The car glided on through the never-never land it had been traversing all evening.
He said a thing that few if any suspects have ever said before. Said it and meant it with his whole heart and soul. “I’m frightened; take me back to the detention pen, will you? Please, fellows, take me back. I want walls around me, that you can feel with your hands. Thick, solid, that you can’t budge!”
“He’s shivering,” one of them pointed out with a sort of detached curiosity.
“He needs a drink,” Burgess said. “Stop here a minute; one of you go in and bring him out a couple fingers of rye. I hate to see a guy suffer like that.”
Henderson gulped it avidly, as though he couldn’t get it down fast enough. Then he slopped back against the seat “Let’s go back, take me back,” he pleaded.
“He’s haunted,” one of them chuckled.
“That’s what you get when you raise a ghost.”
Nothing further was said until they were out of the car again and filing up the steps at Headquarters in phalanx. Then Burgess steadied him with a hand to his arm, as he fumbled one of the steps. “You better get a good night’s sleep, Henderson,” he suggested. “And a good lawyer. You’re going to need both.”
5
The Ninety-First Day Before the Execution
“... You have heard the defense try to claim that the accused met a certain woman, in a place called Anselmo’s Bar, at ten minutes after six on the night the murder was committed. In other words, two minutes and forty-five seconds after the time established by police investigation as that of the death of the victim. Very clever. You can see at once, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that if he was at Anselmo’s Bar, Fiftieth Street, at ten past six, he could not have been at his own apartment two and three-quarter minutes before then. Nothing on two legs could have covered the distance from one to the other in that length of time. No, nor on four wheels, nor with wings and a propellor either, for that matter. Again I say, very clever. But; not clever enough.”
“Convenient, wasn’t it, that he should just happen to meet her on that one night, and not any other night during the year. Almost as though he had a premonition he was going to need her on that particular night. Strange things, premonitions, aren’t they? You have heard the defendant admit, in answer to my questions, that he did not go out and accost unknown women other nights of the year. That he had never done such a thing before during the entire course of his married life. Not once, mind you. Those are the accused’s own words, not mine. You heard them yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. Such a thought had never even entered his mind until then. It was not his habit to do that sort of thing. It was foreign to his nature. On this one night of all nights, however, they would have us believe that he did. Quite a handy coincidence, what? Only—”
Shrug, and a long pause.
“Where is the woman? We’ve all been waiting to see her. Why don’t they show her to us? What’s keeping them? Have they produced such a woman here in court?”
Singling out a juror at random with index finger. “Have you seen her?” Another. “Or you?” A third, in the second tier. “Or you?” Gesture of empty handed helplessness. “Has any one of us seen her? Has she been up there on that witness chair at any time from first to last? No, of course not, ladies and gentlemen. Because—”
Another long pause.
“Because there is no such woman. There never was. They can’t produce a person who doesn’t exist. They can’t breathe life into a figment, a figure of speech, a nebula, a thing that isn’t. Only the good Lord can create a full-grown woman in all her height and breadth and thickness. And even He needs eighteen years to do it, not two weeks.”
Laughter, from all parts of the room. Brief smile of grateful appreciation on his part.
“This man is being tried for his life. If there was such a woman, do you think they would have neglected to bring her here? Wouldn’t they have seen to it that she was on the job here, speaking her piece at the right time? You bet they would! If—”
Dramatic pause.
“—there was such a woman. Let’s leave ourselves out of it. We’re here in a courtroom, miles from the places that he insists he visited with her that night, and months have passed. Let’s take the word of those who were right there, at those same places, at the same time, as he supposedly was with her. Surely they should have seen her, if anyone did. Did they? You heard for yourself. They saw him, yes. Every one of them can recall, no matter how vaguely, no matter how hazily, glimpsing him, Scott Henderson, that night. It seems to end there, as though they all had a blindness in one eye. Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd, ladies and gentlemen? It does me. When people travel around in pairs, one of two things happens: either neither one of them is remembered afterward, or, if one is, then the other is also. How can the human eye see one person without seeing the other — if the other is right there alongside the first at the time? That violates the law of physics. I can’t account for it. It baffles me.”
Coy bunching of the shoulders.
“I’m open to suggestions. In fact I’ll make a few myself. Possibly her skin was of a peculiar transparency that let the light through, and so they looked right through her to the other side without—”
General laughter.
“Or possibly she just didn’t happen to be there with him. Nothing more natural than that they should fail to see her if she didn’t happen to be there at the time.”
Change of manner and of voice. General tightening-up.
“Why go ahead? Let’s keep this serious. A man’s on trial here for his life. I’m not anxious to make a farce out of it. The defense is the one that seems to be. Let’s leave hypotheses and theories, and go back to facts. Let’s stop talking about phantoms and will-o’-the-wisps and mirages; instead let’s talk about a woman of whose existence there has never at any time been any doubt. Everybody saw Marcella Henderson in life, and everybody saw her just as plainly afterward in death. She was no phantom. She was murdered. The police have photographs showing that. That’s the first fact. All of us see that man over there in the prisoner’s dock, with his head bowed low through all of this — no, now he’s raising it to stare defiantly over at me. He’s on trial here for his life. That’s the second fact.”
In a confidential, theatrical aside, “I like facts much better than fancies, don’t you, ladies and gentlemen? They’re much easier to handle.
“And the third fact? Here’s the third fact. He murdered her. Yes, that’s as concrete, as undeniable a fact as the first two. Every detail of it is a fact, already proven once here in this room. We’re not asking you to believe in phantoms, in wraiths, in hallucinations, like the defense!” Raising his voice. “We have documents, affidavits, evidence, for every statement we make, every step of the way!” Bringing his fist crashing down on the rail before the jury box.