Lady Killer

by George Harmon Coxe

  Leahy gave the location of the newsstand and Murdock thanked him. When he hung up he turned to find that Ginny had slipped on her cape and was watching, wide-eyed and attentive.

  He said he had to run and would drop her off at her place, and she said was the call about Sidney Graham. “I read in the paper that the police were looking for him.”

  Murdock said there was a chance that he might be able to locate Graham. “At least,” he said, “I’ve got a lead.”

  “Will you let me know? When you’re through, I mean. Please, Kent. I want to know what happens.”

  Murdock said he would if he could and then he had his camera and equipment case and was following Ginny out the door and down the stairs.

  The address that Leahy had given Murdock proved to be a little hole-in-the-wall store sandwiched in between a plumbing supply shop and a meat market, a narrow, dimly lighted cubby selling magazines, comic books, candy, cigarettes, and assorted odds and ends. The newspaper racks were placed next to the counter, making it necessary for a customer to step into the store, and it was this arrangement which had forced Sidney Graham inside where he could be seen.

  The proprietor, a tall, leather-skinned Italian with pointed mustaches, was quite positive about this. “Same as in the picture,” he said. “Eight o’clock, he come.”

  “A husky fellow,” Murdock said. “Square-faced, well-dressed, about five-foot-ten.”

  “Thatsa right. Dominic see him too.” He nodded towards the bright-eyed boy who stood next to him behind the counter. “Dominic helps his grandpop. He’s a reada the comics but he looks good at everybody who comes in. ‘Thatsa man in the picture,’ he says when this fella leave.”

  Murdock had an extra print of Sidney Graham and now he took it out and showed it to the old man, wanting to be sure. “That’s the man?” he asked.

  “That’s him.”

  “Know who he is?”

  “No. Me, I never see him before.”

  Murdock passed the picture to the boy, who nodded vigorous assent, his eyes big with his excitement.

  “As soon as this fella leave,” the old man said. “Dominic say, ‘I’ll follow him.’ ‘Not close,’ I say to him. ‘Be careful, boy,’ I say. ‘Follow just enough to see where he go so we getta the tickets to the fight.’” He cocked his head at Murdock. “You gotta the tickets?”

  “You’ll get them,” Murdock said and turned to the boy. “Will you go with me, Dominic, and show me where the man went?”

  “Sure,” the boy said, “but call me Dom.”

  Murdock winked at him. “Okay, Dom,” he said.

  “You make him come back after he show you,” the old man warned. “I don’t wanta no trouble.”

  Murdock reassured him and went out into the street with the boy, turning right at the corner where his car was parked. The boy said the house Graham had entered was in the next block so Murdock started the coupe and they rode to the next intersection, parking just beyond it.

  It was dark here and Murdock could not tell much about the neighborhood except that it looked grubby and down-at-the-heels, a district of flat-topped, multi-family wooden houses, most of them with porches. The one pointed out by the boy, the next to the last house in the block, was, like its neighbors, a three-storied, flat-roofed affair with three narrow porches out front and three doors opening from the lower one.

  At the near side was a vacant lot and Murdock could see that there were narrow back porches on this house, and behind them a fenced-in alley where the vacant lot ended. Lighted windows showed on all three floors, and as he stood there wondering just which flat Graham was hiding in the boy came up with some helpful information.

  “The man is on the second floor.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I’m a little scared,” Dominic said, “so I don’t get too close. I see him come in this place and I keep walking and then when I get here I see the lights go on in the second floor.”

  “Do you know which door he went in?”

  “The middle one.”

  Murdock took a moment to offer up silent congratulations to Dominic, his grandfather, Leahy, and the circulation organization of the Courier-Herald. As a more material token he dug out a five-dollar bill and gave it to the boy.

  “Go back to the store,” he said, “and tell your grandfather to call police headquarters. Tell him to keep trying until he gets Lieutenant Bacon and then tell Bacon that Murdock wants him to come right out to this address.”

  He walked as far as his car with the boy, stood watching him as he continued on towards the Columbus Avenue corner. Because a camera always made a good front, he pulled it from the coupe, put some flashbulbs and an extra filmholder in his pocket. Then he walked back to the house next to the vacant lot and went up on the porch.

  He kept his fingers crossed as he reached for the center door, hearing now the radio playing in the first-floor flat. He found the door was unlocked and he went up, not trying to muffle his footsteps on the bare stairs but feeling the perspiration start to come as he climbed upward through the darkness.

  There was a broad step or landing at the top in front of the door, and he could see the crack of light beneath it. Then he was knocking, ready to identify himself if Graham called to him, not alarmed at what he was doing but a little tensed up inside nevertheless.

  When he got no answer to his knock he stooped to inspect the keyhole, finding it of the old-fashioned sort instead of the spring-type. When no light escaped he knew the key was in the lock so he knocked again and then tried the knob. It turned and he went in slowly, calling ahead so that Graham would know who it was and not be startled into any precipitate action.

  “Sid,” he said through the six-inch opening. “It’s Kent Murdock, Sid.”

