Tully sat up straight. Smith glanced over at him. He immediately pushed the pile of paper aside.
“Okay, Dave.”
“Is there an autopsy report yet on the Blake woman?”
“Just a preliminary one.”
“What’s it look like?”
“The M.E. is pretty sure she died as a result of acute alcoholism. He’s making the usual tests for poison, but there are no marks of violence on her, no toxic indications so far except the alcohol.”
“So she’s going to he written off,” Tully said with a peculiar smile, “as an accidental death?”
“In all probability.” Smith leaned back in his swivel chair, clasped his manicured hands behind his head. “From the empties in the room and blood analysis, she died when her intake of alcohol passed the critical point. She took one big slug too many — if she had passed out before that, she’d likely have survived. Maudie’s tough luck was that she collapsed on the bed before she drank that last one. She landed on her back and she was too near unconsciousness to get up; about all she had the strength to do was lift the bottle to her mouth that last time. Her body tried to heave the stuff but, with her head way back the way it was, only an insignificant amount came up. So...” Julian Smith shrugged and sat up. “We get two-three deaths like that a year, Dave, even in a town of this size. Okay?”
“No,” David Tully said.
“What d’ye mean no?” the detective demanded.
“I mean no, you’ve got it all wrong, Julian. Maudie Blake’s death was not an accident. It’s too damn convenient for somebody.”
“Murdered, hm?” Smith seemed unexcited.
“Yes, I think she was murdered.”
“And who’s the somebody you think murdered her?”
“The same one who murdered Cox.”
“You mean,” Julian Smith said, “Ruth?”
Tully’s face convulsed. He leaped to his feet, upsetting the chair. “Damn you, Julian, I don’t mean Ruth! Ruth’s the pigeon in this thing, don’t you see it?”
“Dave,” Smith said. “Why don’t you drop by your office? Or go home and lie down? You’re as wound up as an eight-day clock. What do you say?”
“No!” Tully stood glaring down at him. Suddenly he righted the overturned chair and seated himself in it. “No, Julian, I’m going to sit here till you listen to what I have to say. Or have me thrown out.”
Smith hesitated. Then he smiled. “Of course I’ll listen, Dave. Shoot.”
Tully sat forward immediately. “I’ve had some time to think since this morning, and I’ve doped it out. Ruth didn’t fire that shot. Someone else did. Maudie Blake knew that — knew who really murdered Cox. She implicated Ruth to cover up the killer. And when I came nosing around, Maudie tightened the noose around Ruth’s neck to keep me off the right track.”
“You mean by sending you up to Wilton Lodge, Dave?”
Tully blinked. “You knew that?”
“I’ve had one of my men tailing you. We know you went to see Maudie Blake yesterday. We know you then drove up to the Lodge. After you left there, my man tackled the manager. Dalrymple was quite cooperative.”
“It’s too damn bad,” Tully said thickly, “your man didn’t stick around Flynn’s Inn instead. The Blake woman would still be alive!”
Lieutenant Smith frowned the least bit. “I don’t see that that kind of talk is going to get us anywhere, Dave. What’s your point?”
“Don’t you see it? Why Maudie sent me up to the Lodge? She wasn’t interested in the lousy hundred bucks she asked me for, or the seventy-eight I was actually able to cough up. She was after a goldmine! That Wilton Lodge business strengthens the circumstantial case against Ruth. It sends me off in the wrong direction. To that extent it protects the real killer better, and so ups the value of what Maudie’s selling. Protection, Julian — that’s what she had in mind! She was going to hold what she knew over the killer’s head and make him pay through the nose for keeping quiet!”
Tully stopped, out of breath, looking at Julian Smith with shining eyes. The shine slowly dulled.
“I’m sorry, Dave,” Smith said, shaking his head. “I don’t buy it.”
“Why not, for God’s sake?” Tully cried. “Doesn’t it make sense?”
“As a theory, Dave, sure. But it’s a theory based on pure assumption, with not a scrap of evidence or a single provable fact to support it — based on two assumptions, actually: that Ruth was not the last one to see Cox, and that Maudie Blake was murdered. There’s no evidence that anyone but Ruth visited Cox on the night of his murder, and the medical findings are that the Blake woman died of overdrinking.” Smith shrugged. “You know, Dave, unsupported assumptions are tricky things. I could assume something you wouldn’t like.”
“What’s that?” Tully muttered.
“The circumstantial case against your wife rested largely on Maudie Blake’s testimony as to what she overheard from her room at the Hobby Motel the night Cox was shot,” the detective said. “I could assume that Ruth murdered Maudie — to get rid of a damaging witness. As a matter of fact, Dave, Maudie’s death is a bad break for the State... and a very good one for Ruth.”
Tully sat still. He had not thought of that at all.
“So, you see,” Smith said mildly, “as the officer in charge of this case I’d have to welcome evidence that Maudie was murdered, because it would corroborate the assumption that she was murdered by your wife. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where you’re sitting in this merry-go-round, Maudie was not murdered, so my assumption carries just about as much weight as yours.”
Tully was silent.
“Dave, Dave,” Lieutenant Smith went on in the same mild tone, “face it — tough as it is, face it. Sick, broke, Cox came back to town to blackmail Ruth. To keep him from wrecking her life, she shot him. Nothing else explains the use of your gun, taken from your house. No other motive has turned up.”
Julian Smith rose. “I can’t blame you for trying to find an out for Ruth. I’m sure if she were my wife I’d do the same thing — shield or no shield.”
He came around the desk.
“I’ll tell you what, Dave.”
Tully looked up.
“Suppose I take the tail off you. I didn’t like having to put you under surveillance in the first place. But in this business you either learn to treat your friends like anybody else or you turn in your shield and take up a milk route. I had to make sure. That Wilton Lodge trip of yours convinces me you really don’t know where your wife is.”
Tully’s lips twisted. “Am I supposed to say thanks, Julian?”
The lieutenant said carefully, “I don’t think I get you.”
He rose. “You’re telling me I’m not going to be tailed any more because you still think I know where Ruth is and may try to contact her — or she me. You’re not taking the tail off me, you’re doubling it.” The detective’s barbered cheeks began to show blood. “I don’t blame you, Julian. You’re a good cop. Let me know if you get a lead on my wife.”
Julian Smith grinned faintly. “And vice versa?”
“Depends,” Tully said. “It all depends.”
He picked up his hat and left.
Tully let the automatic part of him take charge of the Imperial’s drive home; he had other work for his conscious mind.
He kept trying to visualize the shapeless shadow of the unknown — the stealthy black blob he was now choosing to think of as the real killer of Crandall Cox and Maudie Blake.
If only he could form a picture of him... of it. The Blob...
After a while Tully gave that up as hopeless. He — it — the Blob might be anyone in the world.
He forced himself to concentrate on the crime.