He had gotten his positive reaction on one of the molds. A dozen or so nitrate specks which the invisible backfire of the gun had deposited on the glove had been lifted off by the mold and now, due to the application of the reagent, showed as blue specks against the milky white paraffin near the crotch of the thumb and along the upper edge of the forefinger.
Merlini looked at the mold a moment, then said, “Funny, isn’t it, that, if I used gloves when I shot the girl and when I handled the photo, I was so careless when I loaded the body and the other stuff into my car?”
“I don’t think so,” Chief Hooper put in. “In the first place, you’d already given us the gloves to test. And besides, you’d know that if anyone found the body in the car, the lack of fingerprints on the lid wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. You’re guilty as hell either way.”
“If my prints weren’t on the car,” Merlini insisted, “I might have an easier time selling you on the idea that someone planted that stuff there. Not much easier, but some.”
“No,” Hooper contradicted, “not even some.”
Merlini fished for some more information. “The glove-wearer fired a shot, all right. But we still don’t know if the Headless Lady was shot — or do we? Are there any bullet wounds on the body?”
“The medical examiner is having a look at it now,” Schafer answered. “I doubt if he’ll find any. I think you got her in the head.”
“I hope you’re going to make a strenuous effort to find that head.”
Schafer nodded. “The boys I left at the lot are doing that, and there’s a search in progress where you found the trailer. But you don’t really want us to find it, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” Merlini said earnestly. “Because once you find it, you’ll know that I’m not the murderer. And without it, unless the medical examiner does find some evidence of violent death on or in the body, you or anyone else is going to have the devil’s own time proving that she was murdered.”
“Now I know you’re nuts,” the Chief said. “Her head was sawed off, wasn’t it? You don’t think that was an accident, or suicide, or death from natural causes, do you — for God’s sake?”
“The fact that her head was removed certainly doesn’t prove murder. There was very little blood on either the body or the sword. I think your medical examiner may tell you that the head was removed quite a while after death. My guess would be about twelve hours — death at 7:00 a.m., head removed at 7:00 p.m. You can prove mutilation of a dead body; you can’t positively prove that her death was not accidental, natural, or suicidal.”
“It ain’t very likely to be one of those, is it?” the Chief said.
“Maybe not,” Merlini said. “But ‘It ain’t likely,’ won’t be good enough when you get into court. You’ll do a lot better if you hunt like hell for the head and hope it’ll give you the evidence that will prove cause of death.”
The Captain reached for the phone. I’m still wondering why the phone’s mouthpiece didn’t shrivel up or at least blister when he spoke into it. The exchange operator was startled enough so that she gave him his number in record time.
“Byrd,” he howled. “What have you done on that autopsy so far?”
We could hear the doctor’s voice coming angrily in reply. “For God’s sake, man! The body just came in. What do you think I use, a high-speed buzz saw?”
“It’d help,” Schafer said. “Are there any surface indications of the cause of death?”
The doctor’s voice was sarcastic. “Why, yes,” he said. “There’s one little thing. Her head’s missing.”
Schafer glanced at Merlini and spoke again into the phone. “That what killed her?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t I tell you the body just got here?”
“Well, go look, dammit,” Schafer said. “I’ll wait.”
We all waited. Schafer’s left hand played with a pen on the desk and dug savagely with its point into the blotter. Hooper took an angry bite from a plug of tobacco. No one spoke.
Finally the Captain dropped the pen and said, “Yes?”
We heard the doctor’s first words. “There is no exterior indication of what caused death. The head was removed several hours after death.” Then, more puzzled now than angry, he stopped shouting and the rest of what he said came to us as an indistinct muttering.
In the middle of it Schafer suddenly sat bolt upright and barked. “Say that again!”
He listened very briefly; and then, while the doctor’s voice still continued faintly, Schafer reached out and slammed the receiver back on its hook. He swiveled around in his chair to face Merlini.
“For a murderer,” he said in an awed and baffled voice, “even a batty one, you do some of the goddamnedest things. Burns, get me those hair samples I gave you.”
Burns at his desk produced the envelope containing the hair combings Merlini had found in the trailer that morning. Schafer hurriedly opened the envelope, tipped the contents out onto a sheet of paper before him, and pulled the goose-neck desk light down close above them. He stared at them a moment, then slowly looked up. “Merlini,” he said, “how do I know you found these in that trailer?”
I answered him: “If you look at the envelope you’ll see my initials. I was around when he found the hair.”
“You see him take them out of the wastebasket?”
“I—” Then I remembered. I had been outside the trailer when Merlini had made the discovery. “Well, no, but—”
“What the hell is this?” Hooper growled. “And what if Harte had seen him? Merlini’s a sleight-of-hand expert. He takes rabbits out of empty hats. He could pretend to take some little wisps of hair out of a wastebasket without any ever having been there. I could get by with that myself. What—”
Merlini went to bat. “Don’t you two gentlemen ever look before you leap? Perhaps if you examined the trailer yourself you might find more of the same. I didn’t go over the interior with a vacuum cleaner.”
“Always got an answer ready, haven’t you?” Schafer said belligerently. “What did you do, plant more blond hair around the place?”
Merlini raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I see. It’s the blondness of it. Hold your hats, everybody; we’re going to do a loop-the-loop. The doctor says the body is a brunette. That it?”
“Yes, dammit, he did! If this case doesn’t take the cake—”
“That’s mild,” Merlini commented. “It gets the bale of blue ribbons and several gross of loving cups. If the clothing labels do identify the brunette corpse, you’ve still got a blond, vanished, and unknown lady to worry about. We both do, for that matter.”
I suddenly caught a curious look on O’Halloran’s listening face, something that was almost a smile; but he hastily concealed it. None of the others had noticed.
“Chief,” the Captain said, “lock ’em up. This guy will drive me nuts too if I have to listen to him much longer. We’ll keep him on ice for Inspector Gavigan and hope he’s got something that’ll help. And in the meantime we’re going to be busy as all hell.”
Merlini said, “You’re charging me, then?”
“Yes.” Schafer eyed him calculatingly. “I won’t make it a murder charge until Gavigan gets here and I find out what he’s got. For the moment, we’ll make it breaking and entering Major Hannum’s trailer last night. You picked the lock, you know.”
“Won’t do,” Merlini objected. “Miss Hannum won’t back you up. If she does, I’ll prefer a similar charge against her. Besides, it hasn’t been established yet that she owns that trailer. Miss King insists that she does. You can’t get the owner to prefer a charge until you know who the owner is.”