The Ability to Kill (7 page)

What the record did not show was that Cody belonged to that rare and remarkable subdivision of the human species—the amoral realists with no illusions about their own frailties or anyone else’s, and no sense of guilt. The odd thing about such men is that, having no pretensions to being less odious than they are, they sometimes achieve a kind of honesty.

His own description of his normal mode of existence was that he lived by his wits. Specifically, he worked as a gamblers’ shill, or decoy, when he had to, but preferred to pay his way by sponging off women. He was a heavy drinker with a pale, puffy complexion and empty eyes. His hair was sleek, however, and his clothes startlingly natty. He wore dark Italianate suits, and white satin neckties. He had his name embroidered on his shirt cuffs. A slack, lop-sided smirk completed the ensemble.

After the initial introduction, when young Williams and Keachie were present, Cody and Miss Tregoff had a number of meetings alone.

According to him, it was on July 1 that Miss Tregoff broached the subject of his killing Mrs Finch. His response was to quote a price of $2000 for the job. She countered with an offer of one thousand. He pointed out that he would need a hundred dollars to buy a weapon, another hundred for a car to get to the Finch house and at least two hundred more for travel and incidental expenses. After further haggling, they agreed on $1400—$350 down and the balance when he had done the job. Then, she drew maps for him showing how to get to the Finch house and the Hollywood apartment of Mrs Finch’s woman friend. Asked how he would do the killing, he said that he would make it look as if it had been done during a robbery. A date was decided—the Fourth of July
^§
—so that everyone else concerned could prepare an alibi. The next day, she gave him $330 and an air ticket, and he was ready to go.

At this point, it appears, his finer feelings got the better of him; or possibly he thought that, if he seemed to be temporising, there might be more than fourteen hundred dollars to be gleaned from the situation. He asked Miss Tregoff if she was sure that she wanted to go through with it. ‘When I get on that
plane,’ he reminded her sternly, ‘you can’t recall me.’ But Miss Tregoff was unmoved. ‘Good,’ she replied, and wished him luck.

If Mrs Finch had indeed been murdered during the Fourth of July week-end, both Dr Finch and Miss Tregoff would have had excellent alibis. She had taken a job as a cocktail waitress in the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and was working there. He was down in La Jolla, a hundred and twenty miles south of Los Angeles, ostentatiously forgetting his troubles by playing in a tennis tournament. He was in the doubles competition, with a clergyman as his partner.

Cody’s Fourth of July week-end was earthier. Upon leaving Miss Tregoff, he cashed in the air ticket, drove down to Los Angeles and spent the holiday with a girl friend in Hollywood. He did not go near West Covina. All he killed was a bottle or two of bourbon.

On the Sunday, he returned to Las Vegas and reported to Miss Tregoff. ‘She asked me if I had done the job. I said, “Yes” and she asked me how I had done it. I said: “With a shotgun.” She then handed me an envelope with six or seven hundred dollar bills in it. She was smiling. She was very happy. It was the first time I had seen the girl happy.’

The happiness was short-lived. On Monday, the doctor talked to his wife on the telephone. She was very much alive. He called Las Vegas.

Confronted by Miss Tregoff, Cody professed incredulous amazement and insisted that he had done the killing. She was sceptical, but the doctor, who arrived shortly afterwards, was unexpectedly helpful. With remarkable faith in his henchman’s probity he concluded that Mrs Finch’s woman friend must have been killed by mistake.

‘He said a tragic error had been made,’ Cody recalled. ‘He told me to go back and do it right. He wanted to know how
much it was going to cost to get me to go back and do it. I said I needed a weapon. He said he had a shotgun in his car that I could use, but I said no. I would get my own weapon. I agreed to go back and kill her. He told me to let her know what she was getting it for, to tell her, “This is for Bernie.” ’

Even Cody found this a little troubling. They were sitting on a hotel patio when this conversation took place. Dr Finch, who had been drinking something called an ‘Orange Squeeze,’ was quite sober. Cody, hitting the bourbon as usual, was just sober enough to make a maudlin appeal to the doctor’s common sense.

‘I said, “Doctor are you in love with Carole?” and he said, “Yes, very much.” I said, “I can see the handwriting on the wall. Killing your wife for money alone (
sic
) isn’t worth it. You ought to let her have every penny … you can take Carole to a new town and start up a new business, or up on a mountain-top and live off the wild. If the girl loves you, she’s going to stick with you.” But he said no, he wanted it done, that Mrs Finch had him in a bottleneck.’

