Authors: Robert Traver

Anatomy of a Murder (10 page)

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder

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The outer jail door opened and in stalked a character straight out or
High Noon.
His big mail-order felt hat was pushed back on his perspiring forehead; his exquisitely tailored and stitched gabardine shirt, with its cascades of pearl buttons at the shaped pockets and cuffs, was negligently open at the tanned throat, from which depended two cords held by a dollar-sized round silver clasp engraved not with Justice, not with Liberty, but with a bucking bronco. The richly tailored trousers were tucked carelessly into the tops of dusty hand-stitched laceless boots and all he lacked, I saw, was a Bull Durham tag dangling over his heart.

“Fourscore and seven years ago,” I found myself perversely thinking, “there came forth upon this continent an ancient dust storm; whereupon an entire province of old Texas was picked up and hurled aloft and held magically suspended all these years. Lo! today, may God help us, it has been dumped upon the far shores of Lake Superior. Yippee yi yi!”

It was a solemn moment and I restrained an impulse to kneel. Sheriff Max Battisfore was back at last from highway patrol. His keen gray eyes restlessly searched the room. They found mine and lit with gladness; you could see the very glow of gladness in them.

“Well, hello,
Paul,”
the Sheriff said. He grasped my hand in both of his and looked me straight in the eye. “If it isn't my favorite ex-D. A. In person not a movie. How's the old boy? Long time no see. Is old Sulo there treating you and the Lieutenant O.K.?” He slapped my shoulder and kept pumping my hand. The Sheriff had come a long way, I saw; he had developed a boisterous and irresistible gift for camaraderie; he made one feelâI groped for wordsâso terribly
wanted.
We might belong to opposite political parties, his attitude seemed to say, but real friendship was something bigger, finer, than mere party. “How are you, anyway, you old buckaroo?” he ran on, playfully digging me in the ribs.

“I'm fine, thanks, Max,” I said, smiling and retreating out of range. “Just fine. How are you?”

“Oh, fine, fine. Any phone calls, Sulo? Oh, on my pad â¦ . Yes, Polly, I feel just like a horse's father. If I felt any better Sulo there'd have to lock me up in one of my own cells.” He paused as Sulo obediently snorted. Musty cheese, musty jokes â¦ . “Tell me, man, how the hell are you, anyway?”

“I'm fine, Max,” I repeated soberly, and, since Max's concern over my health had been doubly relieved and certified, I added: “If you've got a minute I'd like to have a chat with you?”

“Sure, sure, Polly. Right this way.” He led the way into his office and bent over a memorandum pad on his desk. He called out to Sulo. “Phone the Missus, Sulo, and tell her I got that Community Chest kickoff dinner tonight, after that the Amvets, then bowling â¦ . Shut the door, Polly, and sit down. Make yourself at home. Long, time no see. Tell me, how the hellâahâwon't you have a cigarette?”

I gestured with the stub of a cigar. “No thanks, Max, I'm still faithfully on these Italian reefers, still smoking the poor man's marijuana.”

The Sheriff wagged his head. “Still the same old joker, too, Polly. Lord, it's good to see you, man. How do you feel, I mean, how are you really feeling?”

“Look, Max,” I said, taking the plunge, “what were the results of Laura Manion's lie-detector test?” I held my lighter poised at my cold cigar. The flame burnt my finger.

“Oh, that,” the Sheriff replied, without a pause. “As a foxy old D.A. like you well knowsâremember those good old days, Polly?âthe state police made that test. They made the test, they've got the results.” He fleetingly laid a confiding hand on my knee. “You remember how jealous they always were of their prerogatives.” He nodded sagely. “Well, Polly, they still are. Jealous as all hell. So wouldn't it be better all around for you to go ask them?” He again looked at his desk pad. “Call operator Eleven, Detroit,” he murmured absently. He looked up. “Boy, Polly, it's been good to see you. Tell me, man, how the hell are you?”

“I guess maybe you're right, Max,” I grudgingly admitted, standing up. “It's their baby, I'd better go ask them.” I paused, pondering the problem aloud. “But what's the use of asking them? They probably wouldn't tell meâand anyway the results wouldn't be admissible in court.” I too could confide. “I think maybe I'll skip it,” I said resolutely. “Yes, I think I may just skip the whole thing. Only complicate matters. To hell with the lie-detector test.” I I pumped the Sheriff's free hand. He had grabbed up the phone with the other. “Thanks, Max,” I said. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

“Any time at all, Polly. Long time no see. Boy, it's been good to see you, you old buckaroo â¦ . Hello, Operator, this is Sheriff
Battisfore. Give me operator Eleven at Detroit. That's right, honey, just about an hour ago â¦ . Yes, dearie, for you I'll hold on forever â¦ .”

