Where There’s Smoke

Chapter Thirty-Six Microscopic Detection

The lawyer frowned contemptuously at the gun. “You can’t bluff an attorney, Marshal. And you certainly can’t believe I had anything to do with the theater fire — when I nearly lost my life in it.”

With his free hand Pedley caught hold of the lawyer’s coat; fumbled at the cuff of the sleeve. “Same situation you ran into here, today. You didn’t mean for Leila to get hurt. Wouldn’t be any point to Lownes’s demise, if the money-making part of the Lownes & Lownes combination should be put out of action.” He picked something out of the cuff of Amery’s coat, examined it while he held the gun in the lawyer’s ribs.

“When Leila ran back to the dressing-room, to save Lownes, you had to chase after her to protect your investment, so to speak. ’Course you didn’t intend to pass out, yourself. But that turned out to be a break; nobody likes to suspect the hero who’s risked his life to save a girl.”

Toleman goggled. “But Mister Amery wasn’t at the Telebar with Ned. Not when I was there.”

“Okay.” Pedley fished around in the attorney’s coat cuff some more; Amery tried to pull his arm away but the marshal shoved on the muzzle of the gun a little and the lawyer subsided. “He was there with Ned before you got there. Or after you left.”

Amery said tightly, “Perhaps you’ll be able to explain to the Prosecutor’s office how I managed to murder my friend Kelsey when I was at home under the care of a doctor!”

“No.” Pedley let go of the man’s sleeve. “I can’t tell him that. But I can suggest several explanations. Your doctor might have been lying, though I don’t think so. You might not have taken the sleeping pills at all; you could have got out of your own home quietly and walked to the bus line, gone in town and taken your car out of a garage — I wouldn’t be surprised if a check on your garage would show you’d had the car out last night.”

“You couldn’t find twelve men stupid enough to accept that sort of imbecile supposition!” The muscles in Amery’s jaws twitched with rage.

“Well, I’ve got quite a bit more for a jury to chew on.” Pedley jiggled something on the palm of the hand that had been exploring the coat cuff. “On the way over here on the fireboat, I had one of my deputies make a few inquiries at that swanky private hospital where you stayed after the theater fire put you out of business.” He waved at the smoldering ruin of the Harbor View. “Not much like this place, your expensive sanitarium. Best of everything, there on Madison Avenue. Good nurses. That crabby old girl who was so solicitous about you — she has a good memory, too. She identified the police photograph of Staro as that of a man who’d been to see you at the hospital not half an hour after I left.”

“That is either a lie,” the lawyer gritted, “or a complete mis-identification on her part.”

“It’s something for the Grand Jury to think about,” the marshal answered. “Here’s something else.” He opened his palm, held it out so the others could see what it was.

Gaydel bent nearer to see, asked, “What the hell is it?”

“Plaster,” Pedley said. “Maybe you didn’t know plaster’s like fingerprints. Under the microscope. Yair. When you wash the lime and hairs out, you’ve got nothing but sand left. Down at the police lab they’ve got some of the sand grains from the plaster that came from the break in the wall that the firebug busted open in Leila’s dressing-room.”

Amery laughed; it was a short and involuntary sound that carried no impression of amusement.

Pedley jiggled the grains around. “The sand from the plaster they’ve got in at Broome Street assays about thirty-two black grains out of every hundred. Twenty-nine white quartz. Say twenty-five or — six brown or amber and maybe eighteen, nineteen red sandstone. Thing is, you wouldn’t find just that same sand, with the grains mixed in these same proportions, in one building out of a hundred thousand. But I’d be willing to take the short end of a long shot that these grains I just picked out of Paul Amery’s coat match that Brockhurst analysis exactly.” He looked down at them thoughtfully. “We checked a lot of suits — but we hadn’t got around to the overcoats — until today.”

The lawyer reached out quickly, as if to poke at the bits of sand in Pedley’s hand — but slapped hard at the flat of the marshal’s palm, instead.

Pedley drew back involuntarily, to protect the evidence. The movement took the gun away from the attorney’s side for an instant. He lunged, knocked the marshal off his feet.

Amery kicked at the wrist holding the gun, knocked it spinning, ran toward it. But he didn’t stop to pick up the weapon. He kept right on running.

Pedley crawled to the pistol, recovered it, propped himself on one elbow, shot Amery between the shoulder blades.