Shoot to Kill

by Brett Halliday

  He held her arm and said, “This is Dorothy Larson, Sergeant Griggs. The sergeant is in charge of the case,” he explained to her, and went on to Griggs, “She’s been through a lot tonight. I think she’s eager to make a brief statement that will clarify a lot of things. Why don’t you get that first and then we can leave her alone and I’ll fill you in with the rest of it.”

  Griggs nodded and gestured toward a comfortable chair. “Sit down, Mrs. Larson. You had us pretty badly worried about you… with blood all over and you mysteriously missing.”

  She sank into the chair and smiled wanly, her face very white and strained, but in control of herself. “I didn’t know… what to do. I was so upset and frightened when Ralph ran out with his gun saying he was going to kill Mr. Ames. And then Victor came and told me Ralph had killed him…” She paused, twisting her hands together in her lap and blinking back tears.

  Griggs looked at Shayne with raised eyebrows and a scowl of utter bafflement. “Victor? How the devil did he know…?”

  “Conroy is being held at headquarters waiting for us to question him,” Shayne explained. “The way he tells it: He discovered Ames’ dead body in the study and thought Ralph had done it on his first trip, and he panicked and rushed over here to Mrs. Larson because he was actually her lover instead of Ames and he was afraid she would get hysterical and blurt out the truth to Ralph if he wasn’t here to prevent it.”

  “Is that true, Mrs. Larson? Were you and Victor Conroy lovers?”

  “It’s true enough. It just happened… and Ralph got the idea somehow that it was Wesley Ames I was seeing. That’s why it was so utterly horrible when he ran out with his gun to kill Wesley. It was the wrong man, don’t you see? I tried to stop him… I tried to tell him… but he didn’t hear a word I said.”

  Sergeant Griggs drew in a deep breath, pondering and evaluating this information. “What did Conroy say and do when he came here?”

  “He was excited and he asked where Ralph was and I told him he’d gone out threatening to kill Wesley, and he said he’d already done it and it wasn’t safe for me to stay here, and for me to pack a bag and come with him to hide some place where Ralph couldn’t find me until he was safely under arrest.

  “I hardly knew what I was doing. I started to pack a bag and go with him, and then I suddenly thought how it was all my fault and I couldn’t run away and desert Ralph like that. But Victor got furious and insisted and tried to force me to go on packing my bag, and we wrestled in the bedroom and that’s when I got a nose-bleed. And then I just hardly know,” she ended helplessly. “I gave in and said all right, and he washed my face and gave me a drink, and helped me down the stairs to his car and we drove off.

  “Things got fuzzy while we were driving and I dimly remember going into a room and lying down on a bed. And then I didn’t know anything until Mr. Shayne was standing over me and shaking me awake.”

  “He doped her with some of her own sleeping powders,” Shayne told Griggs. “He said he gave her two of them, but it must have been more to have acted so fast. I don’t believe he meant her any harm. He just wanted her out of the way and incommunicado until he could get back to the house and brazen it out when Ames’ body was found.”

  “Not knowing at that point that Ralph had come back with a gun to shoot a dead man?”

  “He couldn’t have known anything about that, according to the timing. Naturally, he kept his mouth tightly shut when he did walk in and learn that Ralph had been arrested for murder.”

  “Naturally,” agreed Griggs grimly. “He must have felt pretty damn good and smug about things at that point.”

  He turned to Mrs. Larson and said in a curiously gentle voice: “I think that’s all we need from you for now. Will you be all right alone here? I could leave a man, if you like.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be all right? You… you think Victor did it, don’t you?”

  “I don’t rightly know what we think at this point,” Griggs told her. “You got some more sleeping pills if you need them?”

  Dorothy Larson shuddered. “I’m sure there are some, though I don’t think I’ll ever take another one. Why don’t you go on? I’d like to be alone.”

  As the three men went down the stairs together, Shayne asked the sergeant, “Did you latch onto anything new after I left the Ames house?”

