Death Trap (15 page)

“I suppose you wouldn’t want to leave because you have so many friends here, Mr. Mackin.”

“It’s a good town. People are nice here. I never really had a home before.” He lowered his hand and gave me a sheepish smile. “I guess you could say I was a bum. Dick put out a helping hand. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him.”

I stood up. “Thanks for the information. I’ll pass it along. You’ll hear from me.”

“May I have your business address, please?”

“I’ll get in touch with you, Mr. Mackin.”

His eyes looked narrower. “I’m afraid I’ll have to have your address. I have to know who I’m doing business with.” He was standing up also, and I noticed that he had managed to drift toward the doorway without seeming to move. He wasn’t big, but he was deep-chested, with broad shoulders, and he was quick. There was a quality of menace about him that I hadn’t sensed before, a menace utterly unlike that exuded by Quillan. This was the tension of the stalking cat.

“I’ll write it on the back of the card I gave you.”

He took it from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. I wrote an address on the back. I wrote a Chicago address, the address of the home offices of the Telboht Brothers Construction Company, with the digits of the street number scrambled.

“It seems like a long way to come for the kind of commission you’d get.”

“The client is an old friend. We don’t expect to make money.”

“Why not put him in touch with a reliable firm in Warrentown?”

“We suggested that. He wanted us to handle it for him.”

“He must be a very good friend “

“He is.”

I was glad to get out into the night, away from the smell of illness, away from the wiry plausible man with the grin wrinkles that had begun to me to look as though they had been cut there for the purpose of deception.

I drove a block in the car and parked where there were no lights. I leaned back and tried to reconstruct it. The young daughter of a close friend. Maybe one summer day they had been left alone in the cabin at the lake. Maybe she had come into the store just at closing time. There were any number of ways it could have happened. And I could see him succumbing to that particular kind of weakness. There was about him a flavor of virility—but not the masculine virility of man, or bull, or ram like the virility of a Quillan. His seemed a more sly and insinuating breed—the virility of a cat or serpent. The eyes smiled too readily. The little touching gestures of grief were a bit too carefully posed.

I had everything, and yet I had nothing.

I felt certain it was Mackin. I tried to doubt my own certainty and I could not. Yet if there was one outstanding element of his mind, it was the element of calculation and control. He would not be caught off guard. He had very nearly caught me off guard. I didn’t know if I’d satisfied his innate skepticism with the invented address. If I hadn’t, he would check it. If he did, he would be more than ever on guard. And he could be dangerous.

Jane Ann had been able to handle him, to use him to her own advantage. I wondered if she had really sensed the danger in doing that. He was a proud man, with a capacity for violence.

I went back to the Inn after a time and went to bed. I could not sleep. I wanted to place a trap for him. I could think of no trap subtle enough yet effective enough. I did not doubt but what he had murdered his wife. He had murdered her through purposeful negligence, just as surely as if he told her to walk across a mine field. She still breathed, and slept and had pain; but she was dead.

Paulson had taken him in. He had put him on his feet. Billy Mackin was thought to be a successful businessman, worried to distraction about his sick wife. “A good joe,” Charlie had called him. I could see Mackin at a village picnic, wandering around with that engaging grin, saying the right things to everyone. He was the lizard which could change its color and blend with any environment. What man was he? The proprietor of the hardware store? The canny bargainer? Or was the real Mackin the man who held the knife and pursued the screaming girl through the alders?

He could slap a back and tell a funny story. He would be the youthful gallant with elderly ladies. He would be a reliable baby-sitter in emergencies. I sensed that there were so many facets to the man that there was no real substance. If there was any area in which a man like that might lose control, it was the area of the sensual, the quick black demands of the wiry body which, in need, would choose not a partner but rather a victim. And I had seen the outward evidence of vanity, the glossy black of the hair combed thickly and carefully back over small well-set ears, the hand-sewn seams of the expensive shoes on the neat narrow feet.

