The Hot Beat, page 13
Lowry studied the doctor’s handsome, dignified features.
“We were taking a drive,” he said. “We came down this way to have a look at the ocean in this lovely weather. And we saw this man breaking into the house. I’m a very nosy person, you know, Dr. Clayton. It’s something of a professional trait, you might say. And so I just had to see what was happening.”
“You’re telling us,” Brady growled unpleasantly. “Where is he?”
“Inside.”
24
Lowry and Terry followed the others to the bedroom. Carrol was still sprawled out, seemingly sleeping in utter tranquility. “You slugged him,” Brady said immediately to Lowry, in tones of reproach.
“Very unfortunate circumstances required me to,” Lowry said solemnly. “It was absolutely necessary, or I never would have done it. Cross my heart and hope to die, Brady, old man.”
Dr. Clayton got down on one knee and scrutinized the slumbering Carrol.
“He’ll be all right,” he said after a brief examination. “I think I can fix him up.”
“All right, go to it, Doctor,” Brady said. Turning to Harrison, he said, “Suppose we have a look around here while the doc’s working.”
Brady, Harrison, and the uniformed men went back to the living room. Lowry and Terry looked on as Dr. Clayton ministered with efficient skill to Carrol. After a few moments the stunned man opened his eyes and looked dazedly about him.
“Lowry,” Brady called loudly from the other room. “Come on in here, will you? I want to talk to you. And bring the girlfriend, too.” Lowry and Terry went to the living room. “Did you tail Carrol here?” Brady asked, his eyes unfriendly.
“More or less,” Lowry said. “We were on our way here ourselves when we spotted Carrol. We just followed him and he led us right to the door.”
“And why were you coming here? A little more of your amateur sleuthing?”
“Well—” Lowry started to say.
But the sentence was cut abruptly short after the first word. A shot rang out from the bedroom like the sharp, throaty bark of a big dog.
“Carrol!” Brady yelled.
The policemen dashed pell-mell to the bedroom. Lowry followed at a somewhat more leisurely pace. Terry grasped his arm and went along with him.
It was not a pretty sight.
Dr. Clayton was bending over the fallen Carrol. The top of Carrol’s head was a hideous mess of scrambled blood and bone. His hand lay outstretched at his side, and in it was clasped the gun which he had earlier pointed at Terry. The line cord, wrenched apart, still hung from his wrists.
“I started to go to the bathroom to wet this towel,” Dr. Clayton said, rising and holding out the towel. “But just as I got there and reached for the faucet, I heard the shot.” Brady covered the revolver with a handkerchief and took it from Carrol’s lifeless hand. He slipped it into his pocket.
Lowry came close to Clayton.
“It’s too bad you didn’t wear gloves, Dr. Clayton. Because the only fingerprints they’re going to find on that gun will be Carrol’s and yours. I should have remembered to take that gun away, but I guess I thought Carrol was in no condition to use it anyway. And he’s a small loss in any case.”
“Yes, naturally,” Clayton said, maintaining his assured, dignified professional manner. “My fingerprints will be on the gun, certainly. I touched it hoping to take it away before he might have a chance to shoot again. I didn’t realize at first that he’d succeeded in killing himself immediately.”
Lowry’s laugh was short and contemptuous. “Oh, come off it, doc. You don’t even have to be a freshman in medical school to realize a man is dead when his head looks like that,” Lowry said deliberately.
Brady had edged close to Clayton, too, by this time. The expression on his face was a cold one.
“This time Lowry’s right, for a change, Dr. Clayton,” Brady said. “Carrol was out here at your place for something you didn’t think he ought to know about, wasn’t he?”
“I’m sure I don’t have the faintest notion of what you’re talking about,” Clayton said stiffly, glowering at both men.
“I’ll try to make it as plain as possible,” Lowry said with heavy sarcasm. He took the green earring from his pocket and held it up, moving it back and forth in front of Clayton’s eyes.
“Remember this particular little bauble, Dr. Clayton?” he asked.
Clayton’s face was an impassive mask. “Of course not,” he said.
