Burden of Guilt

by Carter Brown

  “Broad?” I ventured.

  “Well, I figure she was just out of the shower because she had a towel wrapped around her head,” he said deductively. “That was all she was wearing, nothing else. The guy with her, the one she was sitting on top of, he wasn’t wearing anything, either. First I thought she was giving him a massage, then I saw she… well, it wasn’t exactly a massage she was giving him.” The sergeant almost managed to look bashful. “You’d think she thought he was a horse, the way she was riding him. Anyway, I had my job to do, and thought maybe the guy was some sort of sex maniac, and maybe he fired his gun to force the broad to screw him like she was riding a horse. Like against her will, even though she had a sort of smile on her face. So I push her off him, then yank him up off the bed, stick my gun into his spine, and march him along to the manager’s office.”

  “Still naked?”

  He winced. “Yeah, like that, Lieutenant.”

  “Were there many people around at the time?” I asked.

  “Well, with the female following us, still just wearing that towel around her head and screaming bloody murder—yeah, there was people watching.” An awed note crept into his voice. “I don’t know where they all came from, Lieutenant. It’s amazing. They must have come out of the woodwork.”

  “Then the manager told you it was the wrong room number?”

  “He damn near died. I wish he had!” Polnik closed his eyes at the memory. “The guy from the room can’t make up his mind which one he’s going to kill first—me or the manager. The broad is going to bring suit against the both of us for around a hundred million bucks, and the three of them are all yelling their goddamn heads off at the same time. After a while the manager swears he told me number twenty-two, so I go back there and take a look. There’s a real nervous little runt of a guy in there who’s so mad he’s ready to bust out crying. It seems he tripped while he was carrying a fishing rod, and the goddamn rod went straight through the screen of the television in the room, and the tube exploded!”

  “Anybody can make a mistake like that,” I said in a soothing voice. “It was the manager’s fault, anyway, for giving you the wrong room number in the first place.”

  “I sure hope the sheriff believes that,” he said doubtfully. “The way it came out, the naked guy just happens to be the mayor’s younger brother—the one that always gives big dough to support his campaign come election time—and the female with just the towel wrapped around her head wasn’t his wife. When she’s not with him in the motel room, she’s a carhop in the drive-in diner a couple of blocks from the motel. A whole bunch of people recognized the both of them, the manager said afterward.”

  Annabelle Jackson emerged from the inner office, and the next moment a voice roared from in back of her for Polnik to get the hell in there. The sergeant obediently lumbered forward with a look on his face like, I wanted to think, a French aristocrat on his way to meet Madame Guillotine. But even my imagination bogged down at the thought of any kind of aristocrat with a Cro-Magnon face.

  “Poor Sergeant Polnik,” Annabelle said. “I feel sorry for him. The sheriffs absolutely furious!”

  “You’re looking well, Annabelle,” I said interestedly. “Even if you have put on a little weight, it looks like it’s all in the right places.”

  She sat down at her desk and took a slow, deep breath that flattened her white organdy blouse against the exquisite contours of her full breasts.

  “Just look down and you’ll see what I mean,” I said.

  The breath exploded out of her lungs. “I had a wonderful vacation,” she said bitterly. “Three glorious weeks back home in Georgia, where all the fellows are courteous gentlemen and know how to treat a girl right, with respect. Then, my first day back in the office, and I have to see you again! I don’t know what it was I did, but it must have been something dreadful to bring a monster like you into my life!”

  “I don’t see how you could have done anything dreadful back home in Georgia,” I argued. “Not if you’re telling the truth about all the guys down there being gentlemen, and treating a girl with respect.”

  “Sometimes I have this dream,” she said wistfully. “I’m here in the office and you’re here, too, talking the same kind of talk you’re talking now. Then, suddenly, this great hole opens in the floor right under your feet. The next moment you’re gone! There’s one big lick of flame comes out of the hole, then it closes up again and there’s just one itty-bitty scorch mark on the floor.”

