Authors: John D. MacDonald
“When a person does a dumb stupid thing, you kind of hate to admit it to anybody, right? I told you I was frightened of Garry and what he might do. But I decided I could maybe—run a bluff. I guess that when you don’t tell the police the whole story, it just gets you in trouble. So I guess I better tell you now to clear the air. Friday night I went to that grubby cottage. I had a horrible time even finding it. I thought that the more I refused to see him, the more he’d keep bothering me. I didn’t want him coming to my home, so I thought that if I went to him and told him right out that I didn’t
ever want to see him again, it might put an end to it. I guess I was thinking that he was like a mean dog. If you don’t look or act scared, they’ll leave you alone—you hope.”
“Did it work?”
“God, no! It was a vile experience. It was suffocatingly hot in that crummy little cottage. He was half tight. If his burns hadn’t still been hurting him, I know I wouldn’t have been able to fight him off. He said ugly things to me. He showed me a check he had gotten from Banner something or other, to tell his story of the accident in the Bahamas. He told me how important he was going to be. He said they were going to make a movie and he was going to play the lead. I begged him to stop bothering me. He said he’d think about it. He said no woman had ever walked out on him and no woman ever would. He said he always did the walking out. On the way home I decided I’d better go away for a while, just pack a bag and get in my car and go. I thought I’d go Saturday afternoon, but I had to get the car fixed and it wasn’t done in time, so I had my maid lock the gates and I told her that if he came around, she should tell him I’d gone away. As a matter of fact, when you two men came to talk to me, I had no idea Garry was dead, and I was going out to do some errands, and then I was going to leave today in the late afternoon, or at least by tomorrow morning.”
“Were you at that cottage long?”
“I got there at midnight. I think I was home by three in the morning. It was sort of spur of the moment. I’ve had better ideas, believe me. But I really think going away for a while would have solved the problem. He would have had to get busy on that contract he signed.”
“Did he give you any idea why he registered under a false name?”
“I think he was worried about somebody close to the Kayds or the Boylston girl thinking he had lost the yacht because of carelessness or incompetence, and coming after him to beat him up.”
“And that was the only time you were ever in that cottage?”
“Being there once wouldn’t give you any reasons to want to go back.”
“What rooms were you in?”
“The bedroom and the bathroom. Oh, and I sat in the living room a while. Why are you asking me that? Oh, I see! Wow, even though it so happens I can prove I never left the house Sunday night, it would look pretty strange if you found evidence I was in the cottage. I guess I had a good motive, too. But I couldn’t do anything like that. I really couldn’t. Blood. I’m the kind who can prick a finger with a needle and faint dead away.”
“A lab unit has collected every scrap of possible evidence from that cottage, Mrs. Harkinson. There is a fresh palm print which was dusted and photographed. From the size and characteristics, it seems to be a female hand. It was on the rim of the tub. How could your palm print, if it is yours, have gotten there?”
She looked puzzled. “On the bathtub? I don’t see how that could be mine. Oh! Just a minute. On the far side of the tub, next to the wall? If that’s where it is, I know how it happened. He made me cry. I went into the bathroom to repair the damage. I was standing at the sink. He came to the doorway and gave me one hell of a shove.” She stood up and backed away from the table and showed them a bruise on the outside of her right knee. “I went staggering back and hit my leg against the tub and I would have tumbled right in if I hadn’t sort of turned in time and stuck my hand back and caught that far edge.” She sat down again. “Is that where the print was?”
“Would you voluntarily let us take a palm print, Mrs. Harkinson.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We wouldn’t require fingerprints also.”
“I think that if the police are asking you to give them prints and all, then there ought to be charges or something, and I ought to have
a lawyer. I mean you seem to be asking a hell of a lot, and I’m getting sick of this place.”
“I believe we’re through now.”
“And I can go?”
“Any minute, just as soon as we bring in the statement from the first series of questions for you to read over and sign. They might be ready now, in fact. Why don’t you all wait here and I’ll go check on it right now.”
“I’ll go see,” Scheff said and hurried out. He found Tuck working at a desk in the bull pen. Tuck, a slight, sallow man with heavy bags under his eyes, was pecking out a report.
