The Guilty Are Afraid

I

The night clerk’s eyes bulged out of his head like organ stops when he saw me come out of the elevator, surrounded by Candy and his two hunks of beef. This was the second time I had been taken away from the hotel by the law, and I had an idea that if I survived this trip, the management would probably ask me to leave.

But I wasn’t any too sure that I would survive the trip. I remembered what Katchen had said at our last meeting, and I had a depressing idea he wasn’t bluffing.

We went across the lobby, down the steps to the waiting police car. The two plain-clothes men got in the front, and Candy and I got in the back.

The car went off with the usual frantic rush and with the usual wailing siren, leaving the kerb so fast the jerk nearly dislocated my neck.

Candy sat beside me like a rock that has been baked in the sun. I could feel the heat of his body, and although I couldn’t see much of his face in the darkness of the car I could hear the steady movement of his jaws as he chewed.

“Okay if I smoke?” I said, more or less for something to say.

“Better not,” Candy said, his voice flat and cold. “I was told to bring you in rough.”

“What’s biting the Captain?”

“If you don’t know, how should I?” Candy said, and there the conversation ceased.

I stared out of the window. I wasn’t happy. There was a chance that someone had seen me on the beach and had phoned in my description. I had visions of being grilled. If Katchen conducted the grilling, I knew I was in for a bad time.

No one said anything until we pulled up outside the police headquarters, then Candy groped in his hip pocket and produced a pair of handcuffs.

“Got to put the nippers on,” he said, and I thought I detected an apologetic note in his voice. “The Captain likes everything ship-shape.”

“Are you arresting me?” I asked, offering my wrists. The cold bite of the steel bracelets added to my depression.

“I’m not doing anything,” Candy said, getting out of the car. “The Captain wants to talk to you — that’s all there’s to it.”

He and I walked across the sidewalk and up the steps into the charge room, leaving the two plain-clothes men in the car.

The desk sergeant, a big, fat-faced man, looked at me and then at Candy, who shook his head and kept on, through a doorway, up some stairs and along a passage to a door at the far end. I walked at his heels.

He paused outside the door, rapped once, then turned the handle and shoved the door wide open. He put his hand on my arm and moved me into a big room that contained a desk, six upright chairs, a couple of filing cabinets, Captain Katchen, Lieutenant Rankin and a tall, thin man around forty with straw-coloured hair, rimless glasses and a face of an eager ferret.

Candy said, “Brandon here, Captain,” then stepped back, giving me the stage.

I took a couple of steps forward and stopped.

Katchen was standing by the window, his massive face dark with congested blood. He looked at me the way a caged tiger might look at a fat lamb that is being marched past its cage.

Rankin sat on one of the upright chairs, his hat tipped over his eyes, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He didn’t turn his head to look at me.

The straw-haired man eyed me with the interest and the professional detachment of a bacteriologist confronted with an obscure germ that might or might not be a potential killer.

“Why is this man handcuffed, Captain?” he asked in a soft, Ivy League voice.

Katchen suddenly appeared to have difficulty in breathing.

“If you don’t like the way I make my arrests, you’d better talk to the Commissioner,” he said in a voice that could have stripped rust off any lump of old iron.

“Is this man under arrest then?” the straw-haired man asked, his voice a polite inquiry.

Even if he had the face of a ferret and an Ivy League accent, he was rapidly becoming my favourite member of this oddly assorted trio.

Katchen bent his glaring stare on Candy.

“Take those goddam bracelets off,” he said, his voice muffled with rage.

Candy came over to me, slid a key into the lock, twisted and the cuffs dropped into his hand. With his back turned to Katchen he allowed himself a slow, deliberate wink at me. He moved away while I went through an elaborate pantomime of rubbing my wrists and looking injured.

“Sit down, Mr. Brandon,” the straw-haired man said. “I’m Curme Holding of the District Attorney’s office. I heard Captain Katchen wanted to see you so I thought I would see you too.”

