You Could Call It Murder

by Lawrence Block

  The police officer fitted a key into a lock and turned it. The door swung open, its rusted hinges creaking in metallic protest at this invasion of privacy.

  “There he be,” the policeman said. “You say what you want with him. I’ll pay no mind.” He winked a rheumy eye. “I know how you big-city detectives work,” he added confidentially. “I’ll be aways up in the front there. I won’t hear a thing. You knock that killer around a mite, I won’t know about it.”

  I stepped into the cell. The door creaked shut and a key turned in the lock again. I listened to his receding footsteps as he left me alone with the boy.

  I said: “Alan.”

  He looked up, blinked, recognized me. “You,” he said. “The private fuzz. What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Talk. Solid. You got any straights? They lifted mine.”

  “Straights?”

  “Cigarettes,” he said. “It’s slang. You know—the picturesque language the American peasants speak.”

  I gave him a cigarette, scratched a match and presented him with a light. He took a very deep drag, coughed, blew out a lungful of smoke. “Thanks,” he said. “I go nuts without a cigarette every few minutes. I smoke too much, I’ll get cancer, I don’t care. It’s a laugh, huh? I won’t live long enough to get cancer. They’ll hang me. Or what is it they do in New Hampshire? Hang you or gas you or electrocute you or what?”

  I told him I didn’t know.

  “Maybe they abolished the death penalty. Probably not—you can’t expect much from a backwards hole like New Hampshire. And even if they did, then I’d stand trial in New York. You want me for Barb’s murder, huh?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Hell with it,” he said. “Barb’s dead. They can do whatever they want to do. I don’t give a damn.”

  “Did you kill Gwen Davison?”

  He looked at me, surprised. “Now that’s a fresh angle,” he said. “Everybody else asks why I killed her. They don’t even think I might be innocent. You’re a breath of fresh air, man.”

  “Did you?”

  He looked away again. “No,” he said. “I didn’t. Do you believe me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that something,” he said. “That’s the closest yet. At least you didn’t come right out and say no, man. You’re way in front of second place.”

  “She was killed at midnight,” I said.

  “I’m hip.”

  “Where were you at the time?”

  He shrugged.

  “Where were you, Marsten? Listen, you bloody fool—you’re neck deep in this affair, whether you know it or not. The cop at the desk gave me permission to beat the truth out of you if I feel like it. He says he doesn’t much care whether you hang in New Hampshire or New York. Why don’t you try talking?”

  His eyes were defiant. “I was all alone,” he said. “How’s that for an alibi? I was all alone and nobody saw me. I wandered around, here and there. That all right?”

  “You’re lying.”

  Another shrug. The little fool didn’t seem to give a damn whether I believed him or not.

  “How did your knife wind up in Gwen’s body?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Someone take it from you? And what were you doing with a knife in the first place?”

  He looked thoroughly bored. “Maybe someone took it,” he said. “Maybe it grew wings and flew away. I keep it in a drawer in my room. I never missed it until they told me it was used to kill Gwen. Hell, they didn’t even tell me. They stuck a bloody knife in front of me and asked me if I saw it before. So I told them. What the hell, they woulda found out anyway.”

  “And why did you have the knife?”

  “I used it to cut my fingernails.”

  I didn’t want to hit him. I knew that the insolence came from fear, that the withdrawal and generally obnoxiousness of his personality was more a defense mechanism than anything else. But a little knocking around wouldn’t hurt him. If he was innocent, it might jar him out of his reveries. If he was the killer, then I felt he had it coming.

  I said: “Get up.”

  “Why, man?”

  He didn’t move. I bunched a hand in his shirt front and dragged him to his feet. I slapped him across the face, hard, and held him with the other hand. He looked startled.

  I closed my hand into a fist and hit him in the stomach. I let go of him and he sat down heavily on the bed. His eyes were angry.

  “So you’re a big man,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  “You want more?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then you’re ready to talk?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  I said: “Barbara Taft was mixed up in something that got her killed. Gwen Davison was in the same thing, in one way or the other. And you’re tied in. All I want to know is what it’s all about.”

  He looked at me.

  “Well?”

  “Oh, to hell with it,” he said. “Everybody wants to give it to me in the neck. I thought you were going to be different but you had to come on like a heavy. Edward G. Robinson with an English accent yet.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You don’t get anything from me, man. You’re just another bastard like the rest of them. You want to hit me, go ahead and hit me. Maybe it’ll make you feel like a big man. Take out all your aggressions.”

  “I’m not going to hit you.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Solid,” he said. Then get lost, huh? You’re a bigger drag than Gwen was.”

  “Is that why you killed her?”

  He frowned. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Here we go again. That was one straight out of television. Why don’t you hire a decent writer?”

  “I’d like to, but this is a low-budget show. You’re not too popular around Cliff’s End, Marsten. You might need a friend. If you decide you do, you might call me. The chap on duty will get in touch with me.”

  “Sure. But don’t hold your breath.”

