Six Seconds to Kill

“That’s one of the things we’ve been wondering,” Shayne said. “The official reason is that he can’t afford to be intimidated by a Miami dentist. Unofficially, he’s hoping to flush out a crazy who may or may not be trying to murder a Supreme Court Justice, among other people, including Crowther himself.”

Rourke’s head shot forward at the end of his long neck. “More on that, please.”

Shayne described the acid-weakened climbing rope, and Crowther’s theory on why it had happened. Rourke listened intently.

“You don’t think Camilla did it?”

“No,” Shayne said. “I think Crowther did it himself.”

Rourke stood up, running his fingers through his tangled hair. He walked to the end of the dais and came back. “Mike, this man is attorney general of the United States.”

“And also, as you pointed out, a conniver, a frustrated ham actor. He’s mean and ambitious, and on top of that, scared. He hasn’t been on page one for months. How did this Freedom Medal come up in the first place?”

“It’s a money-raising lunch, and the medal’s just a gimmick. One of Crowther’s people probably dropped a hint that he was available.”

“And the next step was to leak the news that his law firm is on retainer from U.S. Metals.”

Rourke was skeptical. “Mike, that isn’t all plus.”

“It depends on his next move. He’s been mentioned for the Senate, and he may want the big political contributors to realize that he’s safe, in spite of his civil-liberties background. It guarantees him a nationwide news story. Defying potential demonstrators and ignoring threats on his life, fearless Eliot Crowther-you’d write it that way yourself.”

Rourke snapped his fingers silently. “If we could prove it, Mike-”

“We can’t,” Shayne said. “There’s more, and I know in advance that some of this you’re not going to believe. Camilla Steele has been writing him letters over the years, threatening to kill him in various gruesome ways. Half serious and half joking, and according to Berger they got under his skin. He got her an interesting job. He sent Berger down to lean on her. They had her arrested. She went right on writing the letters. The point is, she’s not exactly crazy. She had a real grievance and Crowther knows it. He got plenty of mileage out of that Felix Steele conviction. I doubt if he felt much remorse when the other confession came in.”

“Somehow I doubt it, too.”

“Nevertheless, it must have set up a few vibrations. He knew he deserved something, if only to be scared by an occasional threatening letter. He’d look silly if he tried to lock her away for good. But she’s been getting more and more unstable, and I have an idea the letters have been getting wilder and more convincing. She’s drinking and dropping pills, and there’s always an outside chance, he must think, that someday she’ll walk up out of a crowd with a gun-”

“Mike!” Rourke poured more whiskey and drank it excitedly. “Are you saying that Crowther set up this assassination himself?”

Shayne corrected him. “Not assassination. Attempted assassination. If he’s supplying the gun he can make sure it’s loaded with blanks.”

Rourke gave an awed whistle. “Let me think about this for a minute.”

“I talked to her boyfriend and her psychiatrist. She’s being treated for recurrent depressions. She tried to kill herself at least twice, and nearly succeeded. Here’s the hypothetical question. If somebody found out about those letters, if this person wanted to kill Crowther himself but was afraid to, if he called Camilla and asked her if she was just kicking the idea around or would she go through with it if somebody else made the arrangements? All right. Both the doctor and the guy think she’d probably say yes.”

“You don’t happen to have those calls on tape?”

“No, I’m guessing. It’s my guess that he’d use a trace of a Spanish accent, to tie it in with the Latin American demonstrations.”

Rourke shook his head decisively. “The trouble is, everything would have to work out exactly right, and how often does that happen? After he gave her the gun she wouldn’t be under his control.”

“Back off a step, Tim. I know it sounds complicated, but it’s really incredibly simple. I think we’ll find that Crowther and Justice Jenkinson know each other socially. At some point in the last few months he located Jenkinson’s climbing gear and switched ropes. After that, it was a matter of two or three phone calls. He couldn’t possibly lose. If she said no, he could stop worrying about the letters. If she agreed, and then found that she couldn’t go through with it after all, she’d be mad at herself, and the next time she tried suicide she’d make sure nobody was around to bring her back.”

“And if she actually did take out the gun and fired-”

“Sure. She’d miss. She’s been drinking heavily. There’s a chance she never handled a gun before in her life. Nobody’ll be surprised if she misses the target with all her shots, even at close range. Then one of two things can happen. Everybody’s going to be very tense and gun-shy. The place will be crawling with cops and Secret Service people. They’ve been warned that an assassin is around somewhere. Suddenly a wild-eyed woman starts banging away with a revolver. Their guns are going to jump into their hands, and it’s a fairly safe bet that one or two will go off.”

Rourke repeated his long whistle. “Son of a bitch. Tricky, all right, even for Crowther.”

“And if she lives through it, she’ll get a long jolt in jail or end up in a hospital for the criminally insane. Either way, she’ll be out of his hair.”

“Now wait. Wait. What if she doesn’t get off all the shots, and we find a couple of blank rounds in her gun?”

“In Crowther’s shoes, in one of the early phone calls I’d tell her to keep firing till the gun was empty. Five shots are better than one, and so on. I’d keep drumming it into her until I was sure she understood it.”

“Mike, it’s too fantastic to believe, but I’m almost beginning to believe it. If it worked, it would make his career. He’s important enough to demonstrate against. He’s important enough to try to kill. The publicity! My God, it would go on for weeks. The best kind of publicity. There was a story once about how he choked when he was flying somewhere and one of the engines caught fire. He went down on his knees and prayed. It hurt him politically. Everybody thought it was a little excessive, a little chicken. This would blot that all out. A cool head in a crisis. And why the hell wouldn’t he be cool, if he knew there weren’t any real bullets in the gun? Mike, it could make him President! What a story, what a story.”

“Are you convinced?”

“I didn’t say that. I said what a story. Because what’s it based on? A long series of guesses.”

“Up to a point. He’s prosecuted enough murder cases to know the importance of physical evidence. There’s one gap in the story the way it stands. If she fired five live rounds and missed with all five, what happened to the slugs?”

Rourke looked thoughtful. “That would certainly be asked. They couldn’t all fly out an open window.”

Shayne stood up decisively. Leaving the dais, he strode to the television platform.

“I may need your testimony, Tim, so pay close attention. Publicity is the key to this. You know he’d make sure the cameras were pointed the right way. All three networks are going to be here tomorrow. After he’s seated and while he’s speaking he’ll get full security coverage, and she wouldn’t be able to shoot more than once or twice. For Crowther’s purposes, the best time for the shooting to take place would be during the first minute or two after he gets off the elevator. A crowd will be milling around. He’ll want to be looking straight at the cameras when it happens, so people can see how calm and unruffled he is. That means the assassin ought to be standing just about here.”

He indicated a spot in the corridor, outside the arched entrance to the ballroom. There was a cigarette- shaped burn in the carpet, possibly put there as a marker. The burn pointed toward the elevators.

Rourke’s undernourished frame was coiled forward. “Goddamn it, Mike, you mean you’ve found some bullet holes?”

“Two,” Shayne said. “There may be others, but two would be enough. He wouldn’t want to have more holes than shots. If she fires twice and the unfired rounds turn out to be blanks, whoever loaded the gun made a mistake, that’s all. Here’s the line of fire.”

He extended his arm, an imaginary gun in his hand. Rourke followed the line down the corridor. Beyond the elevators, the corridor turned sharply. He examined the wall at the turn.

“Hell, I don’t see anything.”