Verdict Suspended (2 page)

“Jaime, can you hear me? Jaime, I want to help you.”

Steve snapped the drape shut. He turned and stood with his back to the window. Jaime’s eyes were open now; he stared dazedly into space.

Dr. Curry’s voice continued in a soft monotone. “Do you remember your sister’s party?” he asked.

Jaime’s mouth worked awkwardly. “Sheilah,” he said thickly.

“Yes. Sheilah’s party.”

“Eight o’clock.”

Curry nodded. “The dinner party was for eight o’clock, but you came early. The houseman says you arrived before seven. He served drinks—”

Jaime brightened. “Martinis,” he said. “Albert Trench specials.”

“What did you and Sheilah talk about?”

Now there was resistance. Jaime’s mind was fighting the memory. His fingers scratched nervously at the sheet.

“Trench heard you quarreling,” Curry prodded. “What was it about, Jaime?”

“Greta,” Jaime said. “My girl.”

“Didn’t Sheilah like your girl?”

“She never liked any girl I liked. I warned her. I told her not to say anything to Greta. I told her—” Jaime seemed to forget his listeners. He was going back in time. The tone of his voice changed. It rose sharply in anger. “I’m going to marry Greta…. You can’t stop me…. You can’t!”

Curry glanced at Steve. He still stood with his back against the doors, his face slightly moist with perspiration. He started to speak but Curry gestured him to remain silent.

“What did Sheilah say when you told her that?” Curry prompted.

“She said, ‘I’m cutting you out, Jaime. I told Steve. I’m cutting you out without a cent.’”

“Cutting you out of what?”

“Out of the business … everything. I didn’t believe her…. I yelled at her…. I threw my drink at her. She stepped back and fell …”

Jaime’s voice stopped. His mind didn’t want to go on. He stirred fitfully, fighting some private demon. When he looked up a second time, Steve stood at the foot of the bed.

“A broken glass was found by the body,” Steve said. “A martini glass.”

Curry was puzzled. “What did he mean—’Sheilah told Steve’?”

“I’ll explain later. Dr. Curry, this is important. This is the point where Jaime’s mind hits a block: ‘Sheilah fell.’ He’s told the same story a dozen times, but that’s where it stops. ‘Sheilah fell.’”

Curry’s attention returned to the patient on the bed. Distinctly, he said: “Jaime, what happened after Sheilah fell?”

They waited. The quiet in the room was like the holding of breath. Faintly, from the corridor, came the busy noises of the nurses; but inside the room there was only the waiting and Jaime Dodson fighting a battle with his mind.

“What happened, Jaime?” Curry asked again.

“Sheilah fell … her foot slipped when I threw the glass.” The words came haltingly. Each syllable was being forced. “I reached down and picked up the poker”—Jaime waited for long seconds—”and then I killed her,” he said.

The gigantic effort he had made to bring the confession from the darkest corner of his mind left Jaime exhausted. He seemed to collapse back into the pillows.

Curry looked at Steve. The extreme tension had pocked his forehead with perspiration. His eyes were fixed anxiously on Jaime. Curry turned back to the bed.

“You picked up the poker and killed your sister?” Curry repeated quietly.

“I killed her! … I killed her!”

And then Jaime broke. He turned his face against the pillow and closed his eyes on the horror Curry had pried from his mind. His whole body was trembling when Steve, now unnoticed by the attentive Curry, turned away. He walked quickly to the glass doors, slid them open, and stepped outside. The wind had risen. Freshness and the morning sun were a balm to tension-racked nerves. He found a cigarette in his pocket and watched the guard at the rail produce a lighter.

“How is he?” the guard asked.

Steve looked up, questioningly.

“One of the nurses said you were going to try hypnosis,” the guard explained.

“Narcosis,” Steve corrected. “He’s all right.”

“I guess there’s not much they can’t do to get inside a man’s mind these days.”

Steve’s hand was steady at the lighter, but it was uncomfortable to be so close to a man whose eyes were hungry for information. He thanked the guard and walked farther down the ramp. There was no red sail on the horizon now; but from this vantage point he could see the beach and the jutting crag above it where the sun glinted on the glass-peaked roof of Sheilah’s house. Like Sheilah, it was dramatic in simplicity, defiant of conventional design. To some it might be shocking—as was Sheilah; but she never contrived to shock. The unusual, the unique, the independent were hers by nature. No man had ever really known her, least of all Steve Quentin. The cigarette, forgotten, burned to his fingers. He tossed it away angrily. This was no time for morbid remembrance.

