The Criminal (11 page)

"Huh-uh," I said. "Absolutely no."

"You name it, then. What's your best offer, Kossy?"

"Complete dismissal. Unqualified exoneration. The boy was excited, overly tired. He didn't realize what he was saying."

"Nonsense. No, siree. No, by God!"

"That's it," I said. "And, Clint, that still leaves it plenty bad for the boy. It leaves it lousy for him and his parents. If he walked out of the place this minute, he'd still be getting the rawest deal a kid could get. He'll suffer for it the rest of his life. Think of it, Clint! Think of what it's going to mean to him at school, and after he leaves school, starts looking for a job, or when he meets some nice gal and wants to get married… Would you want a child of yours to run around with a kid who was the prime suspect in a rape murder case? Would you want him on your payroll? Would you want your daughter to marry him? Would you want to associate with him yourself? Don't say it, Clint. Don't tell me people will forget. They'll forget, all right-that he wasn't convicted. It's like the old song: the words are ended but the melody lingers on. And it'll get louder and uglier wherever he goes, whatever he does, as long as he lives."

"That's what you say. I feel otherwise. Mind you, now"-he held up a hand-"mind you, my mind isn't closed on the matter. You show me something, just anything at all that might cast a reasonable doubt on his guilt, and I'll be most happy to consider it. You'll find me unusually receptive, Kossy. I'll be just as pleased as you are. But, hell, I can't-"

"Let him go, Clint," I said. "It'll still be bad enough."

"So? Aren't you being remiss then in asking me to discharge him? Shouldn't you prove him innocent beyond any shadow of a doubt? Is anything less fair to him?"

"Clint," I said. "How many of these sex murderers are ever run down? You can't type them on
modus operandi
; they're not peculiar to any particular group or class. They look like you and me and everyone else, and they
are
you and me and everyone else. The corner grocer and the chainstore executive, the bum and the big business man, the choir singer and the dice hustler, the minister, the prize fighter, the guy who mows your lawn and the guy who-"

"Kossy. I think you must have misunderstood me. I said nothing about your producing the guilt-another suspect. That isn't what I said at all."

"Isn't that about what it amounts to?"

"Not at all. We have evidence of his guilt. I merely pointed out that without something to dispel that evidence, some reasonably concrete proof of innocence, my hands were tied. You can see that, Kossy. You can't conscientiously expect me to drop the case. It wouldn't be fair to the boy."

He reached for the cigar box again, raised his eyebrows at me. I shook my head.

"I'll get him off, Clint," I said. "I'll get a verdict or a dismissal. You ain't got a God damn thing but the confession, and I'll rip it to pieces. It'll have more holes in it than a whores' convention."

He laughed. "Ah, Kossy. I'll bet you do take my hide off, at that. However, I don't think I'd count too much on getting him off."

"Let him go, Clint. I know you want to."

"I can't, Kossy. It's simply unthinkable."

"Let him go. Give him a clean bill of health. It'll still be bad, but it's better than anything else."

"I can't. Understand me, Kossy? I can't!"

I hadn't actually expected him to. Just hoped. His case might not be too strong, but it was stronger than mine, and with all the newspapers raising hell, keeping the deal spotlighted…

No, he couldn't do it.

I picked up my briefcase from the floor, and stood up. "All right, Clint," I said. "I guess that takes care of everything for the present. Now, if I can have a little chat with the boy…"

"Certainly, certainly." He punched a button on his desk. "I'll tell the matron to clear out and see that you're not disturbed. Incidentally, I think you'll see that we've done everything possible to make things pleasant for Bob."

"I'm sure of it," I said. "Now, about that civil court appointment, Clint. I'm really going to pour the coal on that. I'm only sorry I didn't get busy on it sooner."

"Kossy," he said. "I… well, I just don't know what to say. I don't know how to thank you."

"Nuts," I said. "Thank me? You don't even know anything about it."

"Why don't we have lunch some time soon? I'll give you a ring."

"You'd better let me call you," I said. "You know how it is. I never know what's going to crop up until the very last minute."

"What about Sunday? You're not busy on Sunday. Come out for dinner and spend the afternoon with us. We haven't had a good talk in a long time."

"Thanks," I said. "I'd love to. Give me a raincheck, will you? Some other time? I'm kind of tied up for the next few weeks."

His smile faded. He turned and stared out the window, spoke with his back turned to me. He was thinking of that "Christ murder" remark.

"You'll never forget that, will you?" he said. "You can't forget it."

"Forget what?" I said.

"I don't know why I said it, Kossy. You know I'm no anti-Semite. I'd give anything in the world if I hadn't said it. I know there's no use in saying I'm sorry, but-"

"Sorry?" I said. "What about? What are you supposed to have said? I didn't hear you say a thing, Clint."

.. There was a portable radio going in the window. The table was loaded down with fruit and candy bars and potato chips, and he had a stack of comic books two feet high. He was reading one of the comic books when I went in, turning the pages with his finger tips since he had a coke in one hand and a banana in the other. He went on reading it, answering me absently, apparently unconcerned with what had happened and what might happen. He was all right now. Miraculously, he had been snatched up from the abyss. He did not want to leave the present, to look back from it or beyond it.

