This Game of Murder

Chapter XVII

After lunch Marshall drove out to Rexford Bay. But to his disappointment, Bruce Case, Jr. was off on a weekend camping trip with the Cub Scouts.

“Max Lischer, Bud’s troop master, phoned just after you did this morning,” Audrey Reed said. “He called to check if Bud was going to the Scout camp at Bear Lake with the troop. It was the first I had heard of it, but when I checked with Bud, he nearly had a conniption fit. Seems this was something planned a month ago and for which he had Betty’s permission. He’d forgotten all about it, and of course she’s had too much on her mind to think about such things. I had one hour to get him packed, into his Cub Scout uniform, and downtown to the chartered bus.”

“When will he be back?” Marshall asked.

“Not until late Sunday night.”

“He’ll probably be pretty sleepy then,” he said. “I’ll drop by to see him Monday morning.”

As he drove back to the office, he thought again that children certainly recovered fast from tragedy. He was sure that Bud loved his mother, and probably missed her, but he obviously wasn’t allowing worry over her predicament to interfere with his social activity.

At two o’clock the following morning the phone blasted Marshall out of a sound sleep. Quickly he picked up his bedside extension after the first ring in order not to disturb his parents. His father purposely had never had an extension put in the master bedroom, so that he and his wife wouldn’t be awakened by middle-of-the-night calls for their son. There was an upper hall extension they could hear, and which usually awakened Jonas if it rang long enough, but ordinarily they weren’t disturbed by his occasional late calls.

“Hello,” he said sleepily.

“Kirk?” a male voice asked. He recognized the voice of night-desk Sergeant Pat Sullivan and came fully awake. “Yeah, Pat. What’s up?”

“Thought you like to know that we just caught the cat burglar. I called the chief just before I phoned you and he’s on his way down to question him. Want to sit in?”

“I certainly do,” Marshall said. “Who is the guy?”

“Hold your hat,” Sullivan said. “It’s Herman Potts.”

“Herman!” the reporter said incredulously. “You’re kidding.”

Herman Potts was a local mental defective who spent most of his time seated on the bench in front of City Hall, amiably smiling at passers-by and engaging anyone who would listen in conversation. He was generally regarded as harmless, an obviously mistaken label if he was the cat burglar, for there was nothing harmless about a burglar who prowled through occupied houses carrying an axe, prepared to use it on anyone who surprised him.

“That was my first reaction when Nat Thorpe brought him in,” Sullivan said. “But there don’t seem much doubt he’s our boy. Nat caught him red-handed pulling a job.”

“I’ll be right down,” Marshall said.

Chief Barney Meister was already at headquarters when he arrived. Herman Potts was seated on the long bench stretching the full length of the booking and complaint room along the wall directly opposite the desk. He was a tall, slender man of about twenty-eight, not unhandsome, but with the vacuous expression of the mentally retarded. Marshall had known him all his life, but he had never before taken a really close look at him. He realized now with some surprise that the man had an unusually muscular and wiry build.

The burly chief was standing before the man, and Patrolman Nat Thorpe stood next to the chief. The grizzled desk sergeant leaned his elbows on the complaint counter, listening to what was going on.

“‘Morning, Pat,” Marshall greeted the desk sergeant. “Hello, Nat. You really think you’ve got the right man, Barney?”

Meister gave his head a slow but definite nod. “Nat caught him hanging from a rope in front of a second-story window at the Clark place out at Rexford Bay. Nat’s been pulling right into the driveways out there when he makes his rounds, and he caught Herman square in his headlights. Before Herman could climb back up the rope, Nat jumped out of the car and ordered him to come down or he’d shoot. The rope only reached a little below the window sill, but Herman let loose and dropped fifteen feet. Didn’t seem to hurt him.”

“He landed like a cat,” Thorpe said. “I never saw anything like it. Didn’t even jolt him.”

Herman Potts smiled. “I can jump clear from a roof onto grass,” he said modestly. “I land on my feet and roll. I wouldn’t try it unless there was grass to land on, though. Hello, Mr. Marshall.”

“Hello, Herman,” the reporter said. “You’ve been kind of a bad boy, haven’t you?”

“He had a Boy Scout hand axe stuck in his belt,” Thorpe said. “Show it to him, Pat.”

Pat Sullivan reached under the counter and held up a short-handled axe. The blade had been ground down to such thinness that it looked as sharp as a razor.

