Drawn to Evil Read online

  Drawn to Evil

  BY HARRY WHITTINGTON

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  IT WAS a wide tree-shaded street in Bayshore Park. Nice neighborhood. I had got the police Code Five on the radio when I started home from an all-night date in Ybor City and, as soon as I got it, I opened up my siren and crossed town.

  I got out there about six A.M., parked my gray coupe and walked over in the drizzling rain to this new Cadillac where the Homicide Squad was standing around. They’d been there about an hour but I saw they hadn’t accomplished much. They all acted like they were sleep-drugged. Then I saw the corpse with his head hanging out of the car on the driver’s side and I knew what was the matter. They were stunned.

  I spoke to everybody and pretty soon Lt. Orace Hilligan came over to where I was standing.

  “My God, Marty,” he said. “Senator Flynn. This is hell.”

  “Somebody sure hated his guts, all right.”

  “It beats me, Marty. A nice guy like that. Who’d want to kill him?”

  Here was a murder that slugged me right in the gut. I tried but I couldn’t keep the way I felt out of my voice. “The last guy in the world I ever expected to see murdered. The one really decent guy I ever knew.”

  “They musta waylaid him on his way home, forced his Caddy into the curb, got in his car with him. They beat his face in. There’s blood all over everything.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “They’re no good, Marty.”

  “What you mean, they’re no good?”

  “That’s it. We made a fast comparison. They all belong to Flynn. He put up one hell of a fight. Even after he was dying he tried to pull himself up in the car. That’s one reason everything’s so bloody.”

  “Sure. They probably wore gloves. Rubber gloves so that they could wash the blood off them. Sure, they planned it sweet, Hilligan, but it ain’t going to do them a damn bit of good. I’m going to get them.”

  “You’re going to get them?”

  He was giving me that old pained look and his voice was crusted an inch thick with sarcasm. It was the old business between us. Last year they had promoted him to lieutenant in charge of homicide. I won’t lie. I had wanted that job so bad I almost busted out crying when they told me I wasn’t going to get it. So ever since then Hilligan hated my guts. He knew I was better qualified for his job and he knew he’d got it by kissing the right bottoms and he thought I felt the same way. He was right. I did.

  “Look, Sergeant Carter. You’re talking like a damn movie cop. No cop ever gets anybody. He just does his job. He does what he’s told. It’s everybody working together that solves any murder. And you damn well know it.”

  “Just the same, it’s like I said. The son of a bitch that done this, I’m going to get. The bastard that killed George Flynn is right now walking around dead and just don’t know it. This was a good man, Hilligan. Maybe you don’t even know what a good man is. A decent, honest, clean guy. This ain’t no Ybor City gook, killed by some other punk. That’s why you ain’t going to mess around and screw it up.”

  Hilligan looked around quick to see if anybody was listening. Maybe they all heard it. I didn’t give a damn. But nobody looked around. Hilligan caught my arm.

  “Look here, Marty. I know you.” His voice was a whisper but it throbbed. This boy really carried a hate. “You don’t want a damn thing in the world but a big thrill. That’s what you’re always looking for. That’s why you’re still a sergeant. That’s why you’re going to stay one until you leave the cops. But I warn you now. I’ve got methods and I’ve got routine. Upset either one with your damn grandstandin’ and I’ll suspend you so fast you’ll never know what hit you!”

  I shook his hand off my arm. “Okay. Sure, I don’t run from excitement. I like it. What in hell else do I get out of this job? But this time it’s different. You say you know me — okay then you know I never believed the best of any politician as long as there was any other angle. This time it’s different, Hilligan. I guess if there was ever any one guy I believed in, it was George Flynn — ”

  “You know him? Personal?”

  “Hell no. Damn few of my friends own Caddys. But I know he was honest and so straight even the people that fought him hardest respected him. Some son of a bitch has killed him — and you want to flub around with slide rules and test tubes until the killer is ten miles south of Timbuctoo! Not this time, Hilligan. This one’s on me.”

  • • •

  I saw her then. Young. Still in her twenties, I figured. Lots younger than her husband. She had arrived while I was yammering at Hilligan. A couple of cops and one of the ambulance men helped her over to where the corpse was stretched out on a litter. The reason I saw her was that she caught her breath in a long, sobbing gasp. I jerked my head around just in time to see her as they were leading her back to this car she’d come in. She was tall and holding her head up so she looked even taller. Her face was gray and set, and you could see it was hell for her to keep from crying. But even with her grief, she was really something to look at. Her hair was loose and like black sable about her shoulders. There was something about her that went through me like the hot charge of high voltage.

  The reporters had arrived by now and they crowded around her, barring the way to the car. “Mrs. Flynn, would you make a statement?” “You got anything to say at this time, Mrs. Flynn?”

  A flash bulb flared in the gray light of early morning. You could see the grief wash up close under her face, but she bit on her lip and refused to cry. “Once more, Mrs. Flynn. Just one more picture.”

