The Fourth Deadly Sin (46 page)

“Please leave before …”

Delaney reached out to slap the top of her desk with an open palm. The sharp crack made her jump.

“Sit down, madam!” he thundered.

“You are going nowhere without our permission.”

She stared at him, blank-faced, and then slowly lowered herself back into her chair.

“Let’s get on with it,” Delaney said.

“We don’t want to waste too much time on a tawdry murder.” That got to her, he could see, and he peered down at his clipboard, flipping pages with some satisfaction.

“Now then,” he said, looking up at her again, “the evidence we have uncovered indicates that you became aware of your husband’s affair sometime last year, probably soon after it started. This is supposition on my part, but I would guess you let it continue because you hoped it was just a passing fancy and would soon end.”

I don’t have to answer any of your questions,” she said.

Delaney showed his big yellow teeth in something approximating a smile. “But I haven’t asked any questions, have I?

Let me continue. About three weeks prior to his death, your husband came to you, confessed his love for Joan Yesell, and asked for a divorce. There went your hope that his adulterous relationship was a temporary infatuation. Worse, it was a tremendous blow to your self-esteem.”

“You’re a dreadful man,” she whispered.

“That’s true,” he said, almost happily, “I am. Let me psychoanalyze you, doctor, for a few minutes. Turn the tables, so to speak. You are a beautiful and wealthy woman, and all your life you’ve lived in a cocoon, protected and sheltered from reality. What do you know about a waitress’s aching feet or how hard the wife of a poor man works? It’s all been peaches and cream, hasn’t it? All those relatives dying and leaving you money. A successful career. And best of all, being worshiped by men. You could see it in their eyes and the way they acted.

Every man you ever met wanted to jump on your bones.”

“Stop it,” she said.

“Please stop it.”

“Never a defeat,” he continued relentlessly.

“Never evena disappointment. But then your husband comes to you, says Bye-bye, kiddo, I want to leave you to marry another woman.

And a quiet, timid, plain, rather dowdy woman at that. It was the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Because you couldn’t handle defeat.

Didn’t know how-you had no experience. So all you could feel was anger. Your husband’s declaration of love for Yesell not only destroyed you, but it destroyed your world.” He paused a moment, expecting a reply. But when she said nothing, he flipped more pages on his clipboard, then looked up at her again.

“All right,” he said, “so much for the psychoanalysis, doc but I think it gives us a motive a jury would believe. Now let’s talk about the weapon the ball peen hammer that crushed your husband’s skull and put out his eyes.

We spent a lot of time on that hammer, Doctor Ellerbee, and, lo and behold, we discovered a ball peen hammer was stolen sometime in October from May’s Garage and Service Station in Brewster, where you take your cars. You could have lifted it. It’s possible, isn’t it? And where do you think that hammer is now? At the bottom of the brook that runs through your land. Which is why we’re getting a warrant to drag the stream. And if we find it-what then?

Fingerprints and bloodstains, I suppose. You’d be amazed at what the laboratory men can do these days.”

She stirred restlessly, moving her body in the chair and turning her head back and forth. She reminded Delaney of one of the great cats he had seen behind bars in the Central Park Zoo-a cheetah, he recalled whipping its head from side to side, pacing, endlessly pacing, plotting how to get out.

“Not much more now,” he said stonily.

“You couldn’t handle your anger, so you got hold of the hammer and started planning. It had to be on a Friday night, because that’s when Joan Yesell came up here, and she and your husband made love on his black leather couch. Right? So, on that stormy night, you didn’t drive up early to Brewster at all, did you?”

“I did!” she cried.

“I did!”

“Don’t jerk me around,” he said, tapping his clipboard.

“We’ve got evidence here that you didn’t. That instead you stayed in Manhattan, watched the townhouse, waiting for Joan Yesell to arrive. But she was late that night. Your anger was building, building … Finally you came in here and murdered your husband. And then smashed his eyes because he had the effrontery to look at another woman.”

She stared at him with horrified wonder.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked.

“Why?”

He stood suddenly and slammed a hard fist down on her desk top, a heavy blow that made everyone in the room jump.

