Brett Halliday - Never Kill a Client

“I’m a licensed private detective… authorized to make arrests just as any police officer.”

“What charge have you got against me?” They were moving slowly to the front of the plane behind other passengers and she spoke back to him over her shoulder.

“Material witness in a murder case will do for the time being,” he told her. “If you decide to come clean and tell Will Gentry a story he believes, and one that clears you of any complicity in a crime… then he’ll release you.” They were off the plane and going down the steps, and he took her firmly by the arm and led her forward, searching anxiously for someone he recognized among those waiting to greet the passengers from United Flight Seventeen.

He expected Timothy Rourke to be there, and desperately hoped to find Lucy Hamilton beside the reporter, but he saw neither of them as he pushed a way through the milling crowd. Then a stocky, pleasant-faced man confronted them and said, “Mr. Shayne. The chief sent me to pick you up.”

He was a sergeant of the homicide squad whom Shayne knew slightly, named Ed Corby. Shayne stopped and said, “Sergeant Corby, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. This is my partner, Jim Greene.” He indicated a tall, unsmiling young man, also in plain clothes, who had moved in close beside Elsa.

Shayne nodded and asked, “What gives, Ed? Have they turned up my secretary yet?”

“Not up to half an hour ago. This your witness, Mike?”

Shayne muttered, “Yeh. Miss Cornell, until she decides to tell us her real name. What is the story, Ed?”

“I think the chief is saving that to tell you himself, Mike. My orders are to bring you both straight from the airport to the morgue where Gentry’s waiting. You got luggage to pick up?”

Shayne nodded, “Three pieces.” He added formally, “I’m turning Miss Cornell over to you, Ed. She returned to Miami with me voluntarily, but I want her held as a material witness until this thing is straightened out.”

The sergeant nodded and said to his partner, “Bring her along, Jim, and we’ll pick up their bags.” The four of them moved into the terminal and went to the Incoming Baggage counter where Shayne claimed their bags a few minutes later. Corby took Elsa’s suitcase and hatbox and said gruffly, “We’ve got a car right outside, Mike. This way.”

“My car’s in the parking lot where I left it yesterday,” objected Shayne, lifting his briefcase and starting to turn away. “Take her along and I’ll meet you at the morgue.”

“I’m sorry, Mike.” Corby kept his voice pleasant, but he dropped the hatbox and caught Shayne by the arm to turn him back. “I’ve got orders to pick you two up and bring you to the morgue. You know how Gentry is about orders.”

“What the hell do you mean, Ed? I’ll follow you down.”

“I’m taking you, Mike. You can pick your car up later. What the hell’s the difference? You get a free ride…”

Shayne’s eyes blazed and he struck the detective sergeant’s restraining hand from his arm. “Is this a pinch? “

“Not unless you make it one.” Corby looked acutely uncomfortable, but went on doggedly, “I got my orders to bring you in with your witness.”

Shayne said angrily. “You’ll have to put the cuffs on me, Corby, to make me leave my car here. I’m going to be needing transportation, goddamnit, if you nitwits haven’t been able to find Lucy Hamilton in twelve hours, and I’m not going to waste time driving back out here for my car.” He turned and strode toward the parking lot, and a moment later Corby came panting after him and fell into stride, muttering, “Take it easy for Christ’s sake. I’ll ride down with you. Gentry can’t kick about that.”

Shayne continued to stride ahead, his jaw set. He said, “You’re welcome to ride along, and if Will Gentry doesn’t like the way I get to the morgue he can damn well lump it.”

When he had found his car and got free of the airport parking lot and was headed down town with Corby in the front seat beside him, he relaxed and threw a rueful grin at his companion.

“Sorry I threw my weight around, but you know damned well I want to clear this up as much as Will does. I’ve been in Los Angeles, damn it. I didn’t kill that guy they found in my office. They know who he is yet?”

“I don’t know from nothing, Mike,” Corby told him uncomfortably. “I suppose the reason Gentry wants you at the morgue is to see can you identify him. I didn’t come on duty until midnight, and I don’t know anything about the case except what I picked up from the boys. All sorts of rumors flying around, but damn few facts.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“You know how it is. There’s this guy dead in your office with your secretary’s filing spindle in his heart, and it looks like both of you have taken a run-out powder. What’s the natural thing to think under the circumstances?”

“Yeh,” Shayne agreed with a sour grunt, and made a left-hand turn to draw up in front of the County Morgue where Detective Jim Greene was just getting out of the driver’s seat of a dark sedan. Shayne pulled in behind the police car and he and Corby got out and the four of them went in together so it wasn’t necessary for Corby to admit to his superior that they had driven in different cars from the airport.

Chief Will Gentry and Timothy Rourke were waiting together in the outer room. Neither man looked as though he had been to sleep that night. There were pouches under Gentry’s eyes, and his eyelids looked heavier and more rumpled than usual. Rourke’s eyes glittered feverishly in his emaciated face, and he stopped his pacing and came forward jerkily as the quartet entered.

“Mike! Has Lucy contacted you?”

Shayne shook his red head and refrained from asking the question which Rourke had already answered so obviously. He looked past the gangling reporter at Will Gentry who was getting up heavily from a wooden chair, and asked, “Have you identified the body yet?”

“We’re waiting for you to do that, Mike.” Gentry came forward stolidly sucking the soggy butt of a cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, rolling his rumpled lids upward to peer at the blonde who stood stiffly beside the redhead.

“This your witness?”

Shayne nodded. “You can call her Elsa Cornell until she decides to give us her real monicker. I don’t know how she fits into all this, Will, but she’s been giving me one hell of a runaround.”

Gentry nodded and rumbled, “Come on back, the two of you. You and Greene wait here, Ed,” he added to the two detectives, then turned and led the way through a plain door into a white-walled corridor leading to the cold room.

Rourke fell into step beside Shayne, with Elsa on the other side, and muttered enviously out of the side of his mouth, “You can still pick ’em, Mike.”

“She picked me,” Shayne said with a tired grin. “They still got nothing on Lucy?”

Timothy Rourke shook his head lugubriously and sighed, seemed on the point of saying something, but checked himself.

Silently, they followed Gentry through a side door into a thick-walled room with a temperature well below freezing. There were built-in metal drawers along one wall, like oversized filing cabinets, and a white-coated attendant stepped briskly to one of them at a nod from Gentry, and pulled out a bottom drawer.

Elsa was pressed close against Shayne, and he felt her hesitate and stiffen. He took her arm and drew her forward, muttering, “Whoever he is, he can’t hurt you now.” He was looking down at her lovely face, watching her expression very carefully as she looked down at the waxen pallor of the corpse’s face.

If there was any expression at all, he thought it was one of relief, but he couldn’t be sure of that.