  I shoved by Hilligan, slugged my way through the ring around George Flynn’s wife. The Kodak kid was aiming again. I let him have the heel of my hand straight into his left shoulder. He staggered back, dropped his camera, and sprawled in the gutter.

  Sergeant Carl Dill caught my arm. I heeled around, glaring. He was a young guy and people said he had an honest face. It seemed to me Dill was always sticking that honest face in my business. I started to swing at him but Hilligan moved in and grabbed me. “Hey! What’s going on?”

  “He knocked Mearsley down, broke his camera.”

  “Can’t these damned vultures see this woman is in agony?” I growled. I glanced at her. She was still standing tall, head up. She was on the verge of hysteria. I shrugged away from Hilligan and took her arm. “I’ll take you back home, Mrs. Flynn.”

  She looked at me then and didn’t say anything. She nodded and I moved her through the crowd and across the street toward my coupe. The reporters and the onlookers stepped out of our way.

  I didn’t know how long it was going to be before she broke down. I wanted to get her out of there before it happened. I hurried her across the street and opened the door. She got in the car, sitting rigid and staring straight ahead.

  I went around the car, got in and started the engine. I glanced back at George Flynn on the litter. The sun was brighter, making a blood-red mask of his face. I shivered, feeling his bloody eyes on us as we drove away. I watched her, wondering if she felt the same way. But she couldn’t have. She just sat straight beside me and she didn’t loo
k back at all.

  Chapter 2

  SHE needed to cry. We drove south to Bayshore Boulevard and turned west. There wasn’t much traffic at that hour of the morning. The sun was a big ball hanging out over Davis Island and glittering in the muddy shallows of the bay. We drove about six blocks that way. Neither of us said anything and I was waiting for her to crack up and start screaming.

  “Let it out,” I told her. “Go ahead — cry. You got to get over it sometime. You won’t start getting over it until you start crying.”

  She kept her eyes straight ahead. It was like she was in a trance.

  “You can’t keep it in you. You gotta let loose. You got to bust all up and let the grief out. You gotta do it.”

  “Let me alone. Please. Let me alone. I’m all right.”

  I looked at her. Eyes distended, mouth outlined in chalk. She was all right. Sure. She was swell.

  I whipped the car across one of the linking drives through the parkway and slammed the car to a halt beside the sea wall. I cut off the engine. She was staring out of the window and she didn’t move until the sun began to hurt her eyes. She had to turn her head away from it then. She wouldn’t look at me.

  “If you’ll just take me home. I’m sure I’ll be quite all right.”

  “Look. I’m just a cop. Nobody. Maybe you won’t ever see me again. I’m trying to help you.”

  “I’m sure you are. You’re very kind. I — I’d like to go home now.”

  “Sure. You’ll go home. And what? That house will be run over with people. All of them wanting to share your grief. All of them yammering at you. All of them telling you to be brave. And you’ll go on just like you are now-trying to keep it in you.”

  No matter what I said, it didn’t help. She was drawing in against me, tightening up. Pretty soon she wasn’t even going to be hearing me any more. I’ve seen plenty of them like that. You see almost everything in thirteen years as a Homicide cop. One thing I had learned: The answer to grief is tears.

  “Cry, damn you!” I snarled. “Not for him. For yourself. He’s dead. They can’t hurt him any more. But you’ve got to go on living. And you’ve got to get over it.”

  She pulled away from me, turning a little on the seat, her face pale and rigid. She clawed at the door, trying to get out of it. I caught her wrists, hard.

  She tried to wrench out of my grip. To show her that she couldn’t, I clapped both her wrists in my left hand. She didn’t make a sound. Her eyes were wild and she never stopped trying to get away.

  “Cry!”

  I pulled her toward me. I raised my right hand as high as I could behind the seat and brought it down across her face. It sounded like a snap of lightning. My palm cracked against her cheek. Her jaw dropped open and when her head flopped back her teeth snapped together.

  She cried.

  It was a hell of a thing to watch. It started with a sob of pain. That first sob she couldn’t help. I hurt her so bad that she lost control of her nerve centers. Sobbing was pure reflex.

  Her face began to twist up and the sobs started low in her stomach and rolled out of her. First she just sat there, limp, the marks of my fingers across her cheeks. For a long time she cried like that, her shoulders shaking. Gradually she caved in against me. Her head fell against my shoulder. I could feel her tears dropping on my hands. Every drop burned, searing like molten steel bubbling out of a white hot vat. Or maybe those tears were acid, etching her brand into my skin. Etching a deep brand. Deep and permanent.

  • • •

  After a while it was like a nightmare. I had started something that I couldn’t stop. She cried so long that every sob pulled out of her was physical agony. She cried as if she hadn’t cried for years, as if she’d never cried before and was never going to stop crying.

  I began to whisper to her. “It’s all right. They’ve killed him. But they’re not going to get away with it. I’ll find ’em and I’ll beat their heads off. You’ve lost him, but one thing I promise you, you’ll know they won’t ever get away with it.”