  “Nothing worth a damn. Going over their stories a second time just left things in the same mess. They all denied hearing anything from the study during the crucial half hour. I didn’t tell them about the stab wound, of course. Theoretically the only person who knows about that is the one who stabbed him. Now you tell me Conroy knew all the time he’d been stabbed. Why didn’t he tell us in the beginning if he was innocent?”

  “I guess he thought it was better just to let well enough alone when he found Larson charged with the crime anyhow. His story is that he was convinced that Larson was the knife-slayer.”

  “How could he be when that back door was bolted on the inside?”

  “Conroy didn’t know about that… he says.” Shayne paused, “What are you doing about Sutter?”

  “Nothing yet,” fumed Griggs. “He seems to be missing too. Checked in at a hotel all right, but he still hadn’t turned up in his room the last I heard from the man I sent to bring him in.”

  Shayne said casually, “I doubt that he’ll have anything useful to contribute.” They had stopped at the curb beside the sergeant’s car, and the taxi Shayne had been using was parked three cars behind it. Not wishing to draw Griggs’ attention to his unorthodox conveyance, Shayne opened the door for the sergeant and suggested, “You go ahead on in. I’ll follow right along because I want to sit in when you question Conroy.”

  Griggs said reluctantly, “I guess you earned that.” He stooped to enter his car and paused in that position, “You haven’t told me how you got onto him… and his having Mrs. Larson stashed away in a motel room.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” Shayne told him breezily, striding away. “Pure coincidence. Just one of my lucky hunches.”

  He walked past the taxi slowly, turned and came back to it as the Homicide car pulled away. He followed at a moderate pace and parked the cab unobtrusively around the corner from the police station in front of an all night short order joint, and walked back to climb the one flight of stairs to Griggs’ office.

  He found the sergeant seated alone at his desk, and he almost beamed as he told the redhead, “I think maybe we got some kind of break, though I’m damned if I see how it adds up right now. But it’s sure as hell a tie-in between Sutter and Victor Conroy. You know I had a man waiting at Sutter’s hotel for him to show up. I sent Powers because he knew him by sight. I just had a call from Powers when I walked in a minute ago. He was waiting outside the hotel when a Pontiac pulled up and Sutter got out of it. He refused to tell Powers where he’d been the last hour, and you know what?”

  With a sinking heart Shayne realized that he did, indeed, “know what.” But he concealed his knowledge and asked weakly, “What, Sergeant?”

  “It was Victor Conroy’s car that Sutter was driving. I knew there was something fishy about that lawyer all along. I’ll get the truth out of him now. What he was really doing in Miami and what his business was with Ames.”

  “Yeh,” said Shayne, suddenly very conscious of the fact that he had twenty-five thousand dollars of blackmail money wadded into his right-hand pants pocket.

  “While we’re waiting for him,” he said desperately, “how about having Conroy and Larson in?”

  “They’re both on their way right now. One thing I want to ask Conroy before Sutter gets here is what the lawyer was doing driving his car.”

  “As a matter of fact, I can explain that,” Shayne said quickly. “Remember asking me how I found Conroy and Mrs. Larson in the motel room? It was this way…”

  He paused, cudgeling his brain for a plausible explanation that would satisfy the sergeant and sidetrack him from his present line of inquiry which was
bound to expose the blackmail angle and his questionable part in it.

  Before he was able to think of anything the door opened and a policeman ushered Ralph Larson into the room. He was still sullen-faced and defiant, and he looked at Griggs curiously as the sergeant leaned back in his chair and smiled benignly.

  “You’re a lucky son-of-a-gun, Larson!”

  “I am?” He looked bewildered. “Why?”

  “Because we’ve got a damned efficient police department in Miami, and we leave no stones unturned in seeking the solution of a crime.” Griggs spoke sonorously and Shayne realized he must have memorized his little speech carefully. “First though,” Griggs went on, thoroughly enjoying himself, “if you’re still worried about your wife… forget it. She’s safely back at home. I left her there myself not more than fifteen minutes ago.”

