Always Leave ’Em Dying

by Richard S. Prather

  I took my hand away. For a moment, she didn't move, then slowly her head turned and her wide dark eyes stared at me. Her lips were parted, her breathing was heavy. I said softly, "Don't be frightened. I just need some help."

  She moistened her lips and finally spoke. "I—I won't scream. Give me a moment, Mr. Scott."

  "Take as long as you want."

  She was turned in the front seat, still breathing heavily, looking directly at me. In the dim light, with soft shadows on her face, she seemed even lovelier than when I'd seen her before. Finally, she swallowed and tried to smile. "I don't imagine I could run if I wanted to. You might as well sit up front."

  I climbed over the seat.

  She asked slowly, "What was that about a girl being killed?"

  "Just what I said."

  "You mean a girl died at Greenhaven after an abortion?"

  "A sweet little gal named Felicity Gifford, the one I asked you about Sunday night. And she came here for an abortion, all right, but that's not what killed her. She was murdered."

  Lyn gasped and was quiet for seconds. "Murdered?" she said finally.

  "With cyanide. I just got through taking a long look at her, and if you've ever seen anybody dead from potassium cyanide, you know what they look like. I've seen half a dozen before this, and that's what killed her. I'm here now because I need information from somebody familiar with Greenhaven—preferably you. Neither Wolfe nor Dixon can do any talking. They're both dead."

  She gasped. "Both . . . Why do you say she's dead?"

  "I dug up her body a couple of times. Don't jump to conclusions. I didn't kill her. I think a guy named Arthur Trammel killed her."

  She moistened her lips, staring at me, then swallowed again.

  I said, "Let me ask you a question, and please give me an honest answer. Do you think I'm enjoying a brief period when I talk rationally and seem normal, or do you think maybe I've been sane all along?" She started to speak and I broke in. "Wait a minute. Give me an honest answer. If you're afraid that any minute now I'll start giggling and snorting, and change from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, I know you won't listen very closely to what I'll be saying."

  "I'll tell you the truth, Mr. Scott."

  "Shell. Am I nuts?"

  "I'm really not sure, Mr.— Shell." She looked at me steadily. "Now let me ask some questions."

  "OK, if you make them fast."

  "Why fast?"

  "If a cop wanders in here and spots me, he'll shoot me."

  "Oh." She frowned. "They've been patrolling around here all night. All right, fast. One, what would you do if I got out of the car?"

  "Start running."

  "After me?"

  "Nope. Just running like a fool, fast and far. If you take off, there'll be little point in my sticking around."

  "Two, why did you attack the police officers?"

  "If I'm goofy, it was a whim; if I'm not, you've enough sense to answer that one yourself." I grinned at her. "Besides, I'll bet you didn't feel much sympathy for those eggs; I gave Sergeant Meadows a pop for you."

  She smiled. This was going very well, I thought. She had about the nicest smile I'd ever seen. Even nicer than Jo's. "Three," she said, "do you really expect me to believe Dr. Wolfe was going to kill you?"

  "That hypo was loaded. If somebody—Dixon, eight to five—squirted the stuff out and stuck the hypo back into its case in a hurry—which I'm sure is what happened, since she was undoubtedly right outside Wolfe's door—there'll still be traces in the barrel. Enough to analyze, anyway. If it isn't some kind of poison, I give up. And I'll bet it's potassium cyanide."

  The next question came more slowly. "You just said you think Arthur Trammel killed Miss Dixon. He's an important man, respected—"

  "Not by me."

  "—well known. Can you prove it?" She was looking intently at my face.

  I told her the truth. "Nope. Not yet. If we had time I could list about ten points one after another, after which I think you'd be convinced. Right now, I don't have the time. Well, want me to look at ink blots?"

  She took a deep breath, let it out. "No."

  "Now the big question: Can we get out of here? A little farther away from all the cops?"

  She turned the key in the ignition. "Sit on the floor." I slid down to the floorboards as she drove out to the street and turned left. A few minutes later Lyn parked and said, "We can either talk in the car or go in there." She pointed out the window past me at a place called Terry's. "It's a little bar, but there usually aren't many people here."

  "Let's go in."

