“But what kind of nutty stuff? You must remember a word or two. Did he mention Junior Delevan?”
Her eyes avoided his as they began that characteristic circuit of the wall behind him, seeking some way out. She said nothing. I shot an oblique glance at George. He’d realized long since where this was heading, but his face expressed nothing but an intelligent professional interest.
“Well, did he?” Scanlon prodded.
“Well—”
“Did he?”
“I guess—maybe he did—”
“Why?”
“Well, how would I know?” she asked sullenly.
Scanlon’s cigar had gone out. He removed it from his mouth and regarded the wet end of it thoughtfully. “You run into some weird ones in this business, Doris, but this one may take the Scanlon Award for 1961. How are you going to account for a man breaking into the room of a pretty girl like you at three o’clock in the morning and tearing her clothes off just to talk about Junior Delevan?” Suddenly, without any warning at all, his flattened hand came down on top of the desk with a sound like a pistol shot and his voice lashed out. “What did he ask you about Delevan?”
That was all it took. She came apart like a cheap toy that’d been left out in the rain. In less than five minutes he had the whole conversation.
“Did Junior ever ask you what that shop took in on an average Saturday?” he demanded.
She was crying now. “Well, he might have. It was a long time ago.”
“Did he have a key to the place?”
“No,” she said. “I m-mean, I don’t know.”
“Did you have one?”
“No. Of course not. She lived there, so she always opened up.”
“Then how did Delevan get one?”
“He d-didn’t.”
“I think he did. There has to be some reason you never did tell us you suspected he was killed in the back of that shop, something that involves guilty knowledge on your part. Either you planned the burglary with him, or you had reason to believe he was going to do it himself. Maybe it was only the fact you didn’t want to have to admit you knew he had a key. Where’d he get it? Did you steal it for him?”
“No! I didn’t do any such thing.”
“Did he ever have a chance to get his hands on her keys?”
She hesitated fearfully. “Wh-what will they do to me?”
“I can’t make any promises, but probably nothing, if you tell us.”
“All right. But I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Just tell us.”
“It was one day when she was out somewhere and she’d left her keys on the showcase next to the cash register. Junior was there, talking to me, and then a customer came in. While I was waiting on her, I happened to look over where he was, and he’d taken out his chewing gum and was pressing one of the keys into it.”
“And when was this?” Scanlon asked.
“About two weeks before—before he was killed.”
“And you never did tell her—Frances Kinnan, I mean?”
She began to cry again. “I was afraid to. Junior could be real mean when he wanted to.”
Scanlon gestured wearily. “All right, you can go.”
She went out. He relit his cigar, and sighed. “We’ll never be able to prove a word of it.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Unless you catch the man that was in the apartment with Frances that night, the man who killed him. And for once you can look somewhere else. I was in Tampa, Florida.”
He gestured impatiently. “Hell, it hasn’t got anything to do with this, anyway.”
I banged my manacled hands on the desk. “Dammit, it has everything to do with it!”
“Oh, cut it out,” he snapped. “You killed Roberts because you thought he was having an affair with your wife. And you killed her for the same reason. All this guesswork about Delevan and where he was or wasn’t killed that night doesn’t change the facts in the slightest. You haven’t got a chance in the world, so why don’t you come clean and get it over with?”
It had all been for nothing, I thought. I wondered where Barbara was and what she was trying to do. Well, it really didn’t matter; nothing would help me. “Listen to me a minute,” I said wearily, knowing before I started it was futile. “I’ll try to explain it in words of one syllable. Roberts was blackmailing her. Not because of Delevan, because he didn’t know anything about that. But because of something else that happened before she ever came here; the thing, whatever it was, that made her change her name. If we ever find out who she really was, and who brought her here—”
“We know who she was,” he said.
I stared at him. “You do? How?”
“The F.B.I. identified her from that photograph you gave Norman. They’ve got quite a file on her.”
“Embezzlement?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. I thought that myself, when I heard about the ponies, but it’s not that simple. As a matter of fact, in 25 years in this business, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a package quite like it. Her name’s Elena Mallory—or that was the one she started with; she’s added to it from time to time.”
I shot a glance at George. Other than well-bred curiosity, his face showed nothing at all. Maybe we were wrong, after all.
Scanlon went on. “She seems to be wanted, under various names and at various times since 1954, by the State of Nevada, the State of California, the Internal Revenue Service, the F.B.I., and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, for fraud, evasion of income tax, hit-and-run driving, manslaughter, illegal flight to escape prosecution, bigamy, and deportation as an undesirable alien. I suppose if she were still alive they’d have to cut cards for her.”
My gears became meshed at last. “Bigamy?”
