Ed McBain - Goldilocks

“That sounds like—”

“That’s what she said.”

He was at the house only last Tuesday, he and Maureen sat at the kitchen table half the night, just talking. A real heart-to-heart talk. About my having stopped the alimony payments, about his going back to school — they’d have gone on forever if I hadn’t told them I was going to bed, I had a busy day tomorrow.

“It sounds like what your father said.”

“My father wasn’t there.”

“Not Sunday night, Michael, Tuesday night. When you and Maureen talked for hours at the kitchen table.”

“We... talked Sunday night, too.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. I told you we—”

“During all the time you talked, did you once ask her what she was afraid of?”

“No.”

“But you said that was the reason you went to the house.”

“That’s right.”

“You hitched a ride from the end of Stone Crab Key—”

“ Yes .”

“Because Maureen was afraid of something—”

“That’s—”

“But then you killed her.”

He did not answer.

“Michael?”

He still did not answer.

“Michael, who called you on Sunday night?”

“Maureen. I told you it was Maureen.”

“Michael, I don’t think Maureen called you. I think Maureen was dead when you got there.”

He shook his head.

“Who killed her, Michael? Do you know who killed her?”

At the far end of the corridor, there was the sound of the door clanging open, and then hurried footsteps. I turned at once. Ehrenberg was approaching the cell.

“You’d better come upstairs,” he said. “We’ve got another confession in this damn case.”

“She came in five minutes ago,” Ehrenberg said, “told the girl downstairs she wanted to talk to whoever was in charge of the Purchase murder case. Girl sent her right up. I introduced myself, and the first thing she said was, ‘I killed them.’ She started filling me in, and I stopped her cold, put in a call to the captain. He told me to call the State’s Attorney’s office, we want them here doing the interview. We can’t afford any foul-ups on this. If we have two confessions kicking around, we may end up with nobody getting blamed for the crime. I’ll tell you, I never did buy that boy’s story all the way, too many loose ends that kept unraveling.”

We had come down the corridor and into the reception area. The orange letter-elevator still dominated the room, the girl was still behind her desk typing. Ehrenberg asked her if the captain had arrived yet, and she told him he hadn’t.

“She’s in there waiting to talk to you,” he said, and indicated the door to the captain’s office.

She was sitting in the same chair Michael had sat in yesterday morning. She was wearing a dark blue linen suit and blue patent leather pumps. Her blonde hair was pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head. She looked up as I came into the room.

“I wanted you here when I exonerated my brother,” she said. “Detective Ehrenberg told me you were right downstairs.”

“Yes. Talking to Michael, in fact.”

“How is he?” Her eyes searched my face — her father’s eyes, Jamie’s eyes.

“He seems all right,” I said. “Miss Purchase, you told Detective Ehrenberg you killed Maureen and her daughters. Is that—”

“Yes.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true.”

“Because if it isn’t, you won’t be doing Michael a damn bit of good by confessing to a crime you didn’t commit.”

“Mr. Hope, I killed them,” she said. The pale blue eyes fastened on mine. “Believe me, I killed them.”

By eleven-fifteen, they had all gathered and were ready to discuss it. They were experts, all of them, and they knew that the progress of an interview, as they insisted on calling it, could be seriously impeded by the presence of too many “authority figures,” as the man from the State’s Attorney’s office labeled us. I was one of the authority figures; Karin Purchase had stated plainly that she would not make a statement unless her brother’s attorney were there to hear every word. The captain in charge of the Detective Bureau wisely offered to stay out of the questioning session, offering the opinion that Miss Purchase now knew Ehrenberg was the man in charge of the investigation, and might feel more comfortable in his presence.

The man from the State’s Attorney’s office was a stout and perspiring gentleman named Roger Bensell. He was wearing a winter-weight brown pin-striped suit, with a yellow shirt and a maroon tie. His shoes were brown, with perforated pointed tips that made him look like a fat ballroom dancer. He kept mopping his brow and telling the captain that this was an important case. I had no doubt that both the captain and Ehrenberg were well aware of this; the very fact that the State’s Attorney was here seemed to prove that contention. It was decided that Ehrenberg and I would both be in attendance while Bensell conducted the interview. The captain informed Karin of this, and she was entirely agreeable.

He further suggested that since the rooms customarily used for interviewing were somewhat smaller than might allow for the comfort of four people, Karin might prefer being interviewed there in his own office. Karin accepted his offer. The captain introduced her to Mr. Bensell of the State’s Attorney’s office, and left the room. Mr. Bensell asked if she was ready to begin. She said she was. He pushed the RECORD button on the tape recorder and, just as Ehrenberg had done yesterday, told the microphone what day it was, and what time — eleven-twenty A.M. — and where we were, and who was present. He then laboriously read her rights to her, and Karin acknowledged that she understood each and every one of them, and said that the only attorney she wished present during the interview was Mr. Matthew Hope.

Bensell then began the question-and-answer session.

Q: What is your name, please?

A: Karin Purchase.

Q: Can you tell me where you live, Miss Purchase?

A: In New York City.

Q: Where in New York?

A: Central Park West. 322 Central Park West.

Q: Do you have an address here in Calusa?

A: Right now, I’m staying at the Calusa Bay Hotel.

Q: By right now...

A: I moved there last night. When I first arrived in Calusa, I checked into a motel near the airport.

Q: When was that?

A: Sunday night.

Q: By Sunday night, do you mean Sunday, February twenty-ninth?

A: Yes. I know what Mr. Hope is thinking. He’s thinking I told him I’d arrived in Calusa only last night. But I was lying to him. I got here on Sunday.

Q: What time Sunday?

A: I took a flight from Newark at five-forty-five, I arrived in Calusa at a little past ten. I called my mother from the airport, I was planning to stay with her, but she was out. So I rented a car and looked for a motel.

Q: Why did you come to Calusa, Miss Purchase?

A: To talk to my mother.

Q: About what?

A: About the alimony payments. My father stopped the alimony payments. When I spoke to her on the phone Saturday, she was very upset. I decided to come down and talk to her personally. To try to comfort her. To figure out what we should do next. But she wasn’t home.

Q: So you checked into a motel instead.

A: Yes.

Q: Can you tell me the name of the motel?

A: Twin Ridges? Something like that. I don’t remember.

Q: What time did you check in?

A: It must’ve been close to ten-thirty.

Q: What did you do then?

A: I tried to reach my mother again. She was still out.

Q: Yes, go on.

A: I watched television for a little while. Then I tried her again, and there was still no answer. I was very eager to talk to her. It was my idea to confront my father. To go there together with my mother and demand... you see, my brother had already told her he wouldn’t help. I was the only one who could help her. But she wasn’t home.