The elevator stopped at the fourth floor and I stepped into the corridor. A man passed, saw little of my face, for I bent my head to light a cigarette.
When the elevator door slid closed behind this man, I moved quickly to 404.
Expecting a caller, Parker answered my knock at once. His brows raised. Coolly, he said, “Yes?”
“You were expecting Greenwood,” I said.
He frowned, looking at me closely as if trying to place me.
“He’s still downstairs,” I said. “A call from the studio caught him. He’ll be right up. I’m new on the production team and some quick changes are being made. Greenwood brought me over to introduce me.”
Uncertainly, Parker let me enter as I talked. I closed the door with an easy, natural motion.
“Please sit down,” I said. “Greenwood may be a few minutes and we might as well get acquainted. We’ve got a lot to discuss.”
The living room was large, air conditioned, comfortable. There was a long couch, several massive club chairs, a desk, a TV set, a cocktail table, a small, portable bar against the wall. The place, I noted, appeared to be soundproof.
As Parker walked to one of the club chairs, he moved with difficulty. Robust as he was, he needed a cane.
Parker reached the chair. He didn’t sit down, but turned and remained standing in front of the chair.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll check the desk and see how long Greenwood is going to be.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m Robert Gaither. You’ve finally recognized me.”
He looked me up and down, his expression puzzled.
“Believe me,” he said, “I’ve never seen you before.”
“And you haven’t seen my wife either,” I said.
“No...”
“And I suppose you’ve never been to Crayton Lake.”
He paled. His hand groped behind him for the arm of the chair, for support.
“You can see,” I said, “that denials won’t help you. You were there. You know she wasn’t alone in the lake that night.”
“Maria Conway...”
“Her maiden name,” I said. “Maria Conway Gaither.”
He fell into the chair. Staring at me, he said, “It isn’t possible...”
“That I wouldn’t find you? It was easy.”
“That isn’t what I meant at all.” A crazy sound, part laugh, came from him suddenly. “We writers... the necessity of our job drives us to get inside people... to see as they see... feel as they feel... think as they think... What have I done? What on earth have I possibly done? You — killed her.” That sound came from him again. “Just like in the story I made up.”
“The story that thirty million people saw,” I said. “What did you think you were pulling?”
“Pulling? I was writing a story... Using the accidental death of a woman I’d come to know, as the springboard for a script. The details of setting and character were changed enough, I was sure. I’m still sure they were — if she had died accidentally, as they said. But I see that that TV show would have meant a great deal if she had been murdered — to the man who murdered her.”
“It was murder in the story,” I said.
“Of course. To use my real-life germ of an idea for a story, I had to change it, for the sake of drama, from accident to murder. But who would murder Maria? She was a fine person. She hadn’t an enemy in the world. She was not rich. There was no motive in the world for her murder except in the heart of the cruel person from whom she was running.”
“She told you all about me, I suppose,” I said.
Parker shook his head. “She discussed her personal affairs very little with me. We became little more than casual friends, that’s all. I knew that she’d experienced a recent unpleasantness, but I knew nothing more.”
“In the story you gave all the—”
“In the story, Gaither, the accident had to be murder. For murder there had to be a murderer. In Maria’s case there was only one possible murderer — a husband who’d kill before he’d give her freedom. It was all quite logical to the mind of a working writer who needed a story.”
“You’re lying!” I shouted at him. “You knew the facts all the time!”
“No,” he said, “not until you came here.”
“You knew— You didn’t spill it to the police because you were at the lake with a blonde.”
“Blonde? Oh — I see. Yes.”
“She wasn’t your wife, was she?”
“No,” he said. “She was my daughter. Fresh from school and taking a short vacation with her father.”
I felt as if the veins were bursting in my temples. To have let fear cloud my judgment, to have let it bring me here...
“I swear I didn’t know, Gaither,” he said. “You were safe. I wasn’t dangerous to you.”
“But you are now,” I said.
He struggled to his feet, faced me squarely.
I pulled the wire from my coat pocket.
I looked at the thick neck growing from those enormously powerful shoulders. Quickly, I moved in to kill. The cripple could not flee. His cries would go unheard.
Unfortunately, under the pressure of my intention, I forgot about the cane in his hand.
When I regained consciousness, the District Attorney’s downtown office was crowded with policemen. Later, the courtroom was jammed, with spectators and reporters. But this cell on death row — it vibrates with an emptiness all its own.
When You Commit a Crime
by Donald Martin
When running from the police, I suggest you travel as lightly as possible. A valise of stolen money may very likely prove somewhat disconcerting. On the other hand, I do recommend your investing in a good pair of track shoes and in considerable stamina.
He had taken the train out of New York to Pittsburgh. There he had gotten off and switched to another train going to Cleveland. From there he had changed again and gone to Chicago. Now he was sitting in a train that was speeding still farther west, watching the small towns appear in fleeting stage sets of houses and stores, flying through a world of flashing telephone poles and glancing trees.
He had not taken notice of the old couple until he had changed at Pittsburgh. Being acutely sensitive to faces at the moment, he was aware that they had followed him in each of his changes and were now on the same train, sitting several seats behind. They appeared innocuous enough. The man was in his mid-sixties probably, short and well-groomed, with a small mustache that lent a certain dignity to his pleasant face. The woman — Frank assumed she was the wife, they had a well-worn compatability about them — seemed of the same age, was short and gray, her face serene and motherly, with — a soft reticent smile. Observing them in the dining car earlier, Frank decided they were tourists by the way they looked out of the window and made quiet but animated remarks, pointing at the rushing landscape with childlike interest.
But today, he decided, he could not trust even his mother, should that sad, long-suffering old woman appear before him. The uniformed conductors gave him a chill. Accusation and suspicion seemed to darken every face. He could not put his trust in anyone. Not with the events back in New York still smoldering, not with a bank guard lying critically wounded in the hospital, not with his — Frank’s — picture staring moodily off every front page; and, this most of all, not with the valise containing the twenty thousand dollars sitting on the seat next to him.