  Terry's was empty except for a bartender and a man and woman at the bar. Lyn and I slid into one of the booths, which was lighted by a candle, and I blew the candle out. Without a flashlight or remarkable eyes, anybody would have trouble spotting me as Shell Scott—particularly in my funereal garb. We got a bourbon and water for me, a Scotch and soda for her, and I began talking, starting clear back when I'd begun looking for Felicity. Every once in a while Lyn interrupted with what I thought of as inkblot questions.

  At one point she said, "The girl was at Greenhaven all day?"

  "All day long. She got the phone call Saturday night and probably left right afterward—certainly sometime before daylight. Incidentally, was Dixon always on duty from midnight on? And how about Wolfe?"

  "He was surgeon in charge of the hospital, and on twenty-four-hour call, but he worked days mostly. Dixon was on from midnight till eight."

  "Just right. They could perform the operations between midnight and 8 a.m., when nobody else was roaming around, and the girl could leave during those same hours the next morning. All very careful, safe, professional. Only Felicity didn't make it." I paused for a moment, then went on. "The operation would have been between midnight and eight Sunday morning. They killed her around noon."

  Lyn shuddered. "You can't know when she died."

  "Close enough. Don't forget, I saw her carried away by Wolfe. And rigor mortis was complete." I thought of how strange that shadow had appeared to me when I'd been crouched near the back door at Greenhaven and had seen the figure of a man surmounted by a rigid something, the shadow oddly like the letter T. The rigid form had been Felicity's body.

  I explained to Lyn, then said, "At least, she'd been dead a good many hours, and Wolfe had to wait until night before he could safely carry her away and bury her. They probably had her body hidden in a locked room all afternoon. You can imagine how jittery they were. And then what happened? Me. I happened."

  Lyn nodded slowly, a faint frown wrinkle between her eyes, soft highlights the color of amber glinting in her hair.

  I said, "When I hit Greenhaven last night and you hauled that guy, your impersonator, away, you stopped and talked to Wolfe in the hall. He told me you'd mentioned something to him about my looking for Felicity." She nodded. "He came down and sounded me out with some phony chatter, just to make sure, then took off. Right after that, I got slugged and wound up in a strait jacket. He could hardly let me keep nosing around. I told Wolfe myself that I was looking for Felicity Gifford. I'm surprised he didn't keel over. He knew I wasn't babbling, or off my rocker." I shrugged. "Exit Shell Scott."

  She pressed her lips together and the frown deepened. This was a lot for her to get hit with all at once. "Why in the world would he use a knife, or whatever it was?" she asked. "That's so obvious."

  "No matter what method he used, it would obviously have been murder. That's a pretty high emotional peak he'd have had to work up to, anyway. Why do people carry paper napkins out of burning houses? Besides, a prowl car arrived as I was leaving; who called the cops?"

  "I did."

  "I thought so. There were two calls to the Raleigh police from your office. I suppose Wolfe knew they were on their way?"

  "Yes, I told him and the others I was going to phone."

  "So there's the big reason: Wolfe had to finish me off in one hell of a hurry, if at all. Well, it was close. I'd barely got out of that strait jacket when the co
ps arrived."

  "That's how we learned you were gone, when the police came in. The strait jacket wasn't in the room, though, and you said you didn't take it."

  "All I took was a scar on my back. I figure Wolfe must have peeked in on me again, just before the cops arrived, and learned I had dissolved. He probably took out the strait jacket. It was cut and had bloodstains on it, which would have made my story sound pretty sane."

  "I suppose. It looked to us as if you'd vanished, jacket and all. You can imagine how puzzled everybody was."

  "Yeah, everybody except Wolfe. Uh, how'm I doing?"

  She smiled. "Pretty well."

  Getting a smile like that one meant I was doing very well. I said, "Just one more point and I'll shut up. Do you know what time I was stuck into that room? In my strait jacket? I think I remember, but I want to be sure."

  "It's all in the records. I went over them tonight. We took you into the room at about twenty-five after nine. Your escape was discovered at nine-forty-two."

  I reached into my pocket for the slip of paper on which I'd written the four phone calls out of Greenhaven, slid it across the table to Lyn. "Wolfe phoned out at nine-sixteen and again at nine-forty. Seems odd that he'd phone the same guy just before those goons jumped me and also right after he'd tried to kill me and messed it up. I don't think that's a coincidence any more than the fact that both Dixon and Felicity were in the same grave. And Wolfe phoned Trammel."

