“You can’t bluff us, McKay,” he said. “We’ve got everything but your motive and we’ll get that too, mark my words. I’ll line it up for you and you can see that you can’t bluff us. You were intimate with the girl. Your landlady, Mrs. Duncan, saw you leave the house at four in the morning.” Ford stopped abruptly, hoping a surprise question would work. “Where were you going at four in the morning?”

“Where I told you,” McKay answered quietly. “To El Centro to look for a job.”

“Pitching alfalfa?”

“Yes.”

“You expect anybody to believe that?”

“Yes.”

“You, a musician who never did anything harder than blow on a clarinet, were going to break your back pitching alfalfa?”

“Yes.”

Ford sighed wearily. “You’re a liar. I’ll tell you where you went at four in the morning. You looked around for a good, reliable car, one that you could count on taking you where you wanted to go and getting you away in a hurry. You found Doctor Clayton’s car but the key wasn’t in the switch—so you got a better idea and waited in the back of it. When Clayton came out, you pointed a gun at him, made him hand over the keys and took his wallet because even though that wasn’t your real objective you figured you might as well grab the cash. Where did you put the gun?”

“I didn’t have a gun.”

Ford leaped out of his chair. “Then you admit that you hid in the car and held Clayton up.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Ford sat down again. “You forced Clayton out of the car and then you drove it off and waited for Doris Blair to come out of Carrol’s. You picked her up and drove off to the lot. You strangled her and pulled her body out of the car and left it in the weeds. The Filipino who lives in the shack on the lot saw you do it. And he saw you get back in the car and drive off. Then you left the car on a street three blocks away and disappeared for a couple of days. Where did you go?”

“None of those things happened,” McKay said. “I was in El Centro those few days.”