Badge of Evil (8 page)

Holt took it and read it automatically. “Thanks, Van.”

“It was a cinch. I figured he might be out of work so I checked state employment and got it without even leaving the office. You want we should take a run over and see him?”

“I don’t think we need to bother.” Briefly, he told Van Dusen about the dynamite and Shayon’s arrest, which had probably been consummated by now. “I guess I was barking up the wrong tree.”

“Well, it’s a funny one,” Van Dusen mused. “I still don’t see how they did it, but you remember what I told you about McCoy. He’s uncanny. Guess you can take that vacation, after all.”

“Yeah.” Holt stuck the slip of paper with Farnum’s address in his pocket. So finally he could empty his brief case and take a real vacation. Not a worry in the world. Somehow he didn’t feel particularly jubilant at the prospect. He went in to phone Connie. He doubted if she’d be too happy about it, either, considering the reason. The young lovers are guilty after all, dear, so now let’s relax and have a good time. But that was the way things went.

T
HOUGH
chagrined, Connie Holt took the news with more composure than did her husband. By the time Holt arrived home that evening, the whole affair had become secondary in her mind and she was more interested in discussing the activities of Nancy’s Brownie troop than in raking over the now dead coals of the Linneker murder. She had been wrong, she accepted the fact and there was no use dwelling on it. That was Connie’s view.

Though a practical viewpoint, it was one which Holt was unable to share. His mind kept returning to the case, like a wistful vulture to a carcass whose bones had already been picked clean. His conversation at the dinner table was abstracted and his appetite meagre.

Connie said, “For goodness sake, Mitch, how can I get Nancy to clean her plate when you set that kind of example?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You would be if you’d only stop brooding. You’d think that this whole thing was your fault or something. You should be happy that it’s settled.”

Holt said moodily, “That’s just it. It’s not settled, not in my mind, anyway. I’m going to have to prosecute those two kids, Connie. What sort of a job can I do when I’ve got a doubt in my own mind?”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Mitch.” Connie dismissed their daughter for her after-dinner ration of television. “It’s occurred to me recently that maybe it’s time you made a change. Are you getting stale in your job? These cases never used to upset you this way. I don’t like it.”

“I had the same thought this afternoon. Maybe it’s not the case. Maybe I’m just played out.” Holt shrugged. “I’ll tell Adair tomorrow that I’m going to take that vacation whether he likes it or not. Maybe he’ll fire me.”

Connie said softly, “Then you could handle their defence, couldn’t you?”

“They’ve already got an attorney,” Holt said. Then he grinned at her. “All right, dear, I’ll admit it. I still feel like I should be on their side of the fence. I don’t care what the evidence is, this thing does not make good sense to me. There’s too much that doesn’t jibe. But darned if I know what I can do about it.”

“You’ll think of something,” Connie told him. “I know you.”

Holt grunted dubiously and pushed back his chair and searched his pockets for cigarettes. When he did so, his fingers encountered a folded slip of paper. It was the address Van Dusen had given him that morning; he had forgotten about it. Holt sat staring at the scrawl for so long that Connie finally asked him what it was.

“Nothing,” he said and slowly balled it up between thumb and forefinger. Then, just as slowly, he smoothed the paper out again and studied it. “That is, it’s probably nothing. But maybe I … Connie, would you kill me if I ducked out on you again this evening?”

“The Linneker case?” she asked and when he nodded, she rose to kiss him lightly. “Hurry back.”

• • •

Ernest Farnum’s present address was a working man’s hotel on the fringe of the downtown business district. It was a forlorn area of honky-tonks and pawnshops and other semi-respectable establishments that catered to the helpless and the hopeless. Standing on the sidewalk before the shabby hotel, Holt wondered what had prompted him to leave his comfortable home tonight on such a nebulous mission. What was that mission, anyway? What exactly did he expect to prove — or disprove?

“Well, I’ve gotten this far,” he murmured as a sop to his good sense. But that was all it was, a sop, because something stronger than logic impelled him onward. It was his mind’s basic need for orderliness. Some people straighten pictures; Holt straightened facts.

Farnum’s room was on the second floor at the rear of a dusty corridor. A strip of light beneath the door proved that he was at home. Holt knocked but got no answer. He waited and knocked again and finally tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and opened easily. Holt stepped into a melancholy room that smelled of tobacco and dirty clothes and mildewed wallpaper.

