Framed in Blood

by Brett Halliday

  He drew his big hands back instinctively. From all indications Rourke had been lying like that for several hours, and he realized the importance of leaving him exactly as he was until the doctor arrived.

  His eyes were grim and brooding as he went to the typewriter and studied the note in the roller. There were only two lines:

  I killed bertJacksonm and Bettr docsnST know anything about it nomatter what she tellsyxx yox.

  Ned Brooks hurried back to the living-room shouting, “Ambulance will be here in a few minutes. My God, Shayne, what’ll we do? Tear up that note before the police get here? I’m willing to do whatever—”

  “The police?” Shayne swung on him angrily. “I told you to call a doctor.”

  “Well—it’s an emergency,” faltered Brooks. “I called headquarters because they’re faster.”

  “You were probably right at that,” Shayne grunted absently. His bleak eyes reread the note for the tenth time, and he mumbled, “It’s too late to try to cover up anything now.”

  Brooks sank down in a chair and hid his face with his hands. “I suppose it is,” he moaned.

  “Is this your typewriter?” Shayne asked abruptly.

  “Yes. I opened it up for Tim when he first came and wasn’t so tight. He said he might write a story. My God, Mr. Shayne—I wonder if he was planning that while I was still here? That gun. He must have had it in his pocket all the time.” He uncovered his face and asked miserably, “Do you really think he’s still alive? The bullet didn’t—didn’t—”

  “He’s got a pulse,” Shayne growled. “I didn’t examine the wound closely, but it looks to me like it bounced off without actually penetrating. Tim’s got a thick skull, and a twenty-two doesn’t have too much power. Tell me exactly how he acted before you left,” he went on swiftly. “Everything he said that you can remember. We haven’t got much time before Gentry gets here—that is, if you reported who you wanted the ambulance for.”

  “I did,” moaned Brooks. “I thought they’d be faster if they knew it was Tim. He—Tim had been drinking, like I told you, and he acted funny. I got the idea he was worried about Betty Jackson.”

  “What do you mean he was acting funny?” Shayne asked harshly.

  “Look, I’m not a detective,” said Brooks, moving his arms in a gesture of despair. “You know a lot more about such things than I do, but if you’ve read that note carefully, don’t you get the idea that he was really covering up for Betty? Or do you think they were in it together and when he got drunk he decided to do it this way and take all the blame? He must have been awfully drunk after emptying that fifth of whisky.” The thin keening of a siren sounded from a distance as Brooks finished. Shayne turned without answering and went to the window. He watched in silence until the ambulance came into view, then hurried out to signal the driver as he slowed to hunt for house numbers.

  The vehicle swung into the curb at his signal and an intern leaped nimbly from the front seat. Shayne urged him inside with a jerk of his thumb and a couple of words, waited for the attendants to pile out of the ambulance, then followed them as far as the front porch where he said, “Wait here until the doc calls you.”

  When he re-entered the living-room the intern was bending over Rourke. Shayne motioned Brooks to a corner and muttered, “You understand that Will Gentry will have to draw his own conclusions if Tim doesn’t stay alive to tell us anything. You’d better tell them the exact truth about phoning Rourke to warn him you’d set the cops on his tail, and how you invited him over here to hole up to sort of make up for it. The truth won’t hurt you, and anything else is likely to. Tim wasn’t a fugitive, and there’ll be no charge against you for harboring him.”

  Other sirens were screaming close by. Shayne whirled toward the door, adding, “Think it over carefully, Brooks,” and went outside again.

  A radio car with two officers pulled in behind the ambulance. Shayne halted them as they trotted up the walk. “Doc’s inside,” he told them shortly. “This is for Homicide. Chief Gentry will be here in a moment, so you’d better not mess around too much.”

  The senior patrolman knew Shayne by sight. He nodded and said to his partner, “I’ll go inside, Jenkins. If Chief Gentry shows up—”

  “There’s his car now,” Shayne interrupted. “I’ll tell him you’ve got things under control.” He moved slowly down the walk as Gentry heaved himself from his sedan and walked stolidly toward the detective.

