Dead Seed

by William Campbell Gault

  “Dear God!” I said. “Your reputation? You were gossip-column fodder for years.”

  “I know that! But my friends could overlook the—the flirtations of my younger years. And they could understand, perhaps, my romantic involvement with a man as handsome as Fortney Grange. But they would never accept a mother who deserted her child. Can’t you understand that?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t been influenced by peer pressure since I left high school.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Damn you!” she said.

  “If you had gone to the police or confided in me,” I pointed out, “Sydney Morgenstern would still be alive and so would Juan Garcia.”

  She said icily, “That is both cruel and absurd. Fort and I had nothing to do with what happened to them!”

  “I’m sure you need to believe that.”

  “How can you possibly blame Fort and me for the actions of others?”

  If she didn’t know, how could I tell her? I didn’t answer.

  “Can I blame you, then,” she asked, “because Fort went back to drinking heavily after the argument you two had?”

  “No. Blame his conscience. Maybe it came back to life.”

  “My friends were right about you,” she said. “You do have a nasty tongue.”

  “They were right,” I admitted.

  She stood up and glared down at me. She started to say something, apparently changed her mind, and went hurrying back across the lawn to her sanctuary.

  Would I never learn to be tactful? If I did, I would not waste it on butterflies. I would save it for the deserving.

  Jan had a better report when she came home. Her romantic, color-blind senior citizen was being as tractable as she had a right to expect from any client.

  I gave her my report from the entrance of Carl Lacrosse to the angry exit of Carol Medford. I expected some criticism of my performance in the last scene.

  “They are neighbors,” I pointed out, “and I do like to get along with my neighbors. Perhaps I was too rude.”

  My loyal partner shook her head. “I’m glad you told that bitch off!”

  TWENTY-TWO

  WE HAD A CASE, Bernie phoned to tell me next morning. The DA had convinced Alvin to testify against his cousin. Alvin had admitted he had gone with her to the Biltmore that night after Morgenstern had talked with Mrs. Lacrosse on the phone when she was still at Kelly’s house.

  They had seen Morgenstern come out of the hotel. Mrs. Lacrosse had told Alvin to wait in the parking lot. She had followed Morgenstern to the beach.

  “If he had gone to the hotel with her,” I asked, “doesn’t that make him an accomplice?”

  “Not the way he tells it. She supposedly told him she only wanted to reason with Morgenstern, to convince him that Carol Medford would not want the publicity and certainly could afford to pay for Joel’s education.”

  “That doesn’t hold water. Why would they set up the phony alibi at the cult gate if they planned only to talk to Morgenstern?”

  “Chitty claims he didn’t even know it was an alibi. He said she told him they might be able to talk with Joel at the gate and get him to come home. He didn’t know anything about the time change on the police report.”

  “He’s a liar, Bernie.”

  “Maybe. But he’s a liar on our side.”

  “How does he explain the wallet?”

  “He claims she gave it to him when she came back from the beach. She told him she would keep the money in it, the money she came for, and he could have the wallet. The credit cards were still in it.”

  “He’s going to feed that story to a jury? The DA is going to feed a fantasy like that to them? That wallet bit stinks.”

  “I guess the DA figures the jury will realize Alvin is lying about that. But the rest of his story can be substantiated by what we have, can’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. But if I were a juror, I’d find it hard to believe any testimony from a man who was obviously lying.”

  “So would I. But we’re not lawyers and we’re not on the jury. We’re going with what we have.”

  “Okay. Save me a seat at the trial. They’re going to be hard to get.”

  “That’s for sure. The media boys are coming to town already. This is a biggie to them.”

  That it would be. A Medford and an ancient movie idol, a runaway kid and a cult, a famous photographer, and the wild Chittys; that was a blockbuster. It should outdraw “Dallas” and “The Gong Show.” It would keep the gossip and scandal magazines in the black for months.

