Murder by the Book (15 page)

“He makes quite a point of it, I'm afraid,” Bradley said. “This lawyer. You know how lawyers are. ‘Did you expect this Mr. Hunter to take an impartial look at a man you had in handcuffs, sheriff? Did you expect a dispassionate decision? You didn't know—didn't dream—that because this man was chained to you, Mr. Hunter—anyone—would be prejudiced against him? Would say to himself, “Sure, this is the guilty man. Probably dangerous, too. Otherwise, why does this sheriff—who'd make two of him—put the cuffs on him?” Then the lawyer moves to have the evidence of identification—or nonidentification—ruled inadmissible and the judge—”

He paused. He shrugged. “Of course,” Jasper Bradley said, “I've never been a judge.” He smiled at Jefferson. “But obviously,” he said, “you've thought of all this. I realize that—”

Jefferson hadn't thought of all that. That was what this skinny little—That was what Jasper Bradley, small-time con man, realized. That was what he was needling Deputy Sheriff Jefferson about.

And probably there was something to it. Why the little bastard should point it out, except that he couldn't keep his mouth shut, couldn't put the needle away—All the same, there might be something to it. Jefferson thought of Judge Ackerman. When it came to trial, the charge murder in the first degree, it would almost certainly come up before Judge Ackerman. And the way Ackerman acted sometimes you'd think he didn't like cops, enjoyed putting cops in the wrong. “Prejudicial to the rights of the defendant.” That was the sort of thing Judge Ackerman liked to say, even when nobody had laid hands on somebody everybody knew was guilty as hell. Just maybe kept him awake when he wanted to go to sleep, or some ordinary thing like that.

“Trying to get away with something, aren't you?” Jefferson said, in his roughest voice. But it didn't really, in his own ears, sound very good or even, come to that, very rough.

Bradley sighed again. This was the sigh of a man misunderstood; of a man who has sought merely to help, and has been rebuffed.

So, Jefferson thought, probably there was something in what the little so-and-so said. And there was something else. Suppose Bradley wanted the cuffs off so he could make a break for it. If a man trying to escape gets roughed up a little, nobody can make a point of that. Not shot, not really hurt. Ronald Jefferson had never, in fact, shot anyone, although he had shot over a few heads. He had never actually roughed anybody up, either—not unless somebody else started the roughing, and then only enough to stop that. Well, there could always be a first time. Let this smart-aleck give him an excuse—

Jasper Bradley looked as if he wanted to smile, and was restraining himself, out of consideration. Smile or, come to that, laugh.

“Don't try anything,” Jefferson said. “Just don't try anything.”

He unlocked the handcuffs and put them in his pocket. Bradley rubbed his wrist. He looked up and down Ronald Jefferson, looked at his own thin hands. Again he sighed, a man resigned to the unreasonableness of others.

Williams stayed in the car. Jefferson took the thin man into the office, a big hand hard on a thin arm. Lemuel Hunter was behind the desk. He was a thin man, too—a hard thin man, with white hair and a face deeply tanned. He wore a blue polo shirt and dark slacks. He said, “Good morning, Jeff,” and New England was in the timbre of his voice, in his inflection. (When Ronald Jefferson had first met Lem Hunter some years earlier he had decided that Hunter was some kind of foreigner.)

Hunter looked at Jefferson and then, longer, at Jasper Bradley. There was nothing to show that this bothered Bradley. Hunter said, “Morning,” and Bradley said, “Good morning, Mr. Hunter.”

“Man you sent me the picture of, isn't he?” Hunter said, and Jefferson said, “Yeah,” and Bradley said nothing at all.

“Saturday evening,” Hunter said, “they come in pretty fast. Check-outs Saturday morning; check-ins Saturday night. Abby gives me a hand.”

“I know, Lem,” Jefferson said.

“Name of Worthington?”

“That's the name he—” Jefferson caught himself. He was looking at Hunter, not at the skinny little—But he could feel that Jasper Bradley was, again, on the verge of smiling. The smile would be one of pity. Conduct prejudicial to the rights—

“Yes,” Jefferson said, “that's the name.”

He did not look at Bradley.

“Wonder,” Hunter said, “if you'd mind going over to the door and walking back, Mr. Worthington?”

