The Criminal

by Jim Thompson

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Mr. Clinton make any promises to you for giving him that confession? Did he say something like, well, you tell us you killed Josie and we’ll let you go?”

  “Well”—he hesitated—“I kind of felt like he did. He said that if I’d do the right thing, he would; that he knew I didn’t really mean to do it and it was just a mistake and he didn’t believe in punishing anyone for—”

  “But he didn’t make you any outright promise?”

  “No—not exactly, I guess. I mean it kind of seemed like he did, but…”

  I nodded and unstrapped my briefcase.

  He said, “Mr. Kossmeyer. What will they—?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “They won’t do a damned thing. Just keep telling the truth, and everything will be all right.”

  I got the briefcase open, and took out a thick sheaf of photographs. I spread them out on the lounge in three rows and nodded to him.

  “These are aerial photographs, Bob. They were taken from a helicopter. They begin there at the trestle, the canyon, near your home and move in a bee-line to the golflinks. In other words, they show the area you passed through on the way to the links…”

  “Yes, sir?” he said.

  “Now, of course, being pictures, everything is considerably reduced—bear that in mind—but it’s all there. All the trees and telephone poles and other landmarks. You look at them and show me the route you followed as well as you remember it.”

  He bent over the pictures. After a moment, he turned and looked at me.

  “They ain’t—they’re not in the right order. You want me to unmix ’em?”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “Well, yes, you straighten them out, Bob.”

  The pictures were actually one picture, one long strip photograph which I’d chopped into sections. I’d mixed those sections up deliberately.

  He had them straightened out within two minutes.

  That didn’t prove anything, of course, but it was a little something, some satisfaction to me, at least. It established that he had been through the area very recently.

  I gave him a pencil, and he pointed out the route he had followed. He did it very quickly. Maybe—I thought—a little too quickly?

  “Did you always go this same way, Bob? Down this little slope and up the next one and so on?”

  “Well…” He scratched his head.

  “You went pretty much the same way each time, right? That’s how you remember it so well.”

  He studied my face doubtfully, cautiously. He wet his lips.

  “What”—he edged back a step—“what you want me to say, Mr. Kossmeyer?”

  “Just the truth, Bob. Whatever the truth is, that’s what I want you to tell me.”

  “Well…I guess not, then. I mean, I guess I just went that way that day.”

  “Fine,” I said, soothingly. “That’s the truth, and that’s all I want. Now, let’s see. Let’s see if I remember as well as you do. You were pretty excited that day. You weren’t thinking about scenery, just walking fast without looking to right or left. That’s right, isn’t it, Bob? I’ve got it right? Then tell me—just the truth—tell me how you remember the way you went so well.”

  “Well…” He swallowed noisily. “Maybe I don’t remember. Maybe—if you don’t want me to say I—”

  “Bob,” I said. “Listen to me, kid. I’m on your side. I’m your friend. I’m like a doctor, see? You know how a doctor has to hurt a guy sometimes for his own good. Well, that’s me, that’s what I was doing a moment ago. You understand that. Sure you do. You re a smart boy, and a damned fine one. So—so just keep right on telling me the truth. Tell me how you remember.”

  “Well. I don’t exactly remember. I just kind of know.”

  “Yes?”

  “It kind of comes back to me. I wasn’t noticing anything, hardly, at the time. But now I sort of do. I mean, I kind of know—I don’t exactly remember, but I know.”

  “Swell,” I said. “You’re doing fine, Bob.”

  “Most of the time, usually, it’d been some other day, I’d kind of wander around. I’d maybe wander off to look at a rabbit hole or something, or maybe I’d try to jump across a little gully or see if I could hit a telephone pole with a rock or—well, that’s the way I’d usually do. But that day, I just wasn’t interested in anything like that. I just went right straight ahead, just the straightest I could go and—”

  “Sure, you did!” I said. “Naturally! That’s exactly what you would do, what anyone would do. That’s swell, Bob, that’s really swell.”

