Malice in Wonderland Page 7

  His home near the county seat, which he occupied with his wife Celeste and their three children, was a handsome ranch-style structure and one that could be easily expanded into a summer mansion appropriate for a governorship.

  The telephone rang, and Pinker found Dr. Lawrence Ford, the county medical examiner, on the line.

  “Thought you might want to know, Oz,” Ford said. “Those two homicides in Halcyon are turning into pretty hot stuff.”

  “Homicides? Two? I thought it was a simple drowning.”

  “That was what it looked like at first, but Sibley says it’s definitely murder. With a repeat last night, presumably by the same joe, of a strangling.”

  “Look—take it easy, Larry. I just got up. Been packing for Nassau with the Andersons.”

  “Better unpack, Oz. This has busted out into main-line stuff—socialites, money, abduction, nationwide coverage. Sibley’s given me a run-down for as far as he knows.”

  Ford relayed as much of the situation as he had gathered from Sibley. Reluctantly Pinker canceled the Nassau cruise and headed his car for Halcyon.

  He found the motel, already filled to mid-season capacity, further overrun with the press, the wire services, radio, and TV. He diplomatically ran this gantlet and finally was closeted alone with Duggan in the unit that had been occupied by Theda Sangford and in which Duggan had set up shop. Every other rental was splitting its seams.

  They shook hands. Pinker wiped his brow. “Let’s get on,” he said. “Right now the job reads like a page from Through the Looking-Glass—a floater that isn’t, a matricide that isn’t, an arrest that isn’t, and some rigmarole about a Gettler test busting the case wide open. Just what is a Gettler test?”

  “Basically it’s used to prove drowning.”

  “But we knew that. That the Sangford woman was drowned.”

  “Sure, but we didn’t know how. Or where.”

  “Where? Sort of silly, isn’t it? To section off the Atlantic Ocean—X marks the wave?”

  Duggan smiled back. “That isn’t the angle. The real value of the Gettler test is that it can show whether the drowning took place in fresh water or in salt.”

  Pinker was immediately interested. Here was something he could use, really sink his teeth into and dramatically present before a jury. Like the cornucopia trick with the colored silks.

  “Tell me,” he said, “exactly how.”

  “Well, let’s take the heart. There’s two of them, two sides really. The left and the right. When a guy drowns he inhales water, and this water is absorbed into the blood of the pulmonary veins and finally reaches the left heart.”

  “I get the emphasis.”

  “Now, if the drowning takes place in fresh water, the left heart’s blood contains less sodium chloride than the right.”

  “Sodium chloride, if I remember my primer, being plain, common salt.”

  “Just about, but try and catch an M.D. admitting it. Then, on the other hand, if the drowning took place in sea water, the left heart would contain a much higher saline content than the right. That’s what the Gettler test is based on.”

  “I see where you’re heading. But, look here, take that swimming pool out there. That’s fresh water, certainly so far as a jury’s notion of it is concerned, and yet it’s purified by chlorination. The defense is bound to latch onto that angle and make a field day of it. Doesn’t it throw the test out of the window?”

  “No. By state specification the chlorine content of swimming pools must be kept down within minus point four and minus point six percent. Sibley adjusted for that in his analysis. Sangford was drowned in fresh water, but not in a fresh-water, chlorinated pool. She was drowned in that bathtub right inside that room there.”

  “Apart from the Gettler test, got any evidence?”

  “Plenty. The minute I saw the body I knew the setup was wrong. You see, I’ve been a lifeguard. I’m familiar with floaters. There was the way the body lay and the pattern of sand that had dried on her skin.”

  “Sand patterns. Interesting. I’ll use them. What was unique about them?”

  Duggan, from papers on the desk, selected two photographs that Roth had taken. He handed them to Pinker.

  “Take a look.”

  Pinker studied the shots intently. “I’d say she’d first been dumped down flat, then arranged on her side. If she’d been washed ashore she’d have been more bundled, and the tide would have cleaned off the sand.”