  There would be delays, of course, before they were brought to trial, what the legal beagles euphemistically call continuances. They needed the delays to stock their arsenals. The taxpayers would pay for the cost of the continuances, the media would get its loot from their advertisers. Only the citizens who lost time at work would lose money on this show. Two of the major characters in the cast would not make an appearance; they were dead.

  I didn’t occupy my reserved seat to watch the slow and tedious choosing of the jury. I learned from the paper that Joe Farini would be representing Mrs. Lacrosse. I shuddered to think of what a fox like Farini would do to the testimony of slow-witted Alvin Chitty.

  I was there for his opening statement. He had stocked his arsenal. He related a detailed history of the muggings on our local beaches over the last four years. He went on from there to the stories of other muggings on other California beaches, working his way south. A few miles this side of San Diego, the prosecution objected. The judge agreed with the prosecution.

  Big Joe, two hundred and forty pounds and six feet, four inches of ham actor, stood there silently, dismay evident on his face. Then: “I was only trying to show, your honor, that there should be more than a reasonable doubt about the guilt of my client. After all, no witness has come forward who actually saw what happened on the beach that tragic night. Everything the prosecution will have to offer is circumstantial.”

  That was, the DA objected, a prejudicial opening statement. The judge agreed, glaring at Joe. Nobody asked the jury for their opinion on the point; they weren’t lawyers.

  The sound of the word “circumstantial” had obviously nettled the district attorney. He gave the jury the Webster definition of circumstantial evidence: “Evidence which tends to prove a fact by proving other events which afford a basis for a reasonable inference of the fact in issue.”

  Joe stood there, smiling.

  The jury sat there, frowning.

  The man should have checked his notes. Joe had not used the word “evidence.” And “tends to prove” could easily read as a reasonable doubt to the jury. And Joe must have landed a few jurors in the box who would wonder what “reasonable inference” meant. Was that, they might have wondered, the same as reasonable doubt? Was the prosecution also trying to establish a reasonable doubt? What the hell was going on here?

  Next to Joe, Mrs. Lacrosse sat quietly in her Sunday best, an obviously inexpensive and simple light-blue nylon dress, looking forlorn and defeated, a poor country woman who had only wanted to get her smart young son into college.

  The way I saw it, it was Farini 17, Prosecution 0, at the end of the first inning.

  Corey phoned me that night with the best news of the day. It would no longer be necessary for me to pay for Joel’s room and board.

  “Why not?”

  “I worked out a deal with Joel. He’s going to get a kiln. I’m going to pay his board and get stock in his company.”

  “You are going to pay his board, or are your parents going to give him free board?”

  “I’m working out that part with my parents now.”

  “Corey,” I said sternly, “remember one thing when you dicker with them—they are your parents.”

  “You’re so sarcastic!” he said. “Of course I’m taking that into consideration. I have a tidbit for you.”

  “How much will it cost me?”

  “Nothing. Joel said he saw Mrs. Lacrosse’s two brot
hers when he was downtown.”

  “Did he talk with them?”

  “No! He wants no part of the Chittys.”

  “Thanks for the free information. You tell Joel that if he wants any outside financial help, I’ll give him cheaper interest than any bank in town.”

  “How much financial help?”

  “Joel and I will discuss that. Are you still going with Penelope?”

  “Natch. She’s a doll! I got her a better job, too, at the Elder Publishing Company.”

  I didn’t ask him if he had charged her a finder’s fee. I thanked him again and hung up.

  I phoned Bernie and passed on the tidbit.

  He had heard it half an hour ago, he told me. “Farini brought them up here as character witnesses.”

  “As character witnesses or hit men?”

  “I had the same thought. They’ll probably try to scare Alvin out of testifying. The DA sure blew it today, didn’t he, with all that confusing legal gobbledygook?”

  “We only bring ’em in, Bernie. We can’t try ’em.”

  “Lucky for them! Hold your thumbs. I don’t like the way this case is going.”

