Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

Fingering a Killer by Malcolm McClintick

The house was one of those newly restored Victorian things, sort of like in San Francisco, except that it wasn’t San Francisco, much to Allen Ross’s chagrin; it was Indianapolis, in a downtown area called Lockerbie Square. Yuppies and other upwardly mobile people came here, bought homes, and lived in modest luxury amid the surrounding rundown warehouses, bars, loan companies, and storefront law offices. They could walk to work, smile knowingly at one another, and pretend to be the cream of a real city.

The dead man lay on his back on the bathroom floor of his Victorian house. His name was Phil Hendrix, single, late thirties, owner of a small nearby loan company called E-Z-Cash Finance. He was heavy, over six feet, dark hair, wearing blue boxer shorts and a blue terry cloth robe. The left side of his neck and face was still covered with the dried remains of shaving cream; the other side was smooth. The stubble of unshaven beard poked through the cream. He looked physically fit, except for the fact that he was dead.

The blue robe lay open, revealing three ugly bullet wounds: one in the left shoulder, one in the middle of the bulging stomach, and one just to the left of the breastbone.

Allen Ross, of the prosecuting attorney’s office, stood in the bathroom pushing his horn-rims up on his nose and looking down at the dead man. He had been sent by his boss to work with the Indianapolis cops on the homicide investigation because the victim had telephoned the prosecutor the day before with information. Ross shook his head. Obviously, the phone call had led to the man’s death.

It was nine fifteen on a Tuesday morning in mid-January, dry and frigid outside, temperature hovering in the twenties. The victim’s Victorian house was pleasant, maybe even a bit warm, except for here in the bathroom where a small window — too small for anyone to get in or out — was open several inches, letting in the cold.

Shivering, Ross glanced up to see the city detective in charge of the case standing in the bathroom doorway, Sergeant Sam Vincent, a tall, skinny, flftyish guy in a brown wool suit and brown overcoat, narrow face, balding on top.

“How’s it going?” Vincent wanted to know.

“Not bad.” Ross smiled. “You solve it yet, Sam?”

“Oh, sure. I just got out my mail-order detective kit, looked through my magnifying glass, and snapped my fingers.” Sam Vincent grinned wryly. “Actually, it is pretty much open and shut, ain’t it?”

“Sure.” Ross glanced at the corpse. “Did you notice he’s holding a bar of bath soap in his left hand, Sam?”

Vincent nodded. “Yeah, we ain’t exactly dumb in Homicide, whatever you legal eagles think. I noticed the bar of soap.”

“He was shaving,” Ross pointed out. “Half of his face still has shaving cream and whiskers. He was using shaving cream from a can, not bath soap.”

“So? Maybe he liked to wash his hands.”

“In the middle of a shave?” Ross asked, then stepped out into the hall so an Indianapolis Star photographer could get by. The crime lab people had finished already. Basically they were waiting for the coroner’s man to release the body.

“Look,” Sam Vincent said, “it’s simple. He’s been shot three times, see? Doc says one got him right in the heart, one in the gut, one in the shoulder. Big caliber, probably at least a .38. Three exit wounds. Three slugs in the wall behind him, where they came out. No shells on the floor, so probably it was a revolver. Rear door of the house was kicked in, ripped the lock right out of the wood. Bathroom door’s been kicked in, somebody’s foot right under the doorknob. It was locked, but just one of those flimsy things with a push button in the knob. So, here’s the picture. Killer broke in the back door and came here. Hendrix is shaving with the door locked. Killer kicks in the door. Killer lets Hendrix have it three times with a revolver. Hendrix falls on the floor and dies. Killer goes out the back door and makes his getaway. Only thing we don’t know is, who the killer was.”

“Footprints on the door that was kicked in?” Ross asked.

“Just a faint dirty mark, nothing to go on. Nothing outside — all the walks around here are bone dry. No fingerprints, either.”

“I don’t understand why Hendrix was gripping that bar of soap,” Ross said. “I’ll tell you something, though. It was one of four guys.”

Sam Vincent smiled vaguely. “Now we’re getting someplace. I didn’t figure your boss sent you over here just to annoy me and my boys. What four guys?”

