Erie Gardner - The Case of the Lazy Lover

“That’s all right,” Mason said grimly. “What I wanted was the truth. I knew that Fleetwood was lying about that amnesia.”

“Who didn’t?” Tragg said. “I was waiting for him to crack at the proper moment. But when you showed up here, I thought that perhaps you could soften him up for me. I didn’t realize that you were going to play into my hands this far.”

“I didn’t either,” Mason said grimly, and stalked out of the room.

The clock on the wall of the visitors’ room of the county jail said that it was ten minutes past nine in the morning. Mason sat on one side of the heavy steel mesh which separated the two ends of the room. Mrs. Allred sat on the other side. At the far corner a matron waited for the lawyer to finish his visit with his client.

“What did you tell Lieutenant Tragg?” Mason asked her.

“Not a thing. He never came near me.”

“That’s bad,” Mason conceded.

“Why is it bad?”

Mason sketched out Fleetwood’s story, while Mrs. Allred listened intently. When he finished, there was a few moments’ silence.

Then Mrs. Allred said quickly, “It’s all a complete lie, Mr. Mason.”

Mason shook his head. “Something corroborates Fleetwood’s story. I don’t know yet what it is. If Tragg hasn’t been hot after you for a statement, it means Fleetwood’s story gets a good corroboration, all the way along the line. There are tracks, for one thing. There is only one explanation. You haven’t been telling me the truth.

“Fleetwood stalled around long enough with one thing and another, but when he finally came through with the story, he came through with a humdinger. It’s a story that puts you in the position of committing a nice little murder. And the nice part of it is that provocation is there. And motivation is there. The thing is so marvelously tailored that the jury will sympathize with you, but will decide that you’re technically guilty, probably of manslaughter.”

She said, “Fleetwood must have killed him, Mr. Mason.”

The lawyer shook his head. “I’m not so certain,” he said.

“But he must have! It had to be either Bob Fleetwood or me.”

“So it would seem.”

“And I know that I didn’t kill him!”

Mason said, “I wish that I could find some way of making a jury share your conviction.”

“Do you feel that — that I’m in a spot?”

“Fleetwood’s story,” Mason said, “is one that sounds convincing.”

“Even to you?”

Mason said, “I make it a point in my business to believe my clients always.”

“If I weren’t your client, Bob Fleetwood’s story would convince you?”

“It might,” Mason admitted. “I wanted to see what you had to say about having been in the luggage compartment of that car.”

“I never was.”

“Do you know of anyone who was?”

“No.”

“There’s blood on the carpet. The officers found that.”

“So I understand.”

“And you can’t explain that? You didn’t have a bloody nose?”

“No.”

Mason said thoughtfully, “You know, if it had only occurred to you to tell the story that Fleetwood told, but dress it up with a few variations, it might have accounted for everything, including the blood on the carpet of the luggage compartment.”

“But I told you the truth, Mr. Mason.”

“There are times,” Mason said, “when an artistic lie can crowd the truth right off the stage. The interesting thing is that Fleetwood’s story is so beautifully logical and puts you in such a sympathetic light in front of the public. But it also hangs the technical killing of your husband right around your neck. I wish you could find some way of accounting for how blood got on the carpet of the luggage compartment.”

“Well, I can’t.”

“That’s the nice part of Fleetwood’s story,” Mason said. “It accounts for everything. It gives the police a beautiful, beautiful case.”

“Against me?”

Mason nodded.

“I didn’t kill my husband, Mr. Mason.”

“Well,” Mason said, “you’ve got to talk. It’s got to a point now where it’s your story against Bob Fleetwood’s. Your story can’t explain certain things. Fleetwood’s does. There’s some evidence I don’t know about. Tragg’s out investigating it now. If that evidence corroborates Fleetwood’s story the way it would seem to, the killing is wrapped around your neck. I can get you off with manslaughter, or I might get a self-defense acquittal, but the responsibility for the fatal blow is yours.”

“What evidence is there that could possibly give such corroboration?”

“Tracks for one thing.”

“Well, my story is the truth.”

“I hope it is,” Mason said and signaled to the matron that the interview was over.

It was shortly before noon. Drake tapped his code knock on the panels of Mason’s exit door.

Della Street opened the door.

Drake came in, followed by a thin man in the late fifties.

“You remember Bert Humphreys,” Drake said. “He worked on that Melrose murder case for you, Perry.”

Mason nodded, said, “Hello, Humphreys.”

Humphreys nodded, the swift, competent nod of a man who has important information to impart and wants to get on with it.

“Sit down,” Drake said to Humphreys, “and tell ’em your story.” Drake turned to Mason and said parenthetically, “As soon as I got your call this morning saying to get a man up to Overbrook’s place to look for the tracks of a car in soft soil, I telephoned Humphreys. Humphreys was working on the case at Springfield. He jumped in his car and beat it up there. He had at least an hour’s start on the officers. He managed to get a complete diagram of everything that was up there before the officers arrived. They were sore as hell at finding him there, but there was nothing they could do about it.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said to Humphreys. “What was it? What did you find?”

Humphreys took a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, said, “I made a map. But, before I show you the map, Mr. Mason, I’d better tell you generally what happened. I got up to Overbrook’s place and told him I’d come to investigate the car tracks. He thought I was from the sheriff’s office and he spilled the whole thing to me.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, it seemed that the more Overbrook thought things over about Fleetwood, the more uneasy he became. He felt certain from the way his dog had been barking that there had been noises before Fleetwood came walking up the road. And Overbrook came to the conclusion they might have been noises made by a car and by people talking when Fleetwood got out. So Overbrook, who’s something of a hunter and tracker, started back-tracking Fleetwood.”

“He could find Fleetwood’s tracks?”

“Yes. Not right near the house, but reasonably close to it. You see, it had been raining hard Saturday and the ground was soft, and it’s kept on drizzling more or less ever since, so the ground has stayed pretty soft. That gave Overbrook excellent tracking conditions.”

“What did he do?”

“He back-tracked Fleetwood without any great amount of trouble, and came to a place where an automobile had been parked. Overbrook started to look the tracks over, and then he saw some things that made him do a lot of thinking. So he didn’t even stop. He kept right on going.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Hell, yes. You can see his tracks plain as day. He walked right up to the spot where this car had been parked, turned in toward the place where the front of the car had been, then swung out in a turn and kept right on walking until he came to a farm road that was on hard soil. Then he walked back to his house, picked up a tractor and trailer, loaded the trailer with scrap lumber that he’d had hanging around ever since he tore down the chicken house, drove the tractor and trailer back to the place on the farm road where he’d come in, took the boards one at a time, and made a little boardwalk running alongside his tracks and right out to the place where the tracks of the automobile were located. He was particularly careful in laying the boards. He’d lay one or two boards, then walk back along the boardwalk to get more boards, come out and lay them, and walk back along the boardwalk again. In that way, he preserved every track there was in the ground. You can see the whole story there just as plain as day. He’s a good, careful man and I guess he made a lot better job of preserving those tracks than the officers would have done if he’d left it to them. The way things are now, even with the officers milling around there, you can still see the tracks — or you could when I left. They were getting ready to use some plaster of Paris then.”