It was a gray chill day late in November, and by 4:30 that afternoon the
ceiling lights were on. Chenowich, the young plain-clothes man recently
transferred to Homicide from Robbery Detail, stopped at Martin Kirk's
cubbyhole and slid an evening paper across the battered brown linoleum
top of the Lieutenant's desk.
"This oughta interest you," he said, jabbing a chewed thumbnail at an
item under a two-column head half-way down the left side of page one.
CORDELL DRAWS DEATH NOD
Killer of Wife and Atom Wizard To Face Chair in January
Paul Cordell, 29, was today doomed by Criminal Court Justice Edwin
P. Reed to death by electrocution the morning of January 11, for
the murders of his wife, Juanita, 29, and her employer,
world-famous nuclear scientist Gregory Gilmore.
A jury last week found Cordell guilty of the brutal slayings
despite his testimony that it was a mysterious blonde woman,
floating in a "ball of blue fire," who had blasted the victims with
a "ray gun" on that October afternoon.
Ignoring the "girl from Mars" angle, alienists for the prosecution
pronounced the handsome defendant sane, and his attorneys were
powerless to offset the damage.
The final blow to Cordell's hopes for acquittal, however, was
administered by the State's key witness, Alma Dakin, Gilmore's
former secretary. For more than three hours she underwent one of
the most grilling cross-examinations in local courtroom....
Kirk shoved the paper aside, "What could he expect when he wouldn't even
listen to his own lawyers? They'll appeal--they have to--but it'll be a
waste of time."
He leaned back in the creaking swivel chair and began to unwrap the
cellophane from a cigar. "In a way," he said thoughtfully, "I hate to
see that kid end up in the fireless cooker. In this business you get so
you can recognize an act when you see one, and I'd swear Cordell wasn't
lying about that blonde and her blue fire. At least he thought he
wasn't."
Chenowich yawned. "I say he was nuts then and he's nuts now. What do
them bug doctors know? I never seen one yet could count his own
fingers."
The telephone on Martin Kirk's desk rang while he was lighting his
cigar. He tossed the match on the floor to join a dozen others, and
picked up the receiver. "Homicide; Lieutenant Kirk speaking."
It was the patrolman in the outer office. "Woman out here wants to see
you, Lieutenant. Asked for you personally."
"What about?"
"She won't say. All I get is it's important and she talks to you or
nobody."
"What's her name?"
"No, sir. Not even that. Want me to get rid of her?"
Kirk eyed the mound of paper work on his desk and sighed. "Probably a
taxpayer. All right; send her back here."
A moment later the patrolman loomed up outside the cubbyhole door, the
woman in tow. Lieutenant Kirk remained seated, nodded briskly toward the
empty chair alongside his desk. "Please sit down, madam. You wanted to
see me?"
"You are Mr. Kirk?" A warm voice, almost on the husky side.
"Lieutenant Kirk."
"Of course. I _am_ sorry."
* * * * *
While she was being graceful about getting into the chair, Kirk stared
at her openly. She was worth staring at. She was tall for a woman and
missed being voluptuous by exactly the right margin. Her face was more
lovely than beautiful, chiefly because of large eyes so blue they were
almost purple. Her skin was flawless, her blonde hair worn in a medium
bob fluffed out, and her smooth fitting tobacco brown suit must have
been bought by appointment. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was
probably thirty.
Her expression was solemn and her smile fleeting, as was becoming to
anyone calling on a Homicide Bureau. She placed on a corner of Kirk's
desk an alligator bag that matched her shoes and tucked pale yellow
gloves the color of her blouse under the bag's strap. Her slim fingers,
ringless, moved competently and without haste.
"I am Naia North, Lieutenant Kirk."
"What's on your mind, Miss North?"
She regarded him gravely, seeing gray-blue eyes that never quite lost
their chill, a thin nose bent slightly to the left from an encounter
with a drunken longshoreman years before, the lean lines of a solid jaw,
the dark hair that was beginning to thin out above the temples after
thirty-five years. Even those who love him, she thought, must fear this
man a little.
Martin Kirk felt his cheeks flush under the frank appraisal of those
purple eyes. "You asked for me by name, Miss North. Why?"
"Aren't you the officer who arrested the young man who today was
sentenced to die?"
Only years of practise at letting nothing openly surprise him kept
Kirk's jaw from dropping. "... You mean Cordell?"
"Yes."
"I'm the one. What about it? What've you got to do with Paul Cordell?"
Naia North said quietly, "A great deal, I'm afraid. You see, I'm the
woman who doesn't exist; the one the newspapers call 'the girl from
Mars.'"
It was what he had expected from her first question about the case. Any
murder hitting the headlines brought at least one psycho out of the
woodwork, driven by some deep-seated sense of guilt into making a phony
confession. Those who were harmless were eased aside; the violent got
detained for observation.
