Framed in Blood (17 page)

“Hell, don’t you think I realize that? Let me do the talking—give Tim the impression I’m alone. Stand aside and listen in.”

Gentry took a dead cigar from his pudgy lips, glanced aside at the intern, who crooked a forefinger for them to come closer. He sighed and said, “Okay, Mike.”

Shayne was on his way to the couch where Rourke’s body lay in a comfortable position, the white bandages around his head making a sharp contrast to his deeply sun-tanned face that was drawn and discolored from the impact of the shot and loss of blood. He motioned to the intern, went close to him, and said in a low whisper, “Get out of sight, over there with the chief. If either of you object to my questions or the replies I get, you can intervene. But if you really want to know the truth,” he added to Gentry, “you’ll let me do it my way.”

Gentry frowned but said nothing. The intern bent over Rourke, his fingers on Rourke’s pulse. “In about thirty seconds the patient will rouse,” the young doctor said. “He should be conscious for a few minutes before the hypodermic takes full effect. But I must warn you that he must not become excited. If he chooses to answer questions of his own volition, however, it shouldn’t harm him.” He stepped aside and joined Gentry.

Timothy Rourke’s head moved slightly. He opened his slate-gray eyes. The pupils were dilated, and he looked up at Shayne with a dull, blank expression. Recognition came slowly as his eyes focused on Shayne’s face a foot above his own.

“It’s all right, Tim,” Shayne said softly. “Don’t move, and listen to me. Can you hear me?”

“Yeh,” Rourke answered feebly. “What the hell?”

“Let me ask the questions, Tim. You’re going to pass out in a minute or two, and it may be too late after that. You may be dying.”

“Yeh,” said Rourke again. “I guess I passed out, huh? Ned and I were sitting here drinking—”

“Save your strength for something very important,” Shayne broke in anxiously. “You’ve got to stop covering up for Betty. She’s not worth it, Tim. I swear she isn’t.” His voice became harsh as he continued. “I know you thought she did it because she loved you, but she didn’t. She gunned Bert for cash—to get twenty-five grand. That was her real reason, Tim.”

For a brief instant Rourke’s eyes glittered, and he tried to raise his head and shoulders from the couch.

Shayne put gentle pressure on his chest and said, “Listen, Tim, while I give it to you straight. Betty killed Bert because at the last moment he decided to do the right thing and turn his story in to the
Tribune.
She had been needling him into the blackmail scheme and she became frantic when she saw that money slipping away. So she shot him. Just like that. Through the back of the head with your target pistol. Then she calmly called Mr. Big and demanded twenty-five grand mailed to her care of General Delivery at ten o’clock this morning. Then she took a batch of sleeping-tablets and passed out. That’s the way you found her when you got to her house a little after midnight, wasn’t it? In bed, passed out cold? And you found Bert Jackson murdered with your gun. How did she get your gun, Tim?”

Sweat stood out on his face. Half of what he was saying was pure guesswork, but he drove the points home and hoped he wasn’t blundering.

Timothy Rourke closed his eyes, and a spasm of pain twisted his cadaverous features. “Is that—the truth, Mike? About the money?” His voice was faint, wavering.

“I swear it’s the truth, Tim,” Shayne told him, bending closer, his voice tense. “Tell me, how did she get hold of your gun?”

“I—I loaned it to her. A week ago.” Rourke opened his eyes slowly. For a moment he appeared to study the taped ear and the puffed left side of Shayne’s face, and the deeply trenched right side, a familiar sight, and the only thing in the world that made sense to him at the moment. His lips twisted in a slow smile intended to show bitterness, but succeeded only in being pitiable. “The gun—was to protect her from Bert—if he got abusive,” he said. “When I—stumbled over his body—on the front porch and went inside and found Betty—passed out in her bed—I thought—”

“That she and Bert had had an argument over you?” supplied Shayne. “And you felt guilty and partly responsible, so you carried his dead body out to your car and stuck him inside, getting blood on your seat cushion in the process, and drove away and ditched him by the side of the road. You hoped to take suspicion off Betty and make it appear he was killed by the man he was planning to blackmail. That’s the way it happened, isn’t it?”

“That’s—right—Mike.” Rourke’s eyes were glazing, and he tried to moisten his dry lips with a dry tongue. “What—happened to me—after I passed out?”

