Framed in Blood (15 page)

“I didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying. They were sort of growling at each other, and like I said, I had to circle around them. You know how it is when you see a thing like that. I’m a man who minds his own business, but if I’d had any idea one of them was going to be murdered, you can bet your life I’d of walked slower and listened harder. I tell you, you could’ve knocked me down with a feather when Sally said—Sally’s my wife—‘That Mr. Jackson in the next block was murdered in cold blood last night.’ She handed me a copy of the
Tribune
extra, and I read all about it.

“I just couldn’t believe it at first. I said to Sally, ‘But I saw him last night and he wasn’t dead, right down the street not more’n a block from his house.’ Sally got terribly excited. We talked it over and decided that what I’d seen might be important, so I called up my boss and asked for the day off. I explained it all to him, too, and he said it was my duty and he’d see I didn’t lose a penny—”

“Think hard, Mr. Pastern,” Gentry broke in. “Try to remember some particular thing they did, something they said.”

The excited glow in the old man’s eyes dulled as he met Gentry’s determined gaze. “Why, I’ve told you. They were sort of wrestling and cussing—”

“Did you see any blows struck?” Gentry interposed patiently.

“Well, not what you’d call blows, exactly. Pushing each other around, I guess. After I went around them I kept looking back and I saw Mr. Jackson go on toward his house. This other one just stood there and watched him.”

“Then Jackson was all right when the two men parted?” Gentry did not try to hide his disappointment.

“Except being drunk.” Mr. Pastern seemed to realize that his story was falling flat. He fidgeted, looking from Shayne to Gentry, then went on awkwardly. “I wouldn’t want to say a single word but the truth. No matter what happened later, I’m bound to tell you the killing didn’t happen then. I kept looking back, like I said, and saw Mr. Jackson start to turn up his walk. Then this other fellow got in his car and drove off. But with bad blood like there was between them I guess it’s pretty plain he must’ve come back later to do it, don’t you reckon?” Again he appealed to the detective and the police chief, met their cold, impersonal gazes, and his body sagged wearily, his thin hands dangling between his knees.

Gentry said, “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Pastern, and it’s a pleasure to meet a citizen who is willing to take time off from his work to do his duty.”

Mr. Pastern straightened, and there was pride in his bearing. “You think I’ve been a help? I always aim to do my duty.”

“Your statement will be typed immediately. Officer Cline will take you along, and you can sign the document before you leave.” Gentry nodded to the plainclothes man; Mr. Pastern came to his feet, looked uncertainly around; then the two men went out together.

Turning to Shayne the police chief asked, “How does his story check with what Brooks told you?”

“Pretty close. With his friend dead, Brooks would naturally try to minimize the seriousness of the argument.”

“There’s one thing I wonder about, Mike,” rumbled Gentry, moving stolidly toward the closed door leading from the line-up room to his private office. “When my men first got to Ned Brooks at his house this morning they found him in the kitchen wearing slippers and a robe and making coffee. He claimed he’d just waked up and couldn’t go back to sleep, but they had a feeling he wasn’t really surprised to hear about Jackson, though he pretended he was.”

“He wasn’t,” said Shayne flatly. “Bert Jackson’s girl friend phoned him about it a short time before.”

“How do you know that?” Gentry paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“He told me about it, back at the newspaper office.”

“How did she know about it?” Gentry fumed. “His girl friend, eh? Who?”

Shayne said, “You’re not going to like this, Will, but if you jump Brooks about it he’ll tell you, anyway. Her name is Marie Leonard, and she lives at the Las Felice. I told her about Bert, Will. Right after you got me sore when they were picking up Jackson’s body.”

“Goddamn you, Mike! You knew about her and didn’t tell me?”

“We weren’t exchanging confidences at the moment,” Shayne reminded him grimly. “I didn’t actually know about her then, but when I saw the key with ‘Three A’ on it taken from Jackson’s wallet, I put two and two together and decided it was probably kept there where his wife wouldn’t see it. Three A is Marie’s apartment number. I found out when I went to the Las Felice to see who lived there.”

“Just like that,” raged Gentry. “I suppose you just picked that particular apartment building by one of your famous hunches.”

“You know I’m usually a couple of jumps ahead of you,” Shayne reminded him. “If you hadn’t got me sore by threatening to arrest me—”

“And if I had arrested you,” Gentry roared, “you wouldn’t have got to this Leonard woman first.”