  “I thought you’d be in on this,” the chief growled without rancor. “What is it with Rourke?”

  “It looks like attempted suicide, Will. With a twenty-two target pistol.”

  Gentry puffed furiously on his cigar, avoiding Shayne’s cold gray eyes, aware of the close bond of friendship between the rangy redhead and the crusading reporter. His own relationship with Timothy Rourke had been very close in the past, and his voice was strangely hoarse when he asked, “Is he bad?”

  “There was just a flicker of pulse when Brooks and I got here,” Shayne told him as they walked unhurriedly toward the house. “He left a note that looks bad. I knew he was here at Brooks’s place, Will. I sent him here early this morning.”

  “To keep us from getting hold of him,” said Gentry without inflection.

  “Yeh.” Shayne’s mouth twisted bitterly. “I didn’t know. There were a lot of things—and I needed time to work on some angles. Before God, Will, I don’t know what I’d have done if I had decided that Rourke fired a bullet into Jackson’s head.”

  “I knew something like that was worrying you,” said Gentry heavily. “Better stick around outside while I take a look.” He stalked up the steps and disappeared into the living-room.

  Shayne paced the length of the walk twice before the summons came. Gentry met him just inside the living-room door and said, “It’s not too good, Mike. The intern has patched him up and gives him a fifty-fifty chance. Tim’s beginning to come out of it, and a hypo is necessary. We’ll have maybe three or four minutes to question him before it takes effect, and I’m giving you a break. Come on in and hear what he says. If he doesn’t recover I don’t want you feeling there was any funny business.”

  Shayne’s throat was dry. “Thanks, Will,” he said huskily. “But do me one more favor. Since Tim will be conscious to answer only a few questions, let me ask them. I know what to say to get the truth out of him.”

  “Sorry,” said Gentry gruffly. “I’m stretching a point to let you listen in—”

  “Don’t you gee how it is?” Shayne burst in angrily. “I know Tim didn’t do it. A dozen things tell me. Damn it, Will, he’s covering up for Betty Jackson, and she’s not worth it! I don’t have time to give it to you now, but if you’ll let me talk to Tim I’ll get the truth.”

  “This is a police investigation,” Gentry reminded him.

  “Hell, don’t you think I realize that? Let me do the talking—give Tim the impression I’m alone. Stand aside and listen in.”

  Gentry took a dead cigar from his pudgy lips, glanced aside at the intern, who crooked a forefinger for them to come closer. He sighed and said, “Okay, Mike.”

  Shayne was on his way to the couch where Rourke’s body lay in a comfortable position, the white bandages around his head making a sharp contrast to his deeply sun-tanned face that was drawn and discolored from the impact of the shot and loss of blood. He motioned to the intern, went close to him, and said in a low whisper, “Get out of sight, over there with the chief. If either of you object to my questions or the replies I get, you can intervene. But if you really want to know the truth,” he added to Gentry, “you’ll let me do it my way.”

  Gentry frowned but said nothing. The intern bent over Rourke, his fingers on Rourke’s pulse. “In about thirty seconds the patient will rouse,” the young doctor said. “He should be conscious for a few minutes before the hypodermic takes full effect. But I must warn you that he must not become excited. If he chooses to answer questions of his own volition, however, it shouldn’t harm him.” He stepped aside
and joined Gentry.

  Timothy Rourke’s head moved slightly. He opened his slate-gray eyes. The pupils were dilated, and he looked up at Shayne with a dull, blank expression. Recognition came slowly as his eyes focused on Shayne’s face a foot above his own.

  “It’s all right, Tim,” Shayne said softly. “Don’t move, and listen to me. Can you hear me?”

  “Yeh,” Rourke answered feebly. “What the hell?”

  “Let me ask the questions, Tim. You’re going to pass out in a minute or two, and it may be too late after that. You may be dying.”

  “Yeh,” said Rourke again. “I guess I passed out, huh? Ned and I were sitting here drinking—”

  “Save your strength for something very important,” Shayne broke in anxiously. “You’ve got to stop covering up for Betty. She’s not worth it, Tim. I swear she isn’t.” His voice became harsh as he continued. “I know you thought she did it because she loved you, but she didn’t. She gunned Bert for cash—to get twenty-five grand. That was her real reason, Tim.”