Max stood silhouetted against his wall of framed photographs. For the first time it occurred to me that there were no pictures showing him out pursuing felons or making an arrest, in fact none showing the man in the simple act of being sheriff â¦ . I nevertheless found it an impressive scene, as though one had long read about and seen some fabulous personage in the newsreels and on TV and then suddenly been privileged to confront him, relaxed and friendly, in the intimate glow of his own home. One had never realized what a remarkable personality he was.

“There's just one more thing, Max,” I said. “I was just going to ask Sulo about it, but perhaps I'd better ask the head man himself. I'm in Manion's case now and he and I are going to have a lot to talk about.” I paused diffidently. “There'll be lots to do, too, and the trial's just three weeks away,” I explained.

“Naturally,” the Sheriff said. “And he's retained one of the best lawyers in the business, Polly. The very best, for my money.”

“Thanks, Max,” I said. I was finding trouble coming to the point. “Well, the county still won't furnish you a jail conference room and I hate for us to be cluttering up your office and being underfoot all the time. I realize you have your work to do.”

“Yes?” the Sheriff said helpfully.

“Well, I was wondering how about the Lieutenant and me occasionally sitting outside in my car, when your office is in use, I mean? That way we could talk without interruption and in private and at the same time not be in your hair.” That way, too, I thought wistfully, we could occasionally breathe without pain.

“He â¦ .” the Sheriff said. He pursed his lips and closed his eyes and nodded his head. “Hm â¦ .” He stole a look at me. “There's always his cell, Polly,” he said thoughtfully. I remained resolutely silent. “Hm,” the Sheriff repeated, squinting again, and it was fun trying to follow his shrewd weighing of the angles, assaying of the factors, yes, counting of the very votes. What was he thinking? Might it not be something like this?â-Murder was a nonbailable offense, wasn't it, and Manion certainly had no goddam business outside except in custody, had he? There could be criticism, bad criticism, too, and if the damned fool skipped, made a break, it might be political suicide. But Biegler there was, an old hand, an old fox wasn't he?âand, hm, a fairly big wheel in his party, tooâ
and he'd certainly warn his Lieutenant his goose would be cooked but good if he tried any funny stuff and took a powder â¦ . And Polly wouldn't forget this favor, would he? And the Lieutenant was a combat veteran of two wars, wasn't he, and poor old Barney Quill wasn't, and of course all
that
had nothing to do with the case, but â¦ .

“Hm,” the Sheriff mused, nodding his head.

“Maybe I'd better skip it, Max,” I said. “Maybe people'd say that because you're such an active veteran yourself you were playing favorites with war veterans. Maybe even the veterans would get down on you for taking a chance on a fellow veteran, a man who'd dare lay a finger on a man that had maybe raped and beat up his wife.” I had delivered what I hoped was my clincher; I paused and awaited the jury's verdict.

“It's O.K., Polly,” the Sheriff said quietly, almost casually. “Take him outside any time you want. He'll be in your custody.”

“No cuffs or leg irons?” I said.

“No cuffs or leg irons,” the Sheriff replied. “He won't runâand anyway you won't let himâneither of you can afford to.”

It was a shrewd analysis. “Thanks, Max,” I said. There was something big about the man; the job of beingâand remainingâsheriff hadn't quite stamped that out. And I felt elated, elated not only to occasionally escape the jail, delightful a prospect as that was, and further elated because the Sheriff's action tacitly confirmed the results of the lie-detector test, but most of all elated because this most representative citizen, this shrewd walking (or rather patrolling) litmus of community sentiment had virtually told me that to his mind at least the prevailing feeling was running toward my man. I was even surer of it now than if Elmo Roper had conducted a county-wide poll. And after all the jury was nothing more than a group of representative citizens, wasn't it? If Max himself felt this way about my man then why shouldn't they? Yes, this was the second big break in the case. Stocks were picking up. “I won't forget this, Max,” I said, opening the door.

“It's nothing at all, Polly,” the Sheriff said. He craned his neck. “Hey, thereâcome on in, Sulo,” he shouted out beyond me. “Yes sir, Polly. Any time at all. Lord, it's good to see you looking so fit. You're as tanned as aâas a hound's tooth.”

“Fishing pallor,” I said.

“You've lost some weight, too, haven't you, Polly? You're as lean as aâas aâ”

“Cigar-store Indian,” I said. “Any weight I've shed, Max,” I continued, ruefully exploring the receding area over my temples, “is solely from losing hair. Time, like crime, marches on.”

