Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

“Look,” Sam Vincent said, “it’s simple. He’s been shot three times, see? Doc says one got him right in the heart, one in the gut, one in the shoulder. Big caliber, probably at least a .38. Three exit wounds. Three slugs in the wall behind him, where they came out. No shells on the floor, so probably it was a revolver. Rear door of the house was kicked in, ripped the lock right out of the wood. Bathroom door’s been kicked in, somebody’s foot right under the doorknob. It was locked, but just one of those flimsy things with a push button in the knob. So, here’s the picture. Killer broke in the back door and came here. Hendrix is shaving with the door locked. Killer kicks in the door. Killer lets Hendrix have it three times with a revolver. Hendrix falls on the floor and dies. Killer goes out the back door and makes his getaway. Only thing we don’t know is, who the killer was.”

“Footprints on the door that was kicked in?” Ross asked.

“Just a faint dirty mark, nothing to go on. Nothing outside — all the walks around here are bone dry. No fingerprints, either.”

“I don’t understand why Hendrix was gripping that bar of soap,” Ross said. “I’ll tell you something, though. It was one of four guys.”

Sam Vincent smiled vaguely. “Now we’re getting someplace. I didn’t figure your boss sent you over here just to annoy me and my boys. What four guys?”

“Hendrix telephoned our office yesterday,” Ross said. “Hendrix manages the E-Z-Cash Finance Company, just over in the next block. He’s got four loan officers working under him. It’s a fairly small outfit. Hendrix said yesterday that one of the four had been extorting sex from female clients.”

“Huh?”

Ross nodded. “Yeah. Apparently this guy would tell some young attractive female who was in hock up to her ears that he’d take care of some or all of her indebtedness for her, in return for certain, uh, favors.”

He saw Vincent frown. “Creep. So, then it is open and shut. Why didn’t you tell me this before, Ross? Which guy is it?”

Allen Ross got out a cigarette, then realized he shouldn’t smoke on the crime scene and put it back in the pack. “Well, that’s the problem,” he said. “Hendrix didn’t tell us yesterday on the phone which guy it was. We set up a meeting with him for ten o’clock this morning, and he was going to tell us then.”

“Damn it. So, you don’t have any idea at all?”

“No.”

Vincent considered this. Then he turned to one of the uniformed cops. “Hey, Sid? Get a car over to the E-Z-Cash Finance Company and round up all four loan officers. Bring ’em down here. Okay?”

The cop nodded. “Right, sarge.”

“Any of ’em not in the office, find ’em and bring ’em anyway,” Vincent added.

The cop nodded again and was gone.

Allen Ross thought about the four loan officers and the sex extortion racket and the bar of soap and the three bullets and the kicked-in doors, and went outside onto the front porch to pull his overcoat collar up and smoke his cigarette. The body was taken out in a bag by the coroner’s deputies, loaded into the back of a van, and driven away. Three bullet holes. Rear door kicked in, bathroom door kicked in. Ross visualized what had probably happened.

When Allen Ross got up in the morning and shaved, he didn’t lock his bathroom door. Why should he? Nobody was coming to blow him away. So why had Hendrix locked his bathroom door? It didn’t make sense, unless...

Ross pictured Hendrix in there shaving. Then he tossed his cigarette into the frozen yard and reentered the house, immediately fogging up the lenses of his horn-rims. “Drat,” he muttered, took his glasses off, and wiped at the lenses with a handkerchief. When he could see again, he plodded down the hall to the bathroom and looked inside.

The blood was still on the floor where it had flowed from the exit wounds in Hendrix’s back. Ross could see the holes in the plaster wall where the three slugs had buried themselves. The small window was still partly open, letting in cold air from an unpaved alley. Ross turned and called to Sam Vincent, who was pacing back and forth in a formal dining room off the hall.

“Hey, Sam?”

The cop stopped pacing and came out into the hall to stand at the open bathroom door.

“Yeah?”

“Was this window open when you guys got here?”

“Sure was. Hendrix must’ve been a fresh-air nut. But I hope you’re not trying to make something of the temperature. He hasn’t been dead long enough to make the cold a problem for the time of death determination. Besides which, we’ve got a neighbor who heard all three shots and called the cops.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Ross said absently. He looked at himself in the shaving mirror and took out a comb, ran it through his thin black hair. There wasn’t a lot left on top now, and he was only forty or so. After forty he’d stopped counting, but it hadn’t been that long ago. Still not bad, though, he mused, checking his teeth — nice and straight — and the line of his jaw — no flab yet. But he didn’t much like the gray at the temples.