The D.A. Breaks an Egg

Larkin hesitated a moment, as though he would have liked to ask further questions, but could hardly see his way clear to doing so. “Body of a young woman over here,” he said. “Evidently a stabbing job. I haven’t touched the body. I’m waiting for the coroner, but I’ve been looking around a bit.”

“Okay, let’s take a look,” Brandon said cheerfully.

“You must have known it was important in order to get Selby up,” Larkin said, curiosity in his voice.

“Why, sure,” Brandon said. “You weren’t trying to keep it a secret, were you, Otto?”

“No, no. I just wondered — how you... how you got here so quick.”

“Oh, we’re fast workers,” Brandon said. “Where is she?”

“Over here.”

They followed the path of Otto Larkin’s flashlight along the grass, moistened slightly by evening dew, to the place where suddenly, out of the darkness, a huddled shape absorbed the circle of light.

“I’m waiting for Harry Perkins, the coroner,” Larkin explained. “But you can see the stab wound in the back there, right between the shoulder blades. It isn’t a messy job, but it must have been right clean to the heart, because apparently she died instantly.”

Larkin waited for a question, and when there was none, added with considerable self-importance, “Now, the reason I know she died instantly is because of the bloodstain on the back of her jacket. You can see that it’s just about evenly distributed around the wound. Now, if she’d been standing up for any length of time after she was stabbed, I figure the blood would have dropped down and there would have been stains on the back of her skirt. There aren’t any. The stains are all around the blouse and the jacket, and that’s all.

“She must have been conscious when she fell, because she flung out her hands in front of her. That’s why the left arm is doubled under and her face is lying on the left arm.”

“Any tracks?” Brandon asked.

“Well, now,” Larkin said, “when you come right down to it you can’t find a track. She’s out here on the grass where you can’t expect to find any tracks. Of course, the gravel driveway won’t help any, but there’s a strip of dirt between the driveway and the lawn and I’ve looked along there pretty carefully. You can’t see a thing.”

“What do you suppose she was doing off this far from the driveway?” Brandon asked. “She must be sixty feet from the driveway.”

“Well, the way I reconstruct what happened,” Larkin said, self-importantly, “is that she was out here on some sort of a necking party, sitting out here with her boy friend, and something happened and he just stabbed her. He was sitting over on the left-hand side, and he reached his right hand around back of her, as though he were just going to put his arm around her, and then suddenly stabbed. That would make the wound come slanting toward the left.”

“And then,” Brandon said, “she’d have pitched forward on her face. That right?”

“That’s right.”

“And what about her legs?”

“Well, they would have sort of straightened out.”

“In that event,” Brandon said, “the skirts would have remained in position as the legs stretched out, and that would give the effect of having the skirts up. This girl is lying with her skirts neatly smoothed out, just as though she’d been walking and had suddenly pitched forward on her face.”

“Or,” Larkin said, reluctant to give up his theory, “the man could have sort of straightened her out.”

“He could have,” Brandon said dryly.

The sheriff moved his flashlight around in probing scrutiny. His eyes, accustomed to reading trail on the range, took in every minute detail that was left, even to the grass which had been tramped down by Otto Larkin, and was now slowly straightening.

“Someone knelt by the body right there,” Brandon said.

“I did that,” Larkin admitted. “I just raised the jacket in order to see about the bloodstains. I could do it without disturbing anything.”

Brandon nodded. The beam of his flashlight quested out in widening circles. He walked over to inspect the strip of dirt bicycle path which bordered the graveled driveway, then said, “Look here. You can see where an automobile came up off the graveled roadway and cut across this dirt.”

“I know,” Larkin said hastily. “I noticed that, but it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s where some car was crowded a little bit on the turn.”

“It could be something else,” Brandon said.

“Well, anyhow,” Larkin pointed out, “it won’t help matters, because you can’t see the tire tread pattern.”

“What makes you think you can’t?”

“Well, look,” Larkin said, pointing his flashlight straight down on the tracks.

Brandon said, “Let’s try another approach, Larkin. Suppose you put out your flashlight and we’ll use just one flashlight.”

The sheriff knelt on the grass and pointed his flashlight along the ground so that the lighting came almost directly from one side. He slowly raised the flashlight for a couple of feet, then lowered it again, until he found the point where he obtained maximum efficiency.