Verdict Suspended (16 page)

“It’s the way out,” Jaime said.

He watched Steve’s face in the driving mirror. The words shocked and held him. He didn’t answer.

“Greta’s a young woman,” Jaime added. “She’ll find someone else and forget me.”

“Jaime,” Steve said, “what do you think would have happened if that confession could have been used in court? Sheilah’s death was provoked—not premeditated. No jury would bring in a death sentence.”

“But I’m the jury,” Jaime said. “Stop the car, Steve.”

“Don’t be an idiot!”

“If you don’t, I will!”

Steve’s eyes, in the mirror, brightened with danger. His foot pressed down on the accelerator. The car swung wildly around a curve, headed toward the sea, and swung back. Jaime grabbed the steering wheel and for timeless seconds they battled for control. He kicked Steve’s foot off the accelerator and held it back until the car lost speed. Steve took one hand from the wheel and reached into his coat pocket, and at that instant Jaime reached past him and slammed the door handle with his fist. The door swung open. There was a wild look of disbelief on Steve’s face as he slid backward into space. He made one frantic grab at the wheel with his free hand, missed, and watched the pull of his own weight tear loose the grip of the other hand. It was over in a matter of seconds. Jaime was too busy righting the car to chance more than a glance in the driving mirror. He saw Steve sprawled on the pavement, his hands and feet clawing at the air like a small dog in play. An instant later the car swung around a curve and Steve was lost to view.

Half a mile farther down the highway Jaime cut sharply to the sea side and braked to a stop on the shoulder. There was no traffic on the highway and no houses within miles. He got out of the car and examined the terrain. Directly below the shoulder, for a distance of about twenty feet, was a slope covered with brush; beyond that slope, a sheer drop to the rocks and the sea. The motor was still running. He reached inside the car and pulled the choke to full. He set the wheels straight ahead and then released the hand brake. The car shot forward, rolled slowly over, and made one complete turn before hitting the first ledge of rocks. It grazed the edge of them, bounced up, and crashed into the sea just below the last formation. The scream of battered metal was still echoing against the sea wall when the first wave hit. The convertible nosed down and settled half submerged a hundred feet below.

Jaime stood at the edge of the shoulder. His body pulsed with the excitement of danger. The crash could have been heard for miles. He listened. A motor was approaching on the highway. He stepped off the shoulder and scrambled down into the brush below. The approaching darkness would shield whatever the brush didn’t; but above him the sky was still light and he could clearly see anyone who came looking for the convertible. The sound of the motor was directly above now. Brakes screeched to a stop. He heard voices. Then the motor moved on. Gone for the police, he decided. It was time to get out of the vicinity. He started to crawl out of the brush and drew back quickly. There were footsteps on the shoulder. He looked up. This time it was Steve. He was dusty and disheveled. His face glistened with sweat, and a smear of grease ran along the side of one cheek. He was alone, and he seemed unsure.

“Jaime!” he called out. “Are you down there?”

There was no answer but the surf.

Steve stepped down into the bush. He walked until he stood a few yards from where Jaime was hiding. He never took his eyes from the wreck below.

“Jaime, are you alive?” he called.

Jaime didn’t answer. Steve was so close now that Jaime could see the gun in his hand.

It was ten o’clock when Captain Lennard got back to the police station in the lower level of the Cypress Point Courthouse. He was tired and gnawed through with cold. He’d been wading in water for hours, and he was too long past the rookie stage to enjoy such adventures. He wanted to get out of his wet shoes and trousers. He wanted to take a hot shower and crawl in bed with a tumbler of Irish whisky. But the county paid him to be God on occasion, and tonight God had late duty.

All of the people he’d sent for were waiting in his office when he arrived. Greta Dodson, Cy and Tilde Shepherd, Albert Trench, and a man some people called Mr. Howard and other people called Dr. Curry. Lennard was confused on that score. He let Steve Quentin brief him when they met in the corridor. Steve was clean. He’d left the scene of the wreck hours earlier. He’d bathed and shaved and dressed; but he couldn’t do anything about the haunted look in his eyes. They entered the office together. Lennard went directly to his desk.

When he looked out over the assembled group he could see nothing but the stark white face of Greta Dodson. She sat next to Dr. Curry—a slender figure wrapped in a dark, green fisherman’s knit sweater and a tight sheath of grief.

