“Why did she come back after those two years?”
“I believe she realized that she had made a mistake in leaving me. Not that you have any license to ask me.”
“The doctor’s right,” Brake said. “Absolutely right. How’s she traveling, by the way?”
“By car. She took my car.” He added stiffly: “She had my permission to take it.”
“Let’s see, that’s a Chevvie sedan, isn’t it, doctor?”
“A 1946 blue Chevrolet sedan.”
“And the license?”
“5T1381.”
Brake made a note of it. “What route is she taking?”
“I have no idea. Surely you’re not proposing to have Mrs. Benning picked up on the highway?”
“First I want to make sure she isn’t here.”
“You think I’ve been lying to you?”
“Not a bit. I’m just doing my job. May I have your permission to look through the house?”
“Do you have a search warrant?”
“I do not. I took it for granted you had nothing to hide.”
Benning managed to smile. “Of course. I was merely curious.” He swung his arm in a quarter circle that ended with his knuckles thumping the wall. “Make free with my demesne, gentlemen.”
Brake started up the stairs that rose at the end of the hallway. I went through the outer rooms with Benning, and paused in the examination room. He spoke quietly from the doorway:
“I know my enemies, Mr. Archer, and my wife’s enemies. I understand your type, the appetitive man. What you can’t have you seek to destroy.” His voice was rising like an ill wind, carrying echoes of our previous meeting.
“Why did your wife come back to you?” I said.
“She loved me.”
“Then why did she leave you again today?”
“She was afraid.”
“Afraid of the Duranos? The police?”
“She was afraid,” he repeated.
I looked around the shabby oilcloth walls and the scrubbed linoleum floor. The faucet was still leaking drop by drop into the sink.
“Is this the room where Florie found the blood, doctor?”
“Blood?” he said. “Blood?”
“The day after your wife came back there were spots of blood on the floor. According to Florie.”
“Oh, yes. I had an emergency patient that Sunday. Cut finger.”
“I suggest that your emergency patient came here late Saturday night. Mrs. Benning brought him to you for treatment. He had a slug in his body instead of a cut finger. His name was Singleton. What happened to him, doctor, did he die on your hands?”
“I had no such patient.”
“I suggest that you performed an unreported operation on a dying man, and couldn’t save him.”
“Have you made that suggestion to Brake?”
“No. I’m not your enemy. I’m not interested in breaches of medical ethics. I’m after a murderer. But I haven’t even been able to prove that Singleton was murdered. Was he?”
Our glances met and locked, until Benning disengaged his. “It’s not myself I’m concerned about,” he said falteringly.
“Your wife? Did she do the shooting?”
He failed to meet my eyes again. Both of us were listening to Brake’s unaccompanied footsteps coming down the stairs and through the house.
Brake saw the tension between us as soon as he entered the room:
“What goes on?”
“Very little,” I said.
Benning looked at me with gratitude, and drew himself up visibly. “Did you look under all the beds, lieutenant?”
“I did. No women’s clothes in the closets, either. You sure your wife isn’t planning to stay away?”
“She hasn’t many clothes.”
Brake crossed the room to the locked closet which I had broken into the night before. He shook the knob with the violence of frustration. “You check this room in here, Archer?”
“It’s only a closet,” Benning said. “There’s nothing inside but my skeleton.”
“Your what?”
“It’s an anatomical specimen.”
“Open up.”
Benning went to the closet door with a key-ring jingling in his hand. As he unlocked it, he gave us a bright bitter smile over his shoulder. “You don’t seriously think I’ve locked my wife in here?”
He swung the door open. The sparse head grinned steadfastly, superciliously, from its refuge beyond time. Benning stood back, watching us for signs of shock or surprise. He seemed disappointed when we showed none.
“Mr. Macabre,” I said. “Where did he come from?”
“I got him from a medical-supply house.” He pointed out a rectangular brass tag attached to one of the ribs: Sunset Hospital Equipment Co., Ltd. I had missed it the night before.