  Polnik came out of the sheriff’s office in time to save me from trying to think up an answer to Anna-belle’s dream. The look on his face said the sky had fallen in, right at the moment when he was the only guy standing out in the street.

  “How was it?” I asked, as I passed him on the way into Lavers’s office.

  “Night duty for a whole goddamn month,” he moaned, “and starting tonight. My old lady will kill me for this! She’ll figure it was all my own idea!”

  The sheriff was busy lighting a cigar as I closed the door. His enormous jowls were still shaking with outraged fury, and the bright purple was only beginning to fade from his face.

  “That Polnik!” he growled. “I would consider it a favor if you’d take him out someplace and shoot him!”

  “The manager gave him the wrong room number,” I said. “It could happen to anybody.”

  “But finding the mayor’s younger brother and his mistress inside the room, then parading both of them stark naked along to the manager’s office,” he grated. “That could only happen to Polnik!”

  There was a kind of uneasy logic there I wasn’t about to argue with, so I changed the subject. “Did Doc Murphy turn in the autopsy report yet?”

  Lavers nodded. “Death by strangulation. Time of death between one and two this morning. The victim had been savagely beaten before death, by some instrument such as a leather whip.”

  “And raped?”

  “No.” He sat there glowering at me for a moment. “It could still be a sex killing, of course. The killer could be some kind of sadist, getting his kicks out of the whipping and strangulation.”

  “I don’t figure sex was any part of the motivation, Sheriff,” I said cautiously. “It could have been incidental, or more likely meant either to confuse us or point the murder at somebody else.”

  I gave him a rundown of the people I had seen, the things they had told me and hadn’t told me. Lavers just sat there like he wasn’t listening, but I knew from experience that under that mountain of blubber was a foxlike cunning that had thrown me on more occasions than I cared to remember.

  “It stinks,” he said profoundly, the moment after I had finished the rundown. “Why couldn’t they keep their dirty conniving racketeering deals out of my county?”

  “It’s a good question, Sheriff,” I said wearily. “You want me to go ask them?”

  “Either Kingsley or his wife is lying about what time he got home last night. Both Cordain and the Blair girl could be lying about what really happened to Shirley Lucas. Obviously, Strachan and his female attorney would tell you anything to protect him from a public scandal!”

  “I don’t see why they would lie about the call from Dana,” I objected.

  He gave a derisive snort. “It took you off their backs, didn’t it? Now you’re happy to sit around and wait until they get this second call from him!”

  I bared my teeth at him. “So what do you suggest, Sheriff?”

  “Get straight back to him and catch him off balance. Scare the hell out of both of them, and keep right on doing it until one of them cracks wide open down the seams!”

  “Thank you, Sheriff Lavers.” I walked across to the door, opened it, then looked back at him. “You don’t mind if I suggest something you can do?”

  “With my weight, it would be impossible,” he grunted.

  “I was about to suggest you call San Francisco and get them to put a transcript of the Stensen trial in the mail tonight.”

  “Anything to keep you
happy, Lieutenant!”

  Polnik had vanished from the outer office, and Annabelle was busy with her typewriter. I took a close look at the floor on my way out, but I couldn’t see any scorch mark.

  Chapter Four

  “I’ve already told you everything I know, Lieutenant.” Kingsley thrust his hands deep into his pants pockets and gave me a Caligula-type scowl. “I see no point in going over the whole thing again!”

  “You had a memory lapse there,” I said. “You forgot to tell me that Wanda Blair was right here in Pine City, because Cordain had brought her and Shirley Lucas with him.”

  “Considering the mental stress I was under at the time, it’s understandable,” he said shortly.

  “Cordain says he brought the Lucas girl with him as a surprise for you, even though he knew you had your wife here.”

  “Hal would figure that never the twain would meet. He and Adele don’t get along, so there would be no chance of Adele coming with me to his apartment. Is there any point to all this, Lieutenant?”