  The circus went on; the media stayed in town. We had a show big enough to attract the wire services and the networks, the juiciest story they could hype since the hostages had been released in Iran.

  Kelly’s policeman friend was never called to testify. Internal affairs had not been able to involve him in the phony alibi; he really did have a girlfriend in the neighborhood. He wasn’t needed. Kermit Karp, the night watchman, testified about the time change.

  Each day, the prosecution put the people’s case together carefully, piece by piece, weaving each piece into the pattern of guilt. Each day, Farini managed to leave some doubt in the jurors’ minds about the truth of the testimony.

  On the morning of the eighth day, Carol Medford’s testimony was the high point. She admitted she was the mother of Carl Lacrosse. Under Farini’s questioning, she also admitted that the money she had given to Mrs. Lacrosse had been purely voluntary, a contribution to allow Joel to go to college.

  That was the high point of the morning. The shocker came in the afternoon, when Grange took the stand. After he had admitted that he was the father of Carl Lacrosse, he was asked by the DA: “Is it true that the money Miss Medford paid Mrs. Lacrosse was voluntarily given?”

  Grange’s voice was cold and measured. “It is not true. Miss Medford and I quarreled heatedly about that. It was blackmail. Joel is not her grandson. Mr. Morgenstern told me that the night he died. And he told Mrs. Lacrosse that when he phoned her. It is probably the reason why she killed him.”

  Both Carol’s attorney and Farini were on their feet immediately with objections. The judge sustained them, instructed the jury to disregard the accusation, and warned Grange to restrict his testimony to the facts he knew, not speculation.

  When the DA continued, he asked Grange how much money Miss Medford had paid toward what the defense attorney had identified as money for Joel’s education.

  “I wasn’t a party to the discussion on the final figure,” Grange said. “I wasn’t in favor of paying those people a plugged nickel. The final figure that Miss Medford mentioned to me was thirty-five thousand dollars.”

  A murmur ran through the courtroom. The judge gaveled for silence.

  The prosecutor asked, “Did she tell you why she paid such an enormous sum of money?”

  “She did. She told me it was worth it to keep the secret of our adultery from becoming common knowledge.”

  In his cross-examination, Farini tried to downplay the adultery angle. “In today’s world,” he asked Grange, “why would Miss Medford consider adultery that serious a sin?”

  Grange looked doubtfully at the judge. The judge said, “If you don’t know, you may state your opinion in this instance.”

  Grange’s smile was cynical. “It is possible,” he told Farini, “that Miss Medford is not living in today’s world.”

  Muffled laughter in the courtroom. The judge frowned, but didn’t use his gavel.

  Farini wasn’t laughing. His voice was icy. “Why is it, Mr. Grange, that you were so certain that Miss Medford was being blackmailed, but you neglected to inform the police?”

  “Because,” Grange said coolly, “I knew she would lie about it to the police just as she lied about it under oath today.”

  Objections again, this time overruled. Grange’s round.

  Bernie had come in for the last hour of the session. We walked out together. “The honeymoon is over,” he said. “That’s why Grange moved to a hotel.”

  “You’ve been watching him?”

  “We’re watching everybody,” he told me. “Those brothers of Mrs. Lacrosse wanted to visit Alvin in the can yesterday, but he refused to see them.”

  “Nobody posted bail for Alvin?”

  “Nobody. That should give him more reason to nail his cousin to the cross. She refused to get him a bondsman on the credit-card charge. I’m beginning to feel optimistic.”

  I was, too. But I had been optimistic in that Cal game until three seconds before the end. Today’s testimony had given us a two-point edge. Did Farini have a place-kicker on his bench? Last-minute histrionics had won him a number of apparently lost games.

  The way it turned out on the final day, he had a pair of them on the bench in the third row, two husky citizens of Arizona, two Chittys, the brothers of the defendant.

  Alvin glanced at them nervously as he was called to the stand. They stared back at him.

  Farini was smiling. “Mr. Chitty, as a witness I am sure you are aware that you are required to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “Yes,” Alvin said.

