Bill Pronzini - Labyrinth

I showed him the photostat of my investigator’s license, told him about Talbot being inside, answered preliminary questions, and handed over the gun. Osterman told me to wait there; then, before I could explain why I knew Talbot had not shot Victor Carding, he and one of the other cops headed for the garage. The third cop went inside the house to talk to Talbot.

There was a kind of deja vu in the next thirty minutes; I had been through it all too often before-the last time just two days ago, at the scene of Christine Webster’s murder. More Brisbane police units had arrived and were controlling the inevitable bunch of ghouls that had gathered down on the road. A dark brown Cadillac with MD plates showed up: the doctor I had asked them to send when I called. Then a county ambulance, probably from South San Francisco. Then another car with MD plates, this one containing a harried-looking guy who I assumed was acting coroner for this bailiwick. Then a TV-remote truck that was not permitted up the drive because there was no room; the area in front of the house looked like a parking lot as it was. And while all of this was going on, Osterman went into the house, came back out after ten minutes looking even grimmer than before, and returned to the garage. Neither he nor anyone else said a word to me.

Finally, while I paced back and forth waiting for Osterman to get around to me again, a light-green Ford sedan joined the string of other cars down on Queen’s Lane. A fat man in a rumpled suit got out of it, spoke to one of the cops down there, and was allowed to proceed up the drive on foot. The way he moved, in a waddling gait like a latter-day Oliver Hardy, made me stop pacing and stand looking at him as he approached.

Well, what do you know, I thought. Donleavy.

He recognized me at about the same time, raised an eyebrow and then one hand in greeting. I went forward to meet him.

“How are you, Donleavy?”

“Not too bad,” he said. We shook hands. “Been what-seven, eight years?”

“About that.” I had met him, way back then, during the course of an ugly kidnapping and murder case in Hillsborough-the one on which I had got the knife wound in the belly.

He said, “So what’re you doing here? Mixed up with murder again, are you?”

“I’m afraid so. How about you? Aren’t you still with the DA’s office?”

“Nope. County CID the past four years. Brisbane police don’t have the facilities to handle a homicide investigation, so they ask us to come in whenever they get one. I was over in San Bruno on a routine matter; that’s why I got sent. Lucky me.”

“Lucky you.”

“Where’s the body?”

“In the garage. The coroner’s with it now.”

“Any suspects?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “There’s a man inside the house named Martin Talbot; I found him with the dead man. He had what was probably the death weapon in his hand-a. 38 caliber revolver-and he confessed to me that he’d done the shooting. But he didn’t do it. I doubt if anybody did; I think it might be suicide.”

Donleavy studied me. He looked older, grayer, maybe a little fatter, and his eyes seemed even more sleepy than I remembered them. The impression he gave was one of softness and mildness-but that was an illusion. He was shrewd and dedicated, and he could be pretty tough when he had to be.

“You know this Talbot, do you?” he asked.

“I know some things about him. I’m working for his sister.”

“Why would he confess to a murder he didn’t commit?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “You want it now or after you’ve seen the body and talked to Talbot?”

“Make it after.” He clapped me on the arm and waddled off toward the garage.

Another five minutes went away. Then Donleavy returned alone and entered the house. The coroner put in an appearance not long after that, to tell the ambulance attendants that they could have the body. Osterman was with them when they brought it out from the garage; he stood near me, not saying anything, while the attendants loaded the stretcher.

Just as the ambulance started down the drive, the house door opened and everybody inside came out. The local doctor and one of the uniformed cops had Talbot between them, hanging onto his arms; he still moved like a sleepwalker. They put him into the doctor’s Cadillac and wasted no time taking him away in the wake of the ambulance.

Donleavy was still up on the front porch; he gestured to me to join him. I did that, with Osterman behind me, and the three of us filed into the living room.

I asked Donleavy, “Did you talk to Talbot?”

“A little. Doctor wanted to get him to the hospital for observation; he’s in a pretty bad way.”

“He confess to you?”

“Yep, he did.”

“To me, too,” Osterman said. “It’s an open-and-shut case.”

“No,” I said, “it isn’t. He didn’t kill Carding.”

“What?”

Donleavy said, “Go ahead, you can lay it out now.”

“Let me give you the background first.” And I told them about the accident in which Carding’s wife had been killed. About Talbot’s obsessive guilt. About what Laura Nichols had hired me to do. About following Talbot here this afternoon.

“He doesn’t sound like a probable murderer, I’ll admit that,” Donleavy said when I was done. “But he claims he picked up the gun in self-defense, more or less, and it went off by accident. It could have happened that way.”

I shook my head. “There are at least three good reasons why it couldn’t.”

“Which are?”

“One is the time factor,” I said. “I was down at the foot of the drive when he disappeared toward the garage. It was thirty seconds before I started up after him, and another two minutes or so until I heard the shot. Say three minutes, maximum. Talbot would have had to walk to the garage, enter, confront Carding, listen to enough verbal abuse to make him pick up the gun, and then shoot Carding when he lunged forward-all in three minutes or less. If that isn’t impossible, it’s the next thing to it.”

“You sure about the amount of time?”

“Positive.”

“What’s the second reason?”

“Talbot claims Carding shouted at him, shouted accusations. But I didn’t hear any shouting; I didn’t hear anything at all from the garage until the gun went off. A yelling voice would have carried almost as far as the shot, quiet as it is around here. And I heard the shot loud and clear.”

Osterman was frowning. “Maybe Carding didn’t shout after all; maybe he spoke in a normal voice and Talbot, mixed up as he is, remembered him as yelling.”

“Then why would Talbot have picked up the gun in such a hurry? If somebody’s talking to you in a normal or slightly raised voice, even making accusations, you wouldn’t have much cause to fear for your safety. Or to grab a weapon just to shut him up.”

Donleavy said, “Let’s hear the third reason.”

“That’s the clincher. I took a close look at Carding’s body less than five minutes after the shot: the blood around the wound was coagulating. He’d been dead at least fifteen minutes by then, maybe longer.”

“You could be wrong about that,” Osterman said. “You’re not a forensic expert.”

“No, but I’ve seen a lot of blood in my life. Believe me, I can tell the difference between fresh and coagulating.”

Donleavy ruminated for a time. Then he said, “Your theory is that Carding killed himself, right?”

“Right. Probably because he was despondent over the death of his wife.”

“Gun suicides don’t usually shoot themselves in the chest, you know.”

“I know. But it happens once in a while-often enough to take it out of the implausible category.”

Osterman said, “It doesn’t make any sense to me. Why the hell would Talbot shoot off the gun if Carding was already dead? Why would he want to make it look like he’d committed murder?”