He leaned far over the desk.

“Why?” he said in a strangled voice, glaring at her.

“Why?

Because you visited my home, you were sweet to my wife, you invited us to your home and fed us. You actually sat down at table with us and acted the bountiful hostess. Then you sent us flowers. The beginning of your downfall-if only you could have known. But throughout you’ve played me for a fool-a fool! And that I can’t take. You want to know why?

That’s why I” He subsided into his chair, his fury ebbing. She looked at him, bewildered, not understanding. Boone and Jason understood but remained silent.

The silence grew. He gave her time, watching her face working. He guessed what was going through her mind. He could almost see her confidence slowly returning as she reviewed everything he had said. She straightened in her chair, raised a hand to make certain her braids were in place.

“You don’t know that I stole a hammer from May’s,” she said finally, “and you certainly can’t prove it.”

“That’s true,” Delaney said, nodding.

“And you can’t prove that I stayed in Manhattan that night.”

He nodded again.

“You can’t even prove that I knew about my husband’s sleazy little affair,” she concluded triumphantly.

“So you’ve got nothing.”

He showed his teeth again.

“We’ve got you, madam,” he said.

She was shaken, expecting to hear a proven indictment.

But this great, shaggy bear of a man sat silently, staring at her over his reading glasses.

“Stop calling me ‘madam,”’ she said petulantly.

“If you don’t wish to address me as “Doctor,’ then “Mrs. Ellerbee’ will do as well.”

He leaned forward.

“Why don’t we cut out the shit,” he said pleasantly, using the crude word deliberately to further unsettle her.

“You’re going to waltz away from this, smiling bravely. If you don’t know it, your lawyers will.”

“Well, then,” she said, “this has all been an exercise in futility, hasn’t it?”

“Not quite. If I had my druthers, you’d be behind bars. for ten-to-twenty, eating off tin plates and afraid to pick up the soap in the shower. But if I can’t have that, I’ll settle for second best.” He extended a big hand, fingers spread wide, then slowly clenched them into a rocky fist.

“I’m going to crush you, madam-just like that.”

She looked at him, then looked at the two uniformed-officers sitting behind him. They returned her stare.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen to you,” Delaney said, hunching forward to rest his clasped hands on the desk.

“We’re going to make what they call a media event out of this.

We’re going to arrest you, charging you with the premeditated murder of your husband, Simon Ellerbee. You’ll be taken to the nearest precinct house, photographed, and fingerprinted.

Then you’ll be allowed a phone call to your attorney. While you’re waiting for him, you’ll be locked in a cage. Won’t that be nice? Oh, you’ll be out in a few hours, I’m sure-maybe a day at the most. Meanwhile we’ll have alerted the newspapers and television stations. It’s going to be a circus: Wife accused in brutal slaying of husband. The media will love it. Prominent East Side couple. Wealthy, well-known psychiatrists.

And the other woman-a patient! Have you ever been photographed wearing a bikini? I’ll bet the tabloids get hold of the photo and splash it all over their front pages.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she gasped, her face suddenly a death’s-head.

“Oh, I’d dare a great deal more than that, madam. Leaks to the press about your husband’s affair. Maybe Joan Yesell can sell her story and make a few bucks -she’s entitled.”

“I’ll sue you!” she screamed.

“I’ll sue all of you!”

“Be my guest,” he said with a frosty smile.

“You sue, and you’re going to be in the headlines a long time, lady. But meanwhile your career is down the drain. No more kiddie patients for you. And wherever you go, for the rest of your life, people will point a finger and whisper, “That’s the woman they said killed her husband.” You’ll never outlive that.”

“You’re a brute,” she shouted at him, quivering with anger.

“A brute!”

“A brute, am I? And what do you call someone who hammers in the skull of another human being and then crushes his eyes? I’m a brute but you’re notis that the way your mind works? You didn’t really think you were going to get off scotfree, did you? This is an imperfect, unfair world, I admit, but you sin and you pay the price, one way or another. It’s payment time for you, doctor.”

“I didn’t do it!” she howled desperately.

“I swear I didn’t!’, “You did it,” he said, looking at her steadily.