The man who sat in the battered old easy chair by the window didn’t challenge his entrance or rise to greet him. He was an older man, in his late forties, rather small, with black hair like a skullcap and sullen, deep-set eyes. These eyes stared vacantly at Holt as if they were not surprised to see him, or as if they did not even see him at all.

Holt said, “I’m looking for Ernest Farnum.”

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?” said the other man in a heavy dull voice. He had been reading the late evening newspaper. It lay in his lap like a napkin. Holt could make out the upside-down headlines, big and black:
POLICE NAB BOY FRIEND FOR LINNEKER SLAYING.

“My name is Holt. I’m the assistant district attorney. I’d like to talk to you — if you’re Ernest Farnum.”

“I’m Ernest Farnum.” He said it like a confession. “I’m glad you came. I was going to call you. Or somebody, I guess.”

“Is that so? What’d you have in mind, Mr. Farnum?”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“Who?” asked Holt, puzzled. He began to wonder if Farnum was drunk.

Farnum consulted the newspaper, bending his head slowly as if it hurt him to do so. “Delmont Shayon. The fellow they arrested today.”

“I don’t know yet. Nobody does. He’ll be charged and tried and, if found guilty, sentenced. Is that what you mean?”

“If found guilty,” Farnum repeated. “They could gas him, couldn’t they? I never thought that could happen. I didn’t figure that at all. It isn’t right that he should get into trouble because of me.”

Holt felt a stab of anticipation, “Mr. Farnum, do you know something about this Linneker case?”

Farnum looked at him with sluggish surprise. “Why, yes. Isn’t that why you’re here? I killed him, you know. With dynamite, at his beach house.”

The statement was made so calmly, emotionlessly, that Holt had no immediate reaction to it. He didn’t believe that he had heard Farnum correctly. He said, “What did you say?”

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You came to arrest me. I’m glad it’s all over. I was going to call you, anyway. I couldn’t let an innocent man take the blame.” Farnum added, as if it explained everything. “That wouldn’t have been decent.”

“I guess it wouldn’t,” Holt murmured. He wanted to sit down but Farnum occupied the only chair so he chose the edge of the unmade bed and stared at the confessed murderer. He had been prepared for almost anything except this and the surprise was great enough to make him try to seek other means of explaining it away. Was Farnum just a crackpot? Every murder case turned up a few, even one or two willing to confess to crimes with which they had no connection, driven by obscure compulsions that were beyond the ken of more normal persons. It was possible that Farnum was one of these, and that his entire knowledge of the murder came from what he had read in the newspapers. Holt said cautiously, “You know what you’re confessing to, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Aren’t you going to arrest me?” Farnum pondered. “Funny how things turn out, Mr — what’d you say your name was? — Mr. Holt. I didn’t really figure on hurting anybody when I bought the dynamite. I was just going to pay Old Man Linneker back a little. But it worked out the other way.”

“You must have had a reason.”

“Sure, I had a reason. What do you think I am?” Farnum looked aggrieved. “He was persecuting me. I didn’t mean him any harm but he wouldn’t let me be. I had to protect myself. That’s just human nature.”

There was something in Farnum’s pathetic sincerity that compelled belief, fantastic though the outright confession seemed. That he had a warped intelligence was obvious, but hadn’t Holt felt from the beginning that the crime was the work of an immature and underdeveloped mind? Ernest Farnum fitted the picture he had mentally drawn of the dynamiter much more than did Delmont Shayon. But he still wanted the final bit of corroboration. He said, “I want you to tell me one thing. Where did you buy the dynamite?”

“Up the coast. A little dump named Seacliff. I was up there looking for work one day and I got the idea.” Farnum stirred impatiently. “Aren’t you going to arrest me?”

“Yes,” said Holt and stood up. “I am now.” Farnum might have gotten the rest of the story from the newspapers but the source of the dynamite had still not been revealed. Only the police knew it — and the man who had bought it. Formally, he said, “Ernest Farnum, I arrest you for the murder of Rudy Linneker on the evening of January twenty-fifth of the present year.”

Farnum sighed, almost contentedly. “That’s good. We going down to the jail now?”

