by Unknown
'Well, why don't you just get out the phone book and start with A,' she said with a sardonic smile.
Eckling looked helplessly at Angelo, who ignored him. He sat with his legs crossed, appraising freshly manicured fingernails.
'So you can't provide any leads?'
'You might start with his business partners. He was famous for screwing his friends. Or perhaps infamous would be a better word. Frankly, I don't really care who shot him. I hope whoever did the world that favour doesn't suffer too much for it.'
'Christ, Ada!'
'Oh, stop it. Don't be such a hypocrite, ask me what you really came here to ask.'
'Yes,' Angelo said, appraising Eckling with a cool stare. 'Why don't we cut through the felicities and get on with it. I'm sure we've all got better things to do.'
'All right, where were you between seven-thirty and nine P.M. last night?' Eckling asked bluntly.
'I was having dinner at Les Chambres with my daughter and son-in-law,' she answered with a smug smile. 'They picked me up here about seven-thirty. I had been home about thirty minutes when Raymond Firestone called me.'
Eckling mentally calculated how long it would take to get from the Delaney house in Rogers Park to the restaurant located in the Gold Coast. Thirty minutes at least. Les Chambres was ten, fifteen minutes from Delaney's penthouse. Five or ten minutes to do the trick…
'We arrived at the restaurant at eight,' she said. 'We were there until nearly ten-thirty. We saw several people we know.'
'You can relax, Chief,' Angelo said. 'She's airtight.'
'I see.'
'Was there anything else?' Ada Delaney said coldly.
'I guess… No, unless you can think of - '
'I can't, Eric. And I doubt that I will. Please don't come back here again.' She got up and left the room.
'Christ,' Eckling said to the lawyer, 'we gotta ask her. She oughtta realize we gotta ask her, y'know, clear her up right off the bat.'
'She has an alibi,' the lawyer said curtly. 'Check it out. I'll advise her to be as cooperative as you need her to be - after you're satisfied she's not involved.'
'Thanks,' Eckling said.
Across town, the Wild Bunch was gathering for a staff meeting called by Shana Parver. Parver and Stenner were in her cubbyhole office talking on the phone while the rest of the bunch gathered in Vail's office, where doughnuts and coffee were waiting: Meyer; Stenner; Naomi; Hazel Fleishman, the daughter of an abusive, hard-drinking army sergeant, who, at thirty-four, was a specialist in sexual and physical abuse cases and rape and was a ferocious litigator; and Dermott Flaherty, a black Irish, streetwise, former petty thief with a gallows sense of humour. Flaherty had escaped dismal beginnings in the east and was graduated cum laude from the University of Chicago, where he had won a four-year scholarship to law school.
Missing were Bobby Hartford, the son of a black ACLU lawyer, who had spent his first ten years as a lawyer fighting civil rights cases in Mississippi and, at thirty-seven, was the oldest of the Wild Bunch; Bucky Winslow, a brilliant negotiator, whose father had lost both legs in Vietnam and died in a veterans' hospital; and St Claire.
'Where are Hartford and Winslow?' Vail asked Naomi.
'Both in court this morning.'
'St Claire?' Vail looked at Ben Meyer.
'He's checking on something over at the records building,' Meyer said.
'About that hunch of his?' Vail asked. 'Anything to it?'
'Well, uh, nothing yet,' Meyer said, not wishing to comment until St Claire was in the room.
The conversation quickly centred on Yancey's stroke and the murder of John Delaney, the landfill trio taking a backseat to these two new developments. Vail filled them in on the Delaney homicide and assured them that he had no intention of wasting a lot of time playing DA.
'This is where the action is, and this is where I intend to stay,' he insisted as Stenner and Parver finished their phone call and entered his office, she wearing a Cheshire cat grin.
'Okay, Shana,' said Vail. 'What're you so proud of?'
'I think we've got Darby,' Parver said, rather proudly. 'We can blow his story off the planet.'
'Oh?' Vail said. He walked around the desk and sat down. He leaned back in his chair and rolled a cigarette between two fingers. 'Let's hear it from the top,' he said to her. They all knew the facts of the crime, but this was the usual drill: taking it from the top so the rest of the bunch could get the whole run in perspective.
