1957 - The Guilty Are Afraid (11 page)

“Congratulations,” I said.

Rankin moved restlessly, fingering his tie. He didn’t say anything.

“Lieutenant Rankin is in complete charge of this investigation,” Holding went on. “I am, of course, referring to these two murders at Bay Beach.”

I could see the trap in that.

If I were going to deny being in the cabin when the girl had died, now was the time to show surprise and ask what other murder had been committed? But I got one jump ahead of that thought fast. For all I knew they had found a fingerprint of mine in the cabin or someone had seen me and had offered to identify me, or they had spotted the Buick parked on the scene. I decided to take a chance and come clean.

“Now I know the Lieutenant is handling the case,” I said, “I’m ready to make a statement. I would have done so an hour ago, but Captain Katchen’s threats put me off. He warned me to keep out of this business and I didn’t keep out of it. When I found the girl I saw Katchen could pin the killing on me.”

Holding appeared to relax a little.

“So you were the man who was seen entering the cabin?”

“I don’t know about that, but I did enter the cabin and I found her dying.”

“Did she say anything?”

“No. She died within seconds of my finding her.”

Rankin said, “Suppose we go over it from the start?” He reached forward and took a notebook off the desk and opened it. “Why did you go down there?”

“I had no particular reason except I had nothing to do and I wanted to look the place over,” I said. “I know it sounds corny, but my partner was killed there, and your men were all over the place when I went there this morning. I just wanted to have a second look at it.”

He didn’t seem wildly enthusiastic about this explanation, but he let it go. He asked, “What time did you get there?”

I told him, and then went on to give him an exact description of what had happened. I told him how I had heard the police siren and how I had realized that if I were caught there, Katchen’s conclusion would be that I had killed her. I went on to describe how I had got away and what time I returned to the hotel.

Rankin looked over at Holding, then suddenly his hard, tight face crinkled into a smile and he looked quite human.

“Can’t say I blame you,” he said. “I guess I would have done the same thing. But it’s not the kind of thing I’d recommend you to try again.”

I said I wouldn’t try it again.

“You realize how lucky you have been?” he said. “You could have got yourself nailed for murder. But the doc says she was stabbed at least two hours before you entered the cabin. She took that time to die. He could tell by the blood on her and on the floor.”

“How did your men know she was there?”

“Some guy spotted you going into the cabin. He was taking a look at the scene of the crime, so he says; he spotted you and called headquarters.”

“What wouldn’t we do without the great American public?” I said. “No sign of the killer, of course?”

Rankin shook his head.

Then I asked the sixty-four dollar question.

“Any idea who she is?”

Rankin stubbed out his cigarette, then sat back while he and Holding exchanged glances.

Holding shrugged.

“It’s pretty obvious she’s the woman who called for Sheppey at his hotel this morning. What she has been doing from eleven o’clock this morning up to the time of her death defeats me. She was still wearing the swimsuit she had on when she left Sheppey.”

“Have you been able to identify her yet?”

“A girl named Thelma Cousins has been reported missing by her landlady. The landlady said she hadn’t been back since she left for work this morning. We got her to look at the body. She says the girl is Thelma Cousins. We’re getting a second check on her. The man she works for is on his way down now.”

“Who is he?”

Rankin supplied the information, which had me suddenly pointing like a gun dog.

“His name is Marcus Hahn,” he said. “He’s a phony who runs a pottery racket he calls the School of Ceramics out at Arrow point. The girl worked in his showroom.”

II

I
had to decide whether to tell them about the folder of matches I had found in Sheppey’s luggage and the odd tie-up between the folder and this School of Ceramics or whether to say nothing.

I told myself that maybe this wasn’t the time for a complete exchange of confidences. I had to make sure first that Rankin was going to find Sheppey’s killer. Although he was in charge of the investigation that didn’t mean he had a free hand. He could still be blocked by Katchen on Creedy’s orders. I wasn’t going to hand him anything on a plate until I was sure he meant business.

