“Her blood?” asked Shayne interestedly. “
“How the hell do I know?” snarled Griggs. “When we find her we’ll take a sample and find out. Just like a woman to complicate an open-and-shut case. First she incites her husband to commit murder, and then she disappears and throws a monkey-wrench into the proceedings.”
“Yeh,” said Shayne sympathetically. “Women are like that. Jezebels, that’s what they are. I don’t see why men put up with them. It would be a simpler world without them.”
“Simpler, maybe, but I don’t know, Mike. Where’d the kids come from?”
“There is that,” Shayne agreed. He switched back abruptly to business. “Did you say you have the typed statements of the witnesses there?”
“Yes. Not that there’s anything in them you haven’t already heard.”
Shayne said, “Could I see Sutter’s statement? I want to check one point.”
“Sutter? That lawyer from New York. It’s here.” Griggs fumbled through the papers, extracted two typed sheets stapled together and slid them across the desk to the detective.
Shayne took it and glanced down the first page swiftly, turned to the second page and stopped near the end to read the final paragraph carefully.
He handed it back, narrowing his eyes and rubbing his blunt chin thoughtfully. He nodded his head slowly, his eyes bleak and questioning, while Griggs watched him, puzzled but interested.
They had never been closely associated on a case before, and Griggs had the professional policeman’s innate distrust for private detectives and their methods of operation, but he was fully aware of Shayne’s long record of brilliant successes in the solution of cases, many of which had been bungled by his own police department, and he was not one to pass up any help no matter where it came from.
He asked gruffly, “You find anything there that I missed?”
Shayne said, “I don’t know. I’m beginning to get an inkling of something that’s been bothering me. Let’s see Ralph Larson’s statement.”
Silently, Griggs sorted it out from the others and passed it over.
Again, Shayne glanced swiftly down the typed lines to a point near the end where he paused and read the confessed killer’s words carefully. He put it down in front of him and looked across at Griggs and said flatly, “I think we both missed something. Where is Ames’ body now?”
“In the morgue for the time being. Pending funeral arrangements.”
Shayne leaned forward and said, “If you’re a smart cop you’ll order a P. M. on him, Sergeant.”
“A post mortem? What the hell for? We know exactly when and how he died.”
“Do we?”
“Are you completely nuts? You were there. You’re one of the main witnesses.”
Shayne leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes.
“We know that Ralph Larson shot him through the heart with a thirty-eight caliber bullet about sixty seconds before I broke the door down. Your medical examiner says the bullet passed through his heart and that the wound would have caused instant death. How much time elapsed between the firing of the shot and the medical examination?”
“You were there through it all,” growled Griggs. “Say twenty minutes. Thirty at the outside. You were the one who said he was dead by the time you broke the door down and got inside.”
Shayne said evenly, “Check my statement if you like, but I think this is what I said: That he looked pretty dead to me. But before I could check him, the radio cops got there and Griffin took over.’” He stopped to think a moment and added, “The way it was, Griffin was so busy holding a gun on me that he had Powers check to see if Ames was dead. Powers is nothing but a rookie, Griggs. If we reconstruct everything carefully, we’ll discover that Powers is the only person who touched Ames or even went close to him during all that time until the M. E. got there. I’m sure Powers is a smart lad, but I don’t believe he’s had much experience with dead bodies. No one else can testify with certainty concerning Ames’ condition.”
“Do you mean to say, goddamn it!” exploded Griggs, “that you’re suggesting the bullet didn’t kill Ames?”
Shayne nodded emphatically. “That’s why I want a P. M.”
“But damn it to hell,” fumed Griggs. “A thirty-eight slug through his heart! You’ve got the M. E.’s report. What more do you want?”
“Thirty minutes after the shooting,” Shayne reminded him. “After a completely superficial examination. There was no reason for it to be more than that,” he went on swiftly and placatingly. “All of us knew… or thought we knew… exactly how and when Ames died. The M. E. had no reason to question the evidence and make anything more than the most superficial examination. But now I think a post mortem is definitely called for.”
“I’d be the laughing-stock of the department.”
“Maybe. Also you might prove to be one of the smartest homicide dicks south of the Mason-Dixon line. Look,” Shayne went on persuasively. “Discounting the curious disappearance of Dorothy Larson and the half-packed bag on her bed and the bloodstains in her bathroom… which you have to admit give an aura of mystery to the whole affair… discounting that, take a look at these statements of Sutter and Larson.”
Shayne handed the two typewritten statements back to him. “Read the end of Sutter’s statement first. The last line of the next to final paragraph. It says: ‘… I went back to my room and shut the door again.’
“Then, first line of final paragraph: ‘… I heard a commotion downstairs and people running about…’ That is Sutter’s statement, isn’t it?”
Griggs read the words, frowning. He nodded without looking up.
“He was at the end of the hall with his door shut,” Shayne pointed out. “He heard Ralph force his way in downstairs and up to Ames’ study. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that Ames would also have heard the same commotion?”
“Probably. No one says Ames didn’t. He didn’t testify on the subject.”
“But Ralph Larson did in a sense. Read the end of his statement. He’s speaking of Ames acting so superior when he ran in waving his gun: ‘… He just sat there leaning back in his chair looking at me and not saying a word even when I waved the gun in his face…’ What does that suggest to you?” demanded Shayne.
“A pretty cold-nerved customer. Remember, he had already sat and laughed at Ralph half an hour earlier when he threatened him.”
“That’s what I am remembering,” Shayne said grimly. “It’s one thing to sit and laugh in the face of an unarmed man, and another thing to sit there in a chair and calmly invite a bullet in your heart without even making a move to prevent it.
“Think about this a minute. Ralph Larson has stormed out the back way from the study half an hour previously threatening to get a gun and kill Ames. Ames isn’t frightened by the threats and he sits right there. Okay. Half an hour later he hears a commotion downstairs… the same one Sutter heard. Ralph shouting, the tray breaking, feet pounding up the stairs to his study. What does he do?
“Nothing, by God. He doesn’t even get up from his chair. He sits there… silent and grinning… and gets a bullet in his heart. What does that suggest to you?”
“That he was drugged or something?” hazarded Griggs.
“There was that pot of coffee on his desk,” Shayne reminded him. “No one thought about analyzing it, of course. A post mortem will show it up fast enough if it was drugged. I’m just saying there appear to be some unanswered questions, Sergeant, and I think you’d be smart if you get the answers to them before this case ever comes to trial and the defense attorney starts asking for proof that his client’s bullet actually killed the man.”