“No.”
“Did you hop a freight?”
“Yes.”
“Did you approach a young woman on South Richmond Street at around eleven-fifteen p.m.?”
“No.”
“Did you rape a young woman the evening in question?”
“No.”
“Did you strangle a young woman to death the evening in question?”
“No.”
“Did you eat eggs and bacon at the Switchhouse Diner around eleven-fifteen p.m. the evening in question?”
“Yes.”
He asked again and again. I said no to rape and strangulation and yes to bacon and eggs. More questions and he came back to the questions again and I still said no twice and yes once. The last page of the script went by and all my answers were the same as far as I knew and the show was over.
Belden gave me a cigarette and lit it while Hanson detached me from the gimmick.
The Herald reporter grabbed another shot, folded his camera back into its case and said, “How’d it go, Doc? Did he do the deed or not?”
“Clear the room please,” Hanson said.
I finished my cigarette, doused it in an ashtray on the desk, then stood. Herman Belden took my elbow and waved to the door with his thumb. “Now that the bedtime story’s over, Hammer, it’s time for beddie-bye.”
So we marched back up the echoey corridors and down past the rows of cells until we came to the special job with the electric lock, and before the door was even opened all the way, the butt end of a nightstick rammed into my kidneys so hard my bladder let go as I headed toward the floor.
Behind me the big-belly cop said, “Tough guy.”
The lock clicked first, then Belden’s voice rasped, “That’ll cost you, Sarge! You know I don’t go for that crap.”
“It’s worth it,” the cop told him.
I got off my hands and knees and sat down on the floor, my groin sopping. The three of them were looking at me through the bars like monkeys.
“Have your secretary send me a carbon of the report in the morning, Chief,” I managed. “If I like it, tell her I’ll buy her a fresh stick of gum.”
Belden’s face froze. “I won’t wait, wise guy. I’ll bring it to you myself. I want to see your face change shape when you get the bad news. Maybe you’ll even cry.”
I was already close to that.
When they left I did what I had to. I staggered over to the sink and puked up my supper. I couldn’t put my hand over my kidneys without feeling the pain wrench at my insides, so I stood there cursing between retchings until there was nothing to cough up except something bitter that made me sicker than ever. I managed to let go of the sink and trudge to the cot where I took off my wet trousers and flopped belly down on the ticking with my face buried in my arms.
I didn’t get it. I didn’t get it at all. Why had I been fingered for this crap? But sure as shit somebody was going to get it when I went out those front doors to the open air again. One hell of a lot of people were going to get taken apart piece by piece, and it would be a long time before the good people of Killington put the finger on a guy without asking questions first.
I lay there with my eyes closed until I was asleep. I didn’t dream. I never dream, or anyway I never remember if I do. I knew I was asleep when the fire in my kidney went out and I knew I was awake when somebody lit it again.
Belden stood over me like a colossus with a book of judgment in his hand. The world outside the little high barred window was still dark—if this was morning, dawn hadn’t come yet.
When he saw my head move, Belden said, “I brought the report, Hammer.”
I started to turn over. “Now you know.”
I got my feet on the floor.
He shook his head and I saw his teeth flash in the semi-darkness. “Now we don’t know. The polygraph didn’t prove a thing. The results were inconclusive.”
My voice sounded weak. Almost gone. “You’re lying!”
He tapped the sheets in his hand. “No. It’s all here. Nothing definite could be established except your age maybe. As far as you’re concerned, it’s as damning as a negative report. You’ll get the benefit of the doubt from the D.A. and he’ll stick to the evidence at hand. Want to read it?”
“Get the hell out of here,” I said.
“Sure, whatever you want. You can go back to sleep now. Maybe you’ll think of that poor girl you killed. You know, I’m going to be there when the state cuts you loose from living. I’m going to enjoy it, in fact. One thing I always wanted to get my hands on, in this line of work, and that was a goddamned sex killer.”
“Get the hell out!” I said again. The sweat on me turned cold. It even put out the fire in my back.
Belden grinned and tossed the report down on the cot. “Too bad you don’t have a bedside lamp. You could look for loopholes.” The lock on the door clicked and he stood on the other side of the bars, watching me in the pale glow of the overhead light.
“I’ll tell you something, Hammer. For a while there I thought you weren’t kidding about that frame. When you asked for a polygraph test, I started to get ideas about somebody having it in for you. You sure are one cocky bastard.”
A laugh rattled in his throat as he walked away. I picked up the report and threw it across the room.
I had been too smart by half. I had requested the lie test and screwed myself over, because while I had told the truth in every instance, I knew down underneath that I was being evasive. The real reason I was here, and even who exactly I was, I’d kept hidden. And revealing it now would put everything at risk.
Nothing to do but ride it out.
Ride it out, and curse these damn sons of bitches and their billy clubs and wet gloves.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was morning.
Not a very pretty morning, because the sun was behind a blanket of rain that beat down hard enough to stir up the fish stink and drive it in through the concrete walls. I wondered if the people who lived and worked in this town got so used to the stench, if it didn’t even register anymore.
What smell? they might ask.
