Case Pending

by Dell Shannon

  He admitted they had not; and yes, the forces of law were so unreasonable as to have arraigned the society beauty for murder, even after hearing all the excellent reasons she had for shooting her husband. He looked at Bertha thoughtfully (the average mind?) and said, “Do me a favor, and pretend you’re taking one of those word-association tests, you know, I throw a word at you and you say the first thing that comes into your head—”

  “I know, it’s psychological.” She looked interested.

  “So, I say doll to you—what do you think of?”

  “Witches,” said Bertha. “I just saw a movie about it last night. The witch takes and makes this doll and names it and all, and sticks this big pin right through—”

  “I get the general idea,” said Mendoza sadly. “Thanks very much, that’ll do.” Witches: that was all they needed! When Bertha had slammed the door cheerfully after herself, he took off his coat, brought in the kitchen step-stool, and spent five minutes persuading Bast that it was safe to trust her descent to him. That was one puzzle he would never, probably, solve: she had no trouble getting up there, but hadn’t yet found out how to get down. As usual, she emitted terrified yells as he backed down the steps, and, released, instantly assumed the haughty sang-froid of the never-out-of-countenance sophisticate. She turned her back on him and studied one black paw admiringly before beginning to wash it.

  There were times Mendoza thought he liked cats because, like himself, they were all great egotists.

  “Witches,” he said again to himself, and laughed.

  * * *

  “And you put that coat away tidy where it belongs! On a hanger, not just anyhow. Clothes cost money, how many times I got to tell you, take care of what we got, no tellin’ when we can get new.”

  “All right,” said Marty. He got out of bed and picked up the corduroy jacket. He couldn’t take down a hanger and put the jacket on it and hang it over the rod, all with his eyes shut, but he did it fast and he tried not to look down at the floor. She was fussing round the room behind him.

  But he couldn’t help seeing it, even if he didn’t look right at it, and anyway, he thought miserably, even if he never opened the closet door, never had to see it, it didn’t change anything—the thing was still there, he’d still know about it.

  So did she, and for another reason he only half-understood himself. That was partly why he got the door shut again quick. She might know, all right, but she was different—if she didn’t see it, she could keep from thinking about it. He felt like he was in two separate parts, about that, the way he felt about a lot of things lately—twin Martys, like looking in a mirror. He didn’t see how she could, but in a funny kind of way he didn’t want to make her have to see it—long as she could do like that.

  He got back in bed and pulled the covers up. It was just like something was pulling him right in half, like two big black monster-shapes were using him for tug of war. And he had to just lie there, he couldn’t do anything, because she wouldn’t. And even if she was wrong, she was his Ma, and—and—

  She said from the door, “You be real good now, no horsing round, you go right to sleep.” She sounded just like always.

  A funny idea slid into his mind then, the first minute of lying there in the dark—alone with the secret. He wondered if she’d forgot all about it, if maybe now she could look right at it and never really see it at all. Like it was invisible—because she wanted it to be.

  But even in the dark with the door shut, he could still see it.

  The box had gone a long while ago, got stepped on, and the big piece of thin white fancy paper and the pink shiny ribbon had got all crumpled and spoiled pretty soon, from handling… The doll wasn’t new any more either. It sat in there on the closet floor, leaning up against the wall, even when he shut his eyes tight he could see it.

  It had been awful pretty when it was new, even if it was just a silly girl’s thing. It wasn’t pretty any more. The spangly pink dress was all stained and torn, and most of the lace was torn off the underwear, and one of the arms was pulled loose. The gold curls had got all tangled and some pulled right off, and one of the blue eyes with real lashes had been poked right in so there was just a black hole there and you could hear the eye sort of rattle around inside when you—The other eye still shut when the doll was laid down.

  Marty always had a funny hollow feeling when he heard that eye rattling round inside. You’d think sometime it’d fall out, but it never did.

