Killing Time

by Thomas Berger

  Arthur suddenly trembled.

  He said: “I apologize. You are a guest in my home. That was unforgivable. We should have stepped outside I, I don’t have experience in these matters.”

  “You don’t?” Tierney asked numbly.

  “Well, that’s a pretty cynical question,” Arthur said, regaining self-possession. “You better get up. I’m going to have to hit you again.” He walked arrogantly towards Tierney’s chair.

  But now Tierney was prepared. He rose and seizing Arthur’s right wrist whipped it behind the man’s back and jerked it upwards. Then he tripped Arthur and fell with him, on him, knelt on him, knee against his sacroiliac.

  “Now what have you got to say for yourself?” asked Tierney.

  Arthur spoke with difficulty, into the carpet.

  Tierney said: “Huh?” He kept his knee against Arthur’s spine, but he took some tension off the bent arm.

  Arthur said: “… defend my honor.”

  Tierney sensed Arthur was using the term in a fantasy or literary way, playing a role—which of course did not mean he wasn’t sincere. But to talk of honor as being personal was highly unrealistic. Honor for Tierney had no meaning when so disembodied, though he could well understand the honor of the school, the honor of the Department, and so on, something beyond the limitations of the individual, who will die; but institutions are immortal.

  Arthur might be another psychopath, but he was probably harmless. Tierney frisked him as long as he was down, of course found no weapons, climbed off him, and Arthur got up.

  Arthur said: “That wasn’t easy for me to do. It may sound odd to you, in your line, but I have never before in my life hit another person except in fun—you know, with an old pal, you give him a poke. I have a temper. I can quarrel vocally, but—”

  The effort seemed to have taxed Tierney more than it did Arthur. Tierney was breathing hard and he had a soreness of nerves.

  He gulped a mouthful of air and said: “Are you crazy? What in hell was the idea of that?”

  “Just to let you know you can’t make a fool of me and get away with it,” Arthur said almost buoyantly. He rubbed the fist that had struck Tierney, ignoring the adjoining arm which Tierney had twisted. He remembered only his own assertion of force, and Tierney found that hard to take.

  Arthur proudly went on: “If you love my wife, stand up like a man and admit it to my face. Don’t sneak around like a common cur.”

  “Oh Christ,” said Tierney. “Did you get me over here for that?” He was stunned. He sat down again in the pea-green chair.

  Arthur professed shock: “Certainly not! Those calls were real.”

  “How do you know?” asked Tierney. “You didn’t take them. You said that. Maybe your wife was lying to you.”

  “But the phone rang. I heard it.”

  Tierney looked at the ceiling.

  Arthur said: “I get your drift. You think Betty told me something about you, and you are trying to destroy her credibility…. That’s even cheaper than I suspected you would be. I even feel sorry for you: you’re at a complete loss in the respectable world. I am trying to understand your attraction for Betty. I have heard that women often like crudeness, brutality, bad manners. But I don’t think that’s the explanation in this case: I think she feels sorry for you.”

  All at once Arthur lost the confidence he had gained in striking a detective for a morals offense. Pain suffused his face. He fell into the rust-colored sofa and propped up the heels of his large shoes in the piling of the rug.

  He said pitifully: “Can we talk man to man?”

  “No,” said Tierney. “I’m not going to let you make any more of an ass of yourself. I haven’t touched your wife. We were together the other day on official police business. I make out a report on everything I do and every place I go, according to departmental regulations. Those reports are on file at headquarters. While Mrs. Bayson and I were in the Starr apartment, a uniformed patrolman was present at all times, Officer Spinelli. I am married and have a fine wife and family, Mr. Bayson.” Tierney got his wallet out. Had he not been guilty he would certainly not have gone to this trouble, but Arthur couldn’t know that. He was not certain of what Arthur did know, of what Betty might have told him, but he found the snapshot of his wife and children and held it up, intending merely to flash it as if it were his badge, but Arthur claimed it with outstretched hand.

