The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie

by Howard Fast

  “State your name and position, please,” he said to Beckman.

  “Seymour Beckman, detective, Beverly Hills police force.”

  “How long have you been with the Beverly Hills Police Department?”

  “Sixteen years.”

  “And how long with homicide?”

  “When Detective Sergeant Masuto was assigned full-time to Homicide, I was given the assignment of working with him. When he needed me. That was nine years ago.”

  “And in the case of the Mackenzie murder, I take it that Detective Masuto was out of the country.”

  Cassell was on his feet with a bellow of objection.

  “On what grounds?” the judge asked mildly.

  “The state has not yet proven that Robert Mackenzie was murdered. We hold that his death was accidental.”

  “Quite so.” The judge nodded and said to Geffner, “Remember that, please, Mr. Geffner.” He then told the stenographer to strike it from the record. Masuto’s impression was that the judge would be meticulously fair. Since the courtroom was loaded with reporters and artists, everyone—judge, attorneys, defendant, and jury—must have been conscious of playing roles in a national drama.

  “Nevertheless,” Geffner said, “you were in charge of the investigation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would you tell us, Detective Beckman, what happened on the day of June twenty-second.”

  Beckman took out his notebook but did not consult it immediately. “I signed in at the police station at a few minutes before eight A.M. At about eight-thirty, Captain Wainwright—”

  “Would you identify Captain Wainwright?”

  “Chief of Detectives—also the head of the force. Well, he told me that there was a situation at the Mackenzie home on Lexington Road that might or might not be a homicide. It had been reported as an accident, but the ambulance from All Saints Hospital—I mean the men on the ambulance—they certified Mr. Mackenzie as dead and were unwilling to remove the body until our medical examiner, Dr. Sam Baxter, had seen it.”

  “Yes, just what were these suspicious circumstances, Detective Beckman.”

  “If you would let me tell it my way,” Beckman said, consulting his notebook now.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I left for the Mackenzie house immediately. It’s on Lexington, just past Benedict Canyon Drive. I knew the house. It’s part of my work to know most of the houses that important people live in. When I got there, Officer Keller was sitting in his car in the driveway, waiting for me. It’s general practice to have a car standing by in a situation like this, even if there’s no hard evidence yet of a crime. The ambulance had left, but I saw Dr. Baxter’s car in the driveway.”

  “Is Dr. Baxter the same man who did the subsequent autopsy?”

  “Yes. We don’t have a regular pathology department in Beverly Hills. We use All Saints’ pathology room and morgue. When we need him, Dr. Baxter acts as our medical examiner.”

  “Yes. Go on, please.”

  “I spoke to Officer Keller, and he informed me that only the housekeeper and Dr. Baxter were in the house.”

  “Would you identify the housekeeper, please.”

  “Feona Scott, widow, thirty-nine years old, been with the Mackenzies four years.”

  “You went into the house then?”

  “Yes, sir,” Beckman said. “I went into the house. That is, Mrs. Scott opened the door for me and told me that Mr. Mackenzie’s body was upstairs in the main bedroom. She directed me to the bathroom off the master bedroom and separated from it by a dressing room. As I entered the master bedroom, Dr. Baxter yelled at me to tell Mrs. Scott to phone All Saints and get the ambulance back here. I asked him whether that meant that Mackenzie was alive. I’m afraid it meant that Mackenzie was dead and he wanted the ambulance to take the body to the pathology room.”

  Masuto smiled, thinking of what Baxter had probably said, something to the effect of, Alive as you are from the neck up. Baxter was hardly a pleasant person, and he regarded every homicide as a personal affront to his time and dignity.

  “I then asked Dr. Baxter what was the cause of death, and he said that until he did an autopsy he was guessing. Possibly Mr. Mackenzie had been electrocuted while taking a bath. However, he indicated an ugly bruise at the deceased’s temple. Dr. Baxter suggested that a small radio in the bathroom might have been the cause of electrocution if he had been electrocuted—that it might have either been thrust into the tub or fallen into the tub. He also said that the blow to the head might have killed Mackenzie.”

  Cassell rose to object to this as provocative guesswork and hearsay, and the judge asked Beckman whether he could substantiate his statements. Before he could answer, Geffner announced that he intended to call Dr. Baxter and both ambulance attendants as witnesses. “Detective Beckman,” Geffner said, “just tell us what happened without any inferences or suggestions.”

  “I was only telling you what Dr. Baxter said.”

  “I understand. Please go on.”

  “Well, I know a little something about electricity, and when you’ve been a cop as long as I have, you seen practically everything, and we had incidents where an electric appliance had fallen into a tub or a pool. The radio in the bathroom was wet, and when I shook it I could hear water sloshing around inside. At the same time, the light in the bathroom was still working. It’s possible for someone with a bad heart to be killed by an appliance dropped into a tub, but one expects the appliance to blow the fuse or snap the circuit breaker. So the first thing I thought about was where was the fuse box. I asked Mrs. Scott, and she led me to it. I opened it. It was the old-fashioned kind of fuse box, not circuit breakers, and there were notations for each fuse. But the fuse next to the bathroom label had been removed, and in its place a copper penny had been inserted.”

