Crime on My Hands (3 page)

“One of the extras got himself killed. We thought you might be able to identify him.”

“So that's why we had one lunch left over? I thought at first Sammy maybe only took one. I've been checking the cast to see if we're paying somebody who's not here.”

“Did you find anyone missing?”

“Yeah. Guy named Herman Smith. Didn't get his lunch. Showed up for work, turned in his slip okay. So I guess he's it. What'd he do, get a horse hoof in his face?”

“He got a bullet in his head.”

“Yeah? Thought they shot only blanks.”

“That was my impression, too.”

We walked over to Riegleman. He stood some distance away from the body. Sammy was under a wagon near him.

“Well, we know who he is,” I told Riegleman.

“Yes, Mr. Riegleman,” Paul said eagerly.

“The chef informed me that we had an extra lunch, and I checked to see if somebody had turned in his work slip and then taken a powder. I watch that sort of thing very closely.”

Riegleman nodded shortly. “Will you take a look, Paul? I have sent for the police.”

Paul looked down at the bearded face. He frowned. He looked up at Riegleman, then back at the corpse. “I'll be a son of a gun,” he said. “That ain't Herman. I never saw this guy before.”

 

Have you ever seen a group of youngsters rough housing each other? Remember how, if one falls unconscious from an accidental blow, they all stand aimlessly for a few moments staring blankly at the unlucky victim?

We did just that. We looked down at the nameless corpse as if we hadn't seen it before. With a name, it would have been one of us, and our emotions would have been personalized. Nameless, it was a stranger in our midst, and we eyed it curiously, as Kentucky mountaineers were reputed to examine a well-dressed stranger. Was he just a visitor, or was he a revenuer? Riegleman showed resentment rather than any other emotion. His razor-thin mouth was a tight, angry line, and his hard blue eyes seemed to send out sparks of indignation. This was understandable, knowing Riegleman. A corpse – worst of all, a nameless corpse – was threatening his already tight shooting schedule.

Paul pushed a thin white hand through black hair and frowned at the unknown. His thoughts were fairly obvious. A “ringer” had slipped in on him, and Riegleman would want to know how it had been done. Paul's thoughts were concerned with his job.

Sammy just gaped. If Sammy had thoughts at the moment, they slumbered.

I tried to analyze my own feelings. When Paul had said that one Herman Smith was missing, I had immediately begun to wonder why anyone should want to kill him. For I held to the possibility of murder. If it should prove to be accident, the matter was done. But if it were murder, there was need for thought and investigation, all necessarily based on his identity.

And here we had a stranger. A dead end for thought. You cannot find a motive for the murder of a completely anonymous person. You must know his habits, associates, and enough of his background to determine why his death was desirable to one or more persons. It would be possible for a murderer to kill with impunity as long as the corpse remained anonymous.

I became aware that Riegleman, Paul, and Sammy were looking at me. I gave them what has come to be known as my quizzical expression and said nothing, loudly.

“This is in your field, George, old boy,” Riegleman said.

I tapped a cigarette against my thumbnail, looked as disinterested as I could under the circumstances, and said, “Oh?”

“It's a mystery,” Paul said. “That's your dish.”

I didn't like the way he said it. He was too eager to place a burden on me, too eager to overlook his particular responsibility.

“I was under the impression,” I said casually, “that the casting director was expected to be familiar with the extras.”

Paul flushed as Riegleman's gaze swung to him. “It's the beards,” he said apologetically to Riegleman. “You can't expect anybody to tell 'em apart. This guy's supposed to be Herman Smith, according to my records. Everybody else was checked off at lunch. If he's somebody else, can I help it?”

Riegleman didn't answer, and Paul flushed again. He flashed me a venomous glance and turned away.

Sammy made his single contribution to the investigation. “Hey,” he called from under his wagon refuge, “how about a social security card?”

“Of course,” Riegleman snapped, and knelt by the body.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Mustn't touch. Clues, you know.”

