“You must think a lot of her,” Gray suggested.
Albano’s dark face flushed. “Actually, I just feel guilty. Because I’m stepping out of this mess. She doesn’t know it yet. But—hell, she isn’t in love with me.”
“No?”
“She still loves her husband. Why else wouldn’t she sleep with me?” Albano quite unconsciously inflated his deep chest and moved his big shoulders a little. It was clear he felt there could be no other reason for rejecting a man like himself. Possibly he was quite right.
“I thought, the way it started,” he said, “it would be just one of those things. A lot of fun and no tears when it ended. That’s the way I like it. But I’m in ’way over my head now. Karen—I’m afraid of what may happen. All I’m waiting for is a chance to kiss her good-by.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“The trouble she can cause,” Albano said flatly. “These damned lies—suppose somebody believed her at the wrong time? Look at this deal with her husband! For all I know, she may go and tell him I raped her.” He shrugged. “I’m getting out.”
He picked up his coat and held his hand out to Gray.
“I guess I won’t be seeing you again, Mr. Gray. Good-by. And if you can do anything for Karen, I hope you will.”
Gray went back into his office slowly, sat down at his desk and pulled the telephone toward him. After a little hesitation he dialed Police Headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Yeager.
“This is Michael Gray,” he said.
Yeager’s brisk young voice said, “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve just been talking to Karen Champion,” Gray said.
Yeager laughed. “Oh yes. Well, the hearing went off like clockwork. Couldn’t have been better. Maybe she’ll get some sense now she knows she can’t make fools of the police any time she feels like it.”
Gray said, “Lieutenant, suppose for a minute Mrs. Champion hadn’t pulled any false alarms on you before. Would you have done more checking up on this story about Wednesday night?”
Yeager was briefly silent. “What are you getting at?” he asked finally, his voice less friendly now.
Gray said doggedly, “You aren’t going to like this. I think this once she was telling the truth. I think something did happen on Wednesday.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Yeager said.
“Now, wait. I just finished running a little test. I found out about some of her known lies and worked the conversation around to them. She seems to feel a very deep anxiety about those subjects. She avoids talking about them at all. She grips the chair arm and shuts her eyes and seems to be afraid, somehow, of falling…. But when I questioned her again about the attack the other night, she was perfectly willing to tell me all about it. She showed none of the symptoms connected with her known lies. Her only reaction is the perfectly natural feeling of fear she’d have if the attack really happened. If it did, she’s in a tough spot, isn’t she?”
Again Yeager was silent for a moment. Then he said, “No, I just can’t buy it. Have you got any evidence at all?”
“Only what I told you.”
“Okay,” Yeager said. “So she shuts her eyes and gets dizzy. For my money that just shows she’s one jump ahead of the strait jacket. That I already knew.” He was silent again. Gray could hear him breathing a little hard over the line. “Well, what do you want me to do?” Yeager demanded after a moment. He sounded very slightly uneasy.
“That’s the problem,” Gray said. “I don’t know. It’s an explosive situation the Champions are mixed up in. Anything could happen.” He thought briefly. “Do you know anything about a man named Ira Fenn? A private investigator?”
Yeager said, “Fenn, Fenn. … I think I’ve heard of him. Nothing good. Why?”
Gray told him what had happened the night of his visit to the Quigley house.
Yeager snorted. “Champion’s a fool if he hired a crook like Fenn to keep him out of the booby-hatch. You want to bring charges against Fenn?”
Gray said, “No, not now. I’ve just been wondering—there’s a man named Perry Brand who runs a kind of mental-healing racket here in town. Know him?”
“We’ve got an eye on him,” Yeager said grimly. “So far he hasn’t stepped over the line. Why?”
“It’s a wild guess,” Gray said, “but would Ira Fenn have any connection with him?”
“Not that I know of. What’s on your mind?”
