Free Shoot to Kill by Brett Halliday Page B

insanity, damn it.”
    “If he’d done it on the spur of the moment, sure. If he’d just walked in there and shot Ames tonight as we first thought, having worked himself into a state of homicidal jealousy, a jury would probably take a lenient view. If he’d had a gun in his pocket and blasted Ames on his first trip at seven o’clock… okay. But he left that house determined to get a gun and kill Ames according to his own statement. Half an hour is a long time for temporary insanity to prevail. No, Tim. Any way you look at it your young friend is in a very bad spot. You and I are both to blame for not taking his threat more seriously and stepping in faster.”
    “Yeh,” muttered Rourke. “I’d rather cut off my right arm than break the news to Dorothy. No matter how it looks, I tell you she was really in love with Ralph. Think what she must have gone through this last hour. Ralph dashing out with a gun. She not hearing a word… not knowing what’s happened.”
    “There may have been a flash on TV,” Shayne suggested. “One of the boys at headquarters may have picked it up.” He slid past the traffic light at 79th and eased over into the outer lane to prepare for the turn onto 61st.
    “In that case we’ll find her hysterical.”
    “Or under sedation,” Shayne suggested hopefully. There were fewer cars parked along the quiet street at this hour than when the detective had stopped by earlier, and he had no difficulty finding a parking place directly in front of the apartment building. He got out with Rourke and they went up the walk together and through the empty entrance hall to the stairway. The doors of both apartments at the top of the stairs were closed and there was silence in the upper hall. Shayne turned to 3-B on the right and pressed the button as he had done on his first visit, but this time he didn’t bother to get a pleasant smile ready to greet the occupant when she opened the door.
    As before, there was no response to his ring. Shayne hesitated and glanced aside at Rourke with ragged red eyebrows raised questioningly, and pressed the bell again. Involuntarily he caught himself glancing over his shoulder at 4-B, half-expecting that door to open and reveal May Graham, still bare-footed and still welcoming.
    But both doors remained shut and only silence answered his second ring. He hunched down and studied the keyhole and jingled a ring of keys in his pocket, and absently tried the knob as he straightened up.
    It turned and the door to the Larson apartment swung open. There were lights inside but only silence greeted the opening of the door. Shayne stepped over the threshold, calling, “Mrs. Larson?” and he hesitated only a moment at the entrance to the empty living room before striding in.
    The interior arrangement of the apartment was a replica of the one across the hall, with a closed door directly in front of him which he knew, opened into a bedroom, and an open door on the right through which he could see a small, neat kitchen.
    He heard Rourke enter behind him, and the reporter muttered uneasily, “What the hell do you suppose…?”
    Shayne crossed the sitting room in four long, fast strides and jerked open the bedroom door. The overhead light was on in this room also and neatly made twin beds stood side by side, but there were articles of feminine clothing tossed in disarray on one of the beds, a half-packed suitcase stood open near the head of it, and bureau drawers were pulled open haphazardly with contents rumpled and dangling over the edges of the drawers.
    Shayne took in the scene with one swift glance, then strode to the open door of a bathroom on the right and switched on the light. Rourke saw him straighten and his shoulders stiffen as he looked inside the bathroom.
    Fearful of what he might see inside the bathroom, the reporter edged up behind the rangy detective and peered past his shoulder.
    There was no body in the bathroom, as he had instinctively feared. But there was