“Hendrix telephoned our office yesterday,” Ross said. “Hendrix manages the E-Z-Cash Finance Company, just over in the next block. He’s got four loan officers working under him. It’s a fairly small outfit. Hendrix said yesterday that one of the four had been extorting sex from female clients.”

“Huh?”

Ross nodded. “Yeah. Apparently this guy would tell some young attractive female who was in hock up to her ears that he’d take care of some or all of her indebtedness for her, in return for certain, uh, favors.”

He saw Vincent frown. “Creep. So, then it is open and shut. Why didn’t you tell me this before, Ross? Which guy is it?”

Allen Ross got out a cigarette, then realized he shouldn’t smoke on the crime scene and put it back in the pack. “Well, that’s the problem,” he said. “Hendrix didn’t tell us yesterday on the phone which guy it was. We set up a meeting with him for ten o’clock this morning, and he was going to tell us then.”

“Damn it. So, you don’t have any idea at all?”

“No.”

Vincent considered this. Then he turned to one of the uniformed cops. “Hey, Sid? Get a car over to the E-Z-Cash Finance Company and round up all four loan officers. Bring ’em down here. Okay?”

The cop nodded. “Right, sarge.”

“Any of ’em not in the office, find ’em and bring ’em anyway,” Vincent added.

The cop nodded again and was gone.

Allen Ross thought about the four loan officers and the sex extortion racket and the bar of soap and the three bullets and the kicked-in doors, and went outside onto the front porch to pull his overcoat collar up and smoke his cigarette. The body was taken out in a bag by the coroner’s deputies, loaded into the back of a van, and driven away. Three bullet holes. Rear door kicked in, bathroom door kicked in. Ross visualized what had probably happened.

When Allen Ross got up in the morning and shaved, he didn’t lock his bathroom door. Why should he? Nobody was coming to blow him away. So why had Hendrix locked his bathroom door? It didn’t make sense, unless...

Ross pictured Hendrix in there shaving. Then he tossed his cigarette into the frozen yard and reentered the house, immediately fogging up the lenses of his horn-rims. “Drat,” he muttered, took his glasses off, and wiped at the lenses with a handkerchief. When he could see again, he plodded down the hall to the bathroom and looked inside.

The blood was still on the floor where it had flowed from the exit wounds in Hendrix’s back. Ross could see the holes in the plaster wall where the three slugs had buried themselves. The small window was still partly open, letting in cold air from an unpaved alley. Ross turned and called to Sam Vincent, who was pacing back and forth in a formal dining room off the hall.

“Hey, Sam?”

The cop stopped pacing and came out into the hall to stand at the open bathroom door.

“Yeah?”

“Was this window open when you guys got here?”

“Sure was. Hendrix must’ve been a fresh-air nut. But I hope you’re not trying to make something of the temperature. He hasn’t been dead long enough to make the cold a problem for the time of death determination. Besides which, we’ve got a neighbor who heard all three shots and called the cops.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Ross said absently. He looked at himself in the shaving mirror and took out a comb, ran it through his thin black hair. There wasn’t a lot left on top now, and he was only forty or so. After forty he’d stopped counting, but it hadn’t been that long ago. Still not bad, though, he mused, checking his teeth — nice and straight — and the line of his jaw — no flab yet. But he didn’t much like the gray at the temples.

“Admiring yourself?” Vincent asked with a sneer. “You ain’t that beautiful.”

“It’s getting thin on top,” Ross said.

Vincent laughed. “I ain’t had hair on top in ten years. Welcome to the club.”

Ross followed Vincent back into the dining room just as the uniformed cop returned, ushering in four men who frowned or looked worried or, in one case, politely smiled.

“Sergeant Vincent? These are the loan officers.”

Ross appraised them as the cop said their names.

“James Neal.” A short, thirtyish, blond guy, tan suit, tan overcoat, polished shoes, pale complexion, pale blue eyes. Frowning hard, indignantly. Pompous, Ross decided. Arrogant.

“This is Tony DeVoss.” A big, heavyset, dark-haired guy, black shifting eyes, large beak nose, clean-shaven but with a shadow already appearing in the area of his beard, thick black eyebrows. DeVoss was also scowling, looking angry, his big heavy fists clenched at his sides.

