“It was, somehow. Do you have the comparison photos?”
“They’re back at the office. But with the narrow depth of field you can probably tell more from looking through the microscope yourself.”
Fletcher drove him to the lab, where they persuaded the Sunday-duty officer to let them have a look at the bullets. While Fletcher and the officer stood by in the interests of propriety, Leopold squinted through the microscope at the twin chunks of lead.
“The death bullet is pretty battered,” he observed, but he had to admit that the rifling marks were the same. He glanced at the identification tag attached to the test bullet: Test slug fired from Smith & Wesson .38 Revolver, serial number 2420547.
Leopold turned away with a sigh, then turned back.
2420547.
He fished into his wallet and found his pistol permit. Smith & Wesson 2421622.
“I remembered those two’s on the end,” he told Fletcher. “That’s not my gun.”
“It’s the one I took from you, Captain. I’ll swear to it!”
“And I believe you, Fletcher. But it’s the one fact I needed. It tells me how Dr. Thursby managed to kill Monica in a locked room before my very eyes, with a gun that was in my holster at the time. And it just might tell us where to find the elusive Dr. Thursby.”
By Monday morning Leopold had made six long-distance calls to California, working from his desk telephone while Fletcher used the squadroom phone. Then, a little before noon, Leopold, Fletcher, the Commissioner, and a man from the District Attorney’s office took a car and drove up to Boston.
“You’re sure you’ve got it figured?” the Commissioner asked Leopold for the third time. “You know we shouldn’t allow you to cross the state line while awaiting grand jury action.”
“Look, either you trust me or you don’t,” Leopold snapped. Behind the wheel Fletcher allowed himself a slight smile, but the man from the D.A.’s office was deadly serious.
“The whole thing is so damned complicated,” the Commissioner grumbled.
“My ex-wife was a complicated woman. And remember, she had fifteen years to plan it.”
“Run over it for us again,” the D.A.’s man said.
Leopold sighed and started talking. “The murder gun wasn’t mine. The gun I pulled after the shot was fired, the one Fletcher took from me, had been planted on me some time before.”
“How?”
“I’ll get to that. Monica was the key to it all, of course. She hated me so much that her twisted brain planned her own murder in order to get revenge on me. She planned it in such a way that it would have been impossible for anyone but me to have killed her.”
“Only a crazy woman would do such a thing.”
“I’m afraid she was crazy—crazy for vengeance. She set up the entire plan for the afternoon of the wedding reception, but I’m sure they had an alternate in case I hadn’t gone to it. She wanted some place where there’d be lots of witnesses.”
“Tell them how she worked the bullet hitting her,” Fletcher urged.
“Well, that was the toughest part for me. I actually saw her shot before my eyes. I saw the bullet hit her and I saw the blood. Yet I was alone in a locked room with her. There was no hiding place, no opening from which a person or even a mechanical device could have fired the bullet at her. To you people it seemed I must be guilty, especially when the bullet came from the gun I was carrying.
“But I looked at it from a different angle—once Fletcher forced me to look at it at all! I knew I hadn’t shot her, and since no one else physically could have, I knew no one did! If Monica was killed by a .38 slug, it must have been fired after she was taken from that locked room. Since she was dead on arrival at the hospital, the most likely time for her murder—to me, at least—became the time of the ambulance ride, when Dr. Thursby must have hunched over her with careful solicitousness.”
“But you saw her shot!”
“That’s one of the two reasons Fletcher and I were on the phones to Hollywood this morning. My ex-wife worked in pictures, at times in the technical end of movie-making. On the screen there are a number of ways to simulate a person being shot. An early method was a sort of compressed-air gun fired at the actor from just off-camera. These days, especially in the bloodiest of the Western and war films, they use a tiny explosive charge fitted under the actor’s clothes. Of course the body is protected from burns, and the force of it is directed outward. A pouch of fake blood is released by the explosion, adding to the realism of it.”