Parver gave a quick summary of the facts: that Darby was having trouble at home with his wife, Ramona, had three bad years on his farm, had lost a subsidy contract with the government, had gone through all his family's money and a fifty-thousand-dollar inheritance Ramona got a year before, and was shacking up with a nude dancer named Poppy Palmer who performed at a strip club called the Skin Game. There was also the insurance policy.
'Darby said last summer he had an accident with a harvesting machine,' she said. 'It rolled back and almost killed him, so he took out a $250,000 insurance policy on himself - and one on Ramona while he was at it.
'Now it's January third, six o'clock in the afternoon. Darby has been hunting with two of his buddies since before dawn. They stop for a couple of beers on the way home.'
Parver stood up, acting out the event as she spoke, substituting a steel ruler for the shotgun. Parver was an actress. She loved visual impact. She leaned with her back against an imaginary wall, the steel ruler pressed against her chest.
Parver: 'He gets home and walks into the house. The CBS news is just coming on. His wife, Ramona, is sitting in the living room. Before he can even say hello, she comes up with his .38 target gun and starts shooting at him. He jumps out of the doorway behind the wall of a hallway leading to the kitchen. She sends another shot through the wall. It misses him by inches. He freaks out. He slams two shells in the shotgun and rushes around the corner.'
She spun around and aimed the ruler at Fleishman.
Parver: 'And shoots her. The shot hits her in the side. Her gun hand goes up, she puts another shot into the ceiling as he charges her.'
She rushed up to Fleishman and held the steel ruler an inch away from her forehead.
Parver: 'Boom! he shoots her right here, just above her right eye. He drops the shotgun and crosses the room to the phone and calls 911. There's a slip of paper beside the phone with Poppy Palmer's unlisted phone number on it. Later he claims he didn't write it, doesn't know where it came from. Then he goes outside and sits on the porch steps until the police arrive. That's his story. No witnesses, nobody to argue with him.'
Fleishman: 'Gunfight at the O.K. corral, right?'
Parver: 'Right. Later Darby claims he called Poppy Palmer to tell her what happened and to find out where Ramona got the unlisted number. Palmer tells him that Ramona Darby called her about five and went crazy on the phone, threatening them both.'
Vail:'Them being…?'
Parver: 'Palmer and Darby.'
Vail: 'Go on.'
Parver: 'Given the motives and the nature of the individual, I don't think any of us believed it happened this way, but we don't have anything to take to the grand jury. The insurance company is about to pay off the policy. Martin and I conducted an interrogation with Darby yesterday and he froze us out. So Abel and I went back out to Sandytown. We decided to take one more crack at everybody out there who might know something, anything.
'There's this elderly lady — she's seventy-six — lives on the opposite side of the road from Darby, about eighty yards - actually it's eighty-three - from Darby's house. It's a field that separates these two houses, a corn field in the summer - some trees line the dirt driveway leading to the Darby place, but basically it's wide open between Darby's house and hers. Her name's Shunderson, Mabel Shunderson, a widow. She's lived there more than thirty years, has known the Darbys for the entire time they lived across the road, which is… uh,' - she consulted her notes - 'twelve years. Mrs Shunderson saw Darby come home in his pickup truck. She was
in the kitchen looking out her window, which faces the Darby place, and she had the window open because she burned something on the stove and she was shooing out the smoke. She saw Darby come home, saw him get out of the pickup carrying the shotgun, and go into the house. A minute later she heard the shots. She had told us all this before, that she heard the shots, I mean, but we never talked about the order of the shots.'
Vail: 'In her seventies, you say?'
Parver: 'Yes, sir. Anyway, she says she heard the shots very clearly. It was a clear night, very cold.'
Fleishman: 'She sure it was him?'
Parver: 'No question about it.'
Meyer: 'And she's sure about the time?'
Parver: 'Says the news was just coming on the television, which ties in with Darby's story and the phone call to 911, which was at six-oh-six.'
Vail: 'Okay, go on.'
