“You know what I mean,” Sgt. Holcomb said. “You substituted weapons. You had the murder weapon in your possession. You had received it from a client. You had that gun concealed on you when you went down to call on Garvin. You asked Garvin if he had a gun. He told you he did. He put the gun out on the desk. You fired Garvin’s gun so as to divert attention from yourself and in the resulting confusion switched guns.”
“Then,” Mason said, “it is now your contention that Garvin’s gun was not the murder weapon.”
“That’s what I think.”
“And you think that I had the murder weapon with me and that I substituted it for Garvin’s gun?”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” Mason said, “you can quite soon test the accuracy of your conclusions by taking the number of the murder weapon and tracing it on the firearms registration.”
“We’ve done that,” Sgt. Holcomb said. “The gun was purchased by Homer Garvin, Sr., the old man.”
“Then how did Garvin, Jr. get it?”
“His father has a sporting goods store among his other investments.
He took three identical guns, snub-nosed, two-inch barrel, detective guns, kept two for himself and gave one to his son.”
“Kept two for himself?” Mason asked.
“That’s what the boy tells us.”
“Then the firearms register shows the gun that I received from young Garvin was a gun that had been given him by his father. Is that right?”
“The firearms register shows that the gun with which the murder was committed was one of three weapons purchased by Homer Garvin, Sr. Now we know damn well that the gun you got from young Garvin wasn’t the gun that was used in committing the murder.”
“How do you know?” Mason asked.
“Because young Garvin is able to account for the possession of that gun every minute of the time during the evening on which the murder was committed.”
“Then it couldn’t have been the murder gun.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Sgt. Holcomb said.
“Well, make up your mind,” Mason told him. “First, you claim it was the murder gun, then you claim it wasn’t the murder gun.”
“You know what I mean. You substituted the murder gun. You knew that the murder gun was a gun which had been purchased by Homer Garvin’s father. He had given it to Stephanie Falkner. She went out and killed George Casselman with it. She called on you for help. You took the murder gun to young Garvin’s place of business, got his gun, fired it into the desk, and then in the resulting confusion you switched weapons and got him to take the murder weapon up to Stephanie Falkner.”
“Can you tell me any reason why I should take the murder weapon and leave it for police to find?” Mason asked.
Sgt. Holcomb stroked the angle of his jaw. “I don’t know why you did all this stuff, but you sure as hell did it. Now then, I’m telling you something else, wise guy. You aren’t in the clear on this thing yourself.”
“No?” Mason asked.
“No,” Holcomb said. “The best medical evidence we can get indicates that Casselman could have met his death at the time you were calling on him.”
“Meaning that I committed the murder?” Mason asked.
“Meaning that you could have committed the murder. I’ll say this for you, Mason, I don’t think you would have gone up there and murdered him in cold blood, but if he had made some threats, if he had started reaching for a gun, you could damn well have poked that gun in his guts and pulled the trigger.”
Mason smilingly shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that, Sergeant. You’ll have to get something more than mere speculation to make a case. George Casselman was alive and well when I left him. I do know that he was expecting some mysterious visitor.”
“Stephanie Falkner,” Sgt. Holcomb said.
“Not Stephanie, Sergeant. Her appointment was later. This was someone who telephoned and was coming right up.”
“How do you know?”
“Casselman asked me to leave. He said he was expecting someone. He said there were complications.”
“And you left?”
“Yes.”
“And then went around to the back of the apartment so you could wait until a mysterious young woman came running down the service stairs and then you picked her up.”
“Did I do that?” Mason asked.
“You did exactly that,” Sgt. Holcomb said, “and that mysterious young woman, whoever she was, was the murderer. You’re trying to protect her. You knew that she was going to call on Casselman. She came running down the stairs and told you she’d killed Casselman. She shoved the murder weapon into your hand and asked you what she should do. You told her not to worry, that you’d dispose of the murder weapon in such a way that you’d mix the facts in the case all up.”
“Well,” Mason said, “it’s an interesting theory. I think you’re going to have a lot of trouble trying to prove it, Sergeant, because it happens to be incorrect.”
“We’ve got the proof,” Sgt. Holcomb said.
“Indeed,” Mason said.
“We have witnesses who saw you waiting out there in back, who saw you picking up this young woman and driving away with her. We have witnesses to the fact that you had the murder weapon in your possession, that you fired a shot from the murder weapon into the desk out there at Garvin’s used car lot.”
“And how are you going to prove it was the murder weapon?” Mason asked.
“By the bullet, you dope! Our ballistic expert can tell whether the bullet you fired out there came from the murder weapon. If it did, then it’s a fair inference that you got the murder weapon from this young woman who ran down the back stairs from Casselman’s apartment. On the other hand if it turns out that bullet was not fired from the murder weapon, then it proves you switched guns right there in Garvin’s office.”
“Well, well,” Mason said. “Under your reasoning I’m hooked either way.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“It seems unfair somehow,” Mason said sarcastically. “I can’t feel that it’s fair to say that if the bullet came from the murder weapon I’m guilty of switching evidence and that if the bullet didn’t come from the murder weapon I’m still guilty. It seems you’re a little biased in your thinking, Sergeant.”
Sgt. Holcomb said, “This is the same old razzle-dazzle. Every time we start working on a shooting case, you go drag in some extra guns and then start a sort of shell game trying to confuse the issues.”
“Anything wrong with that?” Mason asked.
“It’s illegal, that’s all.”
“Then I trust I’ll be charged with whatever crime I’ve committed.”
“You sure will in this case,” Holcomb promised. “This time we have you dead to rights. You went too far out on a limb this time.”
“You certainly credit me with a diabolical ingenuity,” Mason said.
“I’ve simply learned your technique,” Holcomb told him. “Now do you want to kick through and tell us what happened? Do you want to admit that that’s what you did?”
Mason shook his head.
“If you do,” Holcomb said, “and if you come clean, we may be able to give you the breaks. If you don’t, we’ll take the bullet we recovered from the wall out there at Garvin’s place, we’ll match it up with the gun you had in your possession, and so help me, we’ll crucify you. We’ll throw the book at you!”