Murder for Two (28 page)

“It was in the drawer, huh?” he said. “You saw it when you got that match. Rosalind's, isn't it? The one you used that first night—until you took the .25 away from her.”

Furness stared open-mouthed, a peculiar sort of fear clouding his gaze. He started to say something but no words came out. He tried again, wetting his lips.

“Why? Why?” he said.

“Because she knew how you felt about a double-crosser,” Casey said. “It was the one thing you couldn't stand. You said so yourself.”

Casey got up slowly, his camera and a flashbulb in one hand. He put the camera on the corner of the desk. The tension was pulling at him now; each movement was a distinct effort, and the inside of his mouth was dry. He concentrated on putting the flashbulb in the synchronized gun, on keeping his voice level.

“You'd had one bitter experience with a woman who wasn't on the level. Rosalind gypped you and you never forgot, nor forgave her. Mac hadn't double-crossed you yet, but she had done worse to Rosalind. Rosalind spent months of her time and a lot of her own money trying to put guys like Matt Lawson where they belonged—in prison. And when she had worked up a case, Helen sold her out. That's why Rosalind couldn't get some of those labor racketeers indicted. That's why her plans always collapsed. She'd get almost enough, and she protected the little fellows who gave her information, and then Helen would go to the guy on the spot and tip him off for whatever she could get from him.—Well, Rosalind found it out. She had known something was wrong. She said so, and the afternoon I was here she found out what it was. That's why she told Helen to come back that night—”

“What if I did?” It was a cold, grating voice Casey had never heard before. “I had most of the money left. I offered to give it back to her.” Helen MacKay was moving now, backing away, toward the door and closer to Furness.

“She didn't want that. She didn't want Stanley and she was going to make sure I didn't get him either. Spite, that's all it was. She said she was going to send me to jail and—”

“She's the one who hit you in the face,” Casey said quietly. “You had the marks and there were no gunmen.”

“Yes, She did. She hated me—and I hated her. It wasn't the first time she'd slapped me, but it was the last. There was one way to stop her and—”

“Helen!” Furness said, his voice leaden, “Helen!”

She caught her breath and looked at him. She looked at the gun and at Casey, and what he saw in the stiff white face curdled the blood in his veins.

“Are you going to do it,” she said, “or am I?”

Furness just looked at her. He didn't know what she meant, but Casey did.

“No one else knows,” she said. “The police'll never find out about me then.”

Something cold coiled tightly about Casey's spine and his scalp tightened. Not because of the gun but because of what he saw when he looked into those bright, wide-open eyes. Talk could do no good now. Something inside the woman's head had been drawn too tight, warping and twisting her thoughts until sanity had temporarily snapped.

“Put it down, Mac,” he heard himself say. “The odds have caught up with you.”

Furness stared at her, his lean face no longer tanned but gray with horror. He knew what she meant now and when she glanced at him again, he did not move. Then, as though time had run out, it happened.

“All right,” she said and took another backward step which brought her to the doorway.

“Mac!” Casey said.

He lifted the camera as the gun muzzle angled upward. He saw her hand tighten and her lips draw back. Furness saw it too. “Helen!” he yelled and reached for the gun and then she pulled the trigger and Casey's flashbulb went off.

Furness was too far away. He couldn't reach the gun and tor an instant there was only that explosion of light that stopped all motion and highlighted the woman, the man, and the gun. Then the glare was gone and there had been no sound but that of the hammer clicking emptily.

Helen MacKay did not even notice this. She yanked viciously at the trigger again as though hoping to explode the shell by the violence of her grasp. The hammer fell and Furness grabbed and missed, and before he could recover she had jumped backward, turning the gun on him now and jerking the trigger twice more.

Furness stiffened, sucking in his breath. For a split instant they stood that way, the man immobile, the woman staring vacantly at the gun. Then Casey was moving up and the woman gave one strangled cry before she threw the gun and ran from the room.

