15
The Grand Jury, hastily called in special session by the district attorney, sat grim-faced. These men were farmers and small businessmen with uncompromising standards of individual integrity. They would be just but stern, and the rumor that the sheriff had got himself involved by smuggling a witness out of the county was due for a thorough investigation.
Out in the anteroom were the witnesses whom Rush Medford had summoned. And waiting with his lips curled in a smile of anticipatory triumph was Ed Lyons, publisher of the Rockville Gazette, ready to drive the final nail in Bill Eldon’s political coffin.
The district attorney briefly outlined his position to the members of the Grand Jury. “The object of this investigation,” he said, “is to find out just what’s going on here. I think you folks are familiar with what’s happened. A woman got into the stable of one of Carl Carver Calhoun. She was kicked by a horse and died. There are some mysterious circumstances surrounding her death.
“For one thing, the diary of Lorraine Calhoun was found in the manger of the stall in front of which the body was lying. One page had been torn out. It’s pretty apparent now that this woman’s trip to that stable was not accidental. It was made with some definite purpose and it was probably made with a companion. Apparently there is only one person whom this woman knew and who also knew the Calhouns and the setup of the Calhoun stable. That person is Frank Garwin. I want you gentlemen to hear his story. I want you to hear how he left this county. I want you to hear who picked him up and drove him to San Rodolpho. I am not going to make any comments as to the motive back of all this. It’s the duty of this body to investigate this whole thing. Now then, gentlemen, I want Frank Garwin called as a witness. And I want his testimony taken down in shorthand.”
One or two of the jurors looked over to where Bill Eldon was sitting, tight-lipped. Here and there were glances of sympathy. But the foreman of the Grand Jury voiced the sentiments of all of its members when he said to Medford, “You’re the district attorney. Go ahead with your witnesses. If there’s anything wrong with the way any of the offices in this county are being run, we aim to do something about it.”
Frank Garwin was brought in and interrogated by the district attorney. He told the same story he had told the sheriff, admitting, however, that he knew Estelle Nichols, the dead girl, but denying he had known that she was anywhere in the state. He had, he said, lost track of her something over a year ago. They had, he admitted, been friendly, but since then he had had what he referred to as “other interests.”
Medford passed by, for the moment, the “other interests,” in order to get to the point which was of most interest to him.
“Now, Frank,” he said, “last night you were here in Rockville?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And where did you go after you left the Calhoun barn?”
“I didn’t go to the Calhoun barn.”
“Well, we’ll pass that for the moment. Did you see the sheriff of this county last night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“Well, he picked me up down at the ball park.”
“And what did he do?”
“He... well, he gave me a lift to where I wanted to catch the bus for the city.”
Rush Medford said, “Now think carefully, young man. Let’s not have any misunderstanding about this. Did he take you to where you wanted to go and get the bus, or did he suggest that he should take you to a certain place to get the bus?”
“Well, he suggested it.”
“Why?”
“He thought that it might be just as well if my friends didn’t see me around here.”
“I see,” Medford said sarcastically. “Spirited you out of town, and he did that in a County car, I believe, using the County tires and the County gasoline.”
Garwin was silent.
“Come, come, young man,” the district attorney said. “Let’s at least answer questions. That’s a fact, isn’t it?”
“I guess it was the County car. It had a red spotlight on it.”
“That’s all,” Medford said.
The foreman of the Grand Jury turned to the sheriff. “You want to ask this boy any questions to try and clear this thing up, Bill?” he asked.
The sheriff merely shook his head.
The grand jurymen exchanged glances. There was sympathy in those glances, but there was also a certain underlying significance.
The foreman said to Garwin, “That’s all, young man. You can go back to the room with the other witnesses. You’re not supposed to tell them anything about what questions were asked you and you’re not supposed to tell anybody what testimony you gave.”
When Garwin had gone, the foreman said, “The way I size things up, Bill, the boys sort of think that calls for an explanation of some sort.”
Heads nodded gravely about the Grand Jury room.
“Well,” the sheriff said, “the way I look at this case, gentlemen, it was a murder case. A plain, cold-blooded, deliberate murder.”
Medford said, “That’s fantastic and absurd on the face of it. But the mere fact that you think that it’s a murder case makes your conduct in spiriting one of the principals in the case out of the county doubly culpable. Now, as I see it, gentlemen, it’s pretty clear that this man, Garwin, must have gone to the barn with this young woman. He must have been there when she got kicked, and he must have tried to keep himself from being involved in the subsquent notoriety by simply sneaking out and getting this Turlock girl to give him an alibi. Now I propose to call this Turlock girl and prove that she doesn’t know where Garwin was at the time this woman was killed, that she had an appointment with him and Garwin stood her up and kept her waiting for something like an hour, simply because he was in Calhoun’s barn with this Estelle Nichols. May I now call Betty Turlock?”
The sheriff said, “I just want to point out that I was makin’ an explanation when the district attorney interrupted me.”
The foreman nodded. “You go ahead and explain, Bill.”
“When you have a murder case,” the sheriff said, “lots of little things become important. But every little thing isn’t important. The way I see it, there’s no use taking a nice girl like Betty Turlock and putting her up here in front of this Grand Jury simply to show the man she’s in love with was a little bit late in keeping his appointment.”
“Oh, certainly,” Medford said sarcastically. “The things that you don’t want brought out are the unimportant little things. But when you get a half-inch or so discrepancy in the measurement of a horseshoe...”
“Now that will be about all out of you for a minute, Rush Medford,” the sheriff said. “I’m making my explanation to the Grand Jury. You can talk afterwards.”
“That’s right, Rush,” the foreman said. “Let’s give Bill a chance to explain.”
“Now then,” Bill Eldon went on, “when I say that was coldblooded, deliberate murder, I know what I’m talking about. The mare wears an ought shoe. The wound was made with a number-two shoe. The mare wouldn’t hardly have struck up high enough with a kick to have kicked the girl on the forehead if she’d been standing back of the manger. Of course, she could have done it, but that’s pretty high for a kick where she wasn’t kicking deliberately but just lashing out at something that startled her. And you’ll notice from the wound, the main force was on the upper part of the horseshoe. Now if the mare had kicked up, she’d be puttin’ the power on the bottom part of the shoe.”