Gray nodded. “I’ll move as fast as I can.”
Zucker stood up and held out his hand. “It’s a deal. Thanks a lot, Mike. I appreciate it.”
Gray closed the door after Zucker and went back to his desk. He looked again at Ann Avery’s watchful face. What conflicts had that face hidden that would never be known now? Had her death been simply a brutal accident, or was there in the sweet, sensuous, repressed face some locked secret to which murder had held the key?
What had been Ann Avery’s motive for being murdered?
3
Each door in the hallway had a rectangular glass peephole set in it at eye-level. There was wire netting embedded in the glass. Inside, each bare cubicle had a window, a metal toilet without any lid, a cot—and a boy.
Gray, glancing into the rooms as he passed, saw one inmate reading a model-aircraft magazine, another staring at the wall. A third turned a blank gaze toward the door, not registering any awareness that eyes were looking in at him.
Gray’s guide tapped the fourth door. “Udall,” he said.
Gray looked in. A square-shouldered figure in drab prison clothes lay face-down on the cot, not moving. The bristling hair was short, the boy’s back muscular and solid. At seventeen, Eddie Udall was very near to being a man. Gray looked at the back of the motionless head and wished he could see inside and watch the thoughts that stirred there.
The confidential records on Eddie Udall had told a familiar story. Gray had studied the Wechsler-Bellevue intelligence test, the Rorschach and the TAT projective tests to diagnose personality. The social worker’s report had had something interesting to say on the subject of Blanche Udall, Eddie’s mother.
“The mother is uncooperative. Most of the information had to be gathered from other sources. She is unmarried and the boy is illegitimate. She feels he is a nuisance. Her attitude toward him is consistently cold. She has a small independent income from a legacy (her statement), and she works occasionally as a waitress. Sexually she seems to be fairly promiscuous…”
Gray stood silent, looking in at the boy whose total experience of life so far could well be summarized in that single paragraph about his mother.
He thought of Carradine’s report, written six months before.
“The boy has a strong conviction, probably based on experience, that all authority figures are predisposed against him and mean him only harm. His history shows, however, that he responds favorably to encouragement in permissive surroundings. Temporary placement in a foster home would probably be effective. So would an after-school job in which he could earn his own money.
“He has positive ambitions which should be encouraged. He wants to become a civil engineer, and his aptitudes and intelligence make this a practical goal for him. However, he has deep-seated emotional conflicts which should be treated as promptly as possible by intensive psychotherapy. No matter what disposition is made of this case, such treatment is strongly recommended…”
The boy stirred a little on the cot, burrowed his face deeper into his bent arm. Gray frowned. Well, Eddie Udall hadn’t got the psychotherapy Carradine had so strongly recommended. The waiting list was too long. The clinics were too short-handed. The disturbed, unhappy children at the head of the list had received the trained attention they needed. Most of them had been able to release their bitter resentments against the world safely, in words and guided actions on the playground, in the gym. Some of them, of course, must have been beyond all help.
Which would Eddie Udall have been? Nobody would ever know now. The boy with the aptitude and the intelligence and the strong wish to make himself an engineer had come too far down on the waiting list. So he’d turned his blind frustrations outward, in violence and theft. And in murder, maybe. Gray frowned again.
The guard said, “Ready to go in now?”
Gray came to a quick decision. “No. I don’t want to talk to him in here. Isn’t there an office somewhere around I could use?”
The guard nodded. “If you’ll go on across the lobby into 608, I’ll bring Udall there.”
The lobby was moderately full of waiting people, patient on benches. One of the men looked up sharply as Gray passed, started to speak, then checked himself and looked away. Gray thought there was a hint of suppressed excitement on the man’s face. Gray couldn’t place him. He thought about it idly all the way down the hall.
The office had comfortable chairs on each side of a bare desk. Its two windows looked out on a panorama of plunging streets lined with white, flat-roofed houses, the gleaming bay a backdrop, with Alcatraz’s low, gray, block-shaped flatness ominous upon the water.
