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Authors: Robert Traver

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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The Lieutenant nodded glumly.
“The notion that one might later, after the fact, go kill the cow or wife stealer was rejected by most early tribal men as it is still widely rejected today. It was and is rejected because the ‘defending' killer has had time to cool off, the thing is over and done, the emergency no longer exists, the offender can be punished at leisure and in an orderly way, and, finally, probably because such a defense is less susceptible of unbiased confirmation and thus opens the door to being invented. Anyway, one may lawfully kill another to save his wife or his cow or his own life but not to punish the doer after it is all over. Now my anthropology may possibly be a little haywire but not my law. The law says that the business of punishment must be left solely to it, which is the People.
“Applying all this to your own situation, Lieutenant, whatever happened to your wife was over and done when you found it out. You could not save her; she'd had it, her danger was past; and if Barney Quill raped her he could have been dealt with by due proc ess of law. It so happens that rape and murder both carry life sentences in this state, but not death. By your action you usurped the law and imposed the death penalty on Barney Quill. Society, the tribe, now seeks to punish you for breaking one of its most ancient and basic taboos.”
We sat silently, the Lieutenant again sipping his mustache. He looked a little morose. “But can't the jury let me go, whatever the damned law is?” he asked.
“Of course it can,” I said. “And juries often do. But that's not because of a legal defense but rather despite the lack of one. Juries, in common with women drivers, are apt to do the damnedest things. Gambling on what a jury will do is like playing the horses. The
notorious undependability of juries, the chance involved, is one of the absorbing features of the law. That's what makes the practice of law, like prostitution, one of the last of the unpredictable professions —both employ the seductive arts, both try to display their wares to the best advantage, and both must pretend enthusiastically to woo total strangers. And that's why most successful trial lawyers are helpless showmen; that's why they are about nine-tenths ham actor and one-tenth lawyer. But as things now stand in your case, all the
law
would be against you. The judge would be virtually forced to instruct the jury to convict you. Don't you see? A jury would find it tough to let you go; they'd have to really work at it. Legally your situation presents a classic one of premeditated murder.”
Quietly: “You don't want to take my case, then?”
“Not quite so fast. I'm not ready to make that decision. Look, in a murder case the jury has only a few narrow choices. Among them, it
might
let you go. It
might
also up and convict you. A judge trying you without a jury would surely have to, as I have said. Now do you want to go into court with the dice loaded? With all the law and instructions stacked against you?” I paused to deliver my clincher. “Well, whether you're willing to do so, I'm not. I will either find a sound and plausible legal defense in your case or else advise you to cop out.” I paused thoughtfully. “Then there's one other possible ‘or else.'”
“Or else what?”
A chastening hint, a light play on the client's fear that the lawyer of his choice might walk out on him is also sound strategy during the Lecture. It tends to keep the subject both alert and appropriately humble. “Or else, Lieutenant, you can find yourself another lawyer,” I said, waiting for him to squirm.
“Like who?” the Lieutenant inquired coolly and without squirming. “Who do you recommend?”
Things weren't proceeding according to plan. But I couldn't back down or display weakness now. If this cool bastard wanted someone like roaring old Crocker he could damn well have him. “Why, we have a splendid old ham-acting lawyer in this county,” I replied. “He's all ham—real boneless country-cured ham. He's also the Peninsula's expert on unwritten law.” I could have added, but charitably didn't, that this last was largely so because I'd never known him to crack a law book. “I might even intercede for you with him,” I said.
“You mean Amos Crocker?” he said calmly.
I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. “Maybe,” I parried. “How come you know about Crocker?”
“We tried to get him,” Mister Cool replied. “Couldn't because he'd broken his leg.”
“Leg?” I said. “Old Crocker broke his leg? I didn't know.” I felt a sudden wave of pity for the windy fulminating old fraud. Beside Parnell McCarthy he was about the last of the old-time colorful gallus-snapping practitioners left in the county. The rest of us were getting to be a fine, colorless, soft-shoe breed, something like a cross between a claims adjuster and an ulcerated public accountant. “When did all this happen?”
