Anatomy of a Murder

by Robert Traver

  “Well, yes, I felt relaxed and was enjoying myself.”

  Claude Dancer paused and rolled up another spitball. “Is it your practice to remove your shoes when you drink whisky?” he said, hurling it.

  “It is not.”

  “Or when dancing?”

  “No, I did not—”

  “And were you served drinks with your shoes off?” the Dancer pressed on.

  “Your Honor,” I said, rising, “I don’t want to spoil the gallant Mr. Dancer’s fun—he’s waited so long for it—but I wish he would let the witness complete her answers before he gets on to the next question. I object to his cutting her off.”

  “The objection is sustained. The witness will be allowed to complete her answer,” the Judge ruled.

  Laura glanced gratefully up at the Judge. “I was going to say that I did not dance with anyone and that I only removed my shoes once briefly during the last game of pinball.”

  “Are you sure you did not dance with anyone?” the Dancer pressed.

  “I am sure.”

  “Didn’t you dance with a tall red-faced man?” (At this point I began wondering whether the lurching Hippo Lukes had made another switch.)

  “No, not even a short pale one. I danced with no one, not a soul.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am positive I did not dance. I am a poor dancer and I do not particularly like to.”

  “Do you recall any man having your shoes in his pockets while you danced with him? Answer yes or no and leave out the comments.” (Ah, this was the great Hippo, all right.)

  “No.”

  “Now, after the shooting when your husband returned to the trailer did he then go to the cottage of the caretaker, Mr. Lemon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear the conversation between them?”

  “No. I only saw Mr. Lemon when he came to our trailer.”

  “Did your husband turn over his pistol to Mr. Lemon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell Mr. Lemon what happened?”

  “Yes, I did; I said, ‘Look what Barney did to me.’”

  Claude Dancer appealed to the court. “Objection. The answer is unresponsive and I move it be stricken.”

  “But you have asked the witness what she told the caretaker,” the Judge said, “and she has answered. If you have something particular in mind, then ask it. Your motion to strike is denied.”

  “Did you tell Mr. Lemon your husband had shot Barney?”

  “I did not.”

  “Now did you and your husband ever go out socially in Thunder Bay?”

  “Several times.”

  “And did you and he once attend a cocktail party in the hotel shortly after your arrival?”

  “Yes.”

  “And at one of those parties did your husband have an altercation with a young second lieutenant?”

  “Altercation?” Laura said. “My husband knocked him down.”

  “Why?”

  “I cannot tell. You had better ask him. The young man kissed my hand.”

  Suavely: “Did you approve of your husband’s behavior?”

  “I did not and I do not,” Laura replied.

  Claude Dancer turned and beamed at me. “Your witness,” he said.

  I pondered the skylight but found no inspiration. “No questions,” I said.

  “Mr. Sheriff,” the Judge said, “I guess we’ll call it a day.”

  chapter 20

  After the crowd had thinned out I gravely nodded my thanks at Max, who stood over by the door, discreetly waiting for the Lieutenant. I did not want to embarrass him by having anyone see me talk to him then; I could thank him later; but in the meantime, win, lose or draw, he had become one of my favorite sheriffs.

  “How did I do, Paul?” Laura asked.

  “Beautifully,” I said. “Simply beautiful. I’m sorry I had to let the little man dig at you so, but there was no help for it. And it’s all for the cause.” I did not tell her that I felt Claude Dancer had scored heavily on us in his cross-examination, but indeed there was no help for that either. I had told Laura to tell the truth and that she had, as Parnell might say, the bad along with the good. I hoped that Parnell and I could dream up some medicine to counteract it, for it was apparent now that Mary Pilant or the bartender or someone from Thunder Bay had furnished Claude Dancer at least some of the material he had used (probably before the “big change”), else the little man could scarcely have asked some of the searching questions he had. Like the cocktail-party incident.

  I patted Laura’s shoulder. “Now you and Manny go over to the jail,” I said. “The good Sheriff is waiting—and I’ll be over after a bit for some final skull practice. Tomorrow’s the big day.”

