Murder for Two (8 page)

“Satisfied?” he said, when they got in the car.

“No,” Logan said.

“You don't know a damn thing more than you knew before.”

“I met her, didn't I? And I'll give you one thing. She's nice, all right. Very nice. Of course that wouldn't stop her from being a murderess—”

“Oh, quiet,” Casey said wearily.

“But she is nice.”

“What good does it do
you?
After tonight she wouldn't look at you unless you had a warrant.”

“I know,” Logan said. “That's what a guy gets for being a cop. Especially a homicide cop. Well, where do you want to go?”

“The paper,” Casey said. “I got a bottle there—if some louse hasn't been at it.”

Chapter Seven

K
AREN
H
AS A
V
ISITOR

T
OM
W
ADE WAS DROWSING
in his tipped-back chair in the studio anteroom waiting for one o'clock to come. His eyes were half-closed as he looked at the door and, although he hadn't realized it, it seemed to him that he was dreaming; at least he saw a vision, and such a lovely one that he was afraid to think about it for fear it would go away.

She stood in the doorway, this vision, a slim, blond girl with wind-swept hair and slim, straight legs. She wore a light, camel's-hair coat, with the collar turned up, and under her arm was an over-sized patent-leather handbag.

“Hello,” she said, her voice as bright and friendly as her face. “Is Mr. Casey in?”

Wade jumped up, knocking over the chair, and was instantly awake. “Hello,” he stammered. “Gosh.” He gulped and fumbled for the chair, because such visions never came to the studio and the immediate shock was great. “I thought I was dreaming,” he said, and encouraged by her laugh, grinned back at her. “Come on in. He isn't here now, but he might come by any time. Sit down here. Let me take your bag.”

He pulled the chair from Casey's desk and put her bag down. She threw back her coat and took the offered chair.

“I'm Karen Harding,” she said.

“I'm Tom Wade.”

Karen Harding said, “How do you do,” and then, after a momentary silence, “Have you been here long?”

“Oh, sure,” Wade said. “About five years.”

She laughed. “I meant tonight.”

“Oh. Well, about an hour or so, I guess.”

She looked at her wrist watch. It was twelve-forty. “He hasn't been in then?”

Wade shook his head. He was a plump-faced, blue-eyed youth, good-natured, happy-go-lucky, and enthusiastic about almost everything. This girl, he realized, was different from most girls he knew. Just how the hell Casey ever got to know her he couldn't imagine, but the point was she knew Casey and unless he, Wade, did something in a hurry she would probably walk out on him.

“But he ought to be in,” he said quickly. “Would you like a drink? I think there's some in Casey's desk—”

“No, thanks,” Karen Harding said. “I'll just wait a few minutes.”

“How about a beer then, and maybe a sandwich? I generally go out for something about this time,” Wade lied. “You can wait here and I'll be right back.”

Something about Tom Wade's eagerness stopped Karen Harding's refusal before it passed her lips. She didn't know why, but she did sense that her acceptance really meant something to this boy and so she smiled and nodded.

“I think that would be very nice. Cheese, I think,” she said. “On rye bread.”

“Beer or coffee?”

“Beer.”

Wade went out fast and she opened her bag and took out the Leica. She looked at it for a while and then, sitting up, she began to re-wind the film. When Wade came back she was sitting there smoking.

“I'll get a glass,” Wade said when he opened the bottles.

“Oh, I can drink out of a bottle.”

Wade didn't believe it. He watched until he saw her do it without spilling any on her chin.

“You can at that,” he said, and pulled up a chair. “Look. I've been thinking. Are you one of those A.W.V.S. girls that Casey teaches?”

“Why—yes.”

Wade said, “Oh-oh,” sorrowfully.

“Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Wade, but what he thought was,
And you thought you were needling Casey!

“He's very nice, isn't he?” Karen Harding said.

