“And what happens if you do find out they’re seeing each other?”
I handed the receipt back to him and rested the binoculars in my lap. “What would happen if a burglary was committed and evidence pointing to Hogan was found at the scene?”
“Then all we’d have to worry about would be breaking down his customary alibi.”
“And if he had no alibi? If he was actually home alone at the time of the burglary but couldn’t prove it because of a witness’s testimony that he saw him leave then return?”
Lieutenant Faber ran his tongue over his dry lips. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for, only Hogan has never dropped a clue in his life.”
Gingerly I reached into my pocket and dropped the gold cigarette lighter with Jack Hogan’s initials onto Faber’s desk. As he reached for it I grabbed his hand.
“I think you’ll find it has Hogan’s fingerprints on it.”
Lieutenant Faber leaned back away from the cigarette lighter as if it were something that might explode. I saw his glance dart to his office door to make sure it was closed, and at that moment I was very sure of him.
“Where did you get it?” he asked.
“Under the sofa cushions in my home.”
“And you’re giving it to me?”
I nodded. “And I don’t require a receipt.”
Lieutenant Faber slowly unwrapped the cellophane wrapper from one of his cigars. As he held a match to the cigar he looked at me over the rising and falling flame. Then he flattened the cellophane wrapper, slid it deftly beneath the gold lighter and placed both lighter and cellophane in his desk drawer.
“For the next three weekends,” I said, “I plan to tell my wife I have to leave town on business from Thursday evening until Monday morning. Instead I’ll stay at a motel outside of town, and I’ll spend my nights on a hillside watching Hogan’s house.”
“From Thursday night to Monday morning,” Lieutenant Faber repeated slowly.
“When you find the right burglary case, call me at the motel, and I’ll tell you if Hogan was home alone that night. Then you ‘discover’ the lighter at the scene of the crime and I testify that I saw Hogan drive away and that he was gone during the time the robbery was committed.”
“One thing,” Lieutenant Faber said. “What if . . .?”
“That’s possible,” I told him, “but Adelaide will hardly be in a position to say she was at Hogan’s house all night, will she? Especially considering the fact that she knows he’s a burglar anyway and deserves to be caught. She can’t afford to be like his swinging single alibis.”
Lieutenant Faber nodded and I stood and carefully tucked the binocular case beneath my arm.
“I’ll let you know what motel I’ll be staying at,” I said to him as I started to leave.
“Smathers.” He stopped me. “I want you to know I’m doing this because of what I think of Hogan. He’s a –”
And the lieutenant told me in the purplest language I’d ever heard just what he thought of Jack Hogan.
I will say Adelaide put on a good act. When I told her about my upcoming business trips she acted convincingly upset by the idea of being left alone. She even stood in the doorway and waved wistfully after me as I got into a cab for the drive to the airport.
Only I didn’t go to the airport. I had the cabbie drive me to a car rental agency where I rented a compact sedan. Then I drove to Sleepy Dan’s Motel and checked in. If I worked it right, I could write all this off as business expenses. And I was smart enough to have set up a plan that would require me to miss only three days, Fridays, in three weeks at the office. I could even sneak in and do some work on Sunday when no one was there if need be. I congratulated myself on my cleverness as I lay down to get a little sleep before sunset.
The spot I’d picked was perfect, a small clearing on the side of a hill from where I could look directly down at Hogan’s large house and grounds. The powerful binoculars brought everything near to me, and the infrared lenses eliminated the darkness as a problem. The night was warm, and I unbuttoned my shirt and settled back to watch until morning.
There were no results that first week. Lieutenant Faber sounded disappointed when I told him on the phone of Jack Hogan’s activities. A burglary had been committed that would have been perfect for our purposes, but I had to tell him that at the time Hogan wasn’t home and I didn’t know where he’d gone. Lieutenant Faber suggested hopefully that he might have gone to my house, but I quickly told him he could rule that out. My house was in view from where I watched also. We decided to wait for an opportunity we could be absolutely sure of.
The second week that I stationed myself on the hillside something did happen. My wife’s affair with Jack Hogan was confirmed beyond even the slightest doubt.
It was about midnight when I saw the headlights turn from the road into Hogan’s driveway. As I pressed the binoculars to my eyes and adjusted the focus dial, I saw that it was Adelaide’s car that had pulled into Hogan’s big double garage to park alongside his convertible. He stepped out onto the porch and met her, and they kissed for an embarrassingly long time before going inside. A few hours later I saw them emerge from the house and go for a late night swim. I didn’t want to watch that, so I lowered the binoculars and sat feeling the numbness in me give way to a smoldering rage.
The next night nothing happened. Hogan spent the entire night alone, going to bed about ten o’clock. I suppose he was tired.
That afternoon Lieutenant Faber called me at the motel. A residence in the west end had been burglarized the night before, smoothly and professionally. There were no clues of any kind.
I told him that Hogan had spent the night home alone. The burglary had to have taken place during the early morning hours, so we agreed that I would say I saw Hogan leave in his convertible at two thirty a.m. and return at five. Tomorrow morning, when Lieutenant Faber returned to question the victim and re-examine the scene of the crime, he would “find” the gold lighter, and the frame around Jack Hogan would be complete.
There was really no reason to go back that third night, but the silent rage had grown in me along with my curiosity. And I suppose it gave me some small sense of power, to be able to watch them without them knowing. It kept me from being a complete fool, and while Hogan didn’t know it, he had only one more night of freedom.
All that dark, hot night Adelaide didn’t arrive at Hogan’s home. The windows of the big ranch house were dark, the grounds silent. Around me the crickets chirped madly as if protesting the heat as I sat staring intently through the binoculars.
Then a light came on in one of the windows, the window I knew to be Jack Hogan’s bedroom. After a while a downstairs light came on too, and both lights stayed on. I looked at my watch. Four-thirty.
He must have telephoned her. At twenty to five Adelaide turned her car into Hogan’s driveway. This time after she pulled her car into the garage Hogan came out and lowered the door, for the sun would soon rise. I watched as he put his arm around her and they went into the house.
The sun came up amid orange streaks on the horizon, turning the heat of night into an even more intense heat.
Then I heard a door slam off in the distance, and I scanned, then focused the binoculars on Adelaide in her skimpy black bikini. Hogan was beside her with a towel draped over his shoulder. He flicked her playfully with the towel and she laughed and dived into the pool, and he laughed and jumped in after her.
I watched them for about twenty minutes before I came to my decision.
Jack Hogan had always freely admitted being a burglar. Now I intended to play his game, to tell him openly what was going to happen to him, so that he’d know he’d been outsmarted. Let the knowledge that he couldn’t prove his innocence torment him. Let him suffer as he’d made Lieutenant Faber suffer, as he’d made his burglary victims suffer. As he’d made me suffer. I placed the binoculars in their case, stood and clambered down the hillside to where the car was parked.