  I took out my pack of cigarettes, lighted one for myself, then tossed him the pack and a book of matches. “You might want these,” I said.

  He looked at me, eyebrows raised, for a second or two. I saw wheels turning in his mind. Then he shrugged and stuffed the pack into a pocket.

  I went to the door and called for the jailer to come let me out of the cage. Prisons do not exactly have an uplifting effect upon my spirit. I wanted to walk outside and breathe fresh air again. This was a one room small town jail, if you could call it a jail at all. But the air was the air of all prisons everywhere and I didn’t care for it.

  “Man—”

  I turned around. Alan Marsten had a thoughtful expression on his face.

  My old man is rich,” he said. “He’ll send up one of his expensive lawyers. One of those city cats who can make these hicks look like idiots. He’ll get me off, won’t he?”

  I listened to the measured steps of the jailer. He was not setting any speed records.

  “Won’t he, man?”

  “Maybe,” I told him. “It may be interesting to see whether he can or not. Whether they hang you or not.”

  The jailer opened the door and gave me another conspiratorial wink. He slapped me on the back and I had a strange urge to wipe myself off. I left Alan Marsten wondering whether or not he was going to hang, left the jailer hawking and spitting into a green metal wastebasket at the side of his desk, left the grayness of the police station for the blinding whiteness of sunlight reflected from the snow. The MG was waiting where I had left it, a low-slung kitten with blood-red fur. I drove away very fast.

  Mrs. Grace Lipton lived in a large old house on Phillips Street. She rented out rooms to tourists and to a few students who had somehow arranged for permission to live off-campus. Helen MacIlhenny had recommended the boarding house on my first visit to Cliff’s End. Now it looked as though I was actually going to ha
ve to remain in the town overnight. I paid the old woman three dollars for a night’s lodging, lugged my overnight case in from the MG, and took a quick shower.

  Dean MacIlhenny was in conference somewhere when I returned to the Radbourne Administration Building. I waited in her office and killed time by putting through a call to Hanovan in New York. I made the call collect, just to see what would happen, and he surprised me by accepting the charges.

  “I’m a son of a bitch,” he said, with surprising accuracy. “You’re actually working on the case.”

  “Of course.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Enough to cast doubt on your suicide verdict,” I told him.

  “Yeah?”

  I gave him a quick run-through on what had happened at Radbourne, explaining that Barbara Taft’s roommate had been murdered by her erstwhile companion, according to the police. He digested this in silence.

  Then, “You think he did it?”

  “No.”

  “Any reason?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  I could almost hear him shrugging. “Hick cops,” he said. “I figure you know more about it than they do. This is okay, Markham. This is good.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. For us, anyway. Look, the Taft kid was mixed up in something, right? We gotta figure it that way. It’s no coincidence—whether she knocked herself off or whether she had help, there’s still a tie-in between her and the killing up where you are. Right?”

  “It would seem that way.”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “Which ties it to the college,” he went on. “It’s not a New York case any more. We can’t do a thing with it except cooperate with New Hampshire.”

  I wanted to compliment him on his fearless and tireless dedication to duty. I saved myself the trouble. “Speaking of cooperation,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I can use some assistance,” I said. “I had a run-in with a young woman a day or so ago. She gave me a story about witnessing a murder and being in trouble. The name she palmed off on me was a false one and I think her story was just as false as her name. But she’s in trouble.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There were a pair of thugs after her. They followed us but we got clear of them. Then the next morning I was waiting to meet her and they were waiting for me.”

  Hanovan snorted. “You got cold-decked?” The amusement danced through his words.

  “There were thirty of them,” I said. “And they all had atomic ray guns. I think they made off with the girl and I think they may have killed her.”

  “Gimme a description.”

  I gave him a very full description. I even told him she had an appendectomy scare, plus a mole high on the inside of her right thigh.

  He whistled happily. “Just a casual acquaintance,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You got a good life,” he said. “This got anything to do with the Taft run-around?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just a favor you’re going to do me. Let me know if she turns up anywhere, or if you get a line on the name Linda Jeffers.”

  I gave him Dean MacIlhenny’s number, plus the number of Grace Lipton’s phone. Then I rang off and lighted a cigarette.

  Another conversation with Helen MacIlhenny gave me no more in the way of pertinent information. It yielded two things only—a renewed appreciation for the woman, and permission to go through Gwen Davison’s room. According to her, the police of Cliff’s End hadn’t gotten around to searching the room. Evidently the concept of discovering a motive for the murder was out of their ken. Hanovan may have been wrong about a good many things, but I couldn’t argue with his opinion of small-town police.

  The room in Lockesley Hall was silent and cheerless. The neatness and precision of the dead girl still characterized the room. Everything was clean and in its place, and this made the bloodstained floor just that much more incongruous.

  I closed my eyes and saw her standing there, saw a faceless assailant moving toward her with a knife. I wondered why no one had heard her scream, or at least heard the sounds of a scuffle. No girl, however precise and orderly, stands stock-still and permits herself to be stabbed to death.

