“Ms.,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“We have to call her Ms. Bowen. You’d better, too. She’s touchy about it. Sends letters to the chief.”
I thanked him and sat back down. Great. Dan’s lawyer was touchy. All I needed. All Dan needed. I looked at my hand, got bored with it, looked at the other one. The fluorescent lighting in the place made it look green, sickly. Dead.
Which brought me right back to the murder. And the ensuing circus.
Les Tilman, of the Sewanka paper, had arrived before the last echo of Chief Cooper’s siren had died, and reporters from the rest of the state, and a good part of north-central Pennsylvania, followed in his dust.
The media, as they say, were out in force. Every once in a while, when things inside got too grim to look at, I’d go to a window and take a peek at the fourth estate. Flashbulbs and floodlights lit up the night every time I did. I wondered idly what it would take to get them to storm the house. Would I have to grab a policeman’s gun and go up on the roof to shoot myself, or would it be sufficient just to open the window and scream at them to go away and let the family deal with its tragedy in peace? That always makes for good copy, a good show for the TV audience.
I never got a chance to find out. Chief Cooper called me over to him.
“Call off your dog,” he told me.
“What?”
“Your dog. He’s standing over the body. Won’t let the lab boys near it. The girl says he won’t listen to anybody but you.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot all about it.”
“Work on your memory,” he told me. “You’re going to fill me in on the background of all this, aren’t you?”
Looking at him, I got the feeling that an answer in the negative would displease him. Not that I planned to be difficult about it. Better he get the story from me than from, say, Mr. Whitten, who was at this moment on the phone to the district attorney demanding Justice or a reasonable facsimile thereof. He’d be happy with anything that involved the destruction of Dan Morris.
I climbed the stairs, looking again at the smashed railing on the way. Spot had stopped licking Debbie’s face. Now he was standing in front of her, snarling at some cops who were trying to close in on him. One of the cops had his gun out.
“Put that away, you idiot,” I told him. “No wonder he wants to bite you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well, get him out of there. We’ve got to get to work.”
“All right, all right. I just wanted you to find things the same way I did, so I told the dog to stay here until further notice. Spot, come.”
The Samoyed became his fluffy sweet self again and pranced over to me. I knelt and scratched his throat for him. He pretended not to like it for a few seconds, because I’d left him alone to do such a nasty job. Then he decided I’d been punished enough, and closed his eyes and dropped his ears the way he does when he’s happy.
We rejoined the chief. The cook had made coffee and sandwiches, and Cooper was sitting at the kitchen table with a stenographer, catching a snack. Cooper offered me some, but I refused.
“I don’t think I’m exactly a welcome guest here, at the moment.”
“Good guess,” Cooper said around a mouthful of bread and ham. “Mr. Whitten’s been telling me to arrest you.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Did he suggest a charge?”
“Accessory. Before, after, or during the fact, he didn’t seem to care which. That’s just silly, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“But I can’t say I cared much for the way you tipped off the number one suspect before we even got on the case.”
“Tough. He’s entitled to a lawyer. Even if he’s innocent, which you will eventually see he is—”
Cooper made a noise with his mouth.
“—but, in any case, I called the police first. So you’ve busted him already.”
“You’re damn right we’ve busted him already.”
“Went along peaceably?” I said. “Didn’t try to escape?”
“No. Not that it would have done him much good. My men on the scene tell me they didn’t know who was more confused: your friend or his lawyer. Seems she’d just got there before they did. He wasn’t talking. On his lawyer’s advice, naturally.”
I nodded. That seemed like the best course for now.
“Okay,” Cooper said. “Now we know where we stand. Right now, I’ve got a fair to excellent circumstantial case against your friend. I’ve got to warn you, I expect it to get better. I know the guy is your friend, so if you don’t want to talk to me, I can understand that.”
“Sure,” I said. “Then at the trial, the DA summons me as a hostile witness and asks me if it isn’t true I refused to cooperate with the police because I was afraid my friend was guilty. No, thank you. Ask your questions, Chief.”
He grinned at me. “The New York cops were right. You are a smart one, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been around the block. Ask away. Or have your minion here put it in writing you decided not to ask me questions. And both of you sign it and give me a copy. I want it on the record that I’m cooperating with the police.”
Cooper scratched his head. I had him outflanked, and he knew it. I was willing to talk because there was nothing I could tell him he couldn’t find out elsewhere.
I gave him the background first, the whole on-again/off-again relationship between Debbie and Dan. I explained to him how Dan had wanted to talk to Debbie one last time before the wedding, to make absolutely sure she wanted to go through with marrying Grant.
Cooper started to smile. He was putting a big check mark on his mental list, right next to Motive.
Then he asked me about the events of the past few hours, checking me for accuracy against the record of an interview he’d already had with Brenda Whitten.
Apparently, they tallied pretty well. The chief had only one question for me when I finished.
“You didn’t hear them fighting, then?”
“Hear who fighting?”
“Morris and the victim.”
The victim. Courtroom tricks already. At least he didn’t say “his victim.”
“No, I didn’t. He wasn’t even around when I got to the house. Why?”
