by Anthology
The detective named Miller gave a derisive grunt. "Of all the goddam stories! Kirk, you gonna listen to any--"
Kirk silenced him with a gesture. "Go on, Cordell."
The young man slowly lifted the cigarette to his mouth, dragged heavily on it, then let it fall to the floor. "That's all. That's when the lights started flashing in there and I tried to be a hero."
"Sure you've left nothing out?"
"You've got it all. The truth, like you wanted."
Kirk said patiently, "Give it up, Cordell. You're as sane as the next guy. Give that story to a jury and they'll figure you're trying to make saps out of them--and when a jury gets sore at a defendant, he gets the limit. And in case you didn't know: in this State, the limit for murder is the hot seat!"
The prisoner stared at him woodenly. "You know I didn't kill my wife--or Professor Gilmore. I had no reason to--no motive. There's got to be a motive."
The police officer rubbed his chin reflectively. "Uh-hunh. Motive. How long you married, Cordell?"
"Six years."
"Children?"
"No."
"Ames Chemical pay you a good salary?"
"Enough."
"Enough for two to live on?"
"Sure."
"How long did your wife work for Professor Gilmore?"
"Four years next month."
"What was her job?"
"His assistant."
"Pretty big job for a woman, wasn't it?"
"Juanita held two degrees in nuclear physics."
"You mean this atom bomb stuff?"
"That was part of it."
"Gilmore's a big name in that field, I understand," Kirk said.
"Maybe the biggest."
"Kind of young to rate that high, wouldn't you say? He couldn't have been much past forty."
Cordell shrugged. "He was thirty-eight--and a genius. Genius has nothing to do with age, I hear."
"Not married, I understand."
"That's right." A slow frown was forming on Cordell's face.
"How old was your wife?" Kirk asked.
The frown deepened but the young man answered promptly enough. "Juanita was my age. Twenty-nine."
Martin Kirk eyed his cigar casually. "Why," he said, "did you want her to walk out on her job; to give up her career?"
Cordell stiffened. "Who says I did?" he snapped.
"Are you denying it?"
"You're damn well right I'm denying it! What is this?"
* * * * *
Kirk was slowly shaking his head almost pityingly. "On at least two occasions friends of you and your wife have heard you say you wished she'd stay home where she belonged and cut out this 'playing around with a mess of test tubes.' Those are your own words, Cordell."
"Every guy," the young man retorted, "who's got a working wife says something like that now and then. It's only natural."
Kirk's jaw hardened. "But every guy's wife doesn't get murdered."
The other looked at him unbelievingly. "Good God," he burst out, "are you saying I killed Juanita because I wanted her to stop working? Of all the--"
"There's, more!" snapped the Homicide man. "When you passed Professor Gilmore's secretary in his outer office yesterday, what did you say to her?"
"'Say to her?'" the prisoner echoed in a dazed way. "I don't know that I ... Some kidding remark, I guess. How do you expect me to remember a thing like that?"
"I'll tell you what you said," Kirk said coldly. "It goes like this: 'Hi, Alma. You think the Prof's through making love to my wife?'"
Cordell's head snapped back and his jaw dropped in utter amazement. "What! Of all--! You nuts? I never said anything like that in my life! Who says I said that?"
Without haste Kirk slid a hand into the inner pocket of his coat and brought out two folded sheets of paper which he opened and spread out on his knee.
"Listen to this, friend," he said softly. "'My name is Miss Alma Dakin. I reside at 1142 Monroe Street, and am employed as secretary to Professor Gregory Gilmore. At approximately 5:50 on the afternoon of October 19, Paul Cordell, husband of Mrs. Juanita Cordell, laboratory assistant to Professor Gilmore, passed my desk on his way into the laboratory. I made no effort to stop him, since my employer had previously instructed me to allow Mr. Cordell to go directly to the laboratory at any time without being announced.'" Kirk looked up at the man in the chair opposite him. "Okay so far?"
Paul Cordell nodded numbly.
