Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

Another Chance for Sally by James M. Ullman

The term juvenile delinquent is a general one, applied to those whose behavior troubles their elders... yet for misbehaving adults no such all-embracing phrase has yet been coined.

Juvenile Officer McMahon telephoned me at the recreation center.

“Pat,” he said glumly, “it’s Sally again.”

“What’s she done this time?”

“She was with three boys who roughed up the manager of a ten-cent store. He caught them shoplifting. We’ve got her at the precinct.”

“Thanks, Dan.”

“We can’t keep her out of court for this sort of thing forever, you know,” he added wearily, hanging up.

I waited a moment and then called my wife.

“Hello, hon. Listen, Sally’s in jail.”

“What for?”

“Same as last time. Hanging around with the wrong friends.”

“Oh, Pat. I think it’s hopeless. That makes four times in the last year. She’s absolutely unmanageable.”

“We’ve got to give her another chance,” I argued. “Any kid who went through what Sally did is bound to be a little haywire. If people like us aren’t willing to help her, she’s lost.”

“All right,” my wife said slowly. “If you say so.”

“Just remember,” I went on. “It isn’t every child that’s orphaned by an axe murderer.”

I left Bill Barlow in charge of the Center. The Welfare Agency had hired him right out of college the year before. Like me, Bill came from this neighborhood, a near-slum inhabited mostly by families of very modest means. That’s the way our agency operates. We want workers who are known and respected by the kids we’re trying to help. Bill had been an all-city halfback, a neighborhood hero, while in high school, and he could get tough kids to confide in him in a way no outsider ever could. I had pitched for the Dodgers once, and that didn’t hurt my standing any either.

I walked the six blocks to the police precinct. It was a hot, humid day, with a layer of muggy clouds throttling the city. On a day much like the one, two years earlier, Sally’s father and stepmother had been hacked to death, when the thick, stifling air could fray even a placid man’s temper and turn anger into blind rage.

Dan McMahon, burly and stoops shouldered and wearing civilian clothes, lounged beside the Sergeant’s desk, his lined face reflecting years of disillusionment in trying to keep kids out of trouble. But for my benefit, he managed a kindly smile.

“Hello, Pat. She’s in the conference room.”

I started toward the back of the station. Then McMahon put a hand on my arm.

“Just a minute. She’s not alone.”

“Who’s with her?”

“That newspaper reporter. Jake Greb. He was here when we brought her in.”

“Great,” I snapped. “That’s all she needs. Somebody trying to get her to talk about the murders at a time like this.”

I brushed by McMahon and strode to the conference room. Greb was there, all right. A pot-bellied little man wearing an ancient Palm Beach suit. The suit didn’t fit him very well and was unpressed and spotted. He looked up and frowned.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said brusquely, “but the interview is over.”

“Hi, Pat,” Sally said, looking down at the table. “I guess I loused us up again, didn’t I?” As usual, her pink sixteen-year-old face was a mask of innocence. Her blonde hair was piled high on her head and in these surroundings she looked frail and out-of-place.

“We’ll get to your current troubles later,” I said. “Right now, Mister Greb is going to leave us.”

“Look, buddy,” Greb began, “you tangle with me...”

“I know. I tangle with you and I tangle with your paper. But this time you’re bluffing. I don’t think your editor will back you up for harassing this girl. I’ve met your editor, at fund-raising dinners for the agency I work for, and he’s not that kind of a man.”

Greb’s manner changed. He tried to smile. “All right. So I asked a few questions. It’s still an unsolved double homicide, you know. Sally was the only person to see the murderer. People are always going to be asking her questions, until the axe maniac is found.”

“Get out,” I snapped.

Greb rose. “I’ll drop over to the Recreation Center,” he said. “I want to talk to you about a story.” He closed the door behind him.

I sat down and took Sally’s hand. “Did he upset you much?”

She shook her head. “I’m used to it,” she said quietly. “Mostly he asked what the others always ask. Did I remember the face? And he wanted to know if I dream about it at night. If I could see the face in my dreams, even though I couldn’t remember it when I was awake.”

“He’s a maniac himself, to badger a child that way.”

“He’s not so bad,” Sally said. “Don’t be mad at him. He was very polite. He called me ‘Miss’. None of the policemen ever do that.”

“What about the policemen? McMahon tells me you’re in here because some friends of yours beat up a dime store manager.”

“They wouldn’t have done it,” Sally replied defensively, “if the man hadn’t tried to push them around.”

“They were stealing merchandise.”

“I didn’t know anything about that,” Sally said, wide-eyed. “Honest. Ziggy said, ‘Let’s go in the dime store, I want to buy something for Ma’. I didn’t know those boys were stealing things.”

She was lying. I was well aware of that. But I also knew she would stick to her story no matter what. And that the boys, true to the juvenile sneak-thief’s code, would back her up.

“Ziggy,” I sighed, “is the boy you got in trouble with the last time. When he broke into the empty house.”

