Death Spins the Platter

15

Layton anticipated the next few hours. They were bound to end in anticlimax, and they did.

He had no illusions about being allowed to sit in on the proceedings. The lawyer Stander had called said he would be waiting at the Police Building for them. No lawyer in his right mind would sanction the presence of a reporter under the circumstances, and Stander’s lawyer came from the élite of Los Angeles’ formidable array of legal talent. So Layton merely paused to watch Hubert Stander stoop over fat Mrs. Stander on the lawn and improvise a plausible fiction to explain his dinnerless departure with Trimble and Winterman; and when the tall gray man got into the rear of the shiny Ford with Trimble at his side and Winterman at the wheel, and was driven off — affectionately waving to his bewildered wife — Layton drove home.

He called the Bulletin and dictated his story. The city desk promised to send a man down to the Police Building for the follow-up, and Layton hung up to face what was left of his Sunday.

It was still early, and there were any number of things he could do. He could drive out to the beach; he enjoyed swimming, and he rarely got a chance to lie in the sun with nothing but trunks on. He could take in a movie; he liked movies. He could get on the phone and start working on the names in his little black book — names like Penny and Love and Alys and Marylouann (who insisted on having it spelled that way, and possessed other unusual ideas). He could — this never failed — call some of the boys and make up a poker game.

Instead, Layton stretched out on his couch with Tropic of Cancer and in the middle of a dirty word fell asleep.

His first thought when he woke up was: I’ll call Nancy. He was actually reaching for the phone when he realized that he had intended to call her all along, and that he didn’t know her number.

He was almost relieved at his ignorance. Lay off, Layton, lay off, he said to himself sternly; and he flung the paperback across the room, got off the couch, and went into the bathroom and plunged his head into a bowlful of cold water.

All through his solitary dinner he knew what he was going to do. He was going to drive out into San Fernando Valley. He was going to find an excuse for doing so. He found the excuse, brushed the napkin across his mouth, grabbed his check, half ran to the cashier’s desk, and then dived for the directory beside the phone booth.

Unlisted.

A colorful curse at the still-unburied corpse of Tutter King exploded in his head. Layton went into the booth and dialed the Homicide Division and asked for Lieutenant Jackson.

“Do me a favor, Lieutenant. I have to phone Tutter King’s widow, and she’s unlisted. I didn’t think to note her number when I was out there. It’s in the file.”

“Seeing as how you’re a privileged character around here,” Jackson said, “hang on.”

“Thanks,” Layton said after noting the number. “By the way, what happened with Stander?”

“A big nothing,” the lieutenant said.

“Figured,” Layton said, grinning into the mouthpiece. “D.A. doesn’t want a habeas slapped on Stander. A writ would force him to bring charges now. Tomorrow the coroner’s jury sits — and who knows what their verdict will be? So the D.A. and Stander’s lawyer make a deal—”

“Yeah, the lawyer promised to take personal responsibility and Stander was released in his custody without even having to put up bond.” Jackson grunted. “What did you ask me for if you knew?”

“I didn’t,” Layton chuckled. “But Sunday is the D.A.’s day for golf.” And he hung up.

He stared at his notation of Nancy King’s telephone number for some time. Once he started to leave the booth. Finally, he dialed the number. When her voice sounded in his ear it went through him like the touch of a live wire. He almost hung up without responding.

But he did not. “Jim Layton,” he said. “Hello again.”

“Hello, Jim.” She sounded pleased.

“You sound pleased,” Layton said.

“I am.”

“At what?”

“At your calling, silly.”

“I’m pleased you’re pleased.”

She laughed. “I’m pleased you’re pleased I’m pleased.”

He laughed.

Silence.

This is impossible, Layton thought desperately.

“Jim?”

“Yes, Nancy,” he mumbled.

“Was that all you called to say?”

Layton inhaled. “No. How about my picking you up tomorrow morning and driving us down to the inquest together?”

She was silent again. But then she said, “No, Jim.”

“Why not?” Layton heard himself demanding.

“Well... I can drive myself now, and I don’t see why you should have to go all that extra distance—”

“You think it’s because of my job, don’t you?”

“Because of your job?” She seemed genuinely baffled.

“I’m a reporter,” he said. “I’ve had the inside track on this story from the start. So naturally you’d think—”

Her quiet voice said, “Jim, that never crossed my mind.”

“It didn’t?”

“No. I don’t think of you as a reporter after a story. I don’t know why, but I never have.”

A singing began in Layton’s ears. “Then how about it?”

“How about what, Jim?”

“My driving you in the morning?”

Once more she was silent. Then suddenly he heard a vexed laugh. “We’re both not very bright, are we? We forgot you won’t have a car tomorrow. You’re supposed to take it to your garage for a new windshield, remember?”

