“He sure God meant to shoot you.”
“Not that, Jase. The fingerprinting. If he had let us take his, where would we be? Big bluff, ours, but he broke.”
At the sheriff’s direction I got a dipper of water from inside the trailer house and doused Dr. Pierpont. It was in doing this chore that I found my right hand was hurt.
We handcuffed the prisoner and put him into the car. From the back seat I held his automatic on him, though I didn’t think he would act up, being shackled and only half-conscious to boot.
We were near home before Dr. Pierpont began to show signs of revival, and then Charleston told him, “Medical treatment first, Doctor. I’ll see to it.”
Dr. Pierpont didn’t reply.
“Now if you want to tell anything, tell it, though you’re not obliged to. If you want an attorney, you’re entitled to one.”
“I want to see Doctor Phillip Phillips,” Dr. Pierpont answered at last.
“Well sure, but you’re not hurt much, and Old Doc Yak’s pretty competent.”
“I said I want to see Doctor Phillips.”
“All right, but where’s he and who’s he?”
Dr. Pierpont replied, “He’s my psychiatrist.”
I could almost hear Charleston saying to himself, “Well, pisswillie.” I did to myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dr. Phillip Phillips was a large, silver-haired man who looked a little saggy, as if the troubles of his patients had overweighted him during the years. He was pretty much what I had expected to see, but didn’t, in the person of Dr. Ulysses Pierpont. Right now, seated in the sheriff’s private office, he appeared maybe sadder than usual after a long session with Dr. Pierpont.
Present in the private office, in addition to him, were the sheriff, Gewald and I. In a corner rested Charleston’s recorder with sixty minutes of tape on it, put there for my benefit. I sat with my right hand plastered and bandaged, thanks to Doc Yak, and my wing in a sling. Dr. Pierpont occupied a cell in the rear, which Jimmy Collins kept visiting in the interests of rare-sparrow science.
“This is a depressing case,” Dr. Phillips said while we waited on his report. “A disappointment, a failure on my part.”
Charleston answered, “I’m sorry, Doctor. You have a name for it, I suppose?”
“Names,” Dr. Phillips said slowly. “What are names except convenient handles for mixed bags of troubles? Even when used professionally? I avoid them when I can.”
“So did Doctor Pierpont, or so he told me.”
“Yes. He was both my colleague and patient.”
“Patient?”
“That should cause no astonishment, Sheriff. Many men, most perhaps, enter the profession because their own mental and emotional experiences have been severe. Often we psychiatrists go one to the other for assurance, guidance, even therapy.” Dr. Phillips gave us a tired smile. “In hospitals for the tubercular many of the personnel have been afflicted with the disease.” He sobered again. “My failure was the failure to recognize the extreme nature of Pierpont’s illness. I thought he had only a mild megalomania, if I must use a term.”
Gewald spoke now. “And instead?”
“It was, it is—No. First, let me say that I am speaking because I feel that I must, if only in the interests of Doctor Pierpont himself. More, he has no objection though convinced that I’m wrong. The illness was and is, then, true paranoia. It is difficult to detect, as well as rare, because, except in the direction of his delusion, the victim is rational and mingles with society unsuspected. He is also chary of proclaiming what he is certain is true, for to him spies exist, unknown but many, and, more, he can hardly afford the reputation of crackpot. Nevertheless, he sees plots against him. He sees classified if undeclared enemies, united though dispersed. Conspiracies are as real to him as the hand in front of his face. Conspiracies by Communists, by fascists, by blacks, by whites, according to the set of his ill mind.”
“And by the establishment?” Charleston asked.
“By selected members representative of it, if that is his way.”
“How come?” Gewald asked.
Dr. Phillips spread his arms in a hopeless little gesture. “Sometimes we find out the why. Sometimes we think we do. Sometimes we go wrong and sometimes despair. What goes into the shaping of a personality? Doctor Pierpont was born into a large and underprivileged family. For an education, for his professional degree, he had to struggle every step of the way, often to the accompaniment of gibes, of derision by those who through circumstance felt superior to him. It is easy to say that a malignant resentment against wealth and authority and standing abides in him as a result. It is easy to say envy. It is easy to say his own felt inadequacies in the presence of equal or better men force him, in self-defense, to extremes, to an absolute belief in conspiracy. I suspect these explanations, though not without force, are too simple. But there is no need to go deeper now. In his mind conspiracy is established.”