  After the Manions had left Parnell shuffled over and stood silently watching me stash my papers away. I looked up. He had been reading my mind. “Well, tomorrow’s the day—the big pay-off, one way or the other. What do you think, boy?”

  “What do you think, Pam?” I countered.

  Parnell shrugged and held out his hands. “You’ve got most of the stuff in now, Polly. All we need now is for the Lieutenant to tell his story and our doctor to say he’s crazy and I guess then it’s in the lap of the gods.”

  “Yes, Parn, and for me to make a decent argument to the jury, and for the Judge to give the jury our requested instructions, and then for the jury to understand and heed them and give us a break —a hell of a lot of big ifs.”

  “You’ll do it, Boss,” the familiar voice of a woman said. “I—I’m almost proud of you.”

  . I wheeled around. “Maida!” I said. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were home minding the till? Why—I—”

  Maida snorted. “Till?” she said. “That’s been repossessed. Stay home? Not on your life, Boss. Did you think for a minute I was going to sit around that empty old law office while the boss was on his way to rags or riches? And while the loveliest case that ever hit this county unfolds? I’ll confess, Boss—I’ve been here every single day.” She cocked her head defiantly. “Am I fired again?”

  I glared at Parnell, who hung his head. “You—you villainous old man, stealing my stenographer, closing my office, wrecking my discipline … .” I paused, at loss for words.

  Parnell drew himself up. “Have you forgotten we’re partners in this case, Polly?” he said. “It was my considered judgment that Maida ought to be on hand. As a matter of fact we’ve still got important work to do.”

  “What’s up now? Back to Green Bay—or is it clean down to New Orleans this time?” I glanced at my watch. “I’ve got to go see the Manions, maybe eat something, and then meet the damn plane tonight.” I lashed my brief case together and stood up.

  “Come, Maida,” Parnell said, offering her his arm. He bowed gravely and he and Maida swept grandly out of the courtroom.

  The plane swooped down out of the darkening autumnal sky like a great rigid bird and taxied up near the cluster of airport shacks and disgorged four passengers, three loud-talking rumple-suited half-potted men whom I dismissed after an envious glance, and, lastly, a tanned and nice-looking young man of moderate height who for a moment, in the glaring searchlights, I thought might be Mitch, crew cut and all. But he simply had to be our psychiatrist; if he wasn’t we were in one hell of a fix; and as he passed the gate I took a deep breath and said “Doctor Smith?” and he said “Paul Biegler?” and I almost staggered with mingled surprise and relief as I took his bag and led him to my mud-spattered coupe. Crew cut or not, we at last had our psychiatrist.

  Dr. Smith gestured at the three men ahead of us. “Reporters,” he said. “Your little murder trial seems at last destined for immortality —for the weekend, that is. It seems that word of a little dog with a flashlight is what did it.” The three reporters noisily commandeered a cab and whirled away.

  “A little dog shall lead them,” I murmured. “God bless our free and untrammeled press.”

  “An amazing trip,
” the Doctor remarked as we left the airport. “Your scattered towns are nothing but occasional scars set amongst the lakes and woods. I didn’t dream of the remoteness and wild beauty of this place. ‘See America first’ is right.”

  “Perhaps, Doctor,” I said, “perhaps you would join my committee to bomb the new bridge over the Straits of Mackinac? I’m enlisting recruits and the initiation fee is modest—only half a case of 4o per cent stump powder. Can I sign you up? Otherwise I’m afraid that before long the highways will be one continuous neon-lit hotdog stand, with serpent lines of cars locked exhaust to exhaust, like hound dogs following a bitch in heat. I shudder to think of it and have lately been eying my escape hatch, Alaska. For years the Straits stood as our English Channel against invasion from the south. And now this goddam bridge, which our gleeful chamber of commerce sturdies have now added to their nightly prayers.”

  The Doctor laughed. “All of us have our little fixations, haven’t we?” he said. “Well, maybe I’ll consider joining your demolition club, but in the meantime, tell me—how’s our murder case coming?”

