Anatomy of a Murder (15 page)

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Authors: Robert Traver

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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“It shall be done, Paul,” Laura Manion said, laughing. “And I promise to look like a perfect witch.”
“That, madam,” I said gallantly, “will take a bit of doing.”
If clients and witnesses sometimes suffer from courtroom jitters, lawyers themselves occasionally come down with what might more clumsily be called “preparation-of-the-case” jitters. That noon while I ate lunch at the Iron Bay Club I thought I detected some preliminary twinges in myself. The symptoms are subtle and rather hard to pin down; I seemed suddenly gripped by a feeling of unreality about the case and its possible outcome, a wry sensation of inadequacy and doubt, a notion that I was somehow missing the boat; an anxious feeling that I had got so close to this damned case that I couldn't see the forest for the trees.
I also discovered that I was holding an uneaten sandwich poised in mid-air. I abruptly took a big bite into it and one or two of my fellow diners glanced quickly in my direction, as one does when a creep is abroad. “Wrong order,” I muttered in a sandwich-muffled voice. “Place goin' plumb to hell.”
Tentative trial strategies which seemed inspired from on high were now crowding in and colliding head on with still other but inconsistent strategies which had seemed no less brilliant at birth. It was high time, I reflected, that I get to hell away from the turbulent Manions and their tangled emotional problems and turn my searchlight on the raw case itself. From there on it was only a breeze for me to decide to go fishing. I sighed and pushed my unfinished sandwich away and went upstairs and phoned the county jail.
“Is this you, Sulo?” I asked, as though there was anyone else in the whole wide world who could say “Iron 'Liffs County Yail speaking” with half the Old World charm of Sulo. “This is Polly Biegler,” I went on. “Look, Sulo, please tell the Manions that I've been unavoidably detained and won't be able to see them this afternoon.”
“You been
wat?”
Sulo shouted, and it came back to me that he had always shouted over the phone; he was one of those resolute diehards who would never quite believe that such gadgets were here to stay.
“Look, Sulo, tell my Army man I won't be there today. Yes … I mean no … I won't be there.” I too was shouting. “Have you got it?
I won't be there!
I'm sick, I'm going fishing, I'm drunk! I won't be there!”
“Sewer, sewer, sewer, Polly,” Sulo said mildly. “Vy don't you tell me dat in da first 'lace? You von't be over here today.”
“Good-by, Sulo,” I said. “I love you madly.”
“Vat you say?” Sulo shouted.
“I won't be there!”
I shouted back, closing my eyes and resting the receiver gently on its cradle.
Yes, it was about time to go fishing.
But it was still too early and far too bright for good fishing so I ordered a bottle of beer and picked up an outdoor magazine and idly thumbed the pages. The mosquito-infested crisp-bacon world of outdoor sportsmen, I saw, was this season fast going to hell in an outboard motor. Tucked away between the jungle of ads I found an article on a new way of plug casting for bass. I read it, as one sometimes macaberly reads the obituaries of complete strangers. The incongruity of my reading about bass or bass fishing, which I loathed, reminded me of the time my friend Raymond and I had once, on a fishing trip, visited the shack of old Dan McGinnis, the king of Oxbow Lake. Danny lived by himself—“batched” in the U.P. idiom—in one of the wildest and remotest areas of the county. One had to walk the last several miles to get there; not even the best jeep could quite negotiate that bush country. We had found old Danny sitting by his window, patched elbows propped on his checkered oilcloth-covered kitchen table, poring over a tattered old pulp magazine. His lips were moving silently as though he were reciting a litany. So absorbed was he in his reading that he barely looked up when we stomped in and dumped our packsacks and fishing gear on his floor.
“What are you reading, Danny?” Raymond had politely asked.
“Oh, who me?” Danny replied, annoyedly looking up. “Why, I'm readin' a story about a kind of a hermit fella what lives 'way up in the north woods—all by hisself. He's slowly goin' crazy, it says here. Livin' all alone all year ‘round. Can you imagine the likes of a pore crazy bastard doin' that? Unnatural, I calls it. Yep, yep, yep. Damned int‘restin', though!”
And there I now sat, in the heart of some of the finest trout fishing in the country, reading an article designed to teach poor trapped city guys and Indiana farmers how they might catch more wormy
bass,
a fish that I personally regarded as scarcely a cut above a chain-store lobster. I slammed shut the magazine and stalked out of the place and down the street to Doc Trembath's office.
The Doctor's office was crowded as usual, and as usual mostly with glowering and stoically pregnant women, who were his specialty; but Doc's receptionist was an understanding woman who
seemed to sense that my own pregnancy was more advanced, and in a few minutes I was seated beside the doctor himself, an enormous big hulking field marshal of a man with the gentle long-suffering mien of an overworked angel.
“I'm defending the Manion murder case,” I said, shaking his big paw, “and believe it or not I need some advice on the mechanics of sex. How the mighty are fallen. Please try to give it to me straight —not in the pig Latin you doctors ordinarily use.”
“Fire away,” Doctor Trembath said, sighing wearily and lighting a cigarette.
“You've doubtless read about the case in the papers, including the fact that Manion's wife claims that Barney Quill had raped her,” I said.
“Yes,” the Doctor said. He was a quiet sort of man, and he rarely wasted words. The women adored him; a sheer case of the attraction of opposites.
“Well, the lady in the case, Laura Manion, is a fireball of a woman. She's now living with her second husband. Could a doctor tell by examining her whether she had been raped?”
The Doctor slowly shook his head no.
“Or that she had recently had intercourse?”
“Only if a smear showed spermatozoa.”
“The Manions tell me that old Doc Dompierre tilted her up over at the jail the other night, at their request, and took a smear with a swab stick. He has since reported it was negative for male sperm.”
“Did he first dilate the—vaginal opening?” Doc asked, mindful of my warning against medical Latin.
“The Manions say no. But is the way he did it kosher?”
“That is not the way I would have done it,” the Doctor said.