Charleston motioned with a dead cigar. “And no getting him out of it?”
Dr. Phillips leaned back and put his hands in his lap. “I don’t know. Once I spent hour after hour with a paranoiac. It was Communists he saw, not men of position or riches, Communists behind every bush, in every little circumstance, and himself the prize and sole quarry. I couldn’t change him.”
“Does Doctor Pierpont own up to the killings?” Gewald asked.
Charleston, I was sure, could have answered the question but let it pass.
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Phillips said, “I’m sure he will admit to the physical facts, but, in a sense, you won’t get a confession. Instead, you will get an assertion of proper and inescapable conduct. He won’t disclaim his acts: he will justify them.” The doctor paused and then said with sad emphasis, “He believes.”
Gewald ground out, “Not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“Confession or not,” Charleston said as he put a match to his dead cigar, “we have other evidence. A box of three-oh-three cartridges cached away in the trailer house. Two missing. A man in the city who can identify Doctor Pierpont as the buyer. Clerks remember rare sales.”
“All right,” Dr. Phillips said, sighing. “Now, Sheriff, would you tell us what made you suspect him?”
“After a question. Was Doctor Pierpont successful in his practice?”
“Well, more or less.”
“Meaning less than more?”
“I wouldn’t say that, not quite. He was engaged by the state, you know, part-time at Central State Hospital.”
“And that was important to him?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars a year.”
Charleston nodded and took a drag on the cigar. “Now for my part, huh?”
“It would be interesting to me.”
Gewald said, “Me, too. But leave me out of it. Seems I was barking up the wrong tree.” Then was the first time, I believe, that I saw him smile. It was a rueful smile, but a smile.
“If you need a fill-in on the characters, stop me,” Charleston told Dr. Phillips.
“I think I’m sufficiently informed.”
“The sequence is easy to follow, once you’re on to it,” Charleston said. “Accept it that Doctor Pierpont was offended by Professor Hawthorne and at the same time felt sore as all hell at Buster Hogue. So he stole Hawthorne’s rifle and used it on Hogue. But Ben Day had seen him and got into the act by attempted blackmail. End of Ben Day. At the last, as a final trick, Doctor Pierpont planted the Savage in the Hogue toolhouse.”
Charleston paused and addressed Dr. Phillips. “He may be off his rocker, Doctor, but he played plenty foxy.”
Dr. Phillips nodded and said, “As I would have expected. No contradiction there.”
“It was safe enough—the stealing and planting. The Hawthornes never lock doors, and the Hogue toolshed is set off a piece from the house.”
We sat silent, all of us, waiting on the sheriff’s next words.
“The night of the picnic, Doctor Pierpont fired from th
e ridge, snaked down the hill, no one watching but perhaps Day, and dressed Buster’s head. Nice cover-up and no loss to his purpose since he was mighty sure Buster would die.”
“That’s a plausible construction of events,” Dr. Phillips said, “but what I’d like to know, if you please, is what led you to suspect Doctor Pierpont.”
“Yeah.” The sheriff sighed as though he weren’t enjoying himself, though I imagined he was. “The field was open at first because everyone, most everyone in the canyon and roundabout, had had his troubles with Hogue. Then Ben Day got himself killed, and it narrowed the pasture. I got to thinking, not so much about motive, but just what kind of a man our murderer was, and my mind galloped off to a remembered, funny affair in my old hometown.” For an instant he was silent. “But I guess I won’t tell about that.”
Dr. Phillips said, “Do, if it’s at all pertinent.”
So Charleston spun the story, with appropriate embroidery, of the two old codgers that were worn out and the studhorse that wasn’t. He ended on the note struck by the blacksmith who would have castrated the stud.
A glint of amusement and a longer look of respect showed in Dr. Phillips’ eyes. “Not exact,” he said, “but illustrative nevertheless.”