  Arthur studied the photograph. At last he returned it. He seemed none the worse for having been thrown to the floor.

  Contritely he said: “Forget everything I mentioned. Forgive me if you can. I should have known it was a nervous reaction. The effects of violence radiate out from the act itself, in ever-widening circles like a stone thrown into a pond. Someone is killed, but a score of other people are poisoned by the vibrations.”

  In relief Tierney chose to take this seriously, this pompous crap. He smiled, and said: “If that is true, then we’re all in trouble, because the homicide rate in the city is two per day.”

  “Maybe we all died long ago and don’t know it,” Arthur stated gloomily. But then vigorously he rose from the couch, fetched from the hall closet, and donned, his hat and coat.

  He said: “Well, I have to get to work. I have to get back to normal. They’ll have an office party this afternoon, but I’ll find a quiet corner. Work: that’s the answer.”

  Tierney went into the hall. “Give you a ride downtown,” he said.

  Arthur looked at him narrowly. “No. You must see Betty.” He pointed up the staircase.

  Tierney felt as if once again he had been stripped of his pants by a Bayson.

  Arthur went on. “I can’t leave her here alone in view of those calls. All right, you and I know it’s some harmless crank. But doesn’t Detweiler seem harmless? In the papers he looks like some kid caught stealing apples. What’s he like in the flesh?” He did not wait for Tierney’s answer, which was just as well. “God, the people you have to deal with in your work. How can you stand it day in and day out? But then how can doctors stand blood and pus.”

  “It’s the contrast,” said Tierney.

  Arthur exclaimed: “Oh?” Just that. He did not ask between what and what, so Tierney did not tell him. Besides, Tierney did not know. Actuality and appearance? Respectability versus disorder? Realism as opposed to idealism? Perhaps merely the contrast between home and the world outside: each gave one, if one was a man, a taste for the other. This feeling was also no doubt common to pilots, deep-sea divers, and soldiers. Peculiar to Tierney’s profession was the enemy: one’s fellow townsfolk.

  But it was not peculiar; that was also true of the profession of crime.

  Tierney said to Arthur as the latter’s hand groped for the doorknob: “I can’t stay here. I’ll call the police.”

  Arthur seemed desperate to get away. “All right, all right,” he said. “I know you’re a responsible individual.” Descending the porch steps, he shouted: “I have to get back to normal!” In a moment he shot out of the driveway in his small car; probably would drive as near as he could to the subway station and park there all day, and if he got a ticket he would return to his paranoia about the police force.

  But Tierney was no longer contemptuous of Arthur. It took guts for an accountant to hit a cop whatever the reason: few hoods had the stomach for it. As a precinct detective Tierney had once singlehandedly apprehended a gang of four armed robbers burgling a pawnshop. Of course he was holding a gun on them and would have shot at the first surly look. But they were spreadeagled against the wall and trembling, and he was the Law.

  Betty’s voice was very clear as it came down the stairwell: “Tierney, is that you?”

  He climbed the stairs and found her room, which was probably also Arthur’s though little could be seen of his property. Nevertheless the bedchamber was not markedly feminine: for example, there were no little bedside lamps shaped like bonnets, nothing colored pink. Betty was sitting up in bed. Maybe she really was frightened: her hair was not arranged and
she wore no make-up. Without artifice she looked both plainer and younger. Her night clothes were modest pajamas.

  Tierney asked: “Have you got any calls yet today?”

  “Not since dawn,” she said. “Are you sure Joe Detweiler is the right one?”

  “He confessed. There isn’t any doubt. You always get these cranks after a murder. Somebody else spills the blood and then they come around like flies. Every time they turn out to be people who would not walk against a red light. They are the people who get their sex from dirty pictures, filthy talk, and daydreams, their violence from the newspaper.”

  “Has Arthur gone?”

