Free Shoot to Kill by Brett Halliday Page A

came to the door and looked through the glass, and unbolted it to let me in. He always keeps that door bolted,” Ralph went on. He seemed eager to talk now, to make them understand exactly what had happened. “I know that, and that’s the reason I didn’t go around that way later when I came back. I knew he wouldn’t let me in after I’d threatened to kill him, so I came in the front way instead.
    “Anyhow, it was about seven-fifteen and he was in his study alone opening his mail and reading it… or at least glancing at each letter as he took it out of the envelope. I had it all planned… what I was going to say… and I started right in as soon as he sat back down at his desk. I told him I knew he was seeing Dorothy at night when he sent me out on assignments, and I asked him… man-to-man… to leave her alone. I reminded him that she was young and impressionable, and that he had lots of other women to play around with, and told him he was wrecking our marriage.
    “And he sat there in his chair slitting open his goddamned letters and he laughed at me. He said if Dorothy wanted to pass it around he didn’t see why he shouldn’t get in line for it.
    “I would have killed him then and there if I’d had a gun. I told him so. And he laughed in my face. So I went back out and down to my car and drove straight home and got my gun and came back. I hardly remember driving either way or anything.” Ralph Larson looked distraught and rubbed a hand vaguely across his forehead.
    “Dorothy was there,” he said in a perplexed voice. “I remember she tried to stop me from getting my gun. She tried to tell me that Wesley Ames meant nothing to her and that I had no reason to be jealous of him. But I was halfway out of my mind, I guess. It’s all sort of blank until I was here suddenly and running up the stairs and that Puerto Rican tried to stop me. Even then I might not have done it. I don’t know,” Larson said in a troubled voice. “If he’d just begged me not to. If he’d just paid attention to me and promised, even then, that he wouldn’t see Dorothy again. But he was so goddamned superior. He just sat there leaning back in his chair looking at me and not saying a word even when I waved the gun in his face. So I shot him. What else could you do with a man like that? He slid sideways half out of his chair when the bullet hit him, and he still didn’t say anything. So, now then!” Ralph Larson lifted his head defiantly and glared at Griggs. “Does that spell everything out for you? I wish I’d had the guts to use another bullet on myself, but I didn’t.” He dropped his face into his hands suddenly and began weeping.
    Sergeant Griggs stood up, looking tired and not particularly happy. He shrugged as Rourke went across the room to stand beside Ralph’s chair and put his hand on his shoulder, and walked out of the room and Shayne followed him.
    He hesitated outside the door and told the detective, “I guess that ties it up in a neat bundle. You think Tim will be willing to go out with us and break it to Larson’s wife? She must be in a hell of a shape, not knowing what’s happened to her husband.”
    Shayne said, “I’ll drive Tim to the Larson apartment. It’s on Northeast Sixty-First. Are you coming too?”
    “Hell, I may as well get her statement for the record, and close it out,” Griggs said. “You and Tim go ahead if you like. Get the hysterics over with before I get there.”

 
8
     
    AS MICHAEL SHAYNE DROVE OUT OF THE FLOODLIGHTED area down to the open gate, Timothy Rourke settled back on the seat beside him and sighed feelingly. “Poor punk,” he muttered. “What’ll become of him, Mike?”
    “Ralph Larson? Chances are good he’ll burn. You’ve got premeditation. Actually a killing in cold blood. It’s Murder One right on the nose.”
    “What about the unwritten law?” demanded Rourke. “A man has a right to defend his home… his wife. This is Florida, after all. Temporary