Murder Is My Business (21 page)
Towne fell back with a .45 slug from a police revolver in his shoulder, and his weapon clattered to the floor.
Shayne nodded to the uniformed man leaning through the window covering Towne with a smoking .45, and said approvingly, “That was nice timing.”
Chief Dyer’s face showed up disapprovingly beside the sergeant’s. “What’s going on in there?”
Shayne got up and strolled forward to pick up the .38 Towne had dropped. He told Dyer, “Why don’t you come around by the front door, and we’ll let Towne tell us all about it?”
Towne was crouched back against the wall, gripping his wounded shoulder with his left hand. He mouthed curses at Shayne while he kept an eye on the patrolman’s revolver. Shayne turned his back on him and broke the sawed-off revolver. He dumped four snubnosed bullets out on the table and examined them. The soft lead of each bullet was notched in the shape of a cross like the two taken from Carmela’s weapon.
He dribbled the four bullets into Dyer’s hand when the police chief trotted into the library from the hallway. “There’s the rest of your case against him. He killed Cochrane with a duplicate of his daughter’s gun, after planting a recently fired empty in hers before he sent her across the border to lead Cochrane into the alley where he was waiting to kill him.”
“That’s another lie!” Towne shouted. “I was at home. Bayliss has already confessed using her pistol to kill Cochrane.”
“Bayliss,” said Shayne, “is in love with Carmela. Ballistics
says only two of those exploded shells in her pistol were fired from it. That’s another place you slipped up, Towne. You knew a comparison test couldn’t be run on a dumdum
bullet,
but you forgot there are tests that prove which gun an exploded cartridge was fired from. You slipped an exploded shell from your gun into hers last evening — after you decided Cochrane had to die the same as Jack Barton died.”
“I don’t understand it,” Dyer said peevishly. “Mr. and Mrs. Barton both said the body wasn’t their son.”
“That
body wasn’t.” Shayne looked at the chief in surprise. “Haven’t you been listening outside the window?”
“Ever since you opened it,” Dyer growled. “I wasn’t going to let that evidence against Carter and Holden out of my sight until I knew Towne had it safely.”
“I figured you’d be close,” Shayne admitted, “as soon as you put that tail on me. But I’m glad you stayed out of sight, because I wanted to push Towne into a corner where he’d feel like pulling his gun on me. I’d already figured he must have one just like his stepdaughter’s, but I didn’t know where he’d have it hidden.”
Towne had stopped cursing. He sank into his chair, breathing hard. He reached for the
tequila
bottle and filled his glass to the brim.
Dyer watched him curiously, and then sighed, “I still don’t get it about Barton and the dead soldier — nor Cochrane either.”
“Cochrane was comparatively simple,” Shayne told him. “A sudden decision without any previous planning. You see, Cochrane had finally figured out the secret of Towne’s two silver mines. Remember that
Barton had hinted part of the truth to him, and the
Free Press
ran a story on the
Plata Azul
not long ago. Cochrane added them up the same way I did, and realized that Towne was just using his Big Bend mine as a blind to get Mexican silver from the
Plata Azul
into the country and smelt it as domestic silver. Then he checked into the
Plata Azul
and discovered it didn’t even belong to Towne. He thought if Barton had gotten ten thousand, he could do as well or better. What he didn’t realize was that Towne would kill a man rather than pay blackmail.”
“What about Barton? I don’t see—”
“Let’s finish up Cochrane first,” Shayne said. “He sent Cochrane away with a promise to pay off. Carmela had overheard Cochrane mention Lance Bayliss’s name, and she insisted that her father tell her in what connection. So Towne began improvising. He spun a story about Lance being in Juarez, but warned Carmela he had paid Cochrane not to tell her, so when she phoned Cochrane his denial wouldn’t upset things. She made a date for Cochrane to take her to Papa Tonto’s, and Towne planted one empty cartridge under the hammer of her gun. He hid in the alley until they entered it, stuck his gun against Cochrane, and pulled the trigger. Carmela shot twice at him without recognizing him in the darkness. Is that right, Towne?”
Towne had drunk half the
tequila
in his glass. He said, “It seemed like a good idea.”
“It was,” Shayne approved, “for a makeshift plan of murder. Nothing like as foolproof or elaborate as your other plan.”
“Barton?” Dyer guessed hopefully.
