I didn’t get to Stanger until nine fifteen. I told him that it might save a lot of time and a lot of questions later if it went down on tape on the very first go-round.
“You look funny,” he said. “You look spooked.”
“It’s been one of those days, Al.”
“What’s this all about?”
“When the tape is running.”
“All right, all right!”
So he left Nudenbarger on traffic cruise by himself and rode down to headquarters with me in my car. I said I’d like to do it in the car if possible. He came out with a battered old Uher with an adaptor for the cigarette lighter. I found a bright white drive-in on Route 30 and parked at the far edge with the rear against the fence. A listless girl made two long walks to take the order and bring out the two coffees and hook the tray onto the car. Stanger had checked the recorder. It had some hiss but not too much. The heads needed cleaning and demagnetizing.
He rewound and started it again on record and established his identity, the date and time, and said he was taking a voluntary statement from one Travis McGee of such and such a place, said statement having some bearing, as yet unknown, on the murder by stab wound of Penny Woertz, and that said victim had been acquainted with said McGee. He sighed and handed me the mike.
As soon as I got into it, he stiffened and he boggled at me. As I kept on he wanted to interrupt so badly he began making little lunges and jumps, so I didn’t give him an opening. At one point he bent over, hands cupping his eyes, and I could hear him grinding his teeth. I finished. I turned the remote switch on the mike and said, “Want me to turn it back on for questions?”
“No. No. Not yet. Oh, good Jesus H. Jumpin’ Sufferin’ Christ on the rocks! Oh you lousy dumb bastard! Oh, why did I ever think you had one brain cell to rub up against another. You silly bastard, I have got to take you in and shut the iron door on you. For God’s sake, it is going to take me half the night just to write up the charges. And you have the gall, the nerve, the lousy… impertinence to ask me to sneak down there and grab that dead broad out of that crazy hidey hole and make like I found her in a ditch, and keep anybody from coming up with the ID and keep her the hell on ice as a Jane Doe until God only knows how…. No! Dammit, McGee. No!” It was an anguished cry.
“Why don’t you ask me some questions. Maybe it’ll calm you down, Stanger. You’ve got all night to go collect her.”
He nodded. I turned the mike on.
“Are you absolutely certain she was dead?”
“She fell a hundred and twenty feet onto concrete.”
“So all right! Did you realize when you touched the outside and inside knob on that office door and messed with the window and picked up the pocketbook, you were removing evidence of a crime, if there was one?”
“He wouldn’t leave anything useful. I moved the body too. Jumped, fell, or pushed, it would look just the same.”
“But what the hell do you expect to accomplish?”
I turned off the microphone. “Al, you won’t play it my way?”
“I can’t! It’s such a way-out–”
“Who can make a decision to try my way? Your chief?”
“Old Sam Teppler? He’s going to keel over in a dead faint if I try to tell him, even.”
“How about your state attorney for this judicial district. Gaffney?”
“Gaffner. Ben Gaffner.”
“Is there any chance he’d buy it? There’s all kinds of prosecutors. What `kind is he?”
Al Stanger got out of the car and slammed the door. He walked slowly around the car, scuffing his heels on the asphalt, hitching at his trousers, scratching the back of his neck. He came and looked down at me across the hook-on tray.
“Gaffner is on his fourth term. He gets a hell of a lot of respect. But nobody gets very close to him. He likes to nail them. He drives hard. His record keeps him in. He isn’t fancy. He builds his cases like they used to build stone walls in the old days. All I can say is… maybe. You’d have to sell him the whole thing. All the way down the line. He’s straight and he’s tough, and he likes being just what he is. But I’d even hate to try to explain to him why you’re not behind iron right now, McGee.”