Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

“Mr. John,” the Chief said again, this time in a tighter voice.

I looked at him then. “I’m going to find out,” I said in a quiet voice. “Miss Millie was my teacher in the tenth grade. She was a fine old lady.”

“Don’t get personal about it, Mr. John,” he said. He motioned toward the equipment on the table. “I’ve warned you about these things.”

“If you don’t like it, fire me. But just give me half an hour,” I said. “I’ll know by then.”

The kid was looking at the Chief’s kindly face. He watched the Chief’s eyes waver away from mine, saw him turn his back. “I’d better go see how the men are doing,” he said, muttering the words as he hurried out of the room.

It was pretty much of a standard routine that we’d worked out over the years. It made me the villain of the piece and later on, if need be, the Chief could come back and be buddy-buddy with the suspect. Usually he didn’t have to work that part. Not after I got through.

Now, I’m not fond of the third-degree method, even if I am tough enough for my job. I’ve always considered it a failure when I had to lay a hand on a guy. It’s all in the atmosphere. If you can shake the bravado out of him you’ll generally get close enough to the truth. Lots of guys you can hurt and never find out a thing. Most guys can stand hurting a lot better than they can stand the thought of hurting.

I nodded at the patrolman and he went out too. Then I looked at the kid again.

“Let’s start telling,” I said.

He was as pale as clay. His hands lying on the table were trembling and he knotted them together. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I picked up the rubber hose and bounced it off the palm of my hand. I kept on bouncing it and his eyes followed it, hypnotized, as it moved limberly in my hand.

“That old lady was lying up there on the kitchen floor with her head bashed in,” I said in a quiet voice. “You didn’t even do it until you’d eaten the meal that she gave you, there on the end of the kitchen table. Or maybe you killed her and then ate the meal. I don’t know. Then you searched the house. You found the money. You took the lapel watch off her body. Then you left. Like an idiot, you started right out of town on the highway, where you were picked up. Didn’t you know you’d be picked up? Wasn’t that kind of stupid of you?”

“I didn’t kill her,” he said. His voice was low, hopeless. But it was insistent.

“Take off your shirt,” I said.

His hands flew to the buttons as though he was glad to please me with something. He fumbled at the job and it took him a while to get the first three buttons undone. Then he stopped.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it.”

“Talk,” I said, not easing the pressure at all.

“There was a guy,” he said in a fast voice. “I met him out by the railroad tracks, where I was planning to spend the night. He was drunk and he offered me a drink. He had two pints of Cabin Hollow com whiskey. We had some drinks together. After a while he passed out.” He looked up at me. He had some of his defiance back. “So I rolled him. That’s where I got the watch and the money. He had all that money on him.”

“That’s a pretty good story,” I said. “Too bad it’s not the truth.”

“It is the truth. He was already drunk when I got with him. He passed out in fifteen minutes.” He wrinkled up his face. “And that com whiskey — it was awful...” His voice ran down.

“Describe the man.”

“He was tall, shabbier-looking than me. He had a long face and real big hands. His skin was dead-white and he was nearly bald. His feet were big, too, I remember them.”

I put the rubber hose down on the table. I sat down in a chair. I looked at the boy. I hadn’t really looked at him before. You don’t want to look too deep into a guy you’ve got to get tough with. Just let him be a face where you can see the reactions moving through him, see whether you’re succeeding or not.

But I really looked at him now. He had a friendly kind of face. There was the kind of toughness there you pick up when you’re on the road young. But it was an open face, too, in spite of being frightened and nervous. You could tell he’d been picked up in strange towns before.

When you’ve been a cop as long as I have, you go on instinct more than you go on fact. That’s why I don’t have much use for these young fellows and their F.B.I.-taught methods — they don’t leave any room for a cop’s instinct.

The kid’s story had the feel of truth in it. Looking at him, I just knew in my bones he was the kind that was perfectly capable of rolling a drunk. But the capability in him didn’t reach as far as cold-blooded murder. There were no real facts to pin it on, only his bald statement — except that he’d described very accurately our town drunk. But I knew that I had hold of the truth now, like holding one end of a string.

I know that a man can kill his mother and smile and smile and keep smiling. But I could feel the innocence in this kid, and that was why I’d been uneasy ever since I’d first laid eyes on him, why I’d had to push myself through the routines of the questioning. Hell, I liked the kid. If he had really murdered old Miss Burden, I just couldn’t have liked him.

He began to get more and more nervous as I sat staring at him. He couldn’t look directly at me, and he couldn’t look away.

“Where are you from, son?” I said finally. “What are you doing on the road, anyway?”

“I’m from Canton, Missouri,” he said. He tried to smile but he didn’t make much out of it. “I’m on the road because I just like to travel, I guess.”

“Where did you pick up the description of the man you said you rolled?” I said. “Did you see him on the street somewhere?”

He made a brave show of looking straight into my eyes but he couldn’t manage it. “I met him out by the railroad yards,” he said. “Like I said.”

I got up from the chair. I went to the door and called the patrolman. “Take him back to his cell,” I told him.

I watched the two of them go down the corridor. The boy, from the back, had a good pair of shoulders, leaning down to narrow hips. He’d never be a slob like me. I’ve always been big-hipped, even when I was a kid. Well, a man gets used to his own ugliness, I reckon — especially when it’s useful in his work. I went to the office. The Chief looked up from his desk when I came in. “Is he ready for a statement?” he said. He motioned toward a patrolman. “Sam here is waiting to take it down when you’re ready.”

“No,” I said. “He’s not ready.”

The Chief lifted his head again, looking at me sharply. “What’s the matter, Mr. John?”

“Maybe there won’t be a statement,” I said. “Maybe the boy is innocent.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” the Chief said. “You expect us to start believing in miracles? He’s a road kid. He’s got the money on him and he’s got the watch. I figure it would take a jury about fifteen minutes. What more do you want?”

I could feel the stubbornness coming up in me. The same kind of stubbornness that the boy had shown. “I don’t doubt that,” I said. “Nobody would feel very bad about hanging Miss Burden’s murder on him. The Prosecutor could rant and rave to his heart’s content. The Judge could be wise and legal. The jury could be self-righteous as hell. A good time would be had by all.”

“What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

I laid my hand flat on his desk, leaning on it. “I tell you he’s not guilty.”

He drew away from me. I kept on looking at him. I was on the force before he was. He was Chief now and I would never be Chief — never in a million years. But he knew me. I was Mr. John.