  For a brief instant Rourke’s eyes glittered, and he tried to raise his head and shoulders from the couch.

  Shayne put gentle pressure on his chest and said, “Listen, Tim, while I give it to you straight. Betty killed Bert because at the last moment he decided to do the right thing and turn his story in to the Tribune. She had been needling him into the blackmail scheme and she became frantic when she saw that money slipping away. So she shot him. Just like that. Through the back of the head with your target pistol. Then she calmly called Mr. Big and demanded twenty-five grand mailed to her care of General Delivery at ten o’clock this morning. Then she took a batch of sleeping-tablets and passed out. That’s the way you found her when you got to her house a little after midnight, wasn’t it? In bed, passed out cold? And you found Bert Jackson murdered with your gun. How did she get your gun, Tim?”

  Sweat stood out on his face. Half of what he was saying was pure guesswork, but he drove the points home and hoped he wasn’t blundering.

  Timothy Rourke closed his eyes, and a spasm of pain twisted his cadaverous features. “Is that—the truth, Mike? About the money?” His voice was faint, wavering.

  “I swear it’s the truth, Tim,” Shayne told him, bending closer, his voice tense. “Tell me, how did she get hold of your gun?”

  “I—I loaned it to her. A week ago.” Rourke opened his eyes slowly. For a moment he appeared to study the taped ear and the puffed left side of Shayne’s face, and the deeply trenched right side, a familiar sight, and the only thing in the world that made sense to him at the moment. His lips twisted in a slow smile intended to show bitterness, but succeeded only in being pitiable. “The gun—was to protect her from Bert—if he got abusive,” he said. “When I—stumbled over his body—on the front porch and went inside and found Betty—passed out in her bed—I thought—”

  “That she and Bert had had an argument over you?” supplied Shayne. “And you felt guilty and partly responsible, so you carried his dead body out to your car and stuck him inside, getting blood on your seat cushion in the process, and drove away and ditched him by the side of the road. You hoped to take suspicion off Betty and make it appear he was killed by the man he was planning to blackmail. That’s the way it happened, isn’t it?”

  “That’s—right—Mike.” Rourke’s eyes were glazing, and he tried to moisten his dry lips with a dry tongue. “What—happened to me—after I passed out?”

  “How much do you remember, Tim?” Shayne asked anxiously, glancing aside at Gentry’s beefy face and seeing his pudgy hand firmly holding the young intern back from the patient.

  “Not—much,” Rourke answered thickly. “I was drinking Ned’s liquor. I knew I was getting tight, but I—started to write a story on Bert Jackson—and that’s all—I remember. I blacked out. You know how it hits me, Mike. Like I—feel now—” His voice trailed off, and he closed his eyes.

  The intern jerked away from Gentry and took a stethoscope from the rear pocket of his trousers, fitting the listening-tubes in his ears as he approached the prostrate form of the patient. He placed the bell on Rourke’s chest with his left hand and felt for his pulse with the right. After a moment he said, “That will be all. He’ll be out for several hours.”

  Gentry came up behind the intern, and Shayne met his stony eyes with the challenge, “Are you satisfied?”

  “I got it all,” he admitted, stepping aside and beckoning Shayne to follow as the intern drew up a chair and took his place beside the patient.

  “And you don’t think Tim was telling the truth?”

  “I had the feeling that you were leading him on, getting him to answer the way you wanted,” Gentry said. He got out a fresh cigar, lit it, and puffed until the end glowed red, then burst out, “It did sound like the truth, damn it, Mike, except that stuff about not remembering shooting himself. Even if a man does pass out from too much liquor—”

  “You know how Tim was about that,” Shayne broke in gently. “Hell, you were at my place that night when he picked up twelve hundred in a poker game and didn’t remember one damned thing about even playing poker the next day, yet none of us realized he was dead drunk when we were playing with him. Tim was like that,” he went on urgently. “I’ve seen him write feature stories in his office and he never hit a wrong letter. The next day he wouldn’t even know what they were about until he read them in the News and saw his by-line.”