I fully expected him to tell me it was none of my business, but he didn’t. He probably wanted to demoralize me. “Brenda Whitten heard voices she says she recognizes as belonging to Morris and her sister raised in anger as she approached the house. She just saw Morris’s car driving off as she got there.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“She says she couldn’t make out words.”
“But she could make out voices. Kind of hard to believe.”
“Knock it off, Cobb. We’re not in court. Besides, you yourself admit he was going back to the house.”
“Yeah, you really had to wring it out of me, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t grill you, I just talked to you.”
“And Í didn’t admit he went back to the house, I said it!” Cooper’s rugged face looked bewildered. He honestly couldn’t see the difference. I ignored it and went on. “But who says he didn’t change his mind, didn’t just get into his car and drive home? Then it might have been someone else Brenda heard fighting with her sister.”
I was really excited with that theory. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it, primarily because it was the first thing other than blind faith that shed some doubt on Dan’s guilt. I couldn’t wait to tell E. R. Bowen about it. As soon as Cooper let me go (“... but, Cobb, don’t leave town. You know that, of course.”), I called her answering service, and they told me where she was, at police headquarters. I stopped in an all-night drugstore and bought a couple of magazines, then went to City Hall to wait for her.
I waited a good long time. I finished my magazines; then, finding reality impossible to tolerate any longer, I went to sleep and had a nightmare.
&nbs
p; It didn’t last long, but it was quite vivid. It took place back at the Whitten mansion and telescoped events into a few breathless seconds. I run back to the house, and Brenda is screaming, and Debbie is lying there dead, and Spot is licking her face. Then the cops show up, and Spot starts to snarl, and I call him, and he runs to me. Then he rears back on his hind legs and grabs me by the lapel. (Now I know this is a nightmare—where did Spot get thumbs?) The dog starts to yell at me. “Pay attention!” he says. “Pay attention!” Then he starts to shake me. Violently, until my head starts to hurt.
My head still hurt when I woke up. I opened my eyes wide and rubbed my face. I shook my head. It was the kind of dream that could make you want to give up sleep. “Pay attention.”
Now, my degree is in English Language and Literature, but I’ve read a book or two by Dr. Jung; and by God, a dream like that has got to mean something. I started to try to figure out what that something could possibly be, but I was interrupted by the desk sergeant’s voice.
“Oh, Ms. Bowen,” he said “There’s a gentleman’s been waiting for you.”
“Where, Max?”
I pulled myself to my feet as she turned to look at me. “I’m the one, Ms. Bowen. Matt Cobb. I—oh, my God.” I didn’t say that last part of it because she was beautiful, though she was—dark red hair, dark blue eyes, a great figure that did wonders for a no-nonsense three-piece suit, high cheekbones, and freckles. I love freckles to the point of fetish. I’m also in awe of people who can look that fresh and alert at four-thirty in the morning.
But I wouldn’t have said “oh, my God” because of any of that stuff. I would have thought it, but under ordinary circumstances, I manage to be sophisticated enough to stifle that sort of response.
These weren’t ordinary circumstances. I knew her.
“Hello, Matt.”
“Hello,” I said. “Looks like all that debating paid off.”
She smiled. “With you or without you. I still haven’t forgiven you for that, you know, Matt.” Some of the friendliness went out of her smile. A lot of it. Some of the old anger still simmered in her, apparently. I suggested we talk about it over breakfast; she accepted.
She even took my arm, bringing back memories of moments behind the waterfall. Because E. R. Bowen was Eve Ronkowski, my old partner on the debating team. My partner behind the waterfall. The girl who, the last time I saw her, had vowed that she would hate me forever.
Breakfast looked like it might be an interesting meal.
CHAPTER 12
“I’m a ba-a-ad boy!”
–Lou Costello, “The Abbott and Costello Show” (Syndicated)
EVE HAD A GRAPEFRUIT and black coffee. I had French toast, ham, home fried potatoes, orange juice, and hot chocolate. A look of distaste passed across her lovely features.
I pointed a fork at her. “Resolved,” I said. “A man who has been up all night; further, a man who usually skips breakfast altogether, may eat whatever he damn pleases without dirty looks from his companion. You take the negative.”
I got a glimpse of a rueful little smile before she covered it with her coffee cup. “You’ve got a lot of nerve making debating jokes to me, Matt Cobb.”
“I never said I didn’t have a lot of nerve.”
“Besides, the sides of the question are chosen by lot. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”
“No. Listen, Eve. It’s been a long time now. If you’re willing to forgive me for missing the East Coast Forensic Society Championships, I’m willing to forgive you for holding it against me.”
“You forgive me?” She was aghast.
“You never listened. I told you the minute they paired us up that if it ever came to a conflict between debating and basketball, debating wouldn’t even come in second.”
“I couldn’t believe you meant it. I thought you were teasing me.”
“Why the hell should I tease you about something that was so important to you?”
“That’s just it. It was important Do you know that one member of the team who won clerked for a Supreme Court justice? Do you know how much good that sort of thing can do for your career?”
“If you want to be a lawyer.”
