by Ed McBain
“He said—”
“I wasn’t coming in no building!”
“What were you doing?”
“I was here in the apartment with Lettie.”
“Then how’d this man see you outside? Walking in?” Rawles said.
“In a hurry,” Bloom said.
“He was mistaken.”
“Not too many white people living here,” Rawles said.
“Lettie told you I was here with her from six-thirty—”
“Hard for a black man not to know a white man when he sees one.”
“Said it was you.”
“Said he saw Jackie Crowell—”
“No, he didn’t,” Crowell said.
“Then it couldn’t have been you coming back from dumping Sunny in a swimming pool, right?” Rawles said.
“With two bullet holes in her head,” Bloom said.
“You told me—” Lettie said.
“Shut up!” Crowell said.
“You told me a dope bust!”
“I said shut up!”
“Shut up shit, man! A thousand bucks don’t buy no—”
What happened next happened very fast.
Lettie was standing near the dresser when Crowell threw open the top drawer and reached in for the gun. She tried to move away the moment she saw the gun, but he pulled her in against him from behind, his left arm around her waist, the gun in his right hand, flailing the room. Both Rawles and Bloom had drawn their own guns the moment Crowell made his break for the dresser, but neither of them could trigger off a shot because Lettie had been in the line of fire. Now Lettie was being used as a shield, screaming and kicking as Crowell dragged her toward the door, the detectives wedged helplessly in a narrow space on the same side of the bed, each of them hoping Crowell wasn’t even dumber than they knew he was. As he backed toward the door, the gun wildly whipping the air, they hoped he wouldn’t start spraying the room with .38-caliber bullets, hoped he wouldn’t leave yet another dead girl behind him. He shoved her across the room instead, an instant before he reached for the doorknob with his left hand. Lettie collided with Rawles, who bulldozed her aside. She was still on the bed, flat on her back, cursing the entire universe, when the detectives ran out into the hallway after Crowell.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I was the first obstacle Crowell encountered on the street outside.
I was the one he shot, the dumb bastard.
My daughter told me she was a celebrity at school. She told me there was only one other kid in her class who had a father who’d been shot, and that was during the Korean War, which didn’t count. She wanted to know how it felt getting shot. I told her I wouldn’t recommend it. She kept wanting to know how it felt. I told her it felt better than getting stepped on by an elephant, but worse than anything else I could think of. We played a game for the next ten minutes, making up things that might be worse than getting shot. We agreed that getting buried alive in the sand might be worse. We agreed that hanging by the thumbs in a Persian market might also be worse. Joanna suggested that getting shot was probably like breaking off with a boyfriend, all the pain and everything.
Clever daughter, mine.
I told her Dale had been the one who’d wanted to end it. I told her Dale had fallen in love with someone else and she planned to marry him. I told her the man’s name was Jim. Joanna said she hated the name Jim. She asked me what I was going to do now.
I didn’t know what I was going to do now.
Bloom came to see me again two days before I was to be released from the hospital. He had with him a transcript of the Crowell Q and A.
“I’m not supposed to let it out of my hands,” he said, “but who’s to say I didn’t forget it here while I went downstairs for a cup of coffee? Glance at it, okay? Pretend it fell off the back of a truck.”
“The coffee downstairs any good?” I asked.
“Better than the squad room, that’s for sure.” He tossed the transcript onto the bed. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes or so,” he said. “Enjoy yourself.”
Skye Bannister himself had handled the interrogation for the state’s attorney’s office. Present had been Captain Walter Hopper and Detectives Cooper Rawles and Morris Bloom. The transcript started with the usual recitation of place, date, and time—in this case the Calusa Public Safety Building at five o’clock on the morning of August 27. Bannister read Crowell his rights, and Crowell acknowledged that he understood them and wished no attorney present during the question-and-answer session.
Q: What is your full name, please?
A: Jack Crowell.
Q: No middle name?
A: No.
Q: Where do you live, Mr. Crowell?
A: 1134 Archer Street.
Q: Here in Calusa?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you tell me how old you are?
A: Eighteen.
Q: Mr. Crowell, I want to ask you first about the night of August eighth. Can you recall that night?
A: I can.
Q: Where were you at nine o’clock that night?
A: In the Shore Haven condominium on Stone Crab Key.
Q: Why did you go there?
A: To see Jack.
Q: By Jack...
A: Jack McKinney.
Q: Tell me what you did when you got to the condominium. Step by step, please.
A: I parked my car, took the elevator up to the third floor, and walked down the hall to Jack’s apartment. I rang the doorbell—
Q: Would you remember the number of the apartment?
A: It was apartment 307.
Q: You rang the doorbell—
A: Yeah, and Jack opened the door for me. We went in the living room and I told him why I was there.
Q: What was it you told him, Mr. Crowell?
A: I told him his sister had mentioned his plan to me, and I wanted $10,000.
Q: What plan was that?
A: To grow pot on that farm he was buying.
Q: Why did you want $10,000?
A: It seemed like the right amount.
Q: But what made you think Mr. McKinney would give you $10,000?
