Shadows Everywhere (8 page)

Seabold smiled forcedly. "You have your warrant." He watched Lieutenant Craig go upstairs, heard the sergeant walk into the kitchen and tread down the cellar steps. Seabold stood and moved to the front window. He saw the police car with the uniformed officer in it parked near the house, facing the house.

Ten minutes passed before the sergeant's urgent voice carried upstairs and through the house via the ductwork. "Lieutenant!"

Craig barely glanced at Seabold as he hurried down the carpeted stairs from above, jogged into the kitchen and down the steps to the basement.

Then Seabold heard him come back up the steps, taking them slowly. When he appeared in the living room his face was grave.

"There seems to be a fresh patch of cement down there, Mr. Seabold."

"Oh that," Seabold said. "The basement floor leaked there so I tore it out a week or so ago and repaired it."

"I see," Craig said, studying Seabold carefully.

The sergeant had entered the living room now and was standing with his arms crossed.

"Excuse me," Lieutenant Craig said, and he walked to the door and went outside. He returned in a few minutes with two uniformed officers.

"We think you should go down to headquarters, Mr. Seabold," Craig said in a friendly voice, "just for questioning. These officers will inform you of your rights."

One of the officers held the front door open for Seabold. "Headquarters?" Seabold said in a shocked tone. "Questions? Surely you don't think...That's preposterous!"

"Preposterous things happen sometimes," Lieutenant Craig observed as Seabold went to the closet and got his coat.

The two officers drove Seabold to Police Headquarters in the patrol car, and he was ushered into a quiet gray room furnished only with two wooden chairs and a battered desk.

He waited alone there for the next two hours, standing and staring through the dirty, iron grilled window at the Twelfth Street traffic passing noiselessly eight stories below.

Then Lieutenant Craig entered the room wearing a perplexed look of aggravation. He motioned for Seabold to sit in one of the wooden chairs, then he sat behind the desk and began to make low clucking sounds beneath his breath as he pondered.

"We're a little puzzled about Mrs. Seabold," he said finally.

"So am I," Seabold said.

Lieutenant Craig sighed. "We tore up that patch of fresh cement in your basement," he said.

"And you found?"

"Nothing." Craig screwed up his eyes to the slanting evening light and stared absently out the window as he continued. "Then we searched the house and the grounds around the house. We found a spot in your rose garden where the earth had been recently overturned."

"Yes," Seabold said, "that's where I was trying out a new fall fertilizer. I assume you dug there also."

Lieutenant Craig nodded. "And we found nothing. However there are some curious facts you might enlighten us on."

"Count on me to cooperate," Seabold said.

Craig grunted. "First of all, when your wife packed, what clothes did she take? It seemed to us she left a pretty complete wardrobe behind. Also her toothbrush, a lot of makeup, hairbrushes, mirrors, things of that nature that a woman would usually pack first."

"I really couldn't say what she packed, Lieutenant. She was mad. Perhaps she just overlooked those items."

"And you said she left in a taxi," Lieutenant Craig said evenly, "but no taxi company has a record of a call to your address on that date."

"I assumed she left in a taxi, Lieutenant. All I really know is that a car door slammed outside when she left. I suppose on reflection that it could have been a friend who picked her up."

Lieutenant Craig loosened the knot on his striped tie and licked his thin lips. "I don't enjoy playing games, Mr. Seabold."

"Nor do I," Seabold said crassly. "I was about to engage your department to search for my missing wife, but you seem to have made a botch of that job to this point."

The lieutenant rose and stood behind the desk. Sweat was beaded on his tan forehead. Seabold's face was dry as he regarded the lieutenant with calm gray eyes.

Lieutenant Craig opened his mouth as if to say something, then he turned and walked to the door.

"Lieutenant?" Frank Seabold stopped him. "Have you dragged the river?"

Lieutenant Craig stood with the door open, glaring darkly at Seabold. "As a matter of fact," he said tightly, "we're doing that right now." He slammed the door behind him harder than was necessary.

Seabold sat for a while in the chair, then his back began to ache and he got up and started to pace.

Less than fifteen minutes had passed, though it seemed longer, when Lieutenant Craig reentered the room. His tie was neatly knotted again and his hair was combed. He was almost, but not quite, smiling.

"Sergeant Tompkins telephoned me," the lieutenant said softly. "He found a ring engraved with your wife's initials in your furnace. And traces of dried blood with your wife's type in cracks on the basement floor." He leaned both hands on the desktop. "Come along with me now. I'm officially booking you for the murder of your wife, Nina Seabold."

A flicker of something crossed Seabold's gray eyes and a muscle along the line of his jaw twitched. "That blood must be from when I cut myself over a month ago," he said. "And if you'll check further with our family physician, you'll find my wife and I have the same blood type. You're making a mistake, Lieutenant–why, how can you have a case when you don't even have a body?"

Now Lieutenant Craig did smile, a rigid, humorless smile. "You might he surprised to know, Mr. Seabold, that we don't need a body."

Seabold stood motionless, framed in the diffused light from the filthy, barred window. "I think," he said calmly, "that I will exercise my right to call a lawyer."

"That would be my advice," Lieutenant Craig said.

Seabold's trial didn't come up for a month. His lawyer, Allan Cory, arranged for him to be released on bail and Seabold spent the time mostly at home, getting his affairs in order. He knew the police were watching him, and the only time he made any kind of contact with Gracie was when he called her on a pay phone. The police had no way of knowing who or where he was calling, and he had to talk to her, had to let her know what had happened.

