Murder Is My Business

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Neil Cochrane sidled back into a corner of the room, pulling a chair with him as the captain went out. There was a smirk of satisfaction on his face as he settled down to wait for Towne to be brought in. Dyer scowled at him and warned, “You’re not in the clear, Cochrane. Accessory to an extortion plot fits you like a glove.”

Cochrane laughed shortly. “Accessory, hell! I did my best to talk the lad out of it. I warned him that Jeff Towne wasn’t the sort to pay off without a fight.”

“And you would much rather have had the information in print in the Free Press than see it suppressed,” Shayne put in.

Cochrane grinned at him cockily. “I won’t deny that. I tried to convince Jack Barton he’d be better off with my five hundred alive than trying to stick Towne for ten grand.”

“But you didn’t report it to us,” Dyer pointed out. “You knew about the blackmail plot before Barton went to Towne. You took an active part in it by concealing guilty knowledge. I can lock you up for that.”

“Perhaps,” Cochrane conceded indifferently. “I won’t stay locked up long if you do. And if you’re smart, Chief, you’ll start climbing on the bandwagon. Carter’s going to be our next mayor and you know it as well as I do.” He stretched out his thin shanks and yawned placidly.

Dyer clamped his teeth together, and his face reddened with impotent rage. He didn’t look at Shayne. He sat behind his desk in glum silence until the door opened again and Gerlach ushered the prisoner in.

A night in jail had not improved Jefferson Towne’s disposition, nor his appearance. There was a surly scowl on his rugged face, and his eyes were red-rimmed from worry and lack of sleep. His beard had sprouted raggedly during the night, and his clothing was rumpled.

He glared balefully at Shayne and Dyer as he strode into the room, demanded acidly, “Where’s my attorney? Hasn’t he showed up yet? What about a habeas corpus, or whatever it is? By God, I pay him an annual retainer-”

Dyer said, “Sit down, Towne, and tell us when you last saw Jack Barton.”

Towne’s expression did not change. He snorted, “Who’s Jack Barton? How do I know when I saw him last? I want to phone Lionel Jackson. I’ll tell him-”

“Right now you’d better tell me some things.” Dyer’s voice was uncompromising. “Sit down and relax. Mr. Jackson was in to see me early this morning trying to earn the retainer you pay his firm, but he didn’t get very far.”

“Riley’s accusation is crazy on the face of it,” Towne grated, dropping into a chair facing Dyer. “Anyone with the sense of a half-wit knows the soldier could have been dead only a few minutes before he was placed in the path of my car. Don’t you think I would have known it, or the ambulance attendant, if he’d been dead for hours, as Riley claims?”

“That’s been bothering us,” Dyer admitted. “But I think we’ve found the answer to that now. We don’t think you killed the soldier, Towne.”

“So you’ve come to your senses at last.” Towne started to rise.

Dyer said, “Sit down,” and his voice cracked like a whiplash on a frosty morning. “You see, we know who you did kill down by the river a couple of hours before sundown.”

Jefferson Towne sank back into his chair slowly. He looked bewildered but unworried. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.” Dyer tapped the folded letter on his desk. “Jack Barton left a letter explaining everything when he went out to meet you Tuesday. You see, he didn’t quite trust you — thanks to Cochrane’s suspicious mind,” he added with a glance at the reporter in the corner.

Towne slowly turned his head to look in that direction. It was the first time he had seen Cochrane since he entered the office. “So you’re in on this,” he snarled. “I might have known you would be.”

“I’m always happy to be of assistance to the authorities,” Cochrane said blandly.

Towne turned back to Dyer. “What’s this all about?”

“Jack Barton,” Dyer reminded him. “What information was Barton holding over, you, Towne?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Towne answered with tight-lipped precision.

Dyer sighed. “We’ve got it all down here.” He tapped the folded letter again. “Didn’t he warn you this was where it would be found if anything happened to him?”

Towne swore in a low monotone, said, “The doublecrossing fool. Sure, he told me about the letter he’d left at home, and that his dope would go to the Free Press if I didn’t pay off. But he wrote his folks a note telling them to tear the letter up and forget it. I dictated the note myself. He put a thousand dollars in it and mailed it before he caught the bus.”

“You admit he was blackmailing you?”

“Sure, I admit it. I’ve known ever since yesterday afternoon that I’d probably have to tell the truth to clear myself. As soon as I heard Riley’s accusation. I didn’t think for a moment he actually believed it was the soldier he saw with me at the river. He made that story up to fit the printed facts,” Towne ended in a tired voice.

“Whether he was fooled by Barton’s khaki clothing or thought it really was a soldier is beside the point,” Dyer said impatiently. “You admit you killed Barton rather than pay blackmail?”

“I admit nothing of the sort!” Towne shouted violently. “I had to knock him down and choke some sense into him. That’s all. The damned fool expected me to pay out a cool ten thousand for nothing but his promise to keep quiet. I don’t do business that way. I convinced him of that and we came to an understanding.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this last night?”

“Admit I was being blackmailed?” Towne asked. “I hoped the story wouldn’t have to come out. I knew I couldn’t be convicted of killing the soldier on that flimsy evidence. The timing was all wrong. I figured you’d have to apologize and release me after it was all over. I paid ten thousand dollars to keep this other thing quiet,” he ended angrily.

“This understanding you claim you reached with young Barton. What was it?”