“Damn the new windshield!”

“No, Jim. I’ll see you at the Hall of Justice.”

Layton said, “I guess I’d better say good night, Nancy.”

“Good night, Jim.” Her voice was very soft. “And... thanks for thinking of me.”

When he got home Layton kicked the Miller book back to the other side of the room and went to bed. He lay staring up into the darkness, hands clasped behind his head, for a timeless interval. He could not have said that he was thinking, or even that he was feeling. All he was conscious of was the soft voice in endless repetition pronouncing his name.

Oddly, Layton overslept. By the time he had dropped his car off at Joe’s and taxied down to the Hall of Justice, Coroner’s Court was full.

In the second row of the section reserved for witnesses Layton saw Lola Arkwright, George Hathaway, Hubert Stander, and Nancy King. The two men were seated together between the two women. Stander had been careful not to sit next to Lola; he was between Hathaway and Nancy. All four were staring straight ahead.

There was no sign of Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins, even in the jammed spectator section. The district attorney’s office must have decided for reasons of prudence to keep the proceedings entirely free of Tutter King’s hysterical teenage admirers; there was not a youngster to be seen in the courtroom. Apparently Mrs. Stander and Linda Norman Hathaway were not present, either. Nor could Layton see Hazel Grant.

The two crime-lab men who had examined the KZZX dressing rooms on Friday were seated in the front row. With them was a thin, bald, keen-eyed man Layton recognized as some official from the coroner’s office.

Harry Trimble was standing near the coroner’s bench talking to a tired-looking young man with a brief case. Layton walked over.

“Hi,” Trimble said. “This is Jim Layton, Artie. Arthur Cabot of the D.A.’s office.”

They shook hands; Cabot’s handshake was limp. “The reporter who found the body,” he said, more as if he were checking off a mental item.

“That’s right,” Layton said. “Where do I sit — in the press section or with the witnesses?”

“Another problem!” the young assistant district attorney muttered. “The witnesses, the witnesses.”

“The witnesses it is,” Layton said; and he walked over to the second row and sat down beside Nancy. She kept staring ahead, but his arm was touching hers and he could feel her trembling. He was obscurely glad that she had not done the usual Hollywood bit and dressed in dramatic black cum widow’s veil. She was wearing a simple dark gray suit and a gray silk blouse; her hat was an unassuming little cap of black felt.

The others did not acknowledge Layton’s arrival, either. He sat back and folded his arms.

When the coroner — a tall, gaunt man with a shock of unruly black hair who looked remarkably like a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln — entered the courtroom and took his place at the bench, Sergeant Trimble joined the row of witnesses, seating himself beside Lola Arkwright.

Trimble had hardly had time to warm the seat when he was called as the first witness.

He gave his name and rank, and immediately plunged into a factual account of his and Sergeant Winterman’s investigation, beginning with the exact time of Layton’s call to Homicide and their arrival at KZZX.

When the one-eyed detective had finished, the coroner said, “Sergeant, what conclusion did you draw concerning the probable manner in which the deceased died?”

“We listed it tentatively on the five point ten,” Trimble replied, “as suspected suicide.”

“The five point ten, so-called, is the investigating officer’s report, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

The coroner grasped the loose skin of his skinny neck between thumb and forefinger, and pulled — a nasty habit, Layton thought, for a man bearing the responsibility of a resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. “Does this mean that you discounted the possibility of murder?”

“No, sir.”

“Would you develop that, Sergeant?”

Trimble explained in detail the physical layout of the area of KZZX in which King had been found dead, and he sketched in briefly the circumstances surrounding King’s last telecast “They were such,” he went on, “as to open up the possibility that the deceased had been murdered. We found that if it was murder, only a few people had the opportunity to commit it.” He named George Hathaway, manager of KZZX; Hubert Stander, chairman of the TV station’s board; Lola Arkwright deceased’s assistant; Mrs. Nancy King, deceased’s widow (here a murmur rippled through the room as hundreds of eyes focused upon Nancy, but she gave no sign that she was aware of them — no sign except to Layton, who felt her body quiver); and James Layton, newspaper reporter.

“There were also two teenage fans of Tutter King’s who theoretically had opportunity,” Trimble concluded, “but at no time were they out of each other’s sight and they alibi each other. There is no reason of any kind to suppose that these minors had anything to do with King’s death. I will name them if ordered to do so, but in a public hearing—”

“Right, quite right, Sergeant,” the coroner said hastily. “You wish to ask a question, Mr. Cabot?”

The tired-looking young assistant district attorney said to Trimble, “How were you able to reduce the number of possible suspects — if this was murder — to so few persons, Sergeant? Weren’t there several hundred people in the building at the time?”

