A Killing in Comics (24 page)

“They aren’t licensed anymore?”

“Bingo. But they don’t need to be licensed; not required in jail.”

I sighed. “Look, don’t you have a crime scene to deal with? You and I could sit down, some time tomorrow maybe, and we could compare what we’ve learned.” I shook my head. “How can I know if I’m withholding anything, if I don’t know what you’ve got?”

An eyebrow hiked. “You could tell me what you’ve found.”

“I’ve found a platoon of people with good reasons to want Donny Harrison dead.”

“Which of them might also have wanted Miss
Daily
dead?”

“That,” I said, “is the pertinent question.”

“Care to make a selection?”

“. . . I’ll get back to you.”

His affability was all used up. His expression was a sneer, a frustrated one, but a sneer. “How would you like to be locked up as a material witness?”

“That one I can answer, Captain. No.” I nodded toward the living room. “What do you think of that stain on the floor?”

He frowned, glanced that way despite himself, then focused on me and said, “
You’re
asking the questions, now?”

“An honest exchange of ideas and information between two professional investigators with a mutual interest in solving a case.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Jack.”

“What about that stain, Captain?”

His frown deepened with frustration. “What about it? Blood, perspiration, dye from the costume.”

“Is that what your lab told you?”

He shook his head. “We didn’t make a lab test. When something is that obvious, why would you?”

“Give me a second while I memorize that . . . never too late to learn.”

Chandler started counting on his fingers before he realized he could only use up one. “Harrison had recently injected himself with insulin, which we believe to have been spiked with an organophosphate.”

“Believing isn’t knowing. Not unless you consider police work a religion and not a science.”

He glowered. “What’s your point, Jack?”

“Make a lab test of threads from that area in there. Not too late.”

“If you know something—”

But I didn’t. The truth was, I hadn’t seen the results from the Hirsch lab yet.

That older uniform stuck his head in. “Captain! There’s a woman out here who wants to be let in. Says she’s with your witness. A Miss Starr.”

I grinned up at him. “Now’s your chance. Be sure to tell her how her pinups warmed you up through lots of hard nights in the Pacific.”

He flicked a frown at me, but told the uniform, “Show her in here. Be nice.”

Chandler took his fedora off and a few moments later the impossible happened: Maggie Starr had broken her hibernation to come to my aid. She filled the doorway, looking beautiful but businesslike in a white dress with a black jacket, the latter decorated with a jeweled rose appliqué, a small black purse in her white-kid-gloved hands. She wore a small black hat, tilted, and was in full battle-array makeup, big green eyes highlighted and her kiss of a mouth a deep, rich red.

I sometimes forgot how tall she was, until I saw her out in public. But she had a commanding, even charismatic air about her.

“Captain Chandler,” she said, her rich contralto filling the room without trying. “Jack has mentioned you. He seems to have a great deal of respect for you.”

“He’s done a good job of hiding it, just now,” Chandler said on his way over to her, but his tone was friendly. “Jack’s probably told you I’m a big fan. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, despite the circumstances.”

She offered her gloved hand and, after a moment, he took it and shook. What was he trying to do, figure whether to kiss it or not?

“Yes,” she said, stepping past him into the room, “we might have found a better way. But this is the way that we have—do you know who did this, Captain?”

She moved to a new position, not deep into the room, but enough to make him tag after her.

“No,” he said. “Obviously we think it may be related to the Harrison murder, but it’s far too early to say.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You
do
know that Miss Daily had a number of boyfriends beside Mr. Harrison?”

“No. Actually, we didn’t. Don’t.”

“Ah.” She smiled at him, the way a queen does to a minor underling—a jester, maybe. “Then, based upon what Jack has reported to me . . . about his inquiries? He may have come upon a number of things that you haven’t.”

I was enjoying this, from my perch on the edge of the bed, across the room from them. I had to twist my torso to see it, but it was worth it.

“Yes,” Chandler said, playing awkwardly with his hat in his hands, “Jack and I have been discussing that.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“By all means!”

“Will you, or your people, be working tomorrow, Sunday, on this case?”

“I probably will be, yes. Certainly my men will be on it. Murder doesn’t get any days off.”

“No. Murder doesn’t stand on ceremony at all.” She flipped a gloved hand. “What I would suggest is that you sit down with Jack, either at our office . . . and Sunday is not a problem for us, we live in the same building as where we work . . . or at the Homicide Bureau. He’ll share everything he’s found.”

He was holding the fedora to his stomach now, as if protecting a wound. “We could do it right now . . .”

“No, Captain Chandler, I think you should run along and conduct this important investigation. You have a dead woman in the other room, after all, and from what the doctor I spoke to—”

“You spoke to
what
doctor . . . ?”

“I stopped by the Waldorf doctor before I came up. You’ll be speaking to him, I’m sure, since he was the first physician to attend to the body.”