Parver: 'Well, we were doing what you might call a courtesy call just to make sure we covered everything and I said to her, Did you hear all six shots, and she said yes. She knows about guns because Gus - that's her husband, her late husband, he's been dead about six years now - did a lot of hunting and she could tell there were two guns going off. And then she said… '
She stopped a moment and read very carefully from her notes.
'… said, "I know the difference between a shotgun and a pistol, my Gus spent half his life either hunting or practising to hunt, and when I heard that shotgun, then all those pistol shots, I knew there was something goin' on down there and I thought it was maybe a burglar in the house." '
Parver looked at Vail and then around at the group. She repeated her remark.
Parver: ' "I heard that shotgun, then all those pistol shots," that's exactly what she said.'
Vail stared at her as she went on.
Parver: 'So I said to her, "You mean you heard the pistol, then the shotgun," and she said, "Young lady, I know the difference between a shotgun and a pistol. I heard the shotgun, then four pistol shots, then the shotgun again." '
Vail: 'She's saying Darby fired the first shot?'
Parver: 'Exactly.'
Flaherty: 'She's seventy-five?'
Parver: 'Six. Seventy-six.'
Flaherty: 'And the house is eighty yards from Darby's place?'
Parver: 'Eighty-three, but she knows what she heard. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But just to make sure, Abel and I did a test.'
Vail: 'A test?'
He looked at Stenner.
Stenner: 'We set up a tape recorder in her kitchen beside the open window. I went down to Darby's place and went in the barn and fired two sets of shots into some sacks of grain.'
Vails: 'Where was Darby?'
Stenner: 'He wasn't there.'
Vail: 'Uh-huh. Trespassing.'
He scribbled some notes on a legal pad.
Stenner: 'We can go back and do it legal. I just wanted to make sure we had a live one here.'
Vail: 'I know.'
Stenner: 'First I did it the way Darby says it happened. I fired three shots from the pistol, one from the shotgun, another pistol shot, and the final shotgun blast. Then I did it the way Mrs Shunderson says she heard it: the shotgun first, four pistol shots, and the final shotgun. Shana stood beside Mrs Shunderson exactly where she was standing when the event took place and taped both sets of shots.'
Parver: 'She was adamant. She says it was BOOM, bang, bang bang, bang… BOOM. Not bang, bang, bang. BOOM, bang, BOOM. Here's the tape.'
She put a small tape recorder on the desk and pressed the play button. There was silence except for the room tone. Then there were the shots, echoing very clearly in the night air.
Bang, bang, bang… BOOM… bang… BOOM.
'No, no. Not the way it was't'all,' came an elderly woman's firm, very positive voice. 'As I told you…'
Shana's voice interrupted her. 'Just a minute,' she said. 'Listen.'
BOOM… bang, bang, bang, bang… BOOM.
'Yes! That's the way it was. 'Cept there was a little more time between the last pistol shot and the shotgun.'
'You're absolutely positive?' Parver asked.
'I told you, child, I know the difference between a shotgun and a pistol.'
'And you're sure of the sequence?'
'The shotgun was first. And there was that little pause between the last pistol shot and then the shotgun again.'
Parver turned off the tape recorder.
Hazel Fleishman said, 'Wow!' The rest of the group started to talk all at once. Vail knocked on the table with his knuckles and calmed them down.
'Is she a good witness, Abel?' Vail asked.
'A crusty old lady.' Stenner nodded with a smile. 'I think she'll hold up.'
'A woman that age -' Meyer started.
'She's positive about what she heard. And there's not a thing wrong with her hearing,' Stenner assured him.
'You think we can bring a first-degree murder case against Darby on this boom-bang testimony?' Flaherty said.
'This woman knows what she heard,' Stenner insisted.
'This is what I think happened,' Parver said. She acted out her theory again, walking to the middle of the room with her hand down at her side holding the ruler-shotgun.
'He comes home, has the shotgun loaded, walks into the house. His wife is sitting in the living room…'
Parver approached Flaherty. When she was two feet away from him, she swung her arm up, aiming the imaginary gun at his forehead.
