Murder for Two (16 page)

“Even if it's Matt Lawson?”

“Especially if it's Lawson.”

“What am I?” Casey said. “Sherlock or Philo this time?”

“You're Casey,” MacGrath said. “You get around, you've got pipe lines. You've got something besides a vacuum between the ears and you've cracked things like this before—”

“Luck,” Casey said.

“If you say so. Okay, get lucky again. For the next couple of days forget pictures. Let the rest of the staff take care of that and you keep digging on this other. Go on, now. Get out. Circulate. If you need help, yell, and if you get in a jam—”

“You'll front for me,” Casey finished.

MacGrath looked at him. He had to grin a little. “Beat it,” he said. “I've got to do some more worrying and you cramp my style.”

Casey stopped at Engle's desk again on his way to the stairs. The reporter had a city edition of the
Standard
in his hand now and he pointed to a page-one head. It read:
Police Shake-up Near as Taylor Murder Goes Unsolved
.

“Logan'll love that,” Casey said.

“He and all his buddies.” Engle put the paper down and then said, “Yeah,” as the desk called him. He grabbed some copy paper and stood up.

“Take it in three,” Bennett called from the desk, and Engle stepped into one of the booths along the wall and shut the door.

Casey spread the
Standard
out and scanned the story. It did not tell him much. A veil of official secrecy clouded the investigation, it seemed, though the identity of the killer was supposed to be known and an arrest was expected shortly.

When he had read enough he stood up and watched Engle thread his way between desks, stopping en route to speak to Bennett.

“Anything?” Casey asked.

The rewrite man shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Some bum got knocked off down in the Hotel Walters.” He sat down, tapped a half dozen sheets of paper together, and rolled them on his machine. “Shot in the back of the head,” he said and began to compose his lead.

Casey stood very still, a curious sensation at the pit of his stomach and a sudden turmoil in his brain. The thing in his stomach began to tighten. “In the back of the head,” he said softly.

Engle glanced up questioningly. Casey knew what came next. He had to say it.

“What was his name?”

Engle consulted his notes. “Name of Byrnes. Henry Byrnes. At least that was the name he registered under.”

For another moment Casey stood there, nothing moving in his face, his gaze sightless and fixed; then he turned and strode off, heading for the elevators and snatching up his hat, coat, and plate-case from the bench outside the railing without even breaking his stride. Engle watched, amazed. He shook his head. The remark he made to himself was similar to the one Wade had made over the telephone.

Chapter Fourteen

A R
OOM WITH A
C
ORPSE

T
HE
W
ALTERS
H
OTEL
was a five-story brick structure with a grimy, cinder-blackened façade and a discouraging outlook. The railroad ran through a cut-out almost directly in front of it, and though a man would need earplugs to sleep, the rates were from a dollar up and the desk clerks were careful not to ask embarrassing questions.

Two police cars and an ambulance were parked out front and a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk to see what the net result would be. There was a uniformed officer at the entrance, keeping the immediate area cleared and when Casey started in the man stopped him.

“Live here, do you, mister?”

Casey said he did and the officer, one of the few who did not know the photographer by sight, gave him a final inspection and let him pass. Casey went directly to the desk.

“I'm from headquarters,” he said. “Where can I find Lieutenant Logan? There aren't any reporters around, are there?” he asked when the clerk told him he would find Logan in room 427.

“There were a couple, I believe,” the clerk said, “but I think they've gone.”

Casey nodded and stepped to the elevator, aware that the situation was as he had hoped it would be. He'd known there would be no photographers because a routine murder in a hotel like this was not the sort of thing you sent a man out for—unless the victim was a newsworthy name. As for reporters, this thing could be covered almost as well from the press rooms at police headquarters and unless Logan told of the connection between Henry Byrnes and Rosalind Taylor any who came would not linger. And Logan, if he was still in his right mind, would be saying nothing at all.