Rankin said, “We want to find out what Sheppey and this girl were up to. It’s my bet she had a boyfriend and he fixed them both.”

I looked over at Holding. His face had gone blank and he had begun to fidget with the pen tray.

“It shouldn’t be difficult to find out if she had a boyfriend,” I said.

“Hahn may know something.” Rankin looked at his watch. “I guess I’d better go over to the morgue. He should be down any moment now.” He looked at Holding. “Okay?”

“Oh, sure,” Holding said.

I made a move to get up, but Holding lifted his hand.

“I’d like to run over your statement just once more, Mr. Brandon. You get off, Lieutenant.”

Rankin got to his feet, nodded to me, and went out.

There was a long pause after he had shut the door, then Holding pulled a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it. I took that as a signal that we were going to be chummy and I fetched out my pack of Luckies and lit one.

“You had a talk with Captain Katchen this morning?” Holding said, not looking at me.

“You might call it that. It was a little one sided, but I managed to sound off in the end. I collected a slap in the face for my trouble, but I’m not complaining.”

“Something was said about Lee Creedy,” Holding said, looking up.

“Something was said about Lee Creedy,” I said, watching him.

His small hard eyes searched my face.

“You mentioned his name to Katchen?”

“I did.”

“You are under the impression that Creedy hired Sheppey to do a job?”

“Yes.”

Holding lit his pipe, frowned, shifted in his chair and puffed smoke.

“You have no proof of that?”

“Sheppey wrote Creedy’s name on his blotter while he was talking on the telephone. I know the man he was talking to hired him to come down here. Sheppey had a habit of writing on his blotter. I can’t see why he should have written down Creedy’s name unless Creedy was the

man who hired him.”

“Unless someone wanted Sheppey to work on a job connected with Creedy. I mean Sheppey’s client could have asked him to get information about Creedy. Thought of that?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t quite fall into line.”

I went on to tell him how I had telephoned Creedy’s residence and had asked for an appointment, how I had been taken in to see Creedy over the heads of six businessmen, how I had been threatened and how Fulton and I had been attacked by Hertz.

Holding listened to all this, puffing away at his pipe, his face expressionless.

“It seems to me that Creedy hired Sheppey, and now Sheppey has been murdered, Creedy is falling over backwards to hush up the fact that he did hire him,” I concluded.

Holding brooded for a moment, then said, “I take it you’re pretty anxious to get Sheppey’s murder cleared up?”

I stared at him.

“Well, of course.”

“When I heard you had come down here and had talked to Katchen,” Holding said, “I called the District Attorney’s office at San Francisco and made some inquiries about you. It seems your agency has been pretty cooperative in the past and you have a high rating in Frisco. You were also on the staff of the D.A.’s office there for some years and you did a pretty good job.”

I grinned.

“I bet the D.A. didn’t tell you that.”

Holding allowed himself a small smile. It didn’t do much to ease the ferrety expression on his face.

“I spoke to my opposite number, the A.D.A. He said your rating for insubordination was high, but, given a free hand, you were a good man on an investigation.”

“He told you that because he still owes me ten bucks,” I said, wondering where all this was leading to.

“How would you like to have a crack at solving the Sheppey murder?”

“I’m working on it now: opposition or no opposition.”

Holding nodded.

“But you won’t get far without some form of protection.”

“I know that. Protection is something I’m a little short of right now.”

“It can be arranged.” He rubbed his lean jaw. “Up to a point that is: it’s not absolutely guaranteed.”

“If it will hold Katchen off my neck, I’ll take care of Hertz.”

“Katchen can be fixed. You may find Hertz hard to handle. You don’t want to underestimate him.”

“I won’t.”

Holding brooded some more, then said, “Well, I guess that’s about it, Mr. Brandon. It’s getting late. It’s time I was in bed.”

I shook my head at him.

“Why the free hand? What chestnut am I pulling out of the fire for you?”

I saw his Adam’s apple rise and fall, but otherwise his face remained impassive.

“It’s not a question of that,” he said carefully. “It seems to me that since your partner has been murdered and you are in the line of business, you would want to make a separate investigation.”

