Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 32, No. 2, January 1973

Some Holds Barred by Randall Garrett

Solve — if you can — the macabre riddle of the man who shot himself, in the head and died instantly — then cocked his gun to be ready for the next victim!

The old house was two blocks from Haight Street. The homicide car pulled up in front of it and eased into the open space between two marked patrol cars. The driver tried to get out and around the car before Lieutenant Fran Dixon could open the door, but as usual he didn’t make it. Lieutenant Dixon was already stepping to the curb.

Sergeant Curtis knew better than to offer her a hand. He waited until the lieutenant was on the sidewalk, then he shut the car door and locked it. In this neighborhood there was no greater idiocy than leaving a car unlocked; some junkie might rip it off, even with two patrol cars parked fore and aft.

Fran Dixon had her ID out as two patrolmen came toward her.

“Dixon. Homicide,” she said evenly.

The two cops came to a sudden halt and saluted. Neither of them had ever met her, but both of them had damn well heard of Lieutenant Fran Dixon. She stood just two inches under six feet, and had caramel brown eyes that could become hard or soft at will. She wore a dark green suit with a skirt that was neither mini nor midi, but about halfway between, showing an excellent length of beautiful legs.

The .38 Colt Cobra on her right hip was hidden by the dark green jacket, but it was available enough for her to get it out and firing in something like three-fifths of a second.

When the two uniformed officers had identified themselves, Fran looked at the older one and said: “What’s the picture, Martinez?”

“Guy shot to death, Lieutenant. Narcotics got a reliable tip that this place was loaded with junk, so we came to hit it. So far, we haven’t found any dope, but there’s a body up there in a bedroom — dead when we hit the place. Maybe you better talk to Sergeant Killenan, Lieutenant.”

“Where is he?” Fran asked.

Patrolman Martinez pointed. “Upstairs. He’s got a suspect.”

Fran Dixon sighed. “No doubt he does.” She knew Killenan. She turned to Sergeant Curtis. “Stay here and do some PR work. We’re beginning to get a little bit of a crowd. Tell them that this is not a narc bust, but that someone has been badly hurt, and—” She looked suddenly at Officer Martinez. “The ambulance has been called?” she asked.

“Yes, sir — uh, ma’am.”

She ignored the slip; she was used to it. She looked back at Curtis. “Tell them that someone has been badly hurt, and that an ambulance is coming to take them to the hospital. Tell them it was an accident of some kind, but that you don’t know all the details. Get it?”

Curtis grinned. “Got it.”

Fran grinned back. “Good.”

That bit of reparté was a joke they shared.

Fran Dixon went up the steps of the old two-story house, identified herself to the cop at the door, and went on up the worn stairway to the upper floor. Another uniformed cop pointed down the dingy hallway toward a door. “Sergeant Killenan’s down there, ma’am.”

The bedroom wasn’t exactly dirty, Fran thought, but it was sure as hell littered. There were clothes and books all over the place. She wondered whether that was the natural state of the room or a state induced by the narc squad when they searched the place. Probably fifty-fifty, she decided.

Sergeant Killenan sat in a stout-looking wooden chair, facing three people sitting on an unmade bed. He turned his round Irish face toward Fran when she entered the room. His eyebrows went up.

“They sent you, Lieutenant?”

“I’ve got the duty,” she said. “Why not?”

“Well, this is a tough neighborhood, ma’am,” he said, standing up. “A lady might get hurt, and—”

“I’m a lady only when I’m off duty, Sergeant,” Fran said coldly. “Who are these people?”

Before the sergeant could answer, the big, hulky, scowling young man at the end of the bed said; “So we got a broad fuzz. What’s she gonna do? Give us a parking ticket?”

Killenan, big, wide, and suddenly mean-looking, turned toward the man. When he spoke, his voice was hard. “You’ll show a little respect around here, buster, or you’ll get your goddam head kicked in. Got that?”

The two women seated next to the hulky man opened their mouths to speak, but Lieutenant Dixon beat them to it.

“Hold it!” Her voice was firm, crisp, and authoritative. “Let’s not start any shouting match until we find out what’s happened. I’m not here to bust anybody unless they’ve committed murder. The sooner we find out what happened, the sooner we can get out of here and leave you people alone. Sergeant Killenan, put one of your men in herb while we go out and look at the body.”

