Murder with a Past

15

The moment Tully walked into the office Lieutenant Smith said, “There’s nothing new.” His desk was piled with papers which he rather stealthily covered with a phone book.

“This time you’re wrong, Julian.” Tully seated himself, uninvited, beside Smith’s desk. “You’d better give me a few uninterrupted minutes.”

The Homicide man studied him suspiciously. He wore a generally fretful and harassed look today. But then he became relaxed-alert all over; Tully saw it coming over him, like a change of clothing.

The detective picked up his phone and said, “No calls from anybody till I check back,” and he hung up and leaned forward on his forearms, clasping his hands. “You’ve got them, Dave.”

“I’ve heard from Ruth.”

Immediately Julian Smith’s hands unclasped. He reached for a pencil and pad. “You talked to her yourself?”

“No. It was a message, relayed to me.”

“By whom? When?”

“About three-quarters of an hour ago, by George Cabbott. Ollie Hurst was with me. I dropped Ollie off at his home and drove directly here.”

“When did Cabbott say he heard from her, and how?”

“Several hours ago. By phone.”

“Where was she calling from?”

“She wouldn’t say, according to Cabbott.”

“Why didn’t she get in touch with you in person?”

Tully said wearily, “She thought you might have our wire tapped.”

“How sure is Cabbott that it was really her voice?”

“He’s positive.”

Smith grunted. After a moment he looked up from his pad and said, “Well?” with a trace of impatience. “What was her message?”

“The gist of it was that she was physically okay, that she was going away to some place where she’d be safe, and that I should patch up my life and, presumably, forget her.”

“In other words, goodbye Charlie.” The detective leaned back in his swivel chair, tapping his chin with the pencil. “Well, Dave, in view of that call, was I right about her, or wrong?”

“Wrong,” Tully said. “Wrong, Julian.”

“You die hard, don’t you?” Smith sighed. “All right, I’ll play. How does this prove I’m wrong?”

“How did you ever get to be a lieutenant?” Tully said matter-of-factly. “Don’t you realize how convenient that message is for the killer of Cox and the Blake woman?”

“Suppose you spell it out for me!” The detective was a bit pink about the ears.

“If Ruth is never found, the goodbye message nails down the lid on her guilt. The all-points goes out like the ripples made by a stone tossed into a lake. The search gets further and further from town here, the ripples gradually weaken and die away. Goodbye Charlie my foot, Julian! Goodbye case — in the unsolved file.”

“You still don’t make sense, Dave.”

“Look!” Tully’s eyes were hard. “The whole thing is damn clear to me now—”

“You mean by guess and by God?”

“I mean by logic and proof!”

“Oh?” Julian Smith said.

“Don’t bug me, Julian — listen! Either Ruth took off voluntarily, or she was forced into hiding, abducted. Those are the only two choices, aren’t they? If she didn’t drop out of sight of her own free will, she’s being held somewhere under duress!”

“By the real killer of Cox.”

“Yes! From which it follows that Ruth is innocent. No, let me keep going. I’ll concede the probability that Ruth did go to the Hobby Motel that night. For purposes of my argument, I don’t give a damn whether she went there — as you believe — because she was also one of Cox’s ex-romances and blackmail victims or — as I believe — because she’d somehow got wind of Sandra Jean’s involvement with Cox and followed Sandra to the motel to protect a wild kid sister. Either way, Ruth’s there, spying. She sees Cox put Sandra into a cab, go back to his room. But before Ruth can leave, she also sees somebody else call on Cox — and it’s my guess it’s someone she knew or recognized, or she’d never have hung around...”

“Pardon,” the detective said. “Your version can be improved. Ruth doesn’t just hang around outside after her sister leaves; she follows Cranny Cox into his room and talks to him — whether about herself or about Sandra Jean doesn’t matter at this point. There’s a knock on the door — the somebody else you set up. Ruth is trapped; she can’t get out without being spotted by this mysterious new visitor, so Cox lets her hide in the bathroom.

“Cox lets visitor in. Argument. Visitor picks up your gun — lying on the bed, maybe, where Cox tossed it after taking it away from Sandra Jean. Bang! Cox is dead. Ruth cries out or something — anyway, killer finds her hiding there. So he slugs her and spirits her away. Is that it, Dave?”

“Yes, that’s it,” Tully said eagerly. “And doesn’t it make all kinds of sense? For instance: Why doesn’t he shoot Ruth, too? Because he sees that she gives him a heaven-sent out. By smuggling her from the motel and keeping her out of circulation, he makes her the logical suspect for the Cox killing. And she takes the heat off him, or any possibility of it.”