He inquired about his folks: why hadn't they come to see him.

I said that they'd wanted to, but I'd felt they'd better not. They were badly upset. It would be hard on everyone concerned.

"Well," he said, idly. "I guess maybe that's right. I guess maybe they better wait."

He turned a page of the comic book. He read it, the coke and banana moving alternately to his mouth, and turned another one.

"Wait for what, Bob?" I said. "Until you serve your sentence or until you get out of the nut house?"

"What?" he said.

"Listen to me, Bob," I said. "I-
Bob!"

"Yeah?" He frowned, fretfully, without looking up. "I'm listening, ain't I?"

I snatched the comic book out of his hand and threw it across the room. I brushed the banana into the wastebasket, and tossed the coke after it.

He said, "Hey! What'd you do-"

"Shut up!" I said. "I'm asking all the questions, get me? I ask the questions and you give the answers, and you have your mind on 'em when you do it. Do you understand that, Bob? I asked you if you understood that!"

Some of the vagueness went out of his eyes. He nodded sullenly, a little fearfully.

"All right," I said. "Question number one: why did you lie to me that first night I talked to you?"

"Lie? I didn't tell you any lie."

"Who did you lie to? Come on, spit it out! You told me you didn't kill Josie Eddleman and you told the district attorney that you did. Now which was the lie?"

"Well, I-Mr. Clinton said-"

"To hell with what Mr. Clinton said. I don't give a fast-day fart for what he said. Did you lie to me? Did you kill that girl?"

He shook his head. "Huh-uh. O' course, I didn't."

"You lied to Mr. Clinton, then. If you didn't lie to me you lied to him. Isn't that right, Bob? Both stories couldn't have been the truth. If you told me the truth, you didn't tell him the truth. Isn't that right?"

He hesitated.

I said, "Well, how about it?"

"Well, uh, you see"-his eyes wavered-"I was kind of mixed up. I wanted to tell him the truth, but I was mixed up. So he said, well, maybe it was this way an' that way, how did I know it wasn't, and maybe it could have been. And I said, maybe it was, I guess it was. I was all mixed up, and he wasn't. So I told him the truth like he said."

"I see," I said. "You told him you killed Josie, and that was the truth, and you told me you didn't kill her and that was the truth."

"Uh-huh. That's-"

I slapped him across the mouth.

I swung my hand back and forth, slapping him palm and backhand.

The matron pounded on the door and rushed in. I told her to beat it.

"I'm slapping hell out of a client," I said, "and I don't want to be disturbed."

"I'm going to report this to Mr. Clinton!"

"You do that," I said. "Take your time going and don't hurry back."

She slammed out, and of course she didn't return. Clint knew what I was doing; he couldn't object to it. With slight variations and with, naturally, a contrary purpose, I was doing exactly what he'd done.

I led the boy over to the sink, telling him, hell, not to cry: I was just trying to be his friend and he'd thank me for it some day. I helped him to wash his face, kidding and joshing until he began to smile a little.

"That's swell," I said. "That's my boy. Now we'll start getting somewhere. We're not mixed up any more, now, are we?"

"N-No, sir"

"You didn't kill Josie, did you?"

"No, sir. I guess I- No, sir."

"You told me the truth. What you told Mr. Clinton was not the truth."

"Yes, sir."

"You were out at the golf course at noon. Before noon and for some time afterwards."

"Yes, sir."

"Did Mr. Clinton make any promises to you for giving him that confession? Did he say something like, well, you tell us you killed Josie and we'll let you go?"

"Well"-he hesitated-"I kind of felt like he did. He said that if I'd do the right thing, he would; that he knew I didn't really mean to do it and it was just a mistake and he didn't believe in punishing anyone for-"

"But he didn't make you any outright promise?"

"No-not exactly, I guess. I mean it kind of seemed like he did, but…"

I nodded and unstrapped my briefcase.

He said, "Mr. Kossmeyer. What will they-?"

"Nothing," I said. "They won't do a damned thing. Just keep telling the truth, and everything will be all right."

I got the briefcase open, and took out a thick sheaf of photographs. I spread them out on the lounge in three rows and nodded to him.

"These are aerial photographs, Bob. They were taken from a helicopter. They begin there at the trestle, the canyon, near your home and move in a bee-line to the golf links. In other words, they show the area you passed through on the way to the links…"

"Yes, sir?" he said.

"Now, of course, being pictures, everything is considerably reduced-bear that in mind-but it's all there. All the trees and telephone poles and other landmarks. You look at them and show me the route you followed as well as you remember it."

He bent over the pictures. After a moment, he turned and looked at me.

"They ain't-they're not in the right order. You want me to unmix 'em?"

"Are you sure?" I said. "Well, yes, you straighten them out, Bob."

The pictures were actually one picture, one long strip photograph which I'd chopped into sections. I'd mixed those sections up deliberately.

He had them straightened out within two minutes.

That didn't prove anything, of course, but it was a little something, some satisfaction to me, at least. It established that he had been through the area very recently.