Mackin was close to the Paulsons—close enough so he would know Alister’s habits, know of the quarrel. Angela Mackin had been in the hospital the night of the killing. An April evening, when it would have been perfectly normal to roam around the back yards of the section where the Mackins and the Paulsons and the Landys lived.

He could have seen Jane Ann start out. He would have known where she was headed. He could have seen Alister Landy start out in the Ford. From then on it was simple. Follow quickly. Pick Jane Ann up on the hill. Take her far beyond the college, off to the obscure road where the college kids parked, where perhaps he had followed Alister and Nancy. Rape and murder in blindness and in fury and in revenge for all the requests. Another fifty dollars. Another forty. Sixty more, please. Or I’ll tell.

Tell what?

It didn’t seem to dovetail neatly enough. Tell what? What could he lose by denying it, telling her to go ahead and tell. If there was proof, where did it go?

I tossed and turned and thought and finally slept.

TOWARD MORNING I must have slept very deeply, because I awoke and could not remember for long seconds where I was. Then I heard the wood mill whistle, heard traffic around the square, saw the Williamsburg blue of the bedroom walls, and had the feeling of coming back into myself, a return of the spirit after long night journeys.

This was Wednesday, and there were five days left, and what I could see of the sky looked gray. I thought of the boy in the cage who could see no sky, only the impersonal fluorescence. He would hear the muffled sounds of the awakening of the prison, hear the slap of ace on jack in the endless card game, the clank and thud of bolt and door as his breakfast was brought.

I hoped Vicky still slept, and that there was more comfort for her in sleep than in wakefulness. Jane Ann slept deep under the October grasses, with gray wind moving unheard through the drying leaves that still clung to cemetery elms. And Ginny, her best friend, slept now, perhaps more restlessly, in the closed coffin at Hillman’s Funeral Home on Vineland Avenue. Perhaps through the years of infinity, those two could complain to each other in bodiless voices of how short life had been, of how small a share each had been given.

And in the house at the corner of Venture and Oak, Angela Mackin would be asleep, the defeated body fighting against invasion, lungs wheezing a staleness, blood moving slowly to nourish the rebel cells. Billy Mackin would be near her, and he would count the slow breathing, and make computation of how many exhalations were left. At twenty-five a minute, at fifteen hundred an hour, at thirty-six thousand a day, those lungs would move one million more times.

Somehow I could not imagine Mackin asleep. I could see him feigning sleep, as though he were some invader from an alien planet forced to conform to our needs to prevent suspicion. I could not imagine him asleep, or as a child, or weeping.

I wondered if I was being too imaginative about him, because it did not seem possible to me that he could have lived here for so long without others being aware of a curious aura of evil about him, a special calculated alertness. In all honesty I knew that I looked at him and saw what I wanted to see. It was the same way that others had looked at Alister Landy and seen, in his every gesture and change of expression, the pervert, the rapist, the murderer. Suspicion creates a wrong interpretation of each symbol. It may well be that there is a blackness in each one of us that, on an almost primal level, responds to the darkness in another—sees it and understands our kinship with every foulness—just as we have an equivalent kinship with every grace. Direct public suspicion at any honest man, back it up with a distortion of facts, spread new slanders; and not only will there be a quick willingness to believe, but the man himself, made aware of all this, will give all the responses of guilt as he tries to persuade all of his innocence. The blush of outrage is no different in tint than the blush of shame.

I could think of no trap for him. I could think of no way to find proof. An expert accountant might be able to go over his books and find that there had been a constant drain of money that had ceased with the death of Jane Ann. Yet Mackin had only to confess to an imaginary infatuation with an unknown woman, or to a weakness for dice. It could be proven that Jane Ann had funds from some unknown source. It could be shown that Mackin had the opportunity and the necessary knowledge of the movements of the principals to commit the crime successfully. But that was not enough. There had to be more.

And I had a feeling that there was more information that I did not have. The crime seemed unnecessarily involved, more complicated than the circumstances demanded. I felt as though I could see only a portion of Mackin’s motivation.

I dressed and went down to breakfast. When I was nearly finished, Mary Staubs came in and told me that a man named Arma wanted to talk to me. He was waiting in the lounge. She had told him I was having breakfast.

