The Blood Stone

Chapter Three Trail to Murder

The lieutenant’s name was Weill, I think. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything, only that I was striking first, protecting my own life in the only way I knew how.

“I am asking that this interview be treated in strictest confidence.”

He looked at me patronizingly; I suppose he thought I was going to accuse someone of poisoning someone else’s pet pekingese. “You can rely on us,” he said.

“I am here to offer you a proposition. I am in a position to give you information which I think you will find not only timely but exceedingly helpful. In return for this, you must not use my name in any shape, form or manner. It means the destruction of my happiness if you do, and I won’t risk it. Who I am, who told you this, must not appear on any of your documents or reports or files.”

He was still very condescending. “That’s a tall order. Are you sure it’s something we’d be interested in?”

“You’re a lieutenant of the Homicide Squad? I’m very sure, Lieutenant.”

He gave me a more alert look. “Very well, I accept your terms.”

“You do. Yes, but how do I know it won’t pass beyond your control? It’s a matter that you will have to take others into your confidence about.”

“Nothing passes beyond my control in this division, if I don’t care to have it do so. If, as you say, others have to be taken into my confidence, I can either pledge them, as you are pledging me, or keep you altogether anonymous, as ‘Mrs. X.’ or ‘an unknown woman.’ Does that satisfy you? I give you my word as a police officer.”

I wasn’t altogether sure of that, I didn’t know enough about them. “I also want your word of honor as a man.”

He eyed me with increased respect. “That,” he admitted, “is a whole lot more dependable. I give you both.” And he took my hand and wrung it once.

I didn’t hold back anything, didn’t try to cover myself in any way. I told him about the letters, about Carpenter’s contacting me, about my first visit there and the payment of the ten thousand cash. “...I also took a gun, to make sure the situation wouldn’t pass beyond my control. Here it is here. You can examine it if you want to make sure it wasn’t I who did it.” I passed it to him.

He weighed it in his hand, smiled a little. “I don’t think it’ll be necessary to do that. The slug of a forty-five was taken out of Carpenter’s body. This would be the grandson of a forty-five.” He fiddled with it, looked up. “Incidentally, did you know it wasn’t loaded?”

He could tell by the look on my face I hadn’t until then.

He fiddled some more with it. “In any case, it would have been quite a feat to fire it. Where did you get it?”

“Paris, before the war.”

I went into the second part of my story, the really pertinent part. If I hadn’t known it was that already, the change in his attitude would have told me. He forgot his role of putting a featherbrained society woman at ease, became a police-lieutenant with just an important witness before him. “You’d know this man if you saw him again?” he said sharply.

“All night I saw his face before me.”

“You say he held a gun trained on you, before this interruption saved your life. Did you get a good look at it?”

“Quite good.” I shuddered.

“Have you a good eye for proportions, for taking in measurements at a glance?”

“Fairly.”

He opened a desk drawer, took out a revolver. “This weapon is empty, so don’t be nervous. Of course, you were frightened, so maybe it’s not fair, but— This is a forty-five here. I am going to hold it just about as you say he held it. Now. Is it the same size as the one he held?”

“No, his seemed heavier, larger.”

“But this is a forty-five. Look at it again. Now what do you say?”

I cocked my head. “No. I may be mistaken, but somehow the one he held seemed to be a larger, heavier gun.”

He replaced it, looked around in the drawer, finally took out another. “How about this one, then? This is far bigger than a forty-five. This is as big as they come.”

I nodded my head affirmatively without a moment’s hesitation. “Yes. That’s the same size as the one he held.”

He put it back in the drawer. “You’re a reliable witness. The first gun was a thirty-eight. The second was the forty-five.” He got up. “I am going to ask you to try and pick him out for us.”

They were all so villainous looking. And yet none of them could approach him in viciousness. Maybe that was because I’d seen him in the flesh, in full dimension, and not just flat on paper, in black and white. There were two photos of each one, in profile and fullface. I ignored the profiles, concentrated on the fullfaces. That was the way he’d been turned toward me during those few awful moments up there the night of the murder.

