Call Me Killer (Prologue Crime) Read online

  Manton was aware of sweat all across his shoulders.

  “Right through there,” he said to Marion. She opened the door marked, Chief of Homicide, Private. There was the buzz of talk inside the room. It abruptly ceased.

  Manton could feel the heads swivel to stare at them. He shoved Marion and Sam ahead of him into the room. Several of the younger detectives and newsmen leaned against the walls. Older men were sitting in chairs that faced the desk where Police Commissioner Mitchell sat with Homicide Chief Milligan.

  “Here they are,” Manton said.

  Milligan looked at Sam’s battered face and pressed a buzzer. He ordered a nurse sent in and then lapsed into silence. His hostile eyes were fixed on Manton’s face.

  Manton ignored him. Sure, hell, the old man hated him now. He looked about the room. The other men watched silently.

  Manton began loudly. “I’ve already given you most of the reasons why I know this man Gowan is guilty of Ross Lambart’s murder,” Manton said. “I don’t mind going through them now. You see, I picked up his trail right on the ninth floor of the Citizens Trust, right outside Lambart’s office. This scrubwoman had bed — ”

  No one spoke. No one made any effort to stop Manton. He heard his voice lashing angrily against their set faces in the crowded room.

  He felt beads of sweat form under the gauze around his head and trickle down, burning his eyes.

  He went on talking, slowly at first. He was naming all the reasons why he knew and could prove that Sam Gowan was guilty. But he had the horrible feeling that he was yelling into emptiness. His words were sounds without meaning. No one spoke, either to deny any point or to agree with him. His voice grew louder.

  He began to shout, his voice harsh. He was trying now to cover his own sudden and paralyzing lack of conviction. He was suddenly seeing the results of ballistics tests. He began to know as he yelled what those tests would show. They were going to show the bullets in Ross Lambart had come from a gun other than the one Sam Gowan had hidden.

  Against the meaningless roar of his own voice, Manton began to see little Dr. Mesaje Terasake. The psychiatrist would be able to show by scientific data that Sam Gowan hadn’t committed murder, was even totally incapable of murder, and had actually been a victim of amnesia.

  Manton knew that all the evidence he had gathered was not enough. It was useless. He began to repeat himself. His voice went hoarse with rage. There was a time when the Woody coat cuff, the hidden gun, the long trail Sam Gowan had left behind him between the Citizens Trust Building and Wilkins Road would have been enough to convict him. Those things, together with the inhuman treatment Gowan would have received in a back room under Barney Manton’s fists, would have been enough to wring a confession out of him, and see him in a gas chamber.

  But Manton stood there, sweated and hoarse, and saw in the impassive faces about him that it was no longer enough. And Manton knew he himself stood convicted of beating senseless an innocent man.

  “Say something!” Barney Manton raged at Milligan.

  He ran forward. He brushed hard past Sam’s shoulder. He leaned across Milligan’s desk, supported on whitened knuckles. His face was swollen, almost purple with the pressure of blood rushing into his head. The veins stood out beside his eyes, and throbbed in his temples.

  “Here, Barney,” Milligan said quietly. He pushed a legal form across the desk. Manton didn’t touch it. He could hardly read it. But he knew it was a confession, and at the bottom of it, he read Elsa Gowan’s shaky signature.

  “Lambart scratched her,” Milligan said mildly. “It was particles of her flesh we got from under his fingernails, Barney. We made sure in the laboratory. And then we began to work. There was a faint stain of blood on the bill she used to pay Dr. Terasake. Our lab tests proved it was Lambart’s blood. And that seemed to prove that it was Lambart’s money. The money was recovered. Mrs. Gowan had it in her possession when I went to talk to her. We recovered the gun, Barney. Ballistics tests showed the bullets in Lambart’s head had come from that gun. Paraffin tests proved that Mrs. Gowan had fired that gun. Her fingerprints were in the office, but so were dozens of others, and so we discounted them.

  “There wasn’t much to it. It wasn’t even difficult when I faced her and young Hal Slimer with the evidence that was piling up against them. For they had planned it together. Hal had all the knowledge, but he lacked the guts to execute it. Mrs. Gowan had the courage. They thought that Lambart would be an easy mark because he was so crazy about Elsa. But they found that no one could get to Lambart where money was concerned. He’d fight for it. He’d risk his own reputation to keep it. Mrs. Gowan held out until I explained to her the cold facts from our lab. I explained to her that an innocent man was about to pay for her crime. She was silent a long time, and then she told me all about it. When she began to talk, she seemed glad of the chance to say it all. She remembered her home and her mother, and the way she’d always dreamed of comfort and security. Her earliest memories were of her mother’s grubbing to make ends meet in a run down boarding house. But marriage hadn’t given Elsa what she wanted, instead she had got only her mother’s idea of security: a man with a good job, a steady income, and a little property in her name. She and Hal were planning to buy real security, at a price that only Ross Lambart could afford to pay.”

