Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  But I was wrong about that. When I got there along with a couple of other people, and we dragged him out, he was alive. Unconscious and pretty badly cut up, but unless he had internal injuries, it looked as though he'd make it all right.

  It did not surprise me when I saw who he was. Because he was the same person who had committed the thefts in John Rothman's book shop—the same clever, greedy, stupid young man.

  Neal Vining.

  Three hours later, I was sitting in a room at the Hall of Justice with Kerry, John Rothman and an inspector I knew named Jack Logan, who had been the investigating officer when Rothman first reported the thefts. Vining was in the hospital under police guard. He'd already been charged with attempted vehicular homicide, and had been coherent enough and frightened enough to confess to that, and when I got done with my explanations he would also be charged with several counts of grand larceny.

  I was saying, "I knew even before Vining tried to run us off the road that he was the thief. And I know how he got the stolen items out of the store, too. It was a combination of things I'd seen and heard; and when Kerry made a comment about me having a hollow leg, because I like to drink beer, it triggered an association that put it all together."

  "Hollow leg?" Rothman said. "I don't understand what -"

  "You'll see what I mean in a minute. The whole thing is really pretty simple; it was Vining himself, in fact, who told me how he pulled off the thefts, either without realizing what he was saying or, more likely, because he was so sure of himself that it was his way of bragging. He said yesterday, 'For all I know, Mr. Rothman himself could be slipping out with the spoils."

  They were all staring at me, Rothman with a look of incredulity. "Are you saying I took the items out of the shop for him? That's preposterous—”

  "No, it isn't," I said. "You took them out, all right; that's the beauty of his scheme. He made you an unwitting accomplice."

  "How could he possibly have done that?"

  "By putting the stolen items inside your cane," I said.

  "My cane?"

  "Vining gave it to you, didn't he? Some months ago? Harmon Boyette told me Vining was in the habit of giving you presents from his father-in-law's haberdashery."

  "Yes, but. . ." Rothman seemed a little nonplussed. He reached for the cane, propped against the side of his chair, and gawped at it as if he'd never seen it before.

  Logan said, "You mean the cane's hollow?"

  "Yes. That's the significance of Kerry's hollow-leg comment. And that's why Vining stole only etchings, prints and maps, instead of books that were more valuable, since you installed your alarm system: they could be rolled up and inserted inside the cane. They still make canes like that over in England; people keep money and other small valuable items inside them—as a safeguard against theft, ironically enough. It wouldn't have been difficult for Vining to have one imported through his father-in-law's store."

  Rothman was running his fingers over the thick barrel of the cane, peering at it. "How does the damn thing work?'

  "I don't know. But it shouldn't take us long to find out."

  It took us about two minutes. The catch was well concealed, and so was the long hinged opening; you couldn't see either with the naked eye, you couldn't feel the grooves with your fingers and it wasn't likely that you could open it by accident. Fine British craftsmanship. Logan was the one who finally found the catch, and when the hinges released I saw what I expected to see: the hollow interior contained a rolled-up length of parchment.

  Rothman took the parchment out and unrolled it gently.

  "My God," he said, "the Mercator map."

  "Right where Vining put it this afternoon," I said, "after he stole it from the Antiquarian Room."

  "But I keep the cane with me at all times; I need it to get around for any distance. I don't see how —"

  "You don't take it into the bathroom with you, Mr. Rothman. When I got to the store yesterday morning, and went up to talk to you, you were in the bathroom; the cane was leaning against the wall outside. I remember you taking it from there when you came out."

  Rothman nodded. "You're right, of course; I never took the cane into the bathroom because it was too cumbersome in that little cubicle. I always left it against the wall outside."

  "And you used the bathroom fairly often during the day, didn't you? Because of your bladder problem?"

  "Yes."

  "So it was easy enough for Vining to put the stolen items inside the cane. He committed each of his thefts while you were out to lunch or otherwise away from the store in the early afternoons so he could be sure you wouldn't catch him red-handed. Then he either hid the pieces somewhere, or kept them inside his clothes, until you returned and he saw an opportunity to put them inside the cane while you were in the bathroom and there was nobody else in the vicinity. It only took him a few seconds each time.

