“And what did you do?”
“I hit her with the pipe, three or four times. I know they say she got hit more times than that, and I maybe I did, but I don’t remember it. If she screamed, I didn’t hear it. But I was, you know … excited. And there was a lot of blood. It got all over me.”
The reporters behind us were murmuring.
Gardner said, “Then what?”
“Then I heard somebody comin’ up the stairs! I went out there and a guy was at the top of them. I hit him once, with the pipe, on the side of the head. I figured it was that guy sleepin’ on the couch. He started to fall and I shoved him out of the way. Just pushed past him and ran downstairs.”
I asked, “What did you do then, Gary?”
“Well, I got down there and kind of got my, you know, my bearings. And I realized nobody was after me. That guy upstairs, I musta knocked him out. So maybe I could score something down here. I saw this leather satchel, you know, a doctor’s bag? I dumped it out, but I didn’t see nothing worth taking, tongue depressors, pill bottles. I tried to see what kind of pills they was, read the labels, but the only light was the moon through the windows. But then I heard that guy comin’ down the stairs. I ran across the living room and onto a porch and then out a door to the bluff. There was all these wooden stairs and I run down them. Toward the water.”
I asked, “Were you followed down those stairs?”
“I don’t know. I never saw that guy again. I just ran along the beach, oh, maybe four, five hundred feet, in the direction of where I parked my car. I stopped and hurled that damn pipe into the lake. Then I went out into the water, a little ways, to kind of wash the blood off. After that, I climbed the bluff up to where I parked that Ford.”
Gardner asked, “Where did you drive next?”
“Nowhere! Not right away. I just got out of those wet, bloody clothes, right there in the car. Got fresh clothes out of one of my grips, put the bloody clothes in the other. Then I drove back to Cleveland and dumped the car.”
“Leaving the clothes behind, son?”
He shook his head. “No, I figured them clothes was evidence, and I best dispose of ’em, far away. And, anyway, having suitcases to carry is the best way to hitchhike. Anybody thinkin’ of picking you up knows you’re for real and not some fiend lookin’ to rob or kill them.”
Neither I nor Gardner knew quite how to react to that.
“Anyway,” he went on, unprompted, “I got a ride right away, with an elderly man—fifty or sixty years old.”
I guess that put both Gardner and me in our places.
“He let me stick the suitcase in back,” Weed was saying, “and I climbed in front with him. We went east and, after about fifty miles, he said this was his stop, and let me out, and he turned off the highway down a dirt road.”
I asked, “What then, Gary?”
“Well, I was there with my suitcases and I figured I best dispose of the one with the bloody things, pronto. I walked along and come to some road construction. Thought maybe I could put that grip somewhere where cement would go over it. Then I saw some tools that hadn’t been put away, including a shovel. There was a wooded area and I walked back in there, dug a hole, and buried those bloody clothes, just leavin’ ’em in the grip.”
Gardner asked, “Could you lead us there, Gary?”
He shook his head, the slicked-back hair coming loose a little. “Not in a million years. I don’t know that part of the world that well. Anyway, I went back to the highway and picked up another ride, just a few miles later. A sailor picked me up. He was in uniform, so I told him how I’d been in the air force. Left out the part about the PX and the brig and all. He was a good guy. Bought me some food at a diner along the way. Even played my favorite song on the jukebox for me—‘Sh Boom.’ Nice fella. Drove me on into Norfolk. That’s where I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Gardner asked.
“Saw it in the papers that this woman named Sheppard got killed. I was sorry to hear she was dead. I had no intention of killin’ her.”
Gardner and I exchanged glances.
“After that, I stayed with some relatives, in this place and that, wound up in Tampa. Got busted for vagrancy, and when they turned up my record, they left me in the can for two whole weeks. I went in a café, wrote a note to the cashier saying I had a gun, which I didn’t, but he gave me the money and I got ten years. Sent to a road camp. I did some time, then just last month I busted out—road camps are a cinch, if you can just play model prisoner long enough to build their trust up.”
