Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (16 page)

“This
is
your knife, and you
did
hide it behind those books in your bookcase.”

“Yes.”

“And you now say you used this knife to stab Michelle Cassidy on the night of April sixth.”

“Yes.”

“How about last night? Did you use this knife to stab her
last
night?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you use some
other
knife to stab her last night?”

“I didn’t stab her last night.”

“You stabbed her
Monday
night, but not last night.”

“That’s correct.”

“Would you care to explain that, Mr. Milton?”

Milton turned, looked at his attorney. O’Brien nodded.

“Well …” Milton said.

And now he told Nellie and the assembled detectives how the idea had been Michelle’s from the very start … well,
premised on
something he’d said while they were in bed together this past Sunday night. She’d been complaining about how
stupid
the play was,
Romance,
the play they were rehearsing, and Johnny had mentioned that the play had pretensions of being something it couldn’t ever
possibly be, there was simply no
way
you could turn a murder mystery into a silk purse. He’d gone on to explain that the minute anybody stuck a knife in somebody
else, all attention focused on the victim, and all anybody wanted to know was whodunit.

Which wasn’t such a bad idea, he’d thought.

Focusing attention on the victim.

Which he’d said aloud.

To Michelle.

“It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get some attention focused on
you,”
he’d said, “never mind the dumb
play.“

Well, if there’s anything an actress loves, it’s getting attention focused on her. The minute he mentioned this thought—what
was actually just a passing thought, an idle thought, a whim, you know—Michelle wanted to now what he meant, what
kind
of attention? He had mentioned somebody sticking a knife in a person, which happens in the play, of course, and now she picked
up on that, saying it was too bad some nut out there didn’t get it in his head to stab
her,
the way the girl in the play gets stabbed, which would certainly focus a lot of attention on her, and wouldn’t hurt the play
besides, since a stabbing is what happens in it. The whole damn audience would be sitting there waiting for the stabbing scene,
knowing that Michelle had been stabbed in real life, though not as seriously as the girl in the play, who almost gets killed
from what she could determine, although it was such a goofy play that the next minute she’s up off the floor and answering
the Detective’s questions,
sheeesh.

“Too bad there
isn’t
some nut out there,” she’d said, and they’d lain there in each other’s arms, quiet for a while, and then she said, “Why does
it have to be some nut?”

“What do you mean?” he’d said.

“Why don’t we
get
someone to do it? Stab me. Not too seriously. Just seriously enough to focus attention on me. As the victim.”

Well, they’d discussed this for a while, back and forth, and she finally agreed with his opinion that if you ever hired somebody
to do something like that, it always carne out in the wash. Whoever did the job always came clean for one reason or another,
and it would all lead right back to them and have the opposite effect from the one intended.

“Why can’t it be someone we know real well?” Michelle said. “Who does the stabbing, I mean.”

So they batted
this
around for a while, back and forth, trying to think of anyone they knew who could be trusted first to stab her not too seriously
and then to keep his mouth shut afterward …

“Or even hers,” Michelle offered.

… but they couldn’t come up with anyone, male or female, who they felt they could absolutely, positively trust to pull this
off and not implicate them later on.

“How about
you?
” Michelle suggested.

The idea of him stabbing her did not immediately appeal to him. He wasn’t sure, first of all, that he could succeed in stabbing
her “not too seriously,” as she kept putting it, because he was not a surgeon, after all, and he had no idea what arteries
or veins might be inside her chest or her shoulder that could rupture and cause her to bleed to death if he hit one of them
by accident. So she lowered the strap of the sheer purple baby-doll nightgown she’d been wearing that night, and showed him
her shoulder, and together they started poking and probing, trying to figure out how to stab her without doing
too
much harm. They finally figured that he could just
cut
her rather than actually stab her, and they decided to do it the following night, when the cast broke for dinner.

“But it was her idea,” Milton said.

“To focus attention on her.”

