Halo in Blood

by Howard Browne

  The only light, now, came from the still open door into the outer hall. But there wasn’t much of it, and what there was didn’t reach where I crouched above the limp body of the girl. The bag with the .32 in it was around somewhere but I wasn’t going to move around looking for it I just crouched down and waited, and the wetness on my forehead wasn’t there because the weather was warm.

  Silence. They built the pyramids and tore them down and built them over again, and I never moved in all that time. My leg muscles were beginning to complain, but they’d have to do a lot more than complain before I moved them.

  Somewhere in the middle of all that blackness a door closed softly, but I heard it. I could have heard an ant with the hiccoughs right then. Overhead, naked feet thudded on a rug and I heard a window being raised up there. The shots must have awakened somebody.

  I moved a hand around carefully and found the brocaded bag. I opened it and took out the .32. It was like shaking hands with God. I gave the bag a small flip and it struck against the wall across from me. It made a hell of a noise, or so it seemed; but right then my ears were as sensitive as an ugly girl at a high-school dance.

  Nothing happened. I crawled an inch at a time to where I could reach the light switch. I gave it a push and the table lamp went on again.

  Nothing happened. Nobody moved. Nobody shot at me. Nobody was around any more except Leona Sandmark’s body and me.

  She lay in a huddled heap near the wall, her eyes closed, her face as white as a surrender flag. There was blood along her neck and on one bare shoulder and it was spreading as I watched. It wasn’t until I bent over her that I saw the slow rise and fall of her breasts under the yellow gown and knew that she was still alive.

  There was a shallow groove about half an inch long in the side of her neck just below the angle of her jaw. I swung her up in my arms and carried her over to the sofa in the living room and put her gently down. I laid the .32 on the coffee table, and went into the bathroom and found a towel. I wet part of it and came back and sponged away the blood and put a gauze bandage from the medicine chest around her neck.

  She came out of her faint while I was finishing up. For a few moments she lay there without moving, just staring up at me in a frightened way.

  I said, “It was close, baby. But you’re all right, now.”

  “Somebody tried to kill me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “This time it was you.”

  “Did you see who it was?”

  “No.”

  “He got away?”

  “If he got stopped, I didn’t do it.”

  “I’m afraid, Paul.”

  “So am I.”

  “Maybe he’s still here!”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “But I’ll go make sure.”

  I took the gun from the coffee table and prowled the joint. There wasn’t anyone around. The kitchen window had been forced and the door was unbolted and standing open. I closed it and went back into the living room and drew open the blinds and the draperies, letting in the dawn’s early light.

  She hadn’t moved. I wiped off the gun absent-mindedly and put it down on the coffee table again.

  “We’re all alone,” I said, giving her a wolfish leer to cheer her up.

  “I think I’d like to sit up. I’m all right now.”

  I left her mixing a highball and went into the bedroom and closed the door and crossed over to pick up the ivory telephone.

  The operator came on the wire and I gave her John Sandmark’s number. After several rings, the same middle-aged woman answered the phone and she was just as indignant when I asked for Sandmark as she had been the morning Marlin was killed. But I insisted and she finally went off to get him.

  I lighted a cigarette and tapped my foot on the floor and looked at the rose-satin bedspread. It lay smooth and sleek and there were no depressions in it now as there had been that other time.

  “Hello.” It was the woman’s voice again and it was worried. This was like seeing a movie twice, and like a movie, it would be the same all the way through.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m waiting for Mr. Sandmark.”

  “He isn’t in, sir.”

  “You mean he’s gone out this early?”

  “I don’t . . . His bed hasn’t been slept in, sir. I—”

  “All right,” I said sharply. “Does anyone there know what time he went out?”

  “I’d have to ask,” she said doubtfully.

  “Then go ahead and ask. I’ll hold on.”

  The minutes dragged. I sat there and smoked. The ash fell off my cigarette and I ground it into the rug with my foot. . . .