“Naturally, if you want to be a lawyer!” She thrust her spoon into her grapefruit, sending a fine spray of juice across her sleeve. “Damn!” she said.
I pulled a couple of napkins out of the dispenser and handed them to her.
“Okay,” I said. “But my learned friend forgets that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I was only on the debating team because I used to argue with Professor Payne in class, and he told Dr. Stokes about me. I was more or less drafted. They always knew basketball came first. Hell, I was only there on a basketball scholarship in the first place.”
“But you were so good.”
“Thank you. Street training is what did it. Think fast. Talk fast. Say what the big dude wants to hear, and sound like you mean it. Or lose teeth. I lived with that sort of business all through childhood, so putting on a suit and discussing the merits of this or that piece of legislation was a game for me. It was fun, an adolescent ego trip. To tie people up in knots with their own tongues. But it wasn’t important. It never meant anything.”
“And basketball was important?”
“Yes. A sport, not a game. Twelve guys, on the court five at a time. Everybody has a job. You have to believe in each other, help each other. No reservations. No second thoughts. I loved it. If I could have played basketball for a living, I would have been a very happy man. Turned out I wasn’t good enough, but I gave it my best. And I always felt good about it.”
“You felt good about debating, too.” She raised an eyebrow. “Or have you forgotten the crazy night in Albany after we beat those two boys from Williams?”
“That,” I said smiling, “had nothing to do with debating.”
“You were still happy we won.” I remembered the blue sparks I now saw in her eyes. They used to flash in anticipation when one of our opponents would leave her an opening, and in anger when they’d make a point or two on us.
“Yes. But I had just stood up in public and lied for an hour and a half about what I thought this country owed the Vietnam veteran. I agreed with everything the other side said, and I shot it down in flames as soon as they said it. I got tired of that kind of thing, Eve. There’s no compromise in a formal debate, no creativity. Nobody tries to find an answer to any of these problems. You just cover up your weak points and rip at your opponents’.”
I drank orange juice. “I was too good at it. Sophistry considered as one of the fine arts. The science of hypocrisy. It gets to be too easy.”
Eve narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “I see. And the conclusion is that that’s what I’ve become. Correct, Mr. Cobb? I failed to make you into a professional sophist or hypocrite, but that’s what I am, right?”
“It’s inherent in the job,” I told her. “Somebody’s got to do it I’m not judging you—”
“Oh, no?”
“—but it’s the way the system works. My point is, it’s not for me and it never was. I’ve got my own vices. Who’s Bowen?”
“My husband.”
“Oh.”
“Ex. It didn’t work out. He got a great offer from a firm in Phoenix, and I had my practice here. I wasn’t about to give it up. So he went.” She ate the cherry off her grapefruit.
“At least,” she said, “I wasn’t hypocritical about it.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Poor choice of words. It’s just that it kept getting harder and harder to fight for something I didn’t believe in. Anything I didn’t believe in.”
I caught her hand. She looked at me strangely but didn’t pull it away. I let go as soon as I had her attention. “Eve, look. Just for example, do you believe Dan Morris is innocent?”
“I’m his attorney.”
“I know, I hired you, remember? Come on. You knew Dan in college. Slightly, anyway. What do you think?”
“It’s not my job
to form opinions about his guilt or innocence. I have to represent him to the best of my—”
“All right, never mind. You think he’s guilty, but you’re going to bust your tail for him anyway. I couldn’t do that. Luckily for me, it doesn’t come up. Dan is innocent Between us, we’re going to get him off.”
She shook her head. “No, Matt I’m going to have him plead guilty.”
I froze. “What did you say?”
“I’m going to have him plead guilty. I think the district attorney will go for first-degree manslaughter. Dan could be out in four years.”
“Right. A mere four years. Have you talked Dan into this yet?”
“No,” she said. “I want you to do it.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Damn you, Matt, the police have an unshakable case. Dan was there. He’s a karate expert, and Debra Whitten’s throat was smashed by a blow of incredible force. Who else on the scene was strong enough to do that?”
“Me.”
“You,” she said, “are alibied by the girl’s father. Besides, the medical examiner says it has all the earmarks of a karate blow.”
“Dan isn’t the only karate expert in the world, for God’s sake.”
Eve shook her head. “Matt, you’re not thinking. He may not be the only one in the world, but he was the only one in the house.”
“How did you find out all this stuff so soon?”
She shrugged. It made her hair jump nicely. The cheap lights in the diner brought out nice red highlights. We might have been talking about what movie we wanted to see that night or how to get a stain out of a cotton shirt.
“I’m not positive, Matt, but I think the idea was to get me discouraged.”
“Get you discouraged!”
“I backed Jack Wernick’s opponent in the last election. Jack’s a brilliant man, but he just wants to use Sewanka as a stepping-stone. And he holds grudges.”
“Great,” I said. “Then this case is tailor-made for him. He can prosecute a big headline-grabbing case. If he wins, he gets the backing of the rich and powerful Mr. Whitten. And the satisfaction of having pushed your nose in in the process.”
Killed with a Passion Page 7
