Dell Shannon - Mark of Murder

"That's quite a story," said Palliser. "Have we got anything to back it up?"

"The bank account. Overpriced vitamins wouldn't quite account for that kind of income. And at that, I expect all was grist to his mill, apologies for the pun, and he'd do some cut-rate ones to keep in practice. We've got a smock with a bloodstain on it, a pair of rubber gloves, a small scrap of a label which was once, probably, on an ampoule of morphine. And-"

"But listen," said Palliser, "if that was so we'd have found all sorts of evidence there! There'd be his instruments, and drugs, and hypos-"

Mendoza sighed. "We all make mistakes. Art was ready to kick himself when he began to suspect, from his notes. You started the usual routine on it, the photographs and printing and so on, but didn't begin an official search-and then Art sent you on the other case. And didn't bother to put a man on guard there while he went and had lunch." He finished his coffee and picked up the bill.

"Come on, let's go try to scare Corliss."

"I'll be damned!" said Palliser. "You mean she- With him there? For God's sake. But-do you think she's the one shot Nestor?"

"I do not," said Mendoza. "In a left-handed sort of way, you've got to admire the woman. She must have had the hell of a shock when Mrs. Nestor called and told her. And what a gamble to take- I tell you frankly, in her place I'd have packed a bag and bought a plane ticket to Japan. And the fact that she didn't-well, I don't think we'll get much change out of her."

Margaret Corliss faced the four men unblinkingly, stolidly. "A search warrant?" she said. "Well, reely, I never was so insulted-as if I had anything to hide! What the world is coming to, with the police thinking they can accuse honest women-" And she looked like a very ordinary honest woman, plain and indignant, in the middle of her ordinary, rather shabby apartment living room.

"I haven't accused you of anything yet," said Mendoza. "But we're going to take some short cuts, Corliss, because I'm not feeling very tactful or talkative. Go over there and sit down. All right, boys"-he nodded to Dwyer and Scarne-"take the place apart."

"Reely, I-"

"Sit down, I said! I know all about it," said Mendoza, standing over her where she flounced into a sagging armchair. "And if you don't come apart and admit it, we'll go the long way round to collect the nice legal evidence to prove it. So one way or another you're due for a little holiday at the taxpayers' expense. I'd guess a one-to-three, it you've never been inside before. Now, Frank Nestor was operating an abortion mill and you were in on it. He-"

"I don't have to listen to your insults-dirty Mex-"

"Sit still and pay attention!" he said coldly. "You'd done some leg work on it, passing the discreet publicity. Between you, you'd built up a nice business, profitable as all hell because you were charging what the traffic would bear."

Both he and Palliser were watching her for any betraying gesture or expression; she just sat, a plump plain fortyish woman, and stared back with cold eyes. But Palliser thought the eyes were watchful.

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you," said Mendoza hardly. "This I know. I know the hell of a lot. Everything had been running smooth as silk-you'd been doing a land-office business. Dios, at the prices you probably got, two or three a month would make a damn nice living for both of you. And as word got round by satisfied customers-everything guaranteed safe, a real doctor-business picked up, didn't it?"

"Talk all you please," she said stolidly. "I don't have to listen.”

"You'll listen. You had one hell of a shock when you heard that Nestor had been shot-"

"Oh, I thought you were going to say I shot him. Reely, blackening Doctor's name like this-wherever you got a nasty idea like that-"

"Weren't you at all surprised when his wife told you first that he wasn't feeling well, was at home, and then called to say he was lying murdered in his office? Did you know anything about Nestor's private life, or was it purely a business arrangement?" He looked her up and down, contemptuously. "Obviously he wouldn't be interested in you that way-probably nobody-"

She reddened indignantly: the one slur a woman might rise to. "Of course there wasn't anything between Doctor and me! I've got my own gentleman friend, he-"

"Oh, have you?" said Mendoza. "That's interesting. Was he here with you last Friday evening? What's his name?"

"I don't have to tell you anything! Coming here and-You've got me all confused-what's Friday got-"

"Never mind. When you heard Nestor had been murdered you knew you'd be in one sweet mess unless you could clear the evidence out of that office. You were taking the hell of a chance, but you moved fast and you had luck. You found the office open, and you found the evidence where it had been left, so you knew probably we hadn't searched the place thoroughly yet. You bundled it into your car trunk-and don't think I can't tell you what it consisted of." He gave her a wolfish smile. "There'd have been a few surgical tools, probably in the sterilizer-and whatever supply was on hand of the morphine he used for anesthetic-and we'll find where he was acquiring that too, probably from some local pusher-and I really do think Doctor had kept a record of all his under-the-counter patients, and while he never let you lay hands on it, you knew where it was and you took that too. Once we had made any kind of search, the whole thing would have been obvious-and how obvious that you'd known all about it! As it was, there were a few more details you had to take care of, but just as you started back to the office your luck ran out. A big tough sergeant of cops drove up." Mendoza stopped; her silent tight-lipped watchfulness was raising wrath in him, Palliser thought. He'd heard that Mendoza was one of those, a drink or so turned him belligerent; and he'd had that double rye, and hadn't eaten much of his steak.

"My God, you had one hell of a nerve, didn't you?" said Mendoza. "You went on taking the chance-to save yourself. If that came out, you'd be tied into it tight. So, right under the sergeant's nose, you went on hiding the evidence-and planting false evidence. Talk about nerve – eso ya es llover sobre mojado, adding insult to injury! You knew the minute we saw those files, listing that slim number of legitimate patients, we were going to start wondering like hell where all Nestor's money came from. That worried you, didn't it, that you couldn't do anything about the files? The sergeant was in there, you couldn't walk off with them or start adding fictitious file cards, to make them look. good. No. But you did what you could. By God, you did. You made the excuse of calling the patients, and you got hold of the appointment book. You sat there at your desk, the innocent efficient nurse, with that and the phone book, leaning over the phone so nobody could see you were holding down the tabs, talking to dead air-and while you canceled non-existent appointments you actually entered a lot of non-existent appointments in the book. Because on the surface it had to look as if Nestor had a large practice, to account for the income."

He laughed sharply. "Unfortunately, somebody had already looked at the appointment book and is ready to swear it's been extensively added to since."

"You can't prove that," she said. "You can't make me out-"

"You don't think so?" said Mendoza. He laughed again. "We'll prove it, Corliss! Check out every one of those names in the book-and nine out of ten'll show up as non-existent. What was a chiropractor doing with a bloodstained smock? Some patient had a nosebleed?? A otro perro con ese hueso! We'll prove it, and you'll be spending the next few years in Tehachapi."

Scarne came in from the bedroom. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing even unusual."