“Bill McCready.” The polite smiler. Ross decided McCready was eager to please. About six feet, late twenties, bland, fair, aviator-styled glasses, flashy sport coat, loud tie. Ross could smell McCready’s cologne. There were four guys standing there, but it had to be McCready’s.

“And Frank Keller.” This was the scared-looking guy. Short, plump, in his twenties, a little stubbly reddish mustache, short red hair, boyish features, dark eyes darting all around. Afraid of — what? Being charged with murder?

Sam Vincent said gruffly, “I’m sorry to drag you gentlemen down here, but your boss, Phil Hendrix, was shot to death earlier this morning. I suppose you’ve already been informed?”

They all nodded. Tony DeVoss said loudly, “So what? Are you arresting us or something? How come we gotta get pulled down here?”

“We have reason to believe,” Vincent said, “that Hendrix was shot by somebody in his office. Which is to say, your office. So we’d like to ask you all a few questions.”

“That’s bull,” DeVoss said, scowling harder.

“I don’t know anything,” Frank Keller stammered, glancing around nervously.

McCready, polite and flashy, just smiled and said nothing. Next to him, Neal remained arrogant and indignant. “This is highly irregular,” he said. “We’re executives.”

Allen Ross hid a smile. Executives. Loan officers. Strange world, he thought. Executives. He was trying to think. Something kept nagging at him. While Sam Vincent started questioning the four executives, Ross decided to go back out on the porch for another smoke, where he could be alone and do some figuring.

It was cold out there; the morning sun seemed weak and ineffectual. Down on the street a small car rumbled past, its tires singing on the dry pavement. Evidently it had just been started — its side and rear windows were all fogged up. Ross had once owned a little Renault that had been hard to keep defrosted in winter.

A uniformed cop came out to join him, shuffling his black shoes and lighting a thin cigar. “How’s it going, Allen?”

Ross nodded. “Not bad. The sergeant getting anything yet? A confession?”

The cop grinned. “Naw. He won’t, neither. Nothing to go on. Unless one of those birds owns a .38. Too bad we don’t actually know which one did it, we could maybe try for a search warrant, look for the gun. But with four suspects we’d be fishing, I doubt we’d get a warrant. Hell, you’re a prosecutor. Am I wrong?”

Allen Ross shook his head. “You’re not wrong. It’d be tough.”

“Weird case, though,” the cop said, puffing at his cigar. “Guy shaves in a locked bathroom, then gets plugged holding onto a bar of soap. I asked my partner, what was Hendrix going to do with that bar of soap? Hit the killer with it? Some weapon. If it was me, I’d at least have gone at him with my razor.”

Ross took off his glasses and wiped at them again with his handkerchief. “Dam things keep fogging up when I go inside,” he said. “Hendrix must have a humidifier.”

The cop nodded. “Yeah. You know, another weird thing. Hendrix had a chip of soap under one of his fingers, the index finger on the other hand. He must’ve really been hanging on to that soap bar for dear life. Hey, speaking of soap, you know what my wife does with her glasses? You can buy that gunk to spray ’em with, you know, keep ’em from fogging up? But she smears a little soap on the lenses, works just like that gunk you can buy. Maybe you oughta try it.”

Ross thought for a time, then smiled at the cop. “Thanks. Maybe I will.”

He’d just solved the case.

He went back inside the house and his horn-rims fogged up again. Taking them off and wiping the lenses with his handkerchief, he went down the hall and found Sam Vincent in the dining room with the four suspects. Vincent glanced up.

“Hello,” Ross said pleasantly, putting his glasses back on. “Anything yet?”

“Nobody’s confessed to shooting Hendrix, if that’s what you mean,” Vincent replied dryly.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” Ross said. “It’s okay, isn’t it?”

“That’s a crime scene,” Vincent said irritably. “Use someplace else, can’t you?”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Ross told him, and entered the bathroom.

He pushed the door shut. The killer had kicked it in, so it would no longer lock, but it stayed almost closed. Ross went over to the small window and shut it. There was a toilet, a sink and shaving mirror, shelves crammed with the usual stuff — aftershave, soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, Band-aids, good quality towels and washcloths. Hendrix’s disposable razor lay on the sink. There was an old fashioned tub with feet, and a white plastic shower curtain.

