The Blood Stone

Chapter Five A Choice of Corpses

The whole town had been talking about it for several weeks past, so I wasn’t surprised when it finally penetrated even to Jimmy’s insulated consciousness. I was only surprised that it hadn’t long before then. But the news of the world, for Jimmy, was only the quotations on a ticker tape.

Carpenter’s metier of preying on respectable and socially prominent women, which had been uncovered during the course of it, and which the defense was as willing (but for different reasons) to play up as the prosecution, was what gave it the fillip of being above just another underworld killing, I suppose. Anyway, half of the men around town kept whispering that it was the next guy’s wife, and the other half looked kind of thoughtful, as though they were doing some mental checking up.

He’d been reading about it one night — that was toward the end, after it had been going on for several weeks — and he started discussing it with me.

I twiddled my thimble-sized coffee-cup around disinterestedly, looked down at it. “Do you think there really is such a woman?” I asked idly. “Or are he and his lawyer just making it up, howling for her to try to distract attention?”

He grimaced undecidedly, didn’t answer right away. But Jimmy is not likely to be without opinions for long; that’s why he is as successful as he is. It came on slowly; I could almost see it forming before my very eyes. First he just chewed his lip in cogitation. Then he nodded abstractedly. Then he gave it words. “Yes. I dunno why, but — I have a feeling they’re telling the truth, as mealy-mouthed as they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some woman up there that same night. The prosecution doesn’t deny it, I notice; they just clam up each time. That’s what makes me half-inclined to believe—”

They hadn’t made use of any of the backstops Weill had prepared, up to this point, so there was still room for legitimate doubt: the affidavits on my affidavit; nor had Weill taken the stand to pinchhit for me. Maybe they were saving them for a bang-up finish, or maybe they weren’t going to ring them in at all, had found they didn’t really need them. My chief contribution had been to point out Sonny-Boy Nelson to them, and help them trap him, and that could be safely left out of it without damaging their case any. Otherwise what could I add? Only circumstantial strengthening to what was already an overwhelmingly strong circumstantial case. They’d even found someone who had seen him — Nelson — run out of the house next door, gun still unsheathed, and the door of Carpenter’s apartment and the two roof-doors had been found yawning wide open.

But there was one thing I couldn’t get straight in my own mind. I mentioned it aloud to him — although very carefully. “But why do they — Nelson and his lawyer — keep harping on this woman? What do they expect to get out of that? I should think it would be the other way around, that it would harm them.”

He shrugged. “Evidently they’ve figured out some way in which they think she can help them. They must have something up their sleeves. I wouldn’t know. I can’t figure out what goes on in the crooked minds of shady lawyers and their clients.” He pitched the paper disgustedly aside, as though the subject didn’t interest him any more. He delivered himself of a concluding postscript.

“Anyway, if there is such a woman — and most likely there is — she’s a fool. She should have gone to her own husband, whoever she is, and taken him into her confidence, before she got in that deep.”

How easy to say, I thought poignantly. “Maybe she was afraid to,” I mentioned. “Afraid he wouldn’t believe her or would misunderstand—”

He gave me a scornful look, as he got up, as though he thought I were a fool myself, to make a remark like that. “The right kind of a husband,” he said, sauntering out to the next room, “understands everything, forgives everything. He takes care of things for her. And above all, he doesn’t speak of it.”

Ah yes, I thought, in theory, on paper, how well that works out. But in real fife, just try it and see what cain it would raise!

He only spoke of it once again, after that. “I see he got the chair.”

“Who?” I asked. I’d known since nine that morning, when the first paper came.

“That fellow, what’s his name, Baby-Face — No, Sonny-Boy, Nelson.”

“He did?” I said, in polite echo.

He pretended to snap the light-switch of my room, to hurry me up.

It put me in mind, somehow, of a switch being thrown in a death chamber.

The maid came in and said, “There’s a man at the door to see you, madam.”

Something about it frightened me even before I knew of anything to be frightened about. I started up from the chair. “Who is he? What does he want?”

I saw her staring at me curiously, as if wondering what made me so jittery about such a trivial announcement. I tried to cover it up with a pass of my hand.

“Send him in here.”

I knew him by sight, right away. I couldn’t help wondering, though, how I’d known it was going to be something like this ahead of time. I went over and closed the door. He had sense enough to wait until I had.

“I’m from Weill’s office—”

I didn’t let him get any further. “He shouldn’t have sent you over here like this! I thought he said I was through! What does he want now?”

“Sonny-Boy Nelson is being taken up to the Death House on the three o’clock train. He’s pleading for a last chance to talk to you before he goes.”

“Then even he knows who I am! Is that how Weill keeps his bargains?”

“No, he doesn’t know your name or anything like that. He just knows that you saw him up there, and it was through you we captured him.”

“Can I reach Weill at his office? Get him for me.”

“Yes ma’am. The only reason he sent me over instead of calling you himself is he thought somebody else might intercept or overhear the call — here he is, now.”

