they're always wondering what terrible crime they just might
conceivably have committed during the blotto stage.
"And every aspect of his relations with her was steeped in guilt,
apparently. Just being her lover made him feel guilty, apparently. You
saw how he flared up when I questioned him about it. It sounds crazy,
but there are a few men like that left in this day and age. A Puritanic
hangover that alcoholism makes a real fighting issue, if it's ever
openly discussed.
"Don't you see? She probably threw him over, rejected him, told him
he wasn't her idea of a lover boy just about the time that big movie
sale went through. So he had a double reason for hating her--a triple
reason, in fact, since he felt guilty about just having an affair
with her--and it all came out in the wash when he walked in here and
confessed to a crime he didn't commit."
"But how about that movie and TV angle."
Fenton frowned, staring down at the double-file on his desk. "That's
the screwiest part of it, the part that really ought to be used in a
book sometime, by one of those mystery writers I told you about--two
writers I know very well and would probably give me a percentage for
bringing it to their attention, if I wasn't more or less incorruptible
regarding Homicide Squad files. Fact is ... she leaned backwards to be
fair, to see that he made a fairly large sum out of the movie sale ...
even though he wasn't legally entitled to anything at all. He did get
pretty close to his hundred thousand dollars."
Gallison whistled softly. "Brother, that's hard to believe.
What happened to the dough? He's still living in fairly modest
circumstances. He has a small house just north of White Plains, as you
know, but he bought it several years ago and it's mortgaged right up to
the hilt."
"You've hung around bars quite a bit, haven't you?" Fenton said,
smiling a little. "I mean, just in line of duty, of course. Haven't you
heard guys say: 'I made three hundred dollars last week, but it was
burning a hole in my pocket. I blew it all in one night.'"
"Sure, sure," Gallison admitted. "I've heard guys talking that way
often enough. But a hundred thousand dollars--"
"Not quite, probably. Seventy thousand would be closer, I should
imagine. And income tax would take a big slice. Half of the rest could
go as a feedback."
"What do you mean ... a feedback?"
"Money squandered on her while he was still in her good graces, as her
number one lover boy. That would also give him an additional reason
to hate her, when he thought about it afterwards. Know what it costs
to take a woman with her expensive tastes out five nights a week, for
perhaps three months?"
Gallison shrugged. "How should I know? I get upset sometimes when my
wife orders three cocktails before dinner at a midtown bar."
"He's probably been living very high for the past three or four months,
ever since the picture was sold and she gave him a slice of what it
brought in cold cash. Just why she did it I can't imagine. Maybe there
actually was a generous streak in her, and she really thought the
concern owed him something, despite the contract. She could even have
been a little in love with him at one time. He's not a bad looking guy,
remember. And she probably knew she'd get quite a bit of it back in
jewelry, furs and expensive entertainment."
Gallison whistled again. "I'm beginning to get the picture," he said.
"If the dough actually was burning a hole in his pocket and there are
plenty of guys like that. And if he had blotto periods--"
"Well, that winds it up," Fenton said. "We'll have to release him, of
course. No reason to hold him now. The poor little guy. In a way, I
feel sorry for him. It's no joke to be an alcoholic and feel _that_
guilty about getting himself a piece of very high-class tail."
"You're not fooling me, Joe. I bet you have a Puritan streak yourself.
The only woman you've been interested in for the past fifteen years is
the glamor doll you married."
"It could be," Fenton conceded. "My father was a farmer in Iowa and he
went to church every Sunday, rain or shine. It's something you never
entirely outgrow. But if I ever hear you shooting your mouth off about
it--"
It was Gallison's turn to smile. "Don't worry, Joe. The secret's safe
with me. I'm just glad I'm not that way."
"I see. You step out now and then--just tell your wife it's a
double-duty assignment that will keep you up until dawn."
"I didn't say that. Hell, there's a difference between loyalty and the
kind of act our little friend put on. He actually blushed, or didn't
you notice, when you threw it up to him."
"Some day you'll become tolerant of every kind of human behavior,"
Fenton said. "We all have a chink in our armor somewhere."
"I suppose, I suppose."
"You don't have to suppose. It's goddam true. A guy can be a prig in
one respect and a liberal-minded, very intelligent kind of human being
in another. We're all jackasses one third of the time, at least."
"It's funny," Gallison said. "One of the Eaton-Lathrup editors is an
alcoholic too. That Ellers guy. Do you suppose he has blackouts now and
then?"
"With nothing more than that to go on," Fenton said, "we'd have no
justification for suspecting him. Something may turn up, of course.
We'll see. We've got a lot of digging to do, and our best lead so far
has gone out the window. I didn't say that all confirmed alcoholics
worry or feel guilty about what they may have done during a lost
week-end. Only a few of them do, the ones who have criminal impulses or
a strong reason for hating someone even when they're sober. We'll see,
we'll see. Right now--"
The phone at Fenton's elbow started ringing.