  “My client agrees,” Farini went on, “that what you told the police in your sworn statement and what you testified here in court is the truth and nothing but the truth. I ask you now, was it the whole truth?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alvin said.

  “Let us recall your testimony, Mr. Chitty. It was a bright, moonlit night, was it not, when you and the defendant went to the hotel?”

  Alvin nodded.

  “Speak up, please, for the record.”

  “It was,” Alvin said.

  “And after her discussion with Mr. Morgenstern, Mrs. Lacrosse came back to the truck you had borrowed and told you Mr. Morgenstern had given her some money. That was when she gave you the wallet, was it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you drove out of the parking lot to the road that borders the beach. What did Mrs. Lacrosse say to you then?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Let me refresh your memory. You knew what Morgenstern looked like. You had seen him come out of the hotel. It was a clear night. I ask you once more, what did Mrs. Lacrosse say to you then?”

  “Mr. Chitty has already answered that question,” the DA objected.

  “Overruled,” the judge said. “Answer the question, Mr. Chitty.”

  Alvin took a deep breath, glanced at the placekickers and back at Farini. “She said, ‘look at that lonely hebe standing out there without his money’ and she pointed at the man standing on the beach.”

  “And that man, standing and alive, more than two hundred yards from where he was found dead seven hours later, was Sydney Morgenstern?”

  Alvin nodded.

  “For the record, please.”

  “It was,” Alvin said.

  The judge knew Joe. He asked sternly, “Do you know what perjury is, Mr. Chitty?”

  “It’s lying,” Alvin said. “And I’m not lying. I didn’t lie to the cops. I told them everything I knew.”

  “But not the whole truth.”

  “I’m telling the whole truth now,” Alvin said, “not the truth the cops wanted when they conned me into testifying.”

  The game was over. The DA tried, but the game was over.

  Where, he asked Alvin, had he and Mrs. Lacrosse gone
after they left the parking lot?

  They had gone home, Alvin answered. They didn’t know that Mr. Morgenstern was dead until they heard it on the radio next morning.

  He had been coached well—by the coach of the opposing team. We never did learn how that was engineered.

  The closing arguments were brief that afternoon. The jury’s deliberations would be just as brief, I was sure. Bernie agreed with me. We waited in the lunchroom outside the courthouse.

  The jury returned at four-forty-five that afternoon. The verdict was not guilty. The reporters rushed for the phones, the audience began to file out. Reasonable doubt had influenced the citizens. Solomon had been unthroned. Legality had won. But where was justice?

  The crowd was sparse when justice came down the center aisle—as Mrs. Lacrosse came up it. Fortney Grange had a long-barreled revolver in his hand. Showdown at Tryden was about to have a San Valdesto rerun.

  The bailiff saw the gun the same time Vogel did. “Stop!” the bailiff warned.

  “Don’t be a damned fool,” Vogel shouted. “Drop the gun, Grange.”

  Grange’s first shot went into the biggest target in sight, the stomach of Mrs. Lacrosse. The bailiff’s first shot hit Grange in the shoulder and spun him around. He went to his knees, twisted back and started firing again. The bailiff’s second shot was the one that killed him.

  “She died in the hospital,” Bernie told me over the phone that night. “God, she must have had some constitution to last that long with all the lead he pumped into her.”

  “She was guilty, wasn’t she, Bernie?”

  “Hell, yes! That creepy Alvin is already changing his story. I think he is thinking deal again. He’ll go up for perjury if he keeps talking.”

  “About that crooked cop, Bernie, you told me you’d tell me his name.”

  “You want it now?”

  “No. I just wondered if it was Corey Raleigh’s uncle.”

  “It is not.” A silence. Then, “Do you know what Grange shot her with? A single-action 1938 Colt. Hell, he had to fan it! Where would he learn that?”

  “I don’t know. He did it in Showdown at Tryden. That was one of his earliest pictures.”