A: I knew he had it. The farm was costing him forty thousand. That’s what Sunny told me.
Q: Yes, but why did you think he would give you so much money?
A: To keep me from telling the cops.
Q: Telling them what?
A: That he was planning to grow pot.
Q: What did Mr. McKinney say when you asked him for the $10,000?
A: He told me to go fuck myself. Is it all right to say that... with the tape going, I mean?
Q: If it’s what he said...
A: It’s exactly what he said.
Q: What happened then?
A: He told me to get out. I told him I wasn’t going noplace till he gave me the ten thousand. One thing led to another...
Q: What do you mean by that?
A: He started shoving me, I guess, and I shoved him back... and like that.
Q: Like what, Mr. Crowell?
A: I guess I pulled a knife on him.
Q: You went up there with a knife?
A: I always carry a knife.
Q: Is this the knife you had with you that night?
A: Yeah, that’s it.
Q: Please have the record indicate that the knife being offered is what is commonly known as a switchblade knife, and that it is equipped with a spring-release button that opens a six-inch-long blade. It was found on the premises at 1134 Archer Street in apartment 202...is that your apartment, by the way, Mr. Crowell?
A: That’s my apartment.
Q: By Detectives Rawles and Bloom at 3:10 a.m. this date, August 27, and marked with an evidence tag at that time. What happened next, Mr. Crowell? After you pulled the knife? You said this is your knife...
A: Yeah, it’s my knife, all right. I guess I told Jack I was going to mess him up unless he gave me the money.
Q: What did you mean by “mess him up”?
A: C
ut him.
Q: What happened then?
A: He ran in the bedroom. He had a gun in there on the table alongside the bed. He went for the gun.
Q: What did you do?
A: What would you do, a guy reaching for a gun?
Q: I’d like to know what you did.
A: I stabbed him. His back was still to me, he was getting ready to turn with the gun in his hand. So I stabbed him before he could shoot me. It was self-defense.
Q: You stabbed him in the back?
A: The first couple of times. I kept stabbing him to make sure. He sort of...like he turned when he was falling, you know? So I stabbed him in the front too. Wherever. I just kept stabbing him.
Q: What did you do then?
A: I looked around for the money.
Q: Did you find it?
A: Yeah. He had it in his toilet tank. In a plastic bag. Like hanging from the plumbing inside there, you know?
Q: How much money was there?
A: I didn’t count it till I got home.
Q: How much money did you discover was in the plastic bag?
A: $47,000.
Q: You counted it.
A: I counted it.
Q: And it came to exactly $47,000?
A: And some change.
Q: How much change?
A: Twenty, thirty dollars, something like that.
Q: What did you do then?
A: After I counted the money?
Q: No. Before you left the apartment.
A: Oh. I washed off my knife and where there was some blood on my clothes. I washed my hands too. Before I left. I didn’t want to go out of there with blood all over me. Also, I took the gun, tucked it in my belt under my jacket. It was a good piece, no sense leaving it there.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about that night?
A: No. That’s all that happened that night.
Q: You told the police that you and Miss McKinney were together that night...
A: Yeah, but not all night. I told her I was hungry, said I wanted to go out for some more burgers. I left her about nine o’clock. It’s only ten, fifteen minutes to Stone Crab. That’s where I went when I left her. To her brother’s apartment. To get my $10,000.
Q: You got a lot more than that, though.
A: Yeah, I was lucky. I almost didn’t look in the toilet tank, can you believe it? That was a last-minute idea.
Q: Miss McKinney told the police that you were together all night on the night of the murder. Why did she do that?
A: That was my idea.
Q: Did she know you had killed her brother?
A: No, no, you think I’m crazy?
Q: Then why did she alibi you?
A: It was the other way around.
Q: I don’t understand.
A: I told her the police would think she did it.
Q: I still don’t understand.
A: I told her if the police knew I’d left her alone there in my apartment, they’d think she ran out to kill her brother.
Q: Why would they think that?
A: Brothers and sisters, you know? The cops always look for that kind of shit. Excuse me.
Q: So you talked her into believing she needed an alibi.
A: Well, I didn’t do it that way. I mean, I didn’t make it sound like I was conning her or anything. I made her think I was protecting her, you know? Like I’d lie for her to save her skin, back her up if she said she was there with me all night. That way the police wouldn’t try to pin anything on her.
Q: And she believed you.
A: Yeah.
Q: Then why did you kill her?
A: Well, that’s another story.
Q: Yes, it is. Maybe we ought to take these in order. Mr. Crowell, are you familiar with a tract of farmland approximately midway between Calusa and Ananburg, what is known as the Burrill farm?
A: I am.
Q: Did you visit the Burrill farm on the afternoon of August 22?
A: I did.
Q: Why did you go there?
A: To see Burrill.
Q: See him about what?
A: Same thing I went to see Jack about.
Q: And what was that?
A: Money.
Q: What money?
A: The $4,000.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Sunny told me her brother gave him a $4,000 deposit on the land.
Q: So you went to see him about this $4,000.
