The Chill

Chapter 28

He was about to be given another turn of the screw. When I climbed out into the cockpit I saw three men approaching along the floating dock. Their bodies, their hatted heads, were dark as iron against the exploding sunset.

One of them showed me a deputy’s badge and a gun, which he held on me while the others went below. I heard McGee cry out once. He scrambled up through the hatch with blue handcuffs on his wrists and a blue gun at his back. The single look he gave me was full of fear and loathing.

They didn’t handcuff me, but they made me ride to the courthouse with McGee in the screened rear compartment of the Sheriff’s car. I tried to talk to him. He wouldn’t speak to me or look in my direction. He believed I had turned him in, and perhaps I had without intending to.

I sat under guard outside the interrogation room while they questioned him in tones that rose and fell and growled and palavered and yelled and threatened and promised and refused and wheedled. Sheriff Crane arrived, looking tired but important. He stood over me smiling, with his belly thrust out.

“Your friend’s in real trouble now.”

“He’s been in real trouble for the last ten years. You ought to know, you helped to cook it for him.”

The veins in his cheeks lit up like intricate little networks of infra-red tubing. He leaned toward me spewing martiniscented words:

“I could put you in jail for loose talk like that. You know where your friend is going? He’s going all the way to the green room this time.”

“He wouldn’t be the first innocent man who was gassed.”

“Innocent? McGee’s a mass murderer, and we’ve got the evidence to prove it. It took my experts all day to nail it down: The bullet in the Haggerty corpse came from the same gun as the bullet we found in McGee’s wife – the same gun he stole from Alice Jenks in Indian Springs.”

I’d succeeded in provoking the Sheriff into an indiscretion. I tried for another. “You have no proof he stole it. You have no proof he fired it either time. Where’s he been keeping the gun for the last ten years?”

“He cached it someplace, maybe on Stevens’s boat. Or maybe an accomplice kept it for him.”

“Then he hid it in his daughter’s bed to frame her?”

“That’s the kind of man he is.”

“Nuts!”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” He menaced me with the cannon ball of his belly.

“Don’t talk like that to the Sheriff,” the guard said.

“I don’t know of any law against the use of the word ‘nuts.’ And incidentally I wasn’t violating anything in the California Code when I went out to the yacht to talk to McGee. I’m cooperating with a local attorney in this investigation and I have a right to get my information where I can and keep it confidential.”

“How did you know he was there?”

“I got a tip.”

“From Stevens?”

“Not from Stevens. You and I could trade information, Sheriff. How did you know he was there?”

“I don’t make deals with suspects.”

“What do you suspect me of? Illegal use of the word ‘nuts’?”

“It isn’t so funny. You were taken with McGee. I have a right to hold you.”

“I have a right to call an attorney. Try kicking my rights around and see where it gets you. I have friends in Sacramento.”

They didn’t include the Attorney General or anybody close to him, but I liked the sound of the phrase. Sheriff Crane did not. He was half a politician, and like most of his kind he was an insecure man. He said after a moment’s thought:

“You can make your call.”

The Sheriff went into the interrogation room – I caught a glimpse of McGee hunched gray-faced under a light – and added his voice to the difficult harmony there. My guard took me into a small adjoining room and left me by myself with a telephone. I used it to call Jerry Marks. He was about to leave for his appointment with Dr. Godwin and Dolly, but he said he’d come right over to the courthouse and bring Gil Stevens with him if Stevens was available.

They arrived together in less than fifteen minutes. Stevens shot me a glance from under the broken white wings of his hair. It was a covert and complex glance which seemed to mean that for the record we were strangers. I suspected the old lawyer had advised McGee to talk to me, and probably set up the interview. I was in a position to use McGee’s facts in ways that he couldn’t.

With soft threats of habeas corpus proceedings, Jerry Marks sprung me out. Stevens remained behind with the Sheriff and a Deputy D.A. It was going to take longer to spring his client.

A moon like a fallen fruit reversing gravity was hoisting itself above the rooftops. It was huge and slightly squashed.