There was another uniformed officer from the precinct house in the fourth floor hall and this one knew Casey. He grinned and shook his head when Casey approached the door he was guarding. Casey pretended the man was a figurehead.

“Hello, Dineen,” he said and reached for the doorknob.

“Now, now,” Dineen said and grabbed Casey's arm. “'Tis the lieutenant's orders, you know.”

Casey looked hurt. “You mean I can't go in.”

“That I do.”

“What'll you bet?”

Dineen looked puzzled, finally grinned. “That is neither here nor there, me lad. If I was a gambling man—which I'm not—”

“Tell him I've got a picture for him,” Casey said. “Go ahead. I promise I'll wait right here.—Why, you don't think I'd stoop—”

“Never mind what I think,” Dineen said, but he opened the door and stepped inside. Casey leaned against the wall. When the door opened, Logan was with Dineen, and the lieutenant's face was dark and annoyed.

“How did you get here?” he wanted to know.

“I flew in by carrier pigeon.”

“Aren't you the card,” Logan said. “Can't we have just one little murder without you horsing around and getting in the way?”

Casey knew now—though he had never really been in doubt—that his hunch had been correct. Logan was harried and morose and he wanted to sit on this new murder until he could figure out what had happened and where he stood.

“Not today,” Casey said. “Not when the victim is shot in the back of his head. Not when his name is Byrnes.”

“Where's the picture?”

“Here,” Casey said, and took out the print he had stopped to get from Finell in the studio.

“Well?” Logan held out his hand.

“When I get inside,” Casey said and then, his impatience rising: “Or do I have to phone in a story about Henry Byrkman myself?”

“Come in,” Logan said, and stepped back.

Casey went in quietly. The room was crowded but what Casey saw first in the glare of the police photographer's lights was the figure at the little writing-desk. In his shirt sleeves, small and skinny and lifeless, Henry Byrkman had slumped forward, his head on the desk and his arms hanging straight down, the side of the face and the upper part of the shirt darkly stained. Over to one side, near the window, a half-finished water color stood on the easel, and a paper had been spread on the chair to protect the seat from the paints and brushes, and there was a glass of colored water with which to wash them out.

The deputy examiner was putting on his coat and two morgue attendants waited in a corner, one of them leaning on a rolled-up stretcher. The police photographer worked silently and the room around the body was one big glare as he exposed his final plate. He nodded to Logan, who spoke to the examiner. The two men with the stretcher unrolled it and Casey moved away, nodding to Sergeant Manahan and a plain-clothes officer.

Logan moved up and Casey handed him the print of Byrkman. Logan glanced at it, gave Casey a disgusted stare, and passed it to the police photographer.

Casey made a mental note to keep his mouth shut. He knew how it was with Logan now, and when the lieutenant got this way he was likely to be bad news for anyone who crossed him. He had counted on finding Byrkman—alive; now what was supposed to be his star witness had been taken away. Casey moved over to the far corner and sat down on the floor with his back against the wall.

By the time he had a cigarette going the body had been removed and the examiner had gone. The police photographer shifted his tripod and lights and began taking more pictures. Now and then the door opened and a man came in to speak in low tones to Logan and then go out again as the official investigation was continued.

Watching all this, a blanket of depression settled heavily upon the big photographer. From the moment Engle had told him of the man named Byrnes who had been shot in the back of the head, Casey moved on impulse alone. This was the first chance he had had to think and as the significance of his thoughts struck home he found them more and more discouraging.

He had no way of telling how much Logan knew. The picture Karen Harding had taken the night before took on a new meaning now, and the half-finished water color was mute testimony that Byrkman had not been killed last night. He realized, too, that the case against Matt Lawson was now circumstantially much stronger, yet what bothered him most was the thought of John Perry—and Karen Harding.

To Matt Lawson, Henry Byrkman stood for prison; for John Perry, Byrkman meant his one great hope of vindication, perhaps even a pardon. Now that hope was gone. The only one who could ever clear him now was Lawson—and Lawson would never talk.

