“Sure,” Fran said. “It’s called an automatic revolver, but, strictly speaking, it’s a semi-automatic revolver. The mechanism is actuated by the energy of recoil, which drives the whole superstructure — the barrel-cylinder assembly, rearward. Like this.”
She was holding the superstructure in one hand and the grip in the other, but when she tried to work the action, nothing happened.
“Damn lousy lube job,” she said disgustedly. “Here, Toku. You do it.”
Lieutenant Tokuwara took the gun. “You see, Sergeant, the whole upper part of the weapon slides back, like... uh... this. When the cartridge is fired, the whole mechanism is sent rearward by the recoil, recocking the hammer. That compresses the recoil spring, which forces the whole assembly forward again to the firing position.” He handed the cocked weapon back to Fran Dixon.
“It’s a beautiful engineering job,” she said, “but a flat failure as a combat weapon. Too complicated. This zig-zag groove around the cylinder is actuated by this stud down here on the grip assembly to rotate the cylinder to the next cartridge. See?” She gave the gun to Killenan.
“I never heard of a gun like this,” Killenan said, looking at it.
“That’s the four fifty-five,” Fran said. “I understand the Webley-Fosbery was also made in thirty-eight caliber, but I’ve never seen one. The only other handgun I know of that’s anything like it is a thirty-two with a nearly identical mechanism, made by the Union Fire Arms Company in Toledo, Ohio.”
Killenan worked the action of the weapon a couple of times, shoving the heavy carriage back and letting it snap forward. Then he looked at Fran Dixon.
“Makes me fee! kind of silly, Lieutenant,” he told her, “Looks like Broadhurst could’ve killed himself after all.”
Before Fran could answer, one of the technicians came out of the death room and said: “Lieutenant Tokuwara, look what we found under the mattress in there.” He held out a small plastic bag half filled with a white crystalline powder.
Tokuwara didn’t take it.
“Is it?” he asked.
Sergeant Killenan took the tiny bag, opened it, touched the powder with his finger and transfered a few grains to the tip of his tongue.
“Yup,” he said after a second. “Heroin. Damn high grade stuff, too.”
“Take it to the lab,” Tokuwara told the technician.
“Sergeant Killenan,” Fran said, “you and your squad have a job to do.” She gave full instructions. Then, when Killenan had gone, she said to Tokuwara: “All right, Toku, we’ll split ’em up. You take the old lady; Sergeant Curtis will take the girl; I will take Postman. Three different rooms. We talk and we wait. Okay?”
“Damn it, Fran,” Tokuwara said, “I’m not up on interrogation, I’m a lab man. I don’t—”
Fran Dixon cut him off. “You went through basic training, didn’t you? That’s all you need.” Her voice became urgent. “Don’t you see, Toku? I’m not asking that any of us get any real information from those three; all we’re doing is stalling for time. All you have to do is go in there and sound like a cop for a while. Is that too damn difficult?”
Tokuwara paused for a moment. Then he slitted his heavy-lidded eyes and bowed. “As honorabu rady Rootenant command, so humber servant wirr do.”
Lieutenant Fran Dixon half closed her caramel eyes and bowed in return. “Sank you, honorabu Rootenant Tokuwara. Now rets get honorabu asses in gear and go to work. Orright?”
“Orright, Rootenant-san.”
“Sank you, Rootenant-san.”
The three investigators spent an hour and twelve minutes interrogating the three suspects, learning nothing that had any real bearing on the case. Tokuwara did his best with the old lady, but he was handicapped by not having interrogated a subject for years, and because he felt impelled to be polite to a frail and rather sweet elderly woman.
In another room, Sergeant Curtis was bearing down hard on little Louise, and wasn’t enjoying it because she had a tendency to burst into tears ever so often. Fran Dixon was having it a little easier because Larry Postman had lost his truculence and was apparently earnestly trying to co-operate with her.
“I keep telling you, lady,” he was saying tiredly, “I was in the bathroom at the time. It took me a little while to get up. Know what I mean?”
There was a rap at the door, and the uniformed cop who was witnessing the interrogation opened it. Sergeant Killenan came in, his hands behind his back and a satisfied look on his face.
“I found the abditory, Lieutenant,” he said.
Fran Dixon blinked. She knew that rare word for “hiding place”, but she wondered where Killenan had learned it.
She looked back at Larry Postman, seated opposite her.
“Well, dumbo,” she said in her bitchiest voice, “it looks like we not only have you for premeditated murder, but for pushing heroin. I don’t know which is worse. We found your stash.”
Postman’s eyes widened in panic for half a second, then narrowed. “Whadda ya mean, my stash? That stuff was in Broadhurst’s room.”
“In Broadhurst’s room?” her voice was biting.
“Yeah; sure. Under his mattress.”
“How did you know it was there? Nobody told you where we found it.”
Postman looked suddenly confused. “Well, I knew. I mean, like he told me. He used the stuff. He was mainlining.”
“Sure he was,” Fran said. “Without making needle tracks? Not even a sterile puncture?” She glanced at Killenan. “Did you check the arms under that long-sleeved shirt of dumbo, here?”
“First thing,” Killenan said. “Looks like a cow pasture after a heavy rain.”
“It figures,” Fran said. “What about the abditory?”
Killenan’s hand came out from behind his back. He was holding a long black cylinder with knobs on both ends.
“Typewriter platen,” he said unnecessarily. “It was in his typewriter, trying to look innocent. One of the ends unscrews, and the stuff is in the hollow of the cylinder. Even if it’s been cut, there’s a Couple of grand worth of junk in it.”
“Fingerprints?” Fran Dixon asked.
“None but his.”
“How about the girl, Louise?”
“Sergeant Curtis says she admits seeing him come out of that room immediately after the shot was fired,” Killenan said.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Larry Postman came up out of his chair. One big fist slammed into Killenan’s chest, knocking him backward into the uniformed Officer Cardona, who was standing behind him. Both men went down like a pair of dominoes. Postman came straight for Fran, hands outstretched.
His own momentum defeated him. Fran’s right hand, knuckles folded, jammed into Postman’s solar plexus, doubling him up. Fran’s chair began to topple backward, but she was up and out of it, on balance, before it hit the floor. Her left hand chopped edgewise at the back of Postman’s neck, and he toppled, unconscious, to join the chair on the floor.
“Hold it!” Her voice snapped out at the two men on the floor near the door. Both Killenan and Cardona had drawn their sidearms, but they froze at the sound of Lieutenant Dixon’s order.
“No need to shoot,” she said quietly. “Cardona. Handcuff this slob and get him the hell out of here.”
Five minutes later, Fran Dixon, Tokuwara, Curtis, and Killenan were standing in the hall.
“I don’t get it, Lieutenant,” Killenan said. “How did you know the stuff would be in Postman’s room?”
“Because that Webley-Fosbery was recocked,” Fran said.
Killenan closed his eyes. “Goddam it, Lieutenant, you just showed me how it could’ve been recocked. How come it couldn’t have been suicide?”
Fran looked at Tokuwara. “You saw how hard it was to work the action on that Webley-Fosbery?”