Read Deadly Weapon for Free Online Page B

Denver some Boy Scouts found him parked in his car on the outskirts of Atlanta. Somebody had emptied a .45 into him. He’d been dead all night.”
    “You own a .45?” Clapp asked gently. The little office died.
    Walter James breathed out and his eyes went icy again. “That’s a poor question,” he said.
    “Yes, it is,” Clapp agreed suddenly. “And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked it at this point.”
    “I’ll answer it at this point. No.” Walter James put his hand next to Laura Gilbert’s on the desk. It was just as white and almost as small. “I have trouble holding onto a .45,” he said.
    “Have one of my cigarettes,” the girl suggested. She lit it for him with a tiny lighter.
    “Furthermore,” said Walter James after a moment, “except that the light was seen burning in my office at the agency, I have no alibi for the night my partner was gunned out.”
    “What did the police find?”
    “Nothing. Not even the gun. Hal’s wallet was emptied and he generally carried any papers he was working on in his inside coat pocket — that pocket was empty, too. And he didn’t leave me a letter or a damn thing telling me what progress he had made on whatever it was. Maybe he hadn’t made any progress. Maybe somebody just thought he had.”
    “I guess his wife took it pretty hard,” Laura Gilbert ventured softly.
    “We never found out,” said Walter James. “She was in Miami at the time and she never came back. Checked out of her hotel, with a few personal items, and disappeared. Left most of her clothes.”
    “Anything more on that?”
    “No. Atlanta has been checking every unidentified body on the East coast but no tall blondes. No nothing.”
    “What makes you so sure that this town is involved?” Clapp passed his hand wearily over his tanned face.
    “I wasn’t — up until the show tonight. Three days after Hal was killed, I got a tip-off by phone. It was a man’s voice. It said that if I told the Filipino at the Grand Theater in San Diego that I was Dr. Boone, I might get some place.”
    “Dr. Boone? Who’s he?”
    “Nobody in the Atlanta directory or the San Diego directory,” said Walter James. “Nobody at all — yet. I scouted the Grand Theater Friday and again Saturday afternoon. The Filipino always sat in on that strip number toward the last. I figured I wouldn’t have to sit through that damn show again — that I’d be safe in coming late and I could nab him after the show. Well, that’s the story. I never got the chance to pass myself off as Dr. Boone.” He drummed on the empty beer can with his fingernails. “Oh. There’s one other item. That gun — the .25 — that’s one of a set I gave Hal on his last birthday. They’re out of my collection and I think I can give you the number tomorrow on the other one. Except that it’s a lady’s pistol — concealed hammer and a little smaller — it’s the same design.”
    “Did your partner have a silencer?”
    “He may have. I don’t know.”
    “Did he have the guns on him the night he was killed?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Were there any witnesses to that telephone tip-off you got?”
    “No. How many witnesses do you have to your phone calls?”
    “Not a hell of a lot.” Clapp rubbed his tongue over his teeth and squinted his eyes wearily. Walter James pushed his two beer cans into the wastebasket.
    “May I go home now?”
    “Okay,” said Clapp. “You can go home.” Walter James stood up first, then Laura Gilbert rose a little uncertainly, with a glance at the big man. He nodded. “Sure, you, too.” Walter James pushed open the door for her. Clapp waggled a finger at him.
    “Here’s something else to think about, James. That box — the one we found in the Filipino’s sport coat — ”
    “Yes,” said Walter James agreeably. “I recognized it. Marijuana, wasn’t it?”
    Clapp sighed. “Yes,” he said. “Marijuana.”

6
. Sunday, September 24, 2:45 A.M.
    A WHITE STUCCO CARTON stood on the