Tierney nodded.
"Now," prompted Morgan, "you said you had another suspicion."
"You bet!" exclaimed Tierney, straightening up in his chair. "That guy, Marsh—underneath here."
"'Great minds'," laughed Morgan. "I sort of focused on that man myself after reading your report just now."
"Well, here's the way I look at it," explained Tierney. "When ordinary folks hear fighting and shooting in the middle of the night, they generally stick their heads under the covers and lie close. They don't put on bath robes and run out on the street to be the first to give a report. Then the janitor tells me that he's seen this man around a lot in the daytime—'no visible means of support,' you might say. Both Murphy and I remember that Marsh referred to his wife. The janitor says he's pretty sure that he never saw any woman around the flat. And when I asked Marsh this morning to let me talk to his wife, he said she was not in."
"You probably noticed in my report that it was this Marsh who showed us the bloodstain under the chair. You know, we came out of the kitchen and caught that guy in the act of pulling a chair over the spot. He said he was replacing the chair where he found it. I've been wondering whether he wasn't actually covering up the spot himself. When we caught him in the act, maybe he just decided to bluff it out."
"The Department didn't make any mistake when they shifted you into the Detective Bureau, Tierney," said Morgan, laughing. "Has the Chief assigned you to any other case for my day off?"
"No," replied Tierney. "When the Chief told me to come back and meet you here I figured he wanted me to stick to this case with you."
"So I thought," agreed Morgan. "But I want to be left alone here for awhile. You scout around and see if you can find out something more about this tenant across the hall. Do you know his name?"
"Clark Atwood, it says on the mail box downstairs."