Poisons Unknown (7 page)

“Where?”

“In the middle of City Park.”

Dunlop’s eyes reflected his interest. “Did he show?”

“He showed, all right. We were all set to have a nice
Kaffeeklatsch
when the house fell in. I was sapped.” Liddell rubbed the back of his head ruefully. “By the time I snapped out of it, there was no sign of him.”

“What time was this?”

“About four or four-thirty.”

Dunlop considered it, grunted. “He showed no signs of being snooted?”

Liddell shook his head. “From the looks of his eyes, he might have had a skinful of C.”

Dunlop leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Go on.”

Liddell dug into his pocket and pulled out the remains of the horn-rimmed spectacles, dropped them on Dunlop’s desk. “I found these scuffed into the mud near where I was sapped. Looks like he put up one helluva fight.”

The newspaperman picked up a piece of the lens, rotated it back and forth. “I begin to get the idea. He couldn’t have been doing much driving without these.” He scowled at the shattered lens, scratched at his bald pate. “Who do you figure’s behind this, Johnny?”

“Marty Kirk. He brought me down from New York to find this Brother Alfred. Swore that he wasn’t using me to bird-dog. I figure he had me followed when I went out to keep the date with Alfred, sapped me, and set Alfred up for the phony accident.”

Dunlop sipped at his paper cup, considered it. “It’s an awful sucker play if it backfires. Kirk had more to gain by Alfred being knocked off than anybody else at first glance.”

“He didn’t expect it to backfire.”

“It hasn’t yet, you know.” The newspaperman drained his cup, crumpled it, tossed it at the wastebasket. “That business about the glasses is interesting. But it’s not conclusive. Maybe Alfred saw you getting sapped, got scared, ran for his car. Glasses or no glasses he knew he had to get away, so he took off. Because he had no glasses, he didn’t see a turn, piled into a tree.”

“Makes a good story,” Liddell conceded.

Dunlop shrugged. “Just as good a story as accusing somebody of murdering him. And not half as libelous.” He rubbed the heel of his hand along his chin and shook his head reluctantly. “You make a good case for a reasonable doubt, but it’ll take more than that. A lot more.”

“Look, Larry. You’re already in town. Take a ride out to the morgue with me. I still have one card up my sleeve. If that doesn’t work,” he shrugged, “then I’m licked. If it does, you’ve got a story.”

Dunlop nodded. “Okay, I’m in for the ride over. You prove to me that Alfred was murdered, and I’m in all the way. Fair enough?”

Liddell drank on it.

T
HE MORGUE AT
S
AN
V
INCENTE
was in the basement of the parish hospital. A long corridor ran from the emergency entrance ramp to a double door stenciled
Medical Examiner
.

Liddell and Dunlop pushed through the doors and entered the brightly lighted office painted a sterile white. A thin man wearing a starched white jacket sat behind a metal desk making entries in a ledger. The bright light reflected off his shiny pate and face.

He looked up as the two men came in, and seemed glad of an excuse to put the pen down. He fished a rumpled handkerchief from his hip pocket and polished his bald head with a circular swabbing motion.

“Looking for someone?” His voice sounded rusty, as if it didn’t get much use.

“Accident case this morning. Guy burned up in a car.” Dunlop flipped a press card in front of the attendant. “Got him in here?”

The attendant swabbed his face with the handkerchief, nodded.

“Got a make on him?” Dunlop asked.

The man behind the desk pulled open a small file index, nodded. “His name’s Brother Alfred. Ran some kind of a temple around here some place.”

“Who identified the body?” Liddell wanted to know.

The attendant looked from Dunlop to Liddell and back again questioningly. Dunlop nodded. “He’s with me.”

The attendant shrugged, referred to the index card. “Some dame. Gave her name as Wanda. No surname. Seems those people only have front names.” He dropped the card back, shut the file. “Want to see him?”

Liddell nodded.

“Ain’t much of him left to see.” The attendant grunted. He pulled himself to his feet and limped around the desk. “Come with me.”

He led the way to a heavy door set in the far wall and tugged it open. Beyond was a high-ceilinged, stone-floored, unheated room with double tiers of metal lockers. Each locker had its own stenciled number.

Liddell wrinkled his nose as the blast of hot, carbolic-laden air enveloped them. There was no word spoken as they followed the thin man across the floor to the rear of the windowless room.

He yanked on one of the metal drawers; it pulled out with a screech. A piece of canvas that bulged suggestively covered its contents. The attendant reached up and pulled on a high-powered light in an enamel reflector. He grabbed a corner of the canvas, pulled it back, exposing the blackened charred remains of what had once been a man.

Its legs were blackened stumps, most of the face had been burned away. No one had bothered to close the eyes if there were any lids left, and the whites showed as he stared up into the night. The hands were twisted claws at the end of badly seared arms.