But the fishy smell in Killington went way beyond the cannery and its glue factory cousin. It permeated whatever powers had put the finger on me and spread enough money and/or influence to make various citizens get up on their hind legs and lie to put me in the jail wing of the police station, with a transfer to the Big House and Old Sparky waiting in the wings.
As the expressly selected patsy, I was special enough to get served breakfast in my cell. I found out why when they marched the other joes through to the mess hall. They were a lousy bunch of pimps, muggers, thieves, and killers, but they were all better than a fiend like me.
So much better that Belden—who maybe harbored some faint qualm that I might be telling the truth—was scared they might try something fancy on me, like a carving job with a water glass, because they found a sex killer’s company too hard to take.
Anyway, I ate alone.
Later a cop with a gun on his hip—not a guard, because they went unarmed—came by and asked me if I wanted to exercise. Not eager to go anywhere alone with any of these bastards, particularly one packing, I told him to shove it. He studied me from his side of the bars, maybe wondering if he should give me a private consultation. But there were enough prisoners and real guards around to make that risky, even in this burg.
At ten o’clock the town chimes went through their routine and, as they finished, the cop came back again, gave me a sour look, opened the door and let in the diminutive D.A. with the expensive threads and the patent-leather hair.
“Mr. Hammer,” he said, with butter-wouldn’t-melt concern, “you really do need to arrange representation.”
I was sitting on my edge of the cot, which let the shrimp tower over me.
I said, “Then give me a long-distance call. I don’t want any of your local so-called legal talent.”
He gave me a long-suffering sigh. “You have a right to make a call, Mr. Ha
mmer, but not a long-distance one. What we’re offering is not standard public defender office counsel. I’ve spoken personally, individually, to the four best criminal defense lawyers in town.”
“And whose pocket are they in?”
His mouth tightened and his face went pale. “What the hell is wrong with you, man? You must know what you’re facing. Let me help you. I have no desire to see you get…”
He looked for the word, but I gave it to him before he found it: “Railroaded?”
The pale face got suddenly red in its cheeks. “I just want to help you get proper representation.”
That rated half a smile. “Let me tell you why, since I’m skeptical when the guy prosecuting me for rape and murder wants to ‘help.’ You don’t want there to be any grounds for reversal. You don’t want this bounced to a higher court where the crap you people are pulling on me comes down around your ears and takes your reputations with it.”
Then I got up and went over to stand by the window, looking out at the dreary, rainy city, while he told me off. Maybe he’d figured out that when I was facing a judge, I’d be asked who and where my counsel was. And when learning I’d been refused a phone call to my out-of-town attorney, that would either get action or lay groundwork for an appeal. The little D.A. was smart enough to figure all that out.
But right now he was one pissed-off little character. I could sure get the wrong guys teed off at me.
I was still thinking about that an hour later, still convinced a local mouthpiece would be looking out for somebody else’s interests, when Chief Belden showed up again, depositing himself on the other side of the bars like he was unloading a wagon load of bricks. A lot of them.
Something had happened to his face. There were streaks in it, like red lines painted on whitewash, and his mouth barely seemed to be there at all, pinched and puckered but with the lips pulled in, like a wound that wouldn’t heal.
He had a little pile of fresh clothes in his hands with the shoes of mine they’d taken off me sitting on top. They gave you slippers here so you didn’t hang yourself with your shoelaces, like that would work.
“Take these,” he said. “Put them on.”
I got up and went over to him. I was in my shorts, having shed the pissed-in pants, and was glad for a fresh change. Belden passed the things through to me. They looked a little big, but they were clean anyway. He’d even brought socks.
When I was done, he unlocked the cell and held the door open. “Come with me, Hammer.”
“Got another party going?” I asked him. “Sykes out of the hospital, maybe? Another wet glove job?”
“You speak one more word to me,” he said, some tremble in his voice, “and you’re gonna get the crap slapped out of you. Come on. Shake it!”
I shrugged and went out the door. At the other end of the corridor, a cop stood by holding the gate open. He was the one who’d worn a gun earlier—now he didn’t. And he didn’t look happy about it.
This time I didn’t get cuffed to anybody, either. Belden just walked me to the booking area and, damn, if there wasn’t a party going!
Everybody was invited, too—the D.A., the boys from his office, a brace of reporters, everybody clustered in the open area in front of the high booking desk. And this time I wasn’t the guest of honor.
That distinction went to one-hundred-thirty pounds of female flesh in a dress so green it made her hair seem almost white, and so form-fittingly stylish she may have gone to Paris for it. She was being mighty careless with her legs, too, just by having them attached to her body like that.
I had never seen her before, but I’d known this kind of woman— money, breeding, yet all female. And judging by the glowering expressions on the surrounding representatives of officialdom, she had really thrown a wrench in the works.
The D.A. scowled at me, waved Belden over with a crooked forefinger, then stood me in front of the blonde like her prize at the fair.
His face was set as rigid as a bronze statue as he said, “I needn’t tell you how imperative it is, Miss Charles, that you make a proper identification. Study him very closely. Very closely.”
