“By the time the car was found, the wife’s body was somewhat decomposed, and, if it hadn’t been for the fire, would have been very decomposed.
“Well, we had a post-mortem on the body and it turned out that Mrs. Chester had been dead before the fire started. The doctor thinks at least an hour before the fire started, perhaps quite a bit longer.
“Well, that was still all right, but we went and impounded the rental car Chester had been driving. They had replaced the headlight and painted over the scratch marks. We went up to the road where Mrs. Chester’s car must have gone off and made an inch-by-inch search. We found a piece of glass broken from a headlight. We feel sure it was the piece chipped out of the headlight lens on the car Chester was driving. However, the evidence there is not as robust as we’d like to have it because of the fact that the headlight lens had been replaced. But we can prove it’s from the same type of headlight used by the company from which Chester rented the car he was driving.
“At the place where we found this broken chip from the headlight, we found tracks in the side of the road off the paved shoulder and in the dirt.
“Those tracks were rather eloquent, despite the fact that some time had passed since they had been made. They told the story.
“Mrs. Chester, making a detour on the Tehachapi, had been forced to the outside of the road. A car apparently had crowded her so far off the road she had lost control. There was a steep slope going down for several hundred feet, then a half-mile slope terminating in an abrupt drop to a dry wash at the bottom.
“Apparently Mrs. Chester had been pushed off the road but had managed to keep from going all the way down the slope, although she presumably was seriously injured. Her husband had calmly parked his car, taken some heavy metallic instrument, probably a jack handle, got out of the car, walked down to where his wife’s car had come to a stop, reached in, clubbed his wife over the head until she was dead, and then had taken some time debating What he was going to do.
“He finally decided to destroy any evidence that might be remaining by fire, so he released the brakes, and after a lot of work, got the car started downhill. This time it went clear to the bottom. Then Chester went down and poured gasoline over the car and set fire to it.
“He made one little mistake that betrays him.”
“What was that?” Breckinridge asked, and I noticed just a faint, trace of skepticism in his voice.
“He left the cap off the gasoline tank.
“He had unscrewed the cap from the gasoline tank, used a rag of some sort to dip out gasoline, then he squeezed gasoline over the, wrecked car and the body. After that he tossed a match into the car and ran. He made his big mistake in waiting to be sure the gasoline in the tank ignited. Having left the cap off the gasoline tank, he forgot to go back and replace it after the fire had burned itself out.
“Once we began to get an idea of what had actually happened, we found a place where the car had rolled over several times and then come to a rest on the side of the hill. We found where someone had gone down to that car and had moved rocks, then used a jack to shove the car around so the wheels would be pointed downhill. Then down at the bottom of the hill we found more tracks again where the man had set fire to the car.
“If that fire had been set at night, it would probably have attracted enough attention from passing motorists to cause a report to the highway patrol. Therefore, we’re pretty certain the fire was set during the daytime. But Mrs. Chester left home about four-thirty. She had some people she wanted to see in San Bernardino. We checked there and found that she arrived a little after six, stayed for dinner and left about nine o’clock to drive over the Tehachapi to Bakersfield. Her friends tried to talk her into staying overnight and leaving early the next morning, but she said she liked to drive at night.
“She told her friends that she and her husband were finished, that she didn’t want to have anything more to do with him that she had other interests and there was a man in her life who could fill it a lot more completely than her husband. We can’t find out this man’s name. It was some cowpuncher she’d fallen for.
“Now then,” Sellers said, “that’s generally the story.
“We’re afraid that Chester will skip out if he gets any idea of how much evidence we have, and if he comes back here and gets to nosing around, he’ll cross our back trail. Then he’ll skip out for good, and we’ll have the devil of a time finding him. So we’re making a stakeout on his apartment so we can nail him when he comes here, and we want to crucify him by getting his story about his wife leaving him and all of that put on tape. We also want to get him to repeat the story that he either ran into a cement gatepost, or that while the car was parked someone ran into him. We’ll get that story put on tape so that we can confront him with it at the trial.”
Breckinridge said, without any great enthusiasm, “Sergeant, that makes an impressive array of circumstantial evidence.”
“Thank you,” Sellers said. “I worked this up mostly by myself — with some help from the office of the Sheriff of Kern County.”
“But,” Breckinridge went on, “that leaves us in the devil of a predicament. We’ve simply got to settle this accident case before the claimant learns you suspect Chester of murder.”
He looked reproachfully at me and said, “After this, Lam, don’t ever discount the value of experience. I told you I had a hunch on this case and I’ve been in this business for years. When I get a hunch, it’s right.”
He turned to Sellers. “May I go now?”
Sellers said thoughtfully, “I guess so. I guess I can trust your discretion.”
“You certainly can,” Breckinridge said.
“How about me?” I asked.
Sellers said irritably, “We can trust you to mess the thing up in some way.”
“And how about Elsie Brand here?” I asked. “What are you going to do with her? Put her under arrest?”
Sellers scratched his head, worried the cigar around in his mouth, heaved a long sigh and said, “All right, all three of you can go. Get the hell out of the neighborhood and don’t have anything more to do with trying to find Chester. Leave that end of it to us.
“Just keep this pint-size troublemaker out of my hair,” Sellers said to Breckinridge, “and keep him away from Chester and the Whole Chester case. What’s the name of the man your insured hit?”
“Helmann Bruno. He lives in Dallas.”
“All right, I may want to check on that file,” Sellers said.
“Our records are at your disposal any time. We cooperate with the police to the fullest extent.”
“Now, of course,” Sellers said, “what I’ve told you about the case against Chester is in strict confidence. The fact that he’s suspect probably will come out in tomorrow’s papers — perhaps the next day — but right at the moment we want to lead Chester along. We don’t want him to know how much we’ve got on him. We want him to start making a lot of statements that he’ll have to contradict later.”
“I understand that,” Breckinridge said. “I understand police procedure. In fact, we encounter similar problems with malingerers.”
“Okay,” Sellers said. “I’m sorry the boys pulled you in here but that was the plan. We were going to round up any of Chester’s friends who came in, particularly if one of them was a jane.
“We don’t want any tip-offs to Chester. You’d be surprised what some slick lawyer can think up if you give him time.”
“I know. I know,” Breckinridge said with feeling. “Believe me, Sergeant, we have the same problems.”