John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 09 - Pale Gray for Guilt

by Pale Gray for Guilt(lit)

  "Why certainly, Sheriff! Willingly and voluntarily, and not in the cage in the back of a county sedan, and with my keys and papers and wallet in my pockets. Otherwise it's an arrest, and if so, my personal attorney is Judge Rufus Wellington and you better get him on the horn and get him down here."

  "Read his name in the paper, boy?"

  "Instead of bothering the judge, why don't you just ask Whitt Sanders if the judge represents me?"

  I was watching for a shift of uncertainty in his eyes and saw it. Apparently he had not anticipated any connection with the local power structure. He motioned one of the two deputies close, stood tall, and without taking his eyes off me, murmured into the younger man's ear. The deputy walked out. Burgoon asked me to come over and sit on a couch in the lobby. The deputy was back in five minutes and the sheriff went over and talked quietly with him, then came over and gave me back my possessions. With one of the deputies ten paces behind us, we walked through the morning sunshine to the Shawana County Courthouse and around to the side and into the entrance labeled COUNTY SHERIFF.

  I was aware of a particularly avid curiosity on the part of the desk personnel and the communication clerk as he led me back into his office. The slats of the blinds were almost closed. He turned on the ceiling fluorescence and his desk lamp. He had me sit in a straight chair facing his desk and six feet from it. The sheriff looked at the papers on his blotter, put them aside and sat in his big black chair. A portly man in deputy uniform came in and sighed and sat in a chair back against the wall. "Willie will be bringing it along, Sherf."

  Burgoon nodded. There was silence. I looked at the framed testimonials on the walls, and the framed pictures of Burgoon taken with various political notables, past and present., Some file drawers were partially open. The contents looked untidy, with documents sticking up out of the file folders.

  "Make that deal with Harry?" Burgoon asked.

  The portly one said, "He give me an estimate of over seventeen hundred. And it was supposed to be a twenty-year roof I told Cathy we could buy a lot of buckets to set under the leaks for seventeen hundred."

  "Harry does nice work."

  "Wisht I'd used him when I was building." Burgoon looked at me. "You made up your mind about a lawyer yet, mister?" I had been promoted from boy.

  "Sheriff, I think it would be easier for me to make that decision if I had more information about what you think I did. It could be something we might be able to straighten out without bothering anybody"

  "Maybe. Maybe not."

  "When and where did the alleged crime take place? That might give me something to go on."

  "It took place, mister, on the morning of December seventeenth last, and it took place at a marina on the Shawana River just about eleven miles east of here."

  "That was a Sunday morning?"

  "Yes it was."

  "Would you be trying to make a capital case, Sheriff?"

  "Murder first."

  I remembered that Sunday with no trouble. Puss, Barni Baker, Mick Coseen, Meyer, Marilee, in fact a lot more people than we had needed or wanted aboard, and a dozen ways to refresh their memories that it was that exact day.

  "Just one more question and I can give you an answer. Am I supposed to be connected with it in some way, or are you trying to say I was there at that time?"

  "There at that time and did commit an act of violence which resulted in the death of one Brantley B. Bannon.

  "Then, I don't think I need a lawyer to straighten things out."

  It seemed to startle Burgoon. He said irritably, "Tom, what the hell is holding up that damn Willie?"

  "Right here, Sheriff. Right here," said a thin young man who came in carrying a tape recorder. He put it on the corner of the sheriff's desk, knelt on the rug and plugged it in. "Sheriff, you just push-"

  "I know, I know! Get on back to work and close the door." When the door was closed, Burgoon said, "We took this with the court reporter and on tape at the same time, and there hasn't been time to transcribe it yet. You get to hear it on account of now we've got that damn new law on full disclosure, and the defense would get a certified copy of the transcript anyways, and the State's Attorney said it was all right I should do it this way. You listen, and then you answer questions and make a statement, and then we hold you and this goes to a special meeting of the Grand Jury for the indictment so you can be arraigned proper."

  He punched it on and leaned back and closed his eyes and rested his fingertips together. The tape had a lot of hiss. Apparently nobody ever bothered to clean or demagnetize the heads. But the questions and answers were clear enough.

  I recognized the flat, insipid, dreary little-girl voice before she even gave her name, saying that she was Mrs. Roger Denn, Arlene Denn, and that she had been living with her husband at the Bannan Cottages, Cottage number 12 ever since the tenth of December, that she was twenty-two years old and that she was self-employed, as was her husband, making and selling art objects to gift shops. Prior to that time they had lived aboard a houseboat the Bannons had rented them, tied up at the Bannon Boatel on the river, and had lived there eight months.

  "What were the circumstances of your leaving?"

  "Well, they had to come and take the houseboats back. They owed on them and some men came and towed them off, I don't know where. That was... early in December, I don't know exactly what day."

  "What happened then?"