I began to feel less depressed.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Holding. I feel in need of protection. The Captain has already talked to me once to-day. So I’m more than pleased to see you.”

Holding took off his glasses, inspected them and put them back on again.

“Captain Katchen wouldn’t do anything out of the line of duty,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

I smiled.

“Maybe the Captain has a sense of humour. I took his talk seriously, but maybe you could be right. You have only to look at the deep-seated kindness in his face to realize he could be a great little kidder.”

Katchen made a growling sound deep in his throat and moved from the window towards me. He looked like a gorilla disturbed at feeding time.

“Will you ask the questions, Captain, or shall I?” Holding said, sudden steel in his voice.

Katchen paused. His little red-flecked eyes moved from me to Holding, who stared at him with the bored expression of a man watching a very tough gangster movie and finding it phony.

“Now you’ve got your oar in, you can handle it yourself,” Katchen snarled, biting off each word. “I’m going to talk to the Commissioner. There’s too much goddam interference from your office. It’s time someone did something about it.”

He went past me, out through the doorway and slammed the door behind him. The room rocked a little under the percussion.

Sergeant Candy said, “You won’t need me, Mr. Holding?”

“That’s okay, Sergeant.”

I heard the door open, but I didn’t look around to see Candy leave. The door closed behind him gently in sharp contrast to the exit made by Katchen.

“Well, now, Mr. Brandon, would you take a seat?” Holding said, and waved to a chair opposite the desk. He got up and took the desk chair.

As I sat down I met Rankin’s blank stare. I got no information from it: it was neither friendly nor hostile.

Holding moved a pencil from the blotter to the pen tray, and gave me a hard look from behind the screen of his glittering glasses.

“Captain Katchen is retiring at the end of the month,” he said. “Lieutenant Rankin is taking his place.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

Rankin moved restlessly, fingering his tie. He didn’t say anything.

“Lieutenant Rankin is in complete charge of this investigation,” Holding went on. “I am, of course, referring to these two murders at Bay Beach.”

I could see the trap in that.

If I were going to deny being in the cabin when the girl had died, now was the time to show surprise and ask what other murder had been committed? But I got one jump ahead of that thought fast. For all I knew they had found a finger-print of mine in the cabin or someone had seen me and had offered to identify me, or they had spotted the Buick parked on the scene. I decided to take a chance and come clean.

“Now I know the Lieutenant is handling the case,” I said, “I’m ready to make a statement. I would have done so an hour ago, but Captain Katchen’s threats put me off. He warned me to keep out of this business and I didn’t keep out of it. When I found the girl I saw Katchen could pin the killing on me.”

Holding appeared to relax a little.

“So you were the man who was seen entering the cabin?”

“I don’t know about that, but I did enter the cabin and I found her dying.”

“Did she say anything?”

“No. She died within seconds of my finding her.”

Rankin said, “Suppose we go over it from the start?” He reached forward and took a notebook off the desk and opened it. “Why did you go down there?”

“I had no particular reason except I had nothing to do and I wanted to look the place over,” I said. “I know it sounds corny, but my partner was killed there, and your men were all over the place when I went there this morning. I just wanted to have a second look at it.”

He didn’t seem wildly enthusiastic about this explanation, but he let it go. He asked, “What time did you get there?”

I told him, and then went on to give him an exact description of what had happened. I told him how I had heard the police siren and how I had realized that if I were caught there, Katchen’s conclusion would be that I had killed her. I went on to describe how I had got away and what time I returned to the hotel.

Rankin looked over at Holding, then suddenly his hard, tight face crinkled into a smile and he looked quite human.

“Can’t say I blame you,” he said. “I guess I would have done the same thing. But it’s not the kind of thing I’d recommend you to try again.”

I said I wouldn’t try it again.

“You realize how lucky you have been?” he said. “You could have got yourself nailed for murder. But the doc says she was stabbed at least two hours before you entered the cabin. She took that time to die. He could tell by the blood on her and on the floor.”