“You know it, I know it, these officers know it, the Department knows it.

And pretty soon the whole city will. You’re going to be a nine-day wonder, Doctor Ellerbee. Maybe they’ll even make up rhymes about you-like “Lizzie Borden took an axe..

Won’t it be great to be a superstar?”

She moved so swiftly they didn’t have time to react. Instead of circling the desk, she launched herself over the top, claws out, going for Delaney’s face. He jerked back, his chair went over with a crash, and he dragged her down atop him, hoping his glasses wouldn’t break.

Boone and Jason Two pulled her off. She fought them frantically and they slammed her back into the chair behind the desk. Jason stood next to her, a meaty hand clamped on her shoulder.

Delaney climbed awkwardly to his feet. He set the chair upright, examined his reading glasses to make sure they weren’t broken, and touched the stinging marks on his cheek.

His fingers came away bloody. He pressed his handkerchief to the gouges.

“Anger,” he said to the others, nodding.

“Uncontrollable.

The way she was when she killed her husband. Sergeant Boone, take a look out the window, see if the press is here.”

Abner Boone looked down from the window fronting on East 84th Street.

“They’re here,” he reported.

“A lot of guys with cameras and a TV crew.”

“Right on schedule,” Delaney said quietly.

“I should tell you, Mrs. Ellerbee, that because this is a felony arrest, you will be handcuffed.”

She sat, huddled and shrunken, head bowed, arms crossed over her breast, holding her elbows. She would not look at him.

“Do you understand what you did?” he asked gently, still pressing a handkerchief to his cheek.

“You killed a human being. The man betrayed you, certainly. But was that sufficient reason to take a human life?

Sergeant..

Abner Boone stepped close to Diane.

“You have the right to remain silent …” he started.

Delaney sat while they took her away. He had no desire to watch from the window. But he saw the flash of photographer’s lights and heard the uproar. Deputy Thorsen had delivered.

He waited until the noise and confusion had died away. He was out of it now; let Thorsen and Suarez carry the ball. His job was finished. He had done what they asked him to do, and if the result was less than perfect, they got what they wanted.

He gingerly touched the back of his head. It had smacked the floor when his chair went over, and he suspected he’d have a welt there. He was, he acknowledged, getting a bit long in the tooth for that kind of nonsense.

It wasn’t so much that he was physically tired, but the evening -had taken a lot out of him. He couldn’t summon the energy to rise and tramp home to Monica and the girls. so he tucked his reading glasses away and just sat there, fingers laced across his vest, and brooded.

His first wife, Barbara, had once accused him of acting like God’s surrogate on earth. He didn’t think that was entirely fair. He had lost his hubris, he was convinced. What drove him now was more a sense of duty. But duty to what he could not have said.

Despite those things he had shouted about Diane Ellerbee playing him for a fool, he felt more pity for her than anger. He thought her life had been so structured, so neat and secure, that she had never learned to handle trouble.

But he could continue forever making up excuses. He was a cop, with a cop’s bald way of thinking, and the naked fact was that she had killed and had to be punished for it.

He dragged himself to his feet, and, as if it were his own home, made the rounds of doors and windows in the deserted townhouse, making certain they were securely locked.

He stopped suddenly, wondering where the hell his overcoat and homburg were. Probably still in Jason’s car, now parked outside the precinct house. But when he went down to the first floor, he found them waiting for him, neatly folded on a marble-topped lobby table. God bless … He pounded home, head down, hands in pockets. He pondered how much to tell Monica of what had happened. Then he decided to tell her everything; he had to explain the jagged scrapes on his face. If it made him seem like a vindictive beast, so be it. He wasn’t about to start lying to her now.

Besides, she’d know.

He looked up suddenly, and beyond the city’s glow saw the stars whirling their ascending courses. So small, he thought.

All the poor, scrabbling people on earth caught up in a life we never made, breaking ourselves trying to manage.

Philosophers said you could laugh or you could weep. Delaney preferred to think there was a middle ground, an amused struggle in which you recognized the odds and knew you’d never beat them. Which was no reason to stop trying.

Las Vegas did all right.