The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man by Alfred Alcorn Page A

“What did you do then?”
    “I told him to go home and get some help. I pushed open the door and turned my back on him. At least if he shot me then, I thought, he couldn’t make it look like suicide.”
    “And that was the last time you saw him alive?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you went back to your office?”
    “Yes.”
    “How long were you there?”
    “Perhaps an hour.”
    “You know what I think happened?” the sergeant started in, leaning toward me until I could clearly see the pores on his thick nose. “I think you arranged to meet von Grümh in the parking lot. Maybe you only wanted to scare him off because you thought he would start up something again with your wife. Maybe you knew already about the fake coins. Whatever. You took your revolver along. You took it out and pointed it at him. Maybe he laughed at you. Maybe he said, Sure, go ahead, you can make it look like suicide. And you got mad because he was taunting you, making you feel like a wimp. So you put the gun up against his temple and pulled the trigger.”
    “No. No! I couldn’t have.”
    “But you could have.”
    I took a moment. I collected myself. I said, “So why didn’t I try to make it look like suicide?”
    “But you couldn’t have.” The sergeant smirked at me. “It’s your gun. You would have to explain how he got it.”
    “My wife will testify …”
    “That’s not good enough, Norman.” The lieutenant spoke with a heavy sadness in his voice. “We have enough to take this to the DA and talk to him about a plea bargain.”
    “Richard, I swear, I didn’t do it. I had no reason … Diantha was finished with him.”
    “How do you know?” the sergeant asked.
    “I just know, that’s all. I just know.”
    “Think it over, Norman. About the DA. This doesn’t look good for you.”
    “Can I ask a question?”
    The lieutenant nodded.
    “Are you sure, absolutely sure, there were no powder burns on von Grümh’s hands?”
    With evident satisfaction, the sergeant shook his head slowly. “No way. I double-checked it. The GSR came up negative. Not a trace.”
    The lieutenant looked puzzled. “Why do you ask?”
    “Because he was suicidal.”
    “I think you’ve got suicide on the brain,” the sergeant said with a sneer. “It was murder, pure and simple.”
    Later I spoke on a phone through a barrier of reinforced glass to an attorney, a colleague of Felix Skinnerman. She was a brisk young woman in a business suit with an air of impersonality who told me she had arranged for a bail hearing that afternoon.
    I was not interested in the lunch of chicken salad, potato salad, green salad, and ice cream. I was not interested in anything really, until, in a void deep enough to make me scream, I asked for paper and pencil, the original word processor, and wrote the following.
    I feel in the wake of these admissions that I owe my readers an apology. In the relative privacy of this journal, I should have been completely candid. I really have no defense. I scarcely have an explanation. I did fear, I have to admit, that, were this document ever to be subpoenaed and placed in evidence, it and anything else I wrote could be used against me in court.
    The truth will make you free. I understand and believe in that dictum. But the truth is not always self-evident. As it involves me in this matter, I am not entirely sure what the truth is. The fact is, I had fantasized more than once about murdering Heinie von Grümh. I had enacted on the stage of my mind precisely what happened to him in that car. I held my revolver to the side of his head, and, while he begged for his life, I taunted him.
    Of course I would rouse myself from these dark dreams with an acute self-shame and a determination not to indulge them henceforth. But, once you’ve killed a man, as I have, it’s not difficult to conceive of doing it again, to feel in your hand the heft of the weapon, to trigger the jolt of deadly power, to watch someone disappear into death.
    Thus