“The very night I shot Quill,” the Lieutenant said. “Fell climbing out of his tub, his housekeeper told my wife over the phone. Is in the hospital with his leg in traction. Won't be up and around for several months.” The Lieutenant looked around the room and sniffed slightly. “That's a trifle too long to wait around in this place. If I've got to go to prison I want to get on with it.”
“Hm,” I said thoughtfully. I felt curiously chastened and deflated. Here was a client, I saw, who possessed a pretty good lecture style of his own. I found myself fretfully hoping that I was at least the
second
choice. The thought gnawed at me. “I hope I was the second choice?” I said.
“You were,” the Lieutenant replied quietly. “By the way, what's this ‘cop out' mean?”
The Lieutenant had not only delivered a swift little lecture of his own; he'd also adroitly got me back on my own.
“Lieutenant, I'm charmed,” I said, carrying on. “Just as bugout means retreat, so cop out means pretty much the same thing: to plead guilty, toss in the sponge, grab at a straw, confess to the cops, or—as the old English judges so quaintly put it—throw oneself upon the country.”
It was rather a big mouthful and the Lieutenant thoughtfully chewed on it. “Hm … . You mean you simply don't want to take a chance on the ‘unwritten law'?”
I stared up at the ceiling, pursing my lips. “You can put it that way if you want. Yes, that's fair enough. I'm a lawyer, not a juggler or a hypnotist nor even a magician or boy orator. When I undertake to defend a man before a jury I want to have a fighting
legal
chance to acquit him. That includes having a decent chance to move for a new trial or successfully appeal. Maybe you were morally entitled to plug Barney Quill. I'll even concede it. But in court I prefer to leave
the moral judgments to the angels. I doubtless possess my fair share of ham, like most lawyers, but I do not want to go into court and depend simply upon the charity or stupidity or state of the liver of twelve jurors.” I paused. With old Crocker now safely out of the picture I could perhaps afford to bear down even harder. “What's more, I don't intend to,” I said. “Have I made myself clear?”
“I'm afraid you have, Counselor.”
“And, since you still seem to hug the ‘unwritten law,' there's one more thing. There's the important matter of saving face. We complacent palefaces of the West like to think that this business of saving face is a sin, a sort of half-juvenile and half-inscrutable
mystique
confined solely to the Orient” I paused. “That's a lot of —a lot of unmitigated—”
“Horseshit,” Lieutenant Manion said, as solemn as an owl.
“Precisely,” I said. “Spoken like a true soldier and a gentleman, Lieutenant. And thanks. But getting back to face … . All of us, everywhere, all of the time, spend our waking hours saving face. This case itself is riddled with face. After all, one of the mute unspoken reasons you are being prosecuted is to save face, community face. The biggest reason I hesitate to take your case, as things now stand, is my fear of losing it. That is merely a negative form of advance face-saving. Face, face, face. Everybody has to save face, and, whether they have to or not, everyone tries to; it's one of the basic compulsions of men.” I paused. “Are you following me?”
“Yes. It's most interesting,” he answered gravely. I glanced at him keenly. It was rather hard at times, I saw, to tell when this character was being sarcastic.
“Thanks,” I said. “That brings me to my sixty-four-dollar point. Even jurors have to save face. Get this now. The jury in your case might simply be dying to let you go on your own story, or because they have fallen for your wife, or have learned to hate Barney Quill's guts, or all of these things and more. But if the judge—who's got nice big legal face to save, too—must under the law virtually tell the jurors to convict you, as I think he must now surely do, then the only way they can possibly let you go is by flying in the face of the judge's instructions—that is, by losing, not saving face. Don't you see? You and I would be in there asking twelve citizens, twelve total strangers, to publicly lose their precious face to save yours. It's asking a lot and I hope you don't have to risk it.”
Lieutenant Manion produced the Ming holder and studied it
carefully, as though for the first time. “What do you recommend then?” he said.
It was a good question. “I don't know yet. So far I've been trying to impress you with the importance, the naked necessity, of our finding a valid legal defense, if one exists, in addition to the ‘unwritten law' you so dearly want to cling to. Put it this way: what Barney Quill might have done to your wife before you killed him may present a favorable condition, an equitable climate, to a possible jury acquittal. But alone it simply isn't enough.” I paused. “Not enough for Paul Biegler, anyway.”
“You mean you want to find a way to give the jurors some decently plausible legal peg to hang their verdict on so that they might let me go—and still save face?”