Sheriff Thursby spoke for the first time, addressing Gardner and me: “We picked him up here in DeLand.”
And also for the first time, Weed frowned. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!”
“No, but your face was,” Thursby said. “It was looking right at me from a wanted circular.”
Gardner asked, “Are you a drug addict, Gary?”
He shook his head and the hair loosened further. “No, sir. I use them sometimes, for … you know. Fun. Or, you know, relaxation purposes. Sometimes I get really low, so it’s nice to get high. But I ain’t no junkie.”
I said, “How about you draw us that picture, Gary? Of the pipe you say you used?”
“Sure.”
Thursby got the suspect a piece of white typing paper and a number-two pencil. Weed turned to use the side of the sheriff’s desk, to support the paper, and began to draw.
He was left-handed.
* * *
Erle Gardner, Alex Gregory and I sat on a wrought-iron bench in the courtyard of the U-shaped hotel. Once again, early dusk made everything seem more beautiful, the well-manicured grounds with their greenery and occasional palms conspiring with a breeze from the nearby ocean to make the evening almost tropically pleasant.
Gardner was in his shirt sleeves and no tie—all three of us were. But Erle wore a Stetson. I wondered if he knew the inventor of the definitive cowboy hat had lived in DeLand, which had been the Wild West only during land boom days. The university here was named after him. Stetson, not Gardner, who was leaning back, enjoying a cigar.
I sat between the two Court of Last Resort board members. We’d just had dinner in the restaurant, but I was digesting more than that.
Gardner was saying, “Back in the ’20s, this hotel was a frequent stop not just for tourists, but celebrities and entrepreneurs and even foreign ministers. That famous radio bellboy who cried, ‘Call for Phillip Morris,’ was employed here, not to carry your bags but as an entertainer. Many a famous actor and actress, in town for dates at the Athens Theater, just down the street, bunked in here.”
Maybe he did know the Stetson connection.
“I heard,” I said, “the guy who created Perry Mason once stayed here.”
“I know you’re pleased with our results, Erle,” Gregory said, having none of such foolishness, “but there are obvious discrepancies in our man’s story.”
“I know,” Gardner said, cigar in his teeth like a cocky politician, “and I made it clear to Governor O’Neill, when I called him late this afternoon, that this was only the beginning. That a new line of investigation needs opening up.”
The governor, hearing Gardner’s account of the Weed interrogation, had approved a polygraph examination of Sam Sheppard at the Ohio penitentiary. This was a major victory and the mystery writer was feeling good.
I was feeling okay. “Good” would be overstating it. And if I had to characterize Gregory, I wouldn’t go past “fair.”
“Weed believes what he’s saying,” Gregory said, leaning out to get Gardner’s gaze. “But that he used narcotics on the murder night is … worrisome.”
I said, “Our boy Gary may have read about the murder later. Hell, he said he did. I don’t know that he’s given us anything that wasn’t in the papers. He could be looking back through a dope haze of a night and fantasizing he was responsible.”
“Again,” Gardner said, raising a palm like an Indian about to say How, “our results aren’t defi
nitive. But the subject passed the polygraph and told a logical, compelling story. And that should be enough to get an inquiry reopened, and that’s all we’re after.”
“I agree,” I said, “but the Cleveland PD may not. They’ll seize on the discrepancies, like pointing out Weed said Marilyn was struck three or four times, not thirty-five. No sign of a bureau drawer being disturbed, either. Or the white form attacking Marilyn, seen through the open doorway by Sam, before he was struck. And what about the stolen items in the green bag? Gary has no memory of a struggle on the beach with Sam. And then there’s the sexual aspect—he said not a word about pulling her pajama top up and the bottoms down.”
Gardner gestured with cigar in hand, like Churchill making a point. “Mr. Weed gets the general layout of the yard and house right. He remembers dumping out the doctor’s bag—perhaps during the drug-addled episode, he forgot or lost track of that. The same might be true about how many times he hit her.”
