The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

by John D. MacDonald

  I opened the door a careful fraction of an inch. A chattering group was approaching. When they had passed, I took the chance and walked out, perhaps too exaggeratedly casual, but there was no one there to fault the performance. I leaned against the corridor wall. Mrs. Mace brought me my drink, scuttling, holding it high, proud of her accomplishment. It was an extraordinarily nasty martini. I gave extravagant thanks. She said I should come by Sunday and swim in her pool. She would round up a swinging group. We’d all drink gallons of black velvets. Delighted. Yes, indeed.

  We drifted along behind a group and ended up in the big room. Biddy came quickly to me and drew me aside. She looked determined and angry.

  “Trav, I haven’t told Tom and I don’t intend to. Sooner or later he’s going to find out she’s missing and that will be time enough. I’m just not going to let my sister spoil the best part of it for him. She’s done enough spoiling already. Would you please do me a very special favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Go down and start checking every bar you can find, and there are quite a few within three or four blocks of here. If you find her and if she isn’t in bad shape yet, bring her back, please. But if she’s had it, stay with her and put her in the station wagon down below. The tag is—”

  “I know the car.”

  “Thanks so much! Poor Trav. Always doing stupid favors for the dreary Pearson family. And look, dear, do not ever let Tom know that I knew she was missing. He’d kill me. He would think I should have told him at once. But, darn it all … and … thanks again.”

  I started the slow journey through the crush of guests. I had to pass a group standing in respectful attention, listening to Tom Pike. He stood, tall, vital, dark, handsome, a little bit slouched, a little bit rustic and cowlicky and subtly aw-shucks about everything, his voice deep, rich, resonant as he said, “… job-creating opportunities in urban core areas, that’s the answer if we’re going to continue to have a viable centercity economic base here in Fort Courtney. The companion piece to this fine building should be—if we all have the guts and the vision—an enclosed shopping mall taking up that short block on Princess Street. Urban renewal to help tear down the obsolete warehouses and get the city to vacate the street, and I don’t see why we couldn’t have …”

  I was by him, and a pack of ladies whooping at something that had just about tickled them to death drowned out the rest of the visionary address to the potential investors.

  I rode down with a silent couple in the elevator. She stared with prim mouth and lofty eyebrows at the ceiling of the small machine. With clamped jaw and moody brow he stared at the blue carpeting underfoot. As we walked down into the parking area she did not realize I was as close behind them as I was. In a thin, deadly, indifferent tone she said, “Sweetheart, why don’t you let me drive home alone while you go right on back up there and stroke Gloria’s vulgar little ass all you want. She may be missing the attention.”

  He did not reply. I walked to my car and unlocked it and got in and clenched the wheel so tightly my knuckles made crackling sounds. I shut my eyes so tightly I could see rockets and wheels of fire. Little improvements come along, because the luck can go either way, and when you play the longer odds you open up the chance of the good luck and the bad. Her reaction helped. I had not expected it. I had wanted her to tell him that McGee had seen Maureen leaving by a route other than the one he knew she had taken, and so that would target him in on me, bring him in close enough for me to see what he was. But it was better the way she was doing it.

  And I had to find Stanger, and find him fast.

  I didn’t get to Stanger until nine fifteen. I told him that it might save a lot of time and a lot of questions later if it went down on tape on the very first go-round.

  “You look funny,” he said. “You look spooked.”

  “It’s been one of those days, Al.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “When the tape is running.”

  “All right, all right!”

  So he left Nudenbarger on traffic cruise by himself and rode down to headquarters with me in my car. I said I’d like to do it in the car if possible. He came out with a battered old Uher with an adaptor for the cigarette lighter. I found a bright white drive-in on Route 30 and parked at the far edge with the rear against the fence. A listless girl made two long walks to take the order and bring out the two coffees and hook the tray onto the car. Stanger had checked the recorder. It had some hiss but not too much. The heads needed cleaning and demagnetizing.

  He rewound and started it again on record and established his identity, the date and time, and said he was taking a voluntary statement from one Travis McGee of such and such a place, said statement having some bearing, as yet unknown, on the murder by stab wound of Penny Woertz, and that said victim had been acquainted with said McGee. He sighed and handed me the mike.

  As soon as I got into it, he stiffened and he boggled at me. As I kept on he wanted to interrupt so badly he began making little lunges and jumps, so I didn’t give him an opening. At one point he bent over, hands cupping his eyes, and I could hear him grinding his teeth. I finished. I turned the remote switch on the mike and said, “Want me to turn it back on for questions?”

  “No. No. Not yet. Oh, good Jesus H. Jumpin’ Sufferin’ Christ on the rocks! Oh you lousy dumb bastard! Oh, why did I ever think you had one brain cell to rub up against another. You silly bastard, I have got to take you in and shut the iron door on you. For God’s sake, it is going to take me half the night just to write up the charges. And you have the gall, the nerve, the lousy … impertinence to ask me to sneak down there and grab that dead broad out of that crazy hidey-hole and make like I found her in a ditch, and keep anybody from coming up with the ID and keep her the hell on ice as a Jane Doe until God only knows how.… No! Dammit, McGee. No!” It was an anguished cry.

