Murder for Two

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Not at first,” Casey said. “The last time I saw it, a couple of nights ago, it was empty,” he said, thinking of how he had returned the gun and shells to Russell Gifford, “but I didn’t know it still was until I looked at it.”

  “Oh,” Furness said, though he still did not understand.

  “It wasn’t much more than a foot from my face,” Casey said. “And when I got over being scared I could look right into the cylinder. When you’re that close, if a revolver is loaded, you can see the ends of the slugs—those on the sides. Four chambers were empty. Even if there was one under the firing-pin, it would turn away from the hammer when she pulled the trigger.”

  Furness did not seem to hear. He leaned back and closed his eyes and he was an old man now. What he had seen was etched indelibly upon his sagging face and Casey knew that some of that imprint would always remain. He picked up the telephone and asked for police headquarters.

  “Hello,” he said when Logan finally came on. “You’d better get word on the radio to pick up Helen MacKay.”

  “Yeah? For what?”

  “For murder. She just left her place. She hasn’t any hat or coat and it’s raining. You ought to be able to get her fairly soon.”

  Logan did not argue nor ask many questions. Something in Casey’s voice told him all he needed to know for now. There was just one thing that bothered him and he said so before he hung up.

  “If she was right there, why the hell didn’t you grab her yourself?”

  “Am I a cop?” Casey said wearily. “I don’t mind helping out a little on this detective business, but I’ll be damned if I’ll make your arrests for you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A DEAL IN REWARDS

  IT WAS HOURS before Lieutenant Logan could get things cleaned up enough so he could go back to his office and relax. When he went he brought Casey with him.

  “Sit down,” he said, and opened a drawer and found a partly full bottle.

  “So you’re one of those solitary drinkers, huh?”

  “Do you want it or not?”

  “Sure I want it,” Casey said, and took the bottle and paper cup, drinking deeply before passing them back.

  “There’s just a few little things,” Logan said when he had had his drink.

  “I knew damn well you brought me back for something,” Casey growled.

  He knew about what had happened since he had first telephoned Logan. Helen MacKay had been picked up wandering aimlessly in the rain within five minutes of that call, and Logan had been smart enough to hustle her to headquarters and get a statement. After that both Casey and Furness had spent a lot of time with the District Attorney.

  “Will that statement stand up in court?” he asked.

  “The D.A. thinks it will,” Logan said. “With the circumstantial evidence you dug up, and with what she said before you and Furness, he thinks he’s got enough. Of course you never can tell with juries and he may decide to take a plea instead of trying for the chair.” He lowered one lid and then the other. “That’s why you didn’t grab the gun as soon as you found out it wasn’t loaded, wasn’t it? You wanted her to talk in front of Furness.”

  “I hoped she would,” Casey said. “And I thought I might as well get a picture too while I was about it.”

  Logan grinned crookedly and shook his head. “Well, I guess you’re entitled to that one. Because the way you figured the thing was the way it happened, according to her story. Though I’m damned if I know what started you. Don’t tell me you suspected her all along because if you do—”

  “You know I didn’t,” Casey said. “I thought the same as you did until this morning. Then there were a couple of things—”

  “One was the envelope,” Logan cut in. “When you knew what was in it you wondered why Lawson should kill Byrkman when he should have protected him and why, if he did kill him, he hadn’t got the envelope first.” Logan grunted softly. “I’d begun to wonder the same thing myself by the middle of the afternoon.—But go on. What else?”

  “Karen Harding had her wrists taped. I cut the rope that held her to the bed and that let her bring her hands to her mouth. By the time I’d untied her ankles she’d already begun to unwrap that tape by starting it with her teeth. She could have got it all off that way in time maybe—if her teeth were strong.”

  “Oh,” Logan said.

  “So I wondered why Helen MacKay couldn’t have done it. You see, I saw something you didn’t because I took that tape off. She’d had a little time after she got the strips off her mouth and before Edward, the operator, got there, and she could have been working on it with her teeth. When I saw it, the bandage was smooth but there were teeth marks on it. I thought she’d been trying and that she couldn’t get the tape started. When I saw how easy it was for Karen Harding to do the same thing—at least to start it—it hit me.”

  He pulled his feet in and reached for the bottle. “Why the teeth marks on Helen’s bandage if it was still smooth?—unless the teeth marks were put there while the bandage was being put on. Of course that’s how it was; she had to use her teeth to wrap up the last few inches.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Logan took the bottle away from Casey and sampled it. “And you figured out that idea of cutting off a strip and anchoring the end with a chair and rolling up to it with her hands over her head—”

  “Not at first, I didn’t,” Casey said. “I damn near went nuts trying to figure out how she could tape herself before I got that hunch. In fact, I gave up for a while and tried something else. I remembered that list of checks drawn by Lawson on his Mathews account—the one for five grand paid to C. H. Manning. That piece of check you found in Rosalind Taylor’s pocket had a signature ending in—ing.”