There was also some rather sinister jocularity.

‘The doctor told me about his clinic. He said after this is all over, if I was ever on the lam or hiding-out, he could put me in his clinic. I said, “That is sort of silly, after I have killed your wife, to put myself at your mercy.… I’d just as soon stay out of your clinic.” And we laughed about it. But,’ Cody added grimly, ‘I meant it.’

After the doctor had gone, Cody downed another drink and gave Miss Tregoff some fatherly advice. ‘ “You’re twenty-two years old,” I told her, “and you don’t know what you’re getting into. Murder is a pretty big beef.” ’

Brushing aside this understatement, Miss Tregoff replied that he might back out, but that ‘if you don’t do it the doctor will, and if he doesn’t,
I
will.’

Some hours later Cody woke up on a plane going to Los Angeles. He had a hangover and eighty or ninety dollars more in his pocket than he thought he had had.

He spent another few idle days in Hollywood. Then, deciding that there was nothing to be gained from further encounters with Dr Finch—and possibly some front teeth to be lost—he left discreetly for Wisconsin.

It was a sensible decision. The doctor had by now leased an apartment in Las Vegas for Miss Tregoff—his ‘fiancée’ as he described her to the apartment house manager—and was driving up there more often. There were tactical as well as sentimental reasons for this. The doctor was at this time trying to evade service of the subpoena on the contempt charge. Until July 14 he was successful.

He was at the Medical Center when the document was served on him. It required him to appear in court nine days later on July 23. On Friday the 17th he left his car at a Los Angeles airport and flew up to Las Vegas.

On Saturday the 18th, he and Miss Tregoff drove down in her car from Las Vegas to West Covina. They went, according to subsequent statements of Miss Tregoff’s, in order to confront Mrs Finch with the fact of their relationship (of which Mrs Finch had been all too obviously aware for over a year) and to try to talk her into an out-of-court property settlement agreement.

They reached Lark Hill Drive shortly after ten in the evening and parked the car at the Country Club.

According to Miss Tregoff, the doctor went up to the driveway of his house, and then called down to her to come up and bring a flashlight with her.

She did so; but instead of taking just the flashlight, she ‘became confused’ and took up an attaché case of the doctor’s which she knew to contain a flashlight.

The attaché case was found near the garage the following day. It contained, in addition to a flashlight, two lengths of rope, an ampoule of seconal, a bottle of seconal tablets, two hypodermic syringes with needles, a pair of surgeon’s gloves, a sheet of rubber bandage, a wide bandage, a wide elastic bandage, and a carving knife with a six-inch blade. All this was later to be described as a ‘murder kit.’

When the doctor and Miss Tregoff reached the garage, they saw that Mrs Finch’s car was not there, and concluded that she was out. In fact, she had gone to the tennis club early that afternoon and had dined out afterwards at a restaurant with friends.

They decided to wait for her. They did not go into the house. Miss Lindholm, the maid, and Patti, the doctor’s twelve-year-old stepdaughter, were watching the Miss Universe Contest on television and remained unaware of them. Miss Tregoff and the doctor passed the time by playing with the dog, an elderly Samoyed named Frosty.

Mrs Finch returned shortly after eleven o’clock.

Miss Tregoff says that as Mrs Finch drove into the garage the doctor walked up and said that they wanted to talk to her. Mrs Finch replied that she did not want to do any talking.

Miss Tregoff said: ‘She got out of the car and bent down. Her back was to me, but then I noticed she had a gun pointed towards me. Dr Finch reached behind his wife into the car, threw something at me which hit me in the stomach and yelled at me to get out of there. The object he threw was a leather case.’

Miss Tregoff says that, as she ran across the lawn, she tripped over a sprinkler head and heard Mrs Finch scream.

‘I heard another sound from the garage and it sounded like Dr Finch was in trouble. I started back in quite cautiously. Then I saw Barbara on the right side of the car. She took off
down the driveway. She had a gun in her hand. I ran back around the lawn. I was scared. I was afraid of being shot at. I guess I stayed there until about 5 a.m. while all kinds of police came around. I seemed to be paralysed.’

In the end, she left her hiding place, behind a large bougainvillaea, and made her way down the hill to the car park. Her car was still there. She drove back to Las Vegas.