  “That’s exactly what’s unique about the patterns. There shouldn’t be any. Then her hair. There was no bathing cap.”

  “But don’t they thrash around? Couldn’t she have yanked it off herself while drowning? I’m simply exploring the defense again, Duggan. We know she never wore one. Not in a tub. What about the hair?”

  “Some of it had streaked over her face and I brushed it back. Near the scalp it was not only damp but soft damp, fresh-water damp, not sticky.”

  “That’s a pretty fine distinction, isn’t it?”

  “Very. Not a guy in a hundred would notice it, and it will get you nowhere as evidence. But there was hair oil, and that will.”

  “Yes, it’s good—salt water would wash the oil off with any sort of submersion, but not a short ducking under fresh.”

  “Then there are the bruise marks on her ankles, when he yanked her up by the feet to pull her head under.”

  “Do you know something? It’s like that famous old case in England when bathtubs were still a novelty. Was it England or here?”

  “I remember the one you mean. The guy married a bunch of wives, caught their heels while they took a bath, yanked up, and their heads went under. And right away he was once more a rich widower. Simple as pie. Only Jackson elaborated. He dumped the body by the sea before proposed Suspect Number One, young Dean, was due to trot down to the beach for a daybreak rendezvous.”

  “Slow up a bit. I’m puzzled about how come Miss Sangford would lie quietly, and I might add fully exposed, in a tub of water and let Jackson wander in without her yelping?”

  “No trouble there. They were married. About a year before she bought herself a bigamy charge by marrying Dean. I got that from New York when they put Sangford’s record through the mill.”

  “Then that’s the motive—bigamy. That kid she was going to have figures too, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Sure to be along those lines. I think she was dealing Jackson out. We’ll dig it out of him. Incidentally, she took that bath about four in the morning, probably to try and sober her wits before Jackson got there. We can be pretty certain she was expecting him.”

  “How?”

  “She had Jimmy, the bartender, drop off a couple of bottles of scotch after the bar closed. Jackson’s fingerprints are on one of them. Probably needed a slug after he’d finished the tub end of the job.”

  Pinker was enchanted. “That nails it. That nails him smack on the scene of the crime. Wonder why he was careless? Didn’t wipe off things in here he’d touched?”

  “He was conceited enough to be positive this would never be considered the scene of the killing. He’d have made book that the ocean would be officially accepted as the spot, with young Dean set up alongside as the prize goat.”

  Pinker mulled for a moment such evidence as there was at hand, digesting it, dovetailing it with the more general picture he had been given earlier over the telephone by the medical examiner.

  “Tell me,” he said, “what put you onto him? Almost everything pointed toward Dean, or his mother, or even the Spangs.”

  “His lies, and the fact that he held the key position in the whole setup.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it, how even the smartest of them will lie and expect to get away with it?”

  “They get cocky. Jackson knew we had no reason to suspect him—that’s while I first was questioning him about the Sangford-Dean marriage deal—and that’s when he slipped.”

  “What did he lie about?”

  “Telling about the couple of months during wh
ich he acted as pay-off man for Dean to keep the marriage under the hatch. Jackson claimed he knew nothing about Sangford whatever, didn’t know where she lived, said she always contacted him by phone at the Deans’ and arranged a time and meeting place. Well, in the first place it seemed funny to me that he hadn’t tailed her; then when her record came through from New York, listing her as a probable call girl from a small book of men’s numbers by the phone in her apartment—”

  “Of course. You checked the telephone directory.”

  “Our local operator had a Manhattan book and she looked it up. Theda Sangford was listed in it for anybody to see, and that laid Jackson’s story about not knowing where she lived wide open. The rest was simple arithmetic.”

  “What a complete louse. Think of it, Duggan. His own wife for bait. Now about the strangling—I suppose Mrs. Dean got onto something, or else Jackson thought she had.”

