Call Me Killer

By Harry Whittington

Homicide Detective Barney Manton had a simple theory about catching murderers. Just beat, torture, and hound your suspect until his life becomes completely unbearable. Stay on top of him every hour of every day until he yearns for releaseeven release via the death chamber. Presto! You have your confession, the law has its “murderer” and the case is closed...

He was just a little guy called Sam Gowan. He was holding an empty automatic in his hand. At his feet lay the body of a man who had been shot through the head. Sam Gowan’s clothes were covered with the man’s bloodSam Gowan’s senses reeled with panicone thought came throughEscape! Cover your tracks and escape!

...Sam Gowan had never heard of Homicide Detective Barney MantonManton never knew that a little guy called Sam Gowan existed. Capricious fate decreed that the two men meet in a deadly, unequal contest, a cat and mouse struggle with all the resources of the police department arraigned on the side of the powerful and sadistic Homicide Detective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781440544934

Book preview

1

SAM GOWAN looked from the empty automatic in his hand to the dead man’s body twisted on the floor between his legs, one leg drawn up, one arm extended. Chill moonlight filtered through the wide casement window that laid bare the east wall of the darkened office. Each separate pane of the window was a framed picture of a deep-sleeping city in the chilly hours before dawn.

For a long time he stood rigid, staring down at the bloody splotch that had been Ross Lambart’s face. His mind was numbed with horror, and all he could think was, I’ve got to get out of here!

He stepped slowly away from Lambart’s body, almost expecting his legs to stretch rubber-like, the fantastic way they might in a dream. He ran woodenly toward the frost-glassed corridor door, conscious only that he was cold, that his fingers were stiff with cold.

But at the door he stopped and looked again at the darkened office. And through the numbness in his mind, he began to see it as the police were going to see it.

He shook his head. I couldn’t have killed him, he said aloud. He was just a guy named Sam Gowan who had never wanted to kill anybody in all his life. He was medium tall, just under thirty. His straight brown hair was flopped over his high, sweated forehead. The nostrils of his straight nose were distended at the sight and horror of death.

He’d always thought of himself as one of those average fellows you wouldn’t look at twice On a crowded street. A fifty-five dollar a week job. A pretty wife with plenty of faults. A mortgaged cottage, a car maybe next year if prices dropped any. That’s me, Sam would have told you.

All he could remember was meeting Ross Lambart this afternoon at four o’clock. Some bar, he couldn’t remember where. He couldn’t remember having had anything to drink beyond that first beer. All that had gone between that time and now was lost to Sam.

He forced his gaze once more to the body of Ross Lambart. There was a widening rim of blood under Lambart’s head. Sam gagged. He jerked at the door knob. The door was locked.

He looked around him. The moonlight was patterned in warped squares across the desk. In its light, he saw the orderly stack of gray papers, an overturned fountain pen holder, an upset desk lamp, and a telephone receiver lying ten inches from its cradle.

His eyes moved from the upset receiver on the desk across to the filing cabinets. There was a closed door directly before him, and one, half ajar to his left. A leather covered chair had been knocked over. He looked down again at the dead man, and inevitably back to the telephone, uncradled on the desk.

How long had it been like that? How long before it would be investigated?

Sam was breathing through his mouth. He thrust the cold metal automatic into his coat pocket and ran back to the desk.

He clutched up the receiver, and threw it back onto its cradle.

Fascinatedly, he watched the receiver slide off crazily and thud dully against the glass desk top. He saw that one of the guard bars was broken off the base of the cradle. He thought sickly, I’m leaving fingerprints, and I’m not fixing anything. He covered-his hand with his handkerchief and wiped the receiver. Then he righted the fountain pen holder and pushed it tightly against the telephone to hold the receiver arm in place.

As he turned away, he saw that his handkerchief was smeared with blood. I’ll get rid of it, he promised himself. He realized he was breathing as though he’d run a fast mile. His legs trembled.

He sank tiredly against the desk and rested his weight on the palms of his hands.

He began to be sick at the feel of blood under his fingers. He backed away, holding his spread-fingered hands before him. There was a thick streak of it along the cuff of his coat. Then he saw that there was blood on the desk, on the penholder, and all over the broken base of the telephone.

He crossed the room and threw open the first door. There was nothing inside this niche except empty coat hangers strung along a small cross-bar. On the floor at Sam’s feet were two overcoats and two hats, crumpled and forgotten where they’d been carelessly thrown.

He moved on to the closed door beyond. When he opened it, light from a shaded bulb over a medicine chest mirror struck him blindingly. He stepped into the small room and closed the door tightly after him. Carefully he washed the congealing blood from his palms, from between his fingers and out of the small hairs across the back of his hand.

He looked at the thick smudge of blood on the cuff of his coat. I’ll burn the coat, he thought, when I get out of here, I’ll burn the coat.

He looked about. There was no towel, not even the paper variety, and there was no toilet paper on the rack beside the stool. He rubbed his hands along the front of his coat.

Again in the darkened office, he straightened the leather chair. Then he started once more for the corridor. But remembering the two hats and overcoats in the closet, he went back across the room. If he left a hat and coat in this room, what chance in the world did he have?

The first hat perched on top of his head. He cast it to the floor and picked up a top coat and the other hat, a bowler dress derby. He knew before he sat it atop his head that it didn’t belong to him. He realized all this was wasting more precious time. Hats and coats belonged, he was suddenly aware, to Ross Lambart. Why were they on the floor? He laughed bitterly. How could he explain a minor detail like that?

Sam cracked the exit door cautiously and stood in the slit of it for a moment. He held his breath, listening. His eyes searched the dim-lit length of the corridor.