  "The whole idea was to beat the sensor alarm. Everyone who left the store after one of the thefts had to pass through the alarm gateway except you; you were always the last one to leave on those days, and you always switched the alarm off before you went through the gateway yourself to lock up. The only person who could have taken the items out of the shop was you."

  "But how did Vining retrieve them from the cane after I'd left?" Rothman asked. Then I saw understanding come to him and he answered his own question. "Well, I'll be damned. The Pacific Health Club."

  "Right. Vining is a member, too, isn't he?"

  "Yes, he is. How did you know?"

  "You told me so yourself, last night. You said you didn't go to the health club to lift weights or to play racquetball with Neal Vining; you wouldn't have phrased it that way unless he was also a member."

  Logan asked, "How did Vining get the stuff out of the cane at the health club?"

  "I go there every night to use the Jacuzzi," Rothman explained. "It's right off the locker room, so I've never taken the cane in there with me; there's no place to put it near the Jacuzzi."

  "You left it inside your locker, is that it?"

  "Yes. The locker has a combination lock, but I don't suppose it would have been difficult for Vining to get the combination. I remember him standing there talking to me on more than one occasion while I was opening it."

  "So all he had to do," I said, "was to wait for you to go into the Jacuzzi and then open up your locker, transfer the stolen items from the cane to inside his clothing and walk out with them. Simple as that."

  Rothman shook his head wonderingly. "The only other question I have," he said, "is why did Vining try to kill you and Miss Wade tonight?"

  "He slipped up this afternoon at the store, while he was putting the Mercator map inside the cane. He'd been careful not to let anybody see him in the past; this time he wasn't so careful and somebody did see him."

  "Me," Kerry said. "Well, I didn't exactly see him putting anything inside the cane; I just saw him with the cane in his hand."

  "How did that happen?" Logan asked.

  "I was browsing in the stacks at the rear of the ficton section. In the W's, along the rear wall directly behind the last stack, near what must be the bathroom. I guess he didn't see me when he looked down the aisles, so he didn't think anybody was around. I found an old scarce book of my father's—he's been a writer for forty years, you see—and I was excited about it; I grabbed it off the shelf and hurried out into the last aisle, and a man was standing there with that cane in his hand. I bumped right into him."

  "She told me about that a few minutes later," I said. "At the time I naturally assumed the man she'd bumped into was Mr. Rothman. But later, I realized it could have been Vining. And it was."

  "Then it was Miss Wade he was after tonight?" Rothman asked. "Because he was afraid she'd seen him put the Mercator map inside the cane?"

  "Not exactly," I said. "Vining was trying to kill both of us. He was afraid Kerry had seen him with the map, yes, and he wanted to know who she was; from what he told the police at the hospital a little while ago
, he hadn't formed any definite plans about her at that time. He'd followed her downstairs and overheard her talking to me, about the date we had tonight, so he knew we were friends. After he left the shop he waited around until I left at seven o'clock and then followed me until I led him to Kerry's apartment building. I was so preoccupied when I went inside to get her that I left my car unlocked. Vining looked inside and found out from the registration that I'm a detective. That really unnerved him. So when I drove away with Kerry a little while later, he followed us again—maybe with the intention of committing murder, maybe not. He said he didn't plan to try forcing us off the road; he just did it on impulse. Whether it was premeditated or not is up to a jury to decide."

  And that was about it. Rothman still had the problem of recovering the other stolen items, but with a full confession from Vining—and it seemed probable the police would get one—he would know to whom they had been sold, and the chances were good that he would be able to force their return.

  Saturday night may have been a bust as far as my date with Kerry had gone, but early Sunday morning at her apartment was something else again. Early Sunday morning was terrific.

  "I love to watch you work," she said once. "You're a pretty good detective, you know that?"

  "Well," I said modestly, "I do the best I can."

  "Yes, you do. No matter what you're doing."

  "The fire's getting low. Shall I get up and put another log on?"

  "The heck with the fire," she said.

  Neither of us noticed when it finally went out.