Lost Lady

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  “Get this straight, Elsie, because I want you to phone in to Captain James and Bert Lane. We could rush the place, but there’s no sense to it. Both Bayless and the girl know how to handle rifles. There’s no use getting a couple of cops killed if we can do it the easy way.”

  “Gas?” asked Elsie.

  “Sure. Tell ‘em to send out a tear-gas gun and a couple of bombs. Meet them a block or so from here. Don’t advertise what’s cooking. Lead them around the back. When you’re all set, move as close as you can to the back windows and let fly. Try not to hurt anybody, and for Christ’s sake, keep out of sight yourself. The tear gas will do the work, especially if they’re not expecting it. Once it gets in their eyes, they won’t be thinking about their lovely little suicide pact. They’ll come right out that front door, meek as lambs.”

  Elsie said he understood. “One thing more,” finished Marty. “Don’t move away from here in a hurry. Danny and I will go back and try to reason with Bayless—maybe even talk to the girl if she’ll let us. While we’re doing that, you drift off. Make it casual.”

  Marty and I started walking back along the edge of the swimming pool. We knew the pair in the playhouse were watching us. We knew that Elsie Barker would play it cute, too. They’d never notice when he went or even that he had gone.

  “We’ll get the pair of them,” Marty was whispering. “We’ll take them down to the station. Both our other friends are there. One way or another we’ll learn the truth.”

  I said, “You don’t think Iris was in it alone?”

  “I keep on thinking it ain’t that simple, Danny. She’s our meat, all right, but I still believe we can build up a neater case by extracting a few well-chosen words out of Dolores and Montero. This thing stinks in all directions.” He said, “Make a pitch for the dame, Danny. And try to forget that she knocked off your buddy. Try talking to her as though tonight hadn’t happened.”

  I said I’d try. It wasn’t going to be easy, feeling the way I did, but I’d try. I took a few steps toward the house and raised my voice.

  “Iris,” I called.

  Bayless answered. He asked what I wanted with Iris. I said I wanted to speak to her. I said it couldn’t possibly do any harm.

  There must have been a debate inside. Then Iris appeared at the window. She looked terrible and she looked beautiful. She stared at me, and then suddenly she started to cry.

  “Oh, Danny!” she said. “I’m so glad you’re not dead!”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Marty Walsh was breathing down my neck. He knew what effect her words would have on me, and I heard him whisper, “Steady, kid!”

  “Listen,” I said, trying to forget Chuck Morrison. “I think you know me well enough to realize I’m telling the truth. You’re doing Bayless a dirty trick by letting him sacrifice himself for you.”

  Bayless ranged alongside Iris at the window. He said, “You mean well, O’Leary, but what you’re suggesting is out.”

  “You’re making a stupid play. What do you get out of being a hero?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Iris whispered something to him and he stepped aside, leaving her at the window. This was a hell of a spot for an intimate conversation: she and Bayless barricaded in the playhouse, the scene brilliantly lighted, eyes peering at us from behind hedges.

  “Robert and I have determined what we’re going to do,” Iris said. “It won’t be fun, but it will still be better than being arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned— especially when I’m not guilty.”

  “If you’re not guilty,” I said, “that will be proved, too.”

  She gave a short, sharp, cynical laugh. “That doesn’t check with what I know of the police. You wouldn’t have sent a fleet of cars and an army of men up here tonight if you hadn’t been convinced of my guilt.”

  “What we think has nothing to do with it, Iris. We don’t try you, we don’t sit on the jury.”

  “But you prepare the evidence the jury hears.”

  “We don’t do that, either. Not the way you put it. We furnish the prosecution with facts. If the facts make you out guilty, that’s not our fault.”

  She said abruptly, “I had nothing to do with that man’s death.”

  “What man?”

  “The one I heard about on the air. The man who was in your car at the place where we were supposed to meet.”

  “You know a lot about it for an innocent person.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Danny. When I heard the news broadcast, the location told me something. The time checked. The license number of the car was the clincher.”