“Not many doctors have these any more, do they?”
“I keep him for a special reason. I worked my way through medical school, and I never received an adequate grounding in anatomy. I’ve been studying it on my own, with the help of this old boy.” He poked the varnished cage of ribs with his finger, and set the whole thing swaying. “Poor old boy. I’ve often wondered who or what he was. A convicted felon, or a pauper who died in a charity ward? Memento mori.”
Brake had been fidgeting. “Let’s go,” he said suddenly. “I’ve got work to do.”
“There are a couple of other points I want to take up with Dr. Benning.”
“Make it fast, then.” Brake seemed to have broken through the thin ice, and contracted a case of cold feet. He moved out through the waiting-room as if to detach his authority from me.
The doctor followed Brake, emphasizing the realignment that was taking place. It had been two against him. Now it was two against me.
“I don’t really mind, lieutenant. I’d like to satisfy Mr. Archer completely and have it over with. If Mr. Archer can be satisfied.” Benning turned to face me in the waiting-room like an actor who has been groping for his part and finally begun to live it.
“There’s a conflict of testimony,” I said. “Florie Gutierrez says that your wife and Lucy Champion were friends. You claim they weren’t. Florie says your wife was out of the house when Lucy was killed yesterday afternoon. You claim she was here with you.”
“I can’t pretend to be objective in this matter, with my wife’s reputation at stake. I’ll tell you my own experience of Florida Gutierrez. She’s an unmitigated liar. And when my wife discharged her last night—”
“Why did your wife discharge her?”
“Incompetence. Dishonesty and incompetence. The Gutierrez woman threatened to get even, as she put it. I knew she’d go to almost any lengths to damage us. But the lengths she’s gone to have surprised even me. There seems to be no limit to human malice.”
“Was your wife in the house between five and six yesterday?”
“She was.”
“How do you know? You were taking a siesta.”
He was silent for nearly half a minute. Brake was watching from the doorway with the air of a disinterested spectator.
“I didn’t sleep,” Benning said. “I was conscious of her presence in the house.”
“But you couldn’t see her? It might have been Florie? You can’t swear it was your wife?”
Benning took off his hat and inspected its interior as if for a missing idea. He said slowly and painfully: “I don’t have to answer that question, or any other question. Even if I were in court—you can’t force a man to testify against his wife.”
“You volunteered an alibi for her. Incidentally, you haven’t proved she is your wife.”
“Nothing could be easier.” He strode into his consultation room and came back with a folded document that he handed to Brake.
Brake glanced at it, and passed it to me. It was a marriage certificate issued in the State of Indiana on May 14, 1943. It stated that Samuel Benning, aged 38, had been married on that date to Elizabeth Wionowski, aged 18.
&
nbsp; Benning took it out of my hands. “And now, gentlemen, it’s about time I insisted that my private life, and my wife’s, is no affair of yours. Since she isn’t here to defend herself, I’ll remind you that there are libel laws, and false arrest is actionable in the courts.”
“You don’t have to remind me.” Brake stressed the personal pronoun. “There’s been no arrest, no accusation. Thank you for your co-operation, doctor.”
Brake slung a look from the door which tightened on me like a rope. We left Benning in the hallway, leaning like a flimsy buttress against the rotting wall. He was pressing the marriage certificate to his thin chest as if it was a love token or a poultice or a banknote, or a combination of all three.
The interior of my car was furnace-hot. Brake pulled off his coat and folded it on his knees. His shirt was blotched with sweat.
“You went too far, Archer.”
“I think I didn’t go far enough.”
“That’s because you don’t have my responsibility.”
I admitted that that was true.
“I can’t take chances,” he went on. “I can’t act without evidence. I got nothing to justify a warrant for Mrs. Benning.”
“You’ve got just as much on her as you have on Alex Norris. He’s still in jail.”
