Killing Time

Twenty-Six

“I’m worried, Tim,” said Ron Lascow. “At first, I thought Harcum was crazy, he’d never make the charge stick. But now I’m not so sure.”

We were sitting in the Visitors’ Room in the Winston City Jail, a buggy-whip era clink that took up half of the basement of City Hall. There was none of the wire mesh separating me from Ron that they have in the big city jails and the state and federal penitentiaries. The Visitors’ Room was simply a bare square room with cream-colored walls and four of the old wooden chairs that used to be upstairs in City Court. The door to the cell area was open. The other door was closed and locked, but it was simply a wooden door with an ordinary Yale lock on it.

All four chairs were occupied at the moment. There was Ron, and Bill Casale, and a cop named Titus O’Herne, and me.

“Why aren’t you sure?” I asked him. “There isn’t a bit of evidence against you.”

“There’s that tax-scheme thing,” he said.

“So what? I already knew about that. You knew you were safe from me, you had no reason to want to kill me.”

He nodded, and rubbed a hand wearily over his face. He was wearing brown slacks and a white shirt open at the collar, the sleeves rolled up. Just the fact of being in jail, innocent or not, had taken a lot of starch out of him. “I don’t have any alibi for the time when the grenade was thrown,” he said. “I was home, alone.”

“So were a lot of people,” I told him. “So was I, for that matter. And I know about the National Guard thing, the bomb demolition squad. That maybe gives you the method for the bomb in the car, but not for the hand grenade.”

His grin was sick. “Sure it does,” he said.

“How so?”

“The Guard isn’t as tight as the regular Army,” he said. “I mean the controls aren’t as good. And you’ve got a bunch of young kids in there. Every summer, during the two weeks at camp, something disappears from the armory. A gun, or a grenade, or maybe just a holster. But always something.”

“So if the whole damn Guard is short one hand grenade,” I said, “they’ll try to pin it on you?”

“They’ve got it all, Tim,” he said. “Not enough to convince you, maybe, because you know me, and you’re on my side. But whose side is the judge going to be on? And they’ve got it all, motive and method and opportunity.”

“What about the other tries?” I demanded. “What about the Tarker killing? Or the shots fired at me from City Hall?”

He shook his head. “I won’t be charged with trying to kill you,” he said. He nodded at Bill. “I’ll be charged with killing his grandfather.”

“While trying to kill me,” I insisted.

“Sure,” he said. “And if the defense even does succeed in getting the other tries admitted, what good does that do me? I’ve been to New York in the last three months, so I could have hired that gunman. And I was home alone when he was killed, too. And when you were being shot at from City Hall, I was driving out to Hillview. Alone.”

“He has less of a case against you than he does against Marvin Reed,” I said.

He looked blank. “Marvin Reed?”

I told him about the killing of Sherri, and he said, “Jesus, it’s catching. Who would have thought little Marvy had the guts?”

“Maybe he didn’t do it,” I said.

“Sure. And maybe pigs fly.” He got to his feet, paced nervously back and forth in the small room, his arms swinging with nervous tension at his sides, “He ought to be in here,” he said. “Not me, for Christ’s sake.”

“Who’s your lawyer?” I asked him.

“Stanley Crawford.”

I nodded. Crawford was an old man, in semi-retirement now, who had first encouraged Ron to study law. He was able, but slow-moving, having long since adapted himself to the snail’s pace of the law.

“What’s he doing about getting you out of here?” I asked.

“He’s trying to get Judge Lowry to set bail. I don’t know, he said he’d come down and see me this evening.”

“I don’t like to rush you fellers,” said Titus O’Herne, the guard, “but I would like to get this felon here back behind bars, so I could go get me some chow.” Titus was a short, grizzled, toothless old duffer, given duty here in the town clink when he got too old to walk a beat any more.

I looked at him. “You alone here?”

“Damn right,” he said.

“For how long?”

He grimaced. “Forever, from the looks of things,” he said. “I should of been off duty at five o’clock, dang near an hour ago.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“Young Ed Wycza was supposed to take over from me,” he explained. “But he walked off with the rest of the family.”

I came to attention, hearing the clang of a warning bell. “They walked off?”

He nodded sourly. “The whole dang family,” he said. “Just a little before four. They all just up and walked off, without a by-your-leave to anybody.”

“What’s happening out there, Tim?” Ron asked me.

I looked at him and shook my head. “I don’t know. A war, I think. And I’m no longer sure who’s on what team.”

“If Jack Wycza marches his people after Jordan Reed and the others...” He left the sentence unfinished.

I finished it for him. “If he does,” I said, “he’ll solve every one of our problems for us.”

“Maybe Jordan’s out of it anyway,” he said, “now that his son is in trouble.”

“I doubt it. When I was up there, Jordan washed his hands of the whole thing. He’s been ignoring Marvin’s little flaws for years, so now he’s swung just as far to the other extreme.”

“I’m mighty hungry,” said Titus O’Herne.

I got to my feet. “Right you are,” I said. To Ron, I said, “I’ll be over at Cathy’s place for a while. If Crawford manages to get you out tonight, come on over.”

“I will,” he said.