Corpus Delectable by Talmage Powell

Author:Talmage Powell [Powell, Talmage]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4405-3715-8
Publisher: Pocket Books of Canada, Ltd.
Published: 1964-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

“I know how you feel, Ed, but you can’t possibly blame yourself.” Homicide Lieutenant Steve Ivey was speaking while the tech men went about their grim job in Lura Thackery’s apartment.

“Who said anything about blame?” I asked.

“Nobody — but it’s in your face.”

“I was thinking,” I said, “of the little actions in life and the way they always spread out. Specifically, of McJunkin’s visit to my apartment and of my knife throw. This, today, might have never happened, if the throw had been a few inches different.”

“You did pretty well, Ed, considering the circumstances.”

“I thought I had hurt him. He went out of my building with the blade in him.”

“And he’s tough,” Ivey said. “We’ve checked every doctor in town. None has treated a knife wound in a man answering McJunkin’s description. He carried the knife away, and he pulled it out, and he plugged up the hole. It didn’t slow him down, Ed — not enough.”

Steve watched two ambulance men cross the room with Lura Thackery’s sheet-covered body on a stretcher between them.

“Death of the innocents,” Steve muttered. “Two girls who never hurt anybody, except themselves. Jean Putnam didn’t want to bring a suspicion into the open without having a private detective confirm it. Killed by her own sense of consideration for her fellow man, you might say. Lura Thackery — killed by her fear.”

Between the meat-wagon boys Lura Thackery went through the doorway, out of the apartment for the last time.

Ivey watched the stretcher until it was out of sight in the corridor. “Maybe her fear was too much bigger than her belief that you could help her, Ed. Maybe she got to thinking, after she called you, and made the wrong decision. Maybe she contacted McJunkin, begged him to leave her alone, and tipped him that the pressure was on her.”

“Could be,” I said.

“Or maybe,” Steve shrugged, “McJunkin simply found the opportunity today to carry out the intention that must have been in his mind from the start. Either way, Lura Thackery wrote the first line of her own obituary when she handed Jean Putnam’s diary over to McJunkin. She became a sheep marked for slaughter.”

Ivey took a final look around the tasteful little apartment. “From the prelim work here,” he said, “we’ve a good idea of how McJunkin did it. He probably came exuding friendliness and reassurance until he’d lulled the girl’s worst fears. Inside the apartment, when she least expected it, he clipped Lura Thackery on the chin — which accounts for the bruise the coroner found. While she was unconscious, McJunkin methodically helped himself to a wire coat hanger, wrapped it around her neck, twisted it tight. He stuffed her in the closet and left as quiet as he had come.”

“Now you hit the jackpot question,” I said.

“I know,” Ivey said grayly. “Where did he leave to? What was his destination?”

I kept trying to pull a mental lever on the jackpot as I drove toward Ybor City. I was bugged with a sense of frustration, a feeling that something, somewhere along the line, had escaped my conscious notice.

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