Shayne looked down at the chief’s purpling face and said mildly, “You made up for that by keeping me away from Mrs. Jackson, Will. Has she talked yet?”

“No. When she does, it’ll be to the police. I warn you to stay away from her, Shayne.” He jerked the door open and trampled solidly into his private office.

Shayne followed him and started to pull up a chair to sit in on the interrogation of Ned Brooks, but Gentry settled his bulk in his swivel chair and shouted an order to the patrolman at the door.

“Take Shayne outside and see that he stays there until I’m through with this man.”

Shayne quirked his right brow in surprise, then glanced aside at Brooks. “Look, Will—”

“Get out,” roared Gentry.

“Better let me stay, Will, and see if he tells it the same way twice.”

“From now on I’ll handle this case,” the chief said flatly.

“Have it your way,” said Shayne. He sauntered toward the door as the patrolman started forward.

The telephone on Gentry’s desk buzzed. He lifted the receiver and barked, “Gentry,” listened for a moment, then roared at the doorman, “Hold Shayne there until I get the straight of this.”

The officer moved to grab Shayne’s arm. Shayne sidestepped him and lounged against the closed door to watch the chief’s apoplectic face and listen to him say, “Go on, give me the rest of it.” He listened again. Suddenly his big fist hit the desk, and he shouted into the phone, “Arrest her. Bring her to my office.” He slammed the receiver on the hook and glared at the lounging detective.

“Is it all right if I go now, Will?” he asked in a pleasant tone.

“Goddamn your double-crossing soul, Shayne,” growled the chief.

“What’s eating you now? Honest to God—”

“Don’t honest-to-God me,” sputtered the chief. “So you dressed your secretary up in a nurse’s uniform and sent her out to take care of Mrs. Jackson, pretending that some doctor sent her. This is the last straw, Shayne. I swear—”

“Lucy’s a damned good nurse,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “She took a first-aid course in Civilian Defense during the war, and when Doctor Meeker said he needed someone to look after Mrs. Jackson this morning I sent her over. She went out of the kindness of her heart, and I don’t see—”

“Out of the kindness of your heart, you mean,” the chief interrupted ironically. “You deliberately planted her there so she’d be the first one to hear her talk. This is the last time you’ll fool around with evidence in a murder case.” He took a drooling cigar stub from his mouth and hurled it at a wastebasket.

Shayne moved toward his desk slowly. “Look, Will, you’ve got this all wrong,” he said soothingly. “I’ll wait for Lucy, and if Mrs. Jackson did tell her anything—”

“You’ll wait outside,” Gentry informed him coldly. “Jack, take Shayne out in the hall and hold him there,” he ordered the officer at the door. “When Sergeant Allen brings in a woman wearing a nurse’s uniform, don’t let her speak to Shayne.”

“I was just trying to help, Will,” said Shayne mildly. “Sometimes Lucy gets awfully stubborn. She doesn’t like to be pushed around.” He turned and ambled through the open doorway, and the officer closed the door firmly. Shayne leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.

He was finishing his second cigarette when Sergeant Allen brought Lucy in. The white uniform accentuated the perfection of her slender figure, and the little cap gave her a professional look completely at variance with the uncompromising set of her mouth and the flaming anger in her cheeks; and the dull stubbornness in her normally soft brown eyes brought a grim half-smile to Shayne’s lips.

Lucy Hamilton caught her breath in sharply and started to speak to him, but Sergeant Allen gripped her arm and hustled her on when the doorman said, “No talking, miss. Chief’s orders.”

“It’s okay, Lucy,” Shayne told her as she went by with her head high.

“That’ll be enough of that,” Jack warned him officiously.

Shayne’s third cigarette was not more than half smoked when the door opened and Sergeant Allen beckoned him inside. Lucy sat primly erect in a straight chair, her eyes blazing and her lips tight. Chief Gentry was chewing on a fresh black cigar, shifting it across his mouth as his murky, protuberant eyes glared at Lucy, and Ned Brooks was slumped disconsolately in a chair.

“For the last time,” Gentry burst out, “you and this young lady are going to have one chance to come clean with me. Push me one inch further and you both go behind bars.”

“What’s the trouble?” Shayne asked mildly.

“Miss Hamilton doesn’t seem to realize the seriousness of withholding evidence. If she thinks you can talk her out of this—”

“Withholding evidence?” Shayne’s tone was both shocked and grieved. He shook his head at Lucy, turned to Gentry, and asked, “What is the exact situation?”

