The Killer Is Mine

by Talmage Powell

  He had got his comeuppance. Here was a young man with no visible means of support, married to a leading Tampa socialite. Here was a child, the daughter of rich and sophisticated parents, brutally murdered. Here was a colorful old woman, Mrs. Wherry, the widow of the late Spicola Wherry, who had built an empire of carnival shows, bearing up like a warrior, her hate for Wally Tulman filling a tense courtroom day after day.

  Scene by scene the macabre plot unfolded for the papers. Stephanie Collins, Ruthie’s mother, went into nervous collapse, tried to kill herself and was taken to a private mental hospital. Milt Collins, Ruthie’s father, tried to drink a distillery into working nights and told reporters he’d take care of Tulman in his own way if the jury let him off.

  It seemed the throwing of a high-tension electric switch was the only manner in which the tale could end.

  I had lunch and went to my office to meet Laura Tulman. It was ten minutes of two.

  The office is in an old building on Cass Street. There’s a small room with a cracked leather couch and two matching chairs and a magazine rack and some magazines. There’s a larger inner office with my desk, a couple of hard chairs, a filing cabinet, phone, typewriter table and beat-up Underwood.

  The place was stifling. I opened the windows and turned on the electric fan. The noise and bustle of Tampa reached through the window. Traffic, and the hoot of a boat’s horn on the Hillsborough River. And the faint, distant whine overhead of a B-47 from MacDill Field, a SAC base nestled close to Tampa. I wondered how the world looked to the boys up in the wild blue today.

  She came to the office promptly at two o’clock. She was more beautiful today than she’d been last night. She was wearing a simple light print dress that made her dark coloring startling.

  I pushed one of the hard chairs close to the desk, went around the desk and sat down.

  With a half-smile, she said, “I presume you want me to sit down today.”

  “Please do.”

  She sat down.

  I rocked back in my creaking swivel chair and said, “Last night I wanted your husband to die.”

  “Today you don’t.”

  “Today I don’t know. But today I have to be sure.”

  She studied my face. I’ve seen women feel afraid looking at my face. I’ve seen a few go hot and hungry inside.

  This woman accepted my face.

  “Will you tell me what happened after I left you last night, Mr. Rivers?”

  “Somebody slugged me.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where?”

  “Late last night. I’d been out. It happened when I returned home. After he slugged me, he phoned and warned me off the Tulman case.”

  “But you hadn’t taken it.”

  “He had no way of knowing that. He knew you’d been there. I guess he was watching you, knowing you still hadn’t given up.”

  “Then you believe that Wally’s innocent?”

  “I don’t know. I just have to find out, that’s all.”

  “For Wally? For me?”

  “No. For myself. I don’t know why, exactly. I don’t care. I don’t analyze myself much. But being a cop is my business. I have to feel that I’m right for it. That I’m good at it. I guess any man feels that way about his job. It’s up to me to find out one way or another before they throw the switch on your husband. I want to know who slugged me, and I want to pay him for that. I have to pay him. I wouldn’t be any good for anybody around this town if people could slug me and get away with it.”

  I broke off. I realized she hadn’t been breathing while I talked. Only watching me.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s that. And let’s go on to something else. Sign this contract, please.”

  I shoved the printed form across the desk. She gave it a brief glance. “Seventy-five dollars a day and expenses.”

  “Whether I’m worth it or not. You have to sign the contract. I work for a big outfit. I have reports to make. Sign all three copies, please.”

  We got the detail out of the way.

  “I suppose you want to know what kind of evidence I hope to find,” she said.

  “You’ve already told me.”

  “Have I?”

  “Wally has convinced you the bartender, Giles Newell, was lying. There’s not one other loophole in the entire picture. If the bartender was telling the truth, Wally’s guilty as sin itself. If Wally was telling the truth, he might be innocent. In fact, he has to be innocent. There’s no other angle you could attack.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Rivers.”

  “And you want me to find this bartender and make him say what you want to hear.”

  “I want him to say the truth,” she said.

  “And if he’s already told it?”

  She closed her eyes. “Then God help Wally.”

  “You’d better tell me about Wally,” I said. “And about yourself. The more I know about you the more help I might be. A pretty rotten picture was drawn of him at the trial. How much do you think is true?”

  “A great deal of it,” she said. “Just as the picture of you might not look well if only certain traits, incidents and factors were blown out of all proportion. There was some truth in what was said, but the picture wasn’t true. Too much was left out.”

  “He drank.”

  “Yes. Sometimes. He was not much of a social drinker, but now and then pressures would build up and he’d blow off steam by getting drunk.”

  “What kind of pressures?”

  “Simple human pressures, Mr. Rivers. Or perhaps they weren’t entirely. Wally felt things more keenly than many people. He wanted the world to be a sweet and good and noble place. Such an attitude in our bruising world can make for pressure enough to topple some people.”

  “True,” I agreed.

  “But this wasn’t the main pressure. That one came from me.”

  “From you?”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize for a long time. I didn’t know. Wally was so quiet and agreeable that I thought everything I did met with his approval.”

  “Such as?”