  At first it didn’t get through to her. But I kept talking. I told her my name. I told her where I was born and where I went to school and how I got on the cops and the way the rats operated in Tampa, and the way they knew better than to mess with me. I didn’t give her any gentle stuff. I let her have it hard. I figured she’d been hit hard and she’d want to hit back hard.

  “You’ve met the right guy. Sure, you’re going to hear plenty about me. There are guys will tell you I’ll do anything for the thrills. They’ll tell you they’ve seen me use a rubber hose. They’ll tell you I thought I was going to be made Homicide chief, only I didn’t make it because they said I was too tough and too brutal. Plenty of people think I oughta quit the cops and the only reason why I stay on is to go on getting thrills. Sure, they’ll tell you that. They’ll tell you I like the odds against me. Because they’re sure all I care about is the big charge I get out of it. And they’ll tell you that when I promise you I’ll find the guy who killed your husband that I won’t be doing it for you, and I won’t be doing it for the law — I’ll be doing it so I can get another goddamn killer in my hands and choke the stinking life out of him.”

  I went on talking. I kept my voice even. I could feel the sobs subside and the tears stop. She moved closer on the seat and her hands slid up around my shoulders and she pulled her face against my neck. Her breath was hot and her mouth was swollen.

  “Who are you?” her hot breath whispered.

  “I told you. A cop. A Homicide detective sergeant. Nobody. A guy named Marty Carter. The guy that’s going to find who killed your husband and batter the living hell out of them.”

  Her breath had quickened. She laid her body against me then, the resilient thrusts of breast, the fiery knoll of her thighs. I didn’t touch her. Sure I could have. I had slapped her so hard I almost paralyzed her. She’d cried until it was agony even for her to breathe. She’d been through a crisis of her life unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

  And I had talked to her until she forgot to cry, forgot to grieve. I talked to her about a guy she’d never even imagined before, somebody she’d never heard of from a world she hadn’t even known about.

  I started the car. I knew one thing for sure. She may never have dreamed I existed before. But I was in her life now. In deep, under her skin.

  She rested her head back on the seat. Her forehead was pale and sweated. She looked exhausted.

  “Marty,” she said. She said it again, like the name was good on her mouth and she was tasting it. “I’m by myself, Marty. I’m all by myself now. Did you know that, Marty?”

  “You’re not alone,” I told her. “You’re not ever going to be alone.”

  “But I am. He let me face it all by myself. He let me face it all by myself.”

  I frowned, trying to puzzle some sense into that. Maybe she was deeper in hysteria than I thought. I looked at her. She turned her face toward me. Her smile was wan. She wasn’t hysterical any more. Her voice came from low inside her.

  “You’ve got to help me, Marty. You’ve got to help me.”

  I saw the police cars even before I turned into her drive. I heard her worried sigh.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s Hilligan. He’ll want to ask you a lot of questions. You got nothing to worry about. I’m going to be there. I’m going to be right there.”

  Chapter 3

  HILLIGAN paced up and down the front room. This was the biggest case he’d ever handled and he meant to play it big. He was probably already seeing the headlines in all the newspapers. I could see his slow-burner mind figuring it all up. This case had everything. Society with a capital S. Politics. He looked at Liza Flynn where I’d led her to the divan in her living room.

  “Now, Mrs. Flynn, I’m sorry but there are a few questions I must ask you.”

  She looked up at him, and her dark eyes wavered and turned to me. I nodded and tried to smile. I had been looking at her since we’d got in t
his room. It began to hit me now. Hard. Just looking at her made my pulse quicken, made my blood race through me. I could feel my heart thud till I thought everyone could hear it. This woman was the one thing I’d never had, never dreamed of having.

  “All right. If I can help you. Of course I want to.”

  “When was the last time you saw your husband alive, Mrs. Flynn?”

  Hilligan was irked. He’d seen the way Liza looked at me before she answered him. Everybody else in the room had seen it, too. But Liza was Society and she was Sex. Hilligan was overlooking annoyances.

  “Last night,” she said. “At midnight.”

  “You saw your husband? Where?”

  “He was here.”

  “Oh! I was under the impression that he was on his way home when he was attacked and killed.”

  “He — was. He must have been. We went out last evening. At nine o’clock.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “We went to a party. At Clayton Lyons’ home.”

  Hilligan knew Lyons. He owned the biggest shipping fleet on Tampa’s waterfront.

  “You went to this party. But you didn’t come home with him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated, raking her upper lip with her teeth. “We had an argument.”

  “Oh? You mind saying what the argument was about?”

  Again she darted a glance at me. I shook my head.

  “I’d rather not say. It — it hasn’t anything to do with — with his death.”

  Hilligan glowered at me. “Perhaps it does, Mrs. Flynn. I wish you’d let me decide that. This is a terrible business. Murder. If we are going to find the killers we’ll need all the help we can get. When you hold back anything, you’re not helping us.”

  “I’ll tell you anything I can.”

  And so he made her go over it all. The people who were at the Lyons’ party. It sounded like Tampa’s social register, only of course society and politics were all scrambled together.