Killenan, still scowling, said: “Yes, ma’am! Cardona!”

The cop who had been standing out in the hall came in quickly, his hand on the butt of his .357 Magnum.

“Watch these people,” Killenan said. “The Lieutenant and I got business.”

Dixon and Killenan went out into the hallway while Cardona took over. When the door closed, Fran turned to Killenan and repeated: “Who are those people?”

The sergeant took a deep breath. It bothered him to take orders from a woman; it confused his sense of values. But he knew damn good and well where Fran Dixon stood with the department.

“The big crud at the end,” he said, “the one with the big mouth, is a guy named Larry Postman. I checked his driver’s license. The old lady fitting next to him is his mother, Ellen Postman — or so she says. No ID; she doesn’t drive a car. The little girl says her name is Louise Smith, says she’s nineteen. Looks more like fifteen or sixteen to me. No ID. She refers to Larry Postman as ‘my old man’. Apparently she’s been... uh... sleeping with him for about six months.”

“Who’s the dead man?” Fran Dixon asked.

“Guy named Wade Broadhurst. They called him Hassan the Assassin, said he was a hashhead. Smoked hashish.”

Fran didn’t bother to say. that she knew what a hashhead was; she was used to having men explain the obvious to her.

“All right,” she said, “we have a big crud, an old lady with arthritic hands, and a little girl who doesn’t weigh more than ninety pounds. What’s their story?”

“They all three claim it was suicide. And they’re lying in their teeth, Lieutenant. Want to come take a look?”

Fran Dixon held back a sarcastic remark and said: “That’s what I’m here for. Where is he?”

Killenan led her down the hall to another bedroom. He opened the door and let her take a look.

The room was eight-by-ten; no more. It didn’t look quite as cluttered as the rest of the house, but it was far from neat.

The messiest part was the body. The man was on a mattress which lay on the floor against the left wall. Even from the door, it was obvious what had happened. A bullet had entered his right temple, making a wound the size of a man’s thumb. It had exited by taking away most of the left side of his skull. The splatter across the bed and wall was not pleasant to look at.

The man’s right hand was flung out across the floor, and near it was a revolver.

“The narc squad didn’t search this room, did they?” Fran asked.

“No, ma’am, we didn’t. We called Homicide as soon as we opened the door. I figured Lieutenant Tokuwara would want his lab men in here before we touched anything. It looked funny. Take a look at that gun, and you’ll see what I mean.”

Fran stepped carefully into the room, knelt, and looked at the gun without touching it.

“Damned unusual,” she murmured. “You don’t find these very often.”

“You damn sure don’t, Lieutenant,” Killenan said firmly.

“It’s an unusual gun,” Fran said, “but what’s so funny about it?”

There was a long pause. Utter silence from Killenan.

Fran turned her head around and looked at the narc squad sergeant. He was staring at her as though she were an absolute moron.

Fran got to her feet and dusted off her hands. “Okay, Sergeant; I repeat: What’s so funny about that gun?”

Killenan looked as though he’d been fed a faceful of alum.

“Well, ma’am,” he said carefully, “in case you hadn’t noticed, that revolver is cocked.”

“I noticed that,” Fran said dryly. “It’s rather obvious.”

“Well then, it couldn’t be suicide, could it?” The sergeant’s voice was still careful.

“Why not?”

Sergeant Killenan blew his cool in a splash of verbal pyrotechnics.

“Because, goddam it, woman, a man don’t stick a goddam revolver up against the side of his goddam head, blow his goddam brains out, and then stay alive long enough to recock the goddam hammer! It goddam well ain’t humanly possible!”

Lieutenant Fran Dixon smiled gently at the sergeant. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “You are goddam well correct, Sergeant. But have you looked at that goddam revolver?”

Suddenly flustered, Killenan blinked. “Yeah. I looked at it,” he said.

“Did you see the zig-zag grooves around the cylinder?”

“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. I mean, yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know what kind of gun that is, Sergeant Killenan?”

“Um. No, ma’am.”

