The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven)

by Howard Fast

  Geffner looked at Cassell, waiting for an objection, but he said nothing.

  “And then, Detective Beckman?”

  “Mr. Cassell asked me if he could see the deceased. I then took him upstairs. Mrs. Mackenzie was at the door of her room, which would be the master bedroom. But she said she would lie down in her room.”

  “Do you mean the master bedroom? You identified that as her room.”

  “No. I meant that it was a bedroom I thought she and her husband both used because it was the master bedroom. But I learned that they slept in separate rooms.”

  “Then it was not to the room with the body that she went?”

  “No, sir. She was just standing there next to the policeman who was on duty there. Then she walked down the hall to her own room. Mr. Cassell and I went into the master bedroom and then into the bathroom where the deceased was. I removed the sheet and Mr. Cassell looked at the body.”

  “How did he look at it? I mean, did he simply glance at the corpse or what?”

  “No, sir. He stood there for quite a bit of time before he asked me to cover the deceased again.”

  “Did you tell him what Mrs. Mackenzie had said?”

  “I did. He said the deceased was Robert Mackenzie, no question about it. I asked him why he thought the defendant said what she said, but he could offer no explanation.”

  At this point the court broke for lunch.

  “There is a rather good Japanese restaurant on Ocean Avenue,” Masuto told Beckman. “It hides itself in one of those old Victorian houses. That’s a syndrome we still carry over from World War II. An unwillingness to be noticed. But if we get a table at the window, we can look out over the ocean.”

  “I’m starved, so if the tempura’s good, I’m with you. I’m not made for the job, Masao. I’m a lousy witness.”

  “Not so. You’re a good, straightforward witness. That’s the best kind of a witness to have. It’s not you—it’s this damn strange situation of the Mackenzies.”

  Masuto was able to park directly in front of the restaurant, and the owner, flattered by Masuto’s patronage, gave them the best table at the front windows. This was not difficult, since only two other tables were occupied; nevertheless, they could look through the palms to where the sun glistened on the Pacific. They had two hours before they had to return to the court.

  “A very large plate of tempura for my friend,” Masuto said. “For myself, I’ll have sushi. Rice and tea. No sake so early in the day.”

  “I wanted to help her,” Beckman said, “but every word I spoke tied the rope tighter.”

  Masuto was watching the gulls, bemused by the birds’ incredible eyesight. To see made a seer. The gulls were seers.

  “Who else identified the body?” he asked Beckman.

  “You know, I try to think the way you think. I’m not putting myself down, Masao, but we’ve been a lot of years together. They had taken the body over to the pathology room at All Saints, but I persuaded four of the men from Fenwick who had worked with Mackenzie to come to All Saints and look at the body.”

  “What did they say? Was it Mackenzie?”

  “No question about it. I wasn’t easily satisfied, Masao. I’m not as thorough as you are, but I tried to be.”

  “Stop apologizing.”

  “I compared photographs. The family doctor came to All Saints. He’s a Dr. Sheperdson from Westwood. He identified the body.”

  Their food came.

  “Let’s eat,” Masuto said. “Plenty of time to talk about it. Out there”—he gestured through the window at the ocean—”all is very peaceful. A very beautiful place. I have heard that it is like the south of France. I’ve never been to France, never anywhere in Europe, and yet all that distance to Japan.”

  “I never had a chance to ask you about the trip,” Beckman said, his mouth full of fried shrimp.

  “A very interesting trip. Very much so. And still she insisted that it was not her husband?”

  “The Mackenzie woman?”

  Masuto nodded.

  “At first. Then she clammed up on that. Then she came back to it after we arrested her.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “I mean, why did you arrest her? I read her story in the papers. She had a fight with her husband, whom she apparently detested. She stormed out of the house—her claim at midnight—and then drove to Santa Barbara, where she spent the night with her sister. Then back to the house in the morning.”

  “She claims, to pack her stuff and leave him.”

