A young sandy-haired, lantern-jawed patrolman guarded me. He sat on the table and chewed gum and watched me out of colorless eyes. When I asked him for a cigarette, he said he didn’t smoke. There was a phone on the corner of the table. A piece of the earpiece had been chipped off.
Fifteen minutes later Kruslov, Hilver, a strange civilian and a male stenographer came in in quick single file, banging the door back against the wall. Kruslov ordered the guard out. They all took chairs. Kruslov put thick hands on his hips and looked down at me.
“Well, damn it, you didn’t get very far. Hid out in your girlfriend’s room and then tried to hike out of town. Not smart, Sewell.”
“Where is she?”
“I ask the questions.”
“She didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Did you spend the night in her room?”
“That has no bearing on this, Captain.”
The back of his hand was like a board. It cut the inside of my mouth and rocked me so far over I nearly fell off the chair. He smiled, almost genially. “I am going to ask a lot of questions. I want a lot of answers. I have missed a lot of sleep. I am impatient. I do not want smart answers, or a smart attitude. I want a little humility, Sewell. You killed a society girl and you did it very neatly and damn near got away with it. Smart police work caught you. We looked in the trunk of the car of everybody connected with this thing, and in your car we found proof you had her body in there. You ran and you didn’t run good enough so you’ve lost all the way around. You outsmarted Paul France, which is something nobody does very often. That was the last piece of luck you had, the last piece of luck you’re going to get. Now I’ll ask questions and you answer them. Why did you kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
He struck me again, in the same place. I wiped my mouth and said, “I want a lawyer.”
“You’re here for questioning. We haven’t placed a formal charge yet. When we place a formal charge, you’ll be entitled to an attorney. In the meantime, you can refuse to answer questions. Naturally, we’ll have to accept your refusal, but we’ll keep asking them. When I’m tired, somebody else will ask them. Where did you kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
This time I was knocked off the chair. The others watched without any great show of interest.
“You don’t want to be stupid about this, Sewell. You see, we can prove you had the body in the back of your car.”
“I know I did.”
“That’s cooperative. Let’s have a little more cooperation. If you admit that, then will you admit killing her?”
“But I didn’t kill her.”
He smiled at me. “I know. The body came in the mail. Special delivery. Or you found it under a bush. Where did you get the body, Sewell?”
“Somebody brought it in in the night and put it in my closet. Mary had a key. I gave it to her so she could wake me up if I was still asleep when she came to get me to go up to the lake Sunday. After your men left I found the body. I was scared. So I got rid of it.”
He moved with the bulky quickness of a bear, and all the strength. He lifted me out of the chair with one hand on my throat, swung me around and banged me back against the wall. My head hit hard, dazing me. Through the momentary fog I saw his face wearing a gentle smile, heard his soft voice. “You just found her in your closet. Just like that. Dead.”
“Yes,” I croaked.
He let go of me, turned with a snort of disgust and sat down again. “Sit down, Sewell.”
“It’s the truth. She had a belt of mine around her neck. A red fabric belt. It’s in the top drawer of my bureau. And I suppose you want the tarp I carried her in. That’s in a hole in a rotten birch, about a hundred and fifty feet back in the woods, a hole about seven feet off the ground. I moved the body. I know that was wrong. But I was scared. I didn’t think clearly.”
Kruslov rattled his fingers on the scarred table top. “Sewell, I’ll tell you how it happened. You invited her in. She came in. She was a teaser. She got you all hot and upset and she wouldn’t give. You were drunk. You killed her and put her in the closet and went peacefully to sleep.”
“How about her car?”
“You drove it out and left it.”
“And walked fifteen miles back? Anyway, if I did that, why not take the body along with the car?”
“You were drunk. You didn’t know what you were doing.” He leaned toward me, smiling softly. “Come on, Clint. We’re all men of the world. We know the score. We know how a thing like that can happen. Hell, we know it wasn’t premeditated. I’ll personally see that you get every break in the world. Honest.”
“I didn’t kill her. Somebody else killed her and wished the body on me.”
He got up and hammered the other side of my face with the back of his hand. It was the sore side. I got my balance and looked up at him. “If you keep your damn hands off me you’ll get further.”
And he knocked me off the chair.
The civilian interrupted. He was an oily joker with white hair and confidential eyes. “Joe, let me have a minute alone with this boy.”
“Okay, Bernie,” Kruslov said. They trooped out and left me with Bernie. He gave me a cigarette and lighted it. I fingered the inside of my cheek.
“Son, Captain Kruslov is a good officer, but he’s used to handling the lower element. I can see right away that he’s not used to dealing with a man like you. But that won’t change his methods. He’s tireless. He won’t give up. He’ll give you hell on earth until you come clean with him. Just between the two of us, I think you’d be doing the smart thing to open up. I really do. And he meant it when he said he’d see that you get every break.”
“You think I ought to?”
He patted my shoulder. “I’m positive of it. It’s pretty sickening the way he cuffs people around. He hasn’t injured anybody permanently — yet.”
“You can go to hell. I found the body in my closet and that’s the entire truth.”
Bernie was not like Captain Kruslov; Bernie used the palm of his hand instead of the back. I nailed him right between the eyes, hurting hell out of my hand. He rocked back on the table, legs kicking, and fell off on the other side, taking a chair down with him. Kruslov, Hilver and the stenographer came tearing back in. Bernie wanted me held while he got even. Kruslov told him to sit down and shut up.
We started again. I stuck doggedly to the truth. They kept trying to mix me up. They began to work it in shifts. It is funny what happens to you when people keep driving questions at you, pounding them in, jeering at your answers. You eventually arrive at a semi-hypnotic state. Their heads all looked as big as bushel baskets. Their voices seemed to start inside my head. I no longer knew or cared who asked what. My voice deteriorated to a husky rasp. Somebody started snapping the end of my nose with his finger, every time I answered a question. I don’t know when it got dark and the room lights went on. My nose hurt like fire each time it was snapped, but I got too weary to duck. I don’t know when the belt and the tarp and the glossy pictures of the body were brought in. I only know that it went on and on and on.
I sat in the bottom of a well with searchlights shining down on me, big heads looking down in there at me. I answered up out of the bottom of my well, my voice hollow. I squatted down there and knew the well was getting deeper and deeper. Their questions were further away. The lights were dimmer.
Suddenly everything stopped. I sat with my chin on my chest. The room was too silent.
“Midnight, Joe,” somebody said.