  “He knew she was waiting, and her patience was out of character.” Duggan became succinct. He was increasingly worried as to why the general alarm for the Cadillac didn’t show results. He said tersely, “Jackson knew that a woman like Mrs. Dean would have blasted him the minute she found out he had two-timed her about the secret marriage. Unless she was getting wise to a hotter vengeance—like his being the killer. Actually, Mrs. Spang was told by Mrs. Dean that Mrs. Dean ‘knew something.’ The word spread, and naturally Jackson got it. To him, it fitted. Same setup with Fernandez.”

  “You planted that, of course.”

  “Sure, and those things will be confirmed when we nab him—along with odds and ends like a funnel, rubber gloves, how he missed finding the Dean marriage certificate, and et cetera. But right now I’m worried—bad.”

  “About Dean and Miss Spang? So am I. I suppose the only reason why they haven’t been spotted is that they’ve holed in.”

  “No, I’ve been thinking. There may be another answer. Mario.” Duggan put through a call for the Club Continental, and a harsh male voice barked, “Yes?”

  “I’m Duggan. Police Chief, Halcyon. I want to speak with Mario.”

  “You can’t. He’s asleep. He never gets up before three in the afternoon.”

  “Wake him.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “You heard me.”

  “It’s a tough job, Chief.”

  “Do it.”

  “Well, if you say so.”

  Shortly Mario’s rich voice said frowsily, “It is I, Mario. Why do you do this bad thing to me, Duggan?”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  Mario’s voice was complacent. “Ah—my little fib.”

  “Your little fib may result in killing Dean and Miss Spang.”

  “Do not joke with me while I am sleeping.”

  “Get this, Mario. Dean and Jenny Spang have been kidnapped by Jackson.”

  “That is so terrible? A watchdog gathers up his sheep? For that I am woke up at”—Mario’s voice plunged into horror—“mama mia, it is but eleven o’clock!”

  “For God’s sake, snap out of it. Jackson’s no watchdog. He’s a killer. He’s the killer. Does that sink in?”

  Mario’s voice sharped to complete seriousness. “Yes, and at once I will tell you. If anything should happen to those two nice rich kids because of me I would kill myself.”

  “That, I doubt.”

  “No matter. It is a noble thought. When Mr. Dean comes to my office last night he cashes this check for one thousand dollars. But it is not for the cages or the wheel. He has arranged a plan during the daytime in secret with Miss Spang. They are to elope. They are to drive to Georgia, where you can get married simply by opening your mouth—Duggan, why are they not now in Georgia?”

  “I don’t know. Get back on line.”

  “It is true as I told you last night that I loaned him a car, but it was not one of the Cadillacs.”

  “Why did you say that it was?”

  “I didn’t. You did. It was a thing you took for granted. Me, I simply played along. Remember?”

  Duggan remembered. “But why?” he asked.

  “So that Mr. Dean would not be disturbed on his honeymoon. It would have been indelicate to let him be hauled back by cops for the foolish reason that his mother got herself justifiably killed. I am a sentimental man.”

  “Mr. Shylock was too. What car did Dean take?”

  “I told Slick to give him any car he wanted, and he took Slick’s.”

  “What make?”

  “It is a Pontiac convertible. Very red all over, which may be why it appealed to Mr. Dean for the happy occasion. Most festive.”

  “Don’t crowd it. What year? License number?”

  “You will relax while I find out such things from Slick. He is by my side. It is he who risked his life to wake me up.”

  After a muttered off-the-line conversation, Mario’s voice returned and gave Duggan the data he wanted. Duggan thanked him, jotted the license number of the Pontiac on a pad, and hung up.

  “Wrong car?” Pinker asked.

  “Wrong car.”

  * * * *

  The canal alongside the road was choked with suede green leaves and the lavender of water hyacinth, while high in the shimmery heat over sage palmetto fans and turpentine trees a buzzard lazed.

  For mile after safe, swift mile Bert, like spring, had been busting out all over with an almost drunken, arrogant sense of content. Boy, he told himself happily, you’ve got a rainbow round your shoulder. Along this sparsely traveled stretch, which led to the cutoff through the savanna to the hunting shack, nothing could happen, and the dangerous part of the job would be over. The initial flight.