But Naia North showed none of the signs of the twisted mind. She was
coherent, attractive and obviously there was money somewhere in her
vicinity. While the last two items could have been true of a raving
maniac, Kirk was human enough to be swayed by them.
"I'm afraid," he said, "you've come to the wrong man about this, Miss
North." His smile was frank and winning enough to startle her. "The case
is out of my hands; has been since the District Attorney's office took
over. Why don't you take it up with them?"
* * * * *
Her short laugh was openly cynical. "I tried to, the day the trial
ended. I got as far as a fourth assistant, who told me the case was
closed, that new and conclusive evidence would be necessary to reopen
it, and would I excuse him as he had a golf date. When I said I could
give him new evidence, he looked at his watch and wanted me to write a
letter. So I wrote one and his secretary promised to hand it to him
personally. I'm still waiting for an answer."
"These things take time, Miss North. If I were you I'd--"
"I even tried to see Judge Reed. I got as far as his bailiff. If I'd
state my business in writing.... I did; that's the last I've heard from
Judge Reed _or_ bailiff."
Kirk picked up his cigar from the edge of the desk and tapped the ash
onto the floor. "Shall I," he said, his lips quirking, "ask you to write
_me_ a letter?"
Naia North failed to respond to the light touch. "I'm through filling
wastebaskets," she said flatly. "Either you do something about this or
the newspapers get the entire story. Not that I'll enjoy being a public
spectacle, but at least they'll give me some action."
"What do you want done?"
She put both elbows on the desk top and bent toward him. He caught the
faint odor of bath salts rising from under the rounded neckline of her
blouse. "That man must go free, Lieutenant. He didn't kill his
wife--_or_ Gregory Gilmore."
"Who did?"
She looked straight into his eyes. "I did."
"Why?"
Slowly she straightened and leaned back in the chair, her gaze shifting
to a point beyond his left shoulder. "Nothing you haven't heard before,"
she said tonelessly.
"We met several months ago and fell in love. I let him make the
rules ... and after a while he got tired of playing. I didn't--and I
wanted him back. For weeks he avoided me."
"So you decided to kill him."
She seemed genuinely astonished at the remark. "Certainly not! But when
I saw him take this woman--this assistant of his, or whatever she
was--into his arms ... I suppose I went a little crazy."
"Now," Kirk said, "we're getting down to cases. You know the evidence
given at the trial--particularly that given by Gilmore's secretary?"
"Of course."
"Then you know this Dakin woman was in the laboratory until a few
minutes before Cordell showed up. You know that nobody could have gone
into that laboratory without her seeing them. You know that Alma Dakin
testified that there were only two people in there: Gilmore and Juanita
Cordell. So, Miss North, how did you get in there after Alma Dakin left
and before Paul Cordell arrived?"
"But I didn't."
The Lieutenant's air of triumph sagged under a sudden frown. "What do
you mean you didn't?"
"I didn't enter the laboratory after Greg's secretary left it. _I was
there all along._"
* * * * *
Kirk's head came up sharply. "You _what_?"
"I was there all the time," the girl repeated. "Since noon, to be exact.
I planned it that way. I knew everybody would be out to lunch between
twelve and one, so I went to the laboratory with the intention of facing
Greg there on his return. When I heard him and Mrs. Cordell coming along
the corridor, I sort of lost my nerve and hid in a coat closet."
Martin Kirk had completely dropped his air of good-humored patience by
this time, "You telling me you were hiding in there for almost five
hours without them knowing it?"
Naia North shrugged her shoulders. "They had no reason to look in the
closet. I'll admit I hadn't intended to--to spy on Greg. But I kept
waiting for him to say or do something that would prove or disprove he
was in love with Juanita Cordell, and not until his secretary left and
he was alone with her did I discover what was between them. I must have
come out of that dark hole like a tiger, Lieutenant. They jumped apart
and two people never looked guiltier. He said something particularly
nasty to me and I grabbed up a short length of shiny metal from the
workbench and hit him across the side of the head before he knew what
was happening. He fell down and the Cordell woman opened her mouth to
scream and--and I hit her too."
She paused as though to permit Kirk to comment. "Go on," he said
hoarsely.
"There's not much left," the girl said. "I was standing there still
holding that piece of metal when the door crashed open and the dead
woman's husband ran in. He started to lunge across the room at me and I
threw the thing I was holding at him. It struck him and he fell down. My
only thought was to hide, for I realized I couldn't go out through the
outer office, and the only window was barred. So I hid in that closet
again.
"It was only a few minutes before Paul Cordell regained consciousness.