“How did your men know she was there?”

“Some guy spotted you going into the cabin. He was taking a look at the scene of the crime, so he says; he spotted you and called headquarters.”

“What wouldn’t we do without the great American public?” I said. “No sign of the killer, of course?”

Rankin shook his head.

Then I asked the sixty-four-dollar question.

“Any idea who she is?”

Rankin stubbed out his cigarette, then sat back while he and Holding exchanged glances.

Holding shrugged.

“It’s pretty obvious she’s the woman who called for Sheppey at his hotel this morning. What she has been doing from eleven o’clock this morning up to the time of her death defeats me. She was still wearing the swim suit she had on when she left Sheppey.”

“Have you been able to identify her yet?”

“A girl named Thelma Cousins has been reported missing by her landlady. The landlady said she hadn’t been back since she left for work this morning. We got her to look at the body. She says the girl is Thelma Cousins. We’re getting a second check on her. The man she works for is on his way down now.”

“Who is he?”

Rankin supplied the information which had me suddenly pointing like a gun dog.

“His name is Marcus Hahn,” he said. “He’s a phony who runs a pottery racket he calls the School of Ceramics out at Arrow point. The girl worked in his showroom.”

II

I had to decide whether to tell them about the folder of matches I had found in Sheppey’s luggage and the odd tie-up between the folder and this School of Ceramics or whether to say nothing.

I told myself that maybe this wasn’t the time for a complete exchange of confidences. I had to make sure first that Rankin was going to find Sheppey’s killer. Although he was in charge of the investigation that didn’t mean he had a free hand. He could still be blocked by Katchen on Creedy’s orders. I wasn’t going to hand him anything on a plate until I was sure he meant business.

Rankin said, “We want to find out what Sheppey and this girl were up to. It’s my bet she had a boy friend and he fixed them both.”

I looked over at Holding. His face had gone blank and he had begun to fidget with the pen tray.

“It shouldn’t be difficult to find out if she had a boy friend,” I said.

“Hahn may know something.” Rankin looked at his watch. “I guess I’d better go over to the morgue. He should be down any moment now.” He looked at Holding. “Okay?”

“Oh, sure,” Holding said.

I made a move to get up, but Holding lifted his hand.

“I’d like to run over your statement just once more, Mr. Brandon. You get off, Lieutenant.”

Rankin got to his feet, nodded to me, and went out.

There was a long pause after he had shut the door, then Holding pulled a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it.

I took that as a signal that we were going to be chummy and I fetched out my pack of Luckies and lit one.

“You had a talk with Captain Katchen this morning?” Holding said, not looking at me.

“You might call it that. It was a little one sided, but I managed to sound off in the end. I collected a slap in the face for my trouble, but I’m not complaining.”

“Something was said about Lee Creedy,” Holding said, looking up.

“Something was said about Lee Creedy,” I said, watching him.

His small hard eyes searched my face.

“You mentioned his name to Katchen?”

“I did.”

“You are under the impression that Creedy hired Sheppey to do a job?”

“Yes.”

Holding lit his pipe, frowned, shifted in his chair and puffed smoke.

“You have no proof of that?”

“Sheppey wrote Creedy’s name on his blotter while he was talking on the telephone. I know the man he was talking to hired him to come down here. Sheppey had a habit of writing on his blotter. I can’t see why he should have written down Creedy’s name unless Creedy was the man who hired him.”

“Unless someone wanted Sheppey to work on a job connected with Creedy. I mean Sheppey’s client could have asked him to get information about Creedy. Thought of that?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t quite fall into line.”

I went on to tell him how I had telephoned Creedy’s residence and had asked for an appointment, how I had been taken in to see Creedy over the heads of six business men, how I had been threatened and how Fulton and I had been attacked by Hertz.

Holding listened to all this, puffing away at his pipe, his face expressionless.