  “Stopping his work, for one thing. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t know I was doing it. To be truthful, I never thought about it—until it was too late. Wally was a magazine illustrator. A good one. But not so big he could be choosy about assignments. I didn’t want to live in New York, so we lived here. The assignments gradually trickled to nothing.

  “We didn’t notice at first. We were building the house and Wally was decorating it. Then there was our social life, properties to be looked after here. This is my birthplace, my home. I wanted to stay here. I busied Wally with many things—and New York and magazines and editors became very remote things. I did it because I thought it was best. Perhaps I thought it was best because it was what I wanted and I was selfish.

  “Wally never protested. He went along. I was the stronger. The more greedy, maybe. I think, now that I reflect, that he was afraid he might lose me. He had to choose. He chose me. But it did something to him.”

  “He miscalculated,” I said. “He should have got tough with you.” “Maybe he should.” “You’d have liked it.”

  She looked at me calmly. “Maybe I would have.” “You were asking for it. He just couldn’t see it. But that doesn’t alter facts. Keep telling me about him.” “What do you want to hear?”

  “Never mind what I want to hear. Just tell me about him. He’d miss his work.” “Yes.”

  “He’d get to feeling useless.” “Yes.”

  “He’d brood, maybe, and tell himself he was a kept man.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then he’d go out and get drunk.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “How long have you lived next door to the Collinses?” “About a year.” “You were close friends?” “Let’s say we were country-club friends.” “I don’t have any country-club friends, Mrs. Tulman. You’ll have to tell me what you mean.” “We were neighbors
. Friends. But not close friends.” “You attended many of the same social functions?” “A few. Are you sure this has some relation to Wally?” “I’m wondering about his relations with the Collins family—and the little girl.” “They were not as pictured in court.” “We’ll see. Did Milt Collins ever say anything about Wally’s fondness for Ruthie?” “No. There was nothing to say!” “Wally was fond of the child.”

  “Of course. He doted on her—but he was not a monster!” “All right, Mrs. Tulman.”

  “Quit using that tone on me! Why do you have such a knack for upsetting me?”

  “You’re going to get a lot more upset before this thing is finished,” I said.

  CHAPTER

  3

  UNDER my questioning, she said that Ruthie Collins had attached herself to Wally with the intensity of a lonely and affection-hungry child. The adulation of the little girl seemed to fill a need in Wally.

  From Laura Tulman’s overtones and expressions I gained a clearing picture of Wallace Tulman. A shy man. A man bewildered by the immensity of life. A man whose flesh wrapped frustrations, ambitions, dissatisfactions. A man adrift. A man reeling in darkness without the strength to drive a center post in his life. He had married strength and an animal courage in Laura Tulman, and he didn’t know how to cope with these things.

  The child had given him a purpose of sorts. In her eyes, he loomed large. He was warmth in an otherwise cold adult world. He listened to her problems gravely. He told wonderful old-fashioned stories peopled with elves and leprechauns. In these brief little worlds of fantasy both could find an escape.

  But he was no monster.

  There was never the slightest hesitancy, the smallest undercurrent of doubt in Laura Tulman’s talk about her husband. The healthy animal vigor of her would have sensed such a thing. And if the little tentacles of her consciousness had ever touched monstrosity, she’d never have been able to hide it so well.

  In a gentler world, Wally Tulman might have been an outstanding success. But the world was not the gentle place he needed. It was a place of atom bombs and wars and death and blood, and it viewed Wally Tulman with critical, bloody eyes. It held him in contempt, while in many ways he might have been more of a man than any individual sitting on his jury.

  “What was Milt and Stephanie Collins’ reaction to their daughter’s attachment to Wally?” I asked.

  “They never displayed a reaction, except to be glad that Wally would act as a sitter for them at times. Wally was always at his best trying to do little favors for people. Milt and Stephanie were glad enough to have someone watch after the child.”

  “Partying people?”

  “Yes. Especially Stephanie. She partied like a person in blind, headlong flight. They had a great deal of money. Not only left by Stephanie’s father. Milt accumulated money of his own. He came to Florida right after World War Two with a hunger for money. He got in on the ground floor. He rode the postwar boom to its crest. He was the man behind the Tierra Rose development in Sarasota, the Palma del Rio subdivision in St. Petersburg, the Crystal Tides on Miami Beach. Though he’s only in his forties, he’s a retired millionaire.”

  “Wherry money help him get started?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps money from Stephanie’s family figured. It was after their marriage that he really became a fabulous success.”

  “What was his attitude toward Wally?”

  “Wally was never quite a man in Milt’s eyes.”

  “That holds. How about Milt’s children?”

  “A by-product of his marriage. Little else.”

  “And a bother to Stephanie.”

  “Yes,” Laura Tulman said. “She should never have had children. She harbored a lot of fears and anxieties. Her health was delicate, but she pushed herself to a frenzied limit.”

  “All right,” I said. “You’ve given me a good picture of the background. Now let’s get to the night the child was assaulted and murdered. What time did you get home from your meeting?”

  “Right after they had taken Wally downtown. There was a policeman at the house. He said my husband was in trouble. He said he would take me downtown. I rode with him in a police car.”

  “Did you see Wally?”

