Маргарет Миллар - Spider Webs

“Nothing.”

“But he thinks I’m his father.”

“And are you?”

“I told you that night in jail, I’m not. Harry’s wife is a slut; she’d go with anyone.”

“So she might have gone with you.”

“If she did, I was too drunk to remember. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not going to be his father. The hell with living together like a real family him and me or me and anybody else. Jeez, why does everybody think they’re entitled to a piece of me just because I’m on trial for murder? Jeez,” he said again. “That Foster dame, she wants us to be a real family, too. And you and your goddamn ranch, and my wife and her slob brother. And that crazy Pherson waiting to kill me. Now it’s the kid. The whole bloody bunch of you waiting to slice me up like a pie.”

“Lower your voice,” Donnelly said. He thought of the nursery rhyme: “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. / And when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing...” This pie had only one blackbird, and there would be no singing.

“I don’t want to be anybody’s husband, anybody’s father, anybody’s lover, anybody’s target practice. You’re sick, you’re all sick, coming on to me like cannibals. That’s what you are, cannibals. I’d rather go to the gas chamber than be eaten alive by a bunch of cannibals.”

“You may not have a choice,” Donnelly said. “A lot will depend on Harry.”

Harry made a better witness than Owen anticipated. He was solemn and respectful, awed by the grandeur of the courtroom with its vaulted ceiling and crystal chandeliers. To him it was like a church, and God himself in a black robe sat majestically on his throne.

He told of his short acquaintanceship with Mrs. Pherson from the time she came on board the Bewitched with Cully. The jury who’d heard it all before in one way or another looked bored until he reached the part where he’d heard a woman screaming in the middle of the night.

Owen asked him if the woman was Mrs. Pherson.

“Must of been,” Harry said. “She was the only woman on board.”

“What was the nature of her screams?”

“Nature?”

“Was she shouting words you could understand?”

“No. They were just screams.”

“How long did they last? A minute? Two minutes?”

“Not that long. Ten seconds, maybe less.”

“Did you think of going to investigate?”

“I thought of it.”

“But you didn’t go?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I figured if her and Cully was just having a wild time, Cully would be mad if I butted in. Cully has a fierce temper when he’s hitting the bottle.”

Donnelly made an objection, the judge sustained it and Harry’s final sentence was stricken from the record.

Owen continued. “Did you hear Mrs. Pherson’s voice again?”

“No.”

“Did you think everything was all right?”

“Yes, sir, until — until I went to check on a loose cable.”

“What happened at this point?”

“I saw Cully throw something overboard.”

“What was this something?”

“Looked like clothes.”

“His clothes? Hers?”

“I don’t know. I just ducked below before Cully could see me.”

“Were you afraid of this man, Cully King?”

“I never been scared of any man,” Harry said. “But on a ship the skipper is boss. You don’t question him or accuse him, leastways not until you go ashore. Onshore it’s just you and him, nobody’s boss, no holds are barred.”

“What time would you say this occurred?”

“About four in the morning. I saw Cully at the aft rail.”

“What enabled you to witness Cully’s actions?”

“It was a clear, calm night with a first quarter moon, and we had the running lights on full because we were in a shipping lane and we didn’t want to be hit by an oil tanker. I saw him throw something overboard.”

“Did he drop this something into the water, or did he dump it out of a container of some kind?”

“I don’t remember seeing a container. Everything happened so fast. We were doing ten knots at the time. It’s in the log; you and me looked it up together. At ten knots things thrown in the water are left behind real fast, and that includes people, which is not an everyday occurrence. Nobody was ever lost from a boat I was crewing on until this time.”

Owen consulted his notes. “Tell me, Mr. Arnold, is it the skipper’s job to dispose of the boat’s trash?”

“No, sir. On the Bewitched that was up to Richie, my son.”

“So it would have been unusual for Mr. King to be disposing of trash, especially in the middle of the night, would it not?”

“Very unusual, yes, sir.”

“What was Cully King wearing when he threw this stuff overboard?”

“Nothing.”

“He was naked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was the air temperature at four o’clock that morning?”

“It’s in the log. I wrote it there myself, forty-five degrees.”

“Would a person feel comfortable without clothes in so low a temperature?”

“Objection,” Donnelly said without rising or even looking up from his notes. “Question calls for an opinion and—”

“Sustained,” the judge said. “But frankly, Mr. Donnelly, the answer is so obvious that an objection hardly seems worthwhile and indeed might even be construed as a waste of the court’s time.”

Harry, who didn’t know whether he was to answer or not, answered anyway. “Maybe an Eskimo.”

One of the spectators laughed, and the judge tapped his gavel sharply. “Witness is to refrain from offering any statements that are not responsive to questions. Proceed, Mr. Owen.”

“Are you sure he was naked, Mr. Arnold?”

“Yes, sir. Funny thing is, if he’d of been black like me” — his voice had a faint note of reproach as he glanced down at Cully — “if he’d been black like me, maybe I wouldn’t of even seen him. But the moon and the running lights caught him square on, and he shone like copper.”

This time the response of the audience was a self-conscious titter at the image Harry had evoked, a copper-skinned man standing naked on the deck of a yacht in the moonlight.

The judge was not amused. “You have been asked, Mr. Arnold, not to volunteer any remarks of this nature.”

“I was only telling the truth.”

“This court is not equipped, timewise or spacewise, to handle all the truths of this world. Please continue, Mr. Owen.”

“Let me ask you a hypothetical question, Mr. Arnold,” Owen said. “If you were caught naked in a burning building, would you stop to put on your clothes before making an exit?”

“No.”

“You’d be in too much of a hurry, would you not?”

“Yes, sir. I’d rather be cold than dead.”

“So your motivation would be one of survival?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think Cully King’s motive was similar?... Strike that. Tell me, have you crewed on many yachts, Mr. Arnold?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Long trips, short trips?”

“All kinds.”

“On any of these occasions, have you seen many people taking a moonlight stroll on deck with the temperature of the air at forty-five degrees?”

“No.”

“Any people?”

“No, sir. Nobody, never. Not that I ain’t seen some hanky-panky on warm nights in the Caribbean.”

This time the gavel came down before the spectators could react. A recess of fifteen minutes was declared.

Only a few spectators remained in the room, along with Eva Foster, Cully and the bailiff, Di Santo.

Di Santo was feeling good. He had convinced his wife that he’d lost five pounds and was promised a steak dinner as a reward. He had managed the weight loss by using a simple trick taught him by one of the other deputies. He moved the scales from a hard surface, the tile floor of the bathroom, to a soft one, the carpeted bedroom. One unexpected result of this deceit was that while convincing his wife he’d lost five pounds, he also convinced himself. His belt felt a little looser, his stomach muscles a little tighter, and the coming steak dinner was beginning to seem like a prize legitimately won.