  "We put all our things in the two end units of the motel just for a while, until we could find something, because Mr. Bannon said it looked like he might lose the place. We went looking and we found a place at the Banyan Cottages and moved in on the tenth, and we were making trips in the station wagon to bring our supplies and so on back to the cottages."

  As she spoke on the tape, through the hiss, I could picture her clearly, pallid and sloppy and doughy, with dirty blonde hair and a mouth that hung open, and meaningless blue eyes.

  "What was the occasion of your last visit to Bannon's motel."

  "It was because of missing some silver wire. We use it in the jewelry. On Saturday, that was the sixteenth, we looked all over for it and it was just gone. We knew then that the place was foreclosed out there, but we still had a key to the end units on account of Roger forgot to leave it off when we made the last trip. I kept thinking that maybe what could have happened to it, we had a lot of supplies piled on the beds and maybe the wire slipped down and caught somehow like at the headboard or the footboard, because I had crawled around looking to see if we'd left anything on the floor the last trip we took. Roger kept saying to forget it because it was real trouble going into a place sealed off by the court, and maybe they'd changed the locks. But it was twenty dollars' worth of wire and maybe seventeen left on the roll, and we don't do so good we can just throw away seventeen dollars. So we sort of had a fight about it, and I said I was going to go out there whether he was or not, so I went out when it was just getting to be daylight the next day, which was Sunday. I drove right on by, slow, to see if anybody was there and I didn't see anybody, so I went a ways up the road and put the station wagon in a little kind of overgrown place that used to be a cleared road once. I backed it in. You know, kind of hiding it, and I went back with the key and when I was pretty sure nobody was around, I tried the key and it worked and I let myself in and started hunting for that wire."

  "What happened next?"

  "I guess I was hunting for maybe ten minutes or fifteen minutes. I don't know just what time it was. Maybe sometime between seven and seven thirty and I heard a car coming, so I squatted down so nobody could look in and see me when they went by. One of the windows, those awning kind of window things, was open three or four inches. So I heard the car drive in and it stopped and then I heard a car door slam and then I heard another car door slam and I heard men's voices."

  "Could you hear what was said?"

  "No sir. They were loudest near the car and then kind of faded when they were walking toward the marina. I couldn't hear words but I had t
he feeling they were mad at each other, almost shouting. I think one word that was shouted was Jan. That was Mrs. Bannon's name. Janine. But I couldn't be sure."

  "What happened next?"

  "I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to leave. I tried to peek out the windows and see where they went to, to see if it was safe for me to sneak out."

  "Could you see the car?"

  "No sir. But I knew I would hear it if it started up."

  "Then what happened?"

  "Somebody shouted a lot louder, and further away, and I knew they were real mad. It sounded to me like Mr. Bannon. Then it was quiet. Then maybe five minutes later I looked out the back window that looks toward the river, and I saw a man dragging Mr. Bannon across the ground. He had his arms wrapped around Mr. Bannon's ankles and he was leaning forward and pulling hard and pulling Mr. Bannon along. I was kneeling and looking out a corner of the window, like with one eye. He dragged him right to that old hoist thing and then kind of rolled and shoved and pushed him under the motor. Mr. Bannon was real limp, like unconscious or dead. The man stood up and looked at him and then he looked all around. I ducked down and when I got up enough nerve to look again, he was walking toward the hoist thing again from the marina and he was carrying something small, some wire and something. I watched him and he kneeled down and did something to Mr. Bannon I couldn't see, and then he worked some more at the hoist thing. Then he turned the crank and the motor went up real slow. I could hear the clickety sound it made. Then he stood near the gear part and bent over and did something and... the motor fell down onto Mr. Bannon. There was a rackety sound when it came down and the wire ropes slapped around and hit those poles and made a ringing sound."

  "And then?"

  "He cranked it up halfway and looked at Mr. Bannon close, and cranked it up the rest of the way and let it fall on him again. When he cranked it up again, Mr. Bannon looked... kind of flattened out. He didn't put it all the way up again. He just let it fall from there and he left it there and picked up some thing off the ground and then kind of stopped and dropped it and then picked it up and wiped it on some kind of a rag and dropped it again. He was nearly running when he left. And then I heard one car door slam and after a little while the car started up. I stayed way down until it was gone."

  "Which way did it go?"

  "Back this way, toward Sunnydale."

  "Did you get a good look at the man?"

  "Yes Sir, I did."

  "Had you ever seen him before?"

  "Yes Sir."

  "Would you recognize him if you saw him again?"

  "Yes Sir."

  "Do you know him by name?"

  "Yes Sir."

  "What is his name?"

  "His name is Mr. McGee."

  "Under what circumstances did you first see Mr. McGee?"

  "I only saw him two times before that, both on the same day. It was back in October. I don't know the exact day. He was a friend of theirs and he came in a nice boat to visit them. He took them over to Broward Beach in the boat that night for dinner and I sat with the little boys. So I met him when I came over to sit, and then I saw him again when they came back."