  “So it comes down to the notebook, doesn’t it? What’s in the notebook?”

  “The whole story of the murder, very precise, very specific.”

  “No!”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you kept it away from the press?”

  “That wasn’t easy, Masao, but that’s the way Geffner wanted it.”

  “What was in the notebook?”

  “She was writing a screenplay,” Beckman said somewhat sadly. “And it wasn’t just something she put up as an alibi. It was a screenplay, and the whole shtick was in there, the penny in the fuse box, the radio in the bathtub—”

  “Come on!” Masuto exclaimed, pushing away his plate of food. “That’s it?”

  “I know it’s circumstantial.”

  “Circumstantial! It’s not even a shadow of a case. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me.”

  “Background stuff. She hated her husband. Constant fights. He beat her up once or twice. He threatened to kill her if she ever decided to leave him. Some kind of sex relationship between Mackenzie and this Feona Scott—although to my way of thinking, given a choice between that Scott dame and Eve Mackenzie, I wouldn’t have to think twice.”

  “All this information supplied by the helpful Feona Scott?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was Doc Baxter’s guess about the time of the murder?”

  “You know Baxter. It’s hard enough to get an opinion on time of death in the best of circumstances. In a bathtub—well, was the water hot or cold? Did it remain in the tub? How long? All he would commit to was that Mackenzie died sometime between midnight and five in the morning.”

  “And when did Eve leave the house?”

  “She doesn’t know. Never looked at her watch. Maybe around midnight.”

  “And what does the helpful Scott say?”

  “She hates Eve Mackenzie. She’s one of those tall, cold types—as emotional as a fish. She brought me the notebook. She says Eve left the house well after one in the morning.”

  “It’s meaningless. It’s all senseless. Who the devil ordered the arrest? Was it Wainwright?”

  “You know him better than that. It was the D.A.”

  “Geffner?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s crazy, Sy. I know Geffner. He’s too smart for anything like this. And why the devil would he come into Beverly Hills and ask for an arrest?”

  “Beats me. I couldn’t make head or tail out of that.”

  “You know,” Masuto said with pleasure, “this case grows more interesting by the minute. Let’s finish eating and spend a half hour in the sun.”

  They walked along Ocean Avenue, found a bench that sat on top of the high cliff facing the ocean and dulling the roar of traffic from the Pacific Coast Highway below them.

  “So Geffner persuaded Wainwright to issue the arrest order,” Masuto said. “Will wonders never cease?”

  “I don’t follow you,” Beckman said uneasily. “I figured the case was open and shut.”

  “You’re in love with Eve Mackenzie. You are a hopeless romantic, Sy.”

  “Come on.”

  “So are a hundred thousand others,” Masuto said gently. “That got in the way. You were sure that Geffner would hound her to surrender and that an angry jury would convict. No way. Sy, this case is never going to get to a jury. The judge will throw it out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s
full of holes and without a shred of worthy evidence.”

  “But look at the way it lines up. She never meant for that notebook to be found. A week before, she tossed it into the garbage to be rid of it.”

  “Let me guess. Feona Scott found it—just happened to be rooting in the garbage that day.”

  “You’re making me feel like a damn fool, Masao.”

  “No, sir. You followed a chain of events. You were caught up in them. You were supposed to.”

  “I was supposed to use my head. The same evidence would point to Scott. But she had no motive—what do you mean, I was supposed to? You think she was framed?”

  “I don’t know what to think at this moment,” Masuto said, “except that this is a damn strange bundle of facts. Start with Geffner. We’ve seen him operate. He’s smart, and he goes in like a tiger. Today, he was diddling. He knows the judge is going to dump it.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “We’ll see. Meanwhile, Eve Mackenzie is defended by the dead man’s lawyer. Next point: She says the dead man is not her husband. How do you explain that?”

  “I figured she was desperate,” Beckman said. “Just pulled something from out of the hat.”

