Death Has Three Lives

Chapter Fourteen

There was one night attendant on duty in the anteroom of the morgue when the detective and reporter got there. He sat dozing behind a scarred desk with a bright droplight directly overhead. He yawned widely and showed a gap where two front teeth were missing when he grinned recognition of Shayne and Rourke.

“You two ghouls again, eh? Been months since I seen either of you. Can’t think what brings you around tonight. Only fresh meat we got is kinda thin an’ bony an’ hardly worth a trip down here to look at.” He cackled thinly at his own macabre humor. “Nossir. Ain’t a thing on hand you’d either one go for.”

“You have got the woman who was drowned in Biscayne Bay tonight?” Shayne asked.

“Oh, yeh. She’s the only fresh un. You boys come down to identify her?”

“To take a look and see if we can.”

“Have tuh put your names down right here.” The attendant produced two cards and picked up a pen. “You know the rules good as I do. Lemme see, now—” He made a pretext of scratching his bald head in perplexity, glancing up slyly at the redhead.

“Seems like I had oughtta remember your name from somewheres. Seen your picture in the papers, maybe?”

Shayne said good-naturedly, “President Eisenhower and the mayor of New York. That’ll look good in your records. Which box is she in?”

“Number four, Mr. President,” said the little man gleefully. “I knew I’d seen that mug of yours somewheres.”

Shayne shrugged and he and Rourke went down a passageway to a heavy door opening onto a flight of stairs leading down into the concrete-lined coldroom. Neither of them spoke as they went down. The attendant had been using the same routine for ten years and seemed to think it was as funny now as when he first thought it up.

The air in the small square room was dank and very chill. Although it was pure and air-conditioned, it never seemed to lose the indefinable odor of the countless corpses that had come and gone during the years. There were two white enamel tables in the center of the room, a bank of white, oversize filing cabinets along one wall. Each cabinet had three drawers, six feet long and about three feet square, with consecutive numbers neatly stenciled on the front of each.

Shayne drew in a deep breath and seized the handle of the top drawer in the second row and pulled it out. A white cloth covered the naked body of the woman he had last seen in Rourke’s company at the tourist cabin when she hesitantly disavowed recognition of Jack Bristow.

The thin features were horribly contorted in death. Lips drawn far back in a grimace to show bloodless gums and sharp teeth, eyeballs bulging from their sockets, flesh showing the typical color that comes from death by strangulation.

Neither man wasted more than one glance at the face. In the bright overhead light, a welt on her stomach showed clearly. Both had seen the scars left by an operation for appendicitis, and to their nonprofessional eyes, this looked typical and had the appearance of being rather recent.

Shayne pulled the cloth over her body and shoved the drawer shut. “So that really doesn’t prove anything except that we can’t say she isn’t Mrs. Allerdice. Doc Martin will have made a preliminary investigation. We can ask him how long ago the operation was, but it’s my guess it was about the right time.”

“Mine, too,” agreed Rourke as they turned back to climb the stairs. “What’s our next move?”

This was decided for them before Shayne had an opportunity to reply. When they re-entered the anteroom, they saw Chief Will Gentry and Doc Martin, ranking police surgeon of Miami, standing in front of the desk in conversation with the bald man.

Gentry rocked back on his heels and regarded them balefully as they approached, demanding angrily of Shayne, “Where’s Lucy Hamilton, Mike? I want her down here.”

“Lucy Hamilton?” Shayne didn’t have to simulate the surprise in his voice. “In bed, I guess. What you want her for?”

“I think you know, Mike.” Gentry’s voice was uncompromising. “And she isn’t at home. At least, she doesn’t answer her phone.”

Shayne stiffened. He said, “I don’t know, Will. Tim and I left her there half an hour ago, and I told her to get some sleep.”

“Damn it, Mike! Don’t give me a runaround.” Gentry’s face was choleric, his voice heavy with suppressed anger. “If you’re hiding her out so she can’t come down here to tell us whether or not this woman is Arlene Bristow, I swear to God in heaven it’ll mean your license.”

“Arlene Bristow?” Again, Shayne’s astonishment was genuine. “What on earth gave you that idea? So far as I know, Miss Bristow is in New Orleans.”

“Then why were you and Tim looking at her?” demanded Gentry. “I’ve had enough lies out of you tonight, Mike. You’re going to start coming clean.”

“Hold it, Will.” Shayne’s voice was even, but it became hard to match the chief’s accusation. “I haven’t lied to you. Certainly not about Lucy. If she isn’t at home I’m more worried about her than you are.”

“You haven’t answered me,” Gentry pounded at him. “Why did you and Tim make a trip down here unless it was to see if she answered Lucy’s description of Jack Bristow’s sister?”

“Because we wondered if she might be someone else.” Shayne looked past Gentry to the police surgeon. “You notice that scar on her tummy, doc?”

“What? Oh, the appendectomy. What of it?”

“How recent would you say it was?”

Dr. Martin shrugged. “Within the last six months at least. I wasn’t aware it was relevant when I examined her.”

“Will you swear she isn’t Arlene Bristow?” demanded Gentry.

“Why no. I never saw Miss Bristow.”

“But Lucy could swear to it?”

“I presume so. I believe she knew the girl fairly well a few years back. See here, Will, what the devil are you getting at? What possible reason have you for thinking she might be Arlene?”

“From now on, you’re going to be answering questions instead of asking them,” was the police chief’s uncompromising reply. He turned back to the man behind the desk. “You were just about to tell us about some other parties who have been in tonight to see her.”

