Bodies Are Where You Find Them Read Free

he wouldn’t even admit to himself, in spite of a year of marriage to a girl like Phyllis? He didn’t honestly think so. Yet, what man ever really knows his inward motivations?
    He became conscious of the movement and commotion around him, the rattling of express carts on gravel, the puffing of engines and clanging of bells, the milling throng of people. He shrugged off a baffled sense of irritation and went to his car.
    The sun was setting in a gray-blue mist as he stepped on the starter. He remembered suddenly that he had not locked the door of his office in his frantic haste to get Phyllis away from the scene. He slipped the car into gear and pressed the accelerator to the floor board, driving the six blocks to his apartment in four minutes. He parked at a side entrance just in front of a drawbridge over the Miami River.
    He went through the private entrance and up the service stairs with a queer feeling of elation which shamed him. He had done this often in the past—before Phyllis—when every feminine face was a challenge, every meeting in his bachelor apartment holding the promise of an assignation.
    He whistled a gay off-key melody as he approached the door. He ran water over a glass of ice cubes in the kitchen, poured a glass of cognac from a bottle in the wall cabinet, then went into the bedroom with a glass in each hand.
    Twilight darkened the room, but not enough to hide the grotesquely twisted posture of the girl on the bed. He bent over her, spilling cognac on the floor.
    Sightless eyes stared up at him. One of the girl’s stockings was tightly knotted about her throat.
    Shayne stepped back and emptied the glass of cognac down his dry throat. He hesitated only an instant before going to the telephone. He picked it up and said, “Police Headquarters,” but the clerk’s excited voice broke in on the line.
    “Mr. Shayne! I thought you’d left town. I just told Chief Gentry you had. He and another man are on their way up there. They’re waiting for an elevator now.”
    Shayne cut off the connection.

 
TWO
     
    SHAYNE WHIRLED ABOUT and ran to the death room. With swift precision of movement he stripped the sheet and bedspread from under the girl, drew them up to cover her clothed body. Leaning close, he pressed her head sideways so that her cheek was on the pillow and turned away from him. He crooked her right arm upward, spreading the flaccid fingers out to coyly cover her upturned cheek, then tucked the spread down tightly about her neck to hide the knotted stocking that had throttled her.
    Stepping back he surveyed the bed and body searchingly, nodding with grim satisfaction as he unbuttoned his coat and vest, stripped them off, and dropped them to the floor beside the bed. He loosened his soft collar and jerked his tie awry, then ran for a bottle of cognac. He splashed liquor from the bottle on the spread near the girl’s face.
    Heady, pungent fumes roiled up from the liquor. He put the bottle to his lips and drank as an authoritative knock sounded on the outer door.
    He didn’t hurry to answer. He made his grim features go lax and practiced staggering to the bedroom doorway. He lolled against the threshold in view of the outer door, holding the bottle by the neck, calling thickly, “Yeh? Who th’ hell izh it?”
    The outer door opened, and Will Gentry advanced solidly into the room, followed by a tall, lean man with deep-set cynical eyes.
    The chief of the Miami detective bureau was a burly man with heavy features and a slow impassive manner. He had been a close friend of Michael Shayne’s for many years, and the two had worked together with congenial expediency.
    Gentry frowned and raised grizzled eyebrows at Shayne. “I thought you and Phyllis had left town on the five-forty.”
    Shayne grinned idiotically and defensively. He waggled a long forefinger at Chief Gentry. “Phyl caught the train. I shtayed here. Rizhness—y’know—ol’ shaying—bizhness ’fore pleasure.” He drew himself