  “I was just wondering about his motivation,” I said idly. “Like why he needed you—a disbarred lawyer—along with him at all.”

  Kingsley gave his thick lower lip a sharp tug with his thumb and index finger. “He knows I have the experience to advise him on the contract with Strachan,” he said tightly. “Any attorney can rubber stamp it for him afterward.”

  “Where does Tyler fit?”

  “I told you before, he’s my personal assistant!”

  “What does a disbarred lawyer need with a personal assistant?”

  “I don’t have to answer that, it’s irrelevant,” he said thinly, “and I’m getting very tired of answering all these pointless questions, Lieutenant.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “Is your wife at home?”

  “Out at the pool. Tyler told me about her listening outside the door this morning. I hope you appreciate that it was pure jealousy that made her tell an idiotic lie about what time I arrived back last night.”

  “Well,” I said mildly, “right now I’d like to go ask her some pointless questions, Mr. Kingsley.”

  “As you wish.” He checked his thin platinum wristwatch carefully. “I have an appointment with Hal thirty minutes from now. You have no objection if I leave, Lieutenant?”

  “None at all,” I told him.

  “Thank you!” His nostrils flared momentarily. “I’m also taking my personal assistant along with me, if you don’t object to that, either.”

  “No objections, Mr. Kingsley,” I assured him. “What does Joe Dana look like?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “He’s about forty—average height and weight, thinning blond hair, and very bright blue eyes. Come to think of it, Dana looks like Mr. Average Man himself. He’s soft-spoken, and I’ve never known him to lose his temper, not even when Hal beat him to the chair Stensen so abruptly vacated.”

  “Is he still in San Francisco?”

  “What?” His hooded eyes looked startled for a moment. “How the hell would I know?”

  “You would have checked by now,” I grated. “He was the only alternative prime suspect you could offer instead of yourself, this morning.”

  “He’s not in San Francisco,” he said, with grudging respect in his voice. “From what I hear—and my sources are reliable—he dropped out of sight three days ago, and nobody knows where he is. Just vanished into thin air, and Lou Fisher along with him.”

  “All right,” I snapped. “So who is Fisher?”

  “One of the union organizers. The one who handles any trouble before it gets out of hand.”

  “A member of the goon squad?”

  “He runs it!”

  “You didn’t call Shirley Lucas last night, after you left Cordain’s apartment?”

  “Of course not.” He shook his head impatiently. “I was embarrassed enough at finding her here! The last thing I wanted was any involvement with Shirley while my wife was waiting for me in this house.”

  “Was your wife awake when you got home?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t go into her room.”

  “You have separate rooms?”

  “Yes, goddamn your—” He clamped his mouth shut until he’d fought his temper back under control. “Adele doesn’t believe that sex is part of the marriage contract at all. It’s some kind of a reward to be given when her husband is doing right by her, and withheld when he’s not. My being disbarred was definitely not doing the right thing by her, and I’m still being punished for that!” He checked his watch again. “You must excuse me, Lieutenant, or I’ll be late for my appointment.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I waited until he had left the room, then headed toward the backyard without hurrying. Outside, the afternoon was still hot and stifling, with no breeze coming down the breezeway. Car doors banged shut, a motor started, then the sound of it slowly faded. Tyler must have been waiting in the driver’s seat with his hand poised on the key, I guessed.

  There was a king-sized beach towel stretched out on the concrete apron of the pool, and the blonde tigress was stretched out on top of it, lying on her stomach, the bottom part of her lime-green bikini slung low over her bronzed, oiled buttocks. There was a fine golden fuzz in the small of her back, and she was wearing dark glasses which caught the shimmering reflections of the pool. She sat up and took off the glasses as I came close, so I got the full impact of those frosted blue eyes.

