Carmody went quickly down the stairs to the sidewalk and looked along the street for Murphy. He saw him in the next block and yelled at him to get his attention. When Murphy turned, Carmody shouted, “Let’s go. I’ve got it...”
“Everything fits,” Carmody said, as they headed back toward his home. “Dobbs did take pictures of the stick-up. He waited two years, probably protected himself from every angle and then parlayed them into a pension plan.”
“Nice guy, Dobbs,” Murphy said, nodding. “Didn’t forget the old folks either. The thing is, I guess, to find Dobbs.”
“We won’t find him,” Carmody said. “Ackerman has sent him on the road by now. Dobbs is on his way to South America or Newfoundland, I’d bet.”
“Then we got to find the pictures,” Murphy said.
“I want to think about that angle a little,” Carmody said.
“We got something good here, Mike. This is what Delaney had on Ackerman. He must know about Dobbs. And that pressure was strong enough to make Ackerman take the big risk of killing your brother. So if we get Dobbs’ pictures we get Bill Ackerman. On a rap he can’t beat.”
“That’s it.” Carmody glanced at Murphy’s tired profile. “You’d have made a good cop, George.”
“So would you, Mike,” Murphy said. Then he rubbed his lips with the back of his hand. “Forget that; okay? It’s no time for cracks.”
“Nobody’s mad,” Carmody said bitterly.
They said good-by in front of the house and Carmody went inside and tossed his hat on the piano. He was on his way to the kitchen for a beer when the phone began to ring. Picking it up, he said, “Yes?”
“Mike, this is Karen. The police took me downtown this morning to look at more pictures. There was no guard here while I was away.” Her voice began to tremble. “Nancy’s gone, Mike.”
“Who picked you up?” he said sharply.
“A Captain Green. From the records station.”
Green was on Ackerman’s leash, Carmody knew. Technically, he had the right to bring a witness downtown... And someone else could have pulled off the police guard... Carmody swore furiously.
“Stay right there,” he said. “I’m coming over.”
Nancy might have walked out by herself, he thought, as he ran down to his car. But in his heart he knew he was kidding himself. This was Ackerman’s work. He wanted her and he had taken her.
12
It was twenty minutes later when he reached Karen’s apartment. She let him in and sat down on the edge of the sofa, locking her hands together in her lap.
“I’ve got to know just when this happened,” he said. “Right to the minute.”
“I’ll try to remember.”
Carmody saw that she was holding herself under control with an effort. Her small face was pale and strained, and her lower lip was trembling slightly. “If you can hang on you’ll be helping her,” he said. Sitting beside her, he took her clenched hands between his and rubbed them gently. “Start from the time the police picked you up here.”
“That was ten o’clock. Captain Green got here then and said he wanted me to come downtown. I told him I’d get ready. Nancy was frightened. She didn’t want to stay alone, but I said it would be all right.” Karen drew a long breath and a little tremor went through her body. “I didn’t get back until two-thirty. Captain Green showed me dozens of pictures and took his time about it. When we got back he made me wait downstairs until he radioed the local district and told them to put the police details back at the apartment. That was the first I knew that they’d been taken off. I was scared then. And when I came in I saw that she was gone.”
Carmody looked around the room. “Was there any sign of a struggle?”
“No. But she left a diamond ring on the basin in the bathroom.” Her hands tightened in his. “Wouldn’t she have taken that if she decided to walk out?”
“I don’t know. She might have forgotten it.” Carmody didn’t believe this and he saw that Karen didn’t either. “We’ll find her,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly. Then he went quickly to the phone in the kitchen and dialed Police. It took him a minute to get through to Wilson. “Jim, Mike Carmody,” he said. “I want to report a missing person. It could be a kidnap job.”
“I’ve been trying to get you, Mike. You’ve got to come in. Myerdahl didn’t buy my brief on you. He insists—”
“Jim, hold that, will you?” Carmody said. “This is the lead to Ackerman. Let’s get it rolling. We can talk about Myerdahl later.”
Wilson hesitated. Then he said, “Let’s have it,” in his crisp official voice.
“The missing person is a girl, Nancy Drake. She’s blonde with blue eyes and a good figure. About five-three, a hundred and ten, I’d say.”
“Nancy Drake? Isn’t that Dan Beaumonte’s mistress?”
“That’s right. She left, or was kidnaped from, the Empire Hotel this morning, sometime between ten o’clock and two-thirty.”
“The Empire? That’s Karen Stephanson’s hotel, right?”
“Yes. I stuck Nancy in her apartment. I thought she’d be safe here with guards at both doors.”
“Damn it, what are you trying to do?” Wilson demanded angrily. “Did it occur to you that Beaumonte’s girl might have blown the head off our only witness? You said you’d work straight with me, Mike. But you can’t drop the prima donna act, even for your brother’s murder.”
“I guessed wrong,” Carmody said. “I didn’t figure Ackerman would pull the guard detail off.”
“That was a mighty bad guess. Look, now; I’ll get an alarm out for this Nancy girl. But you get in here, understand? And bring your badge and gun. Myerdahl wants ’em both.”
“Okay,” Carmody said bitterly, and replaced the phone with a bang. When he returned to the living room Karen was pacing the floor nervously. “I can’t forget that I talked her into helping you,” she said.
“This isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”
“She’d just written a letter to her agent,” Karen said, putting the palms of her hands against her forehead. “She was sure she’d started back uphill.”
“The police of three states will be looking for her,” Carmody said. “Remember that.” He put his hands gently on her slim square shoulders. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything,” he said.
Carmody walked through the swinging wooden gates of the Homicide Bureau twenty minutes later, and nodded to Dirksen and Abrams who were working at their desks with a suspicious show of industry. Dirksen pointed to Wilson’s closed door and said softly, “Very high-priced help at work, Mike. Myerdahl and the D.A.”
Carmody smiled faintly at him and rapped on the door. Wilson opened it and said, “Come on in, Mike.”
“Anything on the girl yet?”
“No, but the alarm is out.”
Carmody walked into the office and took off his hat. Captain Myerdahl, acting superintendent of the department, sat in a straight chair beside Wilson’s desk, puffing on a short black pipe. Standing at the windows was Lansing Powell, the city’s District Attorney. Myerdahl was a short stocky man with a coarse dark complexion, and small blue eyes that glittered like splinters of ice behind his rimless glasses. He was a tough and shrewd cop, who took his responsibilities with fanatic intensity. As a rookie he had supported his wife and family on two-thirds of his meager salary and spent the remainder on Berlitz lessons to modify his heavy German accent. He had moved up slowly through the ranks, never compromising his standards, and giving every job the full measure of his dogged strength and intelligence. Detectives and patrolmen hated the discipline he enforced but they relished working for him; in Myerdahl’s district a cop could do his job twenty-four hours a day without worrying about stepping on sensitive toes.