Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 5, April 1968

Just Another Perfect Crime by Edward Y. Breese

He was ravaged by illness and his hatred, a living dead man. Far too weak, too utterly gone to commit murder. Or — was he?

Old Simon Fullerton sat at the window of his rented Miami apartment and looked out with hatred at the tangle of straggling, tree-high hibiscus and unmown grass which filled the rear yard.

Stifling wet heat blanketed the big old frame house on its unkempt lot. Just across North River Drive a dirty mist smoked the surface of the Miami River and softened the lines of the rotting hulks moored against its banks.

Simon had retired to Florida; but not to a life of luxury.

He sat in his wheel chair and looked out. Constantly, endlessly, he shook with the ravages of the disease which was slowly killing him. Simon was close to the final stages of Parkinson’s disease.

Day and night his limbs and the flesh of his body shook and crawled on his old bones. Only in sleep could he find a little relief. He could only walk a little now. Mostly he rolled the wheel chair.

Worst of all was the endless, remorseless trembling that had almost destroyed the usefulness of his hands. He could no longer write or brush his teeth or manage a button. Most of the time he let Emma feed him, though he could manage a large spoon with concentration and immense effort. Lately he almost never tried to use the hands at all except when he was entirely alone. He had his own reasons.

He was alone now. Emma had gone shopping downtown. The two young couples who rented the first floor apartments were at work. His neighbor across the second floor hall, old Albury, was doubtless asleep at this time of day. He worked as night man at a gas station some place in town. Simon had time to get ready for Emma’s return.

In a way, he knew inside himself, he had been getting ready for this moment all his life. The lonely, ugly child had hated his parents and had had no friends at school. The awkward, grasping young man had envied and hated his bosses. The half-successful business man had had no friends in the dingy, northern industrial town which he called home. The inarticulate, fumbling search for something only half understood which had prompted him to marry Emma had led inevitably to this moment.

He was ready at last. As soon as Emma returned he was going to kill her. It didn’t matter in the least to him that this must be almost his last major act. To his hatred and fear it appeared as an act that would crown and culminate his life.

Simon Fullerton had hated and cheated and hurt his fellows all his life, but he had never yet dared the ultimate act. He had never dared to deliberately kill. In some twisted way which only he could grasp; this killing was a final test to which he must put his strength and cleverness.

He was justified, in his own mind. She kept the money — his small annuity, his government check, and the few thousand she had inherited from her parents — tightly under her own control.

He knew why. She wanted something for herself when the disease had killed him off. Well, he’d show her. He’d get out of this miserable hole into a comfortable convalescent home.

He’d be tended by a young nurse, and be free of Emma’s grudging, slipshod care. There’d be enough to last the short time till he died. If not, the State would put him somewhere. He’d have had his fling.

Best of all; he’d show her. He’d have the laugh on her and everyone else in the world. Hatred is not logical.

She was coming now. He heard her steps on the broad wooden porch below and in the hall. Silently he wheeled his chair into position facing the door from the front room into the upstairs hall, where she would come in.

The checkered butt of the old fashioned, long barrelled .38 Smith & Wesson revolver was firm in his hand. That was impossible. Everybody but Simon would know it was impossible with the palsy that never let him go. He would not tell his secret — the way that his keen and brilliant mind had found for him.

He waited while she came into the room. As he knew she would, she left the door ajar while she took three steps left to the table and set down the new slip and the paper sack of groceries.

When she turned and really saw him it was too late.

With something close to happiness he saw her eyes widen and her mouth shape to scream.

Simon fired three times. The bullets struck so close together that the entrance wounds could be covered by the palm of a hand. They ripped her heart apart. There was no time to scream. The shock of impact slammed her thin body back against the wall before it crumpled to the worn straw mat on the floor.

Simon had no time to gloat. He had to get the gun wiped clean with the towel that normally draped his trembling neck and shoulders in the heat. Then he dropped it on the body, so it would not thump on the floor, and backed his chair towards the kitchen door.

As he expected, through the partly open door, he heard muffled noises from across the hall as old Albury scrambled out of bed. Then he heard something he hadn’t expected at all. From the back-stair landing at the rear of the hall came a human gasp of fear. Feet pounded down the stairs. The back door rattled, held, rattled again. Then the old iron bolt rasped back and someone scrambled through. Luck was with Simon. Instead of a nameless prowler, Fate had supplied him with a scapegoat.

“Help,” Simon yelled. “Help! Murder! Help!”

He shot his wheel chair backward until he could see out of the rear kitchen window and recognize the man running hard for the tangle of bushes at the rear of the yard. It was, as he had known it would be, the slow-witted Andy who sporadically worked around the yard and house and kept up the property for the owner. Apparently he had been coming in for some minor job which Simon had not known about.

By this time Pop Albury had crossed the hall and run into the apartment. Simon pointed shakily out the window.

“Stop him!” he yelled. “There he goes. Stop him! Murderer!”

Pop was too late to see anything but thrashing shrubbery to mark the man’s passage. “It was Andy. I recognized him. He killed her,” Simon said.