“Not very pretty, is he?” the attendant commented. The phone in the inside office started pealing. The attendant swore under his breath. “Damn thing always rings when you’re nowhere near it.” He nodded at the body. “Got enough?”

“You go ahead and answer your phone. We’ll wait.”

The attendant seemed undecided, shrugged. “Guess you can’t walk off with him.” He grinned, showing the stumps of yellowed teeth. “Be right back.”

His bad leg clip-clopped across the floor as he hurried to answer the phone.

Dunlop shook his head sadly. “If it was a kill, they sure did a good job of it, Johnny. There’s not enough left of him to prove a thing.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Johnny Liddell pulled a small vial of powder from his pocket. “On the way to your office, I stopped by the hotel to pick this up. Rhodokrit. Know how it works?”

Dunlop took the vial, examined it, handed it back. “Never even heard of it.”

“We use it quite a lot in arson investigation,” Liddell explained. “You dump it on a surface that’s suspected of having been doused down with kerosene or gasoline or any other fat-dissolving inflammable compound. It turns red if they’re present.”

Dunlop nodded. “In other words, if this character was torched, when you put that powder on him, it should turn red?”

Liddell nodded. He unscrewed the cap of the vial, poured some of the powder into his hand. Then he leaned over the thing on the table and spilled some onto its face. The powder turned red. He repeated the process on the hands and legs, got a positive reaction.

Dunlop took a deep breath through his mouth, let it out slowly from his nostrils. “Well, what do you know?” He took the vial of Rhodokrit from Liddell, poured some into his own hand, dusted it on the body. The powder turned red wherever it fell.

“Well?” Liddell wanted to know.

“You just got yourself a boy.” They waited until the attendant had limped across the floor. They slipped him a folded bill. “Thanks, pal. Where’s there a phone?”

The attendant pulled the canvas sheet over the body and slammed the door back into place with a clang that reverberated throughout the entire room. “Out in the corridor. The far end.” He smoothed out the bill, folded it into quarters, stuck it into his watch pocket. “Anything else I can do for you gents? We got us a pretty one in last night. Young, too. Took a hot shot or overdose, looks like. Want to see her? Real pretty.” He leered.

Liddell shook his head. “Not today. We’ve had our quota.” He fell into step beside Dunlop, and they walked back to the corridor. “Narcotics big here?”

“Getting bigger all the time,” the newspaperman grunted. “Why?”

Liddell shrugged. “A young kid on a slab from an overdose. A tea party I sat in on last night. This Alfred character with a skinful when I met him. It adds up to a hot town for the shovers.”

Dunlop nodded, led the way to the telephone booths. He dropped a coin, dialed the number of the
Dispatch
.

“This is Dunlop. Get me Eddie Connolly.” He held his hand over the mouthpiece. “All hell is going to pop when this story breaks.” He grinned. He turned his attention back to the mouthpiece. “Connolly? I’ve got a pip. Brother Alfred was murdered.”

The receiver started to sputter metallically.

“I know all about that. I’m out at the morgue now. He was murdered. Now, don’t tip our hand on this one, but start digging. How do I know it was murder?” He winked at Liddell. “We gave the body the Rhodokrit test.”

The receiver chattered back at him.

“What the hell kind of a reporter are you? What do you mean what is Rhodokrit?” he barked into the receiver. “Rhodokrit is always used in suspected arson. Brother Alfred was doused down with kerosene or gasoline, set afire, and his car wrecked.”

The man on the other end sounded jubilant.

“Of course it’s a good story. It’s a pip. Now you get started on it and see what you can do with it.” He tossed the receiver back on its hook, stepped out of the phone booth. “By this time tomorrow, there won’t be a soul in Louisiana who doesn’t know Brother Alfred was murdered!” He caught Liddell by the arm, headed for the exit to the street.

Two big men in civilian clothes lounged outside the emergency entrance to the hospital. They looked up as Liddell and the newspaperman emerged. They couldn’t have been more recognizable if they’d worn sandwich boards labeling them
Cop
. The taller of the two, a big man in a rumpled blue suit and a gray fedora, stopped picking his teeth long enough to ask, “You the guys just been down to see the D.O.A.?”

Liddell nodded. “Yeah. Why?”

The man in the blue suit went back to picking his teeth. “Sheriff wants to see you.” He nodded his head at the building across the way.

“Some other time,” Dunlop told him. “I’ve got a paper to get out.” He started to shoulder past. A hamlike hand caught his arm and spun him around.

“The sheriff says he wants to see you now.” The big man screwed his face into what passed for a smile. “He’s not particular what condition you come in.”