Ross reached down and turned on the shower, all the way over to HOT, as hard as it would run. He stepped to the sink and turned the hot water tap full on. Then he stood there, waiting.

The cop’s wife had a good idea, Ross thought. He pulled a tissue from a box on the back of the toilet and used it to wipe some soap onto his glasses lenses. As the bathroom gradually filled with steam, the shaving mirror over the sink began fogging over but his glasses remained clear.

Ross stood there for a while, smiling and humming a little tune and looking at himself in the mirror. With all the fog on the glass he couldn’t see much. He combed his thinning hair once, then gave up. I’ll be bald before I’m fifty, he thought.

After a time he turned off the sink faucet and the shower. Someone rapped hard at the door and Sam Vincent’s voice came loudly:

“Ross? What the hell you doing in there?”

“Come in,” Ross said, opening the door. “Quickly,” he added.

Vincent came in, and Ross shut the door behind him.

“What’s going on?” the detective asked. “What the hell you doing in here — taking a bath?”

Ross smiled. “How’s it going out there? Figure it out, yet?”

Vincent shook his head, frowning. “No. Geez, why’ve you got it all steamed up in here. You nuts? Out there, it’s rotten. Not one guy has an alibi. Three of ’em own guns, two of ’em have revolvers. All four of ’em disliked Hendrix for one reason or another. They all four got to the loan office within twenty minutes of the time of the shooting and did paperwork in their own little cubicles. Any one of the four could’ve sneaked out, walked a block, kicked in the back door, come in and shot Hendrix, and beat it back to the loan company again, maybe tossing the gun in a trash barrel on the way. My men are searching the alleys now. I’m gonna have to start interviewing all their female clients to get any lead at all. This is gonna take forever.”

“Maybe not.” Ross pointed at the mirror. “There’s your murderer,” he said.

Vincent stared, blinking in the steam-filled room.

“You do that, Ross?”

“Not me. Hendrix. Before he died.”

“How?”

Ross said, “Hendrix is in here shaving. If he steams up the mirror he can’t see to shave, so he opens that window. It’s cool and airy, the mirror doesn’t fog over. Right?”

Vincent nodded.

Ross continued. “The killer kicks in the back door. Hendrix hears it. Hendrix already knows he’s going downtown today to talk to us and put the finger on an extortionist. Maybe the extortionist overheard Hendrix on the phone or found out about it in some way. Hendrix is halfway through shaving. He looks out and sees the killer, the extortionist, coming for him, holding a gun. Hendrix knows he’s about to be shot. He locks the bathroom door, but it’s a flimsy lock and a flimsy door. He doesn’t have a chance. What’s he do?”

“You tell me,” Vincent said.

“He decides that if he’s going to get shot, he’ll at least name his killer. The name of the extortionist and killer. He grabs the bar of soap, the one you found in his left hand. He jabs the end of his right index finger against it, getting soap under his fingernail. He writes the killer’s name in soap, on the shaving mirror. When the killer breaks in, he won’t see it — there’s no steam in the room, and it’s not really visible on the glass unless you get very close and peer. And probably the killer fired from the doorway and never even saw the mirror.

“The killer kicks in the door and fires. Hendrix goes down, holding the bar of soap. If anybody steams up the room, the mirror will fog over — all except for the soap. The killer’s name.”

Vincent scratched his head. “That was a long shot, wasn’t it? How’d he know anybody’d bother steaming up the bathroom?”

“I guess he just hoped.”

“Maybe now we can get a search warrant and look for the gun,” Vincent said. He looked at the mirror again.

In the fog on the glass, a name stood out in large dripping letters.

NEAL.

They left the room. A uniformed cop was watching the four loan officers in the dining room. They were all drinking coffee.

Vincent looked at them. “All right, Mr. Neal,” he said. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder. You have the right to remain silent...”

The short blond guy in the tan suit and polished shoes stared at Sergeant Vincent. His pale blue eyes widened. Then the arrogance left, leaving only fear and desperation.

“Like hell,” Neal snapped, and bolted for the hall. But of course there were other cops out there, and he didn’t get far. When they had subdued him and pulled him back into the dining room, Neal glowered sullenly at Vincent.

“How’d you know? Just tell me that.”

Vincent said, “It was Mr. Ross here. He saw the handwriting on the wall. Or rather, on the mirror.”