“Did he use this hotel paper to write on?” I asked Joe.
“Yeah. I saw him reach out and take some and start writing on it with that ballpoint pen there.”
“Okay,” I said. I reached out myself and took the sheets of stationery that were left in the desk slot and brought them out and looked at them crossways against the lobby light. “How many people have written at this desk since the man in the morgue?” I asked Joe.
“Nobody I know of,” Joe said. “At least, not while I’ve been on duty. This is the seldomest-used desk of the three, Lieutenant — way over here in the corner like it is.”
I said, “This top sheet of stationery has some marks on it, Joe. Maybe he pulled out more than one sheet by mistake and wrote on the top one, bearing down so heavy with the pen that his writing showed through and marked the next one. I’ve heard about such things happening. I couldn’t be that lucky, though.”
But I was.
I went back to the office and turned the sheet of hotel stationery over to Mark Godwin in our little lab, and sure enough, he messed around with graphite or something of the sort and brought up a clear message on that writing paper. He made a copy of it for me and brought it in. Here’s what it said:
Dear Doctor:
For 16 years you’ve owed me a $750 back payment. Now I’m in town to collect it — with interest. I’ll be in touch tonight.
I read it down to the signature and then I swore out loud and said to Mark, “John Smith! You’re kidding!”
“No,” Mark said. “That’s what it was signed.”
“There’s a million John Smiths running around loose in this country, Mark. And a fifth of them are using the name as a phoney, at that. You’re a great big help, you are.”
“It ain’t my fault the guy’s name is John Smith,” Mark told me in a hurt voice and left me to my own devices.
My first device was to call Doc Sanderson in, tell him about the note having been found, and show it to him. “You’re a doctor,” I told him, “and this note was written to a doctor. Does it mean anything more to you than it does to me?”
Sanderson shook his head. “I can’t say it does, Lieutenant,” he said. “What’s it mean to you, incidentally?”
“Well,” I said, “First of all, it’s signed with a phoney name. That’s obvious. Second, this so-called John Smith is dunning some Riverside doctor for an old debt — a doctor that John Smith used to work for sixteen years ago. And third, it sounds like Smith isn’t going to be satisfied to collect his legitimate debt of seven hundred and fifty skins and let it go at that. He’s also going to put the bite on the good doctor for sixteen years’ interest on the money.”
“Why do you think this doctor Smith was writing to is here in Riverside?” Doc asked.
“Because John Smith didn’t mail the note when he wrote it. He stuck it in his pocket and carried it away after consulting the telephone book at the hotel for a local address. Obviously, he was going to deliver the note himself. Drop it in the doctor’s mail slot, maybe — right here in town.”
“And you suspect that doctor, whoever he is, killed John Smith when he got in touch with him that night?”
“You bet I do. Plenty of murders have been done for less than seven hundred and fifty dollars, Doc. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Y-e-s,” Doc admitted. “Especially if you read the note a little differently.”
“What do you mean, differently? I can read English. And that’s what the words say, Doc.”
“No, I mean interpret the note differently. Suppose our murdered man downstairs isn’t just dunning this Riverside doctor an old debt and sixteen years’ interest. Suppose the words ‘with interest’ are a threat of blackmail? Because now John Smith has come into possession of something he can use to put pressure on this doctor he used to work for? The whole tone of the note is arrogant, self-assured, even a little threatening, it seems to me. As though John Smith knew the doctor would have to pay that old debt now. What do you think?”
I said, “You could be right, Doc. And the blackmailer is signing his note John Smith just for kicks. Because he’d know the doctor would recognize his true identity from his reference to the old debt.”
Doc Sanderson nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I’d say blackmail was a definite possibility. Approach it from that angle.”
“Approach it hell,” I said. “How? We’ve got to find out who this doctor is before we can approach anything. You see that, don’t you, Doc?”
He grinned his slow relaxed grin at me. “I can see that, all right,” he said, “and I don’t envy you your job.”
“It’s a cinch,” I said. “I’ve got it all worked out. Look. The note is written by a guy nobody’s ever seen before in Riverside. He’s a stranger from out of town, right? His note practically says so. And we know that he used to work for, or at least knew, this particular doctor sixteen years ago. That means the doctor wasn’t in Riverside either at that time. He was probably in the same town where the bogus John Smith resided. Do you follow me?”
“Perfectly.”
“Okay. So we check out all the doctors in Riverside, to see which ones were not living here sixteen years ago. There aren’t too many doctors in a city this size, especially ones that came here from someplace else.”
Doc Sanderson didn’t say anything.
“Now, when we find out which doctors weren’t living here sixteen years ago, we send photographs of our John Smith to the police in the towns where the doctors were living at that time. And the chances are, we’ll come up with a true identification of John Smith in one of those towns.
“We’ll tie him to the specific doctor who came from that town, and who lives here. You could help me with this, Doc, by getting me the dope on our doctors from the records of the county medical society. You’re a member, aren’t you?”
Doc said, “Sure.” I stood up. But the Doc stayed seated. “But,” he said, “I don’t belong to the dental society, or the veterinary society. And I don’t happen to have a Ph.D. behind my name either.”
I sat down again. “I didn’t think of that,” I said. “Dentists, vets, and Ph.D.’s are all doctors too, aren’t they?”
“I just thought of it myself,” Doc said apologetically. “But it’s got to be considered.”
That increased the difficulty of my checking job about five hundred percent, I estimated. And it reduced my chances of coming up with anything helpful by just as high a percentage.
I sighed. Doc Sanderson sighed in sympathy.
“This blackmail thing,” I said finally, just to be saying something. “Are doctors likely blackmail victims? Or rather, what would they be likely to be blackmailed about?”
“In general, the same indiscretions and sorry sins that laymen get blackmailed about,” Sanderson said. “After all, doctors are human, too.” He grinned at me again. “But to answer you question more specifically, I suppose when it comes to doctors, malpractice is the basis for most lawsuits or blackmail schemes against us.”
“Malpractice? You mean like giving a patient the wrong medicine?”
“Sure. Or a hundred other wrong things that doctors can do — more often than not through accident, carelessness, or ignorance. Sometimes deliberately, however. Most doctors carry insurance against malpractice suits nowadays, so we don’t fear blackmail attempts the way we used to.”