  On the drive back to Iron Bay I filled him in on the trial situation: how the People had not made any psychiatric examination of the Lieutenant or seriously attempted to make one. I also told him the things, both good and bad, that had cropped up since he had talked with the Lieutenant. I was concerned over the testimony of Detective Sergeant Durgo as it might modify or even completely change his previous diagnosis of insanity. And also over the evidence of jealousy that the Dancer had dug out of Laura. Dr. Smith said very little, occasionally asking a question or two, and by and by we arrived at his hotel and got him registered and proceeded up to his room where I wryly noted that for the second night in a row I was finding myself adrift in a hotel room looking out upon Lake Superior. “Next week, East Lynne,” I thought. I fell to musing over Mary Pilant, wishing I was back in her moonlit apartment.

  After Dr. Smith tidied up I told him more about the case, including the whole tangled yarn of Barney Quill and his guns and drinking.

  “You say that this Dr. Gregory proposes to testify as to the mental state of Lieutenant Manion on the night of the shooting merely from observing him in court?” the Doctor said.

  “Well, I can’t be sure, Doctor,” I said, “but I certainly hope so. I can’t see any earthly reason why they would have him here otherwise.”

  Dr. Smith shook his head. “I am sorry to hear that. Very sorry.”

  “Well I’m not, Doc,” I said. “How can the People expect to rebut our proof of insanity based upon such counter-testimony? Yet they must do so under the law—and do so beyond a reasonable doubt. The cases are clear.”

  “That’s precisely it, Mr. Biegler,” the Doctor said soberly. “You see, I wasn’t thinking so much of your man as I was of my own profession. The profession or art of psychiatry is still in its adolescence if not its infancy. It is precisely practitioners like Dr. Gregory who help keep it there, daring to pass a professional opinion on such a basis.”

  This crew-cutted young man, I saw, was as dedicated to his profession as old Parnell was to his. I shrugged. “I see your point,” I said. “I’m dismayed for your profession, Doctor, but very happy for my client.” I paused. “And do I assume from what you’ve just said that you still are of the opinion that the Lieutenant was legally and medically insane when he fired the fatal shots?”

  The Doctor glanced at me quickly. “Yes. There is not the slightest doubt about that. What you’ve told me tonight only serves to clinch it.”

  “Would you feel disposed to discuss it more now?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I would rather do so in court, if you don’t mind. It might lend my testimony a little more spontaneity, if nothing else, and at the same time spare you from being bored twice instead of once. But I assure you that in my opinion your man was clearly insane and that I will so testify. Is that enough for now?”

  “As you say, Doctor.” I stifled a yawn.

  Dr. Smith grew thoughtful. “I will say this, however—I believe that Lieutenant Manion’s case is routine compared with the dead man, Barney Quill. There is a man whose mind I would really have liked to explore. There is a challenge.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” I said, “the big thing that still perplexes and worries me is that a man of such unusual endowments as this man Quill could have done what he did. It seems to me he must have known that nothing but disaster would follow his rape and assault of Mrs. Manion.” I shook my head. “My biggest worry is that despite all our proof to the contrary the jury might still doubt that the man could be capable of such an act. The thing was so utterly savage and primitive.”

  Doctor Smith looked thoughtfully out at the lake. “We must remember that for untold millenniums in the long history of the human race something very much like rape was probably the normal order of the relations between the sexes. Anthropologically speaking it was only yesterday that men ceased to club and ravish on the spot any female that attracted their passing whim.”

  “Yes, I suppose, Doctor,” I said. “Life must have been one merry chase in those relaxed and informal old times. ‘Nice day, madam. I love you madly: Conk! Oops-a-daisy, my little penguin.’”

  Dr. Smith smiled. “And just as there are a surprising number of men today—so-called ‘civilized’ men—who somehow derive their greatest sexual satisfaction from colliding with the most depraved women they can pick up, so there are still many men who take their greatest pleasure from something not very far from rape.”

