“At any rate,” Davis continued, “you took the scarf and choked her and killed her. And then you snapped out of your murderous rage, and realized you had a dead body in the car. You drove around for a while, wondering what to do about it, and then you remembered these maniac killings, and you got a brilliant idea. You figured it all out, and you figured you could make it look like one of them, and get away with it. So you just parked the car on the first quiet street you came to, and went back to the theatre.”
“Let’s stop kidding,” Conway said. “I don’t know what you’re driving at; you must have something on your minds, but it certainly can’t be that you believe I did this thing. The car was parked at ten-o-four, remember? And you yourself, Sergeant, said I couldn’t have done it then.”
“That’s right,” Bauer said. “You couldn’t of done it if the car was parked at ten-o-four. If. That’s what threw me, and it was a lucky break for you — for a while. You must of had a good laugh when you found out that’s what we were going on — you couldn’t of hoped for a break like that. But — and I don’t expect you to be surprised at this — that car wasn’t parked at ten-o-four, it was parked at nine-o-i our, as I found out only this afternoon. So now d’you see what’s changed since this morning?”
Conway looked at them incredulously. “What did you do, bribe that couple to change their story?”
“Wait a minute, Conway—” Ramsden half-rose from his chair. “We’ve taken enough lip from you.”
“He’s naturally disappointed,” Bauer said placatingly, “after getting away with it this long. But don’t you go talking about bribes,” he said sternly to Conway. “You ought to know by this time that a man like me don’t have to pull stuff like that. Matter of fact, it was you tipped me off. You remember, you were talking about rebroadcasts this morning? It must of been your unconscious, thinking about it. Anyhow, I did a little checking up.
“Remember, we were here in this office the day the body was found, and I said this Elsie Daniels told me they’d been listening to Senator Taft when they saw the car being parked. Well, somebody” — there was a barely perceptible glance at Ramsden — “figured that made it ten o’clock, because that’s when most people here heard the speech. But” — the sergeant paused professorially — “that was not a fact. When I got the real fact, this afternoon, all I had to do was take it and the other facts I had, and put ’em together right, like I told you. Senator Taft’s speech was broadcast from two local stations here at ten o’clock, all right. But those were rebroadcasts. By looking up the radio logs at the newspaper, I find out it was broadcast at nine o’clock from a Denver station which not many sets can pick up out here. But whaddaya know? Elsie’s family just got a big new radio that can get it, as I proved this afternoon. And to top it off, the Denver station is practically right next to KNX on the dial, which is what Elsie usually tuned to, on account of the music.
“The other day, when I told Elsie and her boy friend it was ten o’clock when the car stopped, they both said, ‘Oh, it couldn’t of been as late as that.’ I figured that was because they’d been mushing and lost track of the time, but it turns out they were right. What happened was, they intended to tune in KNX, but, not being used to the new radio, they didn’t hit it right on the nose. What they got instead was Denver. So today when I asked ’em again what time they thought it was, they were positive it wasn’t ten. So it must of been nine, which all adds up and makes sense. At nine-o-four, or very close to it,” he was addressing Conway now, “you parked your car with your wife’s body in it, and got out and walked away.”
“I have to hand it to you, Sergeant, for figuring that out,” Davis said. “It’s brilliant.” Conway expected Bauer to take a bow, but instead he ploughed along with his recital.
“You got out of the car,” he continued, “and walked up to Santa Monica Boulevard—”