  “Why don’t you ask me some questions. Maybe it’ll calm you down, Stanger. You’ve got all night to go collect her.”

  He nodded. I turned the mike on.

  “Are you absolutely certain she was dead?”

  “She fell a hundred and twenty feet onto concrete.”

  “So all right! Did you realize when you touched the outside and inside knob on that office door and messed with the window and picked up the pocketbook, you were removing evidence of a crime, if there was one?”

  “He wouldn’t leave anything useful. I moved the body too. Jumped, fell, or pushed, it would look just the same.”

  “But what the hell do you expect to accomplish?”

  I turned off the microphone. “Al, you won’t play it my way?”

  “I can’t! It’s such a way-out——”

  “Who can make a decision to try my way? Your chief?”

  “Old Sam Teppler? He’s going to keel over in a dead faint if I try to tell him, even.”

  “How about your state attorney for this judicial district. Gaffney?”

  “Gaffner. Ben Gaffner.”

  “Is there any chance he’d buy it? There’s all kinds of prosecutors. What kind is he?”

  Al Stanger got out of the car and slammed the door. He walked slowly around the car, scuffing his heels on the asphalt, hitching at his trousers, scratching the back of his neck. He came and looked down at me across the hook-on tray.

  “Gaffner is on his fourth term. He gets a hell of a lot of respect. But nobody gets very close to him. He likes to nail them. He drives hard. His record keeps him in. He isn’t fancy. He builds his cases like they used to build stone walls in the old days. All I can say is … maybe. You’d have to sell him the whole thing. All the way down the line. He’s straight and he’s tough, and he likes being just what he is. But I’d even hate to try to explain to him why you’re not behind iron right now, McGee.”

  “Let’s give it a try.”

  He went to a public phone booth on the corner line of the gas station across the highway. I could see him in the floodlighted booth, talking for a long time. I could
not tell from his dispirited pace as he came back what the answer had been.

  He got in beside me and pulled the door shut. “He’s based fifty-five miles from here. In Lime County. He’ll leave in about ten minutes, he said, and bring two of his people. They’ll make good time. They’ll plan on me opening up one of the circuit court hearing rooms in the courthouse and we’ll meet them there.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Told him I had a nut here that wanted me to help him hide the body of a murder victim.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked me why I’d called him, and I told him because I thought maybe the nut had a pretty good idea. So he said he’d better come over and listen. I don’t think he’ll buy it.”

  “No harm in trying to sell it.”

  “Why don’t I just lock you up nice?”

  “Because at heart you’re a dandy fellow.”

  I blinked the lights and the girl came and got the tray and her money. Stanger checked in and said he was going off shift a little early instead of staying on until midnight. He told them to have the dispatcher tell Lew Nudenbarger. We went down to the courthouse. He located the night man and had him unlock the small hearing room next to the offices of the circuit judge on the second floor, and told him to stay by the side door near the parking lot, as Mr. Gaffner would be coming along.

  The countersunk fluorescence shone down on a worn red rug, a mahogany veneer table with ten armchairs aligned around it. The air was close and still, and the room had no windows. Stanger fussed with the thermostat until something clicked and cool air began to circulate. We laid out the various items on the oiled top of the table. The two prescription vials, one partially used. The two-headed bug. The recorder, now with AC line cord plugged in. One blue lizard envelope purse that matched the blue lizard pumps wrapped up with the dead wife of Tom Pike. Holton’s revolver. The pry bar, which could be matched to the forced entry marks on the sliding glass doors and the metal medicine chest.

  We waited for Gaffner, with Stanger wearing a tired little smile.

  Nineteen

  Ben Gaffner sat at the middle of the long table. He directed me to sit opposite him, Stanger at my left. His two men sat at his right and his left. The thin, pale one named Rico was his chief investigator. The round, red one named Lozier was the young attorney who assisted him throughout the circuit.

  Gaffner was an orderly man. He arranged in useful order in front of him a yellow legal pad, four sharp yellow pencils, glass ashtray, cigarettes, lighter. Rico had brought along a recorder, a Sony 800. He plugged it in, threaded a new tape, tested it, put the mike on top of a book in the center of the table, tested it again, changed the pickup volume, and nodded at Gaffner.

  Only then did Gaffner look directly at me. The tape reels turned at slow speed. He had a moon face and his small and delicate features were all clustered in the center of the moon. His hair was cropped close except for a wiry tuft of gray on the top near the front, like a handful of steel wool. His eyes were an odd shade of yellow, and he could hold them on you without shifting them or blinking them or showing any expression. It was effective.

  “Your name?” he said finally. Uninflected. No accent, no clue to area of origin. Name, age, address, occupation, marital status, local address.

  “It is my understanding that you are making a voluntary confession, Mr. McGee. I must warn you that—”

  “I am aware of my rights regarding self-incrimination, remaining silent, right to counsel, and so forth, Mr. Gaffner. I waive them freely and voluntarily, with no threats, promises, or coercion on your part.”