“If explaining things away because he was on dope is our best course of action,” I said, “we’re in more trouble than Weed.”
Gardner’s frown was frustration-edged. “Nate, are you saying you don’t like this boy for a suspect?”
“I like him fine. He’s just the kind of petty repeat offender who might take advantage of an open door on Lake Road, to walk in and help himself to somebody’s else’s money and possessions. Of course, if Gary knew ahead of time Sam was a doctor, that kind of home invasion makes even more sense—he is a drug user.”
Gregory said, “Don’t forget that Weed describes a blunt instrument consistent with the crime. And that he recalls the blood-soaked clothes such a crime would induce. Additionally, he’s about the right size, bigger than Dr. Sheppard.”
“And that hair of his,” I granted, “minus the Wildroot Cream-Oil, might make a bushy-haired man out of him … or bushy-haired kid, anyway. A little skinny to get the best of Dr. Sam, though.”
Gardner, frowning in thought, said, “Not necessarily. He’s young. Probably damn agile. Sam, waking up from a deep sleep, ten years older, might well have met his match.”
Gregory said, “I am bothered by the boy saying nothing about the robbery downstairs, other than a passing reference to the doctor’s bag.”
I said, “Let me offer a possibility that a mystery writer might appreciate.”
That made Gardner smile a little. He took a puff from the cigar he’d forgotten, then said, “Go on.”
“What if Weed’s story is true, in almost every detail? Let’s allow that he may have gone batty, doped up as he was, and bludgeoned Marilyn Sheppard in some kind of frenzy. So he knocks Sam out, and, waking up and finding Marilyn dead, Dr. Sam knows immediately he’ll be a suspect. With all of his screwing around with other women, the prime suspect. The only suspect. So he quickly fakes the robbery himself. And concocts a story about chasing the intruder and doing his best to stop him. Painting himself a hero, not a cheater in a bad position. And once he tells this tale, he’s stuck with it.”
Gregory was thinking about that, but Gardner was grinning. He liked a wild plot. “Not bad, Nate. Not bad. I’ll have to remember that one.”
I turned over a hand. “Here’s another—perhaps Weed’s confession lacks some details because he wasn’t alone. What if he had an accomplice on his break-in—that Freeman character, possibly. And he’s either protecting his accomplice, or himself from that accomplice.”
Gardner’s eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his glasses. “That would explain such missing elements as the absence of a struggle with Sheppard—it might have involved the accomplice, not the Weed boy.”
Gregory was slowly shaking his head. “For all my probing—and yours, gentlemen—our suspect has raised as many questions as he’s answered.”
We all thought about that as the warm saltwater breeze did its best to lull us. It had been a long day for all concerned.
“To me,” I said, “the biggest problem is not a few flaws in this Weed kid’s account—it’s the unwillingness of the Cleveland cops and prosecutors and the whole mess of them to admit to maybe making a mistake. A bad one.”
But Gardner shook his head. “Nate, you’re more cynical than I. I truly believe the authorities, at least in general, mean well. Mean to dispense justice in a fair-minded manner.”
“Even if I give you that, Erle,” I said, “in general? It’s the specific instances that give me this cynical view … and the flawed human beings who appear to populate this world.”
When Gardner had finished his cigar, we got up and strolled into the lobby, on our way to the bar for a nightcap.
“Now that we have the governor’s okay,” Gardner was saying to Gregory, “I’ll assemble our team and fly everyone into Columbus. Nate, I don’t think you need to make that trip. We’ll be limited to just our polygraph experts.”
“That’s fine. I should go back to Chicago and earn a little money, anyway.”
“You’ll be the first call I make,” he told me, a big grin on his big face.
“Erle,” I said, and put a hand on his sleeve, stopping him. Gregory had already thrown on the brakes. I nodded toward the front desk.