“Yes. She” seems to have been a girl who was easily bored. As I get the picture, she was a Guatemalan citizen, of Irish and Spanish parentage, educated in the United States—that is, until she ran away from the last school they put her in and married some horse-trainer on the California racing circuit. He lost his license for giving stimulants to a horse—which he says she did—and later, without bothering to divorce him, she married, a Southern California used-car dealer who was pretty well-to-do, or was until she got her scoop into his bankroll and started heaving it into the pari-mutuel windows at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. Then she wrote several thousand dollars worth of rubber checks at casinos at Las Vegas, and ran over and killed a man with her sports car, and took it on the lam. This last item was in October, 1958. They’ve been looking for her ever since, waiting for her to drop the other shoe; sooner or later she figured to be back in the headlines. She was reported to have been seen at a Florida horse track in December, 1958, but disappeared before they could get their hands on her. That would have been just a few weeks before she showed up here.”
That tied it all together, I thought—and we’d never prove a bit of it. He really must have hated her. He’d picked her up broke in Florida and set her up in the dress shop. Then in less than six months she’d ditched him and married me, sold the stock and fixtures, and kept the money herself, so all he’d got out of it was to put himself at the mercy of a reckless and irresponsible girl who might some day get him sent to prison for the death of Junior Delevan. With her record of unbuttoned and uninhibited behavior, there was no telling what she’d spill if the police ever caught up with her. And on top of that there was no doubt he’d had to keep paying Roberts off —through her—because she’d probably told him she’d already given Roberts everything she had. And then he learned from Denman she’d just dropped six or seven thousand dollars at the racetrack in New Orleans.
I looked at him now; he seemed perfectly at ease. Nothing would ever crack him. Well, Roberts was dead, and she was dead; he really didn’t have much to be afraid of. Except maybe turning put the light at night.
At least I had to try. “All right,” I said to Scanlon, “that accounts for Paul Denman. This man, whoever he w
as, knew the police would always be on the lookout for her around racetracks, so he hired Denman to follow her. And of course he found out it was exactly as he’d suspected; she was on another gambling binge, and sooner or later she’d be recognized and picked up. When she came home, he killed her. He even destroyed her photograph—the big one in the bedroom—to keep the newspapers from running it. Somebody might have recognized her. He didn’t know I had a small one in my wallet.”
Scanlon shook his head. “He couldn’t have killed her. Nobody knew she was home. Except you.”
The door opened then, and the Deputy on guard called but to Scanlon. “Mrs. Ryan’s out here. She says she’s got to see you or Mr. Clement.”
“What about?” Scanlon asked.
“She says some evidence.”
“All right. Let her in.”
xii
I WAS CONSCIOUS OF THE shallowness of my breathing as I watched her come through the door. She looked lovely, but very tired. She smiled at me, and then nervously at the others as she came over to the desk. “Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Scanlon, but I think I may have something important.”
“What is it?” he asked.
She turned slightly to include George. “I don’t know whether it would be classified as defense evidence or just evidence, but I thought the best thing would be to come here right away.”
George smiled. “Any evidence is properly turned over to the police, Mrs. Ryan. If it’s pertinent, we have access to it too.”
Scanlon interrupted impatiently. “Sure, sure. But what is it?”
“Well, I’ve just been talking to Mr. Denman—you remember, the private detective. I called him last night to ask if he thought he’d recognize this Randall’s voice if he heard it again, but he didn’t think so—that is, he wouldn’t be able to pick it out of a number of similar voices, and his testimony would probably have no value as evidence. So then I asked him about the envelope Randall sent the money in, but he said there was nothing there either. It was just a plain white envelope from the drugstore or dime store, and the address was typewritten. There was no return address, of course, and no letter with it. Just the money. Then, a little while ago, it occurred to me that typewriters can be identified too. They all have their individual characteristics—”
“Yes, of course,” Scanlon broke in. “The F.B.I, can do it, or any good police lab. But there’s not a chance in the world he’d have it now. Nobody ever keeps an envelope.”
“But that’s just it,” she said eagerly. “I think he does have it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just talked to him. At his home. He says he threw the envelope in the waste basket, all right, but the thing is he doesn’t have any janitor service in the building where his office is, and he doesn’t think he’s emptied the basket since then—since Tuesday afternoon, when he got it. He’s going down to the office in the next half hour or so, as soon as he’s had breakfast, and he’ll look and see if it’s still there. I asked him to call you, if it is, and you’d tell him whether to turn it over to the F.B.I, or mail it to you in another envelope.”
“Good. I’ll call the F.B.I. myself, if he finds it.” Scanlon removed the cold cigar from his mouth and regarded it musingly. He shook his head. “Faith is a wonderful thing, Mrs. Ryan. For your sake, I almost hope this doesn’t backfire on you.”
“I don’t think it will,” she said. She went out.
For a moment no one spoke. Then Scanlon relighted his cigar and smiled grimly at George. “I think this is one you’re going to lose, counselor. If they identify that as one of the typewriters in Warren’s office, on top of everything else we’ve got—there goes your ball game.”
George shrugged easily. “Well, they haven’t yet, remember. Don’t try to bluff us with an empty gun.”
I glanced at my watch. It was seven-thirty-five. The next half hour or so—I wondered if I’d live through it, or if I did, whether I’d ever be the same again. My nerve ends felt as if they were going to snap and come out through my skin like steel wire. George didn’t even bother to look at his watch. He merely lit another cigarette and listened attentively as Scanlon took up the questioning again. A telephone stood on the desk between us like a silent black bomb, and there was another on the desk where he was sitting, next to his left elbow. He didn’t look at either of them. Nor was there the slightest indication in his face that he was avoiding them.