“Yes. First to go to the cops and tell them she’d been threatened …”

“Which she did.”

“Yes. It was also her idea to say the person calling her sounded like Jack Nicholson.”

“I see,” Nellie said.

“Yes. Because Nicholson sounds very menacing even when he isn’t trying to be. The whole idea was to get media attention.”

“Which is exactly what happened,” Nellie said.

“Yes. We got a lot of attention.”

“So why’d you kill her?”

“Now, now, Counselor,” O’Brien said.

“Why’d you kill her, Mr. Milton?”

“I didn’t.”

“When’s the last time you saw her, Mr. Milton?”

“When I left the house yesterday morning.”

“Do you have your own keys to the apartment, by the way?”

“I do, yes.”

“What time did you leave yesterday morning?”

“Around nine.”

“Lock up after you?”

“No. Michelle was still in the apartment.”

“Where’d you go?”

“To my office. These detectives came to see me there around eleven o’clock.”

“What time did you leave the office?”

“I went out for lunch around twelve-thirty, I guess it was.

“Who with?”

“Producer named Elliot Michaelman.”

“Did you go back to the office after lunch?”

“I did.”

“What time would that have been?”

“A little after three.”

“When did you see Michelle again?”

“I didn’t,”

“You didn’t see her from when you left the apartment at nine that morn … ?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, didn’t you go
back
to the apartment, Mr. Milton? Isn’t that where you
live?“

“Yes, but I didn’t go there last night.”

“Why not?”

“Because we had a fight on the phone.”

“Oh?” Nellie said, and saw the warning glance O’Brien shot Milton. “When was this?” she asked at once.

“I guess around six o’clock. I tried the theater as soon as I got back from a meeting, but they’d already stopped rehearsing
for the day, so I kept calling the apartment every ten minutes till I reached her.”

“And you say this was around six o’clock.”

“Yes. She’d just come in.”

“What’d you fight about, Mr. Milton?”

“I told her the detectives here had come to my office, and she was worried they might be getting suspicious.” “That doesn’t
sound like a fight to me.”

“Well, she finally said that if they came to the apartment asking questions, she would say she didn’t know anything about
it, that I must’ve dreamt up the whole thing on my own, without telling her about it. She told me she wasn’t going down with
me, she was going to be a star.”

“Then what?”

“I told her she was the one who’d
planned
the damn thing, for Christ’s sake! So she said
^`
Prove
it
’ and hung up.

“How’d you feel about that?”

“Rotten.”

“In addition to feeling rotten, did you also feel
angry
?”

“No, I just felt rotten. I thought we were supposed to love each other. I wouldn’t have gone along with her scheme if I hadn’t
loved her. I did it for her. So she really
could
become a star. I’ve known her since she was
ten,
I’ve been grooming her all that time.”

“And now she tells you you’re on your own, right?” “In essence, yes.”

“If they catch you …”

“Yeah.”

“… she knew nothing about it.”

“Yeah.”

“She
gets her shot at stardom …”

“Well, yeah.”

“…while
you
go to jail for assault.”

“I wasn’t thinking about jail. I was thinking we were supposed to love each other.”

“So you decided to kill her.”

“No, I didn’t kill her.”

“You had nothing to lose anymore …”

“No …”

“So you went back to the apartment …”

“No, I didn’t. I never left the office. I. sent out for a sandwich and a bottle of beer …”

“When? What time?”

“Around six.”

“It was delivered at six?”

“Six-fifteen, six-twenty.”

“Who delivered it?”

“Some black kid. I ordered it from a deli on the Stem.”

“Name of the deli?”

“I have it in the office. On one of those menus they slide under the door.”

“But you don’t know the name of the deli offhand.”

“I don’t.”

“How about the kid who delivered your order? Know him?”

“By sight.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“No.”

“And you say he delivered your sandwich and beer …”

“And some fries.”

“… and some fries at six-fifteen, six-twenty.”

“Yes, around then.”

“Then what?”