“We’re about to hit her with phase three,” Scheff said.
“How are you making it?”
“Like nowhere. By now she is probably the only person in Dade County who doesn’t know about the dead kid. What did you get?”
“We didn’t get a thing until we split the Akards up. Then after a lot of hemming and hawing, she told me that she hadn’t dared tell the kid’s old man, but a week or so ago when she had fought with the kid about his attitude, he admitted he was getting it from an older woman. He said she was twenty-eight. He wouldn’t tell his old lady who it was. Some girl saw the Akard kid in his sailboat with the Harkinson woman, evidently, and told the girlfriend the kid had dropped when he got tangled up with Harkinson, and the girlfriend told his old lady. It gave her enough to pry it out of him, but she didn’t dare tell his old man.” He shook his head. “It’s days like this, Barney baby. Those are good people. Their life from today on is lousy. There better be a special corner of hell reserved for kids who kill themselves, and for the Crissy Harkinsons. Is she getting edgy at all?”
“If she is, she could have been a great actress, Tommy.”
“Remember Ackles, retired two three years back? He used to say the top-dollar whores are the best actresses around. Whatever act
the mark wants, shy, scared, bold, college girl, spooky, cold, take charge, exotic, comedian, athlete—whatever he seems to want, that’s what he gets, because that’s where the bonuses and the repeats are.”
Scheff went back to the interrogation room and, as planned ahead, gave the Harkinson woman a bleak look, and took Lobwohl over to a far corner and whispered to him. All he had to tell him was what Tuck had turned up, but they kept it going longer to match the amount of information he was supposed to be imparting.
Lobwohl went back to his chair. He regarded her for a few very long moments. “A boy died today, Mrs. Harkinson. He was a suicide. He had a serious head wound. They couldn’t save him. There were a few moments of semi-consciousness toward the end. He said he did it for you. He said he had to protect you from Staniker. We have all the proof we need that he did it. It was curious you did not mention your visit to Staniker on Friday night until a little while ago. It is more curious that you have not mentioned the boy. It makes me wonder just how much—suggestion was involved, Mrs. Harkinson.”
Scheff, watching her closely, saw an expression of wild astonishment. She put her fingers to her throat. In a hoarse whisper she said, “Olly? Olly Akard? Dead? Oh God, oh dear God!” She lowered her head, hands hiding her face. “But it was just
talk!
Just brave kid-talk! That’s all.”
“But he had to get Staniker’s address from you.”
She looked up sharply. Her tears were flowing. “No! I swear he didn’t. I don’t know how he could have found that place …” she frowned. “Unless—unless he followed me. When I got back, he was waiting at my place for me.”
“What was your relationship with the boy?”
“He—He was a very wonderful boy. I was really fond of him. I wanted to learn to sail. At Dinner Key they said he taught people.
And while he was teaching me, he—got a sort of a crush on me. I guess it was sort of flattering for a while. But then I realized it wasn’t a good thing for him, to feel like that about a woman practically old enough to be his mother. I made a very bad mistake. I told him about the relationship I had with Garry. And one of the times Garry phoned last Friday, Oliver was there. He made such a scene I told him if he kept it up, I wouldn’t let him see me any more. He kept it up. Saturday I told him to go away and stay away. You can ask my maid, Francisca. She knows the locked gate was to keep him away too. He came early Sunday evening and got his boat and took it away. He had somebody bring him by boat, I guess. I didn’t see him. I went to bed very early. I was exhausted, emotionally. I told him that his ideas about me were childish and foolish and absolutely impossible. I told him to go back to his nice little girl. Betty I think her name is. You must believe me! I had no
idea
Olly would do such a crazy thing. Even if he thought of something silly, like beating Garry up, how could he find him? No, this is a terrible terrible thing.”
“You imply that the relationship was innocent?”
“If you mean did I have intercourse with that nineteen-year-old boy, I certainly did not!”
“But that boy was apparently willing to stage a clumsy murder for your sake and then sacrifice himself, Mrs. Harkinson.”
