“Doesn’t it mean anything to you, Linda? Didn’t it change something inside of you, pulling that trigger and seeing what it did to her?”
She closed her eyes for a portion of a second. “Don’t be irrational, darling,” she said calmly.
“How long have you looked for the big chance? How many years? What made you think this was it? You’re a damn fool, Linda. Even if it works, it won’t really work, you know. He knows what you did. And that means he knows what you are. Maybe you can hold him for a little while, but the years are hardening and coarsening you, Linda. And your looks are the only thing to hold him with. You haven’t got anything else. You did the actual deed, not him. He’ll think about that more and more as time goes by. I suppose you plan to marry him. Maybe, right now, he’s thinking how foolish that would be. It wouldn’t give him anything he hasn’t already had. It would be a nice joke on you, Linda. You set him free, and he leaves you flat. You wouldn’t dare object. You wouldn’t dare open your mouth.”
She stood up abruptly. Her face was a mask. I saw that I had touched her. I saw the effort it took for her to relax again. Then she smiled. “Dear, you must get that fantasy out of your head. Poor Jeff. This tragedy has made him quite dependent on me.” She gave a subtle emphasis to the word “dependent.”
“You better go, Linda.”
She wouldn’t call the jailer. I yelled for him. He came, let her out. She turned in the open door and said, for his benefit, “Please try to get some sleep, darling. You’ll feel so much better if you get some sleep.”
I cursed her quietly and the jailer looked at me with pained indignation and slammed the cell door with clanging emphasis. When they were gone I undressed, washed at the sink, put on the fresh clothing. It felt good to have shoes on.
They took me to an office in the afternoon and gave me written and oral tests that lasted over two hours. A half-hour after I was back in the cell, Journeyman came in. He looked bitter. “You’re sane, all right. Know what you’ve got? A very stable personality and good intelligence.”
“What makes you so happy?” I asked him.
“All your prints they found on the gun. Plus some of Jeffries’ and some of your wife’s. But mostly yours. And Jeffries showed Vern where he and your wife caught the fish. Vern picked up four of her cigarette butts there, on the bank, with her lipstick on them. They fished in a hole near an old broken-down dock behind a mangrove point, so they weren’t seen by any of the boat traffic on the bay. It comes down to this, Paul. It’s your word against theirs. And a jury will believe them. Change your mind since yesterday?”
“No.”
He roamed around the cell, hands crammed in his pockets, head lowered, scuffing his feet, whistling tonelessly. He stopped and sighed. “Okay. I’ll do every damn thing I can. Shepp has decided to make a try for first degree. He’ll handle it himself. Voice like an organ. Makes them cry. Well, hell. We’ll do what we can.”
He said he would come back the next day and go over a lot of stuff in detail, and left.
David Hill arrived at eight o’clock. He wore a big briar pipe. He looked through the bars at me and said, “I’m the opposition, so you don’t have to talk to me, Cowley.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
He sat in the straight chair, thumbed his pipe, got it going again. “I’m a stranger here myself,” he said. “I came down three years ago. Used to practice in Michigan. Passed the Florida bar, set up here and got appointed as Shepp’s assistant. The doctors said my little girl would do better in this climate. Asthma. Ever play chess, Cowley?”
“No.”
“When your opponent launches an attack, you must watch the moves he makes and try to figure out what he has in mind. The most nonsensical-looking moves can sometimes conceal a very strong attack.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“We paid per diem to two men who confirmed what I’d already guessed. You’re intelligent, stable. I spent some more county funds today and talked to a man named Rufus Stick. I have a fair idea of what you’re like, Cowley. You are my opponent, let’s say, and I see you making a nonsensical move. In other words, your story of what happened on the beach. You stand up to stiff questioning, and they don’t trip you once. So I have two assumptions. One, you made up that story and went over it in your mind until you were letter perfect on it. Two, it was the truth. Now why would an opponent I know to be able, devise a story which practically means suicide? Answer: he wouldn’t. Conclusion: he told the truth. Next step, a closer look at the two other principals. How did you meet your wife, Cowley?”
I told him everything I could remember about her, and everything I knew about Brandon Jeffries. From time to time he wrote things down in a small notebook. It took a long time.
When at last he stood up to go I said, “It is the truth, you know.”
He looked into his dead pipe. “I think it is, Cowley. I’ll wire Jeffries to be back for the inquest. He was told his statement would be enough. I’ll get him back here.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know yet.” He looked at me and his face changed. “If your story is true, it’s the coldest, most brutal, most callous murder I’ve ever heard of.”
Journeyman was in the next day and we worked for three hours. Linda came the next day with more cigarettes and reading matter. I refused to see her and the jailer sullenly brought me the things she had purchased. This was Saturday, the day we were to have left, the day they were lowering the body of Stella Jeffries into the ancient soil of Connecticut. No one came to see me on Sunday. I had read everything at hand. It was a long day.
David Hill, complete with pipe, came at noon on Monday. He seemed ill at ease, as though he had to bring up something unpleasant. When he finally brought it up, it was not as unpleasant as it would have seemed a week before. It was about Linda.
“It’s a good firm,” he said. “We used to use them when I was in Michigan. They have an office in Los Angeles and they have a big staff, so things move fast. I had to use my own money for this.”
“I’ll pay you back, of course.”
“Her name was still Willestone when she went out there. She went out there with a married man. He left her. She was calling herself Mrs. Brady when you met her again. Mrs. Julius Brady, you said. There is no marriage record. She lived in San Bernardino with a petty gambler named Julius Brady for a while. He cheated some soldiers at Camp Anza and was sent up. There’s a blank, and then she turned up in Bakersfield, calling herself Linda Brady. She was sentenced twice there, thirty-day terms, for soliciting. She moved up to Los Angeles and was picked up in the company of a man wanted on suspicion of armed robbery. They found she was sick and committed her to the county hospital until she was well. Then she was warned to leave the city. That was about three months before you met her on the street. It... it isn’t pretty, Cowley.”
I thought of how she had been, years ago. I looked beyond Hill. “In school,” I said softly, “she was the prettiest, and the best. Life was going to give her all the wonderful things. You could see that, just looking at her.”
“Maybe she thought so too,” Hill said. “Life didn’t give them to her and she tried to take them, and her methods were wrong, and she got licked, beaten down. Then you picked her up and brushed her off. This time she waited for the long chance. The big chance.”
“This time maybe she’s made it.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.”
“How about Jeffries?”
“Nothing on him. Orphaned. Brought up by an aunt. Never much money. Good athlete. He was working on a cruise ship — something to do with games and recreation — when he met his wife. She steered him into sales, and he did well. Her people objected at first, but finally came around. He’ll be back tonight. He’s flying in. I’ve wangled a delay on the inquest.”