  I guess that she knew her killer. Whoever he or she may have been, Gwen had admitted the killer to her room, had permitted the killer to get close enough to her to stick a knife into her before she could shout for help.

  It was something to think about.

  So, for that matter, was the idea of a man or boy entering a dormitory at midnight and leaving it after midnight without being seen.

  I lighted a cigarette and started to look through her desk. I found piles of school notes from all the years she had been in Radbourne, all classified by subject matter and secured with paper fasteners. Her penmanship was perfect Palmer method, her typing painfully flawless.

  All her clothes were folded neatly in the drawers of her dresser. I went through them more as a matter of form than because I expected to find anything. She had a great many sweaters; I guessed she must have been proud of the way she filled them.

  Now all she would ever fill was a shroud. And a hole in the earth somewhere.

  Something kept me in the room even after I had decided that I was wasting my time, even when I began to feel ghoulish about going through stacks of clothing which she would never wear again. Something kept me hunting methodically for a scrap of a clue, a gram of evidence pointing in one direction or another.

  Perhaps it was the total lack of motive for her murder. As even an oaf like Hanovan had been acute enough to realize, there was an obvious connection between Barbara Taft and Gwen Davison. They had lived together and they had died almost simultaneously. Which meant that Gwen’s killing had a motive, a reason.

  Which I could not seem to locate.

  So I went on with my silly search. Maybe it was my detective’s sense of smell that kept me going, maybe some sixth sense, maybe some form of intuition.

  Whatever it may have been, it was valuable.

  It worked.

  It worked, as it happened, on the top shelf of Gwen Davison’s closet. It worked when I hauled down a hatbox, its sides securely sealed with masking tape. I wondered momentarily why anyone would take the trouble to fasten a hatbox with masking tape. Then I stripped off the tape and had a look.

  There was a single manilla envelope in the box. It was eight inches wide by ten inches long and it was fastened by a metal clasp. The clasp looked as though it had been opened and closed many times.

  I opened it.

  I took out a sheaf of photographs. They were all glossy prints, all just slightly smaller than the dimensions of the manilla envelope which had contained them.

  I looked at them.

  To be honest, I stared at them. I stared hard at each in turn, and there were six all told. They were not the best existing examples of the art of photography. In some the backgrounds were out of focus. In others the shots were slightly under-exposed.

  This did not lessen my interest.

  They were the sort of pictures which may be purchased in back rooms of small stores in Soho, or around the Times Square area, or in the tenderloin district of almost any large city. In each picture there was a man and a girl on a bed. In each picture the man and girl were participating in one or another form of sexual intercourse.

  Pornographic photographs.

  Which in itself was not all that remarkable. Gwen Davison would not have been the first college girl with an interest in vicarious sexual excitement.

  But there was more. The faces of the men, in all six photographs, were either turned from the camera or deliberately blocked out from sight. The faces of the girls were plainly visible in each picture. The faces, in two instances, were familiar.

  I took one photograph and studied it. The girl in the picture was tall and blonde. She was engaging in sexual relations with a man in a rather bizarre manner and her expression indicated considerable pleasu
re.

  I put the picture away hastily. There is something extraordinarily revolting in the notion of looking at pornographic pictures of a corpse. And this girl was a corpse now.

  It was Barbara Taft.

  And then I looked once more at the other picture I had recognized. I saw the bright eyes, the full breasts, the pretty face. I saw the dark hair, the trim waist.

  I saw the appendectomy scar. I saw—just faintly visible, but unmistakably present—the mole high on the inside of her right thigh.

  I saw the face. The face of a girl I had known before, but under a name which was probably false.

  Linda Jeffers.

  Seven

  BY THE time I returned to the police station, a younger man had replaced the older one behind the desk. He was tall enough to make me feel short and young enough to make me feel old. He had a forest ranger’s build and a boy scout’s face. His eyes were blue and very frank.

  “Roy Markham,” I said. “I’d like to see the Marsten boy.”

  He motioned for me to sit down. “Pete told me about you,” he said. “I’m Bill Piersall. The kid’s lawyer is in with him now. Have a seat.”

  I had a seat. “He’s got an honest-to-God Philadelphia lawyer in there,” Piersall said. “The Marstens live in Philadelphia. Main Line family. So the lawyer’s a Philadelphia lawyer. Isn’t that one for the books?”

  “It certainly is,” I said, to make him happy. It seemed to make him happy at that. “What time did he get here?”

  “The lawyer?”

  I nodded.

  “About an hour ago. Been with him all this time. Wonder what he’s got to talk about.”

  “Did you hear any of it?”

  He shook his yellow-topped head. “Not a word,” he said. “Well, I did hear a word at that. More than a word. That lawyer said a few things before I left the cell. But I’m damned if he used a word of less than four syllables. Every other one out of his mouth was a regular jawbreaker.”

  “Have you any idea how long they’ll be?”

  “No idea,” he said. “I guess we just wait for ’em.”