A Stab in the Dark

Page 24

I asked him about the day of the murder.
"My shift ended around noon that day. I went over to Clinton Street and sat in a coffee shop at the counter where I could keep an eye on the place. When she left early I followed her. I was across the street watching her building when a man went into it. I knew him, I'd seen him with her before."
"Was he black?"
"Black? No. Why?"
"No reason."
"I don't remember what he looked like. He was with her for a half-hour or so. Then he left. I waited a little while longer, and something told me, I don't know, I just knew this was the right time. I went up and knocked on her door."
"And she let you in?"
"I showed her my shield. And I reminded her that she knew me from the day-care center, that I was Danny's father. She let me in."
"And?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Are you sure of that?"
I guess he thought it over. Then he said, "We were in the kitchen. She was making me a cup of coffee, she had her back to me, and I put one hand over her mouth and jabbed the icepick into her chest. I wanted to get her heart right away, I didn't want her to suffer. I kept stabbing her in the heart and she collapsed in my arms and I let her fall to the floor." He raised his liquid brown eyes to mine. "I think she was dead right then," he said. "I think she died right away."
"And you went on stabbing her."
"When I thought about it before I did it, I always went crazy and stabbed over and over like a maniac. I had that picture in my mind. But I couldn't do it that way. I had to make myself stab her and I was sick, I thought I was going to throw up, and I had to keep on sticking that icepick into her body and-" He broke off, gasping for breath. His face was drawn and his pale complexion was ghostly.
"It's all right," I said.
"Oh, God."
"Take it easy, Burt."
"God, God."
"You only stabbed one of her eyes."
"It was so hard," he said. "Her eyes were wide open. I knew she was dead, I knew she couldn't see anything, but those eyes were just staring at me. I had the hardest time making myself stab her in the eye. I did it once and then I just couldn't do it again. I tried but I just couldn't do it again."
"And then?"
"I left. No one saw me leave. I just left the building and walked away. I put the icepick down a sewer. I thought, I did it, I killed her and I got away with it, but I didn't feel as though I got away with anything. I felt sick to my stomach. I thought about what I had done and I couldn't believe I'd really done it. When the story was on television and in the papers I couldn't believe it. I thought that someone else must have done it."
"And you didn't kill your wife."
He shook his head. "I knew I could never do something like that again. You know something? I've thought about all of it, over and over, and I think I was out of my mind. In fact I'm sure of it. Something about seeing Mrs. Potowski, those pools of blood in her eyes, those stab wounds all over her body, it did something to me. It made me crazy, and I went on being crazy until Barbara Ettinger was dead. Then I was all right again, but she was dead.
"All of a sudden certain things were clear. I couldn't stay married anymore, and for the first time I realized I didn't have to. I could leave my wife and Danny. I had thought that would be a horrible thing to do, but here I'd been planning on killing her, and now I'd actually killed somebody and I knew how much more horrible that was than anything else I could possibly do to her, like leaving."
I led him through it again, went over a few points. He finished his beer but didn't get another. I wanted a drink, but I didn't want beer and I didn't want to drink with him. I didn't hate him. I don't know exactly what I felt for him. But I didn't want to drink with him.
HE broke a silence to say, "Nobody can prove any of this. It doesn't matter what I told you. There are no witnesses and there's no evidence."
"People could have seen you in the neighborhood."
"And still remember nine years later? And remember what day it was?"
He was right, of course. I couldn't imagine a District Attorney who'd even try for an indictment. There was nothing to make a case out of.
I said, "Why don't you put a coat on, Burt."
"What for?"
"We'll go down to the Eighteenth Precinct and talk to a cop named Fitzroy. You can tell him what you told me."
"That'd be pretty stupid, wouldn't it?"
"Why?"
"All I have to do is keep on the way I've been. All I have to do is keep my mouth shut. Nobody can prove anything. They couldn't even try to prove anything."
"That's probably true."
"And you want me to confess."
"That's right."
His expression was childlike. "Why?"
To tie off the ends, I thought. To make it neat. To show Frank Fitzroy that he was right when he said I just might solve the case.
What I said was, "You'll feel better."
"That's a laugh."
"How do you feel now, Burt?"
"How do I feel?" He considered the question. Then, as if surprised by his answer, "I feel okay."
"Better than when I got here?"
"Yeah."
"Better than you've felt since Sunday?"
"I suppose so."
"You never told anybody, did you?"
"Of course not."