“Of course you do, you mean. Permit me to refresh your memory a little. A man of your professional stature has so much on his mind that occasionally he lets a little detail slip out of his memory. But I’ll fill in the blank for you, doctor. Your little companion, Doris Blair, used to wear this earring. It matched a light green evening gown of hers. Remember?”
“Hey, lemme see that!” Brady yelled. He took the earring from Lowry’s hand and inspected it closely. Looking up, he said, “We’ve got the mate to this. Found it with all the rest of her junk. We wondered about the singleton for a while.”
“But not long enough,” Lowry said icily. “It was less work just to pinch McKay.”
“Can that,” Brady said angrily. “You didn’t know so much yourself. You were just bluffing right along the whole time.”
“Now, see here,” Dr. Clayton said, his expression becoming one of irritation. “I don’t know what you fellows think you’re about, but if this is some kind of an attempt at humor I might as well tell you that I don’t think it’s awfully funny.”
“Let me assure you, doctor,” Lowry said, “that this is definitely not an attempt at humor. Dr. Clayton, it didn’t do you a single bit of good to shoot Carrol. Your number was up long before that, whether you realized it or not.”
He turned to Brady. “Carrol found that earring right here under the bed. We caught him just as he finished squirreling around down there to find it. It seems Dr. Clayton thought he was in the clear with McKay’s trial coming up so soon and everything looking so damning against him. So he figured that the blackmail he was paying Carrol to shut up was really a waste of money. That was what was on your mind, wasn’t it, Dr. Clayton? Don’t try to bluff.”
Clayton’s lips were drawn together in a tight, grim line. His face had turned deathly pale. He did not speak.
Lowry nodded. “You’d better hold still, doctor. That’s a lot more sensible than all the business of righteous indignation that you were pulling a little while ago.”
Lowry turned to Brady. “You see, Brady, up to this time all that Carrol had to go on was one bit of information: the knowledge that Dr. Clayton was the boyfriend who was supposed to be giving Doris Blair the life of luxury she craved in return for the favors of her lily-white body. That was enough to make Dr. Clayton pay up, but, as I said, it began sooner or later to seem to him that with McKay taking the rap he had nothing to worry about anymore. So he must have told Carrol where to head on the blackmail deal. You still with me, Brady?”
“Go ahead,” the detective said tightly.
“Imagine Carrol’s position. It was his word against Dr. Clayton’s if he decided to go to the police with the story. The word of a shady character like Carrol against that of a highly respected member of the community like the doctor. Besides, Carrol wasn’t interested in going to the police. That wouldn’t have netted much for him. What he was really interested in was getting a way to squeeze more blackmail money out of the doctor. So he came here in the hope that he’d find some concrete evidence with which he could frighten Dr. Clayton into paying more money. I forgot about the gun and you gentlemen didn’t notice it. It was an awful mistake to have left Dr. Clayton alone with Carrol for those few minutes. Dr. Clayton thought Carrol was the only man who stood between him and his freedom.”
Brady and the police were watching Dr. Clayton. They were all watching him as he began to crumble, as the firm, strong mouth began to twitch nervously, as the handsome features began to lose their rigidity and grow slack with fear. His shoulders drooped a little now. He only resembled the man who had come into the house a little earlier.
“You’re beginning to look a little tired, Dr. Clayton,” Lowry said. “I don’t wonder. The going is getting tough, isn’t it? I can’t feel sorry for you. To be blunt you’re a cold-blooded sort of louse. You strangled Doris Blair because she was demanding that you treat her as you promised instead of keeping her in a back alley. You wanted Doris Blair but you also wanted to be sure that there would be no interference with your smug respectability. Doris must have threatened to air your romance and you didn’t like that. Next you did a dandy job of identifying an innocent man, made it look as if you weren’t quite certain about him which always makes an identification seem more honest. And just now when it looked like Carrol would finally wreck everything anyway, you only took a few seconds to decide to blow the top of his head off.”
Brady put his hand on Clayton’s arm. As Lowry looked on, he saw Brady’s heavy, pugnacious jaw come forward in the manner that meant he was going to become businesslike in the only business he knew well.
