Samuel Holt - The Fourth Dimension is Death

“This one?” She seemed really surprised, and really troubled. “Sam, hon, don’t you realize how badly you could be smeared in this thing? You still have some hope for your career, don’t you?”

“Well, don’t say it like that,” I said. “Of course I do. And in fact, the longer it is since PACKARD’S off the air, the better chance I have to break out of this typecasting thing.”

“Except for this lawsuit,” she insisted. “They don’t have to prove you murdered that fellow, all they have to do is say you did and then pretend to talk about something else, like civil rights and damages. You’ll never live that down, you’ll never work again or be asked to give your name to charities or present awards or talk to film classes in colleges or—”

“Some of that wouldn’t be so bad,” I said, trying for comedy, but hearing myself how hollow it sounded.

“Oh, yes, it would,” she said. “For the rest of your life, you won’t be Packard any more, you’ll be the TV star who murdered the poor struggling actor, and got away with.”

“Got away with it? How do you figure—”

“No electric chair,” she said. “Not even prison. Just paid some damages . People will say you bought your way out of it, you’ll be mentioned in editorials talking about justice being different for the rich and the poor. Sam,” she said, “if you let the lawyers just do their normal gavotte through this one, there’s no way you can win. Because the judge isn’t even going to rule on whether or not you’re a murderer, not really. He’s going to rule on whether or not you owe damages to the dead man’s mother. This is the worst example I’ve ever seen, Sam, of the old question, ‘Do you still beat your wife, answer yes or no.’ Do you owe Mrs. Wormley money for killing her son, answer yes or no.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “you make it sound even worse than I thought.”

“It is even worse than you thought.”

“But what am I supposed to do about it?”

“I don’t know , “Bly said, staring at me. “Think about it, anyway, try to find some way...” She shook her head, waved her arms in frustration. “I don’t know what to do, Sam, but we can’t just sit here and wait for it to roll over you, and this is not just me making up stories again and doing sitcom plots.”

“No, I know it isn’t,” I said. “You’re right, I’m in trouble no matter what. Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“Unless the cops are going to break the case soon. Arrest the real murderer, and that makes the lawsuit moot.”

“If that was going to happen,” Bly said reasonably, “wouldn’t it have happened by now?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But probably,” she said, and then she said, “What if you hired a private detective? Now, wait a minute,” she said quickly, when I looked at her, “don’t look at me like that. There are private detectives in the real world, and people hire them all the time—”

“Not to find murderers,” I said. “In fact, Mort Adler probably will hire one or two, to do backgrounds on Mrs. Wormley and her son, see if we can prove she doesn’t need the money, or her son never provided for her when he could, or something like that.”

“Stuff that won’t help you at all,” she said.

“I agree completely,” I told her. “But that’s the kind of thing you hire a private detective for, in the real world.” I raised a hand, saying, “Wait wait wait, let’s find out a little more what’s going on in the case, before we decide what we should or shouldn’t do about it. It’s almost nine o’clock at night in New York now, so I probably can’t reach Sergeant Shanley any more today, but—”

“He’s the one who took over the case?”

“She,” I corrected, “and yes, she’s the one. I’ll try her in the morning, but I could at least call Terry Young tonight, and see what the press knows that it isn’t saying, if anything.”

“Then do it,” she said.

I looked around at this pleasant rustic living room, with the fire crackling in the fireplace, and night spreading like blue smoke across the view out the big front windows, and soft illumination from the bedroom upstairs where we’d left the light on and the warmth of our lovemaking would still be in the air, and I said, “I guess I’m just not going to get away from it, am I?”

Bly looked at me sympathetically. “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln,” she said, “how did you like the play?”

When I tried calling Terry Young that night I got a babysitter, who told me Terry and Gretchen were out to a screening in Manhattan and wouldn’t be back till late. I didn’t want to leave my number — that’s right, I was feeling so harried and paranoid I didn’t even want Terry to know where I was — so I just said I’d call back in the morning, and I did. “Well, well, it’s the civil wrong,” he said, when he heard my voice. “Betsy said you called last night. What’s happening?”

“That’s why I called,” I said. “To ask you that same question.”

“Well,” he said, not getting it, “so far as I know, you’re happening. On the international scene, of course, there’s always the Middle East, but that’s not the question, is it?”

“No. The question is, what’s happening on the murder of Dale Wormley? Not this goddam lawsuit, the killing itself.”

“Nothing that I know of,” Terry told me. “When the lawsuit broke, an enterprising fella on Newsday asked the police if they expected to prove your guilt any time soon, and an official spokesman’s answer was that the investigation was still proceeding.”

“They opened it, in other words,” I said.

“Exactly. They opened it.”

In police parlance, to ‘open’ is to close, which is about as near as the American language has come so far to the Newspeak of 1984 . Since in theory the police can only actually close a case by solving it, all unsolved cases are open, but not all open cases are by any means active. Therefore, active really means ‘open’, and open really means ‘closed’, and that meant the Dale Wormley murder wasn’t being worked on by anybody in this world.

Terry and I talked about this good news for a while, I promised him that when I had something public to say I’d say it to him, and then I went outside and stomped around by myself in the snow for a while, getting the stiffness out of my body and the negative feelings out of my brain, while Bly watched me from the living room window, like a sea captain’s wife worried about storms. Then I went back inside and started calling Sergeant Shanley.

It took four tries, and when at last I reached her — again, I wouldn’t leave a callback number with anybody — she said, “I was wondering if I’d hear from you. Where are you?”

“In California.”

“And what can I do for you?”

“Find the murderer of Dale Wormley,” I said.

She chuckled. “That would be a nice thing, wouldn’t it? But at the moment, I’m afraid, it isn’t looking very good.”

“I understand you’ve opened the case,” I said.

There was a little surprised silence, and then she said, “Oh, that’s right, you used to be a cop.”

“That’s right.”

“So I shouldn’t blow smoke.”

Myself surprised by that, I involuntarily laughed, and said, “I’d appreciate that, yes.”

“Okay, then. If I’m called to testify in this civil trial of yours, I’ll say there’s no reason to suppose you killed Dale Wormley any more than anybody else did. Insufficient motive and no physical evidence.”

“Thank you.”