I gave him a pencil, and he pointed out the route he had followed. He did it very quickly. Maybe-I thought-a little too quickly?

"Did you always go this same way, Bob? Down this little slope and up the next one and so on?"

"Well…" He scratched his head.

"You went pretty much the same way each time, right? That's how you remember it so well."

He studied my face doubtfully, cautiously He wet his lips.

"What"-he edged back a step-"what you want me to say, Mr. Kossmeyer?"

"Just the truth, Bob. Whatever the truth is, that's what I want you to tell me."

"Well… I guess not, then. I mean, I guess I just went that way that day"

"Fine," I said, soothingly "That's the truth, and that's all I want. Now, let's see. Let's see if I remember as well as you do. You were pretty excited that day. You weren't thinking about scenery just walking fast without looking to right or left. That's right, isn't it, Bob? I've got it right? Then tell me-just the truth-tell me how you remember the way you went so well."

"Well…" He swallowed noisily. "Maybe I don't remember. Maybe-if you don't want me to say I-"

"Bob," I said. "Listen to me, kid. I'm on your side. I'm your friend. I'm like a doctor, see? You know how a doctor has to hurt a guy sometimes for his own good. Well, that's me, that's what I was doing a moment ago. You understand that. Sure you do. You re a smart boy, and a damned fine one. So-so just keep right on telling me the truth. Tell me how you remember."

"Well. I don't exactly remember. I just kind of know."

"Yes?"

"It kind of comes back to me. I wasn't noticing anything, hardly, at the time. But now I sort of do. I mean, I kind of know-I don't exactly remember, but I know."

"Swell," I said. "You're doing fine, Bob."

"Most of the time, usually, it'd been some other day, I'd kind of wander around. I'd maybe wander off to look at a rabbit hole or something, or maybe I'd try to jump across a little gully or see if I could hit a telephone pole with a rock or-well, that's the way I'd usually do. But that day, I just wasn't interested in anything like that. I just went right straight ahead, just the straightest I could go and-"

"Sure, you did!" I said. "Naturally! That's exactly what you would do, what anyone would do. That's swell, Bob, that's really swell."

No, it didn't prove anything. It wasn't nearly enough to swing Clint around, or to go to trial with. Still, it would help… a little. It was something to build on. It sounded so plausible, so authentic, you know, not the kind of thing a kid could invent on the spur of the moment. If he'd stick to it, if it was true, if he just wasn't beating his brains out to please me for fear of getting them beat out…

I wished I hadn't roughed him. I wished to God I hadn't. And, yet, there'd been nothing else to do. He'd had to be snapped out of it fast. Hell, he might have taken days to do it by himself-if he ever did it-and we didn't have days. Anyway, I didn't… Only one client, I had? I got forever to spend with one client? You should live so long, Kossmeyer!

I opened a coke for him, and took one myself. I kidded with him some more, did a little downing, made him laugh a few times. He seemed pretty much at ease when we went back to the pictures. He answered my questions with only normal hesitation, telling the truth apparently without regard for how I might take it.

Yeah, that was an excavation there by that highline tower, but it had been there a long time. He didn't know why it was there unless they'd started to dig the hole for the tower in the wrong place, but he hadn't seen anyone working there. There hadn't been anyone around those towers since he didn't know when.

Yeah, that was a pasture, all right, those were some cows. But the house was way off over on the highway, several miles off. You had to be over by the highway to see it, and he hadn't been anywhere near.

Yeah, that was kind of a dump over there on the left; that is, it had been a dump. Now, though it was fenced in and it was against the law to dump anything there. Anyway, it was too far off from the way he'd gone. It was over on kind of an old country road that no one used any more.

Yeah, that was a pond. There were two or three of those little ponds. But there wasn't anything in them but maybe a few tadpoles. No one fished in 'em or swam in 'em or anything. He'd never seen anyone near them, so, well, he guessed there couldn't have been anyone that day.

No-well, yeah, he did take a smoke now and then, but just when someone had given him one. He never bought any. He hadn't left any butts lying around the spot where he'd sat killing time. Yeah, that was the place, right in there in those rocks. Yeah, the ground was pretty hard there, all right. Maybe there might be some footprints or something, but that wouldn't prove anything, would it? He might have made them some other day… Yeah, he had this wristwatch; he'd had that watch for, well, almost always. His Dad had bought it for him when they were in the city together, and… yeah, that's how he'd known the time. He hadn't asked anyone. There hadn't been anyone to ask…

We came to the end of the pictures, but he rambled on a minute or two longer, talking about the watch and the time his Dad had bought it for him. Then, he looked at me, and the skin around his cheekbones seemed to tighten.

"I… I guess I'm not doing so well, am I?" he said.

"Nonsense," I said. "You're doing swell, Bob. You just keep it up and everything'll be fine."

"B-but-what'll Mr. Clinton do if we can't-"

"Frig Mr. Clinton," I said. "You ain't done a God damned thing, and they ain't going to do a God damned thing to you. Now, let's go back through these pictures, just for the hell of it and…"