Casey got up to put out his cigarette. Questions were stumbling over themselves in his brain now, but when he looked at Logan he knew he dared not ask them. Not yet. This was Logan's job and his eyes were stormy, his temper short. Already the newspapers were riding the department and a solution was farther than ever away. He could keep this second murder separate and comparatively unimportant—for a while—unless some reporter put two and two together and got eighteen. But eventually the connection would become known—

The door opened and Dineen looked in. “Lawson,” he said, and when Logan nodded, stood aside.

Matt Lawson took in the room in one swift glance and began to remove his gloves; when he looked up again his small, deep-set eyes were flat and expressionless.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Took you long enough,” Logan said.

“I was detained.” Lawson cleared his throat but it did not do much good. His voice still sounded as if something had rusted in his larynx. “Unavoidably.”

“That's too bad,” Logan said. “Now you'll have to make a trip to the morgue.”

“Is that so? Why?”

“To identify a guy that used to work for you. Name of Henry Byrnes. Remember him?”

“Byrnes?” Lawson flexed his thin lips, scowled at his gloves. “Yes. For the moment—but yes, certainly. He was my secretary for a time.”

“He took a room here last night. Somebody shot him in the back of the head.”

“Oh.”

Lawson folded his gloves and put them in his coat pocket. It was a double-breasted coat, light gray and expensive-looking. It added power and fitness to a torso already thick—until he unbuttoned it.

“Was that all you wanted, Lieutenant?”

“Not quite all,” Logan said. “Sit down. Tell me about Byrnes. We've been going through his bags. He's got a brother up in Canada but you probably knew him as well as anybody around these parts.”

Lawson hesitated. He did not look very pleased, but he finally sat down on the bed and took off his hat. His thinning black hair was combed straight back and his scalp and face were pink and freshly barbered.

“I'm sorry to hear it,” he said. “Of course it's been some time since he was with me—”

“How long?”

“Oh—more than a year.”

“How much more? I'd like it as exact as you can make it.”

“A month or two. That's as close as I can come without looking up the matter.”

“Fire him or did he quit?”

“He quit.”

Logan rocked on heel and toe. He nodded thoughtfully.

“Let's see. That would make it about the time John Perry went to prison, wouldn't it?”

Lawson's brows came down. The pink in his face turned to red and then clouded over.

“What the hell're you driving at?”

“You'll find out,” Logan said. “Would it, or wouldn't it?”

“Look.” Lawson leaned forward, his hoarse voice taking on emphasis. “If Byrnes was murdered I'll be glad to do whatever—”

“Yes, you will.” Logan's lip curled; he allowed himself a mirthless chuckle. “All right, skip that one. I know and you know, so what're you getting steamed up about? If I slander you, sue me.—Any idea what Byrnes has been living on since he left?”

Lawson settled back and took a gold cigar case from his pocket. “I believe he came into a small inheritance,” he said and now he had control of things and his voice was casual.

“That's why he quit, huh?”

“He liked to paint. I believe he wanted to give it all his time.”

“See him lately?”

“No.”

“Where were you this morning?”

Lawson lit his cigar, spoke past it. “When this morning?”

“Any time.”

“Home probably. I had a late breakfast. As a matter of fact, I was still there when you called.”

“At two-ten, huh? Well, we'll find out about that too.” Logan went to his coat and took out a rolled photograph. He went over to Lawson, nodding to Casey to join him.

Casey got up, one eye on Logan, the other on the picture. When it was unrolled it became the one Karen Harding had taken the night before with her blackout bulbs and showing Byrkman with Blondie and Harry.

“Know any of these guys?” Logan asked.

Lawson looked at the picture. “Certainly. The one in the middle is Byrnes.”

“He calls himself Byrkman now,” Logan said. “What about the others?”

“They're strangers to me.”

“The hell they are. What about the big guy?”

“I never saw him before.”