“By all means,” McCoy agreed. “How did you find out about it, Holt?”
“How did I — ?” Holt stopped, puzzled. He looked across at Van Dusen, wondering if the chief investigator had talked to McCoy previously. Yet he could see by Van Dusen’s expression that such was not the case. Cautiously, Holt said, “I think I’d better come down and see you, Captain.”
“As a matter of fact, I was on the point of calling you. Could you make it right away? I think you should be in on this from the beginning. It’s your baby from now on.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” said Holt. He hung up and stared at Van Dusen. “Van, you’ve known McCoy longer than I have. Did you ever think he might be psychic?”
“I always thought he was Irish.” Van Dusen looked curious. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know.” Holt grabbed for his hat. “But I think I’d better go find out.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
BY the time he had driven across town to the police station, Holt thought he knew what McCoy was going to tell him. And that was that the cops had found, working independently, the same information as had Van Dusen. It stood to reason that McCoy and Quinlan, with vastly more experience, would be ahead of him on the scent. Holt didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. He was human enough to want recognition for what he had discovered, yet he knew that relations all around would be better the less he intruded on the police province. It was a situation that called for diplomacy.
McCoy had left word with the desk sergeant that he was in the police laboratory and that was where Holt found him, perched on a stool and chatting with the lab technicians. Quinlan was not with him.
McCoy greeted Holt with a broad smile. “Well, you made a quick trip. Wanted to be in at the kill, huh?”
“Well, I wanted to talk to you, Captain.”
“I’ll bet you do. Still can’t figure how you found out about it so fast. The D.A. must have a pipeline.” McCoy stretched his arms happily. “Well, Holt, it’s all over. The race is run, the chase is done. We’ve got the proof we need.”
“We have?” asked Holt cautiously. He still wasn’t sure where this was leading.
“Take a look,” invited McCoy, waving his hand at the laboratory table. Among the litter of retorts, test tubes and Bunsen burners sat a grimy shoe box. The cardboard top had been removed and, for all that Holt could see, the box was empty. “That’s the little baby that’s going to put them in the gas chamber. Providing you boys at the D.A.’s office don’t kick it, of course. And with the case we’re giving you there shouldn’t be any danger of that.”
“Put who in the gas chamber?” Holt said slowly. “I’m not quite sure I follow you.”
“Why, Shayon and Tara Linneker,” said McCoy impatiently. “Isn’t that who we’ve been talking about all along?”
Holt hesitated. It had come to him finally that McCoy’s “big development” and his own weren’t the same thing at all. He said, “I think I’ve got something to tell you, Captain.”
“In good time. Wait till I tell you first.” McCoy had a small boy eagerness about him as he waved Holt silent. “The dynamite, that’s what finally did it for us. You remember that it was Black Fox brand that Shayon bought up in Seacliff.”
“A man of Shayon’s general description,” Holt demurred quietly.
McCoy didn’t pay any attention. “And it was Black Fox brand that blew Linneker to kingdom come. The lab established that. But something else didn’t jibe, not exactly. Shayon bought two dozen sticks, plus blasting caps. No doubt about the number; it’s on the register. Yet the lab estimated that no more than eighteen sticks were used at the cabana. Beats me how they can tell from what was left down there, but these test tube boys are marvels, as you know.”
Holt didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say.
McCoy continued, “So I was bothered by what happened to those other six sticks. The odds were that Shayon had gotten rid of them somehow since that was the smart thing to do. But these cocky fellows sometimes outsmart themselves. Just on a chance, Hank and I shook down Shayon’s apartment this morning.” He paused, then went on triumphantly. “And the last place we looked was in the outside storage closet that’s underneath the stairs leading up to his front door. The closet had a lock on it but the door frame’s so old that the hasp lifts right out, screws and all. Shayon keeps some old clothes in there and some tools and other junk. And behind a pile of newspapers, I found that shoe box. It had five sticks of Black Fox brand dynamite in it, pretty as you please.”
