Read In the Heat of the Night for Free Online Page A

the uncomfortable chair at the side of the room. “Well, that clears it up,” he commented.
    “It helps,” Tibbs agreed.
    “How much more help do you want?” Gillespie asked, his voice somewhat closer to a normal level for a change.
    “It eliminates the superficial motive,” Tibbs replied, “it means digging a little deeper. I expected it, but it is an advantage to see it confirmed.”
    Gillespie swiveled to face Tibbs, an amused smile dawning on his face. “Don’t tell me you bought that kid’s story. I thought you were supposed to be the hotshot cop, the deadly manhunter, the Sherlock of the Pacific. If you’re a cop, I’m an anteater.”
    Arnold appeared in the doorway carrying a waxed- paper-wrapped sandwich in one hand and a paper container of coffee in the other. Without comment he handed them to Tibbs, then turned toward his chief. “Is he our boy?” he asked.
    Gillespie waved his hand toward Tibbs, who was unwrapping his sandwich. “Ask him,” he suggested. Arnold looked obediently at Tibbs. “Well?” he asked. “He’s innocent of the murder, I’m almost certain of that,” Tibbs replied.
    “Now tell him why,” Gillespie invited.
    “Because he’s left-handed,” Tibbs answered, and bit into his sandwich.
    Arnold looked at Gillespie. “Go on,” he said.
    Tibbs waited a moment until his mouth was empty. “When I examined the body of the deceased this morning,” Tibbs explained patiently, “it was evident that the fatal blow had been struck by a blunt instrument at an angle of about seventeen degrees from the right as the skull is viewed from the rear. That makes it almost certain that the assailant was right-handed. If you’ll pick up your desk ruler for a moment by one end, Chief Gillespie, I’ll explain the point.”
    To Arnold’s utter amazement, Gillespie complied. “Now imagine that you want to strike something with it at about the level of your own shoulders, or even a little higher. If you hold the ruler tightly, you will see that it is almost impossible to hold it straight out; your wrist isn’t built that way. If you want to point it toward the right, you will have to turn your hand over, palm up, to do it. Even to hit straight ahead, you have to turn your wrist ninety degrees.”
    Gillespie looked at the stick in his hand and then laid it back on top of his desk. “And you think Oberst is left-handed,” he said.
    “I know he is,” the Negro replied. “You remember when he thumped himself in the chest when he was trying to defend himself. Even if he was ambidextrous, he would still use his primary hand to do that, and he thumped himself with his left forefinger. I noticed when he walked in that he was probably innocent, but that confirmed it, in my judgment.” Tibbs took another bite from his sandwich and moistened it with a sip of the thick black coffee.
    “I didn’t ask if you wanted sugar,” Arnold said.
    “This is fine, thank you,” Tibbs replied.
    “You just looked at that guy and decided that he was probably innocent. What was that, intuition?” Gillespie asked.
    “No, his shoes,” Tibbs answered, “and the fact that he needed a shave.”
    Suddenly Gillespie fell silent. Arnold waited for his superior to ask why shoes and a shave were important. Then he realized that Gillespie would not do that; it would be a comedown for him and Bill Gillespie did not take kindly to comedowns. Arnold cleared his throat.
    He waited until Tibbs had his mouth empty between bites and then asked, “Why?”
    “Consider the circumstances of the attack,” Tibbs replied. “Mantoli was hit over the head from behind. That means that he was either assaulted by someone he knew and trusted, who stepped behind him for a moment and then hit him, or, more likely, someone sneaked up on him quietly enough to hit him without warning. If Mantoli had been warned, even by a second, he would have turned his head somewhat and the blow would have landed at a different angle on the