  “That’s fine,” muttered Ralph. “I’m… glad.”

  “Secondly,” said Griggs, “you didn’t shoot Wesley Ames to death tonight even though you did try like hell. Do you know why you didn’t, Larson?”

  “He knows why all right,” Shayne said coldly. “Stop toying with him, Sergeant. He’s the one man in Miami who knew that Wesley Ames was dead before he fired that bullet into his heart because he had stabbed him to death half an hour earlier.

  “You were damned smart to figure that out so fast, Sergeant,” Shayne hurried on with a chuckle while Griggs regarded him in openmouthed astonishment and Larson scowled blackly and tried to break in with a protest.

  “Remember right there in the study when we discovered the paper-knife was missing, you theorized that Ralph had stabbed him on his first trip and then hurried home to get a gun and come back and establish a perfect alibi by pretending to shoot him. It was damned fast and clever thinking, Larson,” Shayne told him, “after you realized you were the only and the perfect suspect for the stabbing. But you almost made a fatal mistake by placing your bullet in the same hole the knife had gone into. That’s what the sergeant meant by the efficiency of the police department. If you’d killed him by shooting it would have shown premeditation and been first degree murder. And that would really have been ironic. Because, as it stands now, a jury will take into consideration the fact that you grabbed up that paper-knife in a jealous rage that brought on temporary insanity, and you’ll probably get only a few years in prison. That’s why you’re a lucky son-of-a-gun. Because Sergeant Griggs refused to take even all the obvious facts for granted and ordered the post mortem that proved Ames was stabbed to death before he was shot.”

  Shayne paused to catch his breath, and saw Griggs shaking his bald head at him, sadly and reproachfully.

  “You’re forgetting something, Mike. I figured it might be like you say until you reminded me that the back door was bolted on the inside and that proved Ames had to be alive when Larson left.”

  “That’s right,” the young man put in shakily. “My God, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. If Ames was stabbed before I shot him, I certainly don’t know anything about it. He was alive when I left, and I heard him bolt that door behind me.”

  “Tell him, Sergeant,” said Shayne indulgently.

  “Tell him what, Mike?” Griggs looked more baffled than ever.

  “That we found his fingerprints on that inside back door bolt… and then we knew exactly how he worked it. You ran to that back door and bolted it before you fired at the dead man,” Shayne told Larson with a shrug.

  “It was obvious when we found traces of your fingerprints on it. That’s why you bothered to lock the front door behind you when you ran in. To give yourself a few precious seconds to bolt the back door before you shot him.”

  “I didn’t! This is all absolutely haywire. I swear I don’t understand…”

  “As soon as Conroy comes in,” Shayne said to Griggs, “ask him how Larson was dressed when he came to see Ames. One will get you ten he was wearing a jacket. He was expecting to go out on an assignment for Ames tonight among the night spots, and even in Miami they require jackets in most places. But he was in his shirt-sleeves when he came back to shoot Ames. Why? Why would he get rid of his jacket in the meantime? I’ll tell you why. Because when he stabbed Ames he unconsciously dropped the paper-knife in his coat pocket and ran out with it. Send a man out to his apartment and have his wife look in the closet for the jacket he wore to work this morning. Ten to one, it’ll be hanging there. It would seem safer to him than trying to throw it away and he was racing against time to get back and shoot Ames before he was discovered dead. And one will get you ten that there’ll be traces of Ames’ blood in the coat pocket. Not the knife, maybe. That would be easy to toss out the car window.”

  Ralph Larson was backing away in horror as Shayne spoke, and he cowered against the wall with both hands over his face, Griggs looked at him with a scowl and said softly, “By God, Mike, I swear you hit the nail on the head that time. I wouldn’t give you one against a hundred that there isn’t blood inside that jacket pocket.”

  There was a sharp rap on the door and Patrolman Powers opened it and stood on the threshold holding firmly to Sutter’s arm. “Here he is, Sarge.”

