Border Town Girl (15 page)

“I didn’t kill her. If I had, I’d tell you. It happened exactly the way I told them downstairs.”

“That story is no damn good,” he said.

“It’s the truth. It has to be good.”

“Being the truth doesn’t make it good. Being the truth doesn’t make it useful. That’s the damnedest sorriest story I ever heard. I can’t take a thing like that into court. You want to get out of this or don’t you?”

“I want to get out of it.”

“All right, then. Anything else we could use. The gun jammed. You were trying to free it. It was pointed at her head. You’ve been scared so bad you’ve been lying ever since.”

“No,” I said.

“Everything went black and when you woke up, there she was.”

“No.”

“It was a suicide pact and you lost your nerve.”

I got up off the bed. I’ve always been mild. I didn’t feel mild then. I don’t think I’ve ever talked louder to a human being. “No! None of that stuff. Because you know what it means? It might possibly get me in the clear, or a short sentence or something, but it gets the two of them all the way in the clear. Can’t you understand that? They plotted it and did it and they want to get way with it. If I get clear I’ll have to go after them and kill both of them. If I get a short sentence it will be the same. They thought I was a damn white mouse. I’m not. The only thing I’ll go into court with will be the truth, and if you don’t want to take the case, somebody else will.”

He waited a long time, until I had cooled down. “You just better think it over, Paul. Stick with this and the whole sovereign state of Florida is going to fall on your head like it fell off a cliff.”

“So I can’t—”

“Shut up. Your story is so wild they’re going to bring down some people to give you some tests and make sure you’re sane enough to try. Do you want to save yourself, or do you want to be some kind of martyr. Don’t answer now. Think it over. I’ve got some checking to do. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”

After he left and I was alone I knew that he was both right and wrong. Right in that it was my testimony against theirs, and I was the introvert. They were the extroverts. On the stand I would sweat and stammer and shake, and should I say the sun would rise tomorrow, it would sound like a lie. Jeffries, rugged, clean-cut, saddened, manly, would convince them. I knew in advance how Linda would be. As my wife she could not be forced to testify against me. But she could volunteer her testimony. She would try to make it look as though she were standing by me. And would damn me, while she smiled sadly.

I wondered why I had not thought of all this before—of how justice and truth are so unpredictably subject to the stage presence of the accused. I knew that Linda and Jeff had thought of it.

Waking up from an illusion is always painful, and often something that takes a long time. My awakening from the illusion of Linda had been painful, but quick. It had happened in a fraction of a second, during that moment after her contrived faint when she put her hands on my arm and I had looked into her eyes. Living with evil does not make it more apparent. I could now look back over the years of Linda and see all the things that I had misinterpreted because I had looked at them through the distorting glass of my own gratitude to her.

That night it was a long time before I could get to sleep.

AFTER THE MORNING MEAL I WAS TOLD THAT Linda had come to visit me and had brought things for me. My first impulse was to tell them to have her leave the things and go. But I was curious about her, about how she would carry it off. Visiting me was something she had to do to preserve the illusion of the story the two of them had plotted.

She came with clothing over her arm, with cigarettes and magazines and the portable radio. She wore a plain dark dress and very little make-up. The jailer was very courtly with her.

“Now you can go right in, Mrs. Cowley, and I’ll be back in a half-hour. That’s all that’s allowed.”

I sat on the bed and watched her. “Dear, they told me you could have clothes, but no belt or shoelaces, so I brought the slacks that don’t need a belt, and your moccasins. Here’s the socks and underwear. I’ll just put them right here on this shelf. I guess the cigarettes and magazines can go here too.” She put the clothing on the bed beside me and sat down in the single chair, smiled briefly at me and dug into her purse for her own cigarettes.

“I’ve been talking to Mr. Journeyman, dear. The county is having two specialists come down from Tampa to examine you. They should be here this afternoon, they say. I think it’s for the best. You haven’t acted like yourself for months.”

“Keep right on. It’s almost amusing, Linda.”

“I’ve let everyone know, dear, that I’m going to stand by you no matter what you did. It was a terrible thing, but you were ill, dear. You didn’t know what you were doing. I’m not going to permit myself to be annoyed or hurt by the fantastic tale you’ve been telling them about me.”