He stepped out into the hall and closed the door after him. He heard a sharp clack as the night bolt slid into place. Sam thought, it has closed now. He couldn’t get back in there no matter what happened, no matter what damning evidence he had left behind.

He glanced toward the fire escape, shook his head. All he needed now was to be caught by a cop on a dark fire escape. No, he had to take his chances on getting out of the building entrance. He was almost to the elevator when he stopped.

There was certainly a night operator on duty unless this was an automatic lift. Sam didn’t know, and he couldn’t take a chance. He looked at the buttons beside the grilled elevator doors and smiled grimly. The stairway was beyond, a huge nine painted on the face of its door.

Sam pushed through it. The marble stairways were wide, with marble banisters. The steps were littered with candy wrappers and cigarette butts.

He held to the banisters with his right hand and hurried down the marble steps. There was a scrubwoman at the eighth floor landing. In his haste, he almost stepped on her. She was on her knees, scouring with soapy lye water.

She looked up, smiling toothlessly at him. There was a smear of soap across her forehead where she’d trailed it in raking a hank of thin gray hair from her face. Her eyes were dulled with the hypnosis of half-sleep. He supposed she worked in that semi-waking state. Her eyes always fixed on the unchanging gray of the stairs, red, bony hands moving instinctively from lye water to marble, and back again.

Sam halted, face flushing. His breath burst thickly across his parted lips. He stared at her for a moment without moving.

She wakened enough to speak, her pale old eyes crinkling. Good morning, sir. I’m almost through now, sir. Seems like everyday it takes longer.

Sam nodded curtly and stepped around her. But at the mouth of the next stairwell, he paused. The biting odor of lye and strong soap were pungent in his nostrils as he looked starkly back over his shoulder at her. Through his mind raced the thought: if she lives, she is a witness against me.

His clenched right fist brushed the cold gun pocketed in his gaudy sport coat. His hand shuddered, recoiled from touching the automatic. He began to run down the steps, ignoring the throbbing of his heart, the weakness of his legs. And he knew as he rounded the landing on the third floor that he was running from that old woman up there.

At the second floor, he halted. He opened the exit door an inch. He listened, watching the silent corridor. When he was certain it was vacated, he moved along the wall. At the elevator, he impatiently prodded the orange colored button.

He waited with breath held against his aching throat until he heard the elevator doors clang together, and the low hum of the elevator mechanism.

He smiled then with bitter satisfaction and returned to the stairway. He ran all the way down the deeper well between the second and ground floors.

He checked only to see that the elevator was closed. Then he stepped boldly into the foyer and started purposefully toward the outer exits.

He heard the sharp crack as chair legs hit marble flooring. The sound struck him like a blow in the small of the back. He stood straight, stock still. The youth in the second elevator doorway spoke respectfully to him.

Would you mind checking out, sir?

Sam turned slowly, dragged the tip of his tongue across his mouth.

The boy was tow-headed, with a sharp, narrow face set in a triangle of protuberant ears and prominent Adam’s apple. He seemed to read the puzzled frown on Sam’s brow.

Just came on duty, he explained with a smile. Julius just answered a call upstairs. Prob’ly some damned scrub woman wants him to buy her a Coke to take her pills with.

What time is it? Sam said. Why ask that? Well, there was nothing like setting the very hour in which he’d been here.

The boy looked carefully at his watch. Then gave a careless answer. Little after five, he said. If you’ll just sign out on that book. Everybody signs in and out between ten at night and six in the morning.

Sam hunched up his shoulders and nodded. It seemed a mile across the floor to the heavily bound ledger chained to a wall rack. As he walked, he heard the other elevator returning from the second floor.

It’s begun to rain outside, the operator was saying. Damn it all, anyway. Been rainin’ every mornin’ for a month. Starts when I get up to come to work, and rains just long enough to make everything miserable.

Sam moved his finger down the list. He stopped at the signature of Ross Lambart, April 25th, eleven-thirty p.m., suite 918.

He exhaled. The name above Lambart’s was that of a man named Mye. David Mye. No time and no office designated. Gratified, Sam glanced up at the brass name plate above the wall rack: Citizens Trust and Home Loan Building.

He took another quick glance at Ross Lambart’s affectedly scrawled signature. Then he wheeled about and moved hurriedly toward the street, fearful his legs were going to buckle under him. The elevator door opened. The tow-head shouted after him.

Hey, sir. Wait a minnit! You didn’t sign out!

My name wasn’t on there, Sam called. He kept his face turned away and pushed through the heavy glass doors to the drizzling rain of the murky dawn.

It was very cold in the street. He shrugged the sport jacket up on his shoulders. He shivered in the chill of the rain. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned west in the blustery drizzle. His eyes searched the rain-slick thoroughfare for a taxi.

If I can get home to Elsa, he told himself. If I can get home to Elsa, I’ll be all right.

He turned all the way around in the middle of the sidewalk, searching miserably for a cab. There was none.

He saw the

Reviews for Call Me Killer

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The theme of this novel is an ordinary guy who suddenly finds himself running away from a brutal murder and quickly has the police on his heels. He's not sure what he did or why and the mystery about him
and his motives deepens. Whittington is such a terrific writer that he really makes this story come alive and makes it one of those hard to put down books.

Seeing things from Sam's point of view worked well and served to keep the mystery alive till the end. The introduction of Manton the take-no-prisoners overbearing detective who specialized in police brutality was a little bit overdone and that part of the story could have used some toning down.

The few minor typos did not detract from the story at all. This one may not be Whittington's pulpiest best but it's definitely worth reading.