Erie Gardner - The Case of the Lazy Lover

“You can see where the car was backed. The ground was a little soft here, and there was just a little skidding when the car backed around. Then it was driven back to the gravel surfaced road.”

Mason studied the diagram, drumming with the tips of his fingers on the edge of the desk.

“Well,” Drake said, “I guess that does it, Perry.”

Mason nodded.

“Of course,” Mason said after a moment, “I don’t suppose it’s possible to check these tracks as to a means of identity. In other words, a woman was in the luggage compartment. This woman got out, walked to the road, turned back and returned to the car and drove it away. The tracks don’t identify Mrs. Allred, merely some woman.”

“Fleetwood’s story identifies Mrs. Allred,” Drake said.

“And Fleetwood has lied at every turn of the road so far,” Mason pointed out.

“But on this angle he had corroboration,” Humphreys said.

Mason said, “I don’t trust that Bernice Archer, Paul. She might have been the one who was locked in the luggage compartment.”

“Not a chance,” Drake said. “Remember that Bernice Archer was in town Monday night. She got that call from the service station out by Springfield. She had a girl friend spending the night with her. They sat up and talked until about one or two in the morning and then slept together. There was only the one bed. I’ve checked Bernice Archer up one side and down the other. She was in her apartment all night Monday. Remember that Mrs. Allred stopped at that service station around seven o’clock and the attendant remembers her, remembers the car, and remembers Fleetwood. Then the car went over the grade sometime around eleven o’clock. It could have been sometime around half past ten, probably about half an hour before the clock on the dashboard stopped and Allred’s watch stopped.”

“The police don’t figure the car was driven over the grade at eleven o’clock when those clocks were stopped?”

“No, they figured Mrs. Allred set the clock and Allred’s watch ahead so as to give herself an alibi.”

Mason got up from his chair and started pacing the floor.

“You’ve got to take this evidence into consideration when you go before a jury,” Drake said, tapping the paper.

“I know I have.”

“This evidence,” Drake went on, “is the controlling factor in the entire case. Whatever story your client tells, Perry, has to coincide with the evidence of these tracks.”

“Her story doesn’t coincide with it, Paul.”

“It’ll have to, by the time she gets on the witness stand.”

Mason said, “If she’s telling the truth, Fleetwood must have picked up some other woman, put her in the luggage compartment, had her get out, run away, return and drive the car away. If she’s lying, then she’s trying to protect someone. The question is — who?”

“Patricia,” Drake said.

“Could be. But how could Patricia have been in the luggage compartment of her mother’s car? Do we know where she was on Monday night, Paul?”

“Apparently not.”

“Find out.”

“I’ll try.”

“Those tracks, Mr. Mason,” Humphreys said. “If you can find any way of figuring how that woman could get out of that automobile after she returned, you’re a better man than I am. She’d have had to have been an angel and had wings. The story is right there in the ground. She got back in the car and drove the car away.”

“And Fleetwood was there at the car only that one time?”

“That’s right. You can see his tracks leaving the automobile. He never returned to that car.”

“Unless perhaps Overbrook is lying about the time the boards were put there,” Mason said, “and...”

“No chance of that,” Humphreys said. “I talked with Overbrook’s neighbor. He saw him putting the boards down there this morning. Overbrook told him he was protecting some tracks that the sheriff might be interested in. The neighbor stood and watched him put the boards down, then drove on in to the post office. Overbrook came in just a few minutes later to telephone the sheriff.”

“You’ve sure as hell got to adopt Fleetwood’s story,” Drake said. “When he finally told the truth, he made a good job of it.”

D. T. Danvers, known to his intimates as “D. Tail” Danvers because of his passionate devotion to every small detail in a case, had been assigned by the District Attorney to the preliminary hearing of the People vs. Lola Faxon Allred.

Danvers, a chunky, thick-necked individual, aggressively determined to have his own way in a courtroom but personally friendly with the men who opposed him, paused by Mason’s chair to shake hands before court opened.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose this is going to be the same old runaround. You’ll be sitting there making objections, trying to get us to put on just as much of our case as possible so you can stand off and snipe at it, and then when it comes your turn, you’ll fold up like a camp tent with a broken guy wire and say, ‘Your Honor, I believe the State has established a sufficient case to warrant the Court in binding the defendant over, and under those circumstances I see no use in presenting any of our defense at this time.’ ”

Mason laughed, “What’s the matter, Danvers? Were you out on a camping trip where the tent folded up?”

Judge Colton ascended the bench, said, “People versus Lola Allred. What’s the situation, gentlemen?”

“The defendant is in court, defended by counsel,” Danvers said, “and the prosecution is ready to go ahead.”

“The defense is ready,” Mason announced.

“Call your first witness,” Judge Colton said.

Danvers’ first witness was the doctor who had performed the autopsy on the body of Bertrand Allred. He described the man’s injuries in technical terms, announced the cause of death, and gave it as his opinion that death had occurred sometime between nine o’clock and eleven-thirty o’clock Monday night.

“Cross-examine,” Danvers said.

“These injuries which you have described,” Mason said, “and which caused the death of the decedent — could all of them have been inflicted by means of a fall of fifty or a hundred feet while the decedent had been in an automobile?”

“With the possible exception of one blow which had been received on the skull, probably made with some circular instrument such as a gun barrel or a jack handle, or a piece of small, very heavy pipe.”

“That couldn’t have been caused by hitting the head in falling against some object such as the edge of the dashboard or the side of the steering wheel?”

“I don’t think it could.”

“Do you know that it couldn’t?”

“No, I don’t. Naturally, there’s a certain element of surmise. The final resting place of the automobile in which the body was found was, I understand, some distance from the place where it struck the first time. Yet at the time that it first struck, there was the force of a considerable impact.”

“That’s all,” Mason said.

A police laboratory expert testified to examining a piece of carpet, similar to that usually placed in the luggage compartments of automobiles. There were stains on this carpet which he said were human blood.

“Cross-examine,” Danvers said.

“What type?” Mason asked. “What group did the blood belong to?”

“Type O.”

“Do you know what type blood the defendant has?”

“She also has type O.”

“Do you know what type blood the decedent, Bertrand Allred, had?”

“No, sir. I do not. I didn’t classify that.”

“You merely found out that the type of blood that was on this piece of carpet, which you understood came from the luggage compartment of the defendant’s automobile, was of the same type as the blood of the defendant. After that you ceased to be interested or to investigate further. Is that right?”