I didn’t get the pitch, but I let her study me, all right. Hell, I’ll let any blonde study me damn close so long as she looks like Miss Charles. I’d even study her back, and if she’d say something nice about me, I’d say something nice about her, like how well she carried off going without a bra, and maybe ask her in a cheeky way why didn’t her panty outlines show like they did on every other girl?
But then I’ve always had a way with women.
Meanwhile, the thinking part of my mind was wondering why this identification was being made under these conditions. Why hadn’t I been hauled to a show-up with a bunch of other cellblock candidates? And why in hell was the press here? Since when did an I.D. in a murder case get made like the circus had come to town?
And then even before she had uttered a word, I knew; I knew that she had arranged this. And if she’d arranged it, inviting the reporters along, that meant she was somebody. But why had she done it?
Right now she was frowning gently, her tongue a wet little dart that snaked out between her full dark-red-rouged lips for a moment as she tried to take apart the puzzle that was my face. I knew what her voice would sound like. It had to sound that way. Rich. Not too deep. Rich and sensual and—just to make it more tempting—cultured.
“Well,” she said, in a voice and manner that bore out my expectations, “he looks… somewhat different, I admit. His face seems—swollen, sort of. Has he been injured?”
Then she looked at my eyes. Hers were gray. They didn’t smolder. They didn’t laugh or dance or do anything a blonde’s eyes should do. They just looked, and that was enough, because she said, “But there’s no doubt about it. This is the man I saw.”
The D.A.’s fist made a meaty smack against his palm. His scowl became a smile that wouldn’t convince any jury.
“Now, Miss Charles, please listen,” he said. “You must be absolutely certain about this. In circumstances like these, we can’t afford a mistake.”
She nodded, as if to say, I understand.
“Look at him again,” the D.A. said, pressing a little. “Take in every detail. See if you can recall the face of the man you saw on the night in question, and compare it mentally with his. Superimpose them in your mind. If there is the slightest doubt, then it’s your duty to say as much. Look at him closely.”
She shifted her weight to both legs now and stared at him insolently. “I said he’s the same one.”
Behind me Belden cursed under his breath. The D.A. threw the chief a helpless look and made a vague gesture with both hands, like a wide end who just missed catching an easy pass.
Reporters were scribbling furiously in their pads and flash bulbs were popping like it was opening night.
One of the assistant D.A.s muttered, “What a hell of a note this is.”
“Okay, Hammer,” Belden said, motioning me with curled fingers. “Come on this way.”
I got up, wondering what it was all about. If she had just identified me, why was a fresh witness bad news? Why the hell were the chief and the D.A. reacting like their dog died?
What the hell—I trailed after Belden. No cuffs. No cop trailing.
We didn’t go up the corridor. We went to Belden’s office and I waited while he fiddled around in his safe and brought out a manila envelope. He got behind his desk and then spilled my watch, wallet and some pocket junk onto his blotter. I looked at him curiously. He looked back with something that might have been boredom or possibly contempt.
Then he shoved a receipt blank across to me.
“Take it and sign for your belongings.”
I was getting sprung!
You bet I signed the receipt.
When I reached for my wallet, he said, “Count your money.”
“Chief, I’m going to give you what you didn’t give me.”
“Yeah?”
“The benefit of the doubt.�
��
And I stuck my wallet away.
Then I reset my watch and strapped it on. Finally I lit myself a Lucky and pulled the smoke down deep into my lungs and let it stay there until it came up by itself.
It was a little too much to take all at once. Just a little too much. What all can happen to a guy in a few spins of the Earth? I had another pull on the butt and looked at Belden, who had finally lowered himself into his swivel chair. His face was a pasty gray with a slightly mottled touch here and there.
“What’s this angle?” I asked him. “It’s not like you boys to be so nice to a sex killer.”
He laid his hands flat on the desk top. “Hammer,” he said slowly, “I don’t know what the hell comes off here myself. You tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“How you managed it! Stranger in town. I’d like to know why Melba Charles, whose old man owns half of Killington, was eating in a hash house at the same time you said you were. You got yourself a very special witness to alibi you out of the hot seat.”
My mouth smiled while my forehead frowned. “That’s all it takes? Just her word? Nobody else seems to remember me being there. I won’t ask if anybody at the diner remembers seeing her.”
“I know we won’t be,” Belden muttered.
“She sure must be some special character witness, if you take her word for it like that.”
Red blossomed over the pasty gray, retaining splotches of purple. “She’s special, all right. If it was anyone else, I’d roast the pants off her until I was damn sure she was telling the truth.”
“I’m not sure she’s wearing pants,” I said, hauling out a grin. I didn’t have many left the way my poor battered face felt. “So… you do have doubts about it?”
Belden’s head made a slow negative motion. “Not even one. She’s as reliable and upstanding as they come. Oh, she saw somebody, all right. I’m just not convinced it was you.”
“For the record, my mother says they broke the mold making me.”
He wasn’t amused.
I asked, “Does your witness say we spoke or anything?”
Because I sure as hell didn’t remember her, though I wasn’t about to say so.
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