  “Where were you?” I asked sharply.

  “This you’ll never believe. I had made a wrong turn and got on the wrong street. I didn’t check the street signs because I thought I was right. I waited for you. You didn’t show up. I waited an awful long time. After a while I heard this news broadcast. I thought it was you.”

  “So you drove home and telephoned Robert Bayless?”

  “Yes. I was afraid I might be involved.” She shook her head impatiently. “I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I, Danny?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “To this extent: We’re going to get you. Resistance will make your case a lot weaker. It’s virtually an admission of guilt. If you and Robert—or either of you—happen to shoot one of us, you’ll both be guilty.”

  “That won’t matter much, Danny. I know it sounds awful corny, but the truth is that I’m not going to be alive when you get me.”

  “And it will make you feel better to have killed a policeman or two? Damn it, Iris, why don’t you use your head for once in your life?”

  She started to say something, but I cut her off. I figured I knew something about this girl, and now I tossed it at her straight.

  “You told me once that you knew only two really good people in the world. One was your sister. She’s dead. The last person she is known to have been with is you. The other good person you mentioned was Robert Bayless. If you let him follow this crazy course, he’ll be dead too. Two people sacrificed for you. And why? For nothing. Personally, I think you killed my friend tonight. If you’ve got to make a gesture, go ahead and knock yourself off. Right now, it wouldn’t mean a damn thing to me. But why should you let the other ‘truly good person’ you ever knew toss himself to the wolves? What has he done to deserve being the fourth victim in this series?”

  She was silent for a long time. Then she said quietly, “It’s just the way I thought it would be, Danny. There’s no use arguing with you.”

  I shrugged and turned my back on the playhouse. Marty and I walked away. Slowly. Unostentatiously. We talked in whispers as though planning our attack.

  Marty said, “Nice stalling, kid. We used up a lot of time. We ought to be getting action out of Elsie Barker any minute now.”

  We stood at the corner of the big house as though discussing tactics. Marty knew they were both good rifle shots and that they couldn’t miss from this distance, but he felt sure neither of them would fire first.

  He continued to spar for time. He called the uniform men to him one by one and gave a fine exhibition of serious conference. What he actually was doing was double-talking. He kept them nodding as though they understood the plan he wanted Iris to think he was working on. Our little pantomime must have looked good to the people in the playhouse. It was just a question of how long they’d hold still for it, how long before they’d start to get suspicious. We wanted to keep both of them watching us. We didn’t want either to start looking out the back windows.

  Then, suddenly, the tension snapped. There was the report of the tear-gas gun. Then another. We heard the first crash of glass and imagined we heard the second. We could see the gas inside the playhouse. We heard violent coughing.

  The door opened and they stumbled out into the fresh air, Bayless first and then Iris. They were blinded by the gas.

  The rest was easy. Cops descended on them in a cloud. Marty and one of the uniform boys grabbed
Iris. Elsie came racing from the rear of the playhouse, and he and I got hold of Bayless. We snapped a pair of cuffs on him. Elsie wasn’t taking chances with anybody who had been just about to kill himself a couple of cops.

  For a few minutes there was a surplus of excitement. The newspapermen swarmed over us. Flash bulbs started popping. Marty protested, but nobody listened. This was too good to miss.

  We carried them down to the station in two cars. I rode in the car with Bayless. He was still feeling lousy from the effects of the tear gas, still coughing, still half blinded. But he was drinking in hunks of fresh air and it was helping by the minute.

  We got them upstairs. An attractive young policewoman was on the job. She took Iris into the ladies’ room and shook her down. She did things to make Iris feel better physically.

  There was a general conference in the big corner room that was customarily used by Homicide and Robbery. It was the same room I’d gone into with Iris Kent that first night—so very, very long ago—when she had informed me that her brother-in-law was a louse, that she thought the missing-person report was a stall, that she was certain Dorothy was dead and that Dean Halliday had killed her. A lot of water had rolled over the dam since then.

