“Didn’t he go back at all? Did he stay out from then on?”
“No one saw him come back, not a soul. I made sure of that before I put it up to him.” Benson smiled bleakly. “I know what you’re thinking, and I thought of that, too. If he didn’t go back at all, then he wasn’t responsible for making the remover disappear in the first place. Because it was back in the drawer before the next matinee, I found it there myself. Now get the point involved.
“He had a choice between the natural thing and the completely exonerating thing. But the exonerating thing would have meant behaving a little oddly. The natural thing for a man sent out on an errand by his wife is to return eventually, even if it’s an hour later, even if it’s only to report that he was unsuccessful. The exonerating thing, in this case, was for him to stay out for good. All he had to do was claim he never went back, and he was absolutely in the clear, absolutely eliminated.”
“Well?” The lieutenant could hardly wait for the answer.
“He played it straight all the way through. He admitted, of his own accord and without having been seen by anybody, that he stopped back for a minute to tell her he hadn’t been able to get it, after chasing all over the Forties for the stuff. And that, of course, is when the missing bottle got back into the drawer.”
The lieutenant was almost goggle-eyed. “Well I’ll be—! She was still alive, the murder hadn’t even been completed yet, and he was already removing the traces of it by replacing the bottle!”
“The timing of her act guaranteed that she was already as good as dead, even with the bottle back within her reach. She couldn’t take the gilt off now for another three hours. Using it continuously had already lowered her resistance. That brief breathing spell she should have had between shows spelled the difference between life and death.
“In other words, Lieutenant, he left her alive, with fifty people around her who talked to her, rubbed shoulders with her in the wings, after he’d gone. And later she even danced onstage before a couple hundred more. But he’d already murdered her!”
“But you say he didn’t have to admit he stopped back at the theater, and yet he did.”
“Sure, but to me that doesn’t prove his innocence, that only proves his guilt and infernal cleverness. By avoiding the slightest lie, the slightest deviation in his account of his actual movements, he’s much safer than by grasping at a chance of automatic, complete vindication. Somebody just might have seen him come back; he couldn’t be sure.”
He took a deep breath. “There it all is, Lieutenant: motive, opportunity, and method. And it don’t do us much good, does it? There isn’t any more evidence to be had. There never will be. There’s nothing more to uncover — because it all is uncovered already. We couldn’t get him on a disorderly conduct charge on all of it put together, much less for murder. What do I do with him now?”
The lieutenant took a long time answering, as though he hated to have to. Finally he did. “We’ll have to turn him loose; we can’t hold him indefinitely.”
“Gee, I hate to see him walk out of here free,” Benson said.
“There’s no use busting your brains about it. It’s a freak that only happens maybe once in a thousand times — but it happened this time.”
Later that same morning Benson walked out to the entrance of the precinct house with Willis, after the formalities of release had been gone through. Willis had a lot of court-plaster here and there, but he was free again. That was what mattered. Court-plaster wears off after awhile; several thousand volts of electricity does not.
“Well, I guess you think you’re pretty mart,” Benson said taciturnly.
Willis said: “That’s the word for people that have held out something, getting away with it. I got a beating for something I didn’t do. Unlucky is the word for me, not smart.”
Benson stopped short at the top of the entrance steps, marking the end of his authority. He smiled. “Well, if we couldn’t get anything out of you in there last night, I didn’t expect to get anything out of you out here right now.” His mouth thinned. “Here’s the street. Beat it.”
Willis went down the steps, walked on a short distance alone and unhindered. Then he decided to cross over to the opposite side of the street. When he had reached it, he stopped a minute and looked back.
Benson was still standing there on the police-station steps, looking after him. Their stares met. Benson couldn’t read his look, whether it conveyed mockery or relief or just casual indifference. But for that matter, Willis couldn’t read Benson’s either; whether it conveyed regret or philosophic acceptance of defeat or held a vague promise that things between them weren’t over yet. And it wasn’t because of the sizable distance that separated them, either; it was because the thoughts of both of them were locked up in their minds.
There was a brittle quality of long-smoldering rancor about her, even when she first opened the door, even before she’d had time to see who was standing there. She must have just got home from the show. She still had her coat and hat on. But she was already holding a little jigger glass of colorless liquid between two of her fingers, as if trying to cauterize the inner resentment that was continually gnawing at her. Her eyes traveled over his form from head to foot and back again.
“Been letting any more killers go since I saw you last?” she said sultrily.
“You’ve taken that pretty much to heart, haven’t you?” Benson answered levelly.
“Why wouldn’t I? Her ghost powders its nose on the bench next to me twice a day! A couple performances ago I caught myself turning around and saying: ‘Did you get paid this week—’ before I stopped to think.” She emptied the jigger. “And do you know what keeps the soreness from healing? Because the person that did it is still around, untouched, unpunished. Because he got away with it. You know who I mean or do I have to break out with a name?”
“You can’t prove it, any more than we could, so why bring up a name?”
“Prove it! Prove it! You make me sick.” She refilled the jigger. “You’re the police! Why weren’t you able to get him?”
“You talk like a fool,” he said patiently. “You talk like we let him go purposely. D’you think I enjoyed watching him walk out scot-free under my nose? And that ain’t all. I’ve been passed over on the promotion list, on account of it. They didn’t say it was that; they didn’t say it was anything. They didn’t have to. I can figure it out for myself. It’s the first blank I’ve drawn in six years. It’s eating at my insides, too, like yours.”
She relented at the sign of a bitterness that matched her own. “Misery likes company, I guess. Come on in, as long as you’re here. Have a stab,” she said grudgingly, and pushed the gin slightly toward him.
They sat in brooding silence for several minutes, two frustrated people. Finally she spoke again. “He had the nerve to put his flowers on her grave! Imagine, flowers from the killer to the one he killed! I found them there when I went there myself, before the matinee today, to leave some roses of my own. The caretaker told me whose they were. I tore them in a thousand pieces when he wasn’t looking.”
“I know,” he said. “He goes up twice a week, leaves fresh flowers each time. I’ve been casing him night and day. The hypocritical rat! All the way through from the beginning, he’s done the natural thing. He does it whether he thinks anyone’s watching or not, and that’s the safe way for him to do it.”
He refilled his own jigger without asking permission. He laughed harshly. “But he’s already found a refill, just the same. He’s not pining away. I cased his flat while he was out today, and I found enough evidence to show there’s some blonde been hanging around to console him. Gilt hairpins on the kitchen floor, a double set of dirty dishes — two of everything — in the sink. He’s probably just waiting for the temperature to go down enough, before he hooks up with her.”