Entrance of bullet below heart to the right. Exit in left shoulder blade. Bullet found in back of chair. Priest had been sitting. Murderer then must have been kneeling to achieve angle of shot. Query: false pretense of confession? Memo: find out mechanics of confessional positions. Time of death: 5:30 to 5:45, pending surgeon’s report. Memo: check time with blond Safeway clerk. Time...
Lieutenant MacDonald bent over the corpse and pushed back the black sleeve on the left arm. Wristwatch. A bare chance...
MacDonald rose and looked at the praying woman. There was a new and speculative quality in his stare. The broken wristwatch had registered exactly 7:06.
Detective Lieutenant Dan Barker, L.A.P.D., felt no compulsion to stare at the body on the bed of the seedy Skid Row lodging house. There was more blood on the face of the questioned witness. There was blood on the floor too, and on the luridly prophetic tracts proclaiming the Kingdom; and the corpse had bled very little.
Barker let another short right jab light on the unshaven jaw of the witness and watched the head bobble on its scrawny neck. “Come clean, friend,” he grunted. “You can’t get away with it.”
The witness tried to stem his nosebleed with what might once have been a handkerchief. Barker slapped his hand down. “Come clean,” he repeated.
“Honest to gar, copper, I don’t know nothing. I hears the shot and I looks in here and I says, ‘Wow! This is where the bulls come in.’ So I runs downstairs and I finds Finney on his beat and he takes a gander and calls in you boys. And honest to gar, copper, that’s all I know.”
Barker looked him over reflectively and decided on the nose. A light tap jerked the head back and set the blood flowing at a doubled rate. “We’ve got you cold, friend. Why’d you kill this Marsden jerk?”
The witness leaned over to let the red stream hit the floor. A drop splashed on Barker’s right shoe. The officer raised his foot and swung it at the witness’s fleshless left shank.
“Keep your blood to yourself, friend.” His voice was toneless. “What’d you do with the rod?”
The witness hopped on his right leg and held both hands clasped to his left shin. He moaned. His hopping left bright discs of blood around the floor with spatter-drops radiating from them.
“The rod, friend,” Barker went on calmly. “We’ve got you cold without that, but maybe we could make things easy if you’d help us.”
“Honest to gar, copper... Oooo...!” The witness’s voice wavered like an air-raid warning as he hopped about.
“Stand still and on both legs, you yellow-bellied stork.”
The witness stood. “Honest, I don’t see no rod. I hears the shot and I says, ‘Cripes, that screwball next door took the short cut home,’ but then I looks in and I don’t see no rod so I goes for Finney just like I says.”
Barker smiled now. “You don’t see no rod, is that it, friend?”
“Sure, copper. Just like I tells you. Honest to—”
“For gar’s sake forget about gar for a while. And you didn’t see the murderer come out of this room either, friend?”
“I don’t see nobody. Hell, copper, I ain’t covering for nobody. If I see ’em, I’d sing. I play ball. You ask Finney.”
“I’m asking you. You don’t see nobody?”
“Nobody. Honest to—”
Meditatively Barker drove a right against the witness’s left ear. The head described a long arc on its skimpy neck and met Barker’s left at the end of the arc. The neck stood straight again. The head wobbled and the eyes were glassy. Barker laid a flat palm against the chest to prop up the body, and swore as blood dripped on his sleeve. His other palm slapped the bristly cheeks until a little life came back to the eyes.
“O.K., friend. Now listen to what you’ve said. This room’s at the end of a hall. You’re in the next room down. You hear a shot, you think this Marsden creep has killed himself, you run out and look in here. You don’t see no rod, you don’t see nobody.” He mimicked the witness’s wavering pipe. “So, my friend, honest to gar, you killed him.”
The witness started to open his mouth. A backhand slap closed it and opened his lower lip. Barker had more reasons than vanity for wearing a heavy ring.
“You’re listening now, friend,” Barker reminded him. “You thought stashing away the gun was smart; they couldn’t pin it on you that way. That’s where you were wrong. A gun, and it could be suicide. No gun, and it’s murder. And you’re the murderer, because anybody else would have had to pass you in the hall.” Barker paused. “There’s one other thing that’s phony,” he added. “How can you be so cockeyed sure of the time?”
The split lip thickened the witness’s speech. “I used to work in a watch factory. Sometimes I do repairs for Joe’s pawnshop over on Main.”
Barker laughed. “Repairs. O.K. We know Joe’s a fence. You alter identifications for him. That’ll help you.”
The witness decided not to argue. “So I’m setting this watch, see, when I hear the shot. That’s how I know what time it is. It’s just 7:06 when they get him.”
Detective Lieutenant Herman Finch, L.A.P.D., sniffed the aroma of the secretary’s obviously custom-made cigaret and lit his corncob defiantly. Twenty years on homicide had still not put Finch completely at ease in any dwelling assessed at over $15,000.
“And you don’t know of any threats against the Judge?” he puffed.
The young man smiled disdainfully. “Judge Westcott did not move in circles where threats against one’s life are a commonplace, Lieutenant.”
“Social-like, maybe not. But all the same the Judge was on the bench. I’ve never known a court officer yet didn’t get threatened some time by some poor sucker.”
The secretary tapped his cigaret into a delicate glass ashtray. “Judge Westcott was never threatened. I’m certain that in my confidential capacity I’d have been aware of such a development.”
“Horsefeathers!” muttered Finch, whose slang never managed to catch up with the times. He looked around the lavishly furnished room. “What do you know about the Judge’s will?” he demanded abruptly.
The supercilious youth was unmoved. “I am afraid that’s a matter on which you should consult—”
“Sure, formal-like, but you could save me a lot of trouble if you knew.”
The secretary shrugged. “Very well. The servants and I receive nominal bequests. The residuary estate is divided among several charities. If you care to know their names...?”
“Later on, for the record. No family?”
“None to my knowledge. Judge Westcott was an orphan and a widower.”
Finch poked his index finger into the corncob bowl. “Nominal,” he said.
“I beg your pardon, Lieutenant?”
“Nominal. What’s it mean?”
“What—? Oh, the bequests. As to the servants, I don’t know. In my case, as I have gathered from the Judge’s hints, it means something between five and ten thousand. Surely...” He hesitated.
Finch let the silence grow, then drawled out a “Yes?”
“Surely you could not consider such an insignificant sum as providing me with... well, a motive?”
Finch said nothing. There isn’t anything you can say to people who call five or ten grand insignificant.
“I’m sorry not to be more helpful.”
Finch roused himself. “No way you can narrow the time? Damned doctors always shillyshally — helpful if you can check up on ’em.”
“No. The Judge regularly spent the hours from six to eight in his study alone. He often dozed off. I found him when I went in to rouse him for dinner.”