Shayne nodded. “And a young soldier whom Towne induced to enlist under an alias. Jimmie Delray had been working in the
Plata Azul,”
he went on conversationally. “Did he suspect what was going on there, so it was really killing two birds with one stone when you used him in your murder plan?”
Towne drank some more
tequila.
He nodded absently. “That’s where I got the whole idea. He wrote me he was quitting down there and was coming to El Paso to give himself up to the army. I recalled he looked a little like young Barton, same build and all, and I saw a way to get rid of them both.” He spoke in a faintly regretful tone.
“He had already planned to kill Barton,” Shayne explained to Dyer, “but he needed a positive way of getting rid of the body so it could never be identified. He fed Delray some hocus-pocus about catching spies, and got him to enlist under an alias. That was necessary, because he wanted Jack Barton to be buried in Delray’s uniform and he couldn’t afford to have it shipped home where his mother would immediately know it wasn’t her son. It was safe enough as long as it was buried here. Delray had just enlisted and no one knew him. In Delray’s uniform, with his identification tags, after being choked and hit on the head and run over, the body looked enough like the unknown recruit to get by.”
“Wait a minute,” Dyer protested nervously. “I still don’t quite get the bodies straight. Who was the naked man in the river?”
“That was Jimmie Delray. The soldier. The one Josiah
Riley actually saw Towne murder by the river. He stripped the uniform off him and put it on Jack Barton, whom he must have had tied up at the time, keeping him alive until dusk, when he planned to kill him just a few minutes before he laid the body in the street and drove his car over it.”
“So he did all that,” Dyer muttered, “by himself?”
“It was smart and damned near perfect,” Shayne said wryly. “He reported it at once as a traffic accident, and expected it to be accepted as one. With Barton’s body safely buried in a soldier’s grave, he knew the crime could never be proved against him even if Barton did disappear and he was suspected. With no
corpus delicti,
he was safe.”
“It might have worked if it hadn’t been for the autopsy,” Dyer exclaimed.
“That’s right.” Towne’s voice was thick with drink and self-pity. “That’s when things started to go to hell. What made you suspicious?”
“A letter from Jimmie Delray to his mother — and being acquainted with you ten years ago,” Shayne told him grimly. “It didn’t make sense — you rushing to the telephone like an ethical citizen and reporting an unwitnessed traffic fatality. It was out of character — particularly with you trying to win an election. If you
had
accidentally run over a soldier, I knew damned well you’d keep right on driving without reporting it.”
“Why didn’t he do that?” Dyer exploded.
“Because he realized there’d be a much closer investigation into the cause of death if the man was found lying in the street later. By reporting it at once, his story
was immediately accepted and no one thought of even looking for another wound.”
Dyer still looked slightly bemused, but he went over and tapped Towne sternly on the shoulder. “Come along with me if you’re sober enough to stand up.”
Towne shambled to his feet, his right arm hanging loosely at his side. His bleared gaze swept around the library and settled on the briefcase. “Gotta take thish,” he muttered. “Paid ten thoushand for thish sho Carter won’t get ’lected.”
Shayne picked up the briefcase and gravely placed it in his groping left hand. “That’s right. It’s all paid for.”
“Hell of a lot of good it’ll do him,” Dyer said. “This doesn’t leave us any candidate for mayor. He could have saved himself ten thousand if he’d known you were on to him.”
“That,” said Shayne cheerfully, “is why I got the money before I started needling him about murder.” He patted the bulky envelope in his coat pocket and followed the others out.
Shamus Award Winner for Best Original Paperback Novel of the Year
by
RICHARD ALEAS
Three years ago, detective John Blake solved a mystery that changed his life forever — and left a woman he loved dead. Now Blake is back, to investigate the apparent suicide of Dorothy Louise Burke, a beautiful college student with a double life. The secrets Blake uncovers could blow the lid off New York City’s sex trade... if they don’t kill him first.
Richard Aleas’ first novel, LITTLE GIRL LOST, was among the most celebrated crime novels of the year, nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus Awards.
But nothing in John Blake’s first case could prepare you for the shocking conclusion of his second...
R
AVES FOR
SONGS OF INNOCENCE:
“An instant classic.”
— The Washington Post
“The best thing Hard Case is publishing right now.”
— The San Francisco Chronicle
“His powerful conclusion will drop jaws.”
— Publishers Weekly
“So sharp [it’ll] slice your finger as you flip the pages.”
— Playboy
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