The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven) (2 page)

“The woman's on trial,” Captain Wainwright told Masuto. “You know, Masao, I damn near cabled you in Japan when this thing broke to tell you to cut off the vacation and come back here. You know the kind of flak we take when there's a murder in Beverly Hills, and this one had to be a hotshot engineer working on some of the fanciest gadgets in the defense field. And done by a movie star. Well, just as well I resisted the temptation. Sy had a full-fledged investigation like this coming to him, and he put together enough for the indictment. It's out of our hands now. We've closed the file.”

“We could open it.”

“What in hell are you after, Masao?” Wainwright asked angrily. “Because someone else did the investigation? Jealousy?”

“That's not fair, and you know me better than that. Sy thinks she's innocent. He asked me to talk to you.”

“You know Beckman when it comes to a beautiful woman. They can do no wrong. And this one's beautiful.”

“I also know that Sy's a good cop. He has good insights.”

Wainwright sighed and spread his arms. “Who knows? Maybe he's right, maybe he isn't. I got a police department, Masao, and I got to go by the book, and this is no longer a police matter. We made the arrest and we put together the evidence and we turned it over to the district attorney. Now it's out of our hands. Let the court decide, which is why we got a thing called trial by jury. I don't want to hear any more about it. I'm glad you're back, Masao, but maybe getting into one of these damned arguments with you isn't the best way to start off.”

“No argument, Captain. It's your position, and it's plain enough.”

Back in his office, where Beckman was waiting, Masuto shook his head. “No go. He says it's out of our hands.”

Beckman shrugged. “He's right.”

“I think he's mellowing,” Masuto said. “Time was when he would have bitten my head off for even suggesting that a case in court should be reopened for investigation. Anyway, after that case where a film star took a few too many and then fell off a yacht and drowned, and the investigation was squeezed right out of existence—”

“Not to mention the Belushi case—”

“They were off our turf, but someone has to pay the piper, and I'm afraid it's Eve Mackenzie. She's the symbol of a blind justice that chooses no favorites, rich or poor or whatever, except when she's already been hurt too much for the rich and famous.”

“And don't think the jury won't be licking their lips over that.”

“You think she'll be convicted?”

“And not with my smarts, Masao. She lined it all up against herself.”

“Deliberately?”

“No …” He hesitated. “No, I don't think so. It just came together that way. You know, someone who's not in our business will give you a lot of mathematical crap about the improbability of coincidence. But I've seen too many coincidences to look at it that way.”

“And this case is loaded with them?”

“You can say that again.”

“There is one thing,” Masuto said thoughtfully. “The laws of probability are based on reality. Sometimes they appear to break down, but sometimes they're tampered with.”

Beverly Hills, a self-governing and independent city possessed of its own fire department, its own police department, its own school system, and its own table of social and civic services, is nevertheless totally surrounded by the City of Los Angeles. A number of communities in Los Angeles are in a similar situation—one which possibly exists nowhere else in the nation—and in the case of Beverly Hills, the judicial system reaches only as far as a municipal court. Criminal cases are tried in the nearest superior court, in this instance in Santa Monica, which nestles along the Pacific shore about ten miles from Beverly Hills.

It was there, in Santa Monica, that Detective Sy Beckman had to appear as witness for the prosecution. As his superior in the tiny Beverly Hills homicide bureau, Detective Sergeant Masao Masuto went with him—tentatively, since he expected Wainwright to demand what the hell Masuto was needed for out there in Santa Monica.

But Wainwright said nothing. It was a very quiet moment in the criminal history of Beverly Hills—no assaults, only two robberies, no purse-snatchings.

“It's routine,” Beckman said. “You'd be here anyway if we'd both done the investigation.”

“No. He's gone soft.”

“Not Wainwright.”

“Do you realize he's given me the day off?”

“Come on,” Beckman said. “You're going to sit in that courtroom. What kind of a day off is that?”

“The kind I'm looking forward to,” Masuto said.

“You been reading. You think she's innocent?”

“I wish I could understand why you think so.”

“Maybe I dream about leaving my wife and staking out a pup tent on Malibu Beach with Eve Mackenzie. God knows why!”

Masuto knew Beckman's wife. He could understand Beckman's feelings, and recalling Eve Mackenzie's beauty on the screen, he found that her films did not exaggerate the attraction of the living woman. How could one look at the comely and charming woman sitting at the defense table and think of her as a murderer? Beckman was outside in the witness room, which gave Masuto a chance to watch Eve Mackenzie undisturbed—the pale but good skin in this land of forced tan and sunburn, calm, wide gray eyes, ash-blond hair that might just have been natural, and no pretensions to less than her forty-one years. What would describe her? And then he caught an answer. Dignity. She was possessed of a calm and unusual dignity. Possibly she was playing a role, since she was a gifted actress; if so, she was playing it very well.

Her lawyers arrived in court, one of them a heavyset, thick-featured man in his fifties—that would be either Cassell or Norman—and the other, one of those bright young men who finds a place in the best legal firms, cut from proper cardboard, with a proper head and nose and mouth, interchangeable with ten thousand others. As people filed into the courtroom, Masuto heard the name Cassell addressed to the heavyset man. But why Cassell? Why did the dead man's attorneys choose to defend the accused murderer of their one-time client? Beckman's explanation was that Cassell and Norman had been family attorneys; but that was hardly good enough to satisfy Masuto.

The judge entered, Judge Harry Simpkins, firm but human as Masuto saw him. The jury was in place, eight women, four men—too many women, too many of them old and bitter. Everyone rose. The judge seated himself and the court sat down. The judge had white hair. Passion lay somewhere in his past.

