Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

I looked at him. He looked away, met my gaze, then avoided my eyes again. “Tell me about it,” I suggested. He looked away again and a minute went by before he started to talk.

It was about what I’d figured. She was living with Cary McCloud, but she and Lane Posmantur would get together now and then. He was a lab technician at Roosevelt and he brought home drugs from time to time and perhaps that was part of their attraction. She’d turned up that night a little after two and they went to bed. She was really flying, he said, and he’d been taking pills himself, it was something he’d begun doing lately, maybe seeing her had something to do with it.

They went to bed and did the dirty deed, and then maybe they slept for an hour, something like that, and then she was awake and coming unglued, getting really hysterical, and he tried to settle her down and he gave her a couple of slaps to bring her around, except they didn’t bring her around, and she was staggering. She tripped over the coffee table and fell funny, and by the time he sorted himself out and went to her she was lying with her head at a crazy angle and he knew her neck was broken and when he tried for a pulse there was no pulse.

“All I could think was that she was dead in my apartment and full of drugs and I was in trouble.”

“So you put her out the window.”

“I was going to take her back to her own apartment. I started to dress her, but it was impossible. And even with her clothes on, I couldn’t risk running into somebody in the hallway or on the elevator. It was crazy.

“I left her here and went to her apartment. I thought maybe Cary would help me. I rang the bell but nobody answered. I used her key but the chain bolt was on. Then I remembered she used to fasten it from outside. She’d showed me how she could do it. I unhooked her bolt and went inside.

“Then I got the idea. I went back to my apartment and got her clothes and rushed back and put them on her chair. I opened her window wide. On my way out the door I put her lights on and hooked the chain bolt again.

“I came back here and took her pulse again — she was dead, she hadn’t moved or anything. I... I turned off the lights and opened the window. I dragged her over to it, and, oh, God in heaven, God, I almost couldn’t do it, but it was an accident that she was dead and I was so damned afraid—”

“And you dropped her out and closed the window.”

He nodded.

“And if her neck was broken it was something that happened in the fall. And whatever drugs were in her system was just something she’d taken by herself, and they’ll never do an autopsy anyway. You were home free.”

“I didn’t hurt her,” he said. “I was just protecting myself.”

“Do you really believe that, Lane?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not a doctor. Maybe she was dead when you threw her out the window. Maybe she wasn’t.”

“There was no pulse!”

“You couldn’t find a pulse. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any. Did you try artificial respiration? Do you know if there was any brain activity? Of course not. All you know was that you looked for a pulse and you couldn’t find one.”

“Her neck was broken.”

“Maybe. How many broken necks have you diagnosed? And people sometimes break their necks and live. The point is that you couldn’t have known she was dead and you were too worried about your own skin to do what you should have done. You should have phoned for an ambulance. You know that’s what you should have done and you knew it at the time, but you wanted to stay out of it. I’ve known junkies who left their buddies to die of overdoses because they didn’t want to get involved. You went them one better. You put her out a window and let her fall twenty-one stories so that you wouldn’t get involved, and for all you know she was alive when you let go of her.”

“No,” he said. “No! She was dead.”

I’d told Ruth Wittlauer she could wind up believing whatever she wanted. People believe what they want to believe. It was just as true for Lane Posmantur.

“Maybe she was dead,” I said. “If she was dead, that could have been your fault too.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you slapped her to bring her around. What kind of a slap?”

“I just tapped her on the face.”

“Just a brisk slap to straighten her out.”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, hell, Lane. Who knows how hard you hit her? Who knows whether or not you gave her a shove? She wasn’t the only one on pills. You said she was flying. Well, I think maybe you were doing a little flying yourself. And you’d been sleepy and you were groggy and she was buzzing around the room and being a general pain in the ass, so you gave her a slap and a shove and another slap and another shove and—”

“No!”

“And she fell down.”

“It was an accident.”

“I always is.”

“I didn’t hurt her. I liked her. She was a good kid, we got on fine. I—”

“Put your shoes on, Lane.”

“What for?”

“I’m taking you to the police station. It’s only a few blocks from here.”

“Am I under arrest?”