Brake answered doggedly: “He’s being held without charge for twenty-four hours. It’s legal. But you can’t do that with people like Mrs. Benning. She’s a doctor’s wife, remember. I stuck my neck out going to Benning at all. He’s lived all his life in this town. His father was the high-school principal for twenty years.” He added defensively: “Anyway, what have we got on her?”
“You noticed her maiden name in the marriage certificate? Elizabeth Wionowski. The same name as the one in the telegram. She was Durano’s woman.”
“That don’t prove anything about Singleton, even if it was evidence, which it isn’t. What I don’t see in your story is this idea of a woman changing partners back and forth like a bloody square dance. It don’t happen.”
“Depends on the woman. I’ve known women who kept six men on the string at the same time. Mrs. Benning has been alternating three. I have a witness who says she was Singleton’s mistress for seven years, off and on. She came back to Benning because she needed help—”
Brake brushed the words like mosquitoes away from his head. “Don’t tell me any more. I got to take this careful and slow or I’m up the crick without a paddle.”
“You or Norris.”
“And don’t needle me. I’m handling this case the way I have to. If you can bring in Mrs. Benning to make a statement, okay, I’ll listen. But I can’t go out and bring her in myself. I can’t do anything to the doctor just because his wife went on a trip. Nobody told her not to.”
The sweat was running down his slant low forehead, gathering in his eyebrows like dew in a thicket. His eyes were bleak.
“It’s your town, lieutenant.”
I dropped him at the rear of the City Hall. He didn’t ask me what I intended to do next.
CHAPTER 27: It was late afternoon when I drove through Arroyo Beach to the ocean boulevard. The palm-lined sand was strewn with bodies like a desert battlefield. At the horizon sea and sky merged in a blue haze from which the indigo hills of the channel islands rose. Beyond them the sun’s fire raged on the slopes of space.
I turned south into traffic moving bumper to bumper, fender to fender, like an army in retreat. The arthritic trees cast long baroque shadows down the cemetery hill. The shadow of Durano’s house reached halfway across its wilderness of lawn towards the iron fence. I pulled out of the traffic into the entrance to the drive.
The gate was still chained and padlocked. There was a button set in the gatepost under a small weathered sign: RING FOR GARDENER PLEASE. I rang three times, without audible effect, and went back to my car to wait. After a while a small figure came out of the house. It was Una. She moved impatiently down the drive, chunky and squat between the slender coconut palms.
Her gold lamé coat gleamed like mail through the bars of the gate. “What do you want, you?”
I got out of the car and approached her. She looked at me, and at the house, as if invisible wires were jerking at her alternately from each direction. Then she right-about-faced and started away.
“I want to talk about Leo,” I said above the traffic noises.
Her brother’s name pulled her back to the gate: “I don’t understand you.”
“Leo Durano is your brother?”
“What if he is? I thought I fired you yesterday. How many times do I have to fire you before you stay fired?”
“Was that the trouble with Max Heiss, that he wouldn’t stay fired?”
“What about Max Heiss?”
“He was killed this morning, murdered. Your labor turnover is rapid, and all of your ex-employees are ending the same way.”
Her expression didn’t change, but her diamonded right hand reached for one of the bars and gripped it. “Heiss had a lot of drunky ideas. If somebody cut him down, it’s no affair of mine. Or my brother’s.”
“It’s funny,” I said, “when I saw Heiss in the morgue I thought of you and Leo. Leo has quite a record in that line.”
Her hand left the bar and jumped like a brilliant crustacean to her throat. “You’ve seen Bess Wionowski.”
“We had a little chat.”
“Where is she?” Una spoke as if her throat was hurting her.
“Blown again,” I said. “You might as well open the gate. We can’t talk here.”
“I might as well.”
She groped in the wide square pocket of her gold coat. I had my finger hooked in the trigger guard of my gun. All she brought out was a key, with which she opened the padlock. I unchained the gate and pushed it open.