"'At the time stated above,'" Kirk, continued, reading from the paper, "'Mr. Cordell stopped briefly in front of my desk. He seemed very angry about something. He said, "Hi, Alma. You think the Prof's through making love to my wife?" Before I could say anything, he turned away and walked into the corridor leading to the laboratory. I continued my work until about five minutes later when Mr. Cordell came running back into the office and told me to call the police, that Professor Gilmore and Mrs. Cordell had been murdered.
"'Since there is an automatic closer on the corridor door, I did not see Mr. Cordell enter the laboratory itself. I do know, however, that Professor Gilmore and Mrs. Cordell were alone in the laboratory less than ten minutes before Mr. Cordell arrived, as I had just left them alone there after taking some dictation from my employer. Since I went directly to my desk, and since there is no entrance to the laboratory other than through my office, I can state with certainty that Mr. Cordell was the only person to enter the laboratory between 5:00 that afternoon and 5:55 when Mr. Cordell came out of the laboratory and told me of the murders.
"'I hereby depose that this is a true and honest statement, to the best of my knowledge, that it was given freely on my part, and that I have read it before affixing my signature to its pages. Signed: Alma K. Dakin.'"
* * * * *
There was an almost ominous crackle to the document as Lieutenant Kirk folded it and returned it to his pocket. Paul Cordell appeared utterly stunned by what he had heard and his once stiffly squared shoulders were slumped like those of an old man.
"I don't have to tell you," Kirk said, "that the only window in that laboratory is both permanently sealed and heavily barred. No one but you could have murdered those two people. You say you saw them killed by some kind of a gun. Yet a qualified physician states both deaths were caused by a terrific blow from a blunt instrument. We found a lot of things around the lab you could have used to do the job--but nothing at all of anything like a projectile fired from a gun."
The prisoner obviously wasn't listening. "B--but she--she lied!" he stammered wildly, "All I said to Alma Dakin was a couple of words--three or four at the most--about not working too hard. Why should she put me on a spot like that? I just--don't--get--it! Why should she go out of her way to make trouble...." Dawning suspicion replaced his bewilderment, "I get it! You cops put her up to this; that's it! You need a fall guy and I'm elec--"
"Listen to me, Cordell," Kirk cut in impatiently. "You knew, or thought you knew, your wife was having an affair with Professor Gilmore. You tried to break it up, to get her to leave her job. She wasn't having any of that; and the more she refused, the sorer you got. Yesterday you walked in on them unannounced, found them in each other's arms, and knocked them both off in a jealous rage. When you cooled down enough to see what you'd done, you invented this wild yarn about a blonde in a ball of fire, hoping to get off on an insanity plea."
"I want a lawyer!" Cordell shouted.
Kirk ignored the demand. "You're going back to your cell for a couple hours, buster. Think this over. When you're ready to tell it right, I want it in the form of a witnessed statement, on paper. If you do that, if you co-operate with the authorities, you can probably get off with a fairly light sentence, maybe even an outright acquittal, on the old 'unwritten law' plea. I don't make any promises. Gilmore was a prominent man and a valuable one; that might influence a jury against you. But it's the only chance you've got--and I'm telling you, by God, to take it!"
Cordell was standing now, his face working. "Sure; I get it! All you'r
e after is a confession. What do you care if it's a flock of lies? My wife wouldn't even look at another man, and not you or anybody else is going to make me say different. That blonde killed them, I tell you--and I'll tell a jury the same thing! They'll believe me; they're not a bunch of lousy framing cops! You'll find out who's--"
Lieutenant Martin Kirk wearily ground out his cigar against the chair rung. "All right, boys. Take him back upstairs."
Chapter II
It was a gray chill day late in November, and by 4:30 that afternoon the ceiling lights were on. Chenowich, the young plain-clothes man recently transferred to Homicide from Robbery Detail, stopped at Martin Kirk's cubbyhole and slid an evening paper across the battered brown linoleum top of the Lieutenant's desk.
"This oughta interest you," he said, jabbing a chewed thumbnail at an item under a two-column head half-way down the left side of page one.
