Deadline Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION 2

  CHAPTER 1 3

  CHAPTER 2 16

  CHAPTER 3 30

  CHAPTER 4 42

  CHAPTER 5 57

  CHAPTER 6 68

  CHAPTER 7 81

  CHAPTER 8 90

  CHAPTER 9 99

  CHAPTER 10 117

  CHAPTER 11 128

  CHAPTER 12 138

  CHAPTER 13 152

  CHAPTER 14 163

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1966 by Thomas B. Dewey.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  CHAPTER 1

  Peter Davidian was twenty-two years old. That’s young to die. But Peter Davidian, barring a last-minute miracle, surely would die within a week. He would die the bad way, in a steel chair wired with enough voltage to light up a good-sized town, with his head shaved and his pants legs slit. They say you don’t feel it, but at twenty-two I guess you feel it now and then while waiting.

  It was a bad year for miracles. The kind Peter Davidian needed hadn’t occurred since the raising of Lazarus. His lawyer, Sam Birch, who knew all about the differences between private eyes and miracle workers, nevertheless laid it out for me in very clear terms.

  “The kid is going to go,” he said, “unless we can dig up some mitigating circumstances in the next day or three or four.”

  “Mitigating…?”

  “You may well ask,” he said. “But it maybe isn’t so dreamy as it sounds. There’s a group behind us.”

  “Sure there is,” I said. “Twelve jurors, a prosecuting attorney, and an electrical engineer.”

  “All right, but let me give you a little background. The nature of the crime made the verdict practically inevitable. I mean, it was the crime that got judged, more than the man who did it. So my psychiatric defense didn’t get off the ground. My client could have sat there in a strait jacket, foaming at the mouth, they still would have thrown him the big one.

  “So—what we have to do is convince the governor that to execute this kid would be a miscarriage because of his provable emotional incompetence. And I think we got ways to prove it—that I didn’t have at the time of the trial.”

  “What about this group you mentioned?”

  “Good group—doctors and psychologists and a couple of lawyers. Very prestige, impeccable and, I might add, enthusiastic. They got a big drive and they like this case.”

  “Well—but what’s their nudge? What do they get?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “So they’re do-gooders. I don’t know what they get, but I don’t really give a damn, if I can get my client a commutation.”

  I kept quiet. Nothing against do-gooders especially, but the whole thing felt funny to me.

  “Oh—they’ve got funds,” Sam said, with a trace of slyness.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Everybody ought to have money.”

  “Which is how I’m able to call on you. My client hasn’t got a nickel and he doesn’t know anybody with a nickel.”

  “This is some kind of test case or something for them?”

  “Now you’re on the stove,” Sam said. “Exactly. They like the rough ones.”

  * * * *

  It was a rough one.

  After leaving Sam in his office, I drove west and south for about two hours until I came to a country town called Wesley. It was in farming country and that was all they had there, farming and a few stores and services on a short main street. There was a hotel named the Clark House. It had been built fifty-five years ago by a man named, and the ancient, ponderous man at the desk could easily have passed for the original proprietor. He was white. That is to say, the hair he had left was white, his eyebrows likewise, and his skin was turning white, so that in certain lights parts of his face and head sometimes disappeared while you were looking at him.

  He was friendly, though. I wrote my name and address in a book and he gave me a key. He asked how long I thought I would stay, and I said I couldn’t be sure, probably three, four days. That was fine with him. The only name on the register page I had signed was my own. At a glance it appeared that, aside from a slender old gentleman nodding over a newspaper in the front section of the lobby, I was the sole tenant of the Clark House. Because there were thirty rooms on three floors, that made for a high vacancy factor. Still, the white old man at the desk didn’t seem discouraged. His sense of humor was as sturdy as the pale bones in his round skull. As I turned from the desk he said:

  “Hope it’ll be quiet enough for you.”

  At the back of the lobby, where the stairs began, a broad double door was barred with a plank nailed in at both sides. On the plank a yellowed sign read: closed. Above the doors, in fading gold letters, was the legend: DINING ROOM.

  In the old days, I thought, launching myself on the climb to the second floor, they would come to the hotel for Sunday dinner. One dollar for all the fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and peas and carrots you could eat, with apple pie and coffee for dessert. Was it better then?

  The second-floor hall was so dark I had to pause and blink six times before I could spot the numbers on the doors.

  Whether it was better then, I thought, I don’t know. But I may find out. I’m back there now—except that the dining room is closed.

  My room was on the front side, Number Eight. The key worked easily in the lock, too easily.

  Have to fix that, I thought. And then I thought, Cut it out with worrying. You’re in the country now.

  I raised the window shade and put my suitcase on a straight-backed chair beside an authentic brass bed. It had two mattresses on a set of sound springs, hair underneath and down on top. The room was clean. There was a washbowl with a mirror for shaving. I looked out and down the hall and at the near end, on a door that stood slightly ajar, read the words: toilet and bath. I closed the door, wishing vaguely that the dining room were open for business.

