“Then he hid it in his daughter’s bed to frame her?”
“That’s the kind of man he is.”
“Nuts!”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” He menaced me with the cannon ball of his belly.
“Don’t talk like that to the Sheriff,” the guard said.
“I don’t know of any law against the use of the word ‘nuts.’ And incidentally I wasn’t violating anything in the California Code when I went out to the yacht to talk to McGee. I’m cooperating with a local attorney in this investigation and I have a right to get my information where I can and keep it confidential.”
“How did you know he was there?”
“I got a tip.”
“From Stevens?”
“Not from Stevens. You and I could trade information, Sheriff. How did you know he was there?”
“I don’t make deals with suspects.”
“What do you suspect me of? Illegal use of the word ‘nuts’?”
“It isn’t so funny. You were taken with McGee. I have a right to hold you.”
“I have a right to call an attorney. Try kicking my rights around and see where it gets you. I have friends in Sacramento.”
They didn’t include the Attorney General or anybody close to him, but I liked the sound of the phrase. Sheriff Crane did not. He was half a politician, and like most of his kind he was an insecure man. He said after a moment’s thought:
“You can make your call.”
The Sheriff went into the interrogation room – I caught a glimpse of McGee hunched gray-faced under a light – and added his voice to the difficult harmony there. My guard took me into a small adjoining room and left me by myself with a telephone. I used it to call Jerry Marks. He was about to leave for his appointment with Dr. Godwin and Dolly, but he said he’d come right over to the courthouse and bring Gil Stevens with him if Stevens was available.
They arrived together in less than fifteen minutes. Stevens shot me a glance from under the broken white wings of his hair. It was a covert and complex glance which seemed to mean that for the record we were strangers. I suspected the old lawyer had advised McGee to talk to me, and probably set up the interview. I was in a position to use McGee’s facts in ways that he couldn’t.
With soft threats of habeas corpus proceedings, Jerry Marks sprung me out. Stevens remained behind with the Sheriff and a Deputy D.A. It was going to take longer to spring his client.
A moon like a fallen fruit reversing gravity was hoisting itself above the rooftops. It was huge and slightly squashed.
“Pretty,” Jerry said in the parking lot.
“It looks like a rotten orange to me.”
“Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. I learned that at my mother’s knee and other low joints, as a well-known statesman said.” Jerry always felt good when he tried something he learned in law school, and it worked. He walked to his car swiftly, on the balls of his feet, and made the engine roar. “We’re late for our appointment with Godwin.”
“Did you have time to check on Bradshaw’s alibi?”
“I did. It seems to be impregnable.” He gave me the details as we drove across town. “Judging by temperature loss, rate of blood coagulation, and so on, the Deputy Coroner places the time of Miss Haggerty’s death as no later than eight-thirty. From about seven until about nine-thirty Dean Bradshaw was sitting, or standing up talking, in front of over a hundred witnesses. I talked to three of them, three alumni picked more or less at random, and they all agreed he didn’t leave the speaker’s table during that period. Which lets him out.”
“Apparently it does.”
“You sound disappointed, Lew.”
“I’m partly that, and partly relieved. I rather like Bradshaw. But I was pretty certain he was our man.”
In the remaining minutes before we reached the nursing home, I told him briefly what I’d learned from McGee, and from the Sheriff. Jerry whistled, but made no other comment.
Dr. Codwin opened the door for us. He wore a clean white smock and an aggrieved expression.
“You’re late, Mr. Marks. I was just about ready to call the whole thing off.”
“We had a little emergency. Thomas McGee was arrested about seven o’clock tonight. Mr. Archer happened to be with him, and he was arrested, also.”
Godwin turned to me. “You were with McGee?”
“He sent for me, and he talked. I’m looking forward to comparing his story with his daughter’s.”
“I’m afraid you aren’t – ah – co-opted to this session,” Godwin said with some embarrassment. “As I pointed out to you before, you don’t have professional immunity.”
“I do if I’m acting on Mr. Marks’s instructions. Which I am.”
“Mr. Archer is correct, on both counts,” Jerry said.
Godwin let us in reluctantly. We were outsiders, interlopers in his shadowy kingdom. I had lost some of my confidence in his benevolent despotism, but I kept it to myself for the present.
He took us to the examination room where Dolly was waiting. She was sitting on the end of a padded table, wearing a sleeveless white hospital gown. Alex stood in front of her, holding both her hands. His eyes stayed on her face, hungry and worshipping, as if she was the priestess or the goddess of a strange one-member cult.
Her hair was shining and smooth. Her face was composed. Only her eyes had a sullen restlessness and inwardness. They moved across me and failed to give any sign of recognition.
Godwin touched her shoulder. “Are you ready, Dolly?”
“I suppose I am.”
She lay back on the padded table. Alex held on to one of her hands.
“You can stay if you like, Mr. Kincaid. It might be easier if you didn’t.”
“Not for me,” the girl said. “I feel safer when he’s with me. I want Alex to know all about – everything.”
“Yes. I want to stay.”
Codwin filled a hypodermic needle, inserted it in her arm, and taped it to the white skin. He told her to count backward from one hundred. At ninety-six the tension left her body and an inner light left her face. It flowed back in a diffused form when the doctor spoke to her:
“Do you hear me, Dolly?”
“I hear you,” she murmured.
“Speak louder. I can’t hear you.”
“I hear you,” she repeated. Her voice was faintly slurred.
“Who am I?”
“Dr. Godwin.”
“Do you remember when you were a little girl you used to come and visit me in my office?”
“I remember.”
“Who used to bring you to see me?”
“Mommy did. She used to bring me in in Aunt Alice’s car.”
“Where were you living then?”
“In Indian Springs, in Aunt Alice’s house.”
“And Mommy was living there, too?”
“Mommy was living there, too. She lived there, too.”
She was flushed, and talking like a drunken child. The doctor turned to Jerry Marks with a handing-over gesture. Jerry’s dark eyes were mournful.
“Do you remember a certain night,” he said, “when your Mommy was killed?”
“I remember. Who are you?”
“I’m Jerry Marks, your lawyer. It’s all right to talk to me.”
“It’s all right,” Alex said.
The girl looked up at Jerry sleepily. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“Just the truth. It doesn’t matter what I want, or anybody else. Just tell me what you remember.”
“I’ll try.”
“Did you hear the gun go off?”
“I heard it.” She screwed up her face as if she was hearing it now. “I am – it frightened me.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“I didn’t go downstairs right away. I was scared.”
“Did you see anyone out the window?”
“No. I heard a car drive away. Before that I heard her running.”