she’s staying at. But that can’t be it,” he went on impatiently. “I forgot you said he’d never even seen his daughter.”
“But there was that picture of her when she was fourteen years old in the Denver paper,” she reminded him excitedly. “He did see that. And she looks just the same today. Hardly a day older. I bet that’s it! And my name… Carla. I should have changed it in California, I suppose, but I just didn’t bother. I was afraid I’d forget to answer to another name.”
“No wallet in his pockets,” Shayne told her. “No identification and nothing to show where he lives or where he came from. A few dollars in his pocket. Just a car parked downstairs with a number on it corresponding to this ticket. It’ll have a registration card.”
“Mike,” she said in a quavering voice, putting her hand tightly on his arm. “Look at Vicky there. Look at her face. So young and innocent. So full of hope and love. Does she have to suffer? Does her life have to be ruined? What has she done to deserve that?”
“She’s a beautiful girl,” Shayne said awkwardly. “But nothing terrible is going to happen to her, Carla. Not if she faces up to it. No Florida jury is going to convict a girl like that of shooting a man in self-defense. In fact, if handled properly I doubt there’ll even be a trial.”
“But there’ll be the publicity. Every sordid word of it spread out in headlines. Look at him, Mike.” She put her fingertip beneath the picture of Vicky’s fiance. “A senator! Son of an old Southern family. Their wedding the society event of the season! She killed her own father, Mike. Don’t forget that. You know what the papers will do with it. You know what the senator will do. And think about the child herself, Mike. No matter what happens, once she finds out the truth she’ll always have to live with the fact that she killed her own father. Think how that will warp her. Is that fair? Is it right?”
“A lot of things happen in this world that aren’t right, Carla. This thing has happened. You’ve got to face it.”
“Why?” she cried vehemently. “Why does Vicky have to face it? Isn’t it enough for her to know that she has killed a man? That’s no small burden to live with. Why make it worse?”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“If we could just let it go at that. If we could… get his body away from here, Mike. Let it be found some other place. You say there’s no identification on him.”
“But he’s got a police record. He’ll eventually be identified by his fingerprints.”
“All right,” she cried out defiantly. “He’ll be identified as Al Donlin, ex-convict. Nothing in the world to connect him with Vicky Andrews. He’ll be dead and buried and no one will really care who killed him. Let it be marked off as an unsolved murder.”
“But your Vicky will still know,” he reminded her.
“What will she know?” she flared. “She will know that an unknown stranger forced himself in here and she was forced to defend herself. I’ll think up some story to satisfy her, Mike. I’ll say he’s a man I met in California after she went off to school who was my lover for a time, and has been bothering me ever since. You can see by her note that he didn’t really tell her anything. She’ll be able to sleep in peace believing that. She’ll be able to go through her marriage tomorrow… go on and find the happiness she deserves in life. She’s strong. I know my Vicky. Given the ghost of a chance, she’ll throw this off and forget about it in a few months.”
“It’s against the law to move a body in a homicide case, Carla,” Shayne told her. “It’s also against the law not to report one to the police immediately.” He looked at his watch and frowned. “It’s past midnight. I can’t wait much longer for Vicky to call you.”
“You mean that, Mike? You really mean it?” She looked at him wonderingly. “You won’t even lift a finger to help?”
“When I was licensed by the state I took an oath to uphold the law,” he told her mildly. “In that respect I’m no different from a policeman.”
“Uphold the law?” She spat out the words contemptuously. “What devious crimes are committed every day in the sacred name of the law. You’re just mouthing words, Mike. My child’s life is at stake. You have already said she will be exonerated by a court… that there probably won’t even be a trial. What difference, then, does it make if his body is found a mile from here? It will simply save her from a nasty scandal… from the utter ruination of a young life. Think about it, Mike. I’m not asking much. Nothing wrong. Nothing that will in any way change the end result. If she were a criminal and I were asking you to let her go free it would be different. But she’s done nothing criminal in the eyes of the law you prate about. You admit that yourself. Then why, in the name of God, should she be publicly pilloried?”
He shook his head doggedly. “I can’t be judge and jury. God knows, I’ll help any way I can, Carla. I have a certain amount of influence with the authorities and with the newspapers in Miami. If she comes back and gives herself up, we may be able to keep the whole affair very quiet and out of the papers.”
She said bitterly, “You know that is a false hope, Mike. With Vicky engaged to marry Senator William C. Greer of Miami Beach tomorrow afternoon. You say you’ll help any way you can. What you mean is that you refuse to take a chance by helping her. You’ll help any way you can without sticking your neck out.
“And I was fool enough to believe those stories Brett used to tell me about you. The way you ran circles around the cops here and on the Beach. The way I remember it from a couple of the books Brett wrote about your cases, it wouldn’t be the first time you moved a body in a homicide case. What about that girl who was murdered in your hotel room just when your wife was going off on a vacation? You and that reporter friend of yours drove half over the city of Miami swapping her body from one car to another.”
“But that was…” Shayne tried to cut in on the flow of words, but she rushed on:
“And another time there was the body in your secretary’s bedroom. You didn’t have any moral qualms about lugging his corpse down the fire escape and loading it into your car.”
“But Lucy was in deadly danger that time,” Shayne pointed out angrily. “If the cops had found the body there…”
“And it’s my little girl who’s in deadly danger this time,” she interrupted him. “It’s not your secretary… or you. It’s Vicky. I wish to God now I hadn’t ever telephoned you,” she went on viciously. “I could have done something. Thrown it out the window, maybe. Anything would be better than just to leave him lying there. But I’d listened to Brett telling all his stories about you and what a great guy you were, so now I’m stuck with you. I don’t suppose you’d even be willing right now to walk out of this room and forget you ever saw me,” she ended forlornly. “Let me try to figure out something for myself.” Shayne compressed his lips and got up and strode across the room and stopped in front of a mirror to look at his reflection curiously.
The hell of it was… there was so much truth in what she was saying. Certainly, justice would not be served by leaving the body in the bedroom and having Vicky and her mother crucified by the public press. He had taken matters in his own hands in the past without any inner qualms about the legality of his actions.
But, as she pointed out so scathingly, that had been when he was endangered… or someone close to him like Lucy.
Is that the kind of selfish guy you really are, he asked himself in the mirror. When the chips are really down, haven’t you got the guts to do for someone else what you wouldn’t hesitate to do for yourself? Have you been kidding yourself all these years? Kidding Brett and the public to the point that a woman like this thinks you will come to her help, and entrusts her daughter’s future to you… and you refuse because it’s too much trouble and might get you in bad with the cops?
Looking at himself in the mirror, he knew he wasn’t that kind of selfish guy. He had just got complacent and lazy these last few easy-going years. He’d been riding on his reputation and collecting big fees that involved no personal danger and little real difficulty.
He grinned at the mirror suddenly, and his reflection grinned back at him, looking a dozen years younger and a dozen years more reckless than he remembered himself looking for a long time.
A trace of the grin still lingered on his face as he turned back toward the sofa and said very gently, “You sit tight here for Vicky to call. If she does… tell her to sit tight wherever she is until I see if I can work an angle or two.”
5
