Bill Pronzini - Labyrinth

“Because he believes he did commit murder,” I said. “And not just one murder-two. Carding’s wife in the accident and now Carding as a result of it.”

“Elaborate on that,” Donleavy said.

“Look at it this way. Talbot’s a man so full of guilt that he can’t live with himself; he wants to be punished for what he did-wants to die but doesn’t quite have the courage or the strength to take his own life. So he decides to confront Carding, either because he hopes to provoke himself into a suicidal state or because he hopes to provoke Carding into carrying out the threat against his life.

“But when he gets here he finds Carding dead in the garage of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. For Talbot it’s a pretty terrible irony: He’s the one who wants to be dead, to kill himself, but it’s turned out the other way around. He’s got a double load of guilt to deal with now and he can’t handle it; he really starts to unravel.

“Then he hears the cab driver hassling me out on the drive and realizes somebody’s about to find him there with the body. In his mind he’s already killed Carding; why not just go ahead and make it look like murder? That way he can be arrested and prosecuted; he won’t be dead, but at least he’ll be punished.

“He picks up the gun, either from the floor or from Carding’s hand, and fires a shot into the roof or one of the walls. And when I come in he blurts out his confession. Simple as that in the factual sense; damned complex in the psychological sense. But I’ll bet that’s the way it happened.”

Osterman was unconvinced. “It still sounds screwy to me,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Donleavy said. He hooked his fingers around his coat lapels and rocked back and forth; when he did that he looked more than ever like Oliver Hardy. The resemblance was uncanny sometimes, even without the little toothbrush mustache, and it made me wonder if at least some of the mannerisms were calculated-an act to keep the people he dealt with off guard. “I’ve done some reading in criminal psychology; you should see a few of those case histories.”

“Well-if you say so.”

“Besides which, there’re two empty chambers in the gun and just a single wound in Carding’s body. And Talbot only fired one shot.”

“Carding could have kept one chamber empty,” Osterman said. “Or he could have fired a round days or weeks ago.”

“Yeah, I know. Still, you’d better have your men comb the garage for a bullet hole and a. 38 slug.”

“Whatever you say.”

Osterman gave me a curt nod, as if he were annoyed with me for making waves in what he still considered an open-and-shut case and went on out. When he was gone, Donleavy asked me, “What’s Laura Nichols’ address and telephone number?”

I told him and he wrote the information down in a spiral notebook. “I called her just after I reported the death,” I said. “She wasn’t home.”

“I’ll try her again pretty soon,” he said. “You got a card for yourself? Home and office numbers?”

“Sure.” I handed him one from my wallet.

He said, “I guess that’s it for now; you might as well go on home. I’ll call you later today or tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

We shook hands, and I went out and down the wind-swept drive to Queen’s Lane. There were still half a dozen citizens hanging around the area; one of them, a kid in his late teens, cut over near me as I turned up toward where I’d left my car.

“What happened up there, mister? Was it a suicide?”

“Yeah. Suicide.”

“The old boozehound knocked himself off, huh?” the kid said. “Wow.” And he grinned at me.

People.

It was dusk by the time I got back into downtown San Francisco. I went straight to my office and checked the answering machine. No messages. Then I sat down to make some calls.

There was still no answer at the Nichols’ home; either Laura Nichols was still out somewhere or she had returned and Donleavy had got in touch with her, and she’d left again to see her brother. I rang up Bert Thomas and Milo Petrie, told each of them the stakeout was finished and what had happened in Brisbane. My last call was to the Hall of Justice, and this time Eberhardt was in. But “I’m busy right now,” he said. He sounded snippy, the way he does when he’s being overworked. “You planning to be home tonight?”

“I was, yeah.”

“I’ll drop by later, sometime after seven.”

I had nothing more to do in the office after that; I locked up again and drove home to my flat. From there I gave the Nichols number another try, with the same nonresults.

I got a beer out of the refrigerator, put a frozen eggplant parmagiana in the oven, and sat down to look at the house mail. The only thing of interest was a sales list from a pulp dealer in Ohio. The guy’s prices were kind of high, even for the over-inflated pulp market, but he had three issues of Thrilling Detective, one of Mammoth Mystery, and one of FBI Detective that I needed and that I thought I could afford. I wrote him a letter and a check-and wondered as I did so just how much I had spent this year on pulps. Too much, probably; that was one of the reasons why I was always short of money. But then, outside of my work, collecting pulps was the only real passion I had in life. What good was money if not to use to indulge your passions?

The telephone rang while I was eating my supper. A reporter from the Chronicle wanting to know if I had any statement to make concerning the murder of Victor Carding. I said no, politely, and hung up. When I had finished supper and was putting the dirty dishes into the sink with the other dirty dishes the phone rang a second time. Another reporter, this one from one of the TV stations. I told him the party he was looking for had been called to Los Angeles on business and would not be back for a week. Who was I? An associate named Phil Marlowe, I said, and then hung up on him too. Media people bring out the worst in me-I suppose because their business is disseminating sensationalistic crime news and mine relies on avoiding too much lurid publicity. The public eye versus the private eye.

I tried once more to call Laura Nichols. Nobody picked up this time, either. So I plunked myself down in the living room with a 1936 issue of Popular Detective, to read and wait for Eberhardt.

The phone rang again at seven fifteen. Another damned reporter? I went into the bedroom and caught up the receiver and said hello with my finger on the cut-off button.

But it wasn’t a reporter. “This is Donleavy,” his soft sleepy voice said in my ear. “I’ve got some news for you.”

I took my finger off the button. “Good news, I hope.”

“Not from your point of view. I talked to Talbot again; so did a couple of psychologists. He still maintains he’s guilty and nobody can shake him. We’ve got no choice except to charge him with suspicion of homicide.”

“What? Christ, I explained why he couldn’t have done it.”

“Sure you did. But you could be wrong about the time element and the silence in the garage before the shot. And about the blood coagulation, too; coroner wasn’t able to pinpoint the exact time of death. I’m not saying you are wrong, understand. Just that the rest of the evidence indicates you might be.”

“What evidence? Look, didn’t Osterman’s men find a second bullet in the garage?”

“No,” Donleavy said, “they didn’t.”

“But it’s got to be there. Otherwise the whole thing doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes sense the way Talbot tells it.”

“No, it doesn’t. There’s just no way he could have killed Carding. The man committed suicide.”

Donleavy made an audible sighing sound. “You’re a hundred percent wrong about that, my friend,” he said. “Lab boys tested the victim’s hands for nitrate traces and his clothing for powder marks; there weren’t any. He hadn’t fired a gun and he wasn’t shot at point blank range: it couldn’t possibly be suicide. Victor Carding was murdered.”