“Pretty,” Jerry said in the parking lot.

“It looks like a rotten orange to me.”

“Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. I learned that at my mother’s knee and other low joints, as a well-known statesman said.” Jerry always felt good when he tried something he learned in law school, and it worked. He walked to his car swiftly, on the balls of his feet, and made the engine roar. “We’re late for our appointment with Godwin.”

“Did you have time to check on Bradshaw’s alibi?”

“I did. It seems to be impregnable.” He gave me the details as we drove across town. “Judging by temperature loss, rate of blood coagulation, and so on, the Deputy Coroner places the time of Miss Haggerty’s death as no later than eight-thirty. From about seven until about nine-thirty Dean Bradshaw was sitting, or standing up talking, in front of over a hundred witnesses. I talked to three of them, three alumni picked more or less at random, and they all agreed he didn’t leave the speaker’s table during that period. Which lets him out.”

“Apparently it does.”

“You sound disappointed, Lew.”

“I’m partly that, and partly relieved. I rather like Bradshaw. But I was pretty certain he was our man.”

In the remaining minutes before we reached the nursing home, I told him briefly what I’d learned from McGee, and from the Sheriff. Jerry whistled, but made no other comment.

Dr. Codwin opened the door for us. He wore a clean white smock and an aggrieved expression.

“You’re late, Mr. Marks. I was just about ready to call the whole thing off.”

“We had a little emergency. Thomas McGee was arrested about seven o’clock tonight. Mr. Archer happened to be with him, and he was arrested, also.”

Godwin turned to me. “You were with McGee?”

“He sent for me, and he talked. I’m looking forward to comparing his story with his daughter’s.”

“I’m afraid you aren’t – ah – co-opted to this session,” Godwin said with some embarrassment. “As I pointed out to you before, you don’t have professional immunity.”

“I do if I’m acting on Mr. Marks’s instructions. Which I am.”

“Mr. Archer is correct, on both counts,” Jerry said.

Godwin let us in reluctantly. We were outsiders, interlopers in his shadowy kingdom. I had lost some of my confidence in his benevolent despotism, but I kept it to myself for the present.

He took us to the examination room where Dolly was waiting. She was sitting on the end of a padded table, wearing a sleeveless white hospital gown. Alex stood in front of her, holding both her hands. His eyes stayed on her face, hungry and worshipping, as if she was the priestess or the goddess of a strange one-member cult.

Her hair was shining and smooth. Her face was composed. Only her eyes had a sullen restlessness and inwardness. They moved across me and failed to give any sign of recognition.

Godwin touched her shoulder. “Are you ready, Dolly?”

“I suppose I am.”

She lay back on the padded table. Alex held on to one of her hands.

“You can stay if you like, Mr. Kincaid. It might be easier if you didn’t.”

“Not for me,” the girl said. “I feel safer when he’s with me. I want Alex to know all about – everything.”

“Yes. I want to stay.”

Codwin filled a hypodermic needle, inserted it in her arm, and taped it to the white skin. He told her to count backward from one hundred. At ninety-six the tension left her body and an inner light left her face. It flowed back in a diffused form when the doctor spoke to her:

“Do you hear me, Dolly?”

“I hear you,” she murmured.

“Speak louder. I can’t hear you.”

“I hear you,” she repeated. Her voice was faintly slurred.

“Who am I?”

“Dr. Godwin.”

“Do you remember when you were a little girl you used to come and visit me in my office?”

“I remember.”

“Who used to bring you to see me?”

“Mommy did. She used to bring me in in Aunt Alice’s car.”

“Where were you living then?”

“In Indian Springs, in Aunt Alice’s house.”

“And Mommy was living there, too?”

“Mommy was living there, too. She lived there, too.”

She was flushed, and talking like a drunken child. The doctor turned to Jerry Marks with a handing-over gesture. Jerry’s dark eyes were mournful.

“Do you remember a certain night,” he said, “when your Mommy was killed?”

