Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"Schroeder is a good man." Matthew Rogers said as he glanced through the bulging folder. "You can always depend on him to do a thorough job.

"Bradford Ames chuckled and told him to take another look at the medical examiner's report.

"Why?" But he picked up the sheet again and this time saw the time of death. "Obviously a clerical error. Call Dr. Lagrange."

"I did. Matt, he says it's correct as he gave it in his report."

"Then he made a mistake, he's new at this. This was his first time, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but Dr. Slocumbe says that if Lagrange pinpointed it that close, then that's when it occurred."

"But. Brad." Rogers was exasperated, "it just doesn't make any sense. I don't know what buggered up his analysis, but something did. It may have been something ridiculous, like his watch stopped, but this is one case where the medical examiner's analysis of the time isn't important because we have other and better evidence of when death occurred."

"It's no good. Matt, the other side would raise the question the minute they saw we didn't introduce it, then you'd have to offer it and we'd catch hell from the judge, and the papers too, for having suppressed evidence. No, you'll just have to let the kids go."

"What do you mean, let them go?" the district attorney asked belligerently.

«Because according to the evidence of our own expert, the medical examiner, Hendryx was killed before the bomb went off, we can't hold them responsible for his death."

"And he can't make a mistake? How about the time the corpse was locked in the freezer and it threw off all of Doc Slocumbe's calculations?"

"Put it this way. Matt, if I had presented the medical examiner's report when they were arraigned before Judge Visconte, would he have withheld bail?"

"Maybe not, but—"

"They're college kids. If the grand jury should refuse to bring in a true bill against them and charges are dismissed, they still will have served time and their lives will be messed up."

"Something you're forgetting. Brad, there's no doubt in my mind, and I guess there was none in Judge Visconte's, that they planted the bomb."

"They deny it."

"Of course."

"Maybe it was the missing one. Ekko, who did it." said Ames doggedly. "The others might not know anything about it."

"That's hard to believe."

"Why is it? He was the only one who skipped."

"Oh, I'm willing to admit that he may have been the actual perpetrator, but what grounds do you have for thinking the others didn't know about it?"

"Because he's different from the others, he's a lot older, for one thing. If the defense had taken this line. I think the judge might very well have gone along and set bail and they'd be out and back at school right now."

"School!" the district attorney echoed scornfully. "What the hell does that bunch of hippies care about school, except to cause trouble? Check it out and you'll find they never go to class, they just hang around and smoke pot and start riots and sit-ins, and when they're not doing that they're busy screwing, that Ekko guy was living with that girl. Ballantine, just as open and free as you please, the hell with them!"

"You're judging their life-styles. Matt, not their guilt."

"Sure. I'm taking their life-styles into account in making up my mind about their guilt, just as every jury does in deciding on the credibility of every witness they see on the stand, and every judge does the same. What's wrong with that?" demanded Rogers. "If we couldn't judge on things like that, then the only people we'd ever find guilty would be those who confessed. What are you getting at. Brad? Do you want me to appoint somebody else, maybe Hogan, to this case?"

"I don't know." said Ames soberly, he shifted unhappily in his seat, then decided to make one last try. "Let's just say, as a kind of exercise in logic, that Dr. Lagrange is absolutely on target."

"All right, then I'll tell you what follows." said Rogers. "Lagrange says death occurred sometime between two-ten and two-forty? Let's call it half-past two. Now that means that Hendryx didn't go back to his apartment, but stayed there in his office, and that means that he was dead even before the committee came in to see the dean, and that means that someone had to come into his office, go around behind his desk, reach up somehow to where that statue is resting on the top shelf, and pull it down. Who can reach that top shelf? That's an old building there, with eleven-or twelve-foot ceilings. Our mysterious assailant would have to hop up on one of the lower shelves, maybe hang on with one hand while he grabbed at the statue with the other, and all the while Hendryx just sits there? He doesn't ask what the guy is doing?"

"What if he were asleep? What if he dozed off?"

"Then how did the person get into the office?" challenged Rogers. "It's locked."

"The door could have been open. I mean, the latch might not have caught when the rabbi left."

"Possibly, but just barely."

"And if the murderer had a long stick with a curved handle, like a cane, for example." said Ames, "then he could just hook the statue and pull it down."

"Sure, Brad, and then?"

"And then what?"

"And then how do you figure the pipe and the hassock and the open book in Hendryx's apartment?"

"Well, it's possible that the cleaning woman fibbed about that." said Ames. "Naturally, she'd want to get out as early as she could, and if she thought Hendryx wasn't likely to come back and check on her, she might have skimped and not done a thorough job."

"Then why didn't she say so?"

"Well, all I know is that if it was my cleaning woman she wouldn't want to say, they have a kind of professional pride."

"So question her again." said Rogers good-naturedly. "If you can make her change her story. I'll reconsider Lagrange's finding on the time of death."