  He’d been lying here, felt like hours, still as he could, in the dark. This was the worst time of all, and lately it had been getting harder and harder to let go, and pretty soon be asleep. Because in the dark, it seemed like the secret was somehow as big as the whole room, so he couldn’t breathe, so he felt he had to get out and run and run and tell everybody—yell it as loud as he could.

  He lay flat, very still, but he could hear his heart going thudthud-thud, very fast. You were supposed to say a prayer when you went to bed, she’d made him learn it when he was just a little kid and when they lived over on Tappan and he’d gone to the Methodist Sunday school, it’d been up on the wall there in the Sunday-school room, the words sewed onto cloth some fancy old-fashioned way and flowers around them, in a gold frame. He could see that now sort of in his mind, red and blue flowers and the words in four lines. It was the only real prayer he knew by heart and he was afraid to say it any more, because if you said any of it you had to say it all and it might be worse than bad luck to say the end of it. If I should die before I—

  Most of the time, like at school, anyway in daylight, he could stand it. But this was the bad time, alone with it. A lot of feelings were churning around inside him, and they didn’t exactly go away other times, they were still there but outside things helped to push them deeper inside, sort of—school and baseball practice and being with other kids and all. But like this in the dark, they got on top of him—a lot of bad feelings, but the biggest and worst of all was being just plain scared.

  There were times, like yesterday, when he thought she was too; and then again, seemed like, she made up her mind so hard that nothing so awful like that could be so, for her it just wasn’t. Maybe grownups could do that. He sure wished he could. Like looking right at that doll and never remembering, never thinking—

  Marty felt shameful tears pricking behind his eyes, but the fear receded a little in him for the upsurge of resentment at her unfairness… She’d told a lie, a lie, he knew it was a lie, he wasn’t crazy, was he?—if Dad had been there she’d never have dared say he was the one telling lies, but—what could you do when a grownup, your own Ma—

  “I bought it,” she’d said, and he thought he remembered it was one of the times she sounded afraid too… “I did so buy it, Marty, you’re just pretendin’ not to remember!—you got to remember, all that money—I saved it up, and I bought it yesterday—” About the money wasn’t a lie; she had, but the rest wasn’t so, he remembered—

  What he remembered made terrible pictures in his mind, now he put it all together.

  The fear that was never very far away now, even at school—outside—came creeping over him again like a cold hand feeling.

  The doll. It had been awful pretty—then.

  He wished he could forget that picture, all it said under it, in the newspaper. She hadn’t got it this time, she wouldn’t talk or listen about anything to do with it now—seemed like something just made him get that paper, and it had cost ten cents too. Elena. It was a pretty name. But he wished he could stop seeing the picture because it was the same girl, he’d known it would be but it was worse knowing for real sure—the picture—and the very worst about it was something silly, but somehow terrible too. The picture that looked like that doll when it’d been new. Before the eye had—

  He thought he heard a noise over by the closet door. It wasn’t really, he told himself. It wasn’t.

  In California they didn’
t hang people for murder, they had a gas chamber instead. It sounded even worse, a thing maybe like a big iron safe and with pipes that—

  But other people, they shouldn’t get killed like that—even if he didn’t know, didn’t mean—even if Ma—It wasn’t right. Dad would say so too, whatever it meant, even something awful like the gas.

  Somebody’d ought to know, and right off too, before it ever happened again. But Ma—

  And that was a noise by the closet door.

  Primitive physical fear took him in what seemed like one leap across the room and out to where it was light, in the parlor.

  She had an old shirt in her lap she’d been mending, the needle still stuck in it, but she was just sitting there not doing anything. “What’s the matter with you now?” she asked dully.

  He tried to stop shaking, stop his teeth chattering. “P-please, Ma, can I—can I sleep out here on the sofa, I—I—I don’t like the dark, it—”

  She looked at him awhile and then said, “You’re a big boy, be scared of the dark.”

  “Please, Ma—”

  “I guess, if you want,” she said in almost a whisper. She went in and got the blanket off his bed.

