Free Man On The Run by Charles Williams Page B

. .”
    The story went on with an account of the two times I’d been seen last night. The description was chillingly accurate, right down to the black eye. My apartment was being watched. If I stepped outside the next few days they’d have me within an hour. They were making a block by block search of all cheap hotels and flophouses. They knew I’d holed up somewhere or I’d have frozen to death last night. The police commissioner and Chief of Police were promising action. If they got their hands on me it was. going to be rough; I was a cop killer, and I’d been making a city’s whole police force look silly for four days.
    On the second page was a rehash of the fight and of the arrival of the police to find Stedman dead with the hunting knife in his throat. It was substantially the same as I’d pieced it together from Red’s account and that on the radio, except that the patrolmen hadn’t forced the door. The manager had let them in. There was no mention of anyone else at all. I was it. All they had to do was get their hands on me and the whole thing was solved. And all that was standing between me and them at the moment was a girl who was interested in me because she was bored.

Seven
    The Martini made me dizzy and gave everything a gauzy effect. I didn’t dare pour another; as weak and empty as I was, two would drop me on the floor. She came back in a little over an hour, carrying a large bag of groceries and looking excited. I tried to help her but she shook her head. We went out in the kitchen and unpacked the bag. It held the biggest double sirloin I had ever seen and some frozen french-fried potatoes and a half-gallon carton of milk among other things.
    “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said, “but first we start this food. Put my coat away, will you, Irish?”
    I took it into the bedroom and hung it in the closet. When I returned she was putting the frozen potatoes in the oven and turning on the broiler. She broke out a box of frozen broccoli and put that on, then started some coffee. I leaned against the refrigerator and watched her. In the high heels she was nearly as tall as I was, and the way she dominated and sculptured a knit dress was something to see.
    “I’m no cook,” she said, “but I do think we have to let that steak sit awhile at room temperature.”
    “Here,” I said. I opened the refrigerator and poured her a Martini. “Tell me this news you’ve got.”
    “Aren’t you having one?” she asked.
    “I already have. One more and you’ll have to shoot that steak into my arm.”
    We went into the living room. She kicked her shoes off and put her feet up on a hassock. The hardboiled gray eyes were alight with interest. “It’s about Purcell,” she said. “He committed suicide. But he couldn’t have.”
    “That’s what you went to the library for?”
    She nodded. “I’ve been going through the back files of the papers. Then I called a friend of mine on the Express . He’s on the police beat and knew Purcell. Hand me my purse, will you, Irish?”
    I got it for her. She took out a small notebook.
    “Here we are,” she said. “The official verdict was suicide, but the police have never been quite satisfied with it. Lanigan summed it up pretty well when he said he was a real cool cat. He was tough, in a civilized sort of way, one of the few college-educated men on the force, strictly on the make, but highly competent. He was a detective First Grade and was a cinch to make Sergeant the next time around. He’d been married for three years to a very nice girl. Good health and no difficult financial troubles that anybody knew anything about. Nothing crooked on his record. In his ten years on the force he’d had to kill two men, but I suppose that’s the risk you take in being a police officer. Doesn’t seem likely they would have bothered him. They were both men with long records, and dangerous, and in both cases he was exonerated.”
    She paused and took a sip of the