  "Did they seem friendly, McGee and the Bannons?"

  "I... guess so."

  "You seem hesitant. Why?"

  "I had the feeling it was Mrs. Bannon he came to See."

  "What gave. you that feeling?"

  "Well, actually I saw him three times that day. It was an awful hot day. Mr. Bannon and Mr. McGee had fixed Mr. Bannon's car. Then Mr. Bannon went off to get the boys from school. I saw Mrs. Bannon taking a pitcher of iced tea to one of the units. I wanted to ask her about something she was going to bring me from town, to save a trip. I needed it in my work and I went down there to where she took the iced tea, thinking she would come right out. When she didn't, I sort of looked in the window. I didn't know his name then, not until later. But I saw Mr. McGee and Mrs. Bannon laying on the bed, kissing."

  "Did you notice anything else that day in October that seemed odd or unusual to you?"

  "No sir. Nothing else at all, sir."

  "What did you do after McGee drove away?"

  "Well, I thought I better wait a little while in case he forgot something and came back. So I looked for the wire some more and I found it. I left and made sure the door was locked and then I ran all the way to our car. I threw the key in the bushes when I was getting into the car, the room key."

  "Why did you do that?"

  "I was very frightened, I guess. I didn't want anybody to know I'd been in the motel."

  "I show you a motel room key. Is this that same key you threw away?"

  "I think so. Yes sir. That's the key."

  "Did you relate all this to your husband?"

  "No sir. I didn't tell him anything."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he said I shouldn't go out there, and even though I did find the silver wire, he was still right about that. I wish I hadn't gone out there that Sunday morning."

  "Will you tell us why you finally came forward, Mrs. Denn?"

  "I thought they would catch Mr. McGee. But they didn't. I worried and worried about it and the other night I told my husband the whole thing and he said I had to come and see you. I begged him not to make me do it but he said I had to. That's why I'm here."

  Sheriff Burgoon turned it off. "There's more. But it covers the same ground. It doesn't bring up anything new. It's an eyeball witness, boy, with nothing to gain or lose. We took her out there and she showed us the window and you get a real good view from there."

  He had demoted me back to boy, heartened by his evidence.

  "I think she saw almost exactly what she says she saw, sheriff."

  "Want to change your mind about a lawyer?"

  "Motive, opportunity, weapon, and an eyewitness. Sheriff, don't you think it's all wrapped up just a little too neatly?"

  "A man can be damn unlucky."

  "How true. I wonder just who he is."

  "Suppose you make a little sense."

  "Okay. Here is something that the unlucky man, whoever he is, had to take a chance on. He had to take a chance on there being some probability or possibility of my being in this area at that time, and my having no way to prove I wasn't."

  "It's going to take a pretty good piece of proof."

  "I can place myself aboard my houseboat where I live, the Busted Flush, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale, at nine o'clock that Sunday morning. Does the rest of the tape establish her best guess as to the time I'm supposed to have left after the murder?"

  "Maybe eight thirty, give or take fifteen minutes," he said. "But let's get to just how you place yourself there and how come you'd remember it so good."

  "Because I arrived at Bannon's place the following afternoon and found out he was dead. I found out he had died the previous morning. Somehow you remember what you were doing at the time a good friend died."

  "And just what were you doing?"

  "Socializing, Sheriff Burgoon. Being a jolly host, right out in front of everybody. I think that I could probably come up with the names of at least twenty people who saw me and talked to me between nine and ten o'clock that morning. Some of them are totally unreliable. I don't pick them for social standing and credit rating, and I wouldn't ask you or anyone to believe them if they swore on every Bible in Shawana County. But there are a half dozen well worth believing. Suppose you write down the names and addresses and pick a couple of names off the list and question them by phone right now any way you feel like. Try any trick or trap you can think up."

  "What did you mean saying she saw almost exactly what she says she saw, mister?"

  "She saw everything except me doing it. She saw somebody else do it, and that changes your theory about nothing to gain or lose."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Somebody prepped her pretty good, Sheriff. I might even have thought that she saw somebody she sincerely mistook for me. But the iced tea sequence was a little too much."
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br />   "Didn't happen?"

  "I got hot and sweaty helping Tush fix the spring shackle on his car. I showered in the motel unit they loaned me. I had just finished dressing when Jan brought the pitcher of tea and two glasses. We talked about the problems they were having. Maybe fat-girl even looked in the window. But no bed and no kisses. Nothing like that between us. Not even any thought of it on either side. At the moment I happen to own the Bannon place, Sheriff. I bought it from Jan Bannon. Why in hell would I do that?"

  "You are the one bought it!"

  "I'm here today to try to resell it to Press LaFrance."

  Burgoon looked very thoughtful. "He's surely been wanting it so bad he could taste it. Trying to put some kind of parcel together for resale. Don't he own a patch out there, Tom?"