Crime on My Hands (16 page)

Melva, Fred, and McCracken awaited me on the sidewalk. Melva laid a slim hand on my arm and rolled beseeching eyes at me. “George, for your poor mother's sake at least, please go straight from now on.”

I shook her hand away. “Perhaps somebody will explain this fourth-rate comic routine. Who is this oaf? I never heard of a lawyer named McCracken.”

“He isn't a lawyer,” Melva explained. “But he played one in
Jackleg
. Very good, too.”

“I was only too glad,” McCracken said in a deep voice, “to sacrifice my hirsute
decor
in the interests of justice, Mr. Sanders.”

“Don't let him kid you,” Melva said. “He was glad to scuttle his beard after he knew he'd still get his twelve-fifty per diem.”

“All right,” I sighed. “I give up. What are you talking about?”

“Mac was a beard,” Melva said. “But I told him you'd pay his salary for the duration of the picture if he'd shave and get you out of jail.”

I stared. I didn't trust myself to speak. She'd got me out of a jail where I wanted to stay, and saddled me with an ex-extra's salary.

“Of course,” Melva added, “I get my ten per cent.

Mac, you'll net only eleven twenty-five.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Let's go eat,” Fred proposed. “You must be hungry, George, and anyway I want to talk over an idea. Look, say we give the papers the story that you'll produce this murderer next Sunday–”

“And invite everybody to tea?” I asked. “You people be off on your own affairs. I can't afford to be seen with you, and I mean that literally.”

A car with a county license plate slid in to the curb. Lamar James shut off the ignition and lights, and joined us on the walk. “What are you doing out?” he asked me.

I told him, in short, smoking words. He grinned. “It doesn't matter. I think I've got the killer. I'm going to pick her up in a few minutes.”

“Her?” I said. “Who?”

“Wanda Waite. This Peggy Whittier had a room at Mrs. Holman's. This evening, right after dark, Mrs. Holman saw a female sneak into Whittier's room. I went out there and didn't find anybody, but I found Wanda Waite's prints all over the room. It's a little too coincidental to find 'em in Flynne's and Whittier's rooms both.”

“Let me give you a friendly warning,” I said. “Wanda didn't kill Flynne, and therefore had no reason to kill Peggy. Don't climb out on a limb.”

“Don't worry,” he said. ‘I'm picking her up for questioning. I've worked out a way to question effectively. As you may find out if I'm wrong on this.”

He nodded pleasantly and went into the building. 

“George, old boy,” I said to myself, “the best thing you can possibly do is to stay out of this, beginning now. You have tried three ruses to trap this killer. You have rued each ruse. You have concealed evidence, you have allowed yourself to be placed in a position that is untenable and dangerous. You have directed suspicion at your friends. You have lied to constituted officials. If your snide part in this investigation becomes known, some judge will heave the book at you. But if you go back to the luxurious loneliness of your trailer and go to bed, your part need never to be known – if you stay in bed. You can plead leprosy, or that you were taken suddenly drunk, or that you are tired of being an actor and have taken up hypochondria. Come now, act as if that skull stuffing isn't frantic butterflies.”

I waved vague dismissal at Melva, Fred, and McCracken, and followed Lamar James.

Sheriff Callahan bristled a t me. “I thought I run you off, Mr. Sanders. Now, I don't want no–”

‘I'm a visitor,” I said. “This is unofficial. Where's James?”

Callahan waved at a corridor. “He went back to his lab. He's fussin' with microphones and stuff.”

“Microphones? What does he do, record conversations?”

“Naw,” Callahan said in disgust. “He's lookin' at bullets through 'em.”

I went back to the laboratory, which was small, neat, and impressive. Lamar James had his eyes glued to a comparison microscope, eying two battered chunks of lead.

He looked up, frowning. “They didn't come from the same gun,” he said, “but they came from the same make. Probably a pair of Smith and Wesson thirty­eight Specials. Now, why didn't he use the same gun?”

