Death of a Dude

Chapter 10

The human mind is a jumbo joke, at least mine is. There were a dozen or more urgent questions it could have been considering as Wolfe disappeared in the passage, but what it was asking was, how will Lily get home? I had that answered, fairly satisfactorily, and was deciding what to work on next when I heard footsteps in the passage. It was Haight, with a flashlight, presumably Lily’s. He came, looked in at the news, turned to me, and asked, “Is this your car?”

He couldn’t have asked a dumber question if he had tried all night. How could it be my car if I didn’t have one and he knew it? “You’ll find the registration card,” I said, “in the dash compartment. Is a doctor coming?”

“Get in the front seat,” he said, “and stay there.” He transferred the flashlight to his left hand and aimed it at my eyes and put his right hand on the butt of the gun at his belt.

“I prefer,” I said, “not to touch any part of the car. If I wanted to blow I probably wouldn’t have waited here for you. I’m pretty sharp in an emergency. Is a doctor coming?”

“I ordered you to get in the front seat.” He pulled the gun out.

“Go climb a mountain, with all respect.”

It was a relevant question, was he actually dumb enough to think I might scoot or jump him, or was he just being J. Edgar Hoover? I haven’t answered it definitely, even yet, because it got complicated by the sound of stumbling feet in the passage, and Haight pointed the flashlight that way as a baldheaded man in a loud plaid sports jacket came into view. It was Frank Milhaus, M.D., whom I knew by sight but had not met. He stopped at the rear end of the station wagon and looked around, and Haight said, “In the car, Frank,” and he came and looked in. He turned to Haight and asked, “What happened to him?”

“You tell me,” Haight said.

By stooping and putting his right foot in and his left knee on the seat, Milhaus got his eyes and hands where they could see and feel. In three minutes he came back out and said, “His head was hit hard at least three times. I think he’s gone, but I can’t be sure until — here he comes.”

It was Ed Welch, with a flashlight in one hand and something black in the other. He came and looked at the object in the station wagon and said, “That’s Sam Peacock.” For the lowdown on anything, you couldn’t beat the law officers of Monroe County. Milhaus took the black thing, a doctor’s kit case, put it on the front seat, opened it, took out a stethoscope, and again maneuvered in to what had now been officially identified as Sam Peacock. In a couple of minutes he came out again, said, “He’s dead,” and started folding the stethoscope tubes.

“That’s final?” Haight asked.

“Of course it’s final. Death is always final.”

“Anything besides the blows on the head?”

“I don’t know.” He put the stethoscope in the case, shut it, and picked it up. “He’s dead, evidently by violence, and I’m not the coroner.”

“We’ll get him out where you can look him over.”

“Not me. As you know, I’ve had a run-in that I don’t care to repeat.”

He started off. Haight said something to his back, but he kept going, to the passage, and was gone. Haight turned to me and said, “You’re under arrest. Get in the front seat.”

“Charged with what?” I asked.

“Held for questioning will do for now. Material witness. Get in the front seat.”

“You’re in the saddle,” I said. “For now. But every inch of this car is going to be—”

I stopped because of the kind of movement Ed Welch made with his shoulder as he took a step toward me. It meant what it usually means. His right fist came around for my jaw, not a jab or a hook, but in orbit. By the time it got there my jaw was some six inches to the rear, and it went on by. But Haight was moving too, to my right, with his gun out, and he poked it in my ribs, the lower ones. Welch was starting another swing, and when it came I did a fancy job of dodging; I turned my head just enough so that it connected, but on a slant. It wouldn’t have toppled a window dummy, but I staggered, lost my balance, and went down flat on the ground.

Welch kicked me, probably aiming for my head, but there wasn’t enough light and it got my shoulder. I don’t like to report what he said because you probably won’t believe it, but it’s a fact and I’ll include it. He said, “Resisting arrest.” With no one to hear him but Haight and me. I sent my eyes right and left into the darkness, thinking there might be an audience he had wanted to impress, but no. Then he said, “Get up, you.”

