Show of Evil

wall. It misses him by inches. He freaks out. He slams two shells in the shotgun and rushes around the corner.'

She spun around and aimed the ruler at Fleishman.

 Parver: 'And shoots her. The shot hits her in the side. Her gun hand goes up, she puts another shot into the ceiling as he charges her.'

She rushed up to Fleishman and held the steel ruler an inch away from her forehead.

Parver: 'Boom! he shoots her right here, just above her right eye. He drops the shotgun and crosses the room to the phone and calls 911. There's a slip of paper beside the phone with Poppy Palmer's unlisted phone number on it. Later he claims he didn't write it, doesn't know where it came from. Then he goes outside and sits on the porch steps until the police arrive. That's his story. No witnesses, nobody to argue with him.'

Fleishman: 'Gunfight at the O.K. corral, right?'

 Parver: 'Right. Later Darby claims he called Poppy Palmer to tell her what happened and to find out where Ramona got the unlisted number. Palmer tells him that Ramona Darby called her about five and went crazy on the phone, threatening them both.'

Vail:'Them being…?'

Parver: 'Palmer and Darby.'

Vail: 'Go on.'

Parver: 'Given the motives and the nature of the individual, I don't think any of us believed it happened this way, but we don't have anything to take to the grand jury. The insurance company is about to pay off the policy. Martin and I conducted an interrogation with Darby yesterday and he froze us out. So Abel and I went back out to Sandytown. We decided to take one more crack at everybody out there who might know something, anything.

'There's this elderly lady — she's seventy-six — lives on the opposite side of the road from Darby, about eighty yards - actually it's eighty-three - from Darby's house. It's a field that separates these two houses, a corn field in the summer - some trees line the dirt driveway leading to the Darby place, but basically it's wide open between Darby's house and hers. Her name's Shunderson, Mabel Shunderson, a widow. She's lived there more than thirty years, has known the Darbys for the entire time they lived across the road, which is… uh,' - she consulted her notes - 'twelve years. Mrs Shunderson saw Darby come home in his pickup truck. She was in the kitchen looking out her window, which faces the Darby place, and she had the window open because she burned something on the stove and she was shooing out the smoke. She saw Darby come home, saw him get out of the pickup carrying the shotgun, and go into the house. A minute later she heard the shots. She had told us all this before, that she heard the shots, I mean, but we never talked about the order of the shots.'

Vail: 'In her seventies, you say?'

Parver: 'Yes, sir. Anyway, she says she heard the shots very clearly. It was a clear night, very cold.'

Fleishman: 'She sure it was him?'

Parver: 'No question about it.'

Meyer: 'And she's sure about the time?'

Parver: 'Says the news was just coming on the television, which ties in with Darby's story and the phone call to 911, which was at six-oh-six.'

Vail: 'Okay, go on.'

Parver: 'Well, we were doing what you might call a courtesy call just to make sure we covered everything and I said to her, Did you hear all six shots, and she said yes. She knows about guns because Gus - that's her husband, her late husband, he's been dead about six years now - did a lot of hunting and she could tell there were two guns going off. And then she said… '

She stopped a moment and read very carefully from her notes.

'… said, 'I know the difference between a shotgun and a pistol, my Gus spent half his life either hunting or practising to hunt, and when I heard that shotgun, then all those pistol shots, I knew there was something goin' on down there and I thought it was maybe a burglar in the house.' '

Parver looked at Vail and then around at the group. She repeated her remark.

Parver: ' 'I heard that shotgun, then all those pistol shots,' that's exactly what she said.'

Vail stared at her as she went on.

Parver: 'So I said to her, 'You mean you heard the pistol, then the shotgun,' and she said, 'Young lady, I know the difference between a shotgun and a pistol. I heard the shotgun, then four pistol shots, then the shotgun again.' '

Vail: 'She's saying Darby fired the first shot?'

Parver: 'Exactly.'