He picked up the receiver, listened for a moment and re-cradled it, a
very odd look coming into his eyes.
"Now nothing can surprise me," he said. "A first-class lead goes out
the window and one just as promising comes flying in, like one of those
goddam pigeons that are always messing up the sill."
"What is it?" Gallison asked. "Or would you rather make a production
out of keeping me guessing?"
"Well ... there's a young writer whose work Helen Lathrup took very
seriously at first and then tore into, ripping his self-esteem to
shreds. I got that from the editor you just mentioned, Ellers. They
were also sort of close and cozy for a time and then she refused to
even see him when he phoned. She slammed his book manuscript back with
a hell of a harsh criticism--Ellers read what she wrote. He also saw
the manuscript and thought it was pretty good."
"Sounds sort of familiar," Gallison said. "Like the same record almost,
but with a different groove maybe in it somewhere. I mean, she sure
was an expert in the tease line. Give them every encouragement, the
better to watch them writhe."
Fenton nodded. "Yeah ... in general I'd say yes. We've run into it
twice before and in questioning the office staff I got the impression
I'd just scratched the surface. She covered a lot of territory with
her teasing. Except that most women who fall into that category either
won't let a man touch them or won't go beyond a kiss. She was very
generous with her encouragement, apparently."
"You mean she was willing to start off as if she was playing for keeps."
"If you want to put it that way. What puzzles me a little is that she
didn't have to. Just one long, lingering look and most men would have
been hooked, right through the gullet like a frog when you use it for
bait. Ever fish for bass with frogs, Gallison? Sometimes they climb
out of the water on a nearby bank and stare back, looking forlorn and
pathetic as hell--pathetic enough to tear your heart out. But they're
still hooked."
"So is the fisherman--if he doesn't catch any bass. Fisherwoman in this
case, of course. What did she hope to gain by it?"
Fenton shrugged. "Who can say, exactly? Probably the same kind of
cruel pleasure most women who fall into that category get from keeping
a man dangling. Only, as I say, she seems to have been exceptionally
generous-minded about it, at least at first. Women like that really
fall into three categories. The first is scared stiff when a man so
much as touches them, but they enjoy leading men on. The second had
some kind of trauma in childhood which prevents them from warming up
to men, but they'd genuinely like to be generous and don't intend to
be deliberately cruel. The third kind is like Lathrup. What they are,
basically, is men-destroying women. They can be both generous and
cruel, and aren't actually repelled by men physically. They'll go all
the way, but the hooked frog had better watch out."
"You know what, Joe? You really should have been a psychiatrist."
"Suppose we drop all that for the moment. You asked me what I'd found
out. You want to hear it, or don't you?"
"Why not? We're supposed to be working together on a homicide case."
"All right, here it is. I put a trailer on the young writer. Not a
shadow, no Squad close-check. Just did a little more digging, keeping
him in view. He was just one of twenty suspects. Thought nothing
important would turn up. His name's Ralph Gilmore, by the way. I gave
you a brief run-down on him. Have you forgotten?"
"Naturally not," Gallison said. "But when you just called him a young
writer--"
"All right, you remember. Good. I won't ask you how much you remember,
because I went into most of this before and you failed to remember
straight off. But anyhow, the digging paid off. All Gilmore did, about
ten days ago, was go into a pawnshop on Park Row and buy himself a gun.
The kind of under-the-counter deal that infuriates me, and this is one
pawnbroker who'll wish he'd thought twice--or three times. He'll have
the book thrown at him."
Gallison narrowed his eyes. "What kind of gun was it, Joe."
"What kind do you suppose? It couldn't have been any other kind, could
it? She was shot with a forty-five, and if he'd bought a pearl-handled
woman's gun did you think for a moment I'd have looked as stunned as I
did just now?"
"You might have. It would have shown he had murder on his mind. At the
last moment, he might have decided that a big automatic was what he
really needed."
"Yeah, I can well imagine."
"I'm serious in one way," Gallison said. "You can fit silencers
on smaller guns. An amateur doesn't usually commit murder with a
forty-five--a big Luger cannon or anything like that--unless he just
happens to have such a weapon lying around ... a war souvenir, say."
"You can't argue with a fact. Gilmore bought a big, long-barreled gun.
Maybe the pawnbroker had only one gun to sell and that was it. Try
buying a gun from a pawnbroker sometime. Gilmore was one of the lucky
ones."
"And now you think his luck is running out?"
A weary, slightly embittered look came into Fenton's eyes. "How should
I know, at this stage? If I was in his shoes I'd be plenty worried. But
our job is simply to do what we can and take nothing for granted ...
until we've checked and double-checked."
"Then we'd better get right after it."
"I think so," Fenton said.