Brett Halliday: The Corpse Came Calling

“With the bedroom door closed tightly,” Shayne cut in.

“Sure.” She widened her blue eyes. “I recognized his voice right away.”

“You’re still lying like hell. When you were in the closet later with the door cracked open you couldn’t hear anything that was said by Pearson and Gentry and Rourke.”

“All right, you-you devil. What of it? You fell for it, all right. You were stuck with a dead man and well knew it. You couldn’t afford to have that silly wife of yours find out you had another woman in her bed and got caught by the woman’s husband. You think you’re so damned smart. Think your way out of that one.”

Shayne lit a cigarette. He admitted, “Sure I was stuck. You outsmarted me. Just as you’ve outsmarted and double-crossed every man you’ve ever had any dealings with.”

She stretched her legs out on the bed and nodded, apparently greatly gratified. “But you were tough,” she returned. “You wouldn’t fall for my sob stories-and you wouldn’t scare when Leroy and Joe came after the piece of the check you had got from Lacy.”

“Houseman must have been plenty sore,” Shayne chuckled, “when they came back from stopping Lacy on the causeway with only a portion of Lacy’s piece-and the wrong piece at that.”

“He was fit to be tied,” she acknowledged.

“He probably blamed you-partly-because you hadn’t taken it from Lacy before he started for my office.”

Helen started to nod, but she stopped with a jerk of her blond and tousled head. “What do you know about that?”

“Everything. I know you two quarreled in Lacy’s room. When he telephoned me, you tried to stop him, and when he went out anyhow you put in a frantic call to Houseman to have Leroy and Joe intercept him before he reached me. Though I don’t imagine,” Shayne went on deliberately, “that you had any idea Lacy would get very far with three bullet holes in his chest.”

Helen stopped breathing for an instant. Her eyes blinked open and shut. She raised her head from the pillow on the bed and asked, “What-are you-talking about?”

“I’m referring to the three slugs you poured into Lacy after he telephoned that he was coming to my office.”

“You’re crazy,” she panted. “I didn’t do any such thing. Leroy and Joe-”

“Both carry heavy guns-heavier than the one you killed Lacy with,” Shayne supplied. “Nope. He was already a dead man when they stopped him on the causeway. That’s one reason they snatched the piece of claim check and beat it without seeing that they didn’t have all of it. They expected him to die any minute and didn’t want to be around.”

Helen laughed shrilly. She was apparently greatly amused. “You are a card. Where do you get such goofy ideas?”

Shayne hunched forward in his chair. His gray eyes bored into the girl lying on the bed. “Lacy’s coat and vest were buttoned over his wounds,” he said harshly. “He had been shot while his vest and coat were open. A man doesn’t drive around in a car with his coat and vest unbuttoned.”

“That’s-no proof,” she said angrily.

“It was enough for me to figure that he was shot in his hotel room. And I was certain your little peashooter had done the job when I heard it click on an empty the third time you pulled the trigger on Mace last night. It only holds five shots. You had used three of them on Lacy.”

“That’s still no proof. You’re crazy to think I shot him in his hotel room. Someone would have heard the shots.”

“A. 22 doesn’t make much noise. Nobody heard the shots in my apartment last night. And Gentry was on his way up while you were murdering your husband.”

A spasm of fear contorted her face. She shrank away from Shayne’s gaunt, grim face. Then she began laughing as if to reassure herself. “You’re doing a lot of guessing. Even if it was that way you’d never make anyone believe it in a million years.”

Shayne said, “Maybe you never heard of ballistics. You’d better not make book on that.” He hunched around and lifted the telephone. He said, “Get me the detective bureau at police headquarters.”

Helen Morgan stiffened. Then, suddenly, she threw herself forward and was clawing at Shayne’s face. He fended her off with one hand until she sank back sobbing.

“You don’t mean it,” she cried. “I trusted you-you won’t do it. You’re bluffing to make me confess something I didn’t do.”

Shayne paid no attention to her. He said, “Hello, Will,” into the telephone. “Have you seen the slugs the doc took out of Jim Lacy?”

“You fool,” Helen cried.

“Haven’t you seen the ballistics test yet? I think you’ll find they’re twenty-two-caliber, Will.”

He paused, chuckling. “That’s right. Same as the ones that killed Mace Morgan.”

He paused to listen again, and Helen breathed, “You’re framing yourself, you fool. Can’t you see what you’re doing?”

He motioned her to be silent. He said, “That’s right, Will. A ballistics test will prove the same gun killed both men. But I wish you’d take the fingerprints off the butt of it before you mess them up taking a ballistic test. That’s right, Will. And send a couple of boys over to two-twelve at the Tidewater Hotel. You’ll find a set of prints here that fit the ones you get off the gun.”

He hung up.

Helen was having difficulty with her breathing. She ran her tongue out over her lips and sucked it back. “You’re still crazy. You handled that gun last. It will have your prints on it.”

Shayne stood up. He shook his head. “I grabbed it away from you by the muzzle. After that I only touched the trigger guard. No. You’ve pulled your last double cross, sister. Even southern chivalry isn’t going to overlook two murders in the same day.”

She cowered away from him, trembling and terrified. “Damn your soul to hell! You planned this all along. Ever since last night. You sent me over here-”

“To keep you on ice until I’d cleaned up the other details,” Shayne told her coldly. “That’s right. And you fell for it.”

He went out the door and slammed it shut to close out the noise of her sobbing from his ears while he waited for the police to come.

All Shayne could think of was that he needed a bath.