“Oh, he’s alive all right,” said the man on the edge of the gully. “You couldn’t kill that thickheaded slug nut with an ax.”
He hauled Jackson out of the roadster and dumped him into the back seat of the sedan.
“Easy,” said the other with a laugh. “Murdock said no rough stuff.”
PART TWO
1. Routine
WHEN Captain Matthew Nicholson, acting head of Homicide, opened the door of his office Sergeant Tripp was sitting in the swivel chair back of the desk. The sergeant had his feet on the desk and was drinking out of a tin pail, a half-consumed sandwich almost hidden in his enormous paw.
Tripp took his feet hastily off the desk and stood up, putting the pail and sandwich on the window ledge.
“Morning, Cap,” he said, adding unnecessarily, “I was waiting for you.” Then he saw Attorney Joel Stern behind Nicholson, and his broad smile changed to an aggrieved expression. “Well, if it ain’t my old pal Joey. Cap, are we going to have this bird on our necks again?”
Nicholson answered severely: “Mr. Stern is working on the Riorden case. We are to give him every consideration. Commissioner’s orders.” He looked accusingly at the window ledge. “How many times have I told you that this office is not a one-arm lunch?”
“Now that’s what a guy gets for doing his duty. I’m up all night, messing through half the garbage cans on the east side and, when I finally get something hot and rush up here without even stopping for breakfast all I get is a bawling out. And you.” He finished with a scowl of mock rage at Stern.
Stern’s eyes twinkled as he shook hands. “Sorry you’re not as glad to see me as I am to see you, Sergeant. I don’t know what I’d have done without you in that Washington Market affair.”
“Holy smoke,” said the sergeant, raising his hands. “He don’t know what he’d adone without me. We go down on a nice, quiet little gang shooting with no screwy angles, and this guy don’t rest till we’re gunning for the political big shot of the district. Boy, there’s old pals of mine that still don’t speak to me over that case.”
“You know I saved you from arresting the wrong man, Sergeant.”
“Yeah, and you come near getting me killed or busted, arresting the right one. I still don’t understand why the cap and me both ain’t out pounding a beat in the sticks right now.”
“Okay, Sergeant,” said Nicholson, “if you’re through reminiscing let’s get back to our murder case.”
“Huh?” said Tripp. “Oh sure, Cap, sure!” A beatific smile suddenly lit up his homely Irish face. “Cap, it’s in the bag. We’ll have that guy inside twenty-four hours.”
“I hope you didn’t tell the newspapers that,” said Nicholson dryly.
“Who, me?” The sergeant was aggrieved again. “You ought to know me better than to think I’d tell them guys anything. The pressrooms been buzzin’ you all mornin’, but I wouldn’t give ‘em the time of the day.”
“All right, all right,” Nicholson said with mock resignation. “What have you got?”
“Just the shoes the guy wore, that’s all.” Tripp dumped a bulky package wrapped in newspaper on the desk. “Take a look.”
The package contained a pair of ancient, battered black work shoes that had evidently seen more than their share of service; the tongue of the right shoe was missing, while the left showed a sole finally beyond repair. It was not the disreputable condition of the shoes that interested Nicholson, however. Rusty-brown smudged stains showed on the weather-beaten leather, as though some sticky liquid had been spilled there and a hurried but not wholly successful effort had been made to wipe it off before the shoe was discarded.
“Hmm.” Nicholson was examining the rusty-brown stain closely. “Where’d you find them?”
“One was in an ash can right near where we found the clothes. Benson picked up the other in a vacant lot a block away from the precinct house.”
“When?”
“Around five o’clock this mornin’.”
“Ye gods and little catfish,” shouted Nicholson. “You mean to say you’ve been lugging these things around all that time without bringing them in to the lab? I’ve threatened to break you before, you thickheaded harp and by God——“ Nicholson spluttered incoherently, and Tripp looked indignant.
Stern murmured: “It was nice knowing you, Sergeant. They tell me the sticks aren’t so bad when you get used to the country noises.”
