Archer - The Chill Part 31

"Her name was Let.i.tia Macready--Let.i.tia Macready Bradshaw. Have you ever heard of her?"

"No. How could he be married? He was living at home with his mother."

"There are all kinds of marriages," I said. "He may not have seen his wife in years, and then again he may have. He may have had her living here in town, unknown to his mother or any of his friends. I suspect that was the case, judging from the lengths he went to to cover up his divorce."

McGee said in a confused and shaken voice: "I don't see what it has to do with me."

"It may have a very great deal. If the Macready woman was in town ten years ago, she had a motive for killing your wife--a motive as strong as your own."

He didn't want to think about the woman. He was too used to thinking about himself. "I had no motive. I wouldn't hurt a hair of her head."

"You did, though, once or twice."

He was silent. All I could see of him was his wavy gray hair, like a dusty wig, and his large dishonest eyes trying to be honest: "I hit her a couple of times, I admit it. I suffered the tortures of the d.a.m.ned afterward. You've got to understand, I used to get mean when I got plastered. That's why Connie sent me away, I don't blame her. I don't blame her for anything. I blame myself." He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.

I offered him a cigarette, which he refused. I lit one for myself. The bright trembling patch of sunlight was climbing the bulkhead. It would soon be evening.

"So Bradshaw had a wife," McGee said. He had had time to absorb the information. "And he told me he intended to marry Connie."

"Maybe he did intend to. It would strengthen the woman's motive."

"You honestly think she did it?"

"She's a prime suspect. Bradshaw is another. He must have been a suspect to your daughter, too. She enrolled in his college and took a job in his household to check on him. Was that your idea, McGee?"

He shook his head.

"I don't understand her part in all this. She hasn't been much help in explaining it, either."

"I know," he said. "Dolly's done a lot of lying, starting away back when. But when a little kid lies you don't put the same construction on it as you would an adult."

"You're a forgiving man."

"Oh no I'm not. I went to her with anger in my heart that Sunday I saw her picture in the paper, with her husband. What right did she have to a happy marriage after what she did to me? That's what was on my mind."

"Did you tell her what was on your mind?"

"Yessir, I did. But my anger didn't last. She reminded me so of her mother in appearance. It was like going back twenty years to happier times, when we were first married. We had a real good year when I was in the Navy and Connie was pregnant, with her."

His mind kept veering away from his current troubles. I could hardly blame him, but I urged him back to them: "You gave your daughter a hard time the other Sunday, didn't you?"

"I did at first. I admit that. I asked her why she lied about me in court. That was a legitimate question, wasn't it?"

"I should say so. What was her reaction?"

"She went into hysterics and said she wasn't lying, that she saw me with the gun and everything and heard me arguing with her mother. Which was false, and I told her so. I wasn't even in Indian Springs that night. That stopped her cold."

"Then what?"

"I asked her why she lied about me." He licked his lips and said in a hushed voice: "I asked her if she shot her mother herself, maybe by accident, the way Alice kept that revolver lying around loose. It was a terrible question, but it had to come out. It'd been on my mind for a long time."

"As long ago as your trial?"

"Yeah. Before that."

"And that's why you wouldn't let Stevens cross-examine her?"

"Yeah. I should have let him go ahead. I ended up crossquestioning her myself ten years later."

"What was the result?"

"More hysterics. She was laughing and crying at the same time. I never felt so sorry for anybody. She was as white as a sheet and the tears popped out of her eyes and ran down her face. Her tears looked so _pure_."

"What did she say?"

"She said she didn't do it, naturally."

"Could she have? Did she know how to handle a gun?"

"A little. I gave her a little training, and so did Alice. It doesn't take much gun-handling to pull a trigger, especially by accident."

"You still think it could have happened that way?"

"I don't know. It's mainly what I wanted to talk to you about."

These words seemed to release him from an obscure bondage. He climbed down out of the upper bunk and stood facing me in the narrow aisle. He had on a seaman's black turtleneck, levis, and rubber-soled deck shoes.

"You're in a position to go and talk to her," he said. "I'm not. Mr. Stevens won't. But you can go and ask her what really happened."

"She may not know."

"I realize that. She got pretty mixed up the other Sunday. G.o.d knows I wasn't trying to mix her up. I only asked her some questions. But she didn't seem to know the difference between what happened and what she said in court."

"That story she told in court--did she definitely admit she made it up?"

"She made it up with a lot of help from Alice. I can imagine how it went. 'This is the way it happened, isn't it?' Alice would say. 'You saw your old man with the gun, didn't you?' And after a while the kid had her story laid out for her."

"Would Alice deliberately try to frame you?"