“Nice? I never heard anyone call him that before. He's big but he doesn't shove little guys around. He goes around grumbling and crabbing and finding fault with this and that, but it doesn't mean a thing. It's an act. You know why? Because he's got a heart that big and he doesn't want anybody to know that 'way down deep he's a sentimentalist or that he'd break a leg for a guy he liked. To hear him tell it you'd think he never had a break. You'd think he had all his illusions kicked out of him, that he hated his job, and that if he could he'd quit it in a minute. Hah! He wouldn't trade places with Rockefeller. He tried to get in the Army this morning. To fight. He could have had jobs with a couple of those picture magazines. He could have been taking pictures in Australia or Egypt or any place else, only he didn't want that. Well, they turned him down this morning because he had a trick knee. They don't know what they're doing, those guys, but—I don't know. I'm kind of glad they didn't take him. He'd probably get himself killed the first damned day they gave him an assignment, the big lug.”

Karen Harding sat very still, aware now that Wade was looking at something a long way off and that for the moment he was not conscious of her, nor of the half-eaten sandwich in his hand. What Tom Wade had said was neither very polished nor grammatical, but thinking of what he meant she knew she'd never heard a nicer tribute.

“You like him very much, don't you?” she said.

Wade looked at his sandwich. He took a bite. He remembered his first days when he hardly knew the difference between a flashbulb and a spread light. He remembered Casey coaching him and bullying him and covering up for him when he missed assignments and getting him out of jams his own recklessness and stupidity had fashioned. He took a swallow of beer.

“He's just the greatest guy in the world, that's all. And the best damned photographer.”

He took some more beer and put down the bottle; then he looked at her and seemed to realize that for a few moments he
had
been a long way off. He grinned, embarrassed.

“I guess I kind of got wound up.”

“I'm glad you did.”

“But don't ever tell him what I said,” Wade cautioned. “He'll break my neck.”

“All right,” Karen Harding said and then, as the silence came between them, she thought of the film in her bag. She glanced at her watch. “Can you develop infrared film?” she asked abruptly.

“Sure.”

“Could you develop this?”

Wade looked at the 35 millimeter film. He grinned at her again. It was like asking him if he could brush his teeth.

“You mean now? Come on. What've you been doing, fooling with blackout bulbs?”

Karen Harding said she had and Wade led her through a doorway, past the dimly lighted printing-room to the row of inky cubbyholes beyond. After that she could hear him doing things but she couldn't see a thing until after the film was in the developer a few minutes and he turned on the dark-red safelight recessed in the wall.

Presently they were in the printing-room and Wade was drying the film in front of a hot air fan. He sounded a little shocked when he saw how much film had been wasted.

“You only got five exposures here,” he said.

Karen Harding said it didn't matter and watched him adjust the enlarger. Wade made five prints without really looking at the subject matter and she asked him please to make an extra one of the print she had taken of the two men with Henry Byrkman. It wasn't until Wade had taken the six prints from the ferrotype dryer that he realized three of the pictures were of the same subject.

He looked at them closely, turned quickly, and went into the anteroom for a more thorough inspection. What he saw in that distorted light-scheme which infra-red film produces was a sedan standing at the curb with someone leaning inside the front door and a white-coated ambulance attendant waiting beside it; what he saw was an ambulance—or part of one—with the sedan in the background and a crowd of people on the sidewalk; what he saw was a man (Russell Gifford, though Wade did not know that then) talking to Lieutenant Logan, and Flash Casey standing near by.

Wade looked up, his face all humps and wrinkles. “What's this?”

“Why—that's Rosalind Taylor's car and the ambulance and that man there is—”

“What?” Wade started, big-eyed and mouth open. “Were you there?”

“Why—yes. With Mr. Casey.”

“And you took these?” Wade gasped air and almost fell over. “Oh, brother,” he said. He almost hugged her and compromised by grabbing her arm. “Look, Miss Harding, can I have one of these? Can the
Express
have one?”

Karen Harding could not help laughing at Wade's excitement. But there was a pleasant vibration too that ran along her spine.

“Of course,” she said. “Take them all. I brought them for Mr. Casey.”