Tripp was insulted to the point of insubordination. “Keep your shirt on, will ya, Cap?” he growled. “I’ve been around Homicide long enough to know routine procedures. Didn’t I tell you these were the shoes the guy wore? I brung ‘em right into the lab and got a report not more than ten minutes ago. Them stains are blood all right and, what’s more, it types with the blood on the monkey suit and on the murder weapon. What d’ya think of that?”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you say so?” barked Nicholson. “Where’s the report?”
He took the document produced by the sergeant and studied it carefully. Scanning rapidly down the page, his eye picked up an item. “White cotton lint,” he said. “That gives us a line on the kind of socks the guy wore.”
“Half the longshoremen on the water front wear white cotton socks,” objected Stern.
“Yeah, I know. But you never can tell. Those socks may have blood on them.” He looked at Tripp and said, “Good work,” grudgingly. “I think maybe we got something.”
Tripp was still indignant. He said slyly, “Maybe. Anyhow, we know who owns them shoes.”
Nicholson got very red in the face. “You half-wit son of a she-ape. Will you stop horsing around?”
“Yes sir.” Tripp’s face was a picture of surprised innocence. Stern looked out of the window to hide a grin.
“Well, come on. Who?”
“Jackson,” said Tripp.
“Jackson!” Nicholson pounced on the name like a terrier on a bone. He slapped Stern on the back and chortled. “You hear that, you amateur sleuth? I told you I had that guy pegged. What d’ya say now?”
“Wait a minute,” said Stern. He turned to Sergeant Tripp. “How do you know they’re Jackson’s?”
“The big red-faced guy identified them. He said he’d seen ‘em around the Union Hall.”
“What do you mean around the hall?”
“They were an old pair this guy Jackson wore down to the dock only he hadn’t been wearin’ ‘em lately because they were shot. He left ‘em in a closet at the hall.”
“So anyone could have worn them?”
The sergeant nodded, and Stern grinned while Nicholson looked at him in disgust. “Of all the God damn luck,” he said. “Every time I get a clue in this case you shoot it full of holes. You wouldn’t have a cousin in this union, would you?”
Stern’s grin faded. “I don’t like that crack.”
“All right, all right.” Nicholson threw up his hands. “Skip it. You!” he said to Tripp. “Go home and get some sleep. It ain’t your fault those shoes don’t add up.”
When Tripp had gone he grabbed up the phone and barked into it. “Any word on those general alarms? None, huh. What kind of cops——? Send Murray in here. Oh, he is, is he? Scanlon? Barry?
Okay, okay. Get me a couple of cops if you have to raid the traffic squad. Yeah, when did you think I wanted them?”
He cradled the phone and, taking a cigar from his vest pocket, bit the end savagely. He sat down in the chair back of the desk and pushed his hat to the back of his head. Stern maintained a discreet silence, and finally Nicholson looked up and grinned ruefully.
“Well, there’s one thing you are right about,” he admitted. “This murder was premeditated. When I first saw the brutal way the job was done I thought we had one of these maniac murders or else the guy must have been either crazy-drunk or scared stiff. This man Riorden must have been standing on the curb with his back to the truck, maybe leaning on the tailboard which was down. There wasn’t any evidence of a fight or a struggle; the killer either
came up behind him or, more likely, was hiding in the truck and just leaned out and crowned him with the back of the hook. Then he caught the body by the coat collar to keep it from falling and dug the hook into his victim’s throat and hauled him over the tailboard and into the truck as though he were handling a side of beef. But the most vicious part was that when he’d got the body into the truck, instead of easing the hook out of the throat, the killer put his foot on his victim’s face and just yanked.”
Nicholson paused and looked up as though expecting a comment. When there was none he continued: “That’s the way it looked at first—a simple water-front killing, not pretty, but fairly obvious. But now I’m beginning to think there’s a lot more to it than that. Whoever pulled this job planned it too carefully “
He broke off evidently waiting for Stern to comment, but the little attorney only nodded.
Nicholson snorted disgustedly. “I might as well be talking to myself,” he complained. “Say something, can’t you? Where do we go from here?”
Stern shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I know you and your single-track mind. You’re convinced Jackson’s the killer, and that’s all there is to it. I’ll bet you haven’t even got tails on the other men who were at the meeting.”
