“Maybe he meant to say he called from some other phone, Steve.”
“No. He made a production of it. Told me how he and this woman had a code cooked up, so he could call her right from his apartment without his wife knowing what he was up to.”
“You check it out?”
“No, I didn’t. You were gone, and I didn’t want to leave the apartment. I had somebody else check it out for us.”
“Looks like we’d better recheck.”
“And fast,” I said.
11
The room was small and hot and smelled of sweat. The woman who had opened the door to Walt and me stared at us belligerently. She was about forty, a big-boned woman with heavy, almost masculine features and hair so black there were blue highlights in it.
I showed her my badge. “You talked to Detective Meers earlier today,” I said. “What, exactly, did you tell him?”
“About Gus Brokaw being here, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“I told him the truth. Gus called me up and wanted to come over. He got here a little after eleven o’clock.”
“For what purpose?”
“To play cards. He likes to play poker, and so do my husband and I. We played all night.”
“You know we don’t believe that.”
“So you don’t believe it. So who cares?”
“You think impeding a homicide investigation is something to take lightly, Mrs. Chase? Have you any idea at all of how much time you and your husband will do, as accessories after the fact?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not even interested.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“Away.”
“Where?”
“How would I know? He just went for a walk, that’s all.”
“Mind if we look around?”
“Naturally I mind. You got a warrant?”
“We can get one fast enough.”
“Suppose you get it, then.”
There was a man’s voice from the next room. “Edna,” he said. “Come here a minute.” It was a thin, wheedling voice, scarcely strong enough to carry to us.
I turned and walked to the room and stepped inside.
He was sitting on a straight chair beside a rumpled bed, a frail-looking, sunken-faced man in his early fifties. Despite the heat, he wore heavy trousers and a sweat shirt.
“Are you Mr. Chase?” I asked.
He stared at me a long moment. “Yes.”
“I’m a policeman, Mr. Chase.”
“I know. I heard you talking to Edna.”
“You know why we’re here?”
“I know.”
“We’ll get to the truth eventually, Mr. Chase.”
Behind me, Mrs. Chase said, “You got no right coming in here like this. Get out!”
Mr. Chase looked at her, shaking his head slowly. “It’s no use, Edna. I told you right from the start that—”
“Bill, shut your mouth!”
“This isn’t the time to brass it out, Edna,” he said. “That time’s come and gone. All we got now is trouble, and we’re heading straight for more, unless we—”
“Shut up, you crazy fool!”
“I’m sick. I can’t stand any more of this.”
“He’s got a fever,” Mrs. Chase said, jerking her head around toward me. “He’s sick, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“He seems to know well enough,” I said. “Why not let him finish?”
“Gus was drunk when he came here,” Mr. Chase said. “He didn’t say anything about a killing. He just said he was in a little trouble, and that he wanted us to tell the police he’d been here since eleven o’clock, or a little after. He gave us two hundred dollars, and told us we should say he didn’t leave here until late this morning. We didn’t know anything about that girl getting murdered. I swear it.”
“Bill...” Mrs. Chase began, and then stopped.
“He got over here about two o’clock in the morning. He said he’d give us some more money as soon as he could get it out of the bank.” He paused to glance at Mrs. Chase. “If we’d known the score, we’d have kicked him out the door. But we didn’t know. We figured it was an easy touch, so we put him to bed out there on the couch. When that other detective came around, he never did say anything about a murder. Edna and I talked it up big, not knowing what we were getting into.”
“But now you know,” I said.
“Yeah. When it’s too damned late, we hear about it on the radio. Then Edna goes out and gets a paper.”
“We did it because Bill’s sick,” Mrs. Chase said suddenly. All her toughness was gone now. She looked almost as ill as her husband. “We would never have done anything like that if—”
“You’d better get one thing straight,” I said. “Both of you. If you cooperate with us, we’ll let the D.A. know about it. We can’t make any deals with you, but there’s a chance the D.A. will appreciate your cooperation.”
Mr. and Mrs. Chase looked at each other a long time without saying anything. Then Mrs. Chase began to cry. It struck me as odd, that a woman like that should cry.
12
Two hours later, Walt and I knocked on the door of Gus Brokaw’s basement apartment.
He opened the door almost immediately and stood back to let us in. The skin that sagged away from his eyes and jowls looked even more pale than it had before, and his eyes were more bloodshot.
“Come in, boys,” he said. “Any luck yet?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe you’d better get your coat, Mr. Brokaw.”
“We going back to the morgue again?”
“We’re taking you over to the station house.”
“What for?”
“We want you to talk to a couple of people.”
“Yeah? Who’s that?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Chase.”
I watched Brokaw’s eyes crawl toward the open door, hesitate, then move back to me. “What for?”
Walt stepped behind him and touched his arm. “Let’s go, Mr. Brokaw.”
13
At the station house, we took Brokaw into an interrogation room, motioned him to a folding chair, and sat down across from him.
“We know you bribed the Chases to alibi you, Gus,” I said. “They’ve signed statements.”
He stared at a spot midway between Walt and me, and said nothing.
“We found your knife. A few minutes ago we showed it to a couple of people you really do play cards with sometimes. They’ve identified it as yours. There was blood on your knife, Gus. It was the same type as Barbara Lawson’s. How’d you feel when you found out that Benny Thomas had cut off the switchboard more than an hour before you said you called your woman friend?”
He stared straight ahead.
“We just heard from the lab, Gus. They’re working on that bath mat. They’ll be able to prove that some of the fibers from your clothes were left on the mat when you carried Barbara up to the roof. And the other way around, too. Some of the fibers from the mat will be rubbed into your clothing.”
“That Benny Thomas,” Gus said, almost as if to himself. “That damned Benny.”
“Why did you kill her, Gus?” I asked.
He grasped one hand with the other and began cracking the knuckles.
“Why?” I said.
He took a deep breath, then let it out very slowly.
“I just went crazy, I guess,” he said.
“You want to tell us about it?”