“There’s a very ugly kind of pattern I keep running into in this Champion business,” Gray said. “Everybody seems to be obsessed with the idea of railroading Champion into an institution. Brand was involved with a case like that once and just barely got out without a sentence. I know he’s treating the wife of a business associate of Champion’s.” He drummed discontentedly on the desk. “I don’t know. There’s no connection. I’m just uneasy about the whole thing.”
Yeager said in a patient voice, “Look, Mr. Gray. I know you’ve worked with the police before, and I know you’re a friend of Captain Zucker’s. But this thing’s in my department, and it’s just one of a lot of cases. As far as we’re concerned it’s all over. If you can bring us any evidence to justify reopening the case, we’ll be grateful. But if you can’t—” He let his voice drop.
Gray said, “All right. I can’t argue with you. I don’t think this Champion case is finished. I think Karen Champion was telling the truth. Somebody did attack her. He failed. He may try again. I wish I could think of something constructive to do about it.”
“Forget it,” Yeager said wearily. “It’s all over.”
“I hope so,” Gray said.
9
Oliver Albano drew his big, dusty car to a stop before Karen’s apartment house as a distant bell tolled the half hour after midnight. Karen, who had been drowsing, woke up and looked around dazedly.
“Where are we?”
“Home,” Albano said, switching off the light. “You are, anyhow.”
She sat up and began fumbling in her purse for her key.
“It’s awfully late, Oliver. I’m going straight to bed.”
“I want to come in for a few minutes.”
“Oliver—”
He reached over and took the key out of her hand. “It’s all right. I’m not going to make any passes. I just want to talk to you about something.” He got out of the car and went around to open the door for her. “Come along. This won’t take long.”
The apartment felt cold and clammy. Karen, switching on the lights, said, “I’m glad you’re here, really. I never come in any more without wondering if Dennis is hiding behind the door ready to jump at me.”
Albano gave her a curious glance and crossed to turn on the heat. “I want a drink,” he said. “Any of that brandy left?”
“I think so. Wait till I fix my face. I feel like a hag. Make me a drink too, will you, Oliver?” She was taking her coat off as she went into the bedroom.
Albano frowned after her. Maybe he was sticking his neck out. He could always just drop the girl and be done with it. No point in building up to a big scene. Still, she’d call and keep inviting him over, and wondering what was wrong. A clean break was probably best, after all. He could say he was leaving the city on a job or something. For an indefinite stay. However he told it, a drink would help. He grinned to himself as he opened the kitchen door, wondering if Karen would ask him what the out-of-town business was. Odd that she’d never shown any curiosity about what business he was really in. Only went to show, he told himself, how little she really cared about him.
He flipped on the kitchen light and crossed to the refrigerator, hoping Karen had remembered to make ice cubes. It was a chore she frequently forgot.
He reached for the refrigerator door. His hand was on its latch when he paused suddenly, puzzled by something. A strange feeling in the air. A sense that he wasn’t alone in the silent kitchen. There was no reason for it. He couldn’t hear a sound but the purr of the refrigerator. He started to turn, not yet very mu
ch alarmed.
With a quiet click, the kitchen lights went out.
Albano said, “Hey!” in startled protest, and pulled the refrigerator door open. A wave of cold air gushed out at him, and the light inside flashed on.
Behind him Albano heard a grunt of sudden, quick-drawn breath and something whistled through the air. Then a stunning shock of hot and cold together exploded against the side of his head. The blow glanced downward, ripping agonizingly at his ear. He stumbled to his knees, too dazed with shock to realize what was happening.
Through the ringing in his ears he heard the air whistle again and a second blow thudded blinding and dazzling against his head. He fell forward, groping as he fell for something to cling to.
His outflung hand seized a wire shelf of the refrigerator and his falling weight tore it loose. Dishes of food, a carton of milk, a plastic container of orange juice vomited out, crashing and thudding across the linoleum.
