Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“Mr. Heller,” Dr. Alice said icily, looking away from me, “this fantasy of yours holds no interest whatsoever for me.”

“Well, maybe so-but Earle’s all perked up. Anyway, you left the body downstairs, closing the examining room door, locking it probably, and went on about the business of business as usual…cooking supper for your roomer, spending a quiet evening with her…knowing that Earle would be back after dark, to quietly slip in and, what? Dispose of the body somehow. That was the plan, wasn’t it? The unhappy bride would just disappear. Or perhaps turn up dead in ditch, or…whatever. Only it didn’t happen that way. Because Snny Boy chickened out.”

And now Dr. Alice broke form, momentarily, her eyes turning on Earle for just a moment, giving him one nasty glance, the only time I ever saw her look at the louse with anything but devotion.

“He sent you a telegram in the afternoon, letting you know that he was still in Peoria. And that he was going to stay in Peoria. And you, with a corpse in the basement. Imagine.”

“You have a strange sense of humor, Mr. Heller.”

“You have a strange way of practicing medicine, Dr. Wynekoop. You sent your roomer, Miss Shaunesey, on a fool’s errand-sending her to a drug store where you knew the prescription couldn’t be filled. And you knew conscientious Miss Shaunesey would try another drug store, buying you time.”

“Really,” Dr. Alice said, dryly.

“Really. That’s when you concocted the burglary story. You’re too frail, physically, to go hauling a corpse anywhere. But you remembered that gun, across the hall. So you shot your dead daughter-in-law, adding insult to injury, and faked the robbery-badly, but it was impromptu, after all.”

“I don’t have to listen to this!” Earle said.

“Then don’t,” I said. “What you didn’t remember, Dr. Wynekoop, is that two bullets had already been fired from that weapon, when Earle tested it. And that little anomaly bothered me.”

“Did it,” she said, flatly.

“It did. Your daughter-in-law’s syphilis; the two missing bullets; and the hour you spent alone in the house, while the roomer was away and Rheta was dead in your examining room. Those three factors added up to one thing: your guilt, and your son’s complicity.”

“Are you going to tell your story to anyone?” she asked, blandly.

“No,” I said. “You’re my client.”

“How much?” Earle said, with a nasty, nervous little sneer.

I held my hands up, palms out. “No more. I’m keeping my retainer. I earned it.”

I turned my back on them and began to walk away.

From behind me, I heard her say, with no irony whatsoever, “Thank you, Mr. Heller.”

I turned and looked at her and laughed. “Hey, you’re going to jail, lady. The cops and the D.A. won’t need me to get it done, and all the good publicity you cook up won’t change a thing. I have only one regret.”

I made them ask.

Earle took the honors.

“What’s that?” Earle asked, as he stood there trembling; his mother reached her hand out and patted his nearest hand, soothing him.

I smiled at him-the nastiest smile I could muster. “That you won’t be going to jail with her, you son of a bitch.”

And go to jail she did.

But it took a while. A most frail-looking Dr. Alicecarried into the courtroom on the opening day of the trial; still playing for sympathy in the press, I figured.

Then, after eight days of evidence, Dr. Alice had an apparent heart seizure, when the prosecution hauled the blood-stained examination table into court. A mistrial was declared. When she recovered, though, she got a brand-new one. The press milked the case for all its worth; public opinion polls in the papers indicated half of Chicago considered Dr. Alice guilty, and the other half thought her innocent. The jury, however, was unanimous-it took them only fifteen minutes to find her guilty and two hours to set the sentence at twenty-five years.

Earle didn’t attend the trial. They say that just as Dr. Alice was being ushered in the front gate at the Woman’s Reformatory at Dwight, Illinois, an unshaven, disheveled figure darted from the nearby bushes. Earle kissed his mother goodbye and she brushed away his tears. As usual.

She served thirteen years, denying her guilt all the way; she was released with time off for good behavior. She died on July 4, 1955, in a nursing home, under an assumed name.

Earle changed his name, too. What became of him, I can’t say. There were rumors, of course. One was that he had found work as a garage mechanic.

Another was that he had finally re-married-a beautiful redhead.

Dr. Catherine Wynekoop did not change her name, and went on to a distinguished medical career.

And the house at 3406 West Monroe, the Death Clinic, was torn down in 1947. The year Dr. Alice was released.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Research materials for this fact-based story include “The Wynekoop Case” in The Chicago Crime Book (1947) by Craig Rice; “Who Killed Rheta Wynekoop?” by Harry Read in Real Detective magazine, April 1934; and “The Justice Story,” a 1987 New York Daily News column by Joseph McNamara.

She was the first movie star I ever worked for, but I wasn’t much impressed. If I were that easily impressed, I’d have been impressed by Hollywood itself. And having seen the way Hollywood portrayed my profession on the so-called silver screen, I wasn’t much impressed with Hollywood.

On the other hand, Thelma Todd was the most beautiful woman who ever wanted to hire my services, and that did impress me. Enough so that when she called me, that October, and asked me to drive out to her “sidewalk cafe” nestled under the Palisades in Montemar Vista, I went, wondering if she would be as pretty in the flesh as she was on celluloid.

I’d driven out Pacific Coast Highway that same morning, a clear cool morning with a blue sky lording it over a vast sparkling sea. Pelicans were playing tag with the breaking surf, flying just under the curl of the white-lipped waves. Yachts, like a child’s toy boats, floated out there just between me and the horizon. I felt like I could reach out for one, pluck and examine it, sniff it maybe, like King Kong checking out Fay Wray’s lingerie.

“Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe,” as a billboard on the hillside behind it so labeled the place, was a sprawling two-story hacienda affair, as big as a beached luxury liner. Over its central, largest-of-many archways, a third-story tower rose like a stubby lighthouse. There weren’t many cars here-it was approaching ten a.m., too early for the luncheon crowd and even I didn’t drink cocktails this early in the day. Not and tell, anyway.

She was waiting in the otherwise unpopulated cocktail lounge, where massive wooden beams in a traditional Spanish mode fought the chromium-and-leather furnishings and the chrome-and-glass-brick bar and came out a draw. She was a big blonde woman with more curves than the highway out front and just the right number of hills and valleys. Wearing a clingy summery white dress, she was seated on one of the bar stools, with her bare legs crossed; they weren’t the best-looking legs on the planet, necessarily. I just couldn’t prove otherwise. That good a detective I’m not.

“Nathan Heller?” she asked, and her smile dimpled her cheeks in a manner that made her whole heart-shaped face smile, and the world smile as well, including me. She didn’t move off the stool, just extended her hand in a manner that was at once casual and regal.

I took the hand, not knowing whether to kiss it, shake it, or press it into a book like a corsage I wanted to keep. I looked at her feeling vaguely embarrassed; she was so pretty you didn’t know where to look next, and felt like there was maybe something wrong with looking anywhere. But I couldn’t help myself.