“That weapon happens to be a .455 Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. British-made, back in—”

There was a sudden flurry of footsteps on the stairway, and both Fran and Killenan stepped out of the death room to look down the hall.

“It’s Tokuwara and the lab squad,” Fran said. “While they are doing their bit, you and. I will go over and ask some questions of our happy trio.” Twenty-five minutes later, Lieutenant Dixon had a reasonably coherent idea of what had happened, although she knew very well that one of the three was lying.

The weapon had belonged to Broadhurst. A check via police radio showed that he had actually registered the .455 with the San Francisco. Police Department.

Broadhurst had been one of the only two people living in the house who had jobs. There were eleven people living there, but seven of them were in a park down near San Jose, attending an esbat, and could be eliminated as suspects.

The narcotic squad had surrounded the house to make the bust, and all of them had heard the .455 go off. It hadn’t been a firecracker, or a shot other than the death shot, because the first officer to arrive in the death room got there before a minute had passed. And the body had still been twitching, as often happens after severe head wounds. The blood was still running, and the smell of cordite from the old British cartridge was still strong.

The time of death, then, had been established, and the officers surrounding the house had stated that no one had gone in or out since the shot, with the exception of the investigators.

So, Fran told herself, there were exactly four suspects. Any one of the three live ones might be guilty of murder; the dead one might be guilty of suicide.

The three didn’t alibi each other, which was a blessing. Little Louise claimed she had been in her bedroom at the other end of the long hall when the shot sounded; she got up from her bed and looked out the door of her room, but had seen nothing until the police arrived, less than a minute later.

Ellen Postman, the sixty-year-old woman with the arthritic hands, had, according to her story, been downstairs in the kitchen making coffee when the .455 went off. Since she had been the one to open the door when the. officers knocked, her story seemed fairly straightforward. But she could just as easily have come down from upstairs as from the kitchen.

Larry Postman said he had been in the john. He had heard the blast of the gunshot, but by the time he was ready to go anywhere, the place was “full of fuzz.” Officer Cardona corroborated that last part of his story, that he had been coming out of the john, but there was no way of knowing just how long he had been in there.

By the time Lieutenant Fran Dixon had extracted all that information from the three suspects, the ambulance had come and gone, and Sergeant Curtis, having done his PR work, was ready to take over. Fran let him continue with the questioning, and went out into the hall with Sergeant Killenan.

Killenan was fuming with frustration. “Lieutenant, I was sure that goddam Larry Postman done it. But now it looks like maybe it was suicide, except for that cocked revolver. Whatever kind of a gun it is, how could it recock itself?”

“I wouldn’t expect a narc squad mans to know anything about hand weapons,” Fran said softly. “Nor a vice squad man either, for that matter. Let’s go talk to Lieutenant Tokuwara.”

Outside the death room, some of the technicians were packing up their cameras and other gear. There were still men working inside.

Tokuwara took his cigar from his mouth, bowed low from the waist, and said: “Ah, so, Rootenant Dixon. Can humber person be of assistance?”

“Knock it off, Toku,” Fran said with a slight smile. “I want to know about that gun.”

Tokuwara stuck his cigar back in his mouth and talked around it. “It’s a point four-five-five Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver, Fran. It did the job, all right. The slug went right on through; the boys dug it out of the wall. There were heavy powder bums around the entrance wound, so it could have been suicide.

“There were a couple of prints on the barrel and on the cylinder, both of them his. Smudges on the grip and trigger, unidentifiable. You know what a bitch of a job it is to get prints off a grip or trigger.”

“I know,” Fran said. “Are you through with it?”

“Sure.” Tokuwara turned his head. “Harry, give me that gun.”

The technician gave Tokuwara the death weapon, and Tokuwara handed it to Fran.

She hefted the big revolver and said: “It’s a beauty. I wonder where he got it.” She checked the cylinder and looked at Tokuwara.

“We took out five live cartridges and an empty,” he said through a cloud of cigar smoke. “We’ve got ’em marked, and we’ve got the corresponding positions on the chambers marked.”

“Lieutenant, ma’am.” Sergeant Killenan said darkly, “would you mind checking me out on that handgun?”

