Chapter 35. Suspense
Well, the next couple of days were long and filled with suspense. I didn’t hear anything from anybody. On Sunday, I was able to talk to Win and Jackie at church, and they passed things along to the other guys and Kate, and later on I talked to Jane on the phone and filled her in. But there was nothing but silence from the cops.
I knew I had to be patient, and I knew I’d be able to talk to Ben at school the next day. So I tried to put it all out of my mind by spending a couple of hours at the library reading up on the Second Bull Run campaign in preparation for my term paper. I saw Sergeant Smithers there. We just smiled at each other; we both knew the next development in the murder case would come via an official announcement by the Essex Junction Police Department.
No news that day, and I spent a typical Sunday evening watching the Ed Sullivan Show after supper. Sid Caesar made me laugh a couple times, Wayne Newton made my skin crawl, but, mostly it all just washed over me while I pondered the possibilities.
There was nothing on the morning news. When I got to school, the big news was that Mrs. Rock was out again. Well, that was encouraging, at least to the few of us who knew what was going on, but most of the kids were convinced that the case was solved, Roger Warren was the killer, and Rock’s absence had nothing to do with it.
Miss Randall was subbing again, and, once again, she had nothing from Mrs. Rock, but we didn’t know that. I only learned that later. It turned out that Mr. Camp and the other English teachers had brought her up to speed on where the various English classes stood, so she was much better prepared.
I managed to get a word with Old Ben, and he promised we could talk after school.
In Mr. Ermentrout’s class, we were finishing up our study of the Reconstruction of the South, and about to move on to the Gilded Age, the era of America’s great “robber barons.” It wasn’t as interesting to me as the Civil War, or any war, for that matter, but Ermentrout made everything pretty fun. He could have been a stand-up comedian, and his caricatures of the American capitalists like Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie were hilarious. He wasn’t exactly a social liberal, but he did give us an appreciation of the way a few very fortunate men became the richest in our history at the expense of the working class.
His class gave us a short respite from the anxiety of the murder. The afternoon started with another French nightmare, then English with Miss Randall. Unlike the previous Friday, Miss Randall knew what we were supposed to be doing, so we were immediately reminded of our deadline for submitting an outline for our term papers, and a tentative thesis. We also had a short essay due the next day, which we had vainly hoped would be forgotten.
It was somewhat of a revenge day for Randall, who obviously knew we had taken advantage of her on Friday. Still, she was a lot nicer than Rock, so nobody was complaining.
After the last class, I headed right down to the basement to talk to Ben. He seemed to be in a good mood, which was encouraging, and he asked me to sit while he poured himself a cup of coffee. I sat down eagerly, anxious to hear what had happened on Saturday.
“Well, Denny, I’ll tell you. Junior came in a little while after you left, with Patrolman Kane, who had some equipment with him. The first thing they did was examine the bottle. Each of them picked up the bottle in turn and examined it with a magnifying glass. They were both of the opinion that the back label had been scraped off, probably with a razor blade. There is a package of razor blades in another drawer of the desk. There is also a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and they believe that the bottle was wiped down with alcohol after the label was scraped off. It was well done, and there were no traces left of the label or anything that might have stained it. But there was something left on the bottle, and it was Kane who spotted it.
“On one edge of the front label, there was a tiny little semi-circle of a stain, nearly impossible to see. They let me see it under the magnifying glass.”
“Was it blood?”
He nodded slowly. “They didn’t know for sure, of course, but Junior was able to get it tested at the lab that night, and it turned out to be human blood, and Miss Delisle’s blood type, which is not the same as Mrs. Rock’s. That was the clincher, the piece of evidence that convinced Chief Mulrooney to have Mrs. Rock picked up for questioning again.
“That’s not all they did. They dusted the bottle, the desk and all the surfaces in the room for fingerprints. They knew, obviously, that Mrs. Rock’s fingerprints would be everywhere; on the bottle and all over the room. But what was important was that no one else’s prints were on the bottle, and Roger Warren’s were nowhere. As we thought, he was never in that room.”
“Of course he wasn’t, and he never touched that bottle. Miss Delisle was already dead when he got to the school. So Junior went to the Chief, and he believed him?”
“Eventually. It wasn’t easy. You see, the mistake that Junior made before was giving you and your friend, Kate, credit for giving him the clue about the car driving out of the lot. As you said on Saturday, the Chief hates you, and so does Sergeant Slingerland. They went into their interview with Mrs. Rock wanting to prove you were wrong, and that made them willing to believe her story. But this new evidence is too important, too damning, and they can’t ignore it. Junior was careful to leave you out of the story this time, which probably helped, but the most important thing is that the Chief desperately wants to solve this case, and get the credit for it. The blood-stained bottle comes very close to solving it.”
“Very close? But it’s not finished yet?”
“Not yet. They picked up Mrs. Rock late yesterday morning, after Junior convinced the Chief that the evidence was compelling. They spent the rest of the day questioning her, and I’m sure they are still working on her. Junior called me this morning to ask me a couple of questions, and he filled me in on their progress. She’s not budging, and even with the murder weapon, they want to have a confession before they indict her.
“By the way, Junior wanted me to apologize to you for cutting you out of the process, and he hopes you understand. He is very grateful for your help, as well as Kate’s, and he told me to go ahead and bring you up to date. I know you want to tell your friends, but please don’t tell them everything; just that they have the murder weapon and they’re trying to get a confession. You must not tell anyone that any of this came from Junior.”
I nodded happily, my mind racing with all this information.
“What about today?” I asked, “Have you heard anything?”
“No. As far as I know, they’re still working on her. I expect Junior will call me at home tonight.”
This was all great news, although it was frustrating that they hadn’t indicted her yet. When I left the building, I found the whole gang waiting for me - Win, Kate, Jackie, Tom, and Rollo. I couldn’t tell them everything, but I gave them the basics: Mrs. Rock was being held on suspicion of murder, they had the murder weapon, and they were trying to get a confession out of her.
Everyone was excited about it, even the kids who had been convinced that Roger was the killer. We jabbered about it for a few minutes, but we all wanted to get home, have something to eat, and be ready for the news on TV at six.