Ellery Queen's The Golden 13, page 39
They had their corpus delicti now, but they still couldn’t pin it on him. What was holding them up, what was blocking them, he realized with grim satisfaction, was that they couldn’t unearth a single witness who could place him at or near the freight yard he’d driven to that night—or at any other freight yard anywhere else on any other night. The car itself, after exhaustive tests and examinations, must have turned out pasteurizedly pure, antibiotically bloodless. He’d seen to that. And the garment bags had been her own to begin with.
There was nothing to trace him by.
Even the Samurai sword—which he had had the audacity to send right along with her, encased in a pair of her nylon stockings—was worthless to them. It had belonged to her, and even if it hadn’t, there was no way of checking on such a thing—as there would have been in the case of a firearm. Being a war souvenir, it was nonregisterable.
Finally, there was the total lack of an alibi. Instead of counting against him it seemed to have intensified the deadlock. From the very beginning he had offered none, laid claim to none, therefore gave them none to break down. He’d simply said he’d gone home and stayed there, and admitted from the start he couldn’t prove it. But then they couldn’t prove he’d been out to the bungalow either. Result: each canceled the other out. Stand-off. Stalemate.
As if to show that they had reached a point of desperation they finally had recourse, during several of the periods of interrogation, to stronger measures. Not violence: no blows were struck, nothing was done that might leave a mark on him afterward. Nor were any threats or promises made. It was a sort of tacit coercion, one might say. He understood it, they understood it, he understood they did, and they understood he did.
Unsuspectingly, he accepted some punishingly salty food they sent out for and gave to him. Pickled or smoked herring. But not water.
A fire was made in the boiler room and the radiator in one of the basement detention rooms was turned on full blast, even though it was an oppressively hot turn-of-spring-into-summer day. Still no water.
As though this weren’t enough, an electric heater was plugged into an outlet and aimed at his straight-backed chair. He was seated in it and compelled to keep two or three heavy blankets bundled around him. In no time the floor around his feet had darkened with the slow seep of his perspiration. But still no water.
Then a tantalizingly frosted glass pitcher, brimming with crystal-clear water and studded with alluring ice cubes, was brought in and set down on a table just within arm’s reach.
But each time he reached for it he was asked a question. And while waiting for the answer, the nearest detective would, absently, draw the pitcher away—just beyond his reach—as if not being aware of what he was doing, the way a man doodles with a pencil or fiddles with a paperweight while talking to someone. When he asked openly for a drink he was told (for the record): “Help yourself. It’s right there in front of you. That’s what it’s here for.” They were very meticulous about it. Nothing could be proved afterward.
He didn’t get a drink of water. But they didn’t get the answers they Wanted either. Another stalemate.
They rang in a couple of ingenious variations after that, once with cigarettes, another time by a refusal of the comfort facilities of the building. With even less result, since neither impulse was as strong as thirst.
“All we need is one drop of blood,” the detective kept warning him. “One drop of blood.”
“You won’t get it out of me.”
“We have identified the remains, to show there was a crime—somewhere. We’ve found traces of blood on articles handled by you—like the dollar bill you gave the storekeeper—to show, presumably, that you were involved in some crime—somewhere. We’ve placed you in the vicinity of the bungalow: metal bits from the overalls and remains of the paint cans and brush handles in the ashes of the fire. Now all we’ve got to do is place the crime itself there. And that will close the circuit.
“One drop of blood will do it. One single drop of blood.”
“It seems a shame that such a modest requirement can’t be met,” was his ironic comment.
And then suddenly, when least expected, he was released.
Whether there was some legal technicality involved and they were afraid of losing him altogether in the long run if they charged him too quickly; whether it was just a temporary expedient so that they could watch him all the closer—anyway, release.
One of the detectives came in, stood looking at him.
“Good morning,” he said finally to the detective, sardonically, to break the optical deadlock.
“I suppose you’d like to get out of here.”
“There are places I’ve liked better.”
The detective jerked his head. “You can go. That’s all for now. Sign a receipt and the property clerk will return your valuables.”
He didn’t stir. “Not if there are any strings attached to it.”
“What do you want, an apology or something?”
“No, I just want to know where I stand. Am I in or am I out—or what.”
“You were never actually under arrest, so what’re you beefing about?”
“Well, if I wasn’t, there sure has been something hampering my freedom. Maybe my shoelaces were tied together.”
“Just hold yourself available in case you’re needed. Don’t leave town.”
He finally walked out behind the detective, throwing an empty cigarette pack on the floor. “Was any of this in the newspapers?”
“I don’t keep a scrapbook. I wouldn’t know,” said the detective.
He picked one up, and it was, had been, and was going to be.
The first thing he did was to phone Allie. She wouldn’t come to the phone—or they wouldn’t let her. She was ill in bed, they said. That much he didn’t disbelieve, or wonder at. There was also a coldness, an iciness: he’d hurt these people badly.
He hung up. He tried again later. And then again. And still again. He wouldn’t give up. His whole happiness was at stake now.