Eddie Udall came in warily, his face expressionless. He had a fresh, fair skin like a child’s, oddly in contrast to his sullen features and the wide, low forehead with the bristling, unruly hair above it. He didn’t look blackly sinister as in the newspaper photograph, but neither did he look harmless.
Gray said, “Sit down if you want to. I could have seen you in your room, but I like to walk around sometimes when I talk. Maybe you do, too.”
Eddie Udall said nothing. He sat down cautiously on the edge of the chair, his hands resting half curled upon his knees.
Gray said, “You remember Dr. Carradine? And Dr. Mawson?”
The boy nodded grudgingly.
“I’m pinch-hitting for Dr. Mawson,” Gray explained. “He’s in the hospital. He asked me to have a talk with you. We’re in the same business. He explained about that to you, didn’t he? Why he gave you all those tests and asked you the questions?”
Eddie said sullenly, “Yeah.”
“Want to tell me what happened?” Gray said.
Eddie Udall said harshly, “I got nothing to say. I won’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“I never touched her!” he said with sudden, furious emphasis. “I never even thought of touching her! But nobody believes anything I say. I—” He started to speak, and then let his shoulders sag.
“What’s the use?” he said. “It won’t make any difference what I say. All I know is I never even touched her.”
Gray looked at him, puzzled. “I’m not quite sure I see what you mean. The question isn’t whether or not you laid a hand on Mrs. Avery, is it? What we need to know is whether you were responsible in any way for her death.”
The boy looked at the carpet sullenly. He said in a weary monotone, as if he’d said the words so often before they had lost all meaning for him, “I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t have hurt her, ever. No matter what happened, I wouldn’t have hurt her. Whoever did it, it wasn’t me. But what’s the good of talking? Nobody believes me. It won’t make any difference what I say.”
“It might,” Gray said.
“Like hell it would! I been in trouble before. I just want to be left alone, that’s all.”
Gray said, “You know your hearing’s coming up in a couple of days?”
Eddie nodded. “If they think they can keep me locked up, they’re crazy.”
“Where do you want to go? Back to your mother?”
A faint shift of focus went over the boy’s sullen face, as if some vivid picture had formed suddenly between him and Gray. He did a curious thing. He lifted one hand, palm up, and looked down at it, at the reddish scars of cuts weeks old now and all but healed. Then he closed his fingers slowly, almost softly, over something invisible that nobody but himself could see lying in his palm.
“My mother?” he said. “Her?” He gave Gray a hard glance. “Sure, I should tell you where I’d go. So you could send the cops to pick me up.”
“You’ve been living in a foster home for the past six months, haven’t you?” Gray asked.
“You read the records,” was all Eddie answered.
“How do you like your foster parents?”
“The Reiners?” Eddie shrugged. “All right. Just fair.” His clear skin flushed slightly. Gray wondered why. He waited. Eddie squirmed a little. After a while he spoke.
“Look, mister. What kind of a rap you th
ink they’ll throw at me, anyhow?”
Gray said, “I don’t know. A lot depends on which court you’re tried in. And on things like why you got in trouble in the first place.”
“Aw, they’ll throw the book at me. You know that.”
Gray said, “I just don’t know. My best guess is you might be sent to Preston. That’s a place for juveniles.”
“I heard of it.” Eddie turned his mouth down derisively. “I could bust out of that place any time.”
“Out of Preston? You’d have a tough time doing it. Preston’s a pretty high security place. Oh, you might break out—it’s been done. But they’d just find you and take you back again. If you do go to Preston and raise hell there, you could end up in San Quentin eventually with a life sentence.”
Eddie said, “Hire a hall.”
Imperturbably Gray went on. “On the other hand, you could be getting vocational training at Preston. What you’d need to become a civil engineer. You could be released from Preston when you’re twenty-one. Then you could get a job, finish high school, and go on into—”
Eddie said, “Who the hell wants to be an engineer. That was a crazy idea, anyway.”
“Not so crazy. Your grades for the last six months have been pretty good.”