“You kill me, Polly,” the Sheriff said, chuckling, shifting the receiver to his other ear and clicking the phone.

chapter 9

It was pleasant sitting out in the warm sun, smelling the rank August smell of Mrs. Battisfore's flower garden, listening to the distant bumblebee hum of traffic and the drone and clatter of the trusty prisoners (the Sheriff's regular clients, the county's convalescing drunk-and-disorderly set) mowing the big sloping courthouse lawnâidly watching the sea gulls dipping and wheeling and soaring so far out over the glittering big lake. We smoked and watched silently and I reflected with lazy unoriginality that the main trouble with the world was the people in it. Someone had said it more floridly if not better: “Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.”

“We'll need a psychiatrist,” I said.

“Why?”

“To prove your insanity. Insanity, Lieutenant, is a medical question and for us, the defense, to create a legal issue on that score we must present expert testimony that you were insane. Once that is done, however, the issue is created and then the burden of disproving your insanity falls squarely on the People. That is our biggest and most pressing problem.”

“I see,” my man said. “Then I guess we get a psychiatrist. But if it's a medical question wouldn't a local doctor do equally as well?”

“No, my friend, a local doctor wouldn't do at all. Those boys already have their hands full delivering the population and trying to keep up with the latest miracle drugs without moving into the tangled realm of the mind. What's more, most of them don't know any more about it than you or I.”

“You're too modest, Counselor. Have you forgotten it was you who injected insanity into this case?”

“No,” I answered carefully. “I merely told you what the possible legal defenses wereâit was you who told me facts from which one might conclude you may have been insane.” I saw I'd have to chink that crack in my lecture and keep it chinked. “In any case, even if we were able to find any doctor hereabouts foolhardy enough to testify to your insanity, all the People would have to do to blast it would be to throw a real psychiatrist at him and cut himâalong with your insanity defenseâto ribbons. You see, psychiatrists are simply a different breed of cats. For example, when plain doctors and lawyers and soldiers and similar riffraff go to a burlesque show they go to watch the girls' legs and titties. But not a psychiatrist. When one of those birds stoops to attend a burlesque
he
goes to
watch the audience. Hell, man, you can't pit a mere doctor against a monster like that.”

“But how would the People get to know?”

“How would they know what?”

“How would they know whether we were going to call a doctor or a psychiatristâor even that we are going to claim insanity at all? So how could they possibly be prepared to refute it?”

This client of mine was no dummy and I was glad he wasn't lobbing shells at me. “Because the law says that we must serve notice on the prosecution in advance of the trial of our intention to plead insanity, and at the same time give the names of our witnesses, expert or otherwise. We can't keep it a secret. Surprise pleas of insanity are âno fair,' the law sensibly says. We've got to tip our hand in advance.”

“It's a pretty unscientific thing,” my man said thoughtfully. “This insanity business is pretty damned unscientific.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, we can't prove insanity without a medical expert, you tell me. Yet you and I have already decided I was insane, we know that we're going to plead insanityâyou tell me it's the only legal defense I've got. And even I can see that now. In other words you a mere lawyer and I a dumb soldier have between us decided that I was medically and legally insane. Having decided that, we must now go out and shop around for a medical expert to confirm our settled conclusion. Yet you tell me an ordinary medical doctor won't do.” The Lieutenant shook his head. “It all sounds damned unscientific to me.”

It irked me unaccountably to hear this Mister Cool so blithely undertake to criticize my profession. It was all right if a member of the family did, but for a perfect stranger â¦ “Lieutenant,” I said, “the easiest thing in the world is for a layman to poke fun at the law. Lawyers and the law are sitting ducks for ridicule and always have been. The average layman may in all his lifetime collide with but one small branch of the law, which he understands but imperfectly. He usually knows whether he won or lost. He may also remember that Dickens, grumbling through Mr. Bumble, once called the law an ass. So for him all the law is henceforth an ass, and, overnight, he becomes its severest critic.”

“But I still don't get it,” the Lieutenant said. “On this score at least, the law looks like a prime ass.”

“Granted,” I said. “But the point I wish to make is that from this
people may not safely proceed to damn all law. You of all men should be grateful that the massive structure known as the law really exists. It so happens that it represents your only hope.”

“How do you mean?” the Lieutenant said, bristling.

“I'll try to tell you,” I said. “Mr. Bumble was only partly right. He was only part right because, for all its lurching and shambling imbe cilities, the lawâand only the lawâis what keeps our society from bursting apart at the seams, from becoming a snarling jungle. While the law is not perfect, God knows, no other system has yet been found for governing men except violence. The law is society's safety valve, its most painless way to achieve social catharsis; any other way lies anarchy. More precisely, Lieutenant, in your case the law is all that stops Barney Quill's relatives from charging in here and seeking out and shooting up every Manion on sight. It is also what would keep the heavily mortgaged Manions of Dubuque from in turn coming a-gunning for the Quills, in other words what keeps the fix you're now in from fanning out into a sort of Upper Peninsula version of Hatfield-McCoy.”

