by Ed Gorman
“Things have changed. The courts are a lot tougher on cops these days.”
“Even with Cliffie’s old man running the town?”
I nodded. “Even with that.”
“You want to know who killed her?”
“Who?”
“Molly. Molly Blessing.”
“Why would Molly kill her?”
“Because she was so jealous of Sara Griffin.”
“And you weren’t?”
“I don’t have the temper Molly does.”
I smiled. “C’mon, Rita.”
“No, really. Everybody thinks because she’s so quiet and everything, she doesn’t blow up like I d. But she came at me with a knife one night.
I thought she was going to kill me.”
“Funny, Molly said the same thing about you.”
“That I tried to stab her?”
“No, that you killed Sara.”
“That bitch.”
I nodded to the door. “I think I’ll go inside. Maybe I don’t trust Cliffie as much as I said.”
“That bitch really said I killed Sara?”
I gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “That’s what she said, Rita.”
“Bitch.”
“Yeah, I think you said that already.”
Six
Mom and Dad got the Hawkeye tickets, which was fine because their wedding anniversary was coming up and Mom had never been to a college football game before and was a lot more excited about going than I would have suspected. I told them that Mrs.
Goldman would let them into my apartment and where they’d find the tickets.
“I forgot to bring her that chocolate-chip cookie recipe,” Mom said on the phone. “The one with the coconut in it. I’d better be sure and dig it out this time.”
The interrogation consisted of Cliffie controlling his natural instincts because I was there and David not saying much except, “I didn’t kill her.”
“If you didn’t kill her, then who did?”
“I think,” I said, “that’s sort of your job, isn’t it?”
“You stay out of this, McCain. He did it and you know he did it and I know he did it and he knows he did it. And I’m gonna stay here until he admits it.”
Or at least until the Hawkeyes scored.
“Shit,” Cliffie said, “I wanted to listen to the game. Have somebody bring in a radio.”
I don’t know about you but I want my villains to be arch villains. Fu Manchu, now there was a villain. Same for Batman’s nemesis, The Joker, and all the various nemeses Tarzan of the Apes ran up against.
Villains through and through.
You see all the great crime movies and the crooked, stupid cops in them are tireless in their villainy. Eye gouging? Brass knuckles?
Shin kicking? And that’s just for starters. But Cliffie was sort of a villain but not sort of a villain, too. He would suddenly lunge at David and shout in his face, “You killed her, you little punk! Now just admit it!” And then before David could say even a word—assuming, of course, that he wanted to say a word—Cliffie would say to his patrolman, “Turn that radio up a little, will ya?”
I’m pretty sure Fu Manchu never
listened to a football game while he was
interrogating somebody. Sort of spoils the effect, wouldn’t you say?
I was in the middle of repeating my 842 best reasons for letting David go when Cliffie jumped up in the air like the world’s oldest male cheerleader. His holster flapped against his leg. His badge jumped on his chest. His face got a deep, beery red. “Touchdown!” he cried, slamming his fist into his palm. “Kill those bastards! Kill those bastards!”
I hoped that wasn’t the cheer going through the stands.
I wouldn’t have wanted my Mom’s first Hawkeye game to be spoiled by an obscene cheer. (i could hear her now: “I never knew they used language like that at those football games, Sam. I was sort of surprised.”)
The score was tied at halftime and Cliffie had to make a decision.
He said, “He’s guilty.”
“Yes, I know you think he’s guilty. But that doesn’t make him guilty.” Then I said, “I’d like to talk to you in the hall.”
“Why?”
“Just because it’s sort of personal.”
“You’re wasting your time, trying all those legal tricks on me.”
“Two minutes is all I need.”
He looked at his officer, the narrow one leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.
“Can you believe the shit this guy asks me to do?”
Cliffie asked him.
The officer grinned around his toothpick.
“He’s a ballsy bastard.”
“Hear that, McCain? “A ballsy
bastard.” That about says it all.”
“Yeah, I heard. Now could I have two minutes of your time in the hall?”
So we went into the hall.
He said, “I’m not gonna let him go.”
“I didn’t want to resort to this but I don’t have any choice.”
I couldn’t believe he didn’t know what was coming but it was obvious he didn’t.
“I want to remind you about the last three murder cases we’ve had in this town.”
And then he knew what was coming. And I almost felt sorry for him.
“You arrested three people right off the bat for each murder.”
“I had good reason to.”
“Maybe. But each person turned out to be innocent.”
His cheeks were tinted a faint red now. He was not happy to be reminded of his past limitations as an investigator.
“They talk about that, Chief.”
“Talk about what?”
“How you’ve gone three for three.”
“Who talks about it?”
“P. In town here.”
“Bastards. I was just doin’ my job.”
“I’m sure I can talk Judge Whitney
into approving bail.”
“Hell, yes, you can. She’d do anything to embarrass me.”
