Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

"Evening, counselor," said the detective.

"Evening, Tony. By the way, you owe the Unlisted Sub scriber Operator a fax by seventeen hundred hours."

"Say what?"

"Never mind."

"Cut it out, girls," said Burke. Then, to Jaywalker, "This better be good."

"This is better than good," Jaywalker assured him. "This is absolutely unbelievable."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

It turned out that Jose Lugo was working the midnightto-eight shift on the door, so they didn't need their shields after all. Which was just as well, because Jaywalker had bought his at a Times Square novelty shop. Lugo got hold of Anthony Mazzini, who, though groggy-eyed and grumbling, produced a passkey and, once the POLICE DEPART MENT DO NOT CROSS tape had been lifted away and the crime scene seal broken, let the three of them into Pent house A.

Once inside, it took them a few minutes to locate the circuit breakers and turn on the lights. It was immediately apparent that the tape and the seal had done their job. Nothing appeared to have been touched since Jaywalker's earlier visit.

"Okay," said Burke to Jaywalker. "Make like Charlie Chan. Explain to us what you think you've figured out."

"Sure," said Jaywalker, "I can do that. But remember, I said just about. I now know who killed Barry, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly how he managed to pull it off."

"He?" said Bonfiglio. "You mean to tell us your girl friend's a trannie?"

"Be nice, Tony," warned Jaywalker. "You can come off looking like a hero in this thing, or the genius who locked up an innocent woman and wouldn't let go. Your choice."

"I got a choice for you, dickhead."

"Hey," said Burke, "I said cut it out."

Jaywalker led them into the kitchen. The outline of Barry's body was still on the floor. A year and a half had passed, but he might just as well have died yesterday.

"Okay," said Jaywalker. "See this coat I'm wearing?" With some difficulty he raised his arms, to demonstrate how short the sleeves were on him.

"Yeah," said Bonfiglio, "it's a thing a beauty."

"It was Barry's," said Jaywalker. "He kept it at Sa mara's, along with a lot of other stuff. Clothes, medication, personal items. In other words, he stayed there from time to time. He had his own key. He had access."

Neither Burke nor Bonfiglio seemed overly impressed.

"Barry was dying from cancer," said Jaywalker. "He had an inoperable malignant tumor that was going to kill him in a matter of months, maybe even weeks. Samara thought Barry was a hypochondriac and bought his explanation that he had the flu. But Barry knew. And the thing is, he hated Samara. He hated the way she humiliated him by running around and seeing other men, and it drove him crazy to think that when he did die, she'd end up with half his estate. He even tried to get Alan Manheim to write her out of his will, but as Manheim explained to him, it wouldn't do any good, Samara would still get half, under equitable distribution."

"You sure that's the law?" asked Bonfiglio.

"That's the law," said Burke.

"So what does Barry do?" Jaywalker asked rhetorically. "He figures out a way to disinherit Samara. He takes out the life insurance policy himself. He tells Samara to sign the application, and like a good little girl, she does, without ever looking at it. A week or so later, when Bill Smythe gets the bill and asks Barry about it, Barry tells him to go ahead and pay the premium out of the joint account. Smythe does."

Jaywalker was pacing now, trying to put the pieces together. "Do you remember why Samara goes over to Barry's the evening of the murder?"

"To kill him?" was Bonfiglio's guess.

"He asked her to," said Burke.

"Right. And what happens?"

"They eat Chinks," said Bonfiglio.

"Forget what they ate. What happens next?"

"They get into a fight," said Bonfiglio.

"A shouting argument," said Burke.

"Exactly. Over some bullshit thing. Samara can't even recall what it was, only that Barry started it. That's im portant. Remember," said Jaywalker, "he knew how to push her buttons. And once they're arguing, Barry makes sure their voices are loud enough to be overheard and recognized."

Burke nodded, but only tentatively.

"Samara storms out, just like she said she did on the stand."

"And right about then," said Bonfiglio, "Spiderman crawls through the window an' offs Barry."

Jaywalker ignored the remark. It was actually working better this way, with the detective having cast himself as the sarcastic doubter and Burke forced to play the role of an impartial third person.

"Here's where it gets interesting," Jaywalker explained. "Barry downs a stiff drink and a couple of Seconals. Maybe he'd done that earlier, maybe he excuses himself for a moment and does it now. It doesn't matter. He takes a knife he swiped from Samara's some time ago."

"Bullshit," said Bonfiglio.

Jaywalker said nothing. Instead, he walked to a set of drawers and rummaged through them until he found a table knife with a rounded tip. He wasn't about to trust Bonfi glio with anything sharper. Handing it to the detective, he said, "Show us how you'd stab me in the heart, as many ways as you can. You know, from the front, the rear, the side, whatever."

"Fuck you."

"Do it," said Burke.

Bonfiglio scowled but did as he'd been told. He pro ceeded to mimic stabbing Jaywalker from the front, first with his right hand on the knife raised above him, then his left, and then both hands. He repeated the process underhanded. He walked around behind Jaywalker, grabbed him unneces sarily roughly around the neck and brought the knife to his chest that way. He tried a couple of other variations, as well.

"How many does that make?" Jaywalker asked.

"Ten, twelve," said Burke.

"What do they all have in common?"

Burke shrugged. Bonfiglio scowled, looking as though he wished he could play the game for real.

"Every single time you went to kill me," said Jaywalker, "you did it with the knife held so the blade was up and down. If Samara had stabbed Barry, that's how she would have done it, too. Anybody would have. That's how you knife someone. But if she'd done it that way, the blade would have gone in perpendicular to Barry's ribs and no doubt would have struck one of them, or even two. Only it didn't. How do we know that?"

"Hirsch," said Burke.

"Right. Hirsch was crystal-clear on that point. The blade went in flat. That's why it never hit a rib. Hard to do, unless…"

"Unless what?" It was actually Bonfiglio who asked the question.

"Unless," said Jaywalker, "you were feeling your ribs with the fingers of one hand to locate the soft spot, so you could get the blade in laterally, right between them."

There was an eerie silence in the room. Burke walked over to the chalk outline of the body on the floor, and looked down at it. "Interesting," he admitted. "But it doesn't begin to explain how he managed to get the knife to Samara's afterwards, hide it behind the toilet, come back here, collapse on the floor and die. Does it?"

"No," said Jaywalker, "but that's actually the easy part. Remember that word access. Barry had hidden those things days earlier. Weeks, maybe. He drew some of his own blood, or stuck a finger. Remember, the total amount on the knife, the blouse and the towel wasn't much at all. And the blood was dried. Those things could have been planted anytime. And he hid them where the blood would stay dry and intact. Sitting in the toilet tank, the logical place for Samara to hide them if she really wanted to be stupid enough to save them as souvenirs, the blood would have dissolved in the water. After a flush or two, it would have been history."

Burke was still far from being convinced. "So you con cede the knife was Samara's?"

"Absolutely," said Jaywalker.