Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953

She kneeled before the statue for a long time, and then got to her feet slowly, drying her eyes. She walked up the aisle, stopped at the font, crossed herself, and then walked outside.

We followed her out, catching up with her at the corner. I walked over on one side of her, and Pat on the other.

“Mrs. Dreiser?” I asked.

She stopped walking. “Yes?”

I showed my buzzer. “Police officers,” I said. “We’d like to ask some questions.”

She stared at my face for a long time. She drew a trembling breath then, and said, “I killed her. I... Carl was dead, you see. I... I guess that was it. It wasn’t right... his getting killed, I mean. And she was crying.”

“Want to tell it downtown, ma’m?” I asked.

She nodded blankly. “Yes, that was it. She just cried all the time, not knowing that I was crying inside. You don’t know how I cried inside. Carl... he was all I had. I... I couldn’t stand it any more. I told her to shut up and when she didn’t I... I...”

“Come on along, ma’m,” I said.

“I brought her to the church.” She nodded, remembering it all now. “She was innocent, you know. So I brought her to the church. Did you find her there?”

“Yes, ma’m,” I said. “That’s where we found her.”

She seemed pleased. A small smile covered her mouth and she said, “I’m glad you found her.”

She told the story again to the lieutenant. Pat and I checked out, and on the way to the subway, I asked him, “Do you still want to pull the switch, Pat?”

He didn’t answer.

It happened in an alley in Tampa, Florida, in the squalid Ybor City district. One minute he was a man, smoking a cigarette, waiting for me in the humid summer night. The next, he was a corpse, tailing over with a knife in his back.

I never saw his killers at all, except for two blobs of shadow in the stinking blackness of the alley. One of them was a woman. She collided with me, giving me the feel of her softness and the smell of her cheap perfume. Then she was gone.

Something had spun out of her hand when she plowed into me. I groped around for it. My hands came in contact with a woman’s small purse. Quickly, without looking at it, I stuffed it in my coat pocket. Then I walked down into the black maw of the alley where the dead man lay.

Stuccoed walls, crumbling with age, formed canyons around me. Outlined against the starry summer sky was filigreed iron grill work around a balcony, and the leaves of a banana tree waving above a courtyard wall.

The corpse was heavy, like an inert sack of potatoes. I shoved and wedged it into a doorway, and then I walked back to the mouth of the alley, lighting a cigarette. I was standing there, casually smoking, when the patrolman came up with his flashlight.

“Evening, officer,” I said.

He shoved the blinding light across my face. When he got it out of my eyes, I could see by the glow of a streetlight that he was young and freckle-faced, built like a Notre Dame tackle.

I inhaled a lungful of smoke, let it drift away. His light whipped down the alley, crawled over garbage cans, packing crates, bundles of paper, went over the spot where the dead man had sprawled, and then made a circuit of the fire escapes and balconies.

“Something the matter?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I thought I heard something. Some kind of yell. What’re you doing here?”

“Just walking around. I heard it, too. In the alley. A couple of cats fighting, I think. They make the damnedest sounds. Like a woman getting raped.”

He relaxed a little. “Yeah.” He shoved the flash into his belt, lit a cigarette. Then he took out a handkerchief and mopped his freckled forehead, pushing his cap back. “God, it's hot tonight.”

“Not a breath stirring,” I agreed.

“Yeah, I guess that’s what it was. Cats, I mean. We got a couple of old alley Toms in my neighborhood. Keep me awake squalling and fussing every night.”

“They can raise a lot of hell, all right.”

He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. “You better not hang around here by yourself,” he said in a friendly tone. “Lousy part of town. One of these cigar rollers might slug you.”

I shrugged and moved away from the alley. I walked down the street and crossed over to a drug store. Like the rest of Ybor City, it was all Spanish. A placard in the window said, English Spoken Here.

For a long time, I stared at the window. Then I walked into the place and examined some magazines. After a bit, I went out on the sidewalk again. The young cop had disappeared. The street was empty and lonely. I stepped back into the store, dropped a coin in a pay phone and called a taxi. Then I walked quickly back to the alley.

The dead man was where I had left him, doubled over in the door way. His skin felt clammy and damp to the touch. I lifted him, draped one of his arms over my shoulder and dragged him out of the alley. His head bounced and rolled and his hand flapped like a dead fish.

I stood there, holding him at the alley entrance. I was afraid to put him down because the taxi might come any minute and I was afraid if I stayed with him, the young beat cop would come by again, making his rounds.

So I stood there, sweating, my muscles aching, and cursed taxi companies. Finally, the cab turned a corner and rolled slowly down the street. I whistled and he pulled into the curb and opened a door.

I grinned and staggered, putting on a drunk act. In the darkness, the murdered man could pass for a friend who’d had more than his limit.

I got the corpse in the back of the car and slid in beside him. In a drunken voice, I mumbled at the driver to take us down to the Bay.

While he drove, I fumbled through the dead man’s pockets, but found nothing. Finally, we reached a sandy strip under some waving palm trees, and the taxi driver stopped. I handed him a crumpled bill and dragged the corpse out again, thankful for the darkness here.

The driver stuck his head out. “Hey, he looks like he’s in bad shape. You better get him to bed.”

“Can’t hold his liquor...” I said thickly.

The man shoved his head out a couple more inches. “You look like you got blood on your face.”

“Cut myself shaving,” I said. “Beat it, friend.”

He stared at me, his face a white blur in the night. Suddenly he started looking scared. He jerked his head back in like a frightened turtle, raked the cab into gear, and got out of there.

I dragged the murdered man along the beach. This was a lonely section: a few dark fishing shacks, some palmettoes, and a row of boats tied up at a rotting pier, slapping and bumping softly in the wash of surf.

I carried and dragged the dead man until my shoulder sockets were almost pulled apart and the sweat was a dripping, slimy film all over my body.

Finally I got down to the little cabin cruiser that had brought me across the bay from St. Petersburg earlier this evening. I worked the dead man on board and into the cabin. Then I went over him again in the darkness. With a pocket knife, I ripped out his pockets, the lining of his coat. He was clean. Not a thing on him.

I played the light of a small flash over his face. An aspen of a man, thin-boned and dissipated; pinched features with an angular design of sharp bones under tight skin.

I straightened my back and swore softly in the darkness. The muggy Florida night answered me across the licking water with mocking silence.

Then I remembered the girl’s purse. I took it out of my coat pocket and emptied its contents on a bunk, and snapped on the flash again. It was a tiny bag, the kind women take with them in the evenings, that contain the bare essentials of makeup. This one had a compact, a balled Kleenex smeared with lipstick, a package of Camels with two cigarettes remaining, a gold lipstick case, and a paper book of matches.