James Chase - Shock Treatment

“Maddox?” That really jolted me. “What’s he coming for?”

“Here he is now,” Harmas said.

I heard a car coming and I stepped to the french doors and looked out.

The sight of the police car with its siren and red light on the roof gave me a shock.

From the car came Lieutenant John Boos of the LA Homicide Squad: a big, powerfully-built man, around forty-two or three, with a red, fleshy face and small steel-grey eyes.

He was followed by a short, thickset man who I guessed was Maddox. He wasn’t more than five-foot six. He had the shoulders and chest of a prize fighter and the legs of a midget. His face was rubbery and red. His eyes were restless and as bleak as a Russian winter. He wore his well-cut clothes carelessly, and he had a habit of running thick, stubby fingers through his thinning grey hair to add to his untidy appearance.

He came up the verandah steps, frowning, his small restless eyes missed nothing.

Harmas introduced me.

Maddox shook my hand. His grip was hard and warm, and he nodded to me.

“Glad to have your help, Mr Regan,” he said. “I understand you’re working for the company now.”

I muttered something as Boos loomed up.

“Hello, Regan,” he said. “So you’ve got tangled up in this thing too, huh?”

“That’s right,” I said, and my voice sounded small and husky.

“Let’s get at it,” Maddox said and walked into the lounge. He stood in front of the TV set. “This it?”

“That’s the baby,” Harmas said cheerfully. He turned the set around. “Those four screws held the back in place.”

Maddox stared for a long moment, then walked over to the empty fireplace.

“Sit down, Lieutenant. You, Mr Regan, sit over there. We won’t need you for a while so just take it easy.”

I sat away from the other three and I lit a cigarette. My heart was thumping and my hands were unsteady and I was pretty badly scared.

Boos picked the most comfortable chair and lowered his bulk into it. He took out a pipe and began to fill it.

Harmas sank into another lounging chair and stretched out his long legs.

“Well now, Lieutenant,” Maddox said, “I’ve asked you up here because I’m not satisfied with this claim. Briefly, one of our salesmen called on Delaney and sold him insurance coverage for this TV set. There’s a clause in the policy that gives coverage of five thousand dollars in the event of death through a fault in the set. It’s one of those dumb clauses our sales people put in to catch a sale. We have sold twenty-three thousand, four hundred and ten of these policies, and this is the first claim covering death by a fault we have had. That is: it is a twenty-three thousand to one chance, and when that happens I get suspicious. The claim arrived five days after the policy was signed. Delaney was buried before the policy was even delivered.”

Boos lit his pipe and frowned at Maddox.

“It could be one of those things, M: Maddox. I’ve read the coroner’s report. I’ve talked to Sheriff Jefferson. Nothing I’ve seen in the report and nothing Jefferson has said has convinced me there’s anything wrong with the setup. It looks straightforward enough to me.”

“It looks straightforward to you, Lieutenant, because you don’t handle fifteen hundred claims a week as I do,” Maddox said. “If you had sat at my desk for the number of years that I have, you would get to know a bad claim by instinct. I know this claim is a bad one. I feel it here!” And he paused to thump his chest. “But I don’t expect you to act on my hunches. Let’s take a look at the setup. Delaney was paralysed from the waist down. I’ve got a report from the doctor who attended him when the accident happened. The doctor says he was not able to bend at the waist. That means he was sitting upright all the time in his chair, and he could not bend forward. Now I’ll give you a little demonstration that’ll interest you.”

He turned to me.

“Mr Regan, I want your help. Will you sit in Delaney’s chair?”

I knew what was coming. Keeping my face expressionless, I walked over to the chair and sat in it.

Harmas picked up a length of cord that was lying on the table. He went around behind me and looped the cord around my chest and behind the chair and tied it tightly, preventing me from moving forward.

“That was the way Delaney was fixed: bolt upright and unable to bend forward,” Maddox said.

“Okay, okay,” Boos said, frowning. “So what?”

“Go ahead, Regan,” Maddox said, “and take the back off the set.”

“It can’t be done,” I said.

“Well, try anyway, and try hard.”

I wheeled the chair up to the set and took out the two top fixing screws: that was easy, but I couldn’t get within two feet of the bottom screws, fixed as I was in the chair.

“You’ve read the coroner’s report,” Maddox said to Boos. “When Regan found Delaney’s body, the back of the set was off. And another thing there was a screwdriver by Delaney’s side. He apparently got it from the storeroom. He hooked the toolbox down from the shelf with a walking stick. The tools fell on the floor. Ask yourself: how did he manage to pick the screwdriver up?”

Harmas put the screwdriver on the floor beside me.

“Can you reach it?”

My fingers were a good twelve inches from the tool.

Maddox said to Harmas, “Take the back off the set.”

When Harmas had removed the back, Maddox said to Boos, “See those two terminals in the set? Delaney was supposed to have touched them with the screwdriver: that’s how he was supposed to have been killed. You can see Regan can’t get near them from where he is sitting.”

Boos got abruptly to his feet. He came to stare at the inside of the set.

“Do you see what I’m driving at?” Maddox went on. “Delaney is supposed to have taken the back off the set. He couldn’t have done it. He is supposed to have got the screwdriver from the storeroom. He couldn’t have done it. He is supposed to have touched those two terminals. He couldn’t have done it.”

Boos stared at him.

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

Harmas undid the cord that bound me to the chair and I got out of the chair.

Then Boos turned to me.

“Let’s have your story again, Regan,” he said. “Let’s go over the whole thing. You called on Delaney to see how the set was working. Right?”

“Yes. I found Delaney lying in front of the TV set. There was a steel screwdriver by his hand and the back of the set was off. I thought he had electrocuted himself. I pulled the plug out of the mains and then I touched him.”

“He was dead?” Boos asked.

“Yes.”

“How did you know he was dead?”

“He was cold and he was stiff.”

“When a man is killed by a big dose of electricity,” Maddox said, “he burns. He’s not going to cool the way a body would cool, dying from gun-shot wounds or a stab in the back. The jolt he gets from an electric shock would increase the temperature of his blood. If Delaney had died of an electric shock, his body wouldn’t have been noticeably cold in three hours.”

Boos began to look bewildered.

“Are you trying to tell me he didn’t die of an electric shock?” he demanded, staring at Maddox.

“I’m not trying to tell you anything,” Maddox said curtly. “I want his body exhumed.”

Boos scratched the side of his neck, frowning at Maddox.

“You’ll have to talk to Jefferson first,” he said. “Maybe there is something wrong, but I’m Homicide. You’re not suggesting Delaney was murdered, are you?”

There was a constriction in my chest now that made breathing difficult. I leaned forward in my chair, staring at Maddox, my hands squeezed between my knees, waiting to hear what he would say.