“How much do you remember, Tim?” Shayne asked anxiously, glancing aside at Gentry’s beefy face and seeing his pudgy hand firmly holding the young intern back from the patient.

“Not—much,” Rourke answered thickly. “I was drinking Ned’s liquor. I knew I was getting tight, but I—started to write a story on Bert Jackson—and that’s all—I remember. I blacked out. You know how it hits me, Mike. Like I—feel now—” His voice trailed off, and he closed his eyes.

The intern jerked away from Gentry and took a stethoscope from the rear pocket of his trousers, fitting the listening-tubes in his ears as he approached the prostrate form of the patient. He placed the bell on Rourke’s chest with his left hand and felt for his pulse with the right. After a moment he said, “That will be all. He’ll be out for several hours.”

Gentry came up behind the intern, and Shayne met his stony eyes with the challenge, “Are you satisfied?”

“I got it all,” he admitted, stepping aside and beckoning Shayne to follow as the intern drew up a chair and took his place beside the patient.

“And you don’t think Tim was telling the truth?”

“I had the feeling that you were leading him on, getting him to answer the way you wanted,” Gentry said. He got out a fresh cigar, lit it, and puffed until the end glowed red, then burst out, “It did sound like the truth, damn it, Mike, except that stuff about not remembering shooting himself. Even if a man does pass out from too much liquor—”

“You know how Tim was about that,” Shayne broke in gently. “Hell, you were at my place that night when he picked up twelve hundred in a poker game and didn’t remember one damned thing about even playing poker the next day, yet none of us realized he was dead drunk when we were playing with him. Tim was like that,” he went on urgently. “I’ve seen him write feature stories in his office and he never hit a wrong letter. The next day he wouldn’t even know what they were about until he read them in the
News
and saw his by-line.”

“That’s very interesting,” the intern said, “and I should like to discuss it further.” He stood up and pushed his chair aside. “May I ask what a mental blackout from alcohol without physical disability has to do with the case?” He took a few steps toward Shayne and Gentry, stopped, and looked at Ned Brooks who sat dejectedly in a chair across the room with his head bowed in his hands.

“From the information I gathered from Mr. Brooks when I first came in, the patient witnessed a murder last night by a woman for whom he cared a great deal. Convinced that it was committed on his account, Rourke destroyed certain evidence pointing to her and later took one drink too many, and a mental block resulted.”

“That’s about it,” Shayne growled, “but Chief Gentry doubts that he could have written a confession and shot himself without being conscious of doing so.” He glanced at Brooks, whose presence he had forgotten until the doctor mentioned his name, but the reporter kept his head bowed.

The intern was saying, “That is exactly what the patient might have done under the circumstances. There is a well-developed theory that when a man blacks out mentally—to use the layman’s phrase—from alcohol, his subconscious controls his actions. Thus, a man under the complete domination of the subconscious, becomes a superlative poker player, or he may attain perfection in any game or any endeavor.

“Let us assume that this man is inherently decent. His subconscious rebels, under the influence of alcohol, against the thing he has done consciously. He makes amends by destroying the evidence of witnessing a murder through the medium of writing a confession absolving the woman he loves and whom he knows to be guilty. Then he attempts to take his own life, believing it is the only way out for him.

“And now,” he continued, turning abruptly to the front door, “it is important that we remove the patient to the hospital.” He called the two men who waited on the porch with the stretcher.

Shayne watched the orderlies edge Rourke’s body gently from the couch onto the canvas stretcher and pull a sheet over him. His mouth was grim and he rubbed a hand hard over his uninjured right jaw.

“Have you gone through Rourke’s pockets?” he asked abruptly, turning to Gentry.

“No. I don’t think—”

“Hold it, boys,” he called to the orderlies as they lifted the stretcher to carry it away, and again turned to Gentry. “Don’t you think you ought to do that, Will?”

“They’ll inventory his effects at the hospital,” the chief said.

“To hell with that. I want it done here, in my presence. I know how hospitals are, and you do, too. If Tim has two grand on him now you’ll find it reported as fifty dollars by the pillroller who goes over him.”

“I resent that,” the young intern retorted with professional dignity. “If you mean—”

“I mean I want to see what he has on him before he is taken away,” Shayne cut in sharply.

