Man On The Run by Charles Williams

Martini. “Now, the actual suicide. He lived in a housing development called Bellehaven, about six miles north of town—”
    “I know where it is,” I said. “Two- and three-bedroom houses, fifteen thousand dollars and up.”
    She nodded. “Then you know where the big shopping center is. I was just out there; that’s where I bought the steak. Purcell’s address was 2531 Winston Drive. That’s the last street in the subdivision, and it parallels the edge of the shopping center. In fact, part of the supermarket parking area is directly behind the row of houses in that block.”
    “Then you could park in the supermarket lot and go right into the back yard?”
    She shook her head. “Not easily. The whole area is lighted. And all the back yards are enclosed with six-foot basket-weave fences covered with Pyracantha. There are gates, but they have latches that can be secured from inside. And Purcell’s was padlocked. You could climb the fences, of course, but in the early evening somebody in the parking lot would be almost certain to see you.
    “It happened on the night of January twenty-eighth, a little over three weeks ago. Mrs. Purcell went to a movie with the wife of a next-door neighbor. She often did; Purcell cared nothing for movies. She left around eight and there was never any doubt Purcell was alive afterward. The neighbor came over about the same time and he and Purcell had a beer and watched a fight on television until a little after nine. And after he left, about nine-thirty, Purcell’s boss, Lt. Shriver of the Robbery Detail, called him about something. He said Purcell sounded perfectly normal over the phone. And as nearly as they could tell afterward, that was only forty-five minutes before he killed himself. Neighbors on both sides heard the shot, and they placed it at approximately ten-fifteen. At the time they thought it was a car backfiring.
    “The picture was a double feature, so it was ten after twelve when Mrs. Purcell returned home. She put the car in the garage, and the two women said goodnight. The neighbor woman had hardly got inside when she heard Mrs. Purcell scream and then run out of the house.
    “The police were there within minutes. Purcell was slumped over his desk in the living room, shot through the temple with his own thirty-eight. The shoulder holster was where he always left it when he came home, hanging on a hook in the hall closet. The gun was lying on the rug beside his chair. They could get only partial prints off it, but they were all his. There was no sign of a struggle at all, and nothing to indicate anybody else had been there. The gate to the backyard was locked, and nobody in the block had seen anyone come or go from the front of the house. It couldn’t have been an accident, because all his gun-cleaning equipment was put away in the kitchen. There was no note, but on the desk just under his face was a single sheet of white paper and a ballpoint pen, as if he’d started to write one and then changed his mind.”
    It was baffling. “What do you think?” I asked.
    “That he was murdered.”
    “Why?”
    “Several reasons—one of which you don’t know yet. In the first place, the back gate’s being padlocked didn’t mean anything. It could have been locked after he was killed. Suppose he’d stayed home because he was expecting a visitor—a woman? He’d have left it open for her.”
    “But how would she leave afterward?”
    “Take her chances and go right out the front. All she had to do was walk half a block, turn right at the next street, and she’d be back in the parking lot. After eleven p.m., the streets in those housing developments are pretty quiet.”
    “All right. What else?”
    “There’s no such thing as a spur-of-the-moment suicide. When a man kills himself, whatever’s behind it has been feeding on him considerably longer than forty-five minutes. A single man might keep it hidden, but Purcell was married, and his wife said there’d been