“Simple enough. I wouldn’t give him the money until he turned the evidence over to me. And then he was to get out of town, and stay out until the election was over. And send his folks a note with a thousand in cash, telling them he was leaving and for them to tear up the letter he said he’d left behind. The one on your desk, I presume.”

“Did he turn the stuff over to you?”

“I sent one of my men to his house to pick up his bag. I paid him the money after the notebook was in my hands. I dictated the note to his parents and he mailed it with ten hundred dollar bills just before he got on his bus for San Francisco.”

“Did you see him get on that bus?”

“I certainly did. That was part of the agreement.”

“How do you account for his body being fished out of the Rio Grande below El Paso last night?”

Jefferson Towne said, “Ridiculous.”

“But true,” said Dyer.

“I tell you I saw him get on the bus Tuesday evening.”

“What time did the bus leave?”

“A little before six o’clock.” Towne’s head was lowered. He shook it like a mad bull ready to charge and bellowed, “There’s some terrible mistake.”

Chief Dyer’s bald face was placid. He said, “His parents were here a little while ago to look at the body and they brought along this letter incriminating you. They didn’t mention any note from their boy, nor any thousand dollars.”

“They’re playing some sort of game,” Towne raged. “They read Riley’s story and then about the finding of a body in the river and figured some sort of swindle.”

“Do you know the Bartons?”

“Certainly not.”

“It isn’t any swindle,” Dyer said. “They haven’t heard from their boy since he left home to meet you around noon Tuesday.”

Towne’s rugged face looked harried. “I don’t understand it,” he muttered. “I saw him address the envelope. I saw him go to the mailbox and put it in. Do you suppose I would have let him get on the bus otherwise?” He jerked his head and challenged Dyer.

Dyer said mildly, “I don’t think he did get on the bus.”

“But I tell you-”

“Then how did his body get in the Rio Grande?”

“That’s a mistake,” Towne stated emphatically. “They lie if they identify the body as Jack Barton. I demand that you check up. Get another identification. I read this morning’s paper and saw the picture of that drowned man. There might be a superficial resemblance to Jack Barton, but certainly no more than that.”

Shayne was punishing his left earlobe and morosely gazing at the bare, dirty floor. He looked up abruptly and started to say something, but Chief Dyer said curtly, “That’s all, Towne. We’ll see to getting a positive identification.” He nodded to Gerlach.

Gerlach stopped Towne’s protestations by tapping him on the shoulder and taking a firm hold on his arm. Towne jerked his arm away and strode from the office.

Dyer asked Shayne, “What do you think of it now?”

“I’d like to know what Neil Cochrane was doing Tuesday afternoon,” Shayne answered.

Cochrane emerged from his unobtrusive position, his face highly flushed. “Don’t try to hang anything on me, shamus,” he said.

“You were in on the blackmail deal,” Shayne reminded him. “You hated to see that information against Towne slip out of your fingers. You were out of luck if Towne made the payoff as he claims, unless you could arrange some way to prevent that letter from reaching the Bartons — forcing them to make Jack’s letter public.”

“I can prove where I was Tuesday afternoon.”

“You may have to.” Shayne turned to Dyer and clamped his thumb and forefinger over his nose. “Don’t you notice a stink in here Chief?”

Dyer said, “Get out, Cochrane.”

Gerlach returned as the reporter went out. He sighed and said, “We seem to be going backward. Towne’s story sounds straight.”

“We’ll bust it wide open after the parents identify the body this afternoon,” Dyer predicted with confidence.

Shayne frowned heavily and said, “I wouldn’t count on that too much, Chief.”

“Why not? It must be the body of Jack Barton. Everything points to it.”

“Everything,” said Shayne softly, “except for the fact that the body was stripped naked.”

“To make identification difficult. Hell, Shayne — Gerlach says it was you who first suggested that reason — when we still thought it might be a soldier.”

“There’s one thing wrong with that theory now. Jack Barton wasn’t wearing army issue underwear and socks.” Shayne stood up and rammed his hat down on his bristly red hair. “I’d get out a pick-up on Jack Barton, just on a chance. And I’d check the buses leaving Tuesday afternoon — to Frisco and any other points. And I’d like to know whether Towne drew ten thousand dollars out of his bank Tuesday.”

“Naturally, we’ll do all that,” Dyer agreed. “You can’t teach us routine police stuff, Shayne. You’re the guy who’s supposed to pull rabbits out of the hat.”

“Maybe I’ll do that, too.” Shayne hesitated, then asked, “What do you know about Towne’s silver mine in the Big Bend?”

“The Lone Star mine,” Gerlach supplied. “Only big producer in all that region. Other small deposits have been found, but they always petered out.”

“Near the border?”

“Not too far, I guess. The Southern Pacific has a spur track that takes off from somewhere below Van Horn.”

“That wouldn’t be too far from the old army camp at Marfa,” Shayne mused.

“In that general neighborhood,” Gerlach agreed.

“Do they still have trouble in the Big Bend? Mexican bandits and so on?”

Gerlach and Dyer both shook their heads. “Not for a good many years. They pulled the cavalry off the border years ago.”

“But they still have a camp at Marfa, don’t they?” Shayne persisted.

“Sure, but — Look here!” Dyer exploded, “What are you getting at now?”

Shayne said, “I wonder if Towne has any army guards from Marfa assigned to protect his mine or ore shipments — and if any of them are missing. I’m still looking for a logical explanation of that naked body.” He turned and went out abruptly.