Her hand closed on my arm: “What happened to Max Heiss? Did he get sliced, like Lucy?”
“He was put to the torch like Joan of Arc.”
“When?”
“Early this morning. We found him in the mountains, in a wrecked car. The car belonged to Charles Singleton, and Heiss was wearing Singleton’s clothes.”
“Whose clothes?”
Her fingers were biting into me. Contact with her was unpleasant and strange, like being grabbed by the branch of a small spiny tree. I shook her hand off.
“You know him, Una, the golden boy Bess was running with. Somebody blowtorched Heiss and dressed him in Singleton’s clothes to make it look as if Singleton died this morning. But we know better, don’t we?”
“If you think Leo did it, you’re crazy.”
“I’m surprised you still use that word in your family.”
Her gaze, which had been steady on my face, swerved away. She said with her head down: “Leo was home in bed this morning. I can prove it by his nurse. Leo is a very sick man.”
“Paranoia?” I said distinctly. “G.P.I.?”
Her rigid calm tore like a photograph. “Those lying sawbones at the clinic! They promised me they kept professional secrets. I’ll professional-secret them when they send me their next bill.”
“Don’t blame the clinic. I’ve seen enough commitment trials to recognize paranoid symptoms.”
“You’ve never seen my brother.”
I didn’t answer the unasked question. “I’m going to see him now, with you.”
“I’ve taken good care of Leo,” she cried suddenly, “with trained nurses all the time, the best of care! The doctor comes every day to see him. I work and slave for that man, making him things he likes to eat, spumoni, minestrone. When I have to, I feed him with my own hands.” She choked back the running words and turned away from me, ashamed of the solicitous old woman jostling her other selves.
I put one hand on her stiff elbow and propelled her towards the house. Its red-tiled upper edge cut off the sun. I looked up at the barred window behind which Leo Durano had been receiving the best of care, and heard a silent word repeated like an echo from the wall many times.
Ins
ide the front door, an iron stairway curved in a spiral to the second floor. Una climbed it and preceded me along a dust-littered hallway. Near its end, the large young man in the white smock sat in an armchair beside a closed door.
My presence startled him. “Doctor?” he said to Una.
“Just a visitor.”
He shook his cheeks at her. “I wouldn’t do it, Miss Durano. He’s been hard to handle this afternoon. I had to restrain him.”
“Open the door, Donald,” Una said.
He produced a key from his tentlike smock. The room contained a bare iron cot and a disemboweled platform-rocker bolted to the floor. A few shreds remained of the drapes that had hung at the barred window. Beside the window, the plaster wall showed handprints, and indentations that could have been made by fists. The inner side of the oak door had been splintered, and repaired with bare oak boards.
Durano was sitting on the floor against the wall in the far corner by the window. His arms, folded in his lap, were sheathed in a brown leather restrainer on which tooth-marks were visible. He looked up at us through soiled black hair that straggled over his forehead. His bleeding mouth opened and closed, trying to trap a word.
The word sounded like: “Forgive.”
Una ran across the room to him and went down clumsily on her trousered knees. “We don’t treat you good, Leo. Forgive me.” She drew his head against her metal torso.
“Forgive,” he answered brokenly. “I forgive me. Released without charge. I told the ragpickers you can’t vag an honest man or the son of an honest man, told them I was doing my father’s business.”
Clasping the mumbling head in both arms, Una looked up at me scornfully. “This is the poor little fellow who committed a murder this morning, eh? Tell him, Donald, where was Leo this morning?”
Donald swallowed painfully. “Police?”
“Close enough,” I said.
“He was right in this room. All night and all morning. Every night and morning. Durano don’t get around much any more.”
“Shut up, you.” Una left her brother and advanced on Donald. “No smart cracks, fat boy. He’s a better man right now than you’ll ever be. You’d still be emptying bedpans for sixty a month if it wasn’t for Leo Durano. Mister to you.”
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