  “Yeah,” Logan said. “We’d been working on that too. That check was what tipped off Rosalind Taylor to Helen MacKay. MacKay was using her Manning account and she’d written a check in advance and when Taylor was poking around MacKay’s desk the afternoon you were there she found that check.”

  “She came out of Helen’s office with it in her hand. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t even know it was a check because she had another slip of paper in her hand too. They were just two pieces of paper, one colored and one white.”

  “But Taylor knew,” Logan said. “The minute she saw that word Manning, she knew. Lawson, as Mathews, was paying Byrkman and he had written a check for Manning and that check Taylor saw proved Manning was MacKay. That made the whole damn thing clear—why Taylor’s crusades always blew up in her face.—But how the hell you got that dope from the Central Trust when we hadn’t even—”

  “It’s my personality,” Casey said. “The manager and I are buddies. I didn’t know what the ‘ing’ on the check meant. I thought at first it was Dinah King.”

  “So did we.”

  “But I went over to the bank anyway. They have a Recordex there that makes micro-films of all checks—for their records—and I wanted to get a piece of that film that had a Manning check on it. Nobody seemed to know Manning but I saw her account. It was made up of just three deposits—the Mathews check for five thousand, another for two thousand from someone named Seeley—probably a phony as well—and a third for twenty-five hundred from Conti, the last guy Rosalind Taylor got indicted for racketeering.”

  Casey spread his hands. “That did it. Helen MacKay knew all the details and she sold out Rosalind Taylor’s campaigns for ninety-five hundred bucks within the past year or so. No wonder Rosalind was sore. No wonder she was going to make her pay and tell Furness—”

  “And no wonder MacKay killed her,” Logan finished quietly. He stirred in his chair. “You made pictures of the Manning signature, huh? And then returned the film?”

  “Sure. By comparing that with Helen MacKay’s hand-writing—”

  “Yeah,” Logan said.

  “And when I got that far,” Casey said, “I just had to figure out some way Helen MacKay could have taped her own hands. Finally I got an idea of ho
w it might have been done.”

  “You knew what to look for. And when you found the chair you knew you had it.” Logan paused to watch the big photographer with narrow-eyed amusement. “And if Furness and MacKay hadn’t walked in on you, you were going to let me in on it, huh?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Damned if I don’t think you were.—Well, I give up. You’re too good for me—or too lucky. You were just as wrong as I was until—”

  “I happened to see a couple of things you didn’t.”

  “But what counts is that you saw them and you remembered and nobody had to draw you a blueprint. There’s just one other thing. That reward. It’s five grand and I think those two cops in the cruiser ought to rate maybe five hundred apiece out of it, don’t you?”

  Casey said he did. “I’m glad you brought it up,” he said. “I want to make a deal with you on the rest of it.”

  “There’ll be no deal.” Logan shook his head.

  “But look—”

  “No.” And there was a definite finality in the word. “Nossek talked. That means we’re going to put him and Harry away for quite a while—and Lawson too because he hired them—on that Loeb shooting. The murder’s your baby and that four thousand is strictly yours.”

  “I don’t want any reward,” Casey yelled. “I didn’t get mixed up in it on that account.” He sat up, his voice aghast. “Hell, if I take the reward it’ll all have to come out. Everybody’ll know it. Do you think I want my picture in the paper? Do you think I want every camera in town yelling, ‘Hey, Sherlock!’ at me every time they see me. Hell, I’ve got to keep this quiet! And look,” he said when Logan started to interrupt.

  “How’ll it look for you, some lousy camera stepping in and getting lucky and walking off with the big dough. What I thought was that you could take the money and then if—”

  “You’re crazy.” Logan sat up too, his face a foot from Casey’s. “Even if I earned it I wouldn’t take it. I’m a cop and I get paid pretty well and what I get paid for is taking care of my job. If I did something on the side and there was a bonus for it, that would be different, but I’m damned if I’ll take money for doing a job I would do anyway, whether Taylor was a big shot or not. No. Damned if I will.”

  “My, my,” Casey said, and then he grinned. Suddenly he felt better. Logan was a cop and he was proud of the department and jealous of its reputation. For himself he had never taken a nickel he hadn’t earned, nor asked for a line of publicity, and remembering all this now made things a lot brighter for Casey.

  “Okay,” he said. “Just keep that big mouth shut a second, will you? What I thought was that since the dough’s going to be paid out anyway—and those papers can afford it—why not see that it goes some place where it’ll do some good, like maybe the U.S.O. or the Army and Navy relief? I thought you could take the check. If I take it, it won’t look right—for the department; if you took it, well, it would be sort of official—”

  He broke off, unable to express exactly what he meant. Logan watched him a moment and something happened to his eyes. In a woman the look he gave Casey might have been called affectionate or tender; in Logan it was a half-smile that was warm and benevolent and understanding.

  “I might have known it,” he said. “You’re awfully damned afraid somebody’ll find out just what kind of a faker you are, aren’t you? All right, you big ox. If that’s the way you want it.”

  Casey’s grin cracked wide and he got right up, his broad face relieved.

  “I’ll tell MacGrath,” he said. He shouldered his plate-case but stopped at the door for a final thrust. “That way you might get some credit. You might even get to be a captain.”