I looked at her soft tan throat. I could reach it in two quick steps.

“I suppose Jeff is heartbroken,” I said.

“He’s had a terrible shock. The funeral will be on Saturday, in Hartford. We’ve both had a terrible time with the reporters. They’ve been so persistent.”

“But they got your story, of course.”

“You can’t just refuse to say anything,” she said, a bit smugly. “Jeff is leaving tonight with the body, by train. He’ll have to stay up there a little while. There are a lot of legal details, I understand.”

“The will, I suppose.”

“Yes, and the trust funds. That sort of thing. You’d understand more about that than I would, Paul.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’m still at the cottage. The rent is paid so I might just as well stay there, don’t you think? Or would you rather have me here in town, dear?”

“You’re incredible, Linda. Incredible.”

“I’m only doing what I think is right,” she said. “They say that if these men from Tampa say you are sane, the trial will be in January. I think you ought to talk to Mr. Journeyman about our own financial arrangements, dear. He could probably arrange about having somebody up there put our house on the market and sell the car and so on. We’ll need money to fight this thing, dear, if they say you are sane.”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you, Linda? Didn’t it change something inside of you, pulling that trigger and seeing what it did to her?”

She closed her eyes for a portion of a second. “Don’t be irrational, darling,” she said calmly.

“How long have you looked for the big chance? How many years? What made you think this was it? You’re a damn fool, Linda. Even if it works, it won’t really work, you know. He knows what you did. And that means he knows what you are. Maybe you can hold him for a little while, but the years are hardening and coarsening you, Linda. And your looks are the only thing to hold him with. You haven’t got anything else. You did the actual deed, not him. He’ll think about that more and more as time goes by. I suppose you plan to marry him. Maybe, right now, he’s thinking how foolish that would be. It wouldn’t give him anything he hasn’t already had. It would be a nice joke on you, Linda. You set him free, and he leaves you flat. You wouldn’t dare object. You wouldn’t dare open your mouth.”

She stood up abruptly. Her face was a mask. I saw that I had touched her. I saw the effort it took for her to relax again. Then she smiled. “Dear, you must get that fantasy out of your head. Poor Jeff. This tragedy has made him quite dependent on me.” She gave a subtle emphasis to the word “dependent.”

“You better go, Linda.”

She wouldn’t call the jailer. I yelled for him. He came, let her out. She turned in the open door and said, for his benefit, “Please try to get some sleep, darling. You’ll feel so much better if you get some sleep.”

I cursed her quietly and the jailer looked at me with pained indignation and slammed the cell door with clanging emphasis. When they were gone I undressed, washed at the sink, put on the fresh clothing. It felt good to have shoes on.

They took me to an office in the afternoon and gave me written and oral tests that lasted over two hours. A half-hour after I was back in the cell, Journeyman came in. He looked bitter. “You’re sane, all right. Know what you’ve got? A very stable personality and good intelligence.”

“What makes you so happy?” I asked him.

“All your prints they found on the gun. Plus some of Jeffries’ and some of your wife’s. But mostly yours. And Jeffries showed Vern where he and your wife caught the fish. Vern picked up four of her cigarette butts there, on the bank, with her lipstick on them. They fished in a hole near an old broken-down dock behind a mangrove point, so they weren’t seen by any of the boat traffic on the bay. It comes down to this, Paul. It’s your word against theirs. And a jury will believe them. Change your mind since yesterday?”

“No.”

He roamed around the cell, hands crammed in his pockets, head lowered, scuffing his feet, whistling tonelessly. He stopped and sighed. “Okay. I’ll do every damn thing I can. Shepp has decided to make a try for first degree. He’ll handle it himself. Voice like an organ. Makes them cry. Well, hell. We’ll do what we can.”

He said he would come back the next day and go over a lot of stuff in detail, and left.