  Even along the more populated highways the luck had held. One road-patrol car, one cruiser from the sheriff’s office. A steady forty-per in passing them and all had been smooth. One thought had bothered: his being in swim trunks. But he was also, he remembered, in Florida, where plenty of joes you saw in cars looked stripped.

  And here along this desolate route he was satisfied, from frequent glancings in the rear-view mirror, that he had no tail. Only that buzzard hanging in the sky. Only that yellow helicopter traipsing away like an old maid in long skirts far up above in the hot, cloudless blue. From, Bert casually thought, one of the fields in the general area.

  A sputter brought his eyes sharply to the panel. The gas indicator stood at Empty. A towering rage swept over him at his own lulled stupidity.

  “When did you fill this crate last?” he snapped at Jenny.

  “We were going to last night, but we stopped at a roadhouse and Ernest—well, when we came out Ernest couldn’t drive.”

  “I’ve been wondering why you turned back.”

  “I couldn’t face it. Landing at that hour of the night someplace with Ernest the way he was and—”

  “Skip the blueprints.” Bert threw a disgusted look at the wreck on her other side. “How a neat package like you could ever tie up with a ribbon-winner stewpot like him. It gets me.”

  “I love him. I love him very much.”

  Bert reserved his blistering reaction to this starched lace valentine as his rage vanished before visual proof that his luck was still hot. A piece ahead, just coming into eye reach like a blessing, stood what resembled a small, weather-tired general store. Two gas pumps were before its porch.

  Bert coasted onto the shoulder, the car’s engine dead. He indulged in swift reflection. The distant store looked lifeless and the car, he felt, would still have been unobserved.

  “Stay put,” he said to Jenny.

  He got out and opened the luggage compartment. Among its small litter of contents a length of towline and a wipe rag pleased him.

  He said to Jenny, “Get out.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Bert leaned loosely on the open door.

  “Do you play it my way, or do you get a tire iron shacked up in your head?”

  Jenny got out. Using the towline and the wipe rag, he wrapped her up. He lifted her into the luggage compartme
nt and slammed the lid. He fished the wallet from Ernest’s pocket and was enchanted to find that it held, at a rough estimate, over eight or nine hundred bucks. Carrying it in his hand, he walked toward the store.

  It was farther away than it had seemed, and his bare feet burned with every step as they flattened on the blacktop. This, however, was a minor irritation. The over-all picture continued sound. He got to the store and hoped that somebody inside its dying shell would still be alive. He went into a twilight clutter.

  “Anybody here?” he called.

  A door opened in the room’s rear and a bovine young woman, bulging in a play suit, came out of the shadows and inspected him.

  “Been swimming, mister?”

  “Many times, sugar ball, and let’s cut the Abbott-and-Costello, shall we? I’m out of gas. Got a gallon can? I’ll fill up when I bring it back.”

  “I’ll go look and see. I think Ezra left an empty in the utility room maybe a week or so ago.”

  Minutes treacled through Bert’s impatience in the fly-buzzing shade, and mosquitoes, abroad from the surrounding swampland, pulled their sneak attacks. Finally, after a good endless quarter of an hour, the young woman returned.

  “I got a can.”

  He said irritably, “That’s peachy, ma’am. Just peachy. Let’s fill it.”

  The can was filled. He gave her a five-dollar bill.

  “Hold it,” he said, “until I come back.”

  He set off toward the car and looked ahead, and his stomach was gripped by inside hands that almost twisted his guts out as he saw that a patrol car was parked alongside the Pontiac. His luck blew up in his head. He dropped the can of gas and tensed to make an offside sprint into the palmettos.

  “Don’t try it, Jackson,” a voice behind him said.

  The sheriff’s deputy was not only a big young man but his right hand held what looked to Bert like a cannon.

  “Just keep moving along the road,” the deputy said.

  Bert moved. He clutched after shredded lifebelts.

  “You’ve got no call to jump me like this.”

  The deputy’s voice was hard and exact. “You are under arrest for abduction and murder.”