“I know I did.”
“Okay, think about what you saw. The Emmet woman’s clothing was convincingly disarranged, but it takes two to tango. Was mine even slightly disarranged?”
“You were on your knees with your back to me for several seconds after she pushed you off the bunk. You had plenty of time to button up.”
“For God’s sake,” Saxon said disgustedly. “I’m beginning to think you’re in on this frame.” Then his eyes narrowed. “You know, that’s a thought, Arn. Maybe he is.”
Arnold Kettle gave him a strange look. “Are you suggesting a conspiracy between the sergeant and his, prisoner?”
“Yeah,” Saxon said slowly. “I don’t know why it didn’t register sooner. He comes in here with a faked appendix attack and leaves the woman in my custody. He even talks me out of calling in a matron, because that would spoil the frame. I see just how they worked it now.”
“Boy, are you reaching out in left field,” Morrison said in a tone of disgust. He smiled the slightest smile.
Chapter 8
“I had Chaney and Ross run him over to the hospital,” Saxon said, speaking to the district attorney and ignoring Morrison. “When they brought him back, they just dropped him off and continued on patrol, they didn’t come in with him. Before coming in, Morrison must have walked back to the woman’s cell window and rapped on the glass to signal her it was time to go into her act. That way they could time it perfectly for him to walk in at the crucial moment.”
Morrison laughed aloud. “This guy isn’t just a rapist. He must be on marijuana.”
“Well, explain your faked appendix attack,” Saxon said hotly.
“What’s to explain? I got worried over a pain that turned out to be just indigestion. I can demonstrate how silly your story is, though. You’re charging that this whole thing was a conspiracy between me and my prisoner, huh?”
“I am.”
“Okay, let’s kick that around. I was assigned to this case when Factor’s body was discovered a month ago, but Grace Emmet had already skipped town when I got it. I never in my life laid eyes on her until I picked her up at the Erie police station at nine this evening. You can check that time with the Erie police. By the time they checked her out and we got going, it was nine-thirty. Are you suggesting that in the hour and a half it took us to drive here, I talked a total stranger into framing you for rape?”
After thinking this over, even Saxon had to admit it seemed unlikely. Arnold Kettle’s expression indicated he considered it impossible.
Morrison said, “Furthermore, I never before laid eyes on you. Why the hell would I want to frame a total stranger, using another total stranger as an accomplice?”
Arnold Kettle cleared his throat. “It does seem that an awful lot of coincidence would have to be involved, Ted. A plot such as you suggest would require considerable advance planning. Assuming just for the sake of argument that there was such a plot, how would Sergeant Morrison know you’d be on duty tonight? Or do you think that for some psychopathic reason he and his prisoner decided to frame just anybody they found on duty?”
“The whole town has known for ten days that I’d be on duty tonight,” Saxon said doggedly. “A police chief voluntarily taking New Year’s Eve is the sort of story that travels. And you must know how fast news travels in Iroquois.”
“I guess that guy in the cell was in on the conspiracy too, huh?” Morrison said sardonically. “I never laid eyes on him before, either.”
Saxon studied him from narrowed eyes. “Now that you mention it, he probably was planted here in order to be on hand as a witness. He did his damnedest to get himself jailed.” He turned to Kettle. “The boys brought him in about ten o’clock. Twice they’d stopped him for speeding, but the first time they let him go with a warning. He’d probably been racing back and forth all over town hoping to be stopped. The only reason he’s in jail is because he deliberately made himself obnoxious. He wanted to be jailed.”
“Why would all these people go to so much trouble?” the D.A. asked reasonably.
Saxon made a hopeless gesture. “You’ve got me, Arn. But they all have to be in on it. It’s too pat.”
“That’s true,” Kettle agreed. “Almost too pat to be believable. I’d like to talk to this witness.”
But questioning of Edward Coombs was postponed because Dr. Harmon and Jenny Waite came from the cell block at that moment. Jenny handed Saxon the keys as the doctor set his bag on the bench and started to put on his coat.
“Hello, Arn,” Harmon said to the district attorney. “How was the country-club dance?”
“Too loud to stand, sober. And you had to put me on a non-alcoholic diet. What’s the story on the woman?”
The doctor shrugged. “You can’t just look at a woman and tell whether or not she’s been raped. Unless it was so violent there’s physical damage — which there isn’t in this case. Aside from the damage to her clothing, there isn’t anything either to prove or to disprove her charge. Her pulse and respiration are normal. Of course, by now she’s had time to quiet down. An hour ago she may have been registering a pulse of two hundred for all I know.”
“Then you can’t say one way or the other?” the district attorney asked.
“Not tonight. Ask me tomorrow when I get the lab report. I’ve prepared a microscopic slide which should tell the story.”
Saxon said, “Bruce, when you examined Sergeant Morrison at the hospital earlier, what did you find?”
“Nothing. He just seemed to be experiencing a touch of mild indigestion.”
“Could he have been faking?”
The doctor glanced curiously from Saxon to the sergeant and back again. “I have no reason to suspect he was,” he said cautiously.
“But could he have been? It’s important.”
“If you mean was it possible, of course it was. My diagnosis was based on the patient’s description of symptoms, because there weren’t any physical symptoms to base it on. When a patient claims pain, I assume there is pain.” Glancing at the sergeant, he said humorously, “The only way to tell definitely is to ask the patient. Were you faking?”
“If you’d felt my pain, you’d know I wasn’t,” Morrison rumbled.
“I guess that settles that,” Harmon said, picking up his bag. “I’ll phone you the lab-test results some time tomorrow morning, Arn. I assume you’ll be home instead of at your office.”
“If I’m not, try me here. My office will be closed for the legal holiday.”
As the doctor went out at his usual rapid walk, a whole group of police officers trooped in together. In addition to the five members of the second trick, now going off duty, there was the reduced staff of three who would now go on for the swing trick, plus patrolman Verne Dowling, Saxon’s desk relief. Glancing at the wall clock, Saxon saw it was just one o’clock.
Naturally, all the officers were curious about the presence of Jenny and the D.A., but Saxon brusquely interrupted their questioning, told the old crew to log out, and the relief to get out on patrol. All of them seemed a little surprised at his brusqueness, but they hurried to comply with his orders. Within five minutes all but Dowling had departed again.
Verne Dowling didn’t ask any questions either. Though he had no idea of what was going on, he recognized that his usually amiable acting chief was in a towering rage and discreetly made himself inconspicuous. Storing his overcoat and hat in his squad-room locker, he quietly moved behind the desk and seated himself.
Saxon said coldly, “I’ll take you back to talk to the prisoners now, Arn. You can stand by while we question the woman, Jenny. But we won’t need you, Morrison.”