“Sure,” Fran said. “It’s called an automatic revolver, but, strictly speaking, it’s a semi-automatic revolver. The mechanism is actuated by the energy of recoil, which drives the whole superstructure — the barrel-cylinder assembly, rearward. Like this.”

She was holding the superstructure in one hand and the grip in the other, but when she tried to work the action, nothing happened.

“Damn lousy lube job,” she said disgustedly. “Here, Toku. You do it.”

Lieutenant Tokuwara took the gun. “You see, Sergeant, the whole upper part of the weapon slides back, like... uh... this. When the cartridge is fired, the whole mechanism is sent rearward by the recoil, recocking the hammer. That compresses the recoil spring, which forces the whole assembly forward again to the firing position.” He handed the cocked weapon back to Fran Dixon.

“It’s a beautiful engineering job,” she said, “but a flat failure as a combat weapon. Too complicated. This zig-zag groove around the cylinder is actuated by this stud down here on the grip assembly to rotate the cylinder to the next cartridge. See?” She gave the gun to Killenan.

“I never heard of a gun like this,” Killenan said, looking at it.

“That’s the four fifty-five,” Fran said. “I understand the Webley-Fosbery was also made in thirty-eight caliber, but I’ve never seen one. The only other handgun I know of that’s anything like it is a thirty-two with a nearly identical mechanism, made by the Union Fire Arms Company in Toledo, Ohio.”

Killenan worked the action of the weapon a couple of times, shoving the heavy carriage back and letting it snap forward. Then he looked at Fran Dixon.

“Makes me fee! kind of silly, Lieutenant,” he told her, “Looks like Broadhurst could’ve killed himself after all.”

Before Fran could answer, one of the technicians came out of the death room and said: “Lieutenant Tokuwara, look what we found under the mattress in there.” He held out a small plastic bag half filled with a white crystalline powder.

Tokuwara didn’t take it.

“Is it?” he asked.

Sergeant Killenan took the tiny bag, opened it, touched the powder with his finger and transfered a few grains to the tip of his tongue.

“Yup,” he said after a second. “Heroin. Damn high grade stuff, too.”

“Take it to the lab,” Tokuwara told the technician.

“Sergeant Killenan,” Fran said, “you and your squad have a job to do.” She gave full instructions. Then, when Killenan had gone, she said to Tokuwara: “All right, Toku, we’ll split ’em up. You take the old lady; Sergeant Curtis will take the girl; I will take Postman. Three different rooms. We talk and we wait. Okay?”

“Damn it, Fran,” Tokuwara said, “I’m not up on interrogation, I’m a lab man. I don’t—”

Fran Dixon cut him off. “You went through basic training, didn’t you? That’s all you need.” Her voice became urgent. “Don’t you see, Toku? I’m not asking that any of us get any real information from those three; all we’re doing is stalling for time. All you have to do is go in there and sound like a cop for a while. Is that too damn difficult?”

Tokuwara paused for a moment. Then he slitted his heavy-lidded eyes and bowed. “As honorabu rady Rootenant command, so humber servant wirr do.”

Lieutenant Fran Dixon half closed her caramel eyes and bowed in return. “Sank you, honorabu Rootenant Tokuwara. Now rets get honorabu asses in gear and go to work. Orright?”

“Orright, Rootenant-san.”

“Sank you, Rootenant-san.”

The three investigators spent an hour and twelve minutes interrogating the three suspects, learning nothing that had any real bearing on the case. Tokuwara did his best with the old lady, but he was handicapped by not having interrogated a subject for years, and because he felt impelled to be polite to a frail and rather sweet elderly woman.

In another room, Sergeant Curtis was bearing down hard on little Louise, and wasn’t enjoying it because she had a tendency to burst into tears ever so often. Fran Dixon was having it a little easier because Larry Postman had lost his truculence and was apparently earnestly trying to co-operate with her.

“I keep telling you, lady,” he was saying tiredly, “I was in the bathroom at the time. It took me a little while to get up. Know what I mean?”

There was a rap at the door, and the uniformed cop who was witnessing the interrogation opened it. Sergeant Killenan came in, his hands behind his back and a satisfied look on his face.