Liddell started to interfere, but the newspaperman shook his head. “Let’s go over and see the sheriff, Johnny. If you’re going to work around here, you’ll have to meet him sooner or later.” He picked the plain-clothes man’s hand off his arm. “I know the way.”

“We’ll trail along just to make sure you don’t get lost.” The man in the blue suit nodded.

They crossed the street and entered a low white stone building. The sheriff’s office was at the end of the first corridor. The two plain-clothes men followed them to the door and took up a position in the hall.

Sheriff Lalonde sat behind an oversized, varnished desk, eyeing the two men with no signs of enthusiasm. He reached out for a pack of cigarettes on the end of his desk and dumped one out.

“Hear you were over taking a look at the body.” He directed his attention to Dunlop. “What’s on your mind?”

“News. That’s my business. Alfred’s death is news.”

The sheriff moved his eyes over to Liddell. “What’s your business?”

“I’m a private detective.” Liddell dumped his credentials on the sheriff’s desk.

Lalonde dropped his eyes to the papers, riffled through them, snorted. “What were you doing over there?”

“Just looking.” Liddell picked up his papers, rearranged them, and shoved them back into his breast pocket. “I was hired to find Brother Alfred. I was just looking out for a client’s interests.”

“You were hired to find him.” He scratched a paper match along the abrasive strip on the box, held it to his cigarette. “You found him. How soon will you be leaving?”

Liddell shrugged. “As soon as I know who killed Alfred.”

Sheriff Lalonde’s eyes flicked from one man to the other. “He killed himself. He got a skinful of liquor, drove his car into a tree.” His voice dropped dangerously. “Maybe I didn’t make myself very clear, Liddell. We don’t like peepers around here. We don’t like anybody that stirs up trouble.” His eyes rolled back to the newspaperman. “This Brother Alfred pulled a fake disappearance for reasons of his own, went on a binge. He got a snootful and hit a tree. That’s the way it stands on the record.”

Dunlop stuck his chin out. “That’s your story.”

“That’s the official story.” The sheriff put his hands flat on the desk and lifted himself out of his chair. “That’s the story the papers will print. Yours included.”

“Not the
Dispatch
. The
Dispatch
will print that he was murdered.”

The sheriff’s face turned a deep red, then darkened to purple. A little vein in the center of his forehead started to throb, and the corners of his mouth twitched. “You might have to prove that crack, Dunlop.”

“I might be able to,” Dunlop snapped back.

Lalonde stamped around the desk and planted himself in front of the two men. He waved a stubby forefinger under their noses. “Get this straight, Dunlop. Alfred was killed in an accident.” The sheriff bared his teeth in an ugly, crooked grin. “Accidents can happen to anybody. You understand? He was killed in an accident!”

“Wouldn’t you like to hear why the
Dispatch
is going to charge that he was murdered?” Dunlop asked quietly.

Lalonde pounded his desk with a clenched fist. “Stop saying that! I don’t want theories or guesses. You couldn’t prove he was murdered! Neither can anyone else. There’s not enough left of him to prove anything except that he’s dead!”

“You don’t need much to prove an accident was faked,” Liddell put in. “There’s enough left to prove that.”

The sheriff whirled on him. “You stay out of this, peeper! You have no standing in this parish. Start getting in my hair and I have a couple of boys who are dying to find out how tough these New York eyes really are.”

“Maybe they better start trying. Because I’m the guy who convinced Dunlop that Alfred was murdered. And if your coroner brings in any other verdict, Dunlop’s paper has enough evidence of murder to make the verdict look silly.”

The sheriff’s red-rimmed eyes played hopscotch from Liddell to the newspaperman and back. “Convince me.” He wet his lips with a quick dart of his tongue, tried to swallow his fury, failed miserably. “I got an open mind. Convince me.”

Liddell dug into his pocket, pulled out the little vial of powder. “There’s all the proof you need.”

Lalonde stared at the vial. “What the hell are you trying to pull?” he roared. “What can that prove?”

“That Brother Alfred was torched, and that he was probably dead before he ever got into that car.” He tossed the vial up, caught it. “Sprinkle a little of this on any surface that’s been doused with an inflammable oil for torching, and it turns red. We tried a little on the body. Wherever it touched, it turned red. He was soaked with either kerosene or gasoline before the fire.”

Beads of perspiration glistened on the sheriff’s forehead and upper lip. He started to say something, changed his mind, wiped the wet smear of his mouth with the back of his hand. He jabbed at a button on the desk. The door opened, and the plain-clothes man in the rumpled blue suit stood in the doorway.

“Need me, sheriff?” He grinned, licked his lips, and looked Liddell over.

The sheriff nodded. He didn’t take his eyes off Dunlop. “Get over and find the coroner. Tell him maybe he better hold up his verdict on that Brother Alfred accident. The
Dispatch
thinks he was murdered.”