Stranger in Town

8

At the hotel there was a message for Shayne to call Timothy Rourke in Miami. The detective hurried up to his room to put the call through.

“I don’t know what the deal is with your friend Amos Buttrell,” Rourke told him when he came on. “But he definitely ain’t.”

“Ain’t what?”

“Not registered at the Roney Plaza and hasn’t been. No mistake on that, Mike. I know one of the assistant managers, and that’s straight. What’s more, there’s nobody named Buttrell listed in either the Miami or Miami Beach directories. And I went back through the issues of both papers the last few days on the chance I missed the amnesia story you mentioned. I found two short dispatches from Brockton. Nothing at all locally. The second dispatch mentioned your Mr. Buttrell and his daughter as wintering at the Roney, and I checked here in the office since it would be routine for us to send a man to interview him and get a story. Ned Piper pulled the assignment, and ran into the same dead-end. No Buttrell at the Roney for him to interview. It looked funny but he just figured there’d been a mistake in the name and let it drop. That help you out any, Mike?”

“Damned if I know,” groaned Shayne. “At this point I don’t know what would help out. Did you check with Will Gentry?”

“Oh, yeh. I called Will and went to look over the lug myself. Here’s the story on it. This guy was waiting outside the office when Lucy opened up this morning. Asked for you, and said he’d wait when she said she thought you’d be in later. So he did. He sat and waited. And made Lucy nervous. She’s a smart gal and she sensed something wrong. That he was dangerous. She’s been around you long enough to get a feel for a thing like that, I guess. And she thought a certain bulge under his coat looked suspicious. I guess she gave you this when you phoned her, huh?”

“Some of it. Enough to worry me a little after what happened here last night, and I told her to call Gentry to have a couple of boys look the situation over.”

“Yeh. She did. From the phone in your office, and then went back to her desk and typed until they got there. Well, they frisked this gent, and Lucy was right. A shoulder-holstered gat. But he wasn’t talking. Not a damned word except he was waiting to see Mike Shayne on private business. They took him down to headquarters and shook him down good, but got nothing else. Not a scrap of identification. Clean like any sharp hood gets when he goes out on a job. But there was one funny thing, Mike. It didn’t seem to mean anything until you asked me that question about there being anything to connect him up with Brockton.

“A newspaper clipping folded up neatly inside his inner coat pocket, Mike,” Rourke went on triumphantly. “I got it here in front of me. Want me to read it to you?”

“What is it first?”

“A front-page story clipped from the Brockton Courier. Dated Saturday last. About an assistant State’s Attorney from Orlando whose charred and almost unidentifiable body was discovered inside his wrecked and burned car in the bottom of a ravine near Brockton the preceding afternoon. Name of Randolph Harris. That mean anything to you?”

“Not yet,” said Shayne harshly. “Not one damned thing.”

“Want me to read you the story over the phone?”

“Last Saturday’s Courier? You needn’t bother, Tim. I’ve got a copy of it right here in my hotel room. Gentry’s holding the man, huh?”

“Sure. Concealed weapon. He’ll pull sixty days if they don’t hang anything else on him. What is happening up there, Mike? Ready to give me a lead for a story?”

“Not yet,” said Shayne dismally. “A lead is what I need right now. Just so you won’t think I’ve wasted your time, I damn near got killed last night, and spent the night in jail.”

“Hell, that’s not news when it happens to Michael Shayne,” countered Tim Rourke cynically.

“I know,” Shayne sighed. “So don’t print it. I’ve walked into the middle of something, but I’ll be damned if I know what. I’ll be in touch if anything breaks.”

He hung up and turned eagerly to the back issues of the Courier he had brought from the newspaper office. Saturday’s paper was the one that carried the second story about Amy Buttrell… in which her father had arrived to identify her.

Shayne spread out the front-page and found the story Rourke had described in the center column. It was past noon and he hadn’t had anything to eat since the garbage offered him at the jail that morning, so he poured an inch of brandy in a water glass to assuage his stomach while he settled back to read the story that had been found in the pocket of a gunman waiting for him in his Miami office.

ACCIDENT VICTIM IDENTIFIED

The burned and disfigured body of Randolph Harris, 26, assistant to the State’s Attorney in Orlando was tentatively identified this morning by local police after they traced the license number of his automobile which was discovered late yesterday afternoon destroyed by fire at the bottom of a deep ravine just off the Miami highway about six miles south of Brockton.

Two boys from nearby farms, Lee Jenkins, 12, and Peter Ellrich, 13, made the gruesome discovery while out rabbit hunting after school yesterday afternoon.

The point where the ill-fated automobile left the highway to plunge through a guard-rail and tumble to the bottom of the ravine is a sharp curve at the top of a long slope which has been the scene of several accidents in recent years, and is known locally as Dead-Man’s Curve. From the physical evidence at the scene, police believe Mr. Harris was driving south on the highway at a high rate of speed and lost control of his car at the curve, which rolled down the steep hillside and burst into flame at the bottom, trapping the driver in the front seat where he was burned beyond recognition.