“This’ll keep you from embarrassment, Chief.
You’ll name him as a suspect but you’ll allow him to be bailed out. This’ll make you look a lot better than locking him up for six or seven days and then finding out he’s innocent.”
He scowled at me. “I just noticed
somethin’.”
“What?”
“You never called me “Chief” before. Now you’re callin’ me that all the time.”
“It’s a term of respect. We’ve had our differences personally but I still respect the office.”
“You sure can sling the shit, McCain.”
I grinned. “Just about as well as you.”
He almost smiled. Almost. But then he caught himself, jammed a cigarette into his mouth and opened the door of the interrogation room. I followed him back in.
He stood next to David Egan.
“What if I let him go and he kills somebody else?” he said.
I looked down at David. “If he lets you go, are you going to kill anybody?”
“No,” David said. He smiled.
“There you have it,” I said. “His sacred word.”
“Game starts again in six minutes, Chief,”
his patrolman said.
“People think I have such an easy job,”
Cliffie said to no one in particular. “Sit around and polish your badge and count your bullets and beat up a few deadbeats just for kicks. It might’ve been like that in the old days but it sure ain’t anymore. These days a chief of police can’t even find the time to squeeze in a
Hawkeye game on a Saturday afternoon.” He sneered at me. “Go ahead, McCain. Get him out of here. I want a fifty-thousand dollar bond on him. But if he kills anybody else, I’m really gonna be pissed.”
“And I wouldn’t blame you,” I said. “You shouldn’t be allowed to kill more than one person a week in this town. And this kid’s had his
quota.
That is, according to you.”
“Just get the hell out of here.”
On the way back to my office, I said to David, “You need to tell me who you were with last night.”
“I wish I could. This is really getting serious, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Very serious.”
I called Judge Whitney. She was more than happy to grant bail and to put up the money herself. “Now,” she said, “you’ve got to find the real killer and humiliate Cliffie like you’ve never humiliated him before. You understand?”
Jack Coyle said, “Our girls want
to move.” He tried to smile. “They think our house is cursed now.”
You could hear his twins playing basketball on a hoop near the garage. I’d watched them as I’d pulled up. They were as pretty as their mother but not anywhere near as delicate. They knew a lot of basketball’s most hallowed dirty tricks. Especially stuff to use when the other girl was going in for a layup.
“They saw a show like that on Tv once,”
Jean Coyle said. “Where the murdered person came back to haunt the people who lived there.”
“Damned Tv,” Jack said. “I wish it
had never been invented.”
“Except for sports, of course,” Jean joked.
“Yes,” Jack laughed. “Except for
sports.”
We sat in deep leather armchairs on a screened-in porch that ran the considerable length of the north side of the house. Like the rest of the house, the porch had been created with imagination and care, the leather couch and chairs complementing the pioneer artifacts placed perfectly around the tiled floor. The Shaker settee, the coffee grinder, the oaken ice box, the framed, faded photographs of Coyle ancestors
let you escape the press of the present. And that was nice every once in a while.
“I imagine you’re doing battle with Cliffie,” Jean said to me.
“He’s letting David Egan out on
bail.”
“Now there’s a surprise,” Jack said. “I didn’t think Cliffie believed in bail.”
“I just made the point that everybody he’d arrested for murder over the last few years was ultimately proven innocent.”
“I’m sure he liked that,” Jack said.
Then, the small talk portion of my visit over, he said, “So once again young Sam McCain, Boy Detective, leaps into the fray.”
His remark came out just harshly enough—there was more than a hint of condescension in it—t Jean shot him a surprised look when he said it.
But Jack didn’t back down. “This is going to be uncomfortable.”
“Jack,” Jean said. “What are you talking about? Sam was nice enough to stop out here to see how we were doing.”
Amazing how quickly the air in a room can shift from placid to tense.
“Sam came out here to question us, dear. A dead girl was found in our gazebo. Sam has a client whose name he wants to clear. And in order to do that he has to find somebody else to blame for the murder. The logical place to start is the place where the body is found. In fact, I can tell you what his first two questions will be. Did our twins know Sara Griffin at all? And did either you or I know her except in passing. That’s about right, isn’t it, Sam?”
He’d taken over the room. He’d asked my questions for me. He was in complete control. He was as good on his screened-in porch as he was in court. He sat there in his blue turtleneck with his carefully brushed graying hair, watching to see how I’d react to the clever way he’d undermined my visit.
“Is that true, Sam? You might think we’re involved in some way?” Jean sounded hurt. The beginnings of anger started deep in her lovely blue eyes. We were friends. Friends didn’t come out on a lazy football afternoon and play at an inquisition.
Jack smiled with a good deal of
calculated malice. “Yes, Sam, why
don’t you explain exactly why you’re here—if what I said isn’t true.”
