Shayne scanned the figure thoroughly with the aid of his little pocket flash before touching it at all. The figure lay as if it had been carried in and slammed down on the floor, either that or killed right there in the room with very little struggle on its own part involved. There was no trail of blood from the door, and though the clothing was soaked, most of that blood was already dried or close to it.
The body had been beaten terribly. Only a few of the blows Shayne could see evidence of would have killed the man by themselves.
He leaned down and turned the head so that he could see the features.
The dead man was Paul Amor!
Mike Shayne switched his flash off then. He’d seen all that he needed to at the moment. Let the police and the coroner’s men check the body and go over the room for prints or other clues later oh.
The body definitely tied in the Friendly Rest Retirement Home with the death of Sam Willison. Whether Paul Amor or someone else had called to bring him to this grisly rendezvous wasn’t so important any more. From now on every one at the Friendly Rest was suspect.
Shayne decided to get out of the old railroad shack.
He started out the door with a swift, silent stride, but the big private detective never made it. As he cleared the door, he fell forward onto the hard ground with force enough to knock the wind out of him. For the moment Mike Shayne was very much hors de combat, out of the picture when he needed his wits and his strength the most.
Shayne didn’t know it then, but he’d fallen for one of the oldest and most effective of a man hunter’s booby traps. Earlier in the night somebody had nailed or tied a length of rope to the building about a foot off the ground, and left it lying there limply, stretching to the corner of the shack. In the dark the redhead hadn’t noticed it.
After he had gone into the shack his ambusher had come out of hiding and pulled the rope tight and held it. When Shayne came out again he tripped and went down.
It was that simple.
Mike Shayne lay there and fought to pull breath back into his tortured lungs.
He heard a step on the hard ground over by the corner of the little building, but there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to brace himself against a* blow or a bullet tearing into his flesh, but neither came.
The voice behind him said: “You lay there real quiet like, Shayne. I got a gun at your back, but I won’t fire it unless you make me. I want to talk instead of kill you. I mean it. I want to talk, but if you try anything, I’ll have to shoot you.”
Mike Shayne knew that voice even as he berated himself for having fallen for one of the oldest tricks in a deadly game. What an idiot he’d been! But the sight of that awful corpse had shocked him out of his usual caution.
He fought for breath and finally managed to talk, still lying face down in the dirt and cinders of long gone freights.
“Okay, Millie. We’ll talk. What did you kill him for? Wasn’t he your partner?”
“I didn’t lull him,” Millie Love said. “You can get up now, Mike. But take your gun out real careful like with two fingers and leave it on the ground. Then move over and sit with your back against this shack.”
Mike Shayne did as he was told.
Millie didn’t look at all like Nurse Hadley at the moment. She had on a dark knit sweater that hugged her still beautiful figure, loose dark slacks and a denim jacket with big side pockets to hold things like a gun and a length of cord. Instead of the starched nurses’ cap, she had a brightly printed scarf tied around her head.
The gun in her hand was a police positive thirty-eight with a two inch barrel and she held it like a pro. The way she held the gun said she could shoot, and the look in those steely eyes even in the half dark of the old railroad yard said that she would.
They looked at each other for a long moment, two pros taking each other’s measure.
Mike Shayne was the first to speak. “Okay, Millie. It’s your gun and your dime. Suppose you tell me what you want me for. I’m listening.”
Her thin lips flicked in a half smile. “Sure you are, Mike. Men listen good when they’re under the gun. First of all, I didn’t kill Paul. He was my partner. At least he was up to a point. Right now I’d rather have him alive than the way he is, particularly since you won’t be the only one to jump to the idea it was me did him in.”
“I didn’t think you did it yourself, Millie,” Shayne said. “You’d use that gun or a knife. Maybe even judo. That body in there looks like it was run over by a mad grizzly bear. You might have somebody do it that way, but not yourself.”
“Now you’re showing some sense,” she said. “Only I didn’t have it done either. If the man that did could come up with me, he’d give me some more of them same. Paul was afraid of him, so he wanted to make a deal with you. He was scared enough to talk.”
“Why didn’t he come on down to my office?” Shayne asked her. “We could have sat down with a drink and he could talk all he wanted. Instead he has to set up a meet in a place like this. That was almost asking for what he got.”
“He was a fool,” she said with venom in her voice. “A coward and a fool. He should have trusted me, and he’d be alive right now. He didn’t tell me he was going to call you, but the fool used his office phone. Anybody can overhear that. I did and so did his killer. I didn’t know that for sure, but I was afraid of it. I followed Paul out here to listen and take care of you if he spilled too much.”
“By the time you got here he was dead,” Shayne suggested.
“That’s right,” Millie Love said. “Paul was dead, like you found him. I didn’t figure you did it. I was scared cold. I decided to wait and see if you showed up and make a deal.”
“You picked one hell of a way to attract my attention,” the big man said. He could see holes in her story, but he wanted her to feel free to go on talking.
“It’s your reputation, Mike,” she explained. “You’re a dangerous man. I wanted to set up this little chat my way.”
“I don’t suppose that includes telling me the name of the killer?” Shayne said. “I don’t suppose you’d go that far to make an old friend happy?”
“Sure it does,” she said, and then had to laugh at the astonishment that showed on his face in spite of himself. “I’m going to do more than that, Mike. I’m going to give you the killer. Hand him to you all wrapped up like a present where you can turn him in to the cops.”
“All right. Who is he?”
“He works at the Friendly Rest,” Millie said. “At least you might say he did work there till he took it into his head to kill his boss. You didn’t see him when you were there today because he wasn’t in. He was the head orderly. A big guy. A real big guy who liked to kill people.”
“For you and the doc?”
“Don’t be a fool, Mike. Of course not. We didn’t have to kill people. In our business we let them pay us while we waited for them to die of natural causes. Oh, I won’t say Paul was above talking them into taking out an insurance policy in his name or the Home’s. He might have done that once in a while when he knew the old shmoe was going to die pretty soon anyhow, but what’s wrong with that? I don’t even think it’s illegal and it sure ain’t murder.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“I’m coming to that. He killed old folks for himself when they had a few bucks stashed away and he could make it look like a heart attack or a accident or something. He killed an old dame this morning for six hundred dollars she had hid in her room. Enough to look like money to him, I guess. Besides, killing punks like that was fun for him. You know that’s not my style, Mike. I’m no angel and Paul wasn’t neither, I admit that. But killing old sick folks for a couple of C-notes each? Pah.” She spat on the ground.