Brady gave Clayton a violent shake. The doctor wobbled as if all his joints had suddenly been separated and strung on with wire.
“He’s right, ain’t he, Clayton,” Brady growled savagely. “That was the way it was. Or do you have some better answer?”
Clayton made no reply. The look of hunted futility in his eyes said plainly that he realized it was useless to talk.
Brady shook him again, more violently this time. “Come on. Speak up.”
“Yes,” Clayton said in a low voice, nodding his head slowly. He looked dreadfully pale. The starch had gone out of him completely.
Brady turned to one of the uniformed men. “You stay here and watch this bird,” he said. “I’ll phone the locals and let them know they can take over for us.”
Brady went to the phone and quickly put in the call to the local police. Hanging up, he nodded in satisfaction and said, “We can go now.”
Harrison and the other cop took Dr. Clayton with them in the police car.
“You mind if I ride back with you?” Brady asked Lowry, a trifle sheepishly.
“A pleasure, Sergeant Brady,” Lowry said with hearty magnanimity.
Terry sat snugly between Lowry and Brady in the front seat of Lowry’s car. She darted a cold, unfriendly look at Brady, who winced.
“You must hate me,” he said.
“She isn’t head over heels in love with you, Brady, if that’s what you mean. But you’ve got to forgive him, Terry. He was only doing his job.”
“That’s right, Ma’am.”
“His job says that for every murder there has to be an apprehended murderer,” Lowry says. “Too many unsolved crimes and something mysterious happens to Sergeant Brady’s next promotion. It’s a nasty setup, Terry. But it’s a nasty world we live in.”
Terry said nothing. She could not yet bring herself to forgive the man who had so energetically tried to send Bob to the gas chamber, but on the other hand she could not fully hate him either.
As they drove through the little town with the cozy art shops, Lowry said, “Isn’t Laguna a lovely town, so quaint, so artistic and stuff?”
“Yeah,” Brady said. “How’d you get the idea about Laguna?”
“And the rest of the ideas,” Lowry teased. “That was why you wanted to ride back with us, Brady. You wanted to find out what it is that makes smart detectives tick.”
“All right,” Brady grunted. “Be a wise guy. See if I care. How’d you piece all this together?”
They were coming through the other side of the town now. The sun was beginning to sink on the horizon. The sea had changed from its deep blue color to a dark shade of green.
“Nothing to it, Brady,” Lowry said. “If you don’t get scared that the public is going to start beefing about what’s the matter with our police force and pull in the first sucker who looks like he might have been guilty and won’t have much fight in him. But I won’t rub that in now. First, I suppose it was important that I never believed it was McKay because I knew he couldn’t have had any part in Doris Blair’s life. Both Ramirez’ identification of him and Clayton’s were made under such unbelievable circumstances that I knew there could be nothing to them. The first inkling we had of the name of the man who had been mixed up with Doris was when one of Carrol’s girls told Terry that Doris used to speak of a man whom she called Buzzy. Doris’ landlady had heard of Buzzy, too. You probably had heard about Buzzy but you assumed Buzzy must have been McKay, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Brady said sourly.
“Well, women will think up some strange nicknames for men but Buzzy was Dr. Clayton. For a little while it looked like Carrol might have been Buzzy, especially as it seemed from the experience of our little friend here that Carrol selected the most attractive of his current crop of girls to be his own personal favorite, sort of like a sultan in his harem, you know. But there was something Doris’ landlady told us that seemed to eliminate Carrol. That was the last time Buzzy had called Doris had been on a Friday and then she hadn’t turned up all weekend. That meant a tryst some place together and weekends are when Carrol takes in most of his money at the bar and when he’s needed there the most. It didn’t seem as if he’d leave his flourishing business even for love.
“You probably don’t know about Miss Stafford’s experience with Carrol but it happened that he became very worried about the investigating she was doing and favored her with a call which also ended disastrously for him. That too made it look as if Carrol might have been the man as he was obviously afraid that Terry knew something. The answer to that is now that since he was blackmailing Clayton he couldn’t afford to have any sort of leak which might lead to the doctor, first because that would end a valuable source of revenue to him and second because he must have known that in dealing with Clayton he was dealing with no softy and that if Clayton suspected he had told anything he wouldn’t hesitate to get him.
