“Dolly Kincaid. Her husband is my client. She’s in a nursing home, under a doctor’s care.”
“Psycho?”
“It depends on your definition of psycho. It’s a complex situation, Jerry. I doubt that she’s legally insane under the McNaghten rule. On the other hand I very much doubt that she did the shooting at all.”
“You’re trying to get me interested in the case,” he said suspiciously.
“I’m not trying to do anything to you. Actually I came to you for information. What’s your opinion of Gil Stevens?”
“He’s the local old master. Get him.”
“He’s out of town. Seriously, is he a good lawyer?”
“Stevens is the most successful criminal lawyer in the county. He has to be good. He knows law, and he knows juries. He does pull some old-fashioned courtroom shenanigans that I wouldn’t use myself. He’s quite an actor, heavy with the emotion. It works, though. I can’t remember when he’s lost an important case.”
“I can. About ten years ago he defended a man named Tom McGee who was convicted of shooting his wife.”
“That was before my time.”
“Dolly Kincaid is McGee’s daughter. Also, she was the key witness for the prosecution at her father’s trial.”
Jerry whistled. “I see what you mean by complex.” After a pause, he said: “Who’s her doctor?”
“Godwin.”
He pushed out his heavy lips. “I’d go easy with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure he’s a good psychiatrist, but maybe not so much in the forensic department. He’s a very bright man and he doesn’t hide his light under a bushel, in fact he sometimes acts like a mastermind. Which puts people’s backs up, especially if their name is Gahagan and they’re sitting on the Superior Court bench. So I’d use him sparingly.”
“I can’t control the use that’s made of him.”
“No, but you can warn her attorney–”
“It would be a lot simpler if you were her attorney. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her husband today, but I think he’ll go along with my recommendation. His family isn’t poverty-stricken, by the way.”
“It wasn’t the money I was thinking about,” Jerry said coldly. “I promised myself that I’d spend this weekend with my books.”
“Helen Haggerty should have picked another weekend to get herself shot.”
It came out harsher than I intended. My own failure to do anything for Helen was eating me.
Jerry regarded me quizzically. “This case is a personal matter with you?”
“It seems to be.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just hold yourself in readiness for the present.”
“I’ll be here all afternoon. After that my answering service will be able to contact me.”
I thanked him and went back to the motel. Alex’s room next to mine was still empty. I checked with my own answering service in Hollywood. Arnie Walters had left his number for me and I called Reno.
Arnie was out of the office, but his wife and partner Phyllis took the call. Her exuberant femininity bounced along the wires:
“I never see you, Lew. All I hear is your voice on the telephone. For all I know you don’t exist any more, but simply made some tapes a number of years ago and somebody plays them to me from time to time.”
“How do you explain the fact that I’m responsive? Like now.”
“Electronics. I explain everything I don’t understand electronically. It saves me no end of trouble. But when am I going to see you?”
“This weekend, if Arnie’s tabbed the driver of the convertible.”
“He hasn’t quite done that, but he does have a line on the owner. She’s a Mrs. Sally Burke and she lives right here in Reno. She claims her car was stolen a couple of days ago. But Arnie doesn’t believe her.”
“Why not?”
“He’s very intuitive. Also she didn’t report the alleged theft. Also she has boy friends of various types. Arnie’s out doing legwork on them now.”
“Good.”
“I gather this is important,” Phyllis said.
“It’s a double murder case, maybe a triple. My client’s a young girl with emotional problems. She’s probably going to be arrested today or tomorrow, for something she almost certainly didn’t do.”
“You sound very intense.”
“This case has gotten under my skin. Also I don’t know where I’m at.”
“I never heard you admit that before, Lew. Anyway, I was thinking before you called, maybe I could strike up an acquaintance with Mrs. Sally Burke. Does that sound like a good idea to you?”
“An excellent idea.” Phyllis was an ex-Pinkerton operative who looked like an ex-chorus girl. “Remember Mrs. Burke and her playmates may be highly dangerous. They may have killed a woman last night.”
“Not this woman. I’ve got too much to live for.” She meant Arnie.
We exchanged some further pleasantries in the course of which I heard people coming into Alex’s room next door. After I said goodbye to Phyllis I stood by the wall and listened. Alex’s voice and the voice of another man were raised in argument, and I didn’t need a contact mike to tell what the argument was about. The other man wanted Alex to clear out of this unfortunate mess and come home.
I knocked on his door.
“Let me handle them,” the other man said, as if he was expecting the police.
He stepped outside, a man of about my age, good-looking in a grayish way, with a thin face, narrow light eyes, a pugnacious chin. The mark of organization was on him, like an invisible harness worn under his conservative gray suit.
There was some kind of desperation in him, too. He didn’t even ask who I was before he said: “I’m Frederick Kincaid and you have no right to chivvy my son around. He has nothing to do with that girl and her crimes. She married him under false pretenses. The marriage didn’t last twenty-four hours. My son is a respectable boy–”
Alex stepped out and pulled at the older man’s arm. His face was miserable with embarrassment. “You’d better come inside, Dad. This is Mr. Archer.”
“Archer, eh? I understand you’ve involved my son in this thing–”
“On the contrary, he hired me.”
“I’m firing you.” His voice sounded as if it had often performed this function.
“We’ll talk it over,” I said.
The three of us jostled each other in the doorway. Kincaid senior didn’t want me to come in. It was very close to turning into a brawl. Each of us was ready to hit at least one of the others.
I bulled my way into the room and sat down in a chair with my back to the wall. “What’s happened, Alex?”
“Dad heard about me on the radio. He phoned the Sheriff and found out where I was. The Sheriff called us over there just now. They found the murder gun.”
“Where?”
Alex was slow in answering, as though the words in his mouth would make the whole thing realer when he let them out. His father answered for him:
“Where she hid it, under the mattress of the bed in that little hut she’s been living in–”
“It isn’t a hut,” Alex said. “It’s a gatehouse.”
“Don’t contradict me, Alex.”
“Did you see the gun?” I said.
“We did. The Sheriff wanted Alex to identify it, which naturally he couldn’t do. He didn’t even know she had a gun.”
“What kind of a gun is it?”
“It’s a Smith and Wesson revolver, .38 caliber, with walnut grips. Old, but in pretty fair condition. She probably bought it at a pawn shop.”
“Is this the police theory?”
“The Sheriff mentioned the possibility.”
“How does he know it’s hers?”
“They found it under her mattress, didn’t they?” Kincaid talked like a prosecutor making a case, using it to bring his son into line. “Who else could have hidden it there?”