Today, Beckman was the first witness. “Call Seymour Beckman!” the clerk announced.

It always gave Masuto a start to have Beckman identified as Seymour. The big, slope-shouldered detective went poorly with his name. He was big but not clumsy; he moved like an athlete as he came down the aisle and took his place in the witness box. The clerk took his oath, and then Mark Geffner, the district attorney, began the questioning. Masuto had worked with Geffner in the past. Geffner was not brilliant, but decent, straightforward, and honest.

“State your name and position, please,” he said to Beckman.

“Seymour Beckman, detective, Beverly Hills police force.”

“How long have you been with the Beverly Hills Police Department?”

“Sixteen years.”

“And how long with homicide?”

“When Detective Sergeant Masuto was assigned full-time to Homicide, I was given the assignment of working with him. When he needed me. That was nine years ago.”

“And in the case of the Mackenzie murder, I take it that Detective Masuto was out of the country.”

Cassell was on his feet with a bellow of objection.

“On what grounds?” the judge asked mildly.

“The state has not yet proven that Robert Mackenzie was murdered. We hold that his death was accidental.”

“Quite so.” The judge nodded and said to Geffner, “Remember that, please, Mr. Geffner.” He then told the stenographer to strike it from the record. Masuto's impression was that the judge would be meticulously fair. Since the courtroom was loaded with reporters and artists, everyone—judge, attorneys, defendant, and jury—must have been conscious of playing roles in a national drama.

“Nevertheless,” Geffner said, “you were in charge of the investigation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you tell us, Detective Beckman, what happened on the day of June twenty-second.”

Beckman took out his notebook but did not consult it immediately. “I signed in at the police station at a few minutes before eight
A.M.
At about eight-thirty, Captain Wainwright—”

“Would you identify Captain Wainwright?”

“Chief of Detectives—also the head of the force. Well, he told me that there was a situation at the Mackenzie home on Lexington Road that might or might not be a homicide. It had been reported as an accident, but the ambulance from All Saints Hospital—I mean the men on the ambulance—they certified Mr. Mackenzie as dead and were unwilling to remove the body until our medical examiner, Dr. Sam Baxter, had seen it.”

“Yes, just what were these suspicious circumstances, Detective Beckman.”

“If you would let me tell it my way,” Beckman said, consulting his notebook now.

“Yes, of course.”

“I left for the Mackenzie house immediately. It's on Lexington, just past Benedict Canyon Drive. I knew the house. It's part of my work to know most of the houses that important people live in. When I got there, Officer Keller was sitting in his car in the driveway, waiting for me. It's general practice to have a car standing by in a situation like this, even if there's no hard evidence yet of a crime. The ambulance had left, but I saw Dr. Baxter's car in the driveway.”

“Is Dr. Baxter the same man who did the subsequent autopsy?”

“Yes. We don't have a regular pathology department in Beverly Hills. We use All Saints' pathology room and morgue. When we need him, Dr. Baxter acts as our medical examiner.”

“Yes. Go on, please.”

“I spoke to Officer Keller, and he informed me that only the housekeeper and Dr. Baxter were in the house.”

“Would you identify the housekeeper, please.”

“Feona Scott, widow, thirty-nine years old, been with the Mackenzies four years.”

“You went into the house then?”

“Yes, sir,” Beckman said. “I went into the house. That is, Mrs. Scott opened the door for me and told me that Mr. Mackenzie's body was upstairs in the main bedroom. She directed me to the bathroom off the master bedroom and separated from it by a dressing room. As I entered the master bedroom, Dr. Baxter yelled at me to tell Mrs. Scott to phone All Saints and get the ambulance back here. I asked him whether that meant that Mackenzie was alive. I'm afraid it meant that Mackenzie was dead and he wanted the ambulance to take the body to the pathology room.”

Masuto smiled, thinking of what Baxter had probably said, something to the effect of, Alive as you are from the neck up. Baxter was hardly a pleasant person, and he regarded every homicide as a personal affront to his time and dignity.

“I then asked Dr. Baxter what was the cause of death, and he said that until he did an autopsy he was guessing. Possibly Mr. Mackenzie had been electrocuted while taking a bath. However, he indicated an ugly bruise at the deceased's temple. Dr. Baxter suggested that a small radio in the bathroom might have been the cause of electrocution if he had been electrocuted—that it might have either been thrust into the tub or fallen into the tub. He also said that the blow to the head might have killed Mackenzie.”

Cassell rose to object to this as provocative guesswork and hearsay, and the judge asked Beckman whether he could substantiate his statements. Before he could answer, Geffner announced that he intended to call Dr. Baxter and both ambulance attendants as witnesses. “Detective Beckman,” Geffner said, “just tell us what happened without any inferences or suggestions.”

“I was only telling you what Dr. Baxter said.”

“I understand. Please go on.”

“Well, I know a little something about electricity, and when you've been a cop as long as I have, you seen practically everything, and we had incidents where an electric appliance had fallen into a tub or a pool. The radio in the bathroom was wet, and when I shook it I could hear water sloshing around inside. At the same time, the light in the bathroom was still working. It's possible for someone with a bad heart to be killed by an appliance dropped into a tub, but one expects the appliance to blow the fuse or snap the circuit breaker. So the first thing I thought about was where was the fuse box. I asked Mrs. Scott, and she led me to it. I opened it. It was the old-fashioned kind of fuse box, not circuit breakers, and there were notations for each fuse. But the fuse next to the bathroom label had been removed, and in its place a copper penny had been inserted.”