That’s a safe bet. Another is that she won’t have any trouble over this shooting. She’ll come out of court free, and thanked in the bargain.”
Myra Banbrock flinched away from Pat as if he had hit her in the face.
I was her father’s hired man just now. I saw her side of the affair.
I lit a cigarette and studied what I could see of Pat’s face through blood and grime. Pat is a right guy.
“Listen, Pat,” I wheedled him, though with a voice that was as if I were not trying to wheedle him at all. “Miss Banbrock can go into court and come out free and thanked, as you say. But to do it, she’s got to use everything she knows. She’s got to have all the evidence there is. She’s got to use all those photographs Hador took—or all we can find of them.
“Some of those pictures have sent women to suicide, Pat—at least two that we know. If Miss Banbrock goes into court, we’ve got to make the photographs of God knows how many other women public property. We’ve got to advertise things that will put Miss Banbrock—and you can’t say how many other women and girls—in a position that at least two women have killed themselves to escape.”
Pat scowled at me and rubbed his dirty chin with a dirtier thumb.
I took a deep breath and made my play.
“Pat, you and I came here to question Raymond Elwood, having traced him here. Maybe we suspected him of being tied up with the mob that knocked over the St. Louis bank last month. Maybe we suspected him of handling the stuff that was taken from the mail cars in that stickup near Denver week before last. Anyway, we were after him, knowing that he had a lot of money that came from nowhere, and a real estate office that did no real estate business.