Brett Halliday - Framed in Blood

The police surgeon climbed up the shallow embankment and stood beside them. “Not much, Will. He has been dead several hours. Either side of midnight. Shot once directly through the back of the head with a small-caliber bullet. Twenty-two is my guess. Either a rifle or a long-barreled target pistol. Everything indicates he was killed elsewhere and dumped here sometime later.”

“We figured that,” said Gentry, “from the position of the body and tracks of a car that pulled off to the side. Would you say he was shot in the car that dumped him?”

“I can’t say, Will. It’s possible. But-there are a couple of curious aspects that’ll have to wait on a p.m.” The physician shook his round head and said mildly, “That’s all I can give you right now.”

“Here’s a funny thing, Chief,” said a Homicide man who squatted on the edge of the pavement going through the contents of Jackson’s pockets and cataloging them. He held up the brass key to a Yale lock. “There’s a regular key ring in his pocket, but this one was zipped inside his wallet. Funny place for a man to carry a single key. And it’s not a duplicate of any on the key ring. ‘Three A’ is the only marking on it. Might be the number of a room or apartment.”

Shayne went over to the officer and said, “What else did you find on the body?”

“That’s about all. Some loose change in a trouser pocket. Cigarettes and a book of matches from a Flagler Street bar.”

“Nothing else in his coat pockets?” Shayne persisted.

“A handkerchief, that’s all.”

“What are you getting at, Mike?” rumbled Gentry, stepping up beside Shayne. “What else did you expect to find on him? How well did you know Jackson?”

Shayne didn’t answer, but continued to stare down at the motionless body. “See if there’s a hole in the lining of the right-hand coat pocket,” he suggested, “where something could have slid through to the coat lining.”

The man squinted up at Shayne, frowned, then stooped again to explore the inside of Jackson’s jacket pocket. He turned the coat back to show his thumb protruding through a hole in the bottom of the pocket. “Here’s the hole,” he admitted, “but the coat isn’t lined. If anything went through it would fall out and be lost.”

Shayne’s face was grim, but he said lightly, “So we’ll never know what might have fallen through, will we?”

“What sort of hocus-pocus is this, Mike?” Gentry demanded impatiently. “What do you think is missing from his pocket-and why?”

“It was just an idea, Will,” Shayne told him. “Probably nothing to it at all. That hole is just about big enough for a key to slide through,” he added with a shrug.

Gentry took Shayne by the arm and drew him aside as two men bearing a stretcher came up to remove the corpse. “What do you know about Bert Jackson, Mike?”

“Not much. I first met him a couple of years ago when he went to work on the News with Tim Rourke. He seemed a nice kid, newly married and enthusiastic about being a reporter.”

Gentry brushed this nonessential information aside and said brusquely, “You threw him out of your apartment this afternoon. Why?”

“A personal matter.”

“You told Rourke you didn’t like his proposition.”

“I didn’t.”

“What sort of proposition?”

“It can’t have any bearing on this,” he answered stubbornly.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Gentry growled. “Why did you throw him out?”

“I’ve told you it was personal.”

“Privileged communication from a client?”

“You might call it that.”

“You said you didn’t have any clients,” Gentry reminded him with thinly controlled anger.

“I didn’t then.” Shayne drew in a long breath. “But this changes things. Mrs. Jackson is now my client. My talk with Bert Jackson also concerns her.”

“Don’t push me too far, Shayne. Don’t forget that as soon as Rourke saw the condition of your office he guessed it had a connection with Bert Jackson. We had one murder then, but I let you walk out without giving me anything. Now we’ve got another.”

Shayne hesitated before answering. He knew Gentry to be a man of long patience, but the fact that the chief had addressed him by his last name evidenced that his patience was reaching the breaking-point.

“Look, Will,” he said placatingly, “Jackson couldn’t have done the job in my office. The doc said he’d been dead since about midnight.”

“I’m not saying he did that job. I want to know why Rourke thought there was a tie-up.”

“Ask him,” said Shayne.

“Morgan,” Gentry called, and an officer detached himself from the group and came toward them. “Put a pair of cuffs on Shayne,” the chief directed pleasantly.

Shayne thrust his hands deep in his pockets and took a backward step. “Dammit, Will,” he raged, “you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”

“I don’t think so. You can either talk now or sit in a cell until you decide to give me what you’ve got.” The trenches deepened in Shayne’s cheeks, and his voice was hoarse with anger and disbelief.

“This is a fool move. Let me work out my own angles and I’ll solve both murders for you.”

“Give me what you’ve got and I’ll attend to solving the murders. I can’t take this sort of thing from you any longer, Mike,” he continued in a pleading tone. “I’ve let you have your head too often in the past, and look at the publicity it’s got me. People read the papers and get the idea that we don’t need a police department in Miami, that you’re a one-man homicide bureau.”

“Maybe they’d be right at that,” Shayne said angrily. “Give me a little time on this. Just a few hours.”

“I’ve done that too often,” Gentry told him stolidly. “We sit around and twiddle our thumbs while you withhold vital information until you can work out some sort of deal to collect a whopping fee for solving a case we’d have tied in knots if you didn’t hold out. This time it’s going to be different. If you won’t give, at least I’ll know you’re put away where you can’t make a deal. Go ahead and put the cuffs on him, Morgan.”

Shayne was shaking with rage. He backed away another step, taking his hands from his pockets and clenching them into fists.

“Before God,” he grated, “I’ll break the jaw of the first man-”

“Dennis-Martin,” Gentry ordered gruffly, “help Morgan arrest this tough shamus.”

Shayne was thinking fast and fighting against his overpowering anger as the three officers moved toward him. “Better hold it a minute, boys. I’ve got to figure this thing out.”

The trio paused, glancing at Gentry for orders, uneasily aware of the redhead’s long friendship with the chief.

“You’ll have lots of time to figure it out in jail,” said Gentry. “This time I mean it, Mike.”

“Call Mrs. Jackson first,” Shayne demanded. “Get her permission for me to give it to you. That’s all I ask, Will, that you don’t force me to betray the confidence of a client.”

“We’ve already tried to call her. Right after I tried to call Rourke. No one answered at the Jackson house. What the hell does that add up to? Nobody home at four o’clock in the morning?”

“I can’t help that,” Shayne pointed out. “I don’t go around tucking my clients in bed. Wait until you get hold of her. If she agrees-”

“I’m not waiting any longer. Either give it to me now or stick out your wrists for the cuffs. Or take them the hard way,” he added uncompromisingly.

Shayne relaxed his white-knuckled fists. He realized that he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Locked up, he couldn’t do Rourke or Betty Jackson or anybody else any good. His one chance to accomplish anything was to buy a few hours of freedom with some sort of story that would satisfy Will Gentry. To even hint at the few facts he knew about in the case would be damning to Rourke and to Betty Jackson.