Casey ducked and the gun hit the wall behind and above him. He brushed Furness aside and went into the living-room. Then he stopped. For Helen MacKay had the outer door open now and as Casey watched, she disappeared into the hall.

He stayed where he was, aware that his hands were trembling, that his knees were weak. He waited until his pulse stopped racing and then walked slowly to the windows overlooking the street. It was nearly dark now and it was still raining, and in the gathering dusk everything looked cold and drab and desolate.

Stanley Furness was still there when Casey went back to the office. He was holding on to the back of a chair and he was sagging, rather than standing, but he was on his feet, a thin, bent figure, utterly spent and beaten.

Casey took one look at him and when he saw the gray, tortured face, with all the horror and shock still stamped upon it, it made him all sick inside and he had to look away.

“You'd better sit down,” he said. “I'll have to call the police.”

He dropped into the desk chair and pulled the telephone toward him. It took a tremendous effort to do even that, for the hollowness and nausea that had come with reaction were still gnawing at his stomach. He swallowed and saw Furness move round the chair and sit down.

“It wasn't loaded,” the man said finally. “You knew it.”

“Not at first,” Casey said. “The last time I saw it, a couple of nights ago, it was empty,” he said, thinking of how he had returned the gun and shells to Russell Gifford, “but I didn't know it still was until I looked at it.”

“Oh,” Furness said, though he still did not understand.

“It wasn't much more than a foot from my face,” Casey said. “And when I got over being scared I could look right into the cylinder. When you're that close, if a revolver is loaded, you can see the ends of the slugs—those on the sides. Four chambers were empty. Even if there was one under the firing-pin, it would turn away from the hammer when she pulled the trigger.”

Furness did not seem to hear. He leaned back and closed his eyes and he was an old man now. What he had seen was etched indelibly upon his sagging face and Casey knew that some of that imprint would always remain. He picked up the telephone and asked for police headquarters.

“Hello,” he said when Logan finally came on. “You'd better get word on the radio to pick up Helen MacKay.”

“Yeah? For what?”

“For murder. She just left her place. She hasn't any hat or coat and it's raining. You ought to be able to get her fairly soon.”

Logan did not argue nor ask many questions. Something in Casey's voice told him all he needed to know for now. There was just one thing that bothered him and he said so before he hung up.

“If she was right there, why the hell didn't you grab her yourself?”

“Am I a cop?” Casey said wearily. “I don't mind helping out a little on this detective business, but I'll be damned if I'll make your arrests for you.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

A D
EAL IN
R
EWARDS

I
T WAS HOURS
before Lieutenant Logan could get things cleaned up enough so he could go back to his office and relax. When he went he brought Casey with him.

“Sit down,” he said, and opened a drawer and found a partly full bottle.

“So you're one of those solitary drinkers, huh?”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Sure I want it,” Casey said, and took the bottle and paper cup, drinking deeply before passing them back.

“There's just a few little things,” Logan said when he had had his drink.

“I knew damn well you brought me back for something,” Casey growled.

He knew about what had happened since he had first telephoned Logan. Helen MacKay had been picked up wandering aimlessly in the rain within five minutes of that call, and Logan had been smart enough to hustle her to headquarters and get a statement. After that both Casey and Furness had spent a lot of time with the District Attorney.

“Will that statement stand up in court?” he asked.

“The D.A. thinks it will,” Logan said. “With the circumstantial evidence you dug up, and with what she said before you and Furness, he thinks he's got enough. Of course you never can tell with juries and he may decide to take a plea instead of trying for the chair.” He lowered one lid and then the other. “That's why you didn't grab the gun as soon as you found out it wasn't loaded, wasn't it? You wanted her to talk in front of Furness.”

“I hoped she would,” Casey said. “And I thought I might as well get a picture too while I was about it.”