  “Hello.” The woman again. “Mr. Sandmark went out shortly after eleven last night and has not yet returned. Is there any message?”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “No, sir. Any message?”

  “Let it go,” I said. “It isn’t important.”

  I put back the receiver, thought for a moment, then called police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant George Zarr. He was off duty, they told me, and so was Captain Locke. I refused to talk to anyone else and broke the connection, then dialed the State’s Attorney’s office at the Criminal Courts Building.

  A sharp, clear voice answered—a voice I recognized.

  “Frank,” I said, “this is Paul Pine.”

  “The hell it is! What’re you doing up this time of morning?”

  “I’m not very bright, is all. Frank, is Crandall there?”

  “Ike? Hell, no—that guy works days. He’s too good for the night shift.”

  “What’s his home phone?”

  “Hold it a minute.”

  He was back almost at once. “Berwyn 9902-J.”

  I thanked him, got hold of the operator and gave her the Berwyn number. After half a dozen rings the receiver went up and a man’s voice growled: “Yeah?”

  “Crandall?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Pine, Crandall. Paul Pine. I hear you got a date to ask John Sandmark and his stepdaughter some questions later this morning.”

  “What about it, Pine?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to come off, that’s all. Leona Sandmark was plugged just a few minutes ago, in her own apartment. And John Sandmark isn’t at home. I just called there.”

  “The hell you say! I thought that guy knew a lot more than he let on. So he killed his own kid to keep her mouth shut! How come you know all this, Pine? Where you at?”

  “At the girl’s apartment.”

  “So you had to play smart, hunh? You had to shove your nose into police business. Why, God damn you, Pine—”

  “Skip it,” I said harshly. “You want the guy, don’t you? Then meet me near Sandmark’s place as soon as you can get there. You’re in Berwyn; that’s not far from where he lives. And you’d better bring a homicide man with you. I called the station, but both Zarr and Locke are off duty. Locke lives out north somewhere; maybe you better get Zarr. He’s entitled to be in on this.”

  “Good enough. He’s got an apartment in the 4900 block on Washington Boulevard. That’s only a few minutes from here. Suppose we meet you at the corner of North Avenue and Kenilworth in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I went back into the living room. Leona Sandmark looked up from the depths of the sofa as I came in. There was a highball glass, half filled, in one hand and a fresh cigarette in the other. Most of the color was back in her cheeks and the strained lines were about gone. The white gauze around her neck showed no blood. Evidently the bleeding had stopped, although she was going to have a stiff neck for a while.

  I sat down beside her and took the glass from her hand and drank what was left. It was Scotch and plain water, and very good, too. I said, “You’ve had it tough, baby, and it’s going to get tougher before it gets better. I can be wrong; I hope to Christ I am wrong. But get some iron in your guts just in case.”

  The color began to go out of her face again and fear
started to grow in her gray-blue eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’ve already said it. Now go put on a street dress or something. We’ve got to go someplace.”

  “Where?”

  “Later.”

  “Where, Paul?”

  “To your stepfather’s.”

  She stared at me uncertainly, opened her mouth to say something; then she got off the couch, dropped her cigarette into an ash tray and went into the bedroom.

  I took a deep breath and another drink. . . .

  When she came out she was wearing a chartreuse suit of shantung and a white blouse with a high collar to hide the bandage around her neck. I smiled at her and said. “You’ve got what it takes, honey. No matter what happens before this is over, you won’t let it throw you.”

  We went down the elevator and out to the curb. The sun was up and there were people out on the streets. I helped her into the front seat of my car and went around and got behind the wheel and drove north.

  On North Avenue, a block east of Kenilworth, I pulled in at the curb. I said, “In a few minutes a car will pick me up at the corner of Kenilworth. When you see me get in, wait ten minutes—then come to your stepfather’s home. I’ll be in the library. You have a key to the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. You think you can drive this pile of junk? I mean, after being used to that convertible—”

  “I can drive it, Paul.”

  “See that you do. Ten minutes.”

