He weighed it in his hand, smiled a little. “I don’t think it’ll be necessary to do that. The slug of a forty-five was taken out of Carpenter’s body. This would be the grandson of a forty-five.”
I went into the second part of my story, the really pertinent part. If I hadn’t known it was that already, the change in his attitude would have told me. He forgot his rôle of putting a feather-brained society woman at ease, became a police-lieutenant with just an important witness before him. “You’d know this man if you saw him again?” he said sharply.
“All night I saw his face before me.”
“You say he held a gun trained on you, before this interruption saved your life. Did you get a good look at it?”
“Quite good.” I shuddered.
“Have you a good eye for proportions, for taking in measurements at a glance?”
“Fairly.”
He opened a desk-drawer, took out a revolver. “This weapon is empty, so don’t be nervous. Of course, you were frightened, so maybe it’s not fair, but— This is a forty-five here. I am going to hold it just about as you say he held it. Now. Is it the same size as the one he held?”
“No, his seemed heavier, larger.”
“But this is a forty-five. Look at it again. Now what do you say?”
I cocked my head. “No. I may be mistaken, but somehow the one he held seemed to be a larger, heavier gun.”
He replaced it, looked around in the drawer, finally took out another. “How about this one, then? This is far bigger than a forty-five. This is as big as they come.”
I nodded my head affirmatively without a moment’s hesitation. “Yes. That’s the same size as the one he held.”
He put it back in the drawer. “You’re a reliable witness. The first gun was a thirty-eight. The second was the forty-five.” He got up. “I am going to ask you to try and pick him out for us.”
They were all so villainous looking. And yet none of them could approach him in viciousness. Maybe that was because I’d seen him in the flesh, in full dimension, and not just flat on paper, in black and white. There were two photos of each one, in profile and fullface. I ignored the profiles, concentrated on the fullfaces. That was the way he’d been turned toward me during those few awful moments up there.
Suddenly I got up from the chair. I put my forefinger on the photograph, but not for his benefit yet, simply for my own, to hang onto it. I closed my eyes and held them that way for a moment. Then when I had his face good and clear, burning clear, I opened them. I let them travel down the line of my arm, all the way down to the end of my finger, and the face on the police photograph blended into the one glowing in my mind, without any changes of outline.
Then I turned to Weill. “This is the face of the man I saw up there,” I said.
He said again what he’d said before, up in his office. “You’re a good, dependable witness. I liked the way you did that just then.” He bent forward above my shoulder and read from the data accompanying the photos. “That’s ‘Sonny-Boy’ Nelson. He’s already wanted for murder, three times over. We’ve wanted him for a long time.”
Back in his office, he finally noticed the change that had come, over me since that last remark of his. “What is it, Mrs. Shaw? You seem troubled.”
I gestured shakily. “Well, after all, lieutenant, why did I come here? To assure my own safety, to protect my life. This man saw me up there, just as I saw him. He knows I’m the only one who knows he was there. He’s going to try to kill me. He’s surely going to try, so that I won’t be able to tell that to anyone.
“Now if he’s already been wanted for three murders, and you haven’t gotten him so far, my identification makes no difference; you’ll simply want him for four murders now, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get him any quicker than before. And meanwhile, what’s to become of me? I’ll be living in danger from one minute to the next.”
“I’ll detail someone to—”
I quickly warded that off with a gesture.
“No, you can’t. How could such a thing escape Jim — my husband’s notice? He’s bound to ask questions, wonder what it’s all about. The whole thing would be bound to come out in the end. And that’s the very thing I tried to avoid by coming here to you unasked, entirely of my own accord.”
He stared at me incredulously. “You mean, given a choice between risking your life in a very real sense, and having your husband learn of your innocent involvement in this whole affair, you’d rather take chances on your life?”
“Much rather,” I told him very decisively.
I had been afraid not to pay the ten thousand. Now, because I had paid it, I was afraid to have it come out I had. I was afraid he would think there must have been something to cover up after all, if I had been so anxious and willing to pay it.
“You’re an unusual person,” Weill let me know.
“No, I’m not. Happiness is a soap-bubble. Once it’s been pricked, just try and get it back together again! This Sonny-Boy Nelson’s bullets can miss me. But my bubble can never be repaired again, once it’s burst. Even if it means just a stray thought passing through my husband’s mind five years from now — ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire’ — I won’t take that chance, I won’t risk it. Nothing else in life matters to me.” I got up and went toward the door.
Then I saw that he had more to say, so I stopped and looked back
“Well, if you’re willing to take the risk that you are, spread out thin, over days and weeks, how about taking an even greater risk, but all at one time? Getting it over with then and there?”
I answered that by coming away from the door, returning to his desk, and reseating myself acquiescently.
“You said, a little while ago, that your coming here had done no good; that we’d only want him for one additional murder now but still without knowing where to find him. But you’re mistaken. If you’re willing to cooperate, run the risk that I just spoke of, we will know where to find him. Which is more than we ever knew before.”
I saw what he meant. I shook a little, but I lit a cigarette. The cigarette of cooperation.
“Tell me,” he said, “are there any out-of-the-way places you’re in the habit of going to by yourself, entirely unaccompanied by your husband or friends or anyone else? I mean, without departing from your normal routine or habits of life?”
I thought for a moment. “Yes,” I said, “there are.”
Jimmy didn’t mind my doing private charity work, going around to a few handicapped cases I happened to know of and doing what I could for them, but he didn’t like the parts of town it took me into at times. Above all, he didn’t like the idea of my going alone into some of those places. He’d warned me again and again to take someone with me.
I made the rounds only about once a month, anyway. I wasn’t a professional welfare worker. I never had more than half a dozen at a time on my list, and they were all people that for one reason or another fell outside the scope of the regular relief agencies. Borderline cases that would have been left in the lurch if it weren’t for me.
Like this old Mrs. Scalento, living alone and too proud to apply to the city for help. She wouldn’t have been eligible anyway; she could make enough to support herself when she was well. But right now she was laid up with arthritis or something, and needed tiding over. That was where I came in.