Random Killer by Hugh Pentecost

through to us. I’d seen pictures of Steiner and knew him to be a small, wiry, grey powerhouse. “I had a feeling someone in your world might be trying to reach me, Mr. Chambrun,” he said.
    “Oh?”
    Steiner laughed. “Not everybody in the world has the dubious pleasure of being involved with strangling-by-picture-wire.”
    “I have you on an open line, Mr. Steiner. Lieutenant Hardy of Homicide is here, also a member of my staff; my secretary, and a young woman who was Joanna Fraser’s secretary. You’ve heard the news from here?”
    “Yes. I don’t mind an audience, Mr. Chambrun. I’m at my best with an audience.”
    “We’ve made a strange connection with the Dain case,” Chambrun said. “It seems that both our victims, Geoffrey Hammond and Joanna Fraser, had a similar involvement with Sharon Dain. They both refused to help her.”
    “I know,” Steiner said. “I knew at the time. I was sitting here wondering if I should tell someone that when your call came.”
    “You think there’s some significance in that?”
    “I don’t know enough about your end of it to make a guess,” Steiner said. “But if I were you I’d certainly be wondering.”
    “So then you’ll understand my first question. Who paid your fees, Mr. Steiner?”
    “You won’t believe it,” Steiner said.
    “Try me.”
    “I don’t know,” Steiner said. He laughed again. “I have been paid over two hundred thousand dollars for the first trial and for the appeals, and I don’t know who paid it.”
    “It is hard to believe. I understand there was some kind of defense committee. I thought they—”
    “Oh, there was a committee, and they hired me. They, technically, paid me. But the money came from an anonymous source.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “There was a man out there named Parker, Alvin Parker. He’s president of the Parker Foundation. They give away millions of dollars to the arts every year. He was chairman of that committee. He approached me. I told him what a defense was likely to cost. He didn’t know how to raise it.”
    “With millions at his command?” Chambrun asked. He was making some kind of signals to Ruysdale, who was standing in the far doorway. It suddenly came to me in that moment. The Parker Foundation was giving some kind of a fund-raising do in the Grand Ballroom that night. Alvin Parker was a guest in the hotel!
    “Alvin Parker is the nephew of Joshua Parker, the oil billionaire, who created the Parker Foundation in his will. Alvin Parker is, no doubt, well off. But he doesn’t have a free hand with the foundation money. It has to go to the arts. Perhaps, if Sharon Dain had been an artist, the foundation could have justified some sort of contribution to her defense. But she wasn’t that kind of artist.”
    “What kind of artist was she?”
    Steiner chuckled. “In bed,” he said.
    “So Parker didn’t foot the bill?”
    “I think he made a contribution. There were half a dozen others. When they put it all together they didn’t have enough for the first roll of the dice. Then, a couple of days later, Parker came back to me, looking bewildered but happy. An anonymous contributor had anted up a hundred grand, with a promise that there was more where that came from if it was needed. Neither Parker nor anyone else on the committee had the faintest idea who Mr. Anonymous was. Sharon Dain couldn’t guess who was willing to underwrite her defense. But whoever it was, he’s lived up to his word. He came up with another hundred grand before we were done.”
    “Two hundred grand to defend an obviously guilty woman?” Hardy broke in.
    “That’s Lieutenant Hardy, Mr. Steiner,” Chambrun said.
    “You used the right words, Lieutenant. ‘Obviously guilty.’ ” Steiner said. “The police had an open-and-shut case. She lived with Carpenter. She was in the cabin with him that night. There were no fingerprints but hers and his. There are watchmen on the property and none of them saw anyone go