God Save the Child

Marge Bartlett was still on the phone with her back to me. No one was in sight. The back door was closed. The dog had settled under the kitchen table. I turned back to the living room and stood in the center, beside the corpse, and held my breath and listened. Except for Marge Bartlett talking with animation about a jellied salad, there was no sound.

I put the gun back in the hip holster and squatted down beside the corpse and looked at its face. It had been Earl Maguire. That’s it for the law practice, Earl. I picked up one hand and bent the forefinger back and forth. He was cold and getting stiff. I put the hand down. All the college and all the law school and all the cramming for the bar, and someone snaps your neck for you when you’re not much more than thirty. I looked around the room. A glass-topped rug was bunched toward Maguire’s body. A fireplace poker lay maybe two feet beyond Maguire’s outflung hand. An abstract oil painting was on the floor beneath a picture hook on the wall as if it had fallen.

I duck-walked over to the poker and looked at it without touching it. There was no sign of blood on it. I stood up and went to the front door. The lock button in the middle of the knob was in. The door was locked. I’d seen Marge Bartlett unlock the back door. I opened the front door. No sign of it being jimmied. There’d been no sign of jimmying on the back door. I’d have noticed when we came in. There weren’t any other doors. I walked across the front hall to the dining room. It was undisturbed except that the door to the liquor cabinet was open. There was a lot of booze inside. It didn’t look as if any was missing.

I heard Marge Bartlett hang up. I headed for the kitchen and cut her off before she got to the door.

“Stay here,” I said.

“Why?”

“Earl Maguire is dead in your living room.”

“My God, the party’s in six hours.”

“Inconsiderate bastard, wasn’t he,” I said.

She opened her mouth and then put both hands over it and pressed and didn’t say anything. “Sit there,” I said and steered her to a kitchen chair. She kept her hands over her mouth and watched me minutely while I called the cops. When she heard me say Maguire’s neck was broken, she made a muffled squeak.

Five minutes later Trask arrived with a bald, fat old geezer who carried a black bag like the ones doctors used to carry when they made house calls. He eased himself down on his knees beside the body and looked at it. He was too fat to squat.

“When’d he die, Doc?” Trask had a notebook out and held a yellow Bic Banana pen poised over it to record the answer.

The doctor was strained for breath, kneeling down like that; it didn’t help his temperament. “Before we got here,” he said.

Trask got a little redder “I know that, goddamn it. What I want to know is how long before we got here?”

“How the hell do I know, George? I don’t even know what killed him, yet. His neck looks broken.” The doctor picked up Maguire’s head and turned it back and forth. A dark bruise ran along his cheek from the earlobe to the corner of his mouth. “Yep, neck’s broken.”

“What time you find him, Spenser?” Trask decided to question me. It wasn’t going well with the doctor.

“Quarter of two.”

“Exactly?”

“Approximately.”

“Well, goddamn it, can’t you be more exact? You’re supposed to be some kind of hot stuff. I want to know the exact time of the discovery of the deceased. It could be vital.”

“Only in the movies, Trask.”

Trask looked past me and said, “Hello, Lieutenant.” I turned and it was Healy. He had on the same straw hat with the big headband that I’d seen him in before. His jacket was gray tweed with a muted red line forming squares in it. Gray slacks, white shirt with a button-down collar, and a narrow black knit tie. Tan suede desert boots. He had his hands in his hip pockets, and his face was without expression as he looked down at the body.

“Worse and worse,” he said.

Trask said, “This is Doc Woodson, Lieutenant. He was just saying that Maguire died of a broken neck.”

“No, I didn’t, George. I said his neck was broken. I didn’t say it killed him.”

“Well, it didn’t help him none. That’s for damned certain,” Trask said.

Healy said, “When can you give me a report on him, Doctor Woodson?”

“We’ll take him down Union Hospital now, and I can have something for you by, say, supper time.” He looked at me. “Gimme a hand up, young fella; you look strong enough.” I helped him up. The effort left him red-faced, and there was sweat on his forehead. “Don’t get the exercise I should,” he said.

“Who found the body?” Healy asked.

Trask said, “Spenser,” and jerked his head in my direction. I got the feeling he wished I were the body.

“Okay, tell me about it.” Healy squatted down on his heels beside the corpse and looked at it while I told him.

“Doors locked when you got here?”

“Yep, both of them. Mrs. Bartlett opened the back door with a key, and the front door was locked. I checked it.”