  “Yes,” Tierney said. As always when intimately quartered with Betty, he wore his overcoat. But he was always on the point of leaving her presence, or so it seemed; the moment took forever to arrive, the suspense built. “You should have let him answer the phone. A man’s voice might have scared the pervert off.”

  “The calls were for me,” said Betty. “It was my responsibility. He read my articles, you see. I was taken in at first. He described himself as a book publisher. He flattered me, said maybe I could do a full-length book on the basis of the newspaper stuff. Naturally, I was excited. We made an appointment—”

  “Specific time and place?”

  “Noon today, at a restaurant in midtown. I wrote it down somewhere. He said his name was Chester Cookson.”

  “That would be a phony and he won’t show up,” Tierney said. “But we’ll check it out anyway. There might just be a real Chester Cookson who is a publisher, and this guy once worked for him or something and developed a grudge and is using his name for revenge.”

  “Well, anyway I broke the date,” Betty said with what Tierney suddenly recognized as pride rather than indignation, and he confirmed this feeling as she went on. “The thing that took me in was he had really read the articles. Talked about them in detail. He must be educated. His accent was cultivated; you might almost say English. He said, ‘Well, then, I look forward to meeting you, Mrs. Bayson. I think this will result in a profit for both of us.’ ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘and goodbye,’ and was in the act of hanging up when—had the phone away from my ear when I heard his voice still crackling in it. I brought it up again and said: ‘Oh, excuse me, I was just—’ and he said: ‘We’ll have a delicious lunch and then we’ll—’”

  Betty had stopped and was looking suspensefully at Tierney.

  Who said: “And then came the indecent proposal.”

  “Yes. I suppose I should tell you exactly what was said.”

  Tierney felt himself blush; at least his face rushed with warmth. He said: “No, that’s not necessary except if the guy is caught and you have to testify against him.”

  “It was something abnormal,” said Betty. “He would do it to me, then I would do it to him, and then he said he would strangle me for being so nasty. I couldn’t believe my ears. I guess I got hysterical. I just kept asking: ‘Mr. Cookson? Mr. Cookson?’

  “He said: ‘I strangled your mother and your sister. I’ll get you next. I hate whores.’”

  It was Tierney, and not Betty, who could not stand her going on. “All right, all right,” he said, putting up his hand. “I take it he called several times again throughout the night. I’m going to contact the telephone company and get you an unlisted number. If this guy quits there might be others. It will all die down in a week or two, but there may be a recurrence when the Detweiler trial comes up. If you get any obscene or threatening mail, be sure to turn it in to the Department.” He looked around the room. “Where is your phone?”

  “In the dining room downstairs.”

  “No extensions up here?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’ve been running downstairs all night?”

  “Oh no. I sat up.”

  Tierney shrugged. “Never thought of taking the phone off the hook?”

  It was her turn to look embarrassed, which she did by pretending Tierney’s question was irrelevant. She went back of her head with both hands to adjust the pillow.

  “Never occurred to you?” he asked.

  Her exhausted eyes were all at once spirited and then hard. She said: “Don’t ride me, Tierney.”

  Until this moment it had all been legitimate police business.

  He said: “I don’t want you calling my home.”

  “Why not?” she responded. “He calls mine. Why should you get off scot-free?”

  “I have the damnedest feeling about you,” said Tierney. “You seem to be jealous of me. Far more so than your husband is. Why don’t you take the examination for policewoman?”

  She stared at him for a while, and then asked: “How is Joe?”

  Tierney said brutally: “He went to the apartment on Christmas Eve to kill you.”

  She smiled. “Don’t try to provoke me, Tierney. Just be your own sweet, considerate self. Nothing could be more tiresome than that.”

  She did not believe him. At last Tierney had discovered the breech in her defenses.

  He said: “I’m giving it to you straight. Detweiler went there expecting to find you and kill you. You weren’t there, so he strangled Mrs. Starr, and then Billie came home and he had to kill her so she would not be upset by her mother’s death.”