If he's looking for a chance, this'll give it to him, Ronald Jefferson thought. But Williams is outside. He won't forget Williams.

“Certainly,” Bradley said, and walked to the door. He turned and walked back again. He limped slightly. “Cramp in my leg,” he said. “Get it when I sit in one position for long. Sometimes I do.”

“Yep,” Hunter said. “About six-thirty; maybe. Next to the last room. Number 11, that was. Overnight. Don't get many overnighters, you know. Don't cater to them, especially. But—yes, Jeff. Checked him in myself.”

Jefferson continued not to look at Jasper Bradley, not to see whether he was smiling. If he was smiling, the little—

“You weren't so sure when you saw the photograph,” Jefferson said.

“No,” Hunter said. “Picture's one thing. Seein's another.”

“You'd swear to it?”

“Yep,” Hunter said. “'Fraid I would, Jeff.”

“Because of the limp?”

“Could be. Could be that helps. But mostly that just brings the situation back. See what I mean? The picture.”

“Yeah,” Jefferson said. “I guess I do, Lem.”

“You thought he wouldn't be? That somebody else used his name?”

“Far as the name goes—” Jefferson said, and caught himself again, and said, “Yeah. That's it.”

“'Fraid not,” Hunter said. “This man's Mr. Worthington, who checked in Saturday evening. By the way, state cops left this for you, Jeff.”

He took an envelope out of a pigeonhole in the letter rack. Jefferson opened it, but he knew, feeling no enthusiasm, what it would be.

It was not a full report from the state police fingerprint boys. That would go on, through channels, to the office. It was enough. Prints on the registration card those of Jasper Bradley, alias James Worthington. (Together with those of Lemuel Hunter, ownermanager of Hunter's Lodge.) Prints in Room 11, assigned Bradley, those of Bradley. (And of other people, presumably previous occupants, in several instances underlying those of Bradley.) Jefferson put the report back in its envelope, and the envelope in his pocket. He was aware that Bradley was looking at him, and did not look at Bradley. Jefferson said, “Well—” and heard reluctance in his voice, and thought of something.

“Pay in advance for the night?” Jefferson asked Lem Hunter, and Hunter shook his head.

“Don't operate that way here,” he said, and there seemed to be faint distaste in his voice. “Not exactly a roadside stopover.”

“Then in the morning he'd have to check out, pay his bill.”

“Did that,” Hunter said. “Had breakfast, charged it on his bill, paid his bill. Checked out about—about when was it, Mr. Worthington?”

“Eight-thirty,” Bradley said, pleasantly. “Between that and nine.”

Jefferson turned to Bradley, then—turned abruptly.

“Mind saying what you had for breakfast?” Jefferson said.

And Bradley smiled. (That damned, tolerant smile!) He said, “Not at all, sheriff. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. Oh, and orange juice. All very good, too.”

The check would show what had been eaten by the occupant of Room 11 at breakfast Sunday morning. If it had not been destroyed. And it would show scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and coffee. And orange juice.

“Held onto it after I got your query,” Hunter said, and reached into another pigeonhole and came out with several papers and shuffled them, and put one down on the desk in front of Jefferson. It was a charge slip for breakfast, eaten the previous morning. The items were those Jefferson had known they would be. He looked at Bradley. Bradley's expression was one of sympathy. Jefferson felt somewhat like a large puppet, dangled on strings held in expert fingers. The skinny, crooked, little—

“You check him out, Lem?”

Hunter hadn't. A man had to get some sleep sometime. Abby—that would be Mrs. Abigail Hunter—had been on the desk then. She'd be out checking with the restaurant manager now, but if Jeff wanted—

Jefferson said, “If it isn't too much trouble. Hate to bother Miz Hunter but—”

They waited a few minutes after Hunter used the telephone. Mrs. Hunter came in. She was a largish woman, noticeably well-corseted. Jefferson said, “Morning, Miz Hunter. Ever see this man before?”

She looked at Bradley. She shrugged her shoulders. She said, “See a lot, sheriff. Come and go. When?”

“Yesterday morning, Abby,” Hunter said. “Checkout. Eleven. Twenty-three sixty-nine, counting tax.”

She looked at Bradley again, shrugged again. She said, “People getting mail, people asking how to get places, people wanting the wagon for the golf course.”