  She studied the paper for a few seconds, then squinted at me, cocking her head slightly on one side, thick red hair tumbling down onto her shoulder.

  "That's not all," I said. "I found out tonight that Arthur Trammel put in a call to Wolfe's phone at Greenhaven on Sunday. The time was just a few minutes after noon. So that's when he told Wolfe to kill Felicity."

  She shook her head back and forth slowly. "I don't understand."

  "You're getting all these little things at once, but think about it a minute and you'll put them together. I've had plenty of time to think about it, and they fit—one way. There's only one answer. Trammel got Felicity pregnant."

  Chapter Sixteen

  It didn't take long after that to convince Lyn that I was talking sense, and we cleaned up some tag ends. I said, "The time I estimated she'd been dead fits perfectly with the time of Trammel's phone call to Wolfe, too. What did Wolfe do when all the hue and cry started after my escape?"

  "For a couple of hours after the police arrived, all of us were looking for you, searching the grounds and all the rooms. Dr. Wolfe and I weren't together, but policemen were with both of us. After all, you were . . . violent." She smiled.

  "You searched all the rooms? Felicity must still have been there somewhere."

  "Dr. Wolfe would undoubtedly have had the girl in a room of the hospital ward, since he's in charge of it," she said. "And we all searched our own areas with the police. I looked through the east wing, where my office is. He'd probably have put her in a bed, as if she were sleeping. And nobody was looking for a girl, anyway. We were all looking for a great big maniac."

  "And I got back to Greenhaven just in time to see Wolfe hauling the body away. That would have been his big worry, naturally. After that he'd have had to remove any evidence that she'd been there." I thought of something then. "Wolfe's search area was the hospital ward, huh? Where is that located in Greenhaven?"

  "At the end of the west wing."

  "He was coming from the west wing in a big hurry when I ran into him and we had our . . . difficulty."

  We sat quietly for a little while, then I asked her, "Still think I'm nuts?"

  "Yes, I do." She smiled. "But a harmless nut." Lyn shook her head. "You did act pretty crazy, though, pretty crazy."

  From then on, we forgot the case, started getting acquainted. It was as though there'd been a signal and it was time to relax. We had a few more drinks, talking cozily like old friends.

  We were gurgling happily when the bartender said, "Last call for drinks," and it was nearly 2 a.m.

  "Where in the world did the time go?" she asked.

  "I don't know. But I'll bet it went to a happy place."

  "You're fun, Shell." She looked at me for a long second, then said quietly, "We'd better go."

  Outside I held the car door while she scooted in, then I slammed it and said, "I'll call you at Greenhaven, Lyn. It would help if you could check with those two guards and find out for sure who sapped me. And there might be something—"

  "Shell, I know you can't have any place to stay."

  "Oh, yes, I do. I've got a dandy little fox burrow where I snuggle up. Dispossessed the hermit. He was a foxy character."

  "Come home with me. I'd like to help you, Shell. I helped put you in this mess. And now I know you're just a little crazy. I can't let you sleep in your—fox burrow."

  "Well . . ."

  "Don't act so shocked, either."

  "I'm not shocked."

  "I mean, I've got a couch in the front room."

  "Ah, the psychoanalytic couch."

  "Sure. I'm going to psychoanalyze you. Besides, I want to laugh some more. Get in, Shell—just for laughs."

  "Just for laughs," I said, and I got in.

  Lyn took our coffee cups into the kitchen. We had spent half an hour here in her apartment talking about the case and I'd told her the things she might look for at Greenhaven tomorrow. When she came back into the living room, she said, "We might as well go to bed."

  It may have been some indication of the way this little tomato was beginning to affect me, since those words went through me like a short circuit through bath water. I sprang to my feet. "Might as well!"

  You would think I'd never even heard of a gal named Jo Perrine. Lyn smiled, then composed her face and walked into the bedroom, and on her way back out almost collided with me. She was carrying a pillow, sheets, and two blankets, which she dropped on a small, lumpy couch.

  "There you are," she said.

