Random Killer Read Free Page B

Madison Avenue. He should be here any moment.”
    “I’d better get upstairs before Dick Barrows starts hammering on the door of thirty-four-oh-six,” I said.
    Ruysdale opened a drawer of the desk and produced a flat box of Egyptian cigarettes. “Better take these to Pierre,” she said. “In his present state of mind he should be just about out of them by now.”
    She knew his needs before he was aware of them himself.
    Lieutenant Hardy, a big, blond, rather clumsy-looking man, appears more like a slightly bewildered professional fullback than a very shrewd expert in the field of crime. Whatever he looks like, he is one of the very best at his job. He and Chambrun work well together because their approaches are so different. Chambrun is a hunch player whose hunches are almost always solid. He is mercurial, arriving at answers without bothering to gather facts that will prove out his instinctive processes. Hardy is an evidence gatherer, slow, plodding, but never leaving a single stone unturned until he has covered every inch of the territory. He knows he has to build a case for a district attorney. Chambrun only wants an answer for himself. Combining their talents they are a very tough team.
    One of Jerry Dodd’s security boys was on guard outside 3406, but I was ushered in without question. The living room was crowded. Evidently Hardy’s homicide crew, fingerprint boys, and police photographers, had come up by a service elevator and were hard at work. A young Chinese doctor from the medical examiner’s office was kneeling beside what was left of Geoffrey Hammond. Hardy didn’t waste time.
    The blond detective, Chambrun, and Jerry Dodd were in a huddle at the far end of the room. I joined them, weaving my way through the army of technicians. Hardy gave me a cheerful nod.
    “How come you cruised through the lobby instead of coming up the back way with your boys?” I asked him. “Dick Barrows of the Times spotted you and I had to fill him in to keep a whole army off our backs.”
    “I wanted to be seen,” Hardy said.
    “By whom?”
    “I wish I knew,” Hardy said.
    I had to let that one lie where it was because Chambrun, cold as ice, was at me.
    “Roy Conklin is on his way,” he said. “Hardy doesn’t want him up here. He’s to be taken to my office. Hold his hand until Hardy and I can get there. You might ask him about women.”
    “What women?”
    “A woman spent a good part of the night here—may have breakfasted with Hammond.”
    “How do you know?”
    Jerry Dodd grinned at me. “Go smell the bedsheets and the pillowcase,” he said. “Unless Hammond wears Chanel Number Five, he had company.”
    “Now!” Chambrun said to me.
    Mine not to reason why. I made tracks for the second floor and Chambrun’s office.
    Roy Conklin was already there, storming up and down Chambrun’s office on his gimpy leg, shouting at Betsy Ruysdale and two security boys who were preventing him from taking off. I have described him as prematurely grey, bitter faced. He was in a rage now.
    “You can’t keep me here,” he was telling the world. “It’s false arrest. I’ll have you all and this hotel sued out of your socks before I’m done with you.”
    “Mr. Chambrun and Lieutenant Hardy will be here in a few minutes,” I told him. “I’m Mark Haskell, public relations for the hotel. Hammond’s room is full of technicians at the moment. No place to talk.”
    “I don’t want to talk! I want to see for myself!”
    “You wouldn’t like it,” I said.
    “Maybe you’d be good enough to tell me just what has happened,” Conklin said. “Nobody else has bothered.”
    I told him. Hammond strangled with picture wire from behind. An unknown breakfast guest. An unknown woman in his bed. As I talked, Conklin lowered himself into one of the office’s leather armchairs, as though his leg and a half wouldn’t hold him up any longer.
    “Where is Bobby?” he asked.
    “Bobby who?”
    “Geoff’s secretary.”
    “Does