  He increased the opening another six inches, the light from the room flooding his face. He stopped there, his heart beginning to hammer as intuition told him that something was wrong. He bent forward from the waist, tensed all over now and not wanting to walk into the room until he was sure.

  He stuck his head round the corner of the door, still clinging to the knob. He started to call again and then he pushed in quickly, the words choked off in his throat.

  The room opened up before him then but there was no sound in it, no movement but his own. It was empty, save for the man in the club chair by the floor lamp, and Murdock seemed to know at once that it would do no good to speak again. There was no one to hear him now. Sidney Graham was waiting in the chair, his stocky body slackly still, but Graham could not see or hear him. Graham was dead.

  15

  WHEN he could move, Murdock felt behind him and closed the door, not looking at the man in the chair in those next few seconds but taking in the modestly furnished room, cluttered now with a coat, vest and hat which had been tossed on the couch, the magazines and newspapers strewn about the floor.

  On the right was a door leading to the front porch; on the left a second door leading into darkness. The radio music from the flat below was a muted drone and there was no sound at all from above. Beyond the chair in which Graham was slumped there was a console radio, the dial of which was lighted though no sound came from it.

  Murdock discovered he was holding his breath and let it out. He walked over to the radio, inspected the control knobs. He turned the volume control and music came from the speaker. He turned it the other way until it clicked; then the dial light went off.

  Backing away he came finally to the chair and stood a moment to verify the things he had seen from the doorway. Graham was in his shirt sleeves, his tie off and the collar open at the throat. His head had slumped to one side and his right arm dangled over the chair arm, the bent hand resting on the carpet. Above the ear on the left side of the face was an ugly hole, darkly stained and still wet. There would, Murdock guessed, be a smaller and neater hole on the opposite side of the head but he did not care to verify the guess.

  Instead he reached for the hand that lay in the man’s lap. He
did not bother to feel for a pulse because it seemed to him that there could be none. He let go of the hand, strangely shocked to find that there was still some faint warmth in it, and then he straightened, the tension coming now as some premonition of impending danger made itself felt.

  He did not attempt to explain this feeling but he heeded it, listening, nerve ends groping. It was then, as he waited, that the whisper of sound came to him.

  It was not identifiable at first; he was not even sure he heard anything at all until, seconds later, it came again, a faintly clicking sound as though some door had been stealthily opened and closed.

  He moved then, not thinking of the odds but turning in the direction of the sound. On tiptoe he came round the chair, putting his camera on the table as he passed. The darkness of an inner hall met him as he stepped through the doorway and he peered about, trying to orient himself but still moving.

  There was a closed door on his immediate left, apparently a closet. Beyond this on the right was an open door. Two windows overlooking the vacant lot served to silhouette enough of the furnishings to tell him this was a bedroom.

  Not knowing exactly where the sound had come from, but exploring on instinct alone now, he went on, past a door on the left and another on the right and then he found linoleum under his feet and knew he was in a kitchen.

  He could see, vaguely, the outlines of the sink and stove. The refrigerator stood out clearly in the shadows and beside it was a door, the glass panel of which mirrored his progress as he went directly to it, palmed the knob and pulled towards him so that he could release the catch quietly.

  He got it open and, still tiptoeing, went out on a square back porch enclosed in latticework. On his left steps led down into blackness and he hesitated, listening with breath held, wondering if he heard some sound below or if it was nothing but imagination. Then he was going down, cautiously, first one foot and then the other.

  There was no banister, only the smooth sides of the enclosure. He had to feel his way along a step at a time. It took him a long time and as he moved downwards he became aware of a breeze he had not noticed before, a spiraling of fresh air that slid up his thighs.

  When at last he reached the lower hall he knew that his instincts had been right, for the ground floor door was open. Someone had come this way before him, someone who had not bothered to close this door.

  Hesitating but a second or two, he stepped noiselessly into the pitch blackness of the alley. Then, as he wondered which way he should turn, he stopped, feeling again the premonition of danger.

  It was nothing that he saw or heard; it was the way he felt: coldly taut, his senses strained. Already in the alley he stepped back, flattening himself against the wall of the building, peering to the right and left, seeing nothing now but heeding the intuitive warning which had stopped him. Only then did he begin to think, to understand the complete idiocy of his actions.

  Sidney Graham had been shot at close range. Apparently the killer had still been in the flat when Murdock entered and had chosen flight rather than the alternative of killing again if discovered. Until now luck had been with Murdock. He had followed his man; he knew he was somewhere in this alley. Somewhere close by. That there was no immediate sound told him that the killer knew he was being followed and was waiting to strike again if necessary.

  Then, as he considered his next move, he heard a sound of movement. Holding his breath once more, he heard it again and knew what it was: the quick tap of leather on stone; the steps of someone walking with stealthy tread.

  Murdock stayed right where he was. He had been endowed with as much courage as the next man but he was intelligent enough to realize now that to move blindly after a man who in all probability still carried a gun was foolhardy. Had he been armed with a flashlight and a weapon of some sort he might have followed; as it was he waited until the steps began to fade, until he thought he saw a shadow darker than the rest moving towards the intersecting street.

