Brett Halliday - Framed in Blood

He said, “You know how it is when I have a client, Will. I know I have to hustle to keep a step ahead of you and your boys.”

“So?” Gentry growled.

“So Tim Rourke couldn’t have been carrying that pistol in his pocket when he came here to Ned Brooks’s house. I saw him leave his apartment to come here, and there wasn’t any pistol sticking out of his clothes.”

“So?” Gentry repeated sourly.

“How did that pistol get here-in Tim’s hand, as we found it?” Shayne said pleasantly.

“You tell us,” the chief rumbled.

“The murderer brought it. That is,” he amended, “if Ballistics prove it’s the weapon that killed Jackson. I think you’d better ask Ned Brooks about that, Will.”

“Brooks?” Gentry roared the word and turned to the reporter. “Come over here.”

Ned Brooks dragged himself up from his chair and took half a dozen steps toward the group at the door. “You want me?”

“How about it?” Gentry demanded.

“How about what?” Brooks asked dazedly, moving slowly forward.

“You heard Shayne. If Tim Rourke didn’t have that gun when he came here, how did he get it?”

“How should I know?” he asked. “Maybe he slipped out after I left for the office and went home to get it.” He combed his tousled hair with his fingers and looked around confusedly as if seeing the others for the first time.

“Why would Tim go home to get his gun and come back here to shoot himself?” Shayne demanded.

Brooks shook his head slowly. “I-wouldn’t know.”

“You were a pretty good friend of Marie Leonard’s,” Shayne said quietly and thoughtfully. “I’ve been making the same mistake about you that I made about her-assuming that you wanted to prevent Bert Jackson from committing blackmail. Actually, it was the other way, wasn’t it? You were egging him on to it so Marie would get the money from him and then ditch him for you. Bert signed his death warrant when he phoned Abe Linkle from her apartment. She realized that the call would ruin everything if something wasn’t done about it in a hurry. So she phoned you as soon as Bert left.

“It’s less than a ten-minute drive from here to Jackson’s house,” he went on evenly. “You did intercept him a block away, as you’ve admitted, and you did argue with him, but you lied when you said you tried to persuade him to phone the story in to the paper. It was just the other way around. When Jackson refused to change his mind after he’d resolved he’d do the decent thing, you fought with him and got the pistol from his pocket. It was you who followed him to his front walk and shot him as he went up the steps. Then you got in touch with Marie and told her to go ahead with the blackmail contact at once. It has to be that way, Brooks. How else did the pistol that killed Bert Jackson get here in your house?”

“My God!” Brooks cried hoarsely and vehemently. “If I had done what you say do you think I’d have handed the pistol over to Rourke this morning so he could shoot himself?”

“No. I don’t think you’d have done that. But you see, Brooks, as soon as I read that purported suicide note I knew Tim Rourke didn’t type it. I was also sure he hadn’t shot himself. And that leaves you.”

Ned Brooks squared his athletic shoulders. “That’s preposterous. Rourke’s fingerprints were on the pistol and the typewriter keys. You and Chief Gentry-all of us know how Tim was about doing all sorts of things when he was drunk and never remembered them later. It was just another case of his mind blacking out and his subconscious taking over his physical reflexes.”

“That’s where you’re wrong again,” Shayne told him. “Remember, Will,” he went on, turning to Gentry, “my telling you about watching Rourke type a three-page story when he was passed out without hitting a wrong key? Yet in that two-line note there are no less than six typographical errors and one word exed out and another letter struck over. Exactly the sort of mistakes that a person who didn’t know Tim too well would make intentionally in a forgery to indicate that the man doing the typing was drunk. Making those errors was just one degree too smart for your own good, Brooks,” he ended with a stiff gesture of finality.

“This man is crazy,” Brooks shouted, appealing to Gentry. “Your men checked the prints and they matched Rourke’s. I couldn’t possibly have-”

“That’s right, Mike,” Gentry interrupted. “How did Tim’s prints get on the keys if he didn’t type the note?”

“Tim told us that himself. Remember he said that before he passed out he started to write a story about Bert Jackson on Brooks’s typewriter?”

“But that was before he passed out,” Gentry objected. “If I get you right, you’re accusing Brooks of shooting Rourke and typing the note afterward. In that case we would have found Brooks’s prints superimposed on all the letters contained in the note.”

“Not necessarily,” said Shayne. “There’s another way of getting at the solution.” He went to the typewriter and took a fountain pen from his pocket. Without removing the protective cap he leaned over and tapped several keys sharply with one end.

Gentry was moving toward him when he straightened up, and the chief demanded, “What are you up to now, Mike?”

“Have your men check the prints again,” Shayne said. “That’s how he did it. But he didn’t realize how hard Tim’s head is, and he bungled the last part of the job.

“You can see that Jackson’s murder lies between you and Ned Brooks,” he continued savagely, stalking back to confront Marie Leonard. “All you have to do is admit calling him right after Bert left you. If you continue to protect him, it’ll be your neck that’s stretched at Raiford.”

There was a long, deadly silence in the room. Shayne felt Lucy’s hand trembling on his arm, but he didn’t look at her. No one looked at anyone else, and the tenseness of waiting was broken simultaneously by Gentry’s first heavy step returning to the group and the exhalations of indrawn breaths.

“I–I did call Ned,” Marie Leonard said faintly. “But I didn’t know what-I didn’t know until he called me back-just like you said. I swear I didn’t know.”

“You damned slut!” Ned Brooks shouted. “If you’d kept your lousy mouth shut-” He plunged toward the girl, but one of the officers grabbed him and shoved him back.

“That’s enough for now,” Will Gentry said gruffly. “Take them both in and get statements.”

Shayne stepped back with Lucy still clinging to his arm. The officer who had been guarding Marie led her away, followed by Ned Brooks struggling against the officer who had grabbed him. Jenkins closed in and caught Brooks’s other arm. Together, they forced him through the open doorway.

Gentry turned to Shayne and asked, “What about these two envelopes addressed to Mrs. Jackson? We still have nothing more than your guess as to their contents.”

“My guess still stands,” Shayne said shortly. “Legally, they’re Betty Jackson’s property. If that story is in one of them I’m pretty sure she’ll want to turn it over to the Tribune for publication.”

“But the money was paid in good faith to prevent publication,” Gentry objected.

Shayne touched his swollen face gingerly, and his eyes were bleak. “No it wasn’t, Will. You heard me make that deal yourself. The money was paid on my promise to destroy everything Bert Jackson had left in my possession. I’ve kept that promise to the letter, because there wasn’t anything to destroy in the first place.”

“Then that’s collecting money under false pretenses,” exclaimed Lucy.

“So it is,” Shayne agreed with a painful grin. “But I had to play along with our unknown friend in order to break the case at all. You understand how that was, Will?” he appealed to the police chief. “And at the same time I couldn’t tell you the truth either. I had to let you go along thinking I was conniving at blackmail or those two murderers of the elevator operator would never have come after me on the causeway as they did.”