“Mrs. Dodson,” he said, “I have to tell you that we’ve not yet found your husband’s body. I have to tell you that it may never be found. I’m sorry.”

It was tough being God. It was never possible to find the right words.

Dr. Curry spoke first. “Captain Lennard,” he said, “is there any chance Mr. Dodson was thrown clear of the wreck?”

Greta’s eyes brightened hopefully. Lennard tried not to look at them.

“Jaime’s a wonderful swimmer,” she said.

They were pitiful little words that hung foolishly in the stale air of the captain’s office. It was at least three hours since Jaime Dodson’s convertible had crashed into the sea. Nobody was that good a swimmer.

“The door on the driver’s side of the car was open,” Lennard told Curry. “In fact it was almost pulled off the hinges. But the car was wedged between two rocks. If Jaime was thrown out, he’d have splattered against a boulder as big as this room. But if he crawled out—or was washed out—that’s another story. All I can tell you is that we’ve searched the beach for miles in each direction from the place where the wreck was found. We’re beating down the bushes and checking every cove where a body might wash up. We can’t do anything more but keep watching and wait.”

“Wasn’t there blood … skin … hair … anything of that sort in the car?” Cy asked. “After a drop like that, he must have been cut up.”

The cold was creeping up Captain Lennard’s legs. He felt as if he stood in a barrel of chipped ice. “We haven’t got the car off the beach yet,” Lennard said, “and it’s dark down there. There may be fragments, but it’ll take lab tests to identify them. Any more questions?”

“Isn’t there another possibility?” Steve suggested. “Jaime could have been thrown clear of the car before it landed. He might have gone directly into the sea.”

“Anything’s possible,” Lennard admitted. “You told me yourself, Mr. Quentin, that Jaime was determined to commit suicide. That he fought you to get possession of the car for that very reason.”

“Suicide!” Tilde gasped. “Oh no!”

Lennard turned toward Tilde. Her face was a pale oval punctuated by two large frightened eyes. She wore a blue scarf over her head and a black silk raincoat; and when her outburst drew Lennard’s attention, she shrank back into the folds of the coat—a frightened peasant facing threatening authority.

“I only meant,” she said, “that I talked to Jaime this afternoon. He didn’t sound to me as if he planned to commit suicide.”

“How did he sound?” Lennard demanded.

“He sounded angry.”

“Angry with whom?”

“With us all, I think. With the gossip. He was searching.”

“What for, Mrs. Shepherd?”

“I’m not sure. He wasn’t either. Anything concerning Sheilah. He was looking for a motive, I think. A motive for her murder.”

“He didn’t tell you that he killed Sheilah?”

“Oh no! I told him—” Tilde stopped abruptly. She looked at Cy for help.

“Go ahead, tell all of it,” he growled. “Lennard already knows about the file in Sheilah’s safe. I called him after Jaime left me this afternoon. It was going to come out anyway. I wanted him to get it from me.”

Tilde still looked miserable. But Lennard and a roomful of attentive people were listening.

“I accused Jaime—indirectly—of killing Sheilah,” she said. “I didn’t really mean it. I was frightened … for my husband.”

“What did Jaime say?” Lennard asked.

“He struck me in the face. He was outraged.”

Lennard turned to Cy. “And after leaving your wife, Jaime came to see you. What was your impression?”

“He was looking for trouble,” Cy said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“He said he was trying to learn who killed Sheilah.”

“He didn’t say that he killed her?”

“No. He was searching for evidence. I told him he might get hurt.”

“What did you mean?”

Cy looked about the room belligerently. People reacted to shock in different ways. Tilde trembled. Cy was angry.

“Everybody connected with Sheilah is over twenty-one,” he said. “Turn the spotlight on any one of us and you’re going to find plenty of dirt. Jaime was in it up to his neck. He was getting a rake-off on every order he gave a supplier. I don’t think he cared if he did ruin Sheilah. Maybe that’s what he wanted to do.”

Greta sat small in her chair. Her face was tense and her hands were clutched tightly together. It made Lennard forget the ice creeping up his thighs just to look at her. But he was a policeman, and a policeman was a tough God.

“Mrs. Dodson,” he said, “do you know anything about the charge Mr. Shepherd just made?”

“No!” Greta answered. “Nothing! I don’t believe it!”

