The Knave of Hearts

by Dell Shannon

  Haines admitted all that; he said he’d lost his head, he’d had a few drinks too many that night, but he’d been horrified at himself afterward—a nice girl like Mary Ellen. Certainly he’d never thought of her that way before or since; he hadn’t, before God he hadn’t, met her that afternoon and assaulted her and then—scared of inevitable retribution when she accused him—killed and buried her.

  "My God," he said, "if I had, wouldn’t I have had better sense than to bury her in my own back yard—leave her bag right out in plain sight?”

  But murderers did that kind of thing, time and again. There was a school of thought which held it was the unconscious seeking of punishment; in Mendoza’s opinion it was just vanity (the earmark of all criminals, that was)—the conviction that they were invincible.

  Then a couple of L.A.C.C. students came in to say that they thought they’d seen Haines that afternoon, sitting in a car near the campus. It would have been about two-thirty. They’d cut the last half of a study hour to go out for coffee at a place on Vermont, and half a block or so this side they’d passed this fellow sitting in a car. Why had they noticed him particularly? Well— That wasn’t hard to figure if you looked at his photograph. Haines was a good-looking man, and he ran a classy open Thunderbird; both the students were female. They identified Haines positively as the man they’d seen.

  Yes, he was there, said Haines; it was the first time he’d visited Rose Pringle, he’d been looking for the address. All those narrow little side streets off Vermont there, he’d finally had to look at a map, and that’s what he’d been doing when those girls walked past—just pulled up to the curb a minute, locating the street on a city map. He hadn’t noticed the girls, hadn’t given a thought to the fact that he was near the L.A.C.C. campus—why should he?

  Both the Haineses said that anyone could have walked into their back yard and disposed of the body there. It was a lot two hundred feet deep; there was a hedge between the shed and the house, and an unpaved alley at the end which was used freely for foot traffic. After dark—

  But it seemed peculiar that Haines hadn’t noticed anything. There were a neighbor and his wife who’d seen him entering the shed around eight that evening and again on Thursday; he had to admit he’d been in the shed perhaps three or four times that week. And hadn’t seen the strange handbag right in plain sight on the shelf—there was an unshaded hanging bulb that lit up the whole place bright as day. No, he hadn’t or maybe he had and just thought it was his wife’s. Did Mrs. Haines usually keep her handbags in the garden shed? Well, of course not; and he couldn’t say why, if he had noticed it and thought she’d left it there, he hadn’t taken it into the house to her. He hadn’t noticed the very obviously disturbed earth in the shed? No. The photographs taken at the time showed the grave open, but everyone present at the opening had testified that there had been fresh-turned earth heaped there, earth left on the spade hanging in its place on the wall rack—evidence of the digging was plain to see, and the grave right in the center of the floor. It was a small but significant point: if somebody from outside had done it, how had he known, first, that the shed didn’t have a wooden floor, and second, that he’d find a spade convenient to hand?

  Haines said that it was obviously a shelter for garden tools: anyone who’d ever passed down that alley might have known. But there were no footprints in that fresh earth except his, no prints on the spade—and there was a pair of cotton work gloves handy there on the shelf.

  What more did an investigating officer want? It was open and shut. Haines had been attracted to the girl, had made advances once at least: that was sure. She’d been buried in his shed with his spade, and if he hadn’t done it, it didn’t look as though he could have entered the place without noticing the evidence of that. ("I was worried that week," said Haines desperately, "I had a couple of business problems on my mind, I was kind of absent-minded—I just didn’t notice—I only went in there a minute, a couple of times, to get a trowel, the rake.") He’d been seen near the campus at a significant time, as if he were waiting for someone. Mary Ellen had expected to be met and given a ride home, she’d said. And Haines couldn’t produce his witness to say what he’d been doing instead.

  It looked run-of-the-mill. Contrary to all the detective stories—any experienced cop knew—murderers weren’t often very clever. Most of them in fact were damn fools. Thompson built it up this way.

