Brett Halliday: The Body Came Back

“Uphold the law?” She spat out the words contemptuously. “What devious crimes are committed every day in the sacred name of the law. You’re just mouthing words, Mike. My child’s life is at stake. You have already said she will be exonerated by a court… that there probably won’t even be a trial. What difference, then, does it make if his body is found a mile from here? It will simply save her from a nasty scandal… from the utter ruination of a young life. Think about it, Mike. I’m not asking much. Nothing wrong. Nothing that will in any way change the end result. If she were a criminal and I were asking you to let her go free it would be different. But she’s done nothing criminal in the eyes of the law you prate about. You admit that yourself. Then why, in the name of God, should she be publicly pilloried?”

He shook his head doggedly. “I can’t be judge and jury. God knows, I’ll help any way I can, Carla. I have a certain amount of influence with the authorities and with the newspapers in Miami. If she comes back and gives herself up, we may be able to keep the whole affair very quiet and out of the papers.”

She said bitterly, “You know that is a false hope, Mike. With Vicky engaged to marry Senator William C. Greer of Miami Beach tomorrow afternoon. You say you’ll help any way you can. What you mean is that you refuse to take a chance by helping her. You’ll help any way you can without sticking your neck out.

“And I was fool enough to believe those stories Brett used to tell me about you. The way you ran circles around the cops here and on the Beach. The way I remember it from a couple of the books Brett wrote about your cases, it wouldn’t be the first time you moved a body in a homicide case. What about that girl who was murdered in your hotel room just when your wife was going off on a vacation? You and that reporter friend of yours drove half over the city of Miami swapping her body from one car to another.”

“But that was…” Shayne tried to cut in on the flow of words, but she rushed on:

“And another time there was the body in your secretary’s bedroom. You didn’t have any moral qualms about lugging his corpse down the fire escape and loading it into your car.”

“But Lucy was in deadly danger that time,” Shayne pointed out angrily. “If the cops had found the body there…”

“And it’s my little girl who’s in deadly danger this time,” she interrupted him. “It’s not your secretary… or you. It’s Vicky. I wish to God now I hadn’t ever telephoned you,” she went on viciously. “I could have done something. Thrown it out the window, maybe. Anything would be better than just to leave him lying there. But I’d listened to Brett telling all his stories about you and what a great guy you were, so now I’m stuck with you. I don’t suppose you’d even be willing right now to walk out of this room and forget you ever saw me,” she ended forlornly. “Let me try to figure out something for myself.” Shayne compressed his lips and got up and strode across the room and stopped in front of a mirror to look at his reflection curiously.

The hell of it was… there was so much truth in what she was saying. Certainly, justice would not be served by leaving the body in the bedroom and having Vicky and her mother crucified by the public press. He had taken matters in his own hands in the past without any inner qualms about the legality of his actions.

But, as she pointed out so scathingly, that had been when he was endangered… or someone close to him like Lucy.

Is that the kind of selfish guy you really are, he asked himself in the mirror. When the chips are really down, haven’t you got the guts to do for someone else what you wouldn’t hesitate to do for yourself? Have you been kidding yourself all these years? Kidding Brett and the public to the point that a woman like this thinks you will come to her help, and entrusts her daughter’s future to you… and you refuse because it’s too much trouble and might get you in bad with the cops?

Looking at himself in the mirror, he knew he wasn’t that kind of selfish guy. He had just got complacent and lazy these last few easy-going years. He’d been riding on his reputation and collecting big fees that involved no personal danger and little real difficulty.

He grinned at the mirror suddenly, and his reflection grinned back at him, looking a dozen years younger and a dozen years more reckless than he remembered himself looking for a long time.

A trace of the grin still lingered on his face as he turned back toward the sofa and said very gently, “You sit tight here for Vicky to call. If she does… tell her to sit tight wherever she is until I see if I can work an angle or two.”

“Do you mean…? Oh, thank God, Mike. You are going to help.” She came to her feet with a rush, her face transfigured with newborn hope, both hands outstretched.

He caught her hands and held them tightly. “I’m going to see what I can do. That’s all I can promise right now. If I hit it lucky and things work out right, we may be able to keep your daughter out of this mess. If she calls before I get back, just tell her to stay put and not do anything foolish until you call her.”

“I know you can do it,” she breathed. “I know everything will be all right.”

“Just leave everything as it is,” he told her, releasing her clinging hands. “Including that whiskey bottle,” he ended half jocosely and half seriously. “From the looks of it you’ve had plenty during the time you’ve been in this room.”

“It wasn’t full when I got here, Mike,” she defended herself. “He must have had a couple of drinks. And maybe Vicky had one or two while she was waiting for me. She does take a drink now and then.”

He shrugged and went to the coffee table to pick up the parking stub he had found in the dead man’s pocket, studied it a moment and then placed it in his own pocket. He picked up the four sheets of paper and folded them carefully while she watched him, and she exclaimed impulsively, “Can’t we tear her note up, Mike? Isn’t that dangerous evidence to have around? If anything does go wrong, I’d prefer to tell the police I killed him. It’s in her handwriting, and…”

Shayne said, “That’s why I intend to keep it… in case something does go wrong. I’m not going to destroy evidence in a homicide, Carla. I may tamper with it or twist it a little bit, but that’s as far as I’ll go.”

He started to go out, then turned back slowly, looking down at his big hands and flexing them indecisively. Gloves were something men just didn’t have on tap in Miami. He said, “Would you let me have a pair of your stockings, Carla?”

“My stockings?” Instinctively she glanced down at her nylon-sheathed legs. “Do you mean…?”

“I mean a pair of stockings,” he told her patiently. “Old ones are all right.” He grinned faintly at the look of bewilderment on her face. “In the olden days the ladies used to give their knights a garter to wear when they went out to joust for them. I prefer a pair of nylons.”

She wet her lips and returned his grin with an uncertain smile. It was evident she hadn’t the faintest idea what he was driving at, but she turned obediently and knelt beside the closed overnight case on the floor. She unsnapped it and opened the lid, straightened up with a pair of fresh stockings still in the cellophane envelope in which they had been purchased. “Are these all right?”

“Just fine.” He shoved them into his pocket and patted her cheek.

He then turned to the door decisively. “I shouldn’t be long. Not more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Lock the door and don’t let anyone in until I come. I’ll knock twice and then three times.” He went out without looking back at her.