“Shut up and let me think,” Shayne demanded impatiently. He whirled about and strode up and down the room, muttering.
“The killer must be getting pretty nervous right now. He doesn’t know where the hell she is. He figured he had me sewed up tight when he sent you and Gentry up here — and he must have sent that note to Stallings at about the same time to clinch the kidnaping and murder on me. Now he doesn’t know what to think. He must know that both Gentry and Stallings have been here and gone away without finding the body. His natural thought will be that I found her before you and Gentry came, carried her upstairs to our living apartment, or hid her here in the building some place. He can’t tip his hand by forcing a further search until he knows where she is. He’ll be watching for me to make a break with the body.”
Shayne stopped suddenly before Rourke. Rourke backed away from the burning heat of his eyes.
“Tim, you’ve got to get her out of here,” he said slowly.
“Me? Nothing doing.” He took another backward step, holding up his hand as though to fend the detective off. “I’m not running any dead wagon.”
“You’re in this up to your neck already,” Shayne reminded him grimly. “Gentry knows you stayed behind when he left. If it comes out there was a body here and you connived with me to keep the fact covered up—”
Rourke shuddered and groaned dismally. “You do have the sweetest way of putting things. All right, I might as well be hung for one thing as another. How’ll we work it? What the hell will we do with her? Dump her in the bay?”
“Nothing like that.” Shayne resumed his pacing, rumpling his coarse red hair. “We want to keep her in storage where we can produce her as evidence later.”
Rourke brightened perceptibly. “That’s an idea, Mike. You got any close butcher friends?”
Shayne ignored him. “How about that fishing-place of yours below Coconut Grove?”