  Manton felt his head was going to burst under the pressure of the blood pounding into it. His red-veined eyes wavered from Milligan’s face to Commissioner Mitchell’s.

  “What about me?” he whispered hoarsely.

  Mitchell stood up, assumed a pose he felt would be effective if one of the news camera men decided to make a picture. He regarded Manton as though he were something despicable. “You stand for the lowest type of police procedure, Manton. I have nothing but contempt for you and the kind of law officer you represent. I can no longer tolerate your kind of tactics on our modern police force. We have already filled out your resignation papers, Manton, and I expect you to sign them, immediately.”

  Mitchell’s eyes fixed on Manton were dark with rage. Without even blinking, he turned a professional smile upon the reporters. “Now!” he said beaming. “If you men want to get some pictures of the Chief and me….”

  The room remained still. Manton straightened up. He looked slowly into the faces of the men in the office. Each in turn met his eyes coldly.

  For an instant, his heart beat faster with his old assurance. There was still his little black book! Wait until Mitchell tried to buck that. There was plenty in there about Mitchell and the mistress he kept at the Raven Arms apartments.

  His heart slowed a little. The habitual, sardonic twist pulled for a moment at the side of his mouth.

  Then, for the first time in his life, Manton found out what fear was.

  It was waiting for him when his eyes brushed back across Mitchell’s face. Mitchell’s cold eyes did not blink. These men in this room were plainly telling Manton they knew about his little black book. They seemed even to know what he was thinking. And in that instant, weak with fear, Manton knew that to attempt one page in his black book would be fatal. Manton’s kind of justice, his kind of police practice were dead in this town, said the cold faces of the men around him, except for one last stand.

  They would stop Manton. He knew they would frame him for murder to stop him. They’d hound him. They’d run him down. They’d sweat him in the back room. They’d beat a confession out of him. They’d use the rubber hose, the scalding water enema, the relays of untiring fists. Barney Manton’s own kind of justice was waiting for him….

  • • •

  It ended at last. The nurse worked over Sam’s face. Finally, he was bandaged and ready to leave. Milligan tried to smile. It was a failure, but the Homicide Chief held out the ignition keys to Tom Dugan’s Buick.

  “We recovered it,” Milligan said. “It’s on the police parking lot. The title seems all right, and in your name. I — there won’t be any towing charges.”

  Sam took the keys. M
arion held his arm. Lieutenant Milligan followed them to his doorway.

  “Real justice may be slow,” Milligan said awkwardly. “But no honest citizen has anything to fear from the law, not any more. It is his servant. And he need not be afraid if he leads an upright life.”

  Sam looked at him. He couldn’t smile yet. And he couldn’t forgive yet. He knew it would be a long time before he was free of this nightmare. Whenever he thought of Elsa, he knew he would for a moment be ill. You couldn’t believe so deeply in a woman as he had in Elsa, and ever feel the same again when you finally learned the truth about her. It helped though to know that Elsa was not evil, but was only weak….

  And Sam wasn’t ready yet to accept the ideal picture of the processes of the law that Milligan presented. It was just that Milligan represented the very best in law enforcement. Because he was an idealist, Milligan believed the best. Sam couldn’t. He looked at Milligan and shook his head. “If he leads an upright life, is lucky, has a Senator for an uncle, a defense attorney for a father, and owes the judge money, then I agree with you, Mr. Milligan. He has nothing to fear.”

  Marion and Sam walked out into the sunlight. They hurried their steps when they saw the blue car, and thought of the long road that stretched south of them. Milligan walked more slowly. There seemed to be something he needed to say, something to reassure these two little people who had been hurt so badly. He hated his feeling of inadequacy.

  Then he saw their faces as the car was backed out of the parking place. They had each other, Milligan thought, they had no need for anything else.

  His voice sounded old. “Where will you go?” he asked. “Where will you live?”

  They looked at him. Sam put the car in low gear.

  Marion smiled. “We don’t know yet,” she said.

  “May God go with you,” Milligan said softly, “and keep you together … wherever you are.”

  The City was blurred behind them in the distance before they spoke. Marion looked at him. “Know how you got the name Mye, David?”

  He shook his head.

  She sank against the seat, and spoke from his shoulder where her cheek rested. “When I got you a job at Slow Joe’s Bar, Dominic wanted to know your name. I told him you were my David. He thought I was giving your last name first, and so you were David Mye. But I didn’t care what they called you, as long as I knew the truth — you were my David.”

  THE END

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  If you enjoyed this Crime title from Prologue Books, check out other books by Harry Whittington at:

  www.prologuebooks.com

  Slay Ride for a Lady

  The Naked Jungle

  Drawn to Evil

  The Brass Monkey

  A Woman On the Place

  One Deadly Dawn

  Heat of Night

  Don’t Speak to Strange Girls

  Mourn the Hangman

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  Copyright © 1951 by Harry Whittington, registration renewed 1979

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  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-4661-4

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4661-7

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-4493-X

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4493-4