  I took a chair in the corner. I was experiencing a hell of a letdown. From now on, they could play it any way they liked. All I could do was to sit there and try not to think of Chuck.

  I didn’t want to punch the wall or do any of the violent things I had desired to do when I first heard the news. I’d been drained dry. I sat in my corner, paying no attention to what was going on. I was thinking, thinking, thinking. Why, I asked myself; why? Something kept nagging at me. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle all fitted now, but I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that something was missing, that at least one of the pieces was out of place.

  Marty had the boys bring in chairs. He marched all the people in. I didn’t know what he had in mind, and didn’t much care. I seemed to be thinking more clearly now, for no reason at all. Little things that never before had seemed important were beginning to assume importance.

  Only two other detectives remained in the room with us. The door was closed, and the hall outside was jammed. The press was there, of course, yelling about deadlines.

  Marty started off by warning his congregation that he didn’t want any general debate. They were to keep their mouths shut until they were spoken to, and then were to open them only to answer specific questions.

  He reminded them that three murders had been committed, that each of them was more or less involved. He made it clear that he realized each of them knew more than he had ever admitted, and he said nobody was going to leave until he had the story whole and straight.

  I saw now what he was driving at. He hoped that in the lace of a murder charge, they’d start unloading. He hoped they’d begin tossing accusations at each other. He was figuring that he’d come up with Iris, all right, but that wasn’t the whole case. What he wanted was corroborative evidence, something that would make conviction certain. Just knowing the identity of the guilty person isn’t enough in a court of law. You’ve got to have evidence to make it stick.

  He went over it from beginning to end. He told them only those things that he was sure they knew already, but at the same time he did a clever job of insinuating, so that any person in that room could see himself being set up as the patsy. He let it be understood without actually promising anything, that if one of them would turn state’s evidence, and go all the way, a deal could be made.

  He did a keen job. He got nowhere.

  Montero was impassive and noncommunicative. He knew nothing, he said, and wasn’t discussing even that. Dolores Laverne Montero admitted having been the mistress of Dean Halliday, of having contacted Dorothy Halliday, of having been friendly with Iris. But now, she averred, she was a respectable married woman, and she hadn’t been involved in anything that smacked of homicide. She didn’t sound very convincing, but she also didn’t give us anything to grab for.

  Robert Bayless was calm. He assured us he hadn’t been bluffing; that if we hadn’t tricked him by spraying the playhouse with tear gas, he’d have shot it out with us and then have killed Iris and himself. He said he was sorry it hadn’t worked out that way.

  Up to this point, Marty had drawn a blank. He’d been reaching for a witness, a real first-class witness who would make his case airtight. None of the fish had risen to his bait.

  Then he started on Iris. He traced her connection.from the moment she had walked into the station with Dean Halliday right through tonight. He explained what he had on her, and how it would sound in court. He subtly implanted the idea that if any of these other monkeys were holding out on him, a smart D.A. would drag the truth out of ‘em on the witness stand.

  He had a fine case against Iris for the murder of her sister. He admitted he lacked motive in that one, but said it didn’t bother him too much. As he put it, there’d be no need to convict her of all three murders. All he had to do was to tie her to one, and tie her tight.

  The Dean Halliday case against her was more solid. Her expressed hatred of the man, her shock and anger at the party he was throwing in her sister’s house just a few days after Dorothy’s death—here she had motive plus opportunity.

  But on the killing of Chuck Morrison, he said, he had her dead-bang. There was his case. She, and only she, knew of the rendezvous with me; she knew I’d been working on the case and that I’d uncovered something that would convict her. He planted the idea that he knew what the thing was, but .wasn’t exposing his ace in the hole. On this job, he said, it had to be Iris.

  Iris hadn’t moved while he was talking. Once she interrupted to say, “Three other people in this room were in the house when I made the date with Danny O’Leary. I talked to him from upstairs. Any one of them could have been listening in. Any one of them could have done what I am accused of doing. Or they could have passed the information along to someone else.”