  “Very well. You will tell me in your own words your actions in regard to the alleged crime which you—”

  “We’re not going to do it that way, Mr. Gaffner.”

  “We are going to do it my way.”

  “Then, you had a long drive for nothing. Al, lead me to that iron door of yours.”

  Gaffner kept those yellow eyes on me for a long ten count. “How do you suggest we do this, McGee?”

  “I want to start over five years ago and tell you how and where I met Helena Pearson Trescott and her daughters. I won’t waste your time with anything not pertinent to the case I hope you will be able to take to the grand jury. Some of the subsequent events will be guesswork.”

  “I am not interested in your conjectures.”

  “I am not interested in how much or how little interest you have in my conjectures. I am going to give them to you, right along with what facts I have. Without the conjectures the facts won’t hang together. You’ll just have to endure it, Mr. Gaffner. Maybe you could just tell yourself you might get some leads out of them.”

  After another long yellow unwinking stare he said, “Proceed, then. Try not to ramble. When I hold up my hand like this, please stop, because I will want to write a note on this pad. When I stop writing, continue, and try to continue where you left off. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  It took a long time. It took both sides of a five-inch reel of tape and half of another before we were done. He wrote many pages of notes, his writing swift, neat, and very small.

  My chain of motive and logic went thus:

  Dr. Stewart Sherman had indeed killed his wife, and in the course of his investigation the special investigator for Courtney County, Dave Broon, had come up with something that, if he reported it or turned it in, would have been enough to give a reasonable assurance of an indictment by the grand jury. A practicing physician would be far more useful to Dave Broon than a man indicted for murder. A man of Broon’s shrewdness would probably lock it all up very carefully, perhaps by trading cooperation and silence for a written confession which could be tucked away.

  Next consider Tom Pike’s narrow escape when he was being investigated for unethical practices while working as a stockbroker. The intervention of Miss Hulda Wennersehn was almost too opportune. One might detect here the possibility of Dave Broon stepping in and doing Pike a great favor. It would be profitable to help Pike. Maybe he dug up information on the Wennersehn woman to use as leverage, or maybe he already had something and was waiting for a good chance to use it. This would give Broon a certain hold over Pike as well. Pike was becoming more and more successful, and possibly overextended.

  Then we have Helena Pearson Trescott, before her first operation for cancer, telling her daughters the terms of her will and the surprising size of her estate. Maureen would certainly have told Tom the terms. Then we have the surgeon, Dr. Bill Dyckes, telling Tom Pike, but not the daughters, that Helena will not recover from the cancer of the bowel. Suddenly the expected baby is a potential source of loss compared to (under the terms of the will) the optimum solution. The ideal order would be for Helena to die first, then for Maureen to die without issue, and for Tom Pike to marry Bridget.

  The family doctor is, by accident or plan, Dr. Sherman. One can assume that through a mutually profitable relationship Pike and Broon have become confidants. Trust could be guaranteed by putting various damaging pieces of information in a safe place, available only upon the death of either conspirator.

  So pressure is put on Sherman to induce spontaneous abortion of the child Maureen Pike is carrying. There are drugs that can be given by injection that will dangerously inhibit kidney function. Do it, or face complete exposure and disgrace and perhaps a life term. It works almost too well, making Maureen dangerously ill.

  Here there is an area of pure guesswork. Why was it so necessary to wipe out Maureen’s memory of the immediate past? Did she suspect the shot Sherman gave her had killed the child? Or, more probably, when she appeared to be comatose, she could have heard too much of some quiet bedside conversation between Dr. Sherman and her husband. Nothing could make a woman keep her mouth shut about that. If memory could not be wiped out, she would have had to be killed, in spite of the money loss it would mean. Sherman had been doing animal experimentations on memory, on the retention of skills once learned, of retraining time wh
en such skills were forgotten. As the doctor on the case, he could easily give Maureen a massive dose of puromycin. When it wiped memory clean of all events of the previous several days, one can assume Pike would soon realize how useful that effect could be. It could help him lay the groundwork for her death, which would have to come after Helena had died, and it would be a way of keeping Bridget there in the house, with the two of them, where she could fall in love with Tom Pike.

  Once she is home from the hospital, Tom Pike, with Biddy’s unwitting cooperation, keeps his wife on puromycin. Her day-by-day memory function is fragmented. Her learning skills are stunted. A side effect is a kind of regression to childhood, to sensual pleasure, to the naughtiness of running away. But this helps keep Biddy near. She cannot leave her sister. So while Helena still lives, he sets the stage for eventual successful suicide. There is no risk in feeding her the sleeping pills and waiting a seemingly risky length of time before taking her in. She will have no memory of it. No harm in putting her in the hot tub, making the hesitation marks on her wrist, then one cut deep enough, and waiting, then breaking down the unlocked door. She will not remember. She will not know that it was he who fashioned the clumsily knotted noose instead of she.