CORDELL DRAWS DEATH NOD
Killer of Wife and Atom Wizard To Face Chair in January
Paul Cordell, 29, was today doomed by Criminal Court Justice Edwin P. Reed to death by electrocution the morning of January 11, for the murders of his wife, Juanita, 29, and her employer, world-famous nuclear scientist Gregory Gilmore.
A jury last week found Cordell guilty of the brutal slayings despite his testimony that it was a mysterious blonde woman, floating in a "ball of blue fire," who had blasted the victims with a "ray gun" on that October afternoon.
Ignoring the "girl from Mars" angle, alienists for the prosecution pronounced the handsome defendant sane, and his attorneys were powerless to offset the damage.
The final blow to Cordell's hopes for acquittal, however, was administered by the State's key witness, Alma Dakin, Gilmore's former secretary. For more than three hours she underwent one of the most grilling cross-examinations in local courtroom....
Kirk shoved the paper aside, "What could he expect when he wouldn't even listen to his own lawyers? They'll appeal--they have to--but it'll be a waste of time."
He leaned back in the creaking swivel chair and began to unwrap the cellophane from a cigar. "In a way," he said thoughtfully, "I hate to see that kid end up in the fireless cooker. In this business you get so you can recognize an act when you see one, and I'd swear Cordell wasn't lying about that blonde and her blue fire. At least he thought he wasn't."
Chenowich yawned. "I say he was nuts then and he's nuts now. What do them bug doctors know? I never seen one yet could count his own fingers."
The telephone on Martin Kirk's desk rang while he was lighting his cigar. He tossed the match on the floor to join a dozen others, and picked up the receiver. "Homicide; Lieutenant Kirk speaking."
It was the patrolman in the outer office. "Woman out here wants to see you, Lieutenant. Asked for you personally."
"What about?"
"She won't say. All I get is it's important and she talks to you or nobody."
"What's her name?"
"No, sir. Not even that. Want me to get rid of her?"
Kirk eyed the mound of paper work on his desk and sighed. "Probably a taxpayer. All right; send her back here."
A moment later the patrolman loomed up outside the cubbyhole door, the woman in tow. Lieutenant Kirk remained seated, nodded briskly toward the empty chair alongside his desk. "Please sit down, madam. You wanted to see me?"
"You are Mr. Kirk?" A warm voice, almost on the husky side.
"Lieutenant Kirk."
"Of course. I am sorry."
* * * * *
While she was being graceful about getting into the chair, Kirk stared at her openly. She was worth staring at. She was tall for a woman and missed being voluptuous by exactly the right margin. Her face was more lovely than beautiful, chiefly because of large eyes so blue they were almost purple. Her skin was flawless, her blonde hair worn in a medium bob fluffed out, and her smooth fitting tobacco brown suit must have been bought by appointment. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was probably thirty.
Her expression was solemn and her smile fleeting, as was becoming to anyone calling on a Homicide Bureau. She placed on a corner of Kirk's desk an alligator bag that matched her shoes and tucked pale yellow gloves the color of her blouse under the bag's strap. Her slim fingers, ringless, moved competently and without haste.
"I am Naia North, Lieutenant Kirk."
"What's on your mind, Miss North?"
She regarded him gravely, seeing gray-blue eyes that never quite lost their chill, a thin nose bent slightly to the left from an encounter with a drunken longshoreman years before, the lean lines of a solid jaw, the dark hair that was beginning to thin out above the temples after thirty-five years. Even those who love him, she thought, must fear this man a little.
Martin Kirk felt his cheeks flush under the frank appraisal of those purple eyes. "You asked for me by name, Miss North. Why?"
"Aren't you the officer who arrested the young man who today was sentenced to die?"
Only years of practise at letting nothing openly surprise him kept Kirk's jaw from dropping. "... You mean Cordell?"
"Yes."
"I'm the one. What about it? What've you got to do with Paul Cordell?"
Naia North said quietly, "A great deal, I'm afraid. You see, I'm the woman who doesn't exist; the one the newspapers call 'the girl from Mars.'"