Two detectives entered, and Nicholson deferred his reply to send them combing the water front for information as to Riorden’s movements before he was killed. A clerk came in from the outer room with a batch of reports, among which was one from the laboratory experts who had examined the truck, one from the men who had been detailed to search Riorden’s flat and interview his wife, and still a third to the effect that the precinct men had found Jackson’s room but no Jackson.
Nicholson swore and tossed the reports across to Stern. “Not a clue in a carload,” he said. “You can yap ‘frame’ till you’re blue in the face, Joey, but I still say when I get my hands on that bird Jackson I’ll crack this case.”
“And I still say no man smart enough to head a big labor union would leave a trail a mile wide pointing right at him. He wouldn’t choose a weapon that could be traced to him as easily as that hook. He wouldn’t leave a spy report lying around loose and he wouldn’t pull the stupid stunt of using his own shoes. Five’ll get you ten, Jackson isn’t our man.”
“All right.” Nicholson gave him a sour look. “Suppose we play it your way, what have we got?” He pulled out his notebook.
“Burke,” he read. “Left bar in company of Officer Hanrahan, twelve-twenty. Talked to Hanrahan on corner and left him at twelve twenty-five, walking west.
“Burke didn’t go home, and we don’t know yet where he spent the night. He could have killed the guy, but there’s not one concrete piece of evidence that says he did.
“Painter. Landlady says he came in and went up to his room at twelve. Claims she spoke to him and looked at her clock.
“We found Painter in bed, and his story checked. There might be collusion there, as I told the commissioner. I liked Painter as a suspect for a while, but there’s nothing to go on any more than there is with Burke. And in the other cases there’s still less. Melius was in a bar from eleven-thirty to one, unless the bartender and a couple others are lying, and Colletti, Gordon, and Sangster, the Negro, were together. Of course, any one of them could have slipped out of that crap game and back in again, but you know yourself we went over that ground with a fine-tooth comb last night and found just exactly nothing.”
He snapped the book shut and put it away. “And what else have we got? Two or three thousand union longshoremen. Where are you going to start on that?” He shook his finger at Stern savagely. “Boy, you let me take those guys down to the basement one at a time, and I’ll blast this thing before it’s twenty-four hours old. Otherwise, you better pray it’s Jackson.”
“And have half the town on our necks howling ‘Hitler’?” Stern shifted sideways in his chair and squinted at the police captain. “How about the typewriter?”
“I put a couple of special-duty men on it first thing this morning; the lab says it’s a Royal. They’ll probably find it, but it’ll take time. The bird that used that machine has sense enough to know we can trace him through it.”
A buzzer sounded. Nicholson leaned forward and tipped the cam on the interoffice communication system. “Yes,” he said.
A voice from the box said, “This is Clark, Captain. Something just came in on the teletype I thought might interest you.”
“Let’s have it,” said Nicholson.
“It’s from Jasper County across the river,” said the voice. “John Murdock, president of Eastcoast Shipping, was found strangled in his library at ten o’clock this morning.”
“What?” shouted Nicholson. “John Murdock?”
Stern sat up straight, his eyes narrow and intent.
“Yeah,” said the voice with satisfaction. “That’s what it says. Thought there might be a tie-up with that water-front killing last night——”
“Yes, yes,” Nicholson interrupted. “Get me the sheriff of Jasper County. If he’s not in his office call the Murdock residence. And don’t wait to think.” He clicked the cam and sat back tensely, a frown that was partly perplexed concentration and partly worry between his eyes.
Stern said nothing, and they waited silently together until the telephone rang. The captain snatched up the phone.
“Nicholson, City Homicide,” he barked.
A blurred voice came gruffly over the wire.
“Sheriff Christy, Jasper County. I’m speaking from the Murdock residence. S’pose you know we got a murder on our hands out here?”
“Yeah, I know, Sheriff. Just got the news over the teletype. There might be a connection with a water-front killing we had last night. We’d consider it a favor if you people’d let us cooperate——”
The sheriff interrupted, his low rumble coming faintly to Stern’s ears.
