James Chase - Shock Treatment

Boos’ face went a deep purple.

“Are you kidding me?” he snarled.

“No. I’m telling you: there was an empty drinking glass lying by his side. I wouldn’t kid about a thing like that.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve just remembered it?”

“That’s right.”

He blew out his cheeks.

“Pretty damned convenient for Mrs Delaney, isn’t it?”

“Is it? I remembered it, and I came down here right away to tell you.”

“Yeah?” He moved around his desk. “Listen, Regan, if you’re lying, you could go down on an accessory rap! And I’m telling you, I think you are lying!”

I kept control of myself with an effort.

“Why should I lie?” I said. “I found the glass by his side! If you don’t believe me, then it’s your look out!”

He stood for a moment glaring at me, then he said, “Okay.” He went to the door, opened it and bawled for Hopkins, his sergeant. “We’ll go out there right away, and you’ll show me where you found the glass and where you put it.”

Hopkins, a thin, tall man with a stoop, came in.

“We’re going out to Delaney’s place,” Boos said to him. “This joker here has suddenly remembered finding an empty drinking glass beside Delaney’s body which he picked up, washed out and put away. Can you imagine?”

“Is that a fact?” Hopkins said, gaping at me.

“Let’s go and find out,” Boos said grimly.

We drove in silence all the way up to Glyn Camp and to Delaney’s place. I sat at the back of the police car: Boos and Hopkins in the front.

It was a nervy, uncomfortable drive for me. I could feel the hostility of the two men in their rigid silence.

When we got to the cabin, I showed them where I had found the glass, then I showed them the glass in the kitchen cupboard.

Boos wouldn’t let me touch it. He carefully put a handkerchief around it, lifted it and sniffed at it.

“I washed it out,” I said.

“Yeah: I heard you the first time.”

He gave the glass to Hopkins who put it in a cellophane bag and then into his pocket.

“Okay, Regan,” Boos said, suddenly the very tough cop, “what’s this woman to you?”

I was expecting this and I was ready braced for it.

“She was nothing to me,” I said before I could stop myself or think of Macklin’s warning. “She was just the wife of a client.”

“Yeah?” Boos sneered. “With a body like that? Listen: you came up here to sell a TV set and you fell for her, didn’t you? I would have done the same. That woman’s got everything, and you knew she wasn’t getting any loving. So you picked on her. That’s it, isn’t it?”

I wanted to plant my fist in his sneering face, but I controlled myself. I knew he was needling me to make me blurt out a damaging admission.

“You’re wrong. She was nothing to me.”

“I say yes.” His small eyes glittered. “Will you swear you never took her out? Never lusted after her? Never had her alone to yourself?”

Then I remembered Macklin’s warning. He had said it would be fatal to Gilda if I lied about taking her to the Italian restaurant and Boos found out. But I couldn’t tell him now. I knew, if I did, he would get the truth out of me. I knew too he would jump it on Gilda and she might deny it.

I had to take the risk of him finding out.

“I swear to that,” I said. “She was nothing to me!”

He stared at me for a long moment, then turned away.

“For your sake, Regan, I hope you’re not lying. I’m going to check. If I find out you are lying, you’re going down for an accessory rap, and if I don’t get you fifteen years, I’ll turn my badge in.”

I felt I was over the danger now — anyway for the time being.

“To hell with you, Lieutenant,” I said. “You can do what you damn well like.”

He suddenly grinned.

“Okay, Regan. Maybe she wasn’t such a dope as to remove the glass. I always thought it was crummy the glass wasn’t there. Well, we’ll see. Come on: I’ll drive you back.”

Two days later I had a telephone call from Macklin.

“Hunt is taking the case,” he said. “He wants to talk to you. Will you be at his office at eleven this morning?”

I said I would.

Macklin sounded curt and unfriendly, and after he had given me Hunt’s address, he hung up.

Lowson Hunt had a set of offices in the fashionable quarter of Los Angeles. I knew him by reputation as did anyone who read the murder cases in the papers over the past ten years.

I had never seen him, and I was surprised to find that he was small, thin and frail looking. He could have been anything from fifty to sixty years of age. His thin pale face was nondescript: it was only his eyes that gave a hint of the man behind the mask. They were remarkable eyes: small and washed out and blue, but they gave me the impression of being able to look through a wall and see well beyond it: the most disconcerting eyes I have ever had to meet.

“Sit down, Mr Regan,” he said, waving to a chair. He made no attempt to get up or to shake hands. “I’ve been through the case against Mrs Delaney. I understand you are offering to finance her defence.”

“That’s right.”

I then got the full blast from his eyes, and the searching stare made me move uneasily.

“Why?”

“That’s my business,” I Said curtly. “What’s it going to cost?”

He leaned back in his chair, resting his small white hands on the desk, and continued to stare at me.

“It happens to be my business if you want me to get Mrs Delaney off,” he said. “Let me explain: when I started to try to make a reputation for myself as a defending attorney, I had the bad luck to run up against Maddox of the National Fidelity. I was defending a man who was charged with the murder of his wife. She was insured, and the money came to him. There wasn’t much of a case against him, and I felt confident that I’d get an acquittal, but I was wrong. When Maddox got on the stand and began sounding off about his instincts for spotting a phoney claim I could see the jury sliding away from me. Simply by stating facts and figures over the period he had been investigating claims, Maddox put so much suspicion into the minds of the jury that my client went to the gas chamber. During my career I have come up against Maddox three times, and each time he has licked me. I’ve accepted the fact now that he is an expert witness; he can sway juries and he is a deadly danger to anyone standing trial for murder. Maddox has been able to lick me because in every case he has been right. He has this odd instinct that tells him long before he even digs up the evidence that a claim is a phoney, and that the man or woman insured by his company has been murdered. He has sent eleven men and five women to the gas chamber during the past ten years. He now has a reputation that is almost impossible to shake. The jury and the press know that when he is connected with a prosecution the man or the woman on trial is a goner.” He drummed on the desk while he continued to stare at me. “He has never been proved wrong for the simple reason he isn’t ever wrong. Maddox says Delaney was murdered, and that means Delaney was murdered. It’s my job when defending a client to get him off whether he is guilty or not. I don’t give a damn how guilty he is. When he hires me, I’m his, body and soul, until he either walks out of a court a free man or goes to the gas chamber. I’m telling you this because, if I am going to lick Maddox, I must have the whole truth and all the facts. Whatever you tell me won’t go beyond this room. It’s up to you. It’s your money. If you want to save her, you’ll have to give me the facts.” He pointed a finger at me. “But remember this: even if I get all the facts, I’m still not guaranteeing that I’ll save her. I have had three failures against Maddox. I’m determined to lick him before I quit this racket, and this case may be my chance. I don’t give a damn if Mrs Delaney did murder her husband. All I care about is pricking Maddox’s ego. Once I show that he can be wrong, I’ve got him where I want him. No jury will be impressed with him as they have been in the past. It’s going to make my other cases in which Maddox is involved a lot’ easier for me.” He paused, then went on, “So if you have anything to tell me that I should know, now’s the time.”