The portly one said, “He give me an estimate of over seventeen hundred. And it was supposed to be a twenty-year roof I told Cathy we could buy a lot of buckets to set under the leaks for seventeen hundred.”
“Harry does nice work.”
“Wisht I’d used him when I was building.” Burgoon looked at me. “You made up your mind about a lawyer yet, mister?” I had been promoted from boy.
“Sheriff, I think it would be easier for me to make that decision if I had more information about what you think I did. It could be something we might be able to straighten out without bothering anybody”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“When and where did the alleged crime take place? That might give me something to go on.”
“It took place, mister, on the morning of December seventeenth last, and it took place at a marina on the Shawana River just about eleven miles east of here.”
“That was a Sunday morning?”
“Yes it was.”
“Would you be trying to make a capital case, Sheriff?”
“Murder first.”
I remembered that Sunday with no trouble. Puss, Barni Baker, Mick Coseen, Meyer, Marilee, in fact a lot more people than we had needed or wanted aboard, and a dozen ways to refresh their memories that it was that exact day.
“Just one more question and I can give you an answer. Am I supposed to be connected with it in some way, or are you trying to say I was there at that time?”
“There at that time and did commit an act of violence which resulted in the death of one Brantley B. Bannon.
“Then, I don’t think I need a lawyer to straighten things out.”
It seemed to startle Burgoon. He said irritably, “Tom, what the hell is holding up that damn Willie?”
“Right here, Sheriff. Right here,” said a thin young man who came in carrying a tape recorder. He put it on the corner of the sheriff’s desk, knelt on the rug and plugged it in. “Sheriff, you just push-”
“I know, I know! Get on back to work and close the door.” When the door was closed, Burgoon said, “We took this with the court reporter and on tape at the same time, and there hasn’t been time to transcribe it yet. You get to hear it on account of now we’ve got that damn new law on full disclosure, and the defense would get a certified copy of the transcript anyways, and the State’s Attorney said it was all right I should do it this way. You listen, and then you answer questions and make a statement, and then we hold you and this goes to a special meeting of the Grand Jury for the indictment so you can be arraigned proper.”
He punched it on and leaned back and closed his eyes and rested his fingertips together. The tape had a lot of hiss. Apparently nobody ever bothered to clean or demagnetize the heads. But the questions and answers were clear enough.
I recognized the flat, insipid, dreary little-girl voice before she even gave her name, saying that she was Mrs. Roger Denn, Arlene Denn, and that she had been living with her husband at the Bannan Cottages, Cottage number 12 ever since the tenth of December, that she was twenty-two years old and that she was self-employed, as was her husband, making and selling art objects to gift shops. Prior to that time they had lived aboard a houseboat the Bannons had rented them, tied up at the Bannon Boatel on the river, and had lived there eight months.
“What were the circumstances of your leaving?”
“Well, they had to come and take the houseboats back. They owed on them and some men came and towed them off, I don’t know where. That was… early in December, I don’t know exactly what day.”
“What happened then?”
“We put all our things in the two end units of the motel just for a while, until we could find something, because Mr. Bannon said it looked like he might lose the place. We went looking and we found a place at the Banyan Cottages and moved in on the tenth, and we were making trips in the station wagon to bring our supplies and so on back to the cottages.”
As she spoke on the tape, through the hiss, I could picture her clearly, pallid and sloppy and doughy, with dirty blonde hair and a mouth that hung open, and meaningless blue eyes.
“What was the occasion of your last visit to Bannon’s motel.”
“It was because of missing some silver wire. We use it in the jewelry. On Saturday, that was the sixteenth, we looked all over for it and it was just gone. We knew then that the place was foreclosed out there, but we still had a key to the end units on account of Roger forgot to leave it off when we made the last trip. I kept thinking that maybe what could have happened to it, we had a lot of supplies piled on the beds and maybe the wire slipped down and caught somehow like at the headboard or the footboard, because I had crawled around looking to see if we’d left anything on the floor the last trip we took. Roger kept saying to forget it because it was real trouble going into a place sealed off by the court, and maybe they’d changed the locks. But it was twenty dollars’ worth of wire and maybe seventeen left on the roll, and we don’t do so good we can just throw away seventeen dollars. So we sort of had a fight about it, and I said I was going to go out there whether he was or not, so I went out when it was just getting to be daylight the next day, which was Sunday. I drove right on by, slow, to see if anybody was there and I didn’t see anybody, so I went a ways up the road and put the station wagon in a little kind of overgrown place that used to be a cleared road once. I backed it in. You know, kind of hiding it, and I went back with the key and when I was pretty sure nobody was around, I tried the key and it worked and I let myself in and started hunting for that wire.”
“What happened next?”
“I guess I was hunting for maybe ten minutes or fifteen minutes. I don’t know just what time it was. Maybe sometime between seven and seven thirty and I heard a car coming, so I squatted down so nobody could look in and see me when they went by. One of the windows, those awning kind of window things, was open three or four inches. So I heard the car drive in and it stopped and then I heard a car door slam and then I heard another car door slam and I heard men’s voices.”
“Could you hear what was said?”
“No sir. They were loudest near the car and then kind of faded when they were walking toward the marina. I couldn’t hear words but I had the feeling they were mad at each other, almost shouting. I think one word that was shouted was Jan. That was Mrs. Bannon’s name. Janine. But I couldn’t be sure.”
“What happened next?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to leave. I tried to peek out the windows and see where they went to, to see if it was safe for me to sneak out.”
“Could you see the car?”
“No sir. But I knew I would hear it if it started up.”
“Then what happened?”
“Somebody shouted a lot louder, and further away, and I knew they were real mad. It sounded to me like Mr. Bannon. Then it was quiet. Then maybe five minutes later I looked out the back window that looks toward the river, and I saw a man dragging Mr. Bannon across the ground. He had his arms wrapped around Mr. Bannon’s ankles and he was leaning forward and pulling hard and pulling Mr. Bannon along. I was kneeling and looking out a corner of the window, like with one eye. He dragged him right to that old hoist thing and then kind of rolled and shoved and pushed him under the motor. Mr. Bannon was real limp, like unconscious or dead. The man stood up and looked at him and then he looked all around. I ducked down and when I got up enough nerve to look again, he was walking toward the hoist thing again from the marina and he was carrying something small, some wire and something. I watched him and he kneeled down and did something to Mr. Bannon I couldn’t see, and then he worked some more at the hoist thing. Then he turned the crank and the motor went up real slow. I could hear the clickety sound it made. Then he stood near the gear part and bent over and did something and… the motor fell down onto Mr. Bannon. There was a rackety sound when it came down and the wire ropes slapped around and hit those poles and made a ringing sound.”