He staggered out of the room and down the hall and I could hear a lot of
excited talk and Greg's secretary calling the police. Then I didn't hear
anything at all for a moment, so I came out of the closet and looked
down the hall. The office door was closed, but it seemed so quiet in
there that I tiptoed quickly to the inner door, opened it a crack and
peered through. The office was deserted; evidently Cordell and Miss
Dakin had gone out to direct the police when they showed up.
"When I saw there was no one in the main hall of the building itself, I
simply walked out and left by another exit. No one I passed even noticed
me."
* * * * *
For a long time after Naia North had finished speaking, Martin Kirk sat
as though carved from stone, staring blindly into space. She knew he was
thinking furiously, weighing the plausibility of what he had heard,
trying to arrive at some method of corroborating it in a way that would
stand up in a court of law.
"Miss North."
She came out of a reverie with a start, to find the Lieutenant's eyes
boring into hers. "This shiny hunk of metal you used: where is it now?"
"I'm sure I wouldn't know. Probably some place in the laboratory, unless
somebody took it away. I do seem to remember picking it up and tossing
it back with several others like it on the bench."
"Then it's still there," he said slowly. "Judge Reed ordered the room
sealed up until after the trial. And then there's the closet.... Were
you wearing gloves that afternoon, Miss North?"
She said, "No. You're thinking of fingerprints?"
"If you're telling the truth," he said, "there's almost certain to be
some of your prints on the inside of that closet door--maybe even on
that length of metal, if we can find it."
She said almost carelessly: "That's all you'd need to clear Paul
Cordell, isn't it?"
"It would certainly help." He swung around in the chair, scooped up the
telephone and gave a series of rapid-fire orders, then dropped the
instrument on its cradle and turned back to where she sat watching him
curiously.
He said, "A few things I still don't get. Like this business of your
standing two feet off the floor in a ball of blue light. And the flashes
of light just before Cordell heard his wife and Gilmore fall to the
floor. Even the snatches of conversation he caught while still in the
hall. He couldn't have dreamed all that stuff up--at least not without
_some_ basis."
She had opened her bag and taken out a cigarette. Kirk ignited one of
his kitchen matches and she bent her head for a light. He could see the
flawless curve of one cheek and the smooth cap of blonde hair, and he
resisted the urge to pass a hand lightly across both. Something was
stirring inside the Lieutenant--something that had long been absent.
And, he reflected wryly, all because of a girl who had just finished
confessing to two particularly unpleasant murders.
Naia North raised her head and their eyes met--met and held. Her lips
parted slightly as she caught the unmistakable message in those
gray-blue depths....
The moment passed, the spell was broken and she leaned back in the chair
and laughed a little shakily. "I read about those statements of his in
the papers, Lieutenant. I think perhaps I can at least partially explain
them. As I remember it, there were several Bunsen burners lighted on the
laboratory bench near that window. They give off a blue flame, you know,
and I must have been standing near them when Paul Cordell came charging
in. In his confused frame of mind, he may have pictured me as being in a
ball of flame."
"Sounds possible," the man admitted, frowning. "What about those flashes
of light?"
"You've got me there. Unless they were reflections of sunlight through
the window--from the windshield of a passing car, perhaps."
"And the things he heard you and Gilmore saying?"
She shook her head regretfully.
"There I'm simply in the dark, I don't see how he could have twisted
what little we said into the utterly fantastic nonsense he claims to
have heard."
* * * * *
Kirk rubbed a hand slowly along the side of his neck, still frowning.
"He _could_ have confused that length of metal in your hand as a gun....
Well--" his shoulders lifted in the ghost of a shrug--"it all seems to
add up. Except one thing: Cordell had been tried and convicted, leaving
you in the clear. Why come down here voluntarily and stick your lovely
head in a noose?"
The girl smiled faintly. "'Lovely head', Lieutenant?"
Kirk flushed to the eyebrows. "That slipped out.... Why the confession?"
She said soberly: "I was so sure they'd let him off. When you _know_
someone's innocent you can't realize that others won't know it too, I
suppose. But when I learned he'd been found guilty and actually
condemned to die ... well, I know it sounds noble and all that but I
couldn't let him go to his death for something I'd done. Surely such a
thing has happened before in your experience, Lieutenant."
He watched as she drew smoke from the cigarette deeply into her lungs
and let it flow out in twin streamers from her nostrils. Only rich men,
he thought, could afford a woman like this, and somehow it made him
resentful. What right did she have to walk in here and flaunt a body
like that in his face? She went with mink stoles and cabin cruisers and
cocktails at the Sherry-Netherland, and her shoe bill would exceed his
yearly salary. She would be competent and more than a little cynical and
not too concerned with morals or the lack of them. That kind of woman
could kill--and would kill, on the spur of the moment and if the
provocation was strong enough.
"Well, Lieutenant?" She said it lightly, almost with disinterest.