Miss Lindholm’s account of what happened is very different. She never saw Miss Tregoff and did not know that she was there.

Just after eleven the television was switched off and Patti went to bed. Miss Lindholm went to her room. She heard Mrs Finch’s car drive in. A few seconds later, she heard Mrs Finch scream for help.

Miss Lindholm had some difficulty in expressing herself in English, and her accounts of the events of the next few minutes varied; but the general pattern was clear.

She ran out, thinking that Mrs Finch might have fallen into the swimming pool, or had some other accident. Patti ran out with her; but, when they heard the doctor’s angry voice, Miss Lindholm sent the child back to the house and went on alone. When she reached the garage, she turned on the lights. She saw Mrs Finch lying on the floor. She was bleeding from a cut on the forehead. Dr Finch was standing over her.

As Miss Lindholm started towards Mrs Finch, the doctor grabbed the girl ‘by the face and chin’ and banged her head against the wall. A broken area of plaster on the wall seemed to bear out this part of her story. She was not clear what happened immediately after that. She was not sure whether or not she lost consciousness, nor whether she remained on her feet. She did remember clearly that the doctor ordered her into the car and that he had a gun in his hand. In one account, she said that he fired a shot to enforce his orders.

At all events, she climbed into the rear seat of Mrs Finch’s convertible. At the same time, the doctor was ordering his wife to get into the front seat. As she got to her feet he told her to give him the car keys. Then he shouted at her: ‘So help me, I will kill you if you don’t do as I say.’

Apparently, Mrs Finch made as if to obey, then suddenly turned and ran out of the garage. A week or so earlier, it will be remembered, she had told her lawyer that if the doctor came to the house again, she would run for protection to the house of his parents. That was the direction in which she ran now. The doctor ran after her.

Miss Lindholm said he had a gun in his hand. Miss Tregoff said that it was Mrs Finch who had the gun.

There is no doubt, however, about the rest of Miss Lindholm’s story. She got out of the car and ran to the house. Patti unlocked the door and let her in. At just about that time, they heard a distant shot. Miss Lindholm called the police.

Mrs Finch’s body had only one shoe on. The other shoe, together with some pieces of earrings, was found by the police on the shoulder of the driveway above. In addition to having been shot in the back with a 0.38 bullet, Mrs Finch had two skull fractures and a number of bruises and abrasions which could have been the result of her being hit with a gun. A torn surgical glove was lying on the floor of the garage.

No gun was found. No one saw Miss Tregoff hiding in the bougainvillaea. Dr Finch had left.

At the time the police arrived at the house, the doctor was, in fact, on South Citrus Avenue, a few minutes’ walk away, stealing a Ford car from a driveway. He abandoned it two miles away in La Puente, and then stole a Cadillac, in which he drove up to Las Vegas. It was about 6.30 a.m. when he reached Miss Tregoff’s apartment. She had not yet returned. The manager let him in with a pass key.

Then, the doctor went to bed. He had had a tiring day.

Miss Tregoff says that it was on the way back to Las Vegas and over the car radio, that she learned of Mrs Finch’s death. When she awakened the doctor and told him, he ‘seemed quite shocked.’ ‘I asked him if he had killed his wife and he said no.’

Relieved to hear this, Miss Tregoff went off to work at the Sands Hotel, where she was a cocktail waitress on the morning shift. Some hours later, after the doctor’s arrest, she was taken to Las Vegas police headquarters, questioned, and then held as a material witness. She made a number of statements. Eleven days later, after she had given evidence at the preliminary hearing of the case against Dr Finch in the municipal court, she was arrested on a charge of ‘aiding and abetting’ him in the murder of Mrs Finch.

An indiscreet conversation between two Las Vegas prostitutes led the police to question Keachie. In August, Cody was picked up by the police in Milwaukee.

The Los Angeles County Court building looks like the new head office of a prosperous building society. There are escalators inside as well as lifts. Courtroom No. 12 is spacious, well-lighted, and efficiently air-conditioned. There is no dock. Defendants sit beside their lawyers at a long table facing the judge’s rostrum. Also at this table are the prosecution lawyers. The witness ‘stand’ is a throne-like chair placed beside the judge’s desk and furnished with a microphone so that the whole court can hear plainly what is said. The jury sits to the left of the judge. The press box is on the right. A wooden barrier with swing gates separates all this from the main body of the court where the public sits. Over three hundred spectators can be accommodated.