The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich

murders committed before, you know,” he went on, “by people having no telephone numbers to their name at all. What I’m trying to tell you is this: there’s no certainty——”
    â€œBut nothing’s ever certain, is it? Only that you people have the wrong man.”
    He lidded his eyes deprecatingly. “Ah, you’d only get all muddied up. You’re too nice a person, Mrs. Murray. Don’t try it. You’re not her type; you won’t know how to handle half of these people.”
    â€œI’ll have to learn.”
    Maybe it showed on my face. Maybe he saw what he’d be doing to me by dampening, taking away this one incentive I had left. Maybe he thought it would be kinder after all to let me start out on a hopeless, foredoomed quest than on no quest at all, to just sit counting the days as they went by, crossing them off one by one on the calendar of my mind until that red-letter date, sometime during the week of May sixteenth, was reached.
    All I know is he suddenly changed. For no apparent reason, because of nothing that I had been able to say to convince him. “Try it, anyway,” he consented abruptly. “Go ahead and try it.”
    I’d intended to anyway, whether with his benediction or not. But I did need someone to angel me, even if against his own convictions.
    â€œWill they—do you think I’m running any risk of being recognized from the trial?”
    â€œWell, I didn’t know you at first, and I’m supposed to have a mind trained to remember faces. You didn’t take the stand, and you were kept pretty much in the background. I’d say if you change yourself around a little you’d have a pretty good chance of not being recognized.”
    â€œNow, what sort of evidence will I need for it to be any good? Documentary, or will it just be enough if there’s some slip made in the course of conversation, or what sort of requirement will there be from the police point of view?”
    â€œThere wouldn’t be any documentary evidence in a case like this,” he let me know. “You don’t find murders written down in black and white, like bank statements. If you can get anything you come to me with it, even if it’s only a rumor, a piece of idle gossip. That’ll be enough from this policeman’s point of view. If there’s anything to it at all we’ll see that it gets turned into something documentary; you leave that to us.”
    He saw me to the door. “You go ahead, and luck to you. Keep in touch with me; you can always find me around here.” But then at the very last he couldn’t resist adding, out of sheer kindliness, I suppose: “Will you do one thing for me, though? Don’t get your heart too set on it. Don’t take it too hard if it doesn’t—work out the way you expect it to.”
    I knew he didn’t really believe Kirk hadn’t done it. He didn’t expect me to uncover anything, because he thought everything there was to be uncovered had already been uncovered. Pity was making him seem to abet me. He thought it would be easier on me if I had some will-o’-the-wisp to chase than just to sit still waiting for the switch to fall.
    I knew that as I left him; I could read it in him, on him.
    â€œI’ll show him too,” I vowed. “I’ll show them all.”
    â€œI stayed up all night rubbing soap on my finger,” I told the pawnbroker, “but I can only get it up as high as the joint, where it is now. It won’t go over it.”
    He tried it a couple of times with his bare hand. “You could have it filed off,” he said.
    â€œI know I could, but I don’t want that done to it. I thought maybe you have a pair of pliers or some sort of instrument handy you could get it off with. I don’t care how much it hurts; it’s got to come off.”
    â€œI’ll see what I can do,” he said. He came back