The Copper Frame

Chapter 8

“I had Chaney and Ross run him over to the hospital,” Saxon said, speaking to the district attorney and ignoring Morrison. “When they brought him back, they just dropped him off and continued on patrol, they didn’t come in with him. Before coming in, Morrison must have walked back to the woman’s cell window and rapped on the glass to signal her it was time to go into her act. That way they could time it perfectly for him to walk in at the crucial moment.”

Morrison laughed aloud. “This guy isn’t just a rapist. He must be on marijuana.”

“Well, explain your faked appendix attack,” Saxon said hotly.

“What’s to explain? I got worried over a pain that turned out to be just indigestion. I can demonstrate how silly your story is, though. You’re charging that this whole thing was a conspiracy between me and my prisoner, huh?”

“I am.”

“Okay, let’s kick that around. I was assigned to this case when Factor’s body was discovered a month ago, but Grace Emmet had already skipped town when I got it. I never in my life laid eyes on her until I picked her up at the Erie police station at nine this evening. You can check that time with the Erie police. By the time they checked her out and we got going, it was nine-thirty. Are you suggesting that in the hour and a half it took us to drive here, I talked a total stranger into framing you for rape?”

After thinking this over, even Saxon had to admit it seemed unlikely. Arnold Kettle’s expression indicated he considered it impossible.

Morrison said, “Furthermore, I never before laid eyes on you. Why the hell would I want to frame a total stranger, using another total stranger as an accomplice?”

Arnold Kettle cleared his throat. “It does seem that an awful lot of coincidence would have to be involved, Ted. A plot such as you suggest would require considerable advance planning. Assuming just for the sake of argument that there was such a plot, how would Sergeant Morrison know you’d be on duty tonight? Or do you think that for some psychopathic reason he and his prisoner decided to frame just anybody they found on duty?”

“The whole town has known for ten days that I’d be on duty tonight,” Saxon said doggedly. “A police chief voluntarily taking New Year’s Eve is the sort of story that travels. And you must know how fast news travels in Iroquois.”

“I guess that guy in the cell was in on the conspiracy too, huh?” Morrison said sardonically. “I never laid eyes on him before, either.”

Saxon studied him from narrowed eyes. “Now that you mention it, he probably was planted here in order to be on hand as a witness. He did his damnedest to get himself jailed.” He turned to Kettle. “The boys brought him in about ten o’clock. Twice they’d stopped him for speeding, but the first time they let him go with a warning. He’d probably been racing back and forth all over town hoping to be stopped. The only reason he’s in jail is because he deliberately made himself obnoxious. He wanted to be jailed.”

“Why would all these people go to so much trouble?” the D.A. asked reasonably.

Saxon made a hopeless gesture. “You’ve got me, Arn. But they all have to be in on it. It’s too pat.”

“That’s true,” Kettle agreed. “Almost too pat to be believable. I’d like to talk to this witness.”

But questioning of Edward Coombs was postponed because Dr. Harmon and Jenny Waite came from the cell block at that moment. Jenny handed Saxon the keys as the doctor set his bag on the bench and started to put on his coat.

“Hello, Arn,” Harmon said to the district attorney. “How was the country-club dance?”

“Too loud to stand, sober. And you had to put me on a non-alcoholic diet. What’s the story on the woman?”

The doctor shrugged. “You can’t just look at a woman and tell whether or not she’s been raped. Unless it was so violent there’s physical damage — which there isn’t in this case. Aside from the damage to her clothing, there isn’t anything either to prove or to disprove her charge. Her pulse and respiration are normal. Of course, by now she’s had time to quiet down. An hour ago she may have been registering a pulse of two hundred for all I know.”

“Then you can’t say one way or the other?” the district attorney asked.

“Not tonight. Ask me tomorrow when I get the lab report. I’ve prepared a microscopic slide which should tell the story.”

Saxon said, “Bruce, when you examined Sergeant Morrison at the hospital earlier, what did you find?”

“Nothing. He just seemed to be experiencing a touch of mild indigestion.”

“Could he have been faking?”

The doctor glanced curiously from Saxon to the sergeant and back again. “I have no reason to suspect he was,” he said cautiously.

“But could he have been? It’s important.”

“If you mean was it possible, of course it was. My diagnosis was based on the patient’s description of symptoms, because there weren’t any physical symptoms to base it on. When a patient claims pain, I assume there is pain.” Glancing at the sergeant, he said humorously, “The only way to tell definitely is to ask the patient. Were you faking?”

“If you’d felt my pain, you’d know I wasn’t,” Morrison rumbled.

“I guess that settles that,” Harmon said, picking up his bag. “I’ll phone you the lab-test results some time tomorrow morning, Arn. I assume you’ll be home instead of at your office.”

“If I’m not, try me here. My office will be closed for the legal holiday.”

As the doctor went out at his usual rapid walk, a whole group of police officers trooped in together. In addition to the five members of the second trick, now going off duty, there was the reduced staff of three who would now go on for the swing trick, plus patrolman Verne Dowling, Saxon’s desk relief. Glancing at the wall clock, Saxon saw it was just one o’clock.

Naturally, all the officers were curious about the presence of Jenny and the D.A., but Saxon brusquely interrupted their questioning, told the old crew to log out, and the relief to get out on patrol. All of them seemed a little surprised at his brusqueness, but they hurried to comply with his orders. Within five minutes all but Dowling had departed again.