'BOOM! He walks right up to her and shoots her in the head point-blank, just like that. Then he takes the .38 - he's still got his gloves on - and he puts it in her hand and bang, bang, bang, bang - he puts the two shots in the hall, one in the wall, and one in the ceiling - then he backs off a few feet and hits her with the second shotgun blast. I mean, he thought of everything. Powder burns on her hand, the long shot that he claims he shot first after she cut loose at him. He covered everything but the sound.'
'It's not just the order of the shots,' Stenner said in his underplayed, quiet manner. 'It's the pauses in between them. Or lack of same. Mrs Shunderson says there was no pause between the four pistol shots. She says it was BOOM… bang bang bang bang… BOOM.
Ramona Darby was dead when he put the gun in her hand and fired the pistol.'
Vail leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment, then chuckled. 'Nice job, you two,' he said.
'The problem is proving premeditation,' Flaherty offered. 'We'll have to give up Shunderson in discovery so they'll know what we have. Darby'll change his story.'
'That won't hold up,' Stenner said. 'No jury will believe that he charged into her while she was shooting at him and got close enough to pop her point-blank in the head without getting hit himself. It's that point-blank head shot he has to live with.'
'He could plead sudden impulse,' Dermott Flaherty offered. 'He came in. She had the gun. She threatened him, he shot her. Then he panicked and jimmied up the rest of the story because he was afraid he couldn't prove self-defence.'
'So how do we trap him?' Vail asked.
Silence fell over the room.
Vail went on. 'Unless we have some corroborative evidence, Darby will be dancing all over the room. And Paul Rainey will jump on the strongest scenario they can come up with and stick with it.'
'Which will probably be Dermott's take on it,' Hazel Fleishman said.
Vail nodded. 'Namely that he came in, she had the gun, he freaked out and shot her but didn't kill her, blah, blah, blah.'
'Doesn't work,' Parver said. 'He can't get around the fact that for his story to work, his first shot had to hit her in the side. That shot in the face was from twelve inches, maybe less. It was cold-blooded. That shot put her away instantly.'
'Heat of the moment?' Fleishman suggested. 'The woman throws down on him, he fires in a panic - '
'And runs twelve feet across the room before he shoots again?' Stenner asked. 'No jury'll buy that. If the farm lady's testimony holds up - if Rainey doesn't di
ssect her on the stand - Darby's stuck with the sequence, he'll have to change his story.'
'He's in a panic. He's exhausted. He's been out in a blind for five hours.' Flaherty lowered his head, miming Darby: 'I was cold and tired. I came in and suddenly this crazy woman's blazing away at me. I duck behind the hall wall. She keeps shooting. Finally I just charged into the room and fired. It all happened so fast. I don't remember firing that last shot. All I remember is the noise and the smoke, one of those shots coming so close to my cheek that I could feel the heat. It was over just like that.' He snapped his fingers.
Vail said, 'Very good, Dermott. You ought to be defending him.'
The group laughed except for Shana Parver, who glared at Flaherty. He smiled at her and shrugged. 'Just doin' my job, Counsellor,' he said. 'I think nailing that witness was a stroke of genius.'
'No question about it,' Vail said. 'The questions we have to decide are: One, do we arrest him yet? And two, do we go for murder in the first or second?'
Shana Parver said, 'It's cold-blooded murder. We can prove premeditation. He did it the minute he walked in the door.'
'So do we arrest him?' Stenner asked. A hint of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. He watched Vail go to the urn and draw another cup of coffee. The old master, playing all the angles in his head.
Vail walked over to Shana and toyed with the ruler and said, 'How about Betty Boop? Did you talk to her about the phone call?'
Parver smiled. 'She flew the coop.'
'She did what?'
'We went by the club and her boss told us she left town yesterday afternoon,' Stenner said. 'Told him her sister in Texarkana is dying of cancer. We checked it out this morning, that's what we were doing on the phone. Her sister lives in San Diego. In perfect health. Last time she heard from Poppy Palmer was five years ago.'
'What do you know,' Vail said to Parver. 'Your ploy may have worked. The question you asked Darby about the phone number could have spooked her.'
'Something did,' Stenner said.
'You want to go for an indictment now?' Vail asked Parver.