  At this point Geffner said, “Excuse me, Detective Beckman. It is possible that some members of the jury are unaware of what this signifies. Would you explain to them.”

  “A fuse is a safety device,” Beckman told the jury. “So is a circuit breaker, but the circuit breaker is an improvement because it’s hard to tamper with. The purpose of a fuse is to limit the amount of electricity that can be drawn over a single circuit. When the electrical demand exceeds the bearing capacity of the fuse, the fuse blows out and breaks the circuit. Without fuses we’d have an endless stream of fires—in fact, I guess you couldn’t have electric power without fuses or circuit breakers. But if you want a real shot of electric power, you can take out the fuse and replace it with a conductor—in this case, a copper penny. But there’s one catch to that, and a very dangerous one. If the radio had dropped into the tub and was left there, at some point the wiring would have burst into flame—unless someone had unplugged the radio cord within a minute or so after it was put into the tub.”

  Cassell objected and Geffner fought back, and Judge Simpkins called both of them up to the bench and told Cassell that a scientific fact was not an unfounded premise. “On the other hand,” he said to Geffner, “I presume you will put an electrical engineer on the stand?”

  “That has been arranged for, Your Honor.”

  “Then let the engineer go into the scientific background and hold Beckman to what he saw and did.”

  Geffner then asked Beckman what his next step was.

  “I telephoned Captain Wainwright, and I told him that the Mackenzie thing had every appearance of being a homicide. You see, Dr. Baxter wanted the ambulance from All Saints to pick up Mackenzie’s body, but that would only wash if we were dealing with a homicide. If it was an accidental or medical death, it would be up to the family where they wanted the body taken or whether they wanted an autopsy.”

  “But at that moment, Detective Beckman, there was no family present?”

  “No, sir. Only Mrs. Scott. Mrs. Mackenzie came home about a half hour later. She said—”

  “Never mind what Mrs. Mackenzie said. We’ll get to that later. I want to know what happened after you telepho
ned Captain Wainwright.”

  “Well, he said to leave the body where it was, in the tub, until we could contact someone in the family. Then Mrs. Scott—”

  “The housekeeper.”

  “Yes, sir. Then Mrs. Scott brought me Mrs. Mackenzie’s notebook.”

  “Did you ask for it?”

  “No, sir. At that point I didn’t know of its existence.”

  Geffner handed Beckman a black vinyl-covered looseleaf notebook. “Is this the notebook in question?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How can you be sure without opening it?”

  “It has my mark—that bit of tape.”

  “Would you glance through it just to make sure.”

  Beckman glanced through the notebook, after which Geffner entered it as evidence.

  “Officer Beckman, did you ask Mrs. Scott whether she knew the contents of the notebook?”

  “Subsequently, I did.”

  “And what was her answer?”

  “She said she did not know what was in the notebook, but since she suspected that Mrs. Mackenzie had killed her husband—”

  Cassell was on his feet, objecting angrily. The judge called him and Geffner up to the bench, where Cassell whispered hoarsely, “This is unconscionable. Mrs. Scott is not on the witness stand, and her opinion is not evidence, and when you put her opinion in the mouth of a homicide detective, you do my client an irreparable injury.”

  “I don’t think so,” Simpkins said gently. He was a soft-voiced man, white-haired and fatherly. “However, I shall sustain your objection and instruct the jury to ignore Beckman’s answer.”

  “Your Honor,” Geffner said, “that notebook is central to the people’s case—”

  “Softly, Mr. Geffner. No one is attacking the notebook. There are other ways to get at its contents.”

  The judge instructed the jury to ignore Mrs. Scott’s opinion, and Geffner said to Beckman, “We will return to the notebook later, but at this point, Detective Beckman, I would like to stay with the sequence of events so that the jury may have a clear idea of what you saw that morning at the Mackenzie home. You have testified that Captain Wainwright of the Beverly Hills police instructed you to go there to look into what might or might not have been a homicide—”

  “Are you summing up so early in the trial, Mr. Geffner?” the judge asked gently.

  “No, Your Honor. But this is a complicated sequence of events. I am trying to clarify it.”

  “I think that proper questioning will simplify it and clarify it.”

  Geffner nodded and referred to his notes. “About what time was it that Mrs. Scott gave you the notebook?”

  “It was exactly nine fifty-one.”

  “How can you say exactly, Detective Beckman?”

  “In a homicide investigation, I note the time if something happens that I consider of importance.”

  “And you considered the notebook a matter of importance?”

  “After Mrs. Scott—”

  Geffner anticipated Cassell’s objection. “Simply yes or no, Detective Beckman.”

  “Yes.”

  Geffner was making a timetable for his own use. “You left the police station about eight-forty, arrived at the Mackenzie home before nine, made your investigation, and received the notebook at nine fifty-one. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what time did Mrs. Mackenzie arrive at the house?”

  “Ten thirty-three.”

  “I presume that once again you noted the time and consulted your watch?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And since we’re being precise about time, Detective Beckman, in the forty-two minutes that elapsed between Mrs. Scott handing you the notebook and Mrs. Mackenzie arriving home, did you have any opportunity to digest at least part of its contents?”

