“That’s the only way it plays.”
“Let’s talk to Jordan again,” Grey said.
They double-teamed Jordan and kept questions looping in at him until he had admitted almost everything. He admitted ownership of the gun, said he had bought it two years ago and had kept it in his desk ever since. He admitted quarreling with Hofert that afternoon and said that Hofert kept provoking arguments. He confirmed the secretary’s statement about the time of her departure and the fact that he and Hofert had stayed alone in the office.
He denied killing Hofert.
“Why? Why would I do it?”
“You were fighting with him. Maybe he swung at you—”
“Dave? You’re crazy. Why should he hit me?”
“Maybe he hated you. Maybe you hated each other. You shot him, panicked, and left. You couldn’t face his corpse in the morning and you stayed home in bed until we came here for you.”
“But I—”
“You stood to gain complete control of the business with him dead. All the profits instead of half, and no partner to get in your hair.”
“Profits!” Jordan was shouting now. “I have enough! I have plenty!” He caught his breath, slowed down. “I’m a bachelor, I live alone, I save my money. Check my bank account. What do I want with blood money?”
“Hofert was dead weight. He was in hock up to his ears and he was giving you a bad time. You didn’t plan on killing him, Jordan. You did it on the spur of the moment. He provoked it. And—”
“I did not kill David Hofert!”
“You admit it’s your gun.”
“Yes, damn it, it is my gun. I never fired it in my life. I never pointed it at anything. It was in my desk, in case I ever needed it—”
“And last night you needed it.”
“No.”
“Last night—”
“Last night I finished my work and went home,” Jordan said. “I went home, I was tired, I had a headache. Dave stayed in the office. I told him I might not be in the next morning. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. That was the last thing he said to me. ‘Take it easy.’ ”
Traynor and Grey looked at each other.
“He was alive when I left him.”
“Then who killed him, Jordan? Who lured him into your office and took your gun and shot him in the chest and—”
They kept up the questions, kept hammering away like a properly efficient team. They got nowhere. Jordan never contradicted himself and never made very much sense. They kicked his story apart and he stayed with it anyway. After fifteen more minutes of getting nowhere they took him back to his cell and locked him away. Traynor stopped to stare at him, at the small round face peering out through the bars of the cage. Jordan looked trapped.
Two hours later, Traynor pushed a pile of papers to one side of his desk, eased his chair back, and stood up. Grey asked him where he was going. “Out,” Traynor told him.
“He said that Jim Jordan was trying to ruin him,” Mrs. Hofert said. “I always felt... well, Dave felt persecuted sometimes. He had so many big plans that came to nothing. He thought the world was ganging up on him. I never believed that Jim would actually—”
“We think it happened during an argument,” Traynor told her. “Jordan got excited, didn’t know exactly what he was doing. If he had planned to murder your husband he would have picked a brighter way to do it. But in the heat of an argument things happen in a hurry.”
“The heat of an argument.” She sat for a long time looking at nothing at all. Then she said, “I believe everything has a pattern, Mr. Traynor. Do you believe that?”
Traynor didn’t answer.
“Dave’s life — and his death, trying, struggling, working so very hard, and getting every bad break there was. Getting bad breaks because he tried so hard, because he wasn’t prudent about money. And then having everything build to a climax with everything going wrong at once. And the tragic ending, dying at what he could only have thought of as the worst possible moment. You see, all he wanted to do was provide for me and for the boys. He was... he was the kind of man who would have thought it a triumph to die well insured.” More long silence. “And not even that. A year ago, six months ago, all his policies were paid up. Then, as things went wrong, he cashed the policies to get money to recoup his losses, and lost that, too. And then the final irony of dying without anything to leave us but a legacy of debts. Do you see the pattern, Mr. Traynor?”
“I think so,” Traynor said.
He got very busy then. He went to the lawyer he had spoken to earlier, went alone without Grey. He asked the lawyer some questions, went to an insurance man and asked more questions. He called the Haber girl, and with her he went over the few hours prior to Hofert’s death. He got the autopsy results, the lab photos, the lab report. He went to the Hofert & Jordan office and stood in the room where Hofert had died, visualizing everything, running it through in his mind.
It was pushing six o’clock. He picked up a phone, called headquarters, and got through to Grey. “Don’t leave yet,” he said. “I’ll be right over. Stay put.”
“You got something?”
“Yes,” he said.
They were in a small cubbyhole office off the main room. Grey sat at a desk. Traynor stood up and did a lot of pacing.
“There were no fingerprints on the gun,” he said.
“So? Jordan wiped it.”
“Why?”
“Why? If you shot somebody, would you leave prints on the gun?”
Traynor walked over to the door, turned, came halfway back. “If I was going to wipe prints off a gun I would also do something about setting up an alibi,” he said. “The way we’ve got it figured, Jordan killed strictly on impulse and reacted like a scared rabbit. He went for his gun, shot Hofert, ran out of the building, and went home and stayed there shaking. He didn’t sponge up blood, he didn’t try to lug Hofert out of his office, didn’t do a thing to disguise the killing. He left the gun right there, didn’t try any of the tricks a panicky killer might try. But he wiped the prints off the gun.”
“He must have been half out of his mind.”
“It still doesn’t add. There’s another way, though, that does.”
“Go on.”
“Suppose you’re Hofert. Now—”
“Why do we always have to suppose I’m the dead one?”
“Shut up,” Traynor said. “Suppose you’re David Hofert. You’re deep in debt and you can’t see your way clear. You look at yourself in the mirror and figure you’re a failure. You want money for your wife, security for your kids. But you haven’t got a penny, your insurance policies have lapsed, and your whole world is caving in on you. You’re frantic.”
“I don’t—”
“Wait. You’ve always been a little paranoid. Now you think the whole world is after you and your partner is purposely trying to make things rough for you. You’d like to go and jump off a bridge, but that wouldn’t get you anywhere. If you died in an accident, at least your wife and kids would get the hundred grand, the insurance dough which Jordan would turn over to them for your share of the business. Suicide voids that policy. If you kill yourself, they wind up with nothing.”
Grey was nodding slowly now.
“But if your partner kills you—”
“What happens then?”
“It’s a cute deal,” Traynor said. “I went over it twice, with the lawyer and with the agent who wrote the policies. Now, each man is insured for a hundred grand, with that amount payable to the other or the other’s heirs. If Jordan kills Hofert, he can’t collect. You can’t profit legally through the commission of a felony. But the insurance company still has to pay off. If the policy’s paid up, and if it’s been in force over two years, the company has to make it good. They can’t hand the dough to Jordan if he’s the killer, but they have to pay somebody.”