Holt knew that a comment was called for, but he couldn’t manage it. He felt that his mouth had dropped open with the overwhelming surprise of the revelation. He closed it with an effort.
“Of course,” McCoy said, getting out his pipe and packing it, “that still leaves us one stick short but I figure that the lab boys deserve a margin for error. I won’t quibble over one stick. So there you have it, Holt.”
Holt mumbled, “Are you sure?” It was the best he could accomplish at the moment. McCoy’s discovery knocked the props out from under his own conclusions, and not all the circumstantial alibis in the world would serve to restore them. What had Van Dusen overlooked? Somewhere they had made a glaring mistake.
“What more do you want?” McCoy demanded. “A confession? We’ll have that for you, too, before long. I know how these things go. When that pair sees how it is, they’ll crack.” He lit his pipe from the flame of a Bunsen burner on the lab table. “There’re no prints on the dynamite itself, naturally, since it tends to be oily. But the box is covered with them — all of them Shayon’s. Now, what was it you wanted to tell me, Holt?”
Holt shook his head slowly. “Nothing of any importance, as it turns out. I thought I might have a new angle, but I guess I can forget it now.”
“And I guess I can go back to the ranch and take life easy again,” said McCoy contentedly. “I’m really getting too old for the grind. Time I let the youngsters handle this sort of thing. You’ll have to drop out and see me, Holt, and I’ll give you a turkey for Easter. I raise them, you know.”
Quinlan came limping in, his cane tapping on the tile floor. “Well, Mac, the warrant’s all drawn. You want to go out with me and pick him up? Oh, hi there, Holt — hear the news?”
“Yes,” Holt murmured. “Congratulations.”
McCoy eyed him shrewdly. “Hank, I think our friend the special investigator is a little disappointed that two old dogs turned out to be right. Maybe he figured he was going to beat us to it.” He winked at his partner.
“Don’t let it get you down, Holt,” said Quinlan with a grin. “You can’t win ‘em all. This is kinda different from the Buccio thing. Mac and I got the bulge on you in experience here.”
Holt had recovered sufficiently to smile back. “Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m no great shakes as a detective. But I certainly didn’t expect this” — he nodded at the shoe box — ”and I guess I was knocked for a loop. I’ll admit I had it figured a little differently, but all that counts as far as I’m concerned is the evidence.”
“I was just kidding, of course,” said McCoy, getting up from the stool. “We’re going down to Shayon’s shoe store and pick him up now. Want to come along? It might be interesting. My bet is he’ll go all to pieces.”
“No, thanks.” He had no desire to see Shayon arrested, guilty though he obviously was. He had developed a sort of liking for the defiant young man. “What about Tara?”
“There’ll be time enough for her after we crack Shayon. I want to break this thing fast. Then it’ll be up to you to take it from there.”
Holt drove back to his office but a good deal slower than he had covered the same distance earlier. His mind was still clouded with confusion. He had been completely convinced that he was right, and Van Dusen’s findings had borne out that conviction. But his logic had foundered against the unassailable rock of the hidden dynamite, and there was no arguing against it. He sighed. Might as well adm
it it, he told himself, you were wrong. But it was hard to swallow, just the same.
Van Dusen was at the drinking fountain as Holt came down the corridor. He hailed Holt cheerily. “Well, I did my homework, teacher. O’Hara left town all right and I sent off a teletype to the D.A. in Frisco to run a check on him. And here’s Farnum’s new address.” He held out a slip of paper.
Holt took it and read it automatically. “Thanks, Van.”
“It was a cinch. I figured he might be out of work so I checked state employment and got it without even leaving the office. You want we should take a run over and see him?”
“I don’t think we need to bother.” Briefly, he told Van Dusen about the dynamite and Shayon’s arrest, which had probably been consummated by now. “I guess I was barking up the wrong tree.”
“Well, it’s a funny one,” Van Dusen mused. “I still don’t see how they did it, but you remember what I told you about McCoy. He’s uncanny. Guess you can take that vacation, after all.”