Trimble went into an explanation in depth. When he had finished, the coroner asked, “Of the persons you have named who had opportunity, assuming this might have been homicide, Sergeant Trimble, were you able to pinpoint any with motive?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. George Hathaway and Mr. Hubert Stander.”

A buzz began to swell, and the coroner admonished the spectators. Hathaway and Stander were so rigid that Layton had the ridiculous feeling that both men had stopped breathing.

“Develop that, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. At the start of the telecast King announced that he was going to make an important statement at the end of the show. He repeated this announcement before going off the air for the news-break intermission at 4 P.M., just a few minutes before he died. No one knows, or professes to know, what King meant to say, but there’s plenty of testimony to the effect that he was very angry and bitter at both Mr. Hathaway and Mr. Stander for the cancellation of his show. We can’t state it as a fact, but there’s a strong possibility that what King intended to say at the end of the show concerned Mr. Hathaway or Mr. Stander, or both. We further established that Mr. Hathaway heard King’s promise of a ‘surprise announcement’ on his office monitor, and that Mr. Stander heard it on his set at home.”

Arthur Cabot asked, “Do you mean, Sergeant, that what King was in a position to reveal about Mr. Hathaway and/or Mr. Stander might have constituted a motive for murder in each case?”

“Possibly.”

“In other words, Sergeant, public disclosure would have discredited or damaged the persons you have just named?”

“Yes, sir.” Trimble added quickly, “But in Mr. Hathaway’s case we discovered that he had instructed his chief control engineer, during the intermission, to cut King off the air if he began to say anything derogatory about anyone connected with KZZX. This would have shut King’s mouth before he could damage Mr. Hathaway publicly, if that was what King meant to do. To that extent Mr. Hathaway had no immediate motive.”

Hathaway was perspiring. Layton saw him begin to reach for a handkerchief, then stop.

The coroner leaned forward. “I remind the jury that no one is on trial here and that your sole duty is to determine the cause of death. While the coroner’s jury has a choice of verdicts — homicide, justifiable homicide, suicide, accidental death, or death from natural causes — you are not empowered to elaborate on any of these possible verdicts by finding, for example, that death was by homicide at the hands of a specified person or persons. Even if the testimony should point to some individual as a murderer, the name of such individual cannot be included in the verdict. We are here today to get at the cause of Tutter King’s death, and nothing more.”

The coroner turned to Trimble. “Consequently, Sergeant, as you know, we have a great deal of latitude in these proceedings. In your opinion, is it necessary for the jury to know precisely what information the deceased had about Mr. Hathaway?”

“In my opinion, no, sir,” the one-eyed detective said. Layton heard Hathaway expel a long, tremulous breath. “It was nothing technically illegal, but to have it made public might cost Mr. Hathaway his job. I personally don’t see that anything would be gained, for purposes of this proceeding, by putting it on the record.”

“Can you tell us, Sergeant,” the assistant district attorney asked wearily, “what information the deceased had in respect to Mr. Stander?”

Out of the corner of his eye Layton saw Stander stiffen.

“Yes, sir, because I have reason to believe it’s going to be all over the newspapers soon, anyway. Mr. Stander secretly owns a substantial interest in a recording company. Under FCC regulations this constitutes a conflict of interest, since Mr. Stander is also chairman of the board of KZZX. However, Mr. Cabot, we discussed this with your office, and the consensus of legal opinion was that the only thing the FCC would do in such a case is insist that Mr. Stander dispose of his stock either in KZZX or in the recording company. Both stocks have gone up in value recently, so while to dispose of either holding might inconvenience Mr. Stander, he would certainly suffer no financial loss and would, in fact, gain.”

“In short, then, Sergeant,” Cabot said, “your considered opinion, as the police officer in charge of the investigation into King’s death, and after discussing all aspects of the case with the district attorney’s office, is that while various persons had the opportunity to murder the deceased, none possessed what you regard as a compelling motive? Is that a fair statement of your opinion?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cabot glanced, at the bench. The coroner nodded. “You may step down, Sergeant.”

Layton was astounded. Trimble had not testified as to the ice pick missing from Hubert Stander’s kitchen, or to any of Mrs. Stander’s revelations. And he had not even hinted at the rivalry between Stander and King over Lola Arkwright’s affections.

But on reflection Layton realized what must have happened. The police, the coroner’s office, and the district attorney’s office had agreed in advance that there was no evidence sufficient to warrant an indictment for murder.

Such prior agreement among the three agencies of the law was, of course, perfectly ethical. The thing that bothered Layton was that the agreement indicated fresh developments in the case of which he was totally ignorant.