“And this is what Monica did?”
Leopold nodded. “A call to her Hollywood studio confirmed the fact that she worked on a film using this device. I noticed when I met her that she’d gained weight around the bosom, but I never thought to attribute it to the padding and the explosive device. She triggered it when she raised her arm as she screamed at me.”
“Any proof?”
“The hole in her dress was just too big to be an entrance hole from a .38, even fired at close range—too big and too ragged. I can thank Fletcher for spotting that. This morning the lab technicians ran a test on the bloodstains. Some of it was her blood, the rest was chicken blood.”
“She was a good actress to fool all those people.”
“She knew Dr. Thursby would be the first to examine her. All she had to do was fall over when the explosive charge ripped out the front of her dress.”
“What if there had been another doctor at the wedding?”
Leopold shrugged. “Then they would have postponed it. They couldn’t take that chance.”
“And the gun?”
“I remembered Thursby bumping against me when I first met him. He took my gun and substituted an identical weapon—identical, that is, except for the serial number. He’d fired it just a short time earlier, to complete the illusion. When I drew it I simply played into their hands. There I was, the only person in the room with an apparently dying woman, and a gun that had just been fired.”
“But what about the bullet that killed her?”
“Rifling marks on the slugs are made by the lands in the rifled barrel of a gun causing grooves in the lead of a bullet. A bullet fired through a smooth tube has no rifling marks.”
“What in hell kind of gun has a smooth tube for a barrel?” the Commissioner asked.
“A home-made one, like a zip gun. Highly inaccurate, but quite effective when the gun is almost touching the skin of the victim. Thursby fired a shot from the pistol he was to plant on me, probably into a pillow or some other place where he could retrieve the undamaged slug. Then he reused the rifled slug on another cartridge and fired it with his home-made zip gun, right into Monica’s heart. The original rifling marks were still visible and no new ones were added.”
“The ambulance driver and attendant didn’t hear the shot?”
“They would have stayed up front, since he was a doctor riding with a patient. It gave him a chance to get the padded explosive mechanism off her chest, too. Once that was away, I imagine he leaned over her, muffling the zip gun as best he could, and fired the single shot that killed her. Remember, an ambulance on its way to a hospital is a pretty noisy place—it has a siren going all the time.”
They were entering downtown Boston now, and Leopold directed Fletcher to a hotel near the Common. “I still don’t believe the part about switching the guns,” the D.A.’s man objected. “You mean to tell me he undid the strap over your gun, got out the gun, and substituted another one—all without your knowing it?”
Leopold smiled. “I mean to tell you only one type of person could have managed it—an expert, professional pickpocket. The type you see occasionally doing an act in night clubs and on television. That’s how I knew where to find him. We called all over Southern California till we came up with someone who knew Monica and knew she’d dated a man named Thompson who had a pickpocket act. We called Thompson’s agent and discovered he’s playing a split week at a Boston lounge, and is staying at this hotel.”
�
�What if he couldn’t have managed it without your catching on? Or what if you hadn’t been wearing your gun?”
“Most detectives wear their guns off-duty. If I hadn’t been, or if he couldn’t get it, they’d simply have changed their plan. He must have signaled her when he’d safely made the switch.”
“Here we are,” Fletcher said. “Let’s go up.”
The Boston police had two men waiting to meet them, and they went up in the elevator to the room registered in the name of Max Thompson. Fletcher knocked on the door, and when it opened the familiar face of Felix Thursby appeared. He no longer wore the mustache, but he had the same slim surgeon-like fingers that Immy Fontaine had noticed. Not a doctor’s fingers, but a pickpocket’s.
“We’re taking you in for questioning,” Fletcher said, and the Boston detectives issued the standard warnings of his legal rights.
Thursby blinked his tired eyes at them, and grinned a bit when he recognized Leopold. “She said you were smart. She said you were a smart cop.”
