The Price of Murder (22 page)

“Got it?” Wixler asked.

“I think so.” Catelli was a wiry man with a satanic grin. The light cast its beams upward onto his face. He said, “How about it, Sarge? A lot of people who don’t know how this is done get a boot out of it. Maybe Mr. Verney wants to see better, hey?”

Wixler nodded and stepped to one side. Spence urged Verney closer.

Catelli looked very pleased. “This is one of the things you got to know how to do in my business.” He took a small square of paper, white and flimsy. “Now this here is filter paper. In this bottle here I got a one-tenth-N-saline solution. I get this here paper nice and moist. Then, see, I press it against this little stain here on the edge of the sole of your shoe. Okay. From here on I don’t need the shoe. In this here bottle a two hundred and forty-to-one solution of Eastman 3620 in acetic acid at forty per cent strength. So I take this glass rod and dip it in this bottle and touch it to the filter paper where I pressed it against the shoe. Check? Nothing happens yet, Mr. Verney. Not until we get to this last bottle. In this bottle I got a mixture of eleven parts sodium perborate to thirty parts of a forty per cent acetic acid solution.

“So I wipe off this here rod and dip it in this bottle.” He held it over the filter paper. “Now if that spot you had on your shoe was human blood, Mr. Verney, you’re going to see this paper change color when I touch it. It’ll change to a nice kinda greeny blue, and there isn’t another damn thing in the world but blood that’ll make it change.”

With a certain ceremonial grace, Catelli touched the wet
rod to the paper. The blue-green stain appeared immediately, and Catelli held it up proudly for Verney to see. “So maybe you cut yourself shaving, or maybe you walked where a pedestrian got clobbered. It ain’t my business how you got it. All I know is it’s blood and it was on your shoe.”

Verney stared at the piece of paper. He could feel the other two watching him closely. He knew he had to say something. He took in a deep breath and let it out. He knew he had to explain quickly and logically. He could think of nothing. Yet he had to think of something. He kept staring at the blue-green stain. He sucked in another deep breath. And exploded it out of his lungs in a high whistling, whinnying scream, a shocking scream of fright and despair.

He staggered Spence with a backhand flail of his arm that caught Spence across the chest. He kicked at the paper and missed. Wixler moved trimly, compactly, and with a half swing laid the side of his service revolver over Verney’s ear.

Verney fell heavily and lay still.

“The poor son of a bitch,” Spence said.

“Pack up, Catelli,” Ben said.

John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel
The Executioners
, which was adapted into the film
Cape Fear
. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.