Framed in Blood by Brett Halliday

bring him along,” the chief of police ordered curtly.
    “If you need Tim, why don’t you call his apartment?”
    “I have, but he doesn’t answer. You know where he is?”
    Shayne glanced at Rourke’s back. He was moving slowly toward the door, and Shayne said truthfully, “Rourke was headed for home the last time I saw him. Where are you, Will?”
    “On Northwest Thirtieth. Come out Okeechobee Road and turn right on Thirtieth.”
    “Right away.” He hung up and said to Rourke, “They’ve found Bert Jackson’s body.”
    Rourke’s hand was on the doorknob. He turned, nodded, and said, “Where?” without surprise.
    “Out in the northwest section. Gentry remembered you mentioning his name in my office, and wants me to come out and identify him.”
    “Let’s go,” said Rourke listlessly. “I’ll drop you there and go to Betty.”
    “You’ll do no such damned-fool thing,” Shayne snapped. “You heard what I told Will. Stay away from this as long as you can. Beat it to some bar where you’re known and have a few drinks. They’ll be on your tail fast enough without your stepping up and asking for it.”
    “But Betty will need me, Mike. I can’t just—”
    “You’ll stay away from the Jackson house,” Shayne ordered more gently. He went over and clamped a big hand on the reporter’s thin shoulder. “Damn it, Tim, don’t you realize Gentry’ll eventually turn all this stuff up? Your friendship with the Jacksons, the fact that you and Bert have had a fight, your hunting through bars for him tonight? That doorman at the Las Felice will remember your asking about him there. Keep out of it. Make them come after you. I’ll get out there and see what’s what.” He rushed the reporter out the door and closed it.
    Shayne long-legged it into the bedroom, stripping off his coat and shirt as he went, hurried to the bathroom and wet a hand towel, sopped it over the hairs at the back of his neck, soaped and washed his hands, then dried neck and hands on the way to a chest of drawers for a clean shirt.
    In three minutes he was at the front door with his hat on. He lifted the slight sag, slammed the door hard to make the night latch catch, and hurried down the steps to the side entrance. Rourke’s car was gone, and he strode back to the tenants’ garage for his car.
    Once on the Okeechobee Road with the Miami Canal shimmering with moonlight on his left, he stepped hard on the accelerator and did not slow until he passed the Seminole Village and began to watch for street signs. He swung to the right on 30th Avenue and a few blocks ahead he saw the spotlights of police cars and an ambulance. He pulled up behind them and got out.
    Bert Jackson lay on his back in the weeds choking the gutter. Gentry nodded curtly as Shayne pressed in beside him. “Recognize him?” grunted the chief.
    “It’s Jackson, all right. Legman on the Tribune. Hit-and-run accident?”
    “Bullet through the back of his head,” Gentry told him, shifting the soggy butt of a black cigar to the other side of his mouth and rolling his puffy eyelids up to look somberly at the rangy detective. He spat out the cigar as a short man wearing thick spectacles rose from a squatting position beside the body. “What do you make of it, Doc?”
    The police surgeon climbed up the shallow embankment and stood beside them. “Not much, Will. He has been dead several hours. Either side of midnight. Shot once directly through the back of the head with a small-caliber bullet. Twenty-two is my guess. Either a rifle or a long-barreled target pistol. Everything indicates he was killed elsewhere and dumped here sometime later.”
    “We figured that,” said Gentry, “from the position of the body and tracks of a car that pulled off to the side. Would you say he was shot in the car that dumped him?”
    “I can’t say, Will. It’s possible. But—there are a couple of curious aspects that’ll have to wait on a p.m.” The physician shook his round head