Murder Points a Finger. David Alexander
what the symbols looked like.”
Dab fingered the waxed ends of his mustache nervously. He decided to try another tack. “Let’s forget these cards on the floor for a minute,” he said. “I maintain that you can present only the flimsiest sort of motive for Ab killing his foster father. Ab’s father, James Ellison, was fired from his job. Rightly or wrongly, he believed he was done a great injustice, that he had been fired solely to make room for one of his employer’s relatives. He was deprived of the means of supporting not only himself, but his child, and Ab became a charge of the city. One night, when he was drunk and desperate, James Ellison went to his employer’s home and killed him. It was a clumsy and an amateurish crime. Ellison left fingerprints all over the place. Phil Linton was the fingerprint man on the case. His evidence convicted Ellison. But because of the man’s psychotic addiction to alcohol and his unbalanced, desperate state of mind, the D.A. allowed him to take a second-degree plea. He was sent up for life to Dannemora with the worst, most hardened criminals of the state. He died there of cirrhosis of the liver while his son was fighting overseas.”
“I don’t give a hang what these modern criminologists and psychologists and so forth say,” put in the old inspector. “I believe in blood. Bad blood and good blood. Like father like son. Crime runs in families. I’ve seen it happen too often.”
“Nonsense, man!” snapped Dab. “I’m very proud of my blood. The Ashton family is rated F.F.V. But one of my remote ancestors was a Louisiana pirate under Jean Lafitte. Do you think that means I’m likely to board the Queen Mary some night brandishing a cutlass?”
“Abner Ellison’s disappeared,” said Romano. “We’ve had men in his hotel room. Clerk says he took off right after Linton was chilled.”
“There’s probably some perfectly rational explanation for that,” insisted Dab. “But to continue. Phil did what he could. He adopted James Ellison’s son, brought him up. Ab and Phil Linton were devoted. I’ve been very close to this family and I know that. Ab held no grudge against Phil because of his father. Why, Phil often took the boy up to Dannemora on visiting days. Ab lived in this house for some twenty years. Do you suppose that all of a sudden, years after his father’s death, Ab is going to kill Phil because he identified his father’s fingerprints once in the line of duty? Such a notion is plain absurd.”
The inspector said, “He lived here for twenty years, but he moved out two months ago. Don’t you think that might mean he and Phil didn’t get along as well as they used to?”
“Ab lived here and paid board after the war while he was going to law school under the G.I. Bill of Rights,” said Dab. “He continued to live here and to pay more board when he graduated and got a job with a law firm. His moving out was purely a matter of old-fashioned propriety. About three months ago Phil Linton signed up with a lecture bureau to give talks on the history and practice of fingerprinting. Some of those lectures were in other towns and he had to stay away overnight. That left no one in the house but Ab and Pat. So Ab moved into a little family hotel not more than ten blocks from here.”
Dab saw the policemen exchange glances. They were holding something back from him, he knew. They had a trump card. But he felt compelled to go on, to state his case, to press every possible point that might be to the advantage of the young man he loved as a son.
“Now,” he continued, “of course I know that Ab was in love with Patricia. He’s about four years older than she. She was a baby when he came here as a child. But I think he always loved her, just as young Allan here did. Since childhood they’ve been friendly rivals. For a while it was anybody’s guess which suitor Pat preferred. I think she was very fond of both boys. They’re very different, but they’re both decent, good-looking young men. However, in recent years I believe even Ab knew that it was going to be Allan she would choose in the end. I doubt that Ab even proposed to her. I think he felt—wrongly, I’m sure—that being the son of a murderer cast a stigma on him in the eyes of a policeman’s daughter. In any event, even granting that he went into a jealous rage when Pat finally accepted Allan Walters last night—providing Ab knew of it—why would he kill her grandfather? Why didn’t he kill Allan Walters instead? Phil Linton would never have done anything to influence his granddaughter’s decision. I’m very sure of that.”
“He might have,” said Inspector Sansone, “if he’d known that Ellison was a crook.”
“Ab a crook,” exclaimed Dab. “Abner Ellison never did a crooked thing in his life!”
The policemen again exchanged glances.
“We’ve got good reason to believe Abner Ellison was a crook,” said Inspector Sansone, “and that Phil Linton knew it and was about to expose him.”
The inspector looked doubtfully at Lieutenant Romano.
Lieutenant Romano said, “This much is fact that we can prove. Abner Ellison was with Philip Linton last night. He was with him half an hour or so before Linton was murdered. Patrolman Bellinger saw the two of them come out of this house about eleven o’clock. They spoke to him. They walked down the hill toward Broadway together.”
“But Phil was killed inside the house by someone who forced an entrance. He must have been killed after Abner left him.”
“Ellison could have followed him back here and forced the window so it would look like an intruder,” replied Romano. “We have reason to believe that Ellison’s conference with Linton last night convinced him he had to kill Phil to save his own skin.”
“Why? Why on earth should you think that?”
Romano looked inquiringly at Sansone.
“Take over if you want to, Inspector,” he said.
Inspector Sansone regarded Dab with narrowed eyes. His big, spatulate fingers played over his square chin.
“I shouldn’t tell you this, Mr. Dab,” he said, “but I think I’ll let you have it. It’s top-echelon police business and mustn’t be repeated, but you’re peculiarly concerned in this affair and I think you have a right to know. Phil Linton knew something. Something that was hot as a firecracker. He told me two or three months ago that he’d talked to the new commissioner—he’s an old-time cop Phil had known well—and told him he’d blundered on to something and that in time he might be able to offer the Department some information that would knock the town wide open. Right after that, Ellison moved out of here. Things seemed kind of cool between Ellison and Linton from that time on.
“I guess you remember the Grand Jury probe into the numbers racket a year or so back. Evidence was presented to indicate that some Manhattan police officers had been taking graft from the Lenny Fassio mob that’s got the numbers and a lot of other enterprises sewed up in this town. Well, I remember the investigation, all right. There were some dirty hints in the papers that I was one of the ‘high officials implicated.’ I’ve got thirty-five years on the force and am due for retirement. The reason I’m still here is I wouldn’t quit under fire.
“Main witness against the cops was a former Fassio gunsel named Mike Stella. The Grand Jury returned indictments but before the case could come to trial, Stella disappeared. He stayed disappeared. Theory is he was bumped and packed in cement. So the case fell to pieces and the D.A. wound up grinding his teeth down to stubs. A few cops retired, some of the brass got busted, half a dozen detectives were put back in uniform and sent out to walk beats in Canarsie. That’s all there was to it, so far as the public was concerned. But very quietly a departmental investigation continued. That’s why I’m still around. I’m going to take a pension only when I’m free and clear of any charges, actual or implied.
“The numbers racket went merrily on, of course. There were whispers that somebody connected with the law firm of Burke and Holmquist was the payoff man. Burke and Holmquist acted as counsel for Lenny Fassio when he was called before that senatorial television show a while ago. Abner Ellison works for Burke and Holmquist.”
“Good Lord, man!” interrupted Dab. “Are you trying to imply that working for a law firm that accepts criminal cases makes a man a crook? Burke and Holmquist