  “Not right away. A Lieutenant Julian Patrick was in charge of the case. He said some very cruel things.”

  “Patrick isn’t a cruel man,” I said. “Merely a cop without the smallest quality of mercy. It’s all ambition with him.”

  “He didn’t let me see Wally until early in the morning,” Laura Tulman said.

  “How did Wally look?”

  “Dazed.”

  “Had they manhandled him?”

  “Not physically. They had built a nightmare like a strait jacket and laced his spirit up in it. They had him so confused he half-believed he had really done it. Only one thing of importance was left to him right then … .”

  “Yes, Mrs. Tulman?”

  She touched her lips with her tongue. “That I wouldn’t forsake him.”

  He was young, thirty or so. But his eyes had aged. He was slender. The bones in his face were finely cut. He was made for the part of a nice young host at a nice cocktail party.

  He faced death with a childlike resignation.

  A guard in blue uniform stood nearby as we talked with Wally Tulman through the steel-mesh screen.

  “We’ve got to have faith in Mr. Rivers,” Laura Tulman said.

  Beyond the shadows of the screen, he looked at me and said politely, “I’m sure you’re a good man, Mr. Rivers.”

  “Wally …” she said. “You’ve got to want him to help you.”

  “I do,” he said tonelessly. He looked at her, and there was nothing much in his face. Then a shadow of sorrow, an inner weeping for something lost.

  He put his hands against his temples. “I hate to think about it. I’d halfway got it out of my mind.” He glanced over his shoulder toward a steel door. “There’s a kind of peace back there, after the tumult of the courtroom. I had just about stopped thinking about it.”

  “You must think of it, Wally!” she said. “Mr. Rivers is going to save you.”

  “From what?” he asked without rancor. “I’ve thought of that. At first. The first few days I thought very much about it. Of some kind of miracle happening. I knew it wouldn’t, really. But I thought of it, the doors opening, one of the fellows in a blue uniform telling me I was free to go.”

  He lowered his hands to his lap. “Free to go where? It would follow me. People would never be sure. I’d always be the man who’d raped and murdered a kid.”

  “No,” she said. “People would forget in time. We could go away, if necessary. Or we could build a shield out of your innocence until people didn’t remember any longer.”

  He looked at her and was sorry for her. “But I don’t believe in the miracle any longer, Laura. I don’t believe, that’s all.”

  “I’m no miracle worker,” I said, “but I know my business. I know how to work. I don’t like to take pushing around. And somebody pushed me. Somebody don’t want me working.

  “And you think that indicates I’m innocent?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” I watched his eyes, the base of his nostrils, and the corners of his mouth. “Are you innocent?”

  He sat looking at me for several seconds. His eyes held to mine steadily.

  When he spoke at last, it was in a soft whisper. “I’m not sure.”

  “Wally!”

  He glanced at his wife. “I’m sorry, Laura. I was very sure at first. I knew what time I left the bar that night. I was sick with myself. I started drinking that afternoon in a blaze of self-pity. I didn’t recognize it as self-pity right away. I had to get blind drunk to see it. I had a horrible moment there in the bar alone. I smelled the whisky and tasted it and felt it roaring through me like a fire.

  “And it was no good, I knew. The fault wasn’t with you or Tampa or anything else outside of me. The fault was in myself—and I knew I was going ho
me. Not to another bar, until I had made the rounds.

  “So I went home. I had a good feeling when I let myself in. I was on the first edge of a binge, but I’d had the guts to come home. The urge to go, go, go until I’d burned myself out wasn’t there any longer. I stretched on the couch, and the knowledge that I’d committed a conscious act of self-control gave me a strange kind of calm. I went to sleep, waiting for you.”

  He was quiet a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Next thing I knew Mrs. Wherry and the police were there. The old lady wanted to kill me. I could see it in her eyes, her every action. She’d never rest until I was dead.

  “I didn’t understand what had happened. Even after they told me, I couldn’t quite realize it. I loved the child, Mr. Rivers. She was lonely and sensitive. I loved her very much. I refused to believe she was dead.

  “Then they showed her to me. Merciful God! They said I’d done it. What a sick, bestial creature this made me out!

  “Of course it was simple. I hadn’t done such a thing. I had come home too late to have done it. Then Newell said I’d left the bar earlier than I claimed. They thought I was trying to alibi my way out—after doing something like that.”

  His eyes became faraway, a faint glitter in them. “The policeman—Lieutenant Julian Patrick—always remained calm and so polite that it was a measure of his contempt. He stayed after me like a naked, unyielding knife blade. He wanted a confession. He explained, again and again, how it must have been. My mind had played a trick. I didn’t want to admit what I had done. My mind wouldn’t face such a thing squarely—it couldn’t and still survive. So I honestly believed the lie my mind, in primitive self-defense, had made up.

  “Yet it was all a lie. A lie. A trick of the mind. A defensive mechanism. I had come home earlier, desecrated and killed the child, and then my mind wouldn’t believe it. It was far easier to believe that I had come home later.

  “I fought him, Mr. Rivers. With all the strength I could summon. I lay in the jail cell telling myself he was wrong. I couldn’t have done it.