  No, it didn’t prove anything. It wasn’t nearly enough to swing Clint around, or to go to trial with. Still, it would help…a little. It was something to build on. It sounded so plausible, so authentic, you know, not the kind of thing a kid could invent on the spur of the moment. If he’d stick to it, if it was true, if he just wasn’t beating his brains out to please me for fear of getting them beat out.…

  I wished I hadn’t roughed him. I wished to God I hadn’t. And, yet, there’d been nothing else to do. He’d had to be snapped out of it fast. Hell, he might have taken days to do it by himself—if he ever did it—and we didn’t have days. Anyway, I didn’t.…Only one client, I had? I got forever to spend with one client? You should live so long, Kossmeyer!

  I opened a coke for him, and took one myself. I kidded with him some more, did a little clowning, made him laugh a few times. He seemed pretty much at ease when we went back to the pictures. He answered my questions with only normal hesitation, telling the truth apparently without regard for how I might take it.

  Yeah, that was an excavation there by that highline tower, but it had been there a long time. He didn’t know why it was there unless they’d started to dig the hole for the tower in the wrong place, but he hadn’t seen anyone working there. There hadn’t been anyone around those towers since he didn’t know when.

  Yeah, that was a pasture, all right, those were some cows. But the house was way off over on the highway, several miles off. You had to be over by the highway to see it, and he hadn’t been anywhere near.

  Yeah, that was kind of a dump over there on the left; that is, it had been a dump. Now, though it was fenced in and it was against the law to dump anything there. Anyway, it was too far off from the way he’d gone. It was over on kind of an old country road that no one used any more.

  Yeah, that was a pond. There were two or three of those little ponds. But there wasn’t anything in them but maybe a few tadpoles. No one fished in ’em or swam in ’em or anything. He’d never seen anyone near them, so, well, he guessed there couldn’t have been anyone that day.

  No—well, yeah, he did take a smoke now and then, but just when someone had given him one. He never bought any. He hadn’t left any butts lying around the spot where he’d sat killing time. Yeah, that was the place, right in there in those rocks. Yeah, the ground was pretty hard there, all right. Maybe there might be some footprints or something, but that wouldn’t prove anything, would it? He might have made them some other day.…Yeah, he had this wristwatch; he’d had that watch for, well, almost always. His Dad had bought it for him when they were in the city together, and…yeah, that’s how he’d known the time. He hadn’t asked anyone. There hadn’t been anyone to ask.…

  We came to the end of the pictures, but he rambled on a minute or two longer, talking about the watch and the time his Dad had bought it for him. Then, he looked at me, and the skin around his cheekbones seemed to tighten.

  “I…I guess I’m not doing so well, am I?” he said.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “You’re doing swell, Bob. You just keep it up and everything’ll be fine.”

  “B-but—what’ll Mr. Clinton do if we can’t—”

  “Frig Mr. Clinton,” I said. “You ain’t done a God damned thing, and they ain’t going to do a God damned thing to you. Now, let’s go back through these pictures, just for the hell of it and…”

  We went through the pictures again. Exce
pt that he was a little slower with it, it was the same story.

  I got up and paced around the room. He watched me, started to say something a couple of times, and I guess I cut him off pretty short.

  I scraped the pictures up from the lounge and carried them over to the window. I held them up to the light, turned through them slowly.

  Nothing. I’d taken him over every step of the way, and there was nothing. Nothing that might mean people—someone who could have seen him.

  I came to the last picture, and I cursed out loud. Why couldn’t he have gone on to the golf course? Why couldn’t he have gone at least a little further down the bluff so that he might have been seen from the course? Why the hell did he have to stay back there in those God damned rocks when—

  I let the pictures slide out of my hands, all but the last one. I held it up to the light, turning it this way and that, squinting at it.

  “Bob,” I said. “Come here! Hurry up, God damn it!”

  “Y-Yes, sir.” He came running like a dog. “Yes, Mr. Kossmeyer?”

