Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

She blacked out momentarily. Got to let him know. Got to! She struggled within her prison. All that had been recently happening welled up inside her. I must — I must! She strained. Every fiber fought against the bonds that imprisoned her. Then, ever so slowly, Helen felt the little finger of her left hand begin to rise. It took an eternity to raise it half an inch, then let it drop. Raise it half an inch, let it drop. Les had stopped talking. Helen could hear the click of her fingernail against the metallic table on which she lay. It drummed loudly in her ears. Relief flooded over her. Now Les would know she was alive...

She saw Les grin broadly, stupidly. Had he heard the sound? Had he? Large beads of perspiration gleamed on his forehead. His expression cunning, mad.

“Your kind don’t die easy,” Les said. “I know what you were. We get lots like you.” He smiled lewdly. “Fifty bucks a night, huh! Pretty hot stuff, weren’t you? Huh? Huh?”

Helen knew Les wanted an answer. The man was insane. He knew she was alive and yet he didn’t go for help. Go away! Her thoughts were screaming. Get me out of here!

“Tonight,” Les said, “you’re working for free, baby. For free.”

Helen saw him slowly begin to unbutton his jacket, draw nearer, nearer. This can’t be happening, she thought over and over. Les’s bare chest shadowed her. His face, his slobbering mouth, covered hers. Her mind cried out: No! No!

Les was standing beside her now, dressed again. His gleeful babbling had stopped. And his sudden silence was fear. And she saw the fear of punishment for what he had done in his wet brown eyes, as well as in his silence. But her mind was too spent to cry out. What more could be done to her? Nothing. Nothing...

Les’s face suddenly loomed large. Larger and larger. The ceiling reeled as he lifted her in his arms. There was the motion of walking, which suddenly stopped. The empty expanse of the ceiling; she could see nothing else.

Then, the smooth flowing whiteness of a sheet engulfed her. No! NO! Her mind was screaming in agony now as Les slid her into her own, private, refrigerated compartment.

The Charles Turner Case by Richard Deming

I said to the blonde, “Just when were you attacked, Miss Haliburton, and what was the man’s name?”

* * *

I won’t say I had completely forgotten the Charles Turner case when I was reminded of it by something George Novy told me. Novy’s information concerned the strip act a woman who lived in the apartment house across the areaway from his put on for his benefit each night. No district attorney is likely to forget the case which started him up the political ladder. But that case was five years in the past, and I doubt that I’d thought of it in three.

“You better be careful,” I advised Novy with a smile. “I tried a case once where the defendant started out by peeping in a neighbor woman’s window. He got twenty-five years to life.”

George Novy looked at me in astonishment. He was just out of law school and brand new to the district attorney’s office. “Twenty-five to life just for peeping?” he asked.

“I said he started by peeping. The peeping overexcited him, and he ended up with rape.”

My newest assistant grinned. “This wouldn’t be rape. This gal knows I’m watching, and deliberately puts on a show. I think I’ll accept the invitation one of these nights.”

“Charlie Turner claimed his peep-show actress knew he was watching too. He still got twenty-five to life.”

“Charlie Turner?” Novy said. “I remember that case. I was a freshman in law school then. You did handle that prosecution, didn’t you?”

“It was the case that made me,” I said. “If it wasn’t for Charlie Turner, I’d still probably be an assistant D.A. Frank Garby would probably be district attorney instead of me, and I certainly wouldn’t be running for the senate.”

“Aren’t you being a little modest, chief?” Novy asked.

I shook my head. “Public life is just as speculative a profession as acting. You need the one big break in both. In acting, it may be getting called to take over for a sick star on the night a movie talent scout is in the audience. For a public prosecutor with political ambitions, the big break is almost always a highly-publicized criminal case. Mine was Charles Turner.”

George Novy cocked a dubious eyebrow.

“Just consider,” I said. “Before the Turner case I was just an unknown assistant district attorney like you, the junior of eight in Saint Francis County. Nine hundred and ninety-nine voters out of a thousand had never heard of me. By the time the case was over, there wasn’t a person in the state who didn’t know who I was. Which made it almost mandatory for the party to by-pass the other seven assistants plus Frank Garby, who even then was first assistant D.A., when it came time to pick a new district attorney candidate because old Harry Doud wanted to retire.”