Brett Halliday - Shoot to Kill

“That’s fine,” muttered Ralph. “I’m… glad.”

“Secondly,” said Griggs, “you didn’t shoot Wesley Ames to death tonight even though you did try like hell. Do you know why you didn’t, Larson?”

“He knows why all right,” Shayne said coldly. “Stop toying with him, Sergeant. He’s the one man in Miami who knew that Wesley Ames was dead before he fired that bullet into his heart because he had stabbed him to death half an hour earlier.

“You were damned smart to figure that out so fast, Sergeant,” Shayne hurried on with a chuckle while Griggs regarded him in openmouthed astonishment and Larson scowled blackly and tried to break in with a protest.

“Remember right there in the study when we discovered the paper-knife was missing, you theorized that Ralph had stabbed him on his first trip and then hurried home to get a gun and come back and establish a perfect alibi by pretending to shoot him. It was damned fast and clever thinking, Larson,” Shayne told him, “after you realized you were the only and the perfect suspect for the stabbing. But you almost made a fatal mistake by placing your bullet in the same hole the knife had gone into. That’s what the sergeant meant by the efficiency of the police department. If you’d killed him by shooting it would have shown premeditation and been first degree murder. And that would really have been ironic. Because, as it stands now, a jury will take into consideration the fact that you grabbed up that paper-knife in a jealous rage that brought on temporary insanity, and you’ll probably get only a few years in prison. That’s why you’re a lucky son-of-a-gun. Because Sergeant Griggs refused to take even all the obvious facts for granted and ordered the post mortem that proved Ames was stabbed to death before he was shot.”

Shayne paused to catch his breath, and saw Griggs shaking his bald head at him, sadly and reproachfully.

“You’re forgetting something, Mike. I figured it might be like you say until you reminded me that the back door was bolted on the inside and that proved Ames had to be alive when Larson left.”

“That’s right,” the young man put in shakily. “My God, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. If Ames was stabbed before I shot him, I certainly don’t know anything about it. He was alive when I left, and I heard him bolt that door behind me.”

“Tell him, Sergeant,” said Shayne indulgently.

“Tell him what, Mike?” Griggs looked more baffled than ever.

“That we found his fingerprints on that inside back door bolt… and then we knew exactly how he worked it. You ran to that back door and bolted it before you fired at the dead man,” Shayne told Larson with a shrug.

“It was obvious when we found traces of your fingerprints on it. That’s why you bothered to lock the front door behind you when you ran in. To give yourself a few precious seconds to bolt the back door before you shot him.”

“I didn’t! This is all absolutely haywire. I swear I don’t understand…”

“As soon as Conroy comes in,” Shayne said to Griggs, “ask him how Larson was dressed when he came to see Ames. One will get you ten he was wearing a jacket. He was expecting to go out on an assignment for Ames tonight among the night spots, and even in Miami they require jackets in most places. But he was in his shirt-sleeves when he came back to shoot Ames. Why? Why would he get rid of his jacket in the meantime? I’ll tell you why. Because when he stabbed Ames he unconsciously dropped the paper-knife in his coat pocket and ran out with it. Send a man out to his apartment and have his wife look in the closet for the jacket he wore to work this morning. Ten to one, it’ll be hanging there. It would seem safer to him than trying to throw it away and he was racing against time to get back and shoot Ames before he was discovered dead. And one will get you ten that there’ll be traces of Ames’ blood in the coat pocket. Not the knife, maybe. That would be easy to toss out the car window.”

Ralph Larson was backing away in horror as Shayne spoke, and he cowered against the wall with both hands over his face, Griggs looked at him with a scowl and said softly, “By God, Mike, I swear you hit the nail on the head that time. I wouldn’t give you one against a hundred that there isn’t blood inside that jacket pocket.”

There was a sharp rap on the door and Patrolman Powers opened it and stood on the threshold holding firmly to Sutter’s arm. “Here he is, Sarge.”

“Take him away,” said Griggs absently. “We’re busy in here, son. Let him go. What the hell do I care whose car he was driving tonight? We just solved a murder, Mike Shayne and I. I don’t care what he was doing in Miami just so he wasn’t killing anybody.”

Behind the wheel of his borrowed taxicab again, Shayne drove east to Miami Avenue and turned south a block to park directly behind his own car which was at the curb in front of a dingy bar-room. He took the keys out of the ignition and dropped them into his pocket, then withdrew the wad of crumpled bills given to him so unwillingly by Alonzo Sutter, and selected one for five hundred dollars from the others.

He put that in the pocket with the taxi keys and shoved the rest of the money back into his other pocket, and then got out briskly and entered the bar-room. There were half a dozen late drinkers seated on stools, and Shayne circled them to seat himself at the end beside a stocky man with a pockmarked face and a cheerful grin.

The man glanced at him casually as he sat down, and when the bartender moved down in front of them he said heartily, “Bring my friend a slug of cognac if you’ve got such in the house, Jim. With ice water on the side. Everything okay, Mike?” he added as the bartender turned away.

“All through,” Shayne told him. “Your heap is parked outside behind mine. Trade keys, huh?” He got the taxi keys from his pocket and put them on the bar, and the stocky man got Shayne’s car keys out and exchanged them for his own.

The bartender set a shot-glass of cognac in front of the redhead with a glass of ice water beside it. Shayne took a sip and continued in a conversational tone: “Only one casualty. I lost your cap somewhere along the line. And I ran up a few bucks on your meter that you’ll have to turn in.” He withdrew the wadded five-hundred bill from his pocket and slid it in front of the taxi-driver.

The man spread it out slowly on the mahogany, protesting, “That was an old cap, Mike. You don’t hafta…” He paused, looking down at the denomination of the bill. “Holy gee! Is that two goddamn zeroes I’m looking at?”

Shayne said happily, “That’s right. Hacking was real profitable tonight. Buy your old lady a fur coat or something.” He tossed off the rest of his drink and chased it with water, stood up and put his left hand firmly on the stocky man’s shoulder. “Thanks for the drink.”

He went out and got into his own car, started the motor and glanced at his watch. He had promised Lucy Hamilton he would let her know how things turned out if it wasn’t too late. He decided it wasn’t too late, and he turned east in the direction of her apartment.

The lights were all out in the front windows of her second-floor apartment when he parked in front of the building, and he got out his key-ring as he entered the small foyer, and selected from it a key which Lucy had given him for emergencies many years ago, but which he had not used more than two or three times in all those years.

It unlocked the outer door for him, and he went in and climbed one flight of stairs, and the same key unlocked the door of her apartment.

He went into the entry-hall and switched on the ceiling light in the living room, entered through the archway and hesitated momentarily when he saw it was empty and her bedroom door was closed.