  “Take him away,” said Griggs absently. “We’re busy in here, son. Let him go. What the hell do I care whose car he was driving tonight? We just solved a murder, Mike Shayne and I. I don’t care what he was doing in Miami just so he wasn’t killing anybody.”

  16

  BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HIS BORROWED TAXICAB AGAIN, Shayne drove east to Miami Avenue and turned south a block to park directly behind his own car which was at the curb in front of a dingy bar-room. He took the keys out of the ignition and dropped them into his pocket, then withdrew the wad of crumpled bills given to him so unwillingly by Alonzo Sutter, and selected one for five hundred dollars from the others.

  He put that in the pocket with the taxi keys and shoved the rest of the money back into his other pocket, and then got out briskly and entered the bar-room. There were half a dozen late drinkers seated on stools, and Shayne circled them to seat himself at the end beside a stocky man with a pockmarked face and a cheerful grin.

  The man glanced at him casually as he sat down, and when the bartender moved down in front of them he said heartily, “Bring my friend a slug of cognac if you’ve got such in the house, Jim. With ice water on the side. Everything okay, Mike?” he added as the bartender turned away.

  “All through,” Shayne told him. “Your heap is parked outside behind mine. Trade keys, huh?” He got the taxi keys from his pocket and put them on the bar, and the stocky man got Shayne’s car keys out and exchanged them for his own.

  The bartender set a shot-glass of cognac in front of the redhead with a glass of ice water beside it. Shayne took a sip and continued in a conversational tone: “Only one casualty. I lost your cap somewhere along the line. And I ran up a few bucks on your meter that you’ll have to turn in.” He withdrew the wadded five-hundred bill from his pocket and slid it in front of the taxi-driver.

  The man spread it out slowly on the mahogany, protesting, “That was an old cap, Mike. You don’t hafta…” He paused, looking down at the denomination of the bill. “Holy gee! Is that two goddamn zeroes I’m looking at?”

  Shayne said happily, “That’s right. Hacking was real profitable tonight. Buy your old lady a fur coat or something.” He tossed off the rest of his drink and chased it with water, stood up and put his left hand firmly on the stocky man’s shoulder. “Thanks for the drink.”

  He went out and got into his own car, started the motor and glanced at his watch. He had promised Lucy Hamilton he would let her know how things turned out if it wasn’t too late. He decided it wasn’t too late, and he turned east in the direction of her apartment.

  The lights were all out in the front windows of her second-floor apartment when he parked in front of the building, and he got out his key-ring as he entered the small foyer, and selected from it a key which Lucy had given him for emergencies many years ago, but which he had not used more than two
or three times in all those years.

  It unlocked the outer door for him, and he went in and climbed one flight of stairs, and the same key unlocked the door of her apartment.

  He went into the entry-hall and switched on the ceiling light in the living room, entered through the archway and hesitated momentarily when he saw it was empty and her bedroom door was closed.

  Then he thrust his hand deep into his pocket and fingered the wad of bills there, strode blithely across to the door and opened it.

  Enough light entered Lucy’s bedroom from behind him to show the outline of her body curled up beneath the covers on the bed, and Shayne walked quietly to her side and looked down at her face pressed against the pillow.

  She was sleeping peacefully and trustfully, just as she had been earlier that night when he returned to his apartment, and again he stood beside her for a long moment, looking down at her and remembering a lot of things.

  Then he brought his hand out of his pocket and held it high in the air over her head and began letting thousands of dollars begin fluttering down over her.

  She stirred as some of the bills settled gently on her face, and opened her eyes slowly to look up into his grinning face, and then she sat up quickly, brushing the bills away and looking at them in bewilderment on the bedspread in front of her.

  She looked up at him again, shaking her tousled head gravely, and told him with a catch in her voice, “A mink coat doesn’t cost that much money, Michael.”

  His grin widened and he opened his big fist to let the rest of the money fall into her lap. He said generously, “Then let’s make it ermine, angel. Get yourself into a robe while I fix us both a drink and tell you what a smart guy you’re working for.”