Anatomy of a Murder (12 page)

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Authors: Robert Traver

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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“We'd gone to Barney's bar several times. It was about the only decent place to drink in town. Barney was one of those loquacious blarney-tongued operators who'd flatter a witch on a broomstick provided only she was wearing a skirt. He paused at our table once or twice—he did the same at most of the others, too—and ran out his poor little stock of complimentary banter, the same dreary sort of thing I've heard in a hundred bars and Army posts, with or without Manny. But this time Manny went into one of his more elaborate sulks. So we quit going to Barney's bar.”
“Was there any incident—any scene?” I asked, holding my breath.
“No, thank goodness. Manny made me hurry my drink and we left.” She shook her head. “It was so utterly childish. It's all so childish—and now so tragic. And I feel so guilty.”
1 spoke casually. “Have you mentioned any of these things we've just been discussing to the state police?—or to anyone?”
“Heavens no. I told them all about the—the incidents of that night, of course. I had nothing to hide.”
“You are sure of this. Think back now.”
“I am positive.”
“Did you tell them about the sexual attack by Barney? And all the rest, both before and after the attack?”
“In great detail.”
“Did you tell all this during your lie-detector test?”
“Why, yes, of course,” she said impatiently.
“Who first suggested that you take this test?”
“I did. I'd read about them somewhere.” She incuriously studied her nails.
“Do you know the results of the test?”
“No, I haven't given it a thought. But if the machine's any good there could only be one result. I told them the simple truth. Heaven knows that was bad enough:”
I had not meant to tell either the Lieutenant or Mrs. Manion, at least for the time, that I knew the results of the lie test; this, not only to protect Sulo but for certain reasons of my own. I now saw I would have to change my plans.
“Well, you passed the test,” I said. “It showed you were telling the truth.”
“Oh,” she said, with mild interest. “Did that handsome young prosecutor just tell you?”
“You see well with your dark glasses, madam,” I said. “No, the handsome prosecutor didn't tell me. I can't tell you how I know, but I know. There are certain trade symptoms I have learned to recognize.” One of them occurred to me as I spoke. Mitch surely knew the results of the test, and if it had been bad for our side he would certainly have told me so to aid his cause when he was making his pitch for a guilty plea to second degree murder. He had no reason then to hide the results of a bad test—bad for our side—and several good selling reasons not to. Why hadn't I thought of it before?
“Does Manny know?” she said.
“Not yet, but I've decided to tell him.” For it was now plain to me that I'd have to reassure this troubled man, and fast, or we perhaps might not need to employ a psychiatrist or anyone to tell us he was insane; he actually
would
be. “There's one more thing,” I said. “Don't tell a soul you know the result of this lie-detector thing. If people ask you—anyone—simply tell them you don't know. This may be vital. Do you promise?”
“Just as you say, Paul. And you won't tell Manny these things I've just told you.”
I shuddered inwardly at the thought. “Heavens no, my good woman. And don't you.”
“No, of course not,” she said, smiling wanly. “Now we have secrets. And I do hope I have made you see certain things more clearly.”
“I'm beginning to see a number of things,” I said.
She again quickly placed her hand on my arm. “Please don't think I have said any of this to criticize Manny. Or to be disloyal. He was—he is—so tender and good in so many ways. He'd go through hell and high water for me.”
“He might even kill for you?” I said.
She buried her face in her hands and I regretted having spoken. I was afraid she was going to cry. “Steady, Laura,” I said. “The man probably can't help himself. I sometimes think that jealousy is a disease—a sort of disease of the personality or of the emotions. I don't know … . You want to help him. As his lawyer I want to help him.” I paused. “Now I must go. I want to talk to you in the morning. Tonight I must work on this case. I suggest you go put on a little scene of loving reunion with Manny for the benefit of Sulo and the Sheriff. But mostly, I guess, for Manny. I'm getting a little worried about that man.”
“Thank you, Paul,” she said. She extended her hand and I took it. “You've been very understanding. I feel much better already.” She kept her hand in mine.
“We have secrets, now, Laura, so I'll tell you another one. I wouldn't have mentioned it except for what you've told me this afternoon.” I looked down at her hand. “Your husband's jail window overlooks my car.” She colored and withdrew her hand quickly. I got out of the car and walked around to open her door. I forced myself not to look up at the jail window.
“Good night, Paul,” Laura Manion said, smiling.
“Good night, Laura. Keep the chin up—like a good Army wife.”
That night I worked late in my office. I looked some law and wrote out a letter for Maida to sign for me and send the Lieutenant's commanding officer, reviewing the case and its problems and putting in an urgent request for an Army psychiatrist. Then I left a note for Maida to tell Pamell McCarthy I wanted to see him at my office late the next night. “After fishing,” I added defiantly. Then I fell into my unmade bed.
 