  Haines had been on his way to a business call in that area, say about two or a bit past, and he’d run into Mary Ellen (she’d gone to that coffee shop on Vermont before her last class). There’d been a little casual talk; he’d seen another chance to get her and offered to meet her and take her home, in an hour. Mary Ellen—believing herself safe with him, seeing him as only a friendly neighbor—had accepted. He waited, and met her there at three o’clock. Drove somewhere, maybe up in the hills in Griffith Park, where any screams wouldn’t be heard. She hadn’t fought her assailant; her nails weren’t broken or her clothes torn. Maybe she’d been taken so completely by surprise she hadn’t had time, or maybe he’d knocked her unconscious right away. In his notes Thompson had also outlined a tentative idea that the girl might have been genuinely in love with Haines, been led on to a voluntary assignation. That was just an idea, and it wasn’t the case stated by the prosecution at the trial, because there was no proof. If it had been like that, Haines would have had no reason to kill the girl, unless he was a lunatic. More likely, after he’d raped her it came to him what a spot he’d be in when she accused him, and he took the easiest way out. There was no blood in his car, no evidence of the assault—of course, he might have taken her out, into the bushes somewhere—but they did find a little blood on the old blanket folded on the floor of the trunk, and it was type O, Mary Ellen’s type. (Also Haines’ type, and he said Yes, he’d skinned his hand on a wrench one day when he was working on the car, that must have been how the blood . . .) He’d probably stashed her in the trunk, with her own coat bundled round her so no blood would get on the floor, and either late that Wednesday night or the following night made the grave. (It was surprising how often a killer who disposed of the body liked to have the spot under his eye, close to home. Plenty of j precedent there, and for the other mistakes he’d made.) The garage was at the back of the lot, close to the shed. Mrs. Haines wasn’t the gardener—Haines did most of that—and she seldom entered the shed, so he hadn’t bothered to do a perfect job. Maybe forgot about the purse or intended to dispose of it later. He hadn’t (with that inevitable conviction of safety, that he was too clever to be caught) expected to be linked to it; when he was, he was taken by surprise. And in the same impulsive way the murder had been done, he produced a spur-of-the-moment alibi. He made up this Rose Pringle out of his head, gave an address at random (remembering a street name he’d noticed as he waited for Mary Ellen). Yes, senseless, but people did these things—he might even have been cocky enough to figure that when he confessed cheating on his wife like that, everybody would believe it was the truth because surely, otherwise he’d never have admitted it. He might even have gambled that whatever woman lived at that address could be bribed to back him up. Bribed, of course, by Mrs. Haines (Haines was sitting in a cell downtown then)—for Mrs. Haines, faced with the choice of keeping a cheating husband or losing a murderous one to the gas chamber, had stayed by him; protested her belief in him; bought TV time to appeal to the Pringle woman to come forward.

  Several good attorneys had fought hard for him too, but there was just too much suggestive evidence. And after that, the appeal, the bitter accusations from Mrs. Haines of prejudice and stupidity on the part of the police, the denial of a new trial, the sentimental news stories when Mrs. Haines’ baby was born, the date of execution (twice postponed) finally settled.

  Haines had died in the gas chamber thirty days ago, for a murder nineteen months old.

  And yesterday morning a diffident young woman had walked into a precinct station in Santa Monica and said she wanted to get something of
f her conscience.

  TWO

  Mendoza had seen Rose Foster this morning; the job had been thrown at him because Thompson was four months dead. So he didn’t have to reread her statement; it had come out more directly, more convincingly, in her thin little voice than in the steno’s dead prose.

  She was thirty-two, she said, and she looked that in one way, but in another way much younger. She might have been pretty had she paid more attention to herself—a slender, frail-looking woman with a lot of untidy brown hair and timid blue eyes; shabby in a cheap housedress, mended stockings, no make-up or jewelry.

