“I think he read what was going to happen then in my eyes. He ran past me and tried to get to the door. Well, he never made it. I shot him through the back of the head. Then I dropped the gun on the floor and had to move the body back in order to open the door. I went out to the corridor, down the back stairs, out through the alley door, took a taxicab, went home, and went to bed.”

“Did you report to Cunweather?”

“Not then. I figured that was the way the chief would like to have things and there was no use getting all excited about it.”

“Did you go to sleep?”

“I was just getting to sleep when Alma Hunter called me on the telephone. I hadn’t expected she’d do that— Well, you know the rest. I put on an act about being sleepy so that the landlady had to call me three or four times.”

The sheriff said, “By God, I believe you, Lam.”

The district attorney said, “Wait a minute. That would mean the gun was fired twice.”

“Sure, it was fired twice,” I said.

“What became of the first bullet?”

“How the hell do I know? It’s stuck in something.”

“The gun couldn’t have been fired twice,” one of the Los Angeles officers said. “The magazine holds seven shells. There were six shells in the gun when the boys from Homicide found it.”

I said, “I’m telling the truth. I can prove it. I loaded that gun myself. I put seven shells in the magazine, then I jacked one up into the barrel. Then I took the magazine out again, and put an extra shell in. That made eight shells. You get the box of shells in the bureau drawer of room 620 in the Perkins Hotel, and you’ll find there are eight shells gone from the box.”

The sheriff said, “He’s right. That accounts for that extra empty cartridge they found in the room.”

The two men from California got up. “Well, Donald,” one of them said, “you’re going back with us. Get your things, and we’ll start now.”

“I don’t want to start now,” I said. “And I don’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m in Arizona,” I told him. “I don’t like California. It’s too damn hot going across the desert. I’m getting along fine here. I like the jail, and I like the treatment. You give me the dose here and I’ll take it.”

“Surely, Donald, you aren’t going to make us go to the bother of getting extradition, are you?”

“I’m not going to leave here.”

One of the cops moved forward belligerently. “Why, you dirty—” The sheriff put a hand on his arm. “Not here, buddy,” he said in a slow drawl that packed plenty of authority.