“God almighty, Captain, there ain’t nothing I’d like better. This is big stuff for Jasper County, and it’s kinda got us winging. Might do yourself some good too. We just picked up a wrecked car down the road from here with a fellow carrying a longshoreman’s union card in it. He’s out cold, but the name on his card is Gordon.”
“The hell you say!” Nicholson’s voice was eager. “Is he a little chunky guy with blond hair?”
“That’s him,” said the sheriff. “You think he fits into this mess?”
“Fits in? He’s in up to his ears. Look, was there anyone with him—a tall, rangy bird by the name of Jackson? He and the little guy are pals.”
The sheriff’s phlegmatic growl lifted a little as he caught Nicholson’s eagerness. “Coulda been,” he said. “We got a description of the murderer that checks with that, only he wasn’t dressed like no longshoreman.”
“Okay,” Nicholson decided swiftly. “I’m coming out there—that is, if you and the county attorney don’t mind. Can you hold everything for about three quarters of an hour?”
“Sure, sure. Me’n and the C.A.’ll be glad to have you, Captain. He ain’t here yet, but I’ll vouch for him. I don’t mind tellin’ you we need help and we need it bad.”
“Thanks, Sheriff, thanks very much. Maybe between us we can clean up both these cases.”
Nicholson replaced the desk phone and looked at Stern, a gleam of triumph in his eye.
“You and the commissioner can go fly a kite, you storybook detective,” he announced happily. “I said it was Jackson and I still say so. Now he’s bumped the only witness who knew he was a stoolie. If I hadn’t listened to a lot of fancy talk—-”
Stern’s eyes were sharp behind his thick lenses. “You’re jumping to conclusions again, but I’ll admit you got more to go on than you had before. Mind if I tag along so you can say, ‘I told you so’?” Nicholson, barking orders into the dictograph, spoke over his shoulder. “Come on, if you want to,” he said. “Only shake a leg. We can’t expect Jasper County to hold up their investigation all day for us.”
“Know McArthur?”
“Who’s he?”
“Jasper County attorney. The fellow you’re going to cooperate with.”
Nicholson turned his head. “Like that, is it? The sheriff sounded all right. What contact we have over there is usually with the township or the state police. I don’t know much about the county setup.”
“You’ll find out,” Stern grinned. “It’s a one-horse outfit. Christy’s okay—been sheriff for twenty years, more or less—but McArthur’s ambitious and a stuffed shirt. He’ll be jealous as hell at our butting in on the first juicy case he’s had in a month of Sundays.”
“He can have his case on a silver platter,” growled Nicholson. “All I want is Jackson.”
Stern shook his head. “If you’re right Jackson’s his case too.”
2. Library
The Murdock estate sat on the brow of a hill overlooking the river. It was a great square block of a house built in the undistinguished architecture of the 1890s, its majestic ugliness dominating the countryside for miles around. A low stone wall guarding the grounds was overshadowed by rows of poplars, and the state road climbed the shoulder of the hill opposite and swung up and back to the house in a long U curve, straightening to run alongside the wall for over a quarter of a mile. The police car turned in at a gate midway of the wall and followed a winding white driveway to the front of the house where several other cars were already parked.
Christy, the elderly white-mustached Jasper County sheriff, met Nicholson and Stern at the front door.
“Glad you fellers could come,” he said, shaking hands warmly. He lowered his voice and jerked his shaggy, grizzled head over his shoulder. “C.A. just got here. He’s inside.”
He led them through a hall, past a wide, polished staircase curving upward, to a door at the rear of the house.
“This is the library,” he informed them. “Everything’s just as we found it.”
The room they entered was very large, running almost the entire width of the house. It had a low-beamed ceiling and dark, oak-paneled walls, broken by tall bookcases that rose on either side of the enormous fireplace and flanked the french windows at the rear. The furniture was heavy, square and old-fashioned like the house itself; a large, flat-topped table in the middle of the room, tall chairs with carved backs and settles with red leather upholstery in front of the fireplace. A large iron safe managed, somehow, not to seem incongruous.
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