My man was responding beautifully to the lecture. “Precisely,” I said, adding hastily: “Whether you have such a defense of course remains to be seen. But I hope, Lieutenant, I have shown you how vital it is to find one if it exists.”
“I think you have, Counselor,” he said slowly. “I rather think now you really have.” He paused. “Tell me, tell me more about this justification or excuse business. Excuse me,” he added, smiling faintly, “I mean
legal
justification or excuse.”
“First I got to go phone my office,” I said, arising. “That'll also give me a chance for some solitary skull practice. It's been quite a while since I've had to brush up on my murder.”
I was back with my man and ready to go. The signs were good: for the first time he was smoking
without
the Ming holder. “We will now explore the absorbing subject of legal justification or excuse,” I said.
“You may fire when ready, Gridley,” the Lieutenant said.
I looked hopefully at the man. Was it barely possible that he possessed a rudimentary sense of humor? “Well, take self-defense,” I began. “That's the classic example of justifiable homicide. On the basis of what I've so far heard and read about your case I do not think we need pause too long over that. Do you?”
“Perhaps not,” Lieutenant Manion conceded. “We'll pass it for now.”
“Let's,” I said dryly. “Then there's the defense of habitation, defense of property, and the defense of relatives or friends. Now there are more ramifications to these defenses than a dog has fleas, but we won't explore them now. I've already told you at length why I don't think you can invoke the possible defense of your wife. When you shot Quill her need for defense had passed. It's as simple as that.”
“Go on,” Lieutenant Manion said, frowning.
“Then there's the defense of a homicide committed to prevent a felony—say you're being robbed—; to prevent the escape of the felon—suppose he's getting away with your wallet—; or to arrest a felon—you've caught up with him and he's either trying to get away or has actually escaped.”
At this point I paused and blinked thoughtfully. An idea no bigger than a pea rattled faintly at the back door of my mind. Let's see … . Wouldn't it be true that if Barney Quill actually raped Laura Manion
he
would be a felon at large at the time he was shot? The pea kept faintly rattling. But so what, so what? “Hm … .” I said. It would bear pondering.
The Lieutenant's eyes gleamed and bored into mine. “Who—what do you see?” he said. It was becoming increasingly clear that this soldier was no dummy.
“Nothing,” I lied glibly. “Not a thing.” The student was getting ahead of the lecturer and that would never do. And wherever my idea might drop into the ultimate defense picture, I sensed that now was not the time to try to fit it. “I was just thinking,” I concluded.
“Yes,” Lieutenant Manion said. “You were just thinking.” He
smiled faintly. “Go on, then; what are some of the other legal justifications or excuses?”
“Then there's the tricky and dubious defense of intoxication. Personally I've never seen it succeed. But since you were not drunk when you shot Quill we shall mercifully not dwell on that. Or were you?”
“I was cold sober. Please go on.”
“Then finally there's the defense of insanity.” I paused and spoke abruptly, airily: “Well, that just about winds it up.” I arose as though making ready to leave.
“Tell me more.”
“There is no more.” I slowly paced up and down the room.
“I mean about this insanity.”
“Oh, insanity,” I said, elaborately surprised. It was like luring a trained seal with a herring. “Well, insanity, where proven, is a complete defense to murder. It does not legally justify the killing, like self-defense, say, but rather excuses it.” The lecturer was hitting his stride. He was also on the home stretch. “Our law requires that a punishable killing—in fact, any crime
must be committed by a sapient human being, one capable, as the law insists, of distinguishing between right and wrong. If a man is insane, legally insane, the act of homicide may still be murder but the law excuses the perpetrator.”
Lieutenant Manion was sitting erect now, very still and erect. “I see—and this—this perpetrator, what happens to him if he should—should be excused?”
“Under Michigan law—like that of many other states—if he is acquitted of murder on the grounds of insanity it is provided that he must be sent to a hospital for the criminally insane until he is pronounced sane.” I drummed my fingers on the Sheriff's desk and glanced at my watch, the picture of a man eager to be gone.
My man was baying along the scent now. “How long does it take to get him out of there?”
“Out of where?” I asked innocently.
“Out of this insane hospital!”