We must be wrong, I thought; nobody has that kind of nerve. Or if we weren’t, he must have weighed the possibilities and decided it was a bluff. No, I told myself; there was still a chance he was only timing it to get out gracefully, without suspicion. But, good God, how long could he wait? How long could he endure it?
Scanlon was saying something.
“What?”
His eyes were bleak as he leaned over the other end of the desk. “I hope we’re not causing you any inconvenience, Warren, with all these silly questions. But there have been a couple of people killed, and the taxpayers always get into a snit about it and start saying we ought to look into it.”
“All right,” I said. “What do you want to know now?”
“I want to know if you’re ready to make a statement.”
“I don’t know your definition of the word,” I said, “but to the best of my knowledge I’ve been making statements ever since I was dragged in here. Apparently they go in one corner of your head, reverberate, and flow out the other, without causing a ripple—”
Seven-thirty-nine.
“How long are you going to hold out?”
“As long as I’m breathing. I’ve told you what happened.”
“You’re the only one in town who knew your wife was home. How could somebody else have killed her?”
“She called him. The minute I left the house with Mulholland.”
“So she could get her head broken with an andiron? Now, that makes sense.”
I explained about the fight. “Maybe she even thought I’d killed Roberts, from the way I was acting and from the fact I had the cigarette lighter, the one Doris told you about. It was a new one she’d ordered, but she didn’t know that. Anyway, she had to get away—get away from me, and out of reach before you could question her about Roberts. But she didn’t have any money left, and couldn’t very well ask me for any, the way I was raving and breaking down doors, so she called this man, whoever he was.”
“But why would he kill her, if she was leaving town anyway? She couldn’t spill anything.”
“Because he didn’t trust her, for one thing; she was too reckless and unreliable. You read her record. She’d be picked up somewhere. Also, he hated her. You saw what he did to her face.”
Seven-forty-four.
My hands, manacled together, lay on the edge of the desk. I could see the watch without moving my face. It had been nine minutes now…ten. …
The telephone rang, the sudden sound of it like an explosion in the room. If he doesn’t scream now, and start across the ceiling, I thought, he has no nerves in his body at all. Or he’s innocent. I glanced toward him. His face was utterly calm, as though he hadn’t even heard it. No, he had turned slightly and was watching Scanlon as he picked up the receiver.
“Sheriff’s office. Scanlon speaking—”
It didn’t mean anything. Everybody was watching Scanlon.
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George take out a cigarette. Then he realized he already had one burning in the tray, and put it back.
“…but, dammit, honey, I can’t get away. I realize I haven’t had any breakfast. Or any sleep. I sometimes notice things like that, without help. But I’m not going to leave here till we crack this thing.”
If it were me, I thought, they’d have heard the sigh of relief in Memphis. Nothing showed. Absolutely nothing.
Scanlon hung up. Then he sighed, and said, “All right, let’s get on with it”
George glanced at his watch. “Speaking of breakfas
t —how long do you think it’ll be, Sheriff, before I’ll be able to talk to Duke?”
“Not for hours, at this rate,” Scanlon said disgustedly.
George stood up. “Well, I think I’ll run over to Fuller’s and have a bite.” He turned to me. “There’s nothing I can do at the moment, Duke, and I’ll be back in twenty minutes or so. You don’t mind?”
“No,” I said. I managed a sickly grin. “I’ll try to hold off the wolves till you get back.”
“Could I have Fuller’s send you over something?”
“No, thanks. I couldn’t eat anything.”
He went out. There was a long moment’s silence after the door closed behind him. Scanlon and Mulholland exchanged a glance. Scanlon jerked his head. Mulholland went out, and almost at the same instant Barbara came back in. She must have been in another room across the corridor. She came on around the desk and sat down on my right.
Scanlon spoke to Brill. “Get that line open to the radio room.”
Brill stepped inside Scanlon’s private office, leaving the door open. The three of us remained where we were, staring at the telephone on the desk between us.
Scanlon looked at Barbara, the gray eyes flinty. “I never thought I’d use the sheriff’s office for a routine like this. If I didn’t have a dirty hunch you could be right, I’d lock you up.”
She made no reply. She glanced at me and tried to smile, but it didn’t quite come off. A minute went by. At this hour on Sunday morning you could drive anywhere in town in less than three minutes. It had to be before then. Two minutes. The silence began to roar in my ears. The room was swollen and bulging with it, like some dark and suffocating pressure. Three minutes. I stared at the telephone, and then away, and back at it again. Barbara had lowered her head, and I saw her eyes were closed. Her elbows rested on the desk, and she was raising and lowering her fists, so tightly clenched the knuckles were white, bumping The heels of them gently against the wood in some rhythmic and supplicant cadence she apparently wasn’t aware of or didn’t know how to stop.
The telephone rang. I saw her gulp. Her shoulders shook, and she groped for her handkerchief and pressed it against her mouth.