"She wouldn't put it that way to herself. She'd know for a fact I was guilty. All she was doing was making sure I got punished for my crime. She probably fed the kid her lines without knowing she was faking evidence. My dear sister-inlaw was always out to get me, anyway."

"Was she out to get Connie, too?"

"Connie? She doted on Connie. Alice was more like her mother than her sister. There was fourteen-fifteen years' difference in their ages."

"You said she wanted Connie to herself. Her feelings for Connie could have changed if she found out about Bradshaw."

"Not _that_ much. Anyway, who would tell her?"

"Your daughter might have. If she told you, she'd tell Alice."

McGee shook his head. "You're really reaching."

"I have to. This is a deep case, and I can't see the bottom of it yet. Did Alice ever live in Boston, do you know?"

"I think she always lived here. She's a Native Daughter. I'm a native son, but n.o.body ever gave me a medal for it."

"Even Native Daughters have been known to go to Boston. Did Alice ever go on the stage, or marry a man named Macready, or dye her hair red?"

"None of those things sound like Alice."

I thought of her pink fantastic bedroom, and wondered.

"They sound more," McGee was saying, and then he stopped. He was silent for a watching moment. "I'll take that cigarette you offered me."

I gave him a cigarette and lighted it. "What were you going to say?"

"Nothing. I must have been thinking aloud."

"Who were you thinking about?"

"n.o.body you know. Forget it, eh?"

"Come on, McGee. You're supposed to be leveling with me."

"I still have a right to my private thoughts. It kept me alive in prison."

"You're out of prison now. Don't you want to stay out?"

"Not if somebody else has to go in."

"Sucker," I said. "Who are you covering for now?"

"n.o.body."

"Madge Cerhardi?"

"You must be off your rocker."

I couldn't get anything more out of him. The long slow weight of prison forces men into unusual shapes. McGee had become a sort of twisted saint.

chapter 28.

He was about to be given another turn of the screw. When I climbed out into the c.o.c.kpit I saw three men approaching along the floating dock. Their bodies, their hatted heads, were dark as iron against the exploding sunset.

One of them showed me a deputy's badge and a gun, which he held on me while the others went below. I heard McGee cry out once. He scrambled up through the hatch with blue handcuffs on his wrists and a blue gun at his back. The single look he gave me was full of fear and loathing.

They didn't handcuff me, but they made me ride to the courthouse with McGee in the screened rear compartment of the Sheriff's car. I tried to talk to him. He wouldn't speak to me or look in my direction. He believed I had turned him in, and perhaps I had without intending to.

I sat under guard outside the interrogation room while they questioned him in tones that rose and fell and growled and palavered and yelled and threatened and promised and refused and wheedled. Sheriff Crane arrived, looking tired but important. He stood over me smiling, with his belly thrust out.

"Your friend's in real trouble now."

"He's been in real trouble for the last ten years. You ought to know, you helped to cook it for him."

The veins in his cheeks lit up like intricate little networks of infra-red tubing. He leaned toward me spewing martiniscented words: "I could put you in jail for loose talk like that. You know where your friend is going? He's going all the way to the green room this time."

"He wouldn't be the first innocent man who was ga.s.sed."

"Innocent? McGee's a ma.s.s murderer, and we've got the evidence to prove it. It took my experts all day to nail it down: The bullet in the Haggerty corpse came from the same gun as the bullet we found in McGee's wife--the same gun he stole from Alice Jenks in Indian Springs."

I'd succeeded in provoking the Sheriff into an indiscretion. I tried for another. "You have no proof he stole it. You have no proof he fired it either time. Where's he been keeping the gun for the last ten years?"

"He cached it someplace, maybe on Stevens's boat. Or maybe an accomplice kept it for him."

"Then he hid it in his daughter's bed to frame her?"

"That's the kind of man he is."

"Nuts!"

"Don't talk to me like that!" He menaced me with the cannon ball of his belly.

"Don't talk like that to the Sheriff," the guard said.

"I don't know of any law against the use of the word 'nuts.' And incidentally I wasn't violating anything in the California Code when I went out to the yacht to talk to McGee. I'm cooperating with a local attorney in this investigation and I have a right to get my information where I can and keep it confidential."

"How did you know he was there?"

"I got a tip."

"From Stevens?"

"Not from Stevens. You and I could trade information, Sheriff. How did _you_ know he was there?"

"I don't make deals with suspects."

"What do you suspect me of? Illegal use of the word 'nuts'?"

"It isn't so funny. You were taken with McGee. I have a right to hold you."

"I have a right to call an attorney. Try kicking my rights around and see where it gets you. I have friends in Sacramento."