“I know,” Lem Hunter said.

“Gave me a twenty and a five,” Mrs. Hunter said. “Looked at the twenty because there's a list out. Wasn't on the list. Wasn't counterfeit far's I could see.” She looked at her husband, with some anxiety.

“No,” Hunter said. “The bill was all right.”

“About the man, Miz Hunter?”

She looked at Bradley again, and once more shrugged her shoulders.

“Looks sort of familiar,” she said. “Thin man, seems I remember. Like he is.”

“Remember whether the man who checked out limped, Miz Hunter?”

“Can't say I do,” Mrs. Hunter said. “One way or the other.” She waited a few moments. She said, “That all, sheriff? Because I've got things to do.”

“I guess it is,” Jefferson said, and Abigail Hunter went, briskly, to do the things she had to do.

Jasper Bradley, alias Worthington, was again appreciative, as they drove back to Key West, of the beauty around them. Driving with the sun at their backs, the colors were quite different, but no less exciting to the eye. Had Sheriff Jefferson noted the difference?

“Shut your yap, for God's sake,” Sheriff Jefferson told him. “And wipe that smile off.”

Bradley said, “Certainly, sheriff,” and did.

When he got out of the car, and was taken into the jail by Deputy Williams, while Jefferson sat and watched, and thought what he'd like to do to the little so-and-so, Bradley limped. He hadn't when they walked from motel office to the car.

The “cramp” had obviously—a hell of a lot too obviously—recurred.

If it's the last thing I do, Deputy Sheriff Ronald Jefferson thought bitterly, I'll pin it on the lying bastard. He won't get away with it—checking in at night, having this sidekick of his take his place during the night and coming back to Key West himself, having his sidekick check out in the morning (after eating the breakfast they'd agreed he'd eat), killing Dr. Piersal and—and laughing about it. Laughing at me. I'll—

And then, aloud, Deputy Sheriff Jefferson swore. You get mad, you let a little crook rile you, and you slip up. (Which is what the smart little crook is after.) It was a kind of sleight of hand. It was the old shell game.

Take the little crook back up again? (And listen to him talk about how pretty the water was.) Or …

12

Pam suggested that, for this day, they pass up tennis. She said they didn't want to overdo it. She said she didn't have a muscle that wasn't furious at her. She said they could just loaf. They could lie in the sun, on the beach or at the pool, and work on tanning. Neither of them was really getting a tan. They'd get back home and nobody'd know they'd been in Florida.

Jerry thought this last was as unlike Pam North as anything he could think of. He thought, and said, that frying in oil was the last thing he would do voluntarily. He said, “Shuffleboard?” and Pam said, “For heaven's sake, Jerry!” in marked horror. Then Pam said she knew. They'd just drive around Key West. They would go down and watch the shrimp boats come in. They would have lunch at the A. & B. Lobster House. Or at this place near the Aquarium poor Dr. Piersal had mentioned. Or …

Key West is a small city on a small island. At its center—in the vicinity of Duval Street—traffic is thick and sluggish and there is no place to park, if one wants to park. Streets which promise well end disconcertingly nowhere, and with no room to turn around in.

“We could,” Jerry said, “just sit here in the shade. When the
Times
gets here, we could read the
Times
. You could do the crossword.”

“We'll go just as we are,” Pam said. “If you've got your billfold.”

Jerry had his billfold. They went just as they were, with Jerry's billfold in the pocket of his walking shorts and a large question mark in his mind.

At Pam's suggestion, they drove first up Roosevelt Boulevard, with the Atlantic sparkling on their right, with, far away, a tanker seemingly motionless in blue water. They passed the Martello Tower, which was a fortification once and is now a museum and art gallery; they passed the International Airport, which has not, since Castro, been particularly international. “Let's turn in here,” Pam said, beyond the airport. “See what it looks like.”

They could see, without turning in, what the Key Wester looked like. It looked like an affluent two-story motel, with “villas.” Its grounds were thick with youngish palms, and bougainvillia brightly climbed the one-story office structure. Jerry turned the rented convertible, which they had converted, into the entrance and stopped it under the portico at the office door. Pam said she wouldn't be a minute, and was only three. That gave Jerry time enough.

“Not there?” he said, when Pam was beside him.