The Shattered Raven by Edward D. Hoch Page A

Fox scratched his balding head, rummaged around his desk until he found a cigarette in a half-empty pack. “All right,” he said. “So maybe she has something. I suppose it’s worth your while talking to her again. Find out how much she needs. If you want, I’ll go down and talk to her with you.”
    Barney thought about that “We’ll never be able to meet her price. I think it might be wiser to call that detective fellow—George. He might just be able to throw a scare into her. Let me use your phone to call police headquarters. I want to see if I can catch him.”
    George was in. He answered the phone almost immediately, in a bored voice that grew only slightly interested when Barney identified himself. After listening in silence to the purpose of the call, he said, “Don’t you think you’re about twelve hours late notifying me? Don’t you think you should have called me as soon as that telegram came in to your radio programme? The woman could be halfway back to Nebraska by now. Or she could be dead, for all you know.”
    “Look, I called you, didn’t I? Now, do you want to meet me down there, or don’t you?”
    “What’s the address?” George asked.
    Barney gave it to him, then said goodbye to Harry Fox and headed out to get a cab. Inching downtown at ten miles an hour, he was not at all surprised to see a police car pulled up in front of the address when he arrived. He was a bit surprised, however, when a second car arrived on the scene almost at once, its siren blaring. He wondered what George was up to.
    The detective was standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for him outside of Irma Black’s apartment. “You mystery writers, you really know how to handle things, don’t you?”
    “What do you mean?” Barney asked, but he already could feel a chill on his spine. Something was wrong.
    “I mean this Black woman is dead. You wanna come in and take a look?”
    “Dead?”
    “Strangled with a telephone cord.”
    Barney stepped through the doorway, fighting down a growing nausea in the pit of his stomach. Yes, she was there, sprawled on the floor.
    “This is the woman you talked to?” George asked.
    “That’s her. Irma Black. From June, Nebraska.”
    “Any idea who did it?”
    “No idea, unless you want a wild guess. It could have been the same person who killed Ross Craigthorn. There were two of them connected with Irma Black somehow in her past, back in the midwest. She told me that much. Wouldn’t tell me more unless she got some money. Like I explained to you on the phone, I thought maybe we could throw a scare into her.”
    “You threw a scare into somebody. You left her at what time, Mr. Hamet?”
    Barney tried to think. “We were here from maybe a bit after twelve till around one. She said she had to go out then.”
    “Did she go out?”
    “I don’t know. Susan Veldt and I left. We didn’t see anyone lurking about.”
    “Who else knew you were coming here?”
    Barney explained again about the radio programme. “Everyone in the studio knew about it. When the telegram came in, we all looked at it. After the show, we debated about it a bit. Some of them wanted to come right down, but I figured I’d better wait till noon.”
    “Sure, wait till noon! Give the murderer plenty of chance!” The detective turned away in disgust
    “How did I know she’d get killed? There were five of us on the programme. Am I supposed to figure one of them did it?”
    “It wouldn’t be a bad figure. They had the address. And it sounds to me as if they might have had a motive, if one of them killed Craigthorn. Give me their names.”
    Barney sighed, feeling somehow on the brink of a great betrayal. “All right Harry Fox. You know him. You met him the other night. Max Winters, you know. You were questioning him at his hotel. Dick McMullen, the agent Frank Jesset. Jesset’s the one who was a friend of Craigthorn’s.”
    “I know. Frank Jesset.”
    But Barney noticed the flicker of interest in the