have come in from the parking lot, beat her up and run out again. They beat up on her too hard, son. She’s dead.”
I got down beside her. I don’t know why I did it. The sheriff was looking at me. He wanted to say something, but didn’t. I lifted Gloria Townsend’s hand and put a finger on the wrist. At first I wasn’t sure, because my hand was trembling.
Then I felt it. A faint but rapid flutter of pulse.
I stood up. “This girl isn’t dead, you damned fool! Send for a doctor.”
“She’s dead, son. Felt for the heartbeat myself.”
“Damn you, get a doctor!”
“Don’t bust a gut, son. Coroner’s coming. He’s a doctor.”
Just then Gloria Townsend groaned. The sheriff looked at me, then turned and casually spat into the sink. “Well, what do you know about that?” he said.
I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t come.
chapter four
THE COUNTY CORONER arrived a few minutes later, a sharp, waspish little man named Dr. Samuel Bowers. Usually politicians stick together, and coroner is just as much a political job as sheriff. But apparently Bowers was a doctor first and a politician second. He took one look at Gloria Townsend and turned the air blue.
“You said over the phone you had a corpse!” he yelled at Sheriff Merz. “I’d have been here twenty minutes ago if I’d known the woman was alive. Get those ambulance attendants in here with a stretcher. Fast!”
The sheriff jumped as though someone had given him a hotfoot. He didn’t have to take orders from the coroner, but he decided to anyway. Unlocking the door to the parking lot, he trotted off like an obedient messenger boy. I didn’t blame him. The waspish little doctor was in such a towering rage, I think I’d have jumped to run an errand too, if he had snapped an order at me.
An ambulance had showed up because the county didn’t own a morgue wagon. When a corpse had to be delivered to the county morgue, they sent an ambulance from Ross Memorial Hospital, the county hospital. This one had come expecting a leisurely trip back to the morgue. Instead it headed for Ross Memorial Hospital with its siren wide open.
Dr. Bowers rode off in the ambulance with Gloria, and Sheriff Merz returned to his old laconic self as soon as the coroner was gone.
“Well, son, guess that winds this up here,” he said to me.
“Winds them up?” I said. “You haven’t even started your investigation yet.”
He shrugged. “Can’t do much until the gal gets conscious so I can talk to her.”
“You could check this rest room for fingerprints. With all this tile and porcelain, practically anywhere you touch would leave a print.”
He snorted. “Must be a couple of dozen people a day come in here. Couldn’t sort out all the prints in a million years.”
I pointed to the broken-heeled shoe in the sink. “Somebody held that in his hand when he beat the girl. It’s black patent leather, a perfect surface for prints.”
He glowered at me. “Listen, son, I know how to run an investigation. Don’t really need advice from a city boy. Suppose you scoot along home and let me run the police business in my own territory.”
There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I didn’t have any more authority in the county than I’d have had if the beating had taken place in Moscow. I went out the door into the parking lot without even saying good-bye. I left the door open behind me, and a few yards away I glanced back over my shoulder.
Sheriff Merz had picked up the shoe and was examining it thoughtfully, turning it over and over in his big hands and effectively smearing any possible prints.
On the way back to town I stopped for some lunch. It was just one thirty when I drove the Merc back into the City Hall garage. Upstairs I stalked into Sunshine Sever’s office and dumped the whole story in his lap.
“This guy Merz is an incompetent nincompoop,” I said. “That girl would have died if it had been left to him. He has no intention whatever of even going through the motions of an investigation.”
“Now don’t get steamed up,” Sunshine advised. “It’s his problem, not ours. We’ve got enough crime in our own territory to worry about.”
“But this has bearing on a city problem, Sunshine. I can’t get to first base on this call-girl investigation if I have to stop at the city limits. It’s headquartered in the county, but it operates here in town. You want me just to drop the whole thing?”
“No, no, Mike. I want this call-girl racket cracked. But you tromp on too many people’s toes. First you risk getting the Morals Division down on us, now you want to start a war with the sheriff’s department. This office can’t function without the cooperation of other agencies, Mike. You’ve got to learn to get along with them. I don’t mean to hamstring your investigation, but you’ve got to stay within our own jurisdiction.”
“Nuts,” I said. “Then I might as well fold up.” I went out, slamming his door to let him know how I felt, and went into my own office.
I phoned the county hospital to ask about Gloria Townsend and got the routine mumbo-jumbo that the patient was “as well as can be expected at this point.” When I asked if that meant she was critical, the nurse I was talking to said her condition wasn’t yet listed because diagnosis wasn’t complete.
In other words, they didn’t yet know how bad off she was.
Then I phoned the Morals Division and got hold of Lieutenant Stan Spooner. I try to keep on friendly terms with the whole police department, and the head of the Morals Division was no exception. Stan Spooner was a quiet, reserved man, however, a pleasant enough guy but one hard to know well. While we were on a first-name basis and I’d always gotten excellent co-operation from him, there was a touch of formality in him which discouraged close friendship.
“Oh, hello, Mike,” he said in his pleasant but reserved way. “What can I do for you?”
“My interview with Harry Allerup was interrupted by some other business that came up unexpectedly this morning, Stan,” I said. “Could I have him over again?”
The lieutenant’s voice sounded regretful. “Gee, Mike, I wish I’d known you weren’t through with him. He went on a three-day leave starting at noon today, and there’s no way to reach him. He’s spending it up at his river cottage, where there’s no phone.”
“Oh,” I said. “When’s he due back?”
“What’s today? Thursday? He comes back on the day trick Monday morning. Want to give me a ring then?”
“All right,” I said, and rang off.
There didn’t seem to be anything more I could do at the moment on the call-girl investigation, and since it was only supposed to be an extra activity, for the rest of the day I lost myself in routine work. As my trip to the Lagoon had taken the whole morning, it was after ten P.M. before I caught up enough to call it a day.