Not that there were any clues. At least, I couldn't see any. How different this was from my screen plays. As The Saint, or The Falcon, I had been confronted many times with situations more baffling than this, and always I had penetrated brilliantly to the heart of the matter, seen a clue, reconstructed the situation and acted unerringly. But here was a nameless bearded corpse sprawled inside the circle of wagons on baking sand. There were no dropped collar buttons, no cartridges of an odd caliber, no telltale footprint with a worn heel, no glove lost in haste.

It seemed as if somebody had simply thrown away an old corpse he no longer needed.

I began to wish that we could throw it away too. If there was one object that we didn't need, it was a corpse. Especially one with a beard, with no name, and with a spurious work slip.

I could almost hear wheels of thought spinning in Riegleman's long skull as he glared down at the body.
Seven Dreams
was on a tight budget. He had planned to shoot these outdoor scenes in two or three days. An investigation into the death of this man would throw the shooting schedule off.

An investigation was under way even at that moment. The rest of the company, with an almost clairvoyant curiosity, was moving toward us in a close­packed, muttering group. I walked to meet them.

“Don't come any closer!”

They stopped. I told them that a man was dead, and that they should stay away until called. “One of you may be able to identify him, but the police should look over the scene before we track it up. Please go back and make yourselves comfortable.”

They did, and I returned to Riegleman's side. “I hope you don't mind my taking charge that way,” I said.

He shrugged. “Sammy!” he snapped.

Sammy gave him a sidewise look from under the wagon.

“Sammy, you had charge of the ammunition in those carbines. Every cartridge was supposed to be blank. What have you to say?”

“What can I say?” Sammy replied. “Evidently at least one wasn't blank. Is that my fault? Am I supposed to examine thousands of cartridges, one at a time?”

Riegleman seemed to drop that line of thought. “It seems strange,” he muttered, “that the shot should have gone so exactly to a vital spot. There's an almost geometrical precision in that wound. Dead in the center of his temple.”

“It's just a freak accident,” Paul said. “Like cyclones.”

Riegleman gave him a puzzled frown. “Cyclones?”

“Sure,” Paul went on. “I remember one that blew a farmhouse all to hell and gone, but picked up a basket of eggs and set it down a mile away without breaking an egg.”

“What
are
you talking about?” Riegleman demanded.

‘I'm simply saying that the impossible can and does happen all the time,” Paul said. “If one shell was loaded in all those carbines, it's not hard to believe that it smacked this poor guy dead center. It's no harder to believe than that egg story.”

Riegleman thought this over. “Yes,” he said finally. “I believe it is better that way. The accident theory will let us stay on schedule. Shall we agree on that?”

He gave the three of us a questioning glance.

Sammy's fat face became flaccid with relief; an accident story would relieve him of responsibility. Paul's dark, thoughtful face indicated furious thought. He was examining the idea from all angles.

I said, “The mysterious stranger.”

Riegleman frowned. “So?”

“Suppose,” I amplified, “that we accept the possibility of somebody getting smack in the way of a slug. It strains credibility, but suppose we accept it. Then I submit that we cannot accept that the person shot should be the only one in three hundred persons who is unknown.”

“You're making it murder!” Paul exclaimed.

‘I'm not making it anything. I'm analyzing. Someone else has already made it murder – maybe. We have to consider it.”

They considered it. They didn't like it. But whatever they were going to say about it was cut off by a low moan that drifted nearer across the sand dunes. A siren heralded the approach of lawful authority.

This was Gerald Callahan, sheriff, and his deputy, Lamar James. The big sedan which carried them swirled up to us in a cloud of dust, a rear door popped open and a man rolled out like a barrel of beer.

He was squat and round, with a froth of white hair and ears like the handles of a beer mug. He hung a smile between his ears and came over to us. I tensed my shoulders against a slap on the back. A good thing, too; I think he tried to knock me down.

“Name's Callahan,” he said, with a bull-like friendliness. “Call me Jerry. Sheriff in these parts. Now, what's the trouble?”

I introduced myself and the others, and waited for somebody else to tell him.

Riegleman said, “We seem to have had an accident here, and since it was fatal, we thought you should know. I had you notified. Here it is.”