It was what he had expected from her first question about the case. Any murder hitting the headlines brought at least one psycho out of the woodwork, driven by some deep-seated sense of guilt into making a phony confession. Those who were harmless were eased aside; the violent got detained for observation.
But Naia North showed none of the signs of the twisted mind. She was coherent, attractive and obviously there was money somewhere in her vicinity. While the last two items could have been true of a raving maniac, Kirk was human enough to be swayed by them.
"I'm afraid," he said, "you've come to the wrong man about this, Miss North." His smile was frank and winning enough to startle her. "The case is out of my hands; has been since the District Attorney's office took over. Why don't you take it up with them?"
* * * * *
Her short laugh was openly cynical. "I tried to, the day the trial ended. I got as far as a fourth assistant, who told me the case was closed, that new and conclusive evidence would be necessary to reopen it, and would I excuse him as he had a golf date. When I said I could give him new evidence, he looked at his watch and wanted me to write a letter. So I wrote one and his secretary promised to hand it to him personally. I'm still waiting for an answer."
"These things take time, Miss North. If I were you I'd--"
"I even tried to see Judge Reed. I got as far as his bailiff. If I'd state my business in writing.... I did; that's the last I've heard from Judge Reed or bailiff."
Kirk picked up his cigar from the edge of the desk and tapped the ash onto the floor. "Shall I," he said, his lips quirking, "ask you to write me a letter?"
Naia North failed to respond to the light touch. "I'm through filling wastebaskets," she said flatly. "Either you do something about this or the newspapers get the entire story. Not that I'll enjoy being a public spectacle, but at least they'll give me some action."
"What do you want done?"
She put both elbows on the desk top and bent toward him. He caught the faint odor of bath salts rising from under the rounded neckline of her blouse. "That man must go free, Lieutenant. He didn't kill his wife--or Gregory Gilmore."
"Who did?"
She looked straight into his eyes. "I did."
"Why?"
Slowly she straightened and leaned back in the chair, her gaze shifting to a point beyond his left shoulder. "Nothing you haven't heard before," she said tonelessly.
"We met several months ago and fell in love. I let him make the rules ... and after a while he got tired of playing. I didn't--and I wanted him back. For weeks he avoided me."
"So you decided to kill him."
She seemed genuinely astonished at the remark. "Cert
ainly not! But when I saw him take this woman--this assistant of his, or whatever she was--into his arms ... I suppose I went a little crazy."
"Now," Kirk said, "we're getting down to cases. You know the evidence given at the trial--particularly that given by Gilmore's secretary?"
"Of course."
"Then you know this Dakin woman was in the laboratory until a few minutes before Cordell showed up. You know that nobody could have gone into that laboratory without her seeing them. You know that Alma Dakin testified that there were only two people in there: Gilmore and Juanita Cordell. So, Miss North, how did you get in there after Alma Dakin left and before Paul Cordell arrived?"
"But I didn't."
The Lieutenant's air of triumph sagged under a sudden frown. "What do you mean you didn't?"
"I didn't enter the laboratory after Greg's secretary left it. I was there all along."
* * * * *
Kirk's head came up sharply. "You what?"
"I was there all the time," the girl repeated. "Since noon, to be exact. I planned it that way. I knew everybody would be out to lunch between twelve and one, so I went to the laboratory with the intention of facing Greg there on his return. When I heard him and Mrs. Cordell coming along the corridor, I sort of lost my nerve and hid in a coat closet."
Martin Kirk had completely dropped his air of good-humored patience by this time, "You telling me you were hiding in there for almost five hours without them knowing it?"
Naia North shrugged her shoulders. "They had no reason to look in the closet. I'll admit I hadn't intended to--to spy on Greg. But I kept waiting for him to say or do something that would prove or disprove he was in love with Juanita Cordell, and not until his secretary left and he was alone with her did I discover what was between them. I must have come out of that dark hole like a tiger, Lieutenant. They jumped apart and two people never looked guiltier. He said something particularly nasty to me and I grabbed up a short length of shiny metal from the workbench and hit him across the side of the head before he knew what was happening. He fell down and the Cordell woman opened her mouth to scream and--and I hit her too."