Some Buried Caesar

Waddell was looking decomposed. He tried to bluster. "If all this is true-you knew it last night, didn't you? Why the hell didn't you spill it when the sheriff was there? When the cops were there on the spot?"

"I represented no interest last night, sir."

"What about the interest of justice? You're a citizen, aren't you? Did you ever hear of withholding evidence-"

"Nonsense. I didn't withhold the bull's face or the pick. You must know you're being silly. My cerebral processes, and the conclusions they lead me to, belong to me."

"You say the pick handle was wet and there was no dirt sticking to the metal. Couldn't it have been washed for some legitimate reason? Did you inquire about that?"

"I made no inquiries of anybody. At eleven o'clock at night the pick handle was wet. If you regard it as a rational project to find a legitimate nocturnal pick-washer, go ahead. The time might be better spent, if you need confirmation, in look- ing for blood residue in the grass around the hose nozzle and examining the pick handle with a microscope. It is hard to remove all vestige of blood from a piece of wood. Those steps are of course obvious, and others as well."

"You're telling me." The District Attorney sent a glance, half a glare, at Osgood, and away again, back at Wolfe. "Now look here, don't get me wrong… you neither, Fred Osgood. I'm the prosecutor for this county and I know my duty and I intend to do it and I try to do it. If there's been a crime I don't want to back off from it and neither does Sam Lake, but I'm not going to raise a stink just for the hell of it and you can't blame me for that. The people who elected me wouldn't want it and nobody ought to want it. And the way it looks to me-in spite of no blood on the bull and whether I find a legitimate nocturnal pick-washer or not-it still strikes me as cuckoo. Did he climb into the pasture carrying the pick-where the bull was-and then Clyde Osgood climbed in after him and obligingly stood there while he swung the pick? Or was Clyde already in the pasture, and he climbed in with the pick and let him have it? Can you imagine aiming anything as clumsy and heavy as a pick at a man in the dark, and him still being there when it landed? And wouldn't the blood spurt all over you too? Who is he and where did he go to, covered with blood?"

Osgood snarled, "I told you, Wolfe. Listen to the damn fool-Look here. Carter Waddell! Now I'll tell you some- thing-"