  I got out and walked off up the street, the sunlight stretching my shadow way out ahead of me.

  There was a drugstore on the corner. I leaned against one of the window frames where Leona Sandmark could see me, lighted a cigarette and waited. . . .

  A black sedan, a Buick, came east on North Avenue at a good clip, cut in fast at the curb and the brakes went on, taking a hundred miles off the rubber. A city car; to hell with the tires.

  “Pine.” It was Crandall, behind the wheel.

  I tossed away the cigarette and went over. Zarr was in front next to Crandall. He said, “This better not be from morphine, Pine. I don’t like to get up this early.”

  I opened the rear door and got in and pulled it shut again. As the car got under way I said, “You’ve at least been to bed. This is the last out of the ball game, Lieutenant. This is where you find out who sicked the twelve preachers onto that corpse, and get yourself a killer besides.”

  CHAPTER 18

  A middle-aged woman who looked as though she had made a million beds in her day opened the door to my ring. Her expectant expression fell on the rug when she saw the three of us standing there. Alarm flickered in her pale-blue eyes and her blue-veined hand tightened suddenly on the knob. Almost anyone can recognize a cop, even one in plain clothes. She stood there, tight-lipped, and stared at us across a distance of three feet that might as well have been three miles.

  I said, “Good morning. We’d like to see Mr. Sandmark, please. Right away. It’s important.”

  The faint morning breeze stirred the starched folds of the neat blue Hoover apron, but nothing else about her moved as I pushed one of my feet across the threshold. But when I reached out a hand and laid it against the door, her thin shoulders jerked a little and the alarm in her eyes turned, to fear.

  Words spilled out of her. “No! I mean, I’m sorry, but— well, Mr. Sandmark isn’t in just now. If you will come back—”

  My hand under her elbow stopped her there and moved her to one side at the same time. “It’s all right, mother. If you don’t mind, we’ll kind of wait in the library. Tell Mr. Sandmark Paul Pine is here . . . when he comes in, I mean. It won’t be necessary to mention these men; they’re with me.”

  Meanwhile I was walking ahead and she was backing away. When she saw there was no stopping us, she clutched the remaining shreds of her dignity in her trembling hands and said a little wildly:

  “I’ll tell him the minute he comes home! I’ll tell him how the three of you actually, forced your—”

  By this time Crandall, Zarr and I were in the shadowy depths of the central hall. I steered them through the library door, leaving the housekeeper outside. “You mustn’t excite yourself, mother,” I said, and closed the door softly in her face.

  Enough morning light came in the French windows to make out the room’s furnishings. But it wasn’t strong enough for my purpose. I snapped on a couple of table lamps over near the huge fireplace and the room sprang alive under the soft yellow glow.

  Crandall shifted his feet uncomfortably in the depths of the gray carpeting and looked around at all the magnificence. “I sure in hell hope you know what you’re doing, guy. This could blow up on us in a big way.”

  “Not any more it can’t,” I said. “Sandmark’s too far out on a limb ever to crawl back. We might as well sit down and wait.”

  I got Zarr into the depths of a high-armed lounge chair and Crandall across from him on the blue leather chesterfield that faced the hall door. Zarr dug a blunt cigar from the breast pocket of his light-gray suit jacket and stripped off the cellophane wrapper. I pushed an ash stand over where he could reach it and he rolled the cellophane into a little ball and flipped it at the bowl. It overshot the mark and I bent stiffly and took it off the rug and put it in the tray and scowled at him.

  “Don’t act like a cop all your life,” I said. “This isn’t a tavern, you know.”

  He looked at me with a sort of bleak wonder, found a wooden match in one of his pockets and leaned over to strike the tip against the sole of a square-toed shoe. He put the flame to his cigar, turning the weed carefully until it was burning to his satisfaction, waved out the match and dropped it with exaggerated care into the ash tray alongside the ball of cellophane. He said, “What’re you so jumpy about, Pine? You act like a rookie making his first pinch.”