  “That’s very interesting,” the intern said, “and I should like to discuss it further.” He stood up and pushed his chair aside. “May I ask what a mental blackout from alcohol without physical disability has to do with the case?” He took a few steps toward Shayne and Gentry, stopped, and looked at Ned Brooks who sat dejectedly in a chair across the room with his head bowed in his hands.

  “From the information I gathered from Mr. Brooks when I first came in, the patient witnessed a murder last night by a woman for whom he cared a great deal. Convinced that it was committed on his account, Rourke destroyed certain evidence pointing to her and later took one drink too many, and a mental block resulted.”

  “That’s about it,” Shayne growled, “but Chief Gentry doubts that he could have written a confession and shot himself without being conscious of doing so.” He glanced at Brooks, whose presence he had forgotten until the doctor mentioned his name, but the reporter kept his head bowed.

  The intern was saying, “That is exactly what the patient might have done under the circumstances. There is a well-developed theory that when a man blacks out mentally—to use the layman’s phrase—from alcohol, his subconscious controls his actions. Thus, a man under the complete domination of the subconscious, becomes a superlative poker player, or he may attain perfection in any game or any endeavor.

  “Let us assume that this man is inherently decent. His subconscious rebels, under the influence of alcohol, against the thing he has done consciously. He makes amends by destroying the evidence of witnessing a murder through the medium of writing a confession absolving the woman he loves and whom he knows to be guilty. Then he attempts to take his own life, believing it is the only way out for him.

  “And now,” he continued, turning abruptly to the front door, “it is important that we remove the patient to the hospital.” He called the two men who waited on the porch with the stretcher.

  Shayne watched the orderlies edge Rourke’s body gently from the couch onto the canvas stretcher and pull a sheet over him. His mouth was grim and he rubbed a hand hard over his uninjured right jaw.

  “Have you gone through Rourke’s pockets?” he asked abruptly, turning to Gentry.

  “No. I don’t think—”

  “Hold it, boys,” he called to the orderlies as they lifted the stretcher to carry it away, and again turned to Gentry. “Don’t you think you ought to do that, Will?”

  “They’ll inventory his effects at the hospital,” the chief said.

  “To hell with that. I want it done here, in my presence. I know how hospitals ar
e, and you do, too. If Tim has two grand on him now you’ll find it reported as fifty dollars by the pillroller who goes over him.”

  “I resent that,” the young intern retorted with professional dignity. “If you mean—”

  “I mean I want to see what he has on him before he is taken away,” Shayne cut in sharply.

  Gentry growled, “Go through his pockets and see what you find, Jenkins.”

  The orderlies set the stretcher down and waited while the Homicide officer knelt beside it and went over every pocket in Rourke’s clothes. He produced a wallet, a stamped letter to an insurance company, a soiled handkerchief and a clean folded one, three partially used books of matches, a pack of cigarettes half full, a key ring, and a handful of loose change.

  When the objects were displayed on the floor Shayne looked them over carefully, shook his red head, and demanded, “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

  “What else did you expect?” Jenkins hunkered back on his heels and looked up at Shayne.

  “What does it matter?” Gentry asked impatiently.

  Shayne ignored the police chief. With a questing, groping expression on his face he demanded of Jenkins, “Are there any holes in any of his pockets?”

  “I didn’t notice any.” He appealed to Gentry.

  Gentry’s murky, protuberant eyes were studying Shayne’s face curiously. “I remember you asked the same thing about Bert Jackson when we found him,” he rumbled, then nodded to his subordinate and ordered, “Check every pocket for a hole.”

  Jenkins rechecked with ill grace, arose from his kneeling position, and said, “Not a hole big enough for a pin to go through.”

  Shayne waved to the patient orderlies, said, “Okay,” then turned to Gentry. “You won’t mind if I follow the ambulance to the hospital? I’d like—”

  Ned Brooks’s telephone rang in the hallway. Jenkins hurried to answer it and called to Will Gentry, “It’s for you, Chief.”