  He lay on the sofa, the blanket tucked around him and face turned to the arm but still thankfully aware of the comforting light. And after a while a kind of idea started to come to him—about a way he might do…

  Because somebody ought to—and she’d never let—she’d made him promise on the Bible, something awful would happen if you broke that kind of promise, but if he didn’t say anything, just—

  It was a frightening, tempting, awful idea. He didn’t see how he could, he didn’t know if he’d dare. And where?—it had to be a place where—

  Danny said cops were all dumb. But Marty didn’t think that could be right, because his dad must know more than Danny, and Dad had always said, Policemen, they’re your friends, you go to them for help, you’re ever in trouble.

  Trouble… he felt the slow hot tears sliding down into the sofa cushion, fumbled blind and furtive for the handkerchief in his pajama pocket. The gas chamber. I never meant nothing bad—

  But you had to do what was right, no matter what. Dad always said, and anyway it was a thing you just knew inside.

  * * *

  Morgan had got used to the oddly schizophrenic sensation—that was the word for it, wouldn’t it be, for feeling split in halves?—more or less. He wondered if everybody who’d ever planned or done something criminal had the feeling: probably not. The visible Morgan, acting much as usual (at least he hoped so), going about his job—and the inside one, the one with the secret.

  That one was still, in a detached way, feeling slightly surprised at this Morgan who was showing such unexpected capacity for cool planning. (The Morgan who’d been kicked around just once too often and this time was fighting back.) The original Morgan was still uneasy about the whole thing, but quite frankly, he realized, not from any moral viewpoint: just about Morgan’s personal safety, the danger of being found out.

  He wrote down the address as the man read it out to him. “How’s that spelled?—it’s a new one to me.”

  “T-A-P-P-A-N. Over past Washington some’eres, I think.”

  “Well, thanks very much,” said Morgan, putting his notebook away.

  “I still can’t hardly believe it,” said the clerk worriedly. “Lindstrom, doing a thing like that! Last man in the world, I’d’ve said—why, he thought the world of his wife and the boy. Never missed a lodge meeting, you know, and I don’t ever remember talkin’ with him he didn’t brag on what good grades his boy got at school, all like that. One of the steady kind, that was Lindstrom—no world-beater, but, you know, steady.”

  “That so?” said Morgan. He lit a cigarette. He felt a kind of remote interest in this Lindstrom thing, no more, but it constituted his main lifeline, and it must appear that he’d been working hard on it, been thinking of nothing else all today.

  “Never any complaints on him, he always did an honest day’s work, I heard that from a dozen fellows been on the job with him. He was working for Staines Contracting, like I said. He was a member here for three years, always paid his dues regular. We did figure it was sort of funny, way he quit his job and quit coming to meetings all of a sudden. When his dues didn’t come in, we sent a letter, but it come back. But things come up in a hurry sometimes, sickness or something. You know. Last thing in the world I’d’ve expected a guy like Lindstrom to do—walk out on his family.” He shook his head.

  “You haven’t heard anything from him since, no inquiries from other lodges of your union?”

  “No, not since last August when he stopped showing up.”

  “Well, thanks.” The man was still shaking his head sadly when Morgan came out to his car.

  If it hadn’t been for this other thing, he’d have been interested in the Lindstroms more than he was. Funny setup: something behind it, but hard to figure what. Had the hell of a time getting a definite answer out of the woman about where they’d been living when the husband walked out. Sometimes they let out something to one of the neighbors, a local bartender: it was a place to start. Then, when he did, she gave what turned out to be a false address. He hadn’t tackled her about that yet; it wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened, and there were other ways to check. He’d found Lindstrom, got this last address for him, through his affiliation with the Carpenters’ Union.

  The thing was, concentrate on Lindstrom today, keep the nose to the grindstone. Forget about tonight, what was going to happen tonight. It would all work out fine, just as the inside, secret Morgan had planned it.