  From the window I could see the far side of for its entire length, except for a couple of buildings at the west end. One of them, I learned soon, was a feed-and-grain store and the other a filling station. There was another filling station at the east end of the street. In between were stores—dry goods, hardware, grocery—a bank called the Farmer’s and Merchant’s National Bank, and a restaurant called the Wesley Café. There wasn’t much pretense in Wesley. Everything was labeled with rock-bottom fitness.

  The label on the barnlike structure opposite the bank and across a narrow, paved street that came to a dead end at was in three parts:

  INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER

  JACK PARRISH

  SALES—RENTALS

  I looked at the establishment for some time. Not that I’m fascinated by farm machinery, but the hard-core reason for my presence in town was that eight months before, Peter Davidian, according to the local county court records plus the records of all the available higher courts up to the U.S. Supreme, had assaulted, murdered, and mutilated a girl named Esther Parrish, age eighteen. The man who had the tractor and farm-machinery franchise in Wesley would be Esther Parrish’s father.

  * * * *

  It was three in the afternoon, the street was full of sunshine, and there was nothing that could be accomplished in the hotel room. I opened the suitcase and got out the thick file in the manila envelope that Sam Birch had given me earlier that day. It was a considerable file. In addition to the highlights of the trial testimony, there were voluminous, detailed reports of psychological and psychiatric examinations of Peter Davidian and a comprehensive study of the case made by the group that was so determined to save Davidian’s life. Also, it was paying my wages, rather liberally, in fact, and among other items in the file was a list of local names and places that bore on the crime and the trial. It was my job to develop what I could about the personality and habits of Peter Davidian and of some others, including Esther Parrish, along with any hitherto neglected or obscured circumstances that might, if known, throw an altering light on the situation. I had never had such a job before, and it was hard to be hopeful. A list of names is a piece of paper with words on it. I would have to breathe life into it, and time was short.

  I put the list in my pocket, shoved the rest of the file in the envelope, replaced it in the suitcase, and started to leave the room.

  A startled female voice squeaked: “Hey!”

  In the dimness of the hall I made out a slender woman in a white summer dress and a pair of serviceable-looking glasses, not unattractive on her. It was easy to see that when I had opened the door, it had come within millimeters of hitting her in the high, slightly turned-up nose.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  She gave me a look and adjusted her position to make up for the displacement caused by the opening of the door.

  “Didn’t mean to almost hit you in the nose,” I said.

  She gave me a look and looked away.

  “It’s not the nose so much,” she said, “but the glasses cost forty dollars.”

  “Then it was a lucky save.”

  She nodded, turning away. I went back into the room and closed the door, starting over. While I was giving her a couple of seconds to get where she was going and disappear, I thought about the file. I opened the suitcase, got it out, and stuck it under my arm.

 
Country or not, I thought, you never can tell, and it’s the only file I’ve got.

  I opened the door and almost broke her glasses for the second time. She was headed in the opposite direction and she had a towel over her arm.

  “My goodness,” she said in a neutral tone.

  “Honest,” I said, “I’m not trying on purpose to bug you. I forgot something and had to go back for it.”

  She glanced at the thick envelope under my arm and it seemed to give her some confidence. She smiled a little. She was quite pretty around the mouth and she had that cute nose. Her eyes were somewhat hard to evaluate because of the glasses.

  “It’s just that until now,” she said, “I thought I had the hotel all to myself. I’m not used to the traffic problem.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ll only be here for a few days.”

  “I hope you enjoy your stay,” she said.

  She smiled again politely, turned, and walked rather primly down the hall toward the toilet-bath.

  Down in the lobby, I asked the alabaster desk clerk whether I could store my envelope in a safe place.

  “Well,” he said, “we got a safe here. It’s old, but it ain’t been broken into for fifty years, and I guess it’s as safe as the next one.”

  “That’s safe enough,” I said.

  I wrote my name on the envelope, licked the flap, and stuck it down.

  The safe was off in a corner and he went over there, stiff on his legs, bent, and started monkeying with the dial. It didn’t take him long to open it. He had to bend a little farther to put the envelope inside, and he halted suddenly and his white old face looked up over the desk into the lobby.

  “Hey, Walt!” he said.

  The old codger, napping over the paper, turned his head slowly.

  “Yeah, Jess?” he said.

  “Did Miss Adams come in? I was out for a spell.”

  “Yeah. She come in a few minutes ago. Went upstairs.”

  “Carnsarn,” Jess said, and finished laying away my file. “Got a special delivery come in for her and I put it away, didn’t see her come in.”

  He came away from the safe.

  “That tight enough for you?” he asked.

  “That’s fine,” I said. “You mentioned Miss Adams,” I added. “Would that be Miss Vivian Adams, from Chicago?”