“Did you have to kill her?” Leopold asked.
“I didn’t. I just held the gun there and she pulled the trigger herself. She did it all herself, except for switching the guns. She hated you that much.”
“I know,” Leopold said quietly, staring at something far away. “But I guess she must have hated herself just as much.”
(1971)
A Melee Of Diamonds
THE MAN WITH THE silver-headed cane turned into Union Street just after nine o’clock, walking briskly through the scattering of evening shoppers and salesclerks hurrying home after a long day. It was a clear April evening, cool enough for the topcoat the man wore, but still a relief at the end of a long winter. He glanced into occasional shop windows as he walked, but did not pause until he’d reached the corner of Union and Madison. There, he seemed to hesitate for a moment at the windows of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. He glanced quickly to each side, as if making certain there was no one near, and then smashed the nearest window with his silver-headed cane.
The high-pitched ringing of the alarm mingled with the sound of breaking glass, as the man reached quickly into the window. A few pedestrians froze in their places, but as the man turned to make his escape a uniformed policeman suddenly appeared around the corner. “Hold it right there!” he barked, reaching for his holstered revolver.
The man turned, startled at the voice so close, and swung his cane at the officer. Then, as the policeman moved in, he swung again, catching the side of the head just beneath the cap. The officer staggered and went down, and the man with the cane rounded the corner running.
“Stop him!” a shirt-sleeved man shouted from the doorway of the Diamond Exchange. “We’ve been robbed!”
The police officer, dazed and bleeding, tried to get to his knees and then fell back to the sidewalk, but a young man in paint-stained slacks and a zippered jacket detached himself from the frozen onlookers and started after the fleeing robber. He was a fast runner, and he overtook the man with the cane halfway down the block. They tumbled together into a pile of discarded boxes, rolling on the pavement, as the man tried to bring his cane up for another blow.
He shook free somehow, losing the cane but regaining his feet, and headed for an alleyway. A police car, attracted by the alarm, screeched to a halt in the street, and two officers jumped out with drawn guns. “Stop or we’ll shoot!” the nearest officer commanded, and fired his pistol into the air in warning.
The sound of the shot echoed along the street, and the running man skidded to a halt at the entrance to the alleyway. He turned and raised his hands above his head. “All right,” he said. “I’m not armed. Don’t shoot.”
The officer kept his pistol out until the second cop had snapped on the handcuffs.
“Damn it!” Captain Leopold exploded, staring at the paper cup full of light brown coffee that Lieutenant Fletcher had just set before him. “Is that the best you can get out of the machine?”
“Something’s wrong with it, Captain. We’ve sent for a serviceman.”
Leopold grumbled and tried to drink the stuff. One swallow was all he could stomach. The men in the department had given him a coffee percolator of his very own when he’d assumed command of the combined Homicide and Violent Crimes squad, but on this particular morning, with his coffee can empty, he’d been forced to return to the temperamental vending machine in the hall.
“Get me a cola instead, will you, Fletcher?” he said at last, pouring the coffee down the sink in one corner of his office. When the lieutenant came back, he asked, “What’s this about Phil Begler being in the hospital?”
Fletcher nodded in confirmation. “There’s a report on your desk. Phil came upon a guy stealing a handful of diamonds from the window of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. The guy whacked him on the head with a cane and started running. They caught him, but Phil’s in the hospital with a concussion.”
“I should go see him,” Leopold decided. “Phil’s a good guy.”
“They identified the fellow that stole the diamonds and hit him as Rudy Hoffman, from New York. He’s got a long record of smash-and-grab jobs.”
Leopold nodded. “Maybe Phil Begler’s concussion will be enough to put him away for good.”
Fletcher nodded. “Hope so, Captain, but there is one little problem with the case.”
“What’s that?” Leopold asked.