  He went on then, cautiously. He saw the vague silhouette of a man step into the street and vanish. He moved more swiftly, coming to the corner and turning right as the other had done. What he saw then was an empty street and when he turned back towards the building he had just left he knew only that the silhouette he had seen had been that of a man, and, if his estimate was right, a tall one.

  Retracing his steps, he entered the house and closed the door behind him. He moved upward as quietly as he had come down. Light filtering from the front room helped him reach the latticed back porch and he closed and locked the kitchen door before he went along the hall to the living room and Sidney Graham.

  It surprised him a little to find his camera waiting there on the table where he had placed it. It seemed that he had been gone at least an hour, and because his nerves were still a little ragged he muttered angrily, the object of his inward wrath Lieutenant Bacon and his tardiness.

  He made no attempt to search the rest of the apartment or the body, believing that in this case, it was a matter for the police. Instead he opened the camera, took a flashbulb from his pocket and got a picture of the dead man. Reversing his filmholder, he ejected the bulb, twisted a fresh one in the reflector. He backed to one side, seeking a new angle, and that was how he happened to see the gun.

  It lay on the floor a few inches from the bent hand which dangled to the carpet, and had hitherto been hidden by the shadows. He did not touch it as he knelt down but saw that it was a short-barreled revolver, probably a .38. Then, still kneeling, his glance moved on across the floor and he saw the white paper between the chair and end table. When he picked it up after he had taken his second picture he saw that it was tissue paper, a good sized piece, partly crumpled but having a texture that seemed softer than he had expected. He was still examining it when he heard a car coming along the street, moving fast and stopping suddenly outside the house.

  “About time,” he said, half aloud, and went to open the door giving on the porch. He saw then that it was a police car, and when Bacon got out followed by a couple of men Murdock leaned over the railing and told them to take the middle door.

  When Lieutenant Bacon came upstairs and found Sidney Graham dead in the chair and Murdock standing around with a camera in his hand he blew a gasket. Murder had erased a theory that he had treasured, he saw himself faced with a case even more difficult than he had looked for, and he turned on Murdock without stopping to think things out.

  Murdock got a little red in the face but he kept himself in hand while he explained what he had done and how he had located Graham. By that time Bacon had calmed down a little but he could not yet be philosophical about the situation.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “You had an idea. You and your newsboy found Graham when we couldn’t. But you could have waited for us, couldn’t you? You didn’t have to come up here and—”

  “What difference would that have made?” Murdock said curtly. “Graham was dead, wasn’t he? If I’d waited for you I wouldn’t have known about the guy I saw in the alley.”

  “A tall guy—you think.” Bacon walked around in a tight circle while his men went over the other rooms of the flat. “That means Lee Hammond or Guy Valliere.”

  Or Bert Carlin, Murdock thought though he did not say so. Louis Tremaine also came to mind and that made him wonder just how tall the man actually was and how much the darkness and his state of mind had to do with the impression.

  “Okay,” Bacon said. “Sit down and keep out of the way.”

  Murdock sat down, dragging a chair to a corner and making himself small while a routine got under way that was familiar to him. He listened to the telephone calls; he listened to Bacon’s assistants report on the immediate neighbors, and before the medical examiner arrived he had a general idea of what the authorities were up against in this particular case.

  The occupant of the ground-floor flat happened also to be the owner and he stated that the second-floor flat had been rented to a man named Barbutti who tended bar at a downtow
n tavern. He said that he did not know Graham had even been in the building, that he must have borrowed the place from Barbutti. He had, he admitted, heard a radio going up here but he assumed that Barbutti had been playing it.

  Murdock had told Bacon about the radio being on when he first came in and now the lieutenant went over the point again with the owner.

  “Loud?” he asked.

  “For a few minutes loud,” the owner said.

  “But you didn’t hear a shot?”

  The man shook his head. He said his radio was also on; if there was a shot he did not remember it. Bacon dismissed the man after learning who occupied the flat above, a flat which apparently was at the moment empty even though some of the lights were still on.

  “The killer turned the volume up before he pulled the trigger,” Bacon said, half to himself, then turned to watch his fingerprint man, who was busy with the revolver Murdock had previously pointed out.

  The medical examiner bustled in a minute or so later, apologizing for being late and saying something about being called away from a bridge game. He motioned the police photographer to continue taking pictures of the body, directing him to get certain shots that he wanted for his record.

  He took some notes of his own before he moved anything, and when the photographer finished, he got to work, checking for signs of rigor, flexing the arms and neck and legs. He made a test for body temperature, examined the wound in the right temple and announced that it was a contact shot. He went over the rest of the head, brushing the gray-brown hair aside in his inspection.

  “Here’s something,” he said finally, holding the parted hair until Bacon could see what he meant. “This contusion on the left side above the ear.”

  “You mean that little lump?” Bacon said. “Is it important?”

  “Can’t tell for sure until I do the p.m. Doesn’t look too bad. No blood. Probably made by a blunt, rounded instrument.”

  “A sap?”

  “That would do it.”