Fran Dixon held back a sarcastic remark and said: “That’s what I’m here for. Where is he?”
Killenan led her down the hall to another bedroom. He opened the door and let her take a look.
The room was eight-by-ten; no more. It didn’t look quite as cluttered as the rest of the house, but it was far from neat.
The messiest part was the body. The man was on a mattress which lay on the floor against the left wall. Even from the door, it was obvious what had happened. A bullet had entered his right temple, making a wound the size of a man’s thumb. It had exited by taking away most of the left side of his skull. The splatter across the bed and wall was not pleasant to look at.
The man’s right hand was flung out across the floor, and near it was a revolver.
“The narc squad didn’t search this room, did they?” Fran asked.
“No, ma’am, we didn’t. We called Homicide as soon as we opened the door. I figured Lieutenant Tokuwara would want his lab men in here before we touched anything. It looked funny. Take a look at that gun, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Fran stepped carefully into the room, knelt, and looked at the gun without touching it.
“Damned unusual,” she murmured. “You don’t find these very often.”
“You damn sure don’t, Lieutenant,” Killenan said firmly.
“It’s an unusual gun,” Fran said, “but what’s so funny about it?”
There was a long pause. Utter silence from Killenan.
Fran turned her head around and looked at the narc squad sergeant. He was staring at her as though she were an absolute moron.
Fran got to her feet and dusted off her hands. “Okay, Sergeant; I repeat: What’s so funny about that gun?”
Killenan looked as though he’d been fed a faceful of alum.
“Well, ma’am,” he said carefully, “in case you hadn’t noticed, that revolver is cocked.”
“I noticed that,” Fran said dryly. “It’s rather obvious.”
“Well then, it couldn’t be suicide, could it?” The sergeant’s voice was still careful.
“Why not?”
Sergeant Killenan blew his cool in a splash of verbal pyrotechnics.
“Because, goddam it, woman, a man don’t stick a goddam revolver up against the side of his goddam head, blow his goddam brains out, and then stay alive long enough to recock the goddam hammer! It goddam well ain’t humanly possible!”
Lieutenant Fran Dixon smiled gently at the sergeant. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “You are goddam well correct, Sergeant. But have you looked at that goddam revolver?”
Suddenly flustered, Killenan blinked. “Yeah. I looked at it,” he said.
“Did you see the zig-zag grooves around the cylinder?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. I mean, yes, ma’am.”
“Do you know what kind of gun that is, Sergeant Killenan?”
“Um. No, ma’am.”
“That weapon happens to be a .455 Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. British-made, back in—”
There was a sudden flurry of footsteps on the stairway, and both Fran and Killenan stepped out of the death room to look down the hall.
“It’s Tokuwara and the lab squad,” Fran said. “While they are doing their bit, you and. I will go over and ask some questions of our happy trio.” Twenty-five minutes later, Lieutenant Dixon had a reasonably coherent idea of what had happened, although she knew very well that one of the three was lying.
The weapon had belonged to Broadhurst. A check via police radio showed that he had actually registered the .455 with the San Francisco. Police Department.
Broadhurst had been one of the only two people living in the house who had jobs. There were eleven people living there, but seven of them were in a park down near San Jose, attending an esbat, and could be eliminated as suspects.
The narcotic squad had surrounded the house to make the bust, and all of them had heard the .455 go off. It hadn’t been a firecracker, or a shot other than the death shot, because the first officer to arrive in the death room got there before a minute had passed. And the body had still been twitching, as often happens after severe head wounds. The blood was still running, and the smell of cordite from the old British cartridge was still strong.
The time of death, then, had been established, and the officers surrounding the house had stated that no one had gone in or out since the shot, with the exception of the investigators.
So, Fran told herself, there were exactly four suspects. Any one of the three live ones might be guilty of murder; the dead one might be guilty of suicide.
The three didn’t alibi each other, which was a blessing. Little Louise claimed she had been in her bedroom at the other end of the long hall when the shot sounded; she got up from her bed and looked out the door of her room, but had seen nothing until the police arrived, less than a minute later.
Ellen Postman, the sixty-year-old woman with the arthritic hands, had, according to her story, been downstairs in the kitchen making coffee when the .455 went off. Since she had been the one to open the door when the. officers knocked, her story seemed fairly straightforward. But she could just as easily have come down from upstairs as from the kitchen.
Larry Postman said he had been in the john. He had heard the blast of the gunshot, but by the time he was ready to go anywhere, the place was “full of fuzz.” Officer Cardona corroborated that last part of his story, that he had been coming out of the john, but there was no way of knowing just how long he had been in there.
By the time Lieutenant Fran Dixon had extracted all that information from the three suspects, the ambulance had come and gone, and Sergeant Curtis, having done his PR work, was ready to take over. Fran let him continue with the questioning, and went out into the hall with Sergeant Killenan.
Killenan was fuming with frustration. “Lieutenant, I was sure that goddam Larry Postman done it. But now it looks like maybe it was suicide, except for that cocked revolver. Whatever kind of a gun it is, how could it recock itself?”
“I wouldn’t expect a narc squad mans to know anything about hand weapons,” Fran said softly. “Nor a vice squad man either, for that matter. Let’s go talk to Lieutenant Tokuwara.”
Outside the death room, some of the technicians were packing up their cameras and other gear. There were still men working inside.
Tokuwara took his cigar from his mouth, bowed low from the waist, and said: “Ah, so, Rootenant Dixon. Can humber person be of assistance?”
“Knock it off, Toku,” Fran said with a slight smile. “I want to know about that gun.”
Tokuwara stuck his cigar back in his mouth and talked around it. “It’s a point four-five-five Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver, Fran. It did the job, all right. The slug went right on through; the boys dug it out of the wall. There were heavy powder bums around the entrance wound, so it could have been suicide.
“There were a couple of prints on the barrel and on the cylinder, both of them his. Smudges on the grip and trigger, unidentifiable. You know what a bitch of a job it is to get prints off a grip or trigger.”
“I know,” Fran said. “Are you through with it?”
“Sure.” Tokuwara turned his head. “Harry, give me that gun.”
The technician gave Tokuwara the death weapon, and Tokuwara handed it to Fran.
She hefted the big revolver and said: “It’s a beauty. I wonder where he got it.” She checked the cylinder and looked at Tokuwara.
“We took out five live cartridges and an empty,” he said through a cloud of cigar smoke. “We’ve got ’em marked, and we’ve got the corresponding positions on the chambers marked.”
“Lieutenant, ma’am.” Sergeant Killenan said darkly, “would you mind checking me out on that handgun?”