“Yes, we, uh . . .”

“And he said he believed the murder had happened shortly before Jack arrived—within an hour, at the outside. Of course, that’s a preliminary judgment, and your crack people, the coroner’s crew and your forensics team, they’ll put a button on it, I’m sure.”

“Yes. Yes, they will.”

She beamed at him and picked some lint off his left shoulder. “So. With a fresh corpse and a fresh murder scene, why waste your time on Jack, much less me? . . . What has your lab said about that stain in the other room?”

Chandler flashed a look at me. Not angry. More like an animal crossing the road that just heard a big sound that was about to turn out to be a truck. “Well, uh . . . I don’t believe we’ve checked it yet.”

“I realize that’s one whole murder ago, but you might want to. I think the results might be interesting.”

“Yes.” He was gazing at her suspiciously, as if her buried sarcasm had just stuck its head up at him and thumbed its nose. “Well, I will do that.”

“Good.”

He grinned at her, a pretty “aw shucks” expression for such a hard-boiled Manhattan dick. “And, really, Miss Starr, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“I know. . . . Do you mind if I sit with Jack for a moment? We’ll clear out very soon. Long before you get around to checking this room out.”

“Yeah. Uh, sure. Go ahead. Try to be out of here in . . . fifteen minutes?”

She beamed at him again and touched his arm. “Less. . . . Now get to work! You have a killer to catch.”

He grinned like a kid and went out and for a minute I thought she might give his butt a paddle.

She shut the door and came over and sat beside me. She slipped an arm around me. She’d never done that before.

“Are you all right?”

My nostrils took in her perfume, one of her favorites: My Sin. “I guess I’ve been better. Kind of in shock.”

She glanced toward the door. “Captain Chandler seems all right. Civil servants aren’t the most imaginative people in the world, and he was a little flummoxed at meeting me.” Her laugh was a throaty purr. “You know, if these little boys have played with themselves, while thinking of you? You can get anything you want out of them.”

I gave her a horrified sideways look. “I really didn’t need to know that, Maggie.”

She shrugged. “New information. Having new information, more information, is always beneficial . . . which is something the good captain hasn’t grasped yet.”

“You
know
, don’t you?” I said.

“Yes.”

“So you get why I blame myself, then.”

“I do.” She shook her head. “But it’s a load. The blame is the killer’s, and the killer’s alone.”

I shook my head. “But how could
you
know? When I finally, stupidly, put it together, hell . . . it was after a full day of interviews, and—”

She slipped a gloved hand over my mouth to silence me.

Then she got into the little black clutch purse and took out a folded piece of green paper. Handed it to me.

I had a look: the results from the Hirsch lab.

“Leo Hirsh,” she said, “ran it over to me this afternoon. They work Saturday mornings, you know. And I think he saw this as his chance to get an autographed picture. And I gave him a good one. More skin than I usually serve up.”

“Please,” I said irritably, as I read the thing over. “There were traces of perspiration, but . . . Maggie, that stain out there, it’s soaked with that stuff, that organophosphate jazz.”

She made an affirmative hum and smiled doing it. Then: “How does that fit in with your thinking?”

“It turns it around a little . . . but still a perfect fit. Forgive the pun.”

Not much of a pun, but if you understand it, you know who the killer is.

She smiled some more. “I like puns. You never have to ask me for forgiveness for a good pun. Where would the monologue I did, with my striptease, be without some choice double entendres?”

I was gaping at her. “So what do we do? Do we give this to Chandler?”

She waved at the air with a gloved hand. “Christ, we already have. You and I both did everything but bend him over that stain and rub his face in it.”

I studied her but it didn’t get me anywhere. “What do you have in mind, Maggie?”

“Something.” Her free hand clasped mine; despite the glove, it was a startlingly personal gesture, and another first. “Jack, my only fear is what you might do if you got your hands on that. . . . Will you
promise
me you won’t do anything rash?”

“Why?”

Her mouth smiled but her eyes frowned. “Normally when you ask someone not to do something rash, Jack, the response isn’t ‘why.’ I don’t want any vigilante nonsense. Understood?”

“Understood.”

She turned toward the draped window and stared, thoughtfully. “But I think I would take great satisfaction in bringing this person to justice. How about you?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Good. Then we’re in agreement.”

I was shaking my head. “But Chandler is talking pretty tough, Maggie. Withholding evidence, stripping me of my license, me or even
us
getting jailed as material witnesses. . . .”

She held up a white-gloved hand: stop. “We won’t withhold anything. We can even tell him who our suspect is.”

“Suspect! Not a suspect, there’s no doubt that—”

“No, but there may not be enough evidence for Chandler to make an arrest. I propose we cooperate with him, and give him, oh . . . all the way to Monday evening to make an arrest. If he hasn’t managed that, then we will have to do something about it.”

“Like what?”

“Like,” she said, shrugging, “get a confession.”