“Weill? What about this?” I asked.

“No, don’t go near him, Mrs. X. There’s nothing to be gained by it. You’re not under any obligation to him.”

“Well, then why did you send someone over here to let me know about it?”

“Simply to give you your choice in the matter, to let you know he’s been asking for you. But you’re free to do as you please about it. If you want my opinion, there’s no need for you to see him any further. He’s been tried and sentenced. There’s nothing you can do for him.”

“But he evidently thinks there is, or he wouldn’t be asking for me. And if I refuse, I suppose he’ll go up there cursing me—”

“Well, let him. They all curse someone, and never the right one — themselves. Put him out of your mind. No use being sensitive about these matters.”

But he was used to dealing in them; I wasn’t.

“Would there be any risk?”

“Of identification? No, none whatever. I’ll see to that personally. But as I said before, if you want my honest opinion, I don’t see any necessity—”

I went anyway. Maybe because I’m a woman. Curiosity, you know. I mean, I wanted to hear what he wanted. I had to, for my own satisfaction and peace of mind. Remember, I wasn’t thirsting for his blood. My purpose in going to the police in the first place hadn’t been to secure his death. It had been to secure my own life. That had been accomplished from the moment he had been apprehended; he didn’t have to be executed to advance my safety any further than it was already.

I didn’t think there was anything I could do for him. Weill didn’t. But he did. Why shouldn’t I at least hear what he thought it was?

I wore such a heavy veil I could hardly see through it myself. Not for Nelson’s own sake, he’d already seen my face as plainly as anyone could that night up at Carpenter’s, but in order to avoid all risk going and coming from the place. Weill’s man went with me as far as the prison building; Weill took over there himself and escorted me into the cell. They didn’t keep me outside at the mesh barrier through which prisoners usually communicate with friends and relatives. They took me right into the cell itself, so my presence would be less likely to attract attention.

He reared up hopefully. He looked — shadowed already, by what was to come. I guess they do. I’d never seen one before.

He said, “How do I know if she’s the right one?”

I raised the veil and left it up.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding grimly. “Yeah.” He turned to Weill. “Why can’t Scalenza be here?”

Weill reached to take me by the arm. “No, no lawyers or anybody else. Say what you want and be quick about it, or she leaves with me right now.”

He looked at me, this time. “I want to see you alone.”

“He thinks I’ve got you intimidated,” Weill said to me caustically. He looked at me for the answer.

“All right,” I said quietly.

“I’ll be right outside here,” he promised, “so don’t be worried.” He stepped out.

It’s hard, I suppose, to make a plea, when your whole life has to go into it. “Look,” he began awkwardly, “I dunno who you are, but you can save me. You’re the only one.”

“I can? Why do you call on me? I never said you killed Carpenter.”

“I know, I know. But listen to me, only listen to me, will you? Carpenter was killed with a slug from a forty-five. Remember, they brought that out at my trail?”

“I wasn’t at your trial.”

He rushed on without stopping to listen. “I got a forty-five, yes. They caught me with one on me. But they never proved that the slug they dug out of him was fired from my gun!”

“The papers said they couldn’t, from what I recall. That it had gone through, or at least into, a thin cigarette case in Carpenter’s pocket. That it wasn’t the bullet that had pierced his heart, actually, but a fragment of the case, driven into it by the bullet. That the bullet itself had been flattened out, the markings had been destroyed by the case, so that they couldn’t check it by — whatever they call that scientific method of theirs, ballistics or something. Again, why do you call on me? I didn’t say you fired at him.”

“No, but you didn’t say I fired at you. And that’s what can save me, that’s my only chance!”

“I don’t under—”

He didn’t actually reach out and shake me, but he made the motions with his hands. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see? I didn’t have a chance to use my gun at all when they caught up with me; they got me without firing a shot. It was still packed the way it was that night up at Carpenter’s when they took it from me. Only one bullet out of it, five still in it. That proves I only fired one shot that night. That shot at you on the stairs. I only thought of that now, after it was too late. If you’ll only tell them that I fired after you out on the stairs, with only one bullet gone that’ll prove it couldn’t have been my shot that went into Carpenter! If you’ll only tell them!”

“Whether she does or doesn’t, that’s not worth a tinker’s dam!” Weill’s voice suddenly grated in at us from outside the cell-opening. He must have been standing there a little to one side taking in the whole conversation. He came in again, motioned curtly to me. “Go home, Mrs. X. Go home and forget the whole business! He could have reloaded that gun sixty times over between the time Carpenter was killed and the time we got him!”

“But the people in the building only heard the one shot!” Nelson shrilled.

“Because only one was fired on the outside, where they could hear it; the other one was fired inside Carpenter’s flat, where they couldn’t. That’s no good to you at all!” He took me by the arm, politely but authoritatively. “Come on, Mrs. X. Don’t waste any more of your time in here. What a nerve this bird has! He tried to kill you with that very shot he’s speaking of; now he’s trying to turn that very shot around and use it to his advantage with your help!”