Albano’s shock gave way to a vast, flooding rage. He heaved himself sidewise on the floor, reached inside his coat with a smooth, familiar motion. His hand came out with the reassuring weight of his automatic clasped in the palm. He flicked the safety off as he swung the weapon up. He was grinning now with effort and anger.
The air whistled a third time. The shock of hot and cold smashed crackling across his wrist. He felt the bones break. The automatic roared the instant after the blow fell. Its own explosion tore it free, bucking out of his useless grip. It dangled by the guard for one instant as it spun around his trigger finger, and then dropped somewhere out of sight.
He heard Karen scream, somewhere, far off.
He was shouting at her to get away, to stay out. He was trying to flounder to his feet. He was groping desperately for the source of these hot-cold blows that rained down on him, shock after shock after shock.
He almost made it. He almost got to his feet again. He was blinded by the blood running down into his eyes, but he saw now in the low, upward glow from the refrigerator the shape of the person behind the weapon.
It was a dark shape, formless, with a hat pulled low. The light glinted on horn-rimmed glasses and a bristling moustache obscured the mouth. He thought he knew the face. He was going to shout the name out as soon as he got his breath back. First of all he had to get to his feet. Somehow that would save him. He didn’t know how, but he had to stand up.
He was half upright when his foot slipped in the spilled food and he fell forward again. Even then his trained muscles responded and he tried to turn the fall into a lunging tackle. But the dark figure sprang aside and Albano came down on his spread hands, ready for the fall, ready to spring up with a powerful thrust against the floor.
He had forgotten his broken wrist.
The wrist betrayed him as he toppled. The dark figure stooped toward him, both arms raised.
An instant later he knew the last betrayal of all as his own skull gave way under the final blow. Strangely, this last blow never stopped. It drove in and in toward the center of his brain, and as it drove it seemed to expand, a bursting flower of red and white that was all color and all sound and all silence.
Albano died.
10
Michael Gray stood in the kitchen door, watching the technical crew at work. A chalked outline on the linoleum showed where Oliver Albano’s body had lain, a much smaller one marked where the automatic had fallen. One of the lab men had stuck a pencil in a hole in the wall and was plotting the course of the bullet that had made the hole.
Captain Harry Zucker came up to stand beside Gray. His seamed face was angry. He hunched heavy shoulders and muttered, “God damn that Yeager. I’ll eat him out plenty for this. You might have warned me, Mike, when he wouldn’t listen to you.”
Gray said, “You wouldn’t have paid any attention either, Harry. I didn’t have any evidence at all. It was just a hunch.”
“Well, it paid off.” Zucker looked discontentedly around the busy room. “I’m glad you could get here. You know the setup. Maybe you’ll turn up something we don’t. We’re still hunting Dennis Champion. He isn’t at his house.”
“You think he killed Albano?” Gray asked.
“Who knows? He’s got the best motive, the way things look now. We’ll find out, eventually. I’m taking charge of this one personally, Mike. I don’t like what’s happened. That hearing yesterday—dismissing the charges—and right away murder. Something’s been loused up bad.”
A detective came up to them. “Captain, we’ve got a report on the gun now.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Registered to Oliver Albano.”
“Permit to carry it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The detective shrugged. “Nobody seems too clear on just what he did for a living. A kind of freelance, it looks like. He did some skip-tracing, for one thing. He was a debt collector, too. Probably where the bigger money is. We think he had a tie-in with some of the Las Vegas outfits. You could say he’d need to carry a gun.” The detective smiled rather bleakly.
Zucker grunted. “What about prints?”
“Albano’s. That’s all. One shot was fired—the slug’s probably still in the wall. We’re checking the cartridge for marks, but all we’ll find is that Albano managed to fire one shot before he died.”
Gray said, “I wonder if he carried a gun all the time. If he did, it’s possible he had enough outside enemies so this killing may just involve the Champions coincidentally.”
“Believe that?” Zucker asked.
“No. I don’t. I just said it was possible. The coincidence seems too close.”
