One Good Deed(43)

“I don’t think about it much. Seems to work okay.”

“Yeah, well, one day that may not work anymore.”

“How do you know about things like that?”

“I told you I studied psychology in college, Archer. After the First World War, men came back with shellshock, or so they termed it. The human brain was not designed for war. It changes you. You weren’t a killer before you went to war, were you?”

“Never killed anything before I went across the Atlantic. Man or beast.”

“Wait a minute, you never hunted, even?”

“Not much to hunt where I’m from.”

“But then you became a killer in the war.”

“Well, I’m not in the war anymore. And I’m no killer.”

She gave him a worried look and steered the Nash onto the road back to Poca City.





Chapter 16



AFTER JACKIE DROPPED HIM OFF, Archer walked down the hall of the Derby Hotel. As he passed by Number 615, a man in his forties stepped out dressed in a wrinkled dark blue three-piece pinstriped suit, worn black leather shoes, and a solid red tie that could have done with some laundering. He was about five-ten and 160 pounds, and looked lean and wiry and tough, with a face that reminded Archer of a boxer he had once seen in the ring during an impromptu match he’d attended during the war when they’d had a brief respite from fighting. A jutting chin of granite, a nose knocked off center, two hardened lumps for cheeks, and flattened, cauliflower ears. His hair was thick, unkempt, and graying. Over his mouth was a ribbon of dark mustache. He wore a black homburg with a gray band.

Most remarkably for Archer, his eyes were twin darts of crystallized coal, or close to it. They were the calmest pair of eyes Archer had ever seen.

Those eyes now looked at Archer with interest.

“You staying here on this floor, son?” the man said.

“Who’s asking?”

The man opened his coat, revealing a silver pointy badge on his vest. “State police. Detective Lieutenant Irving Shaw is asking, Mr.…?”

“Archer. You’re a homicide dick, then?”

Shaw ignored this and said, “So you’re Archer? You were at Miss Jackie Tuttle’s residence this morning, correct? The deputies reported that to me.”

“I was.”

“You two going out or something?”

“Just a friend. Told the same to your deputies.”

“A friend who’s at her house early in the morning? You sure you didn’t spend the night?”

“I slept here last night. I went to see Jackie at her place this morning.”

“Why that early?”

“Missed her, I guess.”

Shaw took out a worn, small notebook and a stubby pencil and wrote something down. “You say you slept here last night? What room?”

“Number 610.”

Shaw eyed the location of Archer’s room and his bits of coal eyes lit up like someone had flamed them.

“You hear anything last night?”

“Like what?”

“Anything out of the ordinary.”

“I haven’t been here that long. So I don’t think I know what’s ordinary for Poca City yet.”

“Just use your common sense then.”

“No, I slept pretty hard. Didn’t hear anything.”

Shaw wrote something else down. “You coulda just told me that to begin with.”

“I could’ve, sure. Sorry about that.”

“You’re in from Carderock Prison, I hear.”

“And I served my time.”

“Not all of it. I looked you up. You’re on parole now. Ernestine Crabtree?”

“That’s right. Already reported in.”

“Good for you. So, your story is you were asleep from when to when?”

“Oh, about midnight to six or so.”

“You see the deceased last night?”

Archer had been stunned that the two deputies had not earlier asked this question. But this fellow Shaw appeared to be a far superior sort of person. He seemed to like asking questions as much as Archer did.

Shaw had his pencil poised over his notebook.

“You hear me, Mr. Archer?”

“Yeah, I saw him. He was drunk. Outside the Cat’s Meow. Me and Miss Tuttle helped him to his bed in there and left.”

“So you were at the bar last night with them?”

“I’m not allowed in the bar. Against my parole.”

“So it is. Then how’d you run into them?”

“I was passing by the bar last night when I saw them come out. Miss Tuttle was having a struggle holding him up. So, I helped her out.”

Shaw rubbed at his mustache with the pencil. “And she let a stranger do that?”

“I had met her before. Both of them, actually.”

“Is that right? Where would that have been?”

Archer felt something go hard in the pit of his stomach.

“Around town. My first night here, actually. We struck up a conversation. Interesting man. And she was nice, too.”

Shaw wrote something else down and shook his head.

“What?” asked Archer, trying to peer at his scribblings.