I decided, in a flash of idiocy, to tell him what I knew, to “come clean,” as he had asked. This police laboratory, in a half-horse town, instilled amazement and respect. Among the apparatus I could identify were: a set of white arc lights, a large camera on a tripod, a Leica minicam, a single lens microscope, a binocular microscope, the comparison microscope he was using, a spotlight, a fingerprint outfit, Bunsen burners, crucibles, pipettes, graduated glasses, test tubes, a small electric motor with an emery wheel and buffer, two types of balance scales, a shelf of chemicals, and several micrometers. If Lamar James was capable of using all these materials, he was a good man, much better equipped than I for criminal detection. I didn't know how to use half the stuff I saw.

My native caution asserted itself almost immediately. There was no point in leading with my throat.

“How do you know?” I asked. “About the guru, I mean.”

He turned toward me and lighted a cigarette with lean, brown hands. “By the weight of the bullets, the number of lands, and the leed. The leed on both these bullets, in inches, is eighteen and three-quarters. This is a characteristic of Smith & Wesson thirty-eight Specials. The rifling twist is clockwise. The groove diameter is point-three-five-seven inches, and this is another characteristic of the S & W gun. The leed on three types of thirty-eights manufactured by Colt is sixteen inches, and the rifling twist is counter-clockwise. The groove diameter on Colts varies in the thirty-eights. The Special measures point-three-five-four, the automatic point-three-five-six, and the revolver point-three-five-four inches. So, you see we can say almost definitely that these slugs came from Smith and Wessons, and from two separate guns, as you can see if you'll compare them under the microscope.”

He showed me how to adjust the eyepiece, and to rotate the slugs separately or together. The infinitesimal markings, left by the barrels, differed on each slug. They were not from the same gun. I could have told him so, because the gun that killed Flynne was out on a sand dune.

“This came out of Flynne's head,” he said, pointing to the bullet on the left. “It was traveling fast, and wasn't deformed very much, because it went through a thin part of his skull at the temple. This one, from Whittier, must have hit a rib. But the characteristics are measurable.”

I looked up. “What do you mean, lands and leed?”

“The lands are the smooth surface between the rifling grooves, and the leed is an expression of how far a land must travel before completing a circle. It may also be expressed by the angle of leed, or the angle which the land forms with the longitudinal axis of the slug. But I don't have that special measurement microscope, so I figure it in inches.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

He waved at a small shelf of books. “Tables. All that dope is in the
Atlas of Arms
, by Metzger, Heess, and Haslacher. Also
Modern Criminal Investigation
, by Soderman and O'Connell. I do a lot of studying.”

“In anticipation of crime waves?”

‘I'm not going to stay in this place all my life,” he said quietly. “I've never had very much so far, but I intend to get what I want. I want to have a crime laboratory of my own, and I want to know as much about the subject as anybody in the business. I own a lot of this stuff, paid for by washing dishes and stuff.”

“You amaze me. I came in here to tell you what I know, but decided I'd find out what kind of a guy you were first. You'll treat what I have to say confidentially?”

“If you haven't committed any crime, George, you got nothing to fear.”

“My first suggestion, then, is that you leave Wanda Waite out of the picture. She isn't guilty. She didn't kill Flynne.”

“What was she doing in his room, then?”

“I don't know. I watched her through the closet door, and I thought she was wiping her fingerprints off things.”

“
You watched her?
” he exclaimed. “What the hell were you doing there?”

“Looking for a motive, of course. My principal interest was in
why
Flynne was killed.”

“Did you find anything?”

“A newspaper clipping. I doubt if it means anything.”

I told him about the clipping, and gave a fair verbatim account of the story.

“All we needed in this,” he said, “was the English nobility. Suppose Flynne is a relative?”

“That can be checked. But I thought you had gone into his life to some extent.”

“Yeah. He was a bachelor of no importance. That's all I could find out. Where does Wanda fit into this?”

“She talked to him on the train coming up here. She
says
for the first time. He told her that he came from Nebraska. He was on this job under false pretenses.”