  “This little dark patch over here on the far right…see it? See where I’m pointing? Down in the bottom of that little swell of land—there in those weeds or bushes or whatever they are.”

  “Yes, sir. I see it.”

  “What is it? It looks like it might be a little clearing.”

  “Yes, sir. I guess maybe it is.”

  “Maybe?” I said. “Don’t you know? You’ve wandered all over hell out there, looked at everything else within a ten mile radius, don’t you know what this is?”

  “Well, I—there was some colored people over there, once, over that way, and this big old fat woman she looked pretty mean, so I figured I’d better stay away from there…”

  He looked at me anxiously. I let out a groan. “You saw a—Wait a minute! You only saw her the one time, and yet you never went near there afterward?”

  “W-Well, I guess it was more than that. I guess I’ve seen her pretty often, her and some colored kids.”

  “You guess! You must have, didn’t you? Didn’t you? When was the last time?”

  “Well, I—I—”

  “God,” I said. “God in heaven! It must be a garden and you’ve seen people around it, and you didn’t tell me about it! Don’t you know they must live around there? Were you ever over in these woods? When was the last time you saw them—any of them?”

  “N-Not—not very long ago, I guess. It kind of seems like it wasn’t. Y-You see, I don’t—didn’t—try to see ’em. I mean, I get near there I always kind of look the other way, so that, well, they won’t think I’m spying or anything. I kind of try to circle around, and pretend like—”

  “When was the last time you saw them? I know. You pretended not to look over that way and maybe you circled around, but you’d damned near’ve had to see them if they were around. You’d know they were there even without looking. When was it? A week ago, two weeks? Four days? That day, the day you—”

  “Y-Yes, sir,” he stammered. “It was that day, I guess. That’s when it was, yes, sir! I remember now it was that day, Mr. Kossmeyer. I—”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure, Bob?”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

  Then, I managed to get hold of myself, and I let go and stood back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Don’t pay me any mind, Bob. You know how it is when a guy gets excited.”

  “Yes, sir.” He eyed me watchfully. “That’s all right, Mr. Kossmeyer.”

  “Now, it doesn’t make a bit of difference, see? If you saw them, fine; if you didn’t see them, fine. Just tell me the truth. Either way it’ll be all right.”

  He knew better than that. He said, “I saw them. Maybe I didn’t actually see them but I knew they were there. Some of ’em were there.”

  “Bob,” I said. “I—well, tell me this, Bob. Right from the beginning I’ve tried to get you to remember if you saw anyone or passed anyone or talked to anyone who might give you an alibi for the time of the murder. I tried that first night I talked to you; I’ve gone back and forth through these pictures today, trying to. And I’m sure various other people tried to, Mr. Clinton and the detectives and the newspaper men. And you’ve maintained all along that there wasn’t anyone, that you couldn’t remember anyone. Now, you suddenly tell me—and I’m sure you wouldn’t deliberately represent—now you tell me that—”

  “W-Well,” he faltered, “you don’t want me to say so, I won’t. If you say I didn’t, well, maybe I didn’t.”

  I mopped my face. “I do want you to say so, Bob, but only if it is the truth, if you’re sure, that is. That’s why I’m asking how you happen to remember now when you couldn’t before. Just to make sure, see?”

  He wet his lips again, looked down uneasily at the floor.

  “Yes, Bob? How do you happen to remember? Why do you remember now when you didn’t remember before now?”

  “Well, I—I guess I was trying not to remember. You know how it is, something you’re kind of afraid of but you can’t do anything about, so you try to act like it isn’t there. So—well, that’s kind of the way it was with me and them. All those colored people, and just me by myself and no one else around. I tried to shut ’em out of my mind, and I guess I did.…”

  I nodded. That took care of part of the question. It sounded reasonable—as, of course, we both wanted it to.

  “Go on, Bob,” I said. “You made yourself believe they weren’t there. You convinced yourself that they weren’t. Now, how do you remember they were?”

