Харлан Эллисон - Murder Plus - True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

“Do you mean did he have the motive for killing Clyde?”

“You can put it that way if you want to.”

Bertha Warner looked down at the floor and frowned. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, “but it wouldn’t surprise me. Harold has a vicious temper and if he and Clyde had a fight, it might very well end in — in murder.”

Cassidy spent ten minutes trying to pin down these rather vague accusations and get something concrete. But about all he actually got was Mrs. Warner’s statement that she believed Harold capable of murder. She either didn’t have or wasn’t giving out any fact that could be counted as evidence.

The detective spent another half-hour in the hotel trying to find out what time Bertha Warner had come home. Nobody remembered her. The doorman said he’d been trying to get a couple of taxis around ten-thirty, which was when she claimed she’d returned. The desk clerk didn’t recall seeing her, but she carried her own key. The elevator man didn’t even know who Bertha Warner was. There were so many people.

Cassidy located the night clerk and the night elevator man. Some time after two — had they seen Mrs. Warner? The detective described her. The clerk admitted he’d dozed off a few times. The elevator operator, however, was definite. An attractive dame at two in the morning? Sure he’d have remembered her, but he hadn’t taken her up. Could she have walked up? He laughed. Climb nine flights of stairs when there was a car running? What for?

Cassidy bore down. He didn’t want to know what the operator thought a dame would do. He wanted to know whether or not she could have done it. The elevator man shrugged. He didn’t spend his time watching the stairs. If she wanted to walk up, she had a pair of legs. While he was on one of the upper floors, he wouldn’t have seen her.

Cassidy returned to Sector R headquarters. His brain must have been spinning by then. Three red hot suspects — Schirmer, Harold, Bertha. And Harold and Bertha Warner were practically accusing each other.

Why?

And yet, Schirmer loomed as the Number One possibility, except that no motive had been unearthed. But Cassidy didn’t care what the motive was. He wanted to know who had shot Clyde Warner, and how.

Schirmer might have done it. But the two wardens on the eight-to-twelve shift had been located and stated that Warner had arrived alone, saying Schirmer would be along any minute and that they should go. When they had pointed out that headquarters was supposed to be manned by at least two men he’d gotten angry. They’d obeyed him to avoid a fuss.

Harold Warner was a guy who didn’t seem to like cops for some reason and he’d claimed to have an alibi which might or might not be okay. Mrs. Warner didn’t look like the kind of woman who would shoot a man, but she didn’t have anything that could be called an alibi, either.

Cassidy collected reports. The fingerprintmen had developed innumerable prints, mostly blurred, but they had no hope that any of them would be of much use. At least fifty wardens had been in and out of the apartment during the last twenty-four hours. They had rubbed their hands on chairs and tables and walls. A dozen different persons had used the phone and there wasn’t a decent print on it. Just smudges.

The Medical Examiner had phoned in that Warner had been drinking and that death had taken place between two and three in the morning. He had been shot in the heart and killed outright.

Ballistics had the slug. It came from a .45 which was the caliber of the gun for which Clyde Warner had a permit. But you can’t tell from which gun a bullet has come unless you have the gun, and the murder weapon had disappeared.

It was Streit, the Sector Commander, who had the only item of real interest to report. He came in suddenly from the hall and announced excitedly, “The cards from the file box. I’ve found them!”

“Where?”

“In the trash basket out in the hall.” Streit’s narrow shoulders straightened up. “What do you think of that?”

“I think,” said Cassidy, “that I’d like a duplicate of that file box. Come on out and help me get one.”

Cassidy returned to the precinct house with a duplicate file box under his arm. He had a glimmering of an idea, but he was far from sure.

Inspector Kennedy, in charge of the division, and Captain Lauterback, of the precinct detective division, were waiting for him. They had the facts now on Harold Warner’s alibi and it apparently left Cassidy with only two suspects. When questioned by Detective Hanrahan, Poletti had corroborated in every detail Warner’s statement that they were together all evening.

“Hanrahan’s doing a check on Poletti now,” Lauterback finished. “And we’re keeping a tail on him, too, just in case.”

Cassidy made his report, describing his conversations with Harold and Bertha Warner. Then he leaned back and listened as his superior officers discussed the case. But he said little himself. He wanted more facts. For one thing, he wanted to know why someone had dumped those records in the trash basket and walked off with the file box.

The day wore on. Every patrolman in the precinct who wasn’t needed elsewhere had been put on the case. Cassidy did paper work and stared at a box. The Captain was handling things and giving the orders.

Around four o’clock, Patrolman Keenan knocked on the door. He had been canvassing the neighborhood under instructions to find out all he could about wardens, and he’d struck pay dirt.

“You know that lunch counter around the corner from Number 202?” he said. “The Greek who runs it said Schirmer was in there for a cup of coffee around 4 A.M. He knows Schirmer and identified him from the photo.”

The Captain smiled grimly. “Bring Schirmer in.”

Schirmer, when he arrived, didn’t try to deny the fact. Instead, he changed his story. He still insisted that Clyde Warner had called him and that he had never been to sector headquarters. But now he stated that he had wakened around three in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. He had gone to bed at eight, he kept repeating, he’d had enough sleep. He’d gone out for a cup of coffee. That was all. Why hadn’t he mentioned it? He answered that he hadn’t thought it important enough.

In the middle of the questioning Cassidy was called out. Hanrahan, whom he had sent to check on Poletti, was on the phone.

“I think I’ve got something,” he reported. “I start checking on this Poletti and I run into an OPA investigator who’s doing the same thing. It seems they got a hunch that he might be tied in with the mob that’s been dishing out those phony gas coupons that hit the East Coast a few weeks back. If they’ve got a case and if Warner spent the evening with Poletti — well, it has possibilities.”

Cassidy agreed. “I see what you mean. I’ll contact OPA and find out just what they’ve got. See what else you can dig up.”

He returned to Captain Lauterback’s office. The Captain hadn’t been able to break Schirmer down, but there was too much against him to turn him loose. He was being held as a material witness. They wanted a confession before making any formal charge.

“I got the laboratory reports, too,” said Lauterback. “They looked over his clothes for bloodstains. There weren’t any.”

“There was no struggle,” said Cassidy. “Warner was shot down in cold blood. You can’t expect stains.”

“I didn’t expect them. I was just hoping.”

There was another knock on the door and Detective Redfern called in excitedly, “Captain — we’ve got the gun!” He shoved in a short squat man in the drab uniform of a street cleaner.

Cassidy’s face lit up. The street cleaner was carrying a cardboard file box under one arm.