“I just ran into him today by accident. In front of the dime store. I was on my way to the Recreation Center.”

“Well, I’ll do the best I can. McMahon and all the other men in the precinct houses are on your side, Sally. They know what happened to your folks and what you went through, and they’ll give you another pass. But sooner or later, if you’re not careful, you’ll go too far. You’re still a ward of the court. If the judge ever learns about the scrapes you’ve been getting into, he’ll take you out of your foster home with me and lock you up in a reform school.”

McMahon agreed, as I knew he would, not to book Sally. He lectured her for a few minutes and then sent her home in a squad car. I went back to the Recreation Center and found Jake Greb there, watching Bill Barlow referee a basketball game.

I nodded and showed Greb to my office. I wasn’t angry with him any more. After all, he was only doing his job. Any newspaperman in town would be in line for a fat bonus for turning up new evidence in the Smallwood murders.

Greb settled in a chair. “First,” he said, “I want to apologize. I got a little arrogant with you earlier today. I guess it’s this miserable heat. That and the fact I don’t really enjoy reminding the little blonde about... you know.”

“That’s all right. I was on edge myself.”

Greb lit a cigar. He leaned back, blowing smoke, and his eyes narrowed. “She’s been living with you and your wife almost all the time since the murders, hasn’t she?”

“We applied to give her a foster home as soon as it was learned the grandparents wanted no part of her. With my record as a social worker, we had no trouble getting her. She used to hang around the Recreation Center before her parents were murdered, and we already knew her well. She was a pitiful little thing even then. Her father had absolutely no love for her. He’d get drunk and throw things at her. And the stepmother... well, everyone in the neighborhood knew how she mistreated the girl. She ruled Sally with an iron hand.”

“Sally ever say anything to you? About that day?”

“Not very often. My wife and I never ask.”

Greb shook his head. “I dunno. There’s something about Sally. I got a feeling for these things. Her story was that she came home from a movie and saw a bloody man run out of the shack carrying an axe. That she never got a look at his face. That she went inside and found the bodies... what was left of them... and sat down on the floor, paralyzed, too shocked to move or anything. That’s how the cops found her. I was the first reporter there and I saw her then too. ‘A bloody man with an axe’. That’s all she ever said. Then or since. But somehow I always figured she knew more than she was saying.”

“I don’t think so,” I replied slowly. “That experience, plus the miserable life she was living while the Smallwoods were still alive... it’s made her kind of a wild girl, I’m afraid, and she does tell lies. But I don’t think she was lying about that.”

“Maybe not consciously lying. But look at it this way. As you pointed out, Smallwood didn’t love her and her stepmother was abusive. So I don’t imagine she liked the Smallwoods either. Subconsciously, she was probably glad to see them dead.”

“Just a minute...”

“Hold on. I’m not leveling any accusations against Sally. Anyhow, it took a strong man to wield that axe. But there are plenty of kids, who, if their parents neglect and abuse them, would be glad to see their parents dead. This could be true of Sally. Despite the horror of the situation, maybe she was glad, inside, that the Smallwoods were no more. And maybe, subconsciously, she refuses to admit to herself that she knows who killed them, because she’s grateful to the killer. Maybe she even got to the shack earlier than she said... early enough to see both murders.”

“It’s kind of a crazy theory,” I said.

Greb shrugged. “All murder is crazy. The police don’t even know why the Smallwoods were killed. They’ve got two theories about that, each as good as the other. One, that the murderer was after the money Smallwood kept in a strongbox under his bed. He bragged about the money every time he got drunk in a tavern... the insurance money he received when his first wife, Sally’s mother, was struck and killed by a truck. The whole neighborhood knew where he kept the money. The other theory involved the stepmother... what was her name?”

“Amy.”

“Yeah, Amy. The only reason she married Smallwood was for that insurance money. She figured when he got it he’d move out of that miserable shack on the alley and into a decent place, and spend some of it. But not Smallwood. He was tight as a drum. Too bad for Amy. She was a good-looking woman, too. Still young. While Smallwood was away she was having affairs with half the men in the neighborhood. And the police think one of those affairs could have gone sour. The man could have gone into the shack that hot, humid day and had a fight with Amy and killed her with an axe. If he was a married man, maybe she wanted blackmail and he lost his head. Amy died first, the medicos said. And then Smallwood walked in, surprised the killer and got it too. I like that theory best myself. Sure, the money was missing from the strongbox. But the killer took it to hide his real motive. He did the job with an axe Smallwood always left near the door. An axe that’s never been found. If the killer had planned to rob the strongbox, he’d have brought a weapon of his own, instead of using Smallwood’s axe... the weapon of an enraged man.”

“The way you put it,” I said, “it’s reasonable enough. But what are you getting at?”

Greb straightened and stubbed his cigar out. “Simply this. One way or another, Sally will never be able to lead a normal life until the killer is behind bars. There’ll always be people like me asking questions. She’ll never be able to forget.”

