Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

Alone, he sat at the table and opened the first of the binders.

It is four days before Christmas.

The weather here in Calusa, Florida, is wonderful for this time of year. No one can complain about temperatures that hover in the mid-seventies during the daytime and then drop to a good bedtime low of fifty-two or — three. No need for air conditioning, you simply throw open the windows and let the prevailing winds blow right on through. During the day, the sun smiles down beneficently, and Calusa’s miles and miles of white sand beaches are littered with the bodies of toasting tourists, the waters of the Gulf sprinkled with bobbing heads. Not a single native is in the water; to Floridians, this is the winter and only madmen go swimming in December.

The downtown streets, the parking lots of the malls, are all hung with Christmas decorations that seem out of place here in this climate. What is Santa Claus doing on a sleigh down here where there has never been snow? Why are there antlered reindeer in a climate better suited to alligators? Why doesn’t Frosty the Snowman melt?

But the neo-Floridians who have migrated from distant places north perhaps still remember the bite of a clear December day with a hint of snow in the air, and those who were born and bred here have heard tall tales of fabulous Christmas blizzards, the family snowed in while the turkey roasts and the fire crackles on the grate, and suddenly at the door, arriving with his arms laden with gifts… “Son! We knew you’d make it! Merry Christmas!”

And so there is the same frantic shopping mania here in the subtropical Southland as there is away up north in frigid Eagle Lake, Maine. So what if the Christmas trees are sprayed white? So what if the shoppers are wearing shorts and T-shirts? In only four days, it will be Christmas morning. And peace on earth will come to men of good will.

Women, too.

Maybe.

There will be no peace on earth for Jessica Leeds tonight.

Tonight, Jessica Leeds will be raped.

“The mall closed at ten o’clock. I…”

A transcript consists of cold type, the words of questioner and witness reduced to something less than conversation, a dialogue lacking inflection or nuance. Matthew can only guess at the fury underlining Jessica Leeds’s testimony, the anger she is controlling.

She describes a Chinese restaurant adjacent to the mall.

Cold type.

The restaurant is still open at ten… a little after ten, actually, by the time she reaches the car. She has parked it behind the restaurant, which is shaped like a pagoda, and which in fact is named The Pagoda. The car is an expensive one, and this is four days before Christmas. With all the traffic in the mall’s lot a dented fender is a distinct possibility, and so she has chosen this deserted spot behind The Pagoda, alongside a low fence beyond which is undeveloped scrub land. As she walks toward the restaurant, the mall’s parking lot is rapidly emptying of automobiles, except for those parked row after row outside the movie-theater complex at the far end. It is ten minutes past ten, she supposes, when she places in the trunk of her Maserati the several Christmas gifts she’s bought.

There are lights here behind the Chinese restaurant. It is not what anyone would call brightly lighted, but there is illumination enough to provide a sense of security. And besides, there’s a moon. Not quite full, just on the wane. Anyway, it is only a little after ten, this is not the dead of night, this is not a town where a woman alone needs to be afraid of unlocking the door of her automobile in an adequately lighted parking space behind a brilliantly lighted restaurant on a moonlit Thursday night four days before Christmas. Besides, there are three men standing behind the restaurant, smoking. All of them in shirtsleeves. Wearing long white aprons. Restaurant help. She unlocks the door of the car, closes and locks it behind her, turns on the lights, starts the engine, and is backing away from the low fence when she realizes she has a flat tire.

She tells this to the State Attorney, and she repeatedly tells it to the defense attorneys who come at her one after the other, trying to shake her story. In the transcript, each attorney is initially identified as he begins his cross, and then the form reverts to a simple Q and A, so that it is not necessary each time, over and over again, to indicate MR. AIELLO for Tran’s attorney or MR. SILBERKLEIT for Ho’s, or MRS. LEEDS for Jessica herself, it is Q and A, Q and A, Q and…

A: I got out of the car to change it. I didn’t realize I was going to be raped.

Q: Objection, Your Honor. We are here precisely to determine whether…

A: Yes, yes, sustained, Mr. Aiello. The jury will please ignore the witness’s answer.

The “A” this time is from the Circuit Court judge hearing the case, a man named Sterling Dooley, who has a reputation as a hanging judge. The team of defense attorneys — there are eight of them sitting at the defense table — would have preferred a different judge. They did, in fact, ask for a change of venue because of the publicity the rape (or alleged rape, as they would have it) generated in the media, but their request was denied. So they are stuck with Dooley, who now asks the clerk to please read Aiello’s question again—

“What did you do when you discovered the flat tire?”

— and the Q and A continues.

A: I got out of the car to change it.

Q: Yourself?

A: Yes, myself. I was alone.

Q: I mean… don’t you belong to any club offering emergency road service?

A: No, I don’t.

Q: Couldn’t you have called a garage?

A: I know how to change a tire.

Q: But the way you were dressed…

A: The way I was dressed has nothing to do with changing a tire.

Q: I merely thought… high heels… a short skirt…

A: Objection, Your Honor.

This from the State Attorney. Skye Bannister himself. In person. Hair as golden as wheat, eyes the color of his given name. Tall and rangy and enormously good-looking. Undoubtedly leaping to his feet in high dudgeon.

A: Sustained. Leave off that line of questioning, please, Mr. Aiello.

Q: Couldn’t you have called your husband to help you?

A: I didn’t want to get him out of bed.

Q: You knew he was in bed, did you?

A: He had a cold. He was in bed when I left the house that night.

Q: And this was now what time?

A: A quarter after ten.

Q: So naturally, you didn’t want to get him out of bed. Was it a quarter after ten exactly?

A: I can’t say exactly. I’m assuming it took me ten minutes or so to walk to the car and put my packages in the trunk.

Q: And you say there were three men standing outside the back door to the restaurant when you…

A: Yes. The defendants. The three men sitting right…

Q: I haven’t asked you to identify anyone, Mrs. Leeds.

A: Well, that’s who they were.

Q: Your Honor…

A: Yes, strike all that. Witness will please not offer testimony unless it is asked for.

Q: Did you speak to these men?

A: No.

Q: Had you seen these men prior to this time — a quarter after ten, you say it was?

A: Around a quarter after ten. No, I hadn’t seen them before then.

Q: That was the very first time you saw them.

A: Yes.

Q: But you’re not sure it was a quarter after ten exactly .

A: Not exactly. But certainly around then.