Then Kirk was all right again, and he was looking at a woman who had
just confessed to murder.
"You heard the phone call I made a moment ago, Miss North. Two men from
the Crime Lab are already on their way to the University. If they find
your fingerprints inside that closet, if they can turn up _anything_ to
prove you've been in Gregory Gilmore's laboratory, then you and that
evidence and your confession get turned over to the D. A. and Paul
Cordell will be on his way to freedom."
"And if those men don't find anything?"
"Then," he told her rudely, "you're just another crackpot and I'm
tossing you _and_ your phony confession out of here."
* * * * *
They found the fingerprints: several perfect ones on the inner door of
the laboratory coat closet. But even more conclusive was their discovery
of a short length of polished metal pipe among the dismantled parts of a
Clayton centrifuge. At one end of the pipe were the imprints of four
fingertips--at the other a microscopic trace of human blood.
"We had no business missing it the first time, Lieutenant," the Crime
Laboratory technician told Kirk ruefully. "I'd a sworn we pulled that
place apart last month. But this time we got the murder weapon and we
got the prints--and those prints match the ones we took off that blonde.
Hey, how about that, Lieutenant? I thought this Cordell guy did that
job?"
Slowly Kirk replaced the receiver and eyed Naia North across the desk
from him. "Looks like you're elected," he said somberly. "I'm telling
you straight: the D. A. isn't going to like this at all--not even any
part of it."
Her brow wrinkled. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Doesn't he want
murder cases solved?"
Kirk smiled crookedly. "You're forgetting this case _was_ solved--over a
month ago. You any idea what it can mean to a politician to have to
admit publicly that he's made a mistake? Especially a mistake that's
going to get all the publicity this one's bound to? 'District attorney
railroads innocent man!' 'Tragic miscarriage of justice averted only by
chance!' Stuffy editorials in the opposition press about incompetence in
high offices and how the voters must keep out anybody who goes around
executing the innocent and helpless. Looks like Arthur Kahler Troy is
going to be a mighty unpopular man around these parts--and election less
than five months away!"
He glanced up at the office clock. It was nearly nine o'clock in the
evening, and both of them were showing signs of wear. Kirk left his
chair and went over to the water cooler, drank two cupfuls and brought
one back to the girl. She thanked him with a wan smile and gulped down
the contents.
He took the empty paper container and crumpled it slowly. "Might as well
get hold of him," he muttered. "It's going to be mighty damned rough,
sister. You sure you want to go through with it?"
She lifted an eyebrow at him. "That's a peculiar question for a homicide
officer to ask, isn't it?"
"I suppose so." His eyes shifted to the phone on his desk, stayed there
for a long moment. Then he shrugged hugely and picked up the
receiver....
* * * * *
It was well after two in the morning before Martin Kirk reached his
apartment. He showered and got into a fresh pair of pajamas and went
into the small, sparsely furnished living room. He moved slowly and with
no spring in his step, and the set of his features was harsh and
strained in the soft light from the floor lamp.
Troy had been even more difficult than he'd feared. What had begun as
plain irritability at being disturbed, had passed by successive stages
to amused disbelief, open anger and finally reluctant conviction that
Paul Cordell was innocent of the crimes for which he had been sentenced
to die.
A male stenographer from his staff was called in and Naia North dictated
a complete statement which she signed. Troy questioned her for nearly
two hours, getting in every possible angle of her private life as well
as minute details of her actions on the day of the murders. Kirk had not
been present during that part of the night, but he figured it wouldn't
be much different from what he'd heard many times before.
He mixed himself a drink, and was surprised to discover that his hands
were shaking noticeably. Well, why not? A day like the one he'd just
been through would put the shakes in Grant's Tomb. Even as he made the
excuse, he knew it wasn't the real reason. There had been cases that had
kept him on his feet for as much as forty-eight hours--cases where men
had pointed guns at him and pulled the triggers--and the shakes never
came.
No, it was the girl. Naia North. Naia--a strange name. But no stranger
than the girl herself. Now how about that? Why should he think her
strange? Because she'd taken a life or two? Hell, lots of people did
that and no one called them strange. Criminal or unmoral or greedy or
angry, yes. But not strange. She looked like other women--only a lot
better. She dressed like them, walked like them, talked like them. So
why strange?
Because she _was_ strange. Nothing you could put your finger on made her
that way, but that's the way she was.
He threw his cigar savagely into the fireplace. He went over and made
another drink and poured it down fast and another one after it, right on
its heels. Then he went to bed. Tomorrow--today, rather--was a work day
and work days were tough days and he needed his rest.
He didn't get much of it, though. The phone woke him a few minutes after
seven o'clock. It was Arthur Kahler Troy at the other end and the D. A.
was too angry to be coherent.
It seemed Naia North had disappeared from her locked cell during the
night.