Callahan looked at the corpse. “Shot, hey?” This piece of intuition brought a small silence. Callahan frowned in a helpless sort of fashion, then yelled at his deputy. “Lamar! Come here, will you?”

The deputy came out of the car like brown paint from a tube. He was slim, tall, and dark. He lounged over to us, was introduced, and took a look. He said nothing. He waited.

“Who's going to tell it?” Callahan said pleasantly.

Riegleman told it. He pictured the scene that was to look like the real thing on the screen and, we hoped, bring from the critics such phrases as “realistic drama,” “a thriller,” and so on. Riegleman turned the story conference over to me, and I related how I had found the body.

Then we all stood silently for a moment.

Callahan broke the silence. “Looks open and shut. The guy got in the way of a slug. One of the shells wasn't blank. Hey, Lamar?”

The deputy's long, brown face showed no expression. His tight mouth cracked. “Caliber?” he asked. “What size shells in the carbines?”

We looked at Sammy. “Forty-fives,” he said.

James knelt beside the corpse and looked at the blackened hole in the temple. He looked for a long time. When he raised up, he was frowning. “Thirty­eight,” he said.

He sounded like me, in one of those
Falcon
roles. He didn't have the polished manner, of course; he wasn't supposed to be a light-hearted Briton. But he tossed in the surprise twist with the same casual aplomb.

“I don't see how you can tell,” I objected, “just with a quick glance. There are too many factors. You can't see the slug.”

The sheriff bristled. “If Lamar says it was a thirty­eight, it was a thirty-eight. He don't make mistakes.”

I shrugged. “It could be. I'm no expert in these matters. But I still don't see how he can tell.”

“Does it matter?” Riegleman asked.

Callahan looked bewildered. “I don't know. Does it, Lamar?”

James said thoughtfully, “If all the carbines were forty-fives, somebody shot him with some other kind of a gun. Anybody carry thirty-eights?”

We all looked at Sammy again. He shook his fat face from side to side. “Nobody,” he said.

My mouth had a tendency to drop open, which I fought with clenched teeth. Sammy knew that somebody had carried .38's. I had. The two Colt revolvers, with silver-inlaid handles, with which I had popped away, were .38 caliber Colts, on .45 frames.

And Sammy knew it, too. He beetled his brows at me in an expression of warning.

I said nothing. 

Lamar Jones narrowed his dark eyes. After a moment he said, “Better look at the guns. Where?”

Sammy waved at a cluster of trucks. “There.”

James looked at the corpse. “Blanket.”

“I'll get one,” I said. I went to one of the wagons and started to pull out a Navajo pattern.

Underneath it was a gun.

The gun had a silver-inlaid handle and it was a .38 Colt on a .45 frame. It was one of the pair Sammy had issued to me.

And I fell right into an old familiar role. I did it automatically, without thinking. Once again I was the gifted amateur loggerheading the clumsy cops. With a graceful gesture which was to appear part of the one I'd already started, I let the Navajo blanket fall back over the gun and picked up another, darker blanket. As I carried it out of the wagon I took out my slim silver case and casually lighted a cigarette to think on.

Here I was again, back in the pattern. A nameless corpse, and the only clue to the killer was my gun, planted by a nameless hopeful who thought he could match wits with me. Only, this time the lines weren't written for me. I had to make them up as I went along.

I gave the blanket to James and he placed it over the corpse, asked Paul to remain on guard, and led the way across the sand toward the trucks. I fell in beside Sammy, and we lagged behind.

I didn't tell Sammy about the gun. Oh, no. That was my secret, to be sprung as a surprise at the psychological moment when the murderer was sure he was in the clear. Then the cops would look chagrined, the killer would make a break for freedom, only to be cut down with a bullet in his thigh.

Then we would have a long scene where I modestly explained why I had suspected the guilty party from the beginning, and how twitch by twitch I had drawn the strings of the net about him.

All I needed to round it out was a suspect. I had Sammy, but his actions didn't fall into any psychological pattern. So, instead of telling him what he was doing, telling him in a detailed deduction that would drop his jaw down to his knees, I said,