Jean Backus - Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

“Oh,” Miss Murphy said. She gave me the book without further questions.

When I returned to the police car Lieutenant Randall said, “Gimme,” and took the book from me, handling it with a finicky delicacy that seemed odd in such a big man. By his tightening lips I could follow his growing frustration as he examined The Damion Complex. For it certainly seemed to be just an ordinary copy of another ordinary book from the public library. The library name was stamped on it in the proper places. Identification number ES4187. Card pocket, with regulation date card, inside the front cover. Nothing concealed between its pages, not even a pressed forget-me-not.

“What the hell?” the Lieutenant grunted.

“Code message?” I suggested.

He was contemptuous. “Code message? You mean certain words off certain pages? In that case why was this particular copy specified — number ES4187? Any copy would do.”

“Unless the message is in the book itself. In invisible ink? Or indicated by pin pricks over certain words?” I showed my teeth at him. “After all, it’s a spy novel.”

We went over the book carefully twice before we found the negative. And no wonder. It was very small — no more than half an inch or maybe five-eighths — and shoved deep in the pocket inside the front cover, behind the date card.

Randall held it up to the light. “Too small to make out what it is,” I said. “We need a magnifying glass.”

“Hell with that.” Randall threw his car into gear. “I’ll get Jerry to make me a blowup.” Jerry is the police photographer. “I’ll drop you off at the library.”

“Oh, no, Lieutenant, I’m mixed up in this. You said so yourself. I’m sticking until I see what’s on that negative.” He grunted.

Half an hour later I was in Randall’s office at headquarters when the police photographer came in and threw a black-and-white 3½-inch by 4½-inch print on the Lieutenant’s desk. Randall allowed me to look over his shoulder as he examined it.

Its quality was poor. It was grainy from enlargement, and the images were slightly blurred, as though the camera had been moved just as the picture was snapped. But it was plain enough so that you could make out two men sitting facing each other across a desk. One was facing the camera directly; the other showed only as part of a rear-view silhouette — head, right shoulder, right arm.

The right arm, however, extended into the light on the desk top and could be seen quite clearly. It was lifting from an open briefcase on the desk a transparent bag of white powder, about the size of a pound of sugar. The briefcase contained three more similar bags. The man who was full face to the camera was reaching out a hand to accept the bag of white powder.

Lieutenant Randall said nothing for what seemed a long time. Then all he did was grunt noncommittally.

I said, “Heroin, Lieutenant?”

“Could be.”

“Big delivery. Who’s the guy making the buy? Do you know?”

He shrugged. “We’ll find out.”

“When you make him, you’ll have your murderer. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

He shrugged again. “How do you read it, Hal?”

“Easy. The kid you pulled from the river got this picture somehow, decided to cut himself in by a little blackmail, and got killed for his pains.”

“And tortured. Why tortured?” Randall was just using me as a sounding board.

“To force him to tell where the negative was hidden? He wouldn’t have taken the negative with him when he braced the dope peddler.”

“Hell of a funny place to hide a negative,” Randall said. “You got any ideas about that?”

I went around Randall’s desk and sat down. “I can guess. The kid sets up his blackmail meeting with the dope peddler, starts out with both the negative and a print of it, like this one, to keep his date. At the last minute he has second thoughts about carrying the negative with him.”

“Where’s he starting out from?” Randall squeezed his hands together.

“The Starlight Motel. Where else?”

“Go on.”

“So maybe he decides to leave the negative in the motel safe and stops at the desk in the lobby to do so. But Hazzard is in the can, maybe. Or has stepped out to the restaurant for coffee. The kid has no time to waste. So he shoves the little negative into one of Hazzard’s library books temporarily, making a quick note of the book title and library number so he can find it again. You found the note in his shirt pocket. How’s that sound?”

Randall gave me his half grin and said, “So long, Hal. Thanks for helping.”

I stood up. “I need a ride to the library. You’ve wasted my whole afternoon. You going to keep my library book?”

“For a while. But I’ll be in touch.”

“You’d better be. Unless you want to pay a big overdue fine.”

It was the following evening before I heard any more from Lieutenant Randall. He telephoned me at home. “Catch any big bad book thieves today, Hal?” he began in a friendly voice.

“No. You catch any murderers?”

“Not yet. But I’m working on it.”

I laughed. “You’re calling to report progress, is that it?”

“That’s it.” He was as bland as milk.

“Proceed,” I said.

“We found out who the murdered kid was.”

“Who?”

“A reporter named Joel Homer from Cedar Falls. Worked for the Cedar Falls Herald. The editor tells me Homer was working on a special assignment the last few weeks. Trying to crack open a story on dope in the Tri-Cities.”

“Oho. Then it is dope in the picture?”

“Reasonable to think so, anyway.”

“How’d you find out about the kid? The Starlight Motel?”

“Yeah. Your friend Hazzard, the desk clerk, identified him for us. Remembered checking him into Room 18 on Saturday morning. His overnight bag was still in the room and his car in the parking lot.”

“Well, it’s nice to know who got killed,” I said, “but you always told me you’d rather know who did the killing. Find out who the guy in the picture is?”

“He runs a ratty café on the river in Overbrook, just out of town. Name of Williams.”

“Did you tic up the robbery squeal Hazzard mentioned when we were out there yesterday?”

“Could be. One man, masked, held up the night clerk, got him to open the office safe, and cleaned it out. Nothing much in it, matter of fact — hundred bucks or so.”

“Looking for that little negative, you think?”

“Possibly, yeah.”

“Why don’t you nail this Williams and find out?”

“On the strength of that picture?” Randall said. “Uh, uh. That was enough to put him in a killing mood, maybe, but it’s certainly not enough to convict him of murder. He could be buying a pound of sugar. No, I’m going to be sure of him before I take him.”

“How do you figure to make sure of him, for God’s sake?”

I shouldn’t have asked that, because as a result I found myself, two hours later, sitting across that same desk — the one in the snapshot — from Mr. Williams, suspected murderer. We were in a sizable back room in Williams’ café in Overbrook. A window at the side of the room was open, but the cool weed-scented breeze off the river didn’t keep me from sweating.

“You said on the phone you thought I might be interested in a snapshot you found,” Williams said. He was partially bald. Heavy black eyebrows met over his nose. The eyes under them looked like brown agate marbles in milk. He was smoking a fat cigar.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Why?”

“I figured it could get you in trouble in certain quarters, that’s all.”

He blew smoke. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s actually a picture of you buying heroin across this desk right here. Or maybe selling it.”