Verne Dowling didn’t ask any questions either. Though he had no idea of what was going on, he recognized that his usually amiable acting chief was in a towering rage and discreetly made himself inconspicuous. Storing his overcoat and hat in his squad-room locker, he quietly moved behind the desk and seated himself.

Saxon said coldly, “I’ll take you back to talk to the prisoners now, Arn. You can stand by while we question the woman, Jenny. But we won’t need you, Morrison.”

Morrison agreeably reseated himself on the bench. Saxon led the others back to the cell block.

There was no change in either prisoner’s story. When they returned from the cell block. Kettle looked thoughtful, Jenny looked upset, and Saxon was furious. It increased his anger when he saw by the disbelieving expression on Verne Dowling’s face that Sergeant Morrison had informed the desk man of what was going on.

Morrison stood up and said, “If you’re through with my prisoner, Mr. Kettle, is it all right if I take her on to Buffalo? I’m sure the Erie County D.A. won’t object to her being returned as a witness whenever you’re ready for her.”

“I suppose it’s all right, Sergeant. She isn’t charged with anything here, and it may be weeks or months before we need her as a witness. You’d better scare up something for her to wear, though. There isn’t much left of her clothing.”

Morrison said, “I’ll bring in her suitcase and let her change.”

Saxon asked bitterly, “Am I under arrest, Arn?”

“I don’t think you’ll run anywhere,” the district attorney said equably. “We’ll hold off any legal action for the time being. Suppose you meet me here tomorrow morning. Say about eleven?”

“All right,” Saxon said stiffly. “Jenny, you stick around until Sergeant Morrison gets his prisoner out of here. We don’t want anyone else accused of rape.”

Stalking into the squad room, he got his coat, hat, and galoshes from his locker, put them on, and strode out again. As he headed for the door, he threw curt goodnights to Kettle, Jenny, and Dowling. He didn’t even look at Sergeant Morrison.

There were now several inches of snow on the street, and snow was falling so heavily that visibility was cut to a matter of yards. Saxon drove the three blocks to Iroquois General Hospital at ten miles an hour.

There was no one in the hospital lobby at that time of night. As he passed the desk, the switchboard operator called, “Hi, Chief,” and he gave her a distant nod. He took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to Ward 3-B. He found Emily seated alone in the nurses’ alcove marking charts.

She looked up with a surprised smile, then simultaneously saw the twin scratches on his cheek and his expression of controlled rage. The smile changed to a look of concern.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“We may have to postpone our marriage again. I’ll probably be in jail.”

She paled. “Why? What’s happened?”

“I’m accused of raping a female prisoner in her cell.”

She stared at him in astonishment. “You? That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

“You’re prejudiced,” he said bitterly. “The D.A. thinks I’m guilty. Jenny Waite thinks it. By tomorrow everyone in town will think it.”

“Maybe you’d better sit down and tell me about it,” she said. “I’ll get us a couple of cups of coffee.”

Rising, she dropped dimes in a coffee vendor in the corner beyond the desk and filled two paper cups. Setting them on the desk, she reseated herself. Saxon took the extra chair and dropped his hat on the floor next to it.

“Where are the other nurses?” he asked.

“Louise is checking the tents and intravenouses. Beth is sitting with a terminal case. We won’t be disturbed for a while.”

He took a sip of his coffee. Then he started at the beginning and described the events of the evening. When he finished, her eyes were blazing with anger even greater than his.

“The beasts!” she said indignantly. “Of course all three of them were in on it.” Suddenly leaning forward, she cupped his chin in her hands and kissed him fiercely on the mouth. “Poor darling. Why do you imagine they did such a thing?”

He hadn’t really expected that Emily would even for a moment have any doubts of his innocence. Nevertheless, her immediate and unquestioning acceptance that it couldn’t have been anything but a deliberate frame sent a warm feeling through him. For the first time in two hours he smiled.

“You know you’re quite a doll?” he said.

She colored. “Sometimes you make me feel like one. But why have they done this to you?”

Ted shook his head. “I can’t even begin to conceive of a reason. When I think about it, it doesn’t seem possible that it could be a frame. And I know it was. You can hardly blame Arn Kettle for thinking I’m guilty.”

“I can,” she said loyally. “He ought to know you couldn’t be guilty simply because you’re you.”

“Your prejudice is showing again,” he said with a grin. “I even boggle myself at believing it was a deliberate conspiracy when I think about it too hard. Maybe Grace Emmet planned it alone for some neurotic reason; maybe Coombs wasn’t deliberately planted there and only went along with her story to get even with me for jailing him; maybe Sergeant Morrison actually thinks he saw a raping. How could it have been planned so elaborately if Morrison never saw that Emmet woman before he picked her up in Erie?”

“Perhaps he promised her leniency if she co-operated,” Emily suggested doubtfully.

“Then you have to assume that Coombs got himself jailed on the off-chance that Morrison could talk her into co-operating during the hour-and-a-half drive from Erie. He couldn’t even have gotten in contact with Morrison to find out if he was going through with the plan.”

“Perhaps Morrison lied about never seeing her before,” Emily said. “Perhaps she was an ex-mistress or something, and he knew she would do as he wished.”

“That would be an even more unlikely coincidence.” Draining his coffee cup, he picked up his hat and climbed to his feet. “I’m not going to think about it any more tonight. Good night, doll.”

“Do you have to leave so soon?”

“You’ll get fired, entertaining a boy friend on duty. I’d better get out of here before the chief nurse comes along.”

Leaning down, he kissed her lightly, turned, and walked toward the elevator.