“Well, the guy was wearing a shoulder holster,” Zucker said. “It wasn’t a new one, either. So he probably expected trouble. But I agree with you, the coincidence has got to be explained.”
He turned as a plump white-haired man came toward them. Dr. Storm, the Assistant Medical Examiner, said, “All right, I’ve taken a good look at that pipe. It’s the weapon that killed Albano, all right.”
Zucker said to Gray, “A length of steel pipe, about two and a half feet long. No prints on it. The sort of pipe you can pick up anywhere a building’s going up.”
“There might have been some metal traces on the gloves the killer wore,” Dr. Storm suggested.
Zucker said, “He’ll get rid of those fast, probably. And any of his clothes that might have got bloodstained. Would there have been much blood on him, by the way?”
“Can’t tell. Likely not—those were crushing blows. I’d like to take a look at the bullet when you get it out of the wall.”
“Think it might have hit the killer?”
“It’s a long chance. There aren’t any bloodstains near the door, or outside, where he’d have left them getting away. But I want to make sure.”
“Well—what happened?”
“By the direction of the blows I’d say the first one caught Albano when he was on his feet, his back to the killer. The rest were struck from above, by somebody standing over him. It was one of those that crushed in his skull. Comminuted fracture—the bone’s shattered. Death was almost instantaneous.”
“Doesn’t it seem a little odd,” Gray suggested, “that somebody armed only with a pipe would go for a man with a gun?”
Zucker grunted again. “I’ve been thinking about that, too. It’s an argument in favor of the killer being connected somehow with the Champion case. A professional killer—the kind Albano might have had a business disagreement with—he’d operate differently. More efficiently. It was just dumb luck this killer got Albano at all.”
Gray said slowly, “It almost looks like an accident—in a way. As if the killer didn’t mean to attack Albano at all. As if he mistook him for somebody else. But how could he? Albano would have turned the lights on before he crossed the room to the refrigerator. He must have been in plain sight. By the way, how did the killer get in?”
“No telling,” Zucker shrugged. “Must have had a key. He was probably standing over
there in the back porch entry, ready to slug whoever came in. Might have been a sneak thief, for all we know. Except there again—coincidence.”
Dr. Storm said, “Just for the record, Captain—you keep saying he, but of course it could have been a woman. There’s a lot of heft in that metal pipe.”
Zucker looked inquiringly at Gray. “How about it? Did the Champion woman have a motive?”
Gray frowned. “I wish I could talk to her.”
“Tomorrow,” Zucker said. “She’s out like a light, and not a minute too soon. I never heard such loud hysterics, and I’ve heard some dillies. That shot the doctor gave her ought to hold her until morning.”
“Tell me again just what she said,” Gray asked Zucker.
“Almost nothing. She and Albano came in, she went into the bedroom, he came out here to mix drinks. He said there was something he wanted to talk to her about. She has no idea what. The next thing she knew there was a kind of thud and a shot, and then more thuds. When she made it into the kitchen Albano was on the floor in the middle of all that mess, with his head caved in. She saw the kitchen door just closing. The killer was on his way out—if she’s telling the truth.”
Gray said slowly, “I had a talk with Albano this afternoon. He was worried about the trouble Karen’s lying might get him into. He was going to tell Karen he wanted to break up their friendship.”
Zucker said, “Friendship?” with a slight leer.
“According to Albano, that’s all it was,” Gray told him.
“Maybe he was lying.” Zucker sounded hopeful. “Maybe he told her he was through and she went for him with the pipe in a jealous rage. Or maybe it was Champion, after all. We’ll assume he didn’t know they were only holding hands. If he found them together, pretty late in the evening, he might jump to conclusions and sail into Albano with the pipe. That would explain the lead-pipe attack on a man with a gun—impulsive rage.”
“It certainly looks as if Karen was telling the truth for once in her life,” Gray said. “About what happened Wednesday night, I mean.”
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