  “You make me feel so—so kind of old-fashioned, Doctor,” I said. “So soft, so effete—imagining that a man should woo or possibly consult a woman’s pleasure during such an enterprise. It’s doubtless the unimaginative brewer in me.”

  “And I suspect,” the Doctor continued thoughtfully, “that Barney Quill might have been one of them, a sort of frustrated throwback who suffered a sudden atavistic regression to type. When to his addled brain his manhood seemed to be at stake, he perhaps almost naturally descended to rape. He would show the whole world what a dominant masculine fellow he was. Most interesting.”

  “Whatever it was, Doctor, he really did himself a job.”

  The Doctor again looked out the window. “Yes, to me the dead man is by far the most fascinating character in this whole drama,” he said musingly. “I would have loved to try to find out just what made him tick.”

  “Quite a character,” I said, yawning and remembering that Parnell had once made pretty much the same observation. “Your main diagnosis, then, Doctor, is that the Lieutenant still was the victim of irresistible impulse that night, regardless of whether he remembered what he was doing or knew right from wrong?” I had at least to know that before I could possibly sleep that night.

  The young Doctor nodded his head emphatically. “Exactly,” he said. “Though we now call it dissociative reaction. In fact it is quite possible that the Lieutenant remembers more about the shooting than he admits. He may in fact remember all about it, have clearly known right from wrong that night, and think he is pulling the wool over your eyes and mine by now saying he doesn’t.” The Doctor shook his head. “It wouldn’t make any difference—in my opinion he still couldn’t help himself; he was nevertheless irresistibly impelled to do what he did and was therefore medically insane.”

  “But almost not legally insane, Doctor,” I said, explaining to him what a cold sweat his diagnosis of irresistible impulse had induced in Parnell and me until we had discovered that Michigan was one of the comparatively few states in the country that admitted the defense, and about the only one among the northern tier of states. “Had the Lieutenant shot Barney just over the border in Ohio or Wisconsin it would have been curtains for his insanity defense, at least on your diagnosis. Consciousness of right and wrong is the sole test in those and most of our states.”

  Dr. Smith shook his head in dismay. “How primitive and medically unrealistic,” he said. “It is precisely those victims who know they are doing wrong and
who realize what they are doing and still cannot resist doing it who are most to be pitied and protected by the law—instead of having criminal guilt added to the torment of their conscious wrongdoing. Their suffering and agony is not only compounded by knowing, but tripled by being punished for knowing.”

  “Perhaps, Doctor,” I suggested, “perhaps most states reject irresistible impulse because it can more easily be faked than the classic ‘unremembering’ insanity.”

  “No,” the Doctor said, shaking his head. “In my opinion it is as medically hard if not harder to fake than any other form of serious mental aberration. As for fakery, the net result in most states is to force criminal defendants who might truly have been medically insane to fake symptoms of a form of legal insanity they actually did not suffer. The fake lies quite the other way. It is a callous and pitiably sordid state of affairs, medically unrealistic and legally an inducement to perjury and sham, involving defendants and psychiatrists and lawyers and judges alike in a squalid sort of make-believe.”

  “Amen, Doctor,” I agreed and sighed, stifling a yawn. “God knows I’m with you. But right now I’m awfully glad we’re in one of the few emancipated states that recognize irresistible impulse as a defense to crime.”

  Dr. Smith arose and held out his hand, smiling. “I don’t want to appear to pass out diagnoses like a depot scales does one’s weight and his fortune,” he said, “but I suspect that the place you clearly belong, Mr. Biegler, is home in the sack. Your head has been nodding and your eyelids drooping for the past hour. What time is court?”

  “Sharp at nine,” I said, “and our judge doesn’t fool. I’d like you to be there to hear the defendant testify.”

  “Sharp at nine,” he said. “And now home to bed for you.”

  I shook his hand and yawned prodigiously in the poor man’s face. “Sometimes, Doc, I think this damn case is getting me down. See you later.”

  “Alligator,” he said, softly shutting his door.