“It seems to me that Creedy hired Sheppey, and now Sheppey has been murdered, Creedy is falling over backwards to hush up the fact that he did hire him,” I concluded.

Holding brooded for a moment, then said, “I take it you’re pretty anxious to get Sheppey’s murder cleared up?”

I stared at him.

“Well, of course.”

“When I heard you had come down here and had talked to Katchen,” Holding said, “I called the District Attorney’s office at San Francisco and made some inquiries about you. It seems your agency has been pretty co-operative in the past and you have a high rating in Frisco. You were also on the staff of the D.A.’s office there for some years and you did a pretty good job.”

I grinned.

“I bet the D.A. didn’t tell you that.”

Holding allowed himself a small smile. It didn’t do much to ease the ferrety expression on his face.

“I spoke to my opposite number, the A.D.A. He said your rating for insubordination was high, but, given a free hand, you were a good man on an investigation.”

“He told you that because he still owes me ten bucks,” I said, wondering where all this was leading to.

“How would you like to have a crack at solving the Sheppey murder?”

“I’m working on it now: opposition or no opposition.”

Holding nodded.

“But you won’t get far without some form of protection.”

“I know that. Protection is something I’m a little short of right now.”

“It can be arranged.” He rubbed his lean jaw. “Up to a point that is: it’s not absolutely guaranteed.”

“If it will hold Katchen off my neck, I’ll take care of Hertz.”

“Katchen can be fixed. You may find Hertz hard to handle. You don’t want to under-estimate him.”

“I won’t.”

Holding brooded some more, then said, “Well, I guess that’s about it, Mr. Brandon. It’s getting late. It’s time I was in bed.”

I shook my head at him.

“Why the free hand? What chestnut am I pulling out of the fire for you?”

I saw his Adam’s apple rise and fall, but otherwise his face remained impassive.

“It’s not a question of that,” he said carefully. “It seems to me that since your partner has been murdered and you are in the line of business, you would want to make a separate investigation.”

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to play,” I said, putting an edge to my voice.

He went back to fidgeting with the pen tray, then, after taking time to find the right words, he said, “I’m not entirely convinced this is a job for the police. It could be, of course. If this girl was associated with a thug and if he found Sheppey was fooling around with her, and killed them both, then it is something the police could handle. But if it goes deeper than that, if it involves Creedy, then we’re not going to make much progress.”

“And that would worry you?”

He looked sharply at me.

“All right: I’ll put the cards on the table. It’ll be difficult for you to understand the position really unless I do.”

“Let’s have all the cards in view,” I said. “Including the one you have up your sleeve.”

He let that one ride.

“Within the next few weeks the Administration is coming up for a new term,” he said, picking his words as if they were as fragile as eggshells. “The opposition is naturally looking for an opportunity to loosen the grip Creedy has on this town. If Creedy is involved in some way in Sheppey’s murder, it may give the opposition the opportunity it is looking for. The Administration isn’t particularly popular, but it is extremely powerful. At the moment it is balanced on a razor’s edge. Any scandal that could be used on the front page of the opposition newspapers might turn the trick.”

“I take it, Mr. Holding, that you are a member of the opposition?”

“I believe in justice and freedom,” he said, taking the pipe out of his rat-trap of a mouth and looking at it as if he were surprised to find it still alight.

“Pretty praiseworthy, Mr. Holding,” I said. “If the opposition gets into power, you would probably become the new District Attorney?”

That made his Adam’s apple do a hand spring. He looked at me from over the top of his glasses, scratched the lobe of his right ear, hesitated about looking indignant, then relaxed completely with a wide, boyish smile that was as false as a chorus girl’s eyelashes.

“I suppose I would, but that, of course, has nothing to do with the issue, nothing at all.”

“Who’s gunning for Creedy?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. This is a straight fight between the Creedy Administration and Judge Harrison, who is going to the poll on a Reform ticket.”

“And this town could do with a little reforming?”

“It certainly could.”

“Where does Rankin figure in all this?”

