Lieutenant Tragg and Hamilton Burger left the interview room and came out into the hallway. After walking a few steps in silence, the District Attorney stopped and asked his friend,
"What did you make of that?"
"The man is madder than a hatter and nuttier than a fruitcake," Tragg retorted. "His next interview should be with a room full of psychiatrists."
Hamilton Burger glanced pensively at the notes he held.
"Or he is extraordinarily clever. If he manages to half-persuade a judge or a jury of the story he just told us, he can't be convicted of any greater charge than involuntary manslaughter! Just think about it – he will claim that he thought that Miss Street growing unresponsive and pulseless was an expected effect of his elixir, and so no one will be able to fault him for not calling an ambulance or the police. And he will maintain that she was still alive when Mrs. Roberts discovered her, and that the police department caused her death by transporting her or storing her inappropriately, taking further responsibility off his own shoulders and trying to transfer it to ours."
"Anyone who spends decades of their life dreaming about making a fictional potion a reality is hardly clever," the older man replied dryly. "Especially when, as a great scholar on Shakespeare, he should have recognized that the concoction did far more harm than good: if I remember the play correctly, Juliet and Romeo both ended up dead because of it, and two prominent families in Verona lost their children and heirs. Come to think of it, we are dealing with quite a similar situation right now. Poor Della is lying dead in the morgue in this very building, and her lover Perry is eating his heart out in his apartment, and if the way he looked yesterday is any indication, the Los Angeles legal system is on the verge of losing one of its best lawyers to a pit of endless sorrow."
Hamilton Burger fiddled uncomfortably with his papers.
"Tragg…," he started, then paused. "Tragg, what exactly did the doctor at the crime scene do, when he pronounced her dead?"
The Lieutenant started.
"Mr. Burger, are you giving serious consideration to Nathan White's claims of her still being alive?!"
"I…I don't know what I am doing," Hamilton replied haltingly. "I realize that, in all probability, we just spoke to a cold-blooded criminal who is desperately trying to talk his way out of a first-degree murder charge. But he was rather persuasive, and his claims of experimenting on rats and of monitoring Della's vital signs after she drank the elixir do correlate to the evidence which we found at the crime scene. Besides that, Perry himself did think that she was breathing when he held her in the morgue – I know we dismissed it at the time and chalked it up to him being out of his mind with grief, but considering that man's propensity for picking up overlooked details, perhaps we should have looked into his claim more. And…even though I have never admitted this out loud to anyone before except my wife – continuously being defeated in court by Perry Mason has, in a way, taught me some measure of humility. I have come to realize that sometimes, the most outlandish theory is the one which turns out to be true. Furthermore, even though it is such a ridiculous shard of hope…I know I won't be able to live with myself unless I investigate it thoroughly. This is Della Street, our friend and colleague, who we are talking about. I would rather make a fool of myself now, rather than to spend the rest of my life asking 'what if?'"
Lieutenant Tragg considered his words carefully, and then looked at his shoes.
"A…a thought along the same lines did come into my head when we were talking to him, but I dismissed it right away, telling myself that if I gave the preposterous idea another instant of my attention, it would mean that I was senile and completely off my rocker," he finally admitted. "To answer your question, once the doctor found her body to be at room temperature and without a palpable pulse, he promptly declared her dead. Usually, those two things are pretty good indications that someone has passed." He looked up at the District Attorney. "Are you…are you suggesting that we ask the doctor to do a more thorough examination before proceeding with the autopsy?"
Hamilton Burger's face went white.
"When was that autopsy supposed to be scheduled for?"
"First thing tomorrow morning, today being Memorial Day."
The prosecutor relaxed a bit.
"Then we are not too late. Do you think it would be possible to contact the medical examiner who is on call this weekend, and ask him to stop by the morgue as soon as possible?"
"Let me make the phone call," Tragg said, heading straight to his office, walking faster than he had in a long time.
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