  Betty cocked her head, and Tierney explained that this was the situation from Detweiler’s point of view. He omitted mention of the subsequent version, taken down by the D.A.’s staff detectives.

  She said: “If you listen to a psychopath you might hear anything.”

  Tierney laughed sourly. “He confessed to the murders, so he has no reason to lie about the rest—unless it would be to find some mitigating circumstances, but this is hardly that. He admits he went there intending to commit a homicide.”

  Betty said smugly: “Me? But he loves me.”

  “That’s as good a reason as any.” Tierney was no longer under the pressure of captivity. He now felt a freedom to come and go as he liked, and decided, freely, to stay awhile. He took off his coat and threw it across a chair.

  He asked: “Did you really get those anonymous calls?”

  “Of course,” said Betty incredulously. And then: “I gather Joe made a favorable impression on you. He’s craftier than I thought. And I was feeling sorry for him!”

  Tierney said: “There is something likable about him. I’ve been trying to figure out what. I’ve dealt with psychos before. They’re no novelty. They’re always people who don’t want to pay the price for services rendered, spiritual deadbeats. ‘Give me love, give me understanding and tolerance, forgive me because I can’t help it, I’m warped.’

  “But Detweiler doesn’t ask for anything—except special orders of food. He manages to believe he already has the approval of everybody. He has no sense of shame. He was trying to convince me that he should plead guilty to first-degree homicide. For my sake. As if I was the one who needed help.” It was reasonable that Tierney could talk to Betty on this subject, as he could not with his own wife. Betty was involved.

  “Maybe you are,” Betty said now. “Aren’t you afraid to be anything but a policeman?”

  So Tierney got into bed with her, and really had her this time, but it seemed a type of duty and he could not have said it gave him pleasure or a sense of accomplishment.

  The pervert never called again, or if he did Betty failed to report it.

  Chapter 17

  EARLY IN the new year Detweiler was indicted by the grand jury for murder in the first degree, and Melrose and the district attorney began opposing effort’s concerning the state of Detweiler’s mind insofar as it was germane to the issues. What both sides had in common was their exclusive interest in the law. Religious and metaphysical aspects were beside the point, though the D.A. was an agnostic who regularly attended Episcopalian services and Melrose was a nonchurchgoing believer. Medical judgment, however, would be appropriate, but only as to whether Detweiler was capable of distinguishing right from wrong: so this inquiry, too, had limitati
ons of legality.

  Melrose explained the situation to Detweiler on one of his visits to the city jail.

  Detweiler said: “Looking at life in terms of the law is rather narrow, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” Melrose answered. “Life is so various, has so many phases that to cope with it we must divide it up into limited, manageable segments.” He had sworn to himself not to get involved in philosophical discussion with Detweiler, but in a very basic way the lawyer’s profession was pedagogical: he taught the jury, who were presumed to be in a state of pure ignorance. Altogether to resist Detweiler’s infantile quest for knowledge Melrose would have had to be another man.

  Melrose said: “Now let’s get down to business. You are interested in time, and law is nothing if not temporal. By which I don’t mean it’s up to the minute, however. What concerns us in this case is a precedent set in the year 1843 and in another country.”

  “Historical, then,” said Detweiler.

  “With a vengeance. In that year, in England, a man named Daniel M’Naghten, who is said to have had the paranoid delusion that a conspiracy of persons headed by Sir Robert Peel, the prime minister, were out to do him harm, shot and killed Peel’s secretary—apparently by mistake, his intended victim being Sir Robert. M’Naghten entered a plea of insanity. He was tried and acquitted on that ground.”

  Detweiler said: “He sounds crazy, to get the wrong man that way.”

  Melrose felt the huge, triangular knot of his golden tie. “You always have a novel perspective,” he said. “My own tendency would be to say that whether or not he was mentally deranged would have to do with his belief in the hostile conspiracy against him, led by the head of state. M’Naghten was a rather obscure individual.”