“I found the abditory, Lieutenant,” he said.

Fran Dixon blinked. She knew that rare word for “hiding place”, but she wondered where Killenan had learned it.

She looked back at Larry Postman, seated opposite her.

“Well, dumbo,” she said in her bitchiest voice, “it looks like we not only have you for premeditated murder, but for pushing heroin. I don’t know which is worse. We found your stash.”

Postman’s eyes widened in panic for half a second, then narrowed. “Whadda ya mean, my stash? That stuff was in Broadhurst’s room.”

“In Broadhurst’s room?” her voice was biting.

“Yeah; sure. Under his mattress.”

“How did you know it was there? Nobody told you where we found it.”

Postman looked suddenly confused. “Well, I knew. I mean, like he told me. He used the stuff. He was mainlining.”

“Sure he was,” Fran said. “Without making needle tracks? Not even a sterile puncture?” She glanced at Killenan. “Did you check the arms under that long-sleeved shirt of dumbo, here?”

“First thing,” Killenan said. “Looks like a cow pasture after a heavy rain.”

“It figures,” Fran said. “What about the abditory?”

Killenan’s hand came out from behind his back. He was holding a long black cylinder with knobs on both ends.

“Typewriter platen,” he said unnecessarily. “It was in his typewriter, trying to look innocent. One of the ends unscrews, and the stuff is in the hollow of the cylinder. Even if it’s been cut, there’s a Couple of grand worth of junk in it.”

“Fingerprints?” Fran Dixon asked.

“None but his.”

“How about the girl, Louise?”

“Sergeant Curtis says she admits seeing him come out of that room immediately after the shot was fired,” Killenan said.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Larry Postman came up out of his chair. One big fist slammed into Killenan’s chest, knocking him backward into the uniformed Officer Cardona, who was standing behind him. Both men went down like a pair of dominoes. Postman came straight for Fran, hands outstretched.

His own momentum defeated him. Fran’s right hand, knuckles folded, jammed into Postman’s solar plexus, doubling him up. Fran’s chair began to topple backward, but she was up and out of it, on balance, before it hit the floor. Her left hand chopped edgewise at the back of Postman’s neck, and he toppled, unconscious, to join the chair on the floor.

“Hold it!” Her voice snapped out at the two men on the floor near the door. Both Killenan and Cardona had drawn their sidearms, but they froze at the sound of Lieutenant Dixon’s order.

“No need to shoot,” she said quietly. “Cardona. Handcuff this slob and get him the hell out of here.”

Five minutes later, Fran Dixon, Tokuwara, Curtis, and Killenan were standing in the hall.

“I don’t get it, Lieutenant,” Killenan said. “How did you know the stuff would be in Postman’s room?”

“Because that Webley-Fosbery was recocked,” Fran said.

Killenan closed his eyes. “Goddam it, Lieutenant, you just showed me how it could’ve been recocked. How come it couldn’t have been suicide?”

Fran looked at Tokuwara. “You saw how hard it was to work the action on that Webley-Fosbery?”

Tokuwara took his cigar out of his mouth. “Yeah. So? I must admit I don’t follow you, Fran.”

“It couldn’t have been suicide,” Fran said firmly. “You know how those Webley-Fosberys work. If the grip isn’t held firmly — and I mean firmly — the recoil throws it up and back. If that happens, the grip follows the action, and the gun doesn’t recock itself. There is no way a freshly dead man could hold a weapon that firmly, so Broadhurst wasn’t holding it.

“Who was? Little Louise? That chickie would be lucky if she could hold a .22 short Beretta steady. So would the old lady, not with those arthritic hands. Elimination leaves Larry Postman.”

“Motive?” Lieutenant Tokuwara asked softly.

“I’d bet that Broadhurst finked to the Narcotics Squad,” Fran said. “So Postman killed him and planted a little bit of heroin in his bedroom. That was supposed to throw us off the track. It was a singularly stupid crime, if you’ll stop and think about it.”

After a moment, Lieutenant Tokuwara bowed and said: “Verrry crever, Rootenant Dixon-san.”

Lieutenant Dixon bowed back. “Sank you, Rootenant Tokuwara-san.”