“Eventually. I want you to talk to some people first, make a statement.”

“Okay.” Farnum rose to get his coat. The newspaper slid off his lap to the floor and lay there, unheeded. At the doorway, Farnum hesitated. “I really should leave a note for the people here. They’ll want to rent the room. Or maybe you can tell them I won’t be back.”

“They’ll hear about it,” said Holt. “They won’t expect you.”

I, E
RNEST
F
ARNUM,
testify that the following statement, given and signed by me on this the 6th day of February, is wholly voluntary and given without threat of coercion or promise of immunity by any official person or persons …

So began Farnum’s confession to the dynamite murder of Rudy Linneker. At midnight, Mitch Holt sat in the district attorney’s private office and read through a carbon copy while in the larger room outside the confessed killer signed the original. It was a sordid and petty document, as such things usually were, and to absorb its contents Holt had withdrawn from the maelstrom of the outer office where police, reporters, photographers and the district attorney’s staff surged about. Holt, though quietly elated, did not feel a part of the circus-like celebration.

“Hey now,” exclaimed his boss, who came bustling in and discovered him. “What’re you doing in here? You’re missing all the fun.”

“I never was much for tearing down the goal posts. I wanted to read Farnum’s statement all the way through.”

“Amazing document, isn’t it? Hard to believe that a man could be so cowardly and so stupid at the same time. But there it is.”

Holt shrugged, not wanting to pass judgment so lightly. “I think we’re going to have trouble hanging a Murder First on him though. The defence can make a good case for insanity, it seems to me. Farnum’s a definite paranoiac.”

“The delusions of persecution, you mean? Well, we’ll see. I’ve handled these defence psychologists before.” Adair, on top of the world, radiated confidence. He flicked the typewritten sheets with his finger. “We’ve got it made, son, thanks to you.”

“It just fell into my lap.”

“What was that line you were giving me about being no detective? You showed up the cops from hell to breakfast.” Adair clapped his hands in high good humour. “I can hardly wait to rub it in to Chief Gould in the morning.”

“It could happen to anybody. The police had their eyes so firmly fixed on Tara and Shayon that they overlooked the obvious. If I hadn’t been so inexperienced, maybe I’d have done the same thing.”

“You play it as modest as you like. The results speak for themselves.” He saw Holt frowning. “What’s bothering you, Mitch?”

“I don’t know. Have you read Farnum’s statement?”

“Not completely. I was in on the interrogation and I glanced over the rough draft. I heard enough.”

“Well, it’s pretty rambling, about what you’d expect from his kind of mind.” Holt began to leaf through the pages. “He tells about how Linneker never gave him a chance down at the yard, promoted other men over him, that sort of thing. Farnum blamed Linneker personally, though Linneker probably didn’t even know he existed. That’s your paranoiac mind for you. Then he tells about the fight with O’Hara — he got beat up pretty bad — and he saw Linneker as he left the yard after being fired. Says Linneker was standing at the window in his upstairs office, laughing at him. That’s when he swore he was going to pay him back. He bought the dynamite two weeks later, after brooding a while.”

“Why’d he wait so long to use it? I missed that part.”

“I’m reconstructing that he lost his nerve or maybe changed his mind — Farnum doesn’t say — but it was probably tied up with his not being able to get another job. He says right here that Linneker had blackballed him all over town. Ridiculous, of course, but that’s what he thought. So he finally went down to the yard the other night, says he just intended to blow things up. Then across the harbour he saw Linneker’s private beach, all lit up with floodlights, and the beach cabana. That seemed to symbolize everything so he hiked around the edge of the harbour, some two miles, climbed over the fence and stuck the dynamite through the nearest window of the cabana. Then he ran away. He didn’t even know he’d killed anybody until he saw the papers.”

“How come this beach cabana fixation?”

“He was one of the lumber yard crew that built it.” Holt put aside the confession. “Anything else in his story strike you?”

“Yes. Farnum’s crazy like a fox. He’s going to try for second degree. But we’ll tear him to pieces, wait and see.”

“That isn’t what I meant. This confession is eleven pages long, covers the whole affair from stem to stern.” Holt grimaced thoughtfully. “But nowhere in it does Farnum mention planting the dynamite sticks in that storage closet under Shayon’s stairs.”