I stayed flat on the ground for the same reason that I had gone down, because I knew what would happen if I stayed on my feet. Perhaps I haven’t made it clear enough, the mood I was in after those two weeks of fizzles, and then Wolfe coming, and then Gil Haight out. And now Sam Peacock gone. The edge I was on was just too damn thin. If I had stayed upright, either I would have put both Welch and Haight on the ground, and don’t think I couldn’t, or I would have got a bullet or bullets in me. So there I was with a sharp pebble under my hip and a bigger one under my shoulder.

Welch said, very rude, “Goddam you, get up.”

I thought he was going to kick me again and so did he, but Haight said, “He’s pissed his pants. If Milhaus leaks there’ll soon be a mob out here. Go in and send Farnham out, and Evers if you can find him quick, and phone Doc Hutchins to come and come fast. The body’s not supposed to be moved until he sees it, for Christ’s sake.”

I know exactly how long I stayed down. Forty-two minutes, from 12:46 to 1:28. I like to keep track of important events. As far as Haight and Welch were concerned I could have been up much earlier, since they soon had all they could do with the arrivals from three directions — through the passage and around the corners of Vawter’s and the Hall of Culture. Whether the word had been started by Dr. Milhaus, who obviously had no love for Haight, or by Farnham or even Welch himself, here they came, and for half an hour I had a good worm’s-eye view of Haight waving his gun and squawking, and Welch shoving, and Bill Farnham trying to guard both sides of the station wagon at once. At that, they did the job. The only man who got close enough to the car to touch it was Dr. Hutchins, the coroner, who arrived at 1:19. By that time Haight had recruited three or four men to lend a hand with the crowd, and two more to bring their cars for illumination from their headlights, and things were pretty well under control. At 1:28 Haight was standing just four steps from me, talking with Dr. Hutchins, and I thought I might as well see if he was still set on getting me into the front seat, and got to my feet. I leaned over to brush my slacks off, and when I straightened up Ed Welch was there. His right hand wasn’t a fist; it couldn’t be because it held a pair of handcuffs. His left hand started for my right one, but missed it because I extended both of mine, to give him no excuse for wrist-twisting, and he snapped the cuffs on. They were one of the newer models, nice and shiny.

“My car’s out front,” he said. He pointed to the passage. “That way.” He gripped my arm.

The crowd may have thinned a little, but there were more than a hundred pairs of eyes to watch their officer of the law escort his prisoner, obviously dangerous since he was manacled, away from the scene of the crime. I used my pair of eyes too, and as we neared the end of the passage I saw her, Lily, standing at the edge of the beam from one of the headlights. Diana and Wade and Pete Ingalls were with her. They waved to me, and I waved back — with both hands, of course — and Lily called, “Woody took him.” That was a relief. I had been half expecting that when we got to the car Wolfe would be in it, also handcuffed, and that would be too high a price even for me.

But there was someone in the car, a Mercury sedan, double-parked in front of Vawter’s. It was Gil Haight, in the driver’s seat. As Welch opened the rear door Gil swiveled his head around on his long neck, and as I climbed in I said distinctly, “Nice mahrnin’,” and Gil laughed. Not a mean laugh, just a nervous laugh. Welch got in beside me and pulled the door shut and said, “Okay, Gil, roll. Your dad said to tell you to come right back.”

It was a quarter past two when we pulled up at the curb in front of the courthouse in Timberburg, and nobody had said a word. When three men ride that many bumps and curves together and no one speaks there’s a bad circuit somewhere, and on that occasion probably two — between Welch and me, and between Gil and Welch. When Welch and I were out and the door shut, he said, “Tell your dad I’ll be right here,” and Gil said, “Yeah.” Four teen-agers, two male and two female, passing by, stopped to look when they saw I was handcuffed, so Welch had an audience again as he took me to the steps and up to the entrance. In the big lobby he steered me to the side hall at the right, and along it, and when we got to the door I had entered sixteen hours earlier, not handcuffed, he stopped, got a ring of keys from a pocket, and used one. That surprised me because I had supposed that by that time someone would be on post in the sheriffs office to channel communications. Welch flipped the wall switch for light, motioned me through the gate in the railing and to a chair at the end of a desk, and sat at the desk.