When Dr. Curry emerged from Jaime’s room he found Steve down to his last cigarette. They couldn’t talk on the ramp; the guard was still within earshot. They returned to the room where Jaime’s bed was now concealed behind a shielding screen.

“He’s sleeping,” Curry said, “but you have a problem. When I brought the patient out of narcosis he remembered nothing of the confession.”

Steve was stunned. “Nothing?”

“It’s not unusual. I’ve seen it happen before. When the guilt-producing incident is great enough the mind refuses to acknowledge it except through hypnosis or narcosis. Once the mind is out of this state, the forbidden knowledge is pushed back into the unconscious.”

“But that’s incredible!” Steve stepped around the edge of the screen and looked down at the bed. In sleep Jaime was childlike. His face was sensitive and innocent, his mouth relaxed and sensual. There was a trace of Sheilah in him—the bone structure, the narrow, high-cut nostrils. “Dr. Curry,” Steve reflected, “do you mean that if I put Jaime Dodson on the witness stand now he could testify—under oath—that he had not killed his sister?”

“No, he couldn’t do that,” Curry answered. “He could testify to exactly what he could have testified to before I came here: that he quarreled with his sister, tossed the glass at her, and remembers nothing more.” Dr. Curry buried his hands in the pockets of his jacket and regarded Steve Quentin from under a pair of shaggy eyebrows. “And we have no transcript of the confession,” he added.

“It wouldn’t matter if we had,” Steve said. “The state doesn’t admit evidence acquired through the injection of barbiturates.”

“Then why …?”

“Why did I have you conduct this experiment? For my own benefit as Jaime’s counsel. It never occurred to me that something like this would happen—that he would confess and then lose all remembrance of the confession.”

“What are you going to do?”

Steve didn’t answer for several seconds. The draperies were still drawn, the room was in semi-darkness. He could feel Curry’s eyes watching and waiting for an answer. Finally Steve said:

“Defend him.”

“Knowing that he’s guilty?”

“But I don’t know it! There were no fingerprints on the poker, Doctor. Just bloodstains. There was no eyewitness to the murder: just one person who saw Jaime drive away from the house minutes before Sheilah’s body was found. When I defend Jaime, I intend to leave behind everything that’s happened here today…. Does that shock you?”

“I don’t shock easily,” Curry admitted, “but what about me? Where do I leave what’s happened here today?”

“You won’t be called to the stand.”

“But, Mr. Quentin, I can’t ignore murder!”

Curry was an obstinate man, probably a dedicated one. Steve appraised him now as an adversary; but the law was on Steve’s side and the law was Steve’s forte.

“Please, this is more than a legal case to me,” he insisted. “I’ve known Jaime Dodson since he was two years old. I knew his sister. She was a dominating woman and that caused friction—but Jaime isn’t a criminal!”

“Now you do shock me,” Curry said. “Isn’t murder a crime?”

“You heard the confession! It was a crime of passion and provoked anger. It was almost an accident!”

Steve looked down at Jaime again, asleep and totally oblivious of the discussion going on over his bed. He would go into a courtroom as unaware of guilt as he was at this moment. He would hear testimony as puzzling to him as it would be to the jury. He would project an innocence no degree of questioning could embarrass.

“No, Dr. Curry,” Steve concluded, “the confession is out. If the state won’t recognize the evidence, neither will I. Sheilah wouldn’t want Jaime’s life jeopardized. My conscience will be clear.”

Steve spoke in a solemn tone, as if passing judgment on himself. Satisfied, he turned to leave the room, but Dr. Curry blocked his way. He wasn’t convinced.

“That’s a very convenient solution for you, Mr. Quentin,” he said, “but I have one question. What about my conscience?”

The Marina County Courthouse dated back to the era of General Frémont and the Republic of California. An imposing stucco portico, vine-covered, weathered with time and sea air, led into a thick-walled, brick-floored foyer. At the far end of the foyer heavy double doors opened into the courtroom where District Attorney Morales Ryan had requested an official hearing into the matter of the death of Sheilah Dodson. It was an ugly business. Ryan, whose family had inhabited the area since an early Ryan answered the call of lust and greed and joined the migration to the gold fields, had no brief for Sheilah Dodson. Deep within him coursed an instinctive distrust of a woman whose success was not based primarily on the function of wife and mother. But Sheilah’s talent and industry had brought honor and success to the community, and now her violent death was bringing publicity of a less flattering kind. Cypress Point was attracting a trade it didn’t want: the out-of-town press, wire service representatives, curiosity seekers. The vulgar occasion they had made of Sheilah’s simple burial service, held within hours of Jaime’s release from hospital, still rankled, ten days later. The sooner the sordid matter was disposed of, the better for all concerned.