  He was right. I was drawn as tight as a dowager’s corset. I ran the fingers of my left hand across the side of my neck and stared at the nails as though I expected to find something foreign under them. Crandall watched me from where he sat, straight and stiff, on the edge of the chesterfield. He seemed nervous and doubtful and a little angry. The last was at me.

  I paced up and down a time or two before Zarr said, “How about giving us some of this before Sandmark gets here? Crandall tells me the guy killed his stepdaughter last night. How do you know it was Sandmark? You see him?”

  “It had to be him,” I said. I sat down on the arm of the chesterfield and lighted a cigarette and threw the match in the fireplace. “You see, I was out with his stepdaughter last night and I got quite a bit of information out of her before she ran into that bullet.”

  “This thing goes back twenty-five years. It goes back to San Diego and two guys working for an express company out there. But I told you about all that. Let’s get down to this year.”

  “About a month ago Raoul Fleming, Leona Sandmark’s real father, came to Chicago. He came here to see his daughter. He got in touch with her through her current boy friend, Jerry Marlin. He asked Marlin a lot of questions, but ducked out when Marlin wanted him to talk to the girl.”

  “A day or so later Fleming went out to Leona’s apartment to call on her. She wasn’t home, so he left a note in her mailbox. Sandmark got hold of that note and it scared him. It scared him because that old San Diego beef against Fleming had been a frame, and he figured Fleming had come to town to even the score.”

  “Meanwhile Fleming got in touch with his daughter and asked that she come to his hotel and see him. She agreed and went out to the Laycroft to meet him. But he was expecting a second visitor by this time and got rid of his daughter in a hurry. And the next day Fleming was found dead in his room—murdered.”

  Ike Crandall stirred uneasily. He said, “The girl tell you this, Pine?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do you know it’s the truth?”

  “Something has to be the truth. This sounds more like it than anything else. You want to hear the rest of it, or wh
at?”

  He scratched his ear and blew out his breath and said to go ahead.

  I got up and went over and dropped some ash into the tray next to Zarr. I stood there, talking to both men.

  “The girl was no fool. She knew Sandmark, guided by that missing note, had gone to the hotel and killed Fleming. What she didn’t know until later was that Jerry Marlin had followed her to the hotel and had seen Sandmark go in after she left. It seems she broke a date with Marlin earlier that night, acting so funny about it that he got suspicious.”

  “It was Marlin’s chance. Millionaire murders old enemy—what a setup for blackmail! He started putting the bite on Sandmark. The old man didn’t like that, so one rainy night he shot Marlin full of holes.”

  “He was sure no one could touch him now. But he was wrong. Marlin had let his pal Ken Clyne in on the deal. Not all the way—just enough to give Clyne the idea of taking over the extortion job. Clyne tried it—and went out with a skull full of blackjack.”

  They were listening, which was fine. They were nodding, which was even better. Crandall wasn’t sitting stiff any more; he had leaned back and was smiling a little. Zarr was staring dreamily at the ceiling, watching the heavy layers of cigar smoke moving in the light from the windows.

  I had never really realized what a deadly thing circumstantial evidence could be. . . .

  “Sandmark,” I continued, “was all set. The only one who could hurt him now was his stepdaughter, and he knew damn well she’d never give him away unless the cops somehow got onto the pitch and started sweating it out of her. But there weren’t any unsnipped ends that would lead the cops to Leona Sandmark.”

  “But there was something he didn’t know about . . . and this will interest you, Zarr. It appears that Fleming was a wealthy man himself. From what he told Marlin, he had cleaned up a mintful in Africa, or some such place. When he was found dead and couldn’t be identified, he was headed for a pauper’s grave and God knows what would happen to all the money of his back on the Dark Continent.”

  Zarr pushed himself up from the chair depths to knock some more ash into the tray. He scowled a little and said, “Why should this part of your story interest, me particularly? Do I get some of this Fleming’s dough?”