He asked me a loaded question: “Your pants dry yet?” Since it was loaded I ignored it. He opened a drawer, took out a pad of printed forms, wrote on it at the top with a ballpoint pen — presumably the date and hour — and asked me two factual questions: “Your name’s Archie Goodwin? A-R-C-H-I-E?”

“I want to phone my lawyer,” I said.

He grinned at me. He meant it to be a mean grin, and it was. “Every Friday night,” he said, “Luther Dawson goes to his cabin up in the hills south of Helena. There’s no phone and—”

“Not Dawson. I want to phone Thomas R. Jessup.”

That erased the grin. “Jessup’s not your lawyer,” he said.

“He’s a lawyer. I have a paper in my pocket signed by him. I’m willing to change my request. Demand. I want to telephone a lawyer.”

“I’ll tell the sheriff when I see him. A-R-C-H-I-E?”

“Just put an X. You probably don’t know what ‘stand mute’ means, but I do. Also you may think that a man can’t stand mute while he’s sitting down, but he can. It’s a trick. I answer no questions about anything until I see Mr. Jessup, not even important ones. Ask me which I prefer for breakfast, ham or bacon, and I’ll stand mute. But you haven’t asked me, so I’ll just mention that the best way is to bring me both and I’ll take my pick. Or even better, to prevent waste...”

I was prattling on because he was trying to think, and with me talking it might be not merely difficult for him but impossible. Of course his problem wasn’t me, really; it was a man whose name he could spell without asking, Thomas R. Jessup. He would probably have liked to consult Haight, but the sheriff was reachable only on Woody’s phone if at all. When he finally got it thought through, and picked up a phone and pushed a button, I expected him to dial Woody’s number, but he didn’t touch the dial. In a minute he spoke:

“Mort? Ed Welch, I’ve got one for you here in the sheriffs office. Come and get him... No, he can walk... What the hell do you care? Come and get him.” He hung up and started writing on the pad.

I looked at the gate in the railing and considered ways and means. There weren’t any. Lily was certainly trying to get Dawson, and Wolfe was probably trying to get Jessup, but all I could do about that was to wish them more luck than they were likely to have. It was more than likely, it was next to certain, that I would not only have neither ham nor bacon for Sunday breakfast; I wouldn’t even get them Monday. The question was, could I do anything about anything? Could I, for instance, say something to Welch that might have some effect on how he spent the rest of the weekend? I had got nowhere with it when the door opened and Mort appeared. He was a wiry little guy with a long red scar on his left cheek, in gray uniform pants with a permanent crease, and a dirty gray shirt, and a gun in his belt. Welch looked at him and demanded, “Where’s your jacket?”

“It’s hot in there,” Mort said. “Just overlook it.”

“I ought to report it.” Welch rose, got his key ring from a pocket and selected one, and came and unlocked the cuffs and took them. “Stand up,” he said, “and empty your pockets. Everything.”

As I rose I said, “I’ll keep the paper signed by Thomas R. Jessup.”

“You’ll keep nothing. Unload.”

I obeyed. I made a pile on the desk, glad that there was nothing strictly private like a copy of the letter I had written Wolfe. When I had finished, Welch went over me and did a good job, not too rough, and then he handed me a surprise. When he picked up my wallet and took the bills out I supposed he was going to count it and have me sign a slip, but he didn’t even flip the edges. He held them out and said, “You can keep this,” and when I took it he picked up the chickenfeed and handed me that too. That had never happened to me before in any of the coops I had been checked in at, and it was an interesting new item for my file on Montana folkways. Of course it could be only local; there could be someone inside, an inmate or one of the help, who had fast fingers and split his take with the front office. It isn’t reasonable to expect the people who run a jail to average up any better than those who run things on the outside.

Welch told Mort, “Put him in five and don’t get in front of him. Is Greve still in twelve?”

Mort nodded. “You know he is.”

“All right, put this one in five. Evers can get his prints later. It looks like he’s a killer and you may have him a long time. I can’t give you his name on the record because he’s not talking, not even his name. Call him whatever—”

“I know his name. Goodman.” Mort put his hand on his gun. “On out, Goodman. Turn right.”

I obeyed.