Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

Sheriff Kerrigan was a big middle-aged man in a rumpled business suit. He was reasonable, as elected police officials often tended to be. My connection with Santana, and Santana’s influence on the Mexican and Negro vote, were no disadvantage at all. He took me to see the body at the morgue.

This occupied the rear of a fly-specked mortuary a short walk from the courthouse. The dead woman lay on a marble-topped table under a sheet. The Sheriff removed the sheet, and switched on a naked light. I looked down into wide blank eyes. Lucy’s skin was shriveled and jaundiced from loss of blood, which had wasted through a gaping slash in her neck. Her orange silk pyjamas were heavily stained. I noticed before I looked away that the silk was real. She had red mules on her feet.

“Not pretty,” Kerrigan said. “I don’t like it any better than you do.”

“Where did she come from?”

“I’ll be frank with you,” he answered heavily. “I haven’t the slightest idea. The city identification officer is stumped–”

“No kidding, Sheriff.”

“Absolutely not. There’s nothing in her room to give us a lead. Repeat, nothing. No laundry marks, no social security card, no labels on the clothes that tell us anything, nothing written down. It’s possible she couldn’t write, I don’t know. All we know is she’s dead.”

“Autopsy?”

“Not yet. The cause of death is obvious, so there’s no hurry. Snickersnee.” He drew a finger under his own soft jowls.

“With the Norrises’ bolo knife?”

“Sure looks like it. The knife was there on the floor, covered with blood.”

“How would it get into her room, assuming that Alex Norris didn’t take it there?”

“He did, though. He admits it.”

“You have a confession?”

“Hell, no. He claims she asked him for it day before yesterday. According to him, she saw him using it to split some kindling, and she said she’d like to have it in her room. He took it to her when he was finished cutting wood. He says.”

“Any reason given?”

“She wanted it to protect herself, he says. Santana thinks she was contemplating suicide, but that’s what Santana would think, or say he thinks.”

“What do fingerprints say, or is that a secret?”

He lit a cigar without offering me one: I voted in Los Angeles. “It’s no secret. Both hers and his are on it. Mostly hers.”

“That’s consistent with suicide.”

“It’s also consistent with murder. Suicides don’t cut themselves that deep, unless they’re completely nutty, and she wasn’t. Besides, there are no hesitation marks. And the boy admits they quarreled. The D.A. wants him arraigned.” He sounded faintly regretful.

“You don’t think he did it, though.”

“I’ll let a jury form my opinion for me. The evidence warrants arraignment, you can see that. Somebody killed her, and the Norris kid was the one that quarreled with her.” He switched off the light, and his cigar winked at me like a red eye.

“What about?”

“He won’t say. He admits that they quarreled yesterday, that’s all.”

“Is that what he meant when he said he was responsible?”

“You figure it out.” He covered Lucy with the sheet again, and we went outside.

I drove to Mrs. Norris’s address. The street was on the precarious edge of the slums, in but not quite of the unofficial ghetto. A street of small well-kept houses standing among neat pocket-handkerchief lawns and flowery borders. Mrs. Norris’s white clapboard bungalow was one of the best in its block. There was a postwar Cadillac at the curb in front of it, being admired by a group of Negro children. I parked behind the Cadillac.

Its owner was inside with Mrs. Norris. He was a slight, sallow Mexican in his fifties, with a dry laconic voice and effusive manners. He embraced me with one arm and shook my hand with the other. “Glad to see you, Mr. Archer. Glad you could make it.” His breath, which was not unpleasant, smelt of spices. A mummy might look and smell and sound as Santana did, if it started to breathe again in a sudden onrush of enthusiasm.

I drew away, and sat in the armchair Mrs. Norris indicated. “What’s the word on your client?”

“They still habent the corpus . I just passed a bad hour arguing with Judge Bronson. He won’t issue a writ. They’re going to arraign Alex in Justice Court.” He took out a gold cigarette holder, caught Mrs. Norris’s look of disapproval, and put it away again, gracefully.

“Can they make it stick?”

He shot a lizard glance at the boy’s mother, and shrugged. “I’d feel a little more certain that it won’t if we could present a reasonable alternative, you know? I thought suicide, but I don’t know if it’s tenable.”

“I’m afraid not. You’ve seen the wound?”

“Yes,” he said. “Guillotine.”

Mrs. Norris shuddered audibly. She was leaning forward in a rocker with her forearms on her knees, her eyes like dark weights in her head. On the wall behind her a Sunday school motto stated that Christ was a silent listener at every conversation.

“Mrs. Norris,” I said, “if I could have a look at Lucy’s things–”

She straightened. “The police sealed up her room, inside and outside. I can’t get in myself, even to clean it up.”

“You can,” I told Santana.

“Yes. I’ll need an order.”

“Isn’t there anything of hers in the rest of the house?”

Mrs. Norris rose ponderously. “She mostly stayed in her room, but I’ll have a look.”

As soon as she was gone, Santana moved with short quick steps across the threadbare carpet, and laid a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t like to speak out in front of her. I talked to Alex this morning, and there was another man. Alex saw him go in by Lucy’s private entrance Tuesday night, night before last. That’s what their fight was about yesterday. He accused her of being a prostitute. Then when he found her dead, he thought he’d forced her to suicide.” He removed his weight from my shoulder and spread his hands. “Poor boy.”

“Poor girl. Was she one?”

“Not here. Not in Mrs. Norris’s house. That one is a highly moral woman.”

“No doubt.” But there was doubt in my mind about Lucy and her orange silk pyjamas. “Could he give you a description of the man?”

“A very good description.” He took out a small leather notebook and opened it. “He was a white man. Curly black hair and Latin features, more Italian than Spanish. Broad-shouldered, above medium height. Light tan tweed jacket, light gabardine trousers. Two-tone sport shoes, brown and white. Dark red tie. General effect that of a prosperous thug. Discount that last, though. Alex hated the man on sight, for obvious reasons.”

“You’ve told the police about this?”

“Alex wouldn’t let me. He made me swear I wouldn’t. The boy’s a poetry-reader, Mr. Archer. He would rather die than cast aspersions publicly on her memory. I’m going to tell them anyway, of course, now that I’ve told you first. Quite soon now. But it would be so much more effective if we could present the man along with the story.”

“So I’m to pluck him out of the air. This state is lousy with prosperous thugs. Latin and non-Latin.”

“Is it not?” He scurried back to the mohair chesterfield. “But there is your problem.”

Mrs. Norris returned, laden with meager booty. A woman’s hat and coat. “These were hers. She kept them in the hall closet.” Toothbrush and toothpaste, a bottle of mouthwash, one of hair oil, assorted cosmetics. “She had her own little cabinet in the bathroom. Oh, and this.”

She handed me a clinical thermometer. I turned it over and found the mercury column. It registered a temperature of 107. I showed it to Santana. “Lucy was really sick, apparently.”