“You bet, chief. Like I said, I’ve had two customers before Shayne and Rourke.” He nervously shuffled some cards on the desk, read aloud: “‘Albert Jenkins. Eleven twenty-six Twelfth Street, Miami.’ And then there was a young lady. She came in just as I was bringing him back up. No luck for him. Or, maybe it was luck for him. He’d feared it was his daughter. Didn’t get the young lady’s name. Friend of Mr. Jenkins, I gathered, and come here for the same reason. She was standing here waiting to register, and soon’s he saw her he went to her fast and grabbed her arm and said something like: ‘No need for you to go through the ordeal of looking at her, my dear. Thank God, it isn’t Helen.’ Or something like that. Then he just hurried her out the door an’ that’s the last I saw of them.”

Shayne was breathing heavily when he finished. He leaned forward with his palms flat on the desk and said harshly, “Describe the young lady.”

“Well, I— She was right pretty, I noticed. Pert-lookin’. Maybe twenty-five. Brown hair, I guess. She wasn’t wearing any hat. Brown eyes, maybe. You know how it is.” He extended both his palms. “Just saw her that one little minute before she went out.”

“What was she wearing?” demanded Shayne hoarsely.

He held his breath while the attendant haltingly described the dark wool suit Shayne had last seen Lucy wearing, and a light wrap he immediately recognized as hers.

Will Gentry tried to break in impatiently by demanding to know why he cared to know what some woman had been wearing, but Shayne silenced him with a savage gesture.

“This Jenkins! What did he look like?”

“Nothing particular. Sort of heavy-built and fiftyish. Wearing a gray suit and gray hat pulled down so you couldn’t see his face so good. Almighty worried, he was, about seeing whether she was his girl or not.”

“Wait a minute, Will.” Shayne’s voice was like a whiplash as he prevented the chief from speaking again. “Tell me this one thing. Any report from Miami Beach tonight about a man that might have been picked up on the Causeway after the car went over the edge?”

Will Gentry studied him curiously for a moment. “You mean the car that had the woman in the trunk? The one where you and Lucy just happened to be rowing out on the bay near by when it occurred?”

“That one,” said Shayne with savage intensity.

“The one,” Gentry went on stolidly, “that showed signs of some sort of explosive having gone off in the front seat? Just about the same amount of damage that might have been caused by that gas bomb you got Pete Fairwell to make up for you earlier this evening?”

“All right,” agreed Shayne grimly. “That one. Though I didn’t know about the signs of an explosion.”

“Why, yes,” said Gentry, rocking back on his heels and taking a thick black cigar from his pocket while he studied the redhead intently. “My men did get a report that some passing motorist maybe picked up the driver and took him away from the scene before they got there. But we haven’t been able to locate either one of them yet. No one has come forward to verify the story. Can you?” He shot the two final words out like two rocks.

“Not personally. Tim Rourke got the story from his paper. I want to know one more thing, Will. Any slugging or anything like that reported on the Beach in the last hour?”

Will Gentry rolled the cigar slowly back and forth from one corner of his mouth to the other, his shrewd eyes hooded by wrinkled brows.

“Funny you should ask that. As a matter of fact a man was picked up unconscious just beyond the end of the Causeway about fifteen minutes after the sedan went over. Apparently slugged over the head and tossed out of a moving car. He was a respectable citizen of Miami Beach who is supposed to have been driving home from Miami about that time. Any more questions you feel like asking right now, Mike? Or, is it my turn?” His voice was deceptively even and calm, but there was a note of iron in it that warned his patience was exhausted.

“I don’t think I need to ask any more questions,” said Shayne. He started out of the morgue fast. “Be seeing you around, Will.”

“Stop!” Gentry’s voice rang out loudly.

Shayne hunched his shoulders forward stubbornly and increased his pace toward the exit.

Will Gentry jerked his coat open and drew a .38 from his shoulder holster. His voice was like ice as he ordered, “Halt, Shayne. I’ll shoot if you go through that door.”

Shayne heard and recognized the note of stolid determination in Chief Gentry’s voice. He had heard it once or twice before, but never directed at him. He was still three strides from the door, and common sense told him this wasn’t the way to handle the situation.

He slammed to a halt and whirled to face the gun in the police chief’s hand. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Will. While we’re standing here talking, Lucy Hamilton is being held by a killer. A two- or three-time killer, by my guess. Put your gun away, Will.”

The gun remained steady in Gentry’s hand. He jerked his head in a curt negative. “You’re going to headquarters with me, Shayne. You and Tim Rourke both. When you’ve told me everything you know about this, the police will take over. Before God, Mike, I mean it.”

“But Lucy—”

“Lucy Hamilton is a woman exactly like the one downstairs. Exactly like the one strangled on Eighteenth Street tonight. We’ll do exactly the same to protect her as we did to protect them.”

“A fine goddamn job you did for them,” raged Shayne. “If you think I’m going to sit on my hands until Lucy’s corpse turns up, you’re crazy.”

“You’ll sit behind bars if you want it that way.” Will Gentry’s voice was inflexible and he made no move to holster his gun. “It’s my own hunch that one or both of those other women would still be alive if you hadn’t tried to play God tonight. If you hold out on us now, it’ll be Lucy you’re holding out on. I’m Chief of Police in Miami, and I’m still running my department the best I can with all the interference I get from smart private dicks.”

Shayne hesitated a long moment, glancing from the Police Positive in Gentry’s big hand to the look of iron determination on the chief’s beefy face.

Lucy was the one who needed help now. His personal reputation in Miami, his license to practice his profession didn’t matter so much any more.

He nodded and said thickly, “All right, Will. For God’s sake, let’s get going before we have a couple more murders to really hang up a record in Miami for one night.”