“I didn’t, I’m telling you.”
“Did you ever give him pills?”
“No.”
“He was taking tranquilizers, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know what he was taking. I never brought him anything.”
“Never?”
“Once maybe, or twice. An aspirin. If he had a headache.”
“But never a tranquilizer?”
“No.”
‘“How about a vitamin capsule?”
“He handed him the pill,” Wetherley said.
“What kind of a pill?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think!”
“I’m thinking. A small pill.”
“What color?”
“White.”
“A tablet, you mean? Like an aspirin? Like that?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so. I don’t remember.”
“Well, you saw it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but…”
They put it all together afterward in the squadroom. They left the three suspects in the lieutenant's office with a patrolman watching over them and sat around Carella's desk and compared their answers. They were not particularly pleased with the results, but neither were they surprised by them. They had all been cops for a good many years, and nothing human beings perpetrated against each other ever surprised them. They were perhaps a little saddened by what they discovered each and every time, but never surprised. They were used to dealing with facts, and they accepted the facts in the Stan Gifford case with grim resolution.
The facts were simple and disappointing.
They decided after comparing results that all three of their suspects were lying.
Maria Vallejo had been arguing with Gifford, and she had been drinking coffee, but she denied both allegations because she realized how incriminating these seemingly isolated circumstances might seem. She recognized quite correctly that someone could have poisoned Gifford by dropping something into his coffee. If she admitted there had been coffee in the dressing room, that indeed she and Gifford had been drinking coffee together, and if she then further admitted they’d been arguing, could she not have been the one who slipped the lethal dose into the sponsor's brew? So Maria had lied in her teeth, but had graciously refused to incriminate anyone else while she was lying. It was enough for her to fabricate her own way out of what seemed like a horrible trap.
Art Wetherley had indeed wished his employer would drop dead, and he had wished it out loud, and he had wished it in the presence of someone else. And that night, lo and behold, Stan Gifford did collapse, on camera, for millions to see. Art Wetherley, like a child who’d made a fervent wish, was startled to realize it had come true. Not only was he startled; he was frightened. He immediately remembered what he’d said to George Cooper before the show, and he was certain Cooper would remember it, too. His fear reached new dimensions when he recalled that he had been one of the last few people to spend time with Gifford while he was alive, and that his proximity to Gifford in an obvious poisoning case, coupled with his chance remark during rehearsal, could easily serve to pin a thoroughly specious murder rap on him. When a detective called and warned him not to leave the apartment, Wetherley was certain he’d been picked as the patsy of the year, an award that did not come gold-plated like an Emmy. In desperation, he had tried to discredit Cooper’s statement by turning the tables and presenting Cooper as a suspect himself. He had seen Cooper bringing aspirins to Gifford at least a few times in the past three years. He decided to elaborate on what he’d seen, inventing a pill that had never changed hands on the night Gifford died, senselessly incriminating Cooper. But a frightened man doesn’t care who takes the blame, so long as it’s not himself.
In much the same way, Cooper came to the sudden realization that not only was he one of the last people to be with Gifford, he was the last person. Even though he had spent several minutes with Gifford in the dressing room, he thought it was safer to say he had only poked his head into it. And whereas Gifford hadn’t stopped to talk to a soul before he went on camera, Cooper thought it was wiser to add a mystery cameraman. Then, to clinch his own escape from what seemed like a definitely compromising position, he remembered Wetherley’s earlier outburst and promptly paraded it before the investigating cops, even though he knew the expression was one that was uttered a hundred times a day during any television rehearsal.
Liars all.
But murderers none.
The detectives were convinced, after a grueling three-hour session, that these assorted liars were now babbling all in the cleansing catharsis of truth. Yes, we lied, they all separately admitted, but now we speak the truth, the shining truth. We did not kill Stan Gifford. We wouldn’t know strohoosis from a hole in the wall. Besides, we are kind gentle people; look at us. Liars, yes, but murderers, no. We did not kill. That is the truth.
We did not kill.
The detectives believed them.
They had heard enough lies in their professional lives to know that truth has a shattering ring that can topple skyscrapers. They sent the three home without apologizing for any inconvenience. Bob O’Brien yawned, stretched, asked Carella if he needed him anymore, put on his hat, and left. Meyer and Carella sat in the lonely squadroom and faced each other across the desk. It was five minutes to midnight. When the telephone rang, it momentarily startled them. Meyer lifted it from the cradle.
“Meyer, 87th Squad,” he said. “Oh, hi, George.” To Carella, he whispered, “It’s Temple. I had him out checking Krantz’s alibi.” Into the phone again, he said, “What’d you get? Right. Uh-huh. Right. Okay, thanks.” He hung up. “He finally got to the last person on Krantz’s list, that Hollywood director. He’d been to the theater, just got back to the hotel. His little bimbo was with him.” Meyer wiggled his eyebrows.
Carella looked at him wearily. “What’d Temple get?”
“He says they all confirmed Krantz’s story. He got to the sponsor’s booth a good fifteen minutes before the show went on, and he was there right up to the time Gifford got sick.”
“Mmm,” Carella said.
They stared at each other glumly. Midnight had come and gone; it was another day. Meyer sniffed noisily. Carella yawned and then washed his hand over his face.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
The men were silent.
“Maybe he did kill himself,” Carella said.
“Maybe.”
“Oh, man, I’m exhausted,” Carella said.
Meyer sniffed.
6
He had followed them to the restaurant and the movie theater, and now he stood in the doorway across from her house, waiting for her to come home. It was a cold night, and he stood huddled deep in the shadows, his coat collar pulled high on the back of his neck, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, his hat low on his forehead.
It was ten minutes past 12:00, and they had left the movie theater at 11:45, but he knew they would be coming straight home. He had been watching the girl long enough now to know a few things about her, and one of those things was that she didn’t sleep around much. Last month sometime, she had shacked up with a guy on Banning Street, just for the night, and the next morning after she left the apartment he had gone up to the guy and had worked him over with a pair of brass knuckles, leaving him crying like a baby on the kitchen floor. He had warned the guy against calling the police, and he had also told him he should never go near Cindy Forrest again, never try to see her again, never even try to call her again. The guy had held his broken mouth together with one bloody hand, and nodded his head, and begged not to be hit again—that was one guy who wouldn’t be bothering her anymore. So he knew she didn’t sleep around too much, and besides he knew she wouldn’t be going anyplace but straight home with this blond guy because this blond guy was a cop.