“All these things still didn’t point to Clayton, of course. If I had approached this properly to start with I could have reached Clayton sooner but I was worried primarily about McKay and how to get him out of the mess instead of how to solve the murder. That was unfortunate because a really smart detective could have found what was phony about Clayton very quickly, I think.”
“When?” Brady interrupted.
“Almost as soon as the investigating began.”
“How do you figure that out?”
“This way. Clayton’s story was that when he came out of a patient’s house there was somebody waiting in the back of his car who held him up. This man, according to him, took his wallet and stole his car which he intended to use to drive off with a girl and murder her. Having committed the crime of robbery and planning the crime of murder, he was still indifferent enough to expose his face completely to the one man who might later identify him if anything went wrong when it would have been the simplest thing in the world to cover his face with a handkerchief, Jesse James style.”
“Something in that,” Brady conceded.
“And most important of all was the way you neglected the element of the patient Clayton was seeing at three o’clock in the morning. Didn’t it ever occur to you that it was odd that a fashionable doctor from Westwood Hills should make a call at three o’clock in the morning on a charity patient in a slum? Do they generally do that sort of thing? Not many of them, I’d say.”
“You mean he didn’t call on a patient? The Lawrence woman said he did. What would her angle be?”
“He did call on a patient. He most certainly did. It was the finest pretext in the world to be in the neighborhood of Carrol’s Bar at the hour when the girls were leaving. It probably also furnished a swell story for his wife. When he finished with the patient he was just in time to meet Doris Blair and take her for that ride. In answering that call he had a stall for his wife, for you fellows, for all of us. It came in nice and handy for him, you see, and I bet he felt smug about doing a good deed that helped him out plenty at the same time. But when Mrs. Lawrence’s baby got sick again a week later, and she phoned him in the middle of the night to come out again, he refused to come. In fact, he even hung up on her. That was a big mistake. It proved that he wasn’t all charity.”
“You found that out?”
“Yes. Didn’t you?” Lowry asked.
Brady looked shamefaced. “I got to admit we didn’t pick up that point. We weren’t interested in what happened a week later.”
They drove along in silence for a while, each lost in his own thoughts.
Brady broke it finally. He asked, “How’d you manage to find out about the house in Laguna?”
Lowry smiled. “I knew if he were having an affair with Doris they must have been going someplace together. They weren’t doing it in the treetops. You said you had checked all hotels and apartments and hadn’t come up with anything worthwhile. And then his daughter tipped me off about the house in Laguna.”
“His daughter?”
Lowry nodded. “Yes, a cute little girl, pretty as a picture. I feel pretty rotten about using her words as a hook to send her old man to the death chamber, but that’s the way it goes.”
“Where’d you find her?”
“I went to see Clayton this morning,” Lowry explained. “I was just going along on a hunch, trying to see if he could be made to realize that his testimony would send McKay to the lethal chamber. I didn’t even begin to suspect him of being the man, then. I just wanted him to reconsider his testimony. I, too, was impressed with that doubt which Clayton seemed to have about McKay. I thought perhaps he really was being sincere about not being sure it was McKay he saw. Maybe, I figured, I could get him to back down and not seem so positive on the witness stand. I didn’t know yet that his hesitation was part of his plan to make it seem authentic. On the other hand, there’s always the likelihood to be considered that he did feel a little sorry to be sending an innocent man to the gas chamber for his crime. Perhaps he thought McKay might get off and he still wouldn’t be involved. I don’t know what he was thinking. But anyway, I went to talk to him, and after I left I met his child and his wife in the garden, and just for no reason at all I smiled and said hello. Cutest little child you want to see. Anyway, I was talking to the child. She said something about there being a summer house at Laguna. If the suspicions that began to pop into my mind were at all correct, then that would neatly take care of the problem of where Doris and her lover had been going. As it happens, I was right. The earring that Carrol found was probably lost there the last time they were there together. That was the time Doris’ landlady was telling you about.”