  “Nope,” he said. “’Twouldn’t.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I thanked him and headed for the street, thinking that if I wanted to know more about Miss Adams, I’d have to find somebody more talkative than Jess.

  After the cool dark of the hotel the sunlight on the street was fairly dazzling. I walked west, past the store fronts I hadn’t been able to see from the window because they were directly underneath, on the same side with the hotel. I passed a five-and-ten, a dry-cleaning plant, and a drugstore. It gave me a sense of security to note that the drugstore contained a soda fountain. Between it and the café across the street, I’d be able to get nourishment.

  Between the drugstore and the next building was a vacant lot, and then came the town hall. It was a three-story building with a square bell tower. Stairs led up at one side to a meeting room on the second floor. The chambers of the town council were on the third floor. One half of the ground floor was a firehouse with the doors open and the big red wagon facing the street. The other half was occupied by the town constable and the jail. That was my first stop.

  The constable’s name, according to my list, was Roscoe Embers. He had been the first official person to view the body of Esther Parrish, though he had not made the discovery. There was a way-out chance that he knew more than he had ever let on, but a much better chance that all he knew was that it had been a sorry sight and a crying shame.

  I found him behind a desk piled with long-outdated bulletins and communiqués from the sheriff’s office, in a cubbyhole of an office so cluttered it must have been quite a trick for him to open and close the door without spilling. He was in his sixties, puffy around the waist and in the face, and he had abnormally small hands, almost a girl’s hands. But the rest of him was male enough. He was writing laboriously with a dull pencil and the tip of his tongue was sticking out from one corner of his mouth.

  “Be right with you,” he said, without looking up.

  I waited for him to finish—standing because there was no clear chair to sit on—and it didn’t take long. He got his tongue back in his mouth, sagged back in his swivel chair, and waggled his bushy brows at me.

  “Goldarn paper work, drive a fella crazy,” he said.

  “I know how it is,” I said.

  “What can I do for you?”

  You have to start somewhere. There’s no way I know of to go into a small town looking for information and keep it a secret.

  “I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Esther Parrish,” I said.

  It gave him quite a time. He moved around in his seat and picked up the pencil and tossed it down again, looked over his left shoulder at a barred door which, by way of a vanishing corridor, led into the jail, and scratched at the back of his neck with one little hand.

  “Well, now,” he said.

  “Any time,” I said, “but it would be better now.”

  He straightened himself out some.

  “Who would I be talking to?” he asked.

  “Me,” I said. “It’s a public matter, I think. I mean, the thing was reported, there was a trial and all that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but if it isn’t official, you know, I’ve got a lot to do around here—”

  “It’s official. I’m representing an attorney.”

  “Oh,” he said, with some relief.

  It didn’t seem to make any difference which side I was on, but I couldn’t be positive of that.

  “You’re the one who reached the scene of the crime first, I understand,” I said.

  I didn’t understand anything of the kind, but it was proper to follow protocol.

  “Well, not the very first. I was with the posse we got up. I looked at the poor girl and around the place some, waitin’ for the sheriff’s people to get there.”

  “How did it look?” I asked.

  “It was a sorry sight,” he said. “Young girl like that—a cryin’ shame.”

  So we had got past that part of it.

  “What time of day was it?”

  “Night—after ten—about ten-thirty.”

  “How come the posse? What got it started?”

  “Oh—well, you know—” His eyes snapped suddenly. “Why d’you ask? Girl had disappeared. Her father was upset. Everybody wants to help—”

  “I understand,” I said.

  Along in there I began to lose him. Everybody hates to reopen a closed issue, and peace officers seem to hate it more than others. If he had played a notable part in tracking down the criminal, Embers might have been glad to discuss it. Apparently he hadn’t.

  “I can see you’re busy,” I said. “I won’t keep you. Maybe we can talk about it some other time.”

  He shrugged and waved one of those miniature hands.

  “Few more days,” he said, “there won’t be nothin’ much to talk about.”

  He had reference to Peter Davidian and the electric chair, and I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I nodded, found the doorknob, and let myself out onto the street.

  I had Fred Sampson and his wife on my list, but according to my vague conception of rural life, there wouldn’t be anybody home at four in the afternoon. They’d be out in the fields somewhere. The time to go visiting on the farm, I decided, would be in the evening after the chores were done.

  I walked back to the drugstore and sat down at the soda fountain. The place was deserted except for a tall guy in a white jacket behind the prescription counter, a bulky woman in a street dress bustling around the cigar counter, and a lanky, oddly misshapen fellow in a sweat shirt and dungarees who was earnestly mopping the floor. He was pretty good at it except that he put a lot more muscle into it than was necessary. He had the downcast, furtive expression of a retarded personality and his mouth was busy nearly all the time, making words nobody could hear.

  Probably a free-lance writer, I thought, who finally found a steady job.

  The woman came to the fountain and served me a coke. I asked whether a girl named Mary Carpenter still lived in town and whether she ever came into the drugstore.