“We’ll shift to Mr. Goodwin. Before he proceeds I should explain that I had made an assumption about the man in the car with the woman last Tuesday when the woman told the boy to get a cop. I had assumed that the man was Matthew Birch.”
Cramer’s eyes widened. “Why Birch?”
“I don’t have to expound it because it has been validated. It was Birch. Another fact.”
“Show me. This one will have to be filled in good.”
“By Mr. Goodwin. He’ll get to it. Archie, start with Fred’s phone call last evening and go on through.”
I complied. Having known that this would be somewhere on the program, I had spent most of an hour carefully going over it, while I had been on guard duty in the front room from three-thirty to four-thirty, and had decided that only two major items should be omitted: the kind of stimulation used on Lips Egan, and Egan’s notebook. The latter wouldn’t be mentioned, and wasn’t. Wolfe had said, during our session up in his room, that if it proved later to be essential evidence we would have to produce it, but not otherwise.
Except for those two items I delivered the crop. Stebbins started taking notes but quit halfway through. It was too much for him. I handed him Mort’s gun and exhibited the pliers, which had black tape wrapped thick around the jaws to keep them from breaking skin and bruising flesh. When I finished, Cramer and Stebbins sat looking at each other.
Cramer turned to Wolfe. “This needs some sorting out.”
“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. “It does indeed.”
Cramer turned to Stebbins. “Do we know this Egan?”