“Apparently, someone was killed. Who was it?”
Lieutenant Kleinsmidt opened the door, entered the room, and pushed the door shut.
Chief Laster stared down at some notes in a leather-backed book which was open on his desk. Then he took a pen from his pocket and scribbled a few more notes.
He looked up, screwed the cap back on the pen, put it in his pocket, and said, “Harry Beegan was shot and killed last night sometime between quarter to nine and nine-twenty-five.”
“Too bad.”
They both looked at me. I didn’t say anything more and didn’t give them any facial expression to read.
“The girl he was living with seems to have skipped out,” Chief Laster went on.
“Was he living with her?”
“Well, he was there a lot.”
“There’s quite a difference,” I said.
“A very few minutes before he was killed — sometime within two hours let us say of the time of his death — you called on this girl. Beegan entered the picture. You had an argument. You left. Beegan accused the girl of having fallen for you. He was jealous. He accused her of going out to meet you. She swore she wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. She went out. She met you. Beegan followed. You had a fight over the girl. I think it’s fair to surmise that you arranged with her to run away from Beegan and meet you in Los Angeles. She left to keep that rendezvous.”
“I don’t follow your reasoning.”
“You were working on a case. Your employer was here. You had planned to stay here for two or three days.”
“Who says so?”
“It’s a fair inference. Mrs. Cool is still here.”
“The job I’m working on is finding someone who disappeared from Los Angeles. That’s where the trail starts, and that’s a mighty good place to pick it up.”
He ignored me. “Suddenly last night out of a clear sky, you announced you were going to Los Angeles on the first available train. You left the Sal Sagev Hotel, which is right at the depot, with lots of time to spare. You had every motive, every incentive, and every opportunity to shoot Harry Beegan, and you know that as well as I do.”
“He was shot in the girl’s apartment?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you fix the time so accurately and yet still have an indefinite interim period?”
“The Clutmers were in their apartment until they went down to the station to meet some friends who were coming through. They left the train and walked directly back to their apartment. They hadn’t heard anything at all — no sounds coming from the next apartment. They’d have heard voices raised in an argument. Unquestionably, they’d have heard a shot. That fixes the time of the murder absolutely within those limits.”
“Unless the Clutmers are lying.”
“Why should they lie?”
“Suppose they didn’t like this man, Beegan, and had been waiting for an opportunity to do something about it? When was the body discovered?”
“Shortly before midnight.”
“All right, suppose they came home, found Beegan either standing in the door of the girl’s apartment or in the hallway or on the stairs? They had an argument. Or else they just walked into the apartment behind him and took a pot shot at him. If you list them as suspects, the killing could have been any time before the body was discovered.”
“It sounds silly.”
“Perhaps it does to you. It sounds silly to me to think that I’d have shot him.”
“You wanted his girl.”
“No more than I want a couple of hundred other attractive women.”
“Enough to run risks of taking a beating.”
“I was working.”
“I know,” he said, and ran the tips of his fingers along the angle of his jaw, “you have a great devotion to duty.”
“When I work on a case, I want to crack it — the same as you do.”
“Well, as far as that is concerned, the Clutmers are out of it. That means that the time of the murder stands. Now come on, Lam, let’s be fair about this. If you were going to have a meeting with the girl, we’ll find it out. If that’s all there was to it, we’ll forget it. But you know good and well that’s why you wanted to go to Los Angeles. Now, isn’t it?”
“I don’t get you.”
“You fixed it up with the girl to meet you in Los Angeles.”
“No.”
He said, “That denial just doesn’t register with me.”
“That’s okay. Too bad you dragged me off the train.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m only a private detective,” I said. “I don’t want to tell you how to run your business, but if you had let me go on to Los Angeles and put a shadow on me and if I’d met the girl there, then you’d really have had something. As it is now, you can’t prove I was going to meet the girl.”
“It’s a fair inference.”
“Nuts!”
Laster said, “There’s one other highly suspicious circumstance. When Kleinsmidt asked you if you knew where Beegan lived, you told him you didn’t.”
“That’s right. I didn’t.”
“But you’d already been up to the apartment.”
“He didn’t live there.”
“His girl friend did.”
“That wasn’t what Lieutenant Kleinsmidt asked me.”
“Aren’t you being rather technical?”
“He asked me if I knew where Beegan lived.”
“Well, you knew what he meant.”
“And because I knew where his girl friend lived and didn’t tell Kleinsmidt, you think I was holding out?”
“Yes.”
“I saw no reason to drag the girl into it.”
Laster said, “That’s all for the present.”
“I can go now?”
“Yes.”
“I want to go to the Sal Sagev Hotel.”
“Well, you can.”
“I see no reason why I should walk. Remember, I was taken off a train to Los Angeles. I had my transportation and berth all paid for. What are you going to do about that?”
Laster thought for a minute, then said, “Nothing.”
“I want to get back to Los Angeles.”
“Well, you can’t leave until we’ve finished our investigations.”
“When’s that going to be?”
“I don’t know.”
I said, “I’ll report to Bertha Cool. If she tells me to go to Los Angeles, I’m going.”
“I’m not going to permit it.”
I said, “If I’m locked up, I won’t go. If I’m not locked up, I’m going. How about having the Lieutenant take me to the Sal Sagev Hotel?”
Laster said, “Don’t be silly. It’s only a couple of blocks. You’re a cool customer, Lam. Kleinsmidt told me as much, but—”
“Nuts. I’m giving you all the breaks. I could make you send me back to Los Angeles. I may yet, after I’ve talked with Bertha Cool. Right now, all I’m saying is that I want to go to the Sal Sagev Hotel.”
Kleinsmidt got up from his chair. “Come on, Lam,” he said.
There was a police car outside. Kleinsmidt was grinning as I got in.
“Well?” I asked.
“I told him to let you go through to LOS Angeles, have the Los Angeles police pick up your trail, see if you met the girl, and if you did to pinch you both; otherwise, to leave you alone. He wouldn’t listen to me. He said it was a cinch you were the one who shot him, that from all reports, you were a pencil-necked little chap who would spill everything you knew if we jerked you off the train, rushed you back here, and didn’t do any talking on the way.”
I yawned.
Kleinsmidt’s car slid smoothly through the streets, deposited me at the Sal Sagev Hotel.
“How about you, Lieutenant?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What were you doing last night between eight-forty-five and nine-twenty-five?”