“I know all about that,” James said impatiently. “How come you want to know
why
he was killed? I want to know who.”

“We know the means,” I said. “He wasn't strangled or poisoned, he was shot. We know that something like a dozen persons had the opportunity. If we can find a motive, we can make an arrest in five minutes.”

“How would you go about finding this motive?” He paused, added with a touch of embarrassment, “I haven't had much chance to go into the psychological angle of investigation, but you seem to know what you're talking about. I'm really asking for information.”

“When a man is murdered,” I said, trying not to sound too pedantic, “the reason exists in the record of his past. If you can produce a complete record, you can point to the reason why this and/or that person would want to kill him. It's dull work, and the only way you can get the information is to ask those who knew him.”

“The trouble with that,” he said shrewdly, “is that at least one guy is going to lie to you. The murderer. All the others may tell you the truth, but not him.”

“Granted. But the way in which the killer evades questions and his whole manner during questioning gives you ideas which can be developed. I'll admit that it isn't a sure-fire method, but it's part of a general investigational pattern. And here we have two persons who knew him. Wanda, for one. And Herman Smith, whose place he took.”

I almost added that Carla had known Flynne well, but a sudden idea struck me. If I could only get James out of town, I could go ahead on my present line of inquiry without revealing my complicity in this mess. Yes, my complicity had been inadvertent and accidental at first, but it had become something else again. And although I admired and respected Lamar James, I had seen him lose his temper a couple of times and didn't want to chance his reactions to the truth.

I was perfectly confident that my own actions in this matter would not harm the official investigation, and I knew that if James could get any more information than we already had, it would help. It seemed logical that he could get information from Herman Smith.

“Smith,” I went on, “was apparently a friend of Flynne. We can assume that he knows something ­ habits, other friends, and what not. Why don't you run down to Hollywood and see?”

He smiled wryly. “I'd like to, but this office doesn't pay traveling expenses for its deputies. This office isn't very well financed. The population of the county is thin, and the tariff can't be too high per capita.”

“If I paid your expenses?”

“Sure, I could go under those conditions, but why should you?”

“Suppose we say that I'm curious, and a trifle angry. I've tried three perfectly good gags for tagging our killer. They were messed up through no fault of my own. But my attempts were based on the science of deduction. Let's say that I'm tired of deduction, and would like to see a little honest work. Since I can't get away myself, I'm happy to foot the bill for you.”

After more conversation, he went off to get Flynne's address from Paul, and I went back to my trailer to think.

I had three possible angles of attack. One, to find the gun that killed Flynne and try to trace its ownership; two, to find Peggy Whittier's notebook and identify the clue to the killer; and finally to see Wanda and Carla. I felt that the key was there somewhere, in the mind of one or the other.

As far as the notebook was concerned, I felt that I had no chance. It was dangerous to the killer; he had undoubtedly destroyed it by now. Finding the gun presented difficulties, too. I couldn't go out at night with a flashlight; the crew who lived on location might see me. The killer might see me, and wouldn't I make a good target!

I had to admit that so far I'd been conspicuously unsuccessful at learning anything from either Carla or Wanda. Of course, that didn't mean that another attempt might not succeed. The Saint and The Falcon had always done well at prying information from lovely ladies. The same tactics might work this time.

On the other hand, I reminded myself, tomorrow was going to be a busy day. We were going to have to shoot that scene over again. The girls would need to be at their best, and they should have a good night's sleep. This was not pure altruism on my part, there was the important fact that I didn't want a nervous and overtired actress to ruin a scene of the picture in which I was the star.

George Sanders, actor, had a brief argument with George Sanders, detective. The former won.

After all, I too was tired. I too had an important scene tomorrow.

The gun, then; let's concentrate on the gun. It's out there on the far side of the dune. It and the pearl­handled Colt which McGuire will begin to raise hell about soon. There is no brush there, no cover of any sort. A search by day is impossible; by night, dangerous. Cover. A sand storm would offer cover. Well, then, we should have a sand storm.