Orrie's Story (24 page)

“All right, son,” he said after the boy had blurted out the confession, “you just sit down in the chair there and catch your breath.”

“Is my sister in jail?”

“No, and she never has been,” said Gross. But he saw that in the fashion of people who are distraught Orrie had not listened to him and was about to rant on the subject of the same imaginary outrage, so the chief raised his voice. “Hey! I said she's not in jail. She's staying over with Bobby and May Terwillen. Now,
sit down.”

Orrie obeyed the order. He looked as though he had not combed his hair for a while and had slept in his clothes, but underneath it all was the same clean-cut young fellow encountered at the schoolyard the other day.

“Where's that college pal of yours?” the chief asked, to break the tension a little. “He go back to school?”

It took Orrie a moment to understand the reference. “Oh, Paul… he left me off here. He didn't want to, said I oughtn't come except with a lawyer, so he went to find one somewhere, but that won't do any good, I can tell you.” His eyes were feverish. “I did it by myself. I'm guilty as hell. I shouldn't have run away. Arrest me.”

“Your friend's got the right idea, Orrie. You shouldn't say things like that without an attorney.” The chief rubbed the stubble on his chin: on arising he had thought he could get away without shaving until lunchtime. “In fact, I'm going to pretend you didn't say it. At least for a while, until I understand exactly what happened up there at your house the other night.”

The boy stared between his feet. “I don't want to hide anything.”

The door opened at that point and Dick Flint came in. He was the detective from the county prosecutor's office. He greeted the chief but after a cursory glance was ready to ignore Orrie insofar as it was possible to do that in so small an office.

Gross told the boy to hang on and asked Flint to step out the back door into the alleyway behind the station, where the cruiser was parked: about the only privacy available on or near the premises. He identified Orrie for Flint and told him what had thus far been said.

“So we've got our killer,” Flint said. “I knew the girl was just protecting him.”

“Well,” said Gross, “I want to get his story before I call him a criminal.”

Back inside, Flint confronted Orrie. “You confess to the murders of Esther Marie Mencken and Erie Grover Mencken?”

When Orrie said he had fired the gun, Flint asked Gross to handcuff him. The chief was still not ready to make an official arrest, but he could not argue with the detective in front of the boy, so after a bit of trouble, having used them very seldom in his job, he put the manacles on Orrie.

Flint lighted a cigarette, throwing the match to the wooden floor: Gross resented that. The detective rested one buttock on the edge of the desk in front of Orrie, blocking the chief's line of vision. Gross sat in his swivel chair.

“You proud of yourself?” Flint asked.

“The only thing I'd be proud of,” said the boy, his head hanging, “would be to have the guts to kill myself, but I haven't.”

Flint blew smoke. “Let's drop the grandstanding. Just tell me exactly how you murdered your mother and your cousin.”

Orrie raised his chin. “I guess it was murder, but I didn't intend to kill either one of them.”

“Oh, come
on”
Flint groaned.

Gross leaned so he could see around the detective. “Orrie, you just tell what happened so far as you remember it, every single detail you can recall.”

“I was up in the attic,” Orrie said. “I was going through some old stuff of my father's in a trunk there. He just died, and these things were all left behind. He had been away in the war for many years, and he just got home when —”

“We all know that,” said Flint, projecting smoke at the ceiling. “This doesn't concern your dad. You're telling me how you killed your mom.”

Gross winced at the coarseness of his associate. He asked Orrie in a kindly voice, “What were your dad's things? Clothes and so on?”

“And the shotgun…I was just looking at it when I heard this yelling and screaming from downstairs.”

“That was an awful long way away, wasn't it?” Flint asked. “Three floors? Must have been
real
loud.”

“Warm day,” the chief pointed out. “Orrie, were the windows open?”