"Not a single person in nine years. You probably didn't think about it much, but there were times when you couldn't help thinking about it, and you never told anybody."
"So?"
"That's a long time to carry it."
"God."
"I don't know what they'll do with you, Burt. You may not do any time. Once I talked a murderer into killing himself, and he did it, and I wouldn't do that again. And another time I talked a murderer into confessing because I convinced him he would probably kill himself if he didn't confess first. I don't think you'd do that I think you've lived with this for nine years and maybe you could go on living with it. But do you really want to? Wouldn't you rather let go of it?"
"God," he said. He put his head in his hands. "I'm all mixed up," he said.
"You'll be all right."
"They'll put my picture in the papers. It'll be on the news. What's that going to make it like for Danny?"
"You've got to worry about yourself first."
"I'll lose my job," he said. "What'll happen to me?"
I didn't answer that one. I didn't have an answer.
"Okay," he said suddenly.
"Ready to go?"
"I guess."
On the way downtown he said, "I think I knew Sunday. I knew you'd keep poking at it until you found out I did it. I had an urge to tell you right then."
"I got lucky. A couple of coincidences put me on St. Marks Place and I thought of you and had nothing better to do than see the house where you used to live. But the numbers stopped at One-three-two."
"If it wasn't that coincidence there would have been another one. It was all set from the minute you walked into my apartment. Maybe earlier than that. Maybe it was a sure thing from the minute I killed her. Some people get away with murder but I guess I'm not one of them."
"Nobody gets away with it. Some people just don't get caught."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"You didn't get caught for nine years, Burt. What were you getting away with?"
"Oh," he said. "I get it."
AND just before we got to the One-Eight I said, "There's something I don't understand. Why did you think it would be easier to kill your wife than to leave her? You said several times that it would be such a terrible thing to leave a woman like her, that it would be a contemptible act, but men and women leave each other all the time. You couldn't have been worried about what your parents would think because you didn't have any family left. What made it such a big deal?"
"Oh," he said. "You don't know."
"Don't know what?"
"You haven't met her. You didn't go out there this afternoon, did you?"
"No."
("I never see him… I never see my former husband… I don't see my husband and I don't see the check. Do you see? Do you?")
"The Potowski woman, with her eyes staring up through the blood. When I saw her like that it just hit me so hard I couldn't deal with it. But you wouldn't understand that because you don't know about her."
("Perhaps he has a phone and perhaps it's in the book. You could look it up. I know you'll excuse me if I don't offer to look it up for you.")
The answer was floating out there. I could very nearly reach out and touch it. But my mind wouldn't fasten onto it.
He said, "My wife is blind."
Chapter 17
It turned out to be a long night, although the trip to Twentieth Street was the least of it. I shared a cab down with Burton Havermeyer. We must have talked about something en route but I can't remember what. I paid for the cab, took Havermeyer to the squad room and introduced him to Frank Fitzroy, and that was pretty much the extent of my contribution. I, after all, was not the arresting officer. I had no official connection with the case and had performed no official function. I didn't have to be around while a stenographer took down Havermeyer's statement, nor was I called upon to make a statement of my own.
Fitzroy slipped away long enough to walk me down to the corner and buy me a drink at P. J. Reynolds.
I didn't much want to accept his invitation. I wanted a drink, but I wasn't much more inclined to drink with him than with Havermeyer. I felt closed off from everyone, locked up tight within myself where dead women and blind women couldn't get at me.
The drinks came and we drank them, and he said, "Nice piece of work, Matt."
"I got lucky."
"You don't get that kind of luck. You make it. Something got you onto Havermeyer in the first place."
"More luck. The other two cops from the Six-One were dead. He was odd man in."
"You could have talked to him on the phone. Something made you go see him."
"Lack of anything better to do."
"And then you asked him enough questions so that he told a couple lies that could catch him up further down the line."
"And I was in the right place at the right time, and the right shop sign caught my eye when the right pair of cops walked in front of me."
"Oh, shit," he said, and signaled the bartender. "Put yourself down if you want."
"I just don't think I did anything to earn a field promotion to Chief of Detectives. That's all."
The bartender came around. Fitzroy pointed to our glasses and the bartender filled them up again. I let him pay for this round, as he had paid for the first one.
He said, "You won't get any official recognition out of this, Matt. You know that, don't you?"
"I'd prefer it that way."
"What we'll tell the press is the reopening of the case with the arrest of Pinell made him conscience-stricken, and he turned himself in. He talked it over with you, another ex-cop like himself, and decided to confess. How does that sound?"