Eddie gave a short bark of laughter. “That’s what you think. Maybe you ought to ask old Quentin about that.”
“Who’s he?”
“Aw, he’s one of my teachers. I just about wrecked his lab one day.” The fair skin flushed again. Eddie was suddenly fluent. “I really tore the joint up. Then he was gonna report me, but I conned him out of it. He’s a sucker. Well, I’ve been a sucker, too, but that’s one thing I’m through with. You guys can do whatever you want, but you don’t get me going soft. Not even if you send me to the gas chamber.”
Gray said, “Do you think it might come to that?”
Eddie hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. The low forehead was suddenly wet with a light beading of perspiration.
Gray said again, “Do you think you deserve the gas chamber?”
Eddie suddenly shouted, “Who cares? Sure, let ’em send me up there! Let ’em do anything they want. I don’t give a damn—I can take anything they can hand out.”
“You really think you deserve it?” Gray persisted.
Eddie got up quickly and walked over to the barred window. He stood looking out at Alcatraz, riding low upon the blue-green water. His shoulders were hunched.
“Maybe I do,” he said, almost inaudibly.
“For killing Ann Avery?” Gray asked in a mild voice.
The boy didn’t answer. He gave his shoulders an impatient shake, as if Gray had asked a foolish question. When he turned, his thin, fair skin was a little pale. He said with violence, “I haven’t done a God-damn thing this time. Nobody believes me. I’m not going to talk any more. You can ask me all the questions you want and I’m not going to say another word.” He clamped his mouth hard.
Gray said, “According to the record, you broke into Mrs. Avery’s apartment and took a ring. A sapphire ring. Also according to the, record, you could have stabbed her to death.”
“It’s a lousy frame-up,” Eddie said. “Why can’t you let me alone?”
“Because I’d like to help you, if I could. If you’d let me.”
Eddie said something obscene.
Gray nodded. “I know how you feel.”
“I got my plans made,” Eddie said. “Like I say, I don’t care what you do. I can take it.” He gave Gray a look of baffled violence, and suddenly he whirled and strode toward the door. He jerked it open. The guard outside turned to face him. Eddie shut the door again.
Gray said, “Sorry, Eddie.”
The boy looked at him angrily. “I want to go back to my cell. The hell with you.”
“All right,” Gray said. “The hearing won’t be for a couple of days. We’ve got a little time. I’ll be seeing you again.” He stood up. “Anything I could bring you?” he asked. “Something to read?”
“Sure,” the boy said savagely. “A Bible. With a file in it.”
Gray smiled. He walked to the door and laid his hand on the knob. Eddie said suddenly,
“Wait a minute.”
Gray waited patiently, feeling a little stir of excitement. So often, in sessions with his patients, some point of major importance emerged out of the conversation at the very end of the hour. As if the unconscious mind, half wanting to bring the dangerous subject up, still waits until the end of the allotted time in self-protection.
“Yes, Eddie?” he said.
“You mean that? About getting me something if I wanted it?”
“Yes. If I can, I will.”
Eddie looked down at his palm. He curled the fingers up softly, enclosing something unseen.
“The ring,” Eddie said in a low voice. “My sapphire ring. Could I have that back now?”
Gray had to pause a moment to keep the surprise out of his voice. Then he said quietly, “Well, I’ll try. But I don’t think the chances are too good. You see, it’s evidence. I’ll do my best, though, and I’ll let you know.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, his voice going listless. He dropped his hand, the fingers uncurling. “Sure, sure. Forget it.” He reached for the door blindly.
Gray watched him go down the hall, the guard’s blue-clad figure closing in between them to shut the boy out of sight. Gray was aching to call him back. But he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He’d get no more answers. Not now, anyway.
The naïveté of Eddie’s request had shaken him. And there was more to the matter than naïveté. He wanted time to think. He wanted to read over the account of the murder very carefully, with this new thing in mind.
Walking out through the lobby, abstracted and hardly conscious of where he was heading, he almost collided with the man who had looked up at him so sharply when he had come through last time.