“I guess so,” Orrie said. “I heard it, anyway, and I ran downstairs. I didn't even realize I was still holding the gun until I got into the front hall. I could hear my mother still screaming, and I guess I just lost my head. I didn't realize Erie was still in the house. In this split second I didn't recognize him in the living room, with his back to me. I don't know, I was all confused. All I could think of was my mother's screams. In that instant I thought it was a burglar, somebody who had broken in —”

“He was doing something to her?” Flint gestured violently with his cigarette.

Orrie shook his head. “Believe me, I've been trying to understand it ever since. Maybe it was the angle I was at…. Erie was a close member of the family. We always called him Uncle. He helped us out a lot, especially after my father went to the Army.”

“Yeah,” Flint said with obvious irony, “we know about E.G. Mencken. He and your mother were real close, weren't they?”

Orrie said quickly, “We all were. He was very good to us all.”

“But you shot him down like a dog,” said Flint.

Chief Gross stepped in here. “You couldn't recognize him? That's hard to believe, Orrie.”

“I had been taking a nap,” Orrie said. “Sleeping up in the attic, on an old mattress up there. I stayed confused for a while after I woke up because of the screaming.”

“Now you're taking a nap?” Flint asked indignantly. “Just a minute ago you were supposedly looking at this shotgun.” He put a finger between his forehead and the inner band of his felt hat and scratched. “Which was it, nap or shotgun?”

“I guess I fell asleep after looking at the gun.”

“Okay, you didn't know Erie G. Mencken from Adam, this guy who was a member of your family and around there all the time—in fact, he more or less lived there, didn't he?”

“He had his own apartment in the city.”

“All right, so much for him at the moment. You not only did not recognize him, you emptied one barrel into him, point-blank. But then what about your mother? You didn't know who she was either? So you nearly blew her apart with the other barrel.”

The chief thought Flint was being too hard on Orrie, though it was pretty obvious the boy was not telling the whole truth.

“There
is
no excuse for what I did,” Orrie said quietly. “I want to be sent to the electric chair.”

Dick Flint got off the desk and strolled behind Orrie. “More grandstanding,” he said to the back of the boy's head. “It won't be you but a judge and jury who will decide what punishment you get, and insofar as you killed both of them, that's never been in doubt, so you haven't told me anything yet.
Why
did you kill them? That's all I want to know. Why?”

From behind the desk the chief said, “We just want to get to the truth. Was Erie beating your mother up for some reason?”

Orrie shook his entire trunk. “No. I guess they were just discussing something.”

“Then why was she screaming?”

“I've thought about that a lot.” He had not once shown any discomfort with the handcuffs, though wearing them must have been a unique experience. “She might have been laughing.”

Dick Flint, still behind Orrie, struck the back of the chair with a sharp blow of his hand. “You trying to make a monkey out of me, you little twerp?
Laughing?”

“No, sir,” said Orrie. “I mean it. At least it's a possibility. My mother didn't laugh much, but when she did, once in a great while, it was really high-pitched.”

“You're insulting my intelligence,” said the detective, and came around in front of the boy. “And you'll be sorry for it.”

Chief Gross spoke in his usual calm tone. “Would there be anything to laugh about, though, Orrie? Your dad's funeral was just that morning.”

“I know. I can't explain it.”

Flint returned to the desk top, but he suddenly softened his manner. Leaning towards Orrie, he asked, almost sympathetically, “Erie wasn't hitting your mom? Then why'd you shoot him?”

“I don't know. I guess I thought this guy, whoever he was, was menacing her somehow, maybe holding a gun, a pistol on her. His back was turned to me when I came into the room.”

“He was hit in the left side.”

“He started to turn.”

Flint sucked on a tooth. “So much for E.G.” He closed his eyes to slits. “You dropped him with barrel one.” His voice began as almost a whisper, but became a shout as he finished the question. “Why did you proceed to empty
the gun into your
MOTHER?”

“She ran into the line of fire,” Orrie said levelly.

Gross asked, “You don't mean she was trying to save Erie?”

Orrie closed his eyes.

