The finding of a girl’s nude corpse floating in the bay made the headline. The body had been discovered by two lads in a rowboat, and there was no clue to her identity. Police thought she had been dead for a couple of hours before her body was found.
The writer of the front-page item had ingeniously made up for the lack of facts concerning the crime by the use of inflammatory conjecture coupled with a glowing and adjective-laden description of her nude body and hints that the police expected important developments momentarily.
The story of Shayne’s automobile wreck was a four-line paragraph, the last of a dozen accidents reported during the night. It contained a brief statement that the hit-and-run driver had not been apprehended as the Herald went to press but that garages were being checked for a black limousine with a dented fender and radiator grill.
Shayne laid the paper aside and finished his breakfast. It was seven-thirty when he left the restaurant and started across the causeway to Miami Beach. Rourke’s extra of the finding of Helen Stallings’s body was not yet on the streets. Either the people in that part of town were late risers or strangely unobservant.
He would not let himself consider the unpleasant alternative that the body had been moved in the meantime. Even though this would take the pressure off him for a few hours, he had a feeling that he would start talking to himself if the body disappeared again. After all, there was little enough that one could bite into on this case, and access to the girl’s body was one of them. Without this evidence of a crime actually committed, Shayne decided he might as well grab a plane to New York and let the whole mess take care of itself.
ELEVEN
THE PATTERSON SANITARIUM was a square, flat-roofed, two-story building of stuccoed concrete situated in the center of an entire city block on Miami Beach. A high, clipped hedge of intertwined Australian pines circled the block, effectually shielding the grounds from view. A heavy gate of oak timbers blocked the only entrance to the inner sanctum of a ten-foot coral wall immediately surrounding the building.
Shayne rattled the gate and found it locked. By the side of the gate was a rubber mouthpiece and an earphone above a button with the directions: Push button.
Shayne pushed the button and put the phone to his ear. He heard a metallic click, and a brusque voice said, “Hello?”
“Mr. Shayne. I’ve an appointment with Doctor Patterson.”