Then, on the determined date, Seabold went with his lawyer and turned himself over to the authorities to await the beginning of his trial the following morning.

The arguments of both the prosecution and the defense could be easily summed up.

The prosecution maintained that Seabold had murdered his wealthy and heavily insured wife after a violent argument, apparently dismembered her and disposed of burnable parts of her anatomy in the furnace. The rest of Nina Seabold he had disposed of some other way, or perhaps buried someplace not yet discovered. Here was her platinum ring, charred almost beyond recognition but with her engraved initials plain to see. And if Frank Seabold had not murdered his wife, let him provide the answers to some serious questions. Why the fresh cement in his basement? Had it been to cover a grave, a method of disposing of his wife's body that he'd later decided against? Might the same thing be said about the digging in his garden?

And the ring, how did it get in the furnace? And the traces of dried blood on the basement floor? And if Mrs. Seabold had left of her own accord, how did she leave? Why didn't she take all her clothes? And, above all, where was she? If she were alive surely the publicity of the trial would have brought her forth. The prosecution ably established motive, opportunity, and method.

The defense's summation was equally convincing. The cement had been for a cracked and seeping basement floor. The digging in the garden had been for fertilizer. And the ring? It had been a gift from Seabold to his wife; perhaps in her anger at some time or another she had furiously hurled it into the furnace. Who really knew about something like that? As for the traces of dried blood, they were from the defendant when he had cut his hand months ago. It was his misfortune to have the same common blood type as his wife. And who was this mysterious neighbor the police say called and told them of foul play?

The defense couldn't say how Mrs. Seabold had left the house–perhaps with a friend. They couldn't say why she didn't take all her clothes–but did a spurned woman always act rationally? Regarding her present whereabouts and her failure to appear in the light of the trial's publicity, could it he she was hiding, making her husband suffer? At any rate, it was the job of the prosecution to answer those questions. Surely in the minds of the jury there had to be some doubt.

And when the jury had filed out to deliberate Seabold had seen that doubt and perplexity on their faces. He estimated he had a fifty-fifty chance, which was about what he'd expected.

S
eabold stopped gazing at the ceiling and rolled onto his side to stare through the bars at the gleaming green-tiled wall opposite his cell. Footsteps were echoing through the courthouse basement, two men walking down the long corridor toward the cell. Seabold saw their hazy, distorted reflections in the tile, then the two bailiffs appeared and stopped in front of the cell door.

"They're ready for you upstairs," one of the bailiffs said, and he inserted a large key into the steel lock.

The judge, stenographer, a few spectators and some reporters were the only people in the courtroom besides Cory when the bailiffs led Seabold down the center aisle to the wide table. As he sat beside Gory the lawyer smiled at him.

"We'll know soon," he said encouragingly.

Seabold smiled back. "Don't worry," he whispered, "this is one case you won't lose."

A door behind them opened and everyone's attention turned to the back of the courtroom as the members of the jury filed back to their seats.

The judge stopped reading whatever he'd been reading and peered down at them, waiting until everyone was seated. Then he brought the court to order and everyone was quiet.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?"

The jury foreman stood nervously and swallowed. He was a
middle-aged accountant for an automobile manufacturer. "We have, Your Honor," he said in a steady voice that belied his appearance.

"And what is your verdict?"

Seabold held his breath, aware that people were watching him, waiting."

"We the jury find the defendant, Frank Seabold, not guilty."

Seabold let out a long sigh, ignoring the buzz of voices, the pop of flashbulbs.

He was free.

Seabold went directly home and showered and shaved before going out again. Then he ordered a steak dinner in one of his favorite restaurants and went to call Gracie on the pay phone while the steak was being broiled.

"It's over," he said when she answered the phone. "I was acquitted."

"I know," she said. "I heard it on the radio. It's wonderful!" "Two more days," Seabold said, "to be on the safe side."

"If that's what you want, darling."

"You're what I want," Seabold said, and hung up.

Two days later, after driving around for a while to make sure he wasn't being followed, Seabold headed the car for Gracie's cabin high in the wooded hills. There, after waking from the effects of the powerful sedative Seabold had secretly given her before bedtime, Nina Seabold had been held captive for the past month and a half in a small, escape proof room. The only person she'd seen during that time had been Gracie, and Nina had never seen Gracie before.

No, if Seabold had been found guilty and sentenced to death or life imprisonment Gracie simply would have released Nina and up she would turn, the victim of mysterious abductors. Seabold would have been released with apologies.

But it was better this way. This was how Seabold had planned it, from Gracie's anonymous phone call to the police to his acquittal. He had hedged his bet, and the jury had decided Nina's fate.

Now that he had been tried and acquitted for his wife's death, it was perfectly safe to kill her. He couldn't be tried twice for the same crime, so in a way the state had given him license to murder. Not that they'd ever find Nina, buried deep, deep in the woods.

Nina was surprised and overjoyed when Seabold entered the room where she was held captive. She was even more surprised, though not nearly so overjoyed, when he struck her with the hammer.

D
etective Sergeant Sam Day stood near the swinging partition that gave access to the area behind the long, scarred wooden counter. The faint odor of sweat and varnish rose from the counter, a familiar odor to Day. He shifted his weight to his other leg and felt a trickle of perspiration down his back. It was hot outside, almost ninety, and the old Eighth Precinct air conditioner just wasn't doing it. Off to one side the switchboard operator sat, marking his chart to keep track of the Eighth Precinct cars, his ears alert to calls for those cars and those cars only, picking them out almost automatically from the constant stream of static-filled chatter that blared from the metal speaker near him.