The Lenient Beast Read online

“And you came here from—?”

  “Chicago. I was fifty, then. A bit young to retire, perhaps, but I was getting arthritis — which the climate here has almost completely cured. And since I could afford to retire if I was willing to live modestly, as I do, and since I wanted to, I did. With the exceptions noted.”

  “I see. I gather that you live alone here. May I ask whether you're a bachelor or a widower?”

  “A bachelor.”

  “Were you born in Chicago?”

  “No, in Cincinnati. I've lived quite a few places, though. Always the Middle West until I came here.”

  “I see,” Ramos said again. He seemed to do all the talking for the two of them. “Well, that gives us a fairly good picture of you yourself, Mr. Medley. Now about this morning. You discovered the body about eleven o'clock. What time did you get up?”

  “Eight o'clock, as near as matters.” I went on and explained what I'd done during the morning and how it happened that I hadn't discovered the body sooner. While I was talking Ramos stood up and went to the kitchen doorway to look in, obviously to verify what I'd just said about not being able to see the back yard from the kitchen window.

  He turned back, but stayed in the doorway, leaning against one side of it. He smiled and his olive face was quite handsome as his white teeth flashed.

  “And yesterday evening?” he asked.

  “I stayed home. Spent the evening reading, listening to music. Went to bed a little short of midnight.”

  “And slept through? You heard nothing?”

  “I slept as well as usual, which is fairly soundly. I don't recall hearing anything out of the ordinary. I suppose you mean the sound of a shot. No, I don't recall hearing one.”

  Ramos frowned. “Surely you'd remember if you heard one.

  “If I'd recognized it for a shot, of course. But if I'd taken it to be a backfire at the time, I might not. Do you think he was shot there in the yard where I found him?”

  “Too early to be sure of anything. But please think carefully. You neither saw nor heard anything at all unusual either yesterday evening or last night?”

  “That's right, Mr. Ramos. But about the shot — assuming it was fired there in the yard. There's one other possible reason why I might not have heard it.”

  “What's that?”

  “Jet planes. When they're taking off from the field in this direction they're pretty low when they come over here. And pretty noisy. If a shot was fired while one of them was right over — well, I don't think I'd hear it.”

  “Possibly not. Do you yourself have any firearms, Mr. Medley?”

  “A revolver, yes,” I said. “I bought it when I first moved into this house. It was much more isolated then than it is now — you know how fast Tucson has been building up — and it's not far from the Southern Pacific tracks. I thought of tramps.”

  “What caliber is the revolver?”

  “I believe it's a thirty-two. I don't know much about guns. I bought it used, at one of those secondhand stores on Congress Street downtown.”

  “May we see it?”

  “Certainly,” I said. I went to the desk and took it from the second drawer. Cahan, the redheaded one, had followed me across the room so I handed it to him. It is a small nickel-plated gun with a relatively short barrel.

  He swung the cylinder expertly, ejected the cartridges into the palm of his hand and then put them down on the desk blotter. He walked to the front window with the gun and held it up to look into the barrel.”

  “If you wish to take it along to check it, you may,” I said. “You'll find it hasn't been fired recently. Not for five years, in fact.”

  “That I can see,” Cahan said. “It's pretty rusty, Mr. Medley. No we won't need to take it in.” He came back and put on the desk beside the cartridges. “I'd suggest you clean out that barrel before you reload it. Or still better, take it to a gunsmith and have a good job done on it.”

  Ramos said, “I gather you fired it five years ago, from what you said. For testing or practice, or did you have a use for it?”

  “I had use for it, I'm sorry to say,” I told him. “I had a dog then, a collie pup six months old. And someone poisoned him. I ran to a phone, all the way up to Broadway then, and called for a vet. But when I got home-well, the poor dog was in such terrible agony—”

  Cahan nodded. “I noticed a little white wooden cross in a corner of your yard. You buried it there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sentimental of me, but I'd come to love the dog and didn't want him just to be picked up with the garbage. It's the only dog I ever owned-and I'll never have another. Not if there's even a possibility that the poisoner is someone who's still around here.”