  “Sure,” said Logan. “The only way I’ll get to be captain is to wait for a few guys to die off and you know it. On your way, fella. I’ve got reports to write.”

  It was after twelve when Casey stopped in at the Express. There was no reason for this. It was just a habit, a sort of final inspection to see that everything was all right.

  No one else was about and he sat for quite a while fighting off the fatigue that had been wearing him down and thinking about a lot of things he didn’t want to think about. He pushed his hand across his rugged chin and felt the beard there and he was trying to decide where to go for a drink when the telephone rang. It was Dinah King.

  “I’ve been trying to get you, Flash. I—I heard about Helen MacKay.”

  “Yeah,” Casey said.

  “A messenger came this afternoon with the envelope,” she said after a pause. “I just wanted to ask if you couldn’t stop by the Club and have a drink with Russ and me.”

  “Well—”

  “It isn’t very late.”

  Casey said no, it wasn’t. He said he’d like to but he wasn’t sure he could make it. Maybe he could if something didn’t come up but not to count on him.

  “If I can’t make it tonight I’ll make it some other time,” he said.

  “All right. And you’ll never know how grateful we both are.”

  Casey mumbled something and hung up. He leaned back, resting. He didn’t want to have a drink with Dinah and Russell Gifford. Three was a crowd, wasn’t it? Gifford had Dinah and young Perry had Karen Harding. What did he have? Some telephone numbers—but who didn’t?”

  And then he thought of Stanley Furness. That was what bothered him. That was why he needed a few drinks tonight. He couldn’t go to bed yet. He tried to tell himself it was better for Furness this way, that no matter how hard the guy had been hit it was better than facing his remaining years under Helen MacKay’s domination—

  He heard footsteps behind him but he did not turn until someone stopped at his desk. He looked up and found it was MacGrath. The managing editor had a paper in his hand.

  “I can think of a few thousand questions I’d like to ask you about what happened,” he said, “but I guess you’ve probably answered enough today, and besides, if you’re in your usual form you’d probably tell me to go to hell anyway. Seen this?”

  He spread the paper out, turning to an inside page. Here were two of the pictures Casey had taken that morning, one of Nossek being carried out on a stretcher, and the other showing Harry and Mugsie in the hands of the law. MacGrath flipped the paper back and on the front page was the shot Casey had taken of Helen MacKay pulling the trigger while the dazed and horrified Furness tried to grab the gun.

  “This could be one of the best prints of the year in the next press photographers’ show,” MacGrath said.

  Casey barely glanced at it. Later he would perhaps think differently, but now he saw the subject rather than the photographic values of the print.

  MacGrath looked at his number-one photographer narrowly and bunched his lips; though not for long. For he was a keen judge of men, MacGrath, and he sensed how it was with Casey now.

  “What’re you going to do with the reward, buy bonds?”

  “I’ve got bonds,” Casey said, and explained the deal he had made with Logan.

  MacGrath nodded. He did not attack Casey’s judgment or tell him he was crazy for passing up the money or anything like that. He just said, “Swell. It’s a good idea.” And then: “By the way, that Perry chap came in this afternoon and if he’s got what I think he’s got we’re going to get a lot more mileage on tires made from reclaimed rubber.”

  Casey listened absently while MacGrath went on with more details. Finally some of MacGrath’s enthusiasm injected itself into Casey and he began to perk up, to think more about Perry and the Harding girl and less about Furness and himself.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m glad of it.”

  “And it just goes to prove my point,” MacGrath added.

  “What point?”

  “About your doing more good here than in the Army. You straighten out a young couple’s life, and give the kid the lift he needs to perfect this rubber toughener so that instead of getting five thousand miles at forty on reclaims we may get seven or eight; you wrap up a murder and t
urn four thousand bucks over to the Army and Navy Relief. What the hell, if that isn’t more important than going out and doing what the Army can train any other young squirt to do—”

  He stopped to watch Casey pull himself out of the chair and reach for his hat. Casey tried to punch some shape into it and ran his fingers through his hair before he put it on.

  “Where you going?” MacGrath asked.

  “Out. I think I’m going to get a little drunk.”

  MacGrath smiled, his eyes wise. For just an instant he hesitated.

  “Any special place?”

  “Any place.”

  “Maybe you’ve got something.” MacGrath went to the door, turned. “And damned if I don’t think I’ll go with you. I may get hell when I get home but it’s been a long time since I bought you a drink, Casey, and tonight I’m going to buy you two. Wait’ll I get my hat and coat.”

  Casey came back to the desk as MacGrath went out. His glance touched the paper as he waited and before he realized it he had opened it to the two pictures he had taken that morning. They would have been better if that damned engraver hadn’t cropped them so much, he thought. And then, realizing he was getting interested, he pushed the paper away.

  “To hell with it,” he said softly. “It’s still a lousy job.”

  But by the time he reached the hall he knew he was lying. Taking pictures for a big city newspaper might be a headache, but for him it was the only job in the world and there way no other that could compare with it.

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