“That makes sense.”

“So, let’s try to smoke the killer out.”

I didn’t like Greb’s plan one bit and said so. But Greb is a persuasive man. I guess that’s one reason he’s such a good police reporter. He talked me into agreeing to let him go ahead with his plan, provided Sally agreed to it too. He argued that Sally would never be safe, or at peace, as long as the killer remained at large; that if I didn’t go along with him, I’d be derelict in my responsibility as a foster parent.

I told Sally about the plan after supper that night. Sally and my wife and I ringed the dining room table.

“Sally,” I began, “you remember that reporter, Mister Greb?”

“The nice little man?”

“That’s right. He wants to write a story about you in the newspaper.”

“What kind of a story?”

“Well, you know we don’t like to talk about this. But it’s about the murders. It will be two years next Friday that it happened. And Greb wants to write a story reminding people that the murders are just two years old, and are still unsolved. Newspapers do that sort of thing on the anniversaries of unsolved crimes, you know.”

“I understand.”

“In his story, Sally, he’s going to mention that he interviewed you today. He won’t say he talked to you in jail, of course. He’s going to say that you dream about the murders.”

“But I don’t,” Sally replied matter-of-factly. “I told Mister Greb that too. I never dream about the murders.”

“I know. But he’s going to say you do anyway. And he’s going to say that in your dreams, the face of the man who walked out of the shack with the axe is getting clearer...”

My wife slammed the table. “Now Pat, that’s absolutely the most insane thing I ever heard.”

“Wait a minute...”

“Why, it’s not only a lie, it’s dangerous. It’s positively an invitation for whoever killed the Smallwoods to try to kill Sally...”

“Exactly. That’s the idea. And there’ll be so many policemen around Sally every minute that if he makes a move we’ll get him.”

“I won’t allow that.”

I looked at Sally. “Sally, it’s up to you. If you’re afraid, we won’t do it.”

“I’m not afraid,” Sally announced, her blue eyes clear and unwavering. “Not at all. You tell Mister Greb to go ahead and write anything he wants to write. Things are kind of dull anyway. It will be fun having policemen around.”

Another heat wave blistered the city in late August. And then it rained. For three days steady. And after that it was hot again, only moister than ever, with puddles in the gutter and drops of water on windows.

As I walked home from the Recreation Center I stopped for a word with two plainclothes detectives. They were in a car parked down the street from my, apartment building.

“How’s it going?”

“Nothing,” the man behind the wheel said. “Like always.”

“It’s been a month, Pat,” the other man said apologetically. “The Lieutenant told us to pull off the detail as soon as you got upstairs.”

“Well, thanks anyhow,” I said. I walked to the building and went inside. Greb waited in the apartment with Sally.

“Your wife’s at the store,” Greb said moodily. He sat in my easy chair smoking a cigar. Sally reclined on the sofa watching a set of teen-aged dancers on the television screen.

“The cops downstairs said they’re pulling the detail off today,” I reported.

“The Lieutenant was up here earlier. He told me.”

“It was a good try.”

“Sure.” Greb got up and walked to the window, peering out. “I was positive this would get a rise out of the killer. Two murders. With an axe. It’s something he’ll never be able to forget. And if he thought Sally were going to identify him...”

“Greb, maybe the police were right. In theorizing that the killer was just after the money in the strongbox. A transient, maybe, who’d heard Smallwood bragging. And when he got the money he skipped town. Probably, he’s a thousand miles away now and never even saw your story.”

“I guess so. There go the cops. I guess they couldn’t keep the guard on Sally forever.” Greb turned and flashed me a rueful grin. He mopped his brow. “Well, it was a long shot. You can’t win ’em all. I’m sorry for the inconvenience I’ve caused. Next time I’ll mind my own business.”

“Don’t apologize.”

He walked over and patted Sally’s head. Sally smiled up at him. “And Sally, here, is the bravest little girl I’ve ever met. Wasn’t scared a bit.”

“Thanks, Mister Greb. You’re nice, and good company too.”

“See you in the papers.”

Greb left us. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk. When I returned to the living room Sally had turned the television set off. She was standing in front of a mirror in the hall, patting her hair.

“They’re all gone, aren’t they,” she said.

“Yes. All the policemen have been reassigned.”

“I liked having them around. That rookie patrolman with the Italian name. He was cute.” She reached for the doorknob.

I looked up. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Now, Sally, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Remember...”

“Aw, it’s no fun here when the policemen and Mister Greb aren’t around. I’m going to see if I can find Ziggy. He got probation yesterday.”

“Ziggy! Why, that boy...”

She turned and fixed me with an unblinking stare. “Look. Nothing’s changed. It’s still like you said that day. You’re going to take care of me, and never give me orders. And I won’t tell them how you killed my stepmother when she wanted money from you. And killed my father when he walked in... and where you hid the axe!”