Finally he went back to his own apartment. There was nothing left for him to do. It was already well after midnight by this time. The phone was ringing as he keyed the door open. It sounded as if it had been ringing for some time and was about to die out. He grabbed at it.
“Darling,” Allie said in a pathetically weak voice, “I’m calling you from the phone next to my bed. They don’t know I’m doing it, or they—”
“You don’t believe what you’ve been reading about me?”
“Not if you tell me not to.”
“It was just a routine questioning. I used to know the girl a long time ago, and they grabbed at every straw that came their way.”
“We’ll have to change everything—go off quietly by ourselves. But I don’t care.”
“I’ve got to see you. Shall I come up there?”
“No,” she said tearfully. “Not yet. You’d better wait a while first Give them a little more time.”
“But then how am I going to—?”
“I’ll dress and come out and meet you somewhere.”
“Can you make it?”
“I’m getting better every minute. Just hearing your voice, hearing you say that it was not true—that’s better than all their tranquilizers.”
“There’s a quiet little cocktail lounge called ‘For Lovers Only.’ Not noisy, not jammed. The end booth.”
Her voice was getting stronger. “We were there once, remember?”
“Wear the same dress you did that night.” It was on all over again. “Hurry, I’m waiting for your hello-kiss.”
He pulled his shirt off so exuberantly that he split the sleeve halfway down. He didn’t care. He shook the shave-cream bomb until it nearly exploded in his hand. He went back to the phone and called a florist.
“I want an orchid sent somewhere—end booth—she’ll be wearing pale yellow. I didn’t ask you that, but what does come after the fifteen-dollar one? Then make it two fifteen-dollar ones. And on the card you just say this—‘From a fellow to his girl.’”
And because he was young and in love—completely, sincerely in love, even though he’d killed someone who had once loved him the same way—he started, in his high spirits, in his release from long-sustained tension, to do a mimic Indian war dance, prancing around the room, now reared up high, now bent down low, drumming his hand against his mouth. “O-wah-o-wah!”
I beat it! he told himself, I’ve got it made. Just take it easy from here in, just talk with a small mouth—and I’m the one in a thousand who beat it!
Then someone knocked quietly on his door.
Less than an hour after going to bed, one of the detectives stirred and finally sat up again.
His wife heard him groping for his shoes to put them back on. “What’s the matter?” she asked sleepily. “You want a drink of water?”
“No,” he said. “I want a drop of blood.”
“If you couldn’t find a drop of blood in the daytime how are you going to find it at night?”
He didn’t answer; he just went ahead pulling his pants on.
“Oh, God,” the poor woman moaned, “Why did I ever many a detective?”
“Oh, God,” he groaned back from the direction of the door, “what makes you think you have?”
“O-wah-o-wah!”
Someone knocked quietly on his door. He went over to it, and it was one of them again. He looked at the intruder ruefully—confidently but ruefully. “What, again?” he sighed. “This time it’s for real.”
“What was it all the other times, a rehearsal without costumes?”
“Hard to convince, aren’t you? All right, I’ll make it official,” the detective said obligingly, “You’re under arrest for the murder of Corinne Matthews. Anything you say may be held against you. Kindly come with me.”
“You did that like a professional,” he smirked, still confident.
The detective had brought a car with him. They got in it.
“This is going to blow right up in your face. You know that, don’t you? I’ll sue for false arrest—I’ll sue the city for a million.”
“All right, I’ll show you.”
They drove to the bungalow that had been Corinne Matthews, and parked. They got out and went in together. They had to go through the doorway on the bias. The detective had mm on handcuffs now—he wasn’t taking any chances.
The detective left it dark. He took out his flashlight and made a big dazzling cartwheel of light by holding it nozzle-close against one section of the wall.
Take a good look,” he said.
“Why don’t you put the lights on?”
Take a good look this way first.”
Just a newly painted, spotless wall, and at one side the light switch, tripped to OFF.
“Now look at it this way.”
He killed the flashlight, snapped up the wall switch, and the room lit up. Still just a newly painted, spotless wall, and at one side the light switch, reversed now to ON.
And on it a small blob of blood.
“That’s what I needed. And look, that’s what I got.”
The accused sat down, the accuser at the other end of the handcuffs, standing, his arm at elbow height.
“How can a guy win?” the murderer whispered.
“You killed her at night, when the lights were on, when the switch was up like this, showing ON. You came back and painted in the daylight hours, when the lights were not on, when the switch was down, showing OFF. We cased this room a hundred times, for a hundred hours—but always in the daytime too, when the lights were not on, when the switch was down, showing OFF. And on the part of the switch that never showed in the daytime, the part marked ON, the way it is now, there was one drop of blood that we never found—until tonight.”
The murderer was quiet for a minute, then he said the final words—no good to hold them back any more. “Sure,” he said, “it was like that. That’s what it was like.”
His head went over, and a great huff of hot breath came surging out of him, rippling down his necktie, like the vital force, the will to resist, emptying itself.
The end of another story.
The end of another life.
Ellery Queen, Ellery Queen's The Golden 13