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to play,” I said, putting an edge to my voice.

He went back to fidgeting with the pen tray, then, after taking time to find the right words, he said, “I’m not entirely convinced this is a job for the police. It could be, of course. If this girl was associated with a thug and if he found Sheppey was fooling around with her, and killed them both, then it is something the police could handle. But if it goes deeper than that, if it involves Creedy, then we’re not going to make much progress.”

“And that would worry you?”

He looked sharply at me.

“All right: I’ll put the cards on the table. It’ll be difficult for you to understand the position really unless I do.”

“Let’s have all the cards in view,” I said. “Including the one you have up your sleeve.”

He let that one ride.

“Within the next few weeks the Administration is coming up for a new term,” he said, picking his words as if they were as fragile as eggshells. “The opposition is naturally looking for an opportunity to loosen the grip Creedy has on this town. If Creedy is involved in some way in Sheppey’s murder, it may give the opposition the opportunity it is looking for. The Administration isn’t particularly popular, but it is extremely powerful. At the moment it is balanced on a razor’s edge. Any scandal that could be used on the front page of the opposition newspapers might turn the trick.”

“I take it, Mr. Holding, that you are a member of the opposition?”

“I believe in justice and freedom,” he said, taking the pipe out of his rattrap of a mouth and looking at it as if he were surprised to find it still alight.

“Pretty praiseworthy, Mr. Holding,” I said. “If the opposition gets into power, you would probably become the new District Attorney?”

That made his Adam’s apple do a hand spring. He looked at me from over the top of his glasses, scratched the lobe of his right ear, hesitated about looking indignant, then relaxed completely with a wide, boyish smile that was as false as a chorus girl’s eyelashes.

“I suppose I would, but that, of course, has nothing to do with the issue, nothing at all.”

“Who’s gunning for Creedy?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. This is a straight fight between the Creedy Administration and Judge Harrison, who is going to the poll on a Reform ticket.”

“And this town could do with a little reforming?”

“It certainly could.”

“Where does Rankin figure in all this?”

“There isn’t a great deal Rankin can do if this case develops along the lines that would be detrimental to the Administration,” Holding said. “The Commissioner wouldn’t encourage an investigation that might embarrass Creedy. He and Creedy are good friends.”

“And, of course, Rankin is hoping to become Captain and needs to keep his nose clean,” I said. As Holding didn’t have any remarks to make on that one, I went on, “So no one is sticking his neck out except me, is that it?”

“Judge Harrison has considerable influence. We have a newspaper with a wide circulation. You would have to be careful, of course, but providing you carry out an orthodox investigation no one would interfere.”

“Except Creedy and Hertz.”

Holding tapped out his pipe.

“I think you said you could take care of Hertz.”

“Yes, I think I could, but I don’t say that my methods would be orthodox.”

“That’s something, perhaps, I had better know nothing about.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. The position as I see it is that I make an investigation, present my findings to you and you persuade the Commissioner to make an arrest. Right?”

Holding went back to the pen tray again. He seemed to get a lot of comfort from pushing it around.

“Not quite. I think perhaps the best plan would be for you to make the investigation and pass the facts to the Editor of the St. Raphael Courier. He is a firebrand who is willing to publish anything so long as it hits at the Administration. Then when it is published, the Commissioner will have to act.”

I grinned.

“And you and Rankin keep out of it? So if anything goes wrong, you’re right where you are, safe and happy.”

He didn’t like that.

“Until the Administration . . .” he began, but I cut him short.

“Okay, skip it.” I got to my feet. “I’ll handle it. Not because I’m pulling your chestnuts out of the fire nor because I want to see Judge Harrison running for a Reform ticket. I’m doing it because my partner was killed, and a thing like that is bad for my business.”

He nodded, looking wise.

“I can understand that.”

“Although he was my partner and I’ve a sentimental feeling about turning up the killer,” I went on, “I can’t live on air forever. If your mob rides into office because of what I turn up, I’ll expect them to meet my expenses.”