“And even then he doesn’t kill her,” Julian Smith said, nodding, “because he’s saving her for the psychological moment. Right, Dave?”

“Right! When he figures the time is ripe, he forces her to make contact with me, to tell me she’s going to run as fast and as far as she can, and I’m to forget her.”

“And how does he force her to do that?”

“Are you kidding, Julian? By threatening to kill her — or, better still, me. Ruth would certainly knuckle under if she thought my life was in danger!”

“And for this killer that’s it, isn’t it?” Smith murmured.

“Exactly. He’s cinched his frame-up and he has no further need of Ruth. But he obviously can’t turn her loose, either.” Tully said hoarsely, “Don’t you see where this leads to, Julian? He has to kill her, dispose of her so that no trace will ever be found. Julian, you’ve got to forget this nonsense about looking for Ruth as a wanted killer. You’ve got to concentrate every effort on finding her before she becomes another victim! It may be too late already!”

The lieutenant did not stir.

Tully jumped up, yelling. “My God, Julian, are you a complete moron? Isn’t it logical? Doesn’t it follow?”

“It follows, all right,” Smith said. “The trouble is, it follows from a premise you’ve cut out of the whole cloth. It’s built on unsupported assumption.”

“What assumption?” Tully cried. “That Ruth is innocent?”

“The assumption basic to that one, that Ruth is being held against her will and was forced to make the call. What’s that assumption rest on but plain air?”

Tully leaned over the desk in a bitter sort of triumph. “I wanted you to put it like that, Julian. It rests not on air but on solid fact!”

“Produce it.”

“I haven’t a sworn affidavit or an inanimate Exhibit A. I have Ruth’s own word. She told me.”

“She told you?” Julian Smith said sharply. “Told you what?”

“That the message she asked George Cabbott to pass on to me was a fake.”

“Interesting if true. How’d she manage to do that?”

“By slipping in a certain word. It sounded like a harmless term of endearment. It was anything but.”

The detective frowned. “I don’t get you.”

“Haven’t you and your wife ever used a secret signal, Julian, a word or phrase with a meaning known only to the two of you?”

“Well... yes.” The lieutenant looked irritated. “If Gert wants to quit a party early because she’s bored or something, she’ll mention the O’Toole case to me. There never was an O’Toole case. It’s our private code for, ‘Let’s get out of here.’”

Tully nodded. “With Ruth and me it’s sugar-pill.”

“Sugar-pill?”

“On our honeymoon Ruth told me about some aunt or somebody, a hypochondriac, who was always running to her doctor with imaginary aches and pains. He’d give her pills made out of sugar, and she went away happy. For some reason it tickled me, and I promptly christened sugar-pill our secret word for anything imaginary or untrue. If somebody told a supposedly true story, I’d beam at Ruth and call her my little sugar-pill, and she’d understand from that that I knew or thought the guy was lying his head off. Or if we were introduced to somebody, especially a gal, that Ruth thought I was showing too much of an interest in, she’d say sweetly to me, ‘Isn’t Miss So-and-So fascinating, sugar-pill?’ and I’d get the message: My wife thought the gal was a phony.”

“So?”

“The last thing Ruth said to George Cabbott before she hung up was, ‘Tell Dave he’ll always be my sugar-pill.’ That was the tipoff, Julian. Ruth was telling me, ‘Don’t believe a word of what I’ve said. This is a phony.’ It could only mean she was forced to make the call, told what to say. Does that bear out my theory or doesn’t it?”

Smith was silent.

Tully kept looking at him, puzzled.

Finally the lieutenant said, “You wouldn’t be making this up, Dave, would you?”

He fought a battle with himself, and won. “No, Julian, I wouldn’t and I didn’t. But if you doubt me, call Cabbott.”

“That wouldn’t prove anything. I have only your word for it that sugar-pill has a secret meaning — the meaning you claim it has — for you and Mrs. Tully.”

Tully shook his head and laughed. “The one thing that didn’t occur to me was that you’d doubt my word.” He shrugged. “Well, that’s the only proof I can give you, Julian. I can’t see that you and I are going to have much more to say to each other. I’ve had it.”

He made for the office door.

Lieutenant Smith said, “Wait, wait, will you?”

Tully stopped, waited.

“Damn it all, Dave, this puts me in a real spot. It might mean my job...” But then the Homicide man got to his feet, and when he spoke again it was with decision. “If your analysis is right, I’ll have to reverse my field. And fast, because Ruth is in for it. Go home and stay out of my hair!”