The D.A. Breaks an Egg

16

Otto Larkin’s wide-eyed, cherubic innocence failed to hide his embarrassment.

“Gosh,” he blurted out, “I didn’t know I was going to run into a deal of that sort. I guess I just got caught in a political squeeze play, and...”

“What about this murder weapon?” Brandon interrupted.

Larkin eased his ponderous frame into a chair. Eager affability oozed out of him like the perspiration on his palms. “Now, look, fellows,” he said, “I tried to get in touch with you on that but it was a last-minute development.”

“And so you got in touch with The Blade instead?” Brandon asked.

“It just happened that they had a man in touch with me, and... well, I didn’t know just what to do. I thought if I held out on them we’d make them hostile and... well, you know how it is. There isn’t a case against Dorothy Clifton except for that murder weapon. Of course, we have bloodstains and it was her car that was in the park, and all that, but... well, you know, I don’t want to go off half-cocked.”

“Well, what about the murder weapon?” Selby asked.

“Well, you see it was this way, fellows. I covered the garages looking for the murder car and of course I spotted this one and learned it belonged to Dorothy Clifton, so I thought I’d go talk with her. As soon as I talked with her, I knew that she was concealing something, so I put a little pressure on her and found out about her wild story that the car had been taken the night before. Well, she left the Lennox place and went to the hotel. I waited around and after she went out I got a passkey, and...”

“But what about the murder weapon?”

“I’m coming to that,” Larkin said. “I found a blouse with some bloodstains on it in her suitcase and Doc Carson made a test for me and said they were human bloodstains.”

“Did you get a type?” Selby asked.

“Yes, he was able to give me a type — Type A.”

“Just what made you feel that a woman stabbing another woman would get bloodstains on the front of her blouse?” Selby asked.

“Well, now,” Larkin said, fidgeting, “I was working pretty fast there, fellows. I didn’t have a chance to go into all the angles on this thing the way you would before a trial.”

“Well, get to the murder weapon,” Brandon said.

Larkin said hastily, “I found these bloodstains on the blouse. Now you take in a case of stabbing — well, it was a highly significant clue.”

“You felt that it was blood from the victim?” Selby asked.

“Sure,” Larkin said.

“And just how would Dorothy Clifton have got blood on the front of her blouse from stabbing another woman in the back when the evidence shows there was no spurting blood from the wound?”

“Well, she could have tripped and fallen, and fallen right on top of the body, or when she pulled the knife out she could have... well, anyway, it was blood, and I considered that a highly suspicious circumstance.”

“Blood of Type A,” Selby said. “Incidentally, the victim in this case had blood of Type O.”

Larkin looked at him with the dazed expression of one who is trying to assimilate the importance of information but fails entirely to grasp its significance.

“The hell she did,” he blurted.

“However, go ahead,” Brandon said. “Let’s get to this business of the murder weapon.”

“Well,” Larkin said, “when I found the bloodstained blouse and looked over the front seat of the automobile and found a little speck of blood on the side of the left-hand door — and all of this other stuff certainly fitted together, I went back out to the Lennox place and found out just where Dorothy Clifton’s car had been parked. Then I started an intensive search.”

Larkin was on more sure ground now, and it was impossible for him to keep a certain triumphant note from his voice. “There’s a driveway running along the side of the building into a double garage. There’s a little portico effect on one side so you can step out of a car and be under cover as soon as you step out, and on the other side is a hedge. I combed that ground over pretty carefully. At first I didn’t find anything, but I just kept moving along studying every inch of ground under the hedge.”

Larkin paused dramatically, then said, “I found the murder weapon sticking with its point in the ground, just where somebody had thrown it. Just like you’d throw a dart.”

“Where is it now?” Brandon asked.

Larkin said, “Doc Carson has it. He’s going over it for bloodstains, and he’s found some. It had been all wiped off slick and clean, but nevertheless there are bloodstains left on it.”

“How about fingerprints?”

“No fingerprints. It had been wiped, really polished, but Doc Carson has some new test for finding bloodstains that’s so sensitive you can bring them out on steel or on the handle of a knife even after it’s been wiped off.

“Now, this murder weapon is a long thin stiletto with a horn handle; that is, it’s made out of rings of horn strung on a thin piece of metal and then buffed off, the way they make those things down in Mexico, and there’s a little etching on the blade that says, ‘Tijuana, Mexico.’ ”

“You took photographs, of course, showing the position of the stiletto in the ground and marked exactly where you’d found it?”