“Excuse me,” the man said, “but aren’t you Michael Gray, the psychoanalyst?”
“Yes, I am,” Gray said. “Why do you ask?”
The man said, “You’ll find out soon enough, Mr. Gray,” and turned to trot rapidly away.
4
Back at the office, Gray opened the folder on Eddie Uda
ll and leafed through it slowly. Now that he had talked to Eddie, the story had more meaning to him. He wondered how much more meaning it would have, how many unexpected little turns of discovery, if he were to talk to the other people also involved in the death of Ann Avery.
Ann Lennox Avery had been thirty-seven when she had died. Twenty years older than Eddie Udall. Her husband, Tod Avery, managed a sizable movie theater, and the Averys had lived in a good neighborhood in comfortable circumstances.
Eddie Udall, seventeen, had been a boy on probation, with a bad record from the age of eight. He was illegitimate and the son of a woman who apparently verged on prostitution. What could the attractive Ann Avery have found in common with the moody, taciturn boy who was Blanche Udall’s unwanted son? Yet Ann Avery had seen something in Eddie. She had gone out of her way to befriend him. And in return…
Six months ago Eddie had been picked up by the police after a fight with an ex-prize fighter who was one of Blanche Udall’s occasional men friends. A condition of his probation had been that he leave Blanche and move into a foster home. It was to this foster home the police had come two weeks ago, after Tod Avery had let himself into his apartment late at night and found his wife’s body sprawled before the fireplace, the blood already drying, blood that had run down across her green dress from the knife wound in her heart.
A search of Avery and the apartment had failed to turn up the weapon, a thin-bladed, sharp knife about the size of the average switchblade. So far the knife had not been found.
A neighbor had reported seeing Eddie Udall leaving the building, half running, that same evening. And the search for Eddie had begun.
It had ended three days later, when Eddie had been dragged out fr
om under a pier at Newport Beach. In his flight, with no real goal and no refuge anywhere, he had somehow been caught up in the seasonal drift that draws teen-agers from the cities to the beach towns on holidays. The flight had been futile—as most of Eddie’s life so far had been futile—and the police had pulled him out into the moonlight and sent him back north to jail and the consequences of whatever it was he had done.
He had denied that he had done anything. He had said Ann Avery had telephoned, asking him to stop by that evening. He had let himself in with the key he claimed she had given him and found her dead on the floor. His footprints in the blood, and the blood that had seeped into the seams of his shoe soles, had shown how he had stood over her on the sodden carpet.
The police version differed a little. He had somehow stolen the key. Ann Avery had telephoned him, yes. Mrs. Reiner, Eddie’s foster mother, had confirmed the fact that Ann had tried several times that evening to reach the boy by phone. The police believed that Eddie had gone up to the Avery apartment, found it empty, got no answer when he’d rung the doorbell, and let himself in with the stolen key. He had begun to rob the place. Bureau drawers had been pulled out and their contents tumbled carelessly, as though from a hasty search. A valuable sapphire ring was missing. Many of Eddie’s fingerprints had been found in the apartment.
The police theorized that Ann Avery had unexpectedly returned to find the boy looting the apartment. He had killed her in a panic and fled. A neighbor had seen him running out of the building.
Eddie insisted that he had not robbed the apartment. He knew nothing about the ransacked bureau drawers, and felt that this was part of a frame-up. As for the ring, he said that Ann Avery had given it to him some days earlier. She had told him it had once belonged to Blanche. Blanche had sullenly denied ever having seen the ring, but then she was denying everything by now. Perhaps she had stolen it and was afraid to admit ownership? If so, no claimant had turned up for the ring.
Tod Avery, in whose theater Eddie had an after-school job, was very bitter against the boy. Could jealousy be a part of his motive? It seemed fantastic, and yet what else can you think when a woman Ann’s age begins to show signs of infatuation with a teen-ager? Jealous or not, Tod Avery had reason enough for bitterness. He and Ann had been married for many years, and his bereavement had been swift, sudden, and brutal.
Michael Gray Novels Page 16