  “Uh-huh. Dog-poisoners are sure hell.” Cahan turned to Ramos. “Well, Frank, you got any more questions?”

  “Just one,” Ramos said. “Mr. Medley, does the name Stiffler mean anything to you? Kurt Stiffler?”

  I shook my head slowly. “No. That is, I don't know anyone of that name. But it does sound vaguely familiar, as though I'd read it or heard it somewhere before — and rather recently, I believe.”

  “It's been in the newspapers.”

  I said, “I must have read it then. But I don't remember in what connection.”

  “I guess that's all, then, Mr. Medley. For now, I mean. I'm afraid one or both of us will be back, though, with a lot more questions. After we've got the coroner's report and an identification.”

  “Come back any time,” I said. “Not this evening, though. It's my chess club night.”

  I followed them toward the door. I said, “About the dog. I should have added one thing. The veterinarian got here shortly after and I had him look at the dog — partly to make sure that it had been poison and not something else. He said it had been poison all right and that it was well that I'd put the dog out of its agony because he wouldn't have been able to save it.”

  Ramos smiled. “We weren't thinking of bringing a murder charge against you, Mr. Medley. By the way, you were wrong about one thing.”

  “What's that?”

  “That date of Berlioz' death. He died in sixty-nine, not fifty-nine. But Richard Strauss would have been five then, all right; he was born in eighteen sixty-four.”

  I had to smile at the neat way he'd turned the tables on me for showing off my knowledge of composers. I said, “You must have an eidetic memory, Mr. Ramos. And you must own the same recording of the Fantastique that I have — the one that mentions those time relationships in the program notes.”

  “Right About my owning the same recording, anyway. Uh — you're not planning any trips out of town, are you, Sir?”

  “No, I'm not.”

  “Good. Well probably not see you until tomorrow. But you may have reporters in your hair as soon as this afternoon, I'm afraid.”

  I shook hands with both of them and stood watching until they got into their car and drove away.

  And then the reaction came and I was trembling. I got the door closed and got to a chair and dropped into it. I dropped my head into my hands and, behind closed eyelids, let the waves of blackness come and go until I could think clearly again.

  Always there is such a reaction as this. But this time had been different from the others because this time for the first time I had had to discover the body myself and face the police. And knowing from the moment of the kill that it would be that way, I had remained calm. Especially since arising this morning I had acted my role within my mind as well as in my physical actions. I had actually forgotten — almost — that the body was there until it was time for me to discover it. Everything had simply been in abeyance until then and until the police had come and gone.

  Now was the time for my suffering, and I suffered.

  When I was calm enough I prayed. Again, again I asked God why He asks so much of me. Although I know. He is right, and He is merciful. He asks much, but someday He will take away from me the mark of the beast and I shall be free. Someday He shall extend His mercy even unto me.

  TWO

  FERN CAHAN

  “What do you think of the old coot?” I asked Frank as he U-turned the car and headed toward Broadway.

  “Wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw a longhorn, Red.”

  “Longhorn cheese or longhorn steer?”

  “Steer,” he said. “How about you?”

  “I think he's on the level. Little queer, maybe — or queer isn't the word I want. What is?”

  “Eccentric?”

  “That's it, Webster. A guy his age, a bachelor — well, I guess he's got the right to be a little eccentric.”

  “What makes you think he's a bachelor?”

  “Goddam it, you asked him if he was a widower or a bachelor, didn't you? And he told you.”

  “Do you believe everything you're told, Red?”

  “Nuts,” I said. “Why'd he bother lying about anything like that?”

  “Maybe he murdered his wife. Do you think all bachelors are eccentric, Red?”

  He thought he had me, because I'm one myself. I said, “I get mine. Say, what was that gobbledegook about Berli — what's-his-name? I didn't get it. Did I miss something?”