“But is it one medically accepted way?” I persisted.
“No,” he said. “I would say it is definitely not.”
“If it appeared that the lady was excessively tender and sore—might not that be some evidence that she had been forcibly had?”
The Doctor looked up at the ceiling and blinked thoughtfully. “I would rather put it this way,” he said, speaking carefully. “The symptoms you speak of are purely subjective, so a physician could not himself testify as to her pain and soreness. There would thus be no direct physical evidence of a rape or indeed of any act of intercourse that he could testify to. But if the woman's claim as to such soreness were true and also her claim that it was the result of an unwelcome act of intercourse—if her story was believed, in other
words—a careful physician could testify that this was some evidence that the intercourse had been against her will.” He paused and smiled faintly. “I suppose I don't have to tell you that a normal woman has to be receptive to the act—she has to be ready. I further understand that among you lawyers the woman's unwillingness is an important element of legal rape.”
“Right, Doctor,” I said. “But would
you
so testify if you were asked in court—that her sensitivity could have been the result of intercourse against her will?”
He thought for a moment. “I would want to examine her first,” he said.
The good Doctor had led with his chin. “Good,” I said. “When can you look her over?”
The Doctor grunted and gestured wearily at the roomful of waiting females. “Another one more or less won't make much difference, I guess.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wish I had taken up steamfitting —some trade where I could just throw down my wrench and walk away when the whistle blew.”
“Perhaps, Doctor,” I said, “perhaps your world view is growing a trifle too confined.”
He smiled wanly. “When do you want to send her in?”
“How about this afternoon?”
“I suppose. Yes, send her along.”
“Will you also check her for any possible bruises and lacerations, there or elsewhere, and please make notes of your findings?”
“Yes, yes. Send her along.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Now just one more question: Is there any way that an autopsy on Barney Quill could have shown that
he
had had intercourse shortly before his death and reached a climax?”
“There is.”
“How?”
“By possible stains on his body or clothing, and better yet by examination of the seminal vesicles, which would naturally be depleted—that is, if he had recently reached a sexual climax. Here, I'll show you.” He reached over and selected a thick medical book and flipped the pages and showed me and explained a picture of the complicated things that happen to the human male as he embarks on love's last embrace.
“Ah, nature, it's wonderful,” I said, when he was done. “But I think that henceforth I'll stick exclusively to fishing.”
“May I ask if an autopsy was performed on the deceased?” the Doctor said.
“I assume so,” I said. “That's the only sure way the People can prove the cause of death—which is part of what we lawyers call the
corpus delicti,
you know, if you'll excuse my foreign accent.”
“Was an examination made of the body and clothing for the things we've just discussed?”
“That's exactly what I don't know, Doc. That's one of the reasons I came to see you.” I had come to the hard part, and I paused. “Would you have any objection, Doctor, to testifying for the defense on these things—if it should become necessary?” I said. “In fairness I should add that it probably will become necessary.”
The Doctor sat pondering and puffing his cigarette. Here was a grievously busy man, one of the busiest and best in the county. Yet could I much blame him if he shied away from getting mixed up in such a malodorous and flamboyant murder case? “Doctor Orion Trembath, prominent Iron Bay physician and surgeon, today testified for the defense!” the newspapers would proclaim. And he would naturally anticipate all that.
“Doc,” I said softly, rising, “this Lieutenant of mine—'way up here among strangers—he's a pretty goddam lonely man. And he's stony broke, too. I'll try to find someone else if—if you'd rather not help.”
The Doctor crushed out his cigarette and arose and extended his hand. Tall as I am he towered over me. “If the going gets too rough,” he said, “you can count on me.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said. “I hope no one's popped out there while we've been talking.”
The stoically pregnant women seemed to glower harder than ever as I, the interloping male, one of the hateful carefree breed responsible for their plight, stole through their swollen ranks and clattered down the stairs. Ah, but they didn't realize all the fine mechanical secrets I now knew about their husbands and lovers. And anyway I had got my doctor, the one I had wanted, one whose opinions were not for sale to the highest bidder. Outside I found that the sun had clouded over. I glanced up at the weather tower. A gentle wind was blowing out of the west. “And when the wind is from the west, that's when fishing is the best.” My nostrils began to dilate.
I walked back up to the club and called the jail again and asked Sulo to please get the Lieutenant on the phone. The Lieutenant, it appeared, was still sitting there waiting for me. Sulo would put him on. “You lawyer man vants you!” he shouted.
“I won't be over this afternoon, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Yes, Sulo just told me a while ago. I'm waiting for Laura. Is everything all right?”
“Just getting a little punchy, is all, and I'm going fishing. I want to be alone to roll some spitballs for Mr. Lodwick.”
The Lieutenant laughed, and I briefly told him of the arrangements I had made for an examination of his wife later that afternoon by Doctor Trembath. “Please see that she gets there,” I added.
“But she already has a doctor,” the Lieutenant countered in that aggrieved voice I was getting to know so well.
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“Then isn't he enough? Do we need
two?”
I mentally counted to ten. “I don't want to seem picky, Lieutenant, but I happen to consider your particular doctor professionally on a par with Amos Crocker. In fact he must have recommended him.” I paused. “Listen, Lieutenant, I'm getting a little weary of having to threaten to pull out of this goddam case every time I want your consent to any recommendation I make. But I should warn you—if you insist upon having that doctor I think you'd better also plan to stick around and wait for old Crocker's leg to mend. They'd make such a charming pair; they both improvise so well. Do I make myself clear?”

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