“This is about Murder Two,” Nellie said.
“Oh?”
Face expressing mild surprise, as if Milton’s entertainment lawyer hadn’t already told him this on the phone.
“Who is supposed to have murdered whom, may I ask?”
Faint derisive smile on his face now. His pose, his manner, the smile, even the expensive hand-tailored suit all said Johnny Milton would be out of here in ten minutes flat. Over my dead body, Nellie thought.
“Mr. Milton is being charged with murder in the second degree,” she said dryly. “Did you want to talk to your client about it before we proceed further?”
“Thank you, I would appreciate that,” Milton said.
They all left Byrnes’s office. Outside in the squadroom, none of them said very much. The lab had already come back with a double match on fingerprints and blood. They had Milton cold. Nellie wasn’t even willing to do any deals here. This was Murder Two, plain and simple, and Milton was looking at twenty-five to life.
Some ten minutes later, O’Brien opened the door to Byrnes’s office, poked his head out into the corridor, smiled under his gray mustache and said, “Mrs. Brand? Ready when you are.”
They filed back into the lieutenant’s office again.
“Would you like to tell me what you think you have?” O’Brien said.
“Happy to,” Nellie said, and laid it all out for both of them. She told them that Milton’s fingerprints matched the latent impressions lifted from the knife found in his office, that the residue substance clogged in the hinge of the knife was indeed blood and that moreover it matched the AB blood group of Michelle Cassidy, who had been stabbed and slashed to death the night before. She pointed out that Miss Cassidy shared her apartment on Carter Avenue with Mr. Milton and that the investigating detectives from the Eighty-eighth Squad had found no evidence of forcible entry to the apartment. It was her assumption that Mr. Milton had his own keys to the apartment. If she was wrong in this assumption, she wished Mr. Milton would correct her when the questioning was resumed. If it was resumed.
“That’s it,” she said.
“My client is willing to admit to the assault on Michelle Cassidy on the night of April sixth,” O’Brien said. “But he had nothing to do with her murder.”
“No, huh?” Nellie said.
“No,” O’Brien said.
“You’re trying to deal an A-l felony down to a Class D, is that it?” Nellie said, and shook her head in amazement.
“Better than that,” O’Brien said. “I’m looking for Assault Three, a Class A mis.”
“Why should i buy that?”
“Because you’ve got nothing that puts my client in that apartment last night.”
“Where was he last night?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Does that mean I can question him now?”
“Sure. I’ve only just met the man, but I’m convinced he’s got nothing to hide.”
Nellie nodded. The technician turned on the video camera again. Milton was read his rights again, this time in the presence of his attorney, and he ascertained that he was willing to answer questions. The dog and pony act began.
“Mr. Milton, did you stab Michelle Cassidy on the night of April sixth at approximately seven P.M.?”
“I did.”
Good. That nailed down the assault.
“You previously told Detectives Carella and Kling that you were in a restaurant named O’Leary’s at that time, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So you weren’t quite telling them the truth, is that right?”
“I wasn’t.”
“In fact, you were lying.”
“Yes.”
“You were instead in the alley outside the Susan Granger Theater, stabbing Miss Cassidy.”
“Yes.”
“With this knife?” Nellie asked, and showed him the knife in the plastic evidence bag.
“With that knife, yes.”
“Then, contrary to what you told me earlier, this knife is yours.”
“Yes, it’s my knife.”
“And are you the person who hid it behind the books in your office?”
“Yes.”
“So when you said earlier… tell me if I’m quoting you incorrectly… when you said, `I don’t know how it got there. Someone must have put it there,’ referring to this knife, you were not telling the truth then, either, were you?”
“I was not.”
“You were lying again.”
“I was lying.”
“This is your knife, and you did hide it behind those books in your bookcase.”
“Yes.”
“And you now say you used this knife to stab Michelle Cassidy on the night of April sixth.”
“Yes.”
“How about last night? Did you use this knife to stab her last night?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you use some other knife to stab her last night?”
“I didn’t stab her last night.”
“You stabbed her Monday night, but not last night.”
“That’s correct.”
“Would you care to explain that, Mr. Milton?”
Milton turned, looked at his attorney. O’Brien nodded.
“Well…” Milton said.
And now he told Nellie and the assembled detectives how the idea had been Michelle’s from the very start… well, premised on something he’d said while they were in bed together this past Sunday night. She’d been complaining about how stupid the play was, Romance, the play they were rehearsing, and Johnny had mentioned that the play had pretensions of being something it couldn’t ever possibly be, there was simply no way you could turn a murder mystery into a silk purse. He’d gone on to explain that the minute anybody stuck a knife in somebody else, all attention focused on the victim, and all anybody wanted to know was whodunit.
Which wasn’t such a bad idea, he’d thought.
Focusing attention on the victim.
Which he’d said aloud.
To Michelle.
“It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get some attention focused on you,” he’d said, “never mind the dumb play.“
Well, if there’s anything an actress loves, it’s getting attention focused on her. The minute he mentioned this thought — what was actually just a passing thought, an idle thought, a whim, you know — Michelle wanted to now what he meant, what kind of attention? He had mentioned somebody sticking a knife in a person, which happens in the play, of course, and now she picked up on that, saying it was too bad some nut out there didn’t get it in his head to stab her, the way the girl in the play gets stabbed, which would certainly focus a lot of attention on her, and wouldn’t hurt the play besides, since a stabbing is what happens in it. The whole damn audience would be sitting there waiting for the stabbing scene, knowing that Michelle had been stabbed in real life, though not as seriously as the girl in the play, who almost gets killed from what she could determine, although it was such a goofy play that the next minute she’s up off the floor and answering the Detective’s questions, sheeesh.
“Too bad there isn’t some nut out there,” she’d said, and they’d lain there in each other’s arms, quiet for a while, and then she said, “Why does it have to be some nut?”