  “Not much. He was playing a record for me while you were giving Doc a hand with the stiff, and he showed off a little. I showed back, that's all.”

  “What's an eidetic memory, Frank?”

  “The kind I've almost got.

  “Go to hell,” I said. “You erudite bastard.”

  “Dammit, don't call me an erudite bastard.”

  “But you are one.”

  “Sure I'm one, but it ill becomes you, you Goddam Texan cowboy, to use a word like erudite because it doesn't belong in your vocabulary. You heard someone else call me that and picked it up and you're not even s
ure what it means. Call me a smart aleck bastard, if you will.”

  “All right, I will. Say, Frank, there were a hell of a lot of questions you didn't ask him. How come?”

  “Why ask them in the dark? Let's have Doc's report first and make sure of identification. And, if it is Stiffler, see if we can get anything on his movements yesterday evening or last night. Then we'll be ready to tackle Medley again. And hard.”

  “Hell,” I said, “Medley hasn't got anything to do with it. Why'd he have left the guy in his own back yard? He's got a car.”

  “I don't know,” Frank said.

  “And what connection would there be likely to be between him and Kurt Stiffler?”

  “I don't know,” Frank said. “And I told you, Red, I'm not sure it is Stiffler. I saw him only once and for a few minutes, and at a distance. That's going to be our first job, to get a positive identification.”

  “Now?”

  “Hell, we're going to eat first. It's after one. How'd you go for pizza?”

  'Show me one,” I said. That's one thing I owe Frank Ramos; he introduced me to pizza pie. I'd never heard of it until I teamed up with him.

  We were heading in on Broadway, nearing Park, so I knew the place he had in mind, right on the comer there. He put the car in the parking lot alongside and we went in and took a booth. The waitress came over and we ordered two pizzas, one with anchovies and one with sausage. We always order different kinds and then share.

  The waitress walked away and I watched; Frank said, “Get your mind back here, Red. One of us may as well phone Doc while we're waiting.”

  “You phone,” I said. “Then I won't have to get my mind back here. It was doing all right where it was.”

  He said, “Nuts. Well flip.” He took out a coin and flipped it and I called heads and it came up tails.

  I went over to the phone, dialed Doc Raeburn and got him “Red Cahan, Doc,” I said. “What's cooking?”

  “Nothing much. I just got back from the mortuary. We got him stripped and on a slab. I've looked him over on the outside. And I can't look him over on the inside unless I get an order for an autopsy.”

  “If we get it for you right away, can you do it today?”

  “Well — I can, yes. But listen, Red, I suggest you boys get identification first, if at all possible. Once I go after that bullet, God knows how much of the skull I'm going to have to take apart to get it. It's going to be a lot easier on everybody concerned if you can get identification over with first.”

  “Okay, Doc. And we may get an ident right quick like, if Frank's right; he thinks he recognizes the guy. But in case we do hold up the autopsy for a while, how much can you give us right now?”

  “You want description — height, weight, guess at age, that kind of thing?”

  “That'll keep till we find if Frank's right or not. How near can you give us time of death?”

  “Pretty roughly, with only rigor to go by. But I'd say that as of when I first saw him — a few minutes before noon — he'd been dead not under six hours, not over twelve.”

  “That'd make it between midnight and 6 a.m. That's pretty rough, all right.”

  “Yeah. If you want it much closer, find out when and what he ate last. Then degree of digestion of stomach contents will let me give it to you pretty damn close. Anything else?”

  “No doubt about cause of death?”

  “That bullet hole is the only mark on him. I'd say a small caliber bullet, probably a twenty-two. Fired close-not quite contact but only a few inches from it. And from a small gun.”

  “Why a small gun?”

  “It didn't go through. A powerful gun, even with a small caliber bullet, would have gone through. Even a twenty-two long rifle cartridge fired through a six-inch barrel would have.”