Arma was a dark, serious young man, compact, rather pallid though husky-looking, icily polite. He showed me credentials. They identified him as Lawrence T. Arma of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation of the State Police. We sat in a corner of the lounge, near the front windows. He had a stenographer’s notebook. He explained that he worked with Lieutenant Frank Leader in a special section that did homicide investigation for the state prosecutor in those areas where municipal police forces were not equipped to handle such investigations. He said that he had worked with Lieutenant Leader on the Landy case and that now he was after information on the Garson case. Chief Score had told him that I could give evidence.

He wanted my full name, occupation, permanent address, birth place, date of birth. He printed proper names in his notebook and took the rest of the information in fast competent-looking shorthand.

“Now just tell me what happened Monday night.”

“Where do I start?”

“You were with Miss Garson, I understand.”

“Not exactly. I wanted to talk to her.”

“You knew her? You had dated her before?”

“Look, Arma. Let’s get on the right track. I’d never seen the girl before. I have no intention of dating any jail bait.”

Some of the icy politeness vanished, and he looked more human. “Sorry. What did you want to talk to her about?”

“Didn’t Score tell you that? She was Jane Ann Paulson’s best friend. You must have known that.”

“Yes. We talked to her in the spring. What’s your interest in the Landy case?”

“I—I intend to marry Victoria Landy. She isn’t convinced her brother did it. Neither am I. That’s a very unpopular attitude around this town.”

“I can see how it would be. Why did you want to talk to Ginny Garson?”

I told him about the money, the clothes, the shopping trips. I told him of Ginny’s speculation about where Jane Ann was getting the money. I did not tell him my suspicion of Mackin.

“Why are you taking this down?” I asked him.

“Mr. MacReedy, I can’t afford to have any opinion of the Landy case. It’s out of our hands. We can’t reinvestigate. You picked up something we missed. I can see how you fell over the information, but that isn’t an excuse for our missing it. I can see why the Garson girl wouldn’t volunteer information. She wanted to keep the clothes. I can take this all down because it has a very indirect bearing on the Garson murder.”

“Do you people have any official objection to my nosing around?”

“You have that right. Just so long as you don’t claim to be an officer of the law, carry a gun, or bully other citizens, or take pay for your work.”

“Are you satisfied with the Landy conviction?”

“Lieutenant Leader is satisfied. It was a good piece of work.”

“Can I ask you one question about that? It’s something that has been bothering me.”

“Go ahead.”

“There was so much physical evidence against Landy that I have to go on the assumption he was framed, and the evidence planted. The tire track can be explained by the fact he and Nancy Paulson parked there the previous night. The hair can be explained by the fact that Jane Ann had ridden in the car on several occasions. The blood, the knife and the purse would have to be the objects planted. But there was a chance they would never be found. That would endanger the actual murderer. I would think that after going to that trouble, the murderer would have done something to direct suspicion at Landy, rather than just wait and hope you fellows would be sharp enough to locate that evidence.”

Arma looked troubled. He made an aimless doodle in the margin of his notes. He didn’t answer.

“I’ve talked to John Tennant,” I said. “Suppose there had been such a signpost pointing at Landy. That would increase any amount of reasonable doubt that he had been framed. Tennant would certainly have brought that out at the trial. It might have helped.”

“I’m not in any position to tell you anything.”

“But you know something. Maybe with what I have and what you have, Tennant could get another stay of execution.”

“I don’t have anything that would do you any good.”

“You aren’t a lawyer.”

“But I know the rules of evidence.” He sat for a time, apparently making up his mind. He sighed heavily. “So okay. So I stick my neck out. I’ve got to trust you not to make a big stink about this. If you try, it’ll be denied by Leader and by everybody else. By God, I’ll deny it too. I’m only telling you because maybe it will help a little, give you a little more to go on. It bothered me at the time. It still bothers me. Every time you get a case like that one, you get a lot of tips, many of them anonymous, usually all of them worthless.