trays. So I sorta backed in, pushing the door with my back and shoulder. I yelled again. Nobody answered. At the same time, I started to undo the tablecloth with one hand, let it sorta drop down in front of me.”
“Why did you do that?” I ask.
“You learn to do it so you can fling it out on the table and put the tray down on top. But I did it for another reason, too. To give myself some cover,” he says. “You hear stories-waiters who barged into a room and found the guest, maybe a woman who didn’t hear ’em knock, coming out of the shower in the buff. It’s happened.”
“So you thought whoever was inside was probably in the shower?”
“There or maybe in the bedroom. It’s a big suite.”
“So you’re standing there inside the door with your back to the room, tablecloth in front of your face. How did you find your way around the room?” says Harry.
“Like I say, I’ve been in that room enough times to know the layout. It never changes. I knew where the table was, the chairs, and I could see enough light and shadow through the cloth. So I just moved in the right direction with the tray up on my shoulder. Listen, I tol’ all this to the cops.”
“We want to hear it from you,” says Harry. “Humor us.”
“Fine. I couldn’t see exactly where I was going. Just enough to know I wasn’t gonna walk into any furniture. It wasn’t until I got to the carpet off the tile in the living room, when I noticed something was wrong. I felt the squishing, you know, under my feet. I thought somebody musta spilled water. My first thought was the bathtub overflowed.” With this his face comes up off his propped-up hand. From the look in his eyes, he’s starting to relive the moment.
“I had to put the tray down before I could look. So I found the table.”
“You didn’t look down to see what it was, the dampness in the carpet?” asks Harry.
Arnsberg shakes his head. “I was juggling the tray. All I needed was to drop coffee and orange juice, on whatever else was there on the floor. And all the time I kept yelling, ‘Hello? Anybody here?’”
“How far away was it, the distance to the table from where you were then, when you first felt the wetness in the carpet?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It was just a small table. It was off to the right as you entered the living room, a few feet. Maybe a couple of steps.”
“Go on.”
“I could sort of see the shadow of the table through the tablecloth.”
“Do you remember whether the carpet was wet all the way to the table as you walked?”
“I don’t remember,” he says. “No. No, it musta been, because of what I saw later.”
“Go on,” I tell him.
“So I spread the tablecloth, put the tray down, and turned around. That’s when I saw him, on the floor. His head was down. His butt was sorta crunched up against the chair. All that blood. I remember I looked down, and I was standing in it. And his head, I panicked. I started to run for the door. Musta got maybe two steps onto the tile when I went down. That’s what I remember. That’s how I got the blood on my pants. I figure that’s probably when I musta done it,” he says. “Touched the hammer, I mean.”
The cops had found a single partial print on the murder weapon, one finger that seems to match the little finger, the pinkie, of Arnsberg’s right hand.
“That’s the only way it could have happened,” says Arnsberg.
“Not according to the cops,” says Harry.
“Well, they’re wrong. All I remember is I got the hell outta there fast as I could. You would, too, you walked in on somethin’ like that.”
“Have you ever seen this item?” Harry slides a photograph across the table. It’s a picture of one of those cheap clear-plastic raincoats, the kind you can fold up and slip into a pocket or a purse. Some of them come with their own tiny little bag for storage. This one doesn’t, but it is covered in the rust hue of dried blood.
Arnsberg shakes his head. “No. Never seen it before.”
“The police found it in a Dumpster behind the hotel, near one of the parking lots. But you’ve never seen it before?”
“No.”
The cops have confirmed that the blood on the raincoat belonged to Scarborough. They have scoured it inside out and subjected it in a chamber to the vapor of hot superglue, looking for any sign of fingerprints. They’ve found none.
“After you found the body, why didn’t you tell somebody?” asks Harry.
This was the clincher as far as the police were concerned, the fact that Arnsberg ran rather than reporting what he’d found. Though he didn’t run far. It took them just one day to track him down at his apartment before they could question him. By then they had enough to book him.
“I don’t know. I panicked. You’d panic, too, if you had some dead guy’s blood on your pants, all over the bottom of your shoes.”
“And that’s the only reason you ran? The blood on your clothes?” Harry pushes him.
“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I guess I knew what people would think.”
“And what was that?” says Harry.
“Just what you’re thinking now. That I did it. That I might have a reason to kill him.”
“Because of the artwork there on your arm?” Harry points with his pen at the tattoo.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Or was it because of some of the friends you’re keeping these days?”
He looks at Harry, the devil with all the questions. “That, too.”
“Let’s talk about some of your friends,” I say. “Did any of them discuss with you the fact that Terry Scarborough was staying at the hotel where you worked? That you might actually see him, have access to him?”
“I…don’t remember.”
“Come on,” says Harry. “It’s a simple question. Did you talk to any of your buddies about Scarborough being in the hotel?”
“I might have.”
This is an angle the cops are working overtime trying to nail down, the question of whether there was a conspiracy to kill Scarborough.
“You knew that some of your friends were seen protesting out in front of the hotel?” I ask. “The cops have them on videotape.”
“Yeah. I knew they were there. I didn’t know about no videotape.”
“Did you talk with them about Scarborough before he was killed?”
“We might have.”
“Did you or didn’t you?” I ask.
“Sure. Why shouldn’t we? No law against talking.”
“What did you talk about? What did you say?” Harry now bores in.
“We…we talked about the fact he was an agitator, causin’ problems, stirrin’ up trouble.”
“ Scarborough?”
“Yeah. We got enough problems,” he says. “Mexicans crossin’ the border by the millions. Politicians sayin’ we can’t get ’ em out. Illegals marchin’ in the streets, carryin’ Mexican flags, tellin’ us they own the country. Then this guy comes outta nowhere, with this book, trying to get the blacks all riled up so he can start the Civil War over again. Only this time he wants to put us in chains.”
“And who is ‘us’?” says Harry.
“The white people,” says Arnsberg.
“And this is what you talked about with your friends?” I ask.
“Yeah. He was a troublemaker. You asked me, so I told ya. If you wanna know the truth, as far as I’m concerned, he got what he deserved.”
One thing is certain. Come trial, Arnsberg is not likely to be his own best witness.
“So you talked about this with your friends when? How long before Scarborough was killed?” I ask.
“I can’t remember exactly.”
“How many times did you talk with other people about Scarborough?”