“Miss Hamilton talked to the witness,” Gentry charged, “and refuses to tell us what Mrs. Jackson said. After getting into her bedroom by impersonating a nurse she bolted the door and refused to allow Sergeant Allen to enter, even after he heard them talking and knew the witness was conscious.

“When Miss Hamilton did come out,” he went on angrily, “she claimed that Mrs. Jackson had gone back into a coma and shouldn’t be disturbed. And, by God, when Allen went in she was pretending she was in a coma and refused to talk to him!

“Your secretary might have got away with it,” the chief continued bitterly, turning to Shayne, “if she hadn’t been recognized by one of my men when she was leaving the house. She still refuses to tell me one thing Mrs. Jackson told her. If she persists in this attitude—”

“Did Mrs. Jackson tell you anything about what happened last night in her brief return to consciousness?” Shayne interrupted in a stern, reproving voice.

Lucy stared at his bandaged ear and the puffed, purple left side of his face. “Yes, she did, Michael. But you’ve always told me the confidence of a client is inviolate and must not be repeated under any circumstances.”

“Since when did Mrs. Jackson become your client, Shayne?” the chief cut in. “You told me last night you didn’t have a client.”

“She became one—sort of—after I told you that,” Shayne explained. “I’ll make a deal with you, Will. If you’ll come down off your high horse and forget all this stuff about impersonating a nurse and withholding evidence, I’ll ask Lucy to tell us exactly what she got from Mrs. Jackson.”

“Not by a damn sight,” Gentry exploded. “You’re through messing in this case. She’ll tell me without you, or she goes to jail.”

Shayne spread out his big bruised hands. “Have it your own way, Will.” He grinned crookedly at Lucy and said, “It’s not too bad in jail, angel. Tell me what you need, and I’ll go pack your bag.”

“Like hell you will,” Gentry fumed. “You’ll be locked in the next cell block.”

“And you’ll wait until Mrs. Jackson is able to talk,” Shayne reminded him. “Which she may decide not to do, now that she knows her husband is dead. You did get the stuff from her before she knew that, didn’t you?” he asked Lucy.

“Yes, Michael,” said Lucy. “Just the way you told me. She was just coming to and hardly knew what she was saying.”

“There you are, Will. Are you going to hold things up just because I had sense enough to put a woman on the job and get the actual information before some cluck like Morgan or Sergeant Allen clammed her up by telling her the truth?”

Chief Gentry creaked back wearily in his swivel chair and was silent for fully thirty seconds. “I’m going to do it some day, Shayne,” he said slowly. “I swear to God I am. I’m going to catch you out on a limb—”

“But right now,” Shayne interrupted, “you’d better compromise. Give me your word that Lucy and I walk out of here together after she gives you the whole story. What could be fairer than that?”

Gentry grunted, rocked forward, and planted his elbows on the desk. “Will you give me your word, Miss Hamilton,” he asked formally, “that you’ll repeat exactly what Mrs. Jackson told you about last night?”

Lucy looked at Shayne for confirmation. “If Michael agrees.”

“I’d rather have it privately,” Shayne told her. “But this appears to be a stalemate, Lucy. Tell us what Mrs. Jackson said.”

Lucy faced the chief and met his cold gaze levelly. “Mrs. Jackson said she remembered taking two sleeping-tablets about nine-thirty last night because she was worried about her husband. He hadn’t been home, and she didn’t know where he was. She dimly recalled taking one or two more tablets sometime later. Before ten o’clock, she was sure, and she doesn’t know what happened after that.”

There was silence in the office.

Shayne’s face had a look of blank amazement. Tim Rourke had said he talked with Betty Jackson at twelve o’clock and that he had called her on the phone at two!

“Do you think she was telling the truth, Lucy?” he asked, trying to keep the tenseness he felt out of his voice.

“Why, I got the impression she was, Michael. She was just coming out of a coma, and she was terribly worried about her husband not coming home.”

“Did she claim she wasn’t conscious when Jackson returned at ten o’clock?” Gentry asked.

“Yes. She didn’t remember anything from nine-thirty on,” Lucy told him.

Shayne said, “This is as much a surprise and disappointment to me as it is to you, Will. I was counting big on getting some important dope from Mrs. Jackson.” He dragged a straight chair up to a strategic position where he could face both Lucy and the chief, sat down stiffly, and continued. “This leaves me completely out on a limb. If she’s telling the truth—”