“I ate.”

“Then what?”

“I went to sleep.”

“You went home to sleep?”

“No. I slept in the office.”

“Anyone
see
you sleeping there?”

“No. But I was there when Lizzie came in this morning. My secretary. Elizabeth Campieri.”

“Found you
sleeping,
did she?”

“No, I was awake by then.”

“Is there anyone who can say with certainty that you were in that office all last night?”

“No, but …”

“Is there anyone who can say with certainty that you didn’t
leave
the office after your sandwich was delivered at six-twenty, and
go
to Michelle Cassidy’s apartment, and
open
the several locks with your keys, and stab …”

“I didn’t …”

“… her to death? Is there anyone who
saw
you where you say you were? Or is this another alibi like the one you had for the night you stabbed her in that theater alleyway?
Are you lying yet another time, Mr. Milton?”

“I am telling you the God’s honest truth. I did not kill Michelle.”

“He done it,” Ollie said. “Go for the jug, Nellie.”

She knew Ollie Weeks only casually, having seen him in the corridors of justice on one or another occasion, but he was already
calling her Nellie, Also, he seemed not to have bathed in a while. But she agreed with him.

“He’s admitted to the assault,” she said. “That’s open and shut. And I think we’ve got enough cause to arrest him on the homicide,
too.”

“I don’t think so,” Careila said.

They all turned to him.

They had asked O’Brien and Milton to wait in the squad-room outside while they deliberated. Lieutenant Byrnes was still seated
in the swivel chair behind his desk. Ollie was overflowing a straight-backed chair near the windows. Nellie had moved across
the room now, as far away from him as possible. Carella stood alongside Kling, near the bookcases opposite Byrnes’s desk.

“What bothers you?” Byrnes asked.

“Motive,” Carella said.

“She threatened to burn him,” Ollie said. “That’s motive enough.”

“I think he’s right,” Byrnes said.

“What does he gain by killing her?” Carella said.

“If he doesn’t kill her, he goes down for the assault.”

“We’ve got him on that, anyway.”

“He done her
before
he knew that,” Ollie said. “He was still figuring if he done her, he’d walk.”

“If I bring both charges on the same indictment,” Nellie said, thinking out loud, “O’Brien can take his misdemeanor plea and
shove it.”

“Why not charge Milton with just the assault?” Carella said.

“Oh, I see,” Ollie said. “You get the assault collar and I get
bupkes,
is that it?”

“You can have
both
collars,” Carella said.

“By rights, both collars are
ours,”
Byrnes said.

“Let’s not debate credit here,” Nellie said. “If there’s no real evidence to support the homicide, then frankly the assault
isn’t
worth
more than a mis. But I think Milton
did
kill her, so how about that?”

“Hooray for you, lady,” Ollie said.

“If we lock him up for Assault Two,” Carella said, “we can explain to the court that we’re still
investigating
the homicide …”

“That’ll make a strong case, all right,” Nellie said.

“It will if we find the evidence we need to back up a …”

“Come on, Steve, we’ve got circumstantial coming out of our ears.”

“I don’t think so. The blood on that knife was caked into the hinge. Really dry blood. The girl was killed …”

“So how long does it take for blood to dry?” Ollie said. “He done her last night, you think the blood’s still gonna be
wet?“

“No, but …”

“The blood’s gonna be
dry,”
Ollie said. “Same as blood from two days ago, three days ago, dry is dry, there are no gradations of dry. What are we talking
here, martinis?”

“Okay, why’d he keep the knife?”

“They do that all the time,” Ollie said, and waved the question away. “Nobody says these guys are rocket scientists.”

“A man’s looking at Murder Two, and he hangs on to the weapon?”

“I’d have thrown it down the nearest sewer,” Kling said.

“Then why didn’t he toss it after the
assault?”
Byrnes asked.

“Right,” Ollie said. “If he didn’t toss it after he stabbed her the
first
time, why would he toss it the
next
time around?”