“Oliver was—a very romantic and idealistic boy. I guess that when I saw how he was beginning to feel toward me I should have laughed at him and called him a silly kid. Okay, I let him kiss me. I let him dream a little. I let him talk about life, the way kids do. It’s like—being young again. He made crazy plans about us. Impossible, of course. Maybe I was being as silly as he was. The difference was he could believe it and I knew it was nonsense. I’m a woman alone. If I’d ever told that poor kid the kind of life I’ve really had, it could have driven him out of his mind I guess. It was just—sweet. A game.
I stopped playing that game when he got so worked up about Garry being back and phoning me and demanding to see me. Saturday I told him to stay away from me. I told him—in a pretty ugly way, I guess. I felt responsible for letting him get such nutty ideas and not stopping him sooner. I tried to jolt him, shake him up.”
Lobwohl said, “As this crush, as you call it, developed, Mrs. Harkinson, the boy became sullen and difficult and withdrawn. It worried his parents. The girl he used to go with told his mother about someone seeing an older woman in the sailboat with Oliver, a blonde woman in a bikini. She could not make Oliver tell her who the woman was, but he admitted he was physically intimate with the woman.”
Her eyes went wide, and her voice was thin as she said, “Told his mother
that?
But it wasn’t
so!
Why would he want to hurt her like that? It doesn’t make any sense at all. I guess he was trying to—break loose.”
“In what sense?”
“His mother wanted him to become a minister. His girl, Betty something, was going to become a nurse. Then they were going to be missionaries. It was all planned, and he said that he hadn’t been able to tell them that he was losing his faith. Maybe he thought that if he told her—that lie, she would stop trying to push him into the ministry.” She shrugged, sighed, wiped her eyes with a tissue. “It’s the only thing I can think of. Can I go now? Can I please go? He was such a fine boy. And I’m to blame. It makes me feel sick.”
Lobwohl opened the folder in front of him and took out the wire copy of the Atlanta ID card and with a long reach, he put it in front of her. “We’re all deeply touched by your sensitivity, Crissy.”
She looked at the card without expression. She looked at Kindler, Scheff and Lobwohl in turn, a measured three seconds for each one. “Very cute,” she said. “Real fancy nifty cute, you sick-minded bastards. Real careful timing. Let me ask
you
something. Do you think
for one minute that if this is
all
I am, or all I
could
be, a man like Ferris Fontaine could have endured me for the last seven years of his life? I never conned him. He knew the score about me. You know what a hustler learns first of all? Don’t trust anybody. And I learned to trust that wonderful old man. You know what he gave me back? Some dignity. Some self respect.” She rapped the wire copy with her knuckles. “I remember this kid pretty well. She had a lot of hate in her. She kidded herself. She drifted into the trade telling herself it was just for a while. She thought she was better than the others she worked with, in New York and Savannah and Atlanta. Then she found out she was just another hooker. Then Fer came along, and after a long time she got her pride back. Every cell in your body is supposed to change every seven years, right? So don’t get me mixed up with some rental playmate in Atlanta a long, long time ago.”
“I will remind you again that we can suspend this until you are represented by counsel, Mrs. Harkinson.”
“Where can you go from here? You don’t need any more from me!”
“Your attorney will advise you that you are providing essential evidence regarding motive in a homicide investigation. He will tell you that even though we have sufficient proof as to who committed the crime, and even though that person is now deceased, Florida law requires that evidence be presented to the Grand Jury for preparing an indictment, and that the subsequent suicide must be handled as a separate matter. He will inform you that we can hold you in interrogation for twenty-four hours, or until early afternoon tomorrow, and at that time we can bring charges against you, if we find sufficient basis therefore, or, if we feel it is in the best interests of the proper investigation of the case, we can ask for a court order which will empower us to hold you in protective custody until such time as the Grand Jury decides whether or not you should be asked to give direct testimony during their deliberations.”
“Hold me for the best interests of what, damn you?”
“You are news, Mrs. Harkinson. Big, gaudy, melodramatic news. You are bright enough to figure it out. What’s their approach? Infatuated youth slays only survivor of the Muñeca disaster to protect blonde mystery woman from unwanted attentions. Future minister a suicide after slaying rival for favors of ex-mistress of deceased State Senator. Heartbroken mother says Akard boy was a model boy until blonde twice his age started taking sailing lessons.”