  “It would be a lunatic kind of desperation, and she’s no lunatic. The reality is always there, but we refuse to look at it. Or we look at it and refuse to see it. If she insists that the dead man is not her husband and everyone else insists that he is, then we must look at the reality as she does. By the way, from the way the press reacted today, I would suppose that you’ve kept that business quiet.”

  “About the corpse not being Mackenzie?”

  Masuto nodded.

  “She kept it quiet after her first statement.”

  “Ah, so,” Masuto said softly. “We come to the first bit of sanity in an otherwise senseless picture. If she were under the illusion that she would have a real trial, then it would be very smart indeed to keep that bit of information quiet. Then Cassell puts her on the stand and she proves that the dead man is not Mackenzie. Thus, no motive. Thus, she is on trial for killing a man who may not be dead. Thus, down the drain with the case. But neither she nor Cassell could have anticipated a real trial. After all, Cassell is a smart lawyer.”

  “And how was she going to prove that Mackenzie was not Mackenzie?” Beckman was smiling.

  “You couldn’t get his fingerprints,” Masuto said.

  “Exactly. Fenwick builds missile components and the plumbing for atomic bombs. All that top secret crap. I asked for a comparison with the dead man’s prints, and they said to send them a set of his prints. I asked for a Xerox of the prints card from their records, and they said they don’t do things that way, but to send them a set of prints and they’d make the comparison.”

  “You did it, and they said it was Mackenzie.”

  “Masao, I’m a damn fool, and maybe I’d give every cent I got to spend a weekend with Eve Mackenzie, but that’s not why when she says it’s not her husband I believe her. You said before that we should look at the reality as she does. What do you mean by that?”

  “Everyone else who looked at the corpse said it was Mackenzie. But when Eve Mackenzie looked at the body she saw something that was meaningless to the others. She saw a naked man. None of the others had ever seen Mackenzie naked—”

  “Scott?”

  “Believe me, whatever goes on there, Scott is in on it. Her testimony is tainted. But the others identified a man clothed. Only Eve knew the naked Mackenzie, and she saw something, perhaps a birthmark, that made her certain. Was there a birthmark?”

  “I just don’t know. I wasn’t looking for one. But if it wasn’t Mackenzie—”

  “It was someone who looked enough like him to be his twin brother. And that’s precisely what we have, a corpse that is Mackenzie’s twin brother.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense either,” Beckman said. “But at this point, maybe none of it does.” He looked at his watch. “Time’s up. You coming back to court with me?”

  “No. I think I’ll talk to Doc Baxter.”

  “The pleasure is all yours,” Beckman said.

  It took Masuto about twenty minutes to drive from Santa Monica to All Saints Hospital. The pathology room was in the basement, where the odor of formaldehyde substituted for air and where two grinning, bearded young men assisted Dr. Baxter. Baxter himself, short, waspish, astringent, always worked up his general state of unpleasantness at the sight of a policeman. He considered it an act of ungenerous fate that chose All Saints as the Beverly Hills replacement for a real morgue and himself as a part-time medical examiner; and now he regarded Masuto sourly.

  “I heard you had gone off to the home of your ancestors. What brings you back?”

  Masuto resisted the impulse to say that it was an ill wind or Pan Am. Baxter had to be handled gently and with a certain degree of humility if one desired anything in return, and Masuto told him that he was pleased to be back, and being back, was interested in the Mackenzie case.

  “Well, bless your heart. Can’t stand it that one got away from you.”

  “I’m curious. Where’s the body?”

  “The body. Now, what did you imagine, my Oriental friend, that I’d have it sitting here in the icebox against the possibility that you’d return one day and ask to contemplate it?”

  “I merely asked.”

  “Indeed. Well, I have to inform you that Mr. Robert Mackenzie, having gone to his reward, whatever that may be, is reposing quietly about six feet below the surface of that Rolls Royce of all cemeteries, namely Forest Lawn, where the Mackenzies have a family plot. Ah, thus liveth and dieth the rich.”