David Hill arrived at eight o’clock. He wore a big briar pipe. He looked through the bars at me and said, “I’m the opposition, so you don’t have to talk to me, Cowley.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

He sat in the straight chair, thumbed his pipe, got it going again. “I’m a stranger here myself,” he said. “I came down three years ago. Used to practice in Michigan. Passed the Florida bar, set up here and got appointed as Shepp’s assistant. The doctors said my little girl would do better in this climate. Asthma. Ever play chess, Cowley?”

“No.”

“When your opponent launches an attack, you must watch the moves he makes and try to figure out what he has in mind. The most nonsensical-looking moves can sometimes conceal a very strong attack.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“We paid per diem to two men who confirmed what I’d already guessed. You’re intelligent, stable. I spent some more county funds today and talked to a man named Rufus Stick. I have a fair idea of what you’re like, Cowley. You are my opponent, let’s say, and I see you making a nonsensical move. In other words, your story of what happened on the beach. You stand up to stiff questioning, and they don’t trip you once. So I have two assumptions. One, you made up that story and went over it in your mind until you were letter perfect on it. Two, it was the truth. Now why would an opponent I know to be able, devise a story which practically means suicide? Answer: he wouldn’t. Conclusion: he told the truth. Next step, a closer look at the two other principals. How did you meet your wife, Cowley?”

I told him everything I could remember about her, and everything I knew about Brandon Jeffries. From time to time he wrote things down in a small notebook. It took a long time.

When at last he stood up to go I said, “It is the truth, you know.”

He looked into his dead pipe. “I think it is, Cowley. I’ll wire Jeffries to be back for the inquest. He was told his statement would be enough. I’ll get him back here.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know yet.” He looked at me and his face changed. “If your story is true, it’s the coldest, most brutal, most callous murder I’ve ever heard of.”

Journeyman was in the next day and we worked for three hours. Linda came the next day with more cigarettes and reading matter. I refused to see her and the jailer sullenly brought me the things she had purchased. This was Saturday, the day we were to have left, the day they were lowering the body of Stella Jeffries into the ancient soil of Connecticut. No one came to see me on Sunday. I had read everything at hand. It was a long day.

David Hill, complete with pipe, came at noon on Monday. He seemed ill at ease, as though he had to bring up something unpleasant. When he finally brought it up, it was not as unpleasant as it would have seemed a week before. It was about Linda.

“It’s a good firm,” he said. “We used to use them when I was in Michigan. They have an office in Los Angeles and they have a big staff, so things move fast. I had to use my own money for this.”

“I’ll pay you back, of course.”

“Her name was still Willestone when she went out there. She went out there with a married man. He left her. She was calling herself Mrs. Brady when you met her again. Mrs. Julius Brady, you said. There is no marriage record. She lived in San Bernardino with a petty gambler named Julius Brady for a while. He cheated some soldiers at Camp Anza and was sent up. There’s a blank, and then she turned up in Bakersfield, calling herself Linda Brady. She was sentenced twice there, thirty-day terms, for soliciting. She moved up to Los Angeles and was picked up in the company of a man wanted on suspicion of armed robbery. They found she was sick and committed her to the county hospital until she was well. Then she was warned to leave the city. That was about three months before you met her on the street. It—it isn’t pretty, Cowley.”

I thought of how she had been, years ago. I looked beyond Hill. “In school,” I said softly, “she was the prettiest, and the best. Life was going to give her all the wonderful things. You could see that, just looking at her.”

“Maybe she thought so too,” Hill said. “Life didn’t give them to her and she tried to take them, and her methods were wrong, and she got licked, beaten down. Then you picked her up and brushed her off. This time she waited for the long chance. The big chance.”

“This time maybe she’s made it.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.”

“How about Jeffries?”

“Nothing on him. Orphaned. Brought up by an aunt. Never much money. Good athlete. He was working on a cruise ship—something to do with games and recreation—when he met his wife. She steered him into sales, and he did well. Her people objected at first, but finally came around. He’ll be back tonight. He’s flying in. I’ve wangled a delay on the inquest.”

“Why? What can you do?”

“I don’t know. They both know they’ll hang together if anybody slips. They’ll be careful. I’ve gone over it a hundred times. They did a good job. There aren’t any loose ends. You said you don’t play chess, didn’t you?”