“Yeah.” Holt stuck the slip of paper with Farnum’s address in his pocket. So finally he could empty his brief case and take a real vacation. Not a worry in the world. Somehow he didn’t feel particularly jubilant at the prospect. He went in to phone Connie. He doubted if she’d be too happy about it, either, considering the reason. The young lovers are guilty after all, dear, so now let’s relax and have a good time. But that was the way things went.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THOUGH chagrined, Connie Holt took the news with more composure than did her husband. By the time Holt arrived home that evening, the whole affair had become secondary in her mind and she was more interested in discussing the activities of Nancy’s Brownie troop than in raking over the now dead coals of the Linneker murder. She had been wrong, she accepted the fact and there was no use dwelling on it. That was Connie’s view.
Though a practical viewpoint, it was one which Holt was unable to share. His mind kept returning to the case, like a wistful vulture to a carcass whose bones had already been picked clean. His conversation at the dinner table was abstracted and his appetite meagre.
Connie said, “For goodness sake, Mitch, how can I get Nancy to clean her plate when you set that kind of example?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You would be if you’d only stop brooding. You’d think that this whole thing was your fault or something. You should be happy that it’s settled.”
Holt said moodily, “That’s just it. It’s not settled, not in my mind, anyway. I’m going to have to prosecute those two kids, Connie. What sort of a job can I do when I’ve got a doubt in my own mind?”
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Mitch.” Connie dismissed their daughter for her after-dinner ration of television. “It’s occurred to me recently that maybe it’s time you made a change. Are you getting stale in your job? These cases never used to upset you this way. I don’t like it.”
“I had the same thought this afternoon. Maybe it’s not the case. Maybe I’m just played out.” Holt shrugged. “I’ll tell Adair tomorrow that I’m going to take that vacation whether he likes it or not. Maybe he’ll fire me.”
Connie said softly, “Then you could handle their defence, couldn’t you?”
“They’ve already got an attorney,” Holt said. Then he grinned at her. “All right, dear, I’ll admit it. I still feel like I should be on their side of the fence. I don’t care what the evidence is, this thing does not make good sense to me. There’s too much that doesn’t jibe. But darned if I know what I can do about it.”
“You’ll think of something,” Connie told him. “I know you.”
Holt grunted dubiously and pushed back his chair and searched his pockets for cigarettes. When he did so, his fingers encountered a folded slip of paper. It was the address Van Dusen had given him that morning; he had forgotten about it. Holt sat staring at the scrawl for so long that Connie finally asked him what it was.
“Nothing,” he said and slowly balled it up between thumb and forefinger. Then, just as slowly, he smoothed the paper out again and studied it. “That is, it’s probably nothing. But maybe I … Connie, would you kill me if I ducked out on you again this evening?”
“The Linneker case?” she asked and when he nodded, she rose to kiss him lightly. “Hurry back.”
• • •
Ernest Farnum’s present address was a working man’s hotel on the fringe of the downtown business district. It was a forlorn area of honky-tonks and pawnshops and other semi-respectable establishments that catered to the helpless and the hopeless. Standing on the sidewalk before the shabby hotel, Holt wondered what had prompted him to leave his comfortable home tonight on such a nebulous mission. What was that mission, anyway? What exactly did he expect to prove — or disprove?
“Well, I’ve gotten this far,” he murmured as a sop to his good sense. But that was all it was, a sop, because something stronger than logic impelled him onward. It was his mind’s basic need for orderliness. Some people straighten pictures; Holt straightened facts.
Farnum’s room was on the second floor at the rear of a dusty corridor. A strip of light beneath the door proved that he was at home. Holt knocked but got no answer. He waited and knocked again and finally tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and opened easily. Holt stepped into a melancholy room that smelled of tobacco and dirty clothes and mildewed wallpaper.