“There isn’t a great deal Rankin can do if this case develops along the lines that would be detrimental to the Administration,” Holding said. “The Commissioner wouldn’t encourage an investigation that might embarrass Creedy. He and Creedy are good friends.”

“And, of course, Rankin is hoping to become Captain and needs to keep his nose clean,” I said. As Holding didn’t have any remarks to make on that one, I went on, “So no one is sticking his neck out except me, is that it?”

“Judge Harrison has considerable influence. We have a newspaper with a wide circulation. You would have to be careful, of course, but providing you carry out an orthodox investigation no one would interfere.”

“Except Creedy and Hertz.”

Holding tapped out his pipe.

“I think you said you could take care of Hertz.”

“Yes, I think I could, but I don’t say that my methods would be orthodox.”

“That’s something, perhaps, I had better know nothing about.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. The position as I see it is that I make an investigation, present my findings to you and you persuade the Commissioner to make an arrest. Right?”

Holding went back to the pen tray again. He seemed to get a lot of comfort from pushing it around.

“Not quite. I think perhaps the best plan would be for you to make the investigation and pass the facts to the Editor of the St. Raphael Courier. He is a firebrand who is willing to publish anything so long as it hits at the Administration. Then when it is published, the Commissioner will have to act.”

I grinned.

“And you and Rankin keep out of it? So if anything goes wrong, you’re right where you are, safe and happy.”

He didn’t like that.

“Until the Administration...” he began, but I cut him short.

“Okay, skip it.” I got to my feet. “I’ll handle it. Not because I’m pulling your chestnuts out of the fire nor because I want to see Judge Harrison running for a Reform ticket. I’m doing it because my partner was killed, and a thing like that is bad for my business.”

He nodded, looking wise.

“I can understand that.”

“Although he was my partner and I’ve a sentimental feeling about turning up the killer,” I went on, “I can’t live on air for ever. If your mob rides into office because of what I turn up, I’ll expect them to meet my expenses.”

He looked as if he had suddenly bitten into a quince.

“That might be arranged, but we would have to be sure first that this case is connected with Creedy.”

“That’s understood. In the meantime do I get any help from anyone?”

“Rankin knows what I’m arranging with you. If you will contact him at his home from time to time he will let you know what progress he has made. You’ll find him in the book.”

“What’s the name of this Editor you mentioned: the firebrand?”

“Ralph Troy. You can rely on him. Give him the facts and he’ll print.”

“But first I’ve got to find the facts.” I looked at him. “Well, I’ll see what I can dig up. So long for now.”

He offered a limp hand.

“Good luck and be careful.”

No one could say he was a ray of sunshine. I knew I would need some luck and I was certainly going to be careful.

III

On my way out I wondered if I was too late to catch a glimpse of Marcus Hahn. I was curious to get a look at him without him getting a look at me.

I asked the desk sergeant where the morgue was, explaining that I wanted a word with Lieutenant Rankin if he were still there.

The sergeant told me to follow the corridor to the rear door, turn left and I’d see the morgue light straight ahead.

I followed his directions.

The entrance to the morgue was across the yard. A blue lamp above the door made a ghostly light. Two windows of the low building showed lights and, moving quietly, I crossed the dark courtyard and looked in through one of the windows.

Rankin was standing by a table on which lay Thelma Cousins’ body, covered to the neck by the sheet. Facing him was a slightly built man with a mass of corn-coloured hair and a chin beard to match. He was wearing a cowboy shirt of blue-and-yellow checks, black trousers, skin tight at the hips and that belled out around his ankles. On his feet he wore Mexican boots with high heels, and with some tricky inlaid silver work on them.

He was good looking if you could accept the long hair and the beard. He had a good nose, deep-set, intelligent eyes and a dome of a forehead.

While he listened to Rankin, he kept smacking the side of his boot with a thin riding whip.

Maybe if he had had a horse with him he would have been impressive. Without the horse, he looked just another Californian screwball.

