Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

“We have no close relatives,” Eleanor said. “We’ll stand the publicity. We want this animal jailed so he can’t harm other women.”

“Fine,” I said. “With the co-operation of both of you, we ought to be able to get him jailed fast. You can go home now. Someone from the district attorney’s office will get in touch with you as soon as a prosecutor is assigned to the case and the prosecution strategy is worked out. I’m just making the preliminary investigation, you understand, and probably won’t try the case.”

“Will there necessarily be a trial?” Mrs. Haliburton asked. “If he agrees to plead guilty, won’t he just be sentenced?”

“He can’t plead guilty to rape in this state,” I told her. “The maximum sentence is death, and the law requires a mandatory not-guilty plea for capital crimes. There has to be a trial whether Turner wants one or not.”

I turned to Lieutenant Gordon. “Let’s take a look at the prisoner now.”

The lieutenant had Charles Turner brought to the interrogation room, and we questioned him there. He was a powerfully-built man of about twenty-five with a face which would have been handsome if it hadn’t worn such a sullen expression. I disliked him the instant I saw him, not just because he was a rapist, but because he looked like the wise-guy type.

But because he was the son of a congressman, I adopted a pleasant tone. “You seem to be in a little jam, Turner.”

“I want a lawyer before I say a word,” he said belligerently. “I’ve a right to legal advice.”

“You’ve a right to legal advice when you’re accused of a crime,” I said. “So far you’re only booked for investigation. We first have to establish that a crime’s been committed. This is a preliminary investigation, not an official interrogation. There’s no stenographer present, and you won’t be asked to sign a statement. I just want to know what happened.”

He looked at me sullenly. “You can’t establish that any crime was committed. I didn’t rape that woman.”

“No? What’s your story?”

“She asked for it. I’ll admit the daughter walked in and saw it all. But it wasn’t rape. It was that woman’s doing as much as mine. More even.”

When I merely waited for him to go on, he said indignantly, “She’d been walking around in the nude over there in her apartment for days, trying to tease me into coming over. What the hell did she expect?”

“You’d been spying on her from your own apartment?”

“Spying? Listen, it didn’t take any spying. Their front windows are right across from mine, see, with a forty-foot-wide courtyard in between. I can see into their apartment and they can see into mine, when the shades are up. She knew I was watching her. She was putting on an act.”

“What kind of act?”

He ran fingers through his hair. “A tease act. I don’t have a job yet, see. I just graduated from college in June, and I’ve been taking a little vacation before settling down to work. I’ve been going out a lot nights and sleeping late. I get up about eleven, and every day I glance across the way. And every day, timing it to about the time she figures I get up, Mrs. Haliburton prances into her front room bare naked and starts calisthenics. Only she’s not interested in the exercise. She just wants to give me an eyefull.”

I asked, “How do you know?”

“Because of the way she does it. Never fully looking my way, but standing so she can see me from the corner of her eye. You think I can’t tell when a woman is deliberately putting on a show?”

“You’re an expert?” I asked. “You’ve had lots of experience watching naked women through windows?”

He turned red. “No I haven’t had lots of experience. But you can tell when a woman knows somebody is watching her. And Mrs. Haliburton knew I was watching her.”

“How do you tell?” I asked. “What’s your basis of comparison?”

“The young daughter’s my basis of comparison!” he suddenly bawled at me. “She doesn’t pose like a strip artist when she’s bare. She just pops out of the bedroom and into the bathroom as fast as she can.”

Then he looked dismayed at his own admission. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I wasn’t playing Peeping Tom. I just happened to be looking that way once when I saw the daughter. It was pure accident, not like the old lady’s peep show. I’ll admit I watch that on purpose, but she knows I’m watching.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “So that’s why you went over this morning, is it? You thought you’d be welcome.”

“I was welcome. She didn’t yell rape until the daughter caught us. She can’t say she did.”

“But she does say she did,” I told him pleasantly. “She says it was rape. You claim it was just seduction?”

“Well, she invited me in.”

“She admits that,” I said. “Why shouldn’t she have? She knew you were a fellow tenant. It was a normal action. You figure that inviting you in was an invitation to seduction?”

“The way she said it, yes.” In a falsetto voice he mimicked, “Why, hello. Come in. You’ll have to wait until I get something on. I’m completely bare under this robe.”

“She said it like that, or you imagined it like that? Those were her exact words and tone?”