“You may be right,” Levine told him. He walked on down the hall and joined the other two at the door.
All three got into the front seat of the Chevy, Crawley driving again and Perkins sitting in the middle. They rode in silence, Crawley busy driving, Perkins studying the complex array of the dashboard, with its extra knobs and switches and the mike hooked beneath the radio, and Levine trying to figure out what was wrong.
At the station, after booking, they brought him to a small office, one of the interrogation rooms. There was a bare and battered desk, plus four chairs. Crawley sat behind the desk, Perkins sat across the desk and facing him, Levine took the chair in a corner behind and to the left of Perkins, and a male stenographer, notebook in hand, filled the fourth chair, behind Crawley.
Crawley’s first questions covered the same ground already covered at Gruber’s apartment, this time for the record. “Okay,” said Crawley, when he’d brought them up to date. “You and Gruber were both doing the same kind of thing, living the same kind of life. You were both unpublished writers, both taking night courses at Columbia, both living on very little money.”
“That’s right,” said Perkins.
“How long you known each other?”
“About six months. We met at Columbia, and we took the same subway home after class. We got to talking, found out we were both dreaming the same kind of dream, and became friends. You know. Misery loves company.”
“Take the same classes at Columbia?”
“Only one. Creative Writing, from Professor Stonegell.”
“Where’d you buy the poison?”
“I didn’t. Al did. He bought it a while back and just kept it around. He kept saying if he didn’t make a good sale soon he’d kill himself. But he didn’t mean it. It was just a kind of gag.”
Crawley pulled at his right earlobe. Levine knew, from his long experience with his partner, that that gesture meant that Crawley was confused. “You went there today to kill him?”
“That’s right.”
Levine shook his head. That wasn’t right. Softly, he said, “Why did you bring the library books along?”
“I was on my way up to the library,” said Perkins, twisting around in his seat to look at Levine.
“Look this way,” snapped Crawley.
Perkins looked around at Crawley again, but not before Levine had seen that same burning deep in Perkins’s eyes. Stronger, this time, and more like pleading. Pleading? What was Perkins pleading for?
“I was on my way to the library,” Perkins said again. “Al had a couple of records out on my card, so I went over to get them. On the way, I decided to kill him.”
“Why?” asked Crawley.
“Because he was a pompous ass,” said Perkins, the same answer he’d given before.
“Because he got a story accepted by one of the literary magazines and you didn’t?” suggested Crawley.
“Maybe. Partially. His whole attitude. He was smug. He knew more than anybody else in the world.”
“Why did you kill him today? Why not last week or next week?”
“I felt like it today.”
“Why did you give yourself up?”
“You would have gotten me anyway.”
Levine asked, “Did you know that before you killed him?”
“I don’t know,” said Perkins, without looking around at Levine. “I didn’t think about it till afterward. Then I knew the police would get me anyway — they’d talk to Professor Stonegell and the other people who knew us both and I didn’t want to have to wait it out. So I went and confessed.”
“You told the policeman,” said Levine, “that you’d killed your best friend.”
“That’s right.”
“Why did you use that phrase, best friend, if you hated him so much you wanted to kill him?”
“He was my best friend. At least, in New York. I didn’t really know anyone else, except Professor Stonegell. Al was my best friend because he was just about my only friend.”
“Are you sorry you killed him?” asked Levine.
This time, Perkins twisted around in the chair again, ignoring Crawley. “No, sir,” he said, and his eyes now were blank.
There was silence in the room, and Crawley and Levine looked at one another. Crawley questioned with his eyes, and Levine shrugged, shaking his head. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. And Perkins was being so helpful that he wound up being no help at all.
Crawley turned to the stenographer. “Type it up formal,” he said. “And have somebody come take the pigeon to his nest.”
After the stenographer had left, Levine said, “Anything you want to say off the record, Perkins?”
Perkins grinned. His face was half-turned away from Crawley, and he was looking at the floor, as though he was amused by something he saw there. “Off the record?” he murmured. “As long as there are two of you in here, it’s on the record.”
“Do you want one of us to leave?”
Perkins looked up at Levine again, and stopped smiling. He seemed to think it over for a minute, and then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “Thanks, anyway. But I don’t think I have anything more to say. Not right now anyway.”
Levine frowned and sat back in his chair, studying Perkins. The boy didn’t ring true; he was constructed of too many contradictions. Levine reached out for a mental image of Perkins, but all he touched was air.
After Perkins was led out of the room by two uniformed cops, Crawley got to his feet, stretched, sighed, scratched, pulled his earlobe, and said, “What do you make of it, Abe?”
“I don’t like it.”
“I know that. I saw it in your face. But he confessed, so what else is there?”
“The phony confession is not exactly unheard of, you know.”
“Not this time,” said Crawley. “A guy confesses to a crime he didn’t commit for one of two reasons. Either he’s a crackpot who wants the publicity or to be punished or something like that, or he’s protecting somebody else. Perkins doesn’t read like a crackpot to me, and there’s nobody else involved for him to be protecting.”
“In a capital punishment state,” suggested Levine, “a guy might confess to a murder he didn’t commit so the state would do his suicide for him.”
Crawley shook his head. “That still doesn’t look like Perkins,” he said.
“Nothing looks like Perkins. He’s given us a blank wall to stare at. A couple of times it started to slip, and there was something else inside.”
“Don’t build a big thing, Abe. The kid confessed. He’s the killer; let it go at that.”
“The job’s finished, I know that. But it still bothers me.”
“Okay,” said Crawley. He sat down behind the desk again and put his feet up on the scarred desk top. “Let’s straighten it out. Where does it bother you?”
“All over. Number one, motivation. You don’t kill a man for being a pompous ass. Not when you turn around a minute later and say he was your best friend.”
“People do funny things when they’re pushed far enough. Even to friends.”
“Sure. Okay, number two. The murder method. It doesn’t sound right. When a man kills impulsively, he grabs something and starts swinging. When he calms down, he goes and turns himself in. But when you poison somebody, you’re using a pretty sneaky method. It doesn’t make sense for you to run out and call a cop right after using poison. It isn’t the same kind of mentality.”
“He used the poison,” said Crawley, “because it was handy. Gruber bought it, probably had it sitting on his dresser or something, and Perkins just picked it up on impulse and poured it into the beer.”