Back in his office he said to me, “So he got under your skin with that, didn’t he? I can tell that by looking at you. That’s what he wanted to do.”

“But he did fire at me on the stairs,” I murmured.

“Then why didn’t we come across the bullet imbedded somewhere along them?”

“It may have gone out through the slit of an open window. I passed one, I remem—”

He fanned a hand at me, as if the whole suggestion were ridiculous. “Did you ever deny that he fired at you?”

“No.”

“Were you ever even given a chance to say whether or not he had?”

“No.”

“Then go home and forget about it. I wouldn’t let you destroy your home for that rat if I could. His dirty hide’s been quadruply forfeited to the State. The whole thing’s splitting hairs, in a way, isn’t it? They can’t excuse him, up there where he’s going, more than once for one murder. We already had him down on the books for three others.

“If he’d happened to be acquitted of this particular one he was tried for just now, d’ya suppose that would have meant he would have been let go? Not on your life! He would have simply been tried over again for one of the others, and sentenced to death anyway.”

The execution notice was tiny, and tucked away so far back within the paper you would have missed it a dozen times over unless you happened to be specifically looking for it.

Well, he was gone now. What was the good of wondering if I could have saved him?

And I couldn’t have saved him, I saw that now. My evidence wouldn’t have been enough to get him off. On the contrary, it might have had quite the reverse effect: even added strength to the case against him. For if he had been willing to shoot me down to keep it from being known that he had been there, didn’t that argue that he had far more than just trespassing to cover up? That he had a previous murder to cover up, in fact?

I would only have blackened my whole future, and he still would have been electrocuted tonight.

I went ahead dressing for the evening.

No, no earrings. I didn’t have to be told that there was only one earring left. My heart knew that by heart. I picked it up, and there was something the matter with my eyes. There was still another one lying in the box!

Jimmy was dressed, waiting for me outside in the other room. I came out to him, box and all; very white. Like a statue.

“Who put this left earring back? I thought I’d lost it.”

He looked at it puzzledly himself for a moment. Then I saw his face clear. “Oh, I remember now. Why, I put it back myself. You were out at the time.”

I swallowed. “I haven’t opened the case since that night I was out with the Perrys.”

I could see him trying to think back. “Well, that must have been the time. Whatever night it was, I remember I’d stayed up all night doing my income tax. Then I went out to stretch my legs, get a little fresh air, and just as I got back I ran into the milkman, he was standing there by our door, all excited about something. He came running to me.

“ ‘Mr. Shaw,’ he said, ‘look what I just found inside the empty bottle at your door. There was a note curled up in the neck of it, funnel-shaped, you know, and that caught it and held it’.”

“Then when I went to our room with it, I saw that you hadn’t come back yet, you were still out. So I put it back in the box and went to sleep. You must have lost it right on your way out, as you left the door.”

He stopped and glanced at me. “You’ve got the funniest look on your face. What’re you thinking about?”

“Oh, nothing.”

I was lying awake later thinking about it; living the whole thing through all over again. I remembered now how I’d had to shake my key, trying to get it in the door, the first time I’d come back. That was what had loosened it, made it drop off. And I remembered now, I’d even heard the funny little plink of glass it had made going in the bottle-mouth. Only at the time I thought it was the tip of my shoe that had grazed it. If I’d only taken the trouble to bend down and look!

Well, that milkman was an honest man, that was about the only consolation I could derive from the whole thing. Even if Jimmy had given him something at the time he found the earring, he deserved a little extra bonus.

I looked across the room and I saw by the radium clock-dial that the night was nearly gone, and it was about his usual time for covering his route and making a delivery at the door. On an impulse I got up, put something over me, took two ten-dollar bills out of the bureau, and went out to our front door.

I was just in time.

“Bill, here’s something for you, for finding that earring of mine, that time.” I tried to tuck it into his hand. He wouldn’t open it.

“What earring, Mrs. Shaw?”

“You know, the one that had dropped into the empty milk-bottle out here at the door. My diamond earring.”

He was an honest man, all right. “No ma’am, I never found any diamond earring of yours. I never found any diamond earring of anybody’s. I’d sure remember it if I had.”

I managed to utter, “Good night, Bill,” and I closed the door rather quickly.

The distance from there to our bedroom wasn’t so great. It took me a long time to cover it, though.

I stood looking at Jimmy. His hand was sticking out over the edge of the mattress, the way a person’s sometimes does when he is asleep. I reached down and put my own over it and gently clasped it, in a sort of wordless pact, but not strongly enough to disturb him.

Something that he’d once said came back to me. “The right kind of a husband understands everything, forgives everything. He takes care of things for her. And above all, he doesn’t speak of it.”

And Weill had told me they’d already wanted Sonny Boy Nelson for three other killings; were looking for him anyway.