He said the same thing to the policemen from Homicide when they arrived. “He must have followed her in. He had a gun — that one there — and he told her to get all the money she had hid here. She tried to say there wasn’t any, and he got mad. She was scared; so I guess he thought she was going to scream. That’s when he shot her. Just like that. I hope he burns. Poor Emma.”

The big plainclothes detective, Lieutenant Ryan, listened while another man took it all down. When questioned, Pop Albury confirmed that he had heard a man run out of the house, and that, when he reached the kitchen, Simon was in a position where he could have seen anyone in the back yard.

“I don’t think it could have been Andy, though,” Pop went on. “Andy wasn’t real bright, but I’ve gotten to know him pretty well in four years in this house. I could swear he’s no killer. For that matter I don’t think he has any armed robbery in his makeup, either.”

“When we catch him,” Ryan said, “he’d better hope a jury likes him as well as you do. Particularly if this old cannon can be traced to him.”

“It will be,” Simon stated confidently. He knew it wouldn’t, but it couldn’t be traced to him either. He’d bought it thirty-five years before off a traveling man who’d lost money at poker and needed a fast ten bucks. There was no record.

The man who had been dusting the gun spoke up. “No prints at all on this thing.”

Pop Albury looked interested.

“How you coming, Doc?” Ryan asked the coroner’s assistant.

The doctor got up from his knees where he had been examining Emma’s body.

“All done,” he said. “You can take it away, now, boys. By the way, Pop, is this Andy of yours by any chance a midget?”

“He’s taller than I am,” Pop said. “I’d say just about six feet; give or take an inch. Why do you ask.”

“This woman was shot by a gun held below the level of the wound,” the doctor replied. “The slugs ranged upward after entry. I can tell the angle after I do an autopsy, but they do angle up. Usually it’s the other way round with anyone as slight as she is. A man would shoot down to her heart, particularly if he aimed at all.”

“You sure?” Lieutenant Ryan asked.

The coroner’s man put on his coat. “You know I know my job. I just thought I’d mention it seemed funny to me.”

“Lieutenant,” Pop said, “a lot of things seem funny to me. Here’s another one. I heard whoever it was run out the back way. When he got downstairs the door was bolted. It wouldn’t open, and I heard him pull the bolt. Now don’t you think a man who knew this place, and knew he might have to run for it, would have left the bolt off that door? Even Andy would be bright enough to leave the door open.”

Simon spoke up then. “If it wasn’t Andy, it was his twin I saw. Why don’t you catch him and see what kind of alibi he has.”

“We’ll do just that,” Ryan said.

Pop was still troubled. “You sound like you wanted it to be Andy,” he told Simon. “Recollect now, you never did like him. Never liked anybody; now that I think of it. Not even your poor dead wife there that you don’t seem sorry about at all.”

“What do you mean by that, Pop?” Ryan was interested.

“He was always complaining about how tight she was with money and how mean she treated him. Leastwise he was whenever I would listen to him. He wanted her to put him in a private hospital or something.”

He would have gone on, but Simon interrupted. Simon wasn’t scared yet, but he was getting mad. He hated Pop. “You meddling old fool!” he said. “What are you trying to do? Sure I was mad at my wife sometimes. What husband ain’t? But that isn’t a motive for murder.”

“I didn’t say it was.” Ryan said.

Simon pushed his advantage. “Suppose I had a motive — what do you think I could do about it? Do you think I could ever aim a gun or hold the aim for three shots? Do you?”

He sat there in the wheel chair and excitement made him shake even harder than ever. His hands trembled and his face twitched and his limbs jumped spasmodically. The sweat soaked his underwear singlet and the legs of his thin slacks. He was a pitiful figure, and he knew it. The more he tried to hold still, the harder he shook. Even the police hated to watch him.

Pop was obviously affected. He went to the bathroom and got a clean towel for Simon’s neck. He took the old towel and was about to throw it away. Then he put it close to his face for a minute.

“Lieutenant,” Pop said. “Smell this thing a minute.”

Ryan took the wet and filthy rag and held it up to his nose. “Gun oil!” he said. “So that’s why there’s no prints on the gun. But he couldn’t have done the shooting. Those shakes are real. And whoever shot her knew his business. Three shots so close together. He never could have.”

“Oh, yes he could,” Pop insisted. “I see it all now. This towel did more than wipe the gun. It held it steady while he fired. Look at the arm of that wheel chair. It slopes up a little to the front. Wrap a towel around the arm and the gun frame and the barrel will point up a little. The towel holds the gun. He just had to point the chair and fire as often as he wanted to.”

“We can check it,” Ryan said. “We can check the angle of the chair arm, the dead woman’s height, and the angle of the wounds. There should be powder fragments where the towel was around the gun’s cylinder, too.”

“There will be,” Simon shouted. “I hated her, and I killed her. I didn’t think you could ever tell how. I hated her like I hate you.”

“That’s what went wrong,” Pop Albury said. “You hated too much. If you hadn’t tried to hurt Andy and accuse him, I might never have thought this thing through. You would have been able to get rid of the towel or wash it.”

Simon shook and shook. He couldn’t stop. “They’ll never execute a sick man,” he said.

“No, old man,” Lieutenant Ryan said. “They won’t execute you. They won’t have to. I think your own hate did that long ago.”