Rankin seemed to be doing most of the talking. Hahn just nodded and uttered a word here and there. I could see from Rankin’s expression that he was getting nowhere. Finally he flicked the sheet over the dead girl’s face as a signal the interview was over, and Hahn started across the room for the door.

I stepped quickly back into the shadows.

Hahn came out, crossed the yard with long strides, flicking his leg with his whip. He disappeared through the doorway, leading to the street exit.

I moved around to the entrance to the morgue, pushed open the door and went in.

Rankin was just about to turn off the lights when he saw me and his hard, tight face showed his surprise.

“What do you want?”

“Was that Hahn?”

“Yeah: a phony if ever there was one, but he does all right with his pots. He must be making a small fortune out of the sucker trade.” Rankin suppressed a yawn. “Know what he told me? This will kill you.” He touched the dead girl’s arm. “She wasn’t only religious, but she never went around with men. She hadn’t even a boy friend unless you can call her priest her boy friend. He was the only one she went around with, and then only to help him collect for the poor. Doc says she’s a virgin. I’ll talk to the priest to-morrow, but I think we can believe Hahn.”

“And yet she went around with Sheppey.”

Rankin grimaced.

“Was he all that good? Could he have made a girl like her fall for him?”

“I wouldn’t put it beyond him. He had a technique all of his own, but I don’t like it a lot. He didn’t go for the religious type. Maybe he and she were on the level. She might have been helping him: giving him information.”

“Would they go swimming together; sharing the same cabin if it was only that?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, at least, it doesn’t look as if we’ll have to look for a boy friend, does it?” He wandered over to the light switch and turned it off. “You playing along with Holding?” His voice came out of the semi-darkness. The light from the outside blue lamp made a silver puddle on the morgue floor.

“I said I would. He tells me I can look you up at your house if I want any information.”

“He didn’t tell you you could look him up at his house, did he?”

“No.”

Rankin moved over to me.

“He wouldn’t. He never takes chances.” He put his hand on my arm. “You want to watch him: you’re not the first guy he’s taken for a ride. He’s been in office now for four years and he hasn’t got there or stayed there without a lot of help. He has a nice, well-developed talent for getting someone else to row his boat for him. He’s the only punk I’ve ever known who hunts with the Administration and runs with the opposition and gets away with it. So watch him.”

He walked out of the morgue, his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, his shoulders hunched, his head bent.

I stood for a long moment, turning this information over in my mind. Even if he hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have trusted Mr. Holding. He hadn’t been born with the face of a ferret for nothing.

I left the morgue, closed the door and walked quickly down the passage and on to the street.

The time was now twenty-five minutes to two o’clock. I was pretty tired, and it was nice to sink into the upholstered seat of the Buick.

I got back to the hotel as the clock was striking two.

The night clerk looked reproachfully at me as I crossed the lobby. I was too tired to bother with him. I got into the elevator, rode up to the second floor, tramped wearily down the corridor to my room. I unlocked the door, pushed it open and turned on the light.

Then I swore under my breath.

The room had been given the same treatment as Sheppey’s room. The drawers in the chest were hanging out, the mattress was ripped open, the pillows were slashed. My stuff had been tossed out of my suit-cases and strewn all over the floor. Even Sheppey’s stuff had been thrown around too.

I went quickly to where I had hidden the match folder. My fingers slid under the edge of the carpet and I grinned.

The match folder was still there.

I hooked it out and, sitting back on my heels, I opened it. The loose match that I had wedged in between the others fell out and I had to scrabble among the pillow feathers to find it.

If someone had been looking for this folder, I thought, they had gone away without it. But suddenly I stopped feeling pleased as I turned the match over. There were no ciphers along its back! A quick check showed me that there were no ciphers on the back of the other matches either.

I straightened up.

Someone had taken away Sheppey’s folder and had left another, probably hoping I hadn’t spotted the ciphers on the back of the original one.

I sank down on my ripped-up bed, too tired even to care.