Tom Wade wheeled and ran from the room. “Oh, brother,” he said as he went through the door. “Oh,
brother!
”

Karen Harding sat down at Casey's desk. She looked at the print of Casey she had taken, at the two prints Wade had made for her of the men with Henry Byrkman. There was something else in her bag too that she thought about but did not touch. It was a manila folder with some papers inside and she had folded it once again when she stuck it into her bag. She was worried about that folder. She wasn't sure she had done the right thing. She brushed aside this uncertainty now by trying to ignore its significance, by looking again at the two prints.

Presently she opened the center drawer of the desk and put one of them inside, hoping Casey would think she had done the right thing. There was a scratch pad here and she found a pencil and wrote a little note for him which she put under the telephone. The remaining print she put in her bag together with the roll of film.

Wade came back, his round face all grin and his voice gleeful. “Blaine died,” he said.

“Blaine?”

“He's the city editor. He likes to ride Casey. He's a cold-blooded so-and-so but he's a damned fine desk man. I showed them to him, all three at once.”

“What did he say?”

“I'm telling you. He died. He wanted to know where I got them and I asked him did he want them or didn't he. Boy, how he wanted 'em. I let him think Casey had something to do with it. Of course Casey won't let that ride. Tomorrow he'll tell Blaine you took them but just for tonight—if you don't mind too much—”

“But I want Mr. Casey to get credit,” Karen Harding said.

Wade grinned. “Look,” he said. “Forget the Mister Casey. He won't like you. It's Flash. Everybody calls him that mostly. You know, from flashgun.” He shook his head in wonderment. “Though how you sneaked those shots, with Casey right there and drawing nothing but a blank—I guess it was Logan's fault, hunh? And he wasn't watching you. Look, do you want to wait some more?”

Karen Harding said no. She said she thought she had better go along.

“Okay, I'll go along with you,” Wade said; then eyed her covertly. “I mean, at least as far as a taxi.”

At the corner of Tremont, Wade put her in a cab. She said she was grateful for his help, that she had loved the sandwich and the beer.

“You're swell,” Wade said simply. “Even without those prints that killed Blaine. Good-night,” he said, “and if Casey ever gets tired teaching that class, let me know.”

Karen Harding's apartment was on the Hill, not far from Louisburg Square. Her home was in Dedham but with her older brother in the Navy and her father in Washington, there was no one there now but her grandmother and her kid brother; and when the gasoline shortage became acute it was a question of getting a small place in town or giving up her war work. So she had taken this apartment on the top floor of this old narrow-front red-brick house which, remodeled somewhat inside, was quite like the others in the block, its one distinguishing feature being the number on the front door.

She climbed slowly when she had dismissed the cab, realizing now how tired she was. Her knees were shaky when she stopped on the third floor landing and rummaged in her bag for the key, and as soon as she was inside she flopped down on the couch, kicking off her pumps, stretching her legs straight out, and wiggling her toes.

Because she was young and everything about her was resilient, her recovery was rapid and presently she sat up. She slipped out of her coat, tossed it over a chair back, and shook out her hair, stopping to scratch the back of her neck. She opened the patent-leather bag, stared for a moment at the manila folder, and finally put it in the top drawer of the secretary, deciding that if she weren't too tired she would examine its contents when she got into bed. The bag itself she put in the bottom drawer, its equipment still inside; then she padded into the bedroom and shrugged out of her dress. She was on her way to the little kitchen to see if there was any sherry left when she heard the knock on the door.

It startled her for an instant, until she thought of Casey, and then she smiled and went to the closet for a robe. She came out belting it about her, deciding that this would be better than having him phone. There was a lot she had to say and she wished, going through the living-room, that she had some whisky to offer him, and made a note to get some the following day. She saw her shoes by the couch and kicked them beneath it in passing. The knock came again, not loud, but insistent.

“Coming,” she said, and opened the door.

The man stood close. In the half-light of the low-watt bulb at the landing he bulked enormous, a startling, top-coated figure with his hat pulled low and his face in shadow—
and
it was not Casey
.