Larkin ran his perspiring hand over his partially bald head, smoothing back the thin locks of hair. “It was pretty dark to take a photograph in there,” he said. “It was right in under the hedge — and I was anxious to test the blade for fingerprints. I felt certain I’d find something on the blade or the handle and...”

“In other words, you didn’t take photographs?”

“No.”

“Did you mark the exact place?”

“Well, I can tell you right where it was, and...”

“Did you mark it?”

“No, I didn’t mark it.”

Selby said, “You know what’s going to happen in this case, Larkin. You’re going to be the key witness on finding that murder weapon. You’re going to have to point out exactly where it was found and then you’re going to have to stand up to cross-examination as to whether it was ten feet this way or ten feet that way.”

“I can stand up. They can’t rattle me.”

“Or a foot this way or a foot that way.”

“Well, of course,” Larkin said, “when you get down to measurements like that it’s a little difficult.”

“Well, go ahead, where was it? Just how was it found?”

“Well, it was about halfway between the street and the portico, the blade sticking in the ground, just the way it would have been if someone driving up in an automobile had popped that dagger out of the automobile window.”

“Dorothy Clifton’s car was parked in front of the portico?”

“That’s the way I understand it.”

“And this dagger, then, was found back of where her car had been parked?”

“Where she’d popped it out of the window just as she was driving in,” Larkin said positively.

“Popped it out of what window?” Selby asked.

“Why, the window on the side of the hedge.”

“The right-hand side of the car?”

“That’s right.”

“Sticking in the ground at what angle?”

“Well, sort of slanting backwards.”

“What do you mean by backwards?”

“Toward the street.”

“You don’t know the exact angle?”

“Well, sort of like this,” Larkin said, holding up his finger.

Brandon studied the angle of the finger. Larkin, looking at it, slowly changed it a little, saying, “Well, perhaps a little more like this.”

“Inclined toward the driveway or away from the driveway?” Selby asked.

“Well, I didn’t notice that so much. I was looking to get the other angle. It was just about like this,” Larkin announced, holding up his finger once more. “Just the way it would have been if someone had popped it in the ground, throwing it just like you would throw a dart.”

“From the right-hand window of an automobile,” Selby said.

“That’s it.”

“Then the angle must have been inclined rather sharply toward the driveway.”

“No, it was sort of straight up and down.”

“Just how could a person behind the steering wheel, on the left-hand side of a car, ‘pop’ a stiletto out of the right-hand window in the manner you have described,” Selby asked, “without having the stiletto slanted sharply toward the car?”

“It must have hit a twig or something in the hedge and sort of straightened out,” Larkin said.

“And it’s the murder weapon?” Brandon asked.

“Doc Carson thinks it is. He performed the post-mortem, you know, and he said the dagger just about fits the wound in the body. Now, the way I figure it, we can start work down in Tijuana and find out where these stilettos are sold and get a description of people who have bought them and probably get a photograph of this Dorothy Clifton and find somebody that will identify it. That way we can bring the murder weapon home to her, and then the case is an absolute cinch. There isn’t any lawyer on earth that could upset it.”

“And suppose we can’t find someone who will remember having sold the weapon to Dorothy Clifton?” Selby asked.

“Well,” Larkin said, “of course I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not the one who would be trying the case, but it looks to me like you’ve got a perfect case there, absolutely dead open-and-shut.”

Selby said, “You’d better make a sketch of the exact position of that stiletto just as you found it. Make it while the facts are fresh in your mind.”

He handed Larkin a piece of paper and a pencil.

Larkin made a crude diagram.

“Now, take it from the other side,” Selby said. “Show the angle at which it was in the ground, looking at it parallel with the driveway.”

Larkin said, “I think it was slanting toward the house all right. Just like it would have been if someone had popped it out of a car window.”

“You didn’t remember that a moment ago when we asked you,” Brandon said.

“Well, I’m remembering it now,” Larkin told him. “It was slanted just like it had been popped out of the right-hand window of an automobile.”

“All right,” Selby said wearily. “Just sign your name on the sketches, and write the date and time on them.”

Larkin scrawled his signature and the date, pushed back his chair with evident eagerness, and said, “Well, I guess that’s all the damage I can do here.”

“Seems to be your usual quota,” Brandon said dryly.