  "Pringle was my maiden name, see, I—I was giving it out places I looked for work, account some places, they don’t like to hire married women—give single ones first chance. And I had enough trouble findin’ work anyways, I ain’t—haven’t had much education, got to take what I can .... Jack, he’d ’ve just killed me, sir, if he knew—that was why. Jack, no use not facin’ it, he wasn’t no good noways, he liked the drink too much. An’ ever he got drunk, knockin’ me around—that was the way of it, see .... This business, really how I come to leave him—get up enough grit, leave him—I was too scared before—he’d ’ve come after, give me what-for to run off. I felt awful bad about it—but I just dassn’t do anything about it, while Jack—he’d ’ve killed me .... Mr. Haines was nice to me. Not many been like that, and with Jack the way he was—I guess that’s how I come to do such a sinful thing .... I got to say it, I got to clear my conscience—Reverend White says I got to, to be truly saved in the Lord—I got to tell you, it was all just like Mr. Haines said. He was—with me—that day, just like he told you. Sinning. Maybe you think that’s awful queer—he’d look at me—but, see, he was sorry for me to start—first time we met, I’d got turned down for a job that place, I couldn’t help crying, right out in the street too—it was hard to get along, get enough to eat and all, with Jack all the time gettin’ fired for bein’ drunk—and Mr. Haines, he was kind, he bought me a cup of coffee and talked nice, and he got me a job cleaning offices, another place. . . .

  "And you know—that time—his wife was havin’ a baby, I guess she was kind of crotchety to him, know what I mean, and he—I guess any woman who was nice to him, he’d ’ve—oh, I was awful scared that time, for fear Jack’d walk in and— And after, when it come out in the papers, I about died o’ fright .... No, sir, Jack, he never read no papers, he didn’t see about it. We was behind in the rent, I just wanted get away, and I told him the landlord says we got to get out. Wasn’t nothin’ strange about that, it was always happening. And he had the offer of this job up in Banning. We went there, and he never heard nothing, I guess, about—that murder. But it laid on my conscience day ’n’ night—like the black sin it was—I got so I couldn’t stand it no longer—even if Jack did kill me .... And the Reverend, he come to a ’vivalist meeting up there, last week it was, and seemed like he was preaching right at me, he knowed all about it—a strong preacher he is—and after, I went up an’ talked with him. He said—and it do seem funny, I never thought about it just so before—there wasn’t no law I had to stay by such a bad husband, and anyways, Jack or no Jack, do I want my soul saved alive from Satan, I got to get my conscience clear I—no matter what you do to me for the awful thing I done—"

  Yes, convincing. If for no other reason than its appalling human wrongheadedness. He said to Hackett, "What’s it worth?" but he’d known, listening to Rose Foster, that it was the truth. The well-used pipe she’d kept, the pipe that Haines said he must have left there, maybe that wasn’t such good evidence—but whether it was his or not, it wasn’t very important.

  He said, "Very damned dirty linen to wash, even in private. But it happens." Because, with the most intelligent and honest police force, the fairest trial, the cleverest lawyers, with all these, chance—and the human element—sat in the game too, and sometimes stacked the deck. For every once that this happened, it happened ninety-nine times the other way round: somebody who was guilty got off, because of the finicky rules about evidence, the little legal loopholes, the design of the law to give the innocent every chance.

  "What do we do about it?" asked Hackett. As Mendoza didn’t say anything at once, he took a last drag on his cigarette, put it out in the ashtray, and stabbed a finger at the second sheaf of papers on Mendoza’s desk. "Don’t drag your heels so hard, amigo. I got an idea what those are. While you were in with the Chief I met Farley downstairs and had a little chat with him. He says you requisitioned all those letters Sally Haines has been sending us for quite a while, and he told me something about ’em. Very interesting."

  Mendoza said softly, violently, "¡Diez millon es de demonios negros desde el infierno! Hay que poner en claro este lio—this mess we’ve got to clear up, pronto. Interesting! If there’s an ounce of truth in these, I can think of better words." He pushed the second sheaf across the desk.

  "Take a look and suffer some more—for the honor of the force!”

  * * *

  Sally Haines had fought harder for her husband than his lawyers; she’d never given up fighting, and it looked as if she’d never forget her bitter grudge against the police. There were a dozen letters in the pile, all addressed to the Chief. Mendoza said, "The top three. The rest are just random accusations."

  Hackett read, grunted, grimaced, reached for another cigarette. "Oh, brother. Piper’s close to home, I had that one." He started to read the letters again.