Gentry growled, “Go through his pockets and see what you find, Jenkins.”

The orderlies set the stretcher down and waited while the Homicide officer knelt beside it and went over every pocket in Rourke’s clothes. He produced a wallet, a stamped letter to an insurance company, a soiled handkerchief and a clean folded one, three partially used books of matches, a pack of cigarettes half full, a key ring, and a handful of loose change.

When the objects were displayed on the floor Shayne looked them over carefully, shook his red head, and demanded, “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

“What else did you expect?” Jenkins hunkered back on his heels and looked up at Shayne.

“What does it matter?” Gentry asked impatiently.

Shayne ignored the police chief. With a questing, groping expression on his face he demanded of Jenkins, “Are there any holes in any of his pockets?”

“I didn’t notice any.” He appealed to Gentry.

Gentry’s murky, protuberant eyes were studying Shayne’s face curiously. “I remember you asked the same thing about Bert Jackson when we found him,” he rumbled, then nodded to his subordinate and ordered, “Check every pocket for a hole.”

Jenkins rechecked with ill grace, arose from his kneeling position, and said, “Not a hole big enough for a pin to go through.”

Shayne waved to the patient orderlies, said, “Okay,” then turned to Gentry. “You won’t mind if I follow the ambulance to the hospital? I’d like—”

Ned Brooks’s telephone rang in the hallway. Jenkins hurried to answer it and called to Will Gentry, “It’s for you, Chief.”

Shayne hesitated, watching the men take Rourke away and listening to Gentry on the telephone. Before he could make up his mind the chief re-entered the living-room and growled, “When I first met Lucy Hamilton she was a sweet, innocent kid, Mike. Now, by God—”

“What has she done now?” Shayne asked.

“Just got herself picked up for a hair-pulling brawl at the post office and taken for a ride in the paddy wagon. She’s raving like a lunatic and demanding to see me, and they can’t do a damned thing with her or the other woman. I’ve ordered both of them to be brought here. Before God, Mike, Lucy’s getting to be exactly like you.”

ONE ENVELOPE TOO MANY

SHAYNE HID A ONE-SIDED GRIN and, at Gentry’s gruff suggestion, sauntered out into the bright sunlight to await Lucy’s arrival while the chief further interrogated Ned Brooks, and Jenkins made a more thorough examination of the suicide scene.

His first amusement over Lucy’s predicament faded as he paced the walk, and he wondered what had happened at the post office. Why was she arrested? What did Gentry mean by a hair-pulling brawl?

As he paced up and down, he realized that it had to be something connected with the letter Lucy had gone to pick up for Betty Jackson, a letter which should contain twenty-five thousand dollars. Had Betty roused from her stupor and got there ahead of Lucy? Fought for the letter?

It didn’t matter much now, he told himself ruefully. Gentry had heard him tell Rourke about the money that was being mailed to Betty, and the whole story would have to come out now. There was no telling what would become of the money after the police got their hands on it, but that would be something to worry about later.

Shayne tossed away a cigarette when he saw the Black Maria swing around the corner. He strolled out to meet it when it pulled up to the curb. A policeman stepped down from the rear step, opened the door, and ordered the occupants out.

Lucy Hamilton came out first. There were two scratches across one cheek, and her left eye was beginning to puff and turn green. She blinked uncertainly, holding herself stiffly erect, looked around, then ran to Shayne with a little cry and with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I feel so awful, Michael,” she sobbed. “You’re not going to be angry with me? I did the best I could. I—I didn’t know what else to do, and I just couldn’t let her get away with it.”

Shayne held her close and muttered soothing words while he watched anxiously for the second occupant of the Black Maria to emerge from its dark interior.

Marie Leonard wore the same yellow blouse and gray skirt he had watched her don earlier in the morning. One shoulder was ripped, and the sleeve dangled in shreds from a bare arm, and her blond hair was in mad disorder. Her face was livid with rage except for a red blotch across one cheek about the size of Lucy Hamilton’s hand. She fought furiously against the policeman’s firm grip on her arm, protesting angrily, but he hustled her along.

“Fancy meeting you again, Marie,” said Shayne pleasantly. “I didn’t realize you two girls knew each other.”