  There was only one thing both Morgans were really worried about, and that was, whether and when, about telling Sue. Not, of course, before; she mustn’t guess, or she’d be too nervous with the police. Not easy to put over the story on her, Sue knew him too well, but he thought he’d got away with it—that he was still stalling Smith, trying to bring him to compromise. It was going to be very tricky, too, afterward, when he had given the police one story and had to meet Sue before them. There was also the woman and the boy, but you had to take a chance somewhere. It was very likely that the woman (if indeed she was still living with Smith at all, and knew about this) would be too afraid of getting in trouble herself to speak up. And Sue was very far from being a fool; Sue he could count on.

  It would go all right, always provided that the man was there. Otherwise it could be awkward, but Morgan figured that as Smith was renting a three-room flat instead of just a room, the chances were that his wife, or some woman, was with him, and he’d be home sometime around the dinner hour. So that was the first way it might go: the upright citizen Morgan, visiting one of his cases on his lawful occasions—if it was after hours, well, it was a case he’d got interested in, there was no law against zeal at one’s job. The Lindstroms’ flat was on the second floor; Smith’s was on the third, so the mail slots told him. Those landings would be damn dark at night, not lighted anyway. Wait for him to come down on his way to collect—the ransom, only word—wait on the second-floor landing. And get up close, to be sure—but no talk. The first story, then: this man put the gun on me at the top of the stairs, before I got to the Lindstroms’ door—I never saw him before, no, sir—he was after my wallet, when he reached for it I tackled him, tried to get the gun—we struggled, and it went off—

  Remember (and not much time to see to it, after the shot) to get his prints on the gun. They were so very damned careful and clever these days, about details.

  And if he missed Smith there, it would have to be in the street. If he was at that corner: or, if again he redirected Morgan to a bar, stall him off in there, and follow. A chance again, that the bartender would be honest, would remember them together: but in most of these places down here, hole-in-the-wall joints, the chance probably on Morgan’s side. The second story: I was on my way back to my
car, when this man tried to hold me up—

  They would never trace the gun, never prove it didn’t belong to Smith. Nobody could. Morgan had taken it off a dead German in 1944, the sort of ghoulish souvenir young soldiers brought home, and he’d nearly forgotten he had it; he had, being a careful man, taken the remaining three cartridges out of the clip, but they’d been put with the Luger in the old cash box his father had kept for odds and ends, locked away in a trunk in the basement. Morgan had gone down there at three this morning, when he was sure Sue was asleep, and got the gun and the cartridges. It was an unaccustomed weight in his breast pocket right now.

  He ought to be somewhere around where this street came in; he began to watch the signs. The third was Tappan. He turned into it and began to look for street numbers.

  * * *

  At that precise moment, Mendoza was having an odd and irritating experience. He was discovering the first thing remotely resembling a link between these two cases (if you discounted that gouged-out eye) and it offered him no help whatsoever. If it wasn’t merely his vivid and erratic imagination.

  “I’m real glad I clean forgot to th’ow that ol’ thing out,” said Mrs. Breen, soft and southern, “if it’s any help to you findin’ that bad man, suh. Ev’body knew Carol thought the world an’ all of her, nice a gal as ever was. Terrible thing, jus’ terrible.”

  Mendoza went on looking at the thing, fascinated. It was a good sharp commercial cut, three by five inches or so, one of a dozen in this dog-eared brochure, three years old, from a local toy factory. Mrs. Breen, maddeningly slow, determinedly helpful, had insisted on hunting it up for him, and as he hadn’t yet penetrated her constant trickle of inconsequential talk to ask any questions, he’d been forced to let her find it first.

  “You can see ’twas a real extra-special doll. Tell the truth, I was two minds about puttin’ it in stock, not many folks’d spend that much money.”

  Was it imagination? That this thing had looked—a little—like Elena Ramirez? After all, he told himself, the conventional doll would. The gold curls, the eyelashes, the neatly rouged cheeks, the rosebud pout, the magenta fingernails. The irrational thought occurred to him that even the costume was exactly the kind of thing Elena would have admired.