Dan Marlowe - Killer with a Key

A nod, and again the hard swallowing movement of the throat.

“The police are going to ask you the same thing I did, Vic.” Johnny leaned over him. “What are you going to tell them?”

Silence. And then Vic's head came up, and a fleeting impression of an expression passed over the damp, ashen face. “I'll tell them-” He hesitated, and his voice strengthened a little with the necessity for conveying his thought. “I'll tell them I-had a date with her. Yes. Date with her… that's it.”

Johnny restrained a wild desire to laugh. “Date with her? You? For God's sake, Vic-”

But Vic had gone away again. With the head bowed the slack-lipped mumble was scarcely understandable. “-date with her.”

Johnny's nails bit into his palms. Time. No time. No time for this damned foolishness. Somewhere inside him a spring was winding down, tighter and tighter. He leaned forward again. “Vic!” He tried to put his own desperate sense of urgency into his voice. “You know they're gonna take you in if you tell them that?” He stared down at Vic's bowed head; he wasn't getting through. He aimed his hard voice down at the withdrawn man. “Do you know who she was, Vic?”

And Vic's head came up; again the voice was a little stronger. “Yes. Ellen Saxon.”

Johnny felt winded, suspended in space and time. How did Vic know Ellen Saxon? How had he known she was here in this room? How did- He shook his head. No time. No time at all. He tried to capitalize on the breakthrough. “Vic. Look at me. Did you know that Ellen Saxon had been married to me?”

The whites overran Vic's eyes. “Mar-ried?” The halting voice made two distinct syllables of the one word; before Johnny's eyes the bones of the round face seemed to dissolve, and the facial flesh slackened. The stocky man pitched sideways from his chair, and Johnny had to lunge hard to catch him before he hit the floor.

The jolting grab as his arms absorbed Vic's weight released Johnny from his own inertia. He lifted strongly, settling Vic back in the chair and propping him up. He glanced quickly around the room; he had a lot to do, and he wasn't thinking clearly.

He grabbed up his torn uniform jacket from the floor, the jacket he had thrown over Ellen's shoulders out in the street in that short time ago that now seemed like such a long time ago. He scooped up the wet towels, and looked for the kitten. He picked up the small white body from the floor where it was playing with the tassels on the bedspread and tucked it under his arm.

In the corridor a dozen strides took him to the door of 615, his own room. He opened it, dropped jacket, towels, and kitten inside, and closed and locked it. Back at the door of 629 he saw that Vic was again in the land of the living, and his voice was hard. “On your feet, Vic. Got to get out of here.”

In the doorway, with Vic already in the corridor, Johnny stopped and turned for a final searing look at the bed. Repressed emotion rioted within him, but he held it down. Savagely he closed the door from the outside and propelled Vic down the hall. Vic moved like an automaton, with Johnny's hand at his elbow.

They moved like a team off the elevator into the lobby, and Paul looked up from the registration desk. “You found him. I was beginning-” Paul broke off when he saw Johnny's face. His glance slid off to Vic, hesitated, and returned to Johnny.

“Got a bad one, Paul,” Johnny told him. He glanced around the deserted lobby. “Get Sally up here. We got work to do.”

Paul silently slithered down the narrow passageway behind the marbled counter and was back almost immediately with Sally. She looked from Johnny to Vic, and her thin features turned anxious.

“All right,” Johnny said abruptly. He tried to sort out his thoughts. “Listen close; I only got time to say this once. We have a dead woman up in 629. Her name is Ellen Saxon. She used to be-”

“Oh, Johnny, no!” Sally's shocked exclamation halted his staccato recital. “Ellen? Dead?”

“Murdered.” The word seemed to reverberate through the stillness of the lobby. “She used to be my wife,” he explained to Paul. No need to explain to Sally. Sally was the one person in the world who knew how Johnny Killain had felt about Ellen Saxon. “I put her in the room about an hour ago, unregistered. Vic found her there about fifteen minutes ago. Approximately.”

Sally's hand was at her throat. “Oh, Johnny-”

He continued harshly. “We're going to cut our losses a little before we call the police. We'll register her in, now. Gimme a blank, Paul.”

He took the registration card and handed it to Sally. “Need a woman's handwriting. Put down 'Ellen Saxon'.”

She wrote swiftly, and looked up at him. “Address?”

Johnny grunted. Address? That was a bad one. He didn't know. Where “Four Twelve Darby Court.” Johnny's eyes swiveled to Vic, who had said it. You couldn't tell from looking at that sodden, wrung-out face that Vic had said anything at all, Johnny reflected. Vic looked back at him, but it was a question if he saw him.

“Put it down,” Johnny told Sally. “I don't know if it's right or not. I don't know how he knows, if it is. I don't know why he went up there. There's too damn much I don't know. Put it down. Paul?”

“Yes, Johnny?”

“Get me the logbook. And your screwdriver.” He picked up the little screwdriver Paul laid down on the counter before he moved out from behind it and reached for the cord on the electric time clock. He pulled the plug, unfastened the two screws that held the metal cover in place on the clock, and slid it off. He turned to Paul at his elbow with the chronological listing of roomings and room service in the logbook and opened it to the current page. He almost smiled. “First break we've had tonight. Only half a dozen entries on this page, and they're all on this shift. Paul, you get this page out of here completely, and be careful no one can tell a page has been removed. On the new page write back in again the entries that were in your handwriting, leaving spaces for me to do the same. Leave me one extra space at the right place for me to enter Ellen Saxon as roomed at two-forty-five a.m. Got it?”

“Got it.” Paul's tone was brisk; he was already slipping his knife from his pocket.

Johnny turned back to the time clock. With the speed born of practice he jiggered the dial with his screwdriver and set it back for a 2:38 a.m. punch, plugged the clock back in and punched the back of the card Sally had filled out. He handed it to her. “Fix up the room carbons for this rack and yours, huh?” He could hear her at the typewriter as he unplugged the time clock again, reset it correctly after a glance at his watch and tested it with a blank card. He nodded, tore up the card, slid the metal cover back on and screwed it down tightly. On a bet one time he had done the whole thing in four minutes.

Paul pushed the logbook over to him, and Johnny reached for his pen. He looked across the counter at Sally. “All set? Call the police, and put Paul through to them. Paul, you say I just called you from upstairs.”

Sally's features looked pinched. “What are you going to tell them?”

Johnny shrugged. “The truth, except this little corner we just cut here. I'd rather tell them I found her, but look at Vic. How long d'you think it would stand up once they started to talk to him?” He could see them looking at Vic, then quickly away. “The hell of it is they're a cinch to take him in.” He picked up his pen again and started to write, then paused as he looked up. “Paul, after you talk to the police call in a couple of the boys that live closest. Get 'em in here fast. We're gonna have the law kneelin' on our chests the balance of this shift, and we'll need a little extra help till the day crowd comes on.”