“Hi, Sulo,” I said. “Greetings from the early bird. I want to see the Lieutenant for a minute. How about my skipping up to his cell and saving a lot of commotion?”
“Sure, sure, skip away, Polly,” Sulo amiably agreed, taking down his big brass key and admitting me to the inner sanctum, the jail proper. “Three flights up, den turn right, den walk to end—his cell door's unlocked—an' dat's where you Lieutenant live his new address.” Sulo chuckled over his little joke.
I managed a wan little smile as I started up the steep iron-shod stairs. “If Mrs. Manion shows up tell her to wait in my car.”
As I trudged up the clanking echoing stairs winding through a maze of pipes of all kinds, water pipes, sewer pipes, steam pipes and miscellaneous brackets and girders, all done in battleship gray, I reflected that men could apparently get used to almost anything. Thousands of men, all over the world, lived in places like this and worse.
I thought of the hundreds of uncomplaining iron miners only a few miles away who daily plunged down into the chill and damp of ill-lit holes in the ground where for hours on end they groped their way about as through some vast insecure cheese. I thought, too, of the time I had once inadvertently wandered into the sawyers' room of a flooring mill, while campaigning, and had suddenly been so clutched and frozen by the demented screaming and awful banshee wailing of the dozens and scores of whirling saws—each presided over by a calmly oblivious workman—that it was only with physical effort I had turned and fled the place in terror. Even my usually dogged zeal for votes for Biegler had failed to hold me.
From a distant cell I heard an unseen player strumming softly and expertly on a guitar, accompanying a quavering falsetto voice, a voice plaintively beseeching his sweetheart to meet him on that opposite shore. I stopped and held my breath, suddenly caught and
wrenched, helplessly plucked at the heartstrings, unaccountably moved by this wry mingling of sadness and comedy. I resisted an impulse to go seek out this anonymous artist, to take his hand, to behold at last a person who didn't treat this haunting evocative instrument as a species of drum. But there was murder to be unraveled and I must not get sidetracked. I shrugged and moved on, reflecting that I must have been a guitar-playing gardener at some Spanish hacienda during a previous incarnation. Pablo O'Biegler, no doubt.
“Oh, tell me you'll leave me no more,
” the quavering voice pursued me. “
When we meet on that opposite shore …
.”
“Hello, Polly!” someone called from one of the nearer cells, and I recognized the wreckage of one of Chippewa's more persistently dedicated drunkards. This gaunt alcoholic specter was gaily waving at me, as though it was I who was caught in jail and he instead a mere passing visitor. I waved back, not very gaily, and as I toiled my way up the last flight of stairs I heard him explaining in an extravagantly loud voice to his cell neighbor just who I was and what a hell of a hard-boiled prosecutor I had been. “But good, though. Boy! Why, that Polly there even once sent
me
to prison on t'ird-offense drunk and disorderly … .” It was nice, I thought, to have such a grateful and satisfied customer.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” I said.
My client was sitting on his unmade cot reading a newspaper, clad in old fatigue trousers and a white T-shirt, his dark hair rumpled and uncombed and his face unshaven. Except for the smudge of mustache he reminded me of a photograph I'd once seen of Lawrence of Arabia.
“Oh, good morning, good morning,” he said, quickly rising and pointing to the lone stool next to the gaping seatless toilet. “Please sit down. I—I didn't expect you quite so early or I'd have been ready.” He gestured at his cell. “Forgive the appearance of this—this—”
“Sty,” I said helpfully, sitting down. I had forgotten how oppressively squalid the cells really were. Nor had I realized that the man had carefully groomed and dressed himself for his daily sessions with me. “Here,” I said, handing him a thick book, “this may help take your mind off your surroundings.” It was Thomas Wolfe's
Look Homeward, Angel.
“I hope you haven't already read it.”
“Oh, thanks. Thank you very much.” He examined the thick book gingerly. “No—no I haven't read it,” he said. He leaned over his cot and carefully shoved the book under his pillow, patting the
pillow to hide it. “Haven't ever heard of it, in fact.” He laughed briefly. “I'm just a typical army type, I guess, interested only in three things: in wine, women, and war, or as I once heard a soldier say in Pusan, in beer, broads, and battle. Is it any good?”
“Good?” I said. “Good?” I repeated. “It was written by a ravaged whale of a man—written with his own threshing flukes dipped in his own raging Mood … . But I didn't climb ‘way up here to talk of Wolfe.” I lowered my voice. “I came to tell you that your wife passed her lie-detector test. She was telling the truth.”
The Lieutenant sat staring at me in tense coiled silence. He stared searchingly, almost uncomprehendingly. The dark eyes fluttered. Then: “How do you know this?” he said, his voice suddenly gone husky with emotion. His eyes, too, had grown narrow and slitted with craft. My hunch, I felt, had not been wrong: he had suspected her all along.
“I can't tell you, Lieutenant,” I replied steadily. “But I know it is true.” I paused. “There is now not the slightest doubt in my mind that your wife's story is true in every important particular—including the rape.” The lieutenant had closed his eyes and sat, tight-lipped, shaking his head quickly from side to side. “The poor bastard,” I thought. “The poor tormented bastard.” The canker of doubt had still been gnawing at him whether it had really been rape, whether she mightn't have encouraged or even solicited Barney Quill.
“There's one more thing,” I said, rising to leave. “We must not let anyone know that we know what we know. That makes a nice cryptic sentence, doesn't it? I mean the result of this test.” I turned to go.
“I understand,” the Lieutenant said. “You're leaving so soon? Oh, I suppose you prefer to wait for me below.” He smiled and glanced about his cell. “I wouldn't much blame you. I won't be long.” He arose and walked to the cell door.
“I won't be seeing you until some time this afternoon, Lieutenant,” I said. “Oh, by the way, I wrote the Army last night about furnishing us a psychiatrist. I held out the tin cup and piled it on. Right now I'm going to talk with your wife. I expect we'll have a rather heavy session this morning.” I paused. “I would prefer that you weren't there.”
The Lieutenant stood frozen in his tracks. “But you talked with her yesterday,” he suddenly blurted. “You talked for—for over two hours. Why—I—” He had paused, fallen silent, and stood nervously chewing his lower lip.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” I said, turning and facing him. “Have you said all you wanted to say? Are you done?”
The man's face was a brick-like crimson. “I—I was just think. ing,” he said.
I stood watching the man, wavering between scorn and pity. “Lieutenant,” I said softly, “I don't think I'd like to know what you're thinking. I don't think I'd really like it. You've already revealed quite enough.” I paused. “And if I may say so, it seems to me that you are in enough trouble already without dreaming up any more. Now come off of it, Lieutenant. Please. We've got to fight a real danger—this damned murder case.”
I held out my hand. He still stood there frozen, still flushed and frowning, his eyes unblinking, his lower lip caught in his teeth. There was a perceptible pause and then he took my hand. “Yes, sir!” he said, and the phrase escaped him like a pent jet of steam. I turned and quickly left.
As I clattered down the ringing jail stairs I whipped out my handkerchief and patted my forehead. The guitar had fallen silent. It seemed that I still had a client. I discovered that I was running and I slowed to a walk. Reaching the bottom I rattled the big main door like a man fleeing from nightmare. “For Christ's sake let me out of here, Sulo!” I shouted. “I need air. I—I'm suffocating.”
“Don't get your bowels in a uproar,” Sulo said, hurrying to release me from—from precisely what I did not know … .
 
