A Death in Belmont

“You’re holding something back.”

“Mister, I’ve been working my whole life, you understand. I never put my hand on nobody.… I ain’t did nothing but drinking, so—”

“You weren’t drunk when you landed in Belmont yesterday morning, were you, at twelve o’clock noon?”

“Of course not, I got drinking last night.”

“You know what you did out on Scott Road yesterday?”

“You all got the wrong man.”

“Why did you do it?”

“You got the wrong man, you can’t pin all that stuff on me, I ain’t did nothing. I ain’t did nothing to that woman yesterday in Belmont and no other Belmont and no other place. Look, I love myself, do you understand? I love myself. I ain’t going to stick my neck out—you kidding?”

Smith’s only demonstrable departure from the complete truth came soon afterward, when he was asked about the name “Bell” on his mailbox. Smith claimed that it was the previous tenant, who was still getting his mail there; in fact it referred to Carol Bell, who had been his girlfriend and was the mother of his son, whom he called “Scooter.” Carol Bell had left him five days earlier without any forwarding address. Carol Bell had sent Smith to prison for six months for nonpayment of child support. Carol Bell, in other words, was not a chapter of Smith’s life that he would want the police to know about. Smith did, however, mention that there was another tenant in the building, a woman named Blackstone.

“You are a male, aren’t you, Roy?” Cahalane asked.

“What?”

“Are you a male—sex?”

“I’m a male.”

“You don’t use sanitary napkins, do you?”

Smith addressed the other officers: “I don’t know what he’s talking about now.”

“Do you wear women’s clothes?”

“No.”

“Who do the women’s clothes belong to?”

“Blackstone. What about her clothes?”

Smith was refusing to admit to the murder, but neither could the police catch him in a significant lie. Much of a police interrogation consists of asking otherwise meaningless details about a suspect’s day that he can’t possibly keep track of. Once the police have opened up even a small contradiction in the testimony, they have a way into the web of lies that inevitably surrounds any denial of guilt. In the eyes of the police Smith was so obviously guilty that his refusal to make everyone’s life easier by confessing seemed to exasperate them. They were playing their parts, in a sense, but Smith was not playing his. Again it was Lieutenant Cahalane who attempted to break through the denials.

“Straighten me out, will you? I’m all mixed up.”

“Go ahead,” said Smith. Cahalane proceeded to introduce himself and everyone else in the room, including the stenographer. He then led Smith once again through every detail of his morning. He asked what time Smith woke up, what he ate for breakfast, where he got off the bus. With slow, grinding thoroughness he asked exactly what work Smith performed in the Goldberg house, which rooms he worked in, and how long everything took. He asked what door he entered through, what door he left through, and whom he saw on the short walk to the bus station. At one point Cahalane asked if he saw three children walking along the sidewalk on Pleasant Street—Dougie Dreyer and his friends coming home from school—and Smith said that he did. The children all placed Smith leaving the crime scene, and Smith would have known that, but he still declined to fall into the trap of lying. Cahalane was getting nowhere.

“Do you ever black out?” Cahalane finally asked.

“I never blacked out in my life.”

“Do you ever find yourself getting into some sort of predicament that you don’t remember getting into?”

“No.”

“You know at all times everything you’re doing?”

“Sure, yes—I mean I’m normal, if that’s what you mean.”

“You have never been in any mental hospital?”

“No.”

“Have you ever fainted in the street?”

“Never.”

Cahalane was trying to lure Smith into a legal trap. If he killed Bessie Goldberg but didn’t remember doing it, then it could not possibly be premeditated. The definition of first-degree murder is the killing of another human being “with malice aforethought,” and a blackout would effectively remove intentionality from the crime, reducing the charge to manslaughter. Had Smith taken the bait and acknowledged that perhaps he had killed her without realizing it, he almost certainly would have been destroyed at trial, but that was not Cahalane’s problem.

“This was a pretty nice lady?”

“She was nice.”

“She treated you nice?”

“Real nice.”

“Did you proposition her?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you ask her to be over-friendly?”

“Never.”

“Listen, Roy, no one is trying to put you in the middle, we’re just trying to find out what happened.”

“Look, this is serious; I’m giving it to you straight,” said Smith. “If you’ll excuse me for saying this here, there’s too many women out there for me to be making a proposition for somebody. Do you think I want my neck broken?”

“You didn’t ask her to be extra friendly?”

“No, I’d swear on a stack of Bibles as high as a building, I swear.”

“Did you make a grab at her when she refused you?”

“I never made no passes at her.”

“Roy, that’s not very reasonable, I’m telling you.”

“I didn’t make no passes. That lady never made no passes at me. She was nice. She fixed me dinner [lunch] and got me a cup of tea. I sat down and ate that and got right back up like I do in everyone’s house. I got right back up and started working.”

“Roy, something happened in that house, and it is quite natural that we should feel you are responsible.”