Accordingly, as soon as practical, Coroner Arthur Swenson convened a jury of local citizens empowered to hear evidence and, if possible, bring in an indictment of a suspect in what was so obviously homicidal death. It was a gathering of local elite in the small courtroom, and they told their stories in an air charged with carefully repressed emotions.

On the day of her death Sheilah Dodson had arranged an impromptu dinner party. The guest list consisted of the five people most closely associated with her enterprises: Jaime Dodson, her brother and partner; Greta Muldoon, his fiancée; a husband-and-wife team, Cyrus and Tilde Shepherd, contractor and decorator respectively, who were involved in Sheilah’s latest project, the Cypress Point Cultural Center, and her attorney and long-time friend, Steve Quentin.

Cyrus Shepherd answered to nothing more formal than “Cy” to anyone in Cypress Point. He was a broad-shouldered giant with close-cropped red hair, quick blue eyes, and the uncomfortable attitude of a man of action forced into the limelight of a macabre duty.

“I was working at the downtown office—trying to get a few bugs out of the Cultural Center plans—when Sheilah called,” he stated. “It was about four-thirty in the afternoon. She said she wanted Tilde and me to come to dinner at her house at eight o’clock. Then she hung up. She used her commander-in-chief voice.”

Swenson, bespectacled and self-conscious, was awed by his socialite witnesses. His conduct of the inquiry could completely miss the finer subtleties. Fortunately, California law provided that the district attorney could attend any inquest into a death where homicide was indicated, and Morales Ryan’s quick and ambitious mind missed nothing.

“Commander in chief?” he echoed. “What do you mean?”

Shepherd smiled wryly. “Sheilah Dodson was a well-organized woman,” he explained. “She wasn’t difficult to get along with, but she was definite. If she told anyone to come to dinner at eight, she meant ‘be there,’ period.”

Ryan was anxious to get back to the facts. “And so you arrived at the Dodson house at eight,” he suggested.

“No, we didn’t,” Shepherd admitted. “Tilde, my wife, spent the afternoon looking at upholstery fabrics. When Tilde gets her nose in a sample book she loses all track of time. We reached the house at eight-ten exactly. I had my eye on the dashboard clock all the way.”

“What did you find when you arrived?”

“First of all, Greta—that’s Greta Muldoon, Jaime Dodson’s fiancée. She heard us drive in and came running to meet us.”

“Running from the house, do you mean?”

Shepherd reflected. “No,” he said. “She was outside, in the parking area. She was crying—almost hysterical. ‘Did you see Jaime?’ she asked. ‘Did you pass him on the road?’”

Ryan’s eyes moved from the witness to where Greta Muldoon sat waiting her turn to testify. She was a stunning woman—slender, blonde, modestly attired in a fitted black suit and a small black hat. She glanced toward Jaime, who slouched darkly beside Steve Quentin, and her face wore a whisper of a smile. There was warmth in it, and loyalty.

Cyrus Shepherd continued his story: “We hadn’t seen Jaime and told her so. Then she led us into the house. Sheilah was on the floor in front of the fireplace—dead. She’d been struck on the side of the head with a poker.”

Ryan didn’t dwell on the murder. The coroner’s findings, certified by a qualified pathologist, had already been read into the record. He steered Shepherd back to the time of arrival at Sheilah’s house.

“Why did Miss Muldoon ask if you had seen Jaime Dodson?” he queried.

“Because she had,” Shepherd answered. “Greta explained, after we quieted her down, that she arrived at the house a few minutes before eight. Jaime’s car was parked in the driveway—it’s a flashy sports job. No chance of making a mistake about that. Greta pulled her car into the parking area just off the driveway, but before she could finish parking Jaime rushed out of the house, leaped into his car, and drove off. He didn’t see her or hear her cry out.”

“And it was after this incident that Miss Muldoon entered the house and found Sheilah Dodson’s body?”