I stood outside the jail door, breathing deeply. God, it was good to be alive and—and free from witnessing an open cancer of jealousy. When I reached the car Laura Manion and her little dog were awaiting me.
“Did you tell Manny?” she asked eagerly before I fairly got seated. “How did he take it?”
“Did I tell him what?” I said sharply, knowing what she meant and feeling an unaccountable prick of irritation. What kind of a pair of emotional juveniles was I getting mixed up with?
“Why, the results of the lie-detector test, of course. I could scarcely wait to ask you.”
“Oh, that,” I said almost gaily, fighting back the dark mood I seemed to be in. “Yes, I told him,” I said airily. “Everything was fine, fine. I also told him to keep mum.” I paused, feeling not unlike a sort of badgered and teetering diplomatic referee, like someone trying to promote sweetness and light, say, between the Soviets
and the U.S.A. “Everything's under control,” I went on. “He's getting himself and his bachelor quarters tidied up and I plan to see him after lunch. In the meantime I'd like to hear your story. I want it from A to Z. Would you care to light up?”
“Do you want me to tell it just as I told it to the state police?”
“I want it just as you told it to the state police, plus,” I said.
“Plus what?”
I smiled. “Plus, my dear, what you
didn't
tell the state police. Come now, Laura, you're a smart woman and you're doubtless several light years ahead of me. I want all the story—plus all of the angles, good or bad. Don't you see, if you don't tell your lawyer what he may have to face and fight—”
“Where shall I begin?” she said, smiling.
“Suppose,” I said, “suppose you begin at A.”

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