“Do you know anything about the confession he made to Mr. Quentin?”

Greta hesitated. She was wretched with worry.

“Lennard,” Steve said sharply, “this is barbaric! There will be a formal hearing into all these matters at a proper time. Can’t you let Mrs. Dodson alone for one night?”

“No … I want to answer!” Greta said. “Yes, Captain Lennard, Jaime did tell me that he killed Sheilah—but it wasn’t true! It was before we found—”

Curry came swiftly to his feet. “Captain,” he said, “I think I can explain that confession. I know more about it than Mrs. Dodson does.” He turned and faced the others: Tilde, Cy, an alert and wary Albert Trench.

“Mr. Quentin called me two days after Sheilah Dodson’s death,” he said. “He explained the situation. By that time he was certain Jaime Dodson would be charged with her murder. There was bad blood between them, he said. Jaime had the opportunity. He was seen fleeing from the scene of the crime moments before the body was discovered. He smashed into a road barricade a few miles away in what looked like an obvious attempt to escape arrest.

“I came here to the Cypress Point Hospital the following day. Jaime Dodson was conscious. He had been questioned by the police and examined by psychiatrists. He was adjudged sane, but he could remember nothing immediately preceding the accident as a result of the subsequent shock. Mr. Quentin was familiar with some of the experimental uses of drugs and hypnosis in the attempt to obtain confessions. He asked me to help him learn what Jaime Dodson’s mind was holding back.

“I had the complete co-operation of Dr. Pitman and the staff of the Cypress Point Hospital; but for the period of questioning, only Mr. Quentin and myself were in the room. This, of course, was for the protection of Mr. Quentin’s client. Under narcosis, Jaime Dodson confessed to the murder of his sister.” Curry gave them all a few moments to absorb his statement.

Tilde reacted first. “But you told no one!” she said. “Steve, you put us all through that terrible inquest!”

“I wasn’t the one to charge Jaime with murder,” Steve protested. “The state would have.”

“But you knew—”

“Tilde, shut up!” Cy snapped. “There would have been an inquest in any event. Why didn’t you let Jaime confess, Steve?”

“For the very good reason that his confession wasn’t admissible in court,” Steve said.

“Wasn’t admissible? In God’s name, why not?”

“Do you mind if I answer that question?” Dr. Curry asked. “There’s a very good reason why it’s not admissible, Mr. Shepherd. There’s an old-fashioned and rather bothersome document we have in this nation. It’s called the Constitution of the United States, and it has an amendment that seems to disturb a great many bigots—the Fifth Amendment. It was born out of the sweat and agony of man’s ceaseless struggle to create at least a semblance of civilization out of a background of sheer savagery, and I don’t think even the most advanced science will ever make it obsolete. Briefly, Jaime Dodson was a human being, a citizen of the United States and, guilty or innocent, could not be forced to testify against himself.”

“But he was guilty!” Albert Trench declared. “And he knew it all the time!”

Heretofore Trench had been wary and sullen. Now the words leaped off his unguarded tongue, and he was immediately self-conscious. Everybody looked at Albert Trench. His hatred for Jaime was an ugly thing spilled out in the tense atmosphere of Captain Lennard’s office, and there was no place to hide it.

“No,” Dr. Curry corrected, “he didn’t know he was guilty. He remembered nothing of the confession when he went to the inquest. The evidence wasn’t conclusive, and so Jaime wasn’t held for trial. He married and came home to start a new life, but the good people of Cypress Point wouldn’t allow that. They talked. They gossiped. They accused him to his face. And all of that time he didn’t know if their suspicions were right or wrong. But he had a conscience, and, because of it, he had to try to learn the truth.”

“That’s not fair!” Tilde protested. “You’re talking about a murderer, and you’re trying to make us all feel guilty!”

Dr. Curry took the snub-nosed pipe from his pocket and rolled it slowly between his hands. He studied Tilde thoughtfully. “I can’t
make
anyone feel guilty,” he said. “If any of you feel in any way responsible for what happened tonight, that’s your problem and you’ll have to live with it. I’ve merely explained my part in Jaime Dodson’s confession.”

“But you talk as if everything is settled!” Greta exclaimed. “It isn’t! Jaime confessed because he
thought
he killed Sheilah. But he couldn’t have killed her. There was no time!”