“I don’t remember any cars in front of him on the left.”
“And what happened when the signal changed?”
“The car that was approaching the intersection could have gone through on the yellow light but the driver stopped suddenly. So the car behind him stopped very suddenly, almost collided with him. Miss Deshler was driving a lighter car. She brought it to a stop, and Holgate evidently didn’t see she had stopped until right at the last minute. He slammed on his brakes hard just about three feet before he hit, but that didn’t do anything except slow down his car somewhat. He hit the Deshler car a pretty good lick and I could see Miss Deshler’s head snap back.”
The officer looked at her.
Vivian Deshler sized me up slowly and thoughtfully and then said, “He’s a liar.”
“Why is he a liar?” the officer asked.
“That wasn’t the way the accident happened at all.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
“There were two lanes of automobiles approaching the intersection,” she said. “I was in the left lane. Mr. Holgate had been in the right lane. There were four or five cars in the right lane and only one car ahead of me in the left lane. Mr. Holgate tried to get in the left lane so he could go around the string of cars in the right lane. He was going pretty fast. He swung out to the left, right in behind me, and the signal changed and he hit me.”
“How many cars ahead of you when you came to the intersection?” the officer asked.
“None,” she said. “I was the only car on the left. There were five or six cars on the right. That’s why Mr. Holgate tried to get around the string of cars on the right and make a run for it. He must have been speeding up until just before he hit me. I could see him coming in the rearview mirror.”
“All right, Lam,” the officer said. “You didn’t see the accident. Now why did you say you did?”
Doris Ashley spoke up. “I’ll tell you why,” she said. “Because Dudley Bedford forced him to make a statement.”
“What do you mean, he forced him?”
Doris said, “I could get killed for telling you this.”
“Nobody’s going to kill you for telling us anything,” the officer said. “What happened?”
She said, “Donald Lam is a dear. He was in San Quentin. He got out and was trying to get a job where he could go straight, and Dudley Bedford, for reasons of his own, forced Donald Lam to make an affidavit that he had seen this accident.”
The officer looked at her thoughtfully. “Now,” he said, “I‘ll tell you something. Donald Lam is a private detective. He’s a member of the partnership of Cool and Lam. He’s taking you all for a ride. He’s never been in San Quentin — yet. He was trying to play on your sympathies, Miss Ashley, and I don’t know what he was trying to do with you, Miss Deshler, but...”
The door opened and Frank Sellers walked into the room.
“Hello, Frank,” I said.
“Hello, Pint Size,” Sellers said. “What the hell have you been doing this time?”
“Trying to make a living,” I said.
“You should leave murder out of it,” he said.
He turned to the officer. “What’s going on here?”
The officer said, “We just caught him in a lie, Sergeant.”
“That’s nothing,” Sellers said. “You can catch him in a dozen of them and then the little punk will squirm right out of them. And, if you’re not careful, leave you holding the sack.”
“Any time I left you holding the sack,” I told Sellers, “there was something in it that you wanted.”
“We won’t go into that,” Sellers said. He nodded to the officer. “Come on, let’s get these girls out of here. We’ll talk for a minute and you can give me the low-down. Then I’ll come back and question this guy.”
They all left the room.
It was a good twenty minutes before Sellers came back alone.
He was chewing the soggy butt of a cold cigar and he looked at me thoughtfully.
“You do do the damnedest things, Lam,” he said.
“I have the damnedest things done to me,” I told him.
“Did you see that automobile accident?”
“No.”
“Why did you say you did?”
“Because this man, Bedford, was forcing me to make an affidavit.”
“How did he force you?”
“He knocked me over, for one thing.”
“And then what?”
“Well, he had the idea I’d been in San Quentin and I rode along with the gag.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see what his interest was in the deal.”
“All right, there was another fellow, a man by the name of Chris Maxton, Carter Holgate’s partner. You made a statement to him about seeing the accident and got paid two hundred and fifty bucks for it.”
“That’s right.”
“And why did you do that?”
“I wanted to see why they were offering two hundred and fifty bucks for witnesses and who was paying the money.”
Sellers shook his head and said, “I’m surprised at a smart guy like you taking the two hundred and fifty bucks, Donald. That makes it obtaining money under false pretenses.”
“And that makes me guilty of murder?” I asked.
“No,” Sellers said, “other things make you guilty of murder.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as being in Holgate’s office, jumping out the window, running to your car, which already had Holgate’s body stuffed in the trunk, and making a getaway.”
“Who says so?”
“Your fingerprints say so.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Talking about the fingerprints you left in Holgate’s place of business,” Sellers said. “This Lorraine Robbins tried her best to cover up for you. She said she went out there with you and that was when you first discovered what had happened, but your fingerprints say you were lying to her.”
“What do you mean, my fingerprints?”
Sellers grinned and said, “It was a slick stunt, Donald. You went back the second time and pretended to discover what had happened. You were being very, very helpful with Lorraine and you got your fingers all over everything so that the fingerprints you’d left the first time wouldn’t be significant. But you overlooked one thing.”
“What?”
“The woman’s shoe.”
“What about it?”
“When that papier-mâché model of the subdivision fell off the table, it hit the shoe. You can see the mark on the leather where the shoe was halfway under it.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” I said.
“And,” Sellers said, “you lifted up the papier-mâché model in order to pull the shoe out and look at it.”
I shook my head.
“And,” Sellers said, “when you did, you left the print of your middle finger outlined in the powder you had got on your finger from the broken compact on the underside of the papier-mâché model. An investigation started out there at nine this morning.”
Sellers quit talking and shifted the cold cigar butt around in his mouth.
“Now let’s see you talk your way out of that one, Pint Size.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well?” Sellers asked at length.
I said, “You’re getting way out on a limb, Sergeant. I could have got my fingerprint on the underside of that papier-mâché at any time.”
“No, you couldn’t,” he said. “After the shoe was taken out and that papier-mâché model got down flat on the floor, there was no place to get your finger under it. You couldn’t even pick it up unless you used the blade of a screwdriver or a chisel or something of that sort to slide under it and lift it up. The thing weighs over a hundred pounds. We couldn’t lift it and you couldn’t.”