  “Have you come to arrest my husband, Lieutenant?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’m trying to lull him into a false sense of security first. That way he’ll make a stupid move and betray himself. Murderers always do that. Leastwise, on television they do.”

  “You have a lousy sense of humor, Lieutenant, but I suppose it’s better than none at all. I never knew police officers were allowed to have any sense of humor.”

  “Pine City has a progressive police department,” I told her. “We’re allowed up to a maximum of three laughs a day.”

  “I hope you haven’t been so busy laughing, you haven’t had time to find out exactly where Gerard was until all hours this morning.”

  “Tyler saw you listening at the door, so he ducked out and listened at the window,” I said. “You were mad at your husband for two-timing you with a call girl while you were in Palm Springs, so you deliberately lied to me. You always make life hell on wheels for anyone that crosses you, he said, with an original turn of phrase.”

  “I’ll give him hell on wheels from here on out,” she said in a bloodcurdling whisper. “All right, so maybe I was lying, but maybe I wasn’t, either!”

  “You want to try that again and see if it comes out sense this time?” I asked hopefully.

  “Tyler went to bed early last night. I went to bed around an hour later, and went to sleep. Nobody knows what time Gerard came in, because we have separate rooms!”

  “It cuts both ways,” I said. “Your husband doesn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder, and neither do you.”

  “Me?” She gurgled with laughter. “You can’t be serious?”

  “Maybe you already knew about your husband and Shirley Lucas. Knew she was here with Cordain, and your husband would see her last night. You could have gotten her over here on some pretext, then killed her. Left her body in the backyard so you could pretend to find it early this morning, in the hope your husband would first be suspected, and then finally convicted of the murder.”

  “You’re the conniving and devious kind of a son of a bitch I could grow to like, Lieutenant,” she said warmly. “I bet you take people into the back room of the sheriffs office and beat them up, just for the good clean fun of it.”

  “I prefer to use a leather whip on them, mostly,” I said. “How about you?”

  “A length of steel chain is what I—” Her face tightened. “I saw all those marks on her body. Is that what it was? A leather whip!”

  “Or something similar.” I looked across th
e surface of the pool to where the shrub still flowered so innocently. “Cordain talked about you, Mrs. Kingsley, when I saw him this morning.”

  “Nothing good, I’ll bet,” she said tightly. “And will you start calling me Adele, so I can stop calling you Lieutenant?”

  “It’s Al,” I said. “Cordain said you’ve never approved of your husband’s association with the labor union or him.”

  “I always thought Gerard could have made a decent living out of an honest legal office,” she snapped, “instead of getting mixed up with racketeers and worse! I’ve always refused to have anything to do with them. Stensen was smart enough to leave well alone, but Cordain doesn’t give up. I’m some kind of a challenge to him, I think. He resents my breeding because it makes him feel what he is—inferior!” She stood up in one lithe movement. “Even talking about Cordain gives me a nasty taste in my mouth. Let’s go inside and have a drink.”

  She moved around in back of the alcove bar when we got into the living room, and set up two glasses on the bar top. “What are you drinking, Al?”

  “Scotch on the rocks, a little soda,” I said.

  “And a little soda?” She shuddered. “You must be some kind of a masochist!”

  “Some kind of voyeur, maybe,” I said in a casual voice. “Your husband was telling me how you regulate his sex life on a kind of brownie-points system.”

  She pushed the drink toward me, then lifted her own glass and took a mouthful of her bourbon on the rocks. “You must have been pushing him hard,” she murmured. “He’s mostly reticent about things like that.”

  “I guess it bugs me a little, the kind of female philosophy involved,” I said. “You hold out on your husband from the time he’s disbarred, then get real mad at him for finding solace with a call girl! It doesn’t add up.”

  “You’d have to understand both of us first.” She ran her tongue slowly around her full upper lip. “Gerard likes to be dominated, and I get a kick out of obliging him. He didn’t play fair when he took up with that little whore! I was all set to be generous after he’d pleaded a couple more times!”