Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson Page B

anyway?”
    “That’s the police list of all dynamite purchases made during the past year. Interesting, huh?”
    “I don’t know that I follow you.”
    “Let’s put it this way. Black Fox was the brand used to blow up Linneker, about eighteen sticks of it. Farnum bought Black Fox dynamite in December. Three months before, Captain McCoy also bought Black Fox. It was McCoy and Quinlan who found the Black Fox dynamite in Shayon’s closet. Farnum denied putting it there. Then he changed his story — unconvincingly.” Holt paused. “McCoy and Quinlan each visited Farnum over the week end in his cell, although Farnum didn’t want to admit it to me.”
    Adair couldn’t remain seated. He rose and paced up and down, finally halting to stare at Holt. “Do you know what you’re suggesting?”
    Holt nodded reluctantly. “I told you it was going to sound pretty wild.”
    “Wild? That’s the understatement of the year.”
    “Suppose,” said Holt, massaging his forehead, “that it went this way. McCoy and Quinlan were sure that Shayon and Tara were guilty. Intuition, McCoy called it, based on their experience. All they needed was one solid bit of proof — they told me so. They thought they were going to get a positive identification of Shayon up at Seacliff from the clerk who sold Farnum the dynamite. Well, naturally, they didn’t get the identification. But that didn’t shake their belief in Shayon’s guilt. They knew they were right. And don’t forget that the pressure was on them, and heavily, to solve the Linneker murder fast. Everybody expected it because of their reputations. Couldn’t they have been tempted to ‘find’ the evidence they needed — even if that meant faking it — figuring that it would make Shayon crack? I think they could.”
    “Incredible,” muttered Adair.
    “Not so very. McCoy and Quinlan are human. They’ve got a lot of pride in their reputations, as well they should. And since they knew Shayon was guilty, what was the harm? That’s a reconstruction from their point of view, of course.”
    “I’m not ready to dignify it with that term yet.”
    “Let me make another point. Whoever put the dynamite in Shayon’s closet knew the right brand to plant. When I talked to McCoy last Friday, I brought that up. He told me that the brand name — Black Fox — had been in the papers. Well, I just finished reading our office scrapbook on this case and that brand name was definitely not mentioned in the papers, at least not soon enough to count. The police evidently didn’t release that detail to the reporters until after Farnum’s arrest. So the dynamite had to be planted by somebody on the inside of this case.”
    “Exactly. Ernest Farnum.”
    “But if not Farnum, certainly not an outside crackpot such as McCoy suggested. Black Fox is a common brand, sure, but not the only common brand. The odds against an outsider picking the right brand are tremendous.”
    Adair made a negative gesture as if brushing aside cobwebs.
    Holt continued, “Of course, Farnum’s confession left McCoy and Quinlan out on a limb. That planted dynamite had to be accounted for. I think that they went to see Farnum for that purpose. They probably scared holy hell out of him, told him that if he didn’t confess to that, too, all sorts of terrible things would happen to him. Farnum’s impressionable, rather childlike. There’s something about being locked up in a cage, at the mercy of other people, that does strange things even to a strong man. Look at what happened to our GIs in Korea, for instance.”
    “Let me be sure I understand this. Is it part of your theory that McCoy and Quinlan have some personal involvement in the Linneker case?”
    “Aside from their reputations being at stake, no.”
    Adair nodded and sat down behind his desk. He made a tent of his fingers and regarded them soberly. Holt waited, not sure what attitude Adair intended to adopt. It might be complete agreement or total opposition.