The man who sat in the battered old easy chair by the window didn’t challenge his entrance or rise to greet him. He was an older man, in his late forties, rather small, with black hair like a skullcap and sullen, deep-set eyes. These eyes stared vacantly at Holt as if they were not surprised to see him, or as if they did not even see him at all.
Holt said, “I’m looking for Ernest Farnum.”
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?” said the other man in a heavy dull voice. He had been reading the late evening newspaper. It lay in his lap like a napkin. Holt could make out the upside-down headlines, big and black: POLICE NAB BOY FRIEND FOR LINNEKER SLAYING.
“My name is Holt. I’m the assistant district attorney. I’d like to talk to you — if you’re Ernest Farnum.”
“I’m Ernest Farnum.” He said it like a confession. “I’m glad you came. I was going to call you. Or somebody, I guess.”
“Is that so? What’d you have in mind, Mr. Farnum?”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“Who?” asked Holt, puzzled. He began to wonder if Farnum was drunk.
Farnum consulted the newspaper, bending his head slowly as if it hurt him to do so. “Delmont Shayon. The fellow they arrested today.”
“I don’t know yet. Nobody does. He’ll be charged and tried and, if found guilty, sentenced. Is that what you mean?”
“If found guilty,” Farnum repeated. “They could gas him, couldn’t they? I never thought that could happen. I didn’t figure that at all. It isn’t right that he should get into trouble because of me.”
Holt felt a stab of anticipation, “Mr. Farnum, do you know something about this Linneker case?”
Farnum looked at him with sluggish surprise. “Why, yes. Isn’t that why you’re here? I killed him, you know. With dynamite, at his beach house.”
The statement was made so calmly, emotionlessly, that Holt had no immediate reaction to it. He didn’t believe that he had heard Farnum correctly. He said, “What did you say?”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You came to arrest me. I’m glad it’s all over. I was going to call you, anyway. I couldn’t let an innocent man take the blame.” Farnum added, as if it explained everything. “That wouldn’t have been decent.”
“I guess it wouldn’t,” Holt murmured. He wanted to sit down but Farnum occupied the only chair so he chose the edge of the unmade bed and stared at the confessed murderer. He had been prepared for almost anything except this and the surprise was great enough to make him try to seek other means of explaining it away. Was Farnum just a crackpot? Every murder case turned up a few, even
one or two willing to confess to crimes with which they had no connection, driven by obscure compulsions that were beyond the ken of more normal persons. It was possible that Farnum was one of these, and that his entire knowledge of the murder came from what he had read in the newspapers. Holt said cautiously, “You know what you’re confessing to, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Aren’t you going to arrest me?” Farnum pondered. “Funny how things turn out, Mr — what’d you say your name was? — Mr. Holt. I didn’t really figure on hurting anybody when I bought the dynamite. I was just going to pay Old Man Linneker back a little. But it worked out the other way.”
“You must have had a reason.”
“Sure, I had a reason. What do you think I am?” Farnum looked aggrieved. “He was persecuting me. I didn’t mean him any harm but he wouldn’t let me be. I had to protect myself. That’s just human nature.”
There was something in Farnum’s pathetic sincerity that compelled belief, fantastic though the outright confession seemed. That he had a warped intelligence was obvious, but hadn’t Holt felt from the beginning that the crime was the work of an immature and underdeveloped mind? Ernest Farnum fitted the picture he had mentally drawn of the dynamiter much more than did Delmont Shayon. But he still wanted the final bit of corroboration. He said, “I want you to tell me one thing. Where did you buy the dynamite?”
“Up the coast. A little dump named Seacliff. I was up there looking for work one day and I got the idea.” Farnum stirred impatiently. “Aren’t you going to arrest me?”
“Yes,” said Holt and stood up. “I am now.” Farnum might have gotten the rest of the story from the newspapers but the source of the dynamite had still not been revealed. Only the police knew it — and the man who had bought it. Formally, he said, “Ernest Farnum, I arrest you for the murder of Rudy Linneker on the evening of January twenty-fifth of the present year.”
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