“Oh, you mean where a man claims he was insane at the time of the offense but is sane at the time of the trial and his possible acquittal?”
“Exactly.”
“I don't know,” I said, stroking my chin. “Months, maybe a
year. It really takes a bit of doing. Being D.A. so long I've never really had to study that phase of it. I got them in there; it was somebody else's problem to spring them. And I didn't dream this defense might come up in your case.”
My naïvete was somewhat excessive; it had been obvious to me from merely reading the newspaper the night before that insanity was the best, if not the only, legal defense the man had. And here I'd just slammed shut every other escape hatch and told him this was the last. Only a cretin could have missed it, and I was rapidly learning that Lieutenant Manion was no cretin.
“Tell me more,” Lieutenant Manion said quietly.
“I may add that the law that requires persons acquitted on the grounds of insanity to be sent away is designed to discourage phony pleas of insanity in criminal cases.”
“Yes?”
“So the man who successfully invokes the defense of insanity is taking a calculated risk, like the time you took the chance that the old German lieutenant was alone behind his ruined chimney.”
I paused and knocked out my pipe. The Lecture was about over. The rest was up to the student. The Lieutenant looked out the window. He studied his Ming holder. I sat very still. Then he looked at me. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe I was insane.”
Very casually: “Maybe you were insane when?” I said. “When you shot the German lieutenant?”
“You know what I mean. When I shot Barney Quill.”
Thoughtfully: “Hm … . Why do you say that?”
“Well, I can't really say,” he went on slowly. “I—I guess I blacked out. I can't remember a thing after I saw him standing behind the bar that night until I got back to my trailer.”
“You mean—you mean you don't remember shooting him?” I shook my head in wonderment.
“Yes, that's what I mean.”
“You don't even remember driving home?”
“No.”
“You don't even remember threatening Barney's bartender when he followed you outside after the shooting—as the newspaper says you did?” I paused and held my breath. “You don't remember telling him, ‘Do you want some, too, Buster?'?”
The smoldering dark eyes flickered ever so little. “No, not a thing.”
“My, my,” I said, blinking my eyes, contemplating the wonder of it all. “Maybe you've got something there.”
The Lecture was over; I had told my man the law; and now he had told me things that might possibly invoke the defense of insanity. It had all been done with mirrors. Or rather with padded hammers. There remained only the loose ends to gather in. I'd try to make it short.
I turned and looked out the sooty window. “Let me think a minute,” I said. Then I turned and studied the impaled cockroach. All right, I thought—maybe my man was insane when he shot Barney Quill. Maybe he was nuttier than a fruit cake and maybe he had blacked out and didn't remember a thing. So far so good. But there was one flaw, one small thorn in this insanity business, and one that had to be faced, and fast. And wasn't it far better to face it now, before I got committed in the case, than later on in the harsh glow of the courtroom? I turned back to my man.
“Look, Lieutenant. Hold your hat. I'm about to pitch you a fast ball … . Maybe you were insane. Maybe you didn't remember a thing. But you and the newspaper agree on one thing. Both of you tell me that right after you returned to the trailer park, after shooting Barney Quill, you woke up the deputized caretaker and told him: ‘I just shot Barney Quill.' Now is that correct?” Again I held my breath.
I rather think he saw what was coming, but he replied steadily enough. “That is right,” he answered because he had to, there was no other answer, no escape; he was already committed on that one far past the point of no return.
Slowly, easily: “All right, then, Lieutenant. Now tell me, how come you could tell the caretaker you had just shot Barney Quill if you had really blacked out and didn't remember a thing?
Who told you?”
“Well,” he began. Then he stopped cold and closed his eyes. He was stalled. It was the first time I'd seen him really grope. The silence continued. Was I, I wondered, developing into one of those incurable ex-D.A.'s, the unreconstructed kind who can always find more reasons for convicting their clients than acquitting them?
“Come, come, Lieutenant,” I said. “Think!”
Impatiently, the lower lip still projected: “I
am
thinking! I'm trying to remember, damn it.”
I was thankful a jury wasn't watching him during the process. It
also occurred to me that he must have been a charming child. “Come, now, man,” I pressed, “what could possibly have led you to tell the caretaker you'd just shot Barney if it is true that you didn't remember it?”

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