Brett Halliday: Murder Is My Business

Shayne shrugged, and leaned back to cross one long leg over the other. “Jeff Towne has changed a lot during the past ten years if he won’t pay out money for a cover-up.”

“He hasn’t changed, if you mean developing a conscience or something like that. A traffic accident can happen to anyone. It’ll lose him a few votes, but people will think more of him if he squarely accepts the blame without trying to weasel out of it on a technicality.”

“So he halted the autopsy?”

Dyer looked at him in surprise. “Did I say that? Towne doesn’t run this department — yet. Doc Thompson’s report should be ready any moment.”

“How do you stand on the election?”

“The police department isn’t in politics,” Dyer told him. “Towne has the backing of the Reform Group, and Honest John Carter is backed by the Free Press. That ought to give you an idea.”

Shayne lit a cigarette. “Towne might make El Paso a good mayor,” he mused. “He’s got enough money so graft won’t interest him. He’s honest enough — in his own peculiar way.”

“He will make a good mayor,” Dyer assured him. “Look here, Shayne, who the hell are you working for if Towne didn’t retain you on this case? Somebody must be paying the bill, from what I’ve been reading about you these past few years.”

“I’m taking a chance that somebody will,” Shayne told him cautiously. “I suppose you haven’t located Brown’s folks yet?”

“No. That’s one of the queer things about it. I wondered why you asked that question over the phone yesterday. James Brown appears to have been an alias and the Cleveland address a phony.”

“Who identified the body?” Shayne asked abruptly.

“He had his dog tags on. We called Fort Bliss and a sergeant came down. The fellow had just enlisted the day before, so no one at the Post was actually acquainted with him, but the sergeant confirmed the identification.”

“Check his fingerprints with Washington?”

Chief Dyer blinked suspiciously at the private detective from New Orleans. “You’re holding out,” he charged.

“Maybe.” Shayne was noncommittal about it. “Did you?”

“The army is doing that. They took his fingerprints when he enlisted, and they’ve shot them in to the FBI.”

“How did Jefferson Towne make his sudden jump to the top of the local heap?” Shayne asked suddenly. “Ten years ago he was a small operator.”

“Guts and hard work and luck.” Dyer shrugged his shoulders. “You know how a career like that rolls up. The Free Press is right enough about him trampling anyone who got in his way, but hell, that’s the way men make money.”

“Sure. It used to be rugged individualism.”

Dyer nodded. “You were doing a job for him ten years ago when you were in town for World-Wide, weren’t you?”

Shayne made a wry face. “It wasn’t much of a job, and I didn’t please Towne the way I handled it. Trying to dig up some dirt on a kid he didn’t want his daughter to marry. There wasn’t any dirt, so I didn’t dig any.”

“And he wanted some if you had to manufacture it?” Dyer supplied with a grin.

“Sure. That’s why he was paying World-Wide. He took his daughter off on a foreign tour to make her forget the lad.”

“Carmela Towne.”

“Do you know her?”

“See her name and picture in the papers. His foreign tour must have worked, because she never married.”

“I hear Towne’s a mining and smelter magnate now.”

“That’s right. He first hit it lucky about 1935 with a mine in the Big Bend — just after the government upped the price on domestic silver. It’s been a big producer ever since and he’s bought up smelters and whatnot. I wondered,” the chief went on reflectively, “why he was so damned sore about your horning in on this case. Didn’t know he was carrying a ten-year grudge against you.”

Shayne grinned. He was about to reply when the door was pushed open by a short man wearing a shabby and rumpled suit. He had a short-stemmed pipe clenched between his teeth, and his bristly mustache was yellow with nicotine. Waving a sheet of paper at Dyer, the short man said, “Here’s your p.m. on that boy.”

Chief Dyer said to Shayne, “This is Doc Thompson, and, Doc, this is the shamus from New Orleans who suggested you do the job.”

Thompson put the report on Dyer’s desk and nodded to Shayne. Removing his pipe, he said, “Shayne, eh? You had an Irish hunch on this one, or maybe you bumped the lad yourself.”

Shayne stiffened. “You mean Private James Brown?”

“Who else have I been cutting up these past hours?”

Dyer had picked up the report and was studying it with a look of incredulity on his naked face. “Post-mortem damage,” he read. “Lack of ecchymosis due to extravasation, and absence of coagulation about the mangled area. Invagination of wound edges, lack of external hemorrhage, m-m-m, point to post-mortem bruising and prior death.” Glaring at Thompson, he yelled, “What the devil do all these ten-dollar words mean?”

“It’s stated clearly enough,” Thompson said. “The boy was dead before the car wheels passed over him.”

There was silence in the office for a moment. Then Dyer ruffled the report, sighed, and asked, “How long before?”

“That’s impossible to determine from an examination at present. However, I think you can safely assume not many minutes had elapsed. Certainly not more than half an hour, else the condition of the body would have been noted by Towne, or more certainly by the ambulance attendant who arrived very soon afterward.”

“Rigor mortis?” Chief Dyer asked.

“Not necessarily. But there would be a noticeable, cooling of the body after, say, fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“What caused his death?” Shayne asked.

“There’s a head wound that didn’t come from the tires of a car,” Thompson answered bluntly. “It was incurred before the wheels ran over him, and caused almost instant death.”

“What sort of wound?”

“Roundish. Half an inch in diameter. A single blow from a hammer would be my guess.”

“How the devil did he get in the street in front of Towne’s car?” Dyer exploded.

“That’s your problem.” Thompson walked stiffly from the room.

“This is one hell of a mess,” Dyer said to Shayne. “You come along and ask for an autopsy, and now I’ve got a murder on my hands.”

“Don’t tell me it’s unexpected,” Shayne said gently.

“What do you mean? Of course I didn’t expect it.” Dyer got up and walked up and down his office fuming aloud. “Why should I suspect murder? It was open and shut. Now I’ve got this damned autopsy.” He stopped to glare at Shayne. “How’d you get onto it? Down in New Orleans. By God, Shayne, you’d better come clean.”

Shayne shook his head. “I’ve got to figure a way to make an honest dollar. Have you traced the boy’s movements yesterday?”

“Only that he got a pass to come to town right after lunch, to finish up some unfinished civilian affairs. We haven’t any further trace of him until Towne ran over his body at dusk.”

He slumped down into his chair and fitted a cigarette into the end of a long holder. Shayne struck a match and leaned forward to hold the flame to the tip of the chief’s cigarette. “It happened at the corner of Missouri and Lawton,” he mused. “What was Towne doing there at that hour?”

“He didn’t say. It’s sort of a blind corner, and the accident occurred just as he was turning onto Missouri, headed east. At dusk like that, he could easily run over a body as he turned the corner before he saw it.”

“I think I’d find out who knew he was going to be turning that corner at dusk,” Shayne suggested.