  “When you did the autopsy,” Masuto said, “did you notice anything unusual—some birthmark or such—on the body where the clothes would have covered it.”

  Baxter looked at him shrewdly. “You got some smarts, Masuto. I give you credit for that. You’re wondering why she took one look and said it wasn’t her husband. But suppose nothing was there?”

  “Then it was the absence of something, which amounts to the same thing. Suppose it was an operation. What’s most likely?”

  “Appendectomy.”

  Masuto sighed and shook his head.

  “You could cover the L.A. hospitals,” Baxter said. “That’s not impossible. Of course, it could have been done twenty years ago. How old was Mackenzie—fifty-three? It might have been done when he was a kid. And I can assure you that the corpse, had no surgery—large or small.”

  Masuto shook his head again. “It’s pretty hopeless. But one other thing. There was a blow to the head.”

  “Skull fracture.”

  “Would the blow have rendered him unconscious?”

  “Absolutely. In fact, odds are that it killed him.”

  “The blow was on the right side?”

  “You’re a real smartass detective, aren’t you, Masuto. And Mackenzie was sitting with his right side against the wall. So if his wife knocked him out, she had to lean over behind him. I told that to your brainless partner, but he has imagination. He said that if Mackenzie had twisted around to talk to his wife, she could have hit him there. Just turn around a little more, sweetheart, and bend your head so I can knock your brains out. Cops! God help us with that kind of law and order! Tell you something, they subpoenaed me as a witness and I’m going to blow this case right out of the courtroom.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Masuto agreed. “Very grateful. Thank you.”

  It was good to be out of there, back in the fresh air, away from the stink of open bodies and formaldehyde. Masuto drove to the police station at Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills. After parking at the station, he sat in his car for a few minutes brooding over as essentially wrong a situation as he had ever encountered. Then he stepped into the sunshine that almost always bathed Beverly Hills, and then he went into the police station.

  Captain Wainwright had locked his office door, enjoying his after-lunch cigar in premises where smoking was forbidden. Masuto
could smell it seeping under the door, whereby he knocked and named himself at the same time. Wainwright opened the door and asked what his business was. “I’m still out to lunch,” he said.

  “We have to talk.”

  “You were out in Santa Monica. I told you to take the day and sit in court and hold Beckman’s hand. You going to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  “That’s right. This horse has three legs.”

  “I do declare, Masuto, that you can make my life as miserable as a dog’s hind side on an anthill, and I damn well do know what you’re going to say. Leave it alone. Why the hell couldn’t you stay another week in Japan?”

  “We got a funny city, Captain, and a lot of rich people, and we’re sort of a freak as cities go, and we got Rodeo Drive, where a man can buy a shirt for two hundred dollars and a suit for twelve hundred dollars, and we have the highest-priced hookers in the world, and we got houses that sell for three million dollars, but I never heard anyone accuse us of having dirty cops. They accuse Beverly Hills of everything else, but not a crooked police force.”

  “You’re going too far, Masao. I’ve put up with damn near everything from you—”

  “Just tell me why you arrested and charged Eve Mackenzie, and I’ll swallow everything I said.”

  “I don’t have to tell you one damn thing!”

  “So sorry, Captain Wainwright.” Masuto turned and opened the door.

  “Where the hell are you going? And don’t give me any of that Charlie Chan routine!”

  “I’m going to sit in my office and decide whether I want to work here anymore.”

  “Close that door and stop being a horse’s ass!” There was a slight smile on Masuto’s face that disappeared as he turned around. “Now, sit down,” Wainwright said to him. “Talk. Get it off your chest.”

  “All right. I listened to Beckman’s testimony. Then I had lunch with him. Then I went over to see Doc Baxter. He’s going to testify that there’s no way in the world Eve Mackenzie could have killed her husband.”