Nattily dressed in a seersucker suit and sporty hat, Dr. Samuel Gerber was checking in. With him, in a baggy suit, looking not at all sporty, was Detective Robert Schottke, the first cop to interview Sam Sheppard about the murder.
“Gerber’s a friend,” Gardner said, gently pulling away, smiling, though not so big now. “He’s a good man. I’ll say hello.”
He strode over and I followed him, feeling like a bodyguard. Gregory stayed planted where he was, like Lot’s wife after she got a good look.
“Sam,” Erle said, extending his hand, grinning.
Gerber turned from the register, froze momentarily, then smiled the way a father does to his daughter’s first date at the door. The Cleveland coroner shook the offered hand, briefly.
“I guess I know what brings you here,” Erle said pleasantly. “This is quite a development.”
“Is it?” Gerber asked, the smile gone. “That’s your man Gregory over there, isn’t it? You might tell him that Gary Weed is a psychotic, which a real expert would know invalidates any lie detector test.”
Awkwardly, Gardner said, “Have you already been to the jail here, to interview the prisoner?”
“No. We’re doing that tomorrow.”
“Well…” Gardner seemed stunned by this less than warm welcome. “… if the Weed boy is psychotic—that’s something a psychiatrist would have to ascertain, wouldn’t you say?”
Gerber’s chin came up. “I would say he’s a faker, looking for notoriety and a way to avoid going back to the Tampa jail.”
I took a verbal poke at that chin: “Going to Ohio for a shot at death row seems like a funny way to avoid jail in Florida.”
Gerber ignored that, saying to Gardner, “You and your so-called Court of Last Resort ‘experts’ are busybodies interested only in increasing the circulation of some cheap men’s magazine … and feathering their nests with profits from another of your sensationalistic TV shows. Now if you’ll excuse me?”
And Dr. Samuel Gerber went off with his police detective companion, carrying their own luggage. Apparently the bellboys were off calling for Phillip Morris somewhere.
As for Gardner, he looked so white and ready to pop, his face might have been one big blister. Gregory walked up and joined us.
“Nice of him spending Cleveland taxpayers’ money,” I said, “to come down to Florida and … how did you put it? ‘Dispense justice in a fair-minded way?’”
The color came back to the writer’s face and he said, “Let’s have that drink.”
“Sustained,” I said.
CHAPTER
11
For the first time in over a week, I was in my inner sanctum at the Chicago branch of the A-I Detective Agency, seated behind the old scarred desk dating back to the early ’30s and my one-room office over the Dill Pickle on Van Buren.
Those digs, which for several years (thanks to a Murphy bed) served as my apartment as well, lacked what success had brought the A-1 and me. This spacious office sported a leather couch, leather client chairs, wooden file cabinets, and walls where framed famous faces from my past and present—including Flo Kilgore—smiled at me, flaunting their personal inscriptions. My son Sam shared a double stand-up frame on my desk with my ex-wife, Peggy, who I hated and still loved.
My partner, Lou Sapperstein, who went back even further than my desk, had left a stack of reports for me to peruse while his wife, Gladys, our office manager and my former secretary, provided a pile of letters for me to approve and sign. These I encountered upon getting to the office at ten A.M., which was a prerogative of being the boss. In half an hour we’d have our weekly staff meeting. Beyond my door was a bullpen of modern desks with mostly modern young operatives, stolen away from various police forces and the occasional rival agency.
Such was the life of a successful private detective in June 1957.
I was finished with the letters and getting ready to dig into the reports when the phone rang. Our receptionist, Millie, was on the line with a call for me.
“It’s Erle Stanley Gardner!” she said.
Millie was new. Our previous girl had taken any number of calls from Gardner, relating to jobs I’ve done pro bono for the Court of Last Resort.
“Put him on,” I said.
“I watch Perry Mason every week!” she said.
“Tell him that, then put him on.”
“And I’ve read tons of his books.”
“Tell him that, too.”
She went off to do that, then Erle was on the line.
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