  “I don’t know what I digested,” Beckman replied. “Mrs. Scott practically insisted that I begin to read the notebook right then and there.”

  “Did she? How very interesting. Now, let’s get back to Mrs. Mackenzie. Did the officer outside make her aware of what had happened?”

  “Well, I opened the door for her. She knew something had happened. She asked me who I was. I told her and showed identification. Then I told her there had been an accident and her husband was dead.”

  “How did she react to this information?”

  “She was cold and—maybe you’d call it withdrawn—”

  Cassell was already on his feet, objecting.

  “On what grounds, Mr. Cassell?” the judge asked patiently.

  “This witness is a policeman. He is not competent to analyze a person’s reactions on the basis of a facial expression.”

  “I’m not asking for an analysis,” Geffner argued. “The question is how does a person look. We ask and answer that question every day of our lives.”

  “I tend to agree with that. I’m going to let it stand.”

  Geffner thanked the judge and then had the stenographer read the question and answer.

  “You said cold and withdrawn, Detective Beckman. Could you elaborate on that?”

  “Well, ordinarily if you inform a woman that her husband has been badly hurt or killed, which I have had to do at times, she has a violent reaction.”

  “Explain what you mean by a violent reaction, please.”

  “Hysteria, screaming, fainting—sometimes just a frozen sort of paralysis.”

  “And Mrs. Mackenzie’s reaction was none of these.”

  “No, none of them. I told her that her husband was dead. She nodded. Then she asked how it happened. Did someone kill him? I asked her why she should think so, and she replied that with a house full of cops, it was more or less evident. Then she asked me again how it had happened. I told her, and then she nodded and shrugged her shoulders.”

  Cassell was on his feet again, demanding that this testimony be stricken as prejudicial. “This policeman is, in fact,” he shouted, “telling the jury that my client is a soulless person. On what basis? On the basis of the fact that her husband’s death drew a particular response from her!”

  “That’s enough, Mr. Cassell,” Judge Simpkins said. “My hearing is excellent. There is absolutely nothing improper about this testimony and I intend to allow it to stand. You will have your turn with Detective Beckman. Until then, I suggest you be patient.”

  “And then, Detective Beckman?” Geffner asked.

  “I told her that the ambulance from All Saints Hospital would be there in a few minutes to pick up the body, and that since there was reason to believe that a crime had been connected with her husband’s death, an autopsy was scheduled, but if she wanted to get in touch with her lawyers, she could have the autopsy postponed. She said, no, she had no objection. Then I asked her whether she wanted to see her husband’s body. She said, yes, she would.”

  “And where was the body at that point in the sequence of events?” Geffner asked.

  “It was still in the tub. Dr. Baxter said that rigor mortis had already set in and that we might as well leave it where it was until the ambulance arrived. We covered it with a sheet.”

  “I presume that the water had been let out of the tub?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You told Mrs. Mackenzie where her husband’s body was?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was her reaction to that?”

  “She just shook her head and mumbled something about her husband not using the tub—something about him taking showers. I led the way to the bathroom. Dr. Baxter had already left the house. Joe Garcia, one of our officers, was stationed outside the bathroom door.”

  “This was a large upstairs bathroom—the master bathroom?”

  “Yes, sir, there are five bathrooms in the Mackenzie house, if you count the powder room. This one had to be entered through the master bedroom.”

  “All right. Continue.”

  “I mentioned that her husband was naked but covered with a sheet and I asked her if she wanted me
to go into the bathroom with her. She said she’d rather go in alone. She left the door open, and from outside I saw her pull the sheet off and stare at the body in the tub. She was a very cool lady. She turned around and left the bathroom, and as she came out, she said—”

  Geffner tried to stop Beckman with “You can—” but let it go when he realized that it was too late.

  “‘That dead man is not my husband,’” Beckman finished.

  The reporters in the courtroom broke for the door in a mad rush, while the judge pounded his gavel for order.

  Masuto had listened carefully to every word of testimony, and this last bit, the statement by Mrs. Mackenzie, via Beckman, that the dead man was not her husband, intrigued him completely. What had been, so far as the newspapers had reported it, a straightforward and mundane Hollywood scandal, now showed indications of becoming something else entirely. Masuto was interested and fascinated, but examining the source of his own interest, and given to a good deal of introspection, he wondered whether it was not simply the woman who fascinated him—the woman whose control allowed her to walk into that bathroom without hysteria or apparent fear.

  Geffner sighed and said, “I would like you to repeat Mrs. Mackenzie’s remark, now that it’s on the record.”

  “She said, ‘That dead man is not my husband.’”

  “You were interrupted before. Please go on.”

  “I asked her what she meant. I told her that the body had been identified by Mrs. Scott, who told us it was her husband. Then she kind of snorted and shrugged.”

  “Snorted?”

  “Like this.” Beckman gave an imitation of someone snorting. “Then I asked her where she had been.”

  “Yes? Go on, Detective Beckman.”

  “She asked me if she was under arrest. For what, I asked her. Then she said—” he consulted his notebook—“‘everything around here points to the fact that you people believe someone has been murdered.’”