“I remember. Who are you?”

“I’m Jerry Marks, your lawyer. It’s all right to talk to me.”

“It’s all right,” Alex said.

The girl looked up at Jerry sleepily. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Just the truth. It doesn’t matter what I want, or anybody else. Just tell me what you remember.”

“I’ll try.”

“Did you hear the gun go off?”

“I heard it.” She screwed up her face as if she was hearing it now. “I am – it frightened me.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“I didn’t go downstairs right away. I was scared.”

“Did you see anyone out the window?”

“No. I heard a car drive away. Before that I heard her running.”

“You heard who running?” Jerry said.

“I thought it was Aunt Alice at first, when she was talking to Mommy at the door. But it couldn’t have been Aunt Alice. She wouldn’t shoot Mommy. Besides, her gun was missing.”

“How do you know?”

“She said I took it from her room. She spanked me with a hairbrush for stealing it.”

“When did she spank you?”

“Sunday night, when she came home from church. Mommy said she had no right to spank me. Aunt Alice asked Mommy if she took the gun.”

“Did she?”

“She didn’t say – not while I was there. They sent me to bed.”

“Did you take the gun?”

“No. I never touched it. I was afraid of it.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid of Aunt Alice.”

She was rosy and sweating. She tried to struggle up onto her elbows. The doctor eased her back into her supine position, and made an adjustment to the needle. The girl relaxed again, and Jerry said:

“Was it Aunt Alice talking to your Mommy at the door?”

“I thought it was at first. It sounded like her. She had a big scary voice. But it couldn’t have been Aunt Alice.”

“Why couldn’t it?”

“It just couldn’t.”

She turned her head in a listening attitude. A lock of hair fell over her half-closed eyes. Alex pushed it back with a gentle hand. She said:

“The lady at the door said it had to be true, about Mommy and Mr. Bradshaw. She said she got it from Daddy’s own lips, and Daddy got it from me. And then she shot my Mommy and ran away.”

There was silence in the room, except for the girl’s heavy breathing. A tear as slow as honey was exuded from the corner of one eye. It fell down her temple. Alex wiped the blueveined hollow with his handkerchief. Jerry leaned across her from the other side of the table:

“Why did you say your Daddy shot your Mommy?”

“Aunt Alice wanted me to. She didn’t say so, but I could tell. And I was afraid she’d think that I did it. She spanked me for taking the gun, and I didn’t take it. I said it was Daddy. She made me say it over and over and over.”

There were more tears than one now. Tears for the child she had been, frightened and lying, and tears for the woman she was painfully becoming. Alex wiped her eyes. He looked close to tears himself.

“Why,” I said, “did you try to tell us that you killed your mother?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Alex’s friend Lew Archer.”

“That’s right,” Alex said.

She lifted her head and let it fall back. “I forget what you asked me.”

“Why did you say you killed your mother?”

“Because it was all my fault. I told my Daddy about her and Mr. Bradshaw, and that’s what started everything.”

“How do you know?”

“The lady at the door said so. She came to shoot Mommy because of what Daddy told her.”

“Do you know who she was?”

“No.”

“Was it your Aunt Alice?”

“No.”

“Was it anyone you knew?”

“No.”

“Did your mother know her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she did.”

“Did she talk as if she knew her?”

“She called her by name.”

“What name?”

“Tish. She called her Tish. I could tell Mommy didn’t like her, though. She was afraid of her, too.”

“Why haven’t you ever told anyone this before?”

“Because it was all my fault.”

“It wasn’t,” Alex said. “You were only a child. You weren’t responsible for what the adults did.”

Godwin shushed him with his finger to his lips. Dolly rolled her head from side to side:

“It was all my fault.”

“This has gone on long enough,” Godwin whispered to Jerry. “She’s made some gains. I want to have a chance to consolidate them.”

“But we haven’t even got to the Haggerty case.”

“Make it short then.” Godwin said to the girl: “Dolly, are you willing to talk about last Friday night?”