The fatal accident is believed to have occurred around midnight Thursday, and the intense heat of the gasoline-fed holocaust was such that every particle of the dead man’s clothing was burned from his body which made immediate identification impossible.

As we go to press there is no definite proof that the driver of Mr. Harris’ car was the owner, but the theory is strengthened by the fact that Chief Ollie Hanger has ascertained from Orlando that the young assistant State’s Attorney did drive his car away from that city early Thursday evening without telling anyone his destination, and did not return to his home or office all day Friday.

The grief-stricken parents, Mr. and Mrs. A. L. Harris, 1879 Dabney Avenue, Orlando, are unable to offer any explanation for their son’s presence at the scene of the midnight accident.

“We just don’t know where Randy was going or what he planned to do Thursday evening,” Mrs. Harris sobbed over the telephone to a Courier reporter today. “He didn’t say anything about his plans when he drove away soon after dinner. His father and I just naturally assumed he had a date with one of the local girls whom he knows, and we retired about ten o’clock without thinking anything about it at all. I can’t imagine what he would be doing forty miles away from home at that time of night. Randy was always such a steady boy and so very conscientious about his work he hardly ever stayed out past midnight, especially on a week-day.”

It wasn’t until Mr. and Mrs. Harris arose the next morning that they discovered their son had not come home, and they weren’t unduly alarmed then, thinking he might have decided to spend the night with a friend.

Neither could State’s Attorney Elmer Jacobson throw any light on the mystery when interviewed early today, insisting he was positive it was not official business that had brought his assistant to Brockton Thursday night, though this city does lie within the jurisdiction of the Orlando district.

“We had no cases pending in Brockton,” he stated positively this morning in his courthouse office. “Mr. Harris was engaged in handling only routine cases at this time, none of which could have taken him as far afield as Brockton. Randolph Harris was one of the finest young men I have ever had in my office,” Mr. Jacobson continued with obvious emotion. “A fine young lawyer sincerely interested in abstract justice and with a brilliant future before him. His untimely death will be a great loss to the community and to the entire state of Florida, and my heart goes out to the fine parents of this stalwart young man in their hour of bereavement.”

One false lead which police had hoped might be a vital clue in the mystery petered out this morning when authorities interviewed Dr. Joseph R. Winestock, Superintendent of the Brockton Sanitarium on the outskirts of the city.

Previously, John Agnolo, attendant at the Squaredeal Filling Station situated on the Orlando highway a half mile north of Brockton, had reported to police that he believed Mr. Harris had been the driver of a car answering to the description of the burned vehicle that had stopped for gasoline about nine o’clock Thursday evening, and who had asked Mr. Agnolo for directions to the Brockton Sanitarium.

“He came inside the station to pay me for the gas,” Mr. Agnolo told the police early this morning. “And when he asked how to reach the Sanitarium I drew him a little sketch on a piece of paper. I told him it was easy from my place, and how to avoid city traffic. Just turn left at the first traffic light and follow straight out East Avenue about two miles till the road forks. ‘You take the left fork where you’ll see the sign,’ I told him, ‘and it’s about a quarter mile on and you can’t miss it.’”

Mr. Agnolo also told police he had a vague impression there was another person in the front seat of the car, but he couldn’t be positive and didn’t know whether it was a man or woman. When shown a picture of Mr. Harris at police headquarters, he tentatively identified it as the man he had given the sketch to on Thursday evening, but could not swear to it.

Police now believe it must have been a case of mistaken identity, because when Dr. Winestock was questioned later he denied any knowledge of Mr. Harris. The only visitor to the Sanitarium Thursday evening, he averred, was a young man who arrived shortly after nine o’clock for a short visit with his sister who is a patient there. Since this young man answered in a general way to the description of Randolph Harris, police are satisfied that Mr. Agnolo was mistaken in his identification.

The brilliant young assistant to the State’s Attorney was born in Tallahassee…

Michael Shayne skimmed through the rest of the news story to see that it contained no further information except a laudatory recap of Randy Harris’ scholastic and brief professional career.

Then he laid the paper aside and applied himself with a frown to the cognac remaining in his glass.

Why had a gunman been enough interested in that particular item to clip it out carefully and carry it about with him in his coat pocket?

Thursday night, of course, was the same night Amy Buttrell had mysteriously appeared in front of the local hospital suffering from amnesia.

Amy Buttrell had fingered him for three hoodlums here in Brockton last night after she had supposedly been taken away to Miami by a father who seemed not to exist. By the grace of God, Shayne had escaped their ministrations, whereupon a killer appeared at his office door the next morning armed with a gun and carrying a clipping from the Brockton paper.

Shayne knew it all had to make sense somehow, but at the moment it was all a crazy hodge-podge of impossibilities and improbabilities. He tossed off his brandy and went down to the hotel dining room to see if food would make his thinking any clearer.