A: Yeah. Same as Jack.
Q: How was it the same as Jack?
A: Well, I wanted that money, you see.
Q: You already had the $47,000 you took after you killed...
A: Yeah.
Q: But you wanted an additional $4,000?
A: Yeah, well, every little bit helps, don’t it?
Q: So you went to Burrill’s farm to steal it from him?
A: To ask him for it, not to steal it.
Q: You expected him to give you $4,000—
A: Well, I had a gun, you see. The gun I took from Jack’s apartment.
Q: Then you did plan to steal the money.
A: No, just ask for it. ’Cause I figured it belonged to Jack, you see? ’Cause Jack was dead now, and there wouldn’t be no deal on the land. That four thousand belonged with the rest of the money, you see?
Q: You went in there to commit armed robbery...
A: No, just to ask him for the money.
Q: Did you, in fact, ask him for it?
A: Sure.
Q: Were you holding a gun on him at the time?
A: Well, I had it in my hand.
Q: Then you were committing armed robbery.
A: No, I wasn’t threatening him or anything.
Q: Is this the gun you had in your hand?
A: Yeah.
Q: Is this the gun you fired at a man named Matthew Hope earlier today?
A: Yeah.
Q: Let the record indicate that the gun is a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, and that it was recovered from Mr. Crowell outside the premises at 1134 Archer Street at 2:20 a.m. this date, August 27. What did Burrill say when you asked him for the money?
A: He said he didn’t have it, even though Sunny told me her brother had given it to him. A deposit of $4,000!
Q: But he said he didn’t have it.
A: He said it was in Escrow. I didn’t know what that meant. Where the hell is Escrow, I asked him. I never heard of noplace in Florida named Escrow.
Q: What happened then?
A: Same thing.
Q: What do you mean?
A: He tried to rush me, and I had to shoot him. Same thing as Jack, if you see what I mean. All I wanted was the money, they shouldn’t have tried nothing.
Q: How many times did you shoot him?
A: Three, four times, is all.
Q: Then what?
A: I looked for the money. I tore the place apart.
Q: Did you find it?
A: No. I asked Sunny later where Escrow was. She started laughing.
Q: When was this?
A: When was what?
Q: That you asked her...
A: Oh. That same night, I guess. The night before she split. We were laying there in bed, I asked her where the hell Escrow was. I figured maybe it was in Texas someplace. She starts laughing, tells me it’s something has to do with lawyers and banks, where they hold money till a deal is settled. I said something like, “So that’s what he meant,” and she asks me what I’m talking about, so I told her about Burrill, about what happened with Burrill. We were drinking a lot, I guess I’d had a little too much. Otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it. About Burrill, I mean.
Q: You told her you’d killed Burrill?
A: Well, I didn’t put it in those words.
Q: How did you put it?
A: I mentioned we’d had a little hassle.
Q: She must have heard about Burrill’s death by then, wouldn’t you think?
A: Well, it was on television and all.
A: Yeah, I guess she knew what I meant.
Q: She knew that you’d killed him.
A: Yeah, I guess so.
Q: What was her reaction?
A: Scared.
Q: Did you tell her you’d killed her brother as well?
A: Yeah. Shit, I’d had too much to drink, that’s all.
Q: How did she respond to that information?
A: She wanted to know why I’d done it. I told her for the money. I told her we could do a lot of things with all that money. I showed her the money. I had it in the toilet tank, same as her brother had it, I got the idea from him. She seemed impressed.
Q: She wasn’t scared anymore?
A: I didn’t think so. She just said that was a lot of money. No shit? Forty-seven grand? I needed her to tell me that was a lot of money?
Q: But she wasn’t scared then, is that right? After you told her about her brother?
A: I didn’t think so at the time. She must’ve been, though. She split the very next day, didn’t she?
Q: Did that bother you? Her leaving?
A: No, the world is full of girls.
Q: But you went looking for her. You went to the M.K. Ranch...
A: I wasn’t looking for her, man.
Q: Then why’d you—
A: I was looking for my money, man! She took my money with her!
Q: The $47,000?
A: What was left of it, forty-five, something like that. Leaves her purple bikini, takes my money!
Q: So you went looking for her...
A: All over town. I told them I was sick down at the market, went looking for Sunny. Staked out the ranch, staked out that lawyer’s house—she told me she’d been there once, went swimming naked in his pool, pissed me off, in fact. I figured she might go back there again, take another swim, who the hell knew? Nothing. I finally gave up, went back to work on Thursday. That was when Detective Bloom here came to see me.
Q: How’d you finally locate her?
A: Luck.
Q: Explain that.
A: Luck, I just told you. I remembered this old fart veterinarian I used to see at her mother’s house every now and then. Guy lives three miles down the road, him and Sunny always seemed very friendly. It occurred to me that maybe she went there. I mean, unless she was already in China, she had to be someplace, am I right? So I looked up the guy’s number—Jeffries is his name, he’s in the phone book—and I give him a call, and guess who answers the phone? Little Miss Sunshine herself! I heard her voice, hung up, and hopped in my car.