“Not about finding her.” She screwed up her face until her eyes were hidden.

“You needn’t go into the details of finding the body,” Jerry said. “But what were you doing there?”

“I wanted to talk to Helen. I often walked up the hill to talk to her. We were friends.”

“How did that happen to be?”

“I ingratiated myself with Helen,” she said with queer blank candor. “I thought at first she might be the lady – the woman who shot my mother. The rumor was going around the campus that she was close to Dean Bradshaw.”

“And you were on the campus to find that woman?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t Helen. I found out she was new in town, and she told me herself there was nothing between her and Bradshaw. I had no right to drag her into this.”

“How did you drag her in?”

“I told her everything, about my mother and Bradshaw and the murder and the woman at the door. Helen was killed because she knew too much.”

“That may be,” I said, “but she didn’t learn it from you.”

“She did! I told her everything.”

Godwin pulled at my sleeve. “Don’t argue with her. She’s coming out of it fast, but her mind is still operating below the conscious level.”

“Did Helen ask you questions?” I said to the girl.

“Yes. She asked me questions.”

“Then you didn’t force the information on her.”

“No. She wanted to know.”

“What did she want to know?”

“All about Dean Bradshaw and my mother.”

“Did she say why?”

“She wanted to help me in my crusade. I went on a sort of crusade after I talked to Daddy in the hotel. A children’s crusade.” Her giggle turned into a sob before it left her throat. “The only thing it accomplished was the death of my good friend Helen. And when I found her body–”

Her eyes opened wide. Then her mouth opened wide. Her body went rigid, as if it was imitating the rigor of the dead. She stayed like that for fifteen or twenty seconds.

“It was like finding Mommy again,” she said in a small voice, and came fully awake. “Is it all right?”

“It’s all right,” Alex said.

He helped her up to a sitting position. She leaned on him, her hair mantling his shoulder. A few minutes later, still leaning on him, she walked across the hallway to her room. They walked like husband and wife.

Godwin closed the door of the examination room. “I hope you gentlemen got what you wanted,” he said with some distaste.

“She talked very freely,” Jerry said. The experience had left him drained.

“It was no accident. I’ve been preparing her for the last three days. Pentothal, as I’ve told you before, is no guarantee of truth. If a patient is determined to lie, the drug can’t stop him.”

“Are you implying she wasn’t telling the truth?”

“No. I believe she was, so far as she knows the truth. My problem now is to enlarge her awareness and make it fully conscious. If you gentlemen will excuse me?”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You can spare me a minute, doctor. I’ve spent three days and a lot of Kincaid’s money developing facts that you already had in your possession.”

“Have you indeed?” he said coldly.

“I have indeed. You could have saved me a good deal of work by filling me in on Bradshaw’s affair with Constance McGee.”

“I’m afraid I don’t exist for the purpose of saving detectives work. There’s a question of ethics involved here which you probably wouldn’t understand. Mr. Marks probably would.”

“I don’t understand the issue,” Jerry said, but he edged between us as if he expected trouble. He touched my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here, Lew, and let the doctor get about his business. He’s cooperated beautifully and you know it.”

“Who with? Bradshaw?”

Codwin’s face turned pale. “My first duty is to my patients.”

“Even when they murder people?”

“Even then. But I know Roy Bradshaw intimately and I can assure you he’s incapable of killing anyone. Certainly he didn’t kill Constance McGee. He was passionately in love with her.”

“Passion can cut two ways.”

“He didn’t kill her.”

“A couple of days ago you were telling me McGee did. You can be mistaken, doctor.”

“I know that, but not about Roy Bradshaw. The man has lived a tragic life.”

“Tell me about it.”

“He’ll have to tell you himself. I’m not a junior C-man, Mr. Archer. I’m a doctor.”

“What about the woman he recently divorced, Tish or Letitia? Do you know her?”

He looked at me without speaking. There was sad knowledge in his eyes. “You’ll have to ask Roy about her,” he said finally.