“This is what he whacked poor Mrs. Ferris with,” the desk sergeant said. “He’s got it ground so you could shave with it. I imagine it’s what he used to cut screens with, too, because there wasn’t another blade on him. How do you like that? Using an axe to cut wire screens.”

The chief said, “He’s been cheerfully admitting every job we’ve asked him about so far. Including chopping Mrs. Ferris.” His tone became a trifle aggrieved. “I think he would have confessed any time we asked him, even if Nat hadn’t caught him cold. Here the guy’s been sitting on the bench right in front of this building day after day. All some cop would have had to do was walk out and ask him if he was the cat burglar. Herman would have admitted it.”

“I’ll point that out in my news story,” Marshall said.

Meister gave him a sharp look, then realized he was kidding and grinned a little sheepishly.

“Have you asked him about being out at the Cases’ that night?” Marshall asked.

“I was waiting until you got here so you’d know it wasn’t rigged.” The chief turned to the suspect. “Now, Herman, you’ve admitted to entering nine different places out at Rexford Bay. Are there any more we haven’t covered?”

Herman Potts corrugated his brow in thought. “I guess that’s all there is,” he said apologetically.

Marshall said, “Were there any places you started to enter, but were scared off for some reason or other?”

Herman considered this for some time before saying, “Well, there were places I watched for a while, but the people never got around to going to bed, so I got tired of waiting and went home.”

“I don’t mean that,” Marshall said. “Did you ever get up on the roof of a house, then hear some noise inside that frightened you and made you decide not to break in?”

Herman shook his head. “I never climbed up on no roof until I figured everybody was asleep. And nobody ever heard me. I don’t make a sound when I walk. I got these. See?” He held up one foot to show the crepe sole of his shoe.

Marshall had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Thinking back over the various burglaries, he couldn’t recall a single victim ever reporting hearing a sound made by the burglar. Even Mrs. Ferris had heard no noises on the roof or in the house. According to her story, she had awakened more because she sensed another presence in her bedroom than because she heard anything.

But Betty’s story was that she had heard noises on the roof, and later from the direction of the hall window. If she had, she was the only person who had ever heard the cat burglar make any noise.

Chief Meister said, “Let’s pin it right down. Benny, do you know the old Runyon place?”

“Sure. That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Case live. Old Man Runyon and his wife used to live there, too, but they’re both dead. He drowned a couple of years back and she had a heart attack a while later.”

“I guess you know the place,” the chief said. “Did you ever try to break in there?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t do that. Mrs. Case was always real nice to me. He’s all right, too, I guess, but I don’t like him as much as her.”

Marshall’s discouragement at the reply was mixed with surprise at his reference to Bruce Case. “What do you mean, you don’t like him as well as her? Don’t you know he’s dead?”

“Is he?” Herman asked with raised brows. “Nobody told me.”

Marshall looked at Meister and the burly chief said, “He can’t read, so he wouldn’t have seen it in the paper. He doesn’t even have first-grade intelligence. And nobody talks to him about anything serious. His folks don’t talk to him at all, except to give him orders, mostly to stay out of the way.”

Marshall tried once again, more out of desperation than hope. “Think hard, Herman. One Sunday night, or early Monday morning, a couple of weeks ago, weren’t you on the roof of the old Runyon place?”

Herman gave his head a definite shake. “No, sir, Mr. Marshall. Like I told you, I like Mrs. Case. I wouldn’t rob her.”

In a last-ditch effort, Marshall said, “Are you just saying that because you wouldn’t want her to know and think bad of you, Herman? Because if you are, she wouldn’t get mad. As a matter of fact it would help her if we could prove you were on her roof that night.”

“Well, I’d certainly like to help Mrs. Case,” Herman said. “She’s a nice lady. But I know she wouldn’t want me to lie. Once when she stopped to talk to me out front I was telling her about Mr. Koontz the hardware man saying he heard I was going to be drafted. She said it was a lie and it was very cruel of Mr. Koontz to lie like that. So I know she doesn’t like lies.”

The reporter let his shoulders sag wearily. That should tie up the prosecution’s case, he thought. Herman Potts would be absolutely convincing on the witness stand. All you had to do was look at his vacantly smiling face when he spoke and you knew he was no more capable of lying than a three-year-old child.