  The first was dated a week after Haines’ trial. It should be evident to the stupidest policeman that the murderer of Mary Ellen Wood is still free—and still murdering. Three days ago another girl was found dead in very similar circumstances. I refer to Celestine Teitel. If and when you arrest the criminal in that case, I beg you to question him, investigate him, in re Mary Ellen Wood—he may have been her killer too. I pray my husband will be cleared of guilt when the real killer is found. The second was dated nearly six months later. You did not find Celestine Teitel’s murderer—now he has killed Jane Piper. Can you protest there is not a strong probability that these murders were done by the same man?—as was the murder of Mary Ellen Wood! If you ever arrest him, I pray you get to the truth about that at last!

  The third was dated fifteen days ago. Now the real murderer of Mary Ellen Wood has another death to his account—Pauline McCandless. Surely the most casual investigation shows the similarity of these crimes—are you still so sure that my husband murdered Mary Ellen? Celestine Teitel—Jane Piper—Pauline McCandless—they died the same way as Mary Ellen, and I swear by the same hand! You have not caught him yet—if you ever do, ask him about Mary Ellen Wood! It is too late to save my husband’s life, but his name may yet be cleared.

  Hackett said, "I’m not up on Teitel and McCandless, but I’ve got to say she could be right about Piper. Just on the bare facts. And what’s that worth?"

  "Not the hell of a lot, at first glance." All those killings had been the same kind; but it was an ordinary kind in any big metropolitan place with its inevitable share of the violent ones, the mentally unstable ones, the professional muggers prowling dark streets.

  Celestine Teitel. (Mendoza had looked back over those cases only superficially as yet; he’d look deeper.) Age thirty, unmarried. Elementary school teacher. Taught at a public school in Hawthorne, shared an apartment with another teacher. Regular, quiet habits, not many friends. An amateur painter: often went out on weekends, to the beach, the mountains, to paint. One Sunday she didn’t come home again, so her roommate called the police. She was found two days later, by a couple of surf-fishers, in a lonely cove up the coast toward Ventura, where apparently she’d been sketching—all her equipment there, untouched. She’d been raped, beaten, and strangled.

  Jane Piper. Age twenty-eight, unmarried. Also a very respectable young woman—and successful, a legal secretary to an old and staid firm of corporation lawyers. Lived alone in a three-room apartment near Silver Lake. Drove a good car. But the best cars now and then needed expert attention; so there
she was, her car temporarily at a garage, leaving her office one day at five o’clock to go home by bus. No one who knew her saw her alive after that. She was found up in Topanga Canyon, a little way off the road, next day. She had been raped, beaten, and choked to death. There was some indication that the intention had been to bury her—someone had started to dig a hole, anyway, about twenty feet down the hillside.

  Pauline McCandless. Age twenty-four, a librarian, just graduated and working at the Culver City main library. Unmarried. Not very pretty: a serious intellectual girl. Lived with her widowed mother in Hollywood. Regular habits, no known male friends. She failed to return home one night, so the police went hunting her; they didn’t have to hunt long. She was found in an empty lot in Walnut Park; she’d been raped, beaten, and strangled.

  Looked at like that, anyone might make the hasty judgment—obviously the same murderer. It wasn’t so simple, so neat; that kind of crime happened too often, committed by too many types of men. Sometimes women almost asked for it, walking dark streets late and alone, picking up with any stranger who bought them a drink; but it happened to respectable women too. Over this period of eighteen months perhaps a dozen women had met similar deaths within Los Angeles County. Offhand Mendoza remembered a few details on those. A woman assaulted, strangled: the killer, a near-moronic eighteen-year-old with a record of petty theft—"I just had to stop her yelling, I only squeezed her throat a little bit, didn’t go to kill her." A girl raped, beaten: the killers, a gang of juveniles riding high on cheap whiskey. Another one, another one—all the same pattern, the assault, the blows, the choking: this killer a respectable middle-aged family man who’d lost his head just once; that one, an equally respectable-looking mama’s boy who’d suddenly gone berserk. When a woman was killed in the course of an assault, it was almost bound to happen that way: the man tried to stop her noise and, lacking any weapon, used his hands. Men who went in for rape were predisposed to violence to start with, and without intending murder frequently committed it.