Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

“Time we turned in again, doll,” he murmured against her ear.

She was a warm rustling, arms gliding about his neck. “I’ve missed you, Eddie. Really I have.”

“So let’s make up for lost time with a weekend in Las Vegas.”

“You’re beautiful, Eddie...”

At eleven o’clock Sunday night Eddie dragged his exhausted body and brain into his down-at-the-heels bachelor pad. He struggled out of jacket and necktie, tossing the garments on a chair that already held a dirty shirt and sweater. Grunting with the effort, he opened the hide-a-bed convertible couch, kicked off his shoes, and lowered his fatigued bones.

Tired as he was, he lay on his back grinning at the ceiling, licking his memory chops. What a weekend! It shimmered in his mind, an elysian haze. First-class accommodations on the jetliner... the swank of the Vegas hotel... the intimate dinners... floor shows... the balconied room with the king-size bed... the smoky smoothness of expensive Scotch sipped beside the pool... the craps table...

All of it a lovely, lovely backdrop for the warmth of Joella’s arms, the fire of her kisses.

They’d gone through every dime in four days, but Eddie kept that thought out of his mind. Right now, he didn’t want anything to spoil the memories.

The skirling of the alarm clock reached into the deep vacancy of sleep earlier than usual the following morning. Eddie mumbled himself awake, reaching out to turn off the clock and lying there for a moment staring at nothing in particular. He was drearily hungup with the idea of being penned in the jury box. He dosed himself with strong medicine, the thought of Baxter Wood’s twenty-five thou. It gave him the energy to get out of bed.

He came out of the building an hour later, his appearance totally out of keeping with the messy apartment he left behind. Dressed conservatively and groomed to his fingernails, he might have been a bright young customer’s man in a brokerage office.

A tension gnawed at him as he drove downtown, parked the Toyota in an all-day lot, and walked into the impersonal fifteen-story stone mass of the courthouse.

He didn’t doubt Clara, or himself, but he wouldn’t feel really easy until he was actually on the Chavez jury.

The jury pool room on the fourth floor was filling with people of all shapes, sizes and colors when Eddie strolled in.

Clara appeared at nine o’clock sharp, in sensible skirt, blouse, fiats, hair in a brown bun at her nape. She was carrying a clipboard and looked so drab and frumpy, compared to Joella in Vegas, that Eddie felt a little sorry for her.

She stood beside a desk in the corner of the room, introducing herself and reciting her routine jazz in a sing-song voice. She commended them all for answering the call to civic duty, mentioned the importance of the jury system under the American banner of freedom, and touched on the state laws governing responsibilities of jurymen.

Then she was calling out the lists, and a short time later Eddie was among the group being herded by a bored deputy into a huge courtroom. The vaulted expanse seemed to Eddie to have all the warmth of a mausoleum, when he took his place, third chair front row, in the jury box.

The lawyers were shuffling papers and exchanging pleasantries at their tables. John Ward was the prosecutor, a lean, spare man with a grizzled face. Wood had retained the firm of Proctor, Proctor, and Adams to defend his son. Old man Proctor himself, who looked like a wily white-haired Mississippi senator, was in charge of the legal battery.

The bailiff rapped a gavel. All rose in the crowded courtroom as the judge entered. The bailiff called court to session with his “O-yez, O-yez.”

The following hour was more nerve-wracking than Eddie had anticipated. Defense and prosecution questioned each juror in turn. The defense excused juror number eight, the prosecution five and nine. The alternates who took their seats were accepted. Eddie surreptitiously pressed a handkerchief in his wet palms and experienced a pleasant inner unwinding. The trial was underway, and he was in his twenty-five thousand dollar seat.

He slipped his first direct look at young Richard Wood, slouched at the defense table. The boy had the brawn, the bulldozer-operator look of his father. Aside from their years, the main difference in father and son was visible in Richie’s petulant, self-centered curl of lips. The punk kid, Eddie reflected, had the natural sneer of a spoiled brat.

During the two days of the trial, Eddie was struck by the lack of drama. In his television-conditioned mind, murder trials were drawn-out featurelengths of sudden surprises, witnesses cracking under cross-examination. Much of this one was conducted in voices at conversation level, with the florid judge sneaking a yawn behind his hand now and then.

The story came out in simple, bold terms, to Eddie’s way of thinking. The evening of last June fifth a group of affluent young people got together for a lakeside party. Grass was smoked. Non-smokers washed down speed pills with beer.

High on speed, Richie Wood kept forcing his attentions on Nancy Chavez. The girl decided to leave the party. Richie followed her to her car. A little later, the others heard a scream. The boys rushed from the lake and saw a figure very much resembling Richie disappearing into the dark underbrush. A few yards from her car, they found Nancy Chavez, clothing torn. Dead. Strangled. Her screams cut off by a pair of powerful hands.

The prosecution said it was cut-and-dried. The defense said, not so; for isn’t it just possible that the fleeing figure seen by the witnesses was a skulker about Richie Wood’s size looking for a chance to loot parked cars?

The judge charged them, and the jury filed out. Seated in the private room adjacent to the courtroom, Eddie looked at the faces hovering about the long table. Butcher, baker, clothing maker. A housewife and a secretary. A salesman, used car appraiser, retired bookkeeper.

It was an ill-at-ease gathering, everyone glancing at the others, waiting for someone else to break the ice.

The retired man, a tall, skinny, gray wisp, cleared his throat. “Guess our first job is to elect a foreman.”

“I’ll nominate you,” Eddie said. “And I move the nominations be closed. We don’t have to waste a lot of time, seems to me. The prosecution didn’t prove the man guilty beyond a shadow’ of doubt.”

Resembling a side of his own beef, the butcher, on leave from his supermarket employer, snorted in derision. “Proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt! Plain as the nose on your face. The punk tried to rape that girl and grabbed her by the neck to shut her up.”

Eddie cut the juror with a cool look. “I think we’re all intelligent human beings who won’t ruin a young man’s life by jumping to conclusions.”

He sensed that most of the others were with him, especially the plump housewife and the sickeningly pale secretary with the washed-out blue eyes.

“Mr. Foreman,” Eddie suggested, “why not take a vote right now to see how we stand, how we may be split?”

“Sounds like a good, efficient idea,” the old bookkeeper nodded. “How many think the boy is guilty?”

The butcher’s hand went up. So did the salesman’s and the tailor’s. After a moment, when there was no other show of hands, the tailor indecisively lowered his. The salesman held out a minute longer. He shrugged, dropped his hand. “With a start like this, we’ll never get a guilty verdict, and I got competition selling my customers every hour I’m in here.”

The butcher stood alone, and Eddie relaxed in his chair knowing he had it made.

Shortly after nightfall, Eddie parked the Toyota in the shadows of the elm trees that lined the driveway of the Wood suburban estate. He got out and walked the few remaining yards to the imposing, white-columned colonial home.