  “And you still think, like you said out there, that he was shot where he was found and lay the way he fell?”

  “Don't put words in my mouth, Red. I didn't say that. I said it could have been that way. There wasn't much blood on that root under the back of his head but there was a little, and a wound like that doesn't bleed much. And he could have fallen the way he lay.”

  “Okay, Doc,” I said. “Hold the fort and don't let him get away from you.”

  When I got back to our booth our pizzas had just arrived so I said only, “Nothing startling,” and dived in. Later, over our coffee, I gave Frank what Doc Raeburn had given me, such as it was.

  He said, “Well, we want that autopsy so well push for identification. But Cap will want to know what we're doing so we'd better phone him. I'll do that.”

  “We got time for another cup of?”

  “Guess so. Well probably be working this evening so we got it coming. You get us refills while I phone in.”

  I did, and batted the breeze with the waitress while he was gone, but he came back before I'd started to get anywhere with her so I let it go.

  “It's okay,” Frank said. “We're to stick with the Stiffler angle. And we're even getting some help. Jay wasn't doing anything so Cap said he'd put him on getting some dope on this Medley character.”

  I just nodded and Frank stirred his coffee a minute and then looked over at me. “Red, did you take a look at that place where he said he'd buried the collie?”

  “Sure. I looked all over the yard. Why?”

  “Had a thought. If I wanted to bury a revolver and if I'd read Poe I might put a little white cross over where I buried it to call attention to it so nobody'd think to dig there.”

  I said, “I don't get it. But anyway, he didn't. That grave had been dug a long time ago. Frank, I think you're out of your head on this Medley angle.”

  “Maybe so. You figure he's husky enough to carry a body? Say, from his house out into the yard?”

  “I guess so. But I say if he carried it, he'd have carried it to his car and rolled it out along the railroad tracks or somewhere, not left it in his own back yard. What the hell would he do that for?”

  He didn't answer that and we didn't talk any more till we'd paid our checks and were heading for the car. We always take turns driving and it was my turn so I said, “Where to, Frank?”

  “Forty-four East Burke Street. I don't know whether he'd still have been staying there, but that was the address of the family at the time of the accident.”

  “You get it from Cap?”

  “It was in the paper.”

  “Jesus, Frank,” I said. “You mean you read a news story about an accident two weeks ago, and remember the street address of the family it happened to?”

  “I'm not that good, Red. Happened to remember it for a reason. Little over a year ago, before we teamed up, I worked on a knifing case, a hell of a messy one, at forty-three East Burke. I remember that address — God knows I should — and when I was reading about the Stiffler business, it hit me they lived right across the street from there.”

  One thing I'll say for Frank, smart as he is and fresh as he is, he never takes credit for more than he's got coming. Except in a razzing way, sometimes. Most of the time we get along all right.

  I made the Burke Street address in eight minutes.

  It's an old neighborhood, not quite a slum but heading that way fast. Forty-four was a two-story frame building flush with the sidewalk. There's a little run-down grocery store in front and a side entrance that leads to rooms and flats behind it and above it.

  There were a dozen mailboxes in the dim and dingy hallway. Some of them had names on them and the name on the box numbered six was Stiffler.

  We climbed the uncarpeted stairs and found a door with the number that matched the one on the mailbox. I knocked and we stood there waiting.

  There wasn't any answer. But if Frank was right, of course there wouldn't be any. It was funny to think that up to two weeks ago five people had lived behind that door and now at least four of them were dead. All of them, if Kurt was dead too. Nobody would ever be home again.

  “How old was Kurt Stiffler, Frank?” I asked. “That is, if you remember from the story.”

  “I remember all right,” he said. “One year younger than I. And that makes him exactly your age.”

  My age, thirty-three. Jesus but Fate can swing on a guy suddenly and knock him flat.

  “Well,” I said, “should we try some more doors? We can at least find out if he was still living there. He might not have bothered to take his name off the mailbox if he moved.”