Page 112 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Cat’s Paw

reality a vice squad officer cruising for johns. He brings her up here,
kills her, then goes about his business and gets zapped. Not pretty,
but it sounds plausible. I may have to alter the evidence a little, but
you won’t mind after I’ve cracked your skull in half like this—”
He swung the mug at close range at her head. She was just
standing there like a statue; he couldn’t miss. But he did. Somehow
she wasn’t there when the deathblow descended. Mallard’s
momentum carried him past her into the wall. Wham! Down he
went, dazed and bleeding at the nose. The noise brought two men
from somewhere in the other offices. They were evidently police, too.
“Take him and book him.” said Labelle. And they did. The next
time I saw Fletcher Mallard was at the defendant’s table in a criminal
courtroom.
“Can I breathe now?” I tried smiling, but the muscles were too
tight.
“Certainly.” Her face wasn’t cramped, but that didn’t stop her
from not smiling. Maybe she was incapable of seeing any humor in
my situation. I was desperate to see some.
I stood up and stretched. It was past my dinnertime and fast
approaching my bedtime. “Would you please tell me what this is all
about?”
“All right. Fair enough.”
She sat down on the edge of Evan Adams’ desk. Boy, would he be
shocked to learn what had happened! Years of brown-nosing down
the drain. Officer Gramercy produced a small notebook, to which
she referred in her ensuing remarks. I was all ears.
“Your employer, Fletcher Mallard, has kept his business from
going under by spending the trust funds formerly controlled by his
wife. She died under mysterious circumstances a few years ago.
Although her death was ruled accidental, her file was flagged with a
certain code which brought it back for review at specific intervals. I
happened to be the officer who looked at it most recently, and I
began exploring leads others had neglected and amassing new
information regarding the case.”
“The facts are these: Alice Mallard suffered from Kreutzlieder’s
Syndrome, a recurrent malady requiring a specific medication to be
kept under control. That prescription drug, Lethenol, had been
purchased by her from a local pharmacy several times over the years.

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