Charleston offered cigars to everybody but me and lit one himself. “Back to business,” he said. “Day’s murder—that’s if he was trying blackmail—cut the number of possible suspects to four, for only four in the field could pay more than a few bucks at most. They were the Hogue brothers, namely Junior, Professor Hawthorne, Guy Jamison and Doctor Pierpont.”
Gewald smiled again and shook his head. “And me, I picked the Hogues.”
I thought I could say, as a sort of comfort to a man who might not be so bad after all, “I kept on suspecting them, too. But I couldn’t keep Mike Day off my list, either.”
“They were possibilities,” Charleston said, “but Mike Day didn’t fit as a murderer. Too outgoing a person and too smart. And the circumstances in his case were unlikely to boot. As for the Hogues, you had to take into account that the Hogues were and are a close family. Quarrels, yes, I suppose, but respect and protection for each as blood kin. I couldn’t believe either of the sons had shot the father, though Doctor Pierpont had said in words that were guarded but all the same pretty sly that Simon, the simpleton, was capable of it.
“Guy Jamison and Professor Hawthorne I dismissed right away. Hell, Jamison is too busy for feuding, and Hawthorne has too many honors, is too much established, for envy or grudge. Besides, neither is the type for planned violence.”
Dr. Phillips smiled faintly. “A rather risky assumption, isn’t it, Sheriff?”
Charleston smiled back. “Sure is. Anyhow, there I was left with Doctor Pierpont and no shred of evidence.” He fingered papers that lay before him. “I had to convince myself. I had to enforce my suspicions. And Jase here has kept a record, a good one, of what was said and done in the case. These are passages from it. Shall I skip through them, maybe putting one with another as I go along?”
“Please,” Dr. Phillips replied.
“All right.” Charleston shuffled the pages. “First off, Doctor Pierpont tried to buy land from both Buster Hogue and Professor Hawthorne. The Hogues laughed at him—and I don’t suppose he can endure ridicule.”
“He least of almost anyone,” Dr. Phillips said.
“Professor Hawthorne turned him down, too, in different words and a different manner. From an interview I had with him later I judged he found both replies arrogant. That’s a word of his, ‘arrogance.’ More than that, I have it from Miss Marguerite Hawthorne that he left their place—shall we say?—in a huff. She said—it’s down here in Jase’s notes—that he suffered from delusions of the illusion of grandeur.”
Charleston looked up from the pages as if to allow for comment, but nobody had comment to offer.
“So back to the interview that Jase and I had with him before he murdered Ben Day. It sounds innocent enough, until added to that gun-muzzle gaze of his and that sober mouth, when he says that everybody, worldwide, needs therapy—which is what he said and which means mental therapy. He says Buster Hogue got disgusted with him and so terminated treatments for Simon.”
Again Charleston’s eyes left the pages and came to us. “They must have had a row over that, and anyhow you can bet your boots that Doctor Pierpont felt insulted down to the raw.”
He sifted through the papers and, doing so, added, “Buster Hogue was a loudmouth.” He found what he wanted. “Now here, referring to the doctor, Junior Hogue called him a fake. Where else but from his father did he get that idea?”
None of us answered.
“But you don’t have to imagine a row or Doctor Pierpont’s hurt feelings,” Charleston continued, changing pages again. “Here’s the slant on the doctor. He said this when we talked about Hogue: ‘Men of means often assume the mantle of superiority.’ Those are his words, and he went on to say, ‘I meet a good many of them in my practice. All psychiatrists do.’”
He cocked an eye at Dr. Phillips, who answered, “True enough. Often we are regarded as menials. We have to take care lest the attitude warp us.”
“Then Doctor Pierpont made mention of wealth in some hands. I asked if he didn’t mean wrong hands.” Charleston consulted his notes. “Here’s his answer: ‘Where so much of it is. Wealth, and consequently position and influence. Consequently a circle of toadies, too. Power misplaced.’”
After a pause Charleston added, “Wrong hands, I would bet, meant any hands but his own.”
“Not quite,” Dr. Phillips put in. “His own hands wouldn’t be the only exception. Include the empty hands of others. He would identify with them, perhaps only so long as they remained empty, though even there there could be exceptions.”
