Erie Gardner - The Case of the Lazy Lover

“All right, how about your dope on Fleetwood?”

“I’ll be back before you talk with Mrs. Allred, and I’ll give you ammunition that’ll crack his amnesia stall wide open.”

“That’s a promise?”

“That,” Mason said grimly, “is a promise. He was with a rancher named Overbrook. He walked in and said he had no idea who he was. I’m going to give you a chance to bust that story wide open. I’ll give you the ammunition. You can shoot it.”

“Okay, I’ll telephone the matron. Go on over and see Mrs. Allred.”

Mason took the pass Lieutenant Tragg scribbled, and went over to the detention ward. After a ten minute wait, he was taken in to see Mrs. Allred, who had quite evidently been aroused from a sound sleep and had had no opportunity to put on her make-up.

“We’ve found Fleetwood,” Mason said.

“Where?”

“A rancher by the name of Overbrook — does that name mean anything to you?”

She shook her head.

“Within five miles of the place where the car went off the grade,” he said. “The story is that Fleetwood had walked up to Overbrook’s house Monday night, suffering from amnesia. Any suggestions?”

She shook her head.

Mason said, “I want to give you one last chance to think over your story.”

“What about it?”

“Is it the truth?”

“Yes.”

Mason said, “Somehow, I think Fleetwood is going to try to hang one on you.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how,” Mason said. “I do know that this amnesia business of his is just a gag. I trapped him into betraying himself just before I took him to police headquarters.”

“Then he’ll tell them everything?”

Mason shook his head. “He’ll tell them everything up to the time he received a blow on the head. After that he doesn’t know what happened. He can’t remember.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure,” Mason said. “He has to adopt that position because a victim of true amnesia can’t remember anything that happened during his periods of amnesia.”

“But does Fleetwood know that?”

“You’re damn right he knows it,” Mason said, and added with a grin, “I took particular pains to tell him.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Now then,” Mason said, “here’s the point. As long as we could have you keep quiet, Tragg didn’t dare to go ahead and put a murder charge against you, or do too much talking for the newspapers — not on the evidence he had. He was afraid he might have to back up after he’d caught Fleetwood.

“Now then that situation is ended. I think Fleetwood’s going to try to hang it on you. My strategy is to start hanging it on Fleetwood.”

“What do you mean?”

Mason said with a grin, “I mean I’m going to pin it on him if I can.”

“Why?”

“In order to save you.”

“You mean you’d frame him for murder?”

Mason said, “I’ll frame him until I get him in such a position that the heat proves too much for him, then he’ll begin to start squirming. Understand, he’s taken advantage of this amnesia business. He’s hiding behind a wall of blank memory.

“That puts him in a particularly vulnerable position, because while he can’t be questioned by the police about the things that happened after he was hit on the head, he naturally can’t deny anything. Therefore, I can make even the wildest accusations against him, and he isn’t in a position to deny them. He has to take them with a bowed head and the simple statement that he can’t remember.

“I’m going to keep piling on the straws until I break the camel’s back.”

“But then suppose his story is — well, suppose by that time he’s had a chance to think up a story that—”

“That’s exactly it,” Mason said. “I’m going to try and push him into something before he’s had a chance to think up a story.

“Now then, when he does crack, he’s going to try to pin it on you. He’ll swear to anything he has to. So far, there are just two people who could have killed your husband and put the body in your car. You are one and Fleetwood is the other.

“In a case of this sort, public sympathy is a big thing. If you refuse to make any statement after the police really and truly turn on the heat, that fact will be spread all over the pages of the newspapers and will be a suspicious circumstance that will alienate the sympathies of the newspaper readers.

“Tomorrow morning Tragg is going to interview you. You’re going to talk with him freely and frankly. You’re going to try and talk your way out of a murder rap. It isn’t going to be easy. If you’re telling the truth, you can do it. If you’re not telling the truth, you’d better do a lot of revising...”

“I’m telling the truth, Mr. Mason.”

“Then,” Mason told her, “that’s all there is to it.”

“And I’m to talk to Lieutenant Tragg?”

“Sing like a skylark,” Mason told her. “Bare your soul to him. Pose for pictures in the newspapers. Tell everybody everything. Have nothing to conceal. Only be sure that it’s the truth, because if you try to lie, you’ll get caught, and if they catch you in a lie it’ll mean life imprisonment, perhaps the death penalty.”

“What I told you is the truth, Mr. Mason.”

“Okay. At eight o’clock tomorrow morning start broadcasting.”

“And you think you can make Fleetwood talk before tomorrow morning?”

Mason said, “I’m going to be a busy little boy, and when I get done I’m going to put so much heat on Bob Fleetwood that the varnish will begin to crack.”

“I think you’re very, very nice, Mr. Mason,” she said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Mason said, grinning. “Incidentally, while it’s all right for you to tell them about Patricia clipping the corner of the hedge, and about finding Fleetwood lying there unconscious, be careful to emphasize the fact that Patricia didn’t think she had hit anyone.”

“But doesn’t that make it worse? In other words, shouldn’t Pat have known it?”

“Sure, she should have known it. You don’t think for a minute she hit him, do you?”

“Why, Mr. Mason... I... She must have!”

“Phooey!” Mason said. “Your husband planted his car in such a position that Patricia would have to cut the corner of the hedge. Your husband was the one who discovered Fleetwood lying there.”

Her eyes were wide with the sudden realization of what must have happened. “You mean then, that it was all a plant that...”

“Sure it was a plant,” Mason said. “Your husband cracked Fleetwood on the head. He thought he’d killed him. He had a corpse to dispose of with a nice little head injury. The best way he could dispose of it was by letting Patricia think she’d hit him with her automobile, and letting her take the rap.”

Mrs. Allred pressed her knuckles against her lips.

“Think it over,” Mason said. “Don’t emphasize it. Let Lieutenant Tragg uncover it, then it’ll be his baby.”

And Mason walked out, leaving her sitting there.

“Drake in?” Mason asked the night janitor who brought up the elevator.

“Yeah. He came in fifteen or twenty minutes ago. You fellows must be working on something hot.”

Mason said, “Oh, we’re just keeping out of mischief.”

Drake kept switchboard operators on twenty-four hours a day, so Mason, opening the office door, jerked his thumb toward Drake’s inner office and at the same time raised his eyebrows in silent interrogation.

The girl at the switchboard, busy taking a call, nodded and pointed.

Mason unlatched the gate from the narrow, cramped waiting room, walked down the long corridor and into Drake’s office.