I didn’t really think I was going to find him. There were so many of them. Looking through this gallery of rogues, you wondered if there could be any honest, law-abiding people left in the world. I even turned to Weill, after the first half hour or so, and asked, “Do you really think you’ve got him in here?”

“We won’t know that for sure until after you’re through.”

Once I nearly thought I saw him, but when I stopped short and looked more closely at that particular subject, recognition faded. It was just a superficial resemblance.

They felt infected by looking at so much depravity. I opened them again and went ahead.

Suddenly I got up from the chair. I put my forefinger on the photograph, but not for his benefit yet, simply for my own, to hang onto it. I closed my eyes and held them that way for a moment. Then when I had his face good and clear, burning clear, I opened them. I let them travel down the line of my arm, all the way down to the end of my finger, and the face on the police photograph blended into the one glowing in my mind, without any changes of outline.

Then I turned to Weill. “This is the face of the man I saw up there,” I said.

He said again what he’d said before, up in his office. “You’re a good, dependable witness. I liked the way you did that just then.” He bent forward above my shoulder and read from the data accompanying the photos. “That’s ‘Sonny-Boy’ Nelson. He’s already wanted for murder, three times over. We’ve wanted him for a long time past.”

Back in his office, he finally noticed the change that had come, over me since that last remark of his. “What is it, Mrs. Shaw? You seem troubled.”

I gestured shakily. “Well, after all, Lieutenant, why did I come here? To assure my own safety, to protect my life. This man saw me up there, just as I saw him. He knows I’m the only one who knows he was there. He’s going to try to kill me. He’s surely going to try, so that I won’t be able to tell that to anyone.

“Now if he’s already been wanted for three murders, and you haven’t gotten him so far, my identification makes no difference; you’ll simply want him for four murders now, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get him any quicker than before. And meanwhile, what’s to become of me? I’ll be living in danger from one minute to the next.”

“I’ll detail someone to—”

I quickly warded that off with a gesture.

“No, you can’t. How could such a thing escape Jim — my husband’s notice? He’s bound to ask questions, wonder what it’s all about. The whole thing would be bound to come out in the end. And that’s the very thing I tried to avoid by coming here to you unasked, entirely of my own accord.”

He stared at me incredulously. “You mean, given a choice between risking your life in a very real sense, and having your husband learn of your innocent involvement in this whole affair, you’d rather take chances on your life?”

“Much rather,” I told him very decisively.

I had been afraid not to pay the ten thousand. Now, because I had paid it, I was afraid to have it come out I had. I was afraid he would think there must have been something to cover up after all, if I had been so anxious and willing to pay it.

“You’re an unusual person,” Weill let me know.

“No, I’m not. Happiness is a soap-bubble. Once it’s been pricked, just try and get it back together again! This Sonny-Boy Nelson’s bullets can miss me. But my bubble can never be repaired again, once it’s burst. Even if it means just a stray thought passing through my husband’s mind five years from now. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire.’ I won’t take that chance, I won’t risk it. Nothing else in life matters to me.” I got up and went toward the door.

Then I saw that he had more to say, so I stopped and looked back.

“Well, if you’re willing to take the risk that you are, spread out thin, over days and weeks, how about taking an even greater risk, but all at one time? Getting it over with then and there?”

I answered that by coming away from the door, returning to his desk, and reseating myself acquiescently.

“You said, a little while ago, that your coming here had done no good; that we’d only want him for one additional murder now but still without knowing where to find him. But you’re mistaken. If you’re willing to cooperate, run the risk that I just spoke of, we will know where to find him. Which is more than we ever knew before.”

I saw what he meant. I shook a little, but I lit a cigarette. The cigarette of cooperation.

“Tell me,” he said, “are there any out-of-the-way places you’re in the habit of going to by yourself, entirely unaccompanied by your husband or friends or anyone else? I mean, without departing from your normal routine or habits of life?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes,” I said, “there are.”