Richard Deming - This Game of Murder

“It makes a fascinating story,” Marshall said. “I’m surprised it didn’t make the wire services.”

“Probably it’s my talent as a storyteller,” Wesson said with a smile. “Actually it was a pretty drab affair which was covered locally by about a quarter column on the inside pages. As I said, it might have developed into a sensational case if there had been a long-drawn-out trial, but it was over too fast. It was just another of the hundred or so homicides a year we have in this city.”

“This probably seems like an anticlimatic question,” Marshall said. “But can you tell me any more about Bruce Case’s background?”

The white-haired man laughed. “I don’t know of any women in his life before he married, though I suppose he he must have had girls in high school and college. And I can’t describe his childhood because I never met him until he came to work here. I never met his parents, incidentally. I only read about them in the paper.”

“How did he take his parents’ deaths?” Marshall asked.

“Surprisingly well. I don’t think he was very close to them and he wasn’t living at home at the time. He had a small bachelor apartment. It struck me that he was more concerned about the effect of the incident on his job here than he was grief-stricken. I think he expected to be fired. It was hardly any fault of his though, so he had no cause to worry. We’re not such an old-fashioned firm that we insist on even our employees’ ancestors being untouched by scandal.”

They chatted a few moments more, than Marshall rose to leave. He thanked the elderly lawyer for his time and sincerely meant it, for he had found him extremely charming.

On the way out he even bade the overzealous receptionist a pleasant good-by.

From the law office Marshall went to a local newspaper morgue and dug up the story. There was little in it which added to Wesson’s account except the date of the occurrence. He copied this in his notebook along with the names of the investigating officers who were quoted.

He took a lunch break then, afterward had a taxi take him to the Board of Education office. He found it open, as summer school was in session, and managed to talk a clerk into looking up Bruce Case’s public school record. He copied down the names of the grammar school and high school Case had attended, noting that he had earned a fairly good scholastic record at both.

He considered visiting both schools to see if he could find teachers who had known Case as a youth and might fill him in on his childhood and teen-age life. Then he decided he had already collected the important factors for a good news story, and that trivia about his childhood girl friends would be mere window dressing.

He caught an afternoon plane back to Buffalo, picked up his car from the airport parking lot, had dinner in Buffalo, and started back to Runyon City in the early evening. He walked into the house at nine p.m. to find both his parents sitting in the front room.

Sylvia smiled at him vaguely and said, “Hello, dear. How was Pittsburgh?”

“He went to Philadelphia, honey,” her husband said. “Good trip, son?”

“Smooth both ways.”

“You must be famished,” Sylvia said, getting up from her chair.

“I ate in Buffalo, Mom.”

“You did?” she said, surprised. “That was silly. I would have been glad to cook you dinner.” She sat down again.

“Get anything?” Jonas asked.

“Uh-huh. Quite a lot.”

“Better drop into my office first thing in the morning, then,” Jonas said. There was an iron-clad rule at the Marshall home that newspaper business was never discussed there.

Marshall had been up since five o’clock that morning. Going upstairs, he took a shower and went to bed.

The next morning he entered his father’s office at a quarter after nine. Jonas listened in silence as his son related the history of Bruce Case’s parentage.

When he finished, the older man said, “It’s a pretty sensational story. Not in itself, of course, but in relation to our local shooting. Can you imagine how some of the tabloids would handle it? ‘Victim of alleged murder discovered to be the son of a murderer. Does some strange curse hang over the Case family name which brings murder in each new generation?’ ”

“The News isn’t a tabloid,” Marshall said.

“I wasn’t suggesting you use that approach. How do you plan to handle it?”

“I’m not sure I’ll write it at all. I want to talk to Betty first and see how she feels about it. I don’t see how it could hurt her, since it all happened before she met Bruce, but I’m not going to let her read it in the news without at least knowing in advance it’s going to be there.”

Surprisingly, Jonas didn’t give him any argument. “You’re usually back by noon when you visit Betty,” he said. “If you only take a half-hour for lunch, you’ll still have time to make the deadline.”

“Suppose I decide not to write it?”

“Then we’ll have another conference. We have enough disagreement about how to run this paper without jumping the gun on something which may never come up.”

“Okay,” Marshall said. “I’ll see you about noon.”

At ten o’clock he made his usual phone call to Audrey Reed and got the message to relay to Betty that her son had just earned his beginner’s Red Cross swimming certificate. It struck him that the resilience of youngsters was remarkable. Here, less than two weeks after the boy’s father had been killed, only slightly over a week after his mother had been arrested for his father’s murder — and he hadn’t seen her since — he was able to go about his usual boyish activities as though everything in his life were normal.

It was probably better that children adjusted so easily, he thought. If it weren’t for that faculty, probably everyone would grow up with neuroses.

At eleven he walked into the visitors’ room of the county jail. When Betty seated herself across from him, she for once asked another question before inquiring about Bud.

“Did you go to Philadelphia?” she said.

“Uh-huh. Audrey said to tell you Bud passed his beginner’s swim test for Red Cross.”

“Oh?” She was pleased, but not distracted from the original subject. “Did you find out anything about Bruce?”

Examining her, he realized she was controlling extreme tension. He said slowly, “You know what I found out, don’t you? You could have told me yourself.”

Her shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh. “I’ve dreaded this moment ever since the stories about me started to appear. I knew eventually some reporter would dig up that old scandal. Why did it have to be you?”

“How can it hurt you?” he asked, puzzled by her strong reaction. “It might even help. It suggests that Bruce came from a kind of nutty family. If the jury thought your husband was a little freakish, it might gain you some sympathy.”

“I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking about Bud.”

He looked at her quizzically.

She said, “I’ve reconciled myself to the probability that I’m going to be convicted, Kirk. That’s going to be enough of a cross for poor little Bud to bear. You know how cruel children can be. When his schoolmates become angry with him, they’ll taunt him, ‘Your mother shot your father and is in prison.’ Why should they have the additional ammunition handed to them that there was murder on his father’s side of the family, too? At least leave him a father he can remember without shame.”

“In the first place, you’re not going to be convicted,” he said firmly. “In the second place, Bud’s father wasn’t a murderer, his grandfather was. People may be little enough to condemn you for what your parents do, but they don’t go clear back to your grandparents. My grandfather was once jailed for horsewhipping a preacher who called him a Godless man from the pulpit after Grandpa published an editorial calling the preacher an ignorant bigot who had never read any book but the Bible in his life. I suppose Dad was taunted by the kids for that, but none of my childhood friends ever mentioned it.”