  “Well”—his eyes clouded—“well, I guess it was something you said, the way you acted or something. It kind of scared me out of not remembering, sort of reminded me of them. I—I don’t mean you’re like them, o’course, but—”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Don’t apologize. Go on.”

  “Well, I remembered they yelled at me, too. Cursed and yelled at me. When you started to—well, you know—well, it came back to me that they’d cursed and yelled.”

  “They’d never done that before?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “You’d gone by there day after day, they’d seen you day after day, and they’d never done anything like that before?”

  “Huh-uh.…Well, maybe that one other time, back when I first noticed that place and that big old colored woman just stood and looked at me. Maybe she said something that day.”

  “But that was a long time ago. After that, they never did anything like that afterwards until four days ago?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No,” I said. “Not uh-huh, Bob. Uh-huh isn’t enough. I’ve got to know why—”

  “Well, I guess maybe it was the way I was acting. Just walking straight and not trying to keep out of their way or anything. Kind of acting like I didn’t give a darn. I guess they must’ve thought I was sort of daring ’em.”

  Well, that too sounded reasonable. It all fitted together, perfectly.…Just the way we wanted it to.

  I began gathering up the pictures and putting them in my briefcase.

  “All right, Bob,” I said. “That’s fine. Of course, you realize I’ll have to find these colored people and talk to them. They’ll have to verify your story.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’ll have to do it, Bob. They’ll have to verify it, swear that it’s true. It won’t do us any good if they don’t. In fact, if you should be mistaken, it might hurt us a great deal.”

  “Well,” he said, sullenly, “I can’t help what they say. I ’spect they’ll probably say I wasn’t there just to be mean. They act like pretty mean people, an’ that’s what they’ll probably do.”

  “Bob,” I said, “look at me.”

  “What for? I’m lookin’ at you, ain’t I?”

  “Look at me.”

  He looked up. He held my eyes stubbornly for a moment.

  Then, his face crumpled and he began to cry.

  “W-What you want me to say?�
�� he sobbed. “What you want me t-to say, anyhow…? M-Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I—I—You don’t want m-me to say so, I won’t.…”

  …I parked my car on the road at the foot of the bluff, and climbed up to the top. I found the garden, a few rows of browning corn with withered sweet-potato and stringbean vines wound round the stalks. I found a path, and followed it down into the woods.

  Their house, their dwelling, rather, had been assembled from packing boxes, scraps of sheet-iron, flattened-out tin cans and other odds and ends of junk. A rabbit hutch, improvised from an old chicken crate, stood on pegs against the house; and several moulting hens scratched at the packed earth beneath the trees. Two Negro boys, perhaps thirteen and fifteen respectively, were shucking beans into a kettle while a third boy—ten or thereabouts—looked on. I said, hello, and they leaped to their feet. The older boy placed himself in front of the other two. “Mammy,” he called over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off me, “some white man heah.”

  There was trouble in the way he said white man. There was trouble in the woman who squeezed through the door and silently confronted me, hands on hips. I could see what Bob meant when he’d said she was plenty mean-looking.

  This was going to be tough, as tough as it could be made on me. But I was thinking not so much of the fact as the causes that must lie behind it. What had been done to them, said and done to them, to make them like this?

  I was wondering why Clinton had made that remark to me.

  He’d apologized. He’d said he hadn’t meant it, and I wanted to believe he hadn’t. But why, unless he’d had it in his mind for a long time, had it slipped out so easily? How, unless a guy thinks a thing, can he say it?

  Well…no matter. It wasn’t deliberate, only an unfortunate slip of the tongue that was best forgotten. And I had forgotten it. At any rate, I certainly didn’t hold any grudge.

  12

  President Abraham Lincoln Jones

  Funny lil man say, Howdy do, mam. My name Kozmi. I a turney. Mammy says, Huh. What at mean to me. Don need no a turney roun heah.