  "No," I said, grinning at her from the bedroom door. "Here I am."

  She proceeded briskly to fix a bed on the couch, called me over, and sat me down on it. "Good night, Shell."

  "You sleepy?"

  "Ho, ho," she said, and went into the bedroom, and I could hear her preparing for sleep, moving about, rustling and what not, and if you want the whole truth, those sounds disturbed me enormously. Despite my sly queries, like "Sure you don't need these blankets?" and "You don't feel like dancing, do you?" she kept on moving about and humming.

  Then her light went out, and bedsprings squeaked. The sound of bedsprings squeaking means nothing all by itself; the squeaks have to be connected in your mind with whoever or whatever is going on before the noise has real significance. If there had somehow been, for example, an old housebroken horse in there, I wouldn't have given those squeaks a second thought. But I knew there was no horse in there.

  Well, I lay awake quite a while, but when I finally did fall asleep, my dreams were sensational.

  I woke up with a sore back and a stiff neck, but with a feeling that all was well with the world. In a few minutes, I remembered that all was not exactly well, but I still felt good enough.

  Lyn was bustling about in the kitchen, humming merrily. In a minute, she came out into the front room. "Hi," she said. "How did you sleep?"

  "I don't know myself how I managed it, but I did get a wink or two."

  She winked at me. "That makes three, and don't get smart. Get up instead before I pull the covers off you."

  "This is a test: I'm not getting up."

  "And I'm not pulling the covers off. What do you want for breakfast?"

  "Coffee. And toast. That's all."

  She shook her head, went back into the kitchen, and closed the door. I got up and dressed.

  Over a second cup of coffee she said, "I'd stay here, Shell, but it might look funny if I didn't go to Greenhaven. Have you thought of anything else I could do?"

  "We've covered it all, I think."

  "Want me to phone you her
e? I'll be back for lunch."

  "That's soon enough."

  "What are you going to do, Shell?"

  "Just sit. I've got plenty to think about. And for God's sake, you be careful. Don't give anybody an idea of what you're doing. If Trammel's all I think he is, he'd kill half the population to keep it from getting out."

  She finished her coffee and got up. "Well, 'by."

  I walked to the front door with her and said, "Lyn, be damned careful. Remember, as far as you're concerned, whoever you talk to, Shell Scott is a raving maniac."

  She left. I hadn't realized the apartment would seem so empty.

  After a while, I went to the phone, looked up Mrs. Gifford's number, and dialed. It was a short conversation. I told her as gently as I could, but the fact of death can never be stated gently. She shrieked and wailed over the sound of the TV blaring in the room behind her, and I explained that Felicity was really dead, that she'd been dead more than a day when I found her body. Before I could finish, she hung up on me. I hadn't even told her that her daughter had left Saturday night for an abortion; I doubt that Mrs. Gifford would have believed me, in any event.

  I was aware that my name was synonymous by now with homicidal insanity, but I'd got the impression that Mrs. Gifford had been afraid even to talk to me over the phone. I wondered how many other L.A. citizens felt the same way about me. By noon, I had a rough idea. By noon, I'd read the morning paper that was delivered at Lyn's door, and listened to enough news broadcasts so that I knew how deep the hole I was in had become.

  It was worse than I'd thought it would be. Everybody seemed to have taken it for granted that I had suddenly and actually gone insane, murdered Wolfe at Greenhaven, and overpowered a police force. There wasn't a word in type or speech that intimated that I might be the victim of circumstances or a frame. This was open and shut, and I gathered that all the cops for miles around, plus a good number of panting citizens, were looking for me.

  I could thank Arthur Trammel and his Guardians for one new development that helped not at all. The morning paper carried Trammel's remarks on the front page. He stated that I had, after escaping from Greenhaven and remaining under cover throughout the day, cornered him in the room where he held his confessional and attempted to murder him. After describing his miraculous escape from death, much distorted with soap-opera phrases such as "Scott's bulging, red-flecked eyes," he declared that simply because he, Trammel, had denounced the madman from the pulpit and in the press, I had sneaked up on him and tried to knock him off. I'd murdered before and last night had tried again; I must be found and destroyed; and so on. Corroboration of his story was supplied, naturally, by all six of the other Guardians.