I paused, warming to my unfamiliar role as a defender of law. “The law is the busy fireman that puts out society's brush fires; that gives people a
nonphysical
method to discharge hostile feelings and settle violent differences; that substitutes orderly ritual for the rule of tooth and claw. The very slowness of the law, its massive impersonality, its insistence upon proceeding according to settled and ancient rulesâall this tends to cool and bank the fires of passion and violence and replace them with order and reason. That is a tremendous accomplishment in itself, however a particular case may turn out. As someone has well said, âThe difference between an alley-fight and a debate is law.'” I paused. “What's more, all our fine Magna Chartas and constitutions and bills of right and all the rest would be nothing but a lot of archaic and high-flown rhetoric if we could not and did not at all times have the
law
to buttress them, to interpret them, to breathe meaning and force and life into them. Lofty abstractions about individual liberty and justice do not enforce themselves. These things must be reforged in men's hearts every day. And they are reforged by the law, for every jury trial in the land is a small daily miracle of democracy in action.”

The Lieutenant stared at me with an amused half-smile as I soared away.

“Why, just look, manâjust look at Russia,” I went on. “There the law has been replaced by a stoic joyless gang of lumpy characters
in round hats and floppy pants and double-breasted overcoats, men who peremptorily crack down on their Lieutenant Manions and everyone, all in the name of the juggernaut state.
They
are the law. There you would have âconfessed' joyfully days ago.” I shook my head. “In fact, Heaven help us, just look almost anywhere these days. The midnight knock on the door, the whisking before a firing squad, the guttural barked commandâthen silence, nothing but anonymous dead silence â¦ . No one even dare
ask
what became of you, much less defend you; such proletarian curiosity is apt to prove abruptly fatal.”

The Lieutenant was smiling now. “I didn't know you cared,” he said. “I only hope you're half as eloquent during my trial.”

I hadn't quite known myself how much I cared, and I couldn't help smiling. “Having said all that, Lieutenant, it remains to be added that you're absolutely right on insanity. The present outlook and ritual of the law on legal insanity is almost as primitive and nonsensical as when we manacled and tortured our insane. I agree with you.”

The Lieutenant frowned and looked concerned. “I hope you haven't talked yourself out of my defense of insanity. And supposing our chosen psychiatrist, when we find him, says I'm not nuts?”

“In that event we keep shopping around, as you say, till we can live-trap one who does.” I shook my head. “So a-shopping we must go. I love that word. I can't wait to tell it to Parnell.”

The Lieutenant eyed me sharply. “Who is Parnell?”

“Oh, just an old lawyer friend. My legal whetstone, I call him.”

“I see. Where do weâahâgo shopping to find this psychiatrist?”

I thoughtfully lit a cigar. “That may be a real problem,” I said. “Either nobody in the Peninsula is insane or else all of us are nuts. In any case psychiatrists seem to shun the place. The only psychiatrists I know about are connected with public institutions of some kind: the veterans' hospital at Iron Mountain, the prison over at Marquette, the insane asylum at Newberry, the various children's clinics, that sort of place. Most are salaried staff men and I'm afraid we can't expect to get any of them. The People are much more likely to pop up with one of those.”

“What do we do, then?”

“We go shopping, my friend.”

The Lieutenant shrugged. “Well, I suppose if we must we must. Where do we start?”

“Not where, Lieutenantâthe burning question is
what with?
I rather suspect that psychiatrists are no more philanthropic than us lawyers. In fact less so than one foolish lawyer I happen to know. They'll expect to be well paidâand on the line.”

“You're making it rather difficult. How can I pay a psychiatrist? You know I'm broke. Hell, man, I can't even pay you.”

I spoke not unkindly. “You might try helping me, that's all. And stop feeling so goddam sorry for yourself.” I paused. “There's one other place we could get a psychiatrist. I was half hoping you might have suggested it.”

“Where's that?” the Lieutenant said evenly.

“From the United States Army,” I replied.

“I don't know whether the Army would.”

“I don't know either, but you might tell me where and who to write. It might also be well to pause here for a little review to impress you with how serious this thing is. One, your only legal defense is insanity. Two, to prove it you must have a psychiatrist. Three, you can't afford a psychiatrist. Four, then we've got to go out and live-trap one some other way. Do you have the picture?”

“I'll give you the name and address of my C.O. before you leave,” the Lieutenant replied. “Don't let me forget.”

“You better do it now. I'm phoning or writing him tonight. For this, my friend, happens to be the heart of your case.”

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder

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