“Right, Doctor, but, you know, looking back, I think I almost had him when he talked about wealth, influence and power. A little more, and he would have jumped the reservation. He caught himself just in time. But, man, was he dead serious about that one subject!”
Charleston leaned back, his hand leaving the pages. “Have I satisfied you, Doctor?”
Before Dr. Phillips could answer, Gewald broke in, his rasp of a voice sounding incredulous. “And that’s all you had to go on?”
“Slim pickin’s, sure enough. Oh, a thing or two more. I called Doctor Pierpont to ask if he could do anything to help in a sad case of senility. Old Mrs. Jenkins’ case. He said he couldn’t, which isn’t the point. The point is he seemed to lack any—what’s the word, Doctor?—compassion.” Charleston came forward, then pushed the pages to the center of the desk for anyone to see. “In addition, according to Jase who was there, the hired hands at Central State Hospital liked Doctor Pierpont just fine. Not so with his peers, as they say. Not so with the medical men. They didn’t like him, and he didn’t like them. That’s the impression Jase got.”
Now Dr. Phillips answered Charleston’s question. “Yes, I’m satisfied.” He thought a minute and gave a sad grin to the sheriff. “Your talents, it would appear, transcend those of detection alone.”
Gewald broke in. “I give you credit, Charleston, but tell me a tail end or two. How did Pierpont get to Ben Day’s?”
“Hired a car, one that Guy Jamison saw. His own car was too showy.”
“I figured so. And how did you know he’d be at his place when he was?”
“Our telephone operator, Mabel Main, kept calling his office, changing her voice, on the pretense of making an appointment. It wasn’t hard to find when he would be out of town.”
Gewald began shaking his head. “I can’t believe, Sheriff, that you’ve given us all your evidence, which adds up to no real evidence at all. There’s not a solid piece in it.” He looked up inquiringly.
“I had only one solid piece,” Charleston answered, “and I was a slow poke in seeing it. But here.” He brought the papers back to him and shuffled.
When he had found his place, he went on. “When I telephoned Doctor Pierpont
about old Mrs. Jenkins, I happened to mention we’d had a second murder that day. He asked who and I told him, adding just a bit or two more of what we knew. Now I’ll quote what he said:
“‘I don’t envy you your job, Sheriff. No clues yet, I suppose. Two shootings and no clues.’”
Charleston’s eyes went to our faces and settled on Gewald. “I didn’t tell him Ben Day was shot. I didn’t tell him the way of the murder.”
Gewald considered. “I see. But it could be argued he would assume Day got shot, since Hogue had been.”
“A stronger assumption is that an innocent man would have asked the how and the why and the wherefore. No, he betrayed himself there.”
Gewald nodded. “I said before I give you the credit.”
“Give luck the credit. In the beginning, and for a good part of the way, I acted on hunch. I just felt Doctor Pierpont was guilty. Say my hunch was right, I didn’t know if he wore gloves while using the rifle. Would he figure, if he figured at all, that our jerkwater outfit couldn’t lift prints”—Charleston shied a glance at me—“which it can’t yet? Nothing to do then but try a big bluff, and it worked. Luck.”
Dr. Phillips shook his head, then said, “But there must have been an additional something, some incident or circumstance, some fracturing factor that impelled Doctor Pierpont to violence, to the ultimate violence of murder.”
“Oh, there was,” Charleston answered. “This I found out in the city last week, from the head of the state Board of Charities and Corrections.”
“I can guess,” Dr. Phillips put in, nodding his sad head.
“Yes. Buster Hogue was trying to get Pierpont fired from his state job. With his political weight he had more than a fair chance to do it.”
Gewald said, “I be damned.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There’s nothing to do now but round up the strays, as Chick Charleston might put it.
Dr. Ulysses Pierpont insisted on a trial, contending he was as sane as the next man or saner, but at a preliminary hearing it was ordered that he be taken to Central State Hospital for further examination. He subsequently was committed to the place permanently or maybe just until that far day when he finds his lost marbles. For all I know, he spends his time envying the fellow patient clothed by Hart, Schaffner and Marx. I doubt he and Mrs. Jenkins would have much in common.
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