Logan grinned crookedly and shook his head. “Well, I guess you're entitled to that one. Because the way you figured the thing was the way it happened, according to her story. Though I'm damned if I know what started you. Don't tell me you suspected her all along because if you do—”

“You know I didn't,” Casey said. “I thought the same as you did until this morning. Then there were a couple of things—”

“One was the envelope,” Logan cut in. “When you knew what was in it you wondered why Lawson should kill Byrkman when he should have protected him and why, if he did kill him, he hadn't got the envelope first.” Logan grunted softly. “I'd begun to wonder the same thing myself by the middle of the afternoon.—But go on. What else?”

“Karen Harding had her wrists taped. I cut the rope that held her to the bed and that let her bring her hands to her mouth. By the time I'd untied her ankles she'd already begun to unwrap that tape by starting it with her teeth. She could have got it all off that way in time maybe—if her teeth were strong.”

“Oh,” Logan said.

“So I wondered why Helen MacKay couldn't have done it. You see, I saw something you didn't because I took that tape off. She'd had a little time after she got the strips off her mouth and before Edward, the operator, got there, and she could have been working on it with her teeth. When I saw it, the bandage was smooth but
there were teeth marks on it
. I thought she'd been trying and that she couldn't get the tape started. When I saw how easy it was for Karen Harding to do the same thing—at least to start it—it hit me.”

He pulled his feet in and reached for the bottle. “Why the teeth marks on Helen's bandage if it was still smooth?—unless the teeth marks were put there
while the bandage was being put on
. Of course that's how it was; she had to use her teeth to wrap up the last few inches.”

“Well, I'll be damned.” Logan took the bottle away from Casey and sampled it. “And you figured out that idea of cutting off a strip and anchoring the end with a chair and rolling up to it with her hands over her head—”

“Not at first, I didn't,” Casey said. “I damn near went nuts trying to figure out how she could tape herself before I got that hunch. In fact, I gave up for a while and tried something else. I remembered that list of checks drawn by Lawson on his Mathews account—the one for five grand paid to C. H. Manning. That piece of check you found in Rosalind Taylor's pocket had a signature ending in—
ing
.”

“Yeah,” Logan said. “We'd been working on that too. That check was what tipped off Rosalind Taylor to Helen MacKay. MacKay was using her Manning account and she'd written a check in advance and when Taylor was poking around MacKay's desk the afternoon you were there she found that check.”

“She came out of Helen's office with it in her hand. I didn't know what it was. I didn't even know it was a check because she had another slip of paper in her hand too. They were just two pieces of paper, one colored and one white.”

“But Taylor knew,” Logan said. “The minute she saw that word Manning, she knew. Lawson, as Mathews, was paying Byrkman and he had written a check for Manning and that check Taylor saw proved Manning was MacKay. That made the whole damn thing clear—why Taylor's crusades always blew up in her face.—But how the hell you got that dope from the Central Trust when we hadn't even—”

“It's my personality,” Casey said. “The manager and I are buddies. I didn't know what the ‘
ing
' on the check meant. I thought at first it was Dinah King.”

“So did we.”

“But I went over to the bank anyway. They have a Recordex there that makes micro-films of all checks—for their records—and I wanted to get a piece of that film that had a Manning check on it. Nobody seemed to know Manning but I saw her account. It was made up of just three deposits—the Mathews check for five thousand, another for two thousand from someone named Seeley—probably a phony as well—and a third for twenty-five hundred from Conti, the last guy Rosalind Taylor got indicted for racketeering.”

Casey spread his hands. “That did it. Helen MacKay knew all the details and she sold out Rosalind Taylor's campaigns for ninety-five hundred bucks within the past year or so. No wonder Rosalind was sore. No wonder she was going to make her pay and tell Furness—”

“And no wonder MacKay killed her,” Logan finished quietly. He stirred in his chair. “You made pictures of the Manning signature, huh? And then returned the film?”

“Sure. By comparing that with Helen MacKay's hand-writing—”

“Yeah,” Logan said.

“And when I got that far,” Casey said, “I just had to figure out some way Helen MacKay could have taped her own hands. Finally I got an idea of how it might have been done.”