“Well, they caught Hoffman only a half-block from the scene, after a young fellow chased and tackled him, and fought with him till a patrol car arrived. Hoffman got $58,000 worth of diamonds out of that window, and he was in sight of at least one person every instant until they arrested him.”
“So?”
“The diamonds weren’t on him, Captain. No trace of them.”
“He dropped them in the street.”
“They searched. They searched the street, they searched him, they even searched the patrol car he was in after his arrest. No diamonds.”
Leopold was vaguely irritated that such a simple matter should disrupt the morning’s routine. “Haven’t they questioned him about it?”
“He’s not talking, Captain.”
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Bring him down. I’ll have to show you guys how it’s done.”
Rudy Hoffman was a gray-haired man in his early forties. The years in prison, Leopold noted, had left him with pale complexion and shifty, uncertain eyes. He licked his lips often as he spoke, nervously glancing from Leopold to Fletcher and then back again.
“I don’t know anything,” he said. “I’m not talking without a lawyer. You can’t even question me without a lawyer. I know my rights!”
Leopold sat down opposite him. “It’s not just a little smash-and-grab this time, Rudy. That cop you hit might die. You could go up for the rest of your life.”
“He’s just got a concussion. I heard the guards talkin’.”
“Still, we’ve got you on assault with a deadly weapon. With your record, that’s enough. We don’t even need the felony charge. So you see, you’re not really protecting yourself by clamming up about the diamonds. Even if we don’t find them, we’ve still got you nailed.”
Rudy Hoffman merely smiled and looked sleepy. “Those diamonds are where you’ll never find them, cop. That much I promise you.”
Leopold glared at him for a moment, thinking of Phil Begler in a hospital bed. “We’ll see about that,” he said, and stood up. “Come on, Fletcher, we’re keeping him from his beauty sleep.”
Back in Leopold’s office, Fletcher said, “See what I mean, Captain? He’s a hard one.”
Leopold was grim. “I’ll find those damned diamonds and stuff them down his throat. Tell me everything that happened from the instant he broke the window.”
“I can do better than that, Captain. The kid who chased him is outside now, waiting to make a statement. Want to see him now?”
Neil Quart was not exactly a kid, though he was still on the light side of twenty-five. Leopold had seen the type m
any times before, on the streets usually, with shaggy hair and dirty clothes, taunting the rest of the world.
“You’re quite a hero,” Leopold told him. “Suppose you tell us how it happened.”
Quart rubbed at his nose, trying to look cool. “I work over at Bambaum’s nights, in the shipping department. I’d just finished there at nine o’clock and was heading home. Down by the Diamond Exchange I saw this guy with the cane smash a window. I wasn’t close enough to grab him, but as he started to run away this cop rounds the corner. The guy hit him with the cane, hard, and knocked him down. Now, I don’t have any love for cops, but I decided to take out after this guy. I ran him down halfway up the block, and we tussled a little. He tried to conk me with the cane too, but I got it away from him. Then he was up and running, but the other cops got there. One cop fired a shot in the air and it was all over.”
Leopold nodded. “How long was the robber—Rudy Hoffman—out of your sight?”
“He wasn’t out of my sight. Not for a second! I went right after him when he knocked the cop down. Hell, I thought he might have killed him.”
“You didn’t see him throw anything away, into the street?”
“Not a thing.”
“Could he have thrown anything away as he raised his hands?”
“I don’t think so.”
Fletcher interrupted at this point. “They caught him at the entrance to an alleyway, Captain. Every inch of it was searched.”
Leopold turned back to Neil Quart. “As you’ve probably guessed, we’re looking for the diamonds he stole. Any idea what he might have done with them?”
The young man shrugged. “Not a glimmer. Unless…We were wrestling around some boxes.”
“They were all checked,” Fletcher said. “Everything was checked. The police were there all night, looking.”
“You still did a good job,” Leopold told the young man. “You weren’t afraid to get involved, and that’s what counts.”
“Thanks. I just didn’t like to see him hit that cop.”
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