  Marty Walsh made an impatient gesture. He said he was tired of talking in circles. The time had come for action. He said he was booking Iris Kent on three charges of suspicion of murder. Following protocol, he turned to me as his partner, and asked whether I agreed.

  A voice came from somewhere. It surprised me because it was my own voice. I said, “No, Marty, I don’t agree.”

  He seemed startled. But he wasn’t half as startled as I was, because suddenly and unexpectedly the missing piece of jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place; I’d been able to see something to which I had been blind, and I saw it at this moment because I hadn’t been expecting to see it, because my mind had been wide open and not busy wrestling with preconceived ideas.

  “Iris didn’t kill any of them,” I said, amazed at my own temerity.

  He tried not to show his annoyance. “All right, Danny,” he said, like a parent indulging a small boy. “If Iris isn’t guilty, who is?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. It wasn’t that I was trying to ham it up, rather it was because I wanted to be sure I was sure.

  They were all staring at me, leaning forward in their chairs. I drew a deep breath and took the plunge.

  “The murderer,” I said, “is Robert Bayless.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  For a few seconds nobody said anything, especially me. Now that the words were out, now that I’d laid it on the line, I was afraid.

  Iris broke the silence. She said hotly that my accusation was ridiculous, fantastic, absurd. Dolores and Montero seemed dazed. They were also on guard, suspecting a trick.

  Marty Walsh tried hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, tried hard not to sound annoyed. He tried, but he didn’t quite succeed. “Would you mind explaining, Danny,” he asked, “how you reached this remarkable conclusion?”

  I said I wouldn’t mind, but that for several reasons I thought it’d be a good idea to take Montero and Dolores out of the room. Marty called two of the boys and told them to take the suspects back to their cages.

&n
bsp; While all this was going on, Robert Bayless was silent. He was alternately staring at me and at the floor. He had his hands clasped tightly. He was doing a lot of thinking, but so was I. I could have felt sorry for him if Chuck Morrison hadn’t been the latest of his victims. There’s something pathetic about a criminal who has been cornered and caught.

  I had him. I knew I had him. Just that one little missing piece had dropped into place. It could have dropped for Marty as well as for me, and if it had, Marty would have looked like the smart detective. But he’d been concentrating on specific things while I’d been sitting in the corner not trying to concentrate. My very lack of concentration had helped me pick up, and evaluate, this one little thing that gave rhyme and reason to all the other little things. Well, not all, perhaps, but enough to make me certain.

  The door was closed again. In the room were the Homicide captain, our own skipper, Marty, Iris, Robert Bayless, and Bert Lane.

  Marty said, “All right, Danny. Give.”

  “It’s all jumbled up in my mind even yet,” I said. “I wish I could start at the beginning and carry through. I can’t. There are certain angles I still don’t understand, but those can be cleared up.

  “Let’s get this straight first of all. We’ve assumed, all of us, that Bayless couldn’t have had any motive; certainly no financial motive. We took it for granted that he was eventually going to marry Iris, but Iris never actually said that. In fact, her remarks about Bayless were usually that she wondered why she didn’t have sense enough to marry him. I believe Bayless knew, even better than Iris knew, that she would never marry him.”

  Bayless spoke then, for the first time. He said, “That’s pretty conjectural, isn’t it, O’Leary?”

  “Yes,” I confessed, “it is. I’ve got more of the same. But I’ve also got certain angles that are definite. Put them all together and you’ve got a pattern and a purpose.

  “Somebody,” I went on, “was putting the bite on Dorothy Halliday. Somebody had got fifteen thousand dollars in cash from her in three installments just prior to her death. This somebody had a date with her for that night. She was worried about it, but not as worried as we were led to believe. I’m not convinced that she entrusted her personal jewelry to Bayless before she went to keep her last engagement. I think he took those things from her after killing her. His first thought was to make it look like robbery. Later he got wise to the fact that it didn’t look that way to us, so he gave us the jewelry with this cooked-up story. It was a smart move. It threw us off balance. That was the first mistake he made. He outsmarted himself.”