“It’s just good investigative technique,” I said to Jean, “to talk to everybody involved.”
“We’re not involved, Sam. And I resent you implying that we are. I thought you were our friend.”
“God, Jean,” I said. “Please don’t
think—”
“Sam McCain, Boy Detective,”
Jack said again. The smile was smug this time.
He’d managed to deny me any possibility of learning anything. And he’d probably caused permanent damage between me and Jean. He’d done a good day’s work and he’d done it in less than five minutes.
She stood up, magazine-ad perfect in her tan sweater and trim brown slacks. “We have a dinner party to go to tonight, Sam. You can finish your conversation with Jack.”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. A little more groveling wouldn’t get me anything.
“You’ve got balls, Sam, I’ll give you that,” Jack said after his wife left.
“That’s what Cliffie told me.”
“Before you start feeling sorry for yourself and thinking that I low-balled you just now, put yourself in Jean’s place. She goes out and finds a body in our gazebo. She’ll remember that the rest of her life. Jean is a fairly sheltered person.
There was nothing in her life to prepare her for something like this. The only dead person she’s ever seen was her father. And that was after the mortician got him all gussied up for public display. So here you come, less than twenty-four hours after this terrible event, and you want to ask us questions about the dead girl.”
“I wasn’t implying a damned thing and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know it, Sam. You took your criminology courses at the university, you’re up on modern police techniques, and you’ve had some luck as a private
investigator. No, check that. That’s condescending. Luck wasn’t involved, or not much of it, anyway. So when you come out here and want to question us, how are we supposed to feel?”
“You’d do the same thing, Jack, and you know it.”
That was the first thing I’d said that seemed
to impress him. He looked at me a long moment and said, “I suppose I would.” Then, “You went all the way through school with her, Sam.
You were always one of her favorites. She was rich and beautiful and she didn’t care a tinker’s damn that you came from the Knolls. She’s always loved you—and I mean that, loved you—and here you come all of a sudden, altering your entire relationship by asking her and her husband some pretty pointed questions.”
“How do you know they were pointed? I didn’t even get to ask them.”
“C’mon, Sam. Don’t try and shit a
shitter. We’re both defense lawyers. We know how it all works and what it all means.”
I leaned back in my comfortable leather armchair, drained the last of the Pepsi in the tall glass with the little pink terrycloth cover on it, and said, “So did either of you know her well, Jack?”
He stood up. He was so tall he looked like a totem pole, an upper-class totem
pole. He said, “I admire you for asking it, Sam. That’s what you want in a lawyer and an investigator.” He put a hard hand on my shoulder and began to pull me up. “Now, I hope you’ll admire me for defending the sanctity of my home and asking you to leave.”
He was still very much in control.
Seven
“You mean you didn’t go to the Hawkeye game?”
“I’m not much of a sports fan, Sam. Never was, actually.”
“You could get deported to Missouri for saying that.”
Hesitation. “I’m sorry about last night.”
I was in jeans and a sweatshirt and a beer, sitting in my apartment with my feet on the coffee table and thinking about how stupid-looking toes are.
“Sorry? For what?”
“Oh, you know. Telling you about—everything.”
“I had a very nice time last night.”
“I’m kind of scr
ewed up now.”
“I’ve been kinda screwed up my whole life. Not to pull rank on you, you understand.”
She laughed. “I had a good time, too, but I don’t think it was fair to you. You know, you should have certain expectations and all.”
“You let me worry about my expectations.
Really, Linda, I want to see you again.”
“Sam, it’s just—it’s not a good time.”
“You could make it a good time.”
“You really think so?”
“Sure. We could go have some dinner someplace and then just go for a ride the way we did last night.”
“But—what happens when the night’s over?”
“I come home and take a cold shower and sit in an ice bath and read the Bible. Same thing I do every night.”
Her laugh again. It was a small, shy, affecting laugh. “You clown.”
“You know you want to go.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I can just tell. I have these powers.”
“It’ll get awful frustrating for both of us at some point.”
“We’ll worry about that when we get to that point. How’s that?”
“I really appreciate this, Sam.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Listen, and I’m being serious now. I’m not doing you a favor. This isn’t some kind of pity date. I like you. Last night I had a good time—if you discount the underlying existential dread that’s always with me, I mean.”
This time she giggled. “I think that’s what I h. Existential dread. And that sounds a lot more impressive than telling people you’re depressed.
Just about everybody’s depressed. But not all that many people have existential dread. I’m not even sure what it means and I’m impressed.”
“Maybe we’ll fall in love.”
“Oh, Sam, c’mon.”
“Why not? You’re lonely and I’m lonely and you’re short and I’m short.”
“And you have existential dread and I have existential dread.”
“See, what did I tell you? Sounds like love to me.”
“So what time are you planning on picking me up?”
“How about seven?”
“I’m staying here at my mom’s. Not in Iowa City.”
