Free Meet Me at the Morgue by Ross MacDonald Page A

to worry about if he will eschew alcoholic beverages in any and all forms. Apart from his potential alcoholism, a condition which is by no means rare among wounded war veterans in general and men who have lost their mothers at an early age in particular, Miner presents a sound psychological configuration.
”
       
Turning to the circumstances of the accident itself, we find certain mitigating circumstances. One is the fact that Miner admits his guilt, and is sincerely repentant. Another is the fact that he was “on holiday” when the accident occurred. While no excuse can be made for drunken driving as such, the fact is that Miner’s employers were both absent at the time, winter-vacationing at their desert establishment, so that Miner cannot be charged with “drinking on duty.” There is the further fact that, while Miner was found to be legally intoxicated at the time of his arrest, his victim was also under the influence of alcohol. The victim’s blood was found to have an alcoholic content of 157 mg., from which it is arguable that the victim may have been at least partly responsible for the accident. As for the second and perhaps more serious charge against Miner, that of leaving the scene of a fatal accident without reporting it to the proper authorities, Miner himself claims that he was totally unaware of the accident’s occurrence. Supporting his assertion, difficult as it is to believe
due to the damage to the automobile and the evidence of violent impact, is Dr. Levinson’s opinion that “a person of Miner’s susceptibility to alcohol, with over 200 mg. of it in his blood, might very conceivably have run over a man without knowing it.
”
       
Miner himself can only be described as a willing and hopeful prospect for probation. There are no other violations in his record, and he says with every appearance of sincerity: “I intend to observe all laws in future. My failure to observe the laws against drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident are a source of intense remorse to me. All I can say is that liquor was my downfall.” His wife, Amy Wolfe Miner, states: “If ever a man has learned from experience, Fred has learned. I am equally responsible with Fred for letting him buy that bottle. We are both resolved that there will be no more bottles, Fred is a teetotaler from here on in.
”
       
We conclude that with his wife’s support and that of his employers, Frederick A. Miner should be in a good position to rehabilitate himself under the guidance of the Probation Department. Such guidance should include a total ban on the consumption of alcoholic beverages, strict adherence to all laws in both letter and spirit, especially traffic laws, regular interviews with the probation authority, a course of indoctrination at the Alcoholism Center, and such other conditions as the Court may see fit to incorporate in its order
.
    A LEX S. L INEBARGE            
Deputy Probation Officer
    I put the report back in its folder and replaced it in the “M” file. Thorough as it was, it failed to answer some of the questions rising in my mind. The question Forest had asked, for instance: Could the involuntary manslaughterhave been voluntary homicide? Was there a connection between the first anonymous body and the second, between both and Fred? Most important of all, and most difficult: What sort of a man was Miner?
    No human personality peeped out between the lines of Alex Linebarge’s unimaginative prose. To Alex, souls were either black or white. He had decided once and for all that Miner was white, and omitted those touches of tattletale gray that would have given reality to his sketch. There was a sense in which Miner, in spite of the laborious biographical data, was a third unidentified man, another Mr. Nobody.
    I picked up the telephone and called the mortuary. Seifel had just left there. He was a fourth.

 
    CHAPTER 11 :       
I heard him taking the steps two
at a time, and