Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

I looked around the kitchen one more time after I put down the phone. “They’ve got somebody down at the jail,” I said to the eager bloodhounds.

They stopped hound-dogging and looked up at me, their faces blank and somewhat disappointed because the suspect had been picked up by the old police routine instead of being detected by their new methods.

“Found any fingerprints?” I asked them.

One of them shook his head. “Whoever did the job was careful,” he said. “No prints here but Miss Burden’s.”

I nodded. “I’m going down to the jail,” I said.

I walked through the hall of the big silent house and out onto the porch. I went down the walk to my car and got in. I looked back toward the house, wondering what was going to happen to it now. It was a shame. Some people you expect to die violently — but not Miss Millie. I shook my head and went on.

I was at the jail in ten minutes. I walked into the office and looked at the Sheriff and the Chief of Police. They were both big men, but the Chief had a pleasant face, full of smiling. The Sheriff was a grim and impressive man. The Chief had been on the force nearly as long as I had been, and the Sheriff had been in and out of office almost as long.

“Have you got him?” I said.

“We haven’t talked to him yet,” the Sheriff said. “We were waiting for you, Mr. John.”

I nodded. “What’s the deal?”

“He was picked up out on the highway, trying to hitchhike out of town,” the Sheriff said. “We got him on a routine sweep of strangers and suspicious characters as soon as we heard about Miss Millie.”

I nodded again. “It figured to be simple,” I said. “Let’s go look at him.”

The Sheriff picked up his hat. “I’ll check my men,” he said. “No use me hanging around here. You can handle it from here on.”

“Sure,” I said. “See you.”

He bobbed his head and went out. I led the way back to the cells. The kid was sitting on a bunk, staring down at the floor between his feet. He looked up when I stopped in front of the cell door.

“Searched him yet?” I said to the policeman guarding him.

“No, sir, Mr. John,” he said. “The Sheriff shook him down for weapons. But we waited for you.”

I nodded. That was the way I liked it. There’s an art to interrogation. If I was going to do the job, I didn’t want anybody messing up the field beforehand.

I opened the cell door. “What’s your name, kid?”

He looked up at me. He was young. He was scared and defiant at the same time. “Billy Roberts,” he said.

I paused, studying him for a moment. His face was dirty but it was the open, friendly kind of face you can like right off the bat. There was nothing to him of the television juvenile delinquent — his hair was cropped close to his head in a crew cut and he didn’t wear any of the television-type clothing. He had on a pair of shabby pants and a fairly new sports shirt. His hair was sandy, with a touch of red in it, and if he ever washed his face you’d probably see freckles there. I thought of Miss Millie. Just the kind of guy she’d bring into her kitchen to feed him a meal.

“Come along,” I said. “And bring that.” I motioned to the battered suitcase resting against the bars on the outside of the cell.

I turned my back and walked along the corridor. I didn’t look back to see if he followed. That was the job of the patrolman. I was already working on the interrogation procedure, you see, and I had to let just enough of my toughness show to make him uncertain about his own stamina.

The Chief came along, too. I led the way to the Interrogation Room. It’s a plain room with a table in the middle where we drink — coffee, usually — but all that had been cleared out for this job. I stopped and turned around.

“Empty your pockets,” I said.

His voice was high, jerky. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I tell you.”

I kept on looking at him. “Empty your pockets,” I said again in a reasonable voice.

He jerked his hands toward his pockets and began turning them out. There was a small penknife, a book of matches, a package of cigarettes, a wallet, a few coins. That was all.

I picked up the wallet in my big hands and looked inside. There was a dollar in the bill compartment. I began probing the card sections with a thick finger, taking out his driver’s license and photographs, all the junk everybody carries around. Then I hit paydirt. In the last compartment, folded thin, I found some bills. There were a good many of them, mostly fives and tens, with two or three twenties. I guess there was maybe a hundred and fifty dollars all told.

“Where did you get the money?” I said.

His face closed up tight and stubborn. I stood watching him for a moment, holding the bills. They were old bills, worn and crumpled, and they felt gritty under my fingertips. I looked at them closely, then shook them against the table. Tiny white crystals shook off onto the surface. I thought about the sugar bowl in Miss Millie’s kitchen. It had been smashed on the floor, the white sugar spilled out of its brokenness just like her brains had spilled out of her broken head.

“Where did you get the money?” I said.

“It’s mine,” he said in his high jerky voice.

“Sure,” I said. “But where did you get it?”

“I was working for a circus,” he said. “Up until a week ago. Cosmos Brothers. They were about to fold, so I blew the lot before they started skipping paydays. That’s the money I saved.”

“What did you do?”

“I was an elephant man,” he said. “You know...”

“An elephant man with a circus can save that kind of money?”

His face closed up again. He reached for the cigarettes and fumbled one out of the pack. I waited until he had put it into his mouth and had reached for the book of matches.

“Leave the cigarettes alone, kid.” I said.

He looked at me without believing. I took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it into my own. I lit it, slowly, watching his face hungry for the steadying assurance of the tobacco. I puffed the smoke at him.

“Let’s see what’s in the suitcase.”

The Chief and the patrolman watched as the kid lifted the suitcase to the table and opened it. I poked at the jumbled clothing inside — another pair of pants, two shirts, and some underwear. I tumbled it out, dropping it on the floor piece by piece as I went through.

Then I turned my attention to the suitcase itself. In one pocket there was a toothbrush and a razor and a bar of soap wrapped in toilet paper. In the other was a watch. I took it out, looked at it, and laid it on the table.

I heard the Chief’s breath suck in. It was an old-fashioned lapel watch, like ladies used to wear. Miss Millie Burden had worn it when she taught me in the tenth grade. I could still remember her gesture when she’d tilt it with one finger and look to see if the class period was nearly over.

I turned to the kid again. “You didn’t have to kill the old lady,” I said in my slow even voice. “You could have robbed her without that, an old lady like her.”

His face paled. His eyes wavered away from my face and he looked desperately around at the other men. “I didn’t kill anybody,” he said. “Honest. I didn’t even know that was why I was picked up.”

I watched him for a moment. Then I winked at the Chief when the kid wasn’t looking at either one of us.

“We’re fixing to find out about that right now,” I said.

“Mr. John,” the Chief said in a nervous voice, picking up his cue.

I ignored him. I went to one of the lockers and opened it. I took out a soiled white kid glove with heavy ridges on the back. I took out a length of rubber hose and a pair of lemon squeezers. I brought them to the table and laid them down.