Flint leaped off the edge of the desk and pushed his finger within an inch of the boy's face. “Enough of this lying crap, you little punk. You killed them because they were having an affair, weren't they? And you couldn't stand it. You never liked it, but now with your father coming back and dying as he did, there was nothing in their way. Maybe they were having a lovers' fight of some kind. Her face was covered with bruises. He
was
punching her, whatever you say. But that was just your excuse, and it won't work, I'll tell you why: nobody brings a loaded twelve-gauge to stop a fight unless they want to kill somebody. You were looking for just such an excuse to kill him. But what about your mother? Why'd you give her the other barrel?” Flint took away his finger and put his nose in its place. “Let me tell you: you hated her for screwing Erie, didn't you?”

“That's a dirty lie,” Orrie cried, at last struggling against his bonds. “You son of a bitch! I'll kill you.”

Flint turned and smirked at Gross, who, right in front of Orrie, asked, “Aren't you going a little too far, Dick?”

“He shot down two human beings point-blank,” said the detective. “Maybe he had cause. If so, he can make his case in court. He won't be railroaded. This is the U.S.A.”

“You mean, try him as an adult?” Gross thought privately this would be a shame.

Flint shook his jowls, smoke drifting from his lips. “Look, I'm not speaking for myself. I'm just doing my job. But I'm pretty sure what Bernie will say: ‘He's old enough to be in the service, killing Japs and Germans. Instead he's home here, shooting down his family.'” He referred to the prosecuting attorney of the county, Bernard J. Furie, who was known as a hard man on lawbreakers.

“I'm Anthony Pollo. I'm your attorney.”

Orrie was at the county jail but in a room with a table and several chairs, and not in a cell. The guard had told him the sheriff decided he would be safer there till he was bailed out than with the other prisoners currently on hand, all of whom were larger, older, and seasoned criminals. If he needed the men's room, he was supposed to knock on the door. It was expected that he would be bailed out soon, but Orrie had decided otherwise.

The lawyer chose a chair on the side of the table across from him.

Orrie said, “I don't have any money.”

“Your friend Paul Leeds hired me,” Pollo said in a tone of reason and authority. Orrie started to protest, but the attorney stopped him with an upthrust hand. “I know you refused to let him put up bail, but I want you to rescind that decision right now.”

“It's no business of yours.”

“Come on, stop acting like a smart-aleck and thank God for having such a friend as Paul and such a devoted sister as Ellie. And this town is full of people who are on your side. Can't you see you're letting them all down if you won't accept any help?”

The unfair argument did serve to evoke from Orrie another emotion than that which had occupied him exclusively for as long as he now could remember. He was astonished to discover that he could feel indignation. “It's nobody's business any more, not even Ellie's. It's no longer a family matter, in the sense of a living family, which is why I don't have anything to say to Ellie. It's between me and those I killed, you see.” He was sure nobody would ever understand, but he was closer now to Erie than he had ever been in life. He and his mother and Erie were intimates. He had hated the living Erie but felt a kind of affinity with the dead one, for whom he was responsible. Outsiders could never understand that. If he tried to tell them, they would think him deranged. As to his mother, he believed that if he was faithful to the principles she had taught him, he might finally earn her forgiveness. He could never now live to be a doctor, but at least he could die as a man, taking what he had coming. Killing Erie was no mistake, and he was not ashamed of the deed. Had Erie been the only victim, Orrie would have defended himself with every resource at his command. It was against his mother that he had committed the crime. Who among the living could have understood that it was all the worse for being an accident?

The lawyer pushed the chair back and got to his feet. He was a heavy man, but his paunch was no thicker than his chest. He paced the floor on his side of the table. “Once you pulled the triggers—which I gather you admit doing—it was no longer private. Society has to stick its nose in when somebody dies even of natural causes: the state always requires a doctor's certification.” He